by M C Beaton
Hannah Pym looked out at the passing scene but with diminished enthusiasm. As they rumbled their way through towns and villages, heads popped out of casement windows to survey the one excitement of the day – the sight of the Flying Machine.
York suddenly seemed a long way away, much longer than its one hundred and ninety-nine miles from London, almost at the edge of the world. The monotonous creak, creak, creak of the coach was beginning to get on Hannah’s nerves. She began to feel like a jaded traveller whom nothing can surprise. A tinge of homesickness crept in on her. What on earth was she doing in this still-damp coach travelling to the ends of the earth when she might be in her little flat in London, awaiting the arrival of Sir George?
But perhaps she might come across Mrs Clarence in York and that would be worth any discomfort, any long and tedious journey. Just thinking about someone other than herself always cheered Hannah, and so her thoughts turned easily from Mrs Clarence to Yvonne Grenier. There was something badly wrong with this coachload, rumbling its way northwards in the failing light; a marquis who had claimed to be ordinary Mr Giles; and a Mr Smith who frightened Yvonne and who had been joined by his foppish friend, Mr Ashton.
By the time the coach jolted its way into Grantham, where they were to spend the night, Hannah had decided to question Yvonne further.
Here was an attractive French girl and here was an aristocrat, and a very handsome one, too. Of course he might be as impoverished as he claimed to be, although Hannah, wise in the ways of the world, knew an aristocrat’s idea of poverty was a far cry from that of the wretches of the rookeries in London. If there was something about Mr Smith to fear, then perhaps that might rouse the knight-errantry in the marquis. Feeling quite warm from all these interesting speculations, Hannah alighted with the others at the Bull and Mouth in Grantham.
The Bull and Mouth was not only a coaching-house but a posting-house as well, which meant it catered for a grander type of customer, and coach passengers were usually relegated to a small dark pit of a dining-roomat the back of the inn. Thanks to the magnificence of the Marquis of Ware, they were ushered into the main dining-room and a good bill of fare was set before them instead of the usual repast of pork in various shapes and sizes.
Monsieur Petit decided to use the supper-time to find out what he could about Miss Pym. If that spinster lady were to get too close to Miss Grenier, then he wanted to know whether she was a creature of consequence who would make a difficult adversary or a pretentious woman who was aping her betters by having some relative dress up as a footman.
Over the soup, he fixed her with his pale eyes and asked, ‘You are from London, Miss Pym?’
He got a brief nod in reply.
‘Which part of London?’
‘The West End,’ replied Hannah with a faint lift of her eyebrows, as if to imply that such as she could hardly be expected to live anywhere else.
‘It is odd to see a lady accompanied by a footman on the stage-coach,’ pursued Monsieur Petit. ‘Particularly a footman who is allowed to travel inside.’
Hannah smiled but did not offer any explanation.
‘I have never travelled on the stage before,’ said Mr Ashton pompously. ‘Usually take m’own carriage.’
‘And what brought you on the stage this time?’ asked the marquis.
‘Heard my friend Mr Smith was bound north, so decided to join him.’
A large roast fowl was placed before the marquis. He carved off the wings first and offered them to Yvonne. The wings were the favourite part, something that was to drive Lord Byron into sulks, for he could never understand why such delicacies should be given to the ladies. Yvonne indicated Hannah, but Hannah refused, saying she preferred a slice of the breast instead.
Monsieur Petit had been racking his brains as to how to find out more about Hannah. ‘The Season will soon be over,’ he volunteered.
‘Do you not regret missing it?’ asked the marquis with a cynical gleam in his eye. ‘Are not the ladies pining at ball and saloon, asking where, oh where, is our Mr … er … Smith?’
‘You jest, my lord. I do not frequent the Season. But Miss Pym, surely …?’
He allowed his voice to trail off and looked at Hannah encouragingly.
Hannah smiled at him again and again did not reply.
To Mr Petit’s annoyance, there was an interruption. A fashionable party entered the room, an elegant man with a finely dressed lady and two young girls. The lady saw the marquis and sailed forward, hand outstretched. ‘My dear Ware,’ she carolled. ‘What are you doing in this common inn?’
‘Like yourself, I am travelling, Lady Abbott. Allow me to make you known to the company.’
Lady Abbott held up one gloved hand. Her large eyes surveyed the group. ‘That will not be necessary,’ she said, her tone, slightly amused, implying that the marquis’s company was beneath her notice. ‘Do come and meet my daughters,’ she said.
The marquis gave a sweet smile and raised the carving knife. ‘My apologies, Lady Abbott. As you can see, I am too busy engaged in carving this fowl. Do you dine?’
‘We have a private dining-room.’
‘So what brings you to the common dining-room?’
‘My maid told me some fantastical story that you had arrived on the common stage. I found it scarcely credible, but now …’ Her eyes raked over the company. ‘Oh, here is my husband. You know Abbott, of course. My daughters, Indiana and Philadelphia.’ Both girls curtsied.
Hannah found herself becoming very angry indeed. Hannah Pym, friend that she was of Sir George Clarence, should be accorded proper respect, not snubbed by this Abbott female. What made it even worse was that Lady Abbott was not going out of her way to be nasty. She obviously believed the company to be beneath her notice. Hannah nervously fingered the corded silk of her own gown.
Yvonne looked wide-eyed at Lady Abbott. She was a handsome woman in a tamboured gown, her oiled head ornamented with feathers. Her daughters, both in their late teens, were gazing up at the marquis with well-trained adoration. In looks, they were neither of them out of the common way, but they had been schooled to please and find husbands. Hard work removes pretty innocence, thought Yvonne. I could never gaze at any man with that cowlike look of worship.
‘Pray join us,’ said Lord Abbott.
‘How can I join you,’ said the marquis mildly, ‘when I am obviously otherwise engaged?’
Lord Abbott half-turned his face away, but his words were perfectly audible. ‘But such company! I assume you are travelling on the stage for some lark.’
Benjamin had heard enough. He considered Hannah had been slighted. ‘My mistress’s food is getting cold, so why don’t you all go away,’ he said loudly.
‘Are you addressing me?’ Lady Abbott raised her quizzing-glass.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Benjamin, unrepentant. ‘Move along, do, my lady.’ He raised his voice to a mincing falsetto. ‘I’Faith, I was never so bored in all my life.’
‘You outrageous whipper-snapper,’ raged Lord Abbott. ‘I’ll have you horsewhipped. You … madam’ – to Hannah – ‘kindly curb your servant.’
‘Indeed I would, my lord,’ said Hannah coldly, ‘were it not that I agree with every word my Benjamin says.’
Indiana promptly swooned. It was gracefully done, for she had spent hours in front of her glass perfecting the art, but the Marquis of Ware did not catch her. That task was left to Benjamin. Indiana opened her eyes and said weakly, ‘Oh, my heart,’ found Benjamin grinning down at her and struggled free with a squawk.
‘I see now,’ said Lady Abbott, struggling for calm, ‘why it is, Ware, that you have elected to go on the common stage.’ She made it sound like acting in the theatre. ‘Obviously your travelling companions suit your low taste.’
Pushing her twittering daughters before her, she flounced off, followed by her husband, leaving the marquis and the rest.
The Marquis continued to carve. The others sat silent, all engrossed in their unhappy thoughts. Monsieur
Petit was grinding his teeth and thinking that Lady Abbott would be considerably improved in appearance were her head in a basket in front of the guillotine. Mr Ashton was ruffled. He considered himself no end of a dandy, but Lady Abbott’s insults had brought back to him unwelcome memories of many such slights. Hannah was depressed. She had so lately been a servant that she felt sure the stamp of the servant class was marked on her face for all to see. Yvonne had met many such ladies as Lady Abbott when she visited the houses of the rich in London to teach French. Somehow, she had not particularly minded before. She had been too grateful for the work. But the horrible Lady Abbott had made her feel small and shabby and undistinguished.
‘Such a pushing, vulgar creature, that Abbott female,’ said the marquis meditatively, looking around the gloomy faces. ‘’Tis said her father was in trade.’
All the bruised egos turned to him like flowers to the sun. Hannah began to laugh. ‘Did you but mark her daughter’s outrage after she had manufactured that swoon only to recover in the arms of Benjamin?’
The others laughed as well and, in one brief fleeting moment, the odd assortment were united by a communal dislike of the high-handed Lady Abbott.
But then Monsieur Petit remembered his mission and reflected that the presence of this marquis was becoming increasingly irritating. He was obviously well known, and no innkeeper on the road would forget their visit. Mr Ashton covertly studied Yvonne. She was a neat piece of work, he thought, fiddling with a goose quill to prize a recalcitrant piece of chicken from between his teeth. He rather fancied himself as a ladies’ man. Perhaps he could flirt with her, dazzle her, and so make her blind to any danger. So ran his conceited thoughts while the object of them looked around the stable security of the dining-room of this English inn and became more determined than ever to ask help of Miss Hannah Pym. This was not Paris, where one learned quickly not to trust anyone but a few close friends, and menace lurked around every street corner. She felt a pang of envy for the marquis. He was eating neatly and deftly, looking relaxed and amused. He was handsome and burnished and tailored to perfection. She did not believe his tale of poverty. He was armoured by birth and fortune and looks against a world of poverty and danger, snubs and deception. He had only to raise his head and look about him for the waiters to come running, not in the hope of a good tip, but because he was ‘my lord’. The landlord hovered near the table as well, eyes sharp for any sign of slackness on the part of his staff.
A large log fire crackled on the hearth and the branches of candles on the tables burnt clear and bright. Yvonne felt a lump rising in her throat caused by a craving to be part of this secure world.
Conversation became desultory, and as soon as the meal was over, they all decided to retire to their rooms. Yvonne was to share a bedchamber with Hannah. Both ladies walked up the shallow polished wooden treads of the inn staircase, a waiter walking before them with a candle to light their way.
‘What it is to be in the company of a marquis!’ exclaimed Hannah as they entered what was obviously one of the best bedchambers in the inn. A coal fire was burning brightly, and beeswax candles burnt on the mantelpiece instead of the usual tallow ones.
Both ladies worked busily, opening their trunks and looking out their night-rail and clean clothes for the morning.
‘And now,’ said Hannah in the same matter-of-fact voice she had just been using to praise the comforts of the bedchamber a moment before, ‘perhaps you might enlighten me, Miss Grenier, as to what is going on? I have never found myself among a stranger group of passengers, and there is an air of secrecy, furtiveness and, yes, menace emanating from our Mr Smith and his foppish friend, and I think you know why.’
Yvonne gave a little sigh and sat down suddenly in a small armchair by the fire and looked at her hands. Hannah waited patiently.
‘I was going to tell you,’ said Yvonne at last. ‘I had made up my mind to ask for your help. Mr Smith is in fact Monsieur Petit of the Paris Tribunal. He told me that my father had written to him saying that he, my father, who had turned against the Revolution, was now in favour of it, and wished to return to Paris and help the new regime. He showed me a letter. It is in my father’s handwriting, but I am convinced now that it is an old letter, one sent before the Terror began. He wishes to either kill my father or to take him back to Paris by force to stand what passes for a trial in that unhappy city.’
Hannah sat down in a chair facing Yvonne and said seriously, ‘We must have a council of war.’
Yvonne moved her shoulders in a Gallic shrug and her pretty mouth drooped with disappointment. The seemingly capable Miss Pym was merely an over-romantic spinster.
She gave a brittle laugh. ‘Really, Mees … Miss Pym, would you call the British generals to our aid?’
‘No, no, but we shall have my Benjamin in to hear your story, and the Marquis of Ware.’
‘Milord? But why? He, I am persuaded, would find the whole thing most distasteful, and in his roast-beef English way he would turn the whole lot of us over to the nearest magistrate.’
‘And what would be so wrong with that idea?’ Hannah’s eyes flashed green.
‘My father is living, perhaps incognito, in York. But if the English knew he was Monsieur Claude Grenier, he who helped so much in the cause of the Revolution, they might take him as a spy.’ She shivered. ‘I see enemies everywhere.’
Despite her concern for the Frenchwoman’s plight, Hannah’s busy matchmaking mind was working furiously. Yvonne was of the French bourgeoisie, which put her well below the level of an English marquis, not to mention a French one, if, thought Hannah bleakly, there were any of that breed with their heads still attached to their bodies. But a maiden in distress worked wonders with even the most hardened cynic.
‘A marquis has great standing,’ said Hannah aloud. ‘Let us have him in, and if he shows the slightest sign of calling the authorities, I, Hannah Pym, will order a post-chaise and take you off to York myself this night and they will never catch us. Trust me, Miss Grenier.’
Yvonne looked this way and that as if seeking escape. She wished now she had kept her troubles to herself. She thought of the very small amount of money she carried with her. There was no way she could hire a conveyance for herself and escape. Better to go along with Miss Pym’s plan.
She finally nodded reluctantly. Hannah went in search of Benjamin and asked her footman to find Lord Ware and to bring him to their bedchamber.
Yvonne waited nervously by the fire. The sound of carriages arriving and departing came up from the courtyard below. She looked up as the door opened. The flames of the candles streamed out in the draught as the marquis and Benjamin walked into the room.
The marquis executed an elegant bow. ‘It is not often,’ he said airily, ‘that I have the honour of being invited by two ladies to their bedchamber.’
Yvonne’s heart sank. Here was a man who knew nothing of violence or danger or treachery. Women to him were pretty playthings, or some sort of boring lesser race, but nothing else.
But it was too late to draw back. Hannah gravely outlined Yvonne’s problem.
The marquis listened with every appearance of calm interest, while behind his handsome face his mind worked furiously. He had been sent by the War Office to find out what this Monsieur Petit was doing in England. Instead of picking him up, they had decided to have him watched. The fact that they had found out that he had booked a seat on the York stage under the name of Mr Smith had really sparked their interest. The marquis had done valuable work before. He had protested against using an alias, saying that one fake on a stage-coach was surely enough, but the authorities had pointed out that a marquis travelling on the stage might in itself be enough to frighten off Monsieur Petit, and then they would never learn what he was up to or what he was about to get up to. But he had no intention of telling anything of this to the assembled company. Yvonne naturally thought only the best of her father. But if Monsieur Grenier showed any sign of returning to France to assist that murderous r
egime, then he must be stopped. The French were devious. Had not this upstart Napoleon tricked everyone, including his own people, by claiming that all he wanted was peace for France? Had he not just led his vast armies into the plains of Lombardy and taken over northern Italy? Certainly it seemed odd, with all Napoleon’s greater plans, that the French should wish to go to great lengths to drag back from England one bourgeois gentleman to stand trial, and yet that was how terror kept its grip on a people. Always punish the ‘traitors’ and in as public a manner as possible to keep everyone else in line.
He smiled and said lazily, ‘It’s as good as a play. But if you want to get rid of this Monsieur Petit and his unsavoury friend, why, it is simple.’
‘How?’ demanded Benjamin from the shadows.
‘I will tell the coachman that our friends do not wish to continue their journey and tell the innkeeper that they are not to be roused. I will buy their seats and persuade the coachman to leave an hour earlier.’
Hannah looked at him, disappointed. ‘By, my lord, all they will have to do is hire a post-chaise and catch us up on the road.’
‘My little mind did think of that.’ The marquis stifled a yawn. ‘At the next stop, it is we who will hire a fast carriage and so proceed to York.’
‘For an impoverished aristocrat, you still seem to have a great deal of money,’ commented Hannah wryly.
He smiled. ‘Nothing is too much to please a lady. Now, Miss Pym, if you and your footman would like to retire for a short time, I wish to have a word in private with Miss Grenier.’
‘But, why?’ Hannah stood protectively next to Yvonne. ‘We are all in this. It is not the thing to be alone in an inn bedchamber with a young lady, or had you forgot?’
‘I am well aware of it, ma’am, but no one need know except yourself and Benjamin. Pray indulge me.’
‘I am used to taking care of myself,’ said Yvonne quietly.
Hannah left reluctantly, followed by Benjamin. ‘Ten minutes,’ she called over her shoulder, and then closed the door behind her.
