Chapter 6
Everyone agreed that they had slept tolerably soundly in their unfamiliar surroundings, though Bea claimed that she had at one point been awoken by loud carousing in the streets outside the inn: shouting, rowdy singing, and breaking glass.
‘Some soldiers of all ranks,’ Miss Macintyre responded as she poured herself a second cup of coffee, ‘will always behave so. I expect they are especially agitated because they know that great events may be happening overseas, and they are not able to be a part of them. Men – a particular kind of men – view the prospect of death or serious injury in a most curious and irrational manner, I have observed: almost as a sport. I wonder if there are militia stationed near our destination? I expect there might be, since it is a vulnerable coastal region, and you must therefore be wary, girls.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Cecilia said drily. ‘I’m sure none of us has any ambition to copy Lydia Bennet.’
They breakfasted quickly, being anxious to complete the final fifty miles or so of their journey and reach Albery Hall in daylight.
Mr Cotwin had written ahead to the housekeeper, Mrs Pritty, to advise her of their imminent arrival, and reassured them that the house had been reasonably well maintained – since he had paid all the bills when they arrived in recent years, and approved necessary repairs, he could at least be sure of that.
‘But Mrs Albery kept to her room during her last illness,’ he had told them, ‘and it is a long time since she employed a staff that most people would think adequate for a house of that size, so I am sorry to say that you cannot expect it to be as clean and ordered as you might wish, despite Mrs Pritty’s best efforts. ’
They had told him that their expectations were not high, and that they were not above putting on aprons and taking up mops themselves.
They would welcome the activity, in fact; Mr Cotwin did not understand, it seemed, their sheer excitement at having a place of their own at last, and being able to make their mark on it.
The roads were bad for the final part of the journey, with choking clouds of dust thrown up by their passage, and the going slow; the sisters were forced to temper their impatience, as they knew the postilion was doing his best. They had no coachman with their vehicle at any point in their journey, only a teenage boy or a wizened little horsey man, who came as a package with each hired vehicle and set of horses.
They took on their last postilion in the nearest large town to their destination, and he turned out to be a cheerful, talkative youth, well acquainted with the area and its inhabitants.
‘You’ll be Mrs Albery’s relatives, the Misses Constantine,’ he said promptly when he encountered them.
‘Pleased to meet you, ladies, I am sure. I’m Fred Wright, at your service, and horses is my business. ’
‘Does everyone in the area know we’re coming, Fred?’ Bianca asked with some surprise.
The lad sniffed eloquently. ‘Well, Mother Pritty is close-mouthed enough in public, but it’s only natural she should need to talk to somebody, living in that big old place almost by herself.
The old man who looks after the house and garden, Jacob Fisk, is her brother, so it’s him she opens her mind to.
And he’s mortal deaf, as you will soon discover.
Apart from them, there’s only the maid, Lucy, and to be plain with you, miss, she listens at doors and peeks in at keyholes every chance she gets.
Powerful curious wench, she is. So yes, I think everyone does know.
Lucy’s walking out with my cousin Tom, you see, and he’s a carter and goes all about the place.
He was here with the barrels of ale only yesterday and told us then that you’d be arriving soon, all three of you with your companion.
You’ll be needing Tom, I daresay, if you have goods to be delivered. ’
‘I hadn’t thought,’ Cecilia said when they were back in the coach for the remainder of their journey.
‘The servants, of course – I expected that – but we now know that all the neighbours will be watching out for us, gossiping about us. And yet we don’t even know who they are.
Isn’t that rather awkward and uncomfortable? ’
‘The awkwardness will not last long, I am confident, because ladies will come to visit, never fear,’ Miss Macintyre said drily.
‘Curiosity will drive them. They will not expect you to call first, I think, because as complete strangers to the district, you are not in a position to know on whom to call.’
‘Or whom we should trust,’ Beatrice responded gloomily.
‘Why should we not trust anyone?’
‘Bianca, we don’t know if anyone else might have had expectations of inheriting Mrs Albery’s money and estate.
Her husband was from these parts originally, wasn’t he?
That was why he bought the house as soon as he was able to afford it.
Some of these neighbours might easily be distant relations of his, or old friends who had expectations that have been disappointed.
Whereas we are complete strangers to the area, and people may easily think that it is unbecoming for relatives who have never so much as paid a visit to their sick, elderly aunt to end up with her house and fortune.
Even if they have no particular reason to feel their noses put out of joint, they may still resent us and be jealous of our good fortune. ’
Beatrice must always see the negative in any situation, Cecilia knew, but there was no denying that she had a point on this occasion.
‘There is sense in what you say, Bea,’ she replied slowly.
‘We must make it clear from the beginning that we had no notion Mrs Albery even existed, the branches of the family having lost touch years ago, and hope that they believe us. We have no cause to be excessively suspicious, but we should not be too trusting either. In Surrey, at Father’s house, we were aware of all the feuds stretching back over generations.
We knew there were things one simply did not say to certain people, invitations that could not be issued without giving grave offence – families who did not talk to each other because of something that happened fifty years ago.
We have none of that important knowledge here, and we should be cautious because of it.
But we must not let it spoil our enjoyment, all the same. ’
Mr Cotwin had told them that Albery Hall could not be seen from a distance – they would come upon it suddenly, he had said, and all the more because the trees around it must by now be sadly overgrown and shielded it from view except upon the more open coastal side.
And so it proved. They were jolting along a rutted lane – luckily, the weather had been dry for the last few weeks, or they would have been axle-deep in mud – and then the carriage made a sharp turn between two ivy-covered gateposts.
They had the carriage windows open and so heard Fred’s cheerful cry: ‘We’re here! ’
The house did not have a long drive leading up to it, as they had already been told.
The sisters knew it wasn’t a large property with a grand approach along a stately avenue of trees; they were not expecting Pemberley or anything like it.
But this house was theirs, and they hadn’t had to marry anyone, even Mr Darcy (about whom Beatrice, for one, had grave reservations) to get it.
They were hanging out of the windows as the coach trundled through an overgrown shrubbery that was dark even on this sunny spring afternoon, until they emerged onto a weed-strewn stretch of gravel that surrounded the house itself.
They were, for a wonder, speechless, all of them.
At length, Cecilia said softly, ‘It’s so very like Constantine Court. I can hardly believe it.’
Their father’s house, which had passed to their cousin John because they had no brother, and which as a result they’d probably never set eyes on again, was a rambling red-brick Tudor manor with many gables, mullioned windows, and tall, twisting chimneys.
Here was just another such. There was even a great climbing rose on each side of the old oak door, reaching up past the first-floor windows and just now coming into bud.
The flowers appeared to be the same colour as those on the bushes they’d known all their lives: a warm, soft pink.
‘It must be deliberate,’ Bianca said wonderingly.
‘Perhaps that’s one of the reasons Mrs Albery and her husband bought the house: because it reminded her so much of home, which makes me think very well of him and his feelings for her.
Then she planted the roses in this position to make the resemblance stronger.
It’s sad to think that we will never know for sure. I’d love to have been able to ask her.’
The girls tumbled out of the coach, followed more slowly and decorously by Miss Macintyre.
Fred unloaded their luggage, and told them that he’d take the horses round to the stables for a rest before he took them and the coach back to the inn, but not to trouble since he knew the way.
Bea hastened to pay him, tipping generously.
The door opened, and three people hurried out; they must have heard the carriage. Cecilia reached out and took a sister’s hand, one on each side. With Miss Macintyre a reassuring presence just behind them, they moved forward, into their new life.