Wooing His Convenient Wife
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Annie Burrows
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26
Chapter One
‘Penny, you must come and see what I’ve found, right this minute!’
Penny looked up from the pile of letters she had written, was in the process of writing, and the ones she had yet to write, with a huff of impatience as her aunt flung the door open and burst in.
‘Aunt Hermione, I am really, really busy at the moment...’
‘Yes, yes, I can see that, but this will help you with all that. You see,’ said Aunt Hermione, bustling across to Penny’s desk, waving a shawl in one hand and brandishing a bonnet with the other, ‘I have found you the perfect man.’
The perfect man? Penny didn’t think so. For there was no such creature. And Aunt Hermione knew Penny’s views on the matter. Penny had expounded them, tearfully, and at length, after she’d heard about that horrible clause which Father had put in his will. And, at the time, Aunt Hermione had behaved as though she felt indignant on Penny’s behalf. At least, she had said it was just typical of her late brother to behave in such a scaly fashion.
But now Aunt Hermione was rounding the desk, clamping the bonnet down on Penny’s head and roughly draping the shawl round her shoulders.
‘You have to hurry, or it will all be over. And you must see him in action, to be able to understand just what I mean about him being perfect.’
Penny thought about it for a moment. On the one hand she had no wish to go out on what would prove to be a wild goose chase. On the other, she was getting the beginning of a headache, and a bit of fresh air might just stop it in its tracks. And it was one of those clear, bright days she so loved at this time of year, when she only needed a shawl to keep the slight chill in the air at bay.
It wasn’t as if any of the letters she was writing today were likely to prove any more fruitful than the dozens she’d already written and sent to all the potential investors she could think of. If she was lucky, she would get a pompous reply about the risks of taking on a venture headed by a mere female. If she was not, she wouldn’t get a reply at all.
Besides which, she didn’t want to offend Aunt Hermione who had, after all, been such a staunch ally so far. She’d come with her to Huntingham, even though she hated staying in public inns, because she hadn’t been able to bear thinking of Penny dashing off on her quest without a proper chaperon.
So she got up and went out with her aunt. Out of the stuffy little parlour she’d hired for her personal use, out of the rambling coaching house where she’d booked a suite of rooms at the front, heading along the high street as far as the crossroads to a posting inn rather ominously named the Shattered Lance. Even so short a walk cleared her head and began to lift her mood.
‘So, this man you claim is perfect, you found him in a tavern, Aunt Hermione? What, pray,’ she said teasingly, ‘were you doing in there? Or should I not ask?’
‘Oh, I didn’t go inside,’ replied Aunt Hermione, scandalised by the mere suggestion. ‘Of course not! I merely stopped to see what all the uproar was about and saw him through the window. This window,’ she said, stopping by one that stood open, probably to let some fresh air circulate into what appeared to be a very crowded room, but which was also letting out the sound of the uproar still going on within.
It sounded as though every male within several miles had crammed inside and all of them were yelling as loudly as they could. Although they probably had to, over the noise of a flock of sheep which, for some obscure reason, appeared to have been housed in the inn’s courtyard and were complaining about the fact at the tops of their quavery voices.
‘Look for yourself,’ Aunt Hermione urged, giving Penny a determined shove.
Penny looked. Well, she’d come this far, so she might as well see what was getting Aunt Hermione so worked up.
The men who filled the low-ceilinged room appeared to be a mixture of farmers, shopkeepers and gentry. A complete cross-section of local society. And they were very cross indeed.
The focus of their anger was easy to detect in the form of a young man who was lounging against the bar, his arms folded and a bored look on his face. No, not bored. Insouciant, that was the only word to describe it. As though it didn’t matter a jot how many people were yelling at him, they simply couldn’t shake his sangfroid. Though he wasn’t particularly tall, that didn’t matter one jot either. He was so full of self-confidence that nobody, no matter how much bigger than him they happened to be, nor how threatening their behaviour, could hope to intimidate him.
‘That’s him,’ said Aunt Hermione, pointing to the young man. ‘Mr Pitt.’
Before she could explain just why she believed the young man was perfect for Penny, an elderly man with a purple face grabbed a tankard and slammed it down on the bar several times, yelling ‘Order! Order! I will have order!’
‘That’s the magistrate, Mr Fanshaw,’ Aunt Hermione helpfully explained. ‘The Reverend Black introduced him to us at church on Sunday, do you recall?’
Yes. Only too well. And she might have known he was the local magistrate from the condescending way he’d spoken to her when the vicar had introduced them. At first sight, she’d noted that he was one of those blustering, pompous men who always made her wish she had a pin with which to prick their massive self-esteem. Or just their fleshy hands that always lingered a little too long over hers.
‘Have you nothing,’ Mr Fanshaw was yelling at the bored young man, ‘to say to your accusers?’
The bored young man shrugged his shoulders. Still with magnificent insouciance.
‘Only that they are mistaken,’ he drawled, in the accent of a gentleman. Which came as a bit of a surprise. She’d assumed he was some sort of workman, considering the rather disordered, rumpled and dirty state of his clothing.
‘We knows it was your sheep that got into my cabbages,’ protested one particularly choleric-looking rustic.
‘And broke through my hedge into my garden,’ shouted another.
‘And trampled my cucumber frame,’ added a third.
Ah. Now she could see why the sheep were being held here. Prisoners at the bar. Or at least, just outside the bar.
‘They may very well have done so,’ said the young man, in a soothing tone, ‘but then, they are not my sheep.’
‘You were in charge of them,’ pointed out, of all people, the very vicar who had introduced Penny and her aunt to the magistrate the previous Sunday. From the fact that he was in his shirt sleeves, Penny guessed that the young man’s sheep must have made some depredations on the vicarage garden, which had so infuriated the cleric that he’d come dashing out without taking even a moment to put on a coat.
The young man smiled. With just one side of his mouth. Giving the impression that he felt extremely sorry for the vicar’s misapprehension. ‘If you can find one person who can vouch for my ability to exert any control over a single one of the sheep I purchased this morning, I should be extremely surprised.’
‘So you admit they belong to you,’ put in the magistrate hastily, in what looked like a desperate attempt to regain control of the proceedings.
‘No,’ said the accused.
‘But you just told us that you purchased them!’
‘On behalf of my employer.’
‘Then he ought to pay for the damage they’ve caused,’ said the magistrate, looking as though he’d finally found the perfect solution. ‘Tell us who he is and we will send the bills to him.’
The young man looked thoughtful. ‘Actually, I would rather not.’
While this statement enraged Mr Fanshaw, that reluctance to name his employer and have the charges against him dropped rather impressed Penny. Not many men ever showed such loyalty. Not many men would rather shoulder the blame than pass it on to whomever they could. She’d already been inclined to like him, for having annoyed two men who’d treated her, the previous Sunday, as though she was a nobody. But this raised him in her estimation still higher.
Not many men, she also mused, would look so indifferent to the roar of disapproval that his comment provoked. While all around him men were shouting and gesticulating, and getting red in the face, he remained unmoved. Like a rock in the midst of a foaming tide. She had never seen anything quite so...heroic. So...appealing. He looked, as Aunt Hermione had suggested, like the kind of man a female could depend on. To be her rock, in fact.
The magistrate banged his tankard so hard the bottom of it crumpled under the repeated impact, but at least the crowd subsided.
‘You may think you can wriggle your way out of some of the charges brought against you,’ roared the magistrate, ‘but there is no denying the fact, the fact,’ he repeated belligerently, ‘that you have broken a bylaw by driving a flock of sheep along the high street without first obtaining the necessary permit! No matter who happens to own them.’
There came a chorus of ayes and arrs from the assembly, many of whom were now regarding the magistrate with admiration.
‘Now that’s where you’re out,’ said the young man. ‘Because you won’t find a single witness who could claim that I ever drove those sheep anywhere. They just went wherever they took it into their heads to go and I had no choice but to follow them.’
The image that conjured up made Penny smile. She could just see the young man desperately trying to exert some control over sheep who were determined to go their own way. And, from the look of his clothes, that had been through a hedge, a stream and some fields in which very long grass grew in very muddy conditions.
Although, now she came to examine them more closely, she could see that in spite of the dirt, and the odd rip here and there, they looked as though they had once been of good quality. They certainly fit his sturdy frame in a style that proclaimed the work of an expert tailor.
Had he come from quality and fallen on hard times? That would certainly explain why his attempt to herd sheep had met with such spectacular lack of success.
‘You know,’ continued the young man, ‘you might as well attempt to prosecute the sheep, as to get any satisfaction from me. They are the ones who broke the hedges and vandalised the cucumber frame and ate the cabbages, after all.’
‘Impertinent jackanapes,’ yelled the magistrate. ‘It is impossible to fine sheep. They cannot pay!’
‘Well, nor can I,’ said the young man with a shrug. ‘Which, I believe, leaves you at an impasse.’
‘On the contrary,’ said the magistrate, lowering his brows into a ferocious scowl. ‘I shall have you confined to the roundhouse until you realise the gravity of your situation. Constable! Take Mr Pitt to the roundhouse and lock him in!’
A man in a leather apron, who looked as though he’d just stepped away from his forge for a breather, came forward and seized hold of the young man’s arm. The young man raised one eyebrow, as though he regarded this attempt to manhandle him as the height of impertinence. The fact that he went where the blacksmith led him, he seemed to suggest with that imperious gesture, was entirely due to his own good nature.
‘You see?’ Aunt Hermione heaved a sigh. ‘He would be perfect.’
Penny watched the blacksmith steering the young man through the crowd of angry villagers and frowned thoughtfully. Though they were all hurling insults at him, not one of them was making any impact on his air of total detachment.
‘I rather think,’ said Penny, ‘that I do see what you mean about him.’ The angry crowd had not intimidated him. He had no respect for the authority of the magistrate. Yet he had shown remarkable loyalty to his employer, by refusing to reveal their identity.
He was also young, could pass for a gentleman with that lordly attitude and the well-educated-sounding voice, and might be fairly attractive, if only he were dressed in clean clothes.
And nothing else had worked.
And she was running out of time.
