Althea (28 page)

“Not until this is all resolved, my dear. Then I think I may
be entitled to a very small decline, do you not agree?” She smiled wanly and
studied the hem of her dress. “I cannot tell you how much I feel my part in
this business. That poor little thing gone racing off with Wallingham, and I at
root to blame. I am altogether mortified with myself.”

“Come, now,” Francis said brightly, “can’t show that Friday
face to Mary! Heaven knows what she’d assume was to do with you.”

Althea smiled a very little at this, but studied to arrange
her face in less alarming lines. It took only a few minutes for the skeleton of
their plan to be drawn for Maria’s benefit. She was already sleepy and
therefore quiet enough to listen to their questions and plans without raising
any sort of fuss at their narrative. When Althea had finished with the tale she
said drowsily, “But that is terrible. She is to stay here tonight? I never
thought that John Wallingham had such an ill nature. I will do exactly as you
bid me tomorrow, Ally, but just now mayn’t I please go to s-l-e-e-eep?”

Althea could hope for no greater assurance of compliance
from her sister in this state, and so she left Maria to the ministrations of
her husband. For herself, she vowed not to sleep until she knew that Georgiana
was safe. If Georgiana was brought back to Grosvenor Square after her rescue,
someone would need to be about to have the ordering of things. Althea returned
to the morning room, stopping in the library to retrieve her neglected copy of
Tristram
Shandy
, and proceeded to attempt to finish the book. Even the scandalous
characters of Sterne’s novel had no power to distract her attention, and after
an hour or so Althea gave up the pretense of reading. Instead she tried to sew,
to sketch, to braid, to finish a beadwork reticule Maria had begun some weeks
before — in short, to occupy herself in any manner that might conceivably make
thinking impossible. In none of these things did she find the needed diversion,
however, and ultimately she found herself staring unseeingly at the wall
opposite her chair, mesmerized as much by anxiety and contrition as by fatigue
and overexcitement.

o0o

Georgiana Laverham was ill, and John Wallingham was forced
to admit that eloping with a lady — he refused to permit the word “abduction”
to enter his mind — was not nearly so easy or so adventurous as he had
imagined. At first he had felt altogether exhilarated. His ruses had worked
excellently, and he was sure of a good two-hour lead-off, should anyone
undertake to follow him. He was not much troubled by the thought of pursuit.
Pendarly would be offended enough by the note he had sent, he thought, to stay
home in bed, and there was no other person so directly concerned with Miss
Laverham as to make Wallingham apprehensive. Mrs. Laverham, once she discovered
the truth of the matter, might let loose a hue and cry, but he doubted that she
would be so harebrained as to alert the entire party at the Liverpools’ to what
had happened: she would sit tight and pray that it would come off with not too
ill an odor, and Pendarly would retire to watch for another wealthy woman to
pay his relatives’ debts.

After this promising beginning things began to go awry.
Georgiana had slept until they were perhaps an hour out of London, then had
awakened, chilled and fretful, and, when she got her bearings well enough to
realize her situation, highly indignant.

“Why am I still in this coach, sir?” she had asked. “I should
have been home above an hour ago — I beg your pardon that I fell asleep —
naturally I would never have done so had it not been — an exceptionally — that
is — a very upsetting and unpleasant day.” There was a catch to her voice as
she remembered her scene with Edward.

“But what is this!” Wallingham had breathed, full of feigned
amazement. “Do you mean that you do not recall — but surely you must! — your
protestations of love! The moment when I declared the full of my passion for
you and, to my infinite joy, you told me that you reciprocated! Do not say that
you have forgotten all that.” The throb in his voice was wholly artificial, but
momentarily convincing, and for the space of a second Georgiana wondered if she
could have taken leave of her senses so far as to — no, it was clearly
impossible. She could not have forgotten Edward in such a fashion as to permit
such protestations, and in a closed carriage, too.

“You must have misinterpreted me, sir,” she said severely.
“I would never have said any such thing. In fact, I do not remember anything of
what you say, and I strongly suspect that you are pitching me a — a Banbury
tale. I am not so lost to the proprieties, sir; we cannot go on. I wish to be
returned to my house as quickly as possible, and I will endeavor to forgive and
forget this episode, and I am not feeling well in the least.” The vulgar truth
was that Georgiana was prone to become ill on long trips by coach, and the
motion of the chaise had begun to make her feel very peculiar. Wallingham had
never considered the possibility of such an inelegant malady impeding the
progress of his elopement, and was thrown into confusion by this reality. “If
only I could have a little bit of air,” Miss Laverham gasped weakly, and he
immediately opened the curtains, so that there was an influx of fresh cold air
into the chaise. Georgiana gasped with relief and chill and sank back into the
cushions.

When next she spoke, every vestige of that spirit she had
manifested only a moment before had vanished, and she felt herself the same
Georgiana she had been when she emerged from the sickroom, the Georgiana who
had never spoken a cross word to anyone in her life.

“Please, sir,” she entreated in a voice made shaky by the
motion of the chaise, the suggestion of tears, and the curious, unsettled
feeling in her stomach, “I dislike greatly to be a bother to you, but I am
afraid that I am going to be very ill. I assure you I never held you in more
than friendly regard, and I
beg
that you will take me home.”

The first statement was the one that most concerned
Wallingham: he leaned out the window and desired the driver to pull over for a
few seconds, and Georgiana regarded him for a moment with something like
gratitude, then began to sneeze violently. Wallingham regarded her with a peculiar
admixture of astonishment and loathing. Never had he heard of an abduction
conducted in such an irregular manner. Finally Georgiana looked up,
white-faced, and said that he might continue, and that she devoutly hoped that
it would be back to London that they traveled. Wallingham thought quickly, then
presented what he considered a very beautifully thought out plumper.

“That is a thing I cannot do, in all honor, until we are
wed, Miss Laverham,” he said solemnly. “Can you not recall what day this is?
Yesternight we left town, and if we were to return to London now, it would
still be four days you had spent alone and unwed. Only consider your
reputation, and then I am persuaded that you will be moved to take the
protection of my name for your own. I beg you will consider how you are
circumstanced.”

Georgiana blanched. “I cannot remember anything after we
changed coaches. Are you serious in telling me that we have been abroad — that
I have been absent since yesternight? Ooohhhh!” With an anguished cry Georgiana
turned her face into the wall of the chaise and began to sob in earnest now.
Wallingham approached her with some notion of attempting to comfort her — to
make her resign herself, even, to the inevitability of their marriage. He
picked up her hand — and dropped it at once, for it was hot with fever. He drew
away from her and placed a handkerchief to his nose.

“Perhaps,” he said through the folds of linen at his face,
“we should retire to an inn. I fear you are more unwell than you know. After
you have had a good night’s rest, all will look different to you, I am sure.”
He added as an afterthought, “Please remember that I hold you in the greatest
esteem, and wish only for your happiness. If I thought that another could
procure it for you, or that there was a way less revolting to you to reclaim
your reputation, since you are so suddenly” — he heaved an aggrieved sigh — “an
unwilling participant in this adventure, you may rest assured that I would do
all in my power to help you. But do at least recall that I hold you dear to my
heart.”

Wallingham congratulated himself on this speech and wondered
how soon he could lay his hands on her money. The mere fact of his marriage to
her fortune would assuage some of the less ambitious of his creditors, but some
would demand a small show of faith, in the form of a token repayment at the
least. Georgiana had not been swayed by the logic of his words, and was trying
to stifle her weeping as she huddled in the corner, murmuring Edward’s name
like a talisman. With a suspicious eye on her, Wallingham leaned out the window
and instructed the driver to stop at the next posting inn.

The landlord of the Red George, one of the smaller inns
along the Great North Road, was not at all pleased to have visitors arrive at
such an unseasonable hour, particularly when one of them was a mewling sick
young lady. Still, gentry was gentry and usually paid promptly, and the Red
George did have a reputation to maintain, so with sullen obsequiousness he
called for his wife to show the young lady to a room, and offered to mix up a
tankard of good strong punch for the gentleman, who looked in need of something
reviving.

“My God, yes!” Wallingham said when this proposal was made
to him. He was directed to the empty taproom and beseeched to make himself
comfortable there while the landlord busied himself with brewing the potation.
With a sigh of relief Wallingham threw himself into a chair near the fire and
gave some thought to whether he should call in a boy to assist him in removing
his boots. That any youth to be found here would undoubtedly have dirty thumbs
and thus mark the boots irredeemably, he was certain. Still, they would have to
come off at some point, and as it was Wallingham’s sincere intention to become
as drunk as possible and thus gain
some
good of the evening, he decided
that it were best done while he had the power to direct the operation.

Fortunately, at this moment the landlord reentered with a
tankard of steaming, fragrant punch. Wallingham accepted the tankard and gave
the proper orders regarding the boots, which the landlord assured him would be
well tended to, since
he
knew the likes of the gentry. After a few more
of these assurances and a hearty draught of punch, Wallingham wished for
something convenient to lob at the man’s head, but nothing came to hand, so he
merely ordered another round of the punch and sat back to consider his ills.

When he was halfway through the second tankard, and
considering muzzily whether or not to inquire after some brandy, the landlord’s
wife entered the room a little diffidently and stood waiting to be observed.

“Well, what do you want?” he growled at last.

The woman was a plump, motherly sort of person, and while
she had been no better pleased at being called from her bed to attend to these
folk than her husband had been, she was by nature of a better temper. The folds
of her face were set in an aspect of timidity and concern both. “It’s the young
lady, sir,” she started. “She’s a-running a fever something terrible, sir, and
tossing about like fury. I mean to make her as comfortable as I know how, but I
thought you’d better know.”

Wallingham stammered out a stream of interesting oaths and
then, with the courtesy peculiar to the very inebriated, thanked the lady and
sent her back to Miss Laverham’s side. When the woman was gone, he returned his
gaze to the bottom of the tankard and, finding that his view was somewhat
obscured by the remaining punch, drank it off so as to afford himself a clear
prospect of the tankard’s base. By the time the innkeeper arrived with the
bottle and glass, his guest had regrettably lapsed into a stupor so deep that
he could not be roused from it. The innkeeper, being a philosophical man, left
the bottle and glass and settled himself on a pallet behind the door, so as to
be handy when the gentleman awoke and wanted his own bed.

Perhaps two hours later the landlord was awakened, but by a
determined pounding on the front doors. Roused from a pleasant dream for the
second time that evening, he suppressed his feeling of ill use and went again
to answer the door.

There were three gentlemen, each with a look so stern that he
immediately fell back a pace. The tallest of the three demanded in an even
voice that should not have sounded menacing but somehow contrived to, to know
if a man and a girl had changed horses there that evening.

“Changed horses, sir? Why no, sir,” the man stammered. “That
is,
I
should hardly know, sir. Ask the ostler, sir.”

The shortest of the three, a fair-haired young man with a
look of ferocious excitement, peered over the first man’s shoulder. “That’s no
good. He sent us to you — said you’d know of ’em. Don’t try pitching us any
gammon or you’ll find yourself fair and far to the —”

“Quiet, Ervine,” the tall man said briefly. “Have you any
idea of such a party? Tell now: we three are on a short fuse tonight, and it
will be better for you to deal honestly with us.”

The landlord, having made some rapid calculations about the
influence of the first gentleman and that of his present guests, decided that
it was in his own best interest to oblige these men in any way possible. “There
are a young lady and her — uh — brother, sir, is what the man said — staying
the night. The young lady was monstrous ill — my wife has been tending her
these last hours — but the gentleman has been in the taproom since his arrival
— drunk up two tankards of my punch and now has a bottle of my best brandy by
him.”

“Where is he?” said the first and the second gentleman. “The
young lady, where is
she
?” cried the third man, who had been so silent
before.