Runaway Bride Page 4

  She was close to the children, who were now among the outlying trees of the copse, when she saw a branch disturbed by Jeremy’s mount lash back across Lucinda’s pony, which she had let follow too close behind her brothers. With a snort of terror, it darted away, entirely out of control, along the side of the wood. Riding now like one possessed, Jennifer was after it...alongside...then, leaning down, she had a hand over Lucinda’s fat ones which still clutched desperately at the reins. For a few seconds the big grey and the pony raced side by side, while Jennifer prayed that Lucinda would hang on. Then, as the grey slowed at her command, she felt, with relief, that the cob was doing likewise, steadied by the presence of the big horse. Stopping at last, Jennifer jumped to the ground and put her arms round Lucinda, who was sobbing with fright. ‘All’s safe now, my precious, I’ve got you,’ she soothed.

  ‘I say,’ it was Edward’s voice behind her. ‘Can’t you just ride, Miss Fairbank. You’re a Trojan and no mistake.’

  Looking round, over the head of the still sobbing Lucinda, she was relieved to see that both boys had followed her. So, too, had various of the less devoted followers of the hunt, who had allowed their curiosity at the strange figure she cut to overmaster the excitement of the chase. Uncomfortably aware that she presented an odd enough spectacle, Jennifer delivered a swift but stinging rebuke to the boys, ordered them to follow her home, and got herself once more into the saddle with the assistance of the chastened Edward. Then, reassuring herself with one anxious glance that none of the busy-bodies gathered round knew her as anything but ‘Miss Fairbank’ she took a firmer grasp on Lucinda’s reins and started for home.

  Lucinda was still much shaken and Jennifer decided to take the long way round by road rather than risk another fright in the rough short cut across the fields. Thoroughly subdued, the boys followed meekly behind, exchanging, sotto voce, awed reminiscences of her cross-country gallop. She was far too busy trying to keep up little Lucinda’s spirits to pay much attention to them. When they reached the front lodge of Laverstoke Park she hesitated for a moment. Should she risk taking this odd little cortège up the front drive? But no one was ever about at this hour in the morning. She had never known Lady Laverstoke to appear before one o’clock at the earliest. And Lucinda was obviously exhausted and shivering with delayed shock. She turned boldly in at the gate, which had meanwhile been opened, with an expression of some astonishment and much disapproval, by plump Mrs Meggs, the lodge keeper’s wife.

  As they rode up the winding, tree-lined drive, Jeremy pushed his pony up beside her. ‘I say, Miss Fairbank, you won’t tell, will you? Mamma would be in such a taking.’ He looked anxiously up at her, a deep appeal behind the casual seeming words.

  She recognised it: ‘No, I’ll not tell this time, Jeremy. But no more hunts, ‘pon honour.’

  ‘Honour bright,’ he began, then interrupted himself with a gasp: ‘Scuppered, by Jupiter!’

  She would have rebuked him for the exclamation, but, looking ahead, saw what had caused it and gasped in her turn. They had rounded the last curve of the drive and now found themselves on the carriage sweep in front of the house. And on top of the shelving steps that led up to the front door was a formidable tableau. Lady Laverstoke, astonishingly up and dressed at this unfashionable hour, was half-swooning on the arm of a tall man whose deep mourning seemed to accentuate an air of black rage about him. Jennifer had only time to take in fierce blue eyes under astonishing black brows before he advanced upon her, with Lady Laverstoke still clinging, tearful and apparently beyond speech, to his arm.

  ‘So.’ The furious eyes looked Jennifer up and down. ‘This, I conclude, is your paragon of a governess, Lavinia. You did not tell me that she acted also as groom to the children. Nor do I entirely comprehend why she should have done me the honour of borrowing my horse.’

  ‘Oh, Lord Mainwaring, I am distracted,’ began Lady Laverstoke, while Jennifer dismounted in a furious bound, careless of Miss Martindale’s crumpled muslin, and turned to the stranger, a stinging rebuke on her lips. No one had ever, in the course of her short life, looked at her with such insolence. Then—she remembered. This was how governesses were treated. Swallowing her fury, she turned towards Lady Laverstoke: ‘Indeed, my lady, I must beg a thousand pardons.’ She was beginning to force out the words when Jeremy interrupted her: ‘But Mamma, Uncle George—you do not properly understand. Miss Fairbank is a hero—I mean a heroine. She is a perfect Trojan and saved silly Lucinda’s life when her pony ran away with her. Indeed she does not deserve a scold, and, oh, Uncle George, you should just have seen her ride. She jumped Lightning over the sunken lane by the ten acre field.’

  ‘I am much obliged to her then for bringing him back unhurt,’ said the black-browed gentleman. ‘Though I am yet to learn that horseback riding is part of a governess’s duties. But come, Lavinia, you will be taking cold and so will Lightning here. We will hear more of this strange business indoors.’

  ‘Is his name Lightning?’ Jennifer forgot herself for a moment. ‘Indeed, it suits him.’

  ‘I am happy that it meets with your approval.’

  Reddening at his ironic tone, she turned, with another murmured apology to Lady Laverstoke and led the big grey and Lucinda’s pony towards the stables.

  ‘Be so good,’ the odious voice pursued her, ‘as to hand Lightning directly to the groom for a rub down.’

  Intolerable insult: to make her a bearer of messages to the groom. For the first time she found herself bitterly hating her subservient position. What would she not give to turn on this odious stranger in her own character as Miss Purchas of Denton Hall. But she must not do it. She could not throw away the security she had gained for a moment’s satisfaction. Inwardly fuming, she listened with half an ear to the children’s rejoicings—which she found herself unable to share—at the arrival of their Uncle George.

  ‘He is not really our uncle,’ explained Jeremy, ‘but our father’s cousin and dearest friend. They served together in the Peninsula and father left him our guardian.’

  ‘Yes,’ chimed in Edward, ‘and Mamma was furious and said it was an insult to make someone so young our guardian, but Milly said she would soon be reconciled to it.’

  ‘Yes,’ added little Lucinda, now somewhat recovered, ‘and Milly said she thought Mamma had a good mind to marry him for his pains. I heard her telling Mr Peasegood.’

  Jennifer was about to rebuke her for this tale-bearing when she was stopped by Jeremy’s next remark: ‘I doubt Uncle George is come to see if you are a fit governess for us, Miss Fairbank. He says Mother has no more judgement than a peahen.’

  Jennifer was so appalled by the realisation that the odious stranger would in some sort control her destiny that she forgot to reprimand Jeremy for his remarks about his mother, and listened absent-mindedly while Edward chimed in: ‘By Jupiter, it was worth six whippings to see his face at sight of Miss Fairbank on Lightning. Lord, he will not even let Laverstoke ride him.’

  They were in the stable yard by now and he interrupted himself to exclaim: ‘Look, there’s Quicksilver. Laverstoke must be here too. Huzza!’

  And indeed when they entered the house, they found all in a bustle. Lord Mainwaring had arrived unexpectedly, bringing with him Charles Laverstoke, who it seemed was in some small disgrace at Oxford over a matter of a performing monkey let loose in divinity class. Lucinda told Jennifer all about it as she wriggled her way into her best sprigged muslin in preparation for a hoped-for summons to join the party at dessert.

  Jennifer, on the other hand, was praying inwardly that the summons would not come. She had seen enough of the governess’s martyrdom on such occasions to wish very heartily that she might be spared it. And, besides, there was something intolerable about the idea of another encounter with Lord Mainwaring’s arrogant blue eyes, particularly when she had no stronger defence than Miss Martindale’s best dress of sober brown watered silk.

  As Lucinda prattled away about her beloved elder brother, and kind Uncle Georg
e who might or might not have brought her a present, Jennifer cast a gloomy glance at her own reflection in the big looking glass before which she was arranging Lucinda’s curls. Intolerable to have to face Lord Mainwaring in Miss Martindale’s drooping finery.

  But Lucinda, catching her eye in the glass, smiled at her lovingly: ‘How well you look, Miss Fairbank. That dress becomes you excessively.’

  Smiling at the child’s parroting of her mother’s phrases, Jennifer gratefully conceded that there was something in what she said. An impatient but successful needlewoman, she had spent several evenings improving the fit and style of the dress, and it was true that its russet brown did indeed set off her auburn hair. When the dreaded summons came, she followed the children with the comfortable thought that Lord Mainwaring must surely find her much changed from the tousled hoyden who had confronted him that afternoon.

  But, deep in conversation with Lady Laverstoke, Lord Mainwaring spared her hardly a glance beyond what the barest civility demanded. For the first time, as she watched his black head bent so close to Lady Laverstoke’s blonde ringlets, she wondered if there had perhaps been some truth in Milly’s gossip. Well, heaven help Lady Laverstoke if she should marry him: his was no temper to bear with a beauty’s faded foibles.

  Her charges, meanwhile, had clustered eagerly round their elder brother, clamouring for sips of his wine and details of his exploit with the monkey. A fair, open-faced, very young man, he was obviously in considerable awe of his cousin and guardian whose elegance of dress and manner he tried hopefully to imitate. Tonight his colour was high and his speech rapid. Jennifer suspected that he had drowned the memory of his mother’s plaintive reproaches in a great deal of claret. To her dismay, he paid her so many compliments on her prowess as a horsewoman, about which his brothers had told him, that she found it necessary to withdraw, with her recalcitrant but obedient charges, at the earliest possible moment.

  CHAPTER IV

  Now began an era of unwonted gaiety at Laverstoke Hall. The big public rooms were unswathed from their voluminous dust sheets, candelabra were polished, candles bought by the gross and two extra girls hired from the village to polish up the enormous stretches of untrodden parquet—in short, Lady Laverstoke was at home to the county.

  She grumbled a good deal in her languid way about the exertion this entailed, but it was obvious to Jennifer that she enjoyed every minute of it, feeling herself freed from the restrictions of her long and monotonous widowhood by the presence of Lord Mainwaring and her grown-up son. At first, Jennifer was surprised at the willingness with which Lord Mainwaring lent himself to these junketings, for he had not struck her as at all a sociable man, and indeed made little attempt at concealing his relief when some particularly tedious band of local talkers had finally taken their leave. It was, incidentally, on these occasions, when half a dozen dull worthies from the neighbouring houses had descended upon her, that Lady Laverstoke was most apt to ring and summon her children to join her and her friends. Many a prosy dowager and many a faithful companion did Jennifer accompany round the rose garden or chaperone dutifully through the glass houses.

  She was, at these times, increasingly sorry that she had not been able to seek asylum a little further from home. When each new set of morning callers arrived, she felt fresh terror lest there should be some of her own acquaintance among them, consoling herself, however, with the thought that she had in fact moved so little in society since the fatal news of Waterloo that this was unlikely.

  Besides, she was soon aware of a particular character in the company that now frequented Laverstoke Hall, and realised, when she did so, what lay behind Lord Mainwaring’s amazing affability. He was, in fact, hard at work keeping up his interest in his neighbouring constituency. Jennifer heard enough scraps of conversation on the occasions when she took the children down for dessert, to realise that he was finding it heavy enough going. Evening after evening, as the ladies rose and the gentlemen gathered over their wine, she heard the attack begin. Mainwaring, it seemed, had shocked his country constituents by the length to which he carried his radical views. Every evening he was under fire, sometimes even before the ladies left the table, for his friendship with Burdett and Hunt, whose meetings and petitions were, in the opinion of his attackers, at the bottom of all the country’s present discontents. ‘Split the party’, ‘Out of office long enough already’, ‘Dissolution’, ‘Going to the dogs’, these and other gloomy phrases echoed through the halls of Laverstoke when, very much later, the gentlemen joined the ladies for tea and scandal.

  Unwillingly, Jennifer found herself compelled to admire the masterly ease with which Mainwaring handled his critics. With an unfailing courtesy that amazed her, he bore with his attackers, turned their arguments, and at last managed, somehow, to convince them that they had been on his side all the time, or he on theirs. Scorning their gullibility, she had, reluctantly, to concede his skill in argument.

  For the children it was a time of ecstasy. Schoolroom discipline was increasingly hard to maintain. The boys had to be driven almost by main force over to the rectory for their morning lessons, while Lucinda, too, was hard to settle at her tasks, and seized every opportunity to reconnoitre at the big door that separated the children’s apartments from the main stairway.

  One morning, after there had been unwontedly early activity downstairs, Lucinda returned from this point of vantage with a disappointed face. ‘It is too shabby; they are gone out in the chaise and never even thought of taking me.’

  Sorry for the child, Jennifer exerted herself to be entertaining, but Lucinda drooped and moped until the nursery lunch hour brought the boys shouting back from the rectory. They were in high feather. They had met their brother in the stable yard and he had invited the nursery party to drive out with him that afternoon. Jennifer had noticed for some time past that Charles Laverstoke found Lord Mainwaring’s politics as little to his liking as his mother’s gossip, and was increasingly apt to turn to the nursery for a society more certainly admiring and less demanding of thought or of punctilio. The children were entranced at the invitation, Jennifer more dubious.

  ‘’Tis only in the carriage,’ said Edward regretfully. ‘Uncle George has taken the chaise.’

  ‘But I thought Lord Laverstoke was gone out already,’ said Jennifer, temporising. Was this an outing to be permitted? What would Miss Martindale have done in such circumstances?

  ‘No, no,’ Jeremy explained. ‘It is but mamma and Uncle George who are gone out. Doubtless they are gone to pay their respects at Petworth House. Uncle George always visits Lord Egremont when he comes here; they are famous cronies.’

  Lucinda pouted. ‘I wish they would have taken me. I dote upon those children. Only think, Miss Fairbank, they have marchpane every day.’

  ‘Never fret yourself for that, Lucinda,’ comforted Edward, ‘it will be a deal more entertaining to drive out with Charles. He is a deuce of a whip, Miss Fairbank.’

  ‘But nothing like Uncle George. He is a real Corinthian,’ said his brother.

  ‘Yes, but what use is that with Mamma in the carriage? He will let the coachman drive, I wager. You know Mamma cannot bear to go above a snail’s pace. The last time Charles took her out she vowed she would never drive with him again.’

  Jennifer, half listening to this discussion, was still debating the propriety of the proposed expedition and the feasibility of preventing it, when Lord Laverstoke bounced into the nursery.

  ‘How do you do, Miss Fairbank,’ he swept the hat from his blonde curls, looking quite a man in his many-caped greatcoat, ‘are these imps ready to come driving with me?’

  ‘Yes, yes, quite ready,’ shouted Jeremy as he and Edward snatched up their own coats, while Lucinda, quicker than they to recognise Jennifer’s hesitation, looked up at her appealingly:

  ‘I may go, may I not, Miss Fairbank?’

  ‘Of course you may, Puss.’ Laverstoke tossed her up on to his shoulder. ‘And Miss Fairbank shall come too to see that you cond
uct yourself like a lady. Is that a bargain, Miss Fairbank? We’ll proceed most properly, I promise you, though, I warrant,’ an admiring glance swept her up and down, ‘that you’d handle the ribbons as well as you do the reins.’

  To turn the subject, for she was heartily sick of references to her exploit at the hunt, Jennifer busied herself with preparing Lucinda for the drive, debating with herself, as she did so, whether or not to accompany them. In the end, she decided reluctantly that it was the lesser evil. It was all too likely that her lively charges would get into some mischief if allowed out with no weightier companion than their brother and she did not feel sufficiently sure of her ground to forbid the outing altogether. So she compromised by stipulating that it should be only a brief turn up over the Downs, and they all piled gleefully into the carriage, Jennifer congratulating herself that Laverstoke had chosen to drive and would therefore have no opportunity for the flattering speeches and speaking looks with which he seemed to think it necessary to distinguish her.

  She gave a sigh of pure pleasure as the big carriage swung up the road that led over the Downs. Except for church on Sunday and her brief and anxious outing on Lightning on the day of the hunt, this was the first time she had left Laverstoke Park since her arrival. It was good to smell the damp woodland air, even qualified by the musty interior of the carriage, and then, as the road climbed higher, to catch a glimpse of the sea, sparkling in the autumn sunlight. The children, too, were in ecstasies, as their brother whipped up his horses and they bowled down the long slope of the hill.