Mistress of My Fate (3 page)

“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 delighted 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.

“The matter was decided quite suddenly. The Earl had gone for a brisk ride one morning and upon his return, without so much as removing his boots, came stamping up the stairs, through the long gallery and into his library. He pulled from his shelves various works by Monsieur Rousseau on the education of girls. He ordered a dish of chocolate to be brought to him and was not seen again until dinner was announced.”

“What did he do in all that time?” I asked in my little voice.

“My dear,” said my governess, “he was concerning himself with you!”

I did not then make the connection between a pile of books by a Frenchman and my own fate, but it seemed Lord Stavourley wished to turn the opportunity of my arrival into a philosophical experiment.

It was decided that I was to be raised alongside my cousins, not only Lady Catherine, but later the two younger boys: his lordship’s heir, Robert, the future Marquess of Dennington, and his brother, Master Edwin. They were to be my upstanding examples. Their noble conduct would guide my actions. I was to receive an education no different
from theirs and to be schooled by the same tutors and governesses. Along with Lady Catherine I would learn French, some Latin, mathematics, geography, a bit of history, music, painting, dancing and how to write in a good hand. My uncle wished us to enjoy all the freedoms of the “noble savage”; we would be at liberty to run and tumble. The servants would assist us in maintaining a small kitchen garden of our own in which we might sow herbs, lettuces and legumes. We would be taught to fish and tend the cows in the dairy. The country air would embolden our health and make us robust. As much as it was possible, we would be kept at Melmouth, far from the diseases of London.

Under these ideal conditions, Lady Catherine would take me to her heart. Our lives would grow together, twining like two vines. We would be as sisters: a pair of straw-haired girls with eyes the colour of blue porcelain. Each night we were laid in our shared bed, and to look at us, slumbering beneath our nightcaps, curled against one another, we seemed the perfect portrait of affection. This was how his lordship intended it to be, so that in later life, I would continue to be looked after.

From the very outset, I was designed to be Lady Catherine’s companion, that uncomfortable role assumed by a penniless female relation; the grateful toad-eater, the quietly tolerated impoverished cousin, part lady’s maid, part genteel guest, who without a fortune of her own would be unlikely to marry. It was not that this was such a poor path: after all, what else might a lady of polite upbringing and no income do? She cannot have a profession, she cannot go to sea; perhaps she might live by her pen, but that never offers any real reward. No, the problem did not lie in the scheme itself, but rather in his lordship’s failure to consider the part his wife would play in it.

With all due respect, my aunt, Susannah, Lady Stavourley, was no better than a child herself. She had been an heiress and indulged extravagantly throughout her youth. I have heard it said that before she was brought to bed of Lady Catherine, she was merry and impish in
her ways. Her cheeks bore a bright flush, and she ate with an appetite so hearty that her bosom swelled against the top of her bodice. But this was not the lady I knew as my aunt. For as long as I remember, Lady Stavourley appeared as if she had been wrung of life. Her eyes were hollow and her face always bereft of its glow. While most women applied powders and creams to achieve such a wan look, my aunt wore it naturally. Her once round frame withered into an assembly of spindles. It was as if in bearing her daughter she had pushed out all of her passion.

Where once her wealth had provided her with a sense of entitlement, now her delicate constitution justified the gratification of her every whim. She went wherever she could find a warm room and a sofa. She did not ride or exert herself and her pleasures became quiet ones. My uncle commanded that whatever his wife desired be brought to her without question. While he imagined this to be porcelain and hats, it was in fact something far dearer. Chief among her amusements was Lady Catherine, who became as much a fixture at her mother’s side as her two Pekinese. Every morning, her little girl was brought down to her apartments to pass most of the day in her company. While it is no bad thing for a child to be so adored by its mother, the Countess indulged her daughter above her other children. As my aunt entertained guests, Lady Catherine sat upon her lap, making impertinent remarks and tipping over teacups. Her mother laughed and clapped her hands, but her acquaintances smiled weakly. They knew better than to scold. I had heard that one well-meaning friend, who had seen quite enough of Lady Catherine’s behaviour, had written a letter to Lady Stavourley, warning her that if she did not see fit to correct the deficits in her daughter’s character, she would ruin her entirely! Needless to say, Lady Catherine’s mamma terminated that association.