The Chaperon Bride. Nicola Cornick
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and swung round abruptly. Charles Lafoy had returned to the box and he looked to be in a very bad temper. Annis suspected that this was due in part to the Misses Crossley, who were chattering like a pair of magpies as Sibella ushered them back to their seats, but it was also indubitably the result of finding her deep in conversation with Adam Ashwick. To her own annoyance, she felt herself blush.
Adam got to his feet in unhurried fashion. There was a mocking glint in his eye. ‘Evening, Lafoy. Granger, Mrs Granger, it is a pleasure to see you again…’ He bowed to Sibella before turning back to Annis. There was a decided twinkle in that cool grey gaze now. ‘I have enjoyed consorting with the enemy, ma’am. We must do it again some time…’
‘Good night, my lord,’ Annis said repressively.
Adam smiled at her and withdrew.
Sibella sighed, a little wistfully. ‘Oh, he is as charming as they said he was…’
Charles slid into Adam’s vacated seat. ‘Annis, what the devil were you about, flirting with Ashwick of all people?’
Annis kept her own voice low. ‘I am sure that one may greet an acquaintance without fear of censure, Charles. As you know, I never flirt.’
‘Yes, but Ashwick!’ Charles ran a hand through his fair hair. ‘He is a loose fish. Gambling, drinking, women…’
‘Show me a man who isn’t,’ Annis murmured. ‘Or one who has not indulged at some point in his life.’
Charles looked disapproving. ‘You might at least have some regard for my own situation, if nothing else! Ingram cannot approve—’
‘Fortunately I do not have to be governed by Mr Ingram’s approval.’ Annis smoothed her skirts and threw her cousin a warning glance. ‘You refine too much upon this, Charles. Lord Ashwick is a neighbour and was only doing the pretty. Now, the second act is about to start. May we call a truce?’
The rest of the show was quite spoilt for Annis, who hated to quarrel with either of her cousins. The Death of Captain Cook proved to be a melodramatic tale of tragedy that was ruined anyway by Fanny and Lucy Crossley chattering incessantly. Charles stared ahead with a frown on his handsome brow, completely ignoring the play. When Annis followed his gaze she saw that he was looking across at the Ashwick box, but he was looking not at Adam but rather at the serene countenance of Della Tilney, illuminated by the pale candlelight. When he noticed Annis’s regard, Charles immediately looked away.
It was a subdued group that assembled in the foyer to take their coaches home. Fanny and Lucy Crossley were quite worn out with flirtation and gossip, Sibella, who was increasing, looked fatigued and leaned heavily on David’s arm, and Charles was still preserving an abstracted silence. As Annis shepherded the girls up into the coach, she spotted a closed carriage pulling away from the side entrance to the theatre. The light from the coach lamps fell briefly on Margot Mardyn’s pretty little face before she twitched the curtain back into place. Annis felt flat and cross at the same time. No doubt Miss Mardyn was being spirited away to join Adam Ashwick somewhere. It was just like a man, Annis thought irritably, to be escorting his mother and sister out of the front door of the theatre whilst whisking his chère amie discreetly out of the back. It should not have mattered to her, but unfortunately she found that it did.
Chapter Three
The morrow brought an invitation for Fanny and Lucy to spend a couple of days with their friend, Clara Anstey, under the auspices of her mother, Sibella’s bosom-bow Lady Anstey. Given this unexpected break from her chaperonage duties, Annis decided to borrow Charles’s carriage and make the journey out into the Dales to visit Starbeck. She had every intention of spending a few weeks there once Fanny and Lucy were off her hands, for she had no engagements until she returned to London for the Little Season. However, an advance visit to Starbeck would prove doubly useful; Annis wanted to assess the state of the house before she discussed its future with Charles, and she also wished to see what would be needed to make the house habitable for her stay.
It promised to be a hot day. The wind had dropped and the sun was already high above the Washburn valley. The grey stone villages dozed in the sunshine and higher up, the heather clad moors shimmered in a heat haze.
They stopped at one of Samuel Ingram’s new tollgates on the Skipton road. At present it was simply a wooden hut and a chain across the road, but a group of men were working conspicuously hard on the construction of a neat stone house beside the road. Their factor, a bare-headed young man whose chestnut hair gleamed bright in the sunlight, was standing close by and keeping a wary eye on them. Annis recognised him as Samuel Ingram’s agent at Linforth, Ellis Benson. Ingram tended to surround himself with the impecunious sons of the gentry, Annis thought wryly. Perhaps it was some manifestation of snobbery that he, a self-made man and son of a lighthouse-keeper, should employ those whose birth was so much better than his own.
Ellis saw her and his grim expression lightened in a smile as he lifted a hand in greeting. The tollkeeper came shuffling out of the hut to take their money and Annis leaned out of the window, recognising him as the former schoolmaster of Starbeck village.
‘Mr Castle! How are you, sir?’
The tollkeeper raised one hand to shade his eyes from the sun. His parchment-grey face crinkled into genuine pleasure.
‘Miss Annis! Well, I’ll be…I am very well, ma’am. And you?’
Annis opened the carriage door and let the steps down. The sun felt hot on her face and she could feel the warmth of the road beneath her feet. She tilted the brim of her bonnet to shield her face, feeling grateful that today she had abandoned her chaperon’s turbans for a straw hat and a light blue muslin gown.
‘I am well, thank you, Mr Castle.’ Annis shook hands with tollkeeper. ‘I am back in Harrogate for the summer, you know, and shall be staying at Starbeck next month. But you…’ Annis gestured to the tollhouse. ‘What happened to the school, Mr Castle?’
A strange expression crossed the tollkeeper’s face and for a moment Annis could have sworn it was guilt.
‘I can’t do both, Miss Annis. Besides, Mr Ingram pays me well to take the tolls for him. Nine shillings a week I’m making here.’ He shuffled, turning back to the coachman. ‘That’s ninepence for a carriage and pair, if you please.’
There was a clatter of wheels on the track behind them and then a horse and cart drew up on the road beside the carriage. The carter and his mate jumped down and started to unhitch the horse from between the shaft. A richly pungent smell of dung filled the air. Mr Castle, who had been about to move the chain from across the road so that Annis’ carriage could pass, gave an exclamation and hurried across to the cart.
‘Now see here, Jem Marchant, you can’t do that!’
The carter pushed his hat back from his brow and scratched his head. ‘Do what, Mr Castle?’
‘You can’t unhitch the horse. Horse and cart is fivepence together.’ Castle looked at the cart. ‘Sixpence, as you’ve got narrow wheels.’
‘Horse and cart are only thruppence apart!’ the carter returned triumphantly. ‘None of us can afford to pay Mr Ingram’s prices. Daylight robbery, so it is.’
The aroma of manure was almost enough to make Annis scramble back into the carriage and put the window up, but she suddenly caught sight of what looked like a pile of bricks hidden beneath the manure and leaned over for a closer look. The carter’s accomplice gave her a wink and shovelled some more dung over to hide it. Castle walked around the back of the cart and looked suspiciously at the load.
‘What’ve you got here?’
‘What does it look like?’ The carter started to lead the horse towards the tollgate, tipping his hat to Annis as he went. ‘Mornin’, ma’am.’
‘Good morning,’ Annis returned. A small crowd of villagers was gathering now to see what was going on, appearing from the fields and lanes as though drawn by some mysterious silent message. A few