Jennie Kissed Me (4 page)

When the inn servant brought us our hot water in the morning, she handed me a note.
Marndale!
was, of course, the first thing that flashed into my head. I opened the note and read with amazement an invitation for me and my companion to join him belowstairs in his private parlor for breakfast. I showed the note to Mrs. Irvine. “Surely he has not come to Farnborough this early in the morning just to thank us again.”

She was as astonished as myself but more logical. “More likely they stayed here overnight. It was pretty late to be taking his daughter back to the Laughing Jack.”

This, while less flattering to me, made eminent good sense. He knew we must meet downstairs, and by asking us to be his guests he was repaying any social obligation the breaking down of our door and calling us names entailed. I would have preferred to have the debt paid in London but sent down an answer that we would join him shortly. Next followed the important decision of what to wear. As we were travelling, it must be something fairly utilitarian. I had earmarked my green serge for travel and put it on again.

“Don’t mention the navy, Mrs. Irvine,” I said as we went below. This was understood between us to mean she should not chatter too familiarly about the conduct of our Tars when ashore.

“Don’t get your tail up your back,” she riposted. “I know how to talk to a gentleman.”

Lord Marndale was hovering at the door of his private parlor and came forward the minute we hit the bottom of the stairs. All the ravages of travel and door battering were removed from his toilette. As he wore a jacket of Bath cloth and a fresh cravat, I assumed his valet was on hand to assist him. “Miss Robsjohn, Mrs. Irvine,” he said, making a graceful bow while he smiled civilly. This new expression removed the air of a savage from him. He was a handsome specimen when he wore civil manners. “So kind of you to join me.”

Mrs. Irvine curtsied; I offered my hand. Mrs. Grambly once scolded me for shaking hands with a gentleman at the seminary. She said it was out of place in a schoolmistress, as it suggested equality with the parents of our students. I hoped Lord Marndale was aware of its significance. I inquired for Lady Victoria.

“My daughter is still resting,” he explained. “I have coffee waiting for us.” He lifted one finger, literally—his small finger at that—and a waiter came running to see what we would like with our coffee.

I don’t know how it is, but I am always as hungry as a horse when travelling. At home I never take more than bread and tea in the morning, but on the road I eat like an infantryman. Like Lord Marndale, I ordered gammon and eggs. He apologized again, and as we tackled our food he stated his real reason for inviting us.

“As you perhaps know, I am taking my daughter home to Wycherly Park. It is only a few miles out of your way. I would be delighted if you ladies would do me the honor of joining us for luncheon there.”

I could not have been more surprised if he had asked me to marry him. Surely this was more civility than either our kindness to his daughter or his insults required. It looked like a real overture at friendship. His whole manner was so engaging, his conversation easy and accompanied by an indefinable air of what I can only call admiration when he looked at me. At the school the parents spoke to us teachers as if we were somehow less than human. They did not really look at us. I always felt they could not tell if my eyes were blue or green or red after they walked out the door. But if staring meant anything, Marndale could tell you not only their color, but how many lashes were on my eyelids.

The friendship of a marquess could not do a young lady any harm in her search for a husband in London. It seemed the doors of society might open wide enough for me to squeak in if I played my cards right. I must not be too eager; on the other hand, I had every intention of accepting.

To my dismay I heard Mrs. Irvine say, “Very kind, Lord Marndale, but Jennie has us on a rigid schedule. We must reach London by tonight. She has arranged our rooms in advance all along the route. Tonight we have rooms waiting at Rendall’s Hotel.”

Her reply annoyed me on several scores. I had no intention of being “Jennie,” in London. Jennie is a fit name for a cow, not a lady. All this talk of rigid schedules made me sound a dead bore, and worst of all she had announced our destination as the second-rate Rendall’s Hotel. Such eminences as Lord Marndale would put up at Claridge’s or the Pulteney. Yet to refute her would sound like unbridled eagerness.

“You could still make it, if you spring your horses,” he said. “Wycherly Park is worth a visit, if it is not immodest in me to say so. It is in all the guidebooks.”

Before Mrs. Irvine could announce the ineligibility of “springing” the sort of job horses we managed to hire, I spoke up. “How far away is Wycherly Park, Lord Marndale?”

“Just a little jog south of Woking—practically on your way.”

“We have to stop for luncheon, Mrs. Irvine,” I pointed out to my recalcitrant friend.

Lord Marndale spoke on of his house, luring us with tales of its historical associations and physical features. He harped quite a while on the parks and gardens, done by Capability Brown in the last century.

“You might as well save your breath to cool your porridge, my lord,” Mrs. Irvine said. “You will never get Jennie to change her plans. It comes from being a school teacher, I suppose. She is all for keeping to our schedule. I wanted to stop over a day at Devizes. There was a fellow putting on a raree-show, but she wouldn’t hear of messing up our schedule.” Lord Marndale’s jaw fell open in astonishment.

“You make me sound a Tartar, Mrs. Irvine,” I objected, casting a menacing eye on her. “What will Lord Marndale think to hear his estate compared to a raree-show? I should like of all things to see Wycherly Park. We accept your invitation, sir.”

He expressed his pleasure, then said, “So you were a schoolmistress, Miss Robsjohn?” in a way that asked for elucidation.

I gave him the bare facts of my residence at the Bath Seminary, beginning as a junior assistant at the same school I had attended when my father was alive. The actual number of years spent there was not pinpointed. He said he had relatives who sent their daughters there, and we discussed the young ladies in question till breakfast was over. He was too polite to inquire how I had suddenly become wealthy enough to desert my career, and I did not volunteer the information. A touch of mystery, I felt, might make me an object of some interest. Before leaving it was arranged that our driver should follow Lord Marndale’s carriage to Wycherly.

I had a hasty word with my John Groom, advising him to hire the fastest team possible, for I did not wish to look a complete flat in front of Lord Marndale
.
I could not but feel the disparity in our rigs, however, when he and Lady Victoria went out to their sleek chariot with the lozenge on the door, pulled by four matched bays. My poor old secondhand cart looked like the relic it was, and I had not thought to tell John Groom to hire four nags.

“I’ll set a slow pace so you can keep up with us,” I heard Marndale tell my groom.

Lady Victoria showed no pleasure or interest that we were going to Wycherly. I assumed her father had chastised her, for she was subdued and polite.

The detour south to Wycherly occurred just west of Woking. We drove for a little over an hour with Mrs. Irvine telling me every five minutes that we would never make London by nightfall but we would have to pay for our room all the same since we had asked them at Rendall’s to hold it.

“What if we do?” I asked. “The price of one night’s lodging won’t break us. You must realize, Mrs. Irvine, that Lord Marndale could be a very helpful social ally in London, if he chose to take us up.”

“You’re flying too high, Jennie. He is just being polite. Very likely he is treating us today so he won’t have to have anything to do with us in London. Gentlemen like to pay off their debts.”

“That is news to me.” I felt she had hit it on the head and was furious with the bearer of bad tidings. “You are becoming cynical in your old age. I think I prefer your naval mode. I am surprised you haven’t claimed he is trying to seduce me.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him, but he wouldn’t do it with his daughter in tow. He thinks too much of her. For ravishing women, men use an inn, usually in the country.”

We were certainly in the deep country here. We drove through hill and hollow, with carefully tended fields where varying shades of green suggested the market and nursery crops under cultivation in the fertile brick-earth of the Thames valley. It was an ever-changing landscape. We passed through areas where tree followed tree, catching glimpses of cattle grazing beyond. Clouds of flowering wild bushes bosomed the hillsides, lending an air of enchantment. I knew from my teaching books that the North Downs must be close by. Before we reached them Lord Marndale’s carriage turned in at a pair of wrought-iron gates and continued along a drive of crushed stone into what must have been Capability Brown’s park.

It was too beautiful to be natural. Nature gives us a more ragged sort of beauty. Here clumps of trees were artfully arranged to give interesting vistas. At a turn in the drive the main building suddenly loomed before us like a mountain. It was of gray stone, the facade plain to the point of severity. Two stories had long windows with a third row of smaller windows forming the attics, or servants’ quarters, above. The long roofline was punctuated only by chimneys. There were no domes or turrets, no statues or other embellishments. Were it not for the delightful setting, it would have looked like an institution.

John Groom drew to a stop behind Lord Marndale’s carriage, and we alit for a closer look at the grounds. Lush grass provided a green carpet as far as the eye could see. In the distance water gleamed in the sunlight, curving sinuously as a snake. A bulge here and there was bordered with blooming bushes. At other points huge stone pots on columns met the eye. A few graceful willows trailed their branches at the water’s edge to vary the scene.

“Welcome to Wycherly Park,” Lord Marndale said with an echo of pride in his accent. He offered his arm, adding, “We’ll go in and have some refreshment.”

I expressed my admiration of the grounds. Mrs. Irvine yawned and stretched and pointed to a little hump in the grass. “You have moles. You want to get after them, Lord Marndale,” was her compliment on all his grandeur.

The severe exterior of the house did not prepare one for the sumptuousness of the interior. I hardly know where to begin describing the wealth of gilt and paintings and ornaments. It was more like a museum or royal palace than a home. A butler who was knock-kneed and walked like a badger bowed us in. “Show the ladies a room. Petty, and tell cook we will have lunch for four in the morning parlor,” our host said. “Lady Victoria will be joining us. Run upstairs and tidy yourself, Vickie.”

We were shown to a charming chamber hung with Chinese paper, featuring ornate birds roosting in meager trees. The furnishings were clearly of the best quality: a canopied bed, a long carpet down the center of the room, and a scattering of mahogany tables and desks. “It looks as if he went to market and bought up everything in it,” Mrs. Irvine said, staring all around.

“No, only the best.”

I was never a guest in such a house before, but I had toured any mansion that was open to the public in the environs of Bath. I recognized quality, and I knew I was surrounded by it here. The change from my own spartan room at the seminary was so great as to overwhelm me. I had planned to set up a small, elegant apartment in London. I realized that my entire fortune would not furnish one room at Wycherly. The hand-painted paper on the walls would clean me out.

Dismayed, I went to the window. The view was magnificent. It showed a length of the serpentine water edged in rhododendrons. I tore myself away from it with reluctance. A maid came with water, and Mrs. Irvine and I made a hasty toilette, consisting mainly of removing our bonnets and pelisses and tidying our hair. While we worked I thought of the future. When I first came into my uncle’s money, I entertained some secret hope that I was eligible to mingle with the very tip of the ton. This visit cured me of that notion. I would settle for my baronet, if I could find one to have me, but meanwhile I would enjoy seeing how the nobility disported itself.

I could not complain of noble manners today. Lord Marndale was awaiting us in his splendid entrance hall when we came downstairs, goggling all about us like a pair of bumpkins. Again I was struck by the eagerness of his manner. His eyes lit up and his lips lifted in a smile when we appeared. He placed a hand on my elbow and led us away from the abundance of gilt to a smaller parlor that was more livable. Sherry awaited us on a tray. Marndale poured. “This will keep us till lunch is served. Afterward I would like to show you around the park, or house if you prefer. The day is not so fine as it began,” he mentioned, glancing out the window.

“There is no counting on the weather in April,” Mrs. Irvine lamented. “I doubt if the
Prometheus
will set sail today as she was due to.” She kept in touch with the wife of the captain who had replaced her husband aboard that ship.

“Will you be staying long at Wycherly?” I asked Lord Marndale to forestall a naval conversation. Once she gets started there is no holding her back.

“I hate being away in the spring, but I have business in London. I cannot stay here long. Of course, it’s close enough that I can come home weekends. As soon as I find someone to tend Vickie, I shall get back to the House.” His business was political business then, I deduced. My mind flew to Lydia Hopkins. “Would you know of a suitable lady, Miss Robsjohn?” he asked, as if reading my mind.

“I have a friend at the seminary at Bath who might be interested,” I said. “A Miss Hopkins. She is accustomed to dealing with girls of Lady Victoria’s age—well, a little younger, perhaps. She is a particular dab at French,” I added, hoping to build Lydia up.

“It is really not the lessons I am so concerned about. Vickie is out of the schoolroom. It is rather a companion I have in mind. Victoria is ... strong-willed,” he said, choosing his word with care. “Well, you have met her. Do you think your Miss Hopkins could handle her?”