The LadyShip (20 page)

Elinor smiled back. Encouraged by his ready sympathy,
she was on the point of confiding all her suspicions to him,
but she hesitated to risk losing his sympathy by such a
tale—particularly if those suspicions proved unfounded.
She would have to find another way to enlist his assistance.

As if he read her mind, he said then, “I shall have to intro
duce you to Lady Dolly, Miss Bennett—Marcus’s mother.
You will like her—she is much like her son, but far more
sympathetic. Prettier too, but that is my opinion, and I do
not expect you to share it.”

“Why should I not, sir? I have not met Lady Dorothea—
although I would certainly be pleased to do so—and can
therefore have no opinion of her as yet.”

“You know enough about her to know that her proper
name is Dorothea,” his lordship observed shrewdly. “How
did you know that, I wonder.”

“I imagine Mr Allingham must have mentioned it to me at
some time.”

“Do you remember everything Allingham tells you, Miss
Bennett?”

Elinor found herself backing farther into her corner
again. “Why, my lord,” she said, maintaining a light mood
with some difficulty, “Mr Allingham tells me so little, it is
no effort at all to remember it!”

But Lord Vernon was not to be deflected from his line of enquiry. He leaned forward, pressed Elinor’s hand warmly, and asked, “How long have you been in love with Marcus,
my dear?”

It was fortunate
for Ned Bennett that Mrs Judson, the
landlady of the Blue Swan, had taken a fancy to him. A
plain, almost shapeless widow of some sixty years, Mrs Jud
son was good-natured, voluble, and fond of good com
pany. For this reason she had kept up the Blue Swan after
the untimely demise of Mr Judson, in spite of the
inn’s location, well outside the nearest town of any size,
and its appearance, which was as plain and ungainly as that
of its mistress. It had the virtue, however, of a hospitality
equal to her own.

Ned was soon made comfortable in the best parlour— which was not, in fact, the only one, there being another,
smaller one on the upper level in addition to the public tap
room on the opposite side of the building on ground level.
This was revealed to Ned by the waiter, a mild-mannered but garrulous individual by the name of Wilkins, who rambled on
in a mellifluous monotone as he opened, one after another, a
series of covered dishes containing a roast chicken with
boiled potatoes and a large helping of broccoli, some oysters
in batter, several slices of cold boiled tongue, and a mound of
pancakes—which, together with a bottle of burgundy, he of
fered to Ned for his dinner. Apologising for the lack of sauces
and sweetmeats, Wilkins ventured the opinion that the good
doctor did not look like the kind of man who fancied such
Frenchified kickshaws in any case.

“Eh?” said the good doctor, not immediately recognising
himself by this title. “Oh, no—this will suit me to a pig’s
whisker. I mean, it will do very well, thank you.”

Glancing around to assure himself that Miss Dudley was
not in earshot of this unfortunate turn of phrase, Ned
glanced sheepishly at the waiter and shrugged his shoul
ders. Wilkins, returning an understanding nod, said he
thought there might be a piece of the excellent currant pie
left from that morning’s baking, and went off to fetch
it.

Mrs Judson, too, was beginning to understand the situa
tion. Despite her friendly, open countenance, which in
spired confidences from those who wished to share them
with her, and a sympathetic nature willing to listen to even
the most preposterous of them, Mrs Judson was at the same
time a sensible lady well able to distinguish fantasy from re
ality.

Therefore, when Clarissa confided her tale of having been abducted by her sinister (because outwardly so amia
ble) cousin to prevent her marriage to an impoverished (but
highly respectable) schoolmaster because her wicked guardian uncle (the father of the sinister cousin) deemed him unworthy of his rich ward, Mrs Judson listened in
enthralled anticipation of whatever fantastical twist of plot
Clarissa might come up with next, but did not believe a syl
lable of it.

She was indulgent enough not to express this dis
belief and to agree readily to assist Clarissa in escaping her
nefarious cousin, but she did, regretfully, remind her that the snow was up to four inches on the doorstep and sug
gested, reluctantly, that miss could not really think of
fleeing until morning

Clarissa, however, was full of counter-suggestions, and,
in return for promising to drink a hot posset that Mrs Jud
son would send up to her, she extracted the landlady’s
pledge to alert her as soon as the household was asleep so
that she could escape by means of the sleigh Mrs Judson
had been imprudent enough to tell her was available for
hire.

Mrs Judson then assisted a reluctant Clarissa out of her
clothing and into a night-dress—pointing out that this
would allay any suspicions on the part of the staff that she was not, in fact, an invalid—and tucked her up snugly un
der two extra comforters. Then, fetching the posset herself and forcing it down Clarissa’s unwilling throat, she prom
ised solemnly not to breathe a hint of “their” plot to her
cousin, and repaired to the kitchen, shaking her head and chuckling to herself. It would be a treat to spend a warm
evening by the fire retelling Clarissa’s affecting narrative to
Mrs Wilkins (she of the salutary posset and wife to Mr
Wilkins, the waiter).

Such was her intention, at any rate, until she learned
from the chambermaid that the doctor-gentleman was still in occupation of the parlour and was making inroads there
into the Swan’s wine supply. Declaring confidentially to
Mrs Wilkins that she had always had a weakness for well-
set-up young men with moustaches, particularly if they
were soldiers—which she made sure this Mr Bennett, what
ever he called himself now, had been until very recently—
Mrs Judson decided rather to look in on him and inform him that the young lady was settled for the night.

The parlour was situated in the front corner of the old
inn, down a maze of passageways illuminated by dim lamps
hung on the walls. The furniture, as in the inn’s bedcham
bers, was a collection of ancient pieces ranging from rough-
carved local products to family heirlooms brought there by Mrs Judson as a bride forty years before—or so the widow
informed Ned, as she made herself comfortable in a venera
ble oak chair opposite Ned’s.

Then, after some further con
fidences designed to elicit a corresponding candour from
her guest—which he found well-intentioned and thus
inoffensive—she came to her point and challenged him
outright as to his qualifications as a physician. Ned con
fessed—with an artless smile—that his practice had thus far
been limited to horses and gunshot wounds.

“Nor you ain’t a relation of the young lady’s, are you?”
Mrs Judson asked, arms sternly akimbo but with a smile
creeping over her unlovely countenance.

“No, ma’am,” Ned admitted.

“Makin’ for Gretna Green, then, are you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ned said, putting himself at Mrs Judson’s
tender mercies. Fortunately, the landlady found this a huge
joke and laughed loudly, clapping him on the back and call
ing him a young devil.

“I thought so! Well, she’s a beauty, all right, your lady. I
misdoubt you’re fretting to see the end of this weather, but
I expect you’ll get to Gretna fast enough when it clears—
you reckon you can rein in your spirits till then, young
sir?”

Mrs Judson, finding this notion and all that it implied to
her yet another source of hilarity, did not wait for Ned to
respond, but went off, chuckling, to fetch him another bot
tle of wine, and left him to ponder escaping to bed himself.
But she was back before he could act on this, saying she’d
post a boy outside miss’s room if he thought there was any
real danger of her running out on him to avenge whatever
imagined wrongs she had suffered from their lovers’ quarrel, or talking herself into a real case of some picturesque
complaint, begging Ned’s pardon.

“To hear her go on, you’d think she was a character out
of one of them Gothic novels our Alice—the kitchen-maid,
you know—always has her nose in when she ought to be
attending to her work. She in the general way of spinning
Canterbury tales like that?”

Ned, lighting up the cheroot that Mrs Judson had also
produced from somewhere, confessed that this was one of his beloved’s less admirable characteristics.

“Well, that’s all right,” said Mrs Judson. “I expect if you
know about it, it can’t do no harm. Though why she wants
to go about making up romantical nonsense when she’s got
you to kiss her and make everything rosy, I’m sure I don’t—”

Ned interrupted this reintroduction of what appeared to be the landlady’s favourite theme to ask where the excel
lent burgundy he was still sipping had come from. A mis
chievous look stole into Mrs Judson’s bright black eyes when she confided that the wine had never seen port nor paid duty—although she supposed that now the war was
over, everyone would go back to dealing with tradesmen in
the normal way and paying forty shillings and more a
dozen for quite ordinary claret. When Ned then suggested
that he might put her in the way of an honest merchant that
would keep her supplied for a reasonable price, Mrs Judson
pressed him for details, and shortly it came out that Ned
was a brother innkeeper.

This naturally enough led to
lengthy discussions of topics of mutual interest—from the
iniquities of the licensing authorities to the dangers atten
dant to hiring over-pretty chambermaids—until Ned at last
attempted to stem the flow by enquiring if there would be any difficulty in obtaining breakfast in the morning if the
snow had not let up by then.

“Lord bless you, no, sir! We could fix you up a dozen
eggs and a side of ham right now if you’d a mind to it—no need to fret yourself about that. We don’t cook fancy here,
but if you’ve a liking for good country fare, we’ll have a
fine breakfast for you any time you like. It’ll more ‘n like
ly stop snowing before then, though—unless it don’t, o’ course. There’s no telling hereabouts. My Horace, you know, drove the mails afore we was married and set up
here—you ever hear the story, young sir, of the winter it
snowed so hard there was no coaches at all to be got south
o’ Sheffield for three days? Well, the mail got through all
right. Horace had to leave his coach on the side o’ the road
and set off for Nottingham on foot with the mail bags. Took
‘im two days and he had to kill a pig on the way to get
summat to eat—that were a story, all right.”

Ned had not, of course, heard this heroic saga, but since
Mrs Judson was obviously eager to recount it in great detail,
he resigned himself to hearing it, and sat back to finish his
cheroot while she talked. Mrs Judson had a great many other tales as well, mostly of the horrors endured by her
Horace on account of the weather—floods as well as
snow—and other hazards of his former profession. Ned be
gan to understand why the poor man had suffered such an
early demise.

A few intelligent questions launched Mrs Jud
son then into a rambling and pleasantly soporific narrative
on the history of the Blue Swan, which shortly began to
grow indistinct and to cease altogether when he dozed off.
Mrs Judson, clucking maternally, shook him back into suffi
cient wakefulness to be conveyed up to his bedroom and
helped out of his coat and boots. Thereupon he fell sprawling across the bed and, soldierlike, almost immediately be
gan to snore. Mrs Judson shook her head sympathetically,
blew out the candles, and went off to seek her own bed,
not forgetting to take Ned’s boots down to the kitchen first
to be polished for him in the morning.

Meanwhile, Clarissa, fully dressed and bandboxes re
packed, paced her room, impatient to make her escape. She
had waited two hours in increasing fretfulness for Mrs Jud
son to return and make good her promise to assist her until, the inn having fallen silent enough to indicate that the land
lady might have turned traitor, she finally opened her door
enough to look out into the hall. She nearly jumped back
inside again at the sight of a bobbing light at the end of the corridor, but thinking it might be Mrs Judson after all, Cla
rissa held her breath and waited.