Before she could sit down at the table, Miss Wimple drew Hannah aside. ‘Do not encourage my charge to prattle. She must be kept aware at all times that she is being sent away to The Bath in disgrace.’
‘Why? What did she do?’ asked Hannah, her odd eyes snapping with curiosity.
‘My lips are sealed,’ said Miss Wimple.
As soon as breakfast was over, Hannah slipped away and asked the landlord if the ladies of the party might have the use of a bedchamber in which to put on some more warm clothes, and also if hot bricks could be put on the carriage floor. She tipped the landlord generously and then had to tip the coachman equally generously so that the ladies’ trunks might be unloaded.
Mr Judd said firmly that his wife was very well as she was. Hannah ignored him and addressed Mrs Judd directly. ‘I have a spare cloak in my trunk. If you put it over your own, you would be so much warmer.’
She cast a scared, rabbit-like look at her husband. ‘Come along with me,’ said Hannah bracingly. ‘We shall only be a moment, Mr Judd.’
She led Mrs Judd up the stairs and Belinda and Miss Wimple followed.
‘This is an excellent idea,’ said Belinda, throwing back the lid of a trunk. ‘I am going to put on two more petticoats.’ Even Miss Wimple seemed to be thawing towards Hannah as she took a large shawl out of her own baggage and wrapped it around her massive shoulders.
Hannah found a scarlet merino cloak and insisted Mrs Judd put it on over her own.
It was a much more cheerful party that set out on the road again, all exclaiming with gratitude at the heat provided by hot bricks placed in the straw on the carriage floor. Mr Judd did slightly sour the atmosphere by lecturing his wife on having borrowed Hannah’s cloak, but Hannah noticed that Mrs Judd drew the scarlet cloak more tightly about her and that her soft mouth was folded into a firm line of defiance.
A red sun rose, sparkling on frost-covered fields. Bare branches of trees stood out skeletal and black against the red sky.
Mrs Judd fell asleep first, followed by her husband and then Miss Wimple.
‘Heigh-ho,’ said Belinda to Hannah, ‘we are travelling at some speed now.’
‘You arrived at the Bell Savage in an extremely handsome carriage,’ said Hannah. ‘I am surprised you took the stage.’
‘I am in disgrace, you see,’ said Belinda calmly. ‘My uncle and aunt said they had already spent a fortune on trying to marry me off and were not going to waste any money on me. I am being sent to my Great-Aunt Harriet in The Bath. She is a very religious old lady and is to teach me the folly or my ways.’
‘That folly being …?’
Belinda glanced at the sleeping occupants of the carriage and then leaned forward. ‘I ran away with a footman,’ she said.
Hannah looked at her sympathetically. Mrs Clarence, wife of her late employer, had done just that; pretty, witty, gay Mrs Clarence, whose going had sent Thornton Hall into a sort of perpetual mourning.
‘Tell me about it,’ said Hannah.
‘Are you not shocked?’
Hannah shook her head.
‘I had better tell you how it all came about.’ Belinda gave a little sigh. ‘I am nineteen years of age. Mama and Papa died of the smallpox two years ago. I inherit all their money when I am twenty-one or when I become married. Papa was a scholarly man and Mama was very pretty, not like me. My uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs Earle – my uncle is my father’s brother – are quite different. They are very rigid and very high in the instep. My fortune impressed them with the idea that it would be simple to find a duke or an earl for me to marry. To that end, they brought me out at the last Season and then again at the Little Season. I did not take. Or rather, there were actually several gentlemen interested in me but they were not titled and so were discouraged. My aunt and uncle said there was a certain lack of necessary innocence in my appearance which attracted the wrong type of gentlemen. I tried to explain to them that when I reached the age of twenty-one, I would be independently wealthy and could travel and study and would not have to marry at all. They were shocked. They said it had been my dead mother’s dearest wish that I marry, and so they said that I must endure another Season this year.
‘It is so very lowering,’ said Belinda, ‘to have to sit at balls, propping up the wall. Of course, I attracted adventurers from time to time and, for some reason, elderly roués.’
Looking at that oddly passionate mouth, Hannah thought she knew why.
‘As I explained, my uncle and aunt felt I lacked the dewy innocence of appearance necessary in a debutante and hired Miss Wimple to school me in the arts of flirtation.’
‘How can a middle-aged spinster be expected to school a young lady in the arts of flirtation?’ asked Hannah.
‘Middle-aged ladies are supposed to know everything. Oh, I beg your pardon.’ Belinda coloured.
Hannah laughed. ‘Never mind my sensibilities. Go on with your story.’
‘In our household, there was this footman. His name was Patrick Sullivan.’
‘Irish,’ said Hannah sympathetically.
‘Yes, Irish, and with all the charm of that race. He had thick black curls …’
Hannah raised her eyebrows, momentarily shocked.
‘I saw him out of powder once when he was returning from a funeral,’ explained Belinda. ‘He always seemed to be asking leave to go to funerals. It was found out afterwards that he did not have one relative in this country, but liked to invent funerals so as to get free time. He had very merry blue eyes. He was most disrespectful behind Aunt and Uncle’s backs,’ said Belinda with a giggle. ‘He called them the Cod and Codess, and they are rather cold and fishlike, with pale eyes and thick lips.
‘I told Patrick I was becoming desperate at the idea of another Season and he startled me by saying, “Run away with me.” I must have been mad, and it all seems so very shocking now. But I thought he wanted to marry me. You see, with my money, he would be rich and he was so merry and bright, I thought we would have a glorious time.
‘I did not climb out of the window or anything like that. Patrick had it all arranged. He waited until my uncle and aunt were out walking, I packed a bag, and we simply walked from the house and took a hack to the City.
‘But when we got to the City, he tipped his hat to me and said he hoped I would be happy now that I was free, and started to walk away. I ran after him and said, “But we are to be married, Patrick.”
‘He said he had no intention of marrying me but was going on to a new position in Lord Cunningham’s household in Grosvenor Square. I said he had no need to work any more. As soon as we were married I would get my fortune. But Patrick had read the terms of my parents’ will in my uncle’s desk, which I had not. I was to have my fortune if I married before the age of twenty-one, but I had to marry someone of whom my uncle and aunt approved. “But where am I to go?” I asked him. He scratched his head and said, faith, I’d surely scores of relatives that were more congenial, and when I told him I had not, he said I had better go home before I was missed.
‘I shall always remember him walking away from me … clank, clank, clank.’
Hannah looked puzzled. ‘Clank, clank …? Oh, you are speaking metaphorically. Do you mean like a knight in shining armour?’
Belinda shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that. It was the spoons, do you see? He had stolen the silver.’
Hannah tried to keep a straight face but she began to laugh and Belinda started to laugh as well.
‘So,’ said Hannah at last, mopping her streaming eyes, ‘I suppose you must survive until twenty-one?’
‘So long away,’ said Belinda mournfully, and Hannah had a sudden sharp memory of youth, when the years had been very long. Now they seemed to speed by.