Carola Dunn (17 page)

Three small children waved back. “Look, Peter,” cried Kitty. “The little darlings!”

At the same time Nathan was saying, “I’ll take my turn now....”

Distracted, Lord Peter lost his rhythm. Jessica never worked out just how it happened, but suddenly there he was dangling from the punt pole while the boat floated serenely onward. The pole wavered back and forth. Lord Peter’s pantaloon-clad legs scrabbled frantically for a foothold on thin air, and then he hit the water with a splash and disappeared beneath the murky surface.

“...Or perhaps I won’t,” Nathan continued, tearing off his coat and hat and diving to the rescue.

Scarcely taking time to ship his oars, Matthew also flung himself into the canal. He and Nathan converged on the spot where Lord Peter had gone down, arriving just as his lordship’s long face reappeared, spluttering.

“All right,” he gasped. “Not deep.”

Indeed he seemed to have found firm footing, his narrow shoulders breaking the water. A moment later Matthew also put his feet down. The water came to his chin. Following their example, Nathan vanished from the nose down.

Matthew and Lord Peter each seized him by an invisible arm and hoisted him above the surface.

“It’s all right, I’ll swim,” he told them. They both let go. Nathan disappeared again, then bobbed up, treading water. “Are you trying to drown me?” he asked indignantly.

All three seemed safe now. Jessica let out her breath on a snort of laughter and Bob Barlow guffawed.

“I regret spoiling the show,” Miss Tibbett intervened, “but Miss Barlow and Miss Pearson are in something of a pickle.”

Lord Peter’s final push had impelled the punt a surprising distance. In it sat Lucy and Kitty, stranded without means of propulsion.

“Help! “wailed Lucy.

“Do something. Bob,” Kitty ordered.

Matthew and Nathan started swimming after them, while Lord Peter appeared to be walking along the bottom, breasting the ripples like a large and ungainly duck. Bob Barlow bent to his oars.

“Watch out!” Jessica cried, heart in mouth as one heavy wooden blade passed within inches of Matthew’s right ear. Mr. Barlow promptly caught a crab, showering her and Miss Tibbett with sparkling droplets. “My new muslin,” she mourned.

Nathan reached the punt and grasped the side. It tilted alarmingly. Lucy and Kitty squealed, hanging on to the other side for dear life. Matthew stood up and steadied the boat while Nathan clambered aboard. Lucy and Kitty squealed again, cowering back in an attempt to protect their muslins.

“Well, I like that!” said Nathan, sitting up amidships. “No thanks for the rescue?”

Lucy gave him a handkerchief and he wiped his face with the tiny, lacy scrap of linen.

“How are you proposing to rescue us when you have neither oars nor pole?” Kitty enquired with interest.

“Lord Peter shall tow you,” Matthew proposed, grinning. Lord Peter was making heavy weather of it, pushing through the water slowly but perseveringly.

Jessica was helpless with laughter, quite unable to give Bob Barlow directions as he rowed on, his back to his destination. Fortunately Miss Tibbett was in control of herself and the situation. She steered around Lord Peter and commanded sharply, “Ship oars!” at precisely the right moment. The skiff floated onward to nudge gently against the punt’s stern.

A burst of clapping from above reminded everyone they had an audience. Lord Peter—at last arriving on the scene—and Lucy both blushed fiery red, while Jessica exchanged a rueful glance with Matthew. This expedition could not possibly be less than a nine days’ wonder, and it might very likely go down in the annals of Bath.

“My hat!” yelped Lord Peter, clapping a hand to his bare head. He gazed mournfully back at the spot where his once-glossy beaver bobbed like a fisherman’s buoy.

Crouching in the middle of the punt, Nathan was shivering. Though Jessica doubted her brother would come to harm on such a warm day, she was concerned for Matthew. She had long since ceased to notice his limp—and to believe in his weak chest—but a dousing in the remarkably cold waters of the canal was not going to do him any good. His face was pale and drawn. The sooner he was out of there the better.

Heedless now of her new gown, Jessica scrambled to the skiff’s bow and picked up the boathook. “Nathan, help me turn the boats around. We’ll have to tow you back.”

“How am I supposed to help? Give me a pair of oars and I’ll row.”

“You haven’t got those things to rest the oars in.”

“Rowlocks,” supplied Matthew. “Dashed difficult to row without ‘em.” He tugged on the side of the punt and it began to turn. Lord Peter went to his assistance.

Bob Barlow decided not to wait for help. He lowered his oars into the water again and began a complicated manoeuvre involving paddling backwards with one and forwards with the other. Slowly the skiff swung about.

“Watch out!” shrieked Jessica, heart in mouth as one heavy wooden blade passed within inches of Matthew’s left ear.

Both boats were broadside on across the canal when a large brown horse plodded round a bend in the tow-path, followed by a gaily painted barge. The horse, an intelligent creature, stopped dead in its tracks on seeing the obstruction. The barge, obedient to Isaac Newton’s laws, slid onward.

Losing his head, Bob Barlow confused his backward oar with his forward oar. The skiff shot forward and Jessica only just managed to fend it off from the punt with her boathook. Horrified, she looked round to see if it had decapitated Lord Peter, as had seemed inevitable.

Lord Peter had ducked. He rose from the waves, spluttering.

“Here, I say!” he protested.

Jessica fended off from the bank, in the process completing the skiff’s turn. They were now in a good position to take the punt in tow—if it weren’t for the barge rapidly bearing down on them.

The bargee, in his breeches, short coat, and flat-crowned hat, was joined on deck by his wife and two children. They watched expressionlessly as their craft advanced on the hapless boaters. In the narrow cutting there was no room for the long, unwieldy vessel to manoeuvre.

The barge glided to a halt close enough for Jessica to count every red petal and green leaf painted on her blue and yellow deck house, to read her gold-scrolled name, the
Marybelle,
out of Reading. It was the wrong moment to ponder the engineering marvel that had connected the Avon with the Kennet (and thus the Thames), Bristol with London across the width of England.

“Well now,” said the bargee unhelpfully.

The horse ambled into view and cast on the scene a glance of ineffable scorn before turning its head to nibble at a tuft of grass growing between the stones of the wall.

Nathan tossed the punt’s painter to Matthew.

He made it fast to the skiff’s stern, then said with studied nonchalance, “I believe I shall walk, if you can manage on your own, Barlow? I dread to think what may happen if I try to climb into the boat.”

“No, no, don’t,” exclaimed Mr. Barlow with a shudder. “I’ll do it all right.”

Matthew and Lord Peter made their way to the bank, pushed and hauled each other out of the canal, and set off along the towpath, dripping. The horse snorted derisively as they passed.

With Jessica and Nathan wielding the boathooks, Bob Barlow, his round face red from exertion, succeeded in rowing the two boats past the barge. A rousing cheer wafted down from the bridges.

Jessica waved to the spectators. “Show them you think it all a good joke,” she called softly to the three in the punt. “Wave.”

Nathan obeyed with a grin, and after a moment Kitty did likewise. Lucy raised a timid hand in a sort of half-salute. Jessica was satisfied. If the participants in the disaster laughed at their own misadventures, the roasting they were bound to receive would be friendly instead of humiliating. And there was no denying, she thought with a giggle, that some of it had been very funny indeed.

She was not at all inclined to be amused when they passed the stern of the barge and she saw Matthew on the towpath. Limping badly, he looked exhausted. While she hesitated, not wanting to draw attention to his disability in front of the others, Miss Tibbett took a hand.

“I see no reason why Lord Peter and Mr. Walsingham should be unable to embark safely from the bank,” she remarked. “Can you draw alongside, Mr. Barlow?”

“If I can’t we’re going to be in trouble when we reach the wharf,” he grunted.

Their luck had turned. They pulled up smoothly to the bank and the two sodden gentlemen lowered themselves with utmost care into the boats, which did no worse than rock gently.

Jessica pushed off, then handed Matthew his beaver and her handkerchief, embroidered with pink rosebuds. Even wet, his dark hair curled, she noticed.

He gave her a wry grin as he dried his hair as best he could and put on his hat. “The next time I take you boating, Miss Franklin,” he said, “it will be in a steam packet on the Thames and we shall sit in the centre of the deck, as far from the water as possible.”

At that precise moment she knew without a shadow of doubt that, given half a chance, she would marry him if he were a penniless beggar.

She had no time to think about the implications. As they entered the dark of the tunnel. Bob Barlow’s steering became erratic again and she was busy with the boathook. Then they emerged into brilliant sunshine and Sydney Wharf lay ahead. The men working there turned and stared as the bedraggled boatloads approached.

“Us’ll have to charge you extry fer takin’ a dip,” said one wit. “A-drinkin’ of the waters, too, was you?”

They all guffawed, but they helped pull the boats into the dock and handed the ladies out with rough and ready courtesy.

Matthew’s curricle, Lord Peter’s phaeton and Mr. Pearson’s splendid barouche awaited them. In no condition to follow the promptings of gallantry, the three wet, shivering gentlemen at once drove off to find hot baths and dry clothes. Bob Barlow handed the ladies into the barouche and took his seat beside his sister. The coachman turned towards Pulteney Bridge.

“Do you think Sir Nathan will be all right?” asked Lucy anxiously. Sitting between Jessica and Miss Tibbett, she turned to first one then the other for reassurance. “You will tell me, will you not, if he should take a fever?”

For the rest of the way to North Parade, Jessica was occupied in trying to convince Lucy that Nathan was as strong as an ox. In this she was aided by Miss Tibbett’s reminiscences about the shocking scrapes he had fallen into as a boy without taking any harm.

“I guarantee he will be there to dance with you at the assembly tonight,” Jessica said at last as she stepped down from the barouche. Pausing on the pavement, she waved farewell as the carriage drove off, but her eyes were on Matthew’s front door. “I suppose it would not be proper to send Tad to see how Mr. Walsingham does,’’ she said to Tibby with a sigh.

“No, and if you did you would likely get no answer but ‘Very well.’ You had best persuade your brother to call on him later,” suggested Miss Tibbett understandingly, leading the way into the house.

They went upstairs to change their gowns. The canal water had dried to dirty grey-green splotches, but Sukey was sure the India muslin could be saved with careful laundering. Jessica regaled the maid with the tale of the calamitous outing.

Sukey chuckled at the antics of her purported betters, then said sagely, “I ‘spect the cold water weren’t too good for the poor gentleman’s leg. Mrs. Ancaster better send Tad over to borrow an onion or some such from his housekeeper and find out what’s what.”

“Bless you, Sukey,” her mistress said, and kissed her.

Pink with pleasure, the girl carried off the soiled gown. Jessica curled up in her favourite seat, by the window overlooking the Avon. Musing, she watched a pair of swans proudly lead their near-fledged cygnets up the river. Serene and haughty in their pure white plumage, they seemed to glide without effort, but beneath the surface their feet must be paddling vigorously against the current.

Cob and pen mated for life, she knew. How did they choose their mates? Surely without all the toil and heartache foolish humans brought to the problem!

To an onlooker, how carefree her life must appear: strolling about the Pump Room, boating on the canal, dancing the night away. Beneath the surface she was struggling against the current. She could not admit her deception to Matthew. To do so would be tantamount to revealing that she loved him, a course no well-bred young lady could contemplate with anything but horror. Yet as long as he thought her wealthy, confession must be equally difficult for him.

Did he have the courage—did he love her enough—to tell her the truth?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“... And the housekeeper made him a linseed poultice, Miss Jessica,” Tad reported, “and he’s resting.”

Though she had hoped to hear that Matthew was in fine twig, Jessica was relieved that at least he had acknowledged his discomfort and allowed his housekeeper to try a remedy. She thanked Tad and turned back to the plans of the summer villa, setting useless worry aside for the moment.

Matthew had given her his plans a couple of days ago, but she had not had time to look at them. She was impressed. The design seemed to her both imaginative and practical. With Lord Ilfracombe’s patronage he would have no difficulty making a living, she thought hopefully. And as she set about studying the drawings with a view to sketching the façade, she recalled that Nathan had said jokingly that she and Matthew should go into partnership. She would not be a burden—she would help him in his work.

Nathan came into the dining room, looking none the worse for his ducking. “I’m off to return Lucy’s handkerchief,” he announced. “Sukey washed and ironed it for me.” Carefully he tucked the lace-trimmed square into his pocket.

“I’m sure she will be happy to receive it,” said his sister ironically. Matthew had
her
handkerchief, and she would not be at all pleased if he insisted on giving it back. She’d much prefer him to carry it always next to his heart.

Nathan was as impervious to irony as he was to cold water. Jessica heard him whistling as he crossed the hall, then the click of the latch as the front door closed quietly behind him. She sang to herself as she began a rough sketch.