Penelope Goes to Portsmouth (5 page)

‘I do not trust the repairs,’ said Mr Cato suddenly. ‘Cobbled together, no doubt. We should have waited at Esher until the company sent another coach.’

But the coach breasted the top of the hill without incident. It was all downhill to Liphook, and the coach began to gather speed to make up for lost time. It swayed and jolted alarmingly. Miss Trenton squealed with fright. Two miles down the hill, there came an enormous crack, followed by the splintering of wood.

Then they were all thrown forward. Hannah fell on top of Penelope, Benjamin on top of Lord Augustus. Mr Cato and Miss Trenton lay as close as lovers in a heap on the floor. The poles of the coach had snapped.

Miss Trenton began to cry. It was an odd sound, like a courting cat, ‘Yow! Yewow! Yow!’

‘Stow it,’ shouted Mr Cato. The coach was tilted forward at a crazy angle. Lord Augustus wrenched open the door and climbed out. The coachman lay sprawled at the side of the road, dangerously near the kicking and thrashing of the frightened horses’ hooves. Lord Augustus ran to him. He was unconscious. The guard struggled around the side of the coach, cursing the villain who had sawn it up in Esher and cursing the repairman who had done such a disastrously bad job.

Lord Augustus knelt down by the coachman and loosened his neckcloth. Hannah climbed out of the wrecked coach, helped by Benjamin, and then both assisted Penelope to alight. Then appeared Mr Cato, who leaned back in and tugged out Miss Trenton. Her yowls reduced to sobs, Miss Trenton sat down on the ground and buried her face in her hands.

Her horrible bonnet had come off during the accident, revealing her small, pinched, discontented face topped with masses of luxuriant red hair. It was not sandy like Hannah’s, but a flaming glorious red, an improbable colour for such a withered spinster to flaunt.

Lord Augustus decided sourly that Miss Trenton was behaving just as a lady ought, given the circumstances. His next thought was that he was being stupid. Surely it was better to have the competent and brisk Miss Pym and the calm and beautiful Penelope than to have the whole lot of them screaming and
wailing. That was followed by a brief flicker of an idea that it would have been pleasant to soothe a distressed Penelope.

He went to the horses’ heads and calmed them, glad they were miraculously unhurt. He wondered at his own reckless folly in damaging the coach in the first place and thought ruefully of various silly pranks he had played in London with his drunken friends. He unhitched one of the leaders and then cut the rest free from the traces and tethered them to a couple of gateposts beside the road. He mounted the leader and rode off down the hill for help.

‘He is really very competent,’ said Penelope thoughtfully.

‘Yes, very,’ said Hannah Pym, giving a tug to her crooked nose and throwing Penelope a sideways look. ‘I think his idle life has not given him a chance to exercise his talents. Perhaps what he needs is a good woman.’

‘I do not think so,’ said Penelope.

‘Why, pray?’ demanded Hannah in an irritated voice, for she was still hoping to make a match between the unlikely pair.

Penelope gurgled with laughter. ‘I think he needs the love of a
bad
woman. Anyone else would bore him and drive him from home.’

‘
I
think,’ said Mr Cato acidly, ‘that instead of discussing our absent friend, you ladies might lend a little help in soothing Miss Trenton.’

‘We have
all
had a fright,’ said Hannah repressively. ‘Thank goodness we are not still carrying
outsiders, or one of them might have been seriously hurt.’

Benjamin, who was carrying Hannah’s reticule, fished in it and produced a vinaigrette that he held under Miss Trenton’s nose. The attention rather than the smell seemed to rally her. Then she clutched her head with a wail. ‘My bonnet!’

Benjamin bowed and went into the coach and then emerged carrying the bonnet. Hannah looked at her footman sharply. For the bonnet was not only crushed but looked as if it had just been jumped on.

Miss Trenton began to yowl and moan again. ‘Heavens!’ snapped Hannah. ‘If you have not another hat in your luggage, you may have one of mine.’

‘My hair,’ said Miss Trenton when she could.

‘What is up with it?’

‘It is
red
!’

‘And a very fine colour, too, you stupid woman,’ expostulated Mr Cato.

But Hannah and Penelope looked at the stricken Miss Trenton sympathetically. Red hair was highly unfashionable, the Scottish race being prone to that colour, and the Scots had not yet been forgiven, not only for the rebellion of ’45, but for travelling to the south in great numbers and taking all the best jobs, or so the prejudice claimed.

‘It is not ordinary,’ said Hannah bracingly. ‘Now, my hair is sandy, and not at all the thing. But yours, Miss Trenton, is of great beauty. You should not hide it.’

Miss Trenton put a shaky hand up to arrange her tumbled tresses.

Benjamin had found a carriage rug, made a pillow of it and put it under the coachman’s head. The wind howled mournfully about them and great ragged clouds tumbled across the sky.

Mr Cato fetched other rugs and spread them on the grass beside the road and everyone sat down and waited for Lord Augustus to return with help.

‘I hate this climate,’ said Mr Cato passionately. ‘I wish I were back home.’

‘Home will surely be England,’ said Miss Trenton. ‘You Americans will come to your senses soon enough.’

‘We came to our senses in ’76,’ growled Mr Cato.

‘Were you born in America?’ asked Hannah curiously.

‘No, I was in Bristol and a good and loyal subject to King George. I went out as a bonded servant. Worked as groom to Mr Josiah Baxter, a tobacco planter. He took kindly to me and when my seven years were up, he trained me in the working of the plantations. Soon I began to see why the colonists had rebelled.’

‘Taxes?’ asked Penelope.

‘Geography,’ replied Mr Cato succinctly. ‘It’s so big, America. So vast. So free. After a bit, England seems small and grubby and petty.’

‘And yet you have slaves,’ snapped Hannah, who could not bear to hear such criticism.

‘I’m a good master. I see them all right,’ growled Mr Cato. ‘You in England dirty your hands with the trading of them. Don’t come hoity-toity with me, ma’am.’

‘And yet you came back,’ pointed out Hannah. ‘Why?’

Mr Cato’s red face became even redder. ‘That’s my affair.’ He rounded on Miss Trenton. ‘Bad manners in you, Miss Trenton, to claim to be so ashamed of red hair when I have a quantity of the stuff myself.’

‘It’s different for a man,’ said Miss Trenton. ‘Men do not need to look beautiful.’

‘How I wish Lord Augustus would come back,’ said Penelope hurriedly to avert a row. ‘It is tedious waiting here.’

Benjamin produced hazard dice from his pocket and began to roll them on the ground. Mr Cato’s eyes gleamed. The guard edged closer. Hannah scribbled frantically on a piece of paper, ‘I will not tolerate gambling,’ and tried to pass it to Benjamin but found the paper twitched out of her hand by Mr Cato. ‘Don’t stop him,’ said the American. ‘Best way to pass the time.’

Hannah rose to her feet. She would deal with Benjamin later. ‘Walk with me, Miss Wilkins.’ Penelope obediently got up and they walked a little way away from the coach.

‘Are all men in London society like Lord Augustus?’ asked Penelope.

‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘Quite a number of them are ill-featured and few are so amiable.’

‘But such a wasted life!’

‘My dear Miss Wilkins, Lord Augustus was not bred to work unless he chooses the military or the Church. Where did you come by such odd notions?’

‘My father.’ Penelope gave a little sigh. ‘I declare I was quite shocked when he sent me to the seminary and told me I must be groomed for a Season so that I could catch a title.’

‘Even the most radical of parents becomes ambitious when he finds himself with a pretty daughter.’

‘I am pretty in a common way,’ said Penelope reflectively. ‘They told me that at the seminary. It is the nose, you see. I lie in bed sometimes and dream that when I awake, I will find I have sprouted a patrician nose during the night. My mouth also is a trifle big. Miss Jasper went on – Miss Jasper at the seminary, that is – as if my mouth were all
my
fault. She made me say my Prunes and Prisms by the hour.’ Penelope pursed her lips. ‘Bit it is seh hird to tuck.’

‘Then do not try to talk with your mouth screwed up. You have a very pretty mouth.’

‘Someone’s coming,’ said Penelope.

Sure enough, Lord Augustus appeared riding the leader and followed by inn servants and two post-chaises.

He swung himself down from the saddle and said, ‘The landlord of the Thorn Tree is ready and waiting for us. How is our coachman?’

As if in reply, the coachman stirred and mumbled. Lord Augustus knelt down beside him and held a flask of brandy to his lips. The coachman feebly drank some and seized the flask from Lord Augustus’s hand and took a great swig and then struggled up with a groan.

‘He’ll do,’ said Lord Augustus cheerfully, relieved that he no longer was plagued with the vision of a
dangerously injured coachman on his conscience. ‘In the carriages, everyone.’

Benjamin pocketed his dice. He was looking very pleased with himself while the guard looked sullen and Mr Cato furious.

The Thorn Tree was quickly reached. Everything had been arranged for them. Bedchambers had been aired, fires lit, and the landlord said that dinner would be served directly. A physician arrived to attend to the coachman.

To Hannah’s embarrassment, Benjamin entered her room and began to take out her clothes and underthings and put them away. Odd to be so embarrassed when she had been a servant herself.

‘I wish you could talk or even hear what I am saying,’ grumbled Hannah aloud. ‘I would like to talk to you, Benjamin, for I am tired of writing notes. This is my third journey on the Flying Machine, and on the two previous journeys, I pride myself that I was instrumental in making matches for two couples … three,’ she added, thinking of a certain widow and a shabby lawyer. ‘But there is no scope on this journey. Even if Miss Wilkins should form a
tendresse
for Lord Augustus, it would not answer. That father of hers thinks he wants a lord for a son-in-law, but what would he make of the indolent Lord Augustus? And Miss Wilkins has been raised in too plebeian, well, normal, a background to understand a husband who might have affairs and whose whole life is given over to the pursuit of fur, feather, and female. Why, what is this, Benjamin?’

The footman had pulled a handful of silver and copper out of his pocket and was holding it out to her. He mimed shaking and throwing dice and thrust the money at her.

Hannah sighed and took out her notebook and wrote that she did not approve of gambling and could not therefore take his winnings. Benjamin threw her a scornful look and thrust the money at her again.

Hannah capitulated. ‘Very well, Benjamin, I will keep it for your board, for I am not wealthy.’ She eyed him narrowly. ‘You appear to understand what I say!’

Benjamin mimed that he could read lips. ‘I had forgot that,’ exclaimed Hannah, looking relieved. She faced him squarely and said, ‘So if I look at you direct and say something, you will understand me?’

The footman nodded vigorously.

‘Well, that’s a mercy. Leave me until I change my gown.’

Penelope in her bedchamber took out a delicate gown of pink India muslin and put it on. The inn was warm, and therefore it would be possible to wear one of those dreadfully scanty creations, so fashionable in 1800. Odd, mused Penelope, that Miss Jasper, so strict in all things, had bowed to fashion and had not even raised an eyebrow when Penelope and the other girls marched to church with the hems of their gowns looped over their arms, showing delectable visions of pink-silk-clad legs.

She brushed her hair until it shone, wishing her hair had a more definite colour than a kind of duskiness, neither black nor brown. But it had a natural curl and
she never had to suffer the discomfort of sleeping in curl-papers.

Lord Augustus paused in the corridor as Penelope left her bedchamber. She turned and looked up at him, her eyes wide. He caught his breath. She was so very young and so very beautiful. High-fashion sticklers might damn her nose but Lord Augustus reflected it gave an appealing kittenish air to her face. Her bosom was beautifully formed and quite a bit of it was revealed by the low cut of her gown. He felt his senses quicken.

‘Why do you stare at me so?’ said the vision crossly. ‘Have I a smut on my nose?’

He sighed. The vision was cursed with plain-speaking to a fault. Ladies were supposed to blush and lower their eyes under his admiring gaze.

‘Yes,’ he said, and strolled off down the corridor. Penelope let out a squawk of dismay and dived back into her room.

She appeared at the dinner-table shortly after Lord Augustus and glared at him. ‘I did not have a smut on my nose,’ she said.

‘The corridor was dim,’ drawled Lord Augustus. ‘Possibly it was a shadow thrown on your face by one of these huge spiders which seem to infest this inn.’

Miss Trenton screamed in horror. Hannah gave Lord Augustus a reproachful look, and Penelope said scornfully, ‘I have not seen one spider in this inn.’

Benjamin was standing behind Hannah’s chair. She looked at the delicious meal spread in front of them
and wished she could ask Benjamin to sit down and join them, but that would be worse than inviting an outside passenger to the table. The coachman, fully recovered, could be seen through in the tap, drinking brandy with the guard.

‘The men are working on the coach now,’ said Mr Cato. ‘Coachee says we’ll be off in the morning. B’Gad, if I miss my ship, I shall charge the coach company for whatever expenses I may incur in waiting in Portsmouth for another. You do not eat, Miss Trenton.’

Miss Trenton, who had found a muslin cap to wear over her flaming hair, simpered and said, ‘I have an appetite like a bird.’ And so she did, thought Hannah, amazed, as the meal progressed. A vulture. As was the fashion of the day, all the courses were served at once. The diners helped themselves to whatever they fancied, one plate doing for everything. They had stewed lamb, fresh young codling, steamed cabbage, pork, a large turbot, mussels, roast veal, a heap of cress, potatoes in thick brown sauce, and a salad and pastries. Miss Trenton put a tiny amount on her plate and as soon as the others had started to eat, she put a large helping of everything in front of her and demolished it with amazing rapidity.