The Temptation of Torilla (4 page)

“That I will not be a bore?” Torilla asked. “Yes, of course I promise, but oh, Abby, I wish you were coming with me! If anyone deserves a holiday it is you!”

“It’ll be a holiday for me thinking of you having a bit of fun for a change,” Abby replied.

She looked up the road and saw the stagecoach in the distance.

“Here it comes!” she exclaimed. “Now have a lovely time, dearie. Enjoy every moment of it and just forget everything else.”

“I will never forget you, dear Abby,” Torilla sighed.

She put her arms round the old maid’s neck and kissed her on both cheeks.

“Thank you for promising to look after Papa. It is all thanks to you that I can be at Beryl’s wedding.”

“Tell Her Ladyship I’ll be wishing her every happiness,” Abby said, “and I hope she’s got a man who’s worthy of her.”

“I hope so, too,” Torilla answered.

The stagecoach, its roof heavily laden with luggage as well as a few male passengers, rumbled noisily to a standstill beside them.

The guard jumped down to pick up Torilla’s small round-topped trunk and placed it on the roof, before opening the coach door.

Torilla saw that there was one place left between two large, fat people taking up more than their fair share of the back seat.

“Goodbye, Abby,” she called and climbed in, apologising for knocking against the passengers’ feet as she did so.

She sat down, the guard climbed up on the box and Torilla bent forward to wave her hand.

Abby waved back.

She was smiling, although there were tears in her eyes as the coachman whipped up the horses – and the stagecoach started off again.

CHAPTER TWO

The Marquis of Havingham drove his team of four perfectly matched chestnuts with a flourish into the courtyard of
The
Pelican Inn.

He was driving in his specially built travelling Phaeton, which was a sporty, open carriage lighter and therefore faster than any other vehicle on the road.

“I think we have made a record today, Jim,” the Marquis remarked.

“A fine performance, my Lord,” Jim replied knowing he would be able to relate it with relish to the other grooms he would meet in the taproom.

The Marquis looked round the crowded yard with dismay.

There were far more fashionable vehicles resting on their shafts than he had expected and after a moment he exclaimed,

“Of course! Doncaster Races. I had forgotten them!”

“I expect your Lordship’ll be comfortable enough,” Jim said soothingly. “Mr. Harris’ll have seen to that.”

The Marquis had no doubts on that score, for by sending his valet ahead with his luggage he was always assured that the most comfortable rooms would be provided for him and that on his arrival everything he required would be waiting and ready.

He was, however, well aware that a race meeting in any town brought in the quality from far and near.

It meant that the inn staff would be run off their feet and it would inevitably be noisy, which after a long day on the road was something he seriously disliked.

But nothing could be done about it now and, as he stepped down from his phaeton, he almost regretted that he had not arranged to stay with friends as he had done on his way North.

“Who will you visit when you leave here?” his mother had asked before he left.

“I have decided to go South as quickly as possible,” the Marquis replied, “and quite frankly, Mama, I found the majority of people I stayed with on my way here excessively boring.”

He did not add that one of the reasons for this was that he found the owners of the large and comfortable mansions who had welcomed him effusively had a habit of trying to thrust one of their daughters upon him.

He had enjoyed the few days he had spent at Woburn Abbey, Burleigh, and with the Duke of Darlington at his extremely impressive country house.

But the manoeuvres of his hostesses to engage his interest in their usually plain and tongue-tied daughters had made the Marquis long for the sophisticated, witty and beguiling women with whom he spent his time in London.

They were fortunately all married and, what was more, knew the rules of the game so there was no chance of his being threatened with a wedding ring, which in his private view was as inhibiting as a pair of handcuffs.

As he was already betrothed to Beryl Fern, the machinations with regard to matrimony, which he had encountered only too often over the years, had on this occasion irritated him all the more.

He had decided when he reached Harrogate that he had no intention of subjecting himself once again to the boredom of it.

“But you hate inns and hotels, dearest,” his mother had remarked in surprise.

“I know, Mama, but I only have to endure them for one night at a time and Harris makes me as comfortable as it is humanly possible to be in such circumstances.”

“I would be happier if you stayed with friends,” the Dowager Marchioness insisted.

“But I would not!” the Marquis replied. “So cease worrying, Mama, and as usual I shall travel incognito.”

The Marquis was not only of paramount Social importance, but he was known as a racehorse owner over the length and breadth of the country.

This made him decide, when he stayed in inns, to use one of his minor titles.

He knew now that Harris would have booked him in at
The Pelican Inn
as Sir Alexander Abdy.

He would not therefore be disturbed by the ‘hangers on’ who always surrounded him on Racecourses, or who besieged him in London with pleas for help or, more difficult, pretensions to friendships forged during the war.

He walked in through the side door of
The Pelican Inn
that opened onto the courtyard and found, as he had expected, that Harris was waiting.

Beside him was his senior groom, who he had also sent ahead in charge of his horses.

“Good evening, my Lord,” both men said simultaneously.

“An excellent run, Ben,” the Marquis said to the groom. “‘Those new chestnuts are worth every penny I paid for them.”

“I’m glad to hear that, my Lord.”

“I pushed them hard today,” the Marquis said, “so you will have to take them easily tomorrow. Watch that new groom, he is a thruster.”

“I will, my Lord.”

The Marquis followed Harris along a narrow passage and up an ancient oak staircase.

As he went, he could hear the noise in the coffee room and knew that the race-goers were already celebrating or drowning their sorrows after a day on the Racecourse.

As Harris showed him into a pleasant bedroom with a bow window and a four-poster bed that looked as if it might be passably comfortable, the Marquis said,

“I had forgotten that the races were taking place at Doncaster this week.”

“I thinks your Lordship might have done that,” Harris replied, “but as we never enters our animals for the Spring Meeting, I’m afraid, my Lord, it also slipped my memory.”

The Marquis was used to his senior servants identifying themselves with him and his possessions and he merely commented,

“I suppose the place is damned crowded, as might be expected.”

“I regret to say it is, my Lord, but a private room’s been engaged and I doubt if your Lordship’ll be very inconvenienced.”

He paused before he added tentatively,

“I regret, however, to tell you, my Lord, that I was unable to also engage the bedroom next to this.”

The Marquis said nothing and Harris, helping him off with his coat, continued,

“It’s only a slip of a room, my Lord, and I persuaded the innkeeper not to let it to one of the gentlemen who I thought might be noisy, but to a lady who’d not be likely to disturb your Lordship.”

Again the Marquis did not reply, but it irritated him to think that if anyone was banging about next door he would be unable to sleep.

Owing to a very active brain, he supposed, he liked complete quiet when he retired to bed and made every effort to secure it.

It was therefore on his explicit instructions that his servants always engaged the adjoining bedroom to his own and if necessary one on either side.

He was well aware it was his own fault that on this occasion such an arrangement had not been possible. In fact, he told himself philosophically, he was lucky to obtain accommodation at all during race week.

He was quite certain, although he did not ask, that Harris had overbid some unfortunate, who employed less generous-handed servants.

This did not perturb him in the slightest. He would also have tipped the staff so handsomely that whoever else was neglected or overlooked in
The Pelican Inn
it would not be he.

The Marquis had a bath in front of the fire and afterwards, dressed in his evening clothes, he went downstairs to a small but pleasant private sitting room.

There was a fire to keep him warm, the dinner was excellent and, as he had expected, the service impeccable.

When the meal was finished, he sat by the fireside to sip a glass of brandy and peruse the newspapers with which Harris had provided him.

He noted with satisfaction that the horses running in the races were not up to his standard and would not have afforded his stable a challenge.

If there was one thing the Marquis disliked where his horses were concerned, it was a walkover.

He told himself that he had been right in competing at Doncaster only in the St. Leger, which was run in September.

He was in fact concentrating on Ascot this year because he was determined to win the Gold Cup.

He glanced at the other news in the paper and found the usual complaints about the difficulties the country was experiencing in adjusting itself to peace. The Parliamentary reports were dry and dull as usual.

The warmth of the fire, after he had been in the air all day, made him feel sleepy and, finishing his brandy, he went upstairs far earlier than was usual to find Harris waiting to help him undress.

When he slept in public inns or hotels, his valet always brought not only the Marquis’s own linen sheets with which to make the bed but also his down pillows.

“Would your Lordship wish to be called early?” Harris asked.

He had the Marquis’s clothes over his arm ready to be packed.

The following morning he would leave
The Pelican Inn
as soon as it was light, to travel ahead as he had done today, so as to have everything in readiness for his Master’s arrival.

“Eight o’clock will be soon enough,” the Marquis answered. “You have left my clothes ready for Jim?”

“They’re all in the wardrobe, my Lord,” Harris replied, with a touch of reproach in his voice that the Marquis should find it necessary to query his arrangements.

It had been an excellent idea, the Marquis thought, that Jim, who was his groom, should also, when required, be able to valet him.

“Goodnight, my Lord,” Harris said respectfully. “I hopes your Lordship is not disturbed.”

“I hope so too,” the Marquis replied.

Harris took a last glance around to see that everything was in order and then went from the room closing the door behind him.

The Marquis took off his long silk robe, threw it on a chair and climbed into bed.

He was right in thinking that the bed looked comfortable – the mattress was made of goose feathers.

As he sank into it, he thought with satisfaction that the evening spent alone had really been far preferable to having to listen to the conversation of a boring host.

Worse still, because of his Social significance he usually found on his arrival at some country mansion that a dinner party had been arranged in his honour.

This meant he was expected to make himself pleasant to a number of people with whom he had nothing in common, had never seen before and in most cases hoped never to see again.

Instead, his linen sheets were fine and cool, and there was only the firelight to dispense a golden glow on the shadows in the room.

The Marquis was in fact almost asleep when he heard heavy, somewhat uncertain footsteps coming up the oak stairs.

Vaguely at the back of his mind he wondered why the devil the innkeeper had not laid carpet on the stairs like other civilised folk.

Then, so loud that it made him start, there was a knock on the door.

For a moment he thought it was on his own. Then, as the knock was repeated, he realised that it was in fact on the door of the next room.

“Who is – it?”

It was a woman’s voice that asked the question and her voice was low.

Yet the Marquis could hear her quite clearly and he thought angrily that the communicating wall between their rooms was too thin.

“I’ve sommat to give ye that ye left in the dinin’ room, Miss,” a man’s voice replied.

He spoke in a strange accent that the Marquis could not place, but merely thought it sounded unusual.

“But I am – sure I left nothing – behind!” the woman protested.

“I’ve got it ’ere, Miss.”

The Marquis tried not to think of what was going on, but he imagined that the woman, whoever she was, was getting out of bed.

Then he heard the sound of the key turning in the lock.

“I cannot imagine – ” she said, then her voice ceased before she exclaimed, “Oh – it is – you!”

“Yes, it is I,” the man said in an entirely different accent. “You slipped away without saying goodnight.”

“I have – nothing to say – and you had no right, sir, to – speak to me.’

“But I want to speak to you.”

“You should not have – come here – please go – away.”

The Marquis had the idea that the woman was trying to shut the door.

Then she gave a cry,

“No! No! You are not to come in! Go away – go away at – once!’

“I want to talk to you.”

‘P-please – leave me alone, – you cannot come into my – bedroom!”

“Ha! But I am in! What do you intend to do about it?”

“You have no right – I shall scream for help if you don’t – leave at – once!”

“I doubt if the innkeeper or anyone else will hear you. They are very busy downstairs.”

“Will you please – go? I have – gone to bed – and I have – nothing to say to – you.”