Chapter 6
“And in addition, I require another seat for this lady, who will also be traveling to London under my escort,” Lord Atherton said.
“Ho yes, sir?” the postal officer said, licking his pencil lead. “And what might this lady’s name be, if I might take her particulars.”
Lord Atherton paused, turning toward Caroline and lifting his eyebrows quizzically.
“Uh, Miss Pomfrey,” she supplied under pressure. “Miss, er, Penelope Pomfrey.”
Lord Atherton frowned, clearly disapproving of her choice. “Now, you must give your real name to an official of Her Majesty’s postal service, Pen,” he chided her gently before turning back to the man in scarlet and black livery.
“My cousin’s real name is Penthesilia and I am afraid she is not at all fond of it. The family shortens it to Penny but a Penelope she is not. Let the record state Miss Penthesilia Pomfrey, if you please.”
The officer looked pained. “If you might be so kind as to spell that one out for me, good sir. Only I don’t rightly know how to go about the writing of that there name.”
Lord Atherton obliged as Caroline regarded him with mingled emotion.
She felt indignation that he should have hijacked her alias thus.
Penthesilia indeed! Whoever had heard of something so outlandish!
On the other hand, he was currently forking over a not inconsiderable amount of money to purchase her ticket.
This ensured she could not really be too cross.
“Pomfrey?” he murmured as he handed her up into the coach.
“Penthesilia?” she shot back before she could stop herself.
Instead of climbing in after her, he turned back to exchange some words with their fellow traveler. Caroline wondered if he was indeed bribing the burly man to sit up top with the mail guards. What a strange thing to do, extravagant too when he purported to have no money!
Moments later he joined her, slamming the door shut after him.
“I take it you were successful with your bribe,” she said, watching out of the window as the other man gestured toward the roof.
“Naturally,” he answered coolly. “Was there any doubt over the matter?”
“The poor man might not have had a head for heights,” she suggested, rallying.
“Have you seen him? The fellow positively radiates robust practicality.” When she continued to frown, he settled back into his seat.
“You should be flattered I am so keen to get you all to myself,” he said.
“Why are you so put out? Confess, it’s because I changed your name, is it not? ” A slow smile curved his lips.
Drat the man. He had no right to be so attractive when he was simultaneously so vexing! “Yes, why did you do that?” Caroline replied forthrightly. “It was—well—” Words failed as her manners returned with full force. What was she doing upbraiding him when she was so overwhelmingly in his debt?
“High-handed?” Gervaise proposed, tipping his head to one side. “Don’t turn all reticent on me now, Penthesilia. Not when you were so delightfully forthcoming last night.”
How in the world did he manage to infuse his words with so much…suggestion? Caroline wondered. “Yes, it was somewhat high-handed,” she agreed in a stifled voice. “What do you have against the name Penelope in any case?”
“It’s all wrong for you,” he answered dismissively. “I told you, you resembled nothing so much as a wild follower of Dionysus last night. You were absolutely nothing like a model of fidelity.” At her blank look, he added. “Odysseus’s faithful wife was named Penelope.”
“Oh. Was Penthesilia a maenad, then?”
“No,” he admitted. “She was an .”
An ? Somewhat appeased, Caroline settled back into her seat. “You can picture me as a female warrior?” she asked hopefully.
“Not at all, but you hampered me by saying Penelope. It was the closest thing I could think of. Also, I could not remember any actual maenad names off the top of my head.”
“Well, I think Penelope Pomfrey rolls off the tongue a good deal easier than Penthesilia Pomfrey,” Caroline maintained with dignity. “Do you mean to tell me all your cousins have such peculiar names?”
“No,” he reflected. “I only have one cousin, whose name is Louisa. Our family tree has dwindled to an almost alarming degree. None bear our illustrious name these days apart from myself and my uncle.”
“Your cousin then…?”
“Her mother was my aunt Deborah. She married a very dull fellow named Yaxton but he did own half of Berkshire.”
“So, your cousin Louisa must be a considerable heiress?”
He nodded. “She married a Holcombe, a prestigious family, though Freddie is a younger brother.”
“I do not have any cousins,” Caroline admitted wistfully. “It is a good deal too bad, for I always thought I would like one.”
“Well, for the duration of this journey, I am your cousin,” he reminded her. “You may satisfy all your cousinly impulses with me.”
Caroline eyed him askance. “The cousin I imagined was always female,” she told him firmly. “We would have confided all our secrets in one another and written weekly letters back and forth.”
Lord Atherton smothered a yawn. “If you had been blessed with such a cousin doubtless, she too would have fallen prey to your mama’s propaganda, rather like that tiresome head girl of yours. What was her name? Belinda Jarrow?”
Caroline caught her breath. “Are you saying—” She stumbled over her words. “Sorry, are you saying you do not believe my reputation is earned?” she asked, quite shocked.
He gave a short laugh. “Of course not,” he answered bluntly. “Though if you had been undutiful I would not have blamed you in the slightest. If she was my mother, I would have pushed her down a well years ago.”
Caroline’s mouth dropped open. “B-but why do you not believe it?” she stammered. “No one else ever had the smallest doubt!”
“I hesitate to contradict you again so soon, but Lord and Lady Faris do not believe it, and neither does my godson.”
Caroline sat up in her seat. She knew about Teddy, of course, but the Farises? “They don’t?” She faltered.
“No. It seems young Teddy has always harbored an instinctive aversion to your mama. As for Emmeline, she took an unaccountable disliking to her on sight.”
Caroline reeled. “I can scarcely believe it. After all this time. Finally…” A single tear tracked down her cheek and she groped at her cuff for her handkerchief to wipe it away.
Lord Atherton had the good manners to pretend he had not noticed her embarrassing reaction. “It is true Jeremy was oblivious at first, but he has the good sense to be led in all things by his wife these days so…” He shrugged a shoulder. “As a result, he too stands firmly in your camp.”
“And what about you, my lord?” she asked.
“Me?”
“But perhaps your friends convinced you of my innocence.”
“Certainly not!” He sounded offended by the implication. “I knew nothing about your scurrilous reputation until the mutilation of your mother’s shawl that day.”
Caroline could not hold back her wince. Ah, that. Hot shame and embarrassment returned in full force. “Yet you did not believe me the guilty party at the time? Even before Teddy took the blame?”
“Of course not,” he answered contemptuously. “Your innocence was almost distressingly palpable. Besides, it was much more diverting to think of your mother’s twistedly setting you up to take the blame. She carries a sharp instrument in her reticule, I take it?”
“She did that day,” she replied, turning her head to look out of the window. For some reason she felt a stab of disappointment that he should have considered such a painful scene amusing. But after all, why should he not? Her situation was absurdly grotesque.
“It was not so much your innocence that I recognized,” he continued, “as her guilt. I know a liar when I see one. After all,” he concluded, “it takes one to know one.” Seeing her startled reaction, he waved a hand.
“Oh, I have no pretentions to your mother’s excesses, but I am something of an adept should the occasion arise. ”
“Such as when you need to invent a new cousin for traveling purposes?” she suggested.
“Precisely. Now, why do you look like that, I wonder?” he mused. “I tell you that you have no less than four people who believe in you and yet you sit there looking like Mariana in the Moated Grange.”
“Tennyson?” she queried uncertainly, for her schooling had been decidedly second rate.
He nodded, quoting, “‘She only said, “My life is dreary, He cometh not,” she said.’”
She smiled wanly. “It’s only that having finally found true friends, I find it is now necessary for me to leave them behind.”
“Not all of them,” he replied in a bored voice. “You still have me.”
Caroline stared at him. If you ignored his rude tone, then he had just called himself her true friend. Could she believe such a thing? She wanted to, so very, very badly.
He cleared his throat and abruptly changed the subject. “We have some nine stops to make today to change our horses.”
“Nine?” Caroline repeated in surprise. “I had not realized it was so many. And will we reach Exeter by nightfall?” He nodded. “It has been many years since I last made the journey,” she observed quietly.
“How long?”
“It must be some ten years. Not since I was at boarding school there.”
“You were sent by stagecoach?” He shot her a quizzical look.
“Yes, I rather enjoyed the adventure of it.”
“You went unattended?”
“Only until Edgar started at a school there too. Then we would travel together. Mother’s old footman used to accompany us, Lake. He retired a few years ago now.”
“And did Lake treat you as a coiled snake ready to strike at any moment?” he enquired lazily.
She considered this. “No, he treated both Edgar and I the same. Mind you, he was not particularly interested in either of us, so long as we sat in our seats and behaved ourselves.”
“Curious your mother never started any fiction that you mistreated your angelic brother,” he pondered. “I would have expected tales of you pushing him into ditches or snatching away his toys.”
“Oh no,” Caroline answered unthinkingly. “Mother would never share the spotlight like that. It was only ever she that was the victim.”
Lord Atherton threw back his head and laughed. “Yes, I had not considered that aspect.”
“Besides,” Caroline added, uncomfortably, “Edgar would never allow a lie to stand.”
“He would defend you?”
“If he knew the person accusing me to be telling an untruth, then certainly.”
Lord Atherton shot her a skeptical look. “You imagine your brother is unaware of your mother’s perfidy?”
“Of course!” Caroline answered at once.
“Despite the fact he has known you both all his life?”
“He believes in her utterly. Mother has a wholly helpless air,” Caroline explained. “Men fall for it completely. Squire Pebmarsh and Reverend Ryland both think her a delicate and charming flower.”
“No doubt they do but your brother also knows you,” he pointed out. “Knowing you, how could he believe you capable of such spite?” He looked intrigued. “If he had been there that day at Vance Park, when the shawl was discovered, would he have believed you the culprit?”
Caroline’s face grew hot. “Most readily,” she admitted. “He would have been sorrowful and disappointed in me, but Edgar would never have questioned my guilt. You see, there have been several such incidents over the years. The shawl was just one of many.”
A look of appreciation crossed Lord Atherton’s face. “Good lord,” he breathed. “You must tell me some of these incidents. They sound quite fascinating.”
Caroline stared at him in consternation. It dawned on her that his aid had precious little to do with any compassion on his part. He saw her more as a means to stave off his habitual boredom than as an object of pity.
Lord Atherton expected her to divert him with tales of her past woes, rather like an organ grinder’s monkey performing tricks. She gripped her gloved hands together tightly. It was humiliating, she reflected, but not too steep a price to pay for her flight from Penarth.
He did not see her as piteous at least; she must concentrate on that.
That part was not so bad. She needed to be practical.
Instead of inwardly flinching whenever she recounted something demeaning, she needed to be bold and brazen it out.
Her pathetic existence was finally proving useful.
It was paying for her passage to freedom.
“Have you yet breakfasted?” he asked, cutting across her thoughts.
She shook her head. She still felt faintly queasy and the dirt track they were currently bumping along was doing little to alleviate the sensation.
This carriage was not so well-sprung as Lord Faris’s luxurious crested coach.
“When I woke this morning, eating was not my uppermost concern,” she admitted.
“No? What then was?” he asked.
“Flight,” she answered, the lifeless image of herself flashing into her mind, huddled all of a heap beneath the pergola. She shivered. “In truth, I have little by way of appetite.”
“You may work one up before our first stop,” he suggested as Caroline reached out to brace a hand against the side as they went over a particularly large rut in the lane.
“These peninsula roads are poorly maintained. You will have to exert yourself to remain in your seat at times. You see,” he said, when she half jolted out of her seat, illustrating his point.
“I hope that poor man up top is not cursing you soundly,” she replied.
His smile widened. “Let him,” he said callously. “He will not be the first nor the last, I’ll wager.”
And Caroline found she believed him.