Dear Lady Disdain. Paula Marshall

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      Chapter Two

      Everything, but everything, had gone wrong from the moment they had left the confines of the Home Counties. Stacy thought that there must be a curse on the journey, her first of any length since her father had died.

      And it had all gone so beautifully right at first—inevitably, with Ephraim and herself arranging things. She was to travel incognito; it would not do to let possible men of the road know that the enormously rich owner of Blanchard’s Bank was travelling nearly the length of England in winter. Safety lay in anonymity. She was to be Miss Anna Berriman, to match the initials stamped on her luggage and entwined on the panels of her elegant travelling coach. Polly Clay, her personal maid, and the other servants had been carefully coached for the last fortnight before they set out to address her as, ‘Yes, Miss Berriman’, ‘Indeed, Miss Berriman’, ‘As you wish, Miss Berriman’, until Stacy had almost come to believe herself Miss Berriman in truth.

      They were taking two coaches to accommodate Stacy, Miss Landen, Polly, James the footman, young Mr Greaves and his man, a coachman, and a spare footman, Hal, a big strong man, to act as yet another guardian to the party. It occurred to Stacy, as she watched the two post-chaises being loaded with luggage and impedimenta, that throughout her life she had rarely been alone, and for a moment she wondered what it would have been like truly to be not-so-rich Miss Berriman, who was no more and no less than an ordinary, unconsidered spinster. She decided that the uncomfortable truth was that on the whole she would not have liked it. She had grown used to being in command in exactly the same way as a man would have been.

      It was while they were crossing from Lincolnshire into Nottinghamshire through heavy rain, after an unpleasant night in a dirty inn, that Greaves’ cold, which had been merely an inconvenience to him, became much more than that. From her seat opposite him Stacy watched his complexion turn from yellow to grey to ashen, tinged with the scarlet of heavy inflammation round his eyes, nostrils and mouth. Her concern grew with each mile that they jolted forward, until she ordered the coach to stop when they reached Newark.

      ‘Greaves,’ she said, genuinely troubled, ‘I do not think that we should go further today. You look very ill.’

      Louisa nodded her head, agreeing with her, while Greaves muttered in a hoarse voice—his throat was badly affected— ‘I feel very ill, madam, but…’

      ‘No buts…’ Stacy was both brisk and firm. ‘We shall stop at the first good inn in Newark, put you to bed and send for a physician. I do not think that you are in any condition to continue.’

      He didn’t argue with her, nor, a day later when the physician had said that his fever was a severe one and he must not rise from his bed, did he or Stacy argue that anything other was to be done than leave him at the inn, with sufficient funds, one of the coaches, his man and James, the senior of the two footmen, to follow after Stacy’s party as soon as the physician pronounced him well enough to travel. ‘Which will be some days yet, I fear,’ he said.

      So now the single coach toiled onwards towards York, through the East Midlands counties and beyond—land which Stacy had not seen since she was a small girl. Alas, the further north they went, the worse the weather grew. The rain turned into an unpleasant sleet, and even the stone hot-water bottles and travelling warming-pans, wrapped in woollen muffs and kept on all the travellers’ knees, were hardly enough to keep them warm as the temperature continued to drop.

      Ruefully Stacy privately conceded that Ephraim Blount had been right to worry about her going north in winter, until, at the beginning of the stage where they were due to pass from Nottinghamshire into Yorkshire, her party woke up to find a brilliant sun shining and the sky a cold blue. Everyone, including Stacy, felt happy again.

      Everyone, that was, but Louisa Landen, who had endured a bad night and suspected that she had caught Greaves’ cold, but, being stoical by nature and knowing that it was necessary to make up the time lost in caring for Greaves, decided to say nothing of it to Stacy. The cold might not grow worse—and besides, the day was fine.

      Except that the landlord of the Gate Hangs Well had shaken his head at them, and before they set out had said gloomily to John Coachman and the postilion they were taking on to the next stage, ‘Fine weather for snow, this, maister.’ John Coachman, however, who wished to press on to make up for lost time, had decided that such country lore was not worth the breath given to offer it, and that he would ignore the warning.

      It was a decision that he would come to regret.

      Stacy was already regretting her ill-fated winter journey to York. She was to regret it even more as, towards noon, when they were still far from journey’s end, the weather suddenly changed; the sun disappeared, it became cloudy, dark and cold, and the bottles and warming-pans grew cold too. Louisa began to cough, a dry, insistent cough, which had Stacy at last registering her companion’s wan face, with a hectic spot on each cheekbone.

      ‘Oh, Louisa, my dear!’ she exclaimed, taking her companion’s cold hand in hers. ‘I have been so selfish, wishing to make good time and not thinking of anything but my own convenience. You have caught Greaves’ cold, and we ought not to have journeyed on today. You should have told me.’

      Louisa shook her head and croaked, ‘My fault—I said nothing because we are not so far from our journey’s end, and I knew you wished to make good time today since the weather seemed to have taken a turn for the better. I must confess I did not think that I would feel so ill so soon.’ She had begun to shiver violently, and it was plain that she was in a state of extreme distress.

      The shivering grew worse, almost in time with the snow which had begun to fall, turning into a regular blizzard. By the early afternoon they were making only slow progress into territory where it was plain that snow had fallen during the night, and only the fact that a few carriages had passed earlier, leaving ruts for them to drive in, kept them going at all.

      John Coachman had consulted his roadbook, and had already told Stacy bluntly that they would be unlikely to find a suitable inn to stop at before Bawtry, which they had originally planned to make for. They were now, he said, in an area where hostelries with beds were few and far between. ‘We’d best be on our way, madam, or night will fall or the road become impassable before we reach the inn.’

      The prospect of being trapped by the snow and spending the night in the coach was СКАЧАТЬ