Flirtation & Folly Page 14

  “I know it is early, Jeannette, so you need say nothing about that. Help me dress. I must go to Aunt Cartwright’s, and you are coming with me.”

  Jeannette’s muslin cap must have been pulled roughly over her head, or else she had not had time to comb her curls before donning it. They sprayed out limply at all sides and seemed to share her waking confusion. “Miss Mowbrey, you must be mad. You cannot visit anyone in the middle of the night.”

  Because Jeannette’s protests were launched while she was helping Marianne with her gown, Marianne deigned to answer her. “It is not the middle of the night.”

  “It’s dark out, dark as dark!”

  “It is early morning, and you know it is very often dark even much later than this, if the fog is thick.”

  “Which it is not.”

  As Marianne’s head popped out through the top of her gown, her gaze was confronted with Jeannette’s sour face. It was awkward for Marianne to explain anything since she knew so little herself, but she tried. “My aunt Cartwright is having an emergency of some kind, and I must go to her. She says not to lose any time. If I had had this letter when it arrived, we could have been there hours ago. Who put it on my dressing table?”

  “Oh, one of the housemaids, I should warrant,” Jeannette said, but her eyes slid away from Marianne. “You must not get too lively about a letter from Mrs Cartwright, Miss Mowbrey. She usually does write something to your aunt when your aunt is entertaining. She gets fretful over being left at home, I suppose, and writes something to make herself feel important.”

  “Did she write to my aunt as well?”

  “No,” Jeannette said, overlooking the fact that she would not have known whether or not the housemaid had delivered a second letter.

  “And there may be a significant reason why she asks me and not my aunt to come.” For once, Marianne felt her practicality of good service. She had dealt with emergencies enough at the rectory. Her smallest siblings had had the pox, and she had cared for them while her mother fretted and Belinda was sent away to preserve her pretty face. When her brother Harry had run away as a child, Marianne had been the one to track him down. Although she did not know how she could help her aunt, she could at least try. Marianne waited impatiently while Jeannette fastened the back of her gown. Arguing with her maid was draining much-needed energy for her aunt’s succour. “You must send someone to the livery stables to order the carriage now.”

  “Miss Mowbrey, that’s nonsense. They’ll not send a carriage at this hour. Wait until Miss Adams is awake, and she will decide what to do.”

  “I am not waiting, Jenny.” Forgetting to call the girl Jeannette was rude, but Marianne’s irritation was growing beyond bounds. What heroine ever had to deal with such a reluctant, obstacle-producing lady’s maid? In novels, a heroine’s maid always instantly advanced her mistress’s plans. “Aunt Cartwright has been very kind to me, and she has asked me for nothing until now. She wants me to come at once, and so I will. Aunt Harriet is sleeping after all the hard work of the party, and I will not have her awakened when she is not wanted anyway.”

  Jeannette finished with the dress, so Marianne pulled on her shoes and grabbed her reticule. “Come along.”

  “You had better let George try and get a hack,” Jeannette warned as she and Marianne descended the stairs.

  Marianne nearly groaned at her maid’s impertinence. Who was the mistress here? “I do not have the ready money for a hack.” It was a wound to her practicality that she had spent so much at her last trip to the milliner’s. She had always had a little bit put by for emergencies at the rectory, if only a few coins. “We will walk.”

  “Walk!” Jeannette nearly shrieked.

  Marianne shushed her with a glare. “It is not that far. I am tired of arguing with you, Jeannette.” She would show her that Marianne was in control. Perhaps she had erred in listening to Jeannette’s gossip and teaching her to give herself airs in French. The maid was spoiled. Marianne marched out of the house, and Jeannette flitted after her. Marianne heard the maid’s footsteps hurry until she was close, then slow as the maid lingered and looked back at the house before quickening again to bring her face to face with her mistress.

  “Let me take a moment and fetch George. If you must walk outdoors at such an hour, we should have a footman with us,” Jeannette said, but she did not plead; she insisted, and Marianne’s chin went up.

  “I have already wasted too much time explaining my orders to you,” Marianne said. “If you cannot follow them, you had better find another place. Go and fetch George if you like, but I will not wait for you.” She charged past the maid. Jeannette hesitated, but finally fell in behind her.

  “You ought to know I cannot leave you even a minute in these dark streets,” the maid said with resentment. Glancing around at the figures moving in and out of the lamplight around them, Jeannette hastened to Marianne’s side and clung to her arm. The people who moved about at this time of day were for the most part tradespeople of a lower class, carrying bundles, arranging wares on carts, or otherwise occupying themselves with their business in preparation for the day. Some of the figures, however, swayed by in a stinking haze of cheap gin or scuttled in the shadows with smudged faces unpleasantly fixated on Marianne. Marianne and Jeannette walked in silence for several minutes.

  The further they got from Aunt Harriet’s house, the less reputable the figures on the street appeared. Although this part of London was by no means impoverished or slum-like, there were enough drunks and prostitutes to shock Marianne into regretting the presence of a footman. Many of the people they passed eyed Marianne with curiosity, but thankfully none approached them.

  As she and Jeannette wound down another street, singing carried from one of the rooms poking out high above the street. At first Marianne thought it must be a public house of some sort, but as they got closer, the tinny wails became recognisable.

  “They are singing hymns,” Marianne said, astonished. She paused in the street to stare up at the lit windows, but Jeannette pulled her arm to get her moving again.

  “Methodists, most like.”

  “They worship at this hour, so early?” Marianne glanced back for one more look, but given the rapid pace with which she and Jeannette were moving, the glow of the rooms was not long in sight. In the distance, the sky was lightening with the slow approach of dawn.

  “And when else can they meet?” Jeannette said, with a note of disdain. “Most of ’em are in service or in trade, and they haven’t got time at a natural hour. They must do their ungodly business in the dead of night.”

  “They are not ungodly, Jeannette, only different,” Marianne said. Although she had occasionally passed by Methodist preachers haranguing the lower classes in Wrumpton, she did not know enough of them to say much more. Her father had simply dismissed them as dissenters, and the passionate display of fury and ecstasy of the traveling preachers had made Marianne feel too awkward and uncomfortable to listen long. Now, however, the tinny singing made her feel a little better. “And I have already told you it is not the dead of night. Look back there, and you will be able to see the sun is coming up.”

  Jeannette simply harrumphed, but Marianne decided she owed the maid something for enduring an unpleasant—perhaps even dangerous—walk. She made an effort to be cheerful. “Let us practice the French words you know, Jeannette. You still do not have the accent correct in most of them.”

  “What difference does that make? I’ll never know enough to make anybody think I’m French.” Now Jeannette sounded positively glum as well as resentful.

  Marianne patted her arm. “It is better to know just a few words and speak them perfectly than to know many and get the accent wrong,” she said. “It is more believable. If the French you do speak is perfect, then people will think you speak English most of the time out of politeness to them. If you say a lot of French in a bad accent, then sooner or later someone will cross your path who does know good French, and they will know ’tis a sham.”
She coaxed Jeannette into practising a little, and both of them began to feel a little more confident as they walked. Upon striding onto a bridge over the Thames, however, Jeannette’s confidence abruptly abandoned her.

  “Lord, Miss Mowbrey!” she whispered, pointing at a man leaning far out over the railing. “He looks as though he might jump over it and be drowned! How wicked!”

  The shape of the man looked familiar to Marianne, as did the dark coat on his back. In height he looked much like Mr Hearn, but his bearing seemed more awkward, as if he were injured. “I think it might be Mr Hearn.”

  “Let’s go quick past, and perhaps he won’t notice us,” Jeannette whispered. The man threw one leg over the railing, and Marianne began to feel genuine alarm. His other leg followed, but he did not throw himself into the black, fetid water. He simply sat on the railing, swaying slightly.

  “What if he does jump? Or falls?” Marianne started moving towards the man, but Jeannette clung to her arm.

  “If he means to jump, miss, then he’s right wicked, and you shouldn’t go near him! If he kills himself, his ghost is sure to haunt whoever is with him when he dies!”

  For once, Jeannette matched the handmaid characters in novels perfectly. They were always begging the heroine not to go further out of an ignorant superstition. The alignment strengthened Marianne’s resolve. “Wait here, if you are afraid,” she said. She strode across the bridge to the man in the dark coat, and she accosted him with an authority that surprised even herself. “I beg your pardon, sir, but you ought not to sit on the railing.”

  The man’s face turned from the smooth flow of water to Marianne. The gas light cast a haze around his figure that ought to have graced an angel, all golden and sparkling, but the expression on his face was far from angelic. It looked wretched and desperate. It was the same face she had seen earlier in the evening, only now it had been driven into a wild sorrow. Mr Hearn was not too drunk to understand and direct his actions, but he had had enough to make him harsh and indifferent to courtesy.

  “Miss Mowbrey,” he said, after a long moment of consideration. He took no notice of her recommendation to get off the railing. Marianne struggled with how to approach a man who was certainly intoxicated, and possibly suicidal. She feared too much sympathy might make him remember his woes—whatever they might be—and throw himself off the bridge. If she pretended nothing was wrong, however, he might feel that no one cared what he did. Where was the night watchman? Surely there was someone nearby better equipped to handle such a situation. Heavens, she had determined on rescuing her aunt from some horrible fate, and now she had someone else to manage before she could even discover what peril her Aunt Cartwright had slipped into.

  “You look very foolish,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Do I?” He did not seem to care very much. His gaze fell back down on the water. Despite the light leaking upwards from the horizon, most of the sky was dark, and the water showed only a few glimmers on the oily sheen of its surface.

  “Yes. For one thing, you are drunk—how much so I cannot judge—and for another, you are terrifying my maid into a certainty that your ghost will haunt her if she so much as looks at you.”

  That seemed to interest him enough to listen, but his gaze remained fixed on the water below—black in the shadows, lead-coloured where the lights of the bridge dared to touch it.

  Marianne still could not tell if he was genuinely considering throwing himself in, or if he was merely looking. She tried again. “I cannot suppose your ghost would haunt me any, even if you are so foolish as to fall in the river, because I would not be properly scared. There would be no sport in it.”

  “I suppose not.” He looked up at her, and then cast his gaze back at Jeannette, who shuddered and inched further down the street. “But your father is a rector, is he not? I daresay he taught you there are no such things as ghosts.”

  “He did, but I maintain my own opinion.” She tried to put humour into her voice, but if he noticed it, he ignored it.

  “And what did he teach you about those who take their own lives?”

  Marianne swallowed hard. She could simply state her father’s opinion—persuade Mr Hearn that such a sin was wicked, perhaps even unforgivable, unless done in madness—but it would not be consistent with the authenticity she had shared with Mr Hearn to that point. She felt sure that authenticity was precious to him. “He believes they are wrong to do so, unless they are very ill in their minds. But again, I maintain my own opinion.”

  At his curious look, she continued. “I believe we have a right to shuffle off this mortal coil when we choose, Mr Hearn. I do not think it wrong in itself, although it could be wrong as a means of deliberately hurting others.”

  The stink of sour wine drowned out the odour of the river as she leaned towards him. “But if you do choose to take your own life, I do not advise doing so tonight.”

  “Why not?” he challenged, a hint of moroseness mixed with his anger.

  “Because it is not a decision to make while drunk, and because it would unsettle my maid’s sanity for the next forty years.”

  He chuckled at that, and after a minute, he swung his legs back over the railing to sit facing inward. “Very well. Not tonight, then. What on earth are you doing out here at this hour anyway, Miss Mowbrey?”

  Although it took effort, he seemed to set his sorrow aside and concentrate on the young lady’s situation. Now that he appeared more reasonable, Jeannette made her way towards them, albeit reluctantly and with caution.

  “I am going to visit my aunt Cartwright,” Marianne said.

  “Just you and your maid?”

  “As you see.”

  He rubbed his head in puzzlement, disheveling his dark hair even further into disarray. Jeannette took Marianne’s arm, although she was careful to take a different arm than before, so that she could be as far from Mr Hearn as possible. His appearance did not do anything to reassure the maid. Purple splotches stained his waistcoat, and there were probably more hidden in the darker cloth of his coat. He wore no hat, and the scent of grease and pipe smoke clung to his hair.

  “Does Mrs Cartwright know you two are walking to her house?” Mr Hearn asked.

  Jeannette hurried to put her own word in, along with a careful stab at Marianne. “Oh, no, sir. Mrs Cartwright is quite a polite lady who would expect us to take a carriage, as any lady would,” she said, throwing a glare at Marianne.

  Marianne ignored her, too glad Mr Hearn was behaving reasonably to take offence.

  “I will accompany you there, then,” Mr Hearn said.

  It was perhaps not proper decorum to walk with a man at such an hour, but neither Marianne nor Jeannette objected. Jeannette was relieved at having some sort of escort to ward off the beggars and drunks, and perhaps felt all the safer as the drunken gentleman who gave Marianne his arm was stranger than any of the others, having nearly thrown himself off a bridge to perdition. It was like strolling through hell with a greater demon, who might be fearsome in himself but at least drove off every lesser devil and knew the country well. Marianne was simply glad Mr Hearn would be too occupied in chaperoning them to have time to sit on any more railings for the morning. No one could say what he would do the next time he tried to drown his sorrows with wine—he might well attempt to drown them in river water, as well—but for today, she felt sure he was safe.

  The sunrise peeked between buildings as they followed the narrow, twisting streets, the sun itself muffled in rolls of fog that seemed to creep in with the morning. It was as if the eldritch night that had hoarsened the throat with its frosty, supernatural air was transforming into another ordinary morning, swaddled in rosy light and fog. Marianne had to remind herself that her aunt’s emergency still remained in order to keep herself alert. The clap of Mr Hearn’s boots on the sidewalk helped. The sharp echoes reverberated with his unsteady tread, keeping her as off-balance as if listening to music with strange syncopation. However normal the daylight might make things appear, she w
as sure she had to be ready for more strangeness to come. The idea pleased her.

  Stopping in front of Aunt Cartwright’s home brought Marianne back to an unpleasant reality. Mr Hearn’s red-streaked eyes still looked defiant and sad, and the sour smell of wine that clung to him steadied and intensified now that they were no longer moving. “I will not go in. I have no hat,” he said.

  Marianne was struck with the sudden epiphany that he had thrown it into the Thames, partly to amuse himself and partly to test the way something might arc and fall into the depths. It was what she would have done if she had felt reckless and desperate enough to lean over the railing

  “That will be fine. You have done quite enough, Mr Hearn.” She had meant it as thanks for accompanying them, but the words must have sounded scolding to someone in his frame of mind. “I mean that we are much obliged to you for guiding us to my aunt Cartwright’s home. Perhaps we will see you again soon?”

  She hoped the question was not tactless. She could not very well say Perhaps we shall dance together at Sir William’s ball if you do not happen to drown yourself by then, but what she had said seemed nearly as bad.

  “Perhaps.” He said nothing more, but shuffled off down the sidewalk. He waited a moment to see that the footman admitted them into Aunt Cartwright’s foyer, and then he turned his face away and walked into the rising tide of shopkeepers and servants now trickling into the streets, his hatless head preserving his individuality as one drop in that burgeoning flow of bodies.

  Marianne could not help peering out the window as soon as the servant left to inform Aunt Cartwright of her arrival. She watched Mr Hearn as he ambled away and tried not to worry. The seamy side of a gentleman’s life in London usually included riotous drink, as well as rowdy friends and vulgar female companionship, so she believed that Mr Hearn, even when tippled, was capable of finding his way home.

  And she believed his promise. He would not destroy himself today, at least. She supposed it was just as well she had already deemed Mr Hearn unsuitable as a husband. This morning’s adventures certainly did not improve his standing. Marianne ruminated for several minutes on his difficulties. Jeannette had been sent to the kitchens for a cup of tea to recruit her energies—that, and a bit of gossip with Mrs Cartwright’s kitchen-maids, would doubtless fortify her for the walk home. When the butler came to escort Marianne to her aunt, she felt relief at the distraction from her thoughts.