Carla Kelly

Miss Chartley’s Guided
Tour

by

Carla Kelly

SMASHWORDS
EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Camel Press on
Smashwords

Miss Chartley’s Guided
Tour

Copyright © 2013 Carla
Kelly

* * * *

Smashwords Edition License
Notes

If he were a
wagering man, he would have bet houses, lands, horses, and hounds
that he was the first of his line to ride to his wedding in a hired
conveyance.

The thought
afforded no pleasure, only a deep washing of shame that flooded his
body from face to toes. He closed his eyes against it, only to see
himself again as though it were early morning, stumbling into the
alley off St. James Square and falling to his knees on the
cobblestones, overcome by the enormity of what had
happened.

“
My
God, what have I done?”

It was the first
thing he had said aloud in hours, and his words made him jump and
then grasp the hanging strap in the hackney. He gripped it tight,
retracing in his mind the long walk back to his own flat on Curzon
Street, well-wrapped in his opera cloak, head down, praying no one
would know him, or speak to him, or wish him
congratulations.

He opened his
eyes and sobbed out loud, seeing again the pile of bloody clothes
he had ripped from his body as if they had burned him, standing
naked in front of his mirror and not having the courage to look
himself in the eye.

The cold that
covered him then, covered him still. He was still shivering, still
trembling like an old man with palsy. After he had dressed himself
he had tried and tried to pick up the little wedding ring on his
bureau. It had taken both hands, and then he had dropped it twice
before seeing it into his pocket.

The clothes
jumbled about him on the floor he wrapped in his opera cloak and
carried down the stairs and into the alley. A quiet walk behind the
row of flats and then the bundle was stuffed deep into someone
else’s ashcan.

There was no time
to speak for his curricle from the stables. He had hailed a hackney
and directed the Irishman sitting on the box to St. Alphonse on
Wadlington Lane, his fiancée’s special choice because she loved the
stained-glass windows and the choir screen.

The driver looked
at him carefully, and his heart dropped to his shoes and stayed
there. “Are ye all right, sor?”

He had nodded,
too devastated to speak. If I open my mouth, I will tell him
everything, he thought. No one must ever know.

The journey that
he wished would take years was over in a matter of minutes. The
hackney stopped and the driver sprang from the box and stood by the
door, hand on the latch. “St. Alphonse, sor,” he said.

“
Oh,
drive on, please. Just a little farther.”

After another
careful look and a shake of his head, the driver returned to the
box and clucked to his horse. When they were beyond the church, he
slowed again, and rapped on the roof.

He had no idea
how much money he gave the driver. The man sucked in his breath and
bowed, so it must have been more than patrons usually flicked his
way. He turned to go, and the man grasped his arm. Again the chills
traveled the length of his body.

“
You’ll not be calling the constable and telling him I robbed
you, now, will you, sor?”

He waved the
driver away and started back toward St. Alphonse. The clock in a
tower several blocks distant chimed twice; he was already half an
hour late. He wiped the sweat from his face, unmindful of the cold
wind that blew off the river. At least all the wedding guests would
be inside. He would be far to the front, next to the altar, and if
he looked a little pale, his friends and relatives would put it
down to wedding jitters.

He forced himself
to hurry. His best man had never been distinguished for his patient
temperament and was probably even now wearing a rut in the carpet.
And his fiancée?

He broke into a
run which ended on the bottom steps leading to the massive front
door of St. Alphonse’s Church. Already a crowd had assembled, a
collection of children and poor people from the neighborhood, who
knew that the gentry inside were inclined to be generous when they
came out after a wedding. And failing that, there were pockets to
pick.

But the people on
the steps were talking among themselves, casting a glance at the
church now and then, and laughing behind their hands. Some were
already beginning to move away.

He mounted the
steps, two at a time, and stood by the entrance with another crowd
of more brazen folk, bits of London chaff blown there by news of a
wedding. He stood next to a man who balanced on one leg and a peg,
a man who nudged him and winked.

“
I
disremember when ever I saw
this
happen before. And what a
crime, I say. Look there at that pretty little lady.”

“
Yes,
look,” chimed in the woman on the other side of Peg-leg. “You
should have seen her skip up the steps. And such a smile on her
face! You could have lit lighthouse lamps from that
smile.”

He could only
groan inwardly as another great tide of shame washed over
him.

Peg-leg shook his
head. “And now her face is whiter than her dress. There’s one
gentleman ducking and running in this city who ought to be pulled
up sharp-like. See her there?”

He looked where
Peg-leg pointed. The doors were open and there she sat in the
vestry of the church, flowers drooping out of her hand, her face a
study in shock. Her brother was speaking to her, kneeling by her,
his hand on her back. She drew away from him. When her father
squared his shoulders and started up the aisle toward the altar to
make an announcement, she burst into tears, helpless tears that he
knew would ring in his mind and soul for the rest of his
life.

The clock in the
tower chimed the half-hour. From habit he pulled out his pocket
watch and clicked it open. Two-thirty. He snapped it shut and
shoved it back in his pocket, feeling as he did so the wedding
ring.

He couldn’t leave
London fast enough.

When the coachman
blew on his yard of tin and signaled their approach to King
Richard’s Rest, Omega Chartley pulled her mother’s watch from her
reticule, snapped it open, and examined it. They were precisely on
time. The thought pleased her, as all perfect things did, and she
smiled to herself.

The loudly
dressed fribble sitting opposite her mistook her smile for approval
of himself. He sat a little straighter and tugged at his wilted
shirt points, smiling back and revealing a mouthful of improbable
porcelain teeth.

Omega snapped the
watch shut with a click that made the vicar next to her sit up and
peer around in fuddled surprise. She fixed the forward young man
across from her with the same quelling stare that had reduced many
an unprepared student of English grammar to visible idiocy. The man
gulped and looked away as the color drained rapidly from his
face.

It was high time
she squelched his pretensions. Earlier that morning, when she was
dozing off as a result of her sleepless night in the last inn,
someone (she suspected the man with porcelain teeth) had prodded
her feet in a scarcely gentlemanlike manner. It would never have
done to call attention to the matter; how nice that she could put
him in his place now.

“
So
the rain has finally stopped,” remarked the clergyman on her left
as he pulled himself awake and tried valiantly to fill in the awful
silence caused by Omega’s set-down.

She returned some
suitable, if vague, answer, and looked out the window. The rain had
stopped, but there was no lifting of the gray covering that had
settled over the gentle hills and valleys. All was gray. It was not
a propitious beginning to her holiday.

Throughout
Plymouth’s dreary winter and spring, when each day was done and she
had corrected papers until her eyes burned, she had treated herself
each night to a few moments with
Rochester’s Guidebook of
England for Ladies.
By the sputter and stink of the work
candles that Miss Haversham grudgingly provided for her teachers,
Omega Chartley had plotted out the journey that would take her from
Plymouth on holiday.

At first the
holiday had no plans beyond an excursion to Stonehenge on the
Plains of Salisbury (“Entirely suitable for ladies not easily
exercised by thoughts of druidical rites,” according to the
Guidebook
),
and
then beyond to the Cotswolds and back again. When, in early spring,
a letter had arrived from St. Elizabeth’s in Durham with a coveted
contract to teach English grammar in the wilds of north England,
the holiday turned into a move.

Other than a
brief trip to Amphney St. Peter for Alpha’s wedding, she had not
left Plymouth in eight years. Omega could claim no attachment to
the damp seacoast town other than the fact that it was far removed
from anyone she once knew. Miss Haversham’s Academy for Young
Ladies would not bring her face-to-face with any bad
memories.

For several
years, Alpha Chartley had tried in vain to draw her from Plymouth
to Amphney St. Peter. Omega would have none of it; she had chosen
her exile and there she would remain. And so she would have, had
not the letter come from her own former teacher, advising her of
the vacancy and requesting that she apply for it.

And so Omega had
applied. She was weary of the gray ocean. She could hide in Durham
as well as Plymouth and teach mill owners’ daughters instead of the
offspring of sea captains. The money was better too. She was on the
shady side of twenty-six, and needed to think about her
future.

But there was the
present to contend with now, and the clergyman who bumped her as he
gathered together his belongings.

“
Pardon, miss, pardon,” he said, his face as red as Mr.
Porcelain Teeth’s waistcoat.

Omega smiled to
reassure him, and made herself small in her corner of the mail
coach. She sighed inwardly and wondered if the time would ever come
when she would feel at ease traveling on the common
stage.

The pretentious
young man left the coach as soon as it rolled to a stop, not
glancing her way again. The vicar followed and then stood by to
give her a hand out.

As she was
bending out of the coach and reaching for his hand, a traveling
coach rolled into the innyard and dashed past the Royal Mail,
spattering the vicar with mud. Omega leaned back inside to avoid
the mud, but she was sure she could hear people laughing inside the
closed coach.