Page 29 of The Book of Lost Stories

Peerless

‘I agreed to escort my kinswoman here,’ Simon de Lombard said, ‘but would not have lingered so long had I not set eyes on you. To find you were betrothed to another was a cruel blow, but I soon discovered he was unworthy of you and I determined to wait and ask your father for your hand on his return.’

Ravish’d by Cruel Fate by ORLANDO brOWNE

‘You like my cousin Nat, don’t you, Nell?’ Alys said next day, as they drove out towards Kew to visit the Red House, as the establishment founded by the Benevolent Ladies was called.

‘Yes, for he is always kind and charming and so very elegant! He is the only one of George’s old friends who seems to be a good influence on him, and even chaffed him back to good humour on the humiliating occasion when he showed his anger with me in public.’

‘I like him too. It would be hard not to, especially when he insists that nothing would please him more than the pleasure of my company if I should allow him to drive me home, as he did yesterday. But I wish he were not so very cow-handed with the reins, for I am in a constant fear that he will overturn me. Do you know, my grandfather had already heard of my morning sightseeing expeditions, and said he would prefer Nat to escort me rather than Lord Rayven, although I told him Nat would not thank him for the suggestion.’

‘Have you thought that Mr Hartwood might hope to make a match between you and Nat?’

Alys laughed. ‘Oh, Nell, I am sure he cannot have any such idea – or Nat, who is so very handsome that I can only wonder that some eligible maiden has not snapped him up in matrimony long since.’

‘He is very popular with the ladies, but his father did not leave him any great fortune, although it is well known that he and Bella are Mr Titus Hartwood’s heirs … or it was , for now perhaps that has changed?’

‘I do not think it. Bella, in particular, has been my grandfather’s pet for so long that I cannot imagine her being cut out. I may be his granddaughter, but I am still little more than a stranger to him and he is baffled and angered by my wish to remain independent.’

‘I believe Nat has been living on his expectations and there are rumours current that he is paying court to Miss Malfont, who is the daughter of a wealthy mill owner, so he must have outrun the fiddler. But if your grandfather decided to leave his personal fortune to you, then I can quite see that a match between you and Nat would be perfect.’

‘Perfect for whom?’ demanded Alys. ‘This is a great deal of nonsense, Nell. I admit I was dazzled by Nat when I first met him – I would have to be made of marble not to have been – but, like all men, I can see that he has feet of clay and I do not in the least wish to marry him, or anyone .’

‘Oh, well, perhaps you are right, but people will talk when it becomes known that both he and Lord Rayven are seen so often in your company.’

‘There is nothing loverlike about Lord Rayven, I thank God, and I have made it plain to him that he is in no danger of my mistaking the nature of his attentions,’ Alys said.

‘I am glad to say we now understand each other very well. By the by, I was not much taken with Carlton House, which we saw this morning.’

Nell was looking pensive. ‘Did Lord Rayven say if Mr Stavely is still staying with him? I have not seen him for some days … although, of course, as you know, we agreed that we must part, and meet in future only as friends.’

‘I am sure were you simply to lift your little finger he would come running, Nell, but you have chosen the sensible course, and must stick to it.’

Nell sighed. ‘I do know. I – I told him to find some eligible lady and propose to her and I hoped I would dance at his wedding.’

Alys pressed her hand but said nothing, for there was no advice she could give in such a situation, only support when it was needed.

She hardly knew how to keep her tongue between her teeth on the increasingly rare occasions when George Rivers dined at home, now she knew how he mistreated poor Nell.

‘I see Sammy is up on the box,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Does he like to drive out into the country?’

‘Yes, I always bring him, for it is pleasant for him to spend some time with his old friends at the Red House. There is one in particular, Sarah, whom he has known since childhood. She is a very quick, sensible kind of girl of nearly fourteen, who hopes to become a lady’s maid.

At present she has been helping the dame with the little ones, but I have it in mind to put her under Jane for a while to learn from her, before finding her a situation with one of my acquaintances.

Perhaps she may look after you, under Jane’s tutelage, while you are staying with me? ’

‘Why not? It would be a novelty to me to have my own Abigail, and I dare say we could both learn together.’

The wall enclosing Lord Chase’s gardens ran beside the road for some distance, and Alys thought wistfully of the Roman mosaic and the ancient passageway to the river leading from his cellars.

Nell had told her, too, of a shell chamber he had had reconstructed from a grotto created at Twickenham by the poet Alexander Pope, which she would very much like to see.

It was a great pity that Lord Chase sounded so very disagreeable!

The Red House lay well set back on the opposite side of the road.

Comfortably, if plainly, furnished, it was in the charge of two middle-aged spinster sisters, plump, cheerful women in starched white caps and aprons.

Order and cleanliness reigned supreme and the children all looked healthy and cheerful.

Nell was obviously a great favourite with them and was quite mobbed as she distributed the little treats she had brought with her.

Alys liked Sarah, a shy, pretty girl, very much, and over the tea tray Nell mooted the idea of appointing her as Alys’s maid, under the tutelage of her own Jane.

It was fixed that she should come to them at the end of the following week, and Sarah, much excited, came to the gate to see them off just as a curricle drawn by a rather familiar pair of high-stepping grey horses was passing.

It was hastily reined in, and Nat called gaily, ‘Good day, Mrs Rivers … Cousin!’ The smile that would once have set Alys’s heart a-flutter and which now, strangely, had no effect on that organ, was bestowed upon them.

‘I know Lord Chase needs no introduction to you,’ he said to Nell with a bow, ‘but I believe you have not met my cousin, Miss Weston, Francis?’

‘How do you do?’ Alys said, looking up curiously at his lordship as he extended a gloved hand that shook slightly.

He was a pallid man of nearer forty than thirty, with thin lank hair and unsettlingly restless eyes, and there was something febrile about him – a sort of suppressed and unwholesome air of excitement – that she found repellent.

‘I have heard of the work you good ladies are doing here,’ Chase said languidly, eyeing Sarah in an appraising way. Then he smiled at her and she blushed hotly before dropping a flustered curtsy and running back into the house.

‘One of your protégées, Mrs Rivers?’ Nat asked.

‘Yes,’ Nell said shortly, as the groom who had been walking their horses approached and Sammy emerged from the house. ‘Pray, excuse us. Here is our carriage, and I do not wish to keep the horses standing.’

‘I see what you mean about Lord Chase,’ Alys said, once they were in the carriage and bowling back to London. ‘How comes Nat to have such an odious friend? I took an immediate dislike to him myself and I am sure I would have done so even if I had known nothing unsavoury about him.’

‘I own I did not like the way he was looking at Sarah in the least. They cannot keep young maidservants at Templeshore House, you know. No respectable young woman would go there.’

‘Well, Sarah at least is safe from that fate, for once your Jane has trained her up, I am sure she will soon find a good post with a respectable family.’

*

Lord Rayven duly presented himself every morning, and if Alys discovered that it was much more enjoyable to be driven about by such an escort than to go alone, he, too, found himself amused by her interest in everything new to her.

He did not fulfil his professed aim of discovering the source of her income, but he did learn more of her character. She put on no airs to be interesting, but was entirely natural: headstrong, opinionated and sometimes alarmingly independent in her ideas, but wholly herself.

During the rest of each day he was never quite sure where he would see her next, for the season had begun and she often accompanied Mrs Rivers to routs, salons, breakfasts, concerts and a myriad other entertainments.

For now that Mrs Lavinia Hartwood and her daughter had called on them several times, and Alys’s position as Mr Titus Hartwood’s granddaughter was established by the frequency of her visits to him, she had become more of an object of interest to society than when she had been plain unknown Miss Weston from Yorkshire.

Rayven knew that Nat Hartwood was also often in her company and he began to wonder if her grandfather had indeed decided to promote a match between them.

In the eyes of the world it would be a sensible union, and he supposed Alys to be no more proof against a handsome face than the next woman, but he could not say that he either liked or trusted Nat Hartwood.

He might be almost universally popular, but anyone who was a part of the Chase set could not possibly be all they appeared.

Jarvis, who was still keeping an eye on Miss Weston’s movements – although there had been no revelations of any interest so far, and he was mightily bored with the task – was instructed to keep his ears open and see what he could also find out about the Brethren.

‘I did warn you that the Peerless Pool was long past its heyday and no longer the resort of the ton ,’ Rayven said, as he drove Alys home from their next excursion.

‘Yes, but the melancholy decay was very picturesque and interesting,’ she assured him. ‘I liked it much better than the gardens of Vauxhall, where Nell and I went with a party of friends yesterday, even though the gardens are very extensive.’

‘I can hardly wait to discover what treat you have found for us to explore tomorrow, Miss Weston.’

‘Why, none, for I am paying an early call on an acquaintance and then afterwards I mean to see Miss Grimshaw, who is staying with relatives in Cheapside.’

‘Very well. Until the day after tomorrow then,’ he said, handing her down from the carriage with the rare but delightful smile that most women would have found near irresistible, but that caused Alys to look at him mistrustfully.

‘And pray remember me kindly to Miss Grimshaw,’ he added.

‘I am sure she is unlikely ever to forget you,’ she said tartly. ‘She was quite horrified when she learned of our excursions.’

But the thought crossed her mind like a shadow that she was fast running out of sights to see … unless she began to revisit them all, of course.