Miser of Mayfair (20 page)

Lord Harrington stayed where he was, stunned and shaken by conflicting emotions, watching the light glimmering and bobbing as she and Rainbird made their way downstairs. He heard the key turn in the street door. So he had not left it open. Rainbird must have found another way in. He turned and walked back to his room, opened the window, and leaned out so that he could watch her crossing the square.

‘Miss Fiona,’ Rainbird was saying urgently. ‘You look so white. Please tell me what happened.’

‘I cannot, Mr Rainbird,’ said Fiona. ‘I never want to think of it or remember it again.’

‘Your face is set and hard. You are become old,’ fretted Rainbird, studying her face in the pale grey light of approaching dawn. ‘Smile for Rainbird.’

Their voices carried clear up to the earl as he stood at the window of his bedchamber.

‘Did I ever tell you, Miss Fiona,’ coaxed Rainbird, ‘that I used to perform at fairs when I was a boy? How merry I was! And how I made them laugh. I would play the mandolin, like Joseph, and I would dance.’ He performed a mad, capering dance and then turned several cartwheels, doubling back to land neatly upright in front of Fiona. ‘Smile, Miss Fiona.’

‘Oh, Mr Rainbird,’ said Fiona, beginning to tremble. ‘I am lost.’ She threw herself into his arms and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Rainbird put an arm about her shoulders, and talking nonsense, coaxing and pleading, he led her out of the square.

The earl watched them until the two figures were swallowed up in the dark shadow cast by the black bulk of St George’s Church. Then the square swam in front of him, and he found his eyes were full of tears. He knew now she had spoken the truth, knew it in the very marrow of his bones. She had merely been looking for evidence that he had found out all about her.

To the devil with his lands and his title and his pride, he thought, striking his fist into his palm. He would call on Sinclair in the morning and beg for Fiona’s hand in marriage. He would
make
her marry him. No other woman would do.

But he had nearly raped her. Would he really have gone so far? He had frightened her and abused her. The words she had said to him on the stair tormented him.

He lay awake for a long time, tossing and turning, wondering at what time of day that old toper, Sinclair, would awake. At last he fell into an uneasy sleep and dreamed that he was trying to catch Fiona, who was always just in front of him among a colourful, shifting fairground crowd. Every time he nearly came up to her, she would dance away from him with Rainbird doing cartwheels at her side.

It ain’t the ’unting as ’urts ’un, it’s the ’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer along the ’ard ’igh road.

PUNCH

‘Why so fine, why so haggard, and why so early?’ asked Mr Toby Masters.

‘I am going courting, Toby my friend.’ The earl grinned. ‘In fact, congratulate me, although I fear that may be premature. I am going to beg Miss Sinclair to marry me. For that matter, what are you doing about so early yourself? It is only nine o’clock in the morning.’

‘As to that, it was about Miss Sinclair that I came to see you.’

‘Never say you are going to try for her yourself!’

‘No. Look, it’s like this.’ Mr Master’s fat face was creased with worry. ‘I couldn’t sleep. The heat was suffocating, so I decided to go for a ride in the park. I was coming back along Piccadilly about sevenish when a closed carriage went past me travelling at a great rate. Up on the box, muffled up to the ears despite the heat – that was why I noticed him – was Sir Edward Kirby.’

The earl’s heart began to hammer against his ribs. ‘And . . . ?’

‘And although the carriage blinds were down, as it drew abreast one of the blinds sprang up and there was Miss Fiona Sinclair.’

The earl sat down suddenly on a chair in the hall. Toby had come upon him just as he was leaving.

‘You see,’ said Mr Masters awkwardly, ‘it came across me at that ball that you were head over heels in love with the girl. I thought she had perhaps a tendre for you. But,’ burst out Mr Masters, turning red, ‘there’s that damn pride of yours. I began to think only a dowager duchess would be considered good enough for you. When I saw Miss Sinclair . . . she looked so pale and
hurt.
’

‘If I don’t get her back, if I don’t stop her,’ said the earl grimly, ‘I will never forgive myself.’ He jumped to his feet and shouted for his fastest racing curricle to be brought round. ‘I know they’ve gone to Gretna,’ he cried. ‘Or at least I’m sure that’s where Sir Edward has told Miss Sinclair they are going.’

‘I will come with you,’ said Mr Masters.

‘No, Toby. Go instead to Clarges Street and tell that butler, Rainbird, what you have seen. I swear neither her servants nor her . . . father know of this.’

Mr Masters hurried out and swung himself up on his horse with surprising ease, considering his bulk.

Rainbird heard him coming. It was unusual to hear someone riding hell for leather in the streets of the West End where none of the top ten thousand poked his nose out of doors until the afternoon. He did not know that, after he had seen the sobbing Fiona to her room, she had not slept, that she had waited until he had fallen into an exhausted sleep, and that she had crept from the house, carrying only one small trunk, and had made her way to Sir Edward Kirby’s lodgings in Jermyn Street.

Mr Masters was breathless and sweating. Words came tumbling out of his mouth one after the other and Rainbird had to plead with him to take it slowly. When Rainbird grasped that Mr Masters was saying that Fiona had eloped with Sir Edward, his shock was almost as great as the earl’s. He remembered how he had eventually managed to prise the whole story out of Fiona of what had happened in the Earl of Harrington’s house on that sad road home at dawn.

Rainbird had shaken his head dismally over the whole thing. It was quite clear to him that Miss Fiona was in love with the earl, but that the earl, like all the aristocrats that Rainbird had known, would never marry a girl with a doubtful background and would certainly never marry any young miss who had the temerity to break into his house in the small hours of the morning.

What if the earl had not known of Fiona’s background? What if there
was
no evidence? Then the earl would merely think her a common thief. To be found with your hands full of jewels and then say you had only been looking for papers – particularly if the earl did not have any such papers – looked very bad.

When he grasped from the heaving, sweating Mr Masters that the Earl of Harrington had been on his way to Clarges Street to beg Mr Sinclair to allow him to pay his addresses to Fiona, Rainbird’s heart gave a lurch. Fiona was somewhere on the Great North Road and everything that might have made her life happy had come too late.

‘We’ll catch ’em,’ said Rainbird. ‘Lord Harrington may miss them if Kirby goes off the main road. All of us will go and if . . . if Kirby’s done anything he should not, then he’ll be forced to take her to the nearest church and marry her.’

‘I-I d-do not have a carriage,’ stammered Mr Masters, backing before the fury in Rainbird’s eyes, although that fury was not directed to him.

‘We’ll hire one,’ said Rainbird. ‘I have money. We’ll get the best.’

Old Mr Sinclair snored upstairs in a drunken sleep as Number 67 Clarges Street roared into life. Soon servants from the adjoining houses turned out to watch the goings-on at Number 67.

First a big, fat gentleman – Mr Masters – arrived with a spanking open racing carriage, drawn by four matched bays. To the watchers’ surprise, all the servants from Number 67 began to pile in. ‘I’m not very good with a four-in-hand,’ panted Mr Masters, ‘and these tits are fresh.’

‘I am,’ said Rainbird curtly. He took the reins. Mr Masters sat beside him. In the back were Mrs Middleton, Alice, Jenny, Lizzie, and MacGregor – who was clutching a large blunderbuss. On the back strap stood Joseph and Dave.

‘Hold tight!’ called Rainbird. ‘I’m going to spring ’em.’

The watching servants sent up a ragged cheer as Mr Masters and the entire staff of Number 67 raced round the corner into Piccadilly. Mrs Middleton clutched her bonnet and let out a faint scream. Elated beyond words, Dave produced a yard of tin and blew a deafening blast.

‘Don’t go charging through the turnpikes,’ shouted Mr Masters, holding on to his hat with one hand and the side of the box with his other. ‘We’ll need to keep asking if anyone has seen them.’

Mr Percival Pardon crackled open the stiff parchment of a letter that had been brought into him with his morning chocolate.

It was from Sir Edward Kirby, he noticed from the seal. When was the man ever going to get on with it? Bessie Plumtree had discovered that a certain Mr Benham, who she was sure was smitten by her charms to the point of marriage, had up and proposed to Fiona Sinclair and had been turned down and now stated his intention of taking his broken heart out of the country. She had turned up at Mr Pardon’s the night before with her parents and had blamed him for doing nothing to stop Fiona from wrecking the hearts of all the eligible young men in London. Lady Disher, the sobbing Bessie had said, had promised them all that Mr Pardon would arrange things. Then Lady Disher had called on Mr Pardon, told him he was an idiot, and said that Sir Edward Kirby seemed to be falling in love with Fiona just like every other fool.

Mr Pardon scanned the note, and then a pleased smile crossed his face. He took off his chin strap the better to enjoy the pleasure of rereading the words. Success! That very morning, Sir Edward had written, Fiona Sinclair had called at his lodgings and
begged
him to elope with her. He would be back in town in a few days’ time to collect his reward before leaving for the Continent.

Mr Pardon sipped his chocolate contentedly. He would give an impromptu party in two days’ time. It would amuse him to invite all those who had been at that first dinner party at his home on the night of the storm, all those who were in London, that is. He would also invite Lady Disher and the gambling hostesses. He would wait until they were all gathered and then have the delight of telling them that he, Percival Pardon, had risen to Machiavellian heights. Fiona Sinclair was no longer a threat!

Rainbird wished he had brought more money. Each time they changed the horses, the price was more expensive because they demanded only the best from each posting house. It seemed odd that prices should rise the further one went away from London, but such seemed to be the case. He felt he had taken a considerable sum, but it seemed to be dwindling fast.

The light was turning to that greenish violet colour of twilight as the burning sun slowly slid down the sky to bury itself behind the parched fields.

Was there ever such heat! The trees, which would normally have been clothed in the delicate green foliage of spring, were dusty and heavy with their summer leaves. Roses as large as cabbages hung over the hedges of cottage gardens, appearing well before their time. Lines of smoke rose up into the suffocating air from fires at the side of the road set off by sparks from the wheels of the heavy traffic on the Great North Road.

They were all weary and tired. But at each turnpike, they learned they were hot on the trail and not only had Sir Edward Kirby been spotted but also Lord Harrington – ‘looking like the devil hisself ’ – had gone through ahead of them.

Sir Edward, who had hoped to disguise his appearance by muffling up, had on the contrary caused people to notice him who might not otherwise have done so. Only a mad-man would wear a muffler in this weather.

Lizzie sat silently praying for Fiona’s safekeeping. She was covered in dust. Her pretty new gown was dirty. It was actually of the cheapest cotton, but it had a little design of rosebuds round the hem. Mrs Middleton had sniffed and had said it was too saucy-looking for a scullery maid, but Rainbird had not only insisted that she have it, but had given her two more gowns as well.

Lizzie had been much comforted to learn that Lord Harrington was looking for Fiona. She had never seen him, but felt reassured by the thought that someone so high in rank would surely be a match for the likes of Sir Edward. But something else was making her feel uneasy. She had a feeling there was something they had not done that they should have done. The carriage lurched and swayed over the sun-baked ruts as Lizzie desperately tried to remember what it was.