Deborah Goes to Dover (7 page)

He thought of her with affection. She should not be forced into a marriage with a man twice her age, a man she had never even met. She would make a good wife. He stared up at the embroidered canopy above his head, seeing not it, but a vision of a trim, shining house, and coming home in the evening and finding someone like Abigail waiting.

He was sure he could easily persuade that wretched uncle of hers to forget his plans for her. But he was rushing too far ahead. He would need to get to know her better. No one could replace his Mary in his heart, but Abigail had been right – he was sick to death of a military life and ready to begin a new one.

Abigail lay awake as well, wondering feverishly if Miss Pym had thought of anything. After all, it was so easy to say ‘I will help,’ and not
do
anything.

She thought of the captain rather dismally. He would never think of her other than as a friend. He was still wrapped up in the memory of his wife. But this stay at the earl’s was a blessing. She would walk with him and talk with him and store up each precious memory to succour her in the bleak days and years that lay ahead. She shifted restlessly. The glory of Ashton Park could not make up for the prospect of Dover. She wondered whether Miss Pym was asleep or not. She got up and found a wrapper and crept out into the corridor. She would just scratch at Miss Pym’s door and if there was no reply, she would return to bed.

Mrs Conningham was awake also, memorizing each rich item in the room to tell her friends when she
returned to London. To the earl, his ancestral home might seem bleak and badly in need of modernizing, but to Mrs Conningham it was all that a stately home should be: ancient retainers, great carved beds, suits of armour, and long dark twisting corridors hung with ancestral portraits. The maid who had prepared Mrs Conningham for bed had been so old, she had made Mrs Conningham feel quite youthful. Of course, it was a pity Abigail was taking things so badly, but she would soon settle down, as Mrs Conningham herself had had to learn to settle down after her parents had chosen a husband for her. There was too much sensibility and romanticism in this new century. Love and marriage should never be mixed up. A woman’s duty in life was to bear as many children as possible and keep a comfortable home.

Mrs Conningham’s fears that the captain might have any romantic interest in her daughter had been allayed. He had been polite, almost formal, towards Abigail at supper, nothing to fear there. Like most of the British public, Mrs Conningham despised the British army. Many inns carried signs saying, ‘No redcoats.’ She composed herself for sleep. The earl had promised to send her letter to Henry telling him of the delay. She hoped Jane was behaving herself and looking after the other children.

Hannah Pym tossed and turned. Her conscience was bothering her. She had not had an opportunity to tell Abigail of that letter to sister Jane. And now, if Jane left immediately as instructed, she would be in Dover before her mother and Abigail. And what of
Lord William and Lady Deborah? She had allowed them to go off into possible danger without warning the earl. She should never have given that promise.

She rang the bell beside the bed and Benjamin, who was in a little bedchamber adjoining her own, came staggering in sleepily, dressed in his night-shirt.

‘Benjamin!’ said Hannah, sitting up. ‘I cannot sleep. Jane Conningham will be in Dover before her mother and sister. I should never have interfered. And what of Lady Deborah and her brother, William? Why did I promise Lord William I would say nothing!’

Benjamin scratched himself lazily and then let out a cavernous yawn. ‘I think,’ he said blearily, ‘that Miss Jane Conningham, if she be like other sisters, might have an interest in pinching her sister’s beau. I would not trouble about it. And as for Lord William and Lady Deborah, why, I didn’t promise to say nuffink, now did I?’

‘Oh, Benjamin, how true. Write a note and put it under the earl’s door. Who’s there?’

There came a timid scratching on the bedroom door. Benjamin opened it. Abigail blushed scarlet at the sight of the footman in his night-wear and Benjamin darted behind a chair, using the back of it as a shield. ‘You may leave us, Benjamin,’ said Hannah, ‘and pray write that letter before you fall asleep.’

Benjamin grabbed Hannah’s travelling writing-case and darted off to his own room.

‘Now, Miss Abigail,’ said Hannah, ‘how may I be of service to you?’

Abigail sat down gingerly. ‘I wondered whether you had time to hit on an idea.’

‘Yes,’ said Hannah, ‘but I do not know whether it will do any good. I have sent money to your sister, Jane, with instructions she is to make her way to Dover at all speed.’

‘But why?’ wailed Abigail.

‘The way I see it,’ said Hannah, ‘is that Miss Jane, having thought you a fool for not wanting to accept Mr Clegg, may try to get him for herself.’

Abigail sat frowning and then her face cleared. ‘Oh, but of course she will. She is like that. And she is most monstrous jealous of me. I must tell Mama.’

‘No, you must not,’ said Hannah firmly. ‘Only think. She might send another letter ahead to say that you are pining to see Mr Clegg or some such thing. People do not like to be crossed, particularly
matchmaking
mamas once their minds are made up.’

‘You have given me hope,’ said Abigail.

Hannah felt a stab of conscience. Abigail’s eyes were full of admiration. But the idea had been Benjamin’s. But were she to tell Abigail that, Abigail might decide it to be a disastrous plan. In straitened circumstances she might be, yet she still belonged to a class who considered servants had no brains to speak of.

‘And now I think we should both get some sleep,’ Hannah affected a yawn. She wanted to make sure Benjamin had written that note to the earl.

‘You are so lucky to have a footman,’ said Abigail wistfully. ‘We had two, then one, then none. It does
lower one’s consequence so dreadfully not to have a footman. But I am surprised your maid does not travel with you.’

‘Got the cold,’ said Hannah.

Abigail rose and look her leave. Hannah went through to Benjamin’s bedchamber. He said he was just finishing the note. Hannah retired satisfied. She had done all she could do. Benjamin was a good lad, and better than that, he was a footman.

People set more store by footmen than they did by
maîtres d’hôtel,
house stewards, masters of the horse, grooms of the chamber, valets, butlers, under-butlers, clerks of the kitchen, confectioners, cooks or any other of the miscellaneous assortment of servants that usually graces a large establishment. For footmen were definitely the lotus eaters of the servant class. Hannah’s admonitions to Benjamin that a footman’s duties included humble housewifery reflected on her own skills as a first-class housekeeper. Once the butler had gone, along with some other servants who were never replaced, Hannah had had the management of the footmen at Thornton Hall and had made sure they did their fair share of the work. But in grand households, footmen were there simply as a reflection of the wealth of the master. They were chosen as carefully as horses, for height, strength and
appearance.
The other servants on their time off dressed like ordinary civilians, but footmen hardly ever put off their grand livery, usually being as proud as peacocks and preferring to strut the streets in the glory of plush breeches, braided coat and powdered hair, rather
than stoop to dressing like ordinary mortals. A lady with a footman in attendance, Hannah knew, made people think that she must come from a household full of servants, for in hard times, the gorgeous footmen were the first to go.

Before Hannah finally went to sleep, she wondered uneasily whether Lady Carsey planned any attack and hoped the Earl of Ashton could get the
irrepressible
twins off the stage-coach before they ran into danger.

Lady Carsey, lying in bed in one of the Langfords’ guest bedchambers, was not asleep. She had felt fate was looking after her by sending that horrible Pym woman and Benjamin into her reach. As the earl had correctly guessed, she had no intention of mounting any attack herself. Men would have to be hired. But then, there was the question of money.

Like most landowners who managed their estates badly, Lady Carsey could not understand why she was suddenly short of money. She employed an agent, and when she needed money, it was the agent’s duty to screw even more money out of the tenants. Not being in the slightest interested in the welfare of her tenants or in any agriculture whatsoever, it was enough for Lady Carsey when she rode out on her estates to think that all the land as far as she could see was hers. She did not care whether the land was growing gorse or grass, wheat or weeds. To a practised eye, the condition of her estates would spell ruin. There was the worn-out character of the soil, the
poverty-stricken appearance of the tenants, and the dilapidated state of the farm buildings. The hedges were wild, the roads were dangerous in summer and impassable in winter. Knowing nothing of the land, Lady Carsey had long been convinced it would pay anything and it was her agent’s duty to fill the voracious maw of her purse. But badly managed estates, like badly managed countries, have a way of suddenly collapsing all at once, or rather, that is how it looks to the one responsible for the neglect. So as the tenants left for other pastures, as the land yielded less and less, so Lady Carsey found that the well had dried up.

There was nothing else to be done, she thought, but to find herself a rich husband. To that end she had invited herself and her nephew, Mr Fotheringay, to the Langfords’, having heard that the Langfords were friends of the unmarried Earl of Ashton. Although her nephew had stolen money from her before, she had managed to catch up with him before he had spent it, shaken it out of him, and become on friendly terms with him again. He was a weak, shiftless, dandified creature, and Lady Carsey needed someone to do her bidding. She accordingly rang for her maid and told the girl to fetch Mr Fotheringay.

The Exquisite presented himself half an hour later dressed in a huge quilted dressing-gown and wearing a turban on his head. The turban gave him a comical look, rather like one of the players in a pantomime who dress up in women’s clothes and try to look as ungainly as possible.

‘Yaas?’ he demanded, sinking languidly into a chair.

‘That Pym creature is here and her precious footman, Benjamin,’ said Lady Carsey. ‘Benjamin, would you believe it, won a purse at a prize-fight by flooring Randall.’

‘I was there!’ cried Mr Fotheringay. ‘Capital sport. Didn’t tell you ’cos I reckoned you’d had enough of him.’

‘When you have ceased your enthusiastic
burblings,
you might recollect, my dear nephew, that I have a score to pay with that unlovely couple.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mr Fotheringay with a delicate shudder. ‘Remember what happened last time? That old witch, Pym, nearly burned your house down.’

‘Exactly. And that is why I must get revenge but I must not be seen to be involved.’

Lady Carsey scowled horribly. Her standing in the town of Esher had diminished as rapidly as her money. It had got about quickly that her great wealth was nearly gone and no one fawned on her any more. She had not told her nephew of her financial troubles knowing that he hung around her in the hope of easy pickings. Arich woman could command great respect, could bribe officials, in those venal times, but a woman with the duns on her doorstep was another matter.

‘I do not want to hire villains,’ she said. ‘That was disastrous last time. Pym and her creature are setting off at six in the morning on the stage-coach from the Crown. I want you to hold up that coach and rob them or shoot them. Whatever you will.’

‘You’re mad,’ exclaimed Mr Fotheringay, startled out of his customary languor. ‘I cannot hold up the stage-coach on the Dover road in broad daylight.’

‘Then think of something,’ said Lady Carsey angrily. ‘I know. It is quite simple. There is no need for dramatics. They don’t know what you look like. Get yourself a ticket on that coach. Do what you will. I’ll give you poison. Put it in their grog at the first stop.’

‘But the authorities will then question all on the coach.’

‘And who is to know it’s you? Disguise yourself and make yourself scarce once you have harmed them in some way.’

‘Murder,’ said Mr Fotheringay in a hollow voice. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘I think you can. There is a slew of duns after you in London who would dearly like to know your whereabouts. And then you would have me to deal with.’

Mr Fotheringay bit his nails and looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. He was an evil creature but without the strength and boldness of his aunt. ‘What’s in it for me?’ he asked.

‘Ten thousand guineas.’

Mr Fotheringay stared at her in amazement,
unaware
that she could not hope to find such a sum and had no intention of paying him anyway.

‘I like the poison idea,’ he said. ‘Do you have any?’

‘Of course.’

‘Silly of me to ask.’

‘Besides,’ said Lady Carsey, ‘you have nothing to fear. People are dropping like flies all over England with one thing or the other. No local physician is going to trouble to open up their stomachs and try to diagnose whether they have been poisoned or not.’

‘True, true,’ agreed Mr Fotheringay, looking more cheerful, for he moved in a half-world where he knew well that relatives were conveniently poisoned for their money and often the perpetrators got away with it.

‘And what will you be doing when I am off a-poisoning?’ he asked acidly.

‘Oh, I shall be planning how to seduce the Earl of Ashton.’

Deborah and William arose very early. Deborah put on a severe-looking grey gown and covered it with a blue wool cloak. On her head, she placed a
sandy-coloured
wig she had found in a hamper of props which had been used for amateur theatricals and, on top of that, a bonnet with a deep brim that concealed her face. William had borrowed a livery from one of the footmen. Over it he wore a greatcoat and one of the very latest in slouch hats, pulled down over his eyes. They both primed their pistols, William carrying his in one capacious pocket of his coat, and Deborah putting her smaller one in her reticule.