Belinda Goes to Bath (4 page)

He dismounted and hurried down the bank, slithering and sliding until he reached the river. He sat down, pulled off his top-boots, and shrugged off his long black cloak, then waded into the icy torrent.

The carriage door swung open and a middle-aged lady with a rather crooked nose looked at him first in surprise and then relief.

‘I see I shall not have to swim for it,’ she said. ‘The torrent seems shallow enough.’

The marquess made his way with difficulty to the coach and hung on to the open door. ‘Climb on my back,’ he ordered, ‘and I will carry you to safety.’

‘There is a lady here who is hurt,’ said Hannah, for it was she. ‘Take her first.’

‘Very well,’ said the marquess in a voice as cold and uncaring as the winter landscape. ‘But be quick about it.’

‘Help me,’ said Hannah to Belinda as she stooped over Miss Wimple. That lady’s face was an ugly colour and she had a great gash on her forehead.

They heaved and pushed at the inert Miss Wimple. ‘Of what use are you?’ cried Hannah furiously over her shoulder to Mr Judd, who was sitting on the floor of the coach.

‘My wife has fainted,’ he said sulkily.

‘Pah!’ retorted Hannah. ‘Does such a little thing paralyse you? Had the coach not landed upright, we might all have been drowned.’

The marquess leaned into the carriage and managed to lift Miss Wimple in his arms. Hannah watched in admiration as he carried her easily to the bank and laid her down. Soon he was back again. By this time, Hannah had found her smelling salts. She held the bottle under Mrs Judd’s nose and then slapped her face. ‘Leave her alone,’ cried Mr Judd, struggling to his feet.

‘Then get you out of the carriage and carry your own wife to safety instead of letting that fine gentleman do all the work.’

Mr Judd looked weakly out of the door at the raging river. There was a moan behind him as his wife recovered from her faint.

‘Now get down in the river,’ commanded Hannah. ‘No, sir,’ she said to the marquess, ‘stand aside. There is no reason why this gentleman cannot carry his own wife.’

Mr Judd dropped down into the river, lost his footing and fell into the water. The marquess swore and jerked him upright.

He backed up to the coach and his wife climbed on his back. She showed every sign of fainting again but was fully recovered to consciousness when her husband stumbled and tipped her into the river. The marquess fished her out and placed her on the bank next to Miss Wimple.

He turned around and saw with surprise that the middle-aged lady was crossing the river with a young girl on her back. He ran to help her.

‘Shame on you,’ he said to Belinda, ‘to use this lady as a pack-horse.’

‘I cannot stand on my ankle, sir,’ said Belinda wrathfully. ‘Do put me down, Miss Pym.’

The marquess drew on his boots and swung his cloak around his shoulders. He looked across the river. The guard and the coachman, who had been thrown clear, were leading the horses back up on to the road. The guard cupped his hands. ‘Going to get help!’ he shouted.

‘Which means,’ said Hannah, ‘they are going to get drunk as soon as possible and forget all about us. That coachman was much too young for the job.’

The marquess stooped and lifted Miss Wimple in his arms. ‘If the rest of you can make your way up the bank into the shelter of the trees, you may wait there until I bring carriages to bear you to safety. There is a road quite near.’

Hannah hitched Belinda’s arm about her neck, Mr Judd helped his wife, and they all stumbled up the bank.

Once more Miss Wimple was laid down. The marquess mounted a great black horse and rode off.

‘My clothes are freezing to me,’ whispered Mrs Judd. ‘I’m going to die and I know it.’

‘Whoever that grand gentleman is, he is very competent,’ said Hannah. ‘We must all try to keep warm. We must walk up and down and stamp our feet and swing our arms and take turns at rubbing some warmth into Miss Wimple’s limbs. Come along, everyone.’

Miss Pym was rather like a general, thought Belinda, amused despite her predicament, as Hannah beat her arms and stamped her feet and then knelt beside Miss Wimple and chafed her wrists.

After only a short time they heard the shouting of voices and rattling of wheels. Torches flickered through the trees, and then four men in outdoor livery appeared, followed by the marquess. Under his orders, two of them lifted Miss Wimple on to a stretcher and bore her off, one supported Belinda, and the other Mrs Judd.

‘I have carriages waiting,’ said the marquess to Hannah. ‘Come quickly or you will catch the ague.’

As he bustled about, seeing them all into carriages, the marquess felt a momentary qualm. He should really have them driven to the nearest inn rather than inflict the passengers of the common stage on his guests. But their presence would give him a necessary breathing space, a wall to retreat behind while he considered his feelings for Penelope.

Hannah helped Belinda into one of the waiting carriages. She admired this lord, or whoever he was, immensely. He must have his staff well drilled to turn out so efficiently and promptly on a freezing night. She gave a happy smile and drew a huge bearskin rug up to her chin.

‘Why, Miss Pym,’ exclaimed Belinda, ‘I declare you are actually enjoying a near escape from a freezing death.’

‘It’s an adventure,’ said Hannah. ‘Now, you see, my dear, it is better to look for romance in real life. Did you note how handsome our rescuer was?’

‘I was too flustered and frightened and my ankle still hurts dreadfully,’ said Belinda. ‘He seemed very autocratic and severe and quite old. Where are we, I wonder?’

‘I have a guidebook in my luggage,’ said Hannah. ‘Oh, dear, that wretched coachman has gone off with it.’

‘Not he,’ said Belinda. ‘It had all fallen off the roof before we even hit the river and was strewn about the opposite bank.’

‘Then our highly efficient host will collect it for us. We are travelling quite a way. Does he mean to deposit us all at some wayside inn?’

‘No doubt.’ Belinda shivered. ‘I must get a physician immediately to look to poor Miss Wimple. How came she to gash her forehead like that?’

‘I think she was thrown against the lamp bracket. How luxurious all this is, and what a great many servants there seem to be.’

Outriders with flaming torches were riding alongside the carriages.

‘We are slowing,’ exclaimed Hannah. To the shivering Belinda’s dismay, she let down the glass and leaned out. ‘Oh, Miss Earle!’ cried Hannah. ‘You have never seen the like.’

Curiosity overcoming cold, Belinda opened her window and, clutching the edge for support to ease her tortured ankle, she too leaned out.

The snow had stopped falling. In the lights of the many torches and carriage lamps a great Norman castle loomed up against the sky; battlements and barbican, towers and turrets. They rolled slowly over a wooden drawbridge and under two raised portcullises into a wide courtyard.

‘Why have I never heard of this place?’ said Hannah, sitting down again. ‘It is huge.’

‘Have you visited many places?’ asked Belinda.

Hannah shook her head. ‘I have led a quiet and sheltered life, like that of a nun. But I have read a great deal, don’t you see.’

The carriage rolled to a stop. A footman in green-and-gold livery let down the steps and Hannah and Belinda were assisted down.

The shivering stage-coach passengers were led into
the castle and all stood blinking in the sudden blaze of light. They found themselves in a great hall with a brown-and-white marble floor. A long refectory table with high-backed Jacobean chairs around it dominated the centre of the hall. There were battle flags and suits of armour and a long gallery running around the top of the hall to form an upper storey.

A house steward with his tall staff of office stood waiting.

‘Convey our unexpected guests to the East Wing,’ said the marquess. ‘Send for the physician to attend us immediately. May I introduce myself? I am Frenton, the Marquess of Frenton, and you are now in my home, Baddell Castle, where I suggest you stay until I find out what has become of your coach. You are …?’

Hannah stepped forward. ‘I am Miss Hannah Pym of Kensington. May I present Miss Belinda Earle. Miss Wimple is the injured lady and Miss Earle’s companion. Also, may I present Mr and Mrs Judd.’

The marquess turned to his steward and rapped out a bewildering, to Belinda, series of orders about which apartments were to be allotted to them.

Again, there were servants everywhere. Belinda clung nervously to Hannah, overawed by the magnificence of it all. They went up a broad staircase and along a bewildering multitude of passages. A housekeeper opened a door at last and said to Hannah, ‘Your apartments are here, madam.’ Oh, the joy of ex-housekeeper Hannah to hear herself called ‘madam’ by one of her own kind. ‘You have a bedchamber as
you go in and you will share a sitting-room with the young lady, who has a bedchamber on the other side. His lordship is sending up your trunks, which the men rescued from the side of the river. The footmen will carry up your baths in a trice.’

Hannah looked around the apartment in satisfaction. The walls were papered with a heavy red paper. The great four-poster bed had dull red silk hangings. The fireplace was Queen Anne and as unlovely a piece of architecture as anything attributed to that poor lady’s name. It had a heavy overmantel that almost dwarfed the grate beneath. But there was a bright fire burning.

She helped Belinda through a pretty sitting-room decorated in the Chinese manner and into a bedroom where blue silk, blue wallpaper, and a four-poster bed and fire-place copied the red room in everything but colour.

Their trunks were brought in, followed very quickly by the baths, which were filled by the footmen, and then the two ladies were left in peace.

Hannah sat in the bath in front of the fireplace, carefully holding the guidebook clear of the water. ‘I have found it,’ she called through the open door to Belinda. ‘Baddell Castle. Ah, it used to belong to the Earls of Jesper. The last earl died in 1590 without children, his estates escheated to the Crown, and all the court rolls and records went to London and disappeared in the middle of the seventeenth century, so it was a castle without much history that anyone knows of or ghosts or what have you, so everyone
forgot about it. It says that the present owner, the Marquess of Frenton, repels visitors.’

‘I am glad he did not repel us,’ called Belinda.

‘The Crown gave the first Marquess of Frenton the castle and estates.’

‘What shall I wear?’ asked Belinda. ‘If we are to dine here, we could dine in our undress.’

‘I think we should dress for a formal supper, just in case.’

‘The marquess is hardly likely to ask coach passengers to sit down with him,’ protested Belinda.

‘He did not need to take us into his home,’ Hannah pointed out. ‘He could have left us at some inn.’

As soon as they had bathed and dressed, servants appeared to remove the baths, and then a physician made his entrance. He said that Miss Wimple was still unconscious but he had hopes she would soon recover. He then examined Belinda’s ankle and confirmed that it was a bad sprain and strapped it up.

Then a lady’s maid came in. She said she was called Betty. Hannah thought it quite likely that she had some other name, for employers very frequently called their lady’s maids Betty.

Hannah enjoyed the luxury of having her hair done and her large shawl arranged tastefully on her shoulders. Then, while Belinda’s hair was being arranged, Hannah asked the maid, ‘When you have finished, can you take us to Miss Wimple? She is the lady who has suffered a bad accident.’

The maid nodded, and after she had dressed Belinda’s fine hair in one of the new Grecian styles,
she led them out and along the corridor and into Miss Wimple’s bedchamber.

Miss Wimple was lying like one dead. Hannah felt her forehead and found it hot. A little chambermaid was piling logs on the fire. ‘The doctor said she would live,’ said the chambermaid.

A footman appeared in the doorway. ‘His lordship’s compliments,’ he said. ‘You are to follow me.’

‘I will stay here,’ said Hannah firmly.

‘Beg pardon, madam,’ said the footman. ‘Mrs James, the housekeeper, will soon be here to sit with the poor lady, and she will let you know as soon as there is any change.’

Belinda and Hannah followed him out, back along a chain of corridors, and then down the main staircase to the first floor. ‘His lordship is in the Cedar Room,’ said the footman, and flung open the double doors.

Belinda hesitated nervously in the doorway until Hannah gave her a little push.

The Cedar Room was enormous. The cedar-wood panelling which gave it its name was hung with family portraits. Huge chandeliers hung from the ornately designed ceiling. There was a large Adam fireplace in the centre of the opposite wall, and a French carpet covered the floor.

Huge windows had thick velvet curtains with heavy swags of fringe drawn against the winter’s night. The gigantic area of the room was dotted about with little islands of tables and chairs.

At the island nearest the fireplace sat a very beautiful lady and a middle-aged couple.

The marquess was standing by the fireplace. He was wearing an evening coat of dark-blue watered silk with a high collar and a ruffled shirt. His breeches of the same material were fastened at the knee with gold buckles. His silk stockings were of gold-and-white stripes and his black shoes had gold buckles. He had a fine sapphire in the snowy folds of his cravat and a large square sapphire ring on his finger.

Hannah shot a covert glance at Belinda and was glad that young lady was looking every bit as finely dressed as the marquess’s guests.

She was wearing a gown of pale lilac satin and a fine necklace of amethysts set in old gold. She had lilac silk heelless slippers to match with ribbons crossed across the ankles, and, on her arms, long gloves of lilac kid. Hannah had put on a fine and delicate muslin cap. She knew the Norfolk shawl about her shoulders was of the finest quality, as was her plum-coloured silk gown with matching silk gloves.

The marquess approached Belinda and Hannah, his eyes narrowing a little in surprise, for there was no denying the richness of the ladies’ gowns. He wondered briefly what they had been doing travelling on the stage.