The Viscount's Unconventional Bride. Mary Nichols
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‘Yes, we did. Fifteen years ago now.’
‘Do you think your daughter might be attempting to go back there?’
‘She does not know where it is. She was only five when we moved down here. I doubt she would remember it. And why would she want to go back there?’
‘I do not know, but perhaps you might hazard a guess?’ It was said meaningfully. ‘Why, for instance, did she abandon her gardening clothes on the flower bed? It seems to me that something startled her. Can you tell me what that could have been?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘Cannot or will not?’
‘Cannot. I beg you not to ask.’
The lady was so nervous, Jonathan was sure she was hiding something. ‘Madam, I will do what I can to find your daughter, but it is necessary for me to know everything, you understand? I cannot work in the dark.’
‘My lord, forgive me, I am not myself.’ She seemed to gather herself with an effort of will. ‘All I can tell you is that we were talking of the place where Louise was born and that might have aroused her curiosity, but I can hardly believe she would try to go there. She has never travelled anywhere on her own before. It is two hundred miles away and goodness knows what at the end of it—’ She stopped suddenly as if conjuring up some dreadful calamity in her mind’s eye that she could not put into words.
He decided she was afraid of something else beside the hazards of the journey. ‘Nevertheless, you do believe that is where she is heading?’
‘Perhaps.’ It was said reluctantly.
‘Does she have any money? She will not go far without it.’
‘The Reverend gives her pin money…’
‘How far will that take her?’
‘I do not know. She has little reason to spend it. Furbelows and fancy ribbons never appealed to her, so she may have a little saved. And…’ She stopped and swallowed hard. ‘I fear she sometimes plays cards with Luke and his friends and is always boasting of how much she has won.’
He almost laughed aloud at the thought of a vicar’s daughter gambling, but restrained himself. It was not a time for laughter. ‘How much has she won?’
‘I have no idea. It is only a little fun, but if my husband were to hear of it he would be very angry. I cannot think it amounts to more than a few shillings.’ She was unhappy about his questioning and wished to bring it to an end. ‘Go after her, my lord, please, bring her safely back to us.’
‘I will do what I can to find her, but short of tying her up and carrying her off, I cannot force her to return, you understand.’
‘Yes, but do your best to persuade her, I beg you. But whatever you do, please see she comes to no harm.’
He was still not completely satisfied, but he did not think he would get anything more out of her and took his leave. Finding runaway daughters was not the sort of thing the Club took on, but there was no time to go back and consult James, who in any case had gone home to be with his family, so it was up to him to decide whether to proceed. There was a mystery here and if the law had been broken, then that was reason enough. Besides, he was intrigued.
‘I don’t know why we ‘ad to go all the way to Lunnon, only to come straight back ag’in,’ Betty said as the coach drew up at the Red Lion in Barnet. ‘You changed yer mind, Miss Louise?’
‘Shh,’ Louise whispered, glancing at the other passengers to see if they had heard, but the noise of the horses being changed and the ostlers and coachmen shouting to each other had drowned her voice. ‘I am not Miss Louise. I am Mr Louis Smith. And you are Mrs Smith. Call me Lou, like I told you. And in answer to your question, no, I have not changed my mind. We could not have boarded the coach here, everyone knows us.’
Betty giggled. ‘Not like that, they wouldn’.’
Louise looked down at herself. She was wearing a pair of breeches, which had once belonged to one of her brothers, tucked into her own riding boots, a blue wool coat with enormous pockets and pearl buttons, a long matching waistcoat, a white linen shirt and a black neckcloth, all once worn by one or other of her brothers. Her hair was tied back in a queue such as military men adopted and fastened with a slim black ribbon and topped by a tricorne hat. The ensemble was completed with a sword belt into which she had put Matthew’s small sword; since becoming a parson he had ceased to carry a weapon. And into the capacious pocket of the coat she had put a pistol, which she had taken from a drawer in Luke’s room, along with a pouch containing ball, powder and tinder. She was a good shot, but had never aimed at anything but a target and doubted she would have the courage to use it in any other circumstances. But having it made her feel a little safer, more manly.
The disguise was the result of much soul searching the day before on how best to travel. She felt she would be safer as a man and she knew there were some old clothes of her brothers stored in the vicarage attic, but even in men’s clothes the prospect of going alone had daunted her, although not enough to make her turn from her determination to make the journey. And she knew roughly where to go. Jaggers was a talkative man and liked to tell her tales of his boyhood in Yorkshire and how he had been taken on by the Reverend, ‘afore he come down south’ as he put it. He hardly needed encouragement and she soon had a place name, the one she had heard her mother mention, though he had no idea exactly where it was in relation to Barnet. ‘Moresdale is a fair distance,’ he said. ‘T’other side of York. It were where you were born, Miss Louise.’ She wondered if he knew the truth, but she couldn’t go round asking everyone she met if they knew she was not her father’s daughter.
She had been leaving the house with a portmanteau containing her disguise, together with some feminine clothes she would need when she arrived, when she became aware of Alfred Rayment, their young gardener, watching her. She thought her adventure had been foiled before it began, but he did not seem particularly curious and she supposed it was because she often took items of clothing to the village in a bag and he would think nothing of it if she acted naturally. She smiled and went on her way.
It was then she hit upon the idea of asking his sister if she would accompany her. Alfred and Betty lived in a cottage on the other side of the village. Betty was seventeen, a couple of years younger than Alfred, and acted as his housekeeper. They had no parents. She had a round, rosy face, blue eyes and thin pale hair. She was always clean and neatly dressed. When asked if she would like to go, she had become as excited as a child. ‘I ain’t ever left home afore,’ she had said. ‘It’ll be summat to tell me children, if’n I was ever to find m’self a husband.’
It solved another problem for Louise—where and how to change into her disguise. Betty thought it was a huge joke and Louise did not tell her it was very far from a joke.
‘Perhaps not, but I could not take the risk leaving dressed as a woman,’ she said in answer to her friend’s comment. ‘We would never have got away if someone had recognised me and told the Reverend.’
The girl was in her best dress, the bodice of which was laced across her stays and the neck filled with a cotton fichu. They were an unprepossessing couple, but that suited Louise’s purpose. ‘Yes, but why did we have to go all the way to Lunnon first,’ Betty persisted. ‘I never bin in such a frightenin’ big place afore.’
Never having travelled by public coach and having little idea where they habitually stopped, they had walked towards London, carrying their bags. It soon became obvious to Louise they must find transport. Their bags, though containing the minimum possible, were heavy and it would not be long before she was missed and being searched for. To be found on foot within half-a-dozen miles of home would be the ultimate humiliation. They had stopped a carrier’s cart and asked the driver for a lift. He had taken them right into the heart of the Capital and directed them to the Blue Boar in Holborn where, so he told them, they could pick up a coach to almost any destination they cared to name.
But there had been