Diana the Huntress (10 page)

‘Let us go, Charles,’ said the squire quickly, seeing the vicar looking ready to explode.

They rode silently away until they were clear of the house.

‘I’ll kill her,’ growled the vicar.

‘It may not be as bad as it seems, Charles,’ said the squire, although he looked as if he were trying to
reassure himself. ‘It was a terrible storm, and you were so very angry. It would be only natural for Diana to lose her way and to seek shelter at the nearest house. It seems this Lord Dantrey did not know Diana was a woman. We shall not worry until we see Lady Godolphin.

‘I am persuaded we shall find Diana surrounded by a court of young men. She will already have forgotten her hunting days.

‘There is nothing to worry about. Of that I am sure. Nothing to worry about at all.’

FIVE

Lady Godolphin was well content. Charles Armitage had paid up handsomely on the previous occasions when she had been successful in arranging marriages for his daughters and she had every expectation that he would prove equally generous after Mr Jack Emberton asked for Diana’s hand in marriage. Lady Godolphin quite forgot that the Armitage sisters had managed to ensnare husbands largely without her help and that she had not really been instrumental in bringing Mr Emberton and Diana together.

Mr Emberton was a fine specimen of manhood, thought Lady Godolphin, looking fondly at that young man over the dinner table. Mr Emberton was intent on demolishing a hedgehog, that popular dessert made from six eggs, a quart of almonds and a pint of cream. He finished every last morsel, licked the spoon, and leaned back in his chair giving a hearty belch. Lady
Godolphin smiled her approval at the compliment to her table, but Diana flinched. She could never quite get used to gentlemen giving a hearty belch as a mark of approval. Lord Dantrey did not belch. Lord Dantrey was made of ice. ‘Fire and ice,’ said a treacherous little voice in her head. His lips had burned. She shook her head impatiently and her long pearl earrings, a present from Annabelle, swayed against her cheek.

Despite her happiness in Mr Emberton’s company, despite that warm feeling of standing on the threshold of love, Diana was prey to a twinge of unease, almost a feeling of discontent. She remembered being happy as a child, a different sort of happiness, not this confused mixture of elation and alarm. How long and sunny and simple the days of youth seemed, thought Diana, feeling ninety. Perhaps growing up meant one could never again be happy in an uncomplicated way. There was no way back down the long road to childhood where summers were always golden and sunny, and the winters snowy and shining white.

Then, as one grew in size, adults no longer seemed like confident giants to be trusted and obeyed. Diana had never believed that one lived happily ever after once one was married. Annabelle had thrown a vase at her husband’s head one day and had shouted terrible things at him. Admittedly, the next day she had been laughing and affectionate, but Diana had felt Annabelle should not have quarrelled with her husband at all. Minerva was happy. But Minerva had always been happy, thought Diana naively, and she had always played ‘mother’ to the rest of them, so it followed that
marriage should simply be an extension of her vicarage life.

She did not see much of Deirdre and Daphne, but the last time she had seen Daphne that beautiful matron had had a severe toothache, and the last time she had seen Deirdre, that normally sparkling and vital creature had cried all day over the death of one of her kitchen maids. It was not that one should not cry, but novels always seemed to stop at the wedding. Perhaps it was because no one wanted to know what went on after the wedding, or perhaps everyone
did
know that the first blissful rapture faded into tolerance,
punctuated
with babies.

‘Diana!’ Lady Godolphin’s voice penetrated her muddled thoughts. ‘Colonel Brian is speaking to you.’

‘I was merely asking whether Miss Diana was looking forward to her first Season,’ said the colonel.

‘Yes,’ said Diana politely. ‘There will be many balls and parties.’

Colonel Brian was even greyer than when Diana had last seen him, which was in the heydey of the colonel’s affair with Lady Godolphin. Diana was not shocked at the thought of two such elderly people having an affair. Once over forty, an affair was surely a
tonnish
name for companionship.

‘Miss Diana is not looking forward to the Season at all,’ laughed Jack Emberton. ‘Miss Diana would rather be on horseback riding across the moors above Hopeworth.’

Diana gave him a quick smile. ‘I must put away those days, Mr Emberton,’ she said. ‘It would be arrogance
to think myself beyond coping with the rigours of the Season when every gently bred lady has to do the same thing.’

‘Ah, but the ladies “do” the Season to find a husband, Miss Diana. What if you were to find a husband
before
the Season, some man who would let you ride free to your heart’s content?’

Diana coloured faintly and studied her plate.

‘That was a bit warm,’ whispered Colonel Brian in Lady Godolphin’s ear. ‘Have you checked out this man’s background?’

‘Yes,’ lied Lady Godolphin impatiently. Like most people who pride themselves on being good judges of character, Lady Godolphin remembered only the few times she had been right about someone and forgot all the times she had been wrong.

Mr Emberton was so
solid
, so well-dressed, so comfortable a man to have at the dinner table, it stood to reason he must have an impeccable background. In truth, Lady Godolphin found the Armitage sons-in-law a trifle overwhelming. She liked her men to be a little more earthy, and she flushed with pleasure as Colonel Brian pressed her hand under the table. She had often tried to reanimate their early affair, but when she wanted it back, the colonel seemed to have grown cold, and when
he
wanted to do something about it, Lady Godolphin somehow treated him coldly, feeling
obliged
to pay him off for past rejections.

The rest of the evening proceeded amicably. Since there were only the four of them, the gentlemen did not wish to be left with their wine but begged the ladies to
stay at table and continue talking. The candles burned low in their sockets. Diana listened to Mr Emberton’s easy voice, talking of this and that, and dreamed of being on a more intimate footing with him so that she could learn more of his adventurous life. He did not actually
say
much, seeming happy to describe other people’s adventures and stories. He appeared to know all the rich and famous people in London with the exception of Diana’s brothers-in-law. Then, just as Lady Godolphin was about to bring the evening to an end, Mr Emberton said, ‘I hear Dantrey has come back to this country.’

Diana’s face became set. Lady Godolphin said hurriedly, ‘I must tell the servants to buy the milk from the cows in Green Park and not from those wretched Welsh milkmaids who come to the doorstep. I don’t know what that blueish fluid is supposed to be, but it’s certainly not milk.’

Diana began to talk quickly of various interesting and amusing hawkers, her voice breathless and rapid.

‘Oho!’ thought Mr Emberton. ‘A mystery here.’ But he did not mention Lord Dantrey again that evening.

As he was waiting for Colonel Brian to be helped into his greatcoat, Mr Emberton murmured to Diana, ‘I fear you do not like London. Would you like me to try to persuade your father to let you return to Hopeworth?’

Diana clasped her hands and looked at him with wide beseeching eyes. ‘I should like that of all things,’ she said.

He raised her hand to his lips and looked into her
wide dark eyes. Diana quickly withdrew her hand and buried it in the folds of her dress. She smiled at him to cover her rudeness. But there had been something almost predatory in his eyes, in his bearing, that had made her instinctively shrink from him. She put it down quickly to a normal female nervousness in the face of the attentions of such a masculine man.

When she was being undressed for bed by Sally, Lady Godolphin’s maid, Diana pondered over the strangeness of her feelings for Mr Emberton. When he was with her, she was sure he was all her heart could desire. When she saw his merry blue eyes and listened to his deep voice, she seemed to be at the threshold of that magical country called love, waiting tremulously for that one long step which would take her across to the land where the days were long and sunny, and where the unicorns played on the crushed pearls of the beach beside the sapphire river.

But when he was gone, she was uncomfortable and had doubts. She longed for the next time she would see him so that these doubts would fade away again.

Then there was that wretched cat. Did she not see Lord Dantrey almost immediately after the cat had run across her path? ‘Close the window, Sally,’ she said sharply. The candle flames were being blown in the draught and ‘winding sheets’ were curling about the candles. Sally went to do as she was bid, with her usual nods and winks and grimaces, as if aware of some nasty secret that she could tell if only she would. Lady Godolphin had told Diana that she put up with Sally’s peculiar mannerisms because Sally was a genius at her
job. But Diana found Sally an uncomfortable person to have around and found herself wishing from time to time that she had Sarah’s company.

She kept Mr Emberton’s face firmly in her mind’s eye before she fell asleep, hoping to dream of him, but it was Lord Dantrey’s lips that bore down on her own and Lord Dantrey’s body that made her own burn and ache. She awoke briefly with a cry of distress, turned over and fell asleep, to dream this time of riding out with her father’s hunt on a clear autumn day when the bracken shone gold in the clear mellow light and the sharp air was tangy with wood smoke.

Lady Godolphin awoke with a feeling that it would be a very good thing to stay in bed and pull the covers over her head. Arthur, Colonel Brian, had turned unaccountably formal when he had taken his leave. Grimy fog had permeated the room despite the drawn blinds and curtains and closed shutters. No sounds filtered up from the street below, a sure sign that the fog was very thick indeed. Sally came twitching in and drew the curtains, let up the blinds, leaned out and opened the shutters, filling the bedroom with grey light.

‘What’s the time?’ mumbled Lady Godolphin.

‘Twelve noon, my lady.’

‘Too early to get up,’ said Lady Godolphin. ‘I did not send for you.’

‘Two gentlemen have been waiting below to see you this past hour, my lady.’

‘Oh, lor’. Who are they?’

‘The Reverend Charles Armitage and Mr Radford.’

‘They should know not to come a-calling at this
unspeakable hour. Follicles!’ grumbled Lady
Godolphin
. ‘I suppose I had better get up. No hope of them taking themselves off anywhere?’

‘No, my lady. Matter of the urgentest, that they said, but I said you was not to be awoke, but after they became insistent, Mr Mice said to rouse you.’

‘Very well,’ groaned Lady Godolphin. ‘I do wish Charles Armitage was one of those quiet spiritual kinds of vicars. He always seems to bring drama with him.’

It took an hour for Lady Godolphin to put on her face and what she called her ‘negligent’ and declare herself fit to see visitors.

‘Well, Charles? Mr Radford?’ demanded Lady Godolphin as both men rose to meet her. ‘What’s amiss?’

The vicar and the squire waited until she was seated before the vicar began to speak.

‘When did Diana arrive to stay with you?’ he demanded.

Lady Godolphin’s eyes looked everywhere but at the vicar.

‘Don’t rightly recall,’ she said at last.

‘Then we will ask your servants, ma’am.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ said Lady Godolphin wearily. ‘I’ll tell you what happened …’

The two men listened to her, the vicar in mounting fury, and the little squire with increasing distress.

‘Well, it’s all your own fault, Charles,’ said Lady Godolphin when the story of Diana’s escapade with Lord Dantrey was finally out. ‘You
would
encourage
her to dress up as a man. But we may forget about the whole thing, you know. As I told you, I went to see Dantrey himself and he promised he would say nothing of the matter. Diana’s still a virago intax.
She
told me herself that there was nothing but a kiss between them and that kiss was only because Dantrey had an understandably low view of her morals. Not only that, seems like some of the old villains like Guy Wentwater were spreading filth about your girls. Dantrey met Wentwater on his travels. So you see, you may as well be comfortable again. Why, if I thought for a moment the girl’s reputation was ruined, I would have sent for you express. Diana’s been behaving very nicely …’

‘It’s not that, ma’am,’ said Squire Radford, straightening his old-fashioned bag wig with a nervous hand. ‘Diana must marry this Dantrey. There is nothing else to be done.’

‘But
why
?’

‘Because Diana had obviously been recognized. Mr Armitage received an anonymous letter.’ After the letter had been shown to Lady Godolphin, the squire continued, ‘What if the writer of this letter should speak up when the Season is at its height?
Then
everyone would say she had to marry Dantrey.’

‘Well, they might say that anyway.’

‘But it wouldn’t
matter
,’ said Squire Radford. ‘No one really cares what is said about
married
women. But scandal can destroy the hopes of any young miss.’

‘Follicles!’ screamed Lady Godolphin in
exasperation
. ‘I used to think Mary Wollstonecraft and her
right for women a load of … of … fustian. But now! Hark’ee, Charles Armitage. Is it not unfair this world of ours? A man may do as he pleases. He may drink and gamble and keep a stable of mistresses and he is accounted no end of an out-and-outer. But a
gentlewoman
must needs primp and simper and
die
of boredom in order to be comma fault.’