Holiday in Bath (2 page)

Now Trelenny knew exactly how to position herself for a jump in her customary fashion of riding, but she suddenly felt unsure as the horse tensed to leap forward. For one panic-stricken moment she did not think she would keep her seat, and then they were back on the ground and racing across the field. Amazing, she thought, that one should actually have so much more control riding this way, and inexplicably she grew very angry. Why had no one told her? What stupidity was it that kept women with their backs twisted, clinging to the tiny horn and knee rest? In mountainous country such as she lived in, the sidesaddle proved a precarious seat. Fuming with indignation, she headed the mare back to the copse.

Cranford watched her preoccupied approach with astonishment. Trust the little hoyden to do something outrageous! He had known, the moment they told him to meet her by the copse, that she was up to something. Whether it would be a race on donkeys or a raft built for the stream, he had not decided, but he had certainly not expected this. And her leg was showing above her boot, for God’s sake! He dismounted and walked to meet her, grabbing Stalwart’s bridle firmly. “Get down.”

“I won’t! And let go of my horse,” she commanded fiercely.

“I do not ride with ladies seated astride.”

“Then you need not ride with me, but if you don’t release Stalwart I shall…” Menacingly, she waved her whip at him.

With one adept movement he reached out, clasped the whip, and twisted it from her grip. “Get down, Trelenny.”

"Why should I?”

“For one thing, you are exposing an indecent amount of leg to the view of anyone who cares to look.”

“Which I am sure you don’t, and there is no one else abroad, so it cannot make the least difference.”

“And I tell you it does, ma’am. You have had your little scene, so let’s be done with it. Do I have to tell you again to get down or must I remove you forcibly?”

Trelenny glared at him but made an attempt to do as he ordered. Unfortunately, her boot heel once again betrayed her and became entangled in her skirt. While one leg hung down toward the ground her skirt remained high above with the other.

Drawing a sharp breath of exasperation, Cranford took hold of her waist and swung her off the horse as though she weighed no more than a saddle, allowing her feet to remain in the air until she had kicked her heel loose of the skirt. Then he deposited her unceremoniously on the ground. “Now, Trelenny, would you like to explain why you felt it necessary to put on such a display?”

“I don’t owe you any explanation, though I assure you I had sufficient reason. And it is all your own fault!”

“I would be charmed to hear how that might be so,” he replied with exaggerated gallantry.

“You wouldn’t be charmed by anything but a dead Roman soldier in his crumbling gruesome coffin,” she snapped as she grasped Stalwart’s reins and began to walk towards the stables.

Unperturbed, he followed suit, not deigning to honor her castigation with a reply. After a while of stomping along, she glanced at him furtively. “I read something from one of the books you left me.”

“I’m surprised to hear it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have, but I heard Mama coming, and I didn’t want her to know that I was reading
Glenarvon
, so I hid it under one of your wretched essays and just happened to see something of interest. Not interest, precisely, but something unusual. Ladies didn’t use to ride sidesaddle, you know. I learned that they used to ride astride just as men do. Fancy! And I thought I would show you how diligent a student I am by adopting the ways of your musty old Romans, or Greeks, or Egyptians, or whatever.”

“You thought no such thing, my girl. Your only wish was to annoy me.”

Trelenny turned her head aside and made a face. “Well, then, I succeeded.”

“Admirably.”

“I think it is wicked to make women ride sidesaddle when it is ever so much more comfortable riding astride. You know what these mountains are, Cranford. One has so much more control facing forward that it would be a great deal safer to ride about that way. I could have a skirt made full enough that it would come down to my boots. Or two skirts together, one for each leg so that they wouldn’t ride up at all. Yes, that would be even better. There could be no impropriety in that.” She glanced at him earnestly.

“It won’t do, Trelenny. You must realize your mother would never allow it.”

His voice was slightly more sympathetic than it had been until this point, and she asked with some interest, “Would you approve?”

“No. I realize the sidesaddle gives a precarious seat over our dangerous, narrow roads, but ladies with breeding do not ride astride.”

“The ancient ladies did.”

“We pride ourselves on being a more cultivated society, Trelenny.”

He sounded so inordinately stuffy that she was once again roused to anger. “Well, I think that your old Romans were not only uncultivated but stupid, bumbling paperskulls.”

“But then, you haven’t bothered to read anything about them,” he said placidly.

“I have. I once read a guidebook on the various English counties. And there were enumerated all the antiquities in each one of them. And do you know how they often knew the Romans had been there?”

“Yes.”

Ignoring him, she continued. “I shall tell you. They found coins. All kinds of coins, all over the place. From lots of different periods. Now, I am eighteen years old, Cranford, and I have never so much as lost a tuppence! There, you see? What a bunch of dunderheads to be losing their money everywhere they went.”

She glanced at him triumphantly, and he gave a roar of laughter and rumpled her hair. “Trelenny, you really are a goosecap. Imagine your using such powerful logic. Unanswerable, I promise you. I shall henceforth regard the Romans with a certain caution to my enthusiasm. How could it be otherwise after this major flaw in them has been pointed out to me?” His eyes danced with amusement.

“Now you’re laughing at me. I see nothing funny in it. A careless group of people at the very least, and who knows what at worst?” Her very eyebrows quivered with her fervor.

“I could tell you, if you were interested,” he teased.

“I’m not, thank you just the same.” She turned her back on him and delivered Stalwart into her groom’s hands. “I suppose you will wish to come in and take tea with Mama.”

“She will expect me to do so, of course, but if it will inconvenience you...”

“Not in the least,” she replied haughtily as she led the way toward the house.

“And, Trelenny, you should not be reading
Glenarvon
. You are far too young for such stuff, if there is any age for it, which I doubt.”

“Little you know,” she murmured; and, when he had been treated to her indifference over the tea table, she settled herself in the wing chair in her bedroom and finished the scandalous book. Not that she understood a great deal of its scandal because she had little knowledge of the people ridiculed and she had no intention of asking her mother for Mrs. Waplington’s letter to decode the work.

The book was old hat to London society by now, having been out for some months, and Mrs. Waplington had debated the wisdom of sending it to her old friend; but the desire to exhibit her intimate knowledge of the participants had won over her better judgment. And though Trelenny believed that her mother had set aside the book as unworthy of her attention, in actual fact Mrs. Storwood had read every line with a horrified interest which would have astonished her daughter. After all, Mrs. Storwood had reasoned, she was not impressionable as her child was and she, too, knew Lady Holland and Lady Melbourne, if she had no acquaintance with the younger members of the cast. Sometimes it seemed to her, from the snippets of gossip her friends sent, that the haut ton had run mad and that she was better off in the country. At other times she ached with regret at her daughter’s exclusion from the brilliantly lit ballrooms, the chatter-filled saloons, and the elegant playhouses. How well she remembered the days when Mr. Storwood was courting her against the backdrop of London’s gaiety...

“Wetherby, have we one of my sister’s sidesaddles about still?” Cranford asked as he dismounted at the Ashwicke Park stables.

The groom rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his chin and cocked his head. “Mayt be, sir, and then mayt not. Want I should have a look-see?”

“If you would. I’ll be back a little later. Is my father at home?”

“Yes, sir. Leastways, he’s not rid out.”

With a nod, Cranford consigned his horse to the groom and trod purposefully toward the house. There was no use allowing the viscount to believe that his son’s suit with Miss Storwood was prospering, since it most emphatically was not. Although Cranford had not yet discussed the matter of marriage with the young lady herself, they were both well aware of his intentions. How could she not be, when he had approached Mr. Storwood for permission to court his daughter? Cranford was also aware that both Trelenny’s parents were in favor of the match. Only the daughter was not! But it went against the grain to offer for her when she was so patently indisposed to his suit, and he refused to speak of it with her when she gave him not the least encouragement. The silly child had every intention of refusing him, he could feel it in his bones, and he had no desire to hear her say so, the ungrateful imp.

The warm September sunlight barely penetrated Lord Chessels’ study, for he kept the draperies drawn while he worked there. There was no similarity between father and son. Lord Chessels was of only medium height and his son towered over him, while the harshly drawn features of the older man had found a kinder expression in the aristocratic nose, high cheekbones, and firm jaw of the younger. No lines of irritability scored Cranford’s forehead, and his eyes, although almost black, held none of the fierceness of his father’s. Cranford, as always, wore an impassive countenance in his father’s presence. Lord Chessels lifted preoccupied eyes from the accounts he was studying. “It’s you. Have you been to Sutton Hall?”

“Yes, sir.

“And the matter is settled at last, I hope.” Lord Chessels’ questioning brow rose with a hint of impatience.

“No, far from it.” It took an effort for Cranford to subdue the resentment which rose in him at his father’s condescending attitude, and he walked to the far end of the room, where he idly twirled the enormous globe. “I have not yet asked her because she does not welcome my suit.”

“Nonsense. How can you know unless you put the matter to her?” his father asked with undisguised annoyance.

Cranford clamped his teeth together and did not reply for a long moment. In his youth he would have spoken his mind with little regard for the respect due his father; he was more cautious now. His body still tensed with resentment as it always had, but he was more the master of his emotions now. “You have seen very little of Trelenny, of course, Father. She’s as transparent as a pane of glass, and she finds me a very dull fellow.”

The cold light in his father’s eyes spoke volumes. “You are boring her with your antiquities. Ladies aren’t interested in Roman ruins and Latin verses, Cranford. I would have thought you would know that…but perhaps you’ve forgotten.” Lord Chessels drummed his fingers against the desktop “Her parents are in favor of the match. She will do what they wish.”

“I think not. They won’t force her, and God knows I don’t want an unwilling bride. They have some influence, of course, but she’s a willful girl. Perhaps in time she will accustom herself to the idea, though I admit I am not particularly hopeful on that score.”

“Ha! You would be delighted if she refused you,” the older man growled. “I can’t see what you have against the girl. Takes after her mother a good deal in looks, with that blonde hair and those blue eyes. And you can see in Maria Storwood that there is no fading over twenty years’ time. Still a beautiful woman, with a fair understanding and considerable natural grace. What is there to balk at in that?”

“I take not the least exception to Mrs. Storwood, who is a lady of refinement and good breeding. Her daughter is a hoyden.”

“She’ll settle down when she produces an heir for you. They always do,” Lord Chessels replied smugly.

Again Cranford’s body stiffened and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “Do they, sir?”

The viscount raised his eyes sharply at the note of sarcasm in his son’s voice. “Just see that you win the girl, Cranford. Remember, it was your mother’s fondest wish.”

The young man’s eyes dropped before the triumph in his father’s gaze. “I’ll do what I can. If you will excuse me, sir.”

“Certainly. You’ve kept me long enough from important matters.”

Unmoved by the hostile dismissal, Cranford bowed formally, and quietly let himself out of the room. Since his mother's death several years previously, he had spent a fair amount of time at Ashwicke Park, but it had not been largely pleasurable time. The house itself he loved, with its fourteenth-century fan vaulting and oak paneling. Nor could he fault his father for the care he took of the house and grounds. They were, in fact, an obsession with the older man. No incipient decay was left unattended; servants were dismissed peremptorily for any carelessness in their duties to maintain the ancient building. Granted to the Ashwicke family at the Dissolution, the old abbey had been successfully converted into a magnificent residence and the current Lord Chessels was nagged only by the persistent belief that all of the former  abbey grounds should be encompassed by his estate. But the king had seen fit in his wisdom to split the lands between the Storwoods and the Ashwickes, the latter gaining the more valuable property, and no subsequent families had intermarried to combine the two. Lord Chessels was determined to see this gross oversight corrected in his lifetime.

Cranford himself had no such desire, either to combine the lands or to marry the Storwood heiress. Both were matters of indifference to him, as were his father’s wishes on the subject, but he could not be so sanguine in ignoring a match his mother had looked upon with favor. Of course, Trelenny had been only fifteen or sixteen when Lady Chessels had died, and his mother could not possibly have known what kind of young lady she would become. Her wish was based on the fondness she had for Trelenny as a child, as a younger friend for Clare, and also on her friendship of many years with Mrs. Storwood. It would be comforting to think that were she alive today, she would share his own dismay at Trelenny’s behavior; unfortunately, he feared she would not.