CHAPTER FIVE #4
“Eh?” said Lord Rowner, startled.
“Well, you are going to marry Teresa, aren’t you?”
The other two gentlemen roared with laughter at Freddy’s astounded face. He blushed, blurting out, “How the deuce did you know that I am going to marry your sister?”
“Come, come, dear boy,” Denzell said. “This is Teresa we are talking about. If you must have it in words of one syllable, it is my sister who says you are going to marry my sister.”
“But, dash it, I haven’t even popped the question!”
“What has that to say to anything? If you don’t get a move on, I have every expectation that Teresa will pop it to you.”
This remark not unnaturally provoked a deal of hilarity in their colleagues, further embarrassing the unfortunate Lord Rowner, who would now be obliged to endure much chaffing.
“If I were you, dear boy,” Denzell advised him in a voice of mock kindness, “I should run away as fast as you can. I have never met a stronger-minded woman than my own sister.”
Except, he found himself reflecting privately as his friends turned their teasing attentions upon poor Lord Rowner, for Miss Verena Chaceley. Did it not take a strong character to maintain that iron self-control?
A fleeting idea crossed his mind that it was this strength that had made him depart in such haste — running away, as he had advised Freddy to do. Only what had he to fear? Verena did not even like him, let alone wish to catch him in matrimony. Her iron will could give him no qualms.
But she was not iron beneath, came the unbidden protest from somewhere deep within him. Oh, she was not. He would swear to that. She was as soft as the snowflakes she had caught at that day to build the children’s snowman.
Verena awoke to the sound of violent knocking. Starting up in bed, she sat a moment, blinking in the dark, the shock reverberating in her head as the relentless rat-tat continued.
Abruptly the significance struck her. Nathaniel! Who else would come battering on the door in the middle of the night? He had come at last, just as she had known he must.
Even as the thought was forming in her mind, she had thrown off the covers.
Sweeping aside the curtains, she flung out of bed, snatching up her flannel dressing-robe from the chair nearby with shaking fingers.
There was a candle on the bedside table, together with a flint to light it, but she had no time to fiddle with that now. Mama must be stopped from going down.
Groping her way to the door, she dragged it open and became aware of voices in the hall below. Mrs Quirk had already opened the front door.
Verena flew for the staircase to the upper floor, almost bumping into Betsey’s bulk as the maid arrived at an uneven stumble at the bottom of the flight, armed with the oil lamp that always remained burning low against Mrs Peverill’s difficult nights.
Verena saw her own confused anxiety matched in the maid’s illuminated features.
“It must be him,” Verena uttered in a harsh whisper, grasping at the woman’s arm. “Go down, Betsey. At all costs, you must prevent him from coming up.”
“Who, Miss Verena?” The maid’s tone was a trifle bleary still with sleep, but matching her urgency. “Who is it?”
“Who? Who but Nathaniel!”
Betsey’s large hands gripped the oil lamp tighter. “Not the master!”
“It must be. Go down, Betsey, for the love of heaven!”
The maid needed no further urging. With a terse, “He’ll not get by me!” she was gone, lumbering off down the passage and clumping noisily down the stairs towards the voices below.
With automatic haste, Verena began ascending the second flight towards Mrs Peverill’s room. Then she halted. What if Betsey failed? And if Mama had managed to sleep through the knocking, why should she wake her — to this?
If there was a tiny thought at the back of her mind that Mama might insist on speaking to Nathaniel, despite her daughter’s efforts to prevent it, she did not long allow it to worry her. Her determination was fixed. Nathaniel would not take Mama back!
A piercing whisper penetrated her thoughts: “Miss Verena! It’s all right, Miss Verena!”
All right? How could it be all right? Peering down, she saw the glow of the lamp moving up towards her.
“Betsey?” she called.
“Yes, it’s I, Miss Verena,” came the answer. “Don’t fret, now.”
Bemused, Verena crept back down the stairs and met Betsey in the passage outside her own room. There was an intensity of relief in the maid’s voice and face, eerily lit by the shadowy spill of light from her lamp.
“It ain’t him, Miss Verena, thank the Lord!”
Verena blinked dazedly. “Not Nathaniel?”
Betsey shook her head. “It’s that there Mr Ruishton, and he’s asking for you.”
“Mr Ruishton? At this time of night!” Then it struck her. “Dear heaven, it must be Unice! What has happened?”
Even as she spoke, urgent now with a growing dread — a different dread, but none the less painful — she was moving towards the head of the stairs, Betsey close behind her, holding high her lamp to light the way.
All thought of Nathaniel, of the principal worry of her life, left Verena in seconds.
She had become so familiar with Unice these last few months, so fond of her, that the thought that something might have gone amiss concerned her deeply.
The baby was not due for another two weeks or more. What could have happened?
“Mr Ruishton!” she called, seeing in the flickering light cast by Mrs Quirk’s own candle below the outline of Osmond’s figure waiting in the hall. “What has occurred?”
He broke into speech before she could reach the bottom of the stairs. “Miss Chaceley, I am sorry to disturb you at such an hour, but I did not know what else to do.”
As she moved forward, Betsey at her back, Verena saw at once, in the brighter glow, the distress of mind mirrored in Osmond’s features, pale with worry and fatigue.
“Oh, what is it?” she cried, grasping at his lapels. “Is she ill? Oh, heavens, tell me at once!”
“No, no, she is not ill,” he said, “Only she is before her time, and we are all at sixes and sevens, not having expected —”
“Do you mean that the baby is coming?”
“At any moment! She thought it had been indigestion last evening after dinner, but — oh, Lord, Miss Chaceley! My mother-in-law always comes to us, but she had not planned to be here for another week.”
Verena’s head was reeling as these words tumbled out. But their message was clear enough. “You would wish me to come to her?”
“I should not ask it of you, I know, but there is only her maid and the midwife —”
“Of course I shall come, Mr Ruishton,” Verena said at once. “I have no experience in these matters, but —”
“She will be comforted merely by your presence, Miss Chaceley, I know. Pray come. She is having a difficult time of it and I am…” His voice failed, and he was obliged to draw a painful breath. “Miss Chaceley, I cannot lose her!”
Verena gripped his hands, for she could not speak. There was no thought at such a time for the company mask she still maintained towards him, although for Unice there had been some slight relaxation. It did not seem, however, as if he noted its lack.
Another voice chimed in, dissipating the sudden tension in the air.
“That will be enough of that, young sir,” said Betsey with all the authority of her years in service to a mistress who, like a child, needed more of a nurse than a maid. “You won’t lose her, not if I can help it.”
“You’ll come, too?” asked Osmond eagerly.
“Try and stop me.” In command now, Betsey grasped her younger charge’s arm. “Now then, Miss Verena, up we go and make ourselves fit to step abroad.” Turning to the landlady, she added, “Mrs Quirk, you must keep watch for my mistress in case she wakes and tell her what is going forward.”
The landlady began to respond, but Betsey was already wagging a finger at Osmond, whose countenance, Verena saw, had lightened a little in relief.
“As for you, young sir, do you go back to your wife at once. We’ll follow as soon as may be.”
“Oh, Betsey,” cried Verena, between tears and laughter. “You may bully me, but don’t bully poor Mr Ruishton.” She put out a hand to Osmond. “Go back quickly. Assure Unice that we are close behind you.”
He grasped her hand and shook it. “Thank you. Thank you a thousand times.”