The Road to Gretna (9 page)

“Anything else, Angus?”

“Nay.”

She found it hard to believe a grown man could be so discomposed by so small a matter. When she was married, Penny vowed silently, if she couldn't find a cook capable of making good porridge, she would learn to do it herself.

To distract him, she mentioned Cora’s cold. So ordinary an ailment was hardly calculated to interest him, but he promised to leave a decoction of willow bark for the abigail. He had often prescribed the same for her aunt, so she asked him about its properties. She did her best to look fascinated by the information that it was much to be preferred to paregoric, since the administration of an opium preparation was to be avoided whenever possible.

Despite Mrs. Ratchett’s lead, Penny finished eating long before her. She sat sipping her tea in an agony of frustration. Eventually she went over to the window and looked out. Rain was still falling, but the clouds were a paler shade of grey.

“I believe it’s clearing up,” she said hopefully.

Mrs. Ratchett squashed her attempt at optimism. “‘The rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”’

In the short term at least the old woman proved the better prophet. When at last Angus had worked out and paid their share of the reckoning and they went out to the chariot, it was raining harder than ever. Scurrying under an umbrella, Penny caught a glimpse in passing of two damply drooping horses and the hunched figure of their postilion.

“You did ask for the best horses and give a good tip, did you not?” she asked Angus as he settled on the opposite seat.

“I did, but I dinna care for the look o’ them. They’ve little to choose from and I wouldna be surprised if they held back the best for his lairdship, in hopes of yet mair siller. I willna be staying at yon inn again.”

Penny forbore to point out that the Beehive had been his own choice.

The vehicle lurched into motion. As they passed the inn's front door it opened and Lord Kilmore appeared in the doorway, his blue coat a splash of colour in the prevailing greyness. He raised his hand in a sort of mocking salute. Penny was sure he was quizzing her on their late start and she longed for a chance to retaliate.

She had missed him by a hair’s breadth. If only the dilatory inn servants had been just a trifle more dilatory, or Mrs. Ratchett had asked for one more slice of toast! She had had no chance to find out where he was planning to stop along the road, nor even which route he meant to take.

Angus had talked of turning west off the Great North road at Newark, their next stage. Jason would not catch up before then, unless Henrietta rose at a reasonable hour and hurried over her dressing and her meal, an improbable scenario.

It seemed all too likely that the two eloping couples had parted for the last time.

The chariot windows were already misted over. Confined in the dank, gloomy box, unable to see out, Penny felt that they were moving with excruciating slowness. Perhaps they were still driving through the town and would go faster when they reached the open road, but the regular rumble of wheels on cobbled streets had given way to irregular jolting.

With one gloved finger she cleared a patch on the glass and peered out. Through the raindrops running down the window she saw a blur of green. A row of poplars loomed, passed, fell behind, at no more than a walking pace, though the flat green plain spread level into the distance.

“We are scarce moving,” Penny cried. “At this rate it will take four hours to reach Newark.”

“I told the postiion to make haste,” said Angus. He wiped away the moisture to make his own spyhole. “Yes, we are going very slowly. I admit to wondering whether the fellow understood me. He held his hand to his ear as if he were deaf, though he did nod and grin in what appeared to be agreement.”

Penny closed her eyes and counted to ten. She would not scold. When she opened them, he was kneeling on the seat, struggling to open the small sliding shutter, doubtless warped with age, in the front of the chariot.

“Hallo!” he called. “Drive faster.” There was no answer. “Faster, mon!” he shouted, then closed the panel and turned round. “Deaf as a post. Ye canna argue wi’ a deaf man.”

“Perhaps we can change horses before Newark,” Penny suggested, holding on to her temper with two clenched hands.

“There are inns at Long Bennington. though I hae ma doots we’ll find anything better.”

“At least at this pace it will not be difficult to walk ahead and stop him!” Penny tried to look on the bright side. “And even if they have no better horses, surely there cannot be two stone-deaf post-boys within a tenmile radius!”

Tortoise-like, the chariot crept onward, stumbling with a jerk into every pothole and jerking out again with an ominous creaking. This far north of the metropolis, the road had not yet been surfaced by McAdam’s new method. The rain had left it not much better than a country lane.

And still the rain fell. A depressed silence enveloped the travellers, broken only by the constant complaints of their vehicle.

They had been on the road for an hour when the chariot lurched to one side, shrieked, and died.

Hanging on to the strap to keep from sliding into her chaperon’s ample lap, Penny glared wordlessly at Angus. It was all his fault for providing such a wretched carriage.

“‘Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein,’" said Mrs. Ratchett.

No, it was her own fault. She should have insisted on hiring a post-chaise in Grantham, at the Angel or the George. Last night she had been too tired, and this morning too much on edge because of their lateness. Still, he should have spent her money on the carriage, not on the fat woman whose weight was no doubt partly responsible for their present situation.

She couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. “If you had only hired a serviceable vehicle!”

“‘Twas the hurrying yesterday put ower much stress on it,” he retorted, glowering.

The door beside Mrs. Ratchett swung open. Beneath his dripping beaver and bleary eyes, the aged postilion’s toothless mouth grinned at them.

“Wheel’th broke,” he announced, nodding. “Akthel, too. I’ll take them 'otheth back to the Beehive and thend thummun to fetch yer. Take a day or tho to fikth.”

He stepped back as Penny scrambled out.

“We cannot wait so long, and surely we are nearer to Long Bennington by now? Ride on and hire a post-chaise for us, if you please.”

He nodded and grinned and unhitched his spavined nags and mounted and rode back towards Grantham, completely ignoring Penny’s expostulations and gesticulations. She stared after him in a fury, hands on hips.

“Deaf as a post,” Angus pointed out. “Come out o’ the rain, Penelope, ye’ll be soaked tae the skin.”

“It’s only a Scotch mist, and it’s a warm day. I will not sit here and wait, for who knows how long! We must walk to Long Bennington and find another vehicle.”

“Dinna be sae foolish. Ye’ve nae notion how far, nor if there’s one to be found.”

“If you will not go with me I’ll go alone. And I’ll find something if I have to purchase it outright.” Without pause for reflection, Penny turned on her heel and stormed away.

CHAPTER EIGHT

By the time Penny’s anger cooled, she was too wet to make it worthwhile returning to the shelter of the chariot. Her hat drooped about her ears, its wilting feather collecting moisture and disbursing it in generous drips which trickled down her neck. The hems of her pelisse and gown were yellow with mud. Though she kept her gaze on the ground ahead, she had stepped in a puddle and one of her half-boots squelched as she trudged numbly northward.

A passing mail coach spattered her from head to toe.

“Miss! I say, miss!” A one-horse gig pulled up beside her, its leather hood sheltering a red-faced squire. “I say, miss, you're in a sorry pickle. How d’ye like to come along home with me and get cosy?” He winked.

Penny drew herself up and looked coldly down her nose at him. “Pray be on your way, my good man,” she said in her most refined tone. “My friends will pick me up shortly.”

“Hoity-toity! Well, ye’d only dirty my seat, so be damned to ye.” He whipped up his horse and departed in high dudgeon, his wheels throwing up a spray of filthy water.

The next driver who offered her a ride received the cold shoulder. He drove beside her for a dozen yards, cajoling, then jeering. Just as she was about to flare up at him, he took his leave with a final sneer, splashing her again as he went on his way.

The rain stopped. Penny plodded on.

A team of four trotted past, slowed, and halted as the carriage they pulled drew abreast of her. She swung around. “Go away. Leave me alone! I...Oh!”

The door opened and Lord Kilmore jumped down. “You don’t mean that, Miss Bryant, I trust. You have been accosted by importunate dastards along the way, I daresay. My dear girl, you are in a sad state.”

She wanted to cast herself on his chest and burst into tears. Dignity—and the thought of the damage she would do to his coat—forbade. “I’m so glad you’ve come, my lord,” she said in an only slightly unsteady voice.

He reached back into the carriage and brought out his many-caped greatcoat. The clouds parted and the sun shone as he smiled down at her, his dark eyes warming her. “Quickly, take off your pelisse,” he ordered, “and put this on. Doctor’s orders.”

She obeyed. He handed her into the carriage, called “Spring ‘em, Mullins,” and stepped in after her.

A moment later she was comfortably ensconced beside him on the soft, grey-velvet-covered seat. Angus, sitting opposite next to Mrs. Ratchett, leaned forward and asked anxiously, “Are you warm enough, Penelope? I ought not to have let you go. Are you all right?”

“I’m quite all right, Angus,” she said submissively. She felt more foolish than anything else, as he had warned her. “I’m not at all cold.”

“Your hat is a horrid sight, Penny,” said Henrietta from the other side of Jason. Today she was wearing peach-coloured lutestring with a matching bonnet. “I wonder you would walk along the public road looking such a quiz.”

“‘The fashion of this world passeth away,’” muttered Mrs. Ratchett appositely as Penny took off the offending headgear and dropped it on the floor at her feet.

Cora sneezed. An indignant meow came from the basket on her knee.

“We must stop and dry your clothes, Penelope,” Angus said. “Perhaps you would be good enough to take us to an inn in Long Bennington, my lord?”

Jason frowned. “Neither the Reindeer nor the Royal Oak is likely to have a suitable carriage for you to hire. If Miss Bryant truly is not chilled, we shall find better service and more comfort in Newark.”

“Truly, I am damp but not in the least cold.”

“Newark is not much more than half an hour distant, but I bow to your judgement, Doctor.”

“Let us go on to Newark, Angus,” Penny begged. “I shall have to buy a new hat and Long Bennington doesn’t sound as if it would provide anything fit to wear.”

“Oh yes!” Henrietta clapped her hands. “We shall go shopping in Newark. I have not been shopping this age."

“At least since the day before yesterday,” Penny murmured, then smothered a giggle as Jason caught her eye and nodded in amused agreement. She didn’t care any more that the chariot had collapsed, or that she had made a cake of herself again. Warmth was diffusing through her from her thigh, pressed against his in the close confines of the crowded carriage. “I never catch cold,” she assured Angus.

“Very well,” he acquiesced. “In any case, if Long Bennington has no suitable vehicles for hire, we should be forced to rely upon your hospitality as far as Newark, my lord.”

“My pleasure, Doctor. You will have no difficulty finding a carriage there. The Kingston Arms alone stables near a hundred post horses, and the Saracen’s Head is not much smaller.”

“Are those historical inns?” Penny enquired. “You had best give me the benefit of your erudition before we arrive, sir, since I expect to spend my time in the town repairing my appearance.”

“The Kingston Arms’ claim to fame is that Lord Byron stayed there while directing the production of his first volume of poetry.”

“Lord Byron!” sighed Henrietta. “Such a romantic, unhappy gentleman.”

“You have read his works, Miss White?” asked Angus, surprised. “I should think them quite unsuitable for a delicate young lady.”

“No, I never read poetry. It makes my head ache horridly.”

Fearing a disquisition on headaches, Penny hastened to return to the history of Newark. “And the other inns, my lord?”

“The Saracen’s Head dates from the crusades, as you might guess from its name, and the White Hart is about the same age. I fear I know nothing of interest about them, though.”

“No death warrants signed? No famous inhabitants? How remiss!”

“Shockingly remiss,” he agreed, laughing. “The castle and town are of some interest, however.” Beginning with Lady Godiva, he proceeded, by way of King John’s death by poisoning, to the Civil War. “While the town was besieged, one of the aldermen dreamed of his house falling in ruins about him. He promptly removed his family, and the house was indeed hit by a Parliamentarian bomb that very day.”

“I knew you must have some good stories up your sleeve,” said Penny, satisfied.

“The governor’s house, where Prince Rupert once stayed, still stands, but after the war the castle was destroyed, since Newark was a Royalist stronghold.”

“Well, I think history is dreadful.” A frown marred Henrietta’s smooth forehead. “Fancy poisoning the king and knocking down his castle! It is quite shocking, I vow.”

“Another school of thought believes John died of overeating,” Jason said soothingly.

Penny shuddered. She glanced at Mrs. Ratchett, who looked disconcerted and failed, not unnaturally, to produce any quotations condemning overindulgence. If Angus had any medical opinion on the topic he kept it to himself as fields gave way to the streets and houses of Newark.

“I shall take you to the White Hart, if you have no objection,” said Jason. “It’s smaller and less grand than the other inns I mentioned, but I am known there and they will provide every comfort. There is nothing to prevent your hiring a vehicle at the Kingston Arms, Doctor.”