Belinda Goes to Bath

2

I never had a piece of toast,

Particularly long and wide

But fell upon the sanded floor,

And always on the buttered side.

James Payn

When the passengers struggled back aboard The Quicksilver in a freezing black dawn, the snow was still falling steadily. But there was no wind. Wind was what caused accidents to stage-coaches, wind that hurled snow up into high drifts. Miss Wimple, rather red about the nose and eye after the libations of the day before, said the weather was all the fault of the government’s encouraging balloonists. If God had meant us to fly, she insisted, he would have given us wings. It stood to reason that all these balloons bouncing into the clouds had disturbed the atmosphere and caused the snow to fall. Hannah’s comment that she had never heard of a ballooning expedition in winter was treated with disdain.

Mr Judd sat groggily in his corner. His wife poured a little cologne in a handkerchief and bathed his brow; he smiled at her weakly and said he would never touch strong drink again.

‘And neither will I,’ declared Miss Wimple. ‘And as for you, miss,’ she went on, rounding on Belinda, ‘you should never have had any in the first place.’

‘At the latter stages yesterday,’ said Belinda, ‘Miss Pym and I were drinking lemonade, which is why we are the only two who look at all human this morning.’

‘Do not address your elders in such a pert manner,’ said Miss Wimple and then put a hand to her head and groaned as the guard tootled ferociously on the yard of tin and the coach moved off into the snow.

‘I wonder how our coachman is faring this morning,’ said Hannah.

‘Disgraceful young churl,’ commented Mr Judd wearily. ‘He looked as if he had slept in his clothes.’

After Reading, the Bath road ran through flat pastoral country with barely a rise, past Sipson Green, where they changed horses again at the Magpie, and into Buckinghamshire, where it became broad, flat, and comfortable until Newbury. The day remained grey and threatening. There was no cheerful dawn, only the remorseless snow, which had begun to thicken. The horses had slowed to a walking pace. The bricks that had been placed on the floor of the coach that morning lost their heat and the miserable passengers began to shiver. Mr Judd lit the travelling lamp, not because he needed the light, but in the hope that it might disperse some of the biting cold.

‘We should have more passengers inside to keep us warm,’ said Hannah, trying to lighten the gloomy atmosphere when they alighted at the next stage. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the vow to give up strong drink, for every one of them was downing Nantes brandy like a trooper.

‘Can be miserable, that can,’ said the guard, a small, tough, wizened Cockney who had been passing their table and heard Hannah’s remark. ‘I mind when Jack Stacey was driving the Bath mail out o’ London. Well, as you know, the mails can only take four inside and a tight squeeze it is. One night, when the mail was about to leave and was full, a gentleman who was a regular customer come up to Jack and insisted on getting in, for he had to get to Marlborough. Stacey held a council with the bookkeeper, observing that it wouldn’t do to offend a regular. At last, the problem was solved by the gentleman jumping in just as the mail was leaving. What a squeeze that was. At the Bear at Maidenhead, where they changed the horses, Jack, he opens the coach door and says, “There’s time for you to get a cup of coffee here, gentlemen, if you’d like to get out.” No one moved, for, don’t you see, they was fearful they wouldn’t fit back in again. And they wouldn’t budge at any of the other stages. Jack says they were all as silent as the grave and that’s how they went on for seventy-four miles.’

‘And how is our coachman today?’ asked Hannah sharply.

‘Tolrol’,’ said the guard with a grin. ‘Flash Jack can handle the ribbons as good as any man in England, drunk or sober.’

‘I would rather have him sober, if you don’t mind,’ said Hannah crossly. ‘And is it not folly to travel on in this storm? If there are any ruts or obstacles in the road, he will not be able to see them.’

‘Oh, all’s right and tight, lady. No wind. Can’t move when there’s wind.’

Hannah sniffed and pulled her nose. Outside the leaded panes of the window lay a winter’s scene. Snow sparkled on roads and roofs, lending beauty to the inn and to a jumble of Tudor houses. It would be pleasant, thought Hannah, to stay where they were and enjoy the view and wait until the snow stopped falling.

Dinner was served, a heavy inn dinner of roast beef, game pies, trifles and fruit. Hannah and Belinda drank lemonade, but Hannah noticed that Miss Wimple was drinking fortified wine, occasionally giving her lips genteel dabs with a lace handkerchief.

Reluctantly they all filed out again. Mr Judd was once more bullying his wife and she was doing everything she could to placate his temper, which, of course, only made it worse.

She should stand up to him, thought Hannah. It is that cringing, fluttering manner of hers. Such a manner brings out the beast in men. She remembered a chambermaid, Lucy, a shy, fair, pretty, fluffy girl. But she had had the same air as Mrs Judd and the butler was always shouting at her and the footmen seemed to delight in making her cry; even the lamp-boy put a dead rat in her bed. She was one of life’s natural-born victims. Hannah, tired of fighting Lucy’s battles, had found her work in the home of an elderly lady renowned for the sweetness of her temper.

But when she had called on Lucy on one of her rare days off, it was to find the girl red-eyed and broken in spirit. She said the other servants tormented her and her mistress shouted at her.

Hannah shook her head over the memory. It was amazing how fear encouraged bullying, as if the human race could smell it, like dogs.

‘Do you read romances?’ Belinda asked Hannah.

‘No, I do not,’ said Hannah roundly. ‘A great deal of pernicious rubbish.’

Miss Wimple gave her an approving smile.

‘Because,’ went on Hannah and lost Miss Wimple’s favour, ‘what goes on in real life is more weird and wonderful than any romance.’

‘How so?’ asked Belinda, sensing a story.

Hannah settled her head comfortably against the squabs. ‘Two miles out of Reading and on the right of the road’, she said, ‘is Calcott House. It was the home of Miss Kendrick, a rich and whimsical lady. There is a poem about this adventure, but I can only remember scraps of it. In any case, this Miss Kendrick had received many offers, all of which she refused, and it was reported she hated all men, when one day,

Being at a noble wedding

In the famous town of Reading,

A young gentleman she saw

Who belonged to the law.

‘The young gentleman was Benjamin Child, Esquire. To him Miss Kendrick sent a challenge to a duel in Calcott Park. She did not assign any cause why Child – if such should prove to be his lot – should be skewered like a chicken. The barrister took the challenge seriously and turned up on the duelling ground, sword in hand. He found Miss Kendrick masked and waiting for him, also with a sword in her hand.

“So now take your chance,” says she,

“Either fight or marry me.”

Said he, “Madam, pray what mean ye?

In my life, I ne’er have seen ye.”

‘In fact, he suggested point-blank that she should unmask, not, perhaps, caring to take a pig in a poke. The lady, however, remained firm and incognito, when the intrepid Child, perhaps fortified with a view of the imposing Calcott House rising above the trees, told the lady he preferred to wed her rather than try her skill. Upon which, in the twinkling of an eye, he found himself

Clothed in rich attire,

Not inferior to a squire

– in fact, master of Calcott. And that all happened in 1712, less than an hundred years ago.’

‘I would think you were making it all up,’ said Belinda, ‘except that the poetry is so bad. There is something so honest and worthy-sounding about bad poetry.’

‘What is wrong?’ asked Hannah sharply. Mrs Judd had begun to sob.

‘Cease your caterwauling this instant,’ snapped her husband.

‘I h-have a p-premonition of disaster,’ sobbed Mrs Judd.

‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Hannah, finding to her horror that she, too, was capable of being nasty to the inoffensive Mrs Judd.

‘Well, I feel it. Here!’

She touched the region of her heart.

At that moment, the pace of the coach began to quicken. Hannah drew aside the red leather curtains, which she had drawn to shut out the vista of bleak snow. The snow was still falling thickly, but the horses were moving at a great rate.

She let down the window and, leaning out as far as she could, screwed up her eyes and tried to make out what was happening on the box. The coachman was hunched up, and with a sudden jolt of alarm Hannah noticed the reins had slipped from his hands.

‘The coachman has fallen asleep,’ she said. ‘Someone has got to rouse him, or the guard.’

Mrs Judd screamed with alarm. Mr Judd opened his window and began to shout to the guard. The guard shouted something back and Mr Judd roared that the coachman had fallen asleep. They heard a thump on the roof as the guard moved from his seat at the back to join the coachman on the box.

Hannah hung out of the window again. The snow thinned slightly and she saw a curve of the road ahead.

Right across it, blocking the road, stood a hay wagon. She put up the window. ‘We are for it!’ she shouted. ‘Down in the straw!’ And Hannah crouched down on the floor of the carriage just as the coach swung off the road. They were thrown right and left. There were cries and sobs and swears and then the coach seemed to take flight. There was a short moment of silence and then, with an almighty crash, the whole coach landed in a river.

The Marquess of Frenton was riding along the marches of his estate. Despite the weather and the time of year, he considered it his duty to see that his property was not being neglected and that the high stone walls that bound the park had not been breached by either animals or humans.

He would not admit to himself that the real reason for the expedition was because of his house guests. With a view to choosing a bride, he had invited Miss Penelope Jordan and her parents, Sir Henry and Lady Jordan, to stay. He had danced with pretty Penelope several times during the Little Season in London. She was a stately brunette with cool, calm, chiselled features and moved with great elegance. She was very, very rich, or rather, her parents were, which meant she would come with a good dowry. Some element of caution had prompted him to invite other house guests so as to make his motives not seem too obvious until he had fully made up his mind. But the other guests had not arrived, being stopped from travelling by the hard weather. It was not that he really had found Penelope any less suitable. The marquess was a fastidious man. He found her as elegant and well bred as ever. It was her parents’ assumption that the knot was as good as tied that grated on him.

The marquess’s late father had been a noisy, spend-thrift gambler and drunk. His mother’s last words as she had followed her husband to the grave some four weeks later had been, ‘Do not blame your father, my son. Men were ever thus.’

So the marquess at the age of twenty had found himself saddled with monstrous debts and a near ruin of a castle. He had worked hard and long, experimenting with new farming methods, taking what little capital he had and using it carefully on the stock exchange. The hostilities with the French had brought about a rise in the price of wheat, and slowly his fortunes began to turn. Now, at the age of thirty-four, he was a very wealthy man. His estates and farms were the envy of all less hard-working landowners. He had restored his ancestral home, Baddell Castle, to its long-forgotten glory. He loved fine statuary and fine paintings and the most delicate of china. His idea of a wife was someone who would grace his home like a work of art.

Hard physical labour in his younger years, combined with a fastidious mind, had kept the more rampant lusts at bay. He had begun briefly to take pleasure when it was offered by, say, some fashionable widow at the London Season who knew very well what she was doing and did not have a heart to break. Succumbing to broken hearts, the marquess’s observations had led him to believe, was something females were prone to do.

He was a tall man with a trim waist, square shoulders, and a lithe, athletic figure. He wore his hair powdered and confined at the nape of his neck with a ribbon. His face was high-nosed and rather stern and he had silvery-grey eyes that usually did not reflect what he was thinking.

He came to a wooded close overlooking the river Thrane that bordered his land. To his amazement, he saw a stage-coach coming down the opposite bank. A little guard was on the back of one of the horses and was hacking the traces free. The team of horses swerved right, clear of the careening coach. The coach wheels struck an outjutting ledge of rock. For one horrifying moment it sailed clear off the ledge and seemed to hang in the snowy air. And then it plunged straight down into the icy stretch of the river.

He dismounted and hurried down the bank, slithering and sliding until he reached the river. He sat down, pulled off his top-boots, and shrugged off his long black cloak, then waded into the icy torrent.

The carriage door swung open and a middle-aged lady with a rather crooked nose looked at him first in surprise and then relief.

‘I see I shall not have to swim for it,’ she said. ‘The torrent seems shallow enough.’

The marquess made his way with difficulty to the coach and hung on to the open door. ‘Climb on my back,’ he ordered, ‘and I will carry you to safety.’

‘There is a lady here who is hurt,’ said Hannah, for it was she. ‘Take her first.’

‘Very well,’ said the marquess in a voice as cold and uncaring as the winter landscape. ‘But be quick about it.’

‘Help me,’ said Hannah to Belinda as she stooped over Miss Wimple. That lady’s face was an ugly colour and she had a great gash on her forehead.

They heaved and pushed at the inert Miss Wimple. ‘Of what use are you?’ cried Hannah furiously over her shoulder to Mr Judd, who was sitting on the floor of the coach.

‘My wife has fainted,’ he said sulkily.

‘Pah!’ retorted Hannah. ‘Does such a little thing paralyse you? Had the coach not landed upright, we might all have been drowned.’

The marquess leaned into the carriage and managed to lift Miss Wimple in his arms. Hannah watched in admiration as he carried her easily to the bank and laid her down. Soon he was back again. By this time, Hannah had found her smelling salts. She held the bottle under Mrs Judd’s nose and then slapped her face. ‘Leave her alone,’ cried Mr Judd, struggling to his feet.

‘Then get you out of the carriage and carry your own wife to safety instead of letting that fine gentleman do all the work.’

Mr Judd looked weakly out of the door at the raging river. There was a moan behind him as his wife recovered from her faint.

‘Now get down in the river,’ commanded Hannah. ‘No, sir,’ she said to the marquess, ‘stand aside. There is no reason why this gentleman cannot carry his own wife.’

Mr Judd dropped down into the river, lost his footing and fell into the water. The marquess swore and jerked him upright.

He backed up to the coach and his wife climbed on his back. She showed every sign of fainting again but was fully recovered to consciousness when her husband stumbled and tipped her into the river. The marquess fished her out and placed her on the bank next to Miss Wimple.

He turned around and saw with surprise that the middle-aged lady was crossing the river with a young girl on her back. He ran to help her.

‘Shame on you,’ he said to Belinda, ‘to use this lady as a pack-horse.’

‘I cannot stand on my ankle, sir,’ said Belinda wrathfully. ‘Do put me down, Miss Pym.’

The marquess drew on his boots and swung his cloak around his shoulders. He looked across the river. The guard and the coachman, who had been thrown clear, were leading the horses back up on to the road. The guard cupped his hands. ‘Going to get help!’ he shouted.

‘Which means,’ said Hannah, ‘they are going to get drunk as soon as possible and forget all about us. That coachman was much too young for the job.’

The marquess stooped and lifted Miss Wimple in his arms. ‘If the rest of you can make your way up the bank into the shelter of the trees, you may wait there until I bring carriages to bear you to safety. There is a road quite near.’

Hannah hitched Belinda’s arm about her neck, Mr Judd helped his wife, and they all stumbled up the bank.

Once more Miss Wimple was laid down. The marquess mounted a great black horse and rode off.

‘My clothes are freezing to me,’ whispered Mrs Judd. ‘I’m going to die and I know it.’

‘Whoever that grand gentleman is, he is very competent,’ said Hannah. ‘We must all try to keep warm. We must walk up and down and stamp our feet and swing our arms and take turns at rubbing some warmth into Miss Wimple’s limbs. Come along, everyone.’

Miss Pym was rather like a general, thought Belinda, amused despite her predicament, as Hannah beat her arms and stamped her feet and then knelt beside Miss Wimple and chafed her wrists.

After only a short time they heard the shouting of voices and rattling of wheels. Torches flickered through the trees, and then four men in outdoor livery appeared, followed by the marquess. Under his orders, two of them lifted Miss Wimple on to a stretcher and bore her off, one supported Belinda, and the other Mrs Judd.

‘I have carriages waiting,’ said the marquess to Hannah. ‘Come quickly or you will catch the ague.’

As he bustled about, seeing them all into carriages, the marquess felt a momentary qualm. He should really have them driven to the nearest inn rather than inflict the passengers of the common stage on his guests. But their presence would give him a necessary breathing space, a wall to retreat behind while he considered his feelings for Penelope.

Hannah helped Belinda into one of the waiting carriages. She admired this lord, or whoever he was, immensely. He must have his staff well drilled to turn out so efficiently and promptly on a freezing night. She gave a happy smile and drew a huge bearskin rug up to her chin.

‘Why, Miss Pym,’ exclaimed Belinda, ‘I declare you are actually enjoying a near escape from a freezing death.’

‘It’s an adventure,’ said Hannah. ‘Now, you see, my dear, it is better to look for romance in real life. Did you note how handsome our rescuer was?’

‘I was too flustered and frightened and my ankle still hurts dreadfully,’ said Belinda. ‘He seemed very autocratic and severe and quite old. Where are we, I wonder?’

‘I have a guidebook in my luggage,’ said Hannah. ‘Oh, dear, that wretched coachman has gone off with it.’

‘Not he,’ said Belinda. ‘It had all fallen off the roof before we even hit the river and was strewn about the opposite bank.’

‘Then our highly efficient host will collect it for us. We are travelling quite a way. Does he mean to deposit us all at some wayside inn?’

‘No doubt.’ Belinda shivered. ‘I must get a physician immediately to look to poor Miss Wimple. How came she to gash her forehead like that?’

‘I think she was thrown against the lamp bracket. How luxurious all this is, and what a great many servants there seem to be.’

Outriders with flaming torches were riding alongside the carriages.

‘We are slowing,’ exclaimed Hannah. To the shivering Belinda’s dismay, she let down the glass and leaned out. ‘Oh, Miss Earle!’ cried Hannah. ‘You have never seen the like.’

Curiosity overcoming cold, Belinda opened her window and, clutching the edge for support to ease her tortured ankle, she too leaned out.

The snow had stopped falling. In the lights of the many torches and carriage lamps a great Norman castle loomed up against the sky; battlements and barbican, towers and turrets. They rolled slowly over a wooden drawbridge and under two raised portcullises into a wide courtyard.

‘Why have I never heard of this place?’ said Hannah, sitting down again. ‘It is huge.’

‘Have you visited many places?’ asked Belinda.

Hannah shook her head. ‘I have led a quiet and sheltered life, like that of a nun. But I have read a great deal, don’t you see.’

The carriage rolled to a stop. A footman in green-and-gold livery let down the steps and Hannah and Belinda were assisted down.

The shivering stage-coach passengers were led into the castle and all stood blinking in the sudden blaze of light. They found themselves in a great hall with a brown-and-white marble floor. A long refectory table with high-backed Jacobean chairs around it dominated the centre of the hall. There were battle flags and suits of armour and a long gallery running around the top of the hall to form an upper storey.

A house steward with his tall staff of office stood waiting.

‘Convey our unexpected guests to the East Wing,’ said the marquess. ‘Send for the physician to attend us immediately. May I introduce myself? I am Frenton, the Marquess of Frenton, and you are now in my home, Baddell Castle, where I suggest you stay until I find out what has become of your coach. You are …?’

Hannah stepped forward. ‘I am Miss Hannah Pym of Kensington. May I present Miss Belinda Earle. Miss Wimple is the injured lady and Miss Earle’s companion. Also, may I present Mr and Mrs Judd.’

The marquess turned to his steward and rapped out a bewildering, to Belinda, series of orders about which apartments were to be allotted to them.

Again, there were servants everywhere. Belinda clung nervously to Hannah, overawed by the magnificence of it all. They went up a broad staircase and along a bewildering multitude of passages. A housekeeper opened a door at last and said to Hannah, ‘Your apartments are here, madam.’ Oh, the joy of ex-housekeeper Hannah to hear herself called ‘madam’ by one of her own kind. ‘You have a bedchamber as you go in and you will share a sitting-room with the young lady, who has a bedchamber on the other side. His lordship is sending up your trunks, which the men rescued from the side of the river. The footmen will carry up your baths in a trice.’

Hannah looked around the apartment in satisfaction. The walls were papered with a heavy red paper. The great four-poster bed had dull red silk hangings. The fireplace was Queen Anne and as unlovely a piece of architecture as anything attributed to that poor lady’s name. It had a heavy overmantel that almost dwarfed the grate beneath. But there was a bright fire burning.

She helped Belinda through a pretty sitting-room decorated in the Chinese manner and into a bedroom where blue silk, blue wallpaper, and a four-poster bed and fire-place copied the red room in everything but colour.

Their trunks were brought in, followed very quickly by the baths, which were filled by the footmen, and then the two ladies were left in peace.

Hannah sat in the bath in front of the fireplace, carefully holding the guidebook clear of the water. ‘I have found it,’ she called through the open door to Belinda. ‘Baddell Castle. Ah, it used to belong to the Earls of Jesper. The last earl died in 1590 without children, his estates escheated to the Crown, and all the court rolls and records went to London and disappeared in the middle of the seventeenth century, so it was a castle without much history that anyone knows of or ghosts or what have you, so everyone forgot about it. It says that the present owner, the Marquess of Frenton, repels visitors.’

‘I am glad he did not repel us,’ called Belinda.

‘The Crown gave the first Marquess of Frenton the castle and estates.’

‘What shall I wear?’ asked Belinda. ‘If we are to dine here, we could dine in our undress.’

‘I think we should dress for a formal supper, just in case.’

‘The marquess is hardly likely to ask coach passengers to sit down with him,’ protested Belinda.

‘He did not need to take us into his home,’ Hannah pointed out. ‘He could have left us at some inn.’

As soon as they had bathed and dressed, servants appeared to remove the baths, and then a physician made his entrance. He said that Miss Wimple was still unconscious but he had hopes she would soon recover. He then examined Belinda’s ankle and confirmed that it was a bad sprain and strapped it up.

Then a lady’s maid came in. She said she was called Betty. Hannah thought it quite likely that she had some other name, for employers very frequently called their lady’s maids Betty.

Hannah enjoyed the luxury of having her hair done and her large shawl arranged tastefully on her shoulders. Then, while Belinda’s hair was being arranged, Hannah asked the maid, ‘When you have finished, can you take us to Miss Wimple? She is the lady who has suffered a bad accident.’

The maid nodded, and after she had dressed Belinda’s fine hair in one of the new Grecian styles, she led them out and along the corridor and into Miss Wimple’s bedchamber.

Miss Wimple was lying like one dead. Hannah felt her forehead and found it hot. A little chambermaid was piling logs on the fire. ‘The doctor said she would live,’ said the chambermaid.

A footman appeared in the doorway. ‘His lordship’s compliments,’ he said. ‘You are to follow me.’

‘I will stay here,’ said Hannah firmly.

‘Beg pardon, madam,’ said the footman. ‘Mrs James, the housekeeper, will soon be here to sit with the poor lady, and she will let you know as soon as there is any change.’

Belinda and Hannah followed him out, back along a chain of corridors, and then down the main staircase to the first floor. ‘His lordship is in the Cedar Room,’ said the footman, and flung open the double doors.

Belinda hesitated nervously in the doorway until Hannah gave her a little push.

The Cedar Room was enormous. The cedar-wood panelling which gave it its name was hung with family portraits. Huge chandeliers hung from the ornately designed ceiling. There was a large Adam fireplace in the centre of the opposite wall, and a French carpet covered the floor.

Huge windows had thick velvet curtains with heavy swags of fringe drawn against the winter’s night. The gigantic area of the room was dotted about with little islands of tables and chairs.

At the island nearest the fireplace sat a very beautiful lady and a middle-aged couple.

The marquess was standing by the fireplace. He was wearing an evening coat of dark-blue watered silk with a high collar and a ruffled shirt. His breeches of the same material were fastened at the knee with gold buckles. His silk stockings were of gold-and-white stripes and his black shoes had gold buckles. He had a fine sapphire in the snowy folds of his cravat and a large square sapphire ring on his finger.

Hannah shot a covert glance at Belinda and was glad that young lady was looking every bit as finely dressed as the marquess’s guests.

She was wearing a gown of pale lilac satin and a fine necklace of amethysts set in old gold. She had lilac silk heelless slippers to match with ribbons crossed across the ankles, and, on her arms, long gloves of lilac kid. Hannah had put on a fine and delicate muslin cap. She knew the Norfolk shawl about her shoulders was of the finest quality, as was her plum-coloured silk gown with matching silk gloves.

The marquess approached Belinda and Hannah, his eyes narrowing a little in surprise, for there was no denying the richness of the ladies’ gowns. He wondered briefly what they had been doing travelling on the stage.

He introduced them to Miss Penelope Jordan and her parents. Mr and Mrs Judd made their entrance, Mrs Judd clinging tightly to her husband’s arm. Belinda saw a mocking smile curving Penelope’s lips and the teasing look she threw the marquess as if to say, ‘My dear, what people!’

All in that moment, Belinda found herself disliking Penelope very much indeed.

The Judds were plainly and respectably dressed. But Mrs Judd’s gown was of an old-fashioned cut and Mr Judd was in morning dress, not having brought any evening dress with him, which, thought Belinda crossly, was perfectly understandable. She flashed a contemptuous look at Penelope and then realized the marquess was watching her and blushed faintly.

A butler and two footmen entered bearing trays of hot negus for the ladies and decanters of wine for the men.

All sat down on chairs arranged for them in a circle in front of the fire. Belinda sipped her negus and covertly studied the Jordans. Sir Henry Jordan was fat and florid with a jovial manner belied by the hardness of a pair of small brown eyes. Lady Jordan showed traces of an earlier beauty in thick, luxuriant, if grey-streaked hair, a statuesque figure, and large brown eyes. But little lines of discontent had caused her mouth to set in a permanent droop and two heavy vertical lines caused by frowning marred her forehead.

‘Why are you travelling on the stage, Miss Earle?’ demanded Penelope, her eyes flicking over the splendour of Belinda’s gown.

‘To get to The Bath,’ said Belinda calmly.

‘I would have thought you would have preferred to travel in your own carriage,’ pursued Penelope.

Seized with a mischievous desire to lower her social status to that of the Judds, Belinda said airily, ‘My family do not own a carriage.’ She turned to the marquess. ‘All my concern is for Miss Wimple, my poor companion.’

‘I have told the physician to return within the hour,’ said the marquess. ‘He will stay here for the night and so be available to help when he is required.’

‘Thank you, my lord. You are so very kind.’ Belinda’s face suddenly lit up in a charming smile. The marquess smiled back, oddly intrigued by this young lady with the wispy-fine slate-coloured hair and the wicked-looking sensual mouth.

‘You have a very fine place here, my lord,’ said Mr Judd nervously.

‘It’ll be something to tell your grandchildren, hey?’ said Sir Henry, all mock joviality. ‘I wager you never thought, considering your social station, to be the guest of an earl.’

Belinda winced and Hannah’s lips clamped tightly together in disapproval. How quaint, thought Penelope, amused. These upstarts of the stage-coach actually consider that Papa is being vulgar. But then she saw the chilly, calculating way in which the marquess was regarding her father and felt a stab of unease.

The marquess rose to escort them to supper. Penelope’s feeling of unease grew, for the marquess placed Belinda on his right hand and Hannah on his left. Moreover, the long dining-table had been replaced by a round one. The marquess had not liked the way Penelope had automatically taken the opposite end of the long table from him as if she were already established as his wife, and so had ordered the round table and had had it delivered that very day.

Penelope’s beautiful eyes narrowed as they surveyed Belinda. There was something definitely odd about that young woman. Her arrival on the scene seemed just too opportune. Perhaps she had engineered the accident, thought Penelope pettishly, not stopping to consider that the idea of any young lady causing a coach to crash down in an icy river in the faint hope that the marquess would come riding by was stupid in the extreme.

Penelope had been told from her earliest days that she was beautiful beyond compare. She had practised a certain elegance of manner but had stopped there at improvement, considering her looks enough to contribute to any company.

Belinda, on the other hand, had assiduously practised the art of conversation to make up for what she felt was her own lack of attractions. She turned to the marquess and began to speak.