The Wicked and Wonderful Miss Merlin (2 page)

She was clearly a young lady of spirit, a very pretty bright and determined young lady by the look of her.  Robert frowned for he did not like to think of another innocent being gathered into that incompetent woman’s net.

‘I shall immediately ride on to the next hostelry and bring help back to you,’ Robert said.  ‘You will be safe enough until I return?’

‘Oh, thank you, sir,’ the young woman replied, giving him a smile calculated to bring most men dropping to their knees.  ‘I am Anne Hampden…my father is Sir William of Kneadsmare Manor.’

‘Delighted to meet you, Miss Hampden.  Does your groom have a pistol – and is he able to use it?’

‘I think not but I certainly am, and Papa says that I am one of the best shots he knows, which is why he was prepared to let me come with just dear old Timms and Miss Mead.’

Robert held back his smile.  She was certainly a precocious miss and at any other time he might have fallen under her spell, but he was angry that his sister had run off with a scoundrel and refused to be charmed by an underage enchantress.

‘Then I shall leave you for as long as it takes,’ he said, tipped his hat to her and rode off, cursing under his breath at the delay his errand must cause.

Yet he was too much of a gentleman to pass anyone by and the look of gratitude in the companion’s eyes must be his reward for putting himself to so much trouble.

Fortunately for Robert, he reached the hostelry, which he knew to be a good one, without further mishap.  He was able to arrange for Thunderer to be stabled, fed and watered, to hire a chaise and send grooms to fetch in the disabled carriage and horses.  He drove the borrowed chaise himself, leading the way to the stranded ladies.

At least an hour had passed by the time he was able to settle the ladies into his chaise.  Their own carriage was to be taken to the inn and a wagon would transport poor Timms in comfort to the nearest doctor.  The young lady’s trunks would be delivered to Miss Merlin’s school and Mr Timms would wait until his employer could be contacted to fetch both him and the carriage home. After seeing her charge settled, the companion would return to the inn to see how Mr Timms went on and they would travel home together.

The discussions and negotiations had taken at least another twenty minutes.  Glancing at his gold pocket watch, Robert knew that he was hopelessly after his time.  He had wished to retain the high ground in order to put Miss Merlin firmly in her place but he was a stickler for punctuality himself and she would be within her rights to deny him her time.

Miss Hampden was thanking him, chattering on about some inconsequential thing.  He replied in words of one syllable, not wanting to be rude but annoyed with his himself for failing to keep his appointment and after a few moments the young lady lapsed into silence.

Realising he must have offended her, Robert forced himself to ask if she and her companion were comfortable and then to inquire if she was looking forward to her new school.  Miss Hampden recovered her spirits and began to chatter again, and this time he did his best to answer her.

She was a pretty, clever little thing and he wished his poor sister had been a little more like her – perhaps then she would not have been so easily led astray by a fortune-hunting rogue…

Samantha looked at the gilt clock on the mantle.  It had just chimed five and she’d been waiting over two and a half hours for Lord Brough.  He might be a rich lord and he was no doubt angry with her for allowing Eleanor to run away but to be so late was nothing short of rudeness.  She had other people to see and she had promised to visit an elderly lady in the village at half-past five.  Well, if Lord Brough decided to turn up now he would just have to wait.  She would not keep Nanny Sylvester waiting for him!

Leaving her sitting room, where she had meant to receive Lord Brough and offer him tea or refreshments, she went down to the kitchen and picked up the basket she’d prepared earlier.  It contained jars of her preserves and jams, sweet biscuits, a ham, some fresh eggs from her special chickens, and a crock of farm butter, also a small bottle of brandy – for medicinal purposes, of course.  Nanny Sylvester loved a drop of brandy in her tea before she went to bed, because it helped her to sleep.

Leaving the schoolhouse by the back door, Samantha walked through the gardens, past the hives that gave her such wonderful honey, remembering to thank them as she passed, because the bees liked that and gave more honey.  She had relaxed after so many hours of tension and she sang a little French verse as she walked, enjoying the evening sunshine.  Perhaps Lord Brough would just go after his sister, take her away from the school and leave it at that…and yet that might be the worst scenario, because if he told everyone she was not fit to have the care of his sister she might have other parents taking their daughters away.

Samantha frowned, because she was not sure what she would do with her life if her school failed.  It would not make her rich but it did enable her to live in her beautiful house without worrying where the money would come from to pay her next bill.

Left to cope on her own at the age of nineteen, when she had just come down from her finishing school in Switzerland, Samantha had discovered that her parents had left her the house and woods, but very little money.  They had loved life and enjoyed every minute to the full, entertaining their friends and giving them lavish hospitality.  Her father was forever loaning money to his friends and very few paid him back; he had a happy-go-lucky attitude to life and always believed that his friends would pay their debts in the end, but when he died there had been several thousand pounds outstanding.   Samantha did not have the details.  Her father’s lawyer had told her that he would do all he could and she believed he had recovered a few hundred pounds but most of the money seemed irrecoverable.

Samantha had not known where to go for though her father had many friends, none of them was in a position to help her.  She had expected a season and she was indeed invited to stay with a friend of her mother’s for a few weeks, but although she had enjoyed herself immensely no one she could possibly have considered had asked for her in marriage.

Lady Melbourne had offered to give her another try the following year, but by then Samantha had discovered the wishing well in the woods.  She had thrown her coin into the water and asked the lady to show her the way – and two days later a friend of her mama’s had written to ask if she would consider taking her daughter under her wing.

‘My Jane does not get on well with her governess and yet a boarding school is such a big step.  Your dear mama told me how clever you are, Samantha – would you do me a great favour and teach my little Jane how to behave in society and if you could possibly guide her about what books she should read and her clothes…?  I should of course be happy to pay for her board and lodgings.’

The fee offered was generous, enough to pay the outstanding bill for sea coal and also hay and oats for the horses.  Samantha had written gratefully that she would be happy to take Jane under her wing.  Both she and Jane had enjoyed the arrangement immensely.  When another mother had asked her to take her rebellious child in, she had been happy to do so.  What had started as a casual arrangement had gradually built up so that she was able after three years to call herself a school, and after another year she could afford two female teachers, who specialised in history, music deportment and French.  Samantha had continued to take several classes herself, and there were of course her special girls who took tea with her three times a week. Six years had now passed and she was firmly established in her life.

Samantha knew that this house was her place and the wishing well had shown her that she had certain powers.  She was not a witch, though once upon a time she might have been thought one, but she could weave a spell just by the power of her voice and the rapt look on the faces of her girls when she told her stories gave her a great deal of satisfaction.

She shared the secret of the well with those girls who were close to leaving.  She knew that some thought it was nonsense…just a fairytale, amusing but unreal.  Samantha knew that if you asked the lady for her help she would give it, though not always in the way you might expect.  The best way was to make a wish for someone else’s happiness…that often came true, she found.

The years had passed swiftly since she first opened her school and Samantha had thought herself secure for life, and it was all she’d wanted.  Once, when she was very young, she had dreamed of a handsome lover who would sweep her off her feet and carry her away with him, but that was mere foolishness.

She knew now that the reality was very different.  Only a few young women were fortunate enough to meet a man they could love.  Most were guided into a marriage for reasons of position or fortune, which she knew could result in great unhappiness.  Her Aunt Hester had suffered such a marriage and died of a broken heart …it was spoken of as the result of a fever, but Samantha’s mother had told her Hester was so unhappy she just did not wish to live.

‘My poor aunt should have married for love, as you did, Mama.’

‘Yes, my darling, as you must.  Promise me you will not marry unless you can give your whole self to the man who asks.’

Samantha had promised and it was almost the last thing she had ever said to her mother, for she left for her finishing school the next day and when she returned she had only the house to remind her of all the love and laughter she’d known as a girl.

Samantha did not resent that her father had given all their money away.  She had loved him, as everyone did who knew him.  He could never turn away from a friend in need and she would not have had him any different.  She did not need more than she had – but she did not want to lose what she had.  It would break her heart to lose the home she loved.

For the time she spent with Nanny Sylvester, Samantha was able to put her worries from her mind.  She returned through the woods at eight that evening, stopping by the well to pay her respects to the lady of the well.  It was a magical time of night, the light beginning to fade but the air still warm and filled with the scents of the woods.  In the undergrowth she heard rustlings as tiny creatures stirred and she began to sing to herself.

‘I do not ask anything of you for myself,’ she whispered to the lady of the well.  ‘I pray that Eleanor will be happy with her choice.  Her brother may have fetched her back and if he has I hope that he will not treat her unkindly.’

She waited but did not hear the music that sometimes seemed to come from the well.  If the lady was minded to grant your wish she sometimes sang to you, but it was not as a woman might sing…but a faint sweet sound that made Samantha’s spine tingle.  She did not hear it that night and walked on, refusing to let herself be cast-down.  Taking the pins from her hair, she shook it free so that it cascaded over her shoulders and fell about her face, and then she began to sing her favourite French lullaby.

Where was the damned woman?  He had been waiting more than an hour and a half. Miss Hampden had been received by one of the teachers and taken to her room.  The companion had been given tea and dispatched back to the inn to discover how Mr Timms went on, and Robert had been left to wait in this very pretty and feminine sitting room, which smelled of a perfume he might have thought haunting had he not been in such a foul mood.

He would not sit here waiting another moment!  By God, she would hear what he thought of her when she returned.  He too would stay at the inn overnight and return in the morning…

As he walked over to the window to glance out, he saw a woman walking through the gardens at the back of the parlour.  Her hair was long and the colour of sunlight; on her face was a dreamy expression of content and well being and she was singing.  He could hear the melody through the open window and it intrigued him.  Surely he had heard that song long ago when he was a child?  It was a French melody that his mother had sung to him as he lay in bed and she stroked his hair.

He drew back from the window as he realised that the woman was about to enter through the French window and realised that she must be Miss Samantha Merlin.  When he’d brought Eleanor here he’d hardly glanced at her.  Angry at his circumstances and the way his father had simply let the estate go to rack and ruin, forcing him to sell land that had been in their family for generations just to pay their debts and secure his sister’s future, he had dumped her and run.  It was merely chance that one of his own investments had suddenly made him rich beyond his dreams.  He’d bought the shares in a silver mine in South America with money he’d won in a card game.  He’d been offered the chance and taken it on a whim, never dreaming that it would earn him a fortune.

Even now, he could not believe his good fortune.  He had sold out his interest at a huge profit, because he could not quite believe in the rich vein that had been found, but he’d heard since that the shares had gone even higher and he might have had more had he held on – but Robert had reinvested in safer things, buying back land and becoming a partner in a wine importing business with a friend.

His thoughts were drifting and it would not do!  He must not lose the advantage just because this woman took his breath away. Why had he not seen it the first time?  Yet there was something different about her today…something he could not place.