Courting Lord Dorney (3 page)

‘And you will be back in London soon?’

‘I have to go to Bath first to see Alex.’

‘Then save yourself the expense of hiring rooms and come to stay with me. My town house is small, but big enough for two bachelors.’

‘Thank you, I’d like that. I’ve some good friends. Now tell me all about America.’

Soon he was listening enthralled to Sir Daniel, who had just returned from a few months at the British Embassy in Washington, and forgot all about his abortive call on Mrs Grant.

‘So you think the matter of the boundary between America and Canada will soon be settled?’ he asked.

‘It’s in everyone’s interest to settle it. Wars are too costly. The Americans don’t want another war with Britain, and we’re too exhausted, we need a few more years to recover without indulging in more heroics.’

‘Is that what you thought about our little disagreement with Boney?’ Lord Dorney asked, laughing.

‘We had to stop him, but peace with America will be good for trade. They have cotton, which we need, and they buy many goods from us.’

Suddenly he yawned. ‘I must sleep. We’ve a long ride tomorrow to Cheshire, and I hope you’ll stay with me there for a few days while I deal with matters at home before I go and report to the Foreign Office.’

‘And I to see how the work goes on at Dorney Court before I go and see Alex and this chit he wants to marry.’

Chapter 2

At breakfast on the following day Bella was still trying to persuade Jane. ‘I must spend a few days at home, I promised Jed I’d find his sisters, but we’ll start as soon as possible. Papa won’t want me there for longer than to ask what happened.’

‘But Bella! I promised to visit Philip’s godmother, Lady Fulwood, soon, and remain in London until Philip comes home on furlough. I can’t go to Bath.’

‘Tell her you’ll come later. Just for a few weeks, Jane! Please! And Philip can come to Bath if he has leave earlier. Jane, you can’t let me down! I mean to go, whatever you do. If you refuse me I’ll find some way, even if I have to tell Papa Lady Salway is still with me.’

‘You wouldn’t dare! You’d never lie to him!’

‘I will! I hate the very idea of deceiving him, but what else can I do when he won’t listen? I’ve never actually lied to him. If he asked me I always told the truth, but I’m determined to marry someone who loves me, not my fortune! You married for love, Jane, you can’t deny me the same chance!’

‘But Bella!’ Jane almost wailed. ‘I can’t!’

‘Then I’ll have to tell lies. I’ll soon find someone in Bath like Lady Salway. I must go soon. Jane, have you any notion of how fast gossip spreads? And how determined some of these fortune hunters are? Only a few people know about me now, and I can be sure no one in Bath does. After the Season, though, with all those wretches from Harrogate spreading gossip, it’ll be different. I’d expect to find coaches breaking down every day outside the gates, or riders waiting to rescue me from falling on every ride I took! I even heard of one man who deliberately crashed into a girl’s coach so that he could meet her, and several heiresses have been abducted! Ravished and forced to the altar for very shame!’ she declaimed in throbbing tones.

‘You’re not afraid of that, surely!’ Jane was aghast, and with a secret sigh of relief Bella knew she’d won.

‘We-ell,’ she hesitated. ‘One of the wretches hinted at something like that. But if I change my name and vanish from home, he can’t do anything. You will help me, won’t you, Jane dear?’

By the following morning they had decided to send Bates to Bath at once to hire them a house for two months before Jane went to London.

‘That ought to be long enough,’ Bella said, but doubtfully. She was assailed by a sudden bleakness, a total lack of confidence in her ability to attract potential suitors.

‘I’ll say I’ve determined to try the waters for the cure of a minor digestive disorder which I’ve ignored until now, but which seems worse of late,’ Jane decided, entering into the deception wholeheartedly now she was committed. ‘We’ll hire servants there, who won’t be aware of your change of name,’ she added, ‘and Bates must return to look after this house while I’m away.’

* * * *

Mr Trahearne, although mildly surprised to see his daughter, accepted her carefully worded explanation that Lady Salway could no longer undertake her chaperonage, and she herself found Harrogate unpleasant. Her wish to accompany Jane to Bath seemed entirely reasonable, and absolved him from further effort.

On the following day Bella went to Preston, taking an apprehensive Jed with her. He was clean and tidy, in respectable clothes which had been outgrown by the gardener’s son, and he rarely stopped asking questions, and demanding reassurances that Bella would find his sisters. When they reached the office of Mr George Jenkins, her attorney, he told her that the house she had bought was fit for occupation, and a decent couple installed.

‘Then let us go and I can meet them, and leave Jed to get acquainted.’

Jed clung to her hand as they drove to the house, in a poor but respectable district not far from the town centre. Bella subjected Mr and Mrs Lloyd to a barrage of questions about their plans for looking after the children who would be consigned to their care, and was soon satisfied that they were an ideal couple to take charge of her orphans. They had one son, a little older than Jed, but Mrs Lloyd had been injured when he was born, and had never started another baby.

‘Much to our regret, Miss,’ Mr Lloyd added. ‘We’d have loved a big family, and this scheme will give us one.’

Bella approved of them, and left Jed with firm instructions that he was to do everything they said on pain of being taken back to the mill. Then she and Mr Jenkins went to the workhouse.

After a slight disagreement with the workhouse overseers Bella succeeded in taking Jed’s sisters away. She suspected that they were secretly relieved at having two fewer mouths to feed. Bet and Sal, seven and ten years old, were tearful in their thanks, and vowed they would keep Jed out of mischief. Bella went back to Mr Jenkins’ office satisfied with her progress so far.

‘You will keep me informed how they go on, and whether you find other children in need?’ she said. ‘I shall be staying for only part of the time in Bath with Lady Hodder, and it’s best you send my letters through her. I’ll send her direction as soon as possible. I mean to spend some time in Bristol, while I am in the area. Your brother recommended a fellow Wesleyan who is engaged in a similar project there, and I must meet him and see if we can help one another.’

And that, she thought with satisfaction, eliminated the possibility that Mr Jenkins might inadvertently give away her real name to Jane’s servants in Bath.

* * * *

When she reached home again and was sitting down after dinner with her father, Bella told him more of Jane’s plans.

‘So you didn’t like Harrogate, my dear?’ Mr Trahearne said, keeping his place in the book with one finger. ‘What a shame, it seemed such a good opportunity for you to mix in wider society than we have hereabouts.’

Bella bit back her opinion of the opportunities her various suitors had seen, and smiled dutifully. ‘Jane is planning to spend a few weeks in Bath, and she has asked me to go with her,’ she said. ‘I expect some of  the people there will be - well, younger. And Jane is reluctant to hire a companion, someone she doesn’t know. She would much rather have my company.’

‘I’ve no doubt of it, my dear. When does she plan to go?’

‘At the end of the week. So I may go, Papa?’

‘Of course, child.’

‘Thank you so much! I’ll send a message to tell her you’ve agreed.’

His gaze strayed back to the book. ‘I shall miss you, my dear, but I am nearly at the end of my translation, and it would be an opportunity for me to complete it without feeling I am neglecting you.’

‘Of course,’ she agreed, dutifully suppressing the thought that her father never permitted anything to distract him from his passion for Greek literature. He really should have been a university don, she thought, and no doubt would have been if he had not met her lovely mother and been swept up for a few pitifully short months by a different sort of passion.

She felt a moment’s compunction. If she had not been born, perhaps he would have returned to Oxford. But he had come back to his home and made sure she lacked for nothing. He’d provided her with nurses, governesses, tutors for painting and music - everything except his undivided attention. She then reminded herself that she probably preferred it that way, being left very much to her own devices, and having far more freedom than most girls in her situation. She had roamed the hills, on foot or on horseback, since she was a child. She knew everyone in the farms and villages round about and was often invited to parties or to accompany other girls to the local Assemblies.

Mr Trahearne promised to keep an eye on Jed and his sisters in Preston. He insisted that Mr Jenkins was utterly reliable, and needed no supervision.

‘But he would appreciate the attention, while I am away,’ she said. She trusted George Jenkins, his brother and their wives implicitly, but she wanted to convince her father that she was using his brother’s legacy wisely.

Mr Trahearne found it easier to agree, as Bella had known he would. Much as he loved her she knew he had never felt at ease with his motherless and impetuous daughter. He had no talent for dealing with children, and on top of his overwhelming grief for his young wife he had been afraid of the tiny baby’s fragility. This awe had never entirely left him as Bella grew up, and he had consequently been far more lenient than most fathers. Now, she suspected, he was somewhat guiltily looking forward to the day when she would marry and depart to her own home, and the more she moved in Society the sooner that would be.

Bella shook herself, and seeing that her father was once more absorbed in his book, left the room. She swiftly wrote a note to tell Jane it was all arranged, and went to the stables to find a groom who would deliver it for her.

* * * *

They left Lancashire a few days later, travelling post. They would hire a carriage in Bath. Bella had not bothered to unpack her trunks during her brief stay at Trahearne House, deciding that the gowns she had taken to Harrogate would do for Bath until she could acquire more. A disgruntled Meg had been left behind, volubly complaining and prophesying all sorts of disasters if she were not present to guard her beloved mistress from them.

‘Jane’s maid Susan can do all I need,’ Bella informed her briskly. ‘Besides, it will be cramped enough with three of us travelling in the chaise.’

Susan she could trust. Bella knew she didn’t get on with Meg, because of some ancient quarrel between their families, and would never let her know what her mistress was doing, might even enjoy deceiving her about Bella’s activities. And if Jane swore her to secrecy she’d know her own job depended on her discretion.

Bella  had no intention of permitting Meg to know her real purpose. Loyal as the woman had always been, since she had taken over the care of the motherless baby, Bella knew she would heartily disapprove of her new plans, and might inform Mr Trahearne of them. That would be a disaster. Little as he normally noticed what Bella was up to, she suspected that this latest ploy might shock him out of his indifference. Susan was new to her job, a timid young lady who had replaced the elderly but now retired dragon who had been with Jane since she was a young girl. She was anxious to please, and would either not care or not know what to do if she did disapprove, though from what Bella had seen of her she doubted the girl had any opinions of her own.

‘At last!’ Bella exclaimed as they left the village behind. ‘How long will it take us to get to Bath?’

‘Several days, for I don’t mean to be cooped up in this chaise all day,’ Jane replied. ‘I’ve given way to you, since I suspected you would do something outrageous on your own if I did not, but I mean to enjoy the journey.’

Bella gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Dear Jane, I am so grateful to you, and of course we will go at the pace of a three-legged donkey if you wish. It will give us more time to decide on what clothes to buy in Bath.’

They spent several enjoyable hours doing this, in between looking at the countryside. Jane had been to London several times with her husband, but Bella had never been south of Preston and she was both fascinated and repelled by the flatness of the Cheshire plain.

‘I couldn’t live in this sort of country,’ she exclaimed. ‘If I find a husband who lives in a place like this I’ll have to persuade him to buy an estate where there are hills.’

‘He might not wish to,’ Jane said, laughing. ‘Bella, this is a mad start!’

‘It’s the only way I can be sure of finding a man who isn’t more interested in my money than in me, and be able to use my money in the way I wish.’

* * * *

Bella’s enjoyment of the countryside increased as they drove through the Cotswolds, and she admitted, laughing, that it was tolerable scenery, though not so grand as Lancashire.

They had only twenty or so miles to go, and were climbing back into the chaise, after having partaken of a light nuncheon at a posting inn, when they saw that the mail coach was partly blocking the archway to the street, and another chaise with half a dozen young men crammed inside was pulled over to the side, unable to leave. A couple of men who had just arrived on horseback were talking to an ostler, further blocking the yard.

The ostlers were changing the mail coach’s horses, and a girl who had been waiting by the doorway to the tap room stepped forward. She was neatly dressed in a gown of dark green serge, and a plain bonnet, and carried a bundle wrapped in a shawl.

Jane’s chaise could not move, and as they settled themselves Bella overheard the exchange clearly.

‘You’re not on the list,’ the coachman said. ‘I’m sorry, lass, but I’m full, there’s no room for you. Mebbe the next will have room.’

‘But I’ve asked two others, and they were full too! What shall I do? They told me I could get on a coach here!’

‘You should have booked a ticket. I’m sorry, but there’s nowt I can do.’