Henrietta (19 page)

“The latest thing is not always the most flattering. I shall wait while you find something else.”

Henrietta was as furious as only a very feminine woman can be after spending time, money and effort on an article of fashion only to be told that her taste is in error. “I suggest you go without me.” She tried to make her voice as disdainful as his lordship’s but it came out sounding petulant and disappointed. But she would not have gone had not Henry suddenly demanded that she accompany him instead. She flounced to her room and crammed an attractive bérgére confection on her head only to find that it did not complement her driving dress. In despair, she put on a simple sprigged muslin and found that it was much too tight across the bosom and certainly too low. But she would not change. She had a sudden panicky feeling that Henry might persuade Lord Reckford to leave. She hurriedly tied a fichu round her shoulders and descended the staircase in a most unladylike manner by sliding down the bannister.

There was a silence when she re-entered the room. Henry was looking flushed and furious and the Beau enigmatic. “How charming you look,” said Lord Reckford gallantly, mentally thinking that Henrietta had had her clothes thrown onto her from a long distance. “Bid you good day, Sandford,” he said over his shoulder. Henry followed them into the hall, entreating Henrietta to stay and, by the time she was handed up into his lordship’s carriage, she felt hot, untidy, flustered and embarrassed. Lord Reckford had ignored her brother throughout the whole and he drove off without turning his head to even glance at the vicar who was babbling on the pavement.

He threaded his way in and out of the Mayfair traffic, paying no attention to his companion. Henrietta was too busy with her jumbled thoughts to notice the direction they were taking and it was with some surprise that she eventually noticed that they were not heading in the direction of the park.

“We are going out into the country,” remarked Lord Reckford, answering her unspoken question. “For once, we are going away from the Henrys and the Beldings and the Ralstons and the Scattersworths. I declare I have seen so much of them of late that there seem to be hundreds of them.”

Henrietta was suddenly afraid of her own emotions. It had been some time since she had seen him alone. Her knees began to tremble and she felt quite faint. “You must hold on very tightly, Miss Sandford,” said Lord Reckford looking down at her with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “My cattle are fresh and I am going to spring them.”

The wind and the unfamiliar countryside whipped past them. Henrietta clutched the side of the curricle and shut her eyes tight. One minute it seemed she was sitting in the carriage with every bone in her body being jolted about and the next she was sailing through the air. She landed with a heavy crash in a dry ditch and lay staring wild-eyed at the summer sky. She could hear the horses rearing and plunging and then they were quiet. There seemed to be a sudden dreadful silence and men, as the dizzy whirling of her brain stopped, the little noises of the countryside crept to her ears. Somewhere nearby, a heavy animal was grazing. A lark seemed to hang suspended far above her, the sound of his song tumbling down to her from very far away. The air was heavy with the scent of mown grass, wild honeysuckle and pine.

She cautiously moved her limbs and found that nothing was broken and then painfully raised herself up on one elbow. With a sudden stab of panic, she realized she had not heard a sound from Lord Reckford. Her head did not reach over the edge of the ditch, so cautiously and painfully she struggled to her feet. Lord Reckford lay at the side of the road where he had been thrown from the carriage. His head lay on a stone and a thin trickle of blood was oozing into the dust of the road.

She ran forward and knelt down beside him. He lay as still as death, his face waxy under the blazing sun. Then he groaned faintly and slowly opened his eyes. “My horses?” he said faintly.

Henrietta looked round. His matched greys were grazing unconcernedly at the side of the road. “Your horses are perfectly well,” said Henrietta, “and just in case you might perhaps feel some concern, so am I.”

He smiled faintly and then sat up with a groan. “Oh, my head. God I feel sick.”

“There is a field across the road with a little stream,” said Henrietta. “If you can lean on me, I can help you cross it and then bathe your head.”

“My sensible angel,” he murmured. He threw an arm round her shoulders and they got to their feet and inched their way across into the field. He moaned and sank down on a pile of freshly cut grass beside the stream, dragging Henrietta down with him. She gently extricated herself and tried to rip a flounce from her petticoat to use as a bandage. But the seams refused to break. “No need for such sacrifice,” said her companion with a return of something of his usual mocking manner. He held out a large sensible handkerchief.

Henrietta soaked it in the stream and then timidly parted the heavy black hair. “It does not look too bad, my lord,” she said, carefully washing the wound. “How do you feel?”

“Sick as a dog,” he replied, “but no bones broken. I shall come about presently but at the moment, all I want to do is put my head down on that beautiful bosom and sleep.”

He rolled over and casually suited the action to the words. Henrietta had lost her fichu in the accident and felt almost naked. He could not possibly be asleep! But his rythmical breathing showed that he was. She lay back against the pile of grass and stared at the sky, cradling the heavy wet head on her bosom and wondered if she were going to faint from an excess of emotion. Then after some time, the heat of the day and the reaction to the shock of the accident overcame her, and she too closed her eyes and slept.

As the sun was setting behind the trees, Lord Reckford opened his eyes and for a few horrible seconds did not know where he was. His cheeks was pillowed on a well-rounded bosom and far above him, little feathery clouds were turning red and gold in the evening sky. At last he remembered, and cautiously raised his head and stared down at the sleeping girl. Her dress was crumpled where his heavy body had lain on it. Tendrils of damp hair clung to her brow and she sighed gently in her sleep.

He was overcome with a feeling of tenderness and did not wish to wake her and spoil the moment. The countryside was very still. The water chuckled over the stones and far away across the fields, a dog bayed to the rising moon.

Then there was the sound of rough voices on the road and Henrietta’s hazel eyes jerked wide open. “Come quickly,” said Lord Reckford. “I am afraid of losing my horses.”

They stiffly emerged on to the roadway to find a farmer and his son examining the overturned curricle… or rather the farmer was down on his knees inspecting the carriage while his son sat vacantly on the farm wagon, bucolically chewing on a piece of grass.

The farmer raised his head at their approach. “This your’n?” he asked laconically. “Ur lynch-pin ’as bin sawn through.”

“What!” shouted the Beau, making his audience jump.

“Zactly. Sawn through ’er be.”

Henrietta felt a cold knot of fear in her stomach.

“Where is the nearest blacksmith?” demanded his lordship, his features harsh and drawn in the twilight.”

“Reckon smiddy’s a mile or so down road. But you and your missus ’op on the wagon and us’ll have you there soon.”

In all her fright. Henrietta felt a warm glow at being taken for the Beau’s “missus.” The horses were tethered to the back as Lord Reckford helped Henrietta up onto the farm wagon. The farmer clucked to his horse which moved off down the road at a leisurely pace.

After a mile or so they saw the twinkling lights of a village. “There’s an inn there. Coach an’ ’Orses,” said the farmer. “Leave your missus there and us’ll get the blacksmith.”

The Coach and Horses proved to be a small but comfortable inn and Henrietta wearily trailed after Lord Reckford into the brightly lit hallway, unaware of her appearance.

She cringed before the basilisk stare of the landlord’s wife who was glaring at Henrietta’s expanse of bosom and mud-stained dress. The landlord’s wife folded her arms and, ignoring Lord Reckford, addressed Henrietta. “We’re respectable folk here. You can take yourselves off this minute.”

She caught the look in Lord Reckford’s eye and fell silent. “My good woman,” he said, each word dripping like acid. “You will arrange a bedchamber for this lady so that she may repair her dress, you will arrange a private parlor for the both of us and you will set about cooking dinner. And spare me any further of your damned insolence.” He turned to the farmer without looking at her further. His lordship expected his commands to be obeyed and Henrietta found herself envying him. Was he not aware of their appearance? But the woman dropped something like a curtsy and led Henrietta to a bedchamber on the upper floor.

After the woman had gone, Henrietta pushed open the window latch and leaned out. There was a small garden at the back of the inn with a few tables. The heavy scent of lavender and stock drifted up in the evening air. She stayed there, drinking in the peace of the evening, unwilling to move and go back to the real world. Relationships between men and women did not remain static. That much she had gleaned from her observations of the parishioners of Nethercote. Lord Reckford did not love her. Therefore the only logical progression was that they should part at the end of the Season. Henrietta wished that it were mid-winter so that a snowstorm might entrap them in the inn. Then she laughed and closed the window. Miss Mattie would certainly have something dramatic to make of that situation.

The floorboards creaked in the corridor outside and there was a firm knock at the door. She opened it and gazed up at Lord Reckford.

“My carriage cannot be repaired tonight, Miss Sandford, and if we stay here, you will be sadly compromised. I have sent one of the ostlers to the nearest town to hire us a conveyance.”

Henrietta suddenly became aware of her still dishevelled appearance. Lord Reckford had miraculously managed to transform himself back into his old elegant self.

“I bought this from the landlord’s wife,” he said handing her a heavy, crimson wool shawl. “Would you like me to send her up to you to help arrange your hair.”

She put her hand up to her tangled locks. “No, it will not be necessary,” she said, thinking of the landlord’s sour-faced wife. “I shall join you presently.”

He bowed very formally and left. She washed as best she could and arranged her hair in the dim light of one tallow candle.

Her efforts were not entirely successful. “You look like a gypsy,” smiled Lord Reckford when she entered the parlor with the crimson shawl draped round her shoulders. He drew out a chair for her and motioned her towards the table.

They ate in a companionable silence until the farmer’s son arrived to tell them that a carriage and pair were waiting for them in the courtyard.

When they were seated in the comfortable, if musty, darkness, Lord Reckford said, “What will you do when the Season ends, Henrietta? I do not like to think of you unprotected. Our madman has turned murderer.”

“I had not thought,” said Henrietta. “What are your own plans?”

“Oh, I shall follow Prinny and the fashionables to Brighton. This is to be my last year of the social round.” She felt his face turn towards her in the darkness. “Next year I shall retire to my estates, marry, and set up my nursery.”

“I thought you were a confirmed bachelor,” said Henrietta in a small voice.

“Ah, but we old roués must settle down sometime. Shall you visit me and play with my children?”

“No,” choked Henrietta.

“Don’t like children, eh?” he drawled maddeningly. “But you must like mine. We are such good friends, you see.”

Was he being deliberately cruel? How could this wretched man sleep all afternoon on her bosom and calmly talk about the children he was to have by another woman?

Just as she felt that she was about to break down into tears, he changed the subject. “I feel you should visit Brighton as well, Henrietta. Who else is going to take care of you?”

How Henrietta longed to scream childishly that she did not wish to go to Brighton but instead she remarked in a matter of fact voice, “It will surely be very hard to find accommodation at this late date.”

“Stay with me,” said the Beau with maddening unconcern. “My sister has taken a large mansion on the Marine Parade and she and her husband will act as chaperone.”

“If I am to take up residence in your household, my lord, the gossips will certainly have something to talk about.”

“But nothing disrespectful,” he rejoined laconically. “You will keep the scalp-hunters at bay until I decide on a wife.”

“Have you considered, my lord, that
I
do not wish the scalp-hunters to be kept away from
me
? I am desirous of marriage, you know,” said Henrietta in a quiet voice. “And I despise your arrogance. You will ‘decide on a wife.’ What if the young lady will not have you?”

“My dear, Miss Sandford, there is no one who would refuse my fortune… except perhaps yourself.”

“And since you do not want me for a wife, you see no hindrance?”

He leaned forward in the darkness. “But I did ask you to marry me,” he said slowly. “Or had you forgotten.”

“That, my lord,” she said primly, “was only because you felt you had compromised me after you had been making love to the ghost of Lucinda.”

“Damn Lucinda. Ah, I had forgot. I am supposed to have driven the fair Lucinda mad. Well, for your information, that charming young lady was introduced to cocaine by her elderly lover and when I last saw her she was completely out of her wits.”

“Poor Lucinda,” whispered Henrietta.

“And poor Henrietta,” he said, dismissing the subject of his ex-love with seeming callousness. “No one to love you and no one to protect you. You could do far worse than to be married to me.”

Henrietta fell silent. If only he would take her in his arms. The silence lengthened and then, to her fury, she heard the sounds of heavy breathing from the other comer of the carriage. His lordship had fallen fast asleep. The infuriating man could go to Brighton for all she cared. She would learn to live without him. Since the Season began, she had been unable to notice any other man. Well, she would begin to change.