Lady Drusilla's Road to Ruin (12 page)

Chapter Twelve

D
ru kept one eye on the innkeeper, and circulated amongst the passengers, whispering that if they were up for an adventure and could get to their seats, the coach would be leaving directly. One by one they escaped into the courtyard; she watched Mr Hendricks slipping pound notes to the stable hands to keep them quiet, carefully checking harnesses and blinders, examining wheels and making sure that all was at the ready. Then he hopped up into the driver’s seat without letting go of the ribbons. He took up the whip and waited.

She ran for the carriage and he whistled to her, offering a hand to swing her up into the seat beside him. He gave a quick snap of the reins—they were on their way.

They were gaining speed, heading for the end of the stones and the beginning of the open road. Behind them, the coachman came roaring out of the taproom, and she turned to see the man shaking a fist and swearing.

‘May I suggest you cover your ears, Lady Drusilla? I fear the man behind us does not realise there is a lady present. And head down, please.’ He reached over and forced her to duck as they went under the stone arch that marked the edge of the coach yard, then released her, letting her spring erect again like a bent reed.

She looked behind her at the rapidly disappearing inn, then in front of her, then at him again. ‘You drive four in hand?’ she said, unable to contain a gasp of feminine admiration that would have done Priss proud.

‘When I was a wag at Cambridge, I was considered the best of my lot at foolish stunts like this,’ he answered calmly, keeping an eye on the horses. ‘It will be more work for you than riding, but far more comfortable. And if you do as I say, we shall make quite good time. I expect we will find your friend within the hour. Then we shall see if Mr Gervaise is quite the man you remember him to be.’

That was an odd remark. She remembered Gervaise to be pretty, but soft and useless. She doubted he had changed a bit in three days. She glanced again at the man next to her, as he gave a smart crack of the whip to speed the horses. She sighed happily. Gervaise certainly would not have been able to drive himself to Scotland. She dared not tell her sister how they’d made the last leg of the journey. A man that could handle the ribbons as her Mr Hendricks was doing could likely dance as well. And manage an elopement without getting caught. When Priss learned of that, poor Gervaise would be out on the street and Hendricks would be left fighting to save his honour.

He cracked the whip over the horses’ heads again, and said, ‘Keep your reticule handy, my lady, for there are likely to be tollgates. It is up to you to pay, and to keep a watch on the passengers, while I manage the team. And if you can learn to blow the horn to warn oncoming traffic, as well? I think you will make an admirable guard.’

The wind was buffeting her bonnet, so she removed it and placed it behind her feet, letting the breeze blow the pins from her hair. The sun was touching her cheeks and there was a strong and handsome man at her side. It was bittersweet to think it was almost at an end. But the moment was glorious. So she smiled, and persuaded herself that it was a lark he’d arranged, just to amuse her. ‘Mr Hendricks, is there anything that you cannot do?’

‘It is a wonder what can be accomplished, if one only tries,’ he said, as modestly as possible. ‘And being born with fewer opportunities gives one reason to dare.’

As he stared down the road, his spectacles slipped down the bridge of his nose. And without another thought, she reached out a finger and adjusted them for him. Then she blurted the truth.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, tipping his head to the side to better catch the words.

‘It was nothing important,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I was wondering how fast we were going.’

As they took the next turn in the road, the carriage rocked dramatically to the side, and he slipped his arm around her waist for a moment to keep her from sliding off the seat. Behind him, she could hear the angry mutters of the passengers, and offered a silent prayer that they would arrive in one piece and hear no complaints about the inexperience of the driver.

‘We are going as fast as we are able and somewhat faster than the coachman would have gone. At least eleven miles an hour, I think. But do not worry, I will have us there safely.’

Dru gave him a satisfied nod, and turned her attention to learning the coach horn, afraid that she would speak again, where the road was quiet and he might hear the truth.

I love you.

She might have managed to turn the words into a statement of respect for his abilities, which were prodigious. But more likely she’d have clung to him like a foolish girl, and said it again with the sort of sheep-eyed expression that made her near to nauseous when she saw it on others. Now, at least, she could understand the reason for it and the idea that it really was possible to fall in a swoon of rapture, as she nearly had in the hayfield. She was in love with Mr Hendricks. And when he left her, she would weep as loudly as any girl in London.

They took another turn and she grabbed for his coat tails with one hand and raised the carriage horn to her lips with the other. The best she could manage was a gooselike squawk and not the sprightly tunes that some guards could play. But if there were obstructions in the way, it was better to give them some sort of warning and she must do her best.

Of course, puckering her lips on the mouthpiece made her think of kissing. And kissing would, now and for ever, make her think of Mr Hendricks.

In response to her grab for him, he caught her waist again and held her until danger was past. It was so like him that it made her want to cry in frustration. If he had not been there, every step of the way, smoothing her path, seeing to her comfort and making her happy, she would not be thinking such foolish thoughts now.

And none of it had meant anything to him. He was an employee. A servant. He had been doing his job. Her father would pay him, he would leave and that would be the end of it. Unless, of course, she went to her father and insisted that he be kept on in some permanent way, so that she could have his company whenever she liked.

Although what he would do, she had no idea. Father already had clerks and secretaries and stewards enough. And she could not exactly ask for a manservant of her own.

But he had assured her that what had happened last night had not been part of the position. It was instead the thing which they were both trying very hard not to speak of.

She was trying, at least. There was no indication in Mr Hendricks’s usually tranquil demeanour that it required any effort on his part at all. Even if she could convince Father to hire him, she could not keep him like a pet. He would have duties to perform. She would wander about the house, mooning after the man, hoping to catch sight of him, just as she would have cautioned Priss not to have done. And Mr Hendricks would continue to politely ignore it.

And when he found the wife he claimed to be seeking, a girl of modest expectations with a father who valued good sense over parentage, it would break her heart.

Hendricks nudged her; she let go with another feeble blast on the horn and dropped the required coins to the toll keeper. Then he gave a nod in the direction of a building on the horizon. ‘There is your inn. And still twenty miles to Scotland.’ He was pulling up on the reins and the carriage was slowing marginally.

‘Well done, Mr Hendricks.’ She put a hand on his arm and felt the muscles. They did not seem to strain to control the horses, but they were taut with the effort. Such strong arms, but gentle as they held her. She took a breath and let her hand drop away, pointing towards the courtyard, as though she still cared. ‘There is the carriage, plain and black, with a crest on the door. And there is our livery.’

‘Your livery?’ He’d tensed on the reins in a way that made the horses start and the carriage jolted at the sudden slowing of the pace.

‘Yes,’ she said, lifting her chin as though the truth was a small omission that should have been obvious to him. ‘It is my family’s carriage that we have been seeking.’

‘And you could not have mentioned this before?’ he said. ‘For when I asked about it, in all the inns between here and London, another detail would have been a welcome aid.’

‘I did not want to run the risk of someone identifying the crest,’ she replied. ‘The fewer people that realise the identity of the couple, the better.’

‘But, apparently, I could not be trusted with the information.’ There was definitely reproof in his voice.

‘A few days’ acquaintance is hardly a reason to take someone totally into confidence,’ she said.

‘Of course not. What reason would I have to expect such intimacy? My lady.’ Her title was added as an ice-cold afterthought, to make it plain that she had been badly mistaken if she thought him unmoved by recent events.

He cracked the whip for emphasis. ‘Now do you mean to tell me, before we arrive, how Mr Gervaise came to be riding in your father’s carriage? Or is it to be a surprise? Speak quickly, for we are almost in the courtyard.’

He was right. There was no reason to keep the secret any longer, for he would know the answer the moment they saw Priss. ‘Mr Gervaise is riding in my father’s carriage, because he has eloped with my sister, Priscilla.’

The horses broke their gait and a cry of complaint went up from the passengers. And then, all was right again, and they were slowing to an orderly stop in front of the inn. ‘Speak to your coachman, to make sure he does not leave. He is your servant and will do your bidding, just as I have. And then, tend to your sister. I will speak to your precious Mr Gervaise.’ And before she could say another word to him, he was out of the seat, handing the ribbons to the stable boy and stalking towards the door of the inn.

Chapter Thirteen

J
ohn pushed through the doors and into the taproom, in no mood to explain the stolen carriage to the stable hands, or to share one more word with the woman in the driver’s seat. She had dragged him all this way, never mentioning the coat of arms on the carriage, or the fact that this meeting was nothing more than a sibling squabble over the same man. If she’d kept those secrets, then what else did he not know?

Although, knowing Dru as he did, he could not see that a battle between the sisters would be a fair fight. Young Priscilla had been wise to run, for her elder sister had to be the stronger-willed of the two. If she had wanted Mr Gervaise, the other girl would have no chance at him, had she stayed in London.

He scanned the occupants of the room quickly. Seeing no one, he asked the innkeeper about the couple attached to the carriage in the yard. He was directed to a private sitting room. He pushed through the door without a second word.

On a banquette near the windows sat the young couple, the plates on the table before them pushed to one side and their heads close together in some sort of heated conversation. The man looked up suddenly at his arrival, guilty, and quite aware of how this must look.

The girl looked strangely triumphant. As John watched, her arms twined about the elbow of the man at her side as though she wished to make clear their relationship.

Of course, it might just have been to hold her escort in his seat. The infamous Mr Gervaise was half out of his chair and leaning towards the door before the girl could pull him down again.

‘Mr Gervaise, I presume? And Lady Priscilla?’ He offered a bow to Dru’s sister, and turned his attention to the man involved, watching the fellow’s Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as his hand reached for the ale in front of him. There was none of the outrage at an interruption that he’d have expected from a peer, or the bluster of a soldier. Only a man who was thin but well built, hands neatly manicured and soft, with a coat cut tight to his body, of good quality but perhaps a little too flash to be tasteful.

A dancing master?

John looked at the pathetic excuse for a Lothario before him, sure of the truth. Then he turned to the girl clinging to him like a damp handkerchief. She was nothing at all like his Dru. Priscilla was petite and insubstantial, with an excess of strawberry blonde hair and bright blue-green eyes. But those eyes had a mutinous light in them that put him in mind of his own lover’s iron will as it might look if disguised with candy floss and ribbons. It was the sort of combination that could turn a man inside out, if he was not prepared for it.

But then he remembered that recent events were proving that Dru’s character was not as he’d expected either. John had imagined a young lord for her, being forced into a marriage by her father. His breeding would be excellent, but his character weak. He’d have bolted with Dru’s rival for the border, rather than wed the formidable lady he’d won. Or perhaps Gervaise was a rake whose house and title would more than make up for his disgraceful behaviour.

But of all the men he’d pictured, there had never been a doubt that the gentleman would be worthy. When Dru went to him, John would know that blood had bested him again. He could step quietly to the side, because it was best for her.

But a dancing master? Was the girl mad? Or as foolish as the rest of her kind, and willing to throw aside her honour for an elopement with a dandified nothing?

‘Well, man? Are you going to stand there all day or explain yourself? What is the meaning of this intrusion?’ Gervaise’s French accent was as atrocious as he knew it would be.

‘It is not I who must explain myself, Gervaise. I am not trying to steal over the border with the Duke of Benbridge’s daughter.’ The whole thing would drive the duke to fury, once he heard of it. He would have stopped it long before now, had he known a tenth of what was going on.

Priscilla gave her fiancé a slap on the arm. ‘Do not be an idiot, Gerard. He is from Father, aren’t you, sir?’ She looked up at John with eyes as blue and liquid as a mountain lake. ‘Is Papa here? Has he come for me?’

Gervaise turned in a panic to the window behind him, searching the courtyard.

‘My name is John Hendricks,’ he said with a polite bow to Lady Priscilla. ‘I am in the employ of your sister, Lady Drusilla.’

Though Priscilla drooped in disappointment, the man beside her looked even more frightened at the mention of the sister. ‘Silly sent you here?’

‘Lady Drusilla did not send me,’ he said, eyeing the man with contempt. ‘She engaged me to accompany her.’

‘She is here, as well?’ Lady Priscilla slumped in her chair and put a hand to her temple. ‘That will not do at all. Take her away immediately. Send for my father. I wish to go home.’

‘Now, sweetness,’ Gervaise said, petting her arm, ‘we are very nearly to Gretna Green.’

‘You are yet in England, Gervaise. And no marriage has yet taken place.’

‘But it will once we cross the border,’ he said with an arched brow. ‘Just as Priss wished it to.’

‘I wished no such thing, you great oaf,’ the girl said, slapping at Gervaise again.

John held a hand out to the girl. ‘If I might suggest that you go to your sister, my lady, I will take care of everything.’ He shot Gervaise a warning look.

Gervaise ignored him, turning to the girl. ‘It was not as if I forced you into the carriage. You arranged for the transport yourself. It was your idea from start to finish, and I will tell your shrew of a sister the whole truth, when next I see her.’

‘I never wished to marry you, Gerard. Only to elope.’ Having spent his life dealing with her kind, it was just the sort of nonsensical statement that John expected to hear from a young lady of quality. He took a breath before another wave of foolishness grabbed him and sucked him under the impending tide.

‘The one leads to the other, Priss,’ Gervaise explained. ‘As I told you before, when a girl runs off with a man and behaves in a certain way, it gives that man certain expectations—’

‘You worthless bounder!’ John slammed his fist down upon the table, trying not to imagine what liberties the cad had taken with either of the daughters to get them into such a state over him. ‘Lady Priscilla, I must insist that you come away so that I might deal with this…thing.’ He gestured to Gervaise.

‘I have no idea who you are, sir. But I am not moving an inch until Father arrives.’

‘He is not coming, Priss, though you sit here ’til doomsday.’ Dru stood in the doorway, arms folded.

Priss looked at her desperately. ‘But if I go home now, you will ruin everything for me.’

‘And if I allow you to stay, you will ruin everything for me. Now come to the carriage. We are leaving immediately.’

‘You may do as you please. But I am not going anywhere.’ The younger girl rushed past her, towards the hall. ‘I am going to my room and I do not wish to be disturbed.’

‘We do not have rooms here, Priss,’ Gervaise called after her.

‘Then I will take one,’ Priss announced.

‘And I am putting you in it and locking the door,’ Dru muttered. Then she turned to the dancing master. ‘But first, I shall deal with you, Gerard.’

‘You most certainly will not,’ John said. God help him, he would not see one sister dislodged from the clutches of this parasite, only to have the other take her place.

‘This is none of your concern, Mr Hendricks,’ she snapped.

‘I beg to differ.’

She turned her anger from Gervaise to him, furious that he had disobeyed. ‘While I employ you, it is not your decision to make. If you will excuse us, I wish to speak to Mr Gervaise alone.’

‘Then I resign,’ he barked back. ‘Now that I have seen the whole of it, the chances of my winning your father’s favour are all but moot should I continue to follow the mad orders that you have been giving me. You will not spend a moment unchaperoned in the company of this louse. In fact, you will spend no time with him at all. You will go immediately to tend to your weeping sister and give me no further trouble. And once you are gone, I will deal with Mr Gervaise. Now, go!’

He waited for the angry outburst, the shower of tears, or even the worthless Gervaise rising to her defence. But all he received was a muttered, ‘Discretion, Mr Hendricks…’ as though it were the only thing that mattered.

‘Oh, I shall be discreet, my lady. Have no fear of that.’ But what he would not be was the poor fool who watched the woman he loved clinging to a primping caper merchant all the way back to London. Or, worse yet, a witness as she dragged him to the anvil. He removed his glasses so that they would not be damaged.

‘Now, sir,’ Gervaise said with a nervous laugh, staring at the retreating back of Drusilla. ‘You seem to be suffering under a misapprehension.’ Then he looked back to Hendricks. ‘Lady Priscilla was quite insistent that we make this trip. I meant no disrespect to her, for I hold the girl in high esteem.’

‘Do not think you can shift the blame to an innocent girl, you muckworm!’ Hendricks spat.

‘There can be no sin in love, Mr Hendricks. No sense of blame in following one’s heart.’ Gervaise said it with such convincing piety that it was no wonder the girls had been swayed. ‘And I would do anything to get the lovely Priscilla out from under the thumb of the Lady Drusilla. She has the eyes of a hawk and the tongue of a viper. And she would not let me alone.’

After three days in her company, John might have felt some small bit of sympathy for his rival, had he not just then imagined the pair on the dance floor, Gervaise’s oily good looks a good match for the pale skin of his travelling companion.

‘Now she has caught up to you. And she has brought me as well.’ John flexed his arms. ‘And I will make you wish you’d never met either of them.’

‘I can wish that without your help, Hendricks,’ Gervaise said, shaking his head. ‘You must have sussed out the truth of it by now. Both the hot and eager Priscilla and her silly spinster of a sister are totally mad, and in need of a hearty prigging to set their wits to right.’

For a moment, John saw nothing but red. When he came back to himself, his hands were on the man’s throat, dragging him towards the door.

‘What…what…what…?’ Gervaise was flopping in his hands like a fish on a boat dock.

‘For talking in such a way about a lady, I would meet you on the field of honour. But it is clear that you have none. And so I think a good thrashing is in order.’

The man under his hands gave out a small sound that was rather like ‘Akkk’. Hendricks loosened his grip, pushing Gervaise ahead of him through the taproom and out into the courtyard of the inn.

‘This will do, I think. Unless you have a better choice. Boy,’ he called to a stable hand, ‘hold my coat.’ He released Gervaise, so that he could remove it.

His rival rubbed his windpipe and uprighted himself, brushing at his garments as though it were possible to gather his dignity. ‘I have no intention of fighting you.’

‘Then I fear you shall be soundly beaten,’ Hendricks said reasonably and raised his fists.

‘Very well, then. But be warned. Mr Jackson says I am quite handy with my fives,’ Gervaise announced, raising his bony fists and giving them a threatening rattle.

‘It is a pity that he is not here to see how you acquit yourself,’ said Hendricks, and punched him in the nose.

Gervaise let out a yowl of pain and cupped his face in his hands. ‘You hit me.’

‘Perhaps you do not understand the principles behind the art you practise,’ Hendricks responded. ‘Now come back here, for I mean to hit you again.’

‘Help!’ cried Gervaise, his eyes watering in outrage and pain and peeping between the spread fingers of the hands that guarded his nose.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Hendricks muttered, almost embarrassed to be harassing the man.

And then he thought of Dru, and decided that perhaps he was not embarrassed after all. ‘Stop squalling, Gervaise, and take your medicine.’

‘I will not.’ The man rubbed his nose. ‘If I do, you will only hit me again.’

‘You dishonoured the ladies.’ Hendricks said, as reasonably as possible. ‘You did not think your behaviour would have no repercussions. And I called you a louse. A muckworm. A prancing dunghill,’ he added for good measure, trying to reason the man into defending his honour.

Gervaise picked himself up, shook the dust from his coat and shrugged.
‘Cherchez la femme.’

Hendricks knocked him down again and glared at the coward lying at his feet. ‘Did I not tell you not to blame what has happened on the ladies involved?’

Gervaise shrugged again, from his place on the ground. ‘Miss Priscilla wished to escape the restrictive confines that her father and sister had set for her. Since I was tired of wooing her in secret, I was happy to aid her.’ He gave John a significant glance. ‘One would think, after all this time without a chaperon, that it might be better for a gentleman to wish us well, and escort us to Scotland. There he could witness that the job is done properly.

Hendricks debated the honour of kicking a man when he was down, decided against it and hauled Gervaise to his feet. ‘I have heard from the lady’s own lips that she does not wish to go. Her sister is equally insistent that no marriage take place.’

Gervaise produced a handkerchief and tended to the blood leaking from his nose. ‘Then it seems that I should be owed something for my silence. And the damage to my person and my coat, as well.’ He looked sadly at his tailoring, then in accusation at John.