His Accidental Countess
Autor
Annie Burrows
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24
Chapter One
Dorothy Phillips lifted her chin as she set her hand to the latch of the Blue Boar’s coffee room. If she was going to become a governess, she was going to have to get used to travelling alone like this. And whoever else might be staying in this inn overnight, while waiting for their connecting stage in the morning, she was simply going to have to deal with them.
If they turned out to be the least bit unsavoury she could always treat them to the withering stare she’d honed to perfection on young Gerry Benson, the most unruly pupil in the village school where she’d been teaching until a few weeks ago. It had certainly worked earlier that day on the young buck who’d tried to talk their coachman into letting him have a turn at the reins.
Yes, she reminded herself, if she could deal with the likes of Gerry Benson, and sporting gentlemen with more money than sense, she could certainly deal with whoever might be occupying the coffee room.
And so it was with a rather determined, not to say stern expression on her face that she opened the door and stepped inside.
The young couple, who’d been sitting on a bench beneath the open window, with their heads close together, leaped to their feet. The girl shrieked, turned deathly pale and fainted.
The young man either had extremely quick reflexes, or was used to his companion fainting on the slightest provocation, because he caught her deftly, well before she could hit the floor.
Dorothy had long become accustomed to people describing her as formidable, but never before had the mere sight of her been enough to cause a total stranger to pass out completely. She had a brief, but almost overwhelming urge to apologise for scaring the slender, pale girl, before her common sense reasserted itself. All she’d done was walk into the room where the landlord had told her he would serve her, and his other overnight guests, their supper in due course. It wasn’t as if she’d been brandishing a knife, or a pistol, or indeed behaving in a threatening manner of any kind.
The youth, who’d been gazing down at the pretty creature he held in his arms, lifted his head, causing one lock of silky brown hair to slide artistically across his forehead and into his eyes. Eyes that held an expression with which Dorothy was all too familiar. The expression of a male who had no idea what to do and expected her to come up with a solution.
Dorothy felt better at once. She might have, inadvertently, been the cause of the girl’s fainting spell, but now she could do what she did best. She could take charge of the situation.
‘Lay her down flat,’ she commanded, as she briskly crossed the room.
The young man did as she’d told him, gently lowering his fair burden to the floor. Dorothy knelt down at her side and undid the strings of the girl’s bonnet. Then, when the girl showed no signs of coming round, she began fanning her with it.
‘I should like to remove her spencer too,’ said Dorothy, who’d felt much better herself for having had a wash in cool water and changing out of her dusty carriage dress. ‘It is always beneficial to loosen the clothing, in the case of a faint,’ she explained, while wondering why on earth the girl was wearing such inappropriate clothing for such a hot day.
The youth blushed, and shuffled away. ‘Y-you mustn’t, I mean...no, not in such a public place! Anyone could walk in, at any moment, and I swore I would protect her...’
Dorothy could see his point, she supposed. After all, if she was the kind of female who fainted, she wouldn’t like people to see her half undressed while in such a vulnerable condition.
‘I have a room upstairs,’ she said, taking the girl’s hand and chafing it. ‘Do you think you could carry her up there?’ In the privacy of her own room, Dorothy would be able to make the girl much more comfortable, as well as preserving her dignity while doing so.
The youth straightened up, puffing out his chest. ‘Of course I could. Only show me where it is.’
By the time he’d followed Dorothy all the way up to the little room under the eaves which was all she could afford, the girl was showing signs of coming round. And just as the young man was laying her down on top of Dorothy’s narrow bed, her eyes flew open.
‘Gregory! What is...?’ She stared round wildly. ‘Where have you brought me?’
‘This lady,’ said the youth, whose name must be Gregory since he hadn’t corrected the girl for calling him that, ‘has very kindly offered you the use of her room, since you swooned.’
‘Miss Phillips,’ said Dorothy, introducing herself, since there had been no opportunity to do so before.
‘Swooned? How...humiliating,’ said the girl with revulsion. ‘I never swoon. Only the most chicken-hearted females swoon.’
Dorothy liked the girl much better for expressing such feelings, since they matched exactly what she would have said in the same circumstances.
‘But anyone,’ Dorothy pointed out, ‘might be overcome by heat and exhaustion after a trying day, when perhaps they haven’t eaten or drunk very much. Which is perfectly understandable, since coach travel makes many people queasy, even those with the strongest constitutions.’
‘That’s true, Pansy darling,’ said Gregory. ‘You have hardly eaten a thing all day.’
‘Well, that’s easily remedied,’ said Dorothy. ‘Young man, you can make yourself useful by going down and ordering tea and a plate of bread and butter, to start with, while I make... Pansy, is it?’ The girl nodded. ‘I will make you more comfortable.’
‘Oh, but...’ Pansy began, struggling as if to sit up.
‘No,’ said Dorothy firmly. ‘You will feel very much better for a lie down and something to eat. And it is cooler up here than down in that stuffy coffee room. I made sure to open the window as soon as I arrived, and the door as well, to get a draught blowing through.’
‘Yes, that breeze is lovely,’ Pansy admitted. ‘But...’
‘Darling, it will be much better for you up here,’ Gregory said, in a rather pointed manner, ‘out of sight, rather than down there in a public room.’
Pansy settled back on to the pillows at once, giving Gregory a worshipful look. He gazed back at her with such adoration that for a moment or two, the whole room pulsed with a kind of tension that made Dorothy rather uncomfortable.
‘I... I did not think it would be so hot today,’ said Pansy, sheepishly, once Gregory had left and Dorothy began to help her out of a couple of layers of her clothing. ‘Or that so many things would go wrong. We had planned to get much further than this before stopping for the night, but first there was something wrong with one of the horses, then there was some difficulty replacing it, and then to cap it all something went wrong with some part of the harness, or the...the driving part of the coach,’ she said vaguely. ‘And then I developed such a crushing headache that Gregory refused to go one more mile, even though we are not yet truly beyond the reach of—’ She broke off, with such a guilty air, that it confirmed the suspicion Dorothy had been harbouring almost from the first moment she’d seen them. If this young couple weren’t eloping, she’d eat her hat.
Dorothy bit back the pithy remark she’d dearly love to make, since it was clear the girl was suffering enough already. ‘You have a headache? I have something in my trunk that should help you with that,’ she said, stepping across the narrow gap between the bed and the window, where her trunk sat, taking the key from her reticule and fitting it into the padlock.
‘I am going away to become a governess, you see,’ she explained as she lifted the lid. ‘And in my experience, children are forever falling ill or scraping themselves. So I stocked up with every remedy I could lay my hands on.’ She also hadn’t known how easy it might be for her to summon a doctor, if she should fall ill herself. Did employers think it worth the expense of summoning a doctor for a mere governess? Probably not.
The girl meekly permitted Dorothy to sponge her hands and face with cool water, drank the herbal tea which Dorothy brewed with the hot water a chambermaid brought up, and then ate all her bread and butter.
‘Try to have a nap,’ Dorothy advised as she set the empty plate and cup back on the tray. ‘I will go down and leave you in peace.’ And get her own supper, which must surely be served soon? Her stomach certainly thought it ought.
‘Oh, but Gregory...’
‘I dare say he will be relieved to hear you are feeling much better,’ she said firmly, ‘now you’ve had something to eat and drink, and have cooled down.’
‘That’s true,’ said Pansy, subsiding into the pillows.
Dorothy smiled at the girl as she made to leave. Though her smile faded as soon as she started down the stairs. If the pair of them really were eloping, then she intended to give Gregory a piece of her mind. What kind of rogue would drag a delicate, nervous creature like Pansy on such a flight when he must have known it would be too much for her? And if her parents had forbidden the match, they must have a very good reason, too. Perhaps she was very wealthy. Her clothing was certainly very modish, and of good quality, even if it was inappropriate for the season. Yes, that must be it. Gregory must be a fortune hunter. He certainly had the looks, and the caressing manner that a fortune hunter would adapt towards an heiress, if Pansy was one.
By the time she reached the coffee room, where she found Gregory pacing up and down, chewing his nails, she’d become so angry that she responded to his anxious enquiry about Pansy by informing him in no uncertain terms exactly what she thought of his conduct.
Gregory heard her out with his head bowed, then ran his fingers through his hair and totally disarmed her by agreeing that he’d behaved in a completely shabby way.
‘But I am so much in love with her that I cannot bear to lose her,’ he said. ‘When she came to me, weeping, and begging me to save her from being forced to marry some man that her father picked out, what else could I do but promise to marry her myself? Even though it has meant adopting measures that, in any other fellow, I would denounce as being completely disgraceful?’
Dorothy’s perception of the situation turned about completely. Instead of feeling indignant on Pansy’s behalf, she now felt heartily sorry for Gregory. Because it was clear that, for all her air of fragility, Pansy was one of those females who used wiles to twist the dimmer sort of males round their little fingers.
‘Well, I shall say no more on that head,’ she said, crossing the room to pat him on the shoulder, the way she would have comforted either of her brothers after they’d confessed to falling into a stupid scrape. ‘Since you already understand that what you are doing is wrong and that you are sorry.’ Which was what she would have said to either of her brothers, in similar circumstances. Not that either of them was old enough to elope, nor handsome or wealthy enough for any scheming female to try to induce them to do so.
‘The only thing about which I’m sorry,’ said Gregory, mutinously, ‘is that Pansy has fallen ill before I could get her to safety.’
‘She is not truly ill. Only a little overwrought and suffering from the effects of the heat. She was looking much better when I left her. I believe, after a sufficient interval of rest, and a decent meal, she will be well enough to resume your journey.’
‘Truly?’ Gregory seized her hand in his own, which was unpleasantly sweaty.
‘Truly,’ she said, tugging at her hand, which the lad seemed reluctant to release. ‘I shall return to watch over her while she sleeps—’ since there was still no sign of the supper the landlord had promised ‘—so that you can see about the repair of your coach, which I believe is in need of some attention,’ she said, giving another, futile, attempt to tug her hand from his surprisingly firm grip.
‘You are an angel,’ he said, raising her hand to his lips and kissing it. ‘Whenever anyone speaks of angels, in future, I shall always imagine them looking just like you, towering over we lesser mortals, with bright hazel eyes either blazing with righteous indignation, or melting with sympathy for our plight. I do not know what we would have done had you not been sent to minister to us in our darkest hour. May I know your name? Your given name?’
‘Dora,’ she said. Then wondered why she hadn’t said Dorothy. It must have been because she’d been comparing him to her brothers, who always shortened her name, in an affectionate way. And because Gregory was something of a charmer, as well as being precisely the sort of impulsive, silly boy who would try to elope with a girl who portrayed herself as a damsel in distress. She was starting to smile at him, in a somewhat bemused manner, when the door of the coffee room swung violently open, banging against the wall and bouncing back. Not that it could bounce far, because standing in the doorway, completely filling the frame, was the largest man Dorothy had ever seen. The effect was probably in part due to the coat he was wearing, which had full skirts and several tiers of capes about the shoulders. The drab-coloured garment reached fully to the man’s heels and had mother-of-pearl buttons the size of a crown piece, which led her to assume that he was the driver of some coach who had drunkenly staggered through the wrong door. But that assumption lasted only as long as it took Gregory to drop her hands and gasp out one word.
‘Worsley!’
The giant of a man had to duck his head to enter the room, which he did, pulling the door shut behind him. As he did so, the coat, which was undone, billowed out, revealing the kind of serviceable waistcoat a coach driver really might wear, as well as heavy buckskin breeches and wrinkled buff top boots that had clearly seen better days. She’d heard from her horse-mad brother Paul that some men, who really ought to know better, aped the attire of coach drivers. And since Gregory had addressed this one by name, with a look of guilty defiance, he must be one of that breed.
‘I need not ask,’ said the man, with a sneer, ‘what you are doing here, I suppose?’
‘It is not,’ said Gregory, ‘what you think.’
‘It is precisely what I think,’ growled the man, removing his hat to reveal a thatch of wildly untidy, straw-coloured hair. He turned his eyes upon her. Eyes which were of a piercingly vivid shade of blue. ‘Although I suppose, now that I have finally met the jade, I can see exactly how she succeeded in making you take leave of your senses and beguiled you into eloping.’
Goodness. This man seemed to think that she was the girl with whom Gregory was eloping. How on earth could he really think that she, dressed as she was in the sombre garb of a governess, and at the age when everyone believed her to be firmly on the shelf, had somehow beguiled this boy to elope with her? The very idea was so ridiculous that a short bark of laughter escaped her mouth.
‘You think this is funny?’ Worsley took a step in her direction and glared down at her. ‘To ruin my ward’s life by not only making him wish for such a mismatch, but also to go about it in this clandestine fashion? By making him take a step that will ruin him in just about every way?’
‘I am doing no such thing,’ she began, intending to explain that she’d only met Gregory less than an hour ago and disapproved of the step he was taking just as much as he did.
But Worsley gave her no chance to finish.
‘I wasn’t born yesterday,’ he snapped. ‘Nor am I the kind that your type of female can manage. I am well up to your weight, even if my ward isn’t.’
His comment drew her attention, once again, to his stature. Because of her height, most men scarcely reached up to her chin. This man, on the other hand, not only topped her in height by several inches, but had shoulders the width of a mantelpiece.
‘So hold your tongue,’ he said. ‘And accept the fact that I have thwarted your plans.’
He might be larger than most men, but he was no more intelligent, she promptly decided. What was more, he was the type who thought he knew better, simply because he was a man, even when he was plainly in the wrong.
Well, let him make an ass of himself. This was nothing to do with her.
Lifting her chin, she gave him the withering look she had already used to such good effect once that day and ceased attempting to explain what was really going on. It wasn’t her place, after all. The argument was really between Worsley and Gregory.
As if coming to the same conclusion, Worsley turned his attention to Gregory.
‘As for you,’ he snapped, ‘you ought to know better. Didn’t I warn you to beware of women like this?’ He waved one arm in Dorothy’s direction. ‘Women who will do just about anything to get their hands on a title? To worm their way into society?’
‘Now see here,’ said Gregory, rather pale-faced, and giving the appearance of girding up his loins, as though he had never attempted to stand up to the larger, older man before. Which, since Worsley had revealed he was Gregory’s guardian, was likely to be the case. ‘You are making a mistake...’
‘No. I am merely making sure that you do not,’ said Worsley. ‘It is not too late to undo what this creature has tried to make you do. You will return to London with me, now, and I will...’
‘No!’ Gregory shook his head. ‘I cannot possibly leave a gently reared female alone and unprotected in an inn. Miles away from anyone she knows. And if you were half the gentleman you keep saying you want me to be, you wouldn’t suggest it!’
Worsley blinked. Appeared to consider Gregory’s argument. And gave a brief nod.
‘You are correct. Much better if I return the hussy to her family instead.’
So saying, he sort of swooped on Dorothy and, before she rightly knew what he intended, he’d heaved her over his shoulder like a sack of coal. A shoulder which she discovered had not only the width, but also the marble-like consistency of a mantelpiece. And which knocked the breath from her lungs.
He had carried her into the corridor before she regained the ability to speak. Or the wits to begin beating at his back with her fists.
‘What are you doing?’
What a stupid thing to say. It was obvious what he was doing. What she ought to be doing was demanding he put her down.
‘Put me down this instant,’ she therefore cried. To no avail. The oaf just kept on walking. Along the corridor, in the direction of the inn door.
Until the landlord stepped in his path.
‘ʼEre,’ he protested. ‘What be you doing?’
Hurrah! Even if Gregory didn’t have the spine to stand up to Worsley, it appeared that the landlord, at least, was not afraid of him.
‘I don’t hold with this sort of thing going on in my ken...’
‘Out of my way,’ growled the walking mantelpiece. ‘Unless you want me to blacken your reputation by letting it be known you have aided and abetted in the elopement of a minor.’
‘I’m not a minor,’ Dorothy protested to the landlord’s knees, which was all she could see of him when she tried to raise her head. ‘Landlord, you know I am not. This is all a dreadful mistake!’ But the landlord’s knees moved out of her line of vision as Worsley carried on walking.
As they reached the door, Dorothy began to get over her initial surprise at being picked up in such a cavalier fashion and experienced a twinge of alarm. And made her first real attempt to wriggle out of his hold. His arm came down like a band of steel, making her realise that until now, he’d only been utilising a fraction of his strength.
‘If you don’t stop trying to thwart me,’ he growled, ‘I shall bind and gag you. Because return you to Coventry I shall. And nothing you do or say is going to stop me.’
‘You cannot return me to Coventry,’ she protested. ‘Since I’ve never been there in my life! Oh, won’t you stop and listen to me, you great...oaf!’
‘Hah,’ he grunted, as he strode across the inn yard. ‘Listen to lies from the likes of you? What do you take me for?’
‘One of...the biggest idiots... I’ve ever had...the misfor...tune to come...across in my...whole life,’ she panted, since the combination of hanging upside down while being clamped to a marble mantelpiece by a bar of steel was making her a bit breathless.
‘I cannot...go to Cov...entry,’ she pleaded. She had a seat booked on the Edinburgh stage the next morning. And what would happen when she didn’t arrive to take up her new post? And how on earth was she going to recover her trunk, which contained all her worldly goods? Although it probably wouldn’t, for long, since she’d carelessly left it unlocked when she came down to speak to Gregory, thinking she wouldn’t be long.
‘You...idiot...man,’ she panted. ‘You are g...going to ru...in every...thing!’
She then went a bit dizzy, as Worsley swung round a couple of times while he opened the door to a carriage. And then really dizzy when he flipped her the right way up before tossing her inside.
‘To Coventry you will go,’ he growled, as he straightened up and backed away. ‘So you may as well stop trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I am not some green boy like Gregory, to be taken in by an older, more experienced woman.’
She opened her mouth to protest that she’d never tried to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. But all that came out of her mouth was a gargling wheeze. And then, as she sat up, her head went all floaty and a crowd of black spots began dancing before her eyes. In the few moments it took for her to regain the ability to breathe in the normal manner, and for her head to stop spinning, Worsley had slammed the coach door, and, to judge from the way the whole equipage rocked, climbed up on to the driver’s seat.
She inched to the door and laid her hand on the release catch.
And then she imagined the scene in the inn yard should she explain that she was no temptress, but a governess who’d only stumbled across the eloping couple he was hunting down, by the merest chance.
With the passengers of who knew how many stagecoaches watching with interest, what a spectacle she would make, with no coat, or hat, and her hair straggling down all over the place, since his method of seeing her into his coach had dislodged most of her hairpins.
And then she thought about what would happen should she finally persuade him he’d made a mistake. And how he would march straight back into the inn and up the stairs, and subject that poor, silly girl to the same Turkish treatment he’d used on her.
And what it would do to a delicate creature like that, who had already been reduced to a state of nervous collapse by the fear of him, never mind the actual presence of him. Because that was why the girl had started up and fainted when Dorothy had walked in, wasn’t it? Yes, because she had suspected that Worsley was pursuing them.
But then she reminded herself that it was her duty to prevent an elopement, if she possibly could, that she ought not to consider her dignity and that even though she didn’t like the methods Worsley might employ, somebody really should return that girl to her parents.
And by the time all those conflicting thoughts had gone through her head, the coach was moving.
She could still leap out and run back to the landlord, enlist his aid and perhaps mount some sort of defence before Worsley could really frighten the Pansy girl...
But even as she considered it, she heard Worsley whip up the horses and put them to a gallop.
And she’d lost her chance of escape.
She put her hands to her mouth as the awful truth hit her squarely in the pit of her rather sore stomach. She was being abducted.
Abducted.
But...things like this didn’t happen to girls like her. Things like this only happened to heiresses, or pretty girls. And that only in stories.
But that was what had happened. Worsley had mistaken a plain, spinster governess for the pretty, flighty young girl with whom Gregory had been attempting to elope. Which was absurd. So absurd that suddenly, she couldn’t help seeing the funny side of it. Which was just as well, or else she might have succumbed to the temptation to cry. Just the thought of crying caused a tear to threaten. Which was always the way, wasn’t it? If you thought about crying, in response to difficulties, that was exactly what you ended up doing. And what good did it do? What did it achieve? Nothing.
She sniffed and reminded herself that she’d been through far worse than this without turning into a watering pot.
Besides, she wouldn’t give that great bully the satisfaction of thinking he’d reduced her to tears. She wasn’t some feeble, nervy creature who could think of nothing better to do than weep and wail, because some idiot man had taken one look at her and decided she was preying on a green boy—and how on earth could he think Gregory was her slave when the lad had made no attempt to defend her? Why, even the landlord had put up more of a protest than he had, when he’d seen Worsley carting her out of the inn.
She dashed away the single tear that had trickled down her cheek while she was giving herself a stern talking-to. And forgave herself for being a bit emotional. After all, it wasn’t every day a girl got thrown over a man’s shoulder and tossed into a coach like a sack of potatoes. Being a bit shocked and upset was perfectly forgivable, providing she didn’t give way to the extent that she ended up having the vapours.
Anyway, she, Dorothy Phillips, was absolutely not the kind of female who would ever have the vapours. She was made of sterner stuff than that.
And so she would jolly well show him.
The moment he let her out of this coach.
