Marrying Harriet (2 page)

Harriet screwed up her eyes and pecked Lady Owen on the cheek, recoiling slightly as one of those horrendous eyebrows brushed her face. ‘If I ever have eyebrows like that, I shall
shave
them,’ thought Harriet Brown, unaware that that was one of the first worldly thoughts that had entered her head. She was usually firmly of the belief that to embellish one’s appearance was flying in the face of God.

She climbed into the coach, but by the time it moved off, Lady Owen had turned and walked back indoors.

The weather was chilly and she was glad, on reaching the coaching inn at York, to find that Lady Owen had booked an inside seat for her. Harriet had heard stories of wild young men who rode the mail coaches, often bribing the coachman to take the ribbons and terrorizing the passengers. But the other passengers looked very sedate. There was an elderly doctor, his wife, a vicar and a young, fashionably dressed matron and a wide-eyed little boy. Harriet smiled on the little boy, who stuck out his tongue at her when no one else was looking. Harriet glared at him awfully and turned her attention to the bustle in the inn-yard.

The minster clock boomed out six o’clock and the coach moved off. Harriet had never travelled at such speed before. She found it exhilarating. She felt like dancing and singing and wondered what had come over her. After some time, when darkness fell, she became used to the speed and fell asleep. She slept in fits and starts through the night and came fully awake as a red dawn broke on the horizon and they slowed their headlong pace to stop at an inn where they were to have breakfast.

As was the custom, the insiders were fed first and then the outsiders, that is, the people travelling on the roof of the coach.

Harriet was just finishing her breakfast when the child, Jeremy, who was travelling in the coach and whom Harriet had damned as rude and spoilt, burst into the coffee room of the inn, tears running down his face.

‘Cat uppa tree,’ he gasped. ‘Got to save kitty.’

‘Now, now, Jeremy,’ said his mother. ‘Cats can get down from trees all by themselves.’

The passengers, who were all heartily sick of Jeremy, averted their gaze.

‘It’ll die,’ screamed Jeremy, punching his mother with his small fists.

His mother, a Mrs Oakes, looked plaintively round at the other passengers. ‘Perhaps some gentleman . . . ?’ she said weakly.

But the gentlemen continued eating and ignored her. Jeremy’s screams were ear-splitting.

Harriet threw down her napkin and got to her feet. ‘Stop that noise,’ she said firmly to Jeremy. ‘It will do nothing to help the cat. Take me out and show me where it is.’

Jeremy stopped screaming and seized her hand and all but dragged her from the inn.

At the bottom of the inn garden was a tall pine tree, a very tall pine tree. And right at the top was the figure of a cat. It mewed dismally.

Harriet looked up at the tree. It was tall and straight, with no lower branches to hold on to. ‘There is no one among the passengers agile enough to get up there,’ she said. ‘Come back to the inn with me, Jeremy, and I shall try to see if one of the servants will go for us.’

But the servants refused to budge and the landlord said crossly he was too busy to allow any of them to waste time rescuing a mere cat.

Jeremy fell on the floor and began to drum his heels. Mrs Oakes began to cry. ‘Oh, Miss Brown,’ she sobbed. ‘He will do himself a mischief.’

Harriet looked about her desperately and then, in the dark shadows of the coffee room, she saw the figure of a man lying on a settle.

She walked over and looked down at him.

He was fast asleep, his hat tilted over his eyes, his gleaming Hessian boots crossed at the ankles. His dress was tailored to perfection and his cravat was like sculptured snow. Normally, Harriet might have felt a little intimidated before such an indolent Exquisite, but she noted from his clothes that he was a gentleman and gentlemen were supposed to be knights errant.

She put her hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle shake.

His heavy eyelids raised and a pair of eyes as green as those of a cat looked sleepily up at her.

‘Sir,’ said Harriet, ‘there is a cat trapped high up in a tree. This child’ – she indicated the screaming Jeremy – ‘is getting himself into a passion of worry and fright. Can you help?’

He swung his long legs down from the settle and stood up and swept off his hat. ‘Marsham,’ he said. ‘Lord Charles Marsham, at your service, ma’am.’

‘And I am Miss Harriet Brown, How d’ye do,’ said Harriet, holding out her hand.

To her embarrassment, he lifted her hand to his lips and smiled down at her. He would have been a very handsome man had not his face been marred by a sleepy, dissipated look. His voice was light and drawling.

Harriet looked at him doubtfully. This fribble could surely hardly climb onto a stool, let alone up a pine tree.

‘My lord, on second thoughts, perhaps the child should not be indulged. It is only a cat.’

‘Lead the way, Miss Brown. Won’t do any harm to look at the creature.’

Harriet walked out of the inn, followed by Lord Charles and a strangely silent Jeremy. Harriet did not know that in passing Lord Charles had hauled Jeremy to his feet and cuffed him smartly around the ears.

Lord Charles stood under the pine tree. He pushed his curly brimmed beaver back on his golden curls and looked up. Then he winced and clutched his head.

‘Port,’ he said weakly. ‘Too much, demme.’

‘Please do not trouble yourself,’ pleaded Harriet.

‘Not at all, Miss Brown. If you will be so good as to hold my hat and coat and look after my boots.’ He took off his coat and brushed it down with his hand in a finicky, absorbed way that aroused Harriet’s contempt. Then he sat down on a mounting block and tenderly pulled off his boots. ‘Do be sure you do not get fingerprints all over them,’ he said. ‘Just leave them on the ground.’ He balanced his hat on top of them. Then, after what seemed a long and silent deliberation, he removed his wristbands and waistcoat and handed those to Harriet as well.

He walked to the tree and began to climb. Harriet watched in awe. He moved up the tree slowly and easily. Jeremy stood silently, holding on to a fold of her skirt.

One by one the passengers joined Harriet, and then the inn servants. Soon bets were being laid as to whether he could make it or not.

Lord Charles finally reached the cat. It was an ill-favoured-looking striped tabby with eyes as green as his own. It looked half-starved.

He seized it by the scruff of the neck and calmly began his descent, one-handed, gripping the thin trunk of the tree with his legs.

He ignored the noisy cheering as he reached the ground. He handed the cat to Harriet and looked dismally down at the wreck of his pantaloons.

‘My best pair,’ he said sadly.

‘Thank you, my lord.’ Harriet held out the cat to him. ‘We must be on our way.’

‘I don’t want the cat,’ said Lord Charles. ‘Take the damn thing away and drown it.’

‘My lord, you have done a noble deed. Do not spoil it with indifference and profane language,’ said Miss Harriet Brown severely. She put the cat on the ground and marched off to the coach. The other passengers followed her.

Jeremy, like all spoilt brats, having successfully caused a fuss and put everyone to a great deal of trouble, fell happily asleep.

The coach lurched and then gathered speed. The last glimpse Harriet had of Lord Charles Marsham was of him standing holding his coat and looking at the cat. He appeared to be lecturing it.

He was.

‘You are a prime bit of flea-ridden trouble, demned if you ain’t,’ said Lord Charles severely.

The shabby cat miaowed plaintively.

Lord Charles put on his boots and picked up his clothes and made his way back to the inn. The cat followed him. He went into the coffee room and called for a pot of black coffee, muttering that his head felt like the deuce.

The landlord himself came oiling forward with the coffee and cup on a tray, along with a saucer of milk and a dish of fish scraps.

‘Little something for your cat, my lord,’ said the landlord.

‘It isn’t my cat,’ complained Lord Charles. The cat had leaped up onto a chair next to him and was regarding him with a steady, unwinking green gaze. ‘Oh, very well, feed the brute,’ sighed Lord Charles. ‘Where was that Miss Brown travelling?’

‘London, my lord.’

‘To judge from her dress, it is hardly likely I shall meet her again. She is probably only stopping over in London before travelling on to convert the heathen and make their lives a misery. Now, I like females to be soft and pretty. Not hard-eyed reformers who make me climb trees after poxy cats. Demme, she smelled of churches and good works. Frightful female.’

‘Will you be travelling on today to London yourself, my lord?’ asked the landlord.

‘Yes, when I am recovered.’

The landlord moved off. From the doorway, he turned and said, ‘I’ll just find you a basket for your cat, my lord.’ And then he was gone.

‘Odd’s fish!’ drawled Lord Charles Marsham. ‘Take you to London, you mangy brute! How would you like to see the bottom of the Thames with a stone tied around your neck, hey?’

The cat jumped on his lap, kneaded its claws into the ruin of his trousers, and began to purr.

While Harriet was reaching the last stage of her journey to London, Amy and Effy Tribble were taking tea at their friend Mrs Marriot’s with several other ladies who were hopeful of securing husbands for their daughters or relatives at the Little Season.

‘Bit thin on the ground, ain’t it?’ said Amy Tribble as the ladies passed a list of eligibles from hand to hand. She and her twin sister Effy hoped for another triumph. Although it was they who had arranged the elopement for the Duke of Berham and Maria Kendall, society did not believe them. Mrs Marriot’s eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘You have not heard my news,’ she said. ‘There is one gentleman not listed. Very eligible.’

‘Who is he?’ demanded a chorus of voices, and pencils were posed over pads of paper.

‘Lord Charles Marsham, younger son of the Duke of Hambleshire.’

The pencils remained poised. ‘It is fine that he is a duke’s son,’ pointed out Effy Tribble, ‘but younger sons do not have much of the ready and our new charge has only a small dowry.’

‘Ah, but that’s the point,’ said Mrs Marriot eagerly. ‘He
is
rich. Very. He is a friend of Rothschild and he took his prize money from the Peninsular Wars and invested it on the Stock Exchange very cleverly, for you see Rothschild tipped him off about the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. Everyone else thought the Duke of Wellington had lost and they were selling stock like anything and it’s my belief Rothschild cleverly spread the rumour of a defeat while having his own messenger right on the battlefield so he would know the outcome before anyone else.’

‘And why was this Lord Charles not on the battlefield himself?’ demanded Amy.

‘He was grievously ill after . . . oh, one of those battles. He had a sabre thrust right through him and everyone thought he would die. But ’tis said the great Duke of Wellington himself declared that Marsham had more lives than a cat, and so it was proved, for he rallied amazingly. He has been visiting his father in Yorkshire and is returning to London very shortly.’

‘Is he old?’ asked Effy.

‘In his thirties, but very handsome.’

‘And why have we not seen him before?’ demanded a small, plump matron who was fretting over the fact that her daughter had not ‘taken’ during the last Season.

‘He was recovering from his wound, then he was busy making money, and then he seemed hell-bent on killing himself with dissipation, which meant if he was not riding in some race fit to break his neck, he was drinking himself nigh to death with a lot of villains in Tothill Fields.’

Amy Tribble sighed and closed her notebook without bothering to write down Lord Charles’s name.

‘Don’t like the sound of him,’ she said roundly.

‘Oh, but he is the best catch there is,’ said Mrs Marriot. ‘Is your new charge beautiful?’

‘Doubt it,’ said Amy gloomily. ‘Daughter of a Methody. Long in the tooth. Twenty-five, I gather.’

‘Well,’ said the plump matron with a malicious giggle, ‘it will be pleasant to see the pair of you take a back seat while one of us gets the chance to snatch the prize.’

‘Sometimes I wonder about the morality of what we’re doing,’ said Amy Tribble to her sister, Effy, as their carriage later bore them towards the City to meet Harriet, who was arriving on the mail coach. ‘There they all were, describing some rake as the catch of the Season. A man in his thirties and not married, hardened by wars and dissipation and no doubt riddled with the pox.’

‘Amy!’

‘Stands to reason. If he’s been with whores, he’s got whores’ disease.’

‘Amy, may I remind you it is a minister’s daughter we are to refine? Mrs Marriot did not talk about whores.’

‘Any man who drinks blue ruin in Tothill Fields has been with whores,’ said Amy with gloomy satisfaction. ‘Can’t hope for much success with this one. Let’s see what she looks like.’

Harriet was pleasantly surprised when she met the Tribbles. They were disappointed in her. Her chin was too strong, her mouth too generous, and her gaze too direct.

Harriet thought Effy Tribble, with her delicate features, cloud of silver hair and pretty clothes, a very dainty lady indeed, and tall Amy, with her sad horselike face, a plain but respectable spinster.

Both sisters forbore from commenting on Harriet’s dress. There would be time enough to persuade her that half mourning was suitable enough and there was no reason to go around dressed in black.

Amy pointed out various sights as the carriage rattled along. Harriet shrank back a little. The noise was tremendous. Hawkers were calling their wares; drivers were fighting with drivers as they tried to manoeuvre their coaches through the press. A thin fog was veiling the streets. London was hardly ever free from fog in the autumn and winter months, said Amy. That, thought Harriet, must account for the unnatural pallor of the faces of the people in the streets. Even the children of the poor in Scarborough had rosy cheeks.