Cynthia Bailey Pratt (20 page)

While in the kitchen putting on her heavy duffel coat, a thought occurred to Jocelyn, and she said, “Miss Hargreaves! I hope you don’t think it is always like this. We are usually a very quiet household. You will stay, at least until I return?”

The new housekeeper drew herself up, and Mr. Quigg looked at her sturdy figure with admiration. “I have passed my word that I’ll take the position. Miss Jocelyn. I never go back on my promises.”

Hearing this reassurance, Jocelyn felt less guilty about leaving her responsibilities behind her. After all, she owed Helena her best efforts in trying to recover her, whether or not Helena wished to be saved. Jocelyn could not let Helena go off in all innocence to a brother allegedly both a traitor and a murderer.

By the time they’d gone twenty miles, Jocelyn’s tailbone ached, as did her back, her neck, and her head. The wagon’s wheels were egg-shaped, the boards rattled unceasingly, and the seat was as hard and comfortless as a Puritan conscience. The hired horse, however, shone in the sunlight and pulled the wagon as though it were Miriam Swann’s own light barouche. Mr. Fletcher drove extremely well, but in his desire for speed he drove right through the ruts and holes in the road, instead of attempting to smooth the ride by going around them.

With an imperturbability Jocelyn envied, Arnold went directly to sleep on some musty horse blankets before they’d traveled three miles.
He
was not disturbed by thoughts of the trouble he faced, both from the law and his parents.

To take her mind off her physical troubles, Jocelyn considered her mental difficulties. She told Mr. Fletcher about her meetings with Hammond, neglecting to mention her feelings on these occasions, as they were none of Mr. Fletcher’s business. He immediately grasped the importance of the letter to Hammond’s case.

“That explains a great deal,” he said, nodding his head like the horse before them. “A letter like that will set the cat among the pigeons. Captain Hammond will rise very high in the opinion of our superiors.”

“You as well, Mr. Fletcher,” Jocelyn said.

“Yes, but the credit belongs to the captain. It’s true he did fool me with all that talk about Fain’s death. I can understand his reasons. It wouldn’t be sportsmanlike to deprive him of his letter. Or his glory.” Mr. Fletcher smiled and said loudly, “By God, I’d like to be there when he tosses the whole business in His Lordship’s lap!”

“His Lordship?” Jocelyn asked.

Mr. Fletcher seemed to think he said too much and turned the conversation to Helena.

“Why did she run away? God only knows what is happening to her, out on the road alone. I’ve seen ...” Mr. Fletcher recalled he spoke his soul aloud to a young, unmarried lady, who had lived a sheltered existence until her involvement with matters of national importance. “I am certain she will be waiting for us in Oxford,” he finished lamely.

“I am also confident,” Jocelyn said, patting his arm.

During the afternoon Jocelyn had time to reflect that at least the government seemed to have plenty of money, considering the way Mr. Fletcher spent it. The instant his horse tired, he exchanged it, lavishly tipping the ostlers to attend them before all the others waiting for service. Jocelyn saw them stare at the wagon, so ill-matched to the liberal coins in their hands. He also purchased certain comforts of the road for which Jocelyn was grateful. Arnold did not mind not being given the candy he asked for at each stop, for he soon remembered he kept the better part of his citron drops screwed up in a dirty piece of paper somewhere in the depths of his pocket.

Chapter Twelve

Helena’s education, for its gaps, had been complete enough on one point. She often listened to tales of young girls setting out for a distant city, never seen again once around the corner from the places they had known. She knew enough to be careful.

Uncertain of how far Oxford was from Libermore, Helena walked slowly, not wishing to exhaust herself. Though footsore, Helena ignored several offers of rides from men, whether in a coach or a cart. She closed her ears to even polite invitations and continued on quickly after more insolent suggestions. Some of the men reminded her of Cocker. When those approached, she turned down the first lane that appeared as though it were her destination, and they drove on.

Only once did a respectable lady stop to aid her; the widow of a prosperous grocer, traveling in a high style with her servants and carriage. The woman asked so many questions and her maid looked at the girl with such narrowed eyes that Helena felt relieved to walk again. There was no doubt, however, that this ride had saved her many weary, trudging hours, for she had traveled as far in two hours as would have taken her four or six or even eight hours to cover afoot.

Helena thought she should concoct some story to explain her presence on the road. Nothing came to mind. She found great difficulty in concentrating on any subject save one. The accusations of her friends repeated and repeated themselves in her thoughts. How could anyone think such terrible things of Nicholas? He could be difficult, especially as soon as he woke up in the morning. Grumpiness, even rudeness, was no crime. She would show the world what it meant to be a sister! By her brave and loving devotion, she would repay the goodness he had shown her in bringing her to England when left destitute and alone in Switzerland.

As she walked, shifting her valise from hand to hand, Helena embroidered this picture with brilliant colors culled from novels until the main figures no longer resembled either Mr. Fain or herself. Yet, she found a pleasure in it that distracted her from the growing discomforts of her self-ordered journey. She looked only at her shoes as she walked down the middle of the road, sparing them the worst of the mud in the ruts. The heavy cloak she wore, while stifling, at least kept her dress from the mire.

Her inner vision became more real to her than the day or the sky, which was boding rain. She did not hear or see the carriage behind her, drawn by four speeding horses. The horses’ breath steamed as they bore down upon her. Their hooves cycled in the air. The driver fought to control them. She turned with a scream. A swirling darkness gathered around her. She felt herself slipping into it and tried to fight, uselessly. For the second time in a day and a half, Helena Fain fainted.

She awakened to voices that confused her. A heavy whiteness lay across her eyes but she did not feel frightened. Rather, she felt extremely comfortable, as if she never wanted to get up again.

“Jocelyn?” Her voice carried no louder than a whisper.

The voices abruptly stopped. “Here you are, then,” someone said kindly as the damp cloth was lifted from her brow.

“Where am I?”

“A cautious subject, I can see. Well, this is the Dog’s Jug Inn on the Botley Road.”

An elderly gentleman, tall and thin, stood over her, and Helena, realizing she was lying down, reached for the coverlet to draw up to her chin. Her fingers found only her cloak. However, she saw now she lay on a settee, fully clothed save for her shoes. A valet superciliously scraped them by the fire. She lay in a modest room whose heavily carved ancient furnishings and overall smell of spilled beer would have informed her this was an inn, if no one had told her so.

“Oh, dear,” Helena said, looking up at the elderly man. “Were they your horses, sir?”

“Indeed, yes. Fortunately, you did them no harm, flinging yourself beneath them.” The old gentleman drew forward an armchair and sat slowly down, motioning to Helena to stay prone. “You are not harmed, either,” he said with a slow nod. “Only frightened and, I think, hungry.”

He was old, quite the oldest person she’d ever seen, with skin like paper. His hair was completely white, and his hands shook with a fine uncontrollable tremor. Deep marks of weariness ringed his large eyes of pale blue, their expression unreadable. His clothes were quietly up to the fashion, though the body they covered was nearly fleshless.

The gentleman, seeing himself under such close inspection, smiled and became less remote. Helena, who had also heard of old roués pretending to be fatherly, was reassured by that smile. So might a grandfather look upon his favorite grandchild when she came in, singing, rousing him from some sad memory.

“What is your name, and why are you traveling alone and on foot?” The smile faded to be replaced by a look of censure, but Helena thought she saw the kindliness still.

“My name is Helena Fain,” she said in a low voice.

“Is it? And . . . ?”

Her words were slow, and she stumbled often in the telling. And yet, she hid nothing from those eyes faintly washed with color as they traveled from her eyes to her lips to her hands. He remained silent, only nodding gravely from time to time as though something she said tallied with a thought in his own mind. His silence drew more information from her than questions could have done. She told not only all she had seen and heard the previous day but also half-realized thoughts and feelings. When at last she told of her escape down the small stair at the Luckems’ house, the old gentleman nodded again in the slow, thoughtful way that seemed to be a habit with him.

“Were your friends so cruel to you that you felt you had to flee from them? This Miss . . . Burnwell, was it? She saved your life. And had you pledged yourself honorably to this tutor fellow—Fletcher, I believe you said?”

Helena said proudly, sitting up, “My first loyalty must be to my brother, sir.”

“Then you still wish to go to Oxford? I happen to be traveling there myself, you see, to visit a troubled friend.”

“Oh,” Helena said, mistrust mingling with hope. “Are you certain you were going there anyway?”

“Yes, I only just heard of my young friend’s presence in Oxford, and it is a visit I have long avoided. I wish now I had gone sooner. Beware of procrastination, Miss Fain. Always cure your faults at once. They only grow worse with age. All my life I have been cursed with pride. Many kinds of pride.”

“Is not pride sometimes worthy?”

“You have been raised among religious people, Miss Fain. What does the Bible say of pride? It is a very long time since I had cause to read it.”

The elderly gentleman turned toward his valet, who, some moments before, had accepted a large tray of food through the door and was now laying the meal out on the white table-cloth. “Will you not join me? I do not wish you to imperil my horses again through hunger.”

He took very little, only a chicken wing and a glass of watered wine. However, he encouraged Helena to eat heartily. “We are less than fifty miles from Oxford, and I will order my coachman to stop no more until we are safely there.”

“Thank you. You are very kind. What is your name?”

“I am Lord Ashspring,” he said as he smiled sadly. “I was raised to the peerage last month.”

“Oh! My congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he said, summoning his valet to give him orders about their departure. Then he said to Helena, as he curled his thin fingers around the stem of his glass, “Finish your dinner.”

At about the same time Jocelyn was trying to persuade Mr. Fletcher that they should stop. Their journey had lasted all afternoon, and now, as night drew in, Mr. Fletcher’s exhaustion was such that he had twice nearly driven them into a ditch. But he was reluctant to stop. Before him always floated Helena’s face, whether transfigured by love or pale and cold in repudiation of him and his affection.

However, the second near-accident made him realize that his love would not be served by the delay, if no worse, of an accident. He drew up before a small inn of pale brick. The building had a homelike look to it with flowers planted by the drive and a garden to the side. Only the sign over the door gave it away as a public house. It depicted only the hind end of a dog, the tail curling over the back, for the rest of the animal was inside a pitcher of wine, presumably drinking.

The landlady of the Dog’s Jug Inn, dressed in a plain brown gown with the white folds of a kerchief at the neck, greeted them cheerfully, though she was forced to apologize when Mr. Fletcher asked for a private room to take their supper in. “If you’d asked for anything else, sir, I’d have been better able to serve you. The only private dining room I have is occupied.”

While Mr. Fletcher weighed the propriety of taking Miss Burnwell into a public room, the landlady’s bright eyes observed Jocelyn shaking the creases out of her skirt. She noticed immediately the absence of a ring on her left hand when her gloves came off.

Operating an inn only fifty-five miles from Oxford, she saw a fair number of runaway lovers, for this was often as far as a girl cared to travel in one day. The one rule of her house was that no wicked goings-on of any nature were permitted. Mrs. Pierce drew herself upright, preparing to banish the travelers to another hour on the road.

Arnold ran in, slamming the big front door. “Legs all stretched?” Jocelyn asked.

“I jumped up and down twenty times,” the boy answered. “That did it.”

“So I should think.” Jocelyn turned toward the landlady, her hand on Arnold’s shoulder.

Mrs. Pierce said, thawing, “You can take supper with me and my boys, if you’ve a mind to it. The taproom can be a bit noisy now and again.”

Jocelyn said, “Thank you. I for one will be glad of any chair that does not move.”

The landlady led the way toward the back of the inn. With a nod toward Mr. Fletcher and Arnold, who were following behind, Jocelyn said, “My brothers and I are going to Oxford to visit my other brother Tom.”

“Couldn’t your maid come along?” the landlady asked slyly.

“I don’t have one.”

It is usually the first business of a young lady in an inn to try to impress the keeper of it with her consequence. She might brag about her servants, or her furnishings, or her family, in a mock-amused tone as if none of these things were important. Persons of innocence frequently think that this is the way to receive the best an inn has to offer when in reality it has the opposite effect.

That Jocelyn did not boast was a mark of favor in the eyes of the landlady, and she forgave her the obvious lie about her older companion being her brother. The landlady could not make out quite what the relationship was between these two new guests but was at least satisfied that there was no intrigue going on under her roof. No young man in his right mind would take a scampacious brat like that along during an elopement.