Penelope Goes to Portsmouth (6 page)

Lord Augustus was seated next to Penelope. He was sharply aware of her, bemused to find that what had been a rather common and tiresome female earlier in the day had mysteriously become an enchantress to stir his blood. He could hardly take his eyes off her, off the turn of her dimpled arm as she raised the
wineglass to her soft lips, off the glory of an errant curl that lay against the whiteness of one shoulder.

Only Miss Trenton, chewing and swallowing assiduously, noticed Lord Augustus’s new preoccupation with Penelope and felt the sour bile of jealousy beginning to spoil her meal. It was always thus, had always been thus. Her own strength of character and what she considered her own unusual beauty had always been ignored by the gentlemen. She did not, as the other passengers had correctly guessed, have a private carriage. She had been a governess at a seminary in London and had recently lost her post, and all because of a girl such as Penelope. The girl had been a young Miss Coates, rich daughter of a banker, who had tearfully complained to her father that Miss Trent was making her life a misery. Miss Trent had therefore been dismissed. She was travelling to Portsmouth because an old friend ran a seminary there and she hoped to find a new post. She had very little money and was glad that Mr Cato seemed prepared to pay her inn bills. Although it was expected that gentlemen in a stage-coach party should pay for the ladies, such was not always the case.

When Lord Augustus raised his glass and smiled down at Penelope and said, ‘Will you take wine with me?’ Miss Trenton felt a stab of pure fury. Penelope’s obvious lack of interest in the noble lord did nothing to allay Miss Trenton’s fury. Penelope would return to that father of hers and all would be forgiven. Mr Wilkins would no doubt blame the seminary.

After dinner, Mr Cato surprised the company by saying he would entertain them to a song or two. He started off with,

He received some polite applause and went on with,

‘Steady on!’ cried Lord Augustus in alarm, but Mr Cato was launched on the next verse.

‘Mr Cato!’ shouted Lord Augustus, who knew the rest of the song only too well. ‘Ladies present!’

Mr Cato looked sheepish. ‘Forgot,’ he said. ‘A million apologies. Not used to the company of ladies. You sing something, my lord.’

Urged on by the others, Lord Augustus rose to his feet. He did not want to sing. He wanted to go on examining the effect Penelope was having on his
senses. He chose the first song that came into his head. His clear tenor voice fell with disastrous clarity on the listening ears.

Mr Cato leaped to his feet, his fists swinging. ‘You shall answer for that,’ he shouted.

Lord Augustus looked at him in horror, realizing for the first time what he had just sung. ‘Yankee Doodle’, that ballad used by British soldiers to taunt the New Englanders with aspirations to fashion, who thought they looked like Macaronies simply by putting feathers in their hats, and could only afford to ride ponies, had been a slur in ’76, but as the years had passed, had simply become a popular ballad. He also realized the infuriated American was quite drunk.

‘My apologies,’ said Lord Augustus as Mr Cato staggered around the table towards him. ‘Fie, sir, we have all had too much to drink. You are not a New Englander. Come, sir. You may sing an American song if you wish.’

Mr Cato stood in front of Lord Augustus. His red face was now so very red he looked about to explode.

‘You did, after all, win the war.’ Lord Augustus raised his glass. ‘A toast! To General George Washington.’

Mr Cato looked bemused. Hannah thrust a glass of wine into his hand.

‘General George Washington,’ roared everyone.

Mr Cato drank, the fire dying out of his cheeks. Mollified, he said, ‘I thought you was making a fool of me, my lord.’

‘We have both had a disastrous choice of songs this night. Let the ladies entertain us. Miss Trenton!’

Miss Trenton blushed and disclaimed. She had a poor voice, she said. But urged on, she rose to her feet and sang ‘Drink to Me Only’ in a surprisingly pretty voice. Mr Cato and Lord Augustus resumed their seats. Miss Trenton was wildly applauded, not so much for the beauty of her singing, but because everyone was relieved that a nasty row had been averted. Mr Cato urged Miss Trenton to take wine with him, and the more wine Miss Trenton drank, the more jealous she became of Penelope.

The party moved their chairs to sit around the fire and Miss Trenton found herself beside Lord Augustus.

‘Ahem,’ she said, clearing her throat genteelly to catch his attention. ‘Sad business about Miss Wilkins.’

Lord Augustus looked amused. ‘Being sent home? I think she has a doting father and all will be forgiven.’

‘Perhaps not this time,’ said Miss Trenton darkly.

He looked at her malicious little eyes and felt he should turn away. But his interest in Penelope was becoming very great. He waited.

‘I said nothing at the time,’ went on Miss Trenton, ‘but I know that seminary in Esher and heard of Miss Wilkins’s downfall.’

‘Driving some poor music master to behave in a silly way can hardly be called a downfall.’

Miss Trenton leaned closer to Lord Augustus and whispered, ‘But Miss Wilkins let the music master have his way with her. The poor man then felt he
had
to propose.’

Lord Augustus turned away from her and began to talk to Hannah while all the time his mind raced. The sensible side of it told him that Miss Trenton was a spiteful spinster. The rakish side of his mind almost wanted to believe her. There was something so, well, sensuous, about Penelope.

He looked across at her to where she sat on the other side of the fireplace. At that moment, Penelope, who had been thinking uneasily about the spiders he had described, thought she felt something crawling over her ankle and raised the hem of her skirt. To Lord Augustus it appeared as if Penelope had deliberately raised her skirts to afford him a glimpse of tantalizing ankles.

Penelope was becoming increasingly aware of Lord Augustus as a man. Despite his air of frivolity and his impeccably tailored clothes, he was undoubtedly very strong and masculine. The firelight played on the strong muscles of his legs stretched out on the hearth. Hannah could have told Penelope that there was nothing more seductive than a man with good legs. Gentleman Jackson, the famous boxer, was hardly an
Adonis, but no one talked about his face; all sighed over the beauty of his legs.

So across the fireplace, the very air between Lord Augustus and Penelope became charged with emotion. Lord Augustus was thinking that perhaps he might try to steal a kiss and see how she reacted.

The party eventually broke up when the coachman reminded them they would all have to set out as early as possible. Repairs on the coach were going on all night.

Lord Augustus quickly moved to Penelope’s side. ‘Would you care to take the air with me, Miss Wilkins, before retiring?’

‘Yes, I would,’ said Penelope candidly. ‘It is so very stuffy here. I will fetch my cloak.’

She went upstairs. Hannah followed her. ‘I am taking a little walk with Lord Augustus,’ said Penelope. ‘I am sure that is safe enough.’

Hannah hesitated, all hopes of making a match between the pair rushing back into her head. And yet, Penelope should not be unchaperoned.

‘What a good idea,’ exclaimed Hannah. ‘May I come with you?’

‘Of course,’ said Penelope, relieved at first at the prospect of having a chaperone, and then disappointed.

Lord Augustus quickly masked
his
disappointment when he found Hannah was to accompany them. They all walked out into the inn yard.

The wind was still blowing but it held a certain warmth, a hint of spring. Lord Augustus drew
Penelope’s arm through his own. Penelope felt suddenly shy and tongue-tied and worried by the surge of emotions in her body caused by that pressure of his arm. Her knees were beginning to tremble and something seemed to have happened to her breath.

‘Hold hard!’ cried Hannah suddenly. ‘I thought I saw two men lurking by the gate!’

Lord Augustus released Penelope and darted forward. He looked up and down the road outside the inn-gate but could not see anyone. He turned back. ‘The wind is blowing through the trees at the side of the road and casting moving shadows, Miss Pym.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Hannah uneasily.

‘I am going indoors,’ said Penelope. ‘It is cold.’ And she hurried before them to the inn, afraid that Lord Augustus would take her arm again and cause all that sickening tumult in her body.

4

Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!

Jonathan Swift

Hannah Pym felt she was getting spoiled. Although the breakfast hour was early, six o’clock, in fact, she had not expected Benjamin to sleep in. But he had not presented himself at her bedchamber door to carry her trunk, and she had had to ring for, and therefore tip, the waiter. There were the stage-coach passengers around the table when she went downstairs, but no footman.

When they rose to leave the inn and take their places in the now repaired coach, Hannah sent a waiter upstairs to rouse Benjamin from his bed in a cheap attic room. She then went out with the others
and climbed into the carriage. Lack of punctuality in servants Hannah regarded as a sin. When she had been housekeeper to Mr Clarence, no servant under her rule dared to lie abed. She cursed herself for her soft-hearted folly in taking on Benjamin. What need had she of a servant?

The waiter poked his head in the coach window and remarked laconically that there was ‘no sign of the fellow’.

‘Made a run for it,’ commented Mr Cato, shaking his head wisely. ‘Better check your goods, ma’am.’

‘No need for that,’ remarked Hannah impatiently. ‘I packed everything myself.’

A blast from the guard’s horn sounded from the roof of the coach. The waiter backed away.

‘Wait!’ shouted Hannah, thrusting her head out of the window. ‘Hold, I say!’

She climbed out of the coach and called up to the coachman, ‘My servant is missing. Be so good as to wait a few moments.’ And before the coachman could reply, Hannah picked up her skirts and ran towards the inn.

It was as the waiter had said. Benjamin’s little room was empty. Hannah stood, irresolute, strangely reluctant to believe her footman had run off and left her.

And then she saw a dark stain on the floor. She picked up a candle and lit it after some fumbling with a tinder-box and then held it close to the stain.

She put a finger down to the mark and then examined it.

Blood.

Her heart began to hammer. Carrying the candle, she inspected the narrow uncarpeted staircase closely. There were long scuff-marks on the treads and more marks of blood.

Blowing out the candle, she placed it on the floor and hurtled down the stairs, out of the inn and up to the coach. She wrenched open the door and cried, ‘Benjamin was attacked during the night and taken.’

Lord Augustus, who had been half-asleep, opened his eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh yes, my lord.’ She told him of the blood-stains on the floor and stairs and of the scuff-marks, which looked as if they had been made by Benjamin’s heels as his body was dragged from the room.

The coach dipped and swayed as the coachman climbed down to find out what was causing the delay. ‘Then if you wish to speak to the authorities about your servant,’ said Miss Trenton, ‘you may wait behind.’

‘It has something to do with Lady Carsey,’ said Penelope suddenly. ‘I know it. I feel it
here.
’

She put a hand to her bosom. Lord Augustus immediately wondered what it would be like to put his own hand there and then quickly damned the fair Penelope for conjuring up erotic thoughts on a bleak morning.

Hannah looked at Lord Augustus appealingly. ‘What am I to do?’ she asked.

‘Good Heavens,’ he said languidly. ‘Take note of this. The redoubtable Miss Pym at a loss.’

The coachman angrily demanded to know what was going on. Hannah explained. The coachman said
crossly that it was all a bad business but they had to be moving forward.

‘Stay,’ said Penelope. ‘Miss Pym must not be left with this great worry. I shall stay with you, Miss Pym.’

‘It ain’t all that very far to Esher,’ said Mr Cato suddenly.

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Lord Augustus. ‘But what of your ship?’

‘With all these delays,’ snapped Mr Cato, ‘it’ll be a miracle if it’s still there.’

Miss Trenton was almost gasping with outrage. ‘Are you proposing to take this coach back to Esher in pursuit of one shoddy footman?’

Lord Augustus looked at Penelope’s beseeching eyes. ‘Why, yes, ma’am, that is it in a nutshell.’

‘Lookee here,’ said the coachman. ‘What do I tell the company when they find I’ve put yet another day on the journey?’

‘You tell them that the repairs took a day longer,’ said Lord Augustus equably.

‘It’s all very fine for you to talk, my lord,’ said the coachman. ‘But what if I loses me job?’

Lord Augustus drew off his gloves and put one white hand up to the lace at his throat. He plucked out a fine sapphire pin and held it up for a moment to the light. ‘All my pretty baubles,’ he sighed. ‘And I did think this suited the colour of my eyes so well; did not you, Miss Wilkins?’

Penelope said nothing, merely clasped her hands tightly and stared at him, her eyes enormous in her face.

‘There you are, coachman,’ said Lord Augustus. ‘Esher it is.’

The coachman took the pin, his eyes gleaming. ‘Right you are, my lord. Reckon as how the old coach will hold fast. Right good job they did this time.’

‘I shall write to the company,’ screamed Miss Trenton, beside herself with rage. She had found a small, dainty hat to wear on her flaming hair, but it showed the full fury of her face.

‘Be quiet, you,’ roared Mr Cato.

Miss Trenton shrank back in her seat and began to snivel. Mr Cato surveyed her coldly and then handed her a large handkerchief like a bed-sheet, saying in a milder tone, ‘I appreciate your distress, Miss Trenton, for you are the only one among us who don’t seem made for adventures, and I guess that is why you are still a maid.’

This remark had the effect of shocking Miss Trenton into complete silence. Hannah returned to the inn to question the landlord and servants, but no one had seen or heard anything strange during the night. She told the others of her lack of success at finding any information as the coach swung out on the long road back to Esher.

The passengers, with the exception of Miss Trenton, who was not consulted, agreed to remain in the coach, even when the horses were being changed, and to have their refreshment brought out to them. The sun rose on another windy day, and as they approached Esher, they fell to discussing what to do. Mr Cato was all for going to the magistrate. Lord
Augustus said they had no proof. Benjamin’s body might already be lying dead in some ditch or, if he were still alive, he might be at the Manor, lying in some cellar.

‘She has to have her revenge,’ he said. ‘She’s that sort.’

Penelope looked at him, remembered his love-making to Lady Carsey, and blushed and turned her face away.

‘So what are we to do?’ demanded Mr Cato.

‘For a start,’ said Lord Augustus slowly, ‘I do not think we should go into Esher itself but rack up at some wayside inn before we reach there. Otherwise, she will quickly learn of our return. We will find a place for the night. I shall tell the coachman of our plans.’ At the next stop where they changed horses again, Lord Augustus instructed the coachman to find some wayside inn outside Esher.

They left the main road before they reached the town and went along a country lane, the coachman eventually stopping at what looked to Miss Trenton’s jaundiced eye like a hedge-tavern.

She was still complaining that a lady of the carriage class such as herself could not possibly be expected to reside in such a place, when Lord Augustus, who had gone into the tavern to make inquiries, returned to say that there were two rooms available, the landlord and his family having agreed to sleep in the stables for the night. The ladies would share one, and he and the coachman, the guard, and Mr Cato would do the best they could with the other.

Hannah was relieved to find that although the inn was very humble indeed, it was spotlessly clean. Mr Cato said that, as Lord Augustus had given up his pin to the adventure, he himself would foot the bill.

They wearily sat down to supper. Now that they were so close, they all felt more hopeless than ever. The landlord and his wife bustled about, laying plates of food, gratified to have so many guests.

‘Tell me, landlord,’ asked Lord Augustus, ‘does Lady Carsey still reside in Esher?’

‘That she does, me lord, but saving your noble presence, I’d rather not be talking about the lady.’

‘Pray tell me why?’

The landlord looked mutinous and his wife frightened.

Penelope, with a sudden flash of intuition, said loudly, ‘We all hate her, you see, and think her a monster.’

The landlord paused and wiped his hands slowly on his apron.

‘That be different then, for we’re sore angry with my lady. Our eldest, Greta, was in service to my lady and come home this very day, crying fit to die. Seems she broke a vase and my lady summoned her and whipped her. So she run home, all the way. Nothing the likes of I can do, her being so powerful in the town.’

‘Could we speak to your Greta?’ asked Hannah suddenly. ‘You see, she may know news of my footman, Benjamin.’ Briefly she told the landlord of Benjamin’s adventures at the hands of Lady Carsey.

‘I mind that,’ said the landlord, amazed. ‘It were the talk of the town.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Fetch our Greta here.’

They waited anxiously until the landlord’s wife returned with a young woman whose face was blotched with weeping.

‘Now, Greta,’ said Hannah in the matter-of-fact voice she had used in the past to quieten frightened servants, ‘do you remember Benjamin, the deaf-and-dumb footman?’

Greta nodded.

‘We fear Lady Carsey has sent ruffians to capture him. Did you hear anything strange during the night? Last night?’

Greta shook her head and twisted her apron. Hannah sighed and then she had an idea. ‘Does Lady Carsey find it hard to keep servants, Greta?’

‘Oh, yes, mum. There’s a few as ’ave bin with ’er ever so long and right nasty they be. But the housekeeper, she left along o’ me. Said she reported the broken vase but didn’t say as ’ow I had done it and she would ’ave no truck wi’ the whipping of girls.’

‘Excellent,’ said Hannah. ‘You may go, Greta.’ She turned to the others, her odd eyes flashing green with excitement. ‘I have a plan!’

‘I thought you would think of something before long,’ murmured Lord Augustus. ‘Go on, Miss Pym the Redoubtable, and tell us all.’

‘It is but seven in the evening,’ said Hannah. ‘I can still go to the Manor directly and apply for the post of housekeeper.’

‘And what good will that do?’ asked Miss Trenton sourly.

‘Let me see,’ said Hannah, ignoring her. ‘Mr Cato can drive me there, if the innkeeper has some sort of gig or cart. If I get the job, he will return for you, Lord Augustus. You and Mr Cato will hide in the grounds. If I have found Benjamin, I will light a candle and wave it across one of the front windows.’

Lord Augustus raised his quizzing-glass and surveyed Hannah’s expensive gown of fine kerseymere wool. ‘And how do you expect to get away with it, Miss Pym? Lady Carsey has already met you.’

‘She did not really look at me,’ said Hannah, ‘nor did her butler. I was a bore in her eyes. She looked at Miss Wilkins because she was jealous of her and she looked at you, my lord, most of the time.’

‘But will she take you for a servant, Miss Pym? Your clothes will give you away.’

Hannah coloured and gave a tug at her crooked nose. She had her housekeeper’s gown in her trunk. Sir George Clarence had deposited Hannah’s legacy in the bank for her, but Hannah still did not trust banks and feared to learn that the bankers had run off with her money and so she had kept her servant’s dress just in case she ever needed it again.

‘I have something that will do,’ she said, avoiding Miss Trenton’s eyes, which were uncomfortably sharp.

‘Well, what do you think?’ Lord Augustus asked Mr Cato when Hannah had gone upstairs to change.

Mr Cato shook his head. ‘Now that we’re all here and going into action as it were, I’m beginning to
think we’ve all run mad. What if one of the waiters at the inn thought Benjamin had money and attacked him, knowing that a deaf-and-dumb man could not cry out? It may have nothing to do with Lady Carsey.’

‘We’re here, and we may as well go through with it,’ said Penelope. ‘I will accompany you to the grounds and wait for Miss Pym’s signal.’

‘No!’ said both men at once.

‘But that is not fair! You are prepared to let her go alone into the house of that creature and yet you will not even let me go as far as the grounds where I may be able to be of some support to Miss Pym should harm befall her.’ Lord Augustus thought indulgently that Penelope looked like an infuriated kitten.

‘We’ll see,’ he said, and Penelope had to be content with that.

Hannah reappeared and the company surveyed her in surprise. She was wearing a severe gown of black bombazine and an awesome cap. So our Miss Pym
has
been a housekeeper, thought Lord Augustus, and Miss Trenton said acidly, ‘Why, Miss Pym, you are the veriest servant. One would think you had been one all your life.’

Lord Augustus went out to find the landlord and returned to say that he had a horse and cart available for their use.

Everyone was highly excited now that the adventure was underway, except Miss Trenton, who sat a little away from the others, looking strangely wistful.