Courting Lord Dorney (4 page)

One of the young men leaned out of his chaise. ‘Come with us, my pretty. We don’t mind being a bit squashed. There’s plenty of laps for you to rest on.’

The girl glared at him and turned away without replying.

‘Hoity toity! Do you need persuading?’ her tormentor asked, flinging open the door and leaping down onto the cobbles. He seized the girl by the arm and swung her round, laughing as he dodged the bundle she aimed at his head.

‘Let me go!’ she cried, her voice wavering in panic.

‘No need to be frightened, we’ll treat you well, and you’ll get to Bath,’ he said, and loud guffaws came from his companions.

Another man had joined him by now, and between them they picked up the girl and started to drag her, crying and struggling, towards their chaise.

‘Let her go!’

The first man turned towards Bella, who was leaning out of the chaise window, and raised his eyebrows. ‘You’d best keep out of it, or we might decide to take you along with us as well,’ he sneered, and then stepped back in alarm, letting the girl’s arm go.

‘I think not,’ Bella said. ‘This pistol isn’t a toy, and it’s loaded, and I’m accounted a tolerable shot. Though I might aim for your leg and hit somewhere a little higher. I can’t guarantee just to lame you.’

The men still in the chaise laughed.

‘A woman shoot straight,’ one scoffed.

‘Oh, leave the wench, Lambert, she’s not worth the trouble,’ another said.

At that moment the mail coach pulled out of the yard and the archway to the street was clear. The two men, with shrugs, clambered back into their chaise and it moved off too.

The girl had dropped her bundle, and as she bent, sobbing with relief, to pick it up, Bella jumped down beside her.

‘Are you going to Bath?’

The girl nodded. ‘Yes, miss, and thank you, miss. Would you really have shot them?’

‘If I’d had to. Have you family in Bath?’

‘No, miss, my parents live in Gloucester. I’m looking for work. My lady died, last week, and I thought there’d be suitable positions in Bath. There’s none round here, and I can’t go home, they haven’t room for me.’

‘You have references?’

‘Oh, yes miss. My lady’s son wrote me one.’

Bella considered her. She looked clean and now she wasn’t being threatened, she spoke up frankly.

‘I need a personal maid. Come, we’ll take you to Bath, and we can talk on the way. If we can come to an agreement, I could employ you for a few weeks. I left my own maid at home, and the post would not be permanent, but it would give you time to look around for something else.’

The girl was speechless, but the look of gratitude and the smile in her eyes were a good enough answer.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Mary, miss. Mary Harding,’ she managed.

‘I’m Miss Collins, this is my cousin Lady Hodder, and her maid Susan. Get in, the way’s clear now.’

Susan looked resentful as she was forced to move along the seat to make room for Mary, but one look from Bella made her bite back the protest she’d been about to make. She gathered up Jane’s jewelry box and a couple of shawls which had been on the seat beside her, and nursed them on her lap. Mary sat beside her, muttered a shy ‘thank you’, and tried to make herself as small as possible in the corner.

Bella sat in silence for the next hour. She had realized that Susan could not be expected to look after all her clothes as well as Jane’s. She’d decided to find a maid once they reached Bath, but if Mary proved capable this would save her the trouble.

She began to question Mary, and discovered that the girl had worked for three years for the old lady who’d died, and before that had been apprenticed to a Cheltenham milliner. Mary handed her the letter, which praised her for her skill in sewing, and her patience.

‘We’ll try it for two weeks,’ Bella said briskly.

‘Oh, Miss Collins, I’m so grateful!’

‘Well, you’re just what I’m looking for, and we couldn’t have let those despicable fools abduct you.’

Mary shuddered, and said no more, but looked eagerly out of the window at the villages they passed through. Bella knew Jane was itching to talk, both to demand an explanation of the pistol, now safely stowed away in Bella’s capacious reticule, and discuss the wisdom of taking in an unknown girl as her personal maid.

Jane would have to wait until they could be private, until they reached the house which Bates had found.

* * * *

‘She beat you to it, old man,’ one fashionably dressed gentleman said to another as they entered the tap room.

‘I wonder if she would have fired it?’ Lord Dorney gave a crack of laughter. ‘That jackanapes thought so, in any event!’

‘Your face was a picture, Richard! You’d started across to intervene when she did it for you.’

‘And probably far more effectively. You and I, Dan, would have been hard put if all half dozen of ‘em had joined in.’

Sir Daniel laughed. ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about possible black eyes. Who’d have thought that dab of a girl had so much spirit.’

Lord Dorney nodded, and turned his attention towards ordering the best the inn could provide.

Sir Daniel was talking about his report to the Foreign Office, but Lord Dorney’s mind kept wandering back to the scene in the inn yard.

He’d noticed the girl and her older companion while they’d been talking to the ostler, arranging for a change of horses. He tried to recall how she looked, but could remember only that her hair was dark, her eyes huge, and her figure plump but shapely.

‘I wonder if we’ll meet them again?’ he said suddenly.

Sir Daniel glanced across at him and grinned. ‘I don’t believe that such a chit who had no looks to recommend her has caught your attention. Richard, Lord Dorney, the despair of countless mamas, the cause of innumerable languishing glances from all the debs, with the pick of them all for years, but so difficult to please, has found Cupid’s dart at last!’

‘Don’t be an ass! But I’ll wager none of this year’s crop of hopefuls would have had the nerve to do what she did.’

‘None of them would have possessed a pistol, let alone known how to use it. Are they an insipid lot, this year? Is that another reason why you left London so early in the Season? Apart from selling Fellside?’

Lord Dorney shrugged. ‘It bores me, but I have to go sometimes. And I’ve no desire to wed. Besides, until I’ve brought Dorney Court back to decency I have to retrench. I can’t afford a wife.’

‘A girl like that might be an asset to you. She’d see off any creditors.’

‘My situation’s not quite as dire as that. After the experiences of my father and Robert at the hands of duns I’ve no intention of getting into their clutches. That’s why the work at Dorney Court has to go more slowly than I’d like. The farms, in any event, are in better shape now, and the rents will improve next year. But I still wonder if she would have shot him, or whether she was bluffing.’

‘I wouldn’t like to have called her bluff! Well, if she’s bound for Bath no doubt you’ll meet her somewhere. I wish I was staying to watch, instead of paying this duty visit to my sister on the way to London. You’ll come to me when you’ve finished with young Alex and his inamorata?’

Lord Dorney raised his glass to Sir Daniel. ‘I’m wondering if his ardour will have cooled by now. He’s not been very constant in the past, fancying himself in love with a dozen chits. But this is the first time he’s asked me to approve of one.’

‘It must be serious!  So our ways part here.’

‘Not for long. I doubt I’ll be in Bath more than a week. My felicitations to your sister, and we’ll meet again when I reach London. Then I will tell you what, if anything, happens in Bath!’

‘And if you happen to meet that intrepid young lady! In some ways, I wish I were able to come with you,’ Sir Daniel said, laughing. ‘I’d like to know more about her.’

Chapter 3

‘Where on earth did you get that pistol?’ Jane demanded as soon as the drawing room door had closed behind Bates, who had stayed to settle them into the house he’d hired.

‘I’ve had it for years,’ Bella said. ‘I never travel without it, but I’ve never had to use it before.’

‘Would you have shot him, really?’

‘Of course. What would be the use of threatening if I didn’t intend to carry out my threat? In some ways I’m sorry he was such a poltroon! He deserved to be shot!’

Jane closed her eyes. ‘First you embroil me in this mad escapade, Miss Isabella Collins, and then you almost shoot someone!’

Bella strolled across to the window which looked out over Sydney Gardens.

‘This really is a perfect position, with the gardens on our doorstep. You know, I’m not sure I like the name Collins. It’s not aristocratic enough. Perhaps I should have chosen something that hinted at ducal connections.’

‘Perhaps you should have been content with your own name,’ Jane almost snapped.

‘It’s too well known, after all that fuss when Uncle Peter died. There was so much speculation about how many fabulous jewels and other treasures he’d brought home from India, everyone must have heard about Nabob Trahearne, and those country yokels in Harrogate certainly knew I’d inherited his fortune. But I kept as close to Bella as I could.’

Jane sighed. ‘I think I was mad to agree to this masquerade.’

‘No, darling Jane, you were kind and sympathetic, you want me to marry someone who appreciates me for myself, not for my fortune.’

‘Heaven help the poor man, whoever he might be!’

* * * *

Bates had hired this house in Henrietta Street, saying severely that it was better to be in a quieter part, away from the hurly burly of the town centre.

‘But it’s rather far from the Pump Room,’ Jane commented. She had visited Bath once before, with an elderly aunt.

‘Ye’ll have to take a chair, then, and not try walking,’ Bates replied uncompromisingly. ‘Better for you than being kept awake with people walking past all night long.’

Jane knew better than to argue. They were country girls, used to walking, and Bates was departing on the stage early the following day, much against his will. He would be unable to complain.

‘I’ve arranged for the butler, cook, maid and groom to be here this afternoon for you to approve,’ he said now. ‘Though why you couldn’t bring your own servants instead of leaving ‘em eating their heads off at home I don’t know.’

‘They can be occupied with a thorough spring cleaning, much easier with me out of the way,’ Jane said briskly. ‘Besides, I’m here for only a few weeks before going to London.’

‘He’ll have told them your real name,’ Jane said worriedly later as they waited for the new servants to arrive for inspection. ‘I’ve only just thought of that.’

‘Then we say your cousin was unable to come, so your husband’s cousin came instead.’

Jane laughed. ‘I think, despite everything, I’m beginning to enjoy this. I feel utterly irresponsible. Now how much a year are you supposed to have?’

‘Don’t say a precise amount. Do you think if we hint at about a thousand it will be enough, but not too much to attract the sharks?’

‘That’s about right, I suppose,’ Jane agreed.

‘Good, Now tomorrow morning I want to go shopping. I feel dowdy, and I suddenly don’t like the clothes I took to Harrogate. They remind me of things I intend to forget!’

Bates, as Jane had known he would, had chosen eminently suitable servants. Mrs Dawes was a rotund, motherly cook with a round face, bright eyes and clear complexion. She looked capable of endless chatter, but replied only to the questions asked. The butler was her husband, tall and thin, quiet but obviously experienced and reliable. The maid, Lizy, was older than Jane would have liked, but was a friend who had worked in the same house with them before. Jackson, a small man who had once been a jockey, would look after the horses and drive the coach she intended to hire.

‘We usually work each year for old Lady Sommerton,’ Mrs Dawes explained. ‘But she died last month, poor lady, and her daughter decided not to come this year, so we had to look for another place rather sudden.’

The next morning, wearing a walking dress she’d acquired in Harrogate, Bella sallied forth with Jane. Mary followed to carry the parcels. The dress was of a delicate primrose shade, with deeper gold ribbons at the high waist and gold Spanish embroidery round the hem and the edges of the short puffed sleeves. With it she wore a poke bonnet of the same colour, again trimmed with gold ribbons, brown sandals and elbow length gloves in a supple leather. Jane was still wearing half-mourning for her husband’s cousin, and had on a gown in a pretty shade of lavender trimmed with dark grey braid.

Much as Bella would have liked to wear one of the necklaces from India, she bowed to Jane’s advice that it would look crude.

‘Save the jewels for evening, and even then, if you don’t want to cause comment, you should wear very simple styles. Remember you’re not a wealthy young lady.’

Jane having decided it was now time to abandon her mourning for a man she’d never met, they spent two absorbing hours selecting materials, bonnets and gloves, shoes and fans, and arranging for the dress lengths to be made up in the latest modes. Then they strolled towards the Upper Rooms where Jane signed the subscription book, and on towards the Pump Room.

‘I don’t think I’ll drink the water,’ Bella said thoughtfully. ‘Let’s just listen to the music rather than sample that.’

They had almost reached the doors when Mary, who had been casting anxious glances behind her for some time, turned to try and shoo away a small, scruffy looking mongrel trailing after them.

‘I wonder if the poor animal’s lost?’ Jane said doubtfully. ‘I noticed him outside the Assembly Rooms.’

‘He looks as if he’s been lost for some time,’ Bella commented. ‘See how thin he is, poor little scrap.’

‘What should we do?’

Bella’s reply was lost in a sudden flurry of excited yapping, as a mincing poodle escaped from the leash held negligently by a small, dandified man, and rushed in to attack the stray.

Mary stepped hurriedly backwards out of the way for the mongrel, although only half the size of the poodle and in much worse condition, was not prepared to suffer the indignity of being chased off by a pampered, coiffured, scented monster, however much larger it was.