Jack Chiltern's Wife (1999) (4 page)

I
f he stopped to think, Edward might guess what was in her mind, Kitty thought, as she climbed into bed that night, having first taken the precaution of hooking a chair back under the door knob, but it might not come to him until it was too late. And he might remain silent, not wanting to implicate himself.

He returned the following morning just as she was finishing a frugal breakfast in her room after a sleepless night. He was accompanied by her maid. Judith Sadler was a woman of middle years, almost as round as she was tall, with reddened cheeks and small blue eyes which easily sprang tears, as they were doing now, as they embraced.

‘Oh, Kitty, my love, what have you done?’ she cried. ‘Your uncle is silent and white-faced and your stepmama is screaming at him what an ungrateful wretch you are. They would have it that I knew aforehand what you were going to do and the mistress bade the Reverend beat it out of me. They could not believe I did not know where you were, nor couldn’t I believe it myself. How could you break my poor heart so?’

‘I am truly sorry, Judith, but you might have stopped me—’

‘For sure, I would.’

‘But you came when I sent for you?’

‘And why would I not? If ever you needed a body’s help it is now, and who else but me could you trust?’

‘No one, dear Judith,’ Kitty said, looking over the grey head at Edward. ‘Was it very difficult?’

He smiled, turning his hat in his hand, anxious to be gone. ‘I paid a young girl to call on the rectory and say Judith was needed urgently by her sister who was ill and needed someone to look after her children until she recovered.’

‘But Uncle William knows Judith has no sister.’

‘Mistress didn’t know it and the Rector was out,’ the maid said. ‘She was glad enough to let me go.’

‘Thank you, Edward,’ Kitty said.

‘My pleasure,’ he said, though he looked far from pleased.

‘What about that other matter?’ she asked, hoping that, in fetching Judith to her, he had not forgotten about the money.

He put a small purse of gold coins and some paper money on the table beside her empty coffee cup. ‘I managed to call in a few debts and borrow some more, but I wish I knew what you were going to do. The Reverend is sure to think of me before long and then what shall I say?’

‘Nothing. I have written to him again, trying to explain why I have done what I have done. I pray he will understand and forgive me. Will you see that it is delivered to him tomorrow, after mid-day?’

‘Why not today?’

‘Because I don’t want him to stop me.’

‘He will say that I should have stopped you. And he would be right. I don’t like it, Kitty, not above half I don’t.’

‘You can have the letter delivered anonymously; he need not know you were involved at all. I told you, you can act the jilted suitor.’

‘I shall look a fool.’

‘No, everyone will say what a lucky escape you had.’ She took his hands in both her own. ‘I am truly grateful, Edward. I could not have managed without you.’

He laughed. ‘Blackmail is a very strong weapon, my dear. I had no choice.’

‘You had, but I am glad you did not take it.’

‘Goodbye, my dear, and good luck.’ He kissed her lightly on the cheek and left.

Kitty turned to Judith, who stood in the middle of the room with a small travelling bag and a basket at her feet. The poor woman looked pale and worried to death, but she was, above all else, loyal to Kitty and would follow her and look after her through thick and thin, fire and water.

‘Fact is, Miss Kitty, I ain’t exac’ly sorry to be leaving the rectory. Not that I would have left while you needed me—your poor dead mother asked me to look after you and look after you I will. I suppose that’s why your stepmama never did take to me. She would have turned me off the minute you were married.’

‘You goose, Judith, I would have taken you with me. Which is what I am doing now. You will come, won’t you?’

‘I couldn’t have borne it if you had asked someone else to look after you.’

‘You aren’t going to try and tempt me to go back then?’

‘Would it serve?’

‘No, it would not.’

‘Then I shan’t waste my breath.’

‘Thank you, Judith. You know I was very desolate and frightened, but now you are here, I feel so much better.’

‘I took the liberty of bringing some more of your things,’ Judith said. ‘I thought you might be going somewhere a mite warmer.’

She heaved the basket onto the bed and opened it to reveal two lightweight gowns, one in green silk, the other blue muslin,
a thin lawn petticoat, shoes and a pelisse, as well as a carriage dress in brown taffeta for travelling and a flannel petticoat to wear in the January weather then prevailing and which they would not leave behind for some days.

‘What made you think that?’

‘You left Master James’s letter lying on your bed.’

‘Did anyone else see it?’

‘No, Miss Kitty, I put it in the basket and brought it with me.’

‘Oh, now you are here I feel quite cheerful again, so you may take that sorrowful look off your face and smile. We are going to have some high old adventures, you and I, and we are going to enjoy them. Can you imagine James’s face when he sees us?’

Judith could not. That meeting was so far in the future that even thinking about what might happen in the mean time filled her with foreboding. But she smiled and began repacking the basket and Kitty’s valise.

It was four o’clock the following morning when the two women arrived in Dover after travelling in a public coach since seven the previous evening. They were cold, tired and hungry, not to mention filthy.

‘We must bespeak a private room here,’ Judith said, as they climbed stiffly from the carriage. ‘For I declare I can’t go a step further until I have washed, eaten and slept.’

Kitty, who had quite regained her spirits, laughed. ‘It is less than twenty-four hours since you left home and already you are complaining.’

‘I am not complaining,’ Judith denied the accusation sharply. It would never do for her mistress to think she was not up to the rigours of the journey or she might be left behind. Already she had had her own way about crossing the channel by the shortest route, having a great terror of the sea.

She would rather face revolution in France than be drowned trying to sail round it, she had told Kitty. Adding that, if she
were sick, how could she look after her darling? And that, she declared, was the one purpose of her life, to look after her charge and protect her from all the dangers that faced them, from lascivious sailors and Frenchmen who would chop off her head, to bad food and bed bugs.

‘Very well, we will stop here for a few hours, but then we must go to the harbour and find out when the next packet is due to leave, for I mean to be on it.’

‘And what story do we put about for a lady and her maid to be travelling alone without so much as a linkboy for an escort?’ Judith demanded, as she picked up Kitty’s luggage and followed her into the inn. ‘Everyone will know at once that you are running away.’

‘I am not running away. I have just lost my parents and am going to Italy to join my brother, he being the only relative I have left in the world. It is as near the truth as makes no difference.’

‘Your poor uncle would not think it so.’

‘No, but when we reach Calais, I shall entrust the captain of the packetboat with another letter to him, so that his mind is set at rest.’

It was Judith’s opinion that a letter from the other side of the Channel was more likely to inflame the Rector’s mind than set it at rest, but she did not voice it.

Picking up their luggage, Judith followed her mistress into the inn and demanded a room in a way which brooked no argument. They were soon ensconced in an upper chamber, enjoying a meal of chicken, ham, meat pie, fish and vegetables. What they could not eat they wrapped up and put in their baggage against a future need, not knowing how well provisioned the ship would be, or how difficult it might be to buy food in France. And then they lay down to sleep.

Kitty was woken three hours later by the clatter in the yard outside their window which told her another day had begun.

She padded across the floor to look out of the casement and saw, in the growing light of dawn, that a coach had just arrived from London and its passengers were alighting. There were two portly men in frieze greatcoats and buff breeches and a tall man with dark hair tied back with a black ribbon who was, at that moment, doffing his hat in goodbye to a clerical-looking gentleman and his plump lady.

At first Kitty thought it was her uncle and stepmama come to fetch her back. However, on looking closer realised this was not so, but it served to remind her of the need for haste and she quickly roused Judith; fifteen minutes later they were out on the street and making their way down to the harbour.

They had the hoods of their cloaks up over their heads against the bitter, sleet-laden wind which blew from the north-east, numbing their fingers and toes. But it was a good wind for sailing and they hurried to the quay where they saw a schooner preparing for sea. People were coming and going from it and the sailors were busy on the deck. Kitty left Judith minding their baggage while she went to the ticket office and paid for their passage, then urged the reluctant Judith up the gangplank of the
Faery Queen
.

They were directed below decks to a small dingy cabin which, so they were told by the crewman who conducted them there, was usually occupied by several ladies. ‘But you have it all to yourselves,’ he said, depositing their baggage on the floor. ‘This not bein’ the season for travelling, so cold and wet as it is, and what with the Frenchies as like to chop your head off as not. If I was you I should turn right round and go ashore ag’in.’

They could not have taken his advice even if they had wanted to because, at that moment, there was a great crack above their
heads as the wind filled the sails and the deck beneath their feet began to tremble.

‘Oh, God be merciful, we’re sinking!’ Judith exclaimed, clutching at Kitty.

The sailor smiled. ‘Bless you, we ain’t sinking, we’re under way, as smooth as you please.’ And with that he left them to go about his duties.

‘Shall we go on deck and say goodbye to England?’ Kitty suggested. ‘I am sure you will feel better if you can see what is happening.’

They returned to the deck, holding on to superstructure, posts and rigging, anything to help them keep their balance, until they were standing side by side at the rail, watching as the ship slowly made its way out of the shelter of the harbour.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t my little runaway.’

Kitty whirled round to face the man who had spoken, the man with whom she had shared a cab little more than forty-eight hours previously, the man she had seen getting out of a coach at the inn. She had been so intent on the clerical gentleman, she had not recognised him then.

‘You!’

He doffed his tall hat with its narrow curly brim and executed a mannerly leg as steadily as if they had been in a London drawing room and not on a heaving deck. He was smiling. ‘As you see! Jack Chiltern at your service, ma’am.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, unaccountably pleased to see him. He was solidly real in a shifting world; someone from England. How did he know she would be on the packet? Had she let her intentions slip when talking to him in the coach? ‘Have you been following me?’

He smiled lazily. ‘Why should I do that?’

‘To take me back.’

‘If that were so, I would surely have made a move before we set sail. I can hardly swim ashore with you. My presence on this ship is pure coincidence, I promise you.’

‘Oh.’ She turned from him to look at the receding coastline as the ship met the open sea and began to pitch and roll. The unexpected movement flung her towards him. He caught her and steadied her, holding her just a fraction longer than was proper before releasing her.

‘But I am curious,’ he went on, deliberately setting aside the pleasure her small body next to his had given him. ‘Tell me, Kitty, what is so objectionable about Edward Lampeter that you cannot abide being in the same kingdom with him and must flee the country?’

She gasped. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘Lampeter murmured it when he required me to give a description of the person who commanded his presence so early in the morning. He said he would not stir for any little bit of muslin who might opportune him; his words, not mine, I add. It was not until he had been convinced of your identity that he agreed to go to you.’ He sighed melodramatically. ‘I am only sorry that it was to so little purpose.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why, that you did not come to an understanding. I should have thought a life with him would be infinitely preferable to the course you have chosen. Or perhaps he did not offer?’

‘Sir, you know nothing of it but what I was so foolish as to confide in you. Pray forget it.’

‘With pleasure, ma’am. I have more important things to occupy me than a madcap girl who does not seem to realise she is jumping from the frying pan into the fire.’

‘Nonsense!’ she said with some asperity. She did not know why she continued to converse with him, he was so arrogant and not at all civil, but he had the kind of presence you could not ignore and, if she were honest, she felt a little safer with
him beside her. ‘I know there is some unrest in Paris, but we mean to bypass the city—’

‘You call the bloodiest deed ever to disgrace the name of France
some unrest
!’ he interrupted. ‘Less than a week ago, they sent their King to the guillotine. Pray, tell me where have you been hiding yourself that something which has cast a cloud over the whole of Europe should be of so little import to you? Do they not have newspapers in your part of the country?’

She was shocked by the news but quickly recovered herself. ‘Naturally they do, but I rarely see them. Uncle William thinks they are not fit reading for genteel young ladies. When he spoke of it, he said it would come to nothing; a people could not depose a king and right would prevail.’

‘And so you remain in blissful ignorance, which is no bad thing, except that you have taken it into your silly head to hurl yourself into the fray.’