My Dear Jenny (6 page)

Emily, conscious that once in London her friends would be
apprised of her ruin, stared weepily out the window and did not reply.

Then she saw the coach.

“Good God,” she breathed.

“My dear, what is it?” Jenny asked, unaware that the coach
was in the yard.

“My parents—their barouche—how did they know I
was—good heavens!” She turned to Jenny. “You have
betrayed
me! You
wrote to them—”

“It seemed the action of a friend.” Jenny said simply. “I
thought that if you were having second thoughts about—um—visiting
your aunt, you might at least like to have the choice of returning to your
family. Also, my dear, I could not think it wrong to tell your people where you
were, since they must have been so very worried.”

“But you don’t understand!” Emily began desperately. “I
must
go with Adrian!” She sat heavily on her side of the bed and began to weep.

“Well, according to your mamma, they have put it all over
town that you have spent a fortnight with your aunt—what was her name?
The one who lives near Ripon?”

“My aunt Judith?” Emily spluttered.

“So you see, you’re not ruined in the eyes of the world, and
we here have done our best to insure that you were well chaperoned with your—um—stepbrother.…”

“Adrian was right? There was a conspiracy?” Only the
beginning of amazed relief in Emily’s voice now.

“So you see, you need only go with Mr. Ratherscombe if it is
truly what you want. Of course that will be a scandal, for while your family
might be able to explain a fortnight from town, they cannot help if people put
two and two together when you return to London as Mrs. Ratherscombe.”

“
Mrs. Ratherscombe
?” cried Emily in alarm. “I never
thought of—Mrs. Ratherscombe. Why, it makes me sound as if I were someone’s
mother
.”

Confounded by this unconsidered blow, and by the sudden
possibility of a reprieve, and the possibility of returning to London in honor,
albeit to a thumping scold from her mother, Emily sat in silence and thought.

Miss Prydd finished her own packing and was just tidying up
Emily’s jumbled box when a knock on the door announced Kate Hatcher, the
landlady’s daughter.

“Doctor’s here, ma’am, miss.” She aimed a curtsy somewhere
between the two of them. “‘E says you can go when you wish, and Mamma asked if
you wanted Micah to put them bags on top of that coach what’s come.”

“Yes, please, Kate,” Jenny said simply. The girl bobbed
again and left.

“Your Mamma said that I might ride with you to London and
stay until I can reach my friends,” said Jenny.

“Oh, famous! Then I shall show you the ropes, and you shall
see some of the city as we ride, and you can—oh, dear, what am I to tell
Adrian?” Emily had gone comically from pleasure to despair.

“I suggest,” Miss Prydd said as Micah Hatcher entered and
began to gather trunks and bandboxes, “that you simply say you’ve reconsidered
the elopement, and have decided to return to London. And that he may call on
you there and, perhaps, woo you in more ordinary fashion. Certainly no gentleman
can take exception to that.” She refrained from adding that, in her opinion,
Mr. Ratherscombe was not a gentleman at all.

“Certainly Adrian will understand,” Emily agreed without
conviction. “Where
have
I put my pelisse?”

All their bags had been loaded on top the coach, and hot
bricks and coach rugs made ready for the journey. This commotion brought Mr.
Teverley and Domenic, and finally Adrian Ratherscombe, into the courtyard.

Jenny, shaking her head at Domenic, whispered to him, “She’s
coming to London, never fear. But we must give her a moment’s leave to tell him
so.”

Adrian, gesturing melodramatically at Emily, drew her out of
earshot, and Jenny put her mind to joking Dom from his sulks while Peter
Teverley returned to the inn to fetch a forgotten shawl.

“Come, a walk to the gate and back,” Jenny suggested. “No,
round the other way—I had as leif avoid the horses. Splendid creatures,
horses, and they make me very nervous.” Dom regarded her with astonishment. “They’re
so
big
,” she explained apologetically as they set out around the
carriage.

They were almost returned from the gate when a row made them
hasten their steps. As they came round the corner of the coach they were
briefly rewarded with the spectacle of Adrian Ratherscombe, his brow dark with
anger, snarling at Emily, who cringed away from him, tears running down her
chin. Ratherscombe held her by one slender wrist and looked as though he would
drag her back into the inn.

Domenic started forward, but Jenny, with a slightly better
view of the scene itself, held him back. He started to argue, then stopped.
Peter Teverley, emerging from the house, was confronting Ratherscombe. Very
calmly, without melodrama, he removed Emily’s hand from Adrian’s clutch, bowed
over it, and sent her off to wait by the carriage. Whatever words passed
between Teverley and the younger man were lost to Jenny and Domenic in the
noise of Emily’s frightened weeping, but they saw Ratherscombe’s furious reply—and
saw Teverley, with his customary efficiency of motion, plant Adrian Ratherscombe
a facer that knocked him entirely off his pins.

“Famous!” crowed Domenic, and “Oh, dear!” sighed Emily,
leaning heavily on Dom’s arm and dabbing prettily at her cheeks with a
kerchief.

“Nicely done! I wish I had done it,” Miss Prydd said quietly.
“Emmy, my dear, I think it really
is
time that we got under way.
Domenic?”

The boy helped first Emily and then Jenny into the carriage,
and was making his farewells when his cousin ambled up. Miss Prydd took the
opportunity, while Domenic awkwardly mumbled to the preoccupied Emily, to
congratulate Teverley on his handling of the situation. “Elegant and to the
point. I dearly wish I might have done it myself.”

“Miss Prydd, if ever you are tempted to do so, I beg you
will make me your agent.” Teverley smiled. “A trifle unusual for a female to
take such delight in a display of fisticuffs, ain’t it? Was in my day.”

“I confess I’ve never been partial to it, but these
circumstances were extraordinary.” Jenny’s voice rose on a note of
satisfaction. “Entirely warranted and exceedingly satisfactory.”

“We agree upon that, in any case.” Teverley bowed over her
hand and turned to make a brief farewell to Emily, while Dom bashfully said
good-bye to Miss Prydd. He was embarrassed no end when she gave him the same
quick, friendly hug she might have given her cousin William.

The steps went up, the door was closed, and the carriage
rolled out of the courtyard.

Miss Prydd settled comfortably in her seat. “Well, I must
say I am glad to be leaving and on the road to London at last.” She regarded
Emily, who sat with a most peculiar look on her face. “My dear, don’t pine for
him too much—he obviously wasn’t the man you thought him, and after all—”
Feeling entirely inappropriate in the role of love counselor, Jenny would still
have continued onward had not Emily favored her with a look of lofty
astonishment.

“Who are you—?
Adrian
? Good heavens, Jenny, I’ve
put him completely out of my mind. I made a childish error, but I am not,” she
finished with the certainty of a seventeen-year-old, “a child any longer.”

Miss Prydd sat and digested this information in silence.

“He said he’d call on me in London,” Emily murmured drowsily
after a time.

“Ratherscombe?” Jenny eyed her companion in amazement.

“Of course not. Mr. Teverley. Mr.
Peter
Teverley,”
she added, so there would be no mistaking. “And he kissed my hand.” Resting her
cheek on that hand, she settled down for a long nap.

“Oh,” Miss Prydd said, and she continued to stare out of the
window at passing fields. “Ohhhh.”

Lady Graybarr was not at home when Emily and Jenny arrived,
and so the young ladies were installed in the house without too much ado.
Admittedly, when Feabers, ushering them into the house, asked with the
dignified license of a privileged retainer how Miss Pellering’s aunt Judith
was, it proved almost too much for her composure. She went unbecomingly white,
then red, then white again, stammered nervously, and only a series of sharp
pinches from Jenny kept her from going completely to pieces. “A long journey,”
Miss Prydd announced with asperity and led her friend up the stairs.

Emily’s reunion with her family proceeded in a similar
fashion—more peaceably than she would have imagined, but still with
scoldings to be endured. First Lord Graybarr intercepted them in the hallway to
Emily’s room and, with all the blunt, familiar joviality of a country squire,
welcomed Miss Prydd to his house for her own sake and for Emily’s. He scolded
his daughter affectionately, told her she was a naughty puss, lucky beyond her
deserts to have such good friends as Jenny, and then told her that, this once,
he would forgive her antics. Jenny shrewdly suspected that Emily had been
confident of the outcome of this skirmish from the start, and watched while her
friend charmed her father into a good temper. Amid Emily’s pretty babblings,
boastings, and recountings, Lord Graybarr managed to announce his imminent
departure for White’s, and bade the young ladies good night.

Jenny’s introduction to Lady Graybarr took place the next
morning, in that lady’s highly ornamented boudoir. Emily’s mother spent the
first few minutes of her reunion with her Errant Child in an extravagance of
noisy gratitude to Jenny, whom she pronounced the Savior of Our Honor. After
embarrassing Miss Prydd in this fashion for some five minutes, Lady Graybarr
turned with sudden and startling venom on her daughter, and in a moment’s
furious invective reduced the girl to white-faced, shaking tears. When Emily
was distressed enough to suit her mother, Lady Graybarr relented, in an equally
ferocious torrent of sweet forgiveness. By the time the interview was
concluded, both girls shared a strong gratification at their release with only
the most trifling of punishments: a list of errands to be accomplished that
afternoon.

Jenny had determined to call immediately upon Lady Bevan, to
make some provision for her own future in London. Emily outlined a program of
accomplishment for that afternoon which made Jenny raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Honestly,
my dear, I must see Maria today! Good Lord, her sister must be wed already, and
here I was supposed to support her.”

“You were a support to me instead, and I doubt that Lady
Bevan’s need was half so great as mine!” Emily hugged her friend briefly and
began to pull on her gloves.

Despite Jenny’s doubts, after the visits to the subscription
library, to Lady Graybarr’s
parfumeur
in New Bond Street, and to Emily’s
very favorite hatmaker—an ancient dame who hid herself in a dim, musty
shop, and smelled ominously of Denmark Lotion—the coach was directed to
the Bevan house in Grosvenor Square.

Admitted to Lady Bevan’s presence by a very superior
footman, Emily watched an interesting transformation. Not only did Lady Bevan—tiny,
frail, pretty, and elegantly blooming in her delicate condition, abandon the
dignity due her as a hopeful matron and member of the
haut ton
, but
Jenny
,
whom Emily had regarded as calm, dignified, sensible, and, secretly, the
supreme antidote, was reduced to the giggling idiocy of a schoolroom chit. The
two women cooed, giggled, clutched and squealed, and, when their first frenzy
was spent, recalled their dignities, tidied their collars, and sat down for
rational conversation. First, of course, they discussed their friends from
school, past and present, each one tumbling over the other to impart some
ridiculous tidbit of gossip. When they were sure they knew all the news, Lady
Bevan began to critically appraise her sister’s wedding, a subject that held
little interest for Miss Prydd and none at all for Emily. At last, Lady Bevan demanded
to know the full of their sojourn at the inn. Jenny, noting Emily’s
restlessness, thought that this would be a topic that would involve her as
well, and made some comment that demanded a reply from Emily.

“Oh, no, Jenny, I do not think we could have been more than—”
she began gratefully, when Lady Bevan cried out, “Jenny? Are you called Jenny
now, my love? And here I’ve been rattling on with that everlasting
Genia
,
which I never could like, and if only one of us girls had been smart enough to
suggest Jenny instead—for it suits you, you know, far better than Genia.
Don’t you think so, Miss Pellering? Was it you who suggested it? Oh, I’m sure
it must have been you.”

Jenny, seeking to distract Emily from what appeared to be
imminent sulks, spoke the magic name Teverley. This worked beautifully for a
moment: Emily’s eyes lit, her chin dropped, and her mouth softened very
quickly. Until Lady Bevan had the unfortunate curiosity to ask Jenny, with an
arch look, if this mysterious Mr. Teverley was a new beau of hers. Inwardly
cursing Maria Bevan, Jenny proceeded to characterize Peter Teverley as the only
man with whom she had ever almost come to blows. This provocative statement
only encouraged Lady Bevan to beg again for the
full
story of their time
at the inn. Jenny had by now abandoned all hope of reconciling Emily to sitting
still another fifteen minutes, and skillfully changed the subject, explaining
that they were tired from their journey, and that she would return another time
to tell that story. With remarkable dispatch Jenny settled it that she would
stay for a while with the Graybarrs as Emily’s mother had begged that morning.
At some later date, however, she would spend some time with her dearest Mary as
well. On which note she ushered Emily out and the two were installed in their
carriage.

It became clear on the ride homeward that Emily intended to
sulk. Jenny endured this in silence, wondering just how to assuage her friend’s
ruined sensibilities—damaged by Lady Bevan’s disinterest and piqued by
the mention of Peter Teverley (and that name, of all the absurd things in the
universe, tangled with her own!). Having experienced Emily’s sulks on rare
occasions at the inn, Jenny was sure that this episode would not persist beyond
the dressing bell, and set herself to find a way to cheer her friend before
that arbitrary limit was reached. By the time she had come up with an amusing
scheme the carriage had delivered them at Graybarr House, and they were in the
process of giving over bonnets and pelisses to Feabers. Jenny, intent upon
turning Emily up sweet, had opened her mouth to speak, only to be forestalled
by a shriek of mingled dismay and delight.