Emily Goes to Exeter (13 page)

After Lord Harley had ordered the post-chaise and they were returning to the inn, Hannah could not bear it any longer and said impulsively, ‘I feel Miss
Freemantle’s parents had the right of it. You would make a very suitable couple.’

‘The difference in age and experience is too great,’ he said, his voice seeming to come from a great height.

‘But—’

‘Miss Freemantle does not love me, nor I her. Now let that be an end of the matter, Miss Pym.’

Hannah stroked the expensive material of her cloak, almost as if to reassure herself she was no longer a servant. He turned and faced her at the inn door. ‘I am grateful to you, Miss Pym,’ he said, ‘for all the help you have given, for all the meals you have cooked, and for your bravery and gallantry.’

Hannah looked up at him, bewildered at the sudden compliment. He smiled down at her and then stooped and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

It was a crying shame, thought Hannah, as he held open the inn door for her, that he could not, or would not, marry Emily Freemantle.

‘Please tell Miss Freemantle that we leave at six o’clock in the morning,’ said Lord Harley.

‘Would you not like to tell her yourself?’ suggested Hannah, faint but pursuing.

‘I see no need for that. Good night, Miss Pym.’

Emily was getting ready for bed when Hannah entered the Blue Room. ‘Lord Harley has hired a post-chaise and he will be ready to escort you to London at six o’clock in the morning,’ said Hannah.

‘Very well,’ said Emily in a quiet little voice. ‘As you can see, I have already packed. I suppose I had
better wear that woollen dress again. I am sick of the sight of it.’

‘Never mind,’ said Hannah. ‘You will soon be back with your parents.’

‘Yes.’ Emily looked bleak.

Hannah awoke at five o’clock and busied herself getting dressed and then roused Emily. Emily herself dressed very quickly and Hannah noticed the girl did not pay any particular attention to her appearance.

She followed Emily down to the dining-room. There was no sign of Lord Harley. The landlord served Emily with toast and tea and told her that Lord Harley was already outside and waiting.

Feeling very low and sad, Hannah followed Emily out of the inn. Emily stood with one little foot on the step of the post-chaise. Lord Harley, already mounted on a large black mare, was waiting alongside.

‘May I have your address in London, Miss Pym?’ asked Emily. ‘I would like to write to you.’

‘Of course. One moment.’ Hannah ran back into the inn and came out with a sheet of paper and a lead pencil. She tore the paper in half and wrote her address on one piece and then said, ‘And your address, Miss Freemantle?’

As Emily wrote it down, Hannah called up to Lord Harley. ‘And where might you be found, my lord?’

She waited anxiously for his reply, half expecting a snub. ‘St James’s Square,’ he said. ‘Number twenty-seven.’

Emily handed over her address and climbed into
the post-chaise. Hannah waved as the carriage drove off and then turned away sadly, for Emily had had tears in her eyes.

The coachman lumbered out and said he would be hitching up a team and would be obliged if Miss Pym could hurry the others up, as they had just started their breakfast.

But Hannah collected more sheets of paper and pen and ink from the taproom, where they had been left lying from the night before. She went into the Red Room and gently shook Mr Fletcher awake.

‘I need your help,’ she told the startled lawyer. ‘I have letters to write and do not have either the education or the necessary delicacy.’

Mrs Bradley was disappointed in Hannah Pym. The captain had not joined them. He had decided to stay at the inn and wait for the next coach back to London. Mrs Bradley and Hannah were therefore alone inside the coach as far as Salisbury, where they took up more passengers, but Miss Hannah Pym turned out to be a sadly silent companion. Even when they had to drive through a flood and the water came up as far as the windows, Hannah remained silent and morose.

But at Salisbury, Hannah asked the coachman where to find the mail coach, and on learning that it left the Angel, St Clement’s, at four, set off at a run. When she returned, Mrs Bradley found that Hannah was once more her talkative self and looking forward to the rest of the journey. On they went through towns and villages – Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Yeovil,
Crewkerne and Chard – and each mile they went, the weather got better and the road firmer.

But when the Exeter Fly crossed into Devon and the end of the journey was in sight, Hannah Pym grew nervous and restless again. At one point she said aloud, ‘Oh, what have I done? What have I done?’

‘Whatever do be plaguing you, m’dear?’ asked Mrs Bradley anxiously, but Hannah only shook her head and said mysteriously that she must have been mad.

And Mrs Bradley, who had been going to ask Hannah for her address, decided that she really was mad and changed her mind. For Hannah said she was returning to London by the next up coach and had only travelled to Exeter for ‘the experience’.

At the Old London Inn, Hannah sat by the window of the coffee room wondering what had become of Emily Freemantle and whether she would marry her Mr Williams, and whether her experiences at the inn had made any change in her character at all.

While Hannah was sitting brooding in Exeter, Emily had just returned from a drive in the Park with Mr Peregrine Williams. She felt restless and bored and suffocated. Her parents had welcomed her back with open arms and crying with remorse. If Mr Williams was what she wanted, then she should have him. Lord Harley had explained the dangers she had endured with such fortitude. To think they had driven her to that! And all the time Emily had a nagging feeling that she would have felt more at ease if they had berated her for her selfishness. She had told Miss Cudlipp all
about her adventures, but Miss Cudlipp had exclaimed in horror at everything and could not understand when Emily had tried to explain that some of the experiences had been fun.

Some new caution in her had made her tell her parents that it might be a sensible idea if she got to know Mr Peregrine Williams a little better before making any commitment and they gladly agreed.

And so she had.

But she could find nothing at all beneath the beautiful face to interest her. She was to make her come-out at the Season. She was to have the best of gowns and hats. It seemed as if her parents could not do enough for her, and Emily miserably felt she did not deserve any of it. At times, she thought of Hannah Pym and envied that lady her freedom. She did not think of Lord Ranger Harley. By a tremendous effort of will, she banished him from her mind. To think of him would be too painful. He had made her feel ugly and unwanted, and although her mirror and the doting Miss Cudlipp told her she was beautiful, she could no longer take any pleasure in her appearance.

‘Did Mr Freemantle give you your letter?’ asked her mother when Emily walked into the drawing-room.

‘No, Mama.’

‘It is over there, on the console table.’

Emily picked it up and looked at it curiously. There was a heavy red seal on it, but so mangled that she could not make out what it was supposed to represent. The paper was of quite poor quality, so it was
probably from Hannah Pym, not Lord Harley. But Hannah was a connection with all those great adventures. Emily opened it and scanned the page eagerly. A blush rose to her cheeks and she read it carefully again, almost unbelievingly.

‘Who is it from, dear?’ asked her mother.

‘Just some lady I met on the journey. I must go up to my room and take off my bonnet.’

Emily fairly ran up the stairs and into her room and locked the door. Then she sat down and looked at that precious letter again. It was not from Hannah. She had only said that until she had time to read and reread the letter. It was from Lord Harley.

Emily put down the letter. She felt such a glow of happiness and elation that she wanted to shout aloud.
But two whole days to wait. How could she contain herself until then?

Lord Harley at that time had just returned from riding in the Park. He had been blessed by a glimpse of Emily and her cavalier. He thought bitterly that they made a handsome pair and considered himself to have had a lucky escape. He seemed to spend most of his days telling himself how lucky he was to have escaped the clutches of the Freemantle family. He picked up the morning’s post, which he had not bothered to read earlier, and carried it into the library. He flicked through it, pausing when he came to a letter written on cheap paper. He opened it first and then sat looking at it in amazement.

A bewilderment of feelings and memories assailed him; Emily’s lips against his own, Emily in the barn, bravely climbing up to the skylight, Emily wilful, Emily humorous, Emily with those huge violet eyes
and glowing auburn curls. For a short moment, he felt quite dizzy with elation. Then he read the letter slowly again and that elation fizzled and died. He was all at once sure Emily had not written that letter. He turned it over and studied the frank. Salisbury. And Salisbury was on the road to Exeter and the travelling matchmaker had been on the road to Exeter. He threw the letter away from him and cursed loudly. He would find that crooked-nosed interfering spinster and wring her neck! She had probably sent the same kind of letter to Miss Freemantle and that gullible child would no doubt be waiting in St James’s Park on Friday, or would show the letter to her parents and ask them to tell him to leave her alone.

For the next two days, he buried himself in affairs of business, trying to put that trickster’s letter out of his mind. But by Friday morning, when he had heard nothing from Miss Freemantle, he realized that she had believed the letter she had no doubt got herself and planned to go to St James’s Park and keep that appointment.

The best thing he could do was to go himself and tell her gently that they had been tricked. She would no doubt be relieved.

It was a cold, frosty morning when he set out, driving his curricle. He reined in at the north end of the ice-covered canal, which was lined by rotting lime trees, and stood and waited, looking unseeingly at the red brick front of Buckingham House. Frost sparkled everywhere and it was bitter cold. Then he saw a hack approaching.

The hack stopped and Emily Freemantle climbed down and paid the coachman.

She was wearing her blue cloak and a very fashionable bonnet under which her short curls glowed in the sunlight.

As the hack plodded off she turned towards him, smiled shyly, and held out both her hands.

All his determination to tell her the letters were forgeries fled from his mind. He walked straight up to her and seized her hands and looked down into her face.

She stood there laughing and blushing and looking adorable.

He caught her in his arms and bent his head and kissed her and Emily kissed him back and it was all he had ever dreamt of. Senses reeling and deaf to the conventions and blind to the interested gaze of a park warden, they kissed and kissed with single-minded passion. At last he raised his head and smiled down at her. ‘Marry me,’ he said. ‘Very soon.’

‘How soon?’ demanded Emily.

‘As soon as we can. Let us go and tell your parents our news.’

Mr and Mrs Freemantle both cried with delight. Miss Cudlipp looked astounded and kept saying feebly, ‘But Mr Williams? Poor Mr Williams.’

But she was pulled from the room by Emily’s parents. The happy couple must be left alone for ten minutes to exchange their vows.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Lord Harley seized Emily in his arms and kissed her
breathless. ‘Can you bear to be married to such an old man?’ he said at last.

‘You are only thirty-two,’ said Emily.

‘I am more than that, my child. I am thirty-three.’

‘But you said in your letter—’

He silenced her with another kiss and then said, ‘Do you have that letter with you?’

‘Yes, it is here in my reticule.’

‘Let me see it.’

Emily took it out and handed it over. He read it and then began to laugh. ‘The cunning old trout,’ he said.

‘Who? Oh, what are you talking about?’

‘My love, I never wrote that letter and I knew as soon as I got one supposed to come from you that you had not written it either. If I am not mistaken, both letters were sent by the interfering Miss Hannah Pym.’

‘But … but …’ said Emily desperately. ‘You came and you said you loved me … You were joking!’

‘My darling, not I. I bless Miss Pym and all her interfering ways. Kiss me again!’

Emily looked up at him nervously. In that moment, he looked a stranger, a stranger with thick black hair and black eyes and richly dressed. Then he smiled at her and her heart did a somersault. She wound her arms tightly about him as she had done in her dream and raised her face to his.

Her parents stood nervously outside the door, listening to the long silence from within. At last they opened the door. The couple were so wrapped up in each other that they did not notice them. ‘Do
something,’ hissed Miss Cudlipp tearfully. ‘Poor innocent Emily!’