Mistress of My Fate

by Hallie Rubenhold

  I had not prepared myself to be the subject of such scrutiny, nor was I in a fit state to contend with enquiries or even idle conversation. Ashamed of my bedraggled appearance, I wished for nothing more than to make my passage in silence. I therefore kept my head down and my frightened features hidden beneath the shade of my hat. As you might imagine, my unwillingness to engage with any of those within the cabin only excited their interest further. This held especially true for the smirking lady sitting directly opposite me. I could tell from the manner in which she craned her neck and peered beneath the brim of my hat that she was determined to have my story from me. She would prise me open like an oyster. I would not meet her gaze, but this did not deter her. Her dark eyes fixed on me, glowing like two pieces of jet beneath her enormous, beribboned hat. For some time, she attempted to draw my notice, fidgeting, dropping her embroidery and harrumphing in great, proud breaths. Unable to bear it any longer, she finally exclaimed, “My, how bad the road is! I do not recall it being so full of rocks and potholes, do you not agree, miss?”

  I looked up, surprised by her address.

  “La, but it is not as bad as the stagecoach…” she continued, directing her comments to her husband, who slumbered beside her. “No, the stage is not for those who value manners.”

  Oh, this woman was a clever one. She knew precisely how to heighten my sense of alarm; after all, I was to board the stage for the next leg of my journey.

  “Please, madam,” I said timorously, “why is this so? I am to join the stage at Royston.”

  “My dear miss, I take it that you have not before travelled upon the stage?” she asked, arching an eyebrow and leaning towards me the better to examine my features. I turned from her quickly but her eyes clung to me like burrs.

  “No, I have not.”

  “Do avoid it if you can. Find some other means of travelling to your destination. If it is possible, hire a post chaise. The stage is filled with none but ruffians and thieves. The coachman will almost certainly be drunk. You are sure to be robbed or to have your pocket picked.”

  “Oh,” I uttered, a look of dread overcoming my expression. The threat of yet more danger seemed almost too much to bear. I felt my throat tighten.

  Until that moment the gentleman sitting beside my interrogator had been entirely engrossed in a book, and had seemed the least curious among the passengers. But he must have sensed my discomfort, for now he too was staring at my wide-eyed face.

  “Poppycock,” he stated firmly. “It is true, the mail provides a better service, but you are as likely to meet with ruffians in this coach as you are upon the stage.”

  He then looked at me. “I take it that your friends will protect you from such dangers, miss.”

  I knew not how to respond to this.

  The gentleman placed his book upon his lap and looked at me sternly. “You do not mean to tell us, miss, that you travel unaccompanied?”

  It was the one question the entire cabin had wished to ask me from the outset. All eyes were upon me, even those of my interrogator’s sleepy husband.

  What a child I was! In all of that time, as I had walked the route to the White Hart, as I had waited for the arrival of the coach, as I had sat bouncing against its leather seat, it had never occurred to me to concoct a plausible story to explain my position. I was not, nor have I ever been, a natural liar.

  “No…” I stuttered, “I am to meet a friend… of my family…”

  “At Royston?” enquired the woman opposite.

  “In Gloucestershire.”

  “And Gloucestershire is your destination?” asked the bookish gentleman.

  A knowing smile began to creep across my female interrogator’s mouth. “How curious that you should be all alone, that your friends should send you off on such a journey unaccompanied. And what of your family?”

  “I have none.” I spoke boldly. That was the truth, in part.

  “And so you are very much alone in the world,” said the gentleman, with a softness in his tone.

  “I am, sir.”

  Neither could formulate a satisfactory response to that.

  “Well then,” began the gentleman, “I shall see to it that you arrive safely at Royston and that you are not troubled by ruffians and pickpockets along the way. My name is Fortune,” said he, holding out his hand for me to shake it.

  I must say that I was relieved, however temporarily, to have the protection of Mr. Fortune, who appeared to me an honest, sensible man. Close in age to Lord Stavourley, he was a solicitor to some families in Norfolk and was en route to London to attend to business on their behalf. Although he resumed reading his copy of Tristram Shandy and said little more to me, there seemed something avuncular in his manner. Every so often he looked up from his book and gave me a genteel nod.

  The journey by mail coach was swift and Cambridge seemed not as far as I had believed. Comforted by my new friend’s presence, I occupied myself with a view of the East Anglian landscape and watched the Gothic tops of the colleges rising from the flat, marshy horizon. Our pace began to slacken as we drew nearer and joined with an eddying flow of freight, cattle and carts, steadily pushing their way through the network of narrow cobbled streets. Eventually we came to a stop under the sign of the Eagle Inn. Here, my fashionably adorned inquisitor and her husband disembarked. Before she flounced from the vehicle, she permitted herself a last lingering look at me. “I shan’t tell your secret, Miss Runaway,” she leaned in and whispered, her face aglow with furtive pleasure. I recoiled, ashamed that I should have been the cause of such entertainment and speculation. To her I must have seemed like a character from a romantic novel, though I felt anything but that.

  As the mail was running to a timetable, we had only a brief spell at the Eagle, enough time to change horses and gather a further sack of post. I had believed that my protector, Mr. Fortune, and I would be the only two in the carriage, until the final moments before departure when a boisterous party of young men clambered aboard. There were three in total and they heaved themselves on to the seats with laughter and groans. They smelled powerfully of drink, and I dare say that it took them hardly the blink of an eye to notice my presence. The door was slammed shut on the tightly packed compartment. Three foxes could not have felt more at home in a hen house.

  I did not venture raising my eyes to them. As they were in high spirits, I wished more than anything not to draw their attention. However, I soon found that to be unavoidable.

  “Good day, miss,” said the young man next to me with an exaggerated, unsteady motion. “I am Thomas Masham, and these are my friends. I shall not trouble you with their names.” The cabin erupted into laughter.

  “And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he continued.

  I spoke quietly: “I am Miss Ingerton.”

  “How do you do, miss?”

  “Please, sir, I am not well and do not care much for conversation at present,” I replied, shrinking away from him.

  “Perhaps you would like a drink to ease you,” said the fattest of the three, offering me a flask he had stowed in his coat pocket.

  “No, thank you, sir.” My audience was disappointed that I would not engage with them.

  “You claim to be unwell, miss, but how could that be so when you have such a healthy blush upon your cheek. Your face is so round and pretty and your eyes so bright. I would say you are in fine health,” teased Thomas Masham.

  I looked away.

  “Or perhaps it is my presence that makes you blush…”

  His friends chuckled once more.

  “I do think she is in love, Tom!” declared the auburn-haired gentleman across from me.

  “Ah, Dick,” he sighed theatrically, “I fear the longer I sit beside Miss Ingerton the more attached to her I become. Madam, I have no doubt that by the time we arrive in London you will have agreed to be my wife, or else offer to perform the services of one.”

  “That, sir, is quite enough!” barked Mr. Fortune, springing to my rescue
.

  The young men reacted sharply. Tom bowed his head. “My apologies to you, sir, I did not think that she was—”

  “No, sir, you did not think at all and you have greatly offended Miss Ingerton.”

  “My apologies to you, madam,” said my assailant, “for my baseness.” He then locked his gaze on me in a hot, predatory manner. “You see, Miss Ingerton, I am very much in drink, and am no better than a beast. My passions have been raised and I mean to slake them in London.” He finished his sentence with a loud belch.

  “Sir!” exclaimed Mr. Fortune, before pulling down the window. “Guard!” he called out. “Stop the coach at once!”

  The galloping horses were immediately reined in and the flying vehicle pulled to a halt. Mr. Fortune shouted from the window, “There is a gentleman here unfit to ride inside and I beg you to take him on top with you. He is in need of air.” With that, the odious Thomas Masham was ushered on to the roof to sit alongside the guard and his sobering blunderbuss.

  With their ringleader removed, Tom Masham’s fellows held their tongues and stared at their shoes. Pleased to have played the role of a knight errant, Mr. Fortune sat erect and smug the rest of the way to Royston. I was truly grateful for his assistance, but the reassurance I had felt in his company would be temporary. From the moment I stepped out of the coach, I would be left open to all sorts of approaches and possible indignities. I began to fret about what I might find upon the stagecoach and the difficult characters I might encounter.

  The day was now disappearing. Along the final stretch of road the sun had faded into deep, rich shadows. I had not progressed as far as I had naively hoped and night would bring a further round of difficulties and pitfalls. Mr. Fortune must have noticed my worried expression as I caught my first sight of the sign of the Bull. The coach pulled through the arch and into the inn yard but I could only look at the light-filled windows with trepidation.

  “Royston!” announced the guard. I could not move. Something held me back. Perhaps it was the thought of entering yet another tavern alone, or the dizzying realization that, beyond this point, I had no further instructions. I did not know which stage to take or when it would arrive. I might have to spend the night here, amidst the noise and fray and the strangers sodden in drink.

  “Oh…” I spoke to myself, clutching my bundle, tears welling in my eyes.

  “Miss Ingerton, this is Royston. You are due to disembark,” said Mr. Fortune, stepping out of the coach to assist me. “But your face, it is entirely white!” he exclaimed with genuine concern, taking my hand. “No. No. This will not do,” and with that, Mr. Fortune ordered his box to be taken off the carriage. “I cannot leave you here in such a condition.”

  I regarded him with gratitude.

  As he escorted me away, I could hear Tom Masham muttering something rude to his associates about my protector. I was pleased I could not make out his precise words, though it might have served me well to listen.

  The relief I felt at hearing their vehicle depart was great, nearly as great as my reassurance at being offered Mr. Fortune’s arm.

  Oh reader, I know what you are thinking. You are wondering how I could possibly have entered an inn at night with an unknown gentleman. Yes, here too I must pause and marvel at my youthful innocence. I am also reminded of that saying: that one goes out of the frying pan and into the fire. Did I not think myself in some danger? To be truthful, I suppose the possibility of danger did briefly fly through my feather head, but Mr. Fortune seemed to be such an honourable, Christian man. He was genteel and sensible. He seemed no different from any other gentleman I had ever known while living at Melmouth. (You, Lord Dennington, I discount.)

  Mr. Fortune was a paragon of chivalry. He immediately ordered me a set of rooms where I could dine in private and later sleep undisturbed. He made all the necessary arrangements for my journey on the stage to Oxford the following day. He ordered that a roaring fire be lit in the hearths of both rooms. “I would not have you take ill from the cold,” he said to me with a kind look. I watched as the wood was piled into the fireplace, Mr. Fortune tipping the boy for each additional log he laid on to the growing pyre. By the time I sat down to dine the room was radiant with heat. It was then that my gallant protector made a motion to leave, claiming that he would take his meal downstairs in the public room.

  “Oh, but you must join me here,” I said innocently to him, and to his credit, he offered several false protests before taking a seat at my table.

  We dined well. In fact, I had not eaten so richly in days, perhaps weeks. He ordered the finest fare that the Bull’s kitchens could provide: quails with plum sauce, soused hare, roast capon, suet pudding, fritters and syllabub. Mr. Fortune was a convivial man, who seemed most at home behind a plate heaped with food. The more wine he drank, the ruddier his cheeks glowed. His conversation, which revolved around London gossip and the races at Newmarket, was so entertaining that he succeeded in making me forget for a short while the pain that weighted down my heart. I was so charmed by his good company and manners that I was entirely unprepared for what transpired next.

  It had grown late and the large meal, wine and heated surroundings had caused me to become sleepy. I expressed my wish to retire, whereupon Mr. Fortune rose to his feet and graciously assisted me from my chair. I was not yet standing upright when I was grabbed fiercely, spun around and pinned to his chest. I screamed and struggled. “Release me!” I demanded.

  Retaining his hold on my wrist, he glared at me, panting. “Whatever do you mean by this?” he snapped, obviously confused. “You have accepted my hospitality, even encouraged my advances, and yet you refuse me?”

  “No, sir, I did not mean…”

  “What, madam? You travel alone and have no protector. What would you have me think? You are an innocent miss?” he leered. Then his eyes hardened on me. “Now you may give up this game and we shall get on with the deed.”

  I shook my head furiously in utter disbelief. The shock of his sudden transformation bewildered me. I was speechless at his suggestion and terrified of what he might try. I began to panic. Twisting with all my might, I managed to pull free from his grasp and tear through the doorway into the adjoining room. How grateful I was for the bolt upon the door! It does not bear imagining what would have happened had there not been one. So many poor wretches have seen their ruin in such rooms, all on account of an innkeeper who would not pay the extra expense for a small bar of metal.

  Dear Mr. Fortune. The man who had once been my saviour and my only friend was now my persecutor. He pounded upon the door, demanding that I open it at once. Inside the Bull’s most costly bedchamber, I trembled. The door bounced on its hinges with each angry impact of his fists. Frightened that it might not hold against his battery, I dragged a tallboy with all my might until it rested against the entryway. Mr. Fortune continued to hammer away, determined to claim his prize.

  I backed myself towards the canopied bed and sat frozen upon it. This had been but my first day from Melmouth. What else might I have to endure? I lived on the faintest hope of what I might find when I arrived in Gloucestershire. But at that very moment I had nothing; no family, no home, no love, no prospects, not even a protector. The bleakness of my situation broke over me like a wave and I collapsed under it in a torrent of miserable sobs.

  Chapter 2

  Now, dear reader, you have followed me this far but I sense your confusion. I suspect you are wondering how a young lady of good breeding came to find herself in such desperate circumstances. I do not simply mean my precarious position at the Bull, but the entire sequence of events that led up to this moment. Forgive me. There is much still that requires explanation. As you will understand, my past is most difficult to unravel.

  I must confess, for much of the early part of my life, I had no real knowledge of my history. It was never made clear to me how precisely I came to live with Edwin Ingerton, the 4th Earl of Stavourley, and his family at Melmouth House. Each of the nursemaids who reared me deli
ghted in relaying their own version of events.

  “You had been deposited at the Foundling Hospital before his lordship rescued you,” said one.

  “You arrived on the steps like Moses in a basket,” said another.

  I might well have appeared on a mountaintop. No one could agree on any one story. However, for those who knew about the Earl’s younger brother, the reasons why his lordship had taken me in were self-evident.

  As it was later explained to me, I was the daughter of the Honourable William Ingerton, a wastrel who had eloped with my mother, Miss Ridgemount, a child-bride of fifteen. The young Mrs. Ingerton lasted no more than nine months. Having borne me, she promptly expired of puerperal fever. My father, inconsolable at the loss of his wife, took a packet to France, which went down in a storm. It was a small stroke of fortune that William Ingerton did not have an appetite for fatherhood and had left me behind in the care of a wet nurse. However, it was less fortunate that long before my birth he had squandered his entire fortune at the gaming tables of his London club. When my uncle Stavourley brought me into his care, I was just two years old and without so much as a halfpenny to my name.

  “As blood, his lordship had a family obligation to maintain you,” explained my governess, “but it was uncertain whether you would benefit more under his roof or that of another. Being a man of learning, he spent much time cogitating on the benefits that might be had by either option.” You see, he already had one daughter, Lady Catherine Ingerton, who was no more than a year and a half my senior.