The Abandoned Bride (3 page)

She found a stile a few paces along the fence and swung the steps out and settled herself as comfortably as if she were a goosegirl. Then she withdrew the letters from her package and sank back with them in hand. The reading of her post was something of a ritual for Julia. She deemed it one of her great luxuries, for it was a thing for her eyes alone, and it was indeed the whole of her private life. One of the letters, she decided, just might be from the employment bureau after all, since it was on such fine paper, but the other, smudged and slightly disreputable, was the more important since she could see at a glance that it was from her sister’s hand. Feeling that she had prolonged her pleasure long enough, Julia opened the missive and, sighing happily, sat on the stile in the sunlight to read her letter.

Clarice was the one who had appointed herself family scribe, but since, at thirteen, her hand left much to be desired, Julia smiled as she bent herself to the task of deciphering her message. Soon she was far from radiant fields and back at home in her thoughts. Betty had gotten a new frock, Dorothea fancied Raymond Pibbs these days, though Dominic Ellis was still dropping by each day languishing for her, the schoolmaster said that William was doing excellently, and the splint had come off Harry’s arm. Papa was working hard now that the spring sowing was begun, and Mama thought Raymond Pibbs was unsteady. And there, at the bottom of the letter, as though
Clarice had only just remembered it, was the mention that, oh yes, Harriet was increasing again.

Julia laid down the letter and stared off into the distance. Her sister increasing again! And she was only a year older then Julia. Soon she would have two nieces or a niece and a nephew. And while Harriet’s house would ring with the sounds of children, she herself could only hope to procure a new post tending to someone else’s children. But Miss Hastings had not gotten through the last three years by allowing herself to indulge in self-pity. She quickly banished traitorous thoughts and forced herself to be happy for her sister. But she did fold the letter away quickly, and some of the sun did seem to be gone from the day.

Thus it was that she opened her other letter absently, and had read three lines before she knew what it was that she was reading. There the words were again: “
...
Something to your advantage
...
particularly lucrative proposition
...”
“
...
My nephew Robin, having failed in his importuning
...”
Julia read no further. She crumpled the letter tightly in her fist. What madness was this? she thought again, as she had thought each time she had received and destroyed these insane correspondences. Do they refuse to clap madmen in Bedlam if they are titled? Does the nobility not step in when an old family member loses his senses? Why has the fellow fastened upon me to plague in his dotage? she wondered.

Again, she thought momentarily of writing to some senior member of that accursed family to complain of how she was being persecuted. And again, she vanquished the thought. She would have nothing to do with them, for any reason. And in truth, writing bizarre letters could not be construed as truly menacing behavior. They would shrug it off. They could not know that mere letters could call up so much that she had worked so hard to put behind her. No one, she knew, could understand how those simple letters upon blameless paper could have the power to so completely distress her, to so easily pitchfork her back in time to the worst time of her life. A time that had in a matter of hours changed the course of her entire future, ensuring that she could never live the life of a normal female. Even Papa, whom she knew could not forget it, and blamed himself for his part in it so continually that he still dreamed on it in nightmares that woke his wife in the deepest night, could not know the whole of it.

She was so lost in her appalled thoughts that she did not hear the farm cart rattling down the road, and half the district laughed that a deaf man could hear Joseph Pringle’s cart trundling along.

“Eee, missy,” that ancient chortled as he came abreast of the ashen-faced girl and stopped his horse, “have you gotten a letter from a ghost?”

“Why yes, Joseph,” Julia replied calmly, knotting the letter in her hand. “As a matter of fact, I have.”

So of course, Old Joseph had to regale his lovely passenger all the miles back to her destination with tales of ghosts in the district. She had taken him up on his invitation to a drive home because she had been so troubled with her own company. The fact that Ruby, his ancient horse, walked even more slowly than she could was an extra bonus, for thus she could be seen to be hastening back but could still enjoy the bright day longer without even a twinge of conscience to plague her.

“Aye,” Joseph continued regretfully, after a particularly convoluted tale, which Julia had difficulty following, that had to do with a spirit who seemingly, so far as she could make out, disliked wash days, “there’s never been a hint-of a haunt at Three Elms, so you’d likely never think on ’em, living there. But if you was to stop at the Manse, where the Mundfords dwell,” he said, brightening, “you’d be up to your pretty chin in ’em. Oh,” he said wisely, “not that
she’d
be like to tell you the tale over tea, not she, for she thinks ’em disgraceful, like they had to do
with bad housekeeping, like mice or beetles. But there they do bide, mark me well.”

Old Joseph rattled off his tales of dire midnight doings as Ruby plodded down the drive to Mrs. Bryce’s house, thinking contentedly that he was entertaining the pretty lass handsomely from the way she sat silent and big-eyed, attending to him. But he could not know that it was not his ghosties and haunts that she was frightened of. Rather, she was aghast at the sudden realization of her own unwillingness to part from newly familiar friends such as himself to go to an unknown future more terrifying in its emptiness than any of the specters that capered through the Mundfords’ house.

When Ruby slowed as she came to the base of the drive, Old
Joseph left off his story to comment with surprise, “Seems like you got company, missy. Could it be the cap’n’s back?” There was a certain amount of chagrin in his tone, for he liked to be the first to know the local gossip. But then, when he dropped the reins and lowered himself to the ground to help the young lady down from her high seat, he stood and looked closely at the equipage and horses being held by an unknown boy. “Nay,” he grunted, “I lie. For cap’n’s a seafaring dog, with never such an eye to cattle. Them’s spanking brutes, bang up to the mark.”

Glancing at the high phaeton and the two gleaming black horses as she straightened her skirts, Julia had to agree with Old Joseph’s outsize admiration. The pair of animals seemed to be of a completely different species than poor Ruby, standing head-down and patient.

“They do shine in the sun,” she commented.

“Pah, shine,” Old Joseph said, shaking his head at a female’s foolishness, “the shine’s in the brushing. Ruby’d shine too if I was daft enough to curry her half my life. No, those two
could be covered in muck and still they’d be thoroughbreds. It’s in the bone, missy, it’s bred in the tone. You can see it in the eyes, in the points. It’s spirit and intelligence and line, missy.”

As it is with you, missy, Old Joseph thought as he touched his battered hat when Julia thanked him kindly for the ride before she disappeared into the house.
Born
and bred it is with you, too, whether you work for your bread or no. And then, casting one more admiring glance at the equipage, he clucked to Ruby, But in a tribute that would have warmed Miss Hastings’ heart had she known it, Old Joseph, though he had left his seventieth year behind in the winter, gave no further thought to the fine, glistening black horseflesh he had seen in the drive, but rather let his thoughts linger instead on a mane of heavy gleaming gold hair as he drove away.

Julia was consumed with curiosity as to who would call upon her mistress in such fine state, but she would not allow herself to sink so low as to question Mr. Duncan, the butler, as to the visitor’s identity. For, she thought as she mounted the stair to her room, it was enough that she had to work for her livelihood in others’ homes. If she began to try to live through their lives
a
s well, she would be lost. But she had gotten only so far as the first landing when she heard her own name being called.

“Oh Julia, my dear,” Mrs. Bryce called from the bottom of the stairs. “Do come down, you have a visitor.”

Julia paused so long upon the stair, frozen in disbelief, that Mrs. Bryce became impatient. If her companion had compunctions about prying into others’ lives, she did not. Her little nose fairly twitched in excitement, there were high spots of color in her round cheeks, and her tight black ringlets shook, perceptibly, like little sausages hung before a butcher’s shop quivering in a gust of wind.

“Do come down, Miss Hastings,” she ordered in the voice of an employer.

When Julia had obediently, but dazedly descended, Mrs. Bryce clutched her companion’s wrist in her hand.

“My dear,” she said in a low voice, “what a lucky chance for you! I have been waiting for your return for hours. Oh,” she said quickly, “in the ordinary sense I would not have cared how long you tarried on your errands, but when the gentleman came, I could not wait for you to return. I stayed him with tea, for I didn’t want him to change his mind and leave, though he said he was stopping at The White Hart, which is not far from here at all, you know, and that he would come back later. But I wouldn’t have that,” Mrs. Bryce said, shaking her head so vigorously that her ringlets swung like carillon chimes at noon. “For who’s to say that he wouldn’t change his mind? He said he had your direction from the Misses Parkinson in London.”

Mrs. Bryce whispered as she drew Julia to the door to the salon, “And he said he had a position to offer you. So I could not let him go, though he’s had to have his horses walked twice as he was waiting. No,” she went on, as Julia paused and tried to fathom it all, “you don’t even need to change your frock, you look charmingly today. But here,” she said, steering Julia to a hall mirror, “only tuck some of your loose hair back, and you will do.”

Julia smoothed back the strands of hair that had escaped from their moorings. Ordinarily, she would have bound it back into a smooth bundle as befitted a proper aspirant for a position as governess or companion. But here in the countryside, though the easy life-style did not delude her into forgetting her position enough to venture to wear her tresses
a la mode,
she had been lulled by it enough to fall into the habit of merely gathering her heavy hair up in back and letting it fall from a high knot.

She stared at her reflection as Mrs. Bryce hovered at her elbow. Her deep blue walking frock was simple and neat enough and she had automatically put on her beige shawl as she always did in company, despite the warmth of the day, when Old Joseph had come along. There was nothing extraordinary in her appearance, but she looked amazed into her own amazed eyes.
To be offered a new position just when she most required one, was felicity indeed. At last able to absorb the good news, for these days it always took her a space to react to surprises, she smiled at Mrs. Bryce.

“Ready, ma’am,” she said.

“Now I’ll let you go in by yourself, Julia dear,” Mrs. Bryce said, “for he did say he wished to speak with you privately
...
” Here she hesitated, for though she knew very well that it was quite unexceptional for Julia to be closeted with a strange man in her house, since for all her gentility she was really only a variety of servant, still if a young and lovely female such as her companion were anything but an employee it would have been reprehensible to allow such a meeting. But then, she reminded herself, servants did not have reputations to worry about. At least, not like proper young females did. And then, feeling guilty about how very defenseless her lovely young companion actually was and extremely guilty about Julia’s having to seek a position at all, she attempted to absolve herself by saying happily, “At any rate, there is nothing to worry about, he is more than respectable. He is ve
r
y high ton, actually. You ought to be honored. It was quite pleasant chatting with him until your return. He is no less than a baron.
”

Julia paused at the closed door to the parlor as her employer went on, “Lord Nicholas Daventry, Baron Stafford, to be precise. I should think he had a marvelous position for you, but he won’t disclose—why Julia, whatever is it?”

Mrs. Bryce looked at her companion with alarm. For the young woman’s milk-white skin had achieved an impossible hue, becoming so leached of color that it appeared to be transparent. Miss Hastings held on to the doorframe, her eyes wide and filled with horror.

“Julia,” cried Mrs. Bryce, growing quite faint herself at the transformation that had come over the usually serene Miss Hastings. “Whatever has come over you?”

“
I cannot see him,” Julia said frantically, backing away from the door. “Send him away. I shall not see him.”

“But why ever not?” Mrs. Bryce demanded, her pique at having this splendid solution to her problems with her companion solved and then ruined in a trice now overriding her concern for the overset young woman.

The door to the salon swung open.

“Yes, Miss Hastings,” the gentleman’s voice said coldly, “why ever not?”