Читать книгу A Regency Virgin's Undoing: Lady Drusilla's Road to Ruin / Paying the Virgin's Price - Christine Merrill, Christine Merrill - Страница 13

Mr Hendricks pulled up beside her, and signalled her to slow her horse to a walk. ‘We shall be stopping soon,’ he said, checking his watch against the position of the sun. ‘While it might be possible to travel farther, we must change horses to keep this pace. We could take a room—’ he corrected himself ‘—rooms. And get some dinner.’

‘Or we can hire fresh mounts and continue for a few more hours,’ she said.

‘You are not tired?’

‘Not if there is a chance that we are gaining on them.’ They’d had no information since the stop this morning. And she must hope that the speed they were moving had closed the distance.

‘And you are comfortable as you are attired?’ He looked doubtfully at her borrowed costume.

‘I am accustomed to it,’ she said, not wishing to commit herself. It was strangely freeing to go without skirts, as long as she did not think of how it must look. She could bend low over the horse’s neck and gallop if she wished, unencumbered by petticoats, not worrying about the set of her hat or the attractive arrangement of the garments. And while she felt the stretching of unused muscles, it was not so much painful as troubling. There was a guilty pleasure in it that would not be repeated. And she wished to prolong that a few more hours, if she could.

‘Very well, then. We will stop at the next inn, and I will check for your wayward carriage and hire us some new steeds. You …’ He looked her up and down before speaking again. ‘You had best remain in the courtyard. Keep your coat buttoned and your hat pulled low. Speak to no one and do not wander off.’ He looked at her again as though he expected to see something he had not noticed before. ‘I am sorry to say it, my lady, but you do not make a very convincing man.’

And then he laughed, a kind of choking snort as though his proper demeanour had failed him.

‘Is there something amusing that I am not aware of?’ she said in a voice that should have frozen him to silence.

He was still chuckling slightly. ‘You seemed most unhappy with a statement that, in any other context, would have been good news. Just now, you were glaring into the air as though you had wished to hear you wore it better. I found the juxtaposition funny.’

‘I do not like to be reminded that I am unable to perform a role to the satisfaction of others.’ She’d had enough of that at home to last a lifetime.

‘It is no fault of yours, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a less attractive woman might have managed it.’ He laughed again.

‘Please do not joke with me about my appearance,’ she snapped. ‘If you thought that I was angling for a compliment, I assure you, that was not the case.

‘I am not laughing at your appearance,’ he said in the same mild patient tone he’d used to coax her into wearing his clothes, but stifling a smile. ‘Only at the way you frowned again upon being told that you were attractive.’

‘Because it is nonsense,’ she said. ‘Fine words meant to flatter me into a better humour.’

‘Give me more credit than that, Lady Drusilla. I have not been in your employ for long, but I am smart enough to realise that it would take more than flattery to put you in a good humour.’ Before she could reprimand him, he shot her another sidelong glance, then turned his attention to the road. ‘This is what comes from reading sermons,’ he muttered. ‘You think too much. If I wished to flatter you, I would have mentioned your pleasant features and your beautiful dark hair. Both comments would have been true. But they would have nothing to do with your inability to disguise such an obviously female body in masculine clothing with any degree of success. And now, if you tell me that the Lord has given it to you, and you deserve no credit for it, then I will take that little book of sermons from your pocket and throw it into the next stream.’

To put an end to the conversation, he gave his beast a gentle kick in the sides and was off at such a pace that she had to struggle to follow him.

He needn’t have bothered. Any retorts she had for him had flown quite out of her head. Left in their place was a swirl of words: attractive, pleasant, beautiful and, best of all, obviously female. Somewhere in the midst of it, he had commented on her bad humour. But she was hardly bothered by a comment on something which was seen as a universal truth by those close to her.

And he had laughed, not exactly at her, but in her direction, as though her temper amused more than it upset him. The negatives he’d thrown into the last interchange were like salt in a pudding, serving to emphasise the sweetness and bring out the subtle flavours of the rest.

And he had threatened to throw her sermon book into the river. Taken as a whole, she could not decide if she wanted to stammer a blushing thank you, or ring a peal over him. But the last statement could not be allowed to stand.

She spurred her horse to draw even with him. ‘I would not care if you did throw the sermons in a stream,’ she said, a little breathless from the ride. ‘It is not as if they are my exclusive reading.’

‘You brought other books with you?’

‘Not on this journey, no.’

His features had returned to mild-mannered passivity, as though he had collected enough evidence for a decision, but saw no reason to comment on it.

‘Perhaps it was because I thought that the couple I was searching for needed a reminder of their duty.’

‘So you sought to give a sermon and not to read one?’ It was an innocent observation. But it made her feel horribly priggish, not at all like the beautiful hoyden of a moment ago.

‘We cannot always have what we want,’ she said firmly. ‘Where would the world be if everyone went haring off after their desires, eloping to Scotland on the least provocation?’

‘Where indeed?’

‘It would be chaos,’ she said, sounding depressingly like the voice of her father.

‘And you are sure you wish to stop this particular elopement,’ he said carefully. ‘If we are lucky, we might catch up with your friends tonight. Or perhaps tomorrow. But sometimes, when people are in love and intent upon their goal, they cannot be turned from it. If you stop them now, they will find another way.’

‘If they run again, I will chase them again,’ she said, feeling as stiff and flat as her sermon book. ‘I do not mean to give them any choice in the matter. This marriage cannot take place. It simply cannot.’ She was already near to on the shelf. With a scandal in the family, her own reputation would be in tatters. Her father would be livid at Priscilla and in no mood to launch the other daughter: the one who had failed to protect his favourite.

The man beside her sighed. ‘Very well, then. If you are resolute, I load my pistols and prepare myself for the inevitable.’

‘The inevitable?’

‘To haul the loving couple back across the border by force, if necessary.’

‘You would do that?’

‘If you wished me to.’

And now she was the one smiling at incongruity. He had replaced his spectacles since their last stop and the sun glinted off his lenses, causing him to squint slightly. He hardly looked the type to resort to physical violence. ‘If you will remember our conversation last evening, I requested discretion.’

‘The sound of a single shot will not carry all the way to London,’ he replied. ‘And from what I understand of females, a wound in a non-vital spot is often deemed quite romantic.’

‘It is not my goal to make Mr Gervaise even more attractive to the opposite gender.’

‘Perhaps not, then.’ He thought again. ‘Maybe I should punch him. A broken nose will solve the problem of his good looks quite nicely, I am sure.’

The idea did have appeal. As did dragging Priscilla back to London by the hair. But it would only make her run away again. And the last thing she needed to risk was engendering sympathy for the villain who had taken her away. ‘No, as I said, discretion is the watchword.’ She glanced at him again. ‘But thank you for the offer.’

He ducked his head. ‘At your service, Lady Drusilla.’

Of course. That was all it had been. She had employed him to solve the problem and he had offered suggestions. The protectiveness that she was sure she’d heard were imaginings on her part. Nothing more than that.

She sighed. For a moment, it had felt quite nice to think that there was a man on the planet who could be moved to brutal overreaction in defence of her.

They kept the pace until they arrived at the next inn, and Mr Hendricks left her standing by a wall in the courtyard, out of the way of departing coaches, as he went to see about the horses and make enquiries about recent guests. While she waited, she did as he’d suggested and buttoned the coat, pulling his hat low over her eyes and thrusting her hands into her pockets in a way that she hoped looked insolent and unwelcoming.

But she could tell from the looks she got from the stable hands that they saw easily through her disguise. She shrank back into Mr Hendricks’s overcoat, vowing that whatever might happen between here and Scotland, she would not be out of his sight for another moment. He had been right. There was no way that she would be taken for a male. She did not want to think about what the clothes might be exposing to view. Even hidden in the coat, she was exposing so much of her legs that she might as well be standing naked in the courtyard.

But despite her fears, the boys’ attitudes were not so much menacing as amused. She could hear the muttered conversation between them, as they came for the horses and brought out the fresh pair. One was guessing it was an elopement. The other disagreed. The gentleman seemed more interested in who had gone before than who might come from behind. It must be some sort of bet or a strange prank.

The first insisted that the man was too old to be just down from Oxford. And the woman was too fine to be the sort of woman who would don breeches for the amusement of the lads. Only love made people act as cork-brained as this. It was an elopement for sure. He’d bet a penny on it.

Drusilla tried not to smile. There was some comfort in knowing that though she did not look like a boy, neither did everyone mistake her for a whore. But the idea that she might be thought the one eloping?

What a wonderful thought that was. For a moment, she imagined herself as being that sort of girl. Just once, she wished to be the one racing for the border with a laughing lover as the hue and cry was raised after her. And chaperons all over London would shake their heads and murmur to their charges about the bad end one was likely to come to, if one behaved like the notorious Silly Rudney.

Mr Hendricks was in the doorway, haggling back and forth with the innkeeper, struggling to pull coins from his pockets and muttering to himself. Then he walked back to her through the busy coach yard, dipping his head low to speak in confidence to her. ‘Are you still carrying your reticule?’

She nodded.

‘Please give it to me.’

She produced the blue silk bag from the pocket of her man’s coat and was certain she heard laughter from the boys who had been watching her. It became even louder as they saw Mr Hendricks rooting through the contents for the sad collection of coins remaining there, swearing at the little money in his hand. Then he thrust the purse back to her and stalked away.

One stable boy passed a penny to the other, agreeing that only a man in love could be brought so low, and Dru cringed in embarrassment for her companion. And the boys glanced in the direction of the doorway to the inn, then looked hurriedly away.

There was a young lady, standing alone beside a stack of bandboxes, waving a handkerchief in the hopes of receiving aid. The burden was light and would have been no trouble for boys strong enough to handle cart horses. But when Dru got a better look at the identity of the girl, she disappeared into Mr Hendricks’s coat, sympathising with the sudden deafness of the stable hands.

Priss’s friend, Charlotte Deveral, was not someone she might wish to meet under the best circumstances. The girl was too young and pretty to be a harridan, but it was only a matter of time. If her disposition was as Dru remembered, she was most likely in a temper over nothing. And she would take it out on a tardy servant, or any lad who left a smudge on a package while trying to earn a penny or two.

‘Boy!’ Char’s voice was sharp and ugly. ‘Boy!’ And then she muttered an aside to her paid companion. But it was a theatrical sotto voce, meant to embarrass the targets of her wrath. ‘These country clods are all either deaf or stupid. One must shout to make them understand. I say! Boy!’

For a moment, Dru was reminded of her own tone as she ordered Mr Hendricks about. Did it sound like that to him? she wondered. She felt suddenly ashamed of herself and more than a little embarrassed for Char, who was making a spectacle of herself with all the shouting and flapping of linen.

‘Boy, I am talking to you.’

And it was then that it occurred to Dru that there was no one else near and that Char was addressing her. ‘Eh?’ She managed a deep masculine grunt, and thrust her hands even deeper into her pockets, as though she did not care a bit for what some London piece might think of her.

‘Help me with these packages. My coachman is nowhere to be found.’ And another aside, loud enough so the stable boys might hear, ‘And the rest of the staff here are useless.’

Dru touched the brim of her hat in what she hoped was a respectfully masculine way, managing to pull it even lower over her face as she did so. Then she sauntered towards Charlotte.

She heard one of the stable boys snicker.

But Charlotte noticed nothing unusual about the ‘boy’ she’d called to aid her, looking right through Dru and refusing to recognise someone she had seen dozens of times before. Of course, a lad in an inn yard was so far beneath her that he might as well have been an ant upon the ground. What reason would she have to assume he was no lad at all? And he was not nearly as important as the bandboxes, to which Char gave her full attention. ‘Help me place my packages in the carriage.’

‘Miss,’ Dru said with false respect, bowing low to take them from the ground at Char’s feet.

‘The correct form of address is my lady.’

The devil it was. The Deveral family was gentle enough, but there was not a title in it. And though Charlotte had her hopes, she would be settling for a plain Mister at the end of the season. But Dru could not exactly announce a fact that she should be in total ignorance of. ‘My lady,’ she corrected herself and bowed deeper.

And heard another snicker from the boys behind her.

She went around to the back of the carriage and clambered into the basket, securing the packages with the rest of the luggage and, quite by accident, placing Char’s bonnet where it might be crushed at the next stretch of rough road. Then she helped Char and her chaperon into their seats as the groom who should be doing the job appeared from the taproom, too late to be of help to anyone.

As Drusilla closed the door and withdrew, Char gave an insolent toss of her head and said, ‘For your trouble.’ And then she pulled a coin from her purse and made as if to hand it out of the window. But she realised at the last moment that she had no wish to touch a filthy stranger and dropped it in the direction of Dru’s hand.

Before she could snatch it from the air, the shilling hit the cobbles and rolled into the muck.

Dru stared down at it in disgust. Under normal circumstances, she would not have noticed the loss of it. But things were far from normal and she was still far from Scotland. She stooped and grabbed, trying to ignore the dirt clinging to her fingers. To add insult to injury, the Deveral carriage had started on its way. Before she could step clear, the wheels and hooves sent up a fine spray of mud that struck her cheek.

To make her humiliation complete, Mr Hendricks appeared with two fresh horses, just in time for a view of the tableau: Lady Drusilla Rudney, muck spattered and scrambling for coins, to the great amusement of ladies and stable boys alike. She could expect no more fine words about her obvious feminine beauty now that he’d seen her debased, dismissed as something less than human by a woman of her own kind. Even worse, she had disobeyed him by talking to Char at all. She waited for a stern lecture on speaking to strangers and the need for secrecy. Or, worse yet, laughter.

Instead, he said nothing, offering her his handkerchief to wipe off the mud. Then he spoke as though he had seen nothing unusual. ‘The news is both good and bad, I’m afraid. The couple you seek were here just this morning.’

She hurriedly wiped her face, clinging to this one small success. ‘How many hours ago?’

‘Four, perhaps. Maybe less. They stayed for luncheon, before starting out again. They seemed in no hurry, wherever it was they were going.’

‘So we are gaining on them.’ Dru smiled in satisfaction. ‘They were a day ahead when I started off. If they continue to dawdle, then we are likely to catch them before they reach the border.’

‘If that is still what you wish,’ Hendricks replied. ‘We are at the end of our funds, I am afraid.’

‘I thought you had ample money to help me,’ she said, feeling even worse than before. If she’d taken the man’s last groat to catch her sister, she could hardly fault him if they failed.

‘I thought I had sufficient funds as well,’ he said. ‘But now that I have brought us to the middle of nowhere, I find that my purse is still in my pocket, but its contents are gone.’ His brows knit and the darkness of his expression was truly fearsome. She braced herself, ready to bear the brunt of the inevitable tirade.

Instead, he turned it inwards upon himself. ‘I have only myself to blame for our circumstances. Like a fool, I left my coat behind in the mail coach, as I helped to push. And that grudge-bearing, bacon-fed cit went through my pockets and helped himself to it. Now I am reduced to picking through a lady’s reticule and letting you grovel for pennies in a coach yard.’ He looked to her again, obviously pained by the confession. ‘I am sorry, Lady Drusilla. I have failed you.’

She felt a rush of sympathy. After all he had done to get her this far, she was amazed that he would think so harshly of himself. ‘You most certainly have not failed me,’ she said. ‘We have simply hit another difficulty and must take the time to examine our options. What do you suggest?’

‘As I see it, we have two alternatives. We return to the place we left and find the man responsible.’

‘And what good would that do us? He would likely deny that he had taken anything.’

‘At first, perhaps. But all the same, I would give him a thrashing that would shake the coins from his pockets.’ His cold smile and the glint in his eye said that the experience would be the most emotionally satisfying option and the one he favoured.

‘Mr Hendricks!’ Drusilla said sharply. ‘Attend, please. To return to find the thief would put my goal quite out of reach. If I have come this far, I do not wish to turn back without some satisfaction. Is there no other way to get to Scotland?’

Now, he was staring at her in silence, as though she were a piece in the puzzle that he could not quite seem to make fit. He did not immediately answer and she repeated, ‘Mr Hendricks?’

‘I am thinking,’ he said, a little too sharply for a servant, and then corrected his tone before responding. ‘There is another way, if you are dead set on continuing. We will press northwards as we have been doing and ride this change of horses to the end. We will be forced to sleep rough. We will take the shilling in your hand to buy some bread and cheese for our supper. But after that, we will have to beg or steal what we need for sustenance.’ He looked heartily sorry that he could not do better. ‘I fear it is not what you are accustomed to. But the only other alternative I can offer is to admit defeat and appeal to your father for help.’

‘And that is precisely what I will not do.’ She stood straight again, remembering that she was the daughter of a duke and not some slouching farm boy. Then she wiped the muddy coin and handed it back to Hendricks along with his handkerchief. ‘Take this and buy us some dinner, so that we might set off again.’ She glanced up the road at the dust of the retreating carriage, focusing all her anger and frustration on it, longing for revenge. And then an idea occurred to her. ‘And if you hurry I think there is a way that we might solve all our problems, given a little darkness and a little luck.’