The Rich Are with You Always (37 page)

  "They won't let you in," he sneered. "You are riff-raff to them. And to me."

  "Bet me!" she challenged. "The same stake you lured Beador into making—a hundred thousand pounds."

  He licked his lips but refused the challenge.

  She smiled. Her heart, in delayed response, began to pound. "Whether you take the challenge or not, my lord, it's there. You are gambling. I'm going now. And from this moment on you are gambling that I shall fail." She turned Fontana's head.

  "No, ma'am. That's a certainty." His voice was very level.

  She did not, at first, take his meaning so she replied. "The price of making it a certainty is a hundred thou' and the four lost farms."

  Then she saw how he was staring at her habit and looking at the two grooms. When he called them and turned smiling to her she realized why he had said it was a certainty.

  "They'll find nothing," she said, and she pulled her habit this way and that, exposing every fold. "The bag is safe, many miles from here."

  A flaw in her plan then struck her, just as she was about to go. She turned to him again. "I'll give you a sporting chance," she said. "I'll hunt my way to Yorkshire without saying a word. If by then you haven't paid, I'll hunt my way back, chattering like eskimos' teeth."

  Her first enthusiasm began to wane on the short ride back to Maran Hill. True, it would suit her very well just now to be darting hither and thither between Hertford and York. The journey and the sport would usefully consume at least three weeks, during all of which she would be beyond the regular or predictable reach of the mails. And it was such a natural thing for her to do if she truly hadn't a care that it would lull any suspicion. Yet there was the one supreme difficulty; Lord Wyatt had put his finger on it: The hunts wouldn't let her in. To them she
was
just riff-raff.

  Unless…it was a small hope…unless the idea of hunting from London to York just happened to catch their imagination. Acts that were wild or eccentric—or even plain lunatic—would always intrigue the English upper class. The hope was slim, but it was the only one she had.

  She got Beador to write an amused and amusing letter to Mr. Hollingworth Magniac, Master of the Oakley, telling him of Mrs. Stevenson's mad notion and begging his hunt's assistance. Beador's own response was reassuring—he thought it a "ripping good idea" and gladly added Fontana to the travelling stable of two hunters she had brought down from Yorkshire. Since Stevenson's now owned Sir George right down to the buttons on his shirt, she thought that most generous.

  He was in very good humour. Later she found out why.

  After dinner she wrote a brisk, chatty letter to Chambers, telling him of her notion and in every way—she hoped—putting him at his ease. It was exactly the sort of letter she would have written if they'd had two hundred thousand in the bank instead of less than nothing.

  Flynn, she found, had already gone recruiting in Hertford. John certainly picked his men well.

  She was about to retire when Sarah knocked at her door. She came in bubbling with excitement; all evening she had brimmed with some secret mirth. Nora had not seen her like that since the day she and Sam had arrived at Coutances.

  "You'll never guess," she said. "Sir George has asked me to marry him!"

  Nora was thunderstruck.

  "Think!" Sarah babbled. "Lady Beador! Me—a Lady! From scullery maid to Lady!"

  It was her money, of course. Somehow Beador had got a sniff of it. He must have a nose for money better than any hound for any fox. But if Sarah took her money out now…

  "Aren't you pleased, Nora dear?"

  Nora made herself smile. "If it's really what you want. If it will really make you happy. But why Sir George?"

  Sarah giggled. "Because he asked, I suppose. No one else has."

  "And that's all it needs? The ability to put you, me, and the verb to marry in their proper grammatical relationship?"

  "Of course not!" Sarah blushed. "You're a bit sharp, anyway. I thought you liked him. He admires you enormously."

  Nora waited. At length she asked, "Am I to be content with that snippet of intelligence: 'Sir George likes me'?"

  Sarah blushed again: "What more?"

  "Do you love him, you goose?"

  "I like him."

  "What in particular? His frank and open way with money, for instance?"

  Sarah actually laughed. "He's told me all about that. I think it's so generous of you to let him stay on here."

  Nora's heart missed a beat—and the next beat was a huge thump that shook her whole body—and the bed. "All?" she asked guardedly.

  "Well, it was only ten thousand pounds. Or…oh, I know one shouldn't say
only
ten thousand pounds. But he has learned his lesson. And when we've repaid you and bought back Maran Hill, we shall live ever so quietly. He's promised that. We shall have to live quietly because all my money will be gone."

  To Nora it was the final blow. After she and John had done so much to guard against the enemy without, the fatal wound was to come from the friend within.

  It was not fair. Of all the things they could have foreseen and prevented, how could they possibly have foreseen this? Yet now it had happened it looked so inevitable—so predictable, even, given the different natures of Sarah and Sir George.

  And why-oh-why had she asked Sarah to come? It had been the merest afterthought. Anything could have intervened—any distraction. Winifred with a dead bird, Mrs. Jordan wanting her daily orders, even a fit of coughing—if any of these had happened at the right moment, she would never have invited Sarah on this visit.

  "What did he say when you accepted his proposal?" Nora asked. She might as well put a date to disaster.

  "Oh, I've not told him yet. I'll tell him tomorrow. Or the day after. Soon anyway."

  It gave Nora the only hope she had. "Sarah," she said, "I think the very least you can do is not to rush into it."

  Sarah drew breath, already shaking her head, smiling radiantly.

  "Please listen," Nora went on. "The least you can do is talk to John. After all he is a sort of unofficial guardian to you—a trustee of your fortune. And he was a very good friend to Tom. He would be most…"

  She stopped as soon as she saw the effect of her words. By chance—chance again—she had chosen the one thing that would reach, spinning down through all that froth of excited sentiment, right down to the very core of Sarah's being: the memory of Tom.

  She did not let the moment slip. "You didn't say you loved Sir George."

  Sarah did not look up. "I will never love any other man." Now all the fighting exuberance had gone. "I know that. I'm not such a fool as to look for love again."

  "What then? Liking? Is Sir George really the most likeable?"

  Sarah looked trapped. "I thought you would understand."

  "Understand what?"

  "I need someone. I can't go on being alone." She turned bright pink. "You must know what I mean."

  Now Nora too was embarrassed. "I think it's essential you should talk to John," she said.

  "I can't tell him
that
!"

  "I don't think you'll need to."

  "Don't you tell him!" She was even more alarmed.

  "Of course I won't. But there's no man with more understanding—and you'll find no truer friend."

  "I know." She sighed. "You are quite right, of course. Poor George, he will be so disappointed! How can I face him?"

  "You won't have to for long," Nora assured her, and she went on to explain her idea of hunting all the way home. "Sir George called it a 'ripping idea,' and he must know I need a chaperone—so he can hardly object if I take you, since it was I who brought you!"

When they left the following day, the eastern end of the park had already begun to fill with tattered bivouacs and shelters of thorn and tarpaulin. Around and among them lounged villainous men with pocked faces and broken teeth. There was a handful of verminous women too, and even a few sickly children. Rubbish already littered the park and highway. Mangy cats and dogs with lice nosed and fought among it. Half the people there were drunk; the rest were well on the way. Fires were lighted everywhere against the cold, and bands of ruffians were bursting out of the Panshanger woods carrying ripped-off branches and uprooted saplings.

  As their carriage went by, Nora smiling, Sarah aghast, Flynn came riding over.

  He gave a huge wink. "Sure we'll just let them wet their whistles a bit longer, then we'll start winning this gravel."

  "Then we'll start
winning
," Nora said, like a correction. "You can control them?"

  "Like the tap on a beer keg." Flynn laughed.

  "I'll write and tell you when to stop. Remember—you take your orders from no one but me."

  Flynn gave a jaunty military salute and withdrew.

  Even Sarah was smiling. "I've never seen you like this, Nora. What is it?" she asked.

  "I'm going to do what I haven't done in five years:
please myself.
I think if the world was to end in three weeks, I'd do no different."

  She meant it too. Her words were no mere bravado. She was going to live every minute of the next three weeks like a hedonist. No thought of the future, whether it was to be spent in jail or exile or even in restored fortune—no thought of it was to mar those living moments as they were given to her.

  It was infectious, of course. Sarah caught it first, being nearest, and she soon forgot to mope for her disconsolate Sir George (who had seen them off with very ill grace). And Mr. Hollingworth Magniac, Master of the Oakley, caught it the moment he read Nora's letter of introduction.

  And Nora hunted like a mad Irishman—and in the hunting field none are madder. If a gate was open, she'd jump the fence beside it. If a winding lane led to where she wanted to go, she'd cross two furlongs of field to cut the corner. She fell off all four sides of all three horses. She fell into mires. She was wiped off and left hanging by branches. She half-drowned in ditches. She was dragged backwards and sideways through hedges. Yet when it came to a hulloa and a gallop and a death, she was on terms to the end. She leaped the most fearsome raspers of hedges, where even cavalry ensigns—even
Irish
cavalry ensigns— turned aside. It was the sort of exhibition she usually despised, but she knew that nothing less would serve her purpose.

  The Oakley gave her the brush of the only fox they broke up that day. The Pytchley, under Mr. George Payne, gave her two brushes—and three rousing cheers, for she enjoyed the first day's hunting with them so much she stayed for a second.

  And then word began to spread of this dashing, spirited young Yorkshirewoman who was hunting her way home. Lord Fitzwilliam gave an impromptu ball for her at Milton Park and she danced until dawn. Ninety minutes later they were all back in the saddle and drawing their first covert as if the season had just begun.

  Sir Richard Sutton said it was the biggest meet the Cottesmore had seen that year. Everyone wanted to see her, shake her hand, watch her fly—or fall.

  Invitations arrived from hunts that were off her direct route home—the Quorn, Earl Ferrers, the Meynell…even from the Bedale, well to the north of her destination. She took in as many as she could. Only Lord Middleton's, which hunted all around Thorpe and which had turned her down, remained silent—the one hunt, above all others, that she longed to join.

  From Lord Galway's hunt the Master, Mr. Richard Lumley, came with an escort of riders to flank her carriage up the Great North Road to Retford. Four days she hunted with them.

  Lord Hawke, Master of the Badsworth (her final hunt before her own York & Ainsty), held a presentation dinner with silver-edged invitations and programmes; the presentation was an illuminated map showing her erratic journey through the hunting countries of eastern England. Each of the hunt masters had signed their portion of the map, and each hunt had sent a brush—even those that had broken up no fox while she was in their country. She could hardly thank them for the tears in her eyes.

  But best of all was the letter awaiting her at York from Lord Wyatt. "You have won your wager," he wrote. "I do not grudge you your victory. To the contrary: I salute you. As evidence I return the deeds of Framwell, which Beador also mortgaged to me. They are now free of any charge upon them. The deeds to the farms will follow in some six weeks."

  Framwell was Beador's estate near Stockton.

  Wrapped in the folds of the letter was a draft, to her, for a hundred thousand pounds.

  She was ungrateful enough to regret that the excitement was over—and that she must learn again to be the sort of woman who would find that sort of regret childish and irresponsible.

When the train drew into York station, bringing John back from his exile, it was not Nora but Sarah who waited to greet him on the platform.

  He gave her a brotherly kiss and said, "What's up then?"

  Sarah smiled. "I did not understand it either until we arrived here. I felt I would be excessively
de trop.
But, of course, Nora cannot waste a visit to York, and as Mr. Hudson is in the city…"

  "Ah! Say no more! And we are to wait for her?"

  They climbed into the carriage, which was standing outside the Railway Office. An urchin was holding the horses.

  "We sent Willet to collect some dress lengths and other things." Sarah explained. "I hope he hurries. It'll soon be dark."