Chapter 5
The carriage had scarcely drawn up at the bottom of the drive when Miss Halperston emerged from the trees looking pale and shaken.
Though her dark hair was tucked out of sight, her navy bonnet and cloak made her face look even more pallid by way of contrast, and Gervaise guessed she was feeling the aftereffects of the previous night.
Despite the pallor of her skin, she looked a good deal neater than the last time he had seen her, and he wondered what the hell he had been thinking offering for her to travel to London with him. It had been a whim, nothing more, and sometimes, he reflected, whims did lead you astray.
Caroline Halperston looked far from alluring in the morning air, clutching her carpet bag before her as though it was some kind of life preserver. Too late now for regrets of course, Gervaise realized throwing open the door for her.
She clambered in, collapsing unceremoniously onto the seat opposite him. “Carry on, Juggins,” he called up to the driver and they lurched away without more ado. She turned her head and peered anxiously out of the rear window until the lonely spot disappeared from view altogether.
“Memorizing the old place or checking for pursuers?” Gervaise enquired lazily.
She turned back to him, her expression troubled. “I just came across my mother’s maid in the shrubberies,” she confided in him, “with a man.”
His eyebrows rose. “Well, it’s a little early in the day for that,” he observed, “but so long as the flesh is willing.” At her blank look he clarified, “Doubtless you interrupted some intrigue.”
“Yes, it seemed so,” she agreed gravely. “Oh, not in the way you mean, but…” Her words trailed off and she bit her lip.
“Not a lovers’ tryst, then?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh no, not Goring,” she said decisively. “Perhaps if it had been Sophy…but I have not seen Sophy since yesterday morning.” Seeing his look of enquiry, she explained, “She is our housemaid and much younger and prettier than Goring.”
“Goring,” Gervaise pondered aloud. “Was that not the woman who fetched your mother’s smelling salts last night?” Caroline frowned, and he wondered how clear the events of the previous evening were to her. “Sour-faced individual with a rather grim disposition,” he prompted helpfully.
“Oh yes, that would have been her,” she agreed at once.
“Ah, I see now why you are so skeptical. It would be hard to imagine her taking a lover.”
“Oh, it most certainly was not a meeting of lovers,” she said absently, then seemed to give herself a shake. “But I have not even greeted you this morning, my lord. In truth, I was not sure if stowaways should greet their harborers.”
He smirked at that. “I confess, I’m a little rusty on the etiquette myself. Tell me, Miss Halperston, just how old are you?” he asked at the same time as she blurted out, “Are we going to London?”
“London, yes,” he answered.
“Oh, I’m quite old. Twenty-seven in a few months. You need not worry about that.”
“Worry?” Her words surprised him. He was not exactly the worrying type.
She twisted her hands in her lap. “About spiriting me away, I mean, from the only home I’ve ever known.” She sent him a look of appeal. “The only thing that worries me is that I don’t actually have any money.”
“Well, if we are having a frank discussion of our prospects, neither do I,” Gervaise responded. He didn’t want her running away with the idea he was the answer to her every prayer. Seeing her dismayed expression, he elaborated. “I have enough for our passage to London, but after that…” He shrugged.
“Well, that’s alright, then,” she breathed out.
“For a moment I did not think we would get out of Cornwall!” She closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them again, she turned to him impulsively.
“Thank you for being honest with me,” she said, surprising him even further and glancing around the carriage.
“This is Viscount Faris’s coach, is it not? ”
“It is.”
“And it will take us as far as St. Ives?”
“It will.”
“And there we will meet the mail coach?” He nodded at her. “How long will it take? To reach London, I mean?”
“Four days.”
“Four days,” she repeated. “That means three nights. Do we drive through them or stop overnight?”
“We will put up at various coaching inns along the way.”
“And will the driver tell Lord Faris I accompanied you, do you think?” she asked in a voice that wobbled slightly.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Juggins is an old reprobate. I doubt he’d care much about your reputation, and besides, I’ve tipped him liberally over the years. Why should he turn tattletale?”
Miss Halperston swallowed, fiddling with the buttons on her glove. Was she imagining him in the role of a wicked seducer? How amusing, he thought, his eyes traveling over her averted face.
“Having second thoughts about accompanying me?” he asked. Maybe it would be better all around if he just set her down now and they forgot all about it.
“Oh no,” she said quickly. “No, I—I need to get out of Penarth quite desperately. You are doing me a great favor, my lord, by allowing me to tag along. I will never forget it. Indeed, I am in forever your debt.”
“Forever is a long time, Miss Halperston,” he said, regarding her from lowered eyelids. He should probably set her mind at rest by reassuring the wretched woman he had no designs on her virtue, but for some reason he did not.
Where would be the fun in that? The only thing that marked Miss Halperston out from the common crowd was the fact she was a persecuted damsel. It seemed only right to him that she should teeter on the brink of disaster at every turn.
It might alleviate the boredom of their four-day journey to see her twist and turn in the grip of nameless maidenly fears, wondering if he was to be her benefactor, or her ruination. A smile curved his lips, the notion pleasing him.
Besides, he was not entirely sure his motives were pure. In his experience they seldom were. In the cold light of day, she did not look particularly tempting but there had been moments the night before when she had not been altogether without appeal.
“Maybe I should travel under an assumed name,” she murmured, distracting him.
“An assumed name?” His ears pricked up with interest.
“Yes,” she said, nodding. She certainly had a flair for the dramatic under her solemn appearance. For a moment he remembered her pink-cheeked with her dark hair loose. I’m the biggest bitch in all the county. A smile crooked his lips. “It would need to be a suitably dramatic one.”
“Suitably dramatic?” she echoed.
“If you are going to the trouble of invention, you should make it worth the effort.”
She considered this. “What would you suggest?”
He thought about it. “How about Scarlet? Or Juliette.”
Miss Halperston blinked. “You think I could aspire to embody such a name?” she asked skeptically.
“Not right now,” he admitted. “Last night, however…” She shifted in her seat, discomforted. “You looked rather like a maenad,” Gervaise concluded. “Wild-eyed and wearing leaves in your hair. I picked out several while you were leaning over that balustrade.”
Some color crept into Caroline’s cheeks. “Yes, I brushed the last of them out this morning. It wasn’t from an ivy wreath though. I think I got them from sleeping under a tree.”
“Something you often indulge in?” he asked with polite interest.
“No, never. Well, maybe I’ve dozed off in the shade of one at the height of summer,” she admitted conscientiously.
“But never on a brisk day in March,” he concluded.
“Certainly not! I really don’t know what came over me,” she muttered, shame-faced.
He considered her thoughtfully. “Personally, I think you were drugged.”
“Drugged!”
He nodded. “Do you recall much of our conversation last night?”
“My recollections are disjointed,” she confessed, “rather like the dreams one has in the grip of a fever. Snatches come back to me, but I hardly know if I can trust them at this point.” Her eyes widened and she gave a little gasp.
“Did we—? Did we perform a Viennese waltz on the terrace?” she asked. “Or am I raving?”
He smirked at her. “You were most insistent; I hardly liked to say no after the crushing disappointment you suffered at the Christmas party.”
“My crushing…?” She gazed at him in dismay.
“Come now, Miss Halperston, it is too late to play coy with me. You told me all about it. How badly you wanted to dance with me at Vance Park despite the fact you thought me an utter swine.”
She gave a low moan and covered her face with her hands. “Please…no more. I can’t bear it!”
He laughed. “I asked if you had taken a tonic or a tincture yesterday,” he reminded her. “You said not, but perhaps today you recall differently.”
She shook her head, lowering her hands. “No, I… That is I am sure I did not. I am very rarely ill.”
“But your mother takes Dalby’s Carminative?”
She looked surprised by this knowledge. “Did I tell you that? Yes, she has a whole cupboard full of pills and medicines. She does not share them with the rest of the household, however.”
He found he rather wondered about that. “And what about your brother?” he asked, his thoughts turning toward the worthy Edgar.
“Edgar? No, he is in excellent health. He used to have earaches as a small child but once he reached school age, he outgrew them right enough.”
He nodded. “And did Edgar attend boarding school too?”
She started in her seat. “Did I tell you about my time at Hamberleigh Hall?” she asked with almost palpable dismay. “You must have been so bored!”
He had not been bored but he did not feel the need to tell her that. “Indeed, you did, you told me all about your thrilling friendship with the head girl and what a prize-winning paragon she was.”
Caroline Halperston groaned, pressing her palms to her hot cheeks. “Oh heavens, I am sorry,” she said, wincing. “I wonder that you could even bear the prospect of my company after I had poured out my exceedingly dull life like that!”
“Your artless confidences were the highlight of my evening,” he assured her blandly as the coach came to a stop. “Ah,” he said. “We have reached St. Ives.”
He threw open the door and stepped down, turning to offer his hand to her.
She took it and descended onto the street, carpet bag in hand as Juggins unstrapped Gervaise’s trunk.
“I can’t see any other travelers,” he commented, casting a look around.
“Which is probably just as well as I have only booked one seat.”
“What about this gentleman?” Miss Halperston asked nervously as a burly individual ambled up the street toward them, a battered trunk balanced on his shoulder.
Gervaise considered him. “He might be persuaded to take a seat up top,” he decided. “If I offer him sufficient renumeration.”
“But why should you wish to persuade him?” she asked with surprise. “Surely there is room enough inside for the three of us to be comfortably seated.”
“Why should our conversation be constrained to accommodate him?” Gervaise asked, arching a brow. “We can hardly freely converse in front of a stranger, now, can we?”
Miss Halperston gave him a faintly disapproving look. “Well, no, but you can hardly expect to rearrange the comfort of others purely for your own benefit.”
“Why can I not? I do it all the time.”
“Well, but—”
Whatever she had been about to utter froze on her lips, for at that moment the mail coach swept into sight.