The LadyShip (9 page)

Now, after three patient months, Clarissa’s willingness
to wait and keep her own counsel was suddenly not
enough. Since her return from Paris, she had been a doc
ile and obedient daughter to her parents and a more than
usually tolerant sister to Felix. She had expressed no de
sire to prepare for a second London season in the spring
(since she hoped to be married by then), and if her father noticed a diminution of her usual sparkle and an uncharacteristic reluctance to flirt with every eligible male who
swam into view, he could only breathe a sigh of relief and
think about something else. Lady Alfred, as was to be ex
pected, perceived the change in her daughter all too
acutely, but she said nothing immediately and used the
change to further her own plans for the enhancement of
the family line.

It was more difficult, although far less heart-rending for
Clarissa, to deal with Marcus Allingham. She knew he did
not love her, so that at least his heart was not at stake; but
his pride was, and that was no small object. She did her best
not to let this knowledge stand in her way, and since she
had no difficulty in conjuring up her true love’s image to replace the otherwise solid figure of Marcus Allingham in her
fantasies, she succeeded in persuading him that she needed
time to accustom herself to the idea of becoming his wife.
She was wise enough not to pretend to be overwhelmed at
the honour, but even so, she could not be sure how con
vinced he was that the reasons she gave him were her only
ones for delaying an announcement of their betrothal.

Clarissa gazed with melancholy—and not a little wistful
ness—at the diamond only temporarily adorning her fin
ger, and then, having recrossed her lines already, dipped
her pen and brought her letter to a close.

“... and so, my love, we cannot hope to succeed by pa
tience alone. I do not know what to do now, so you must
tell me. Write to me quickly, to the usual place, but please,
please, dearest, come to me yourself as soon as ever you
can.”

It was not
going to be a very good day, Elinor thought, re
signing herself to it. November had been making itself un
pleasant, and December promised no improvement. She
had sat up in bed until a sinful hour the night before, re
reading her precious copy of
Guy Mannering,
and had
then been awakened at dawn by a rainstorm and a drop in
temperature that had suddenly chilled her usually cosy
bedchamber to a degree that did not permit her to lie abed
comfortably any longer. She had forced herself to dress and
had gone to her window as usual, only to observe from it
that a muddy morass was forming around the mounting
block and that Teddy had apparently fallen into it; also that a dark mass looking suspiciously like a hole had formed in
the roof of the stable across the yard, and that someone had
left the window of one of the upstairs parlours open all
night.

She went downstairs to see to having these faults reme
died as quickly as possible, but it was not more than an
hour later before she was faced with the first major disas
ter of the day—a stagecoach, boasting of the inaccurate
appellation
Invincible,
which had travelled all the way
from London only to break a wheel not a hundred yards from the door of The LadyShip. The resulting rush of in
commoded passengers, insiders and outsiders both, into
the dining-room, tracking mud and demanding breakfast,
gave even the imperturbable Evans what he later de
scribed as “a severe nervous spasm.”

Fried eggs with
smoked ham, toast and butter, and coffee were considered insufficient repast for this company, which con
sisted of a pair of thick-set merchants in bright red vests,
an elderly lady holding a vinaigrette to her nose, a
younger lady in spectacles, a small boy apparently in the
care of the elderly lady but indiscriminate in his attachments (for he entered the inn clutching the young woman’s hand), and a very thin man with a red scarf wrapped
around his head to ward off the cold he had been sub
jected to while riding on the outside of the coach—per
sons whom Evans, the Beau Brummell of the coaching
world, would never have deemed to serve had not his employer’s sharp eye been fixed on him.

This assemblage having been unexpectedly blessed with
time enough to eat anything they liked, Evans soon found
himself serving up large portions of broiled cutlets, Stilton
cheese, and glasses of brandy and soda, and sending for such seldom-called-for esoterica as a bottle of Harvey’s
sauce and a jar of pickled olives. Cries of “Waiter, waiter!”
sounded continually, echoed by a “Coming, sir!” from Ivor
(who was then obliged to tend instead to a passenger who
had seized his apron to demand his prior attention) or a
muttered imprecation from Evans, whose fixed smile
masked his precise meaning from those who were more
concerned with their breakfast than with the opinion of
even the most superior of waiters.

Most of the other male servants were pressed into duty
to haul the disabled coach into the yard, where the wheel
wright inspected it and shook his head, estimating the dam
age to be severe and wishing Master Edward were there to
see it, for even he couldn’t fix it in under three hours. Eli
nor told him roundly to hire help from wherever he could
find it and get the job done in one.

Meanwhile, the coachman, a colourful individual with a
large red nose and a broad, mottled face topped by a low-
crowned hat, was attracting the neighbourhood youngsters. He strolled around the yard with his huge hands
thrust into his greatcoat pockets and regaled his mud-
spattered audience with outrageous tales of his exploits on
the road. On request from one of them, he described the
proper method of putting a team to a coach—”taking care,
young sir, mind you, that them pole chains ain’t too slack,
nor yet your leads caught up on summat, which sure as
check’ll upset you on the first bend”—and at the slightest
encouragement from some other listener expounded on
the relative merits of geldings as coach horses over mares—
“which be no werry easy matter to train.”

Elinor had to ex
tricate two messengers and her youngest ostler from this
admiring crowd in order to care for her regular clients, who
were quickly ushered into private parlours to protect them
from the loud and unseemly complaints emanating from
the coach passengers in the public dining-room.

“Beg pardon, ma’am,” said Jenny the barmaid, passing
Elinor in the hall, “but we’ve run clean out of the good
brandy.”

“Good heavens! At this hour? Which of them ordered
it?”

“The swells—I mean, the gentlemen in the vests, ma’am.”

Elinor glanced through the doorway at the personages in
question, who had shed their greatcoats and gloves and
whose faces were rapidly turning as scarlet as their gar
ments under the influence of the heat of the fire and the un
accustomed excellence of The LadyShip’s brandy; they
were even talking—Evans informed Elinor in horror after
wards—of spending the night in this “demmed fine place—
lucky we stumbled on it, eh?”

“Give them a cheaper bottle,” Elinor told Jenny. “They’ll
not notice the difference now.”

After what seemed an interminable delay—expressly or
dained, Elinor was convinced, by a malicious providence
to ruin the reputation of her house among its best clients—
the wheel was at last repaired. The guard was extricated from the taproom, in which he had secluded himself the
instant his coach had come to a halt within hailing distance
of it; the passengers, still slicing ham and swallowing last
gulps of coffee, were made to pay their bills and resume
their seats; and the coachman, with great ceremony, demonstrated to his lingering public how he checked the reins
by settling them in his fingers before mounting and not let
ting them out of his grasp while he climbed skillfully
aboard. Once mounted, and having passed the reins to his
left hand in order to pick up his whip with the right, he
signalled the ostler that he was ready.

“All right! Let ‘em go!”

The cloths were whipped off the horses’ backs, the guard
(somewhat belatedly) took up his yard of tin to blow their
passage up the street to the open highway, and at last the
coach was on its way. The LadyShip’s mistress was left to soothe as best she could the shattered nerves of her much-
abused staff before retiring to her own room to pin up her
hair, brush off her stained bodice, and apply a cup of tea to
her own severely ruffled sensibilities.

However, the constitutions—not to mention the loyal
ty—of all concerned were to be tried yet further that day. It
was very little time later, indeed, that Elinor found Evans
bustling through the kitchen demanding that Rose look
sharp and take “milord’s” dinner up to him instantly. Not
having seen any crested chaise pull into the yard recently,
Elinor went to the only presently occupied private parlour,
prepared to greet whichever nobleman might have chosen
to travel incognito and to assure him of the discretion of
her staff.

What she found was an elderly dandy, lavender legs
crossed and quizzing glass raised superciliously at her intru
sion. What was worse, this aging tulip was accompanied by
a female whose origins and profession took no more than a
glance to appreciate. She was dressed in a thin muslin gown
adorned with rows of ruffles around the hem and the extremely low neck, and she had thrown a blue velvet cloak back on her chair to display the jewels that bedecked this
creation. Her hair was of an unnatural silver shade, and
there was little doubt that the colour in her cheeks had not
been applied by nature either. She gazed up at Elinor with a
look of innocence mingled with shrewdness, but on learn
ing that Elinor was her hostess, she took no further notice
of her and devoted herself to her paramour.

Elinor made
this pair as welcome as her sense of propriety allowed, but
departed immediately on having done so, and when she en
countered Lucy on the stairs outside the parlour, snapped
unnecessarily at her when she asked innocently if she should go and make “the new gentleman” welcome.

“No, you should not!” her sister told her roundly, turn
ing Lucy by the arm and leading her back downstairs again.
“I’m surprised at Evans. I had thought him to have more
discrimination.
Miss
Dauntry, indeed. She is no more a
maiden than our milch cow is! What you may do, miss, is to
go and see what assistance you may render Mrs Nash and
not show yourself again until the gentleman and his little
friend have gone.”

Lucy, perceiving that her sister was in no mood to be crossed, did as she was told. The happy couple, in fact,
departed sooner than Elinor had hoped—leaving behind
the echo, still ringing in the staff’s ears, of enough contra
dictory orders to cause Evans to make several pungent
remarks to the tapster and to demand of Petra—the par
lour-maid who had been accorded the dubious privilege of brushing the dandy’s snug-fitting pink coat while his
companion fortified herself with enough glasses of rata
fia to inebriate two of her—what she had to look so smug
about. When Petra confided that she had surreptitiously cut two threads in the back of that offensive garment so
that when “milord” next emerged from his carriage, he
would find a large tear in the seam, Evans felt infinitely
compensated for the insults he had been obliged to en
dure—not to mention his employer’s vexation with him.

Elinor was, however, soon obliged to beg his pardon when she discovered that Evans had refused the late
unlamented couple a room for the night and ordered
them served immediately in order to have them out of
The LadyShip as quickly as possible.

Elinor then breathed a sigh of relief, ordered the fires in
the parlours and coffee-room built up, and fervently
hoped that all would now be well. And so it was—until a
short time later she encountered Petra on her way out of
the kitchen, bearing a hot brick wrapped in a flannel
cloth.