Animating Maria (2 page)

‘Coal mines,’ said Amy gloomily.

‘So low,’ mourned Effy. ‘Now tea or beer would have been quite respectable, but there is nothing respectable about coal.’

‘The Tribbles have never been in trade,’ said Amy.

‘We are now, dear,’ said Effy sweetly. ‘And if Papa had been a low sort of gentleman in trade, we might have been set up for life.’

‘Nonsense. Papa could have gambled coal mines away with the same ease as he gambled his estates away. There is one good thing about Maria; she does seem to be very accomplished. Her needlework is exquisite, her water-colours are good enough, and her piano playing is a delight.’

‘Can she dance well, d’you think?’

‘Bound to,’ said Amy. ‘She moves so gracefully.’

‘At least Mr and Mrs Kendall are not accompanying her to London. They’ve hired some shabby genteel Bath spinster to accompany her. What is her name? Ah, Miss Spiggs. I hope this Miss Spiggs realizes she cannot stay in London and her services are at an end as soon as she delivers Maria.’

‘If she doesn’t know, we’ll soon tell her,’ said Amy grimly. ‘At least Maria is travelling from Bath. A good hard road and little fear of footpads and highwaymen. We may complain about the Kendalls, but we need their money. I only hope that dreamaday Jill doesn’t wander off somewhere on the road and forget she’s supposed to be travelling to London!’

Miss Maria Kendall had little hope of forgetting where she was bound. She was travelling in a brand-new travelling carriage with Miss Spiggs, her lady’s maid, Betty, two outriders, two grooms on the backstrap, and a coachman and burly thug hired for her protection on the box.

For the moment, as the grey, depressing countryside rolled past outside the carriage, Maria was not lost in dreams or fancies. Her thoughts were of a more practical nature. She hated every bit of the wardrobe her mother had chosen for her. Her gowns were too jeune fille, too high-necked and frilled and tucked and gored. She was a good needlewoman and when they stopped for the night, she planned to sit up and alter at least one gown to make it look more like one of the illustrations in
La Belle Assemblée
and less like those made-up gowns which provincial dressmakers put in their shop windows to advertise their skills. Mrs Kendall had no eye for line, no eye for fashion. As long as the material cost the earth, she felt happy about the result.

The steady drizzle which had been falling all day changed to heavy rain. Rain thudded down on the carriage roof and lashed against the windows.

‘I wonder if John Coachman can get us to The Bell by nightfall,’ Miss Spiggs asked anxiously. The Bell was where they were to break their journey for the night. It was a famous and luxurious posting-house. Miss Spiggs had never been used to any luxury at all and had been looking forward to that posting-house all day.

‘Ask him then,’ said Maria.

Miss Spiggs got to her feet and balanced in the swaying coach, pushing open the trap in the roof with her cane. A small waterfall poured down on her and she gasped and spluttered. Maria turned away to hide a smile. She thought Miss Spiggs a detestable creature. Miss Spiggs was a small plump lady in her late twenties with mousy-brown hair, a round face, pale-blue eyes, and a little curved mouth like those mouths you see on eighteenth-century statues. She had a sycophantic, oily manner and was not very clean. Her gown stank of benzine from frequent cleanings, her armpits of sweat and her feet of old unwashed stockings. It was, Maria reflected gleefully, probably the first wash Miss Spiggs had had in months. While Miss Spiggs sank back in the seat, leaving the trap open, Maria stood up and called out to the coachman, who replied they were nearly at their destination. Maria closed the trap and sat down.

‘Dearie me, Miss Kendall,’ said Miss Spiggs. ‘I am quite wet.’

‘What you need,’ said Maria firmly, ‘is a warm bath as soon as we arrive.’

‘I do not hold with bathing all over,’ said Miss Spiggs. ‘It can cause the ague.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Maria robustly.

‘I do not know what Mrs Kendall will say when she hears about this,’ sniffed Miss Spiggs. ‘She don’t hold with washing all over.’

‘But I do,’ said Maria sweetly, ‘and you are now under my orders. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Of course, of course, my dear Miss Kendall. Anything you want. You have only to command. I am only a poor creature of aristocratic birth who has fallen on hard times and I often forget my lowly station. Oh, my poor papa. He must be revolving in his grave.’

Maria reflected that she had now heard of Mr Spiggs’s revolving so many times that the corpse must surely have dug a hole right down to Australia by now. She pictured an angry and earth-covered Mr Spiggs erupting in the middle of a convict settlement. Maria’s thoughts drifted on. It would be fun to sail across the world to Australia. The sun shone there, it was said. The captain of the ship would be a tall man with thick black hair, merry blue eyes and a tanned face. He would fall in love with her. They would be married on board ship. The pirates would attack them and he would defend his ship nobly, saving them all at the last minute, except Miss Spiggs, whom the pirates had made to walk the plank just before the gallant captain’s rescue. Maria and the captain would build a fine house in Australia and have parrots and monkeys. Did they have monkeys in Australia? Well, if they didn’t, the captain would ship them in for her amusement. But there were all those convicts about. That could not be so terrible, decided Maria after much hard thought. People were transported for all sorts of minor crimes, like stealing loaves of bread. Convicts might be quite jolly. Any company seemed jolly after Bath society. And anyone who had survived transportation was bound to be healthy, not like all those invalids who invaded the Pump Room in Bath, comparing physical deformities and sores. Back to the gallant captain. She had married him but he had not even kissed her yet. What would that be like? It was very hard to imagine being kissed when no one had kissed you.

The carriage lurched to a halt. They had arrived. Maria was disappointed to have to give up such a splendid dream.

There seemed to be a great number of people and carriages about the inn. As the groom let down the steps, he said, ‘They’re saying as how part of the road is washed away up ahead. We may not be able to travel on tomorrow.’

‘Very well,’ said Maria, climbing down. ‘It does not matter all that much. This posting-house has a good reputation and will be a comfortable place to stay.’

But Maria, who was all ready to sink back into her pleasant dream about the captain, received a rude shock when she walked into the hall of the posting-house. She found she had to share a room not only with her maid but with Miss Spiggs as well.

‘And why is that, sir?’ demanded Maria. ‘My parents bespoke two bedchambers, one for me and one for my companion and lady’s maid.’

The owner, Mr Swan, bowed low. ‘I am sorry, miss, but there are so many travellers stranded by the weather. The Duke of Berham himself arrived looking for a room and I could hardly refuse.’

‘Oh yes, you could,’ said Maria crossly. ‘Very well, see to it that an extra room is found as soon as you possibly can, for it seems as if we shall be stranded here for more than one night.’

But Maria became even more angry when she saw the room. There was a large four-poster bed and a truckle-bed in the corner. She summoned Mr Swan and demanded another bed to be set up in the room. Maria had no intention of sharing a bed with Miss Spiggs.

‘And,’ she called to the owner’s retreating back, ‘have a bath of hot water sent up immediately.’

He swung round. ‘I will send it up as soon as it is free.’

‘I want it
now
,’ said Maria, thinking that Miss Spiggs now smelled like a wet dog.

‘I am afraid it has just been taken up to the Duke of Berham’s room,’ said Mr Swan miserably.

‘And everything must be for the Duke of Berham? Very well, as soon as you can. We are all hungry. Where is my private parlour?’

Mr Swan turned red. ‘His grace demanded a private parlour and—’

‘If there was anywhere else to stay on this dreadful night, then I would find it, you toady,’ said Maria. ‘Go and tell this duke I want that parlour.’

The owner looked at this Miss Kendall’s provincial clothes. He cringed before her rage but a duke was a duke. ‘I am afraid I cannot do that,’ he said. ‘I shall put screens around a table in the public dining-room.’

Maria felt the lack of male support keenly. This owner would not have been so ready to give up the private parlour if she had been a man. ‘I told his grace you had already bespoken it,’ said Mr Swan in a conciliatory tone, ‘but he reminded me he owns most of the land around here, including the land on which this posting-house stands. I am sorry we had to give the Blue Room to him instead of you.’

‘Thank you, that will be all,’ said Maria, suddenly realizing the futility of arguing with him any further.

But when the bath finally arrived and a protesting and screaming Miss Spiggs was shoved into it by a determined Maria, she found her rage against this high-handed duke mounting by the minute. She went through Miss Spiggs’s trunk while Betty, the maid, scrubbed that lady’s back, or as much of it as she could considering Miss Spiggs had insisted on taking a bath in her shift. Then, piling up an armful of clothes, she rang the bell and handed them to a chambermaid, with instructions that everything was to be laundered.

‘What am I to wear?’ moaned Miss Spiggs.

‘I have left a gown out for you,’ said Maria, ‘and a clean shift which you will need to sleep in tonight, for I have sent your night-gowns to the laundry as well. When were your clothes last laundered?’

‘On laundry day,’ said Miss Spiggs. ‘The beginning of February.’

‘And this is the beginning of April,’ pointed out Maria. She changed out of her travelling-gown into one of her plainer gowns of striped merino wool.

‘Wait here for me,’ she said.

‘Where are you going, miss?’ asked Betty.

‘To see the Duke of Berham and give him a piece of my mind!’

Maria stopped a chambermaid outside and asked for the Blue Room and was told it was next door. She knocked on the door and, when there was no reply, tried the handle. The door was not locked. She opened it and walked in.

The Duke of Berham was attired only in his small-clothes. He was naked to the waist and sitting at the toilet table brushing his hair. He had sent his valet along to the parlour to supervise the laying of dinner.

Maria stood in the doorway and glared at him. The fact that he really looked like a duke and not like a coal-heaver, which was what most dukes seemed to look like, did not calm her anger or intimidate her. He had very thick fair hair, almost white, and large black eyes under heavy lids, a proud nose, a firm mouth, and a square chin. His muscled chest was white and hairless and his shoulders broad.

The duke for his part saw in his mirror a very pretty girl standing glaring at him. She had thick chestnut hair with gold threads that shone in the candlelight. Her eyes were green, her face sweet, and her pink mouth as perfectly shaped as her figure in the merino gown.

He turned and stood up, and looked down his nose at her, his hands on his hips.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘Insufferable pompous lout,’ said Maria, her temper snapping. ‘I ordered this room for my maid and companion and I ordered a private parlour which you have calmly taken away from me.’

‘You are impertinent. Who are you?’

‘I am Miss Maria Kendall of Bath and I demand that private parlour back again.’

‘Don’t your parents know any better than to let you go wandering into strange inn rooms?’ he demanded. ‘I am in my buffs, or had you not noticed?’

‘Only half of you is naked,’ said Maria. ‘My parents are not with me.’

‘That is a pity, otherwise I could have called on them and told them exactly what I think of your behaviour,’ said the duke. ‘Be off with you.’

‘Not until you have at least apologized.’

‘I have no intention of apologizing to a minx like you. Take yourself off.’

‘No,’ said Maria stubbornly.

‘It is as well I am a gentleman, Miss Kendall, or you might learn a sharp lesson in what happens to misses who accost half-naked gentlemen in their bedchambers.’

‘You are no gentleman, sir. You are a pompous idiot and you look quite stupid prancing about in only your drawers, trying to lay down the law.’

No one had ever dared to speak to the great Duke of Berham in such a manner.

He strode up to her, jerked her into his arms and forced his mouth down on her own. She wriggled against him, trying to get free, but the more she wriggled against his bare chest, the deeper and more searching that kiss became. Maria decided to stay passive in his arms until he had finished. His kiss became gentler, more caressing. She saw her opportunity, wrenched herself out of his arms and stood there, face flaming, green eyes as bright and hard as emeralds.

‘You shall answer for this insult,’ she said, taking out a handkerchief and scrubbing her mouth.

‘Are you going to call me out, Miss Kendall?’

‘My fiancé will.’

‘And who is this fiancé?’

Maria thought of the captain of her recent dream. ‘Captain Jack Freemantle of the good ship
Mary Bess
,’ she said.

‘And when may I expect to be challenged to a duel?’

‘As soon as he returns from Australia.’

‘Then I await his return.’

Maria went out and slammed the door behind her. She leaned against the wall, her heart thudding. What had she done? As soon as she saw him in his undress, she should have blushed in a maidenly manner and then waited outside until he had dressed.

She swung about. ‘Damn you, sir,’ said Maria Kendall furiously and kicked the closed door of his room.

She then made her way to her own room. Miss Spiggs was dressed and shivering beside the fire. Two chambermaids and two waiters were carrying out the bath. Maria averted her eyes from the dirty water.

‘I feel I must write to Mrs Kendall of your behaviour, Miss Kendall,’ said Miss Spiggs in a stifled voice. ‘Just because I am fallen on hard times, there is no need for you to treat me in such a manner.’