The Frost Fair (2 page)

“Done!” Meg said promptly, with a show of confidence she was far from feeling. “It's a wager.”

He grinned, nodded and opened the door. “Is Isham driving you and your aunt up to Yorkshire himself?”

“Yes. We leave tomorrow.”

“Then you won't have your own carriage with you?”

“No, of course not. Why?”

Arthur rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the head of his walking stick. “I was just wondering how you'll manage to get away from him if you should decide to cut your stay short,” he muttered, half to himself.

“What's this? Are you already searching for excuses to explain why I'd fail to return in time for you to win the wager?” Meg grinned in amusement. “Are you trying to hedge off your bet, Mr. Steele?”

“Not at all, my dear, not at all. If you make up your mind to escape—and you will—I'm certain you'll contrive somehow. Meg Underwood is not a girl who'd be likely to permit a little thing like the lack of a carriage to keep her imprisoned. So have yourself a very good journey, my dear.”

“Thank you, sir, I shall.”

“Tell you what, Meg,” he said with sudden inspiration. “When you decide the time has come to make an escape—”

“
If
I decide to make an escape,” she corrected.

“
If
, then. If you decide to make a run for it, send me word. I'll meet you in … in Harrogate and escort you back to London. How's that for gallantry?”

“It's very gallant indeed. But I shouldn't wager any more than you already have on the likelihood, if I were you.”

“It's likelier than you know. Charles Isham, my dear, is a deadly bore. As soon as you realize it, get word to me. Harrogate, remember. The White Hart in Harrogate. It's a quite respectable hostelry where you and your aunt can find comfortable, safe refuge until I arrive to take you home.”

“You know, Arthur,” she said, suddenly serious, “even if I should send for you to escort me home, it wouldn't mean that I would necessarily agree to accept
you
in Charles' place at the altar.”

He shrugged. “I know that. No obligations on either side, agreed?”

“Agreed.” She smiled at him warmly. “I may not find you suitable as a husband, my dear, but I couldn't find a better friend.”

He blew her a parting kiss. “We friends make the very best husbands, and so you'll learn for yourself one day. See if you don't.”

Meg was to remember those words. Shockingly often, during the week that followed, they came back to haunt her, for Charles Isham turned out to be, just as Arthur had predicted, the most crushing bore. It amazed her that she'd not recognized that quality in him earlier. She should have seen it from the first. After two days in his company, she began to wonder if she could endure a lifetime as his wife. After three days, she wondered if she could endure a
week
. After four, she was certain she couldn't endure another
hour
. She had had enough … enough of his prosy mother, his stuffy manor house, his overweening relatives, and the viscount himself.

That fourth day was the one before the day of the dinner at which their betrothal was to be announced. Everyone in the household was in one way or another busily preparing for it. Even Aunt Isabel had been pressed into service by Lady Isham to help arrange the flowers. Only Charles and Meg were exempted from the bustle of preparation.

Charles chose to occupy the time by giving his bride-to-be a complete tour of the portrait gallery. For Meg, the experience proved to be appalling. The gallery, a wide corridor spanning the east and west wings of the building, seemed to extend for miles into the distance, both its walls covered with paintings. Meg was made to stop and examine each and every one, while Charles identified the portrait with a brief, pompous biography. “Here, my dear,” he expounded, “you see Lord Hallwell, the first Minister of the Exchequer under George the Second. In my mother's line, you know. And this is Lady Evelyn Marsdene. She married John Marsdene of the Somerset Marsdenes, quite a distinguished family, but originally, of course, she was one of the south-county Ishams.”

It was all stultifyingly tiresome. As they inched along the corridor, her mind raced wildly about for a way to break through the lethargy of the atmosphere, to lighten his intense absorption in his ancestry. Such an absorption was bound to give the man too great a sense of his own consequence. It would do him good to be teased out of it.

With this in mind, she stopped before the next portrait and looked up at it carefully. “That gentleman
must
have been cleverer than he looks,” she said with a wicked twinkle.

“No, he wasn't very clever at all,” Charles responded without a blink. “He made a speech before the Lords, they say, but it was not greatly heeded, and I don't think he ever went back.”

Meg almost gaped at him. She'd already begun to suspect that Charles Isham did not have a well-developed sense of humor, but she doubted that he could be as mirthless as that. Perhaps he hadn't heard her properly. She would try again.

She stopped before a portrait of a particularly unprepossessing lady. “She's not a
female
, is she?” she asked sweetly.

Charles leaned forward, scrutinizing the painting carefully. “That's Lady Millicent Hallwell, born Millicent Allyn. My great uncle Joseph Hallwell's wife. He was my mother's uncle, you know.”

“Yes, I surmised as much,” Meg sighed, ready to admit defeat. But as the hour wore on and the names of dozens of Hallwells and Ishams were dunned into her ear, she became more and more rebellious. If she heard the stultifying biography of one more Hallwell (“My mother's side, you know”) or one more Isham (either north- or south-country), she was very much afraid she would scream. It was at that point that she looked up to see the stuffed head of a huge boar protruding from the wall. “Is he a Hallwell or an Isham?” she asked with melting innocence.

He'd been studying the portrait to the stuffed boar's left, and it was with difficulty that he forced his attention away from it. “What?” he asked.

“This,” she said, pointing. “Hallwell or Isham?”

He looked from her to the boar and back again with the greatest of seriousness. “That's a wild boar,” he said as if to a backward child.

“A b-boar?”

“A boar.”

“That's what I thought,” she said, trying to stifle the gurgling in her throat. “To which side of the family does he belong?”

“I'm not sure I understand your question. It's a wild
boar
.”

“Yes, Charles, I heard you. A
boar
. That's why I took it to be
some
sort of relative.” She thought he would probably hit her. Or wring her neck. It was too much to hope that he would laugh. Any sort of appropriate reaction would have pleased her.

But Charles merely shook his head mildly. “It was caught by the Isham side, if that's what you mean. My uncle Joshua Isham felled him … on a hunt in Asia. The beast is said to weigh over seventy stone—I say, where are you going?”

It had been too much for Meg. She'd clapped a hand to her mouth to keep from guffawing into his face, lifted her skirts and fled.

After she'd shut her bedroom door behind her, thrown herself across the bed and laughed till the tears came, she lay still for a long while. Then, her mind made up, she rose and went to her dressing table. She removed her writing case from a lower drawer and swiftly penned a note.
Dear Arthur
, she wrote.
You win. Be at the White Hart, Harrogate, tomorrow evening. I shall be waiting. Meg
.

Chapter Two

While Charles Viscount Isham waited for his betrothed at the foot of the main staircase, the lady herself was stealing down the rear one.

“Really, Meg,” whispered her grey-haired accessory-to-crime who was following her down the back stairs carrying a bulging hatbox awkwardly in her arms, “do you know what you're
doing?
”

“Hush, Aunt Bel. Do you want someone to hear us?”

“Yes, I think I do! Dash it all, this is the most
reprehensible
act of impropriety! There are more than twenty guests downstairs waiting to meet you!”

Meg's silvery, mocking laugh floated up to cut off her words. “I know. I wish I could see the expression on Charles' face when he has to announce to them all that I've bolted.”

Her aunt Isabel rolled her eyes heavenward in hopeless disapproval. “I wish, Margaret Underwood, that once, just
once
, you'd handle yourself like a well-reared, well-behaved creature and show a
modicum
of restraint! Why can't you be a bit conventional for a change?”

Meg, with a sloppily packed bandbox tucked under her left arm and a bulging portmanteau gripped in her right hand, managed to turn her head to grin up at her aunt. “If I were, think how dull life would be for you?”

“Not dull at all!” her aunt retorted. “Blessedly restful!”

The stairway was narrow, and their voices seemed to bounce back at them from the enclosed walls. “Hush, dear,” Meg warned again.

They made a turn at a small landing. Aunt Isabel shifted the weight of the hatbox to one arm and, holding on to the bannister with her free hand, leaned over and looked down. “Goodness, there seems to be no bottom. Where does this stairway lead?”

“I haven't the foggiest idea,” Meg admitted, depositing her burdens on the narrow stair and joining her aunt to peer down. “You don't think I'm so unconventional that I explore the back stairs of the houses I visit, do you?”

“Then you don't know where we're going?” Her aunt looked at her aghast. “Why, for all you know, this will lead us to the cellars!”

“What's wrong with that? Come along, Aunt Bel, we haven't time to dawdle.”

“I shall not move another step! I've never entered a cellar in my life!”

“Neither have I, but I don't think we need be afraid of them. They are not necessarily dungeons, are they?”

“But, Meg, they have rats!”

Meg laughed again and picked up her baggage. “Don't be so silly. We shall reach the servants quarters or the kitchens long before we reach the cellars. Do come along.”

“The kitchens? Do you plan to leave through the
kitchens?
”

“I plan to leave through the closest exit I can find. It might well be the kitchens. Why not?”

“But they'll be full of cooks and scullery maids and such, won't they, with Charles hosting a huge dinner?”

“What if they are?”

Aunt Isabel, noticing that her niece's head was already disappearing down the flight of stairs below hers, shifted the weight of her hatbox to her chest again and scurried down after her. “But how can we—? Dashing out through the kitchen, bag and baggage, like a couple of thieving housemaids! What will we
say
to them?”

“To the kitchen help?” Meg was not in the least concerned. “Don't worry about that. Just leave it to me.”

The stairs did indeed lead to the kitchens. At the next turning, Meg and her aunt found themselves standing at the top of the last flight of stairs. One of the stairway's enclosing walls here was cut away, leaving them completely exposed to view from the room spread out directly below them—the wide expanse of the main kitchen. As Isabel had predicted, the area was a veritable beehive of activity. Meg could see at least a half-dozen aproned maidservants, four or five under-cooks, an equal number of scullery maids, two bakers and four liveried footman all running about between the ovens and the tables setting up foodstuffs on platters and trays.

At the center of the room, stationed behind the largest of the many workables, was the Viscount's French chef who had been distracted from directing all the activity by the presence of the butler. The butler, inordinately imposing in full, formal regalia, stood directly opposite the chef at the worktable. He was red-faced and angry as he defended himself against the Frenchman's tirade. “Is it
my
fault, you Frenchified hysteric,” he was shouting, “that his lordship has ordered me to withhold the first course for another quarter hour?”

“
Mais vous n'ecoutez pas
!” the distracted chef railed. “I prepare
les poulard a la Perigeaux
! You
idiot Englais
, zey will be unfit for—”

But his vituperations were never to be concluded, for a footman, glancing up at the stairway, gasped loudly. “Gawd!” he squawked.

“My word!” the butler muttered, agape.

“It's 'er ladyship!” a housemaid piped.

Dead silence fell on the room as the entire company, frozen in their places, stared at the ladies on the landing.

Meg quickly surveyed the area. The wall opposite them, she noted, was an outside one, its window revealing the kitchen gardens beyond. In the far corner she could see the door which led to them. That was the exit she was seeking. Her course now clear, she turned, looked down at the faces gaping up at her and gave them a brilliant smile. “Please don't let us interrupt.” she said airily. “We do not at all intend to be in your way. We are only passing through.” And with a beckoning nod to her aunt, she sailed down the stairs, Isabel at her heels. While their audience remained immobilized in shock, Meg turned and, with another dazzling smile, grasped her aunt's hand and pulled her out the door.

As soon as the two ladies found themselves in the autumn-faded kitchen gardens, they burst into giggles. But in a moment Isabel's smile faded. She looked up at the darkening sky, became aware of the icy air that nipped at her neck and shivered. “Meg, this is absurd!” she said worriedly. “I have the strongest feeling that it'll come on to
snow
!”

“Snow? In October? It's you who's absurd, love. Do come along. I think the stables must be this way.”

Isabel had no choice but to follow. “It's been known to snow in October, you know,” she muttered as she dutifully trotted behind her purposeful niece, “and this
is
north country. Besides, it's almost November. I tell you, I can smell snow in the air just as surely as I can sense that we're heading for trouble.”