Courting Lord Dorney Read online

  She felt a moment’s compunction. If she had not been born, perhaps he would have returned to Oxford. But he had come back to his home and made sure she lacked for nothing. He’d provided her with nurses, governesses, tutors for painting and music - everything except his undivided attention. She then reminded herself that she probably preferred it that way, being left very much to her own devices, and having far more freedom than most girls in her situation. She had roamed the hills, on foot or on horseback, since she was a child. She knew everyone in the farms and villages round about and was often invited to parties or to accompany other girls to the local Assemblies.

  Mr Trahearne promised to keep an eye on Jed and his sisters in Preston. He insisted that Mr Jenkins was utterly reliable, and needed no supervision.

  ‘But he would appreciate the attention, while I am away,’ she said. She trusted George Jenkins, his brother and their wives implicitly, but she wanted to convince her father that she was using his brother’s legacy wisely.

  Mr Trahearne found it easier to agree, as Bella had known he would. Much as he loved her she knew he had never felt at ease with his motherless and impetuous daughter. He had no talent for dealing with children, and on top of his overwhelming grief for his young wife he had been afraid of the tiny baby’s fragility. This awe had never entirely left him as Bella grew up, and he had consequently been far more lenient than most fathers. Now, she suspected, he was somewhat guiltily looking forward to the day when she would marry and depart to her own home, and the more she moved in Society the sooner that would be.

  Bella shook herself, and seeing that her father was once more absorbed in his book, left the room. She swiftly wrote a note to tell Jane it was all arranged, and went to the stables to find a groom who would deliver it for her.

  * * * *

  They left Lancashire a few days later, travelling post. They would hire a carriage in Bath. Bella had not bothered to unpack her trunks during her brief stay at Trahearne House, deciding that the gowns she had taken to Harrogate would do for Bath until she could acquire more. A disgruntled Meg had been left behind, volubly complaining and prophesying all sorts of disasters if she were not present to guard her beloved mistress from them.

  ‘Jane’s maid Susan can do all I need,’ Bella informed her briskly. ‘Besides, it will be cramped enough with three of us travelling in the chaise.’

  Susan she could trust. Bella knew she didn’t get on with Meg, because of some ancient quarrel between their families, and would never let her know what her mistress was doing, might even enjoy deceiving her about Bella’s activities. And if Jane swore her to secrecy she’d know her own job depended on her discretion.

  Bella had no intention of permitting Meg to know her real purpose. Loyal as the woman had always been, since she had taken over the care of the motherless baby, Bella knew she would heartily disapprove of her new plans, and might inform Mr Trahearne of them. That would be a disaster. Little as he normally noticed what Bella was up to, she suspected that this latest ploy might shock him out of his indifference. Susan was new to her job, a timid young lady who had replaced the elderly but now retired dragon who had been with Jane since she was a young girl. She was anxious to please, and would either not care or not know what to do if she did disapprove, though from what Bella had seen of her she doubted the girl had any opinions of her own.

  ‘At last!’ Bella exclaimed as they left the village behind. ‘How long will it take us to get to Bath?’

  ‘Several days, for I don’t mean to be cooped up in this chaise all day,’ Jane replied. ‘I’ve given way to you, since I suspected you would do something outrageous on your own if I did not, but I mean to enjoy the journey.’

  Bella gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Dear Jane, I am so grateful to you, and of course we will go at the pace of a three-legged donkey if you wish. It will give us more time to decide on what clothes to buy in Bath.’

  They spent several enjoyable hours doing this, in between looking at the countryside. Jane had been to London several times with her husband, but Bella had never been south of Preston and she was both fascinated and repelled by the flatness of the Cheshire plain.

  ‘I couldn’t live in this sort of country,’ she exclaimed. ‘If I find a husband who lives in a place like this I’ll have to persuade him to buy an estate where there are hills.’

  ‘He might not wish to,’ Jane said, laughing. ‘Bella, this is a mad start!’

  ‘It’s the only way I can be sure of finding a man who isn’t more interested in my money than in me, and be able to use my money in the way I wish.’

  * * * *

  Bella’s enjoyment of the countryside increased as they drove through the Cotswolds, and she admitted, laughing, that it was tolerable scenery, though not so grand as Lancashire.

  They had only twenty or so miles to go, and were climbing back into the chaise, after having partaken of a light nuncheon at a posting inn, when they saw that the mail coach was partly blocking the archway to the street, and another chaise with half a dozen young men crammed inside was pulled over to the side, unable to leave. A couple of men who had just arrived on horseback were talking to an ostler, further blocking the yard.

  The ostlers were changing the mail coach’s horses, and a girl who had been waiting by the doorway to the tap room stepped forward. She was neatly dressed in a gown of dark green serge, and a plain bonnet, and carried a bundle wrapped in a shawl.

  Jane’s chaise could not move, and as they settled themselves Bella overheard the exchange clearly.

  ‘You’re not on the list,’ the coachman said. ‘I’m sorry, lass, but I’m full, there’s no room for you. Mebbe the next will have room.’

  ‘But I’ve asked two others, and they were full too! What shall I do? They told me I could get on a coach here!’

  ‘You should have booked a ticket. I’m sorry, but there’s nowt I can do.’

  One of the young men leaned out of his chaise. ‘Come with us, my pretty. We don’t mind being a bit squashed. There’s plenty of laps for you to rest on.’

  The girl glared at him and turned away without replying.

  ‘Hoity toity! Do you need persuading?’ her tormentor asked, flinging open the door and leaping down onto the cobbles. He seized the girl by the arm and swung her round, laughing as he dodged the bundle she aimed at his head.

  ‘Let me go!’ she cried, her voice wavering in panic.

  ‘No need to be frightened, we’ll treat you well, and you’ll get to Bath,’ he said, and loud guffaws came from his companions.

  Another man had joined him by now, and between them they picked up the girl and started to drag her, crying and struggling, towards their chaise.

  ‘Let her go!’

  The first man turned towards Bella, who was leaning out of the chaise window, and raised his eyebrows. ‘You’d best keep out of it, or we might decide to take you along with us as well,’ he sneered, and then stepped back in alarm, letting the girl’s arm go.

  ‘I think not,’ Bella said. ‘This pistol isn’t a toy, and it’s loaded, and I’m accounted a tolerable shot. Though I might aim for your leg and hit somewhere a little higher. I can’t guarantee just to lame you.’

  The men still in the chaise laughed.

  ‘A woman shoot straight,’ one scoffed.

  ‘Oh, leave the wench, Lambert, she’s not worth the trouble,’ another said.

  At that moment the mail coach pulled out of the yard and the archway to the street was clear. The two men, with shrugs, clambered back into their chaise and it moved off too.

  The girl had dropped her bundle, and as she bent, sobbing with relief, to pick it up, Bella jumped down beside her.

  ‘Are you going to Bath?’

  The girl nodded. ‘Yes, miss, and thank you, miss. Would you really have shot them?’

  ‘If I’d had to. Have you family in Bath?’

  ‘No, miss, my parents live in Gloucester. I’m looking for work. My lady died, last week, and I thought there�
��d be suitable positions in Bath. There’s none round here, and I can’t go home, they haven’t room for me.’

  ‘You have references?’

  ‘Oh, yes miss. My lady’s son wrote me one.’

  Bella considered her. She looked clean and now she wasn’t being threatened, she spoke up frankly.

  ‘I need a personal maid. Come, we’ll take you to Bath, and we can talk on the way. If we can come to an agreement, I could employ you for a few weeks. I left my own maid at home, and the post would not be permanent, but it would give you time to look around for something else.’

  The girl was speechless, but the look of gratitude and the smile in her eyes were a good enough answer.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Mary, miss. Mary Harding,’ she managed.

  ‘I’m Miss Collins, this is my cousin Lady Hodder, and her maid Susan. Get in, the way’s clear now.’

  Susan looked resentful as she was forced to move along the seat to make room for Mary, but one look from Bella made her bite back the protest she’d been about to make. She gathered up Jane’s jewelry box and a couple of shawls which had been on the seat beside her, and nursed them on her lap. Mary sat beside her, muttered a shy ‘thank you’, and tried to make herself as small as possible in the corner.

  Bella sat in silence for the next hour. She had realized that Susan could not be expected to look after all her clothes as well as Jane’s. She’d decided to find a maid once they reached Bath, but if Mary proved capable this would save her the trouble.

  She began to question Mary, and discovered that the girl had worked for three years for the old lady who’d died, and before that had been apprenticed to a Cheltenham milliner. Mary handed her the letter, which praised her for her skill in sewing, and her patience.

  ‘We’ll try it for two weeks,’ Bella said briskly.

  ‘Oh, Miss Collins, I’m so grateful!’

  ‘Well, you’re just what I’m looking for, and we couldn’t have let those despicable fools abduct you.’

  Mary shuddered, and said no more, but looked eagerly out of the window at the villages they passed through. Bella knew Jane was itching to talk, both to demand an explanation of the pistol, now safely stowed away in Bella’s capacious reticule, and discuss the wisdom of taking in an unknown girl as her personal maid.

  Jane would have to wait until they could be private, until they reached the house which Bates had found.

  * * * *

  ‘She beat you to it, old man,’ one fashionably dressed gentleman said to another as they entered the tap room.

  ‘I wonder if she would have fired it?’ Lord Dorney gave a crack of laughter. ‘That jackanapes thought so, in any event!’

  ‘Your face was a picture, Richard! You’d started across to intervene when she did it for you.’

  ‘And probably far more effectively. You and I, Dan, would have been hard put if all half dozen of ‘em had joined in.’

  Sir Daniel laughed. ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about possible black eyes. Who’d have thought that dab of a girl had so much spirit.’

  Lord Dorney nodded, and turned his attention towards ordering the best the inn could provide.

  Sir Daniel was talking about his report to the Foreign Office, but Lord Dorney’s mind kept wandering back to the scene in the inn yard.

  He’d noticed the girl and her older companion while they’d been talking to the ostler, arranging for a change of horses. He tried to recall how she looked, but could remember only that her hair was dark, her eyes huge, and her figure plump but shapely.

  ‘I wonder if we’ll meet them again?’ he said suddenly.

  Sir Daniel glanced across at him and grinned. ‘I don’t believe that such a chit who had no looks to recommend her has caught your attention. Richard, Lord Dorney, the despair of countless mamas, the cause of innumerable languishing glances from all the debs, with the pick of them all for years, but so difficult to please, has found Cupid’s dart at last!’

  ‘Don’t be an ass! But I’ll wager none of this year’s crop of hopefuls would have had the nerve to do what she did.’

  ‘None of them would have possessed a pistol, let alone known how to use it. Are they an insipid lot, this year? Is that another reason why you left London so early in the Season? Apart from selling Fellside?’

  Lord Dorney shrugged. ‘It bores me, but I have to go sometimes. And I’ve no desire to wed. Besides, until I’ve brought Dorney Court back to decency I have to retrench. I can’t afford a wife.’

  ‘A girl like that might be an asset to you. She’d see off any creditors.’

  ‘My situation’s not quite as dire as that. After the experiences of my father and Robert at the hands of duns I’ve no intention of getting into their clutches. That’s why the work at Dorney Court has to go more slowly than I’d like. The farms, in any event, are in better shape now, and the rents will improve next year. But I still wonder if she would have shot him, or whether she was bluffing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to have called her bluff! Well, if she’s bound for Bath no doubt you’ll meet her somewhere. I wish I was staying to watch, instead of paying this duty visit to my sister on the way to London. You’ll come to me when you’ve finished with young Alex and his inamorata?’

  Lord Dorney raised his glass to Sir Daniel. ‘I’m wondering if his ardour will have cooled by now. He’s not been very constant in the past, fancying himself in love with a dozen chits. But this is the first time he’s asked me to approve of one.’

  ‘It must be serious! So our ways part here.’

  ‘Not for long. I doubt I’ll be in Bath more than a week. My felicitations to your sister, and we’ll meet again when I reach London. Then I will tell you what, if anything, happens in Bath!’

  ‘And if you happen to meet that intrepid young lady! In some ways, I wish I were able to come with you,’ Sir Daniel said, laughing. ‘I’d like to know more about her.’

  Chapter 3

  ‘Where on earth did you get that pistol?’ Jane demanded as soon as the drawing room door had closed behind Bates, who had stayed to settle them into the house he’d hired.

  ‘I’ve had it for years,’ Bella said. ‘I never travel without it, but I’ve never had to use it before.’

  ‘Would you have shot him, really?’

  ‘Of course. What would be the use of threatening if I didn’t intend to carry out my threat? In some ways I’m sorry he was such a poltroon! He deserved to be shot!’

  Jane closed her eyes. ‘First you embroil me in this mad escapade, Miss Isabella Collins, and then you almost shoot someone!’

  Bella strolled across to the window which looked out over Sydney Gardens.

  ‘This really is a perfect position, with the gardens on our doorstep. You know, I’m not sure I like the name Collins. It’s not aristocratic enough. Perhaps I should have chosen something that hinted at ducal connections.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have been content with your own name,’ Jane almost snapped.

  ‘It’s too well known, after all that fuss when Uncle Peter died. There was so much speculation about how many fabulous jewels and other treasures he’d brought home from India, everyone must have heard about Nabob Trahearne, and those country yokels in Harrogate certainly knew I’d inherited his fortune. But I kept as close to Bella as I could.’

  Jane sighed. ‘I think I was mad to agree to this masquerade.’

  ‘No, darling Jane, you were kind and sympathetic, you want me to marry someone who appreciates me for myself, not for my fortune.’

  ‘Heaven help the poor man, whoever he might be!’

  * * * *

  Bates had hired this house in Henrietta Street, saying severely that it was better to be in a quieter part, away from the hurly burly of the town centre.

  ‘But it’s rather far from the Pump Room,’ Jane commented. She had visited Bath once before, with an elderly aunt.

  ‘Ye’ll have to take a chair, then, and not try walking,’ Bates replied
uncompromisingly. ‘Better for you than being kept awake with people walking past all night long.’

  Jane knew better than to argue. They were country girls, used to walking, and Bates was departing on the stage early the following day, much against his will. He would be unable to complain.

  ‘I’ve arranged for the butler, cook, maid and groom to be here this afternoon for you to approve,’ he said now. ‘Though why you couldn’t bring your own servants instead of leaving ‘em eating their heads off at home I don’t know.’

  ‘They can be occupied with a thorough spring cleaning, much easier with me out of the way,’ Jane said briskly. ‘Besides, I’m here for only a few weeks before going to London.’

  ‘He’ll have told them your real name,’ Jane said worriedly later as they waited for the new servants to arrive for inspection. ‘I’ve only just thought of that.’

  ‘Then we say your cousin was unable to come, so your husband’s cousin came instead.’

  Jane laughed. ‘I think, despite everything, I’m beginning to enjoy this. I feel utterly irresponsible. Now how much a year are you supposed to have?’

  ‘Don’t say a precise amount. Do you think if we hint at about a thousand it will be enough, but not too much to attract the sharks?’

  ‘That’s about right, I suppose,’ Jane agreed.

  ‘Good, Now tomorrow morning I want to go shopping. I feel dowdy, and I suddenly don’t like the clothes I took to Harrogate. They remind me of things I intend to forget!’

  Bates, as Jane had known he would, had chosen eminently suitable servants. Mrs Dawes was a rotund, motherly cook with a round face, bright eyes and clear complexion. She looked capable of endless chatter, but replied only to the questions asked. The butler was her husband, tall and thin, quiet but obviously experienced and reliable. The maid, Lizy, was older than Jane would have liked, but was a friend who had worked in the same house with them before. Jackson, a small man who had once been a jockey, would look after the horses and drive the coach she intended to hire.

  ‘We usually work each year for old Lady Sommerton,’ Mrs Dawes explained. ‘But she died last month, poor lady, and her daughter decided not to come this year, so we had to look for another place rather sudden.’