Summer Escapade Read online

  “Aye,” the groom agreed, “but you’ll be pleased to know the paltry fellow didn’t even have the wherewithal to hire a team. He’s got naught but a pair pullin’ his chaise, and seein’ as it’s heavier than this phaeton, I reckon the blackguard can go only ’bout half as fast as you can. I can give you full directions as to the probable route they have taken, and with the full moon tonight, you two can take turns drivin’. Doubtless you can catch up with that fortune hunter by mid-mornin’ tomorrow, at which time you can take turns thrashin’ our Mr. High-and-Mighty Lucaster, who’s allus puttin’ on airs.”

  Sweeney and the groom exchanged opinions as to the proper treatment for the unfortunate Mr. Lucaster, but Terence did not really care what punishment was meted out. So long as Marigold was recovered safe and sound, the dancing master could simply remove himself from the picture.

  And if he was reluctant to depart, Terence would be happy to assist him.

  * * * *

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Sybil said, “there is Algernon at long last. Quick, Marigold, if we want to have a private word with him, we must stop him before he turns in at the drive.” Jumping down from the low wall they had been standing on, she set off at a run down the lane that ran past Dunmire Abbey.

  Even though the wall was only three feet off the ground, Marigold could not quite bring herself to leap down as recklessly as her friend. Sitting down first so that her feet were only a foot or so off the ground seemed a much more sensible way to descend.

  Not quite sure how she should then proceed, she finally took a deep breath and used her arms to push herself off the wall. To her amazement, she did not break her leg or her head, nor did she even so much as turn her ankle. Feeling flushed with triumph, she dashed after Sybil, who by this time was standing beside the phaeton, talking to the driver.

  Running was every bit as exhilarating as swinging, Marigold discovered, but unfortunately it required a great deal more energy—energy she found she did not have in any abundance. By the time she reached the other two people, she was panting and her heart was pounding in her chest.

  Then she looked up at Sybil’s oldest cousin, and her heart began to race even faster. She could well understand why Sybil intended to marry him—and why, doubtless, every young lady who met him would sigh over him.

  Towhead was not the word to describe a young man with guinea-gold locks and a classical profile. In fact, no words were adequate to describe the heir apparent to Dunmire Abbey—who was now looking down at her with mild distaste.

  Instinctively, Marigold took a step backward.

  “I cannot think what you had in mind, cousin, bringing home such a puny creature,” he said. Yet, despite his hurtful words, his voice was melodious and most pleasing to Marigold’s ears.

  “I thought you would be happy,” Sybil retorted with an impish grin.

  “Happy? To be saddled with a visitor who cannot run even a few steps without wheezing like a broken-winded nag?” He looked down his nose at Marigold, and since he was sitting above her in the phaeton, his look of haughty superiority was doubly effective. “I suppose she can amuse herself with the ‘littles,’ but I decline to allow her to tag along after us.”

  He picked up the reins to signal the horses to continue, but Sybil leaped up and clung to his arm. “Wait,” she said, “or you will be very, very sorry. We have a grand and glorious secret, but I cannot tell you what it is unless you promise not to reveal it to anyone.”

  For a moment Marigold thought Algernon was going to shrug Sybil off his arm, but apparently he could not completely restrain his curiosity. “Very well, brat, I promise. But your secret had better be good, because you have wrinkled my sleeve.”

  “Oh, pooh,” Sybil said, “as if that mattered when I have such a treat in store for you. This,” she said, stepping back down to the ground and waving her arm dramatically in Marigold’s direction, “is not Clara Perkins. Allow me to make known to you my particular friend, Marigold Kinderley.”

  It was such a strange introduction, Marigold was not sure if she should curtsey or not.

  “Not the invalid! Ecod, it wanted only this to make the summer complete,” Algernon said, rolling his eyes heavenward. “I should have accepted Throckmorton’s invitation to go home to Yorkshire with him. Really, Sybil, it is one thing to let you follow me around, but I absolutely draw the line at doing the pretty with an invalidish chit who is not even out of the schoolroom.”

  “Actually,” Sybil said, and now she was grinning broadly, “that is precisely the problem, or should I say, that is the best part of it? You see, we are not at all sure Marigold’s health actually is delicate. I have discovered that all her life everyone has simply assumed that she has a weak constitution.”

  “Assumed?” Algernon asked, immediately dropping his affectation of bored young man of the world.

  “Exactly,” Sybil said smugly. “She has not been allowed to exert herself in the slightest, and she has had to eat the most restricted—and the most tedious—diet imaginable.”

  Scrambling down from his carriage, Algernon handed the reins to Sybil, then walked around Marigold, considering her from all angles. “Tell me, Miss Kinderley, have you ever heard of the scientific method?”

  For one desperate moment, Marigold was afraid her voice would not work, but then she managed to croak out, “Sybil explained to me that we cannot blindly accept something as true if we do not conduct experiments to test its validity.”

  “Very good, Miss Kinderley. Now tell me, do you have any objections to being experimented upon?”

  Whereas earlier Marigold had not been at all sure in her own mind that she was in favor of such things, she was now ready—nay, eager—to do whatever was required to win this young man’s approval. “I have no objections. Indeed, I am quite looking forward to discovering the truth. And you may call me Marigold.” She was quite astonished by her own boldness, but Algernon and Sybil appeared to find nothing amiss.

  “Well then, Marigold,” Algernon said with a smile that changed his face from handsome to breathtakingly beautiful, “I bid you welcome to Dunmire Abbey. It is a shame that it is so close to the dinner hour, else we could begin our scientific studies at once.”

  “I thought first we could teach her to ride,” Sybil said, quite as if she were Algernon’s equal.

  “She doesn’t ride?” he inquired, cocking an eyebrow.

  “She has never been allowed even to touch a horse,” Sybil explained. “Nor pet a cat or a dog, or be around any kind of animal.”

  Tired of being discussed as if she were nothing more than a piece of furniture, Marigold spoke up. “My uncle has always said exposure to animals will give me sneezing fits.” He had also warned her that she would doubtless break out in a rash if she so much as touched fur or feathers, but that information she kept to herself.

  “Well then,” Algernon said, “we shall meet in the stables tomorrow morning at dawn and see whether horses make you sneeze.”

  Sneezing would not be so bad, Marigold decided when she and Sybil were walking back to the dower house, but if she broke out in spots, she would be totally mortified.

  “Oh,” she said, stopping abruptly as another thought struck her. “Oh, dear.”

  “What’s wrong?” Sybil asked.

  “I am afraid I cannot, after all, try riding,” Marigold said, feeling totally miserable and cast down.

  Hands on her hips, Sybil glared at her. “I had not thought you such a pudding-heart. Perhaps Algernon was right—perhaps I should not have brought you home with me.”

  Pudding-heart? Marigold felt her own temper flare up. “You are entirely too quick to jump to conclusions, Lady Sybil,” she said in an icy voice. “I am not the least bit afraid of horses.” That was a barefaced lie, but Marigold would have died before she would have admitted to the least anxiety. “It has obviously slipped your mind that I do not have a riding habit.” Then she childishly stuck out her tongue at her friend.

  Sybil only laughed and thr
ew her arm around Marigold’s shoulders. “Pooh, that is nothing. I have clothes you can borrow.”

  “You have two riding habits?”

  “Something even better,” Sybil said. “I have two pair of breeches I wheedled out of Algernon when he outgrew them. You will find it is ever so much more fun to ride astride—and easier and safer than sitting all twisted around crooked in a sidesaddle, too.”

  “But ... but ...” Marigold felt called upon to object, but she was torn by an intense longing to try every new experience that presented itself. To actually wear breeches instead of skirts—never in her wildest dreams, when she had so longed to escape the restrictions that hemmed in her every waking moment, had she imagined such delightful freedom.

  “And you need not fret about what people will say,” Sybil said airily. “We shall put our hair up under caps, and since I have so many cousins running wild around the countryside, even if one of the old tabbies in the neighborhood spots us, she will merely assume we are two of Algernon’s brothers. I have worn my breeches many a time, and no one has ever suspected, not even my mother. Nor should you worry that any of the stable lads will peach on us. Algernon would bust their heads if they betrayed us.”

  Marigold was silent, contemplating the treat that was in store for her.

  “Well, are you game?” Sybil asked impatiently.

  “Do you think I could try on the breeches before dinner?” Marigold asked. “Just to be sure they will fit me?”

  * * * *

  The sky had been growing ominously dark, and there was still an hour before sunset. “It’s coming on rain,” the coachman commented unnecessarily.

  The first flash of lightning illuminated the roadway, followed a moment later by the sharp crack of thunder. The job horses they had hired at the last posting house were too apathetic even to bolt, and Terence began to curse under his breath.

  “How far to the next town?” he asked.

  “We’d be there already if we’d been able to hire proper horses instead of these slugs. The way they’re moving, I’d say we’re no more than halfway there,” Sweeney replied. “We’ve prob’ly got a good five or six miles to go.”

  As much as Terence wanted to push on, he knew it was dangerous to be out in the open during such a storm. Positively seething with frustration, he instructed the coachman to see if there were any accommodations to be had in the little village they were approaching.

  “Leastways that cursed dancing master won’t be able to travel in this weather neither,” Sweeney pointed out.

  His words immediately conjured up in Terence’s mind a vision of his niece being struck by lightning. Suppose that wretched dancing master did not have enough sense to come in out of the storm?

  The possibilities for disasters were too numerous to count. Suppose Mr. Lucaster determined to push on regardless of the weather? Suppose he lost his way in the dark? Suppose a bridge was out or the roadway flooded? Suppose the chaise got overturned? Suppose, suppose, suppose—

  When he and Sweeney were safely ensconced in a small village tavern with mugs of hot mulled cider in their hands, Terence found he could not stop worrying. Even if Marigold was safely out of the rain, who knew what miserable accommodations she might be forced to accept?

  The sheets might be damp, the beds full of fleas or other vermin, and the food—he shuddered as new worries plagued him. Some wayside inns, he knew, served ale and mutton to every guest as a matter of course. If the dancing master had such limited funds that he could only afford to hire a paltry pair of horses rather than a team, it was doubtful that he would be able to demand of the landlord that he be provided with food that was not a part of the regular menu.

  Ale and mutton—ecod, it did not bear thinking about. But Terence thought about it, of course. And about the brigands that might be lurking about waiting to murder the eloping couple in their beds—or in their bed’? A fresh new worry now overset him completely, and he raged inwardly at the storm and the job horses and the poor roads and Mrs. Wychombe for not being more particular in the teachers she hired and most of all, he cursed Mr. Lucaster for being such a blackguard.

  Terence lay awake in his bed long after the noise from the public room below had abated. Unable to stop his thoughts from going over and over the same worries, he was much too tense to fall asleep.

  Then unexpectedly, a different vision filled his mind—that of the beautiful and imperturbable Alicia Lady Dunmire, a most unusual female. Remembering the casualness with which she had treated the two injured boys, he could well imagine that she would find his present state of anxiety a source of amusement.

  If she were there beside his bed, she would probably gaze serenely down at him with her calm blue eyes and say, “What is the point of worrying?”

  He could almost feel her hand reaching out to soothe his forehead, almost hear her say reassuringly, “You can do nothing until tomorrow, so why not sleep? ... Rest? ... Dream? ...”

  * * * *

  The stable was dark and warm and quite the most fascinating place Marigold had ever been in. Redolent of hay and grain and horses, the long building was also home to innumerable cats, including two litters of kittens. One set was so tiny their eyes were not even open; but the other batch was five weeks old and their antics had Marigold laughing so hard her sides ached.

  Petting the kittens was something Marigold could have done all day, but that was not, of course, the reason for their early morning visit to the stable.

  There still remained the matter of the great beasts that stood placidly in their stalls, occasionally shuffling their giant hooves or making funny whiffling noises.

  “You shall ride Pattycake,” Algernon said, opening the door to the furthermost stall. “She is so old and so placid, even Ferdinand has no trouble riding her.”

  Placid the mare might be, but she also seemed monstrous big when Marigold was standing beside her. Perhaps learning to ride was not such a good idea after all?

  The mare turned her massive head and shoved it up against Marigold’s chest, forcing her to take a step backward. In fact, she came very close to sitting down in the straw.

  “Pattycake wants the sugar you brought her,” Sybil explained. “All you have to do is hold it on your palm and keep your hand flat.”

  If Algernon had not been there, Marigold would have dropped the sugar and removed herself from the vicinity of the mare’s wicked-looking teeth, but she knew as sure as anything that if she displayed the least bit of cowardice, he would banish her to play with the “littles.”

  As it turned out, feeding the sugar to the horse was the worst ordeal she had to face during her first riding lesson. She had a natural aptitude, or so Algernon told her when he finished instructing her, and she was quite willing to believe he knew what he was talking about.

  After all, he was a proponent of the scientific method, so he would not go around making rash statements that could be easily disproved.

  On the other hand, she was discovering that Uncle Terence had been totally wrong about a great many things—about almost everything, in fact. No matter how many forbidden things she had done in the last twenty-four hours, she had not once sneezed or wheezed or broken out in spots or gotten queasy or had a fever or a stomachache or anything at all.

  Standing now at the base of an enormous oak tree, she realized she had never felt better in her life. To be sure, when she looked up at the platform someone had constructed high in the branches of said tree, she did feel a little nervous at the thought of climbing up there among the leaves, even though it did look to be quite solidly built.

  “Uncle Terence would doubtless say that I must avoid heights because they might make me dizzy and I might fall,” she said to no one in particular.

  With a hoot of laughter, Bartholomew and Cedric and Sybil pushed past her and swarmed up the tree, using the boards that were nailed crossways on the trunk.

  “If you wish,” Algernon offered magnanimously, “I can go right behind you and catch you if yo
u fall.”

  “No,” Marigold said, resolutely pushing aside all thoughts of falling, “that will not be necessary. But perhaps you could help me get up to the first board. It is rather far off the ground, and I fear I am not strong enough to pull myself up just using my arms.”

  Willingly, Algernon boosted her up, and slowly she began to make her way, rung by rung, up the tree. She was most thankful that she was still wearing breeches, because a skirt and petticoats would really have been quite impractical for climbing trees.

  “Did you know,” Algernon said below her, “that horses must be exercised every day if they are to stay strong? I have long been of the opinion that people are much the same. It is quite likely that resting, rather than conserving our strength, only makes us weaker.”

  Finally reaching the hole in the platform, Marigold climbed through it and then crawled across it on her hands and knees and with great trepidation peered over the edge. She was at least twelve feet off the ground, which made her tingle with excitement. But to her relief, she did not feel the slightest nervousness or fear or dizziness.

  “So,” Algernon called up to her, “it is quite possible that the more you exercise, the stronger you will become. Are you game to try it?”

  “Of course,” she called down to him, “I am ready to try anything and everything.” So saying, she bravely rose to her feet and stood waiting while Algernon climbed up to join them.

  * * * *

  Terence was inclined to believe the dowager viscountess had the right attitude. Worrying about his niece all through the better part of the night had accomplished nothing except to give him a pounding headache.

  From now on, he resolved, paying off the innkeeper and climbing back into the phaeton, he would concentrate his energies on retrieving his niece and put all pointless worries completely out of his mind.

  His new resolution was put to the test a mere hour later when a cow-handed provincial, who apparently thought himself a notable whip, attempted to pass him on a narrow curve, with the result that Terence was forced off the road. Which would in itself not have been disastrous, had not one of his wheels struck a large rock hidden in the tall grass, resulting in two broken spokes.