The Hemingford Scandal. Mary Nichols
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the same riding coat he had worn when she had encountered him in Green Park. It seemed too tight for him. She leaned forward to pat Blaze, who was blowing hard. ‘Carried away, Captain Hemingford? It was you who taught me to ride, if you recall.’
‘I also recall teaching you not to mistreat a horse,’ he said with a twisted smile. She was breathless and her heightened colour was making her look even more desirable. It was all he could do to sound normal. ‘That poor mare is blowing. Dismount and let her rest.’ He jumped down from his own mount, a huge stallion that was hardly breathing above its normal rate, and held out his hand to help her down.
‘I would not have had to gallop her so hard if you had not chased me,’ she said, annoyed by his curt command. Her temper was not lessened by knowing he was right, though she took the offered hand and slid lightly down beside him.
‘Chased you? Why should I do that? I am not so short of female company that I have to chase after it, particularly yours. I have more pride than that. I thought your mount had bolted with you.’
‘I did not know it was you.’ He had not released her hand and the feel of his strong fingers about hers was having a strange effect on her. She had not felt such a fluttering of her heart since— She stopped herself asking when; it was too painful to remember. ‘I thought it was some rogue and I was in danger.’
‘You are in no danger from me.’ He laughed and let go of her hand. ‘But where is your escort? Surely he has more sense than to let you ride so far ahead of him…’
‘There is a groom…’
‘A groom! I meant the gentleman I met last week. What was his name?’
‘Mr Allworthy.’
He laughed. ‘How apt! And I am Mr Unworthy.’
‘You are being silly.’
‘So where is Mr Allworthy?’
‘Gone to Norfolk.’ She lifted her head defiantly. ‘Aunt Lane and I go to join him tomorrow.’
He had known she was planning the visit because Anne had told him so. She had returned from visiting Jane in a fine old miff. ‘I do not know what she can be thinking of,’ she had said. ‘She is not so green that she doesn’t know that if she goes to Coprise there is no turning back, but she has convinced herself that she has only to say no and Mr Allworthy will meekly accept it. He doesn’t seem the meek kind to me.’
‘So?’
‘Harry, she has got herself into a bumblebath or, more correctly, her aunt has tumbled her into it, and she cannot see she is being manoeuvred into an impossible situation.’
‘Anne, please calm yourself. Jane is capable of making up her own mind and perhaps it is what she wants. It is not our affair…’
‘How can you say so? You love her and she still loves you, I know it.’
Looking at Jane now, her cheeks red with exertion and her eyes blazing angrily, she had never looked lovelier, but she showed no sign of softening towards him. And what good would it do if she did? ‘Then I wish you a good journey and a pleasant stay.’ He held his cupped hands to help her mount. ‘Allow me to return you safely to your groom, who must be on hot coals wondering if he is to be punished for negligence.’
She opened her mouth to tell him she did not need his escort, nor was she going to punish her groom for obeying her orders, but he was looking at her in that old teasing way she remembered from her childhood and she felt the hard knot in her chest dissolve away. It was most disconcerting. It would have been a grand gesture to have galloped away from him, but Blaze was not rested enough for that and so she began to walk her sedately back towards the gate. He followed, riding slightly behind her.
They had almost reached the Row when they were met by Anne riding towards them. ‘Jane, are you all right? Did you take a fall? Are you hurt?’
‘No, of course not.’ Then, seeing her friend’s worried countenance, Jane smiled. ‘I simply felt like a gallop. If that mad brother of yours had not come dashing after me, making me think I was being pursued, I would not have gone so fast.’
‘He is not mad. And it was me who told him to go after you. He would not have done so on his own.’
‘Then he has more sense than you,’ Jane said, unaccountably disappointed that he had had to be urged to rescue her. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, my groom is waiting for me and I must go home. There is much to do before I leave tomorrow.’
‘You mean to go, then?’
‘Of course I am going.’
‘Then I hope you know what you are doing, that’s all. Come on, Harry, let us leave the stubborn clunch to go her own way.’ And she wheeled her horse round and trotted away.
Harry turned to Jane and smiled. He had a boyish smile that spread from his mouth to his eyes and crinkled the skin at either side. It seemed to encompass everyone about him. No one could be completely immune to it, certainly not Jane Hemingford, who had once loved him. ‘Do not be hard on her, Jane, she loves us both and she cannot see that what she is asking is out of the question. I will try to reason with her and perhaps, when you return, she will be more her old self and accept that you must tread your own path. As I must mine.’
Jane did not answer, but watched him ride away through a mist of tears. She did not know why she was crying. Was it for a lost love, for a friendship broken or simply that she had been more frightened by that headlong gallop than she was ready to admit?
She set off for Norfolk the next day, determined to put Harry and Anne and all such distractions behind her and enjoy the visit; slowly, as the miles passed, she felt calmer. She sat beside her aunt with Lucy facing them, Aunt Lane’s hatbox and jewellery case on the seat beside the maid and the boot filled with trunks and portmanteaux. Jane wondered why they needed so much baggage for a two-week stay, but her aunt insisted they must be prepared for every eventuality.
‘Mr Allworthy will no doubt wish to take you out and about and introduce you to his neighbours,’ she had said. ‘He might hold a ball or a formal dinner party or arrange a picnic and then there is riding and walking and carriage rides. We must always be appropriately dressed.’ It sounded as if her aunt expected them to be paraded for everyone’s inspection, and her heart sank.
Mr Allworthy had arranged the post horses when he passed that way the week before and everything worked smoothly. They rattled through Woodford and then took Epping Forest at a gallop for fear of highwaymen, before slowing down to enter Sawbridgeworth, where they stopped for a meal. After that, they passed through Bishop’s Stortford and Great Chesterford and in the early evening arrived in Cambridge, where Mr Allworthy had arranged for them to stay overnight at the Blue Boar.
Once north of Ely and its majestic cathedral, which Jane insisted on stopping to visit, they found themselves travelling through a countryside so flat, there was nothing to see for miles but fields and dykes, interspersed with isolated farms. Above them and all round them was a huge sky, dark blue fading to a pale grey haze on the horizon, through which the morning sun tried to penetrate. After their next change of horses at Downham, they left the fens behind and were soon in a countryside that pleased Jane more. The sun came out and bathed the country in warmth.
Here were gentle hills, small woods and farms whose fields were surrounded by hedgerows and everywhere workers were bringing in the hay, loading it on to haywains. The hedgerows were festooned with wisps of it, which had been caught up as the carts passed along the narrow roads. Twenty minutes later they came to a tiny village, and just beyond that the gates of Coprise Manor. The journey was over and Jane sat forward to catch her first glimpse of the house.
Built of red brick and surrounded by a narrow moat, it was squat and square, with a round tower in each corner. Its mullioned windows gleamed in the sun. There were formal gardens on two sides, a wood on a third and a great lake on the fourth that fed the moat. The coach rattled over the bridge and into a courtyard where Donald stood to greet them, wearing a brown riding coat and leather