Sally James (2 page)

The vehicle, a shabby post chaise, came into sight round a slight bend in the road, and began to slow down. Mary waited for it to pass, idly wondering what brought its occupants to this part of the world, when she suddenly realised it was halting outside her own home.

Hidden from sight the passengers descended from the chaise, a portmanteau was quickly unstrapped, and Mary saw with astonishment her brother Matthew walk along to hand money to the postilion. The man nodded and then urged his horses on towards the village, leaving Mary confronted with the sight of her brother, burdened with the portmanteau, two band boxes, and an enormous bird cage, hastening towards his front door. At his side walked a petite, modishly attired girl who seemed to Mary’s incredulous eyes to be little more than a child.

Shaking off her surprise, she started across the road and passed through the gate in their wake. The gate swung to behind her, and the click of the latch made Matthew turn round in dismay. His companion gave a little scream and clutched at his arm, causing the bird cage to sway precariously.

“Oh, he’s followed us! Save me, I beg!”

“Be careful!” Matthew expostulated sharply. “You nearly upset this damned bird!”

A squawk of rage came from the cage, followed by an ear-piercing screech, so that the girl’s reply was lost. Matthew, depositing his burdens on the ground, grinned amiably at her.

“Don’t be a ninny! Apart from the obvious fact that it
isn’t
Ingram, he has no idea where you are. Mary, how are you?” he went on, taking his sister’s hand and lightly kissing her cheek.

“I am well, but a trifle bemused,” Mary replied, eyeing her brother with some trepidation. Several inches taller than she, equally dark and handsome, Matthew had a lively spirit that had in the past led him into innumerable scrapes. Usually his charm of manner had enabled him to escape severe penalties, and there had been no major disturbances while he had been at Oxford. She had begun to entertain hopes that the years had brought discretion with them, but now she wondered.

Matthew’s companion had been standing back a little, watching Mary anxiously. Mary turned to her, and saw that the girl was rather older than she had at first supposed, probably seventeen. She was small and slight, ethereally fair, with wide, innocent looking blue eyes, a tip-tilted nose, rosebud mouth, and a riot of short blonde curls. Her dark blue pelisse was of the latest style, and she wore an amazing confection of a straw bonnet, trimmed with an abundance of artificial flowers.

“Matthew, can you not introduce us?” Mary prompted, and Matthew grinned boyishly.

“Oh, my wits have gone a-begging, getting up at the unearthly hour Teresa insisted on! I was forgetting that you don’t know Teresa. Teresa, this is my sister Mary, and this is Miss Standish, who has done me the honour of promising to marry me.”

Mary merely blinked before extending her hand to Teresa.

“Do call me Mary, and if we are to be sisters, may I not call you Teresa? But why are we standing here? Let us go indoors where we can be more comfortable. If you have travelled from London you will no doubt wish to tidy yourself.”

Teresa emerged from the trance she had apparently fallen into on seeing Mary.

Smiling prettily, she greeted Mary and then, as though she suddenly realised where she was, cast an apprehensive look about her and moved closer to Matthew, who had seized her luggage and was attempting to balance the bird cage on top.

“Oh yes,
pray
do let us go indoors. I cannot help feeling hideously unsafe until I am hidden from Ingram!”

“He won’t know where to look for you,” Matthew responded curtly. “I wish you’d get the notion out of your head that he can discover everything. Oh, thank you,” he added to Mary as she retrieved the recalcitrant bird cage from his insecure grasp. “I
said
that damned bird would be a
nuisance!”

“Damn bird! Damn bird!” suddenly squawked the cage’s occupant, and Teresa broke into a trill of laughter.

“Oh Matthew! Isn’t he clever! He’s heard you say that no more than half a dozen times, and he’s learned it already!”

“Well, I wish he hadn’t!” Matthew said with a faint blush, and an apologetic glance at Mary. She stood holding the cage up and interestedly surveying the occupant, a brightly coloured parrot.

“Caroline’s children would be enchanted with him,” she remarked easily. “But do come inside. I’m surprised father has not come out to see what is amiss.”

“If he’s reading his precious Plato he won’t even have heard us,” Matthew replied, leading the way through the front door and depositing the luggage on the hall floor. Mary smiled reassuringly at Teresa and they followed him in just as a startled maid appeared from the kitchen quarters to stand gaping at the unexpected visitors.

“Ah, Susan, please bring some cakes and tea into the parlour. This way, Teresa,” and Mary led them into a bright parlour to the left of the front door. She was still carrying the bird cage, and she set it down with some relief on a small table near the window. Then she turned to Matthew.

“Where is father?” he asked, slightly nervously, she thought.

“In his study. But as he has apparently not heard us, I suggest you do not disturb him for the moment. While Susan prepares the tea I will take Teresa up to my room to wash.”

Teresa seemed excessively shy of Mary during the few minutes they were apart from Matthew, and Mary did not attempt to discover from her the reason for this unheralded appearance. Let Matthew do his own explaining, she thought a trifle grimly, and confined her remarks to showing Teresa to her room, and helping her to remove her bonnet and pelisse.

When they were installed in the parlour and Mary had dispensed tea, she lifted her eyebrows quizzically at her brother. Now that the moment for explanation had come, he seemed ill at ease, tugging unthinkingly at the folds of his intricately arranged cravat.

“I do apologise for not being ready to receive you,” Mary said gently to Teresa. “No doubt Matthew’s letter went astray. How long do you propose to remain?” she went on, turning to Matthew.

He looked uncomfortable. “I - I did not send a letter,” he muttered. “There was no time. I’m sorry, Mary, if it inconveniences you. I - I am not certain what it is best to do next. But I knew that you would take pity on Teresa and shelter her until I can arrange to have the banns called.”

“Shelter?” Mary was startled, though she contrived not to show her surprise.

“From my cousin!” Teresa interjected. “He is the most abominable man, forever telling me that I must not do things I wish to do, and trying to force me to do things I detest. I truly believe he would have made me stay on at that horrid school in Kensington if I had not run away so often Mrs Bloom refused to take me back in the end!”

Mary blinked at this spate of revelations.

“Your cousin? Is he your guardian?” she enquired cautiously.

“Yes!” Teresa replied bitterly. “Papa appointed him, and he is also my trustee, and what is worse, he controls mama’s capital so that she can have merely the miserable pittance he allows!”

“And is it he you were afraid of seeing? Does he not approve of your engagement?”

“I dared not tell him!” Teresa uttered, shuddering, and casting an appealing glance towards Matthew.

“You see, Mary,” Matthew contributed, thus prodded, “Sir Ingram wants to marry Teresa himself.”

“And what of her mama? Does she know?”

Teresa blushed and looked down into her lap. “No. I did not dare to tell her either, for you see, she is so
terrified
of Ingram, that she would tell him
everything
the moment he asked her. She can
never
stand up to him, and he is so overbearing and detestable we decided it was safer, and better for her too, that she should not know where I am. We have eloped, you see,” she concluded ingenuously.

“Well, I’m thankful Matthew had the good sense to bring you here,” Mary declared, her concern as she began to disentangle the threads of this new scrape Matthew had become embroiled in tempered by relief that he had not made it worse by attempting to carry off this child, for she was little more, to Gretna Green. It appeared, too, that she was an heiress, if she had trustees.

“I knew you’d help us,” Matthew said with relief. “Truly, there was nothing else to be done.”

“Have you approached this Sir Ingram? What is his other name?”

“Leigh. No, I did not dare. Not that I was afraid, you understand, but for Teresa’s sake.”

“You see, he threatened to send me to stay with an absolutely
antiquated
aunt at Cheltenham, just because I was a few minutes late returning from a morning drive!” Teresa declared. “He means to marry me for my fortune - though I would have thought he had sufficient of his own - and he tries to discourage every man who shows any interest in me. If I even
hinted
that I had any partiality for one man his life would be in danger, so you see I could not
possibly
have told him about Matthew!”

“Surely you exaggerate!” Mary replied, shocked at this incredible suggestion.

“You haven’t met him,” Matthew said gloomily.

“He has already killed one man I wanted to marry!” Teresa declared.

Mary stared at her. “How is that?” she asked. “And if so, how was he allowed to get away with it?”

“Oh, he was clever enough to hide it, but I know! He made friends with Godfrey, or that is what he said, when Godfrey went to him to ask permission to address me. And then he took Godfrey to the most
dreadful
places, and one night he was killed. Of course Ingram pretended he had been set on by ruffians, but he was not even scratched himself, and there was no blood on his clothes, and no one saw it happen! If his story were true then he’d have been hurt too, because they’d
both
have been attacked. But he wasn’t, and Godfrey died. I’m terrified the same thing might happen to Matthew, and that’s why I begged him to bring me away.”

“I know it’s not the proper thing, Mary,” Matthew said slowly, “but it was all I could do, truly. Mrs Standish could not have helped, for Sir Ingram would cut off her allowance if she defied him. Apart from the business of Godfrey Delaine he is a most unreasonable man, and dominates Teresa, or tries to, in everything.”

“He refuses to allow me to entertain my friends at Leigh House, in town, or at any of his country houses. And I am permitted to accept only a few invitations, and even then I have to take a governess with me!” she said in disgust. “Oh, he calls her a chaperone and a companion, but why he must insist on her when mama is able to take me to balls and assemblies and parties, I cannot think! And she is a most disagreeable
gorgon,
for he dismissed my dear Matty, saying she was too old to control me! And she has been with me almost from the time I was born, and was mama’s governess before that!”

“How odious he sounds,” Mary commented, pity for the unknown Matty surging up within her, for she had met elderly spinsters whose charges no longer needed them, and knew of the difficulties they encountered when trying to obtain a new situation.

“He is
abominable!
”
Teresa shuddered. “Although I have a
vast
fortune, he will allow me only a pittance, and he sends back to the shops anything which I have bought that he does not approve of. And - and he
beats
me! Truly! Only last week when he was angry with me over some trifling purchase I had made, and I argued with him, he beat me! Then he sent me to my room and locked me in, and permitted me to have bread and water only for two days. It was mainly that which showed me that I
had
to escape. Besides,” she added darkly, “there have been several attempts on my life, and as he would inherit my fortune if I died before I married, he
must
have been responsible!”

“What in the world do you mean?” Mary asked, startled.

Teresa sighed deeply. “Once, when we were at Leigh Park, there was a thorn put under my horse’s saddle, so that he would become frantic when someone mounted him. Fortunately my groom was still holding him and was able to control him while I dismounted. Another time, a shot was aimed at me when I was walking in the woods. Then there was the fence on the little bridge over the river that had been sawn through. Fortunately it was a friend of Ingram’s who fell in, for he could swim and I could not.”

“They could all have been accidents, I suppose,” Mary said, but doubtfully.

“Possibly. But not the saddle girth that had been cut almost through. Luckily my groom is conscientious, and discovered it in time.”

“It sounds incredible,” Mary said slowly. “If your mother is unable to help, is there no other relative who might be appealed to? I know little about such things but are there not normally two or three trustees? Could they not help?”

“The other one is an elderly uncle, but he leaves everything to Ingram. He suffers from gout and spends all his time in the country, so that he cannot see what happens. But even if he
were
in London, I have no doubt Ingram would contrive so that he agreed with him!”

“Well, we must think what to do,” Mary said with sudden decision. She had listened to Teresa’s outpourings with some scepticism at first, but as the catalogue of the unknown Sir Ingram’s offences grew, she concluded that even if she allowed for some exaggeration natural in the circumstances, Teresa’s guardian did seem to be an undesirable person to exercise such control over her.

“Then you’ll help us! I knew you’d do it! I told you it would serve best to come here, Teresa! Mary’s a great gun!” Matthew exclaimed. “You can stay with Mary while the banns are called, and I will go back to town to throw him off the scent. Then we shall be married and there will be nothing he can do to harm you.”

“We must discuss this,” Mary said firmly. “I am not convinced it is possible, for Teresa is not of age. You must ask papa. But Teresa is welcome to remain here while we talk things over. I will go and help Susan prepare a room.”

She smiled comfortingly at Teresa and rose. As she moved towards the door it opened, and Susan entered, looking rather flustered. Looming large behind her in the doorway was a tall man, even taller than Matthew, and with broad shoulders made even broader by the many-caped greatcoat he wore. His eyes were a startling blue in a face deeply bronzed by the sun, and his sardonic glance as he took in the scene presented to his gaze was accentuated by the upward slant of his black eyebrows.