My Dear Jenny (5 page)

Jenny—for so she had resigned herself to being called—found
that for her part she was more bored than exhausted by the business of playing
duenna. While such a pretext was feasible, she hovered over Emily lest she
succumb to another attack of nerves. Shortly there existed between herself and
the girl such a bond of affection that no pretext was necessary. While
lphegenia was careful not to say a word against Ratherscombe to Emily, she was
equally careful that the dislike in which she held him was quite apparent.
After the first week, Emily broke down and begged to know what Dear Jenny found
to dislike in dear, dearest Adrian.

“My dear Emily, it is hardly for me to say. He is
your
brother—half brother,” she corrected heartlessly.

“No, honestly, Jenny. You seem so uncomfortable with Adrian,
quite as if he had been unpleasant to you, or.…”

“It is not for me to say,” Jenny countered. “And I have
always had the greatest dislike of tale bearers.”

“But what could Adrian possibly have done that would bring
you to tale-bear?”

“Nothing, as you see, for I have twice refused to do so, and
shall continue to do—”

“But what?”

So Jenny, making it obvious that she was reluctant,
continued. “He is what my cousins would call a queer nabs. A loose fish!”

“Oh, no, Jenny, he’s not like that at all! He’s the smallest
bit flash, and awfully dashing, and—”

“All show and no go,” Miss Prydd finished drily. “And
although he
is
your brother, my love, I wonder at his most unthinking
conduct toward you in these last few days ... barely an inquiry after you! He’s
spent all his time in the taproom drinking Mrs. Hatcher’s punch. I’m sorry to
have to say these things to such a devoted sister as you are—and surely
sisterly love can surmount a great deal of trying. But I’m not his sister, you
see, and these little flaws do appear to me.”

Picking up some work, she offered to escort her friend down
to the sitting room they had secured for their use, and effectively cut off
that conversation.

For his part, Adrian Ratherscombe spent the first week of
the incarceration at the inn variously inebriated, very inebriated, and, in
Domenic’s dire phrase,
four sheets to the wind
. During that week it was
his custom to rise late, beginning his inroads on the punchbowl by way of
breakfasting, and to contrive to convince himself that the delay in their
elopement and the dangers to which it exposed them were somehow Emily’s fault.
He did not fail to treat her shabbily. However, some time in the eighth day at
the inn, his natural canniness reasserted itself with a flare, and he realized
that if he seriously planned to continue the elopement—and, heaven only
knew, with the marriage!—he had best to preserve Emily’s good opinion.
Strangely, when he had been at his most obnoxious she had flown to his defense
against the detached distaste evidenced by Miss Prydd, Mr. Teverley, and young
Domenic. When he began to exert himself to charm, she began to feel
uncomfortable in his company, to note discrepancies in his stories, and
generally to feel herself depressed at the thought that they were to be man and
wife very shortly. Had the disapproval she met been aimed at her elopement, she
would have shortly been re-infatuated, but of course they knew nothing of the
elopement, she assured herself, and the attitude she felt was one of affection
for her and tolerance of her “stepbrother” for her sake.

Miss Prydd’s letter to Emily’s home was sent, and a reply
received very shortly. The letter, full of tearful gratitude and a mother’s
thanks, begged Iphegenia to continue in her excellent fashion, and to inform
them when a coach might be sent to collect Emily and, if she wished, herself,
for the trip back to London. The letter was signed Elizabeth Pellering. Jenny
had long since learned that Emily’s papa was a member of the House of Lords and
took it, in the child’s disparaging words, “quite dreadfully serious.” Feeling
that Emily’s departure in the Graybarr coach would take considerably more
fortitude than she had to muster, Jenny reported the contents of the letter to
her cabal: Mr. Teverley and his cousin, Mr. Dunham, reverend conspirator by
default, and Mrs. Hatcher. The landlady had become part of their plots when she
had threatened, within Mr. Teverley’s hearing, to dun Miss Pellering for Mr.
Ratherscombe’s tavern bill. Once she had been apprised of their surmises
regarding Emily and Mr. Ratherscombe, it was all they could do to keep her from
storming straightaway to the taproom to upbraid the villain for his crimes. She
was finally brought to an appreciation of a subtler tack, and came to delight
in frustrating Mr. Ratherscombe’s flirtations and in embarrassing him as often
as she found convenient.

Each of the conspirators acted in his own way to further
their work on Emily’s (unknowing) behalf. Miss Prydd was her friend, her
confidante, and, as Adrian Ratherscombe had reason to know, an unobtrusive
gooseberry. Mrs. Hatcher was more obtrusive—delightedly so, for she had
the advantage, as Domenic put it, of being able to bluster with offended
dignity if Mr. Ratherscombe so much as hinted that she was where she was not
wanted, to the great amusement of the invalids, who would call out cheers from
their sickroom. Domenic had early appointed himself Emily’s most willing slave,
and spent endless hours amusing her with games and conceits. She was mostly too
distracted to notice, or to voice her gratitude for his cheer, but from time to
time she would look up, and make the world into heaven for Dom by saying
softly, “Thank you, Dom. You’re very good to me.”

“But Domenic is so young!” Emily insisted later to
Iphegenia,

“He’s two years older than you, my love.” Miss Prydd replied
evenly. “And of course, he’s not seen as much of the world as, say, your
stepbrother has. But when Dom has a little town brass, I fancy he’ll do very nicely.
He’s old for his years and has a nice set of manners. Only think of his wasting
all last evening playing fox-and-geese with me, when I know he had far rather
be talking with you.”

The unvoiced fact that Adrian Ratherscombe had spent that
same evening glaring at the bottom of his oft-emptied tankard was not lost on
Emily. Nor was Miss Prydd’s absolute, obtuse refusal to discuss her hint about
Adrian.

But even with the unflagging attention showered on Emily by
her protectors—attention for which she thanked them prettily, and which
she regarded as her due—the time was bound to come when she must face
Adrian Ratherscombe alone. During the first week of their incarceration at the
inn, Emily’s chaperones were comforted by the fact that Mr. Ratherscombe was
mostly too inebriated to ingratiate himself with her. Once he had, through his
punch-fuddled haze, grasped the extent of the conspiracy to foil him, as well
as the danger of treating Emily too cavalierly, he began at once to mend his
fences. One morning before breakfast Emily left Jenny amidst piles of hairpins,
combs, and brushes, struggling to bring order to her unfashionably long hair,
and slipped downstairs for a breath of air. Adrian, who had been lounging in
the hallway, saw the opportunity and followed her into the kitchen garden.

“At last, Emmy, at last!” he breathed. “Without those cursed
interfering—well, I beg your pardon, but how can I feel else when their
presence—your friends!—keeps me from holding you!”

He uttered this in a tone that would have credited a country
player, letting the vibrant tones of his voice drip with meaning. Emily
permitted herself to be embraced passionately, wondering why the entire
procedure was so curiously flat.

“Oh, Adrian,” she breathed at last. It was, after all, very
pleasant to be cuddled before breakfast in the early morning sunlight, and,
after all, she
was
in love with him, and he with her, and they
were
eloping together. “Good heavens.” She opened her eyes and her head snapped up
with a force that almost demolished Mr. Ratherscombe’s carefully wrought
neckcloth.

“Emmy?” Ratherscombe was wakened from the pleasant
contemplation of his own powers of persuasion.

“My God, Adrian, do you realize that we’ve been eloping for
nine
whole days
? I’m ruined! Oh, heavens!”

Ratherscombe stared at Emily dumbly as she dropped,
regardless of her dress, to the dusty bottom step of the kitchen garden to sit,
staring at the dirty pathway.

“But my love...” Ratherscombe began tentatively.

“Eloping is one thing, but I never thought we’d be at it so
long! Good heavens, we shan’t be received in town at all after this. And poor
Mamma will never forgive me—she’ll never recover from the mortification!
Oh, my goodness, what are we—what am
I
to do?”

Ratherscombe cleared his throat awkwardly. “But Emily, my
rose, surely you knew—you understood when you consented to our elopement—that
the world would disapprove ... call us fools. Ah, but love, the world forgets
its scandals, and will forgive two people in love....’

“I was prepared to give up the
world
,” Emily said
aggrievedly, “but it does seem hard when I have barely been to Almack’s more
than three times!”

Ratherscombe had restored her to her original place. He took
her hand to draw her to her in his arms, cheek close with hers, as he gestured
grandly toward their future, which appeared to be hidden just behind the
woodshed, next to a crabapple tree.

“Think of our life together! Think of our love, burning
through time forever, pure and fine!” Abandoning the future, Mr. Ratherscombe
applied himself to matters at hand. Emily, giving herself to the slightly
dulled glory of his kiss, thought obligingly of the future, and decided that
perhaps their love
was
worth all—even missing attendance at Almack’s
for the rest of the season. (Surely their exile from the
ton
would not
last longer than that!)

This scene might have lasted through several more kisses,
and quite a few grand speeches, but for the sudden appearance of Mrs. Hatcher,
bearing a deep pan full of soapy water. With calculated mis-aim she tossed the
water from the pan, neatly missing Emily and entirely destroying the finish on
Ratherscombe’s boots.

“Damme, I might have known it!” he howled with rage. “No
sooner do I get a moment to consolidate my ground, when one of those damned
interfering—”

“Oh, sir!” keened Mrs. Hatcher. “Oh, sir, sir, how ever did
I come to do such a thing? Oh, come, sir, let’s have them, and I’ll put my
Micah to work on them straightaway. Oh, sir, you’ll catch your death of cold
standing there in the dew. And you, Miss Emily, standing out in the sun without
so much as a sunshade! Next you’ll be freckling for sure, and
then
what’s
to do I’m sure I don’t know!”

Blithely ignoring the venomous glare of Mr. Ratherscombe,
Mrs. Hatcher bustled the two of them inside, and Ratherscombe, forced at least
to change his boots, gave up hope of any further tête à tête that morning.

Miss Prydd’s only comment was that Emily had certainly
gotten a lovely color from her little walk.

In the next several days the couple found very little
opportunity to be alone, but Ratherscombe began to work to retain Emily’s good
graces, and not all Mrs. Hatcher’s bumbling, Jenny’s disinterested opinions, or
Peter Teverley’s hard stares—not even Domenic’s bristlings and moonings—could
totally diminish the effect of his siege on her doubts. There was no question
that, had it been possible to turn time backward, Emily would have undone the
elopement and her ruination. She had been thinking wistfully of weddings at St.
Margaret’s, and Venetian Breakfasts, and dancing until morning. But Adrian had
tactfully pointed out to her that the die was cast, and ruination was certainly
her fate. In which case, what choice
had
she but to marry him?

When Dr. Wibberley announced to the company that, barring
relapses and new outbreaks, the quarantine should be lifted in a day or two,
Emily felt no more than mild apprehension; she was prepared for her fate.
Ratherscombe caught her eye with a look of arch, loverlike significance, and
she blushed and nodded, entirely missing Jenny’s exit from the coffee room.

“I hate to make you courier again, Doctor, but if you’ll
give me a moment?” Jenny drew him aside as he entered the hall and, taking a
half-finished note from her reticule, completed it rapidly, signed it, reread
it, sanded it, sealed it, and handed it to the doctor with her thanks. “I must
owe you a great deal in postage—” she began.

“Not in the least. Mr. Teverley informed me long ago that he
would pay the frank on all the letters sent by you and the young lady.” The
doctor’s tone suggested that he thought all this very irregular. So did
Iphegenia, but when she suggested as much to Teverley he scoffed her scruples
into extinction.

“My dear Prydd” —he had, much to her dislike, taken to
addressing her so, abbreviated, he said, from Miss Prydd-whom-l-may-not-call-Jenny—
“I paid postage on your notes purely as a part of our conspiracy. I assure you
I am not trying to compromise either you or Miss Pellering.”

So it was that when the Graybarrs’ traveling coach arrived
on the morning they were to quit the inn, Emily and Jenny were in their room,
busily packing bandboxes and talking. Jenny, by way of priming her friend for a
return to London, asked questions about that city and sighed loudly over the
fact that there would be no one in London to show her how to comport herself—cheerfully
forgetting Maria Bevan and several other former school friends who would have
been delighted to condescend to an old acquaintance.

“I do wish I might take you to Almack’s with me,” Emily
began, crumpling a pretty muslin into a ball and shoving it into one of her
boxes.

“Lord, Emmy, not that way!” Jenny snatched the gown back,
folded it properly with a length of tissue, and bestowed it again in the
bandbox. “Well, perhaps when you have returned from your aunt’s house—well,
by this time she may well have recovered from her illness—you can do so,”
Jenny suggested blandly.