Pistols for Two (20 page)

Miss Wyse, finding herself out of the picture, thought it proper at this moment to interject: ‘I love him!’

‘You need not hang upon his neck if you do,’ replied the Marquis unsympathetically. ‘Is he a relative of yours whom you have dragged into this affair?’

‘Relative! No!’ said Miss Wyse, affronted. ‘He is the man I love!’

‘The man you –?’ The Marquis stopped short. ‘Good God, is this an elopement?’ he demanded.

‘But – but you know it is!’ stammered Miss Wyse.

The Marquis, who had almost reeled under the shock, recovered himself, and came towards them. ‘No, no, I’d not the least idea of it!’ he said. ‘I thought – well, it’s no matter what I thought. You must allow me to offer you my most sincere felicitations! Are you on your way to Gretna Green? Let me advise you to lose no time! In fact, I think you should set forward again at once. You may be pursued, you know.’

‘But did
you
not come in pursuit of us, sir?’ asked the astonished Captain.

‘No, no, nothing of the sort!’ replied the Marquis, grasping his hand, and wringing it fervently. ‘You have nothing in the world to fear from me, my dear fellow. I wish you every imaginable happiness!’

‘Every imaginable happiness?’ cried Miss Wyse indignantly. ‘Have you forgot that I am engaged to you, Carlington?’

‘You will be much happier with Henry,’ the Marquis assured her.

‘The advertisement will be in today’s
Gazette
!’

‘Don’t let that weigh with you! Is a mere advertisement to stand in the path of true love?’ said the Marquis. ‘I’ll repudiate it immediately. Leave everything to me!’

‘Don’t you
want
to marry me?’ gasped Miss Wyse.

‘Not in the – Not when your heart is given to another!’ said his lordship, with aplomb.

‘But Mama said – and your Mama too – and everybody – that I must accept you because you were desperately in love with me, and it had been understood for so many years! Only when I had done it I knew all at once I couldn’t bear it, and I sent for Henry, and –’

‘Very right and proper,’ approved his lordship. ‘I could wish, of course, that you had sent for Henry before I wrote the advertisement for the
Gazette
, but never mind that now. The thing is for you to waste no time upon this journey.’

The Captain, who had been gazing upon his lordship in a bemused way, said in a much-moved voice: ‘Sir, your generosity does you honour! An explanation of conduct which you must deem treacherous indeed is due to you.’

‘No, no, pray don’t explain anything to me!’ begged the Marquis. ‘My head is none too clear, you know. Let me take you out to your chaise!’

The Captain, finding himself propelled towards the door, hung back, and said: ‘We stopped here to partake of breakfast, sir!’

‘Not to be thought of!’ said Carlington firmly. ‘At any moment you may be overtaken, and Fanny wrested from your arms. You must make all possible speed to Gretna.’

The mere thought of being wrested from the Captain’s arms caused Miss Wyse to add her entreaties to his lordship’s. Captain Dobell, still faintly protesting, was swept out of the inn, informed that this was no time to be thinking of food and drink, and pushed up into his chaise. He made a second attempt to explain his elopement to Carlington, but at a sign from the Marquis the post-boys whipped up their horses, and the chaise bowled off down the street, with the Captain hanging out of the window and shouting a final message to the Marquis, the only words of which to reach him were ‘everlasting gratitude’ and ‘eternally obliged’.

The Marquis turned back into the inn, and strode across the coffee-room to the parlour. Miss Morland had emerged from the cupboard, and was standing by the table, trying hard not to laugh. The Marquis said: ‘Did you hear, Helen?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I couldn’t help hearing,’ she answered, a slight quaver in her otherwise solemn voice.

‘We must go back to London at once,’ said the Marquis.

‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Morland.

‘For one thing,’ said the Marquis, ‘I want a change of clothes and for another this Gretna scheme was a piece of nonsense. I am not going to be married in company with that pair. We must have a special licence.’

‘But we are not going to be married,’ said Miss Morland. ‘It was all a jest. I was mad – I never meant to come with you!’

‘You had to come with me,’ retorted the Marquis. ‘I won you and you’re mine.’

Miss Morland was trembling a little. ‘But –’

‘I have been in love with you for months, and you know it!’ said the Marquis.

‘Oh!’ said Miss Morland on the oddest little sob. ‘I did think sometimes that you were not – not indifferent to me, but indeed, indeed this is impossible!’

‘Is it?’ said the Marquis grimly. ‘We’ll see!’

It seemed to Miss Morland that he swooped on her. Certainly she had no time to escape. She was nipped into a crushing embrace, and kissed so hard and so often that she had no breath left to expostulate. The Marquis did at last stop kissing her, but he showed not the least inclination to let her go, but looked down into her eyes, and said in an awe-inspiring voice: ‘Well? Are you going to marry me?’

Miss Morland, quite cowed by such treatment, meekly nodded her head.

A thin covering of snow already lay on the ground when the Bath and Bristol Light Post Coach set out from Holborn at two o’clock in the afternoon of a bleak December day. Only two hardy gentlemen ventured to ride on the roof; and the inside passengers consisted only of a pessimistic man in a muffler, a stout lady with several bandboxes, a thickset young man with small eyes, and a jowl, a scarlet-coated young lady and a raw-boned countrywoman, who appeared to be her maid.

The scarlet-coated lady and the young man sat opposite each other, and occasionally exchanged glances of acute dislike. Upon their initial encounter in the yard of the White Horse Inn, the gentleman had uttered: ‘
You
going to Bath? Much good may it do you!’ and the lady had retorted: ‘
You
travelling upon the stage, Joseph? I had thought you would have gone post!’

‘I am not one to waste my substance,’ had pronounced the gentleman heavily.

Since then they had indulged in no conversation.

The coach was making bad time. At Maidenhead Thicket the snowflakes were swirling dizzily, and the temperature had dropped to an uncomfortably low degree. The young man wrapped himself in a rug; the young lady hummed a defiant tune: she had not provided herself with a rug.

Slower and slower went the coach. At Reading the fat woman got down, and her place was taken by a farmer, who said that he disremembered when there had been such another hard winter, and prophesied that the roads would be six foot under snow by Christmas. The pessimist said that he had known at the outset that they would never reach their destination.

The coach laboured on, but past Theale actually picked up its pace a little, and for perhaps ten minutes encouraged the passengers to suppose that the weather was clearing. Then the snow began to fall more thickly still, the coachman lost his bearings, and the whole equipage lurched off the road into a deep drift.

It was thrown on to its side with some violence. The two outside passengers were hurled over the hedge into a field, and those inside landed in a heap on the near-side door.

The thickset young man was first to extricate himself, and to force open the off-side door. He scrambled through it, rudely thrusting the pessimist out of the way, floundered into deep snow, and fell upon his face, a circumstance which afforded the pessimist a sour pleasure.

The farmer and the young lady were too much occupied with the abigail, who had fallen awkwardly, to notice this interlude. The abigail said in a faint voice: ‘I’ve broke my leg, Miss Sophy.’

‘Oh, Sarah, do not say so!’ besought her mistress.

‘Well, it’s just what she has done,’ said the farmer frankly. ‘We’ll have to get her out of this, missie.’ He hauled himself up to look out through the open door, and shouted: ‘Hi, you! Come and lend a hand with the poor wench here! Lively, now!’

Thus adjured, the thickset young man came back to the coach, asking rather ungraciously what was wanted. He seemed disinclined to lend his aid, and the scarlet-coated young lady, who had been trying unavailingly to move her henchwoman into an easier position, raised a flushed face in which two large gray eyes sparkled with wrath, and uttered: ‘You are the most odious wretch alive, Joseph! Help to lift Sarah out this instant, or I shall tell my grandfather how disobliging you have been!’

‘You may tell him what you choose –
if
you reach Bath, which you are not now very likely to do, my dear cousin!’ retorted Joseph.

‘You hold your gab, and do what I tell you!’ interposed the farmer. ‘Jump out first, missie: you’ll only be in my way here!’

Miss Trent, pausing only to pick up her cousin’s abandoned rug, allowed herself to be hoisted through the door. Joseph received her from the farmer, and lost no time in setting her down. Her feet sank above the ankles in the snow, but the pessimistic man helped her to reach the road. By the time she had spread the rug out on the snow Sarah had been extricated from the coach, and the coachman was helping the guard to unharness one of the leaders.

Sarah was laid on the rug; Miss Trent, her bonnet fast whitening under the gathering flakes, knelt beside her; and the coachman informed the assembled company that there was no need for anyone to worry, since the guard would ride on at once to Woolhampton, and get some kind of a vehicle to fetch them all in.

This speech greatly incensed the pessimistic man, who demanded to be told when the next coach to Bath was due. The coachman said: ‘Lor’ bless you, sir, we’ll be snowbound a week, I dessay! Nothing won’t get beyond Reading, not if this weather holds!’

There was a general outcry at this; Miss Trent exclaimed: ‘Snowbound a week! But I
must
reach Bath tomorrow!’

‘Can one hire a chaise in Woolhampton?’ asked Joseph suddenly.

‘Well, you
might
be able to,’ acknowledged the coachman.

‘I’ll ride in with the guard!’ Joseph decided.

Miss Trent started. Stretching up a hand, she grasped a fold of his coat, saying sharply: ‘Joseph, if you mean to go on by chaise you’ll take me with you?’

‘No, by God!’ he retorted. ‘
I
didn’t ask you to come to Bath, and
I
shan’t help you to get there! You may hire a chaise for yourself!’

‘You know I haven’t enough money!’ she said, in a low, trembling voice.

‘Well, it’s no concern of mine,’ he said sulkily. ‘A pretty fool I should be to take you along with me! Besides, you can’t go without your woman.’

Miss Trent’s eyes were bright with tears, but she would not let them fall. She said passionately: ‘I’ll get to Bath if I have to
trudge
there, Joseph – and then we shall see!’

He responded to this merely with a jeering laugh, and moved away to confer with the guard. Miss Trent made no further attempt to detain him, and in a very few minutes he had ridden off with the guard in the direction of Woolhampton.

With the departure of the guard a new and more fearful mood descended upon the coachman. He became obsessed by the idea that highwaymen would descend upon the wrecked coach, grasped his blunderbuss nervously, started at shadows, and ended by firing the weapon at the mere sound of muffled hoofbeats.

The sound of horses plunging and snorting was almost immediately followed by the appearance round the bend in the road of a curricle and pair, which drew up alongside the coach. A wrathful voice demanded: ‘What in hell’s name do you mean by firing at me you fat-witted, cow-handed ensign-bearer?’

The coachman, reassured by this form of address, lowered his weapon, and said that he was sure he begged pardon. The gentleman in the curricle, having by this time taken in the group by the wayside, briefly commanded the groom beside him to go to the horses’ heads, and himself jumped down from the curricle, and approached Miss Trent, still kneeling beside her stricken attendant. ‘Can I be of assistance, ma’am?’ he asked. ‘How is she hurt?’

‘I very much fear that she has broken her leg,’ Miss Trent replied worriedly. ‘She is my maid, and I am a wretch to have brought her!’

The gentleman, whose momentary outburst of wrath had swiftly given place to an air of languor which seemed habitual, said calmly: ‘Then I had better take you both up, and convey you to the nearest town.’

Miss Trent said impulsively: ‘Would you do that, sir? I should be so very grateful! Not only on poor Sarah’s account, but on my own! I
must
reach the next town quickly!’

‘In that case,’ responded the gentleman, rather amused, ‘let us waste not a moment. I’ll drive you into Newbury.’

The farmer and the pessimistic man, both applauding this scheme, at once volunteered to extricate Miss Trent’s baggage from the boot, and to strap it on to the back of the curricle; Sarah was soon lifted up into the carriage, and made as comfortable as possible; and the groom, resigning himself to a most uneasy drive, perched on the baggage behind.

Miss Trent, squeezed between Sarah and her very tall and broad-shouldered rescuer, bade farewell to her old travelling companions, and looked buoyantly towards the future.

This seemed, at the moment, to consist only of snowflakes. The light, moreover, was beginning to fail, so that she would not have been surprised had the curricle, like the coach, plunged off the road into a drift. But its driver seemed to be very sure of his ability to keep the track, and drove his pair along at a steady pace, his eyes, between narrowed lids, fixed on the road ahead.

‘How well you drive!’ remarked Miss Trent, with a sort of impulsive candour, as engaging as it was naïve.

A slight smile touched his lips. ‘Thank you!’

‘I do trust we shall reach Newbury,’ confided Miss Trent. ‘For one thing, I must have poor Sarah attended to, and for another, I
must
get to Bath!’

‘I collect that it is of importance to you to reach Bath immediately?’

‘Of vital importance!’ asserted Miss Trent.

‘You might be able to hire a chaise,’ he suggested. ‘I fear there will be no stage-coaches running for some days.’

‘That,’ said Miss Trent bitterly, ‘is what my cousin means to do!
He
can afford it, and he knows very well I cannot, and he won’t take me along with him. He is an odious man!’

‘He sounds quite abominable,’ agreed the gentleman gravely. ‘Is he one of the unfortunates we were obliged to leave by the wayside?’

‘Oh, no! He rode off with the guard to Woolhampton. Trying to steal a march on me, of course!’ She added, on an explanatory note: ‘He has eyes like a pig’s, and his name is Joseph.’

‘How shocking! One scarcely knows whether to feel pity or disgust.’

Miss Trent knew no such uncertainty. ‘He is a hateful wretch!’ she declared.

‘In that case it is unthinkable that he should be permitted to steal a march on you. May I know your name? Mine is Arden.’

‘Yes, of course! I should have told you before,’ she said. ‘I am Sophia Trent. Do you live near here? I have come all the way from Norfolk!’

Never before had Sir Julian Arden announced his identity with so little effect! Indeed, it was seldom that he was put to the trouble of announcing it at all. Not only was he the acknowledged leader of Fashion, a crack shot, and a nonpareil amongst whips: he was quite the most eligible bachelor in Society as well. He had been toadied all his life; every eccentricity was forgiven him; every door flew open at his approach. Mothers of likely daughters had laid siege to him for the past ten years; while the efforts of damsels of marriageable age to engage his interest were as ingenious as they were unavailing. He was so bored that nothing kept his interest alive for more than a fleeting moment. Very little, indeed, had the power to rouse his interest at all. But Miss Trent had achieved this feat quite unconsciously. His name meant nothing to her.

He permitted himself one swift glance down at her before resuming his steady scrutiny of the road ahead. There was not a shadow of guile in the big eyes, which met his in a friendly smile. Miss Trent was merely awaiting an answer. He said: ‘No, I live for the most part in London.’

‘But you did not come from London today, in this weather!’

‘You see,’ he said apologetically, ‘someone laid me odds I would not venture on it.’

‘And you set out, in an open carriage, for such a reason as that! I beg your pardon, but it seems quite nonsensical!’

He appeared to be much struck by this view of the matter. ‘Do you know, ma’am, I believe you are right?’

‘I
think
,’ said Miss Trent severely, ‘that you are quizzing me. Is your destination Newbury?’

‘My present destination, yes. We shall forget my original one. I daresay I should have been very much bored there.’

‘But your friends will wonder what has become of you!’

‘It need not concern us, however.’

This indifferent answer made her blink, but she forbore to press the matter, and chatted away on a number of unexceptionable topics. She held Sarah in one arm, and appeared to be more concerned for the maid’s comfort than her own, assuring Sir Julian that she thought the whole episode a famous adventure.

‘You see, my home is quite in the country,’ she explained, ‘and nothing exciting ever seems to happen, except when Bertram broke his leg, and Ned was thrown over the donkey’s head into the horse-pond. Thieves did once steal three of my stepfather’s best hens, but we knew nothing about it until the next day, so it was not precisely exciting.’

Entranced by this artless confidence, Sir Julian at once enquired into the identities of Bertram and Ned. He discovered that they were two of Miss Trent’s three half-brothers, and that her stepfather was the incumbent of a parish in Norfolk. She had two young half-sisters as well, and very little prompting was needed to induce her to expatiate on their many engaging qualities. In this way the journey to Newbury was largely beguiled, and when Sir Julian turned his horses in under the archway of the great Pelican Inn, a mile short of the town, Miss Trent exclaimed that she had not thought it possible they could have arrived so soon.

A number of ostlers and waiters came hurrying to serve the newcomer, and in a very short while Sarah had been carried up to a bedchamber, a groom sent off to summon the nearest surgeon to her aid, and a private parlour bespoken for Miss Trent.

She came down to it presently, and found her protector warming himself before a leaping fire. He had shed his hat, and his many-caped greatcoat, and Miss Trent, who had already formed a very good opinion of his person, now perceived that he was decidedly handsome. He was dressed in a coat of blue superfine, which more experienced eyes than Miss Trent’s would have recognized as coming from the hands of a master; his buckskins were of impeccable cut; and his cravat was tied in the intricate style that had long baffled all imitators.

Sir Julian was also pleased with what he saw. Now that she had removed her bonnet, and he beheld her in the full candlelight, he perceived that Miss Trent’s hair grew in profuse ringlets, and that her eyes were even bigger than he had supposed them to be. He liked the frank way they lifted to his, and found it refreshing, to say the least of it, to encounter a lady who was neither arch nor simpering, and who had obviously not the smallest notion of enslaving him.