by M C Beaton
Too mortified to do other than make room between herself and William for Hannah, Lady Deborah then sat very still, staring straight ahead.
‘He will be killed,’ said Miss Hannah Pym. ‘I know it.’
‘Your son, ma’am?’ asked Lady Deborah, finding her voice.
‘No,’ said Hannah crossly, ‘my footman, and as Benjamin is in his thirties and I in my forties, I am tired of people asking me whether he is my son. He is a silly footman who lost a great deal of money gambling and this is his stupid, stupid, dangerous way of trying to recoup his losses. Why are you dressed like a man?’
‘Mind your own business, madam, and watch the fight,’ said Deborah tartly.
‘I do not want to watch the fight,’ replied Hannah. ‘I do not enjoy public hangings, nor do I like to see public murder done, which is all that a prize-fight is.’
‘How long do these … these … things usually go on for?’ Deborah asked William.
‘Twenty-eight rounds,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Stubbs has a great deal of bottom and is shaping up well.’
Deborah thought gloomily that Stubbs was going to end up, if he lived, looking like a sort of black-and-blue jelly for the rest of his life.
Benjamin’s pluck against such a formidable adversary had caught the crowd’s imagination. They began to roar his name, not Stubbs, not the surname which would have been usual, but a huge chant of, ‘Benjamin, Benjamin, BENJAMIN!’ The noise seemed to galvanize Benjamin, who began to place his punches more accurately. The rounds were mercifully short but by the time the fight reached its fifteenth, Deborah, forgetting Miss Pym was a stranger, was clutching her for support and Hannah had a comforting arm around the girl’s shoulders.
At the sixteenth round, Hannah’s nerve broke. Freeing herself from Lady Deborah, she jumped to her feet and shouted, ‘I cannot stand it any more, Benjamin.’
Benjamin’s eyes flickered in her direction. He dived under Randall’s guard and landed a massive blow under Randall’s ear, that magic spot, as it was described by the boxing expert of the time, Captain Godfrey.
Randall fell like a stone and lay still.
Crying with relief, Hannah cheered and jumped up and down. Deborah leaped to her feet and she and William clung on to Hannah and shouted themselves hoarse.
Benjamin was borne off in triumph from the field. The Earl of Ashton jumped down from his curricle and came up to Deborah. ‘I shall call on you later,’ he said.
Deborah sank down on the carriage seat. ‘Your guardian?’ asked Hannah.
Deborah shook her head. ‘Only a neighbour.’
‘May as well sit here for a bit,’ said William. ‘There’ll be such a press of carriages on the road to Rochester, it would take us ages inching along to get there if we left now.’
A man passed their carriage and leered up at Deborah. ‘Holloa, slut-face, show us yer twat,’ he jeered. Hannah’s ever-ready umbrella came crashing down on his head and he reeled away.
Overcome at last, Deborah began to cry. Although she had hunted and fished in men’s clothes and ridden about the countryside in them, she had never appeared in the town with them on, never had worn them anywhere where she might be held up to ridicule. She had been confident all the same that everyone at the fight would assume her to be a man and was sure they might have done so had not the Earl of Ashton betrayed her.
‘I h-hate him,’ she sobbed.
‘Who?’ asked Hannah. ‘That devilish-looking man?’
‘He’s the Earl of Ashton and a stuffed shirt if ever there was one,’ said William gloomily. ‘Don’t cry, sis. You’d better dry your eyes and introduce yourself. I am Lord William Western and this is my sister, Deborah.’
‘And I am Miss Hannah Pym,’ said Hannah, holding out her hand.
He shook it and then said, ‘You’d best come home with us for a bit, Miss Pym. Are you living in Rochester?’
‘I am residing at the Crown,’ said Hannah. ‘I am travelling by stage-coach to Dover, but there was an accident to the coach.’
‘If we go to our home, Downs Abbey,’ pursued William, ‘then we will be able to cut across country and avoid the main roads. Then, when all is quiet, I will escort you to Rochester.’
‘What of my footman?’ asked Hannah.
‘He’ll have a right royal time being fêted and paraded all about the town.’ William looked at her curiously. ‘With a purse of a thousand guineas, he may not wish to remain a servant.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Hannah. She put a comforting arm around Deborah’s still shaking shoulders. ‘Drive on.’
Hannah looked at Downs Abbey with pleasure when they eventually came to a stop in front of it. It was a jumble of various periods of architecture blended by ivy and age into a harmonious whole. A groom came running from the stables to take horses and carriage away and an elderly butler opened the door to the twins and Hannah.
‘Tea in the drawing-room, Silvers,’ ordered William.
‘I must change,’ said Deborah. She was much recovered but still looking rather pale. ‘I shall join you in a trice.’
In the drawing-room, William shovelled a pile of newspapers and magazines off an armchair and assisted Hannah into it. Hannah gazed about the room. It looked more like the study of two bachelors than a drawing-room, she reflected. There was a mangy wolfhound taking up most of the sofa and two spaniels lay stretched out before the fire.
The butler and two footmen carried in the tea-things. Deborah appeared shortly afterwards wearing a severe gown of dull gold velvet. Hannah noticed to her surprise that Lady Deborah, out of her masculine attire, was a very beautiful young woman.
‘How,’ said Deborah, pushing the wolfhound off the sofa and sitting down, ‘can any civilized man watch a prize-fight?’
‘When Benjamin won, you were cheering and shouting fit to beat the band,’ pointed out William.
‘I was cheering and shouting with relief. I thought the man would have been killed by Randall. But what an unusual cove of a footman you do have, Miss Pym.’
Hannah reflected that it was a pity the beautiful Lady Deborah chose to speak in the words and accent of one of her grooms, before replying, ‘Yes, he is very unusual. I do hope he has not decided to take up fighting as a career. Lord William, surely it was wrong of you to allow your sister to attend such an affair and expose her to ridicule.’
‘They would have taken me for a man,’ said Deborah hotly, ‘had not Ashton put those about him wise.’ Hannah’s eyes fell on the roundness of Deborah’s excellent bosom. ‘I take leave to differ, my lady,’ she said. ‘You are very much a woman in appearance.’
William grinned. ‘There you are, sis. Hear the lady speak. May as well resign yourself to a Season.’
‘Never!’ said Deborah passionately.
Thoroughly curious now, Hannah said, ‘But may I point out, Lady Deborah, that at your age and with your beauty, I would expect you to be dreaming of beaux and balls.’
‘I never wanted to be a woman,’ said Deborah restlessly. ‘They don’t have no fun, nohow. All primping and simpering and laced into tight corsets and all so that they may catch the eye of some future husband. Pah! Husband? Slave-master, most like. Condemned to a life of breeding brats like a demned rabbit.’
Hannah chewed a caraway cake and eyed Deborah speculatively. Then she said, ‘As plain talking seems to be the order of the day, may I point out that your future seems to me singularly lonely and unpleasant.’
‘How so?’ Deborah, forgetting she was wearing skirts, swung one leg over the end of the sofa.
‘When Lord William marries, his lady may not share your views on her sex; in fact, she might be very shocked. And if Lord William sets up his own establishment, who will you enjoy your freedom with? Surely the men of the county will not wish to hunt and fish and run wild with you? You will be damned as an Original, despised by both sexes.’
‘William will never marry,’ laughed Deborah. ‘Can you see William in the toils of some pretty miss?’
Deborah shifted restlessly. ‘Here we are indoors on a fine day. Let’s do something. What say, William? How can we amuse ourselves and Miss Pym until it is time to return her to Rochester?’
‘Croquet,’ exclaimed William. ‘Just the thing for Miss Pym. Do you play, Miss Pym?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Hannah. Mrs Clarence, wife of her late employer, had taught the servants to play one sunny day. Hannah could see her now, pretty little Mrs Clarence, her auburn hair glinting in the sunlight and her white muslin gown trailing across the green grass of the croquet lawn at Thornton Hall. And where was Mrs Clarence now; Mrs Clarence who had run off with that footman and left her dour and depressed husband to end the rest of his days in morose solitude?
She wrenched her thoughts back to the present and soon she was out on the lawn at the front of the abbey with the twins. They played several light-hearted games, until the sun began to slant through the tall cypress trees at the edge of the grass.
They were just returning indoors when a carriage came rolling up the drive. The twins exchanged looks of dismay. ‘Ashton!’ they said in unison.
‘Shall we tell Silvers not to admit him?’ suggested William.
Deborah shrugged. ‘Better not. He’ll complain to Papa, and Papa was most odd when he was last home, worrying and fretting about us.’
‘Shall I leave?’ asked Hannah.
‘No, do stay,’ said Deborah. ‘He can’t bluster and rant with you present.’
They returned to the drawing-room, and shortly after they had settled themselves, the Earl of Ashton was announced.
Hannah studied him curiously. At first glance, she would have taken him for a dangerous rake, with his glittering green eyes and midnight-black hair and those odd slanting eyebrows, but responsibilities, not dissipation, she decided, had stamped those lines on either side of his mouth.
He declined any refreshment, shook hands with Hannah, and then sat down after tipping the contents of a chair onto the floor. ‘Now,’ he said, regarding the twins, ‘I received a letter from your father asking me to look in on you and see you were not misbehaving yourselves.’ He was, Hannah thought, very much the older man wearily preparing himself to lecture a couple of wayward schoolchildren. ‘As you both will be able to understand, I was appalled to see Lady Deborah at a prize-fight and unsuitably dressed.’
‘You are not our father, nor yet our guardian,’ snapped Lady Deborah. ‘What is it to you?’
‘I am a friend of your father, as you both well know. Were it not for that, I would gladly leave you, Lady Deborah, to become the joke of the county.’ Deborah flushed angrily. ‘I shall keep a constant check on your behaviour, and if there is any repeat of anything like today’s affair, I shall contact your father through our embassy in Constantinople and tell him to return.’
‘You would not do that!’ cried William.
‘Oh, yes, I would. Now, I do not want to sit here lecturing both of you further. I have said what I came to say.’ He turned to Hannah and said with a surprisingly charming smile, ‘You made a gallant attempt to rescue your footman.’
‘Benjamin is a silly boy,’ said Hannah. ‘I only pray he will not be marked for life.’
‘I am curious,’ said the earl. ‘Where did you find such a servant?’
Hannah sat back and told him how she had found Benjamin and of all his adventures. The sun sank lower and the twins forgot their own troubles and listened with all the rapt fascinated interest of children hearing a bedtime story.
‘You are lucky,’ sighed Deborah when she had finished. ‘Nothing exciting like that ever happens to us, does it, William?’
Before her brother could reply, Hannah said, ‘Many would think being an object of ridicule was adventure enough, Lady Deborah.’
Deborah flushed and bit her lip. ‘In fact,’ pursued Hannah, ‘you look so very charming in women’s clothes, I am amazed you should ever choose to wear anything else.’ She turned to the earl and said severely, ‘As well as condemning Lady Deborah for attending such a spectacle, I find it strange that any civilized gentleman should choose to visit such an affair.’
‘You have the right of it,’ said the earl mildly. ‘It had been years since I went to one, and believe me, it will be a long time before I will ever think of attending another. My tastes are dull and quiet, Miss Pym, and do not run to seeing two men beat each other to death.’
‘I think you are interested in nothing else but moralizing,’ said Lady Deborah. ‘You always were a dull stick, Ashton.’
Hannah stared at Deborah and raised her eyebrows. Deborah found herself blushing and added hotly, ‘Why should I not do as I please? I ride and hunt and shoot better than any man I know.’
‘Then you have only met milksops,’ commented the earl acidly.
‘My mare, Harriet, could outrun anything in your stables,’ said Deborah.
He looked at her for a long moment and then said, ‘I think you need to be taught a lesson, Lady Deborah. I shall race you, on the morrow.’
Deborah clapped her hands with glee. ‘Where?’
‘The drive of this abbey, from the lodge to the house. Two miles, is it not?’
‘And what is the wager?’ demanded Deborah.
He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘If you win, I will leave you alone and interfere no more in your lives. Agreed?’
‘Splendid,’ said Deborah. ‘And if I lose … although that will not happen.’
There was a long silence and then his voice fell on their ears, light and amused, ‘If you lose, Lady Deborah, then you will give me a kiss.’
‘Here, I say,’ protested William, ‘what kind of wager is that?’
The earl looked at Deborah, his eyes alight with mockery. ‘Frightened?’ he asked softly.
Deborah tossed her head. ‘Not I.’ She held out a small hand. The earl took it and shook it solemnly. ‘Shall we say eleven o’clock tomorrow morning? And who is to be judge?’
William crowed with laughter. ‘Why, the excellent Miss Pym, o’ course. Those sharp eyes of hers will act as judge and jury. Hey, what say you, Miss Pym?’
‘I should be delighted,’ said Hannah, her eyes gleaming almost as green as the earl’s as they looked from Lady Deborah’s flushed face to the earl’s mocking one.
‘Then I shall take my leave.’ The earl swept them a low bow and left the room.
‘I hope you know what you’re about, Deb,’ said William. ‘He seems pretty confident.’
‘Pooh!’ said Deborah. ‘I shall win, never fear. Now let us get Miss Pym back to that inn of hers.’
By the time they arrived at the Crown, Hannah had decided that Deborah and William were a very good-hearted couple. It was a pity they had been allowed to run wild. They treated her with a casual friendliness, as if they had known her a very long time. She invited them to supper and they cheerfully agreed. They all sat down round the long inn table. Captain Beltravers was there and Mrs Conningham and her daughter and the three had heard all about the prize-fight but wanted Hannah’s description of it. As Hannah talked, she watched Miss Abigail Conningham’s expressive face. The girl did not look quite so plain now. Her eyes, although still rather small, were not puffy anymore and her mousy brown hair had been dressed in quite a pretty style. While she talked, Hannah wondered what it was about going to stay with Uncle in Dover that was so upsetting Miss Conningham. When she had finished, Captain Beltravers said, ‘I heard your footman has been carried off in triumph to London.’
Hannah’s heart sank. She would miss Benjamin. She thought sadly that he might have waited just to say goodbye. He was not much use at household chores, but as a bodyguard he was excellent. She would miss his outrageous remarks and clever face.
‘From what you have already told us,’ she realized Lady Deborah was saying, ‘you appear to enjoy journeying on the stage. Why is that, Miss Pym?’
Hannah told them of her legacy, but not that she had been a servant
, for Lady Deborah might shrink from her, and Hannah was anxious to see the outcome of the race in the morning. ‘I had led a very quiet life,’ said Hannah, thinking briefly of the dark, dreary days when Mr Clarence had shut up half of Thornton Hall where she had been housekeeper and when the parties and dinners and entertainments had ceased. ‘I used to watch the Flying Machines going along the Kensington road,’ said Hannah. ‘All that colour and movement flashing by. And I have had such adventures since I began my travels this year.’
‘I wish I could have adventures,’ sighed Deborah.
The captain smiled at her and said gently, ‘Some would say attending a prize-fight dressed in masculine attire was an adventure, Lady Deborah.’
‘I made a mistake,’ said Deborah repressively. ‘I am sorry you heard of it. My escapade is obviously the talk of Rochester.’
‘Do you wear men’s clothes because you wish you were a man?’ asked Abigail and then coloured at her own temerity.
‘Not quite,’ said Deborah. ‘But I envy men their freedom.’
‘Men sometimes envy women,’ said the captain. ‘They do not have to fight wars, they do not have to worry about providing for a family, they are never subjected to danger.’
‘But men can choose whom they marry,’ said Abigail. ‘They are not constrained to marry someone they don’t know, and what is more, don’t want to!’ And with that, she burst into tears and ran from the table, with her scandalized mother hurrying after her.
There was a startled silence after she had left, and then Hannah said slowly, ‘Ah, I think that explains the mystery of Miss Conningham’s distress. At Dover, there is some suitor that has been picked out for her.’
The door of the dining-room opened and Benjamin walked in. He went straight up to Hannah and stood behind her chair.
Hannah’s eyes filled with tears of sheer gladness. ‘I think we would like another bottle of claret, Benjamin.’
‘Very good, modom,’ said Benjamin and went to fetch the waiter.
Hannah very much wanted the return of Benjamin to pass over quietly, but Deborah and her brother were wildly excited and plied Benjamin with questions when he returned with the wine. Had he feared for his life? Was he badly hurt? Benjamin was wearing blanc to cover his bruises, and his hair had been freshly powdered. He replied quietly to all their questions until Hannah, shooting an anxious look up at him, realized he was exhausted and ordered him to bed.
