Chapter 2 #3
“Then you will adore Little Valentine,” he said in a rush, determined to keep his mind in its proper place.
“It’s rather a well-kept secret, or at least it always has been.
I’ve heard lately that it’s becoming all the rage.
Apparently, Lord Beaumarsh found himself a wife there and can’t help singing the praises of the place and the people. ”
“Lord Beaumarsh?” she repeated and Nat checked himself as he realised she hadn’t the foggiest notion whom he was speaking about.
“Oh, he’s the dandy fellow, the fashionable one all the young bucks try to imitate,” Betty piped up from beside Meg.
Nat grinned. “Well, someone reads the scandal sheets.”
Betty blushed. “Only once you’ve thrown them away. That’s all right, ain’t it?”
“Quite all right,” Nat said, not realising that was how she’d come to read such things. “You have never done so, Miss Bancroft?”
The lady shook her head. “No, indeed. My father had not the slightest interest in society, and the family I recently stayed with would certainly not have approved of such scandalous literature. The bible and some very stern religious sermons were the only books I was permitted to teach from,” she said, and with such emphasis Nat was given the impression of a rather pious and self-righteous family, who had then stolen from a poor young woman in their employ, which would be about right in his view.
“Well, suffice to say that the place is becoming all the rage,” he said with a smile.
Miss Bancroft looked rather uneasy at this prospect and Nat hurried to reassure her.
“Oh, not at this time of the year, I assure you. The roads are even worse in Sussex, and no one goes there unless they have a good reason for doing so. Next summer, though, there won’t be a noblewoman in the country who will not want to boast of sea bathing in Little Valentine. ”
“Well, I shall be long gone by then,” she said with obvious relief.
This remark nettled him for reasons Nat did not quite understand, but he let it go.
They carried on in silence for a while and Nat grew sleepy despite the jolting, all the rushing about of the previous night catching up with him. Waking sometime later, groggy and disorientated, he discovered to his relief that they were in Tunbridge Wells.
Meg looked up at the hotel, her feelings in complete disarray.
After twelve hours in a carriage, it seemed like some fantastic dream, or more like a farcical one.
Was she really doing this? Was she, Miss Margaret Bancroft, truly here in Tunbridge Wells, at a hotel, with a man whom she had only met last night?
Had all her principles, all her long-held beliefs about propriety and how a young lady ought to behave, been thrown out of the window at the first hint of misfortune?
Not at the first hint, she reasoned, for she truly had been left in the most disastrous circumstances through no fault of her own.
First had come her father’s illness, nursing him and coming to realise the depths of poverty they had been reduced to, a situation he had hidden from her for years.
Despite having been raised a lady, she had not complained or bemoaned her circumstances and had submitted to becoming a governess when her father had explained it was her only option, the only thing left he could do for her.
Though she had always adored her papa, she had realised lately that he had been a rather selfish creature, for he had in no way prepared her for her fate.
At least he had educated her well, as well as any man, in fact, for as his only companion he had expected her to discuss and debate whatever caught his interest, which might range from Ancient Greece to politics or science.
Sadly, this had not endeared her to the family for whom she had worked.
In their view, women ought to speak French and Italian, embroider, paint and play music, and very little else.
They had been furious when they had discovered her teaching their daughter the rudiments of Latin.
“Miss Bancroft?”
Meg started, looking around to find Mr Ashford watching her with concern.
“It’s a very respectable hotel,” he said with a reassuring smile. “And you have a comfortable room with an annex for Betty. It’s quite all right, I promise.”
“Thank you,” she said, uncertain of what more to say.
She was all at sea, everything seemed such a muddle, and the prospect of meeting Mr Ashford’s family, and pretending to be something she was not, loomed before her.
She had never been good at playacting, or at least she had never had the opportunity to try, and the suspicion she would likely fail and catapult them both into disaster made her stomach churn.
“Are you sure quite well?” he asked anxiously.
Meg looked at him, discovering his expression filled with concern, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners.
How handsome he was, and so personable. She truly believed he could persuade a girl that black was white if he put his mind to it.
Surely his family would never believe he had consented to wed such a dull creature as she?
“Come, take a walk with me before we go in,” he said, offering her his arm. “You’ve been cooped up in that stuffy carriage for hours. A little fresh air will be just the thing.”
Meg nodded, wondering if this was a new version of herself, a docile creature who would submit to whatever he thought best for her, a leaf caught up and tossed about on the breeze, or swept inexorably down a river to certain disaster.
He sent Betty off to prepare the room for her mistress and then guided her down the road.
“If you would like, you can take the waters,” he offered with a smile.
“It might put some colour back into your cheeks, but all the same, I won’t recommend it.
Foul stuff. Mind you, Little Valentine is a spa town too, and the water there is even worse.
We used to dare each other to drink it as children! ”
“We?” she said, realising she knew very little about his family.
“Oh, Hawkney, his sister Della, and our cousin Aubrey usually, though there seemed always to be dozens of cousins coming and going. In those days my grandmother spent the entire summer at Little Valentine, though. We children would run tame there.”
“Why did she stop?”
Mr Ashford frowned. “I don’t know, though I bet Hawkney had something to do with it,” he added darkly.
“Is Lord Hawkney so humourless?” she asked, feeling increasingly daunted at meeting the man whom Mr Ashford seemed to dislike so much.
His expression grew pensive, and he sent her a shifty glance that made her nerves leap.
“What is it?” she demanded, planting her feet and refusing to move another step. “What haven’t you told me?”
“Nothing. That is to say, I didn’t not tell you, it’s only that you presumed.”
Meg was not a fool. He was nervous that whatever he was about to reveal would have her running back to town, on foot if necessary. “You had best make a clean breast of it, Mr Ashford,” she said sternly. “I cannot abide falsehoods, and if you are trying to make a fool of me—”
“Good heavens, no!” he said, sounding genuinely appalled, which was somewhat reassuring. “Heavens, but you do fly up into the boughs. It’s only that you assumed Hawkney was a lord, when he isn’t.”
“He isn’t?” Meg said, her stomach unknotting a little as she hoped perhaps the fellow wasn’t a nobleman and the family wouldn’t be as intimidating as she feared.
“No. He’s a duke.”
Meg stared at him in horrified silence. “Oh, dear lord. I’m doomed,” she said faintly, raising a trembling hand to her temple. This could not be happening. Oh, what a fool she had been to consider even for a moment—
“Come, come, buck up,” Mr Ashford said briskly, taking hold of her elbows. “We’ll have no swooning. Not again. Look, sit yourself down and take a deep breath.”
With no better option than to do as he suggested, Meg allowed him to guide her to a low wall. She sat down, wondering how on earth she could extricate herself from this dreadful situation.
“I know I said he’s a top-lofty devil, and he is, there’s no getting away from it, but I doubt we’ll see much of him. He’s not in the least bit sociable, even at family gatherings. Especially at family gatherings,” he said with a snort. “I think we all get on his nerves.”
Meg glared at him, wondering how he couldn’t see this was not the least bit reassuring.
“And your grandmother is the Dowager Duchess of Hawkney,” she said, fighting back a sudden desire to fall into strong hysterics.
“She is,” he agreed.
“And what is she like?” Meg asked, hoping against hope that he would say she was a dotty old woman with a fondness for cats and peppermints and did not know what day of the week it was.
“A tyrant,” he said cheerfully. “I suspect you’ll like her.
She doesn’t hold with women being timid and placid and under a man’s thumb.
She’ll expect you to have a mind of your own, and to use it too.
Only speak up, she’s rather deaf but hates any suggestion of infirmity.
She’ll accuse you of muttering if you don’t speak loudly enough. ”
“Thank you for the advice,” she said sourly, for it was a good deal too little and far too late. How could she back out now, when he had arranged Betty to work for her for the next three weeks and paid for their travel and a hotel, not to mention the small matter of an entire wardrobe?
“It will be all right,” he said, his voice gentle now. “Truly. Actually, I think they’ll all love you, and they’ll be so relieved that I’m finally getting leg shackled that they won’t care a straw that you have no dowry.”
“Except you’re not,” she reminded him. “Don’t you care that, if this ludicrous scheme actually works, they might be disappointed?”
He had the grace to look somewhat unnerved by this suggestion. “It’s only three weeks! They can’t fall in love with you that much in such a short time. They’ll get over it. Besides, they are used to being disappointed in me, it will hardly be a shock.”
There was a remarkable depth of bitterness in that last remark.
It struck Meg as very revealing. Whatever his family were like, he felt the sting of their disapproval more than he let on.
The question was, were they right to feel so?
Sadly, she rather thought they might be.
From what she had seen of Mr Ashford so far, he was kind and charming, very reckless and altogether too ready to avoid anything that smacked of responsibility.
She did not doubt that his face, his fortune, and his winning manners made his way through life altogether too easy and could well imagine why the idea of marriage and family, and the obligations they would demand of him, appeared dull and confining in contrast.
“You’re not going to bolt, are you?” he asked, frowning down at her.
“Yes, I’ll just trot back to London and carry on freezing to death in the doorway where you found me,” she said tartly. “Precisely how many options do you think I have now?”
He grinned at her. “Well, I’m glad—not for the situation,” he added hurriedly.
“But I’m glad you will not back out. You should look upon it as an adventure.
For three weeks only, you can be someone else, live another life, and then you can go back to being a respectable governess, if that’s what you prefer. ”
“Not anywhere your family is likely to run into me, I can’t,” she said, wondering if he had even considered that as a possibility.
He frowned, confirming her suspicions that he did not look farther ahead than the next few days and that the future was something vague and far off that he preferred not to consider. “Well, we could send you abroad if you liked the idea? Do you speak French?”
“French, Italian, German, Greek, and Latin,” she replied, not above feeling rather smug at his expression of astonishment.
“You don’t say?”
“I do, actually,” she said, rather surprised at the delight and admiration in his eyes. The notion of an educated female horrified most gentlemen.
“Good Lord. You must have a brain the size of a carthorse in that dainty head of yours. However does it fit?”
Meg blushed, undecided whether or not this was a compliment.
“Well, no wonder you think me a foolish fellow. I rather think I am compared to you. Are you good at maths and science and dreadful things like that too?”
“Exceptionally,” she said, surprising herself this time. She had quickly realised no one other than her father had thought her cleverness was a good thing.
“Well, I never,” he said quietly.
He looked suddenly rather dispirited, and Meg wondered if she had made a mistake and he regretted having taken on a female with a brain. “I can pretend to be vapid and stupid if you prefer,” she said, though not without a resentful bite to the words.
“What? Heavens, no. Don’t do that. Grandmama will adore you.
She’ll just wonder what on earth you are doing with a dull fellow like me,” he said with a snort.
“I’m afraid I was never very good at… well, learning.
Hawkney was, of course. He excelled at everything.
You’ll probably get on like a house on fire. ”
The idea did not seem to please him.
“You did not enjoy learning?” she asked, finding this an odd concept.
He shrugged and leaned down, snatching a piece of long grass growing beside the wall and systematically tearing it into small pieces.
“I don’t know. Not much. I liked some of it, but it never stuck.
I preferred… oh, never mind. Come along, let us get inside before you really do freeze.
It’s damned cold. You need a warm fire and a good meal, and you’ll feel much more the thing. ”
Meg did not argue, for it truly was bitterly cold.
The idea of a fire and a hot meal was too appealing to refuse, yet she wished he had told her what he had preferred to learning.
She determined to find out a bit more about her would be fiancé over dinner, for if she was to convince his family that she intended to marry him, she would certainly need to know.