The LadyShip (17 page)

“Ye’d best overnight in Oxford—should ye get as far as
that,” the landlord offered, spreading this repast out care
lessly in front of his guests and slapping a dented cannikin down at Ned’s elbow. “Weather’s bound to get worse arter
that—ye be headin’ north, ye understand.”

Ned thanked their host for this lesson in geography and sat staring gloomily into his cider while Clarissa downed
her meal and pronounced herself ready to go on.

Ned showed no such eagerness. “Do you not think, my
love, that we might turn back? We have not gone so far that
we cannot do so now—but if we proceed, there is no
knowing when, if ever, we may reach the border, and long
before that your reputation will be unretrievable.”

Clarissa assumed an indignant expression. “Are you not
to be trusted after all, Lieutenant? Will you compromise me
and then abandon me on the high road to the mercy of
footpads and cutthroats?”

“No, certainly not, you foolish girl. Why do you say such
a thing?”

“To show you that I have no apprehension about contin
uing—for you will have to abandon me indeed before I will
go back willingly. Furthermore, if you think I have waited
for you all this time, Ned Bennett, and gone through so
much deception and scheming, to give it all up for a bit of
snow and a few hours’ discomfort—never mind your idiot
ish talk about my reputation—let me tell you that you are sadly mistaken, sir!”

Ned reached out to press Clarissa’s hand and gazed lov
ingly into her eyes. “Has it been so hard for you, my sweet?
I’m so sorry.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” Clarissa said, lowering her
potent green eyes, with which she had expected to have to force her strong-willed lover to agree to her importunities.

Clarissa continued to be astonished at the power she had
over Ned without resorting to the fluttering lashes and coy
smiles with which she had been accustomed to getting her way with her suitors. Ned was not like the others; and although she adored him for that very reason, she found it a little frightening not knowing how to deal with his direct
and honest love for her.

“It is only that I do not want to wait any longer for you,”
she said, looking up again and matching his directness. Ned
drew a long breath, hesitated for a moment as if measuring
his resolution, and then rose and called their host for the
reckoning to keep from succumbing to temptation that
would surely delay them dangerously.

When, presently, Clarissa skipped happily outside to re
sume her perch on the chaise, she demonstrated her re
newed eagerness by regaling Ned with a number of ways to
coax her family around to accepting their marriage.

“How would it be if you were to rescue me from some
dire peril?” she said. “I shall have to think of one.”

“I should be very surprised if you could think up one to
account for my carrying you away from your home instead
of toward it and the loving arms of your family,” Ned said
unhelpfully.

“Well, then, what if I had been abducted by a black vil
lain, and you were obliged to follow us nearly to the border
before rescuing me from his clutches?”

“I wish you would ride inside again, Clarissa,” Ned said,
trying a different tack. “I really do think it may start to snow at any time.”

“Do you know,” Clarissa said, disregarding this attempt
to divert her thoughts, “there was once an elopement in
my family. It was a great scandal, so of course, no one speaks of it—no one but the servants, that is. I once over
heard my nurse discussing it with the housekeeper. It
sounded excessively romantic. He was my Uncle Richard’s
heir, you know—which is why there is no Marquess of Red
ding now—and she was a governess or a chambermaid, or
some such thing. They were terribly in love, but my uncle
threatened to cast him off—so they were obliged to run away to be married. So you see, it is not such a dreadful
thing to do!”

“What happened to them?”

“He died a hero’s death,” Clarissa said, in soulful accents.

“Well, I’m sorry the war’s over,” Ned said practically,
sensing that Clarissa might very well require such a sacrifice
from him if he allowed her to dwell on this fancy. “Not that
I wouldn’t have been willing to die a hero, but I’d much
rather live happily—and preferably safely—ever after.”

“Oh, how can you have so little sensibility!” Clarissa said crossly, lapsing into offended silence. This gave Ned an op
portunity, which he was foolish enough to take advantage
of, to try to persuade her of all the unwisdom of attempting
to hoax her family any more than they had already, and of
the advisability of being, on the contrary, as honest with them as possible—once they were married.

“They cannot very well cast you off,” he pointed out,
“but we can only hope to bring them around if we show
them that we are prepared for that possibility and willing to
risk it. We must not expect them to be quite pleased just at
first, of course, particularly since they believed you prom
ised to Mr Allingham—who, by the way, may be less than
pleased himself. I know you consider him not to be in love
with you, but perhaps you underestimate his understanding. Are you sure he is not the kind of man who would— well, raise a dust?”

The notion of Marcus Allingham’s demanding satisfac
tion for his humiliation and his tarnished honour gave Clarissa’s thoughts a momentary new diversion. But the
picture of her hero standing over Allingham’s lifeless
corpse on a lonely heath at dawn, a smoking pistol in his
hand, palled as quickly as it had materialised. She sighed.

As it happened, the snow held off for the remainder of
the afternoon, and although the temperature dropped
markedly, there was some brightening on the northern horizon. They drove straight through Oxford and stopped in
the northern outskirts of that city only to change horses at a
large, bustling inn where the ostlers were so busy that it
was several minutes before they could proceed—Clarissa
remaining bundled up meanwhile and pacing the yard in si
lence so as to give the impression of being only an impa
tient gentleman travelling companion to Ned. The presence
of a postboy seated on the near-side leader inhibited con
versation on the box, but proved necessary after a few
miles. The road soon became rougher and their pace
slower, and then, well before the next stage, the other
leader went lame.

Ned, silently cursing his own stupidity for not looking
the team over himself before taking it out of the inn, vocif
erously castigated the unfortunate postboy for the sins of
his employer in hiring unsound horses out to trusting clients. During the pause necessitated by inspection of the
damage, Clarissa, in a rare display of discretion, elected to
reassume her invalid disguise and retreated once again in
side the chaise, so that when they had arrived—at a much
slower pace, with the post-boy leading the lame horse—at
the next inn, little notice was taken of the veiled lady who
hobbled into the private parlour on the arm of her physi
cian. Even when, raising her hand expressively to her fore
head and requesting in failing accents a glass of clear tea and
perhaps a few cakes to restore her, she elicited no more
than a sympathetic smile from the landlady and the assurance of immediate service.

Unfortunately, Clarissa’s performance became reality when, the landlady having left her, she glanced into a mir
ror on the wall to discover that her little adventure in the open air of the perch with Ned had left her decidedly di
shevelled and dusty. Lacking her maid—Ned had wished to
bring her along, but had been dissuaded by Clarissa, who
had assured him that Peggy could not keep a secret for five
minutes, much less overnight—she was able to do little to
restore the damage and was so little satisfied by the results
of her efforts that her expression was decidedly woebegone when, a little later, Ned stomped into the parlour,
rubbing his bare hands together briskly. One glance at his
beloved informed him that she was in a very low mood, so
he remarked, also briskly, “Well, well—we shall do nicely now. The groom here’s a regular jaw-me-dead, but he
knows his job. We’ve got a fine team of strengthy beasts to
go on with, instead of those bone-setters we had.”

“I do wish you would not use that low army slang, Ed
ward,” Clarissa complained with a long-suffering sigh that
added unnecessary colour to her disguise—unnecessary
because no one else was there to appreciate it. “You know I haven’t a notion what they mean, but they sound dreadful.”

Ned knew better than to take this literally, but was
goaded into recommending that Clarissa cease enacting the
tragedy-queen for his benefit, for he would not be bamboo
zled as easily as the landlady had been. This injudicious
scolding naturally had the opposite effect than intended,
and Clarissa, sighing, assumed what Ned recognised as her
martyred look, for which, he likewise recognised, there
was no cure but time and flattery. Feeling not much up to the latter, he resigned himself to the former and assisted Clarissa gently back into the chaise—observed by one of
the ostlers who, when they had gone, went back to report to his lady employer that in spite of what the Red Lion’s
postboy had said, he reckoned they’d been told no Ban
bury tale, but the simple truth about the consumptive lady
and her “physician.”

What was in fact afflicting Miss Dudley was the reflexion,
now that she was tired and disabused of her initial exhilara
tion in their adventure, was a case of second thoughts
about the wisdom of her actions. She had, in the course of imagining during the cold day’s drive how she would face
her papa—and particularly her mama—when she and Ned
returned home wedded, come up with what she now saw
as unassailable arguments in favour of her attachment to Ned Bennett. He was a war hero; his character was of the
steadiest—not to say dullest—which would be sure to ap
peal to her papa; he was a hard worker—even if in a humble
profession—but acted like a gentleman and was easy in his manner with all classes of persons; and—surely this would
appeal to her mama—he looked perfectly splendid in his
regimentals.

What she ought to have done, Clarissa now
recognised, was to stay at home and argue her case to her
family. It would have been, certainly, less cowardly than to
run away—even with Ned’s willing assistance, and even if
such a romantic marriage would be the envy of all her
friends.

Feeling thoroughly sorry for herself, Clarissa was just
indulging in a good cry when the chaise came to a halt
again and, looking out, she saw that it had begun to snow, and indeed was coming down in large wet flakes. She also
saw that they had stopped at a hostelry calling itself the
Blue Swan—a singularly apt name, Clarissa thought, blow
ing her cold nose—whose lights were shining warmly into
the dark that had descended since their last stop.

However, when Ned opened her door and informed her
in no uncertain terms that they would spend the night here,
Clarissa balked. They must not stop yet, she protested; they
could go on for miles yet; it was barely dark yet; if Ned was
tired, he could hire someone to drive for him while he slept
for an hour or two in the coach. Besides, she did not like the look of this place; the sheets would be damp, and if
there were more than one private parlour she would be
amazed.

Ned listened to these querulous objections patiently, but
when Clarissa began to repeat herself, he said once more
that they would stop, and then picked the startled Clarissa
up in his arms and marched into the Blue Swan.

This entrance lent some credence to their masquerade,
although the landlady, one Matawilda Judson, expressed an
initial disbelief at the tale, and at the ability of such an indi
gent lady to pay for two bedrooms and a private parlour.
But when Ned had deposited Clarissa in one of the bed
rooms and explained, with his most ingratiating smile, that
“madam’s” grandfather was a lonely, but extremely
wealthy gentleman who had made sure to provide his only
living relative with a generous travel allotment, and when
he demonstrated a considerable, if irrelevant to the circum
stances, knowledge of practical medicine—acquired on the
march through Spain—Mrs Judson was temporarily ap
peased. In any case, she was unlikely to welcome any other
guests that night and she could not afford to let the price of
their beds and breakfasts slip through her fingers.