Elisabeth Fairchild (6 page)

“What nonsense, Fanella! You have been foisted on no one. You are a well-educated young lady of good family. I dare say you may do as well as your sister in finding a husband.” She looked pointedly at the flowers. “You may certainly set your sights higher than a coachman.”

Nell dipped her nose down to smell the flowers. “I might like to marry a coachman, were he a kind and gentle man who loved me as well as his horses,” she teased, with a mischievous smile.

Ursula Dunn allowed her forbidding expression to unbend.

“You are your father’s child, my dear. I will not scold you for such, but think on this if you will. It is just as easy to fall in love with a Duke as a dustman. Far easier, I should imagine.”

Ursula took herself off to stretch her legs.

Nell mounted the steps that led to the top of the carriage, thoughts of her father’s recent death weighing down her spirits. Death harshly pointed out to her the vagaries of being born female in Great Britain, a creature whose fate was determined almost entirely by men. In giving oneself into marriage, a woman gave herself up completely; her rights, her name, her dowry, the very fruit of her loins-- her children, was she powerless to control, under the current law. There was something akin to the relationship between man and beast, between man and wife. A woman, she thought, could but hope for a just and gentle keeper in a husband who outlived her.

She was frowning with such thoughts when her head came up over the rim of the coach top. There, alone on the foremost seat of the carriage, nibbling on a bit of bread and cheese, with Bandit waiting expectantly for a handout, sat none other than the young coachman she and her aunt had just spoken of so freely. Nell almost lost her footing.

A smile lurked about Mr. Ferd’s provocative lips. Mischief sparkled in the clear depths of his eyes. Nell’s cheeks burned witmiliation. He was certain to have overheard them! She hesitated, ashamed, wondering if it would be better to return to the ground awaiting the return of her Aunt, rather than continuing up the steps to face the young man’s opinion of what he might have heard.

“May I offer you my hand?” He stood, and leaned down over the steps, gloved hand extended.

Nell decided that it would be churlish in her to refuse. “If you please,” she said.

With steady clasp he firmly brought her up beside him. She found herself blinking, both from the brightness of the sun, and from the keenness of the look he bent on her. Mr. Ferd’s pale gaze would seem capable of cutting through to the heart of her. Nell felt exposed. Her gaze fell.

“I am sorry for what you may have heard.” Self-consciously, she held forth the flowers she had brought for his buttonhole. “These are for you. I hope you will not think me too forward in offering you replacement for those I have crushed.”

“To the contrary, Miss Quinby. There is something rather more b-b-backward than f-f-forward in your offering.”

She frowned. Did he mean to insult her? “Backward?”

Eyes sparkling, he smiled sweetly. “Yes, I have never had the p-p-pleasure of a young lady offering me a p-p-posy. The situation is generally reversed.”

Her heart turned over. No man had ever before looked at her in the manner that he did. She smiled. “I have never had cause to offer a gentleman flowers before. I suppose it is both backward and forward in me.”

He laughed, shook his head, and in taking the posy from her hand, managed to turn her knees to water. “Not a-a-at all, Miss Quinby. Your gesture is p-p-precisely right.”

Deftly, he removed the smashed flowers from his buttonhole. Their stems were encased in a small water vial. The vial was not unexpected, but the cut glass and silver it was made of, was. Nell would not have thought that a coachman could afford such a luxury. She wondered if he might be of as gentle a birth as she, and fallen on equally hard times. She regretted again his having overheard her conversation with her aunt.

He tucked the fresh pinks carefully into the vial. “My posy is yours for the crushing once a-a-again, Miss Quinby. They are a-a-a far better r-r-re. . .”

He sighed, as if disgusted with his inability to speak without stuttering. Something fluttered in Nell’s chest. She did not want this kind young man, with the speaking blue eyes to feel bad about his stutter, any more than she wished him to feel inferior to her because of his position in life. She liked him too much.

“A far better what?” she pressed gently.

Again, he blessed her with the magic of his smile. “Re-placement,” he said slowly, and she could tell by the shift in his gaze from her face to her hat, that he meant to belittle his own kindness to her.

“I feel very fortunate that it was only a bonnet that was crushed this morning.” Both her look and her answer were quite direct, and he seemed to see or hear something that widened the heart-stopping smile.

“We are f-fortunate indeed,” he agreed.

There was no time for more. Passengers were climbing aboard. Nell felt a sort of relief that such was the case. She had begun to wonder if her aunt was not perhaps right about encouraging conversation with a coachman, no matter how kind. She had never felt so warm, and exhilarated, in conversation with any other gentleman of her acquaintance. As she took her seat, and they prepared to get under way again, Fanella found herself wondering how easy it was to fall in love, duke or dustman.

Chapter  Four

The passengers settled in their seats. With a thoughtful expression, Mr. Ferd began to whistle. Nell was struck by the wayward impression that it looked as if he meant to kiss the flowers she had given him, so similar was the pursing of his lips in whistling to that other oral pursuit. The tune, so cheerfully rendered, was vaguely familiar to her. She tried to place it as the postboy took up his horn to hurry the laggards, but had not managed to put name to it even as the horses fell into a trot.

Nell found something vastly disappointing, both in her inability to recognize the tune, and in no longer being in a position to regard the expression of her new acquaintance. Not that Mr. Ferd’s was an unattractive back. Broad and tautly muscled, cloth capes, stretched provocatively from left shoulder to right, telegraphing every move. His wind-tousled hair was attractive, both in cut and color beneath the low-brimmed hat, but Nell, having once been introduced to the more

speaking aspect of a pair of pale blue eyes, found herself anxious to face again what she considered his better side. She found the turnings of Mr. Ferd’s agile mind far more intriguing than the curling tendrils of hair at the nape of his neck.

She knew she could not, with any decency, begin conversation with him herself, and while there was some contentment to be found in examining the strength of his jawline, and the ingenious way in which nature had seen fit to attach pink-tipped ears to the sides of his well-shaped head, Nell could not help but wish that he might bless her with another of his complimentary blue-eyed looks.

Fortunately, a gentlemen passenger, who sat behind Nell, pointed to the attractive sandstone Jacobean edifice they passed.

“What is that building there?”

 “That ’s Sackville, sir.” The older coachman spat a stream of snuff from the wad that bulged in his cheek. “It’s for them that’s gone tuppy or has not got two megs to rub together.”

“What’s that he says?” the gentleman’s wife asked of no one in particular, clearly confused by the cant.

Mr. Ferd, turned toward them. Nell found the shape of his lips utterly fascinating as he stopped whistling and lightly passed the tip of his tongue over them.

“It’s an a-a-alms house,” he explained. “Built by the Earl of Dorset in 1619. It was originally meant to house r-r-retired r-r-retainers. . .” He threw back his head as if reined in by his own tongue. A shadow darkened the pale blue of his eyes, before he surged manfully on, “I understand the earl’s charity has been extended to a-a-all those in the village who a-a-are maimed or penniless.”

An awkward silence fell. This exhibition of the young coachman’s speech impediment, hitherto unrealized by the vast majority of the passengers, rendered them all speechless.

Herself struck dumb by Mr. Ferd’s surprisingly detailed knowledge of a long dead earl’s largess, Nell was bothered by the silence. It stretched too long not to be noticed, and Mr. Ferd’s fascinating ear tips appeared to flush deeper rose as a result.

Gently, she filled the silence. “It would seem the Earl was a kind man.” 

“Kind indeed,” the gentleman who had first enquired about Sackville murmured.

“Kindnessis an excellent quality to cultivate,” Mr. Ferd said softly, turning to look at her, an expression in the cool depths of his eyes, that convinced her he was not unmoved by her intervention.

Nell was touched by a thrill of pleasure. She found she could not take her eyes from the back of Mr. Ferd’s weather-beaten hat as the coach rumbled across the Medway River bridge, and into the strangely desolate remains of Ashdown Forest. Had she just been thanked for her own charity? She could no more be certain of it, than she could be certain of what it was the curious coachman began to whistle again. The name of the tune still eluded her.

It was not until they crested a small hill that led into the village of Forest Row, when the postboy took up his yard of tin to echo a bit of the whistled melody in bugling tones, that Nell finally remembered from whence the music came. It was a refrain from a Beethoven Serenade their coachman whistled with kiss-pursed lips, while his companion on the driver’s bench spat snuff between the horse’s hooves in time to the music.

The notes from the horn died away. Mr. Ferd twisted in his seat, to shout back at the postboy with a pleased look, “You’re quick to pick up a tune.”

Nell knew it was neither ladylike nor polite to turn and stare, but she could not resist twisting to look at the postboy as he grabbed up the heavy canvas mailbags. He was grinning.

“I’ve always got me ear out for a new lick. That tootle works right smart on me yard of tin, don’t you think, sir?”

“Capitally so,” Mr. Ferd agreed, returning his attention to the team as they swung into the yard of a posting house and the postboy rose to his knees with the timing of familiarity, to fling one of the stout mailbags off the roof, near a woman in an apron who stood waving. Before they had left her behind, the postboy wielded a long-poled crook, with which he snagged up the waiting bag of outbound mail.

“There’s more, if you’d care to hear it,” the coachman shouted as the bag was stowed.

“Aye sir, whistle away,” returned the postboy.

Nell straightened her position, in order that she might once again regard the intriguing coachman who was familiar enough with a contemporary composer that he might whistle his tunes for half the morning. There was something strange and wonderful in listening to a coachman and a postboy for his Majesty’s Royal mail, as between them they made the great forest once known as Anderidon, ring with the music of Beethoven.

In Chailey, with its ancient church, and pretty smock windmill high upon the breezy common, the music stopped as the horses were changed out again. Two departing passengers were the only ones to leap down. The change was a swift one.

In the short, flurried pause, Brampton Beauford allowed himself the luxury of turning about completely on his bench, gloved hand stretching down under the seat to stroke Bandit, who lay, tail thumping, beneath. The dog was not the primary reason for his movement. Lord Brampton Beauford, Seventh Duke of Heste, had a great desire to look once again upon the fair face of Miss Fanella Quinby, whose words had given him cause to consider the financial difficulties females faced, with regard to marriage, in a different light.

She looked quite fetching in the pink muslin lined bonnet he had procured for the protection of her complexion. The color suited. It matched the roses that bloomed on each cheekbone. What drew his attention irresistibly back to her, was not so much her pretty face as it was the turnings of this young woman’s mind, and the expression that played about her engaging mouth. She regarded him with amused and uncensored approval. Such tolerae struck Lord Beauford profoundly. He was not accustomed to receiving direct or admiring glances from attractive young females once his stutter was discovered.

Pained sympathy, blank glassiness or fearfully shuttered looks usually settled over feminine features, when his speech impediment made itself known. The pained ones usually tried to finish his sentences for him, or at the very least, they played a humiliating sort of guessing game with him, as they tried to predict what word it was he meant to utter. The blank and fearful ones quickly ended all conversation, that they might escape to more articulate company.

To be sure his sisters, Anne and Beatrix, did not behave so, but they had grown up beside him, and beyond a fixed need in both of them to mother him more than he cared for, it would appear they had accustomed themselves to his halting speech.

Miss Quinby, seemed unphased by his handicap, capable of looking beyond it, to what he said. He could tell by her calm, unhurried manner, that she felt comfortable waiting for his tongue to catch up with his thoughts. He read no censure, no offended withdrawal, no unwanted pity in her steady gaze. He could, in fact, at times read a curious sort of admiration there. That look was enough to make his blood sing, while the hair lifted quite perceptibly along the nape of his neck.