Carola Dunn (14 page)

“He cannot well be worse off,” Ashe said decisively. “That fit terrified me quite as much as him. Is he strong enough to travel?”

“Not a great distance. Not so far as Gloucestershire. And if he has another fit before the morning, I should be as afraid of moving him as of keeping him here.”

“Exactly. That’s why I propose to leave immediately and to take him to my aunt Busby in Buckinghamshire, not much more than twenty miles off. How soon can you get packed up everything that Colin, you, and your brothers will need for a night?”

Joyful, Lissa jumped up and rang the bell for the nurserymaid. “Half an hour?”

“The carriage will be at the door, ma’am.” He rose, looking faintly amused by her enthusiasm. “I’ll send off a groom at once with a note to prepare my aunt for our arrival.”

“You will come? But oh! Lady Orton will not be back from Richmond so soon!”

“You may leave Daphne to me. There is nothing to stop her joining us. But if she chooses not to,” he added with a grin, “then she is welcome to berate me at a distance as much as she may please!”

Chapter 11

Lord Ashe carried his nephew down to the luxurious travelling carriage. Depositing him within, he turned to hand Lissa up.

“I had several pillows put in,” he said. “You will know how to arrange him most comfortably. I shall ride to leave you more space.”

“Peter may very well sit beside the coachman,” she protested.

“No need.” He glanced at Peter and Michael, who had gone forward to inspect the team. “To tell the truth,” he went on in a conspiratorial whisper, “I had far rather ride in this weather than be cooped up in the carriage. I shall check with you frequently to make sure all goes well. Come along, boys!”

Peter and Michael scrambled in and they set off.

Lissa half hoped Colin’s breathing would ease as soon as they left the city streets. It was too much to expect. As they passed the Tyburn turnpike and rolled through the little village of Shepherd’s Bush, slowly so as not to jolt him, he continued to wheeze.

Yet, propped against his pillows, he watched the passing scenery through the windows and took a lively interest in the sights pointed out by Peter and Michael. A lightning-blasted oak, a pair of magpies (one for sorrow, two for joy) on a fence, a tavern called The Bat and Ball, a bright-painted canal boat passing under a bridge: Colin did not speak but he looked, and his eyes were brighter than Lissa had seen them in days.

Thanks to Lord Ashe’s thoughtfulness, she had two flasks of barley-water from which Colin sipped regularly.  When his lordship appeared at the window to report that they would shortly stop to change horses, Lissa told him her patient had not had a coughing fit in over an hour.

“He is tired, though. How much farther have we to go?”

“We are about half way. I rode ahead to hire a private parlour at the Target Inn, so he may rest for a while.”

“You think of everything, sir.”

“Not I, but I try. For you, tea; for the boys, lemonade and cakes.”

“What kind?” asked Michael, by now a connoisseur of cakes.

“Wait and see!” said Lissa.

“I’m going to be a pastrycook when I grow up.”

Lord Ashe laughed, and rode forward to speak to the coachman. Lissa watched him. She had not seen him on horseback before, or only a glimpse from the schoolroom window high above the street. He looked splendid, she thought, his tall, broadshouldered figure straight yet at ease in the saddle of the black gelding.

How her view of him had changed since she had felt his gaze on her from the box above the stage! Even then, when he was a stranger, his character unknown to her, she had felt the tug of attraction. Now she knew him, how could she help but love him?

It was just as well they were separating, she decided sadly. When he left her in the country and went back to Town, she could stop wondering what she would do were he once more to offer her carte blanche. She would no longer have to fight the temptation to accept, to enjoy a few months of love before he tired of her. It would be her only chance to experience the sweetness of a man’s embrace, for by the time Michael was old enough to be safe from Mr. Exton she would be well and truly on the shelf.

The carriage slowed, turned sharply, and pulled up in the courtyard of a bustling hostelry. Lord Ashe came to carry Colin in.

When they left the inn, an hour later, Colin was definitely breathing less laboriously. He was even comfortable enough to doze off. Peter and Michael quietly played a game suggested by Lord Ashe which involved each choosing a particular colour of horse and counting a cricket run for each one spotted on the busy Oxford Road. A matched pair counted as four, or a boundary hit, Lissa gathered, and a matched team was a six. It kept them occupied.

Unoccupied, Lissa started to worry about their reception by Mrs. Busby. Doubtless Lord Ashe would not tell his aunt that Lissa had been an actress. Still, a governess of a mere nineteen summers was more suitable for nursery children than a ten-year-old boy. Add two brothers and Mrs. Busby might well consider the whole business decidedly queer.

She was not likely to turn her sister’s son and grandson away, and in any case it was in Lord Ashe’s hands. Trusting him, Lissa let herself succumb to weariness after a sleepless night. She drowsed off.

The sway of the carriage around a sharp turn roused her. Her first thought, as always, was for her brothers. In a dim, green light Peter sat opposite her, a look of conscious nobility on his face. Michael had fallen fast asleep slumped against his shoulder.

“My arm’s gone to sleep,” he whispered. “I didn’t move him in case he woke up and disturbed you and Colin.”

“Thank you!” she said, turning to Colin.

He was just beginning to stir. For the first time in days, Lissa could not hear his respiration. She leant towards him, holding her own breath. The soft susurration of normal breathing was music to her ears.

As he rubbed his eyes, she glanced beyond him through the window. The dimness was explained: the side of the carriage brushed a verdant hedge. So narrow was the lane that leaves grazed the opposite window, too.

“We have left the turnpike,” Lissa said. “We must be nearly there. Wake Michael, Peter--gently. However did he manage to get his face dirty in here?” She felt in her reticule for a handkerchief.

“Where are we, Miss Findlay?” Colin asked sleepily.

“Nearly at your great-aunt’s.”

“I can talk! Peter, I can talk! I was getting very tired of listening all the time.”

The boys chattered while Lissa spat on a corner of her handkerchief and cleaned Michael’s smudged cheek.

“What is your great-aunt like?” Peter enquired. “Do you know her?”

“Yes, she came to London once when I was little, to stay in Dover Street. She’s very fat and she doesn’t like boys.”

“Not even good boys?” Michael asked.

“Not any boys.”

Lissa’s sense of foreboding returned.

The hedges vanished and the carriage rumbled up a hill with the smooth, grey trunks of beeches on either side. The sun shining through the leaves far overhead cast a dappled greenish-gold light. Though Spring was nearly past, clumps of fragile pink-tinged windflowers still bloomed beneath the trees.

Despite her anxiety, Lissa’s heart could not but rise at the beauty of the scene. Colin was so much better they would be able to leave for Gloucestershire on the morrow, she told herself. One night at Mrs. Busby’s was survivable. What was more, she had forgotten that, as a mere governess, she probably would not have to meet the lady, and although Colin must make his bow, the others need not.

A high red-brick wall appeared, marching between the trees towards the road. They came to a small brick lodge and the carriage turned in between octagonal gateposts and wrought iron gates, standing open.

“‘Is lordship said you was on the way,” the lodgekeeper called to their coachman with a wave. The gates clanged shut behind the carriage as it moved on.

* * * *

Ashe had not so much forgotten as refused to recollect how his aunt still made him feel like a grubby and ill-mannered small boy. As he paused on the threshold of her immaculately tidy sitting room, her raised lorgnette stripped him of dignity and sophistication before she so much as uttered a word.

“Pray excuse my dirt, ma’am.”

“If you had stopped to wash and change out of your riding clothes, you would not need to beg my pardon.” Her biting tone and cold eyes, magnified by the lenses, belied the inanimation of her round, dew-lapped face. Massively inert, she half sat, half reclined upon a well-padded sofa, her equally inert, overfed pug sprawled on her vast black satin lap, a box of bonbons at her elbow.

Mrs. Busby was a widow, her late husband having not so much died as faded away. Ashe was not alone in nursing a sneaking fantasy that she had somehow absorbed the unfortunate Mr. Busby’s substance, like a praying mantis consuming its mate.

“I have ridden ahead but the carriage is not many minutes behind me, aunt.” Though Ashe heard the note of grovelling apology in his own voice, he was powerless to change it. “My note was brief, so...”

“Very brief.”

“I wrote in haste, ma’am. So I wanted to explain before Colin arrives.”

“I cannot conceive of any explanation which will justify foisting a sick boy on my household.” Lowering the lorgnette, she reached for a sweetmeat. She did not invite her nephew to be seated, nor even to advance further into the room. “Indeed, it seems to me highly inadvisable to remove an ailing child from his home.”

“That’s just it, ma’am. The nature of Colin’s illness made removing him from the city not merely advisable but imperative.” He embarked upon a tangled account of symptoms, attempted treatments, and Miss Findlay’s discoveries.

“You are babbling, Robert! How long do you intend to make my house the site for your medical experiments?”

“We shall not impose upon you for more than one night. Colin is so much improved that I trust he will be quite fit enough by tomorrow to make his bow to you before we go on to Ashmead.”

“Make his bow to me?” said Mrs. Busby in horror. “I assure you I can well dispense with that civility. A pert boy, as I recall, spoilt by his mother just as your mother spoilt you.”

Since the criticism came from the dowager Lady Ashe’s own sister, her son forebore to flare up in her defence. In fact, his chief feeling was relief. If Mrs. Busby had no intention of seeing Colin, there was no need whatever to mention Colin’s two young companions. The manor was quite large enough to make a chance encounter unlikely, especially as she seldom left her apartments on the ground floor.

“As you wish, aunt,” he said meekly.

“I still fail to comprehend why you brought the boy here. I shall speak to the governess. Perhaps she will be able to provide a round tale. Send her to me--after she has removed her travel dirt. You may go.”

Bowing, Ashe went. He was sorry to have involved Miss Findlay in an interview with his aunt, but he was not about to argue.

“Whew!” he whistled silently, wiping his forehead as he closed the door behind him.

The butler, waiting and no doubt listening in the hallway, gave him a sympathetic glance. “Three adjoining chambers are being prepared, my lord,” he said in a low voice, “as your lordship’s note to me requested. One for Lord Orton, one for his governess, and one for his young companions, and a small sitting room nearby.”

“Thank you, Benton.” Ashe slipped him a guinea. “No need to mention the other two boys to your mistress.”

“None at all, my lord,” the butler agreed blandly. “Allow me to show you to your rooms. Your lordship will require hot water, no doubt.”

“And plenty of it, but I shan’t be able to change until my carriage arrives.”

“Naturally, my lord. May I venture to suggest that madam is unlikely to require your presence again in the immediate future?”

“Doubtless.” Ashe groaned. “However, I cannot allow Miss Findlay to face the drag...my aunt alone.”

Benton nodded gravely. “Your lordship will find a decanter of Madeira in the dressing room,” he promised, opening a door.

“Dutch courage? You’re a good fellow, Benton! Let me know immediately when the carriage comes.”

“Certainly, my lord. Perhaps the two...ah...young gentlemen will not object to continuing round to the stables and ascending by the back stairs?”

“Sheer genius! I have no doubt they will be delighted,” Ashe exclaimed, and dished out another guinea.

* * * *

The carriage emerged from the beechwood, rolled down an avenue of elms, and came to a halt before a large house of mellow red brick half hidden by Virginia creeper. The front door stood open, though the heat of the day was past.

Before the coachman’s “Whoa, there!” had faded, a footman in green livery dashed down the steps, followed at a more stately but still hurried pace by the butler. The carriage door was flung open, the step let down. A trifle overwhelmed by the enthusiastic welcome, Lissa gathered her reticule and her shawl and prepared to descend.

The butler appeared in the doorway, blocking her way. With a regal nod, he said in a low voice, “Lord Ashe’s compliments, miss, and he requests that the young gentlemen remain in the carriage as far as the stables.”

Lissa frowned. Did Mrs. Busby dislike boys so much she would not even let them enter by the front door? “Lord Orton is very tired,” she said. “I should like to get him to bed at once.”

“Of course, miss. I should say, the other young gentlemen.”

No better pleased, Lissa assumed her brothers were to be treated as servants. However, she was in no position to protest. She was comforted by the thought that the order must surely have originated with the lady of the house, not Lord Ashe. At least the butler had referred to them as gentlemen.

“Very well. I shall explain to them.” She turned her head to speak to Peter.

Her chagrin must have been plain, for the butler said quickly in a still lower voice, “I should explain, miss, that it’s by way of being a conspiracy. His lordship desires to keep the young gentlemen’s presence unobserved by the mistress. Thomas here is to go with them and smuggle them up the back way.”