Runaway Bride Page 7

  Jennifer, murmuring something half-intelligible from fatigue, about illness and great haste, asked to be shown at once to a room and ordered the grilled chicken and hot water to rouse her two hours later. The old lady protested: only two hours rest, lord save us, the young gentleman would kill himself and his horse, too. But Jennifer took no notice. Two hours was the most she dared allow herself.

  The room over the taproom was small and snug, warmed by the main chimney of the house. The sheets smelt of lavender. Jennifer longed to undress and go fully to sleep, but dared not. Relaxed against the hard pillow, she promised herself she would be up again before the two hours were over. It was a long way, still, to London...a long way...a long way still...

  She was roused by someone’s shaking her arm, and sprang fully awake in an instant. Bright winter sunlight flooded the room. The landlady stood beside her, looking frightened, apologising harder than ever. Jennifer’s first question, ‘What is’t o’clock?’ brought forth a perfect torrent of words. Indeed, she said, she had meant no harm, but the young gentleman slept so sound, there was no waking him and in truth she was very sorry, but she thought it must be near noon, for Farmer Giles had driven his cows back to the farm some time past.

  Jennifer interrupted her. Easy now to assume her brothers’ autocratic air. Urgency lent unwonted firmness to her voice as she commanded food, her horse, the reckoning, all on the instant. Still muttering apologies, the landlady hurried to obey.

  Appalled at the length of her sleep, Jennifer was almost tempted to forego the meal she longed for, but decided she did not dare to do without food; she would never stand up to the long ride to London. So she waited, bore the landlady’s contrite speeches with the best grace she could muster, and was rewarded by a meal of the most delicious tough old fowl she thought she had ever tasted.

  As she ate, the landlady bustled to and fro, supplying her every need, visibly suppressing curiosity. At last, fidgeting with a pewter tankard, she spoke.

  ‘Begging your worship’s pardon,’ she said, ‘but you would not be concerned about an eloping young lady, I suppose...’ She let the sentence die away, alarmed at her own effrontery.

  ‘An eloping young lady?’ Jenniffer was proud of her tone of supercilious surprise.

  ‘Indeed, yes, and an heiress to boot. I ran over, not ten minutes since, to borrow some French mustard (for indeed I know the Quality’s tastes, though I serve them but seldom, having gone as housemaid at Petworth when I was little more than a child and married the head footman there, lord rest his soul, a hard husband he was to me, and dead these fifteen years or more) but,’ she observed Jennifer’s impatience, ‘to come to the point, as I was saying I did but run over to my cousin Susan who is married to Sam Crompton, landlord of the Swan—a good inn, too, I must own, for those who like the hurly-burly and helter-skelter of a coaching inn, which some, I am glad to say, have more sense than...’

  Lost in her own verbosity, she paused for a moment and Jennifer did her anxious best to steer her back to her subject: ‘But the heiress, ma’am, what of her?’

  ‘Oh, never fear for me, I was just coming to her. For I found my cousin Sam (for he is my cousin, too, through our grandmother)—I found him in one of his passions, red as a turkey-cock, hot as a fire at Christmastide, and poor cousin Susan trying her best to soothe him—for indeed these passions of his do him much harm—and all along of a young lady, or rather of a gentleman that had come enquiring for a young lady and had so angered him with his questions and his cross questions that he was neither to hold nor to bind. To be called a liar in his own house is what Sam never would stomach and nothing would satisfy this fine gentleman but he must search every chamber in the inn himself for fear his ward lay hid there.

  ‘For it is his ward who is run off to join her lover, and good luck go with her, say I, and so says Sam, too, and confusion to her guardian, who rode off at last, with not so much as a thank you or a glass of ale ordered, and Sam so angry he could hardly speak. And a blessing that was, too, for Susan told me the last thing of all the gentleman asked if there was any other inn in town. Sam, he was silent with rage, and Susan, she said nothing being a good friend of mine and not wanting my house turned topsy-turvy as hers had been. And so the long and the short of it is that the gentleman has rode fuming off down the London road, none the wiser for all his questions.’

  Pausing in her flood of talk, she considered Jennifer with a bright, enquiring, kindly eye. Clearly she suspected something, but how much? Rapidly deciding what to do, Jennifer plunged into explanation: ‘And all the better for me, ma’am, since, as you seem to suspect, the young lady is my betrothed, stolen away to meet and marry me against her cross-grained guardian’s will. But it seems by some mischance I have missed her and must now make all haste to her aunt’s in London, where I have no doubt she awaits me, that we may be safely wed before her guardian finds her.’

  Much delighted at this confidence, and at finding herself playing so important a part in smoothing the course of true love, the landlady bustled about harder than ever, produced her modest reckoning, shouted to John for the gentleman’s horse, assured Jennifer that her guardian was doubtless half-way to Horsham by now and offered her John’s services to guide her by a country short-cut which should not only avoid her pursuer but give her a chance to pass him on the road and reach London before him. ‘For he will doubtless be making his enquiries and turning every inn in Horsham topsy-turvy too and while he is doing so you may, with John’s help, show him a clean pair of heels.’

  Jennifer gratefully accepted this offer, after a rapid mental calculation as to the extent of the vails such a service would require. She could just manage it, she thought, and still leave herself enough money for emergencies...So, after a friendly farewell to her kind landlady, she set forward again with John, on a shaggy pony, as her silent companion. He led her along by-ways and bridle-paths that took them through no town of any size until they hit the London road again near Dorking. Here he bade her farewell, suddenly loquacious as he pocketed her tip and bade her, ‘Ride fast, and you’ll beat them to London yet,’ leaving her wondering what tale of highwaymen or Bow Street Runners his mother had thought fit to tell him.

  She rode on thoughtfully, wondering whether she had indeed distanced her uncle by this manoeuvre, or whether he would be in London—and perhaps at Lucy’s—before her. One encouraging thing she had learned from the landlady’s story. Elizabeth had not betrayed her. Uncle Gurning clearly did not know that she was dressed as a man.

  This, she told herself, riding confidently through Dorking, was a great point gained. Her uncle was searching for a young lady in a hired carriage, not a young gentleman on horseback. She was also pleased that her friend the landlady had showed no signs of suspecting her real identity. So she rode on for a while in jaunty imitation of her brothers, whistling a few bars of Lillibulero. But a chill in the air brought soberer thoughts. The light was beginning to ebb from the top of the Downs; it would be dark long before she reached London. It was not a pleasant thought, and she silently cursed the landlady’s negligence in not arousing her sooner. Visions of highwaymen haunted her, but she cheered herself as best she might with the thought that the road would certainly grow more clearly marked, and more frequented, as she neared London, and that at least, if her uncle should, by unhappy chance, overtake her on the way, the chances of his seeing through her disguise by the uncertain light of evening were slight indeed.

  So she rode doggedly on, squaring her shoulders inside the greatcoat when a rare carriage overtook her, letting wise Starlight set his own pace, fighting off the fatigue that began, again, to overwhelm her. Incoherent thoughts, near to dreams, flickered in and out of her mind. What was happening at Laverstoke Hall which she had left—how strange it seemed—only yesterday...? How much did the children miss her? What, if anything, was Lady Laverstoke doing about her disappearance? Had she perhaps sent for Lord Mainwaring? Intolerable thought. The sound of a carriage behind her roused her fr
om her half sleep. Where was her uncle now? In this very carriage, perhaps?

  But it rattled past, its four horses whipped on by a young elegant who bestowed hardly a passing glance on the solitary horseman plodding so wearily along. The rhythm of Starlight’s gait was broken, now, by fatigue; they went on slowly, so slowly that the journey had the quality of one of those, in a nightmare, that will never end. It was quite dark, and the moon had risen, when they passed, at last, through Lambeth village, past the Archbishop’s palace and so to her first view of the Thames, lying silver and quiet in the moonlight, with beyond it the lights of London. She paused for a moment, breathtaken, despite her weariness, by the magic of the scene, then urged Starlight on to the bridge, noticing, with surprise, the number of people who were still about. But of course by London reckoning the night was young yet. She passionately hoped that Lucy would be at home in her house in Great Peter Street and not gone to some rout or other. What had Elizabeth said? They had been in London a whole week; Lucy would be well launched on the social tide by now. Vaguely anxious, Jennifer wished she had questioned Elizabeth more closely as to what had brought Lucy and her father, the General, to London at this odd time of year. Something to do with his duties at the House of Commons perhaps? She remembered a conversation between Lord Mainwaring and young Laverstoke about the present disturbances in London. They had spoken anxiously and yet, somehow, with excitement about massed meetings and petitions presented to Parliament. Would these perhaps have affected General Faversham? If only she knew what precisely he did, but it was certainly connected with Parliament, and carried with it the comfortable house in Great Peter Street where she had once stayed with Lucy for an intoxicating breath of the London season.

  Reaching the north bank of the river, she was surprised to find the bridge’s approaches crowded with people, who stood about in little groups, mostly quiet, some talking, some arguing, all apparently waiting for something. Was there always such a crowd when Parliament was sitting, she wondered. Surely not? As she made her way diffidently through the scattered groups, who gave way to her civilly enough, she caught scraps of conversation. One man was speaking of ‘The petition’, another said ‘Any time now’, ‘Damned cold waiting’, added a third.

  Remembering again Lord Mainwaring’s talk of bad harvests, expensive bread and resultant meetings and petitions to Parliament, she made her way as fast as she safely could through the crowd. It seemed quiet enough now, but she did not like the thought of what might happen if something should fuse together these separate, waiting groups.

  The crowd was thicker still in Old Palace Yard and she had some anxious moments as she made her way, as unobtrusively as possible, towards Great Peter Street. It was a relief when she turned into its comparative quietness, but her heart sank as she saw the unlighted windows of Lucy’s house. She must, indeed, be out, and her father, most likely, on duty in Westminster Hall. But Miss Milsom, Lucy’s cousin and companion, would surely be there to welcome her with the inevitable exclamations. Thus reassuring herself, she tied Starlight’s bridle to the gatepost, advanced boldly and rapped at the front door. A long, anxious silence followed, while she wondered more than ever at the dark quietness of the house. Then, at last, came a little glimmer of light through the window above the door. Slowly, reluctantly, the big bolts were pulled back and a wizened face peered out suspiciously at her, the door held all the time on the chain.

  ‘Miss Faversham?’ she asked impatiently.

  ‘Miss Faversham is from home.’ The old woman began to close the door.

  ‘The General, then, or Miss Milsom?’

  ‘All, all are from home, sir. No one’s here but old Peter and me. They be all gone north for the baronet’s funeral; left in a great shindig they did and won’t be back these two months or more, I reckon. Staff be all gone down to the country, young sir, saving only Peter and me...Mortal cold and lonesome it be in this great house, sir, and riot and mayhem loose outside, and now, if you please, sir...’ Slowly, remorselessly, the withered hand closed the door.

  Jennifer turned away. There was nothing to be done here. This old crone could provide neither shelter nor support. Lucy’s sudden trip to town was explained now; the General’s ailing brother, the baronet, must have died at last in Northumberland; there was no hope of help from Lucy for some time. Her plans were all to make over again. For a moment, drooping over Starlight’s bridle, she gave herself up to despair, then pulled herself together. She still had two guineas, and her pearls. Things would look better in the morning. She would go back across Westminster Bridge to a little country-looking inn she had noticed in Lambeth and pass the night there. How she wished, now, that she had yielded to temptation and stopped there in the first place. For, she confessed to herself, she did not much relish the idea of passing once more through that crowd, whose confused murmur seemed to grow as she listened. There were shouts now: ‘Hunt, Hunt’, she heard and then loud huzzas.

  Best get it over with. She turned Starlight resolutely back into Old Palace Yard, then paused at the tumultuous scene that met her eyes. The crowd had found its focus, a man in a high white hat who was making an impassioned speech from a cart in its midst. She was too far away to hear what he was saying, but from time to time the crowd immediately around him would punctuate his speech with cries of, ‘The petition’ or, yet again, ‘Hunt, Hunt’ and ‘Huzza’. Impossible, now, to go back the way she had come. The crowd had become too dense in the few minutes she had spent in the quietness of Great Peter Street. Too dense and, at the same time, somehow menacing.

  As she manoeuvred to turn Starlight back into the narrow opening of Great Peter Street, a rough hand was laid on her bridle. ‘Nah, then, cully,’ said a cockney voice, ‘this is no place for the likes of you. We eats young gentlemen, see.’ It was said, apparently, with kindly, even humorous intent, and the hand on the bridle was endeavouring to guide Starlight back into Great Peter Street, but the horse, alarmed by the crowds and resenting the unfamiliar touch, reared up in sudden alarm. Exhausted as she was, Jennifer kept her seat by a miracle, and tried simultaneously to soothe the horse and the crowd, who had scattered before its lashing hooves, but now closed in on her again in a very different temper. Gone, now, was the humorous patronage of the first speaker. Instead, she found herself the target of a babel of angry voices. ‘Did it a-purpose,’ said one. ‘Hoped to knock our brains out,’ chimed in another. ‘The river’s the place for the likes of him,’ said a third. More hands now, hot, dirty hands reached out to grasp bridle and reins. Her attempts at protest and explanation were lost in the angry hum of voices about her. ‘The river, the river,’ came from every side. Terrified, exhausted, her worst fear that her tormentors might discover her sex. Jennifer felt herself and the quivering Starlight pushed forward by sheer mass of numbers down a little lane leading to the river. A rude hand snatched the hat from her head and sent it spinning over the crowd towards the water. ‘There,’ came the exultant cry, ‘young dandy, where’s your titfer?’ and, ‘Let him go fishing for it,’ came another voice.

  All the time, struggling in a whirlpool of angry men, Jennifer had been half aware of a carriage that was making its slow way through the crowd in a direction at an angle to that in which she and Starlight were being pushed, its coachman, a cockney himself, persuading his way forward with inaudible blandishments. Here, surely, was help. Forcing herself to think through her terror, Jennifer did her best to guide Starlight towards the carriage. But it was no use, the human tide was sweeping her on too fast. Desperately, she rose in her stirrups and gave a wild cry for help.

  As she did so, the carriage window went down with a bang, and a head leaned out and gave an order to the coachman. Breathless with hope, she saw the carriage slowly change its direction and make towards her through the crowd. Now she could hear what the coachman was saying: ‘Way for Lord Mainwaring,’ he cried, ‘you fools, do you not know your friends?’ At once, the ready crowd had a new cry: ‘Mainwaring for ever, Mainwaring and the petition. Huz
za!’ And, with a mixture of relief and horror, Jennifer saw that it was Mainwaring himself who still leant out of the carriage window. ‘That’s very well,’ he cried now in ringing tones that caused a sudden pool of silence round him, ‘very well indeed, you’d huzza for me, would you? And what were you doing with my young friend there?’

  ‘Friend,’ a rough voice took him up, ‘that’s no friend of yours, nor of liberty’s. Rode his horse clear into the crowd, the bastard, and might have killed a score of us.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ said Mainwaring in his carrying voice, and, oddly, it was enough for the crowd. A dozen other voices chimed in: ‘Aye, aye, true enough, ’twas accident most like,’ said one, and, ‘If he’s Mainwaring’s friend that’s good enough for me,’ added another. To her amazement, for she had never before encountered the volatility of a crowd, Jennifer found the very hands that had a moment before been urging her roughly towards the river and probable death, now guiding Starlight towards Mainwaring’s carriage. Almost, for a moment, she would have preferred the river. But there was no help for it. He had the door open, his servant was ready to take Starlight, there was a last cry of ‘Mainwaring and Hunt for ever. Huzza for Mainwaring’s friend,’ and she was safe inside.

  CHAPTER VII

  The door closed behind her. The carriage moved forward slowly through the shouting crowd. Inside, there was stony silence. Lord Mainwaring sat still in his corner, Jennifer, quick-breathing, in hers.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, as the carriage turned into the comparative quiet of Parliament Street. ‘Am I to be favoured with an explanation of this frolic, Miss Fairbank?’