Elizabeth Mansfield (23 page)

"Aye, we do, but on'y one. We don't 'ave many trav'lers," the innkeeper's wife said. She and Clive helped Cicely upstairs. Then the woman eased her onto the bed, unbuttoned the top of her dress, put a cold cloth on her forehead, and shooed Clive from the room. He'd had to spend the next few hours pacing about downstairs, clumping from the taproom to the little private parlor and back again, with nothing better to drink than a thin home brew, nothing better to eat than overcooked mutton and nothing better to do than shuffle a deck of shabby playing cards. And without anyone troubling to tell him anything about the patient upstairs except that she was still resting.

Finally, about eight in the evening, Cicely had sent for him. He'd had to bring his head down to get in the low doorway. She was lying on the bed, propped up against the pillows. She looked very pretty, he thought, and not at all ill. But when he asked how she did, she lowered her eyes and shook her head. "Just another hour or two," she said in a small, plaintive voice. "I'm sure I'll feel strong enough to go on after that." She smiled up at him and motioned to the side of the bed. "Sit down here, Clive, and keep me company."

Clive, an offspring of a robust family, was unaccustomed to illness and very uncomfortable in the presence of invalids. He sat down very gingerly. "What on earth's wrong with you, Cicely?" he asked. "You seem well enough to me."

"I don't really know," she murmured. "It's my head. I get a bit dizzy if I get up."

"Then let me go for a doctor."

"No," she insisted. "I don't want a strange doctor."

"Please, Cicely, it doesn't seem right for me just to sit here and do nothing. I can saddle one of my horses and ride for your mother."

"I tell you I'll be better in just a bit. Just stay here with me and hold my hand."

He looked around uncomfortably. "But we're alone... in a bedroom..."

A giggle escaped her. "If it's my reputation that's worrying you, just leave the door open."

So here he was, sitting beside her as she'd asked, holding her hand, searching desperately in his mind for pleasantries to say and wondering how he'd gotten himself into this fix.

There was no question that Cicely was behaving strangely. Every few minutes she asked the time. Eight-fifteen. Eight-thirty. Eight fifty-five. When she asked again, he became annoyed. "Why do you keep asking for the time?" he demanded impatiently.

"No reason," she murmured, looking troubled. "I thought that by this time ..."
 

"Yes?"

Her eyes fell from his. "I thought... I'd be feeling better."

They sat in silence after that. A few minutes later, he noticed that she'd fallen asleep. He stared at her face, wondering what he ought to do. He didn't know how to take care of a sick young lady. And the innkeeper's wife, though helpful at first, had not made an appearance since the evening patrons had come crowding into the taproom. What would happen if Cicely worsened? She hadn't wanted him to ride for her mother, but she was now fast asleep. If he went on horseback, he could get to Crestwoods in an hour and have Lady Beringer back here before midnight. And perhaps even before Cicely woke up. Carefully he released her hand and laid it gently on the coverlet. Then, as stealthily as a thief, he tiptoed from the room.

It was more than two hours later when something—a sound in the doorway, perhaps—caused Cicely to awaken. She blinked in the dimness, for now it was dark outside, and the only light in the room came from a candle at her bedside that had burned low. It took her a moment to remember where she was.
Heavens,
she said to herself,
I shouldn't have let myself fall asleep. What if he
—
?
And then she realized someone was standing in the doorway. Her heart leapt up into her throat. "Charlie!" she gasped. "You
came!
"

"Yes, we did," he muttered in disgust. "Jeremy and I. The question is why?"

"To save me, of course," she said with a satisfied smile, lying back against the pillows in a pose she hoped was lascivious. "What did you think?"

"That's what I thought I was doing—what your idiotic letter led us to believe. But there seems to be no one here to save you
from."

"What?" She looked round the room in bewilderment. "Where is Clive?"

"I have no idea. Jeremy is downstairs trying to locate him. What sort of peculiar assignation is this, Cicely? How can you have an assignation if one of the lovers is absent?"

"But he was right here—!"

"Was he? Are you telling the truth? Or is this simply a childish prank of some sort, as I suspected?"

Cicely sat up in bed, nonplussed. "I don't know what's become of Clive, and I don't care if you believe me or not. But if you thought it was a prank, why did you bother to come?"

"I'm dashed if I know. If I'd had a grain of sense I would have thrown your deuced letter in the fire and gone to Lady Holland's, as I'd engaged to do. It was to be a gala of galas. I had every expectation of playing whist tonight with Prinny himself!"

"I'm sorry. Forgive me," she said, pouting. "I didn't know I'd be wheedling you out of a game of whist."

"So it
was
a wheedle after all!" With a groan of disgust, he stomped in and dropped, exhausted, upon the room's one chair. "You, Cicely Beringer, are the most irritating little troublemaker I've ever encountered. Not only did you make a complete fool of me and cut up my evening, but you caused us to go chasing all over the countryside for more than three hours. The blasted inn doesn't have a night lantern, and we kept passing it by without seeing it. I went almost wild, I can tell you, agonizing over the possibility that we'd be too late to keep you from ruin! And now it's almost midnight, this deuced inn has no other rooms, and we have no place to sleep. I could wring your neck!"

In all that diatribe, Cicely heard one thing that lifted her spirit right out of the doldrums. "Wh-what did you say?"

"I said I'd like to wring—"

"No. About being almost wild."

"He
was
wild," came Jeremy's voice from the doorway. "A father could not have been more agitated or more determined to save his daughter from seduction. What were you thinking of, Cicely, to run off with Clive in this madcap fashion?"

"Good evening, Jeremy," she mumbled, shamefaced. "I didn't expect
you
to be drawn into this. But if you believe that I'm telling the truth about Clive, then I'm glad you came."

"I never doubted that he was here. The question is, where has he gone? The only clue I've managed to uncover comes from an ostler, who saw him saddle one of his horses and ride off."

Charles leapt from the chair. "Do you mean there actually
was
a... a seduction? When I get my hands on that boy, I'll horsewhip him within an inch of his life!"

'Take a damper, Charlie," Jeremy said mildly. "Just because Clive was here doesn't mean anything untoward took place.
Did
it, Cicely?"

"Of course not," Cicely said.

Charlie threw up his hands. "Then what was the
point—?"

"Yes, Cicely," Jeremy said, sitting down on the edge of her bed and taking her hand. "I think it's time you told this poor fellow just what the point is."

A flush rose from her neck all the way up to her forehead. "You guessed?"

"It was not difficult. You'd given me too many clues. A man you loved madly, just a wee bit my senior, whom you had a plan to entrap—"

"Be still, you crunch!" the girl cried, clapping her hand over Jeremy's mouth. "I want him to figure it all out for himself."

"Whom are you speaking of?" asked the bewildered Charlie. "I demand to know what is going on here! See here, Jemmy, if you knew something about this blasted rigmarole that I don't, why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I couldn't determine the purpose of this little scheme, and I didn't want to do or say anything to spoil it until I knew just what this goosecap had in mind."

"It should be perfectly obvious by now," Cicely said, looking at Charlie hopefully.

He glowered at her. "Nothing is at all obvious. Except perhaps that you contrived an assignation just to get us here."

"Not
us,
you gudgeon," Jeremy laughed.
"You"

"Me?" He rose from his chair, an arrested expression on his face. "You arranged all this just to have
me
come and rescue you?"

"Yes," she said, "but I didn't expect—"
 

"She didn't expect you to be such a deuced slow-top," Jeremy said, getting up and going to the door.

Charles stood gaping down at her. "You don't mean that
I'm
the fellow... the one in your letter...?"

She lifted herself to her knees and threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, Charlie, my love, you
are
a slow-top!"

He peered at her suspiciously for another moment, but as soon as he permitted himself to believe what her eyes were telling him, he was not slow to gather her in his arms and kiss her with all the passion that complete astonishment would permit. "But you can't love me," he whispered when he let her go. "I'm old enough to be your father."

"I've loved you ever since the day you kissed me in the orchard," she whispered back.

"Madly," Jeremy added, beaming at them from his post in the doorway.

They ignored him. "A few months ago, when Jeremy was courting me," Cicely pointed out, "you didn't tell
him
he was too old for me, did you?"

"That's right," Jeremy agreed. "You didn't."

"So there!" Cicely said in triumph.

Charles, overwhelmed, could only kiss her again. "Jemmy, old man," he said after a moment, lifting his head but not taking his eyes from the girl's face, "I would like to tell this outrageous child that I love her to distraction, but I would prefer to do it without an audience. Would you mind making yourself scarce?"

"Very well, I'll go," his friend said, bending down and backing out from under the low door frame into the dark corridor, "but I must remind you that this is a bedroom in a secluded inn—a location ideally suited for an assignation. So if you're not downstairs in five minutes, Charles Percy, I shall come storming up to rescue the girl from
you!
"

Chapter 34

Later, when the starry-eyed couple came down to join Jeremy in the inn's tiny private parlor and announced their betrothal, Jeremy insisted that the weary innkeeper bring them the best wine the establishment had in its cellars. A celebration was called for, and a celebration they would have.

"I fear we ain't goin' t'get any sleep tonight," the innkeeper complained to his wife as he crossed the kitchen on his way to the cellar.

The woman looked up from the cutting board, where she was slicing thick pieces of bread to accompany a platter of cold meats and cheeses. "It'll be worth it," she said happily. "The tall gent gived me six yellowboys!"

Thus the three celebrants gathered round the small table and toasted the upcoming nuptials with a wine that Charles declared was not half bad.

"I'd enjoy it more," Jeremy remarked, "if I knew what had become of Clive."

"He wouldn't have gone back to London and left me," Cicely mused, biting into a piece of cheese hungrily. "Not Clive."

"If he's so blasted reliable, why did he agree to a tryst in the first place?" her betrothed demanded.

"Because he had no idea it
was
a tryst, silly," the girl explained. "I pretended to be ill, you see, and he—"

But a commotion at the outer door stilled her tongue. Their heads turned toward the corridor, Jeremy starting out of his chair. But before he could get to his feet, he discovered that a small crowd had materialized in the doorway: Clive, Cassie's housekeeper Mrs. Upsom, and Cassie herself, looking every inch a distraught mother. Her face was pale and drawn, her posture tense and her clothes disheveled. Her hair was hanging down her back in one thick, carelessly plaited braid (just the way Jeremy loved it), and she'd hurriedly tossed a shawl over her painting smock. Her appearance smote Jeremy's heart. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and soothe her.

But her eyes barely took note of him as she looked round quickly. At the sight of her daughter, however, her whole face brightened. "Cicely!" she cried, holding out her arms. "You're
eating!
"

"Well, you see, I was famished," Cicely said sheepishly as she ran across the room and flung herself into her mother's embrace.

"But that means..." Cassie held her off and studied her face intently. "... you're all
well."

Clive, standing in the doorway and surveying the scene, began to suspect that he'd been the victim of a hoax. "Dash it, Cicely," he muttered, ogling his uncle and Jeremy suspiciously, "what's going on here? I'd wager a monkey you weren't ill at all!"

Cicely broke from her mother's hold and faced him. "I'm sorry, Clive. I tricked you. But I didn't dream you'd go so far as to ride all the way to Crestwoods for Mama."

"Are you saying you were
not
ill?" Cassie asked. "Oh, what a relief! I was terrified. I even brought Annie to help in the sickroom. Clive had me believing you were at death's door."

"Well, she
swooned,
"
the boy cried in self-defense. "I saw it. She actually swooned!"

"No, I didn't," Cicely confessed. "Not really."

"But dearest, why?" her bewildered mother asked.

Jeremy came forward and took Cassie's elbow. "Why don't we all sit down and have some refreshments? And while we do, Cicely can explain everything."

"Must I?" the girl asked, blushing. "Wouldn't it be enough just to announce the outcome?"

"Outcome?" Cassie asked.

"Oh, Mama, I'm bursting to tell you—" Cicely threw her arms round her mother's neck. "I'm betrothed!"

Cassie gaped at her daughter for one frozen moment before turning right around to Jeremy. Her eyes sparkled in tearful gratitude. "Oh, my dear!" she said, putting a hand on his arm. "I'm so glad!"