The Viscount's Unconventional Bride. Mary Nichols

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 no coaches leaving for the north until the morning. They had walked about all night, not daring to ask for a room anywhere, and at dawn had made their way to the inn and paid their fare to York. Louise was taken aback by the amount she had to pay; three guineas left little for bed and board on the way and she feared her small savings would not last and she might have to sell what little jewellery she had. She had no idea how to go on after they reached York, but she told Betty, as confidently as she could, they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

      She was almost holding her breath in case someone whom she knew boarded the coach at Barnet, but no new passengers claimed seats and the original four were soon on their way again. The die was cast. She was going to find Catherine Fellowes and then she might have her questions answered. It had briefly occurred to her that the lady might no longer live in Moresdale even if she ever had; she could not even be sure of that. She might have moved away, or even died. Louise hoped not; it would be sad never to have known her. She would never find out if she did not go, would she? Curiosity had always been one of her characteristics, but this was more than curiosity; this was a need to discover her identity. But it did not mean she wanted to leave the loving couple she would always look upon as her parents; she would come back. She had said so in her letter. She hoped they understood that this was something she had to do and it did not mean she loved them any less.

      She settled back in her seat, prepared to sleep if she could, and advised Betty to do the same. ‘We have been awake all night,’ she whispered, with one eye on the couple sitting opposite them. ‘And if we are asleep, no one will engage us in conversation, will they?’

      Most of the roads close to the metropolis had been turnpiked, but even those had been churned up by heavy wagons in winter and baked into ruts in summer. They were jolted from side to side and sleep was almost impossible. They passed through Hatfield, changed horses at the Duke of York at Ganwick Corner, then again at Stevenage without incident and were approaching Baldock when it happened.

      Louise was drowsing, but was jolted fully awake by the shout of the guard and the coach being pulled to a sudden stop, followed by the sound of a gun being fired.

      ‘Highwaymen!’ she gasped, as the door was wrenched open and a black cloaked figure wearing a mask and brandishing a pistol ordered them out on to the road.

       Chapter Two

      Jonathan left the vicarage and rode to Chaston Hall, which was only eight miles distant, where he kept his coach and carriage horses. Finding a standing for them in London was difficult and his father’s estate in Barnet was large enough for them to be no trouble to him and near enough to the capital for him to send for them if they were needed.

      He told his parents he would be away some time on the Society’s business, though he did not explain the nature of the business. And though they decried his secretiveness, they had become used to it. They bemoaned the day he had ever met James Drymore and his band of gentleman thieftakers. If it were not for them, he would be dancing attendance on the year’s hopefuls at London’s society balls and finding himself a wife. He would not find one chasing all over the countryside after criminals. At twenty-five, it was high time he set up his own establishment; his bachelor rooms in town did not count.

      He smiled politely and allowed them to go on for some minutes before excusing himself and hastening out to the stables to tell Joseph Potton to harness up his travelling coach. He might be quicker on horseback, but if and when he caught up with the runaway he would need a vehicle to convey her home. ‘You and I are going alone,’ he told Joe. ‘Take a change of clothes, I do not know how long we will be gone.’

      Joe grinned. ‘Chase ‘em and nab ‘em business, m’lord?’ he queried, using his own name for the Society. He was a sturdy twenty-year-old, though sometimes he behaved like someone twice his age, which was hardly surprising considering he had been born in poverty without a father and with a mother who turned him out when she was entertaining her men friends. The courts and alleyways of Ely had been his home. He would still be there if James had not rescued him and given him an education to fit him for a life in service. It was on James’s recommendation Jonathan had taken him on.

      ‘Yes, now make haste—we have not a moment to lose.’ The young lady had a day’s start and must be well on her way by now. In Jonathan’s favour was the fact that he had a far superior vehicle and was prepared to drive through the night, which the public coach would not do.

      He left the boy to do his bidding while he went to his room to supervise his packing and console Hilson, his valet, for not taking him too. He changed swiftly from his silk coat, waistcoat and breeches and his СКАЧАТЬ