the alternative bride 3

 

Chapter 3

 

“The White Hart and change horses, my lord?” asked Jelves.

“May as well,” said Gerard. “It’s quicker getting into St Albans by the new road without having to negotiate the hill, and if we eat an early dinner here, we can push on to Dunstable, another couple of hours on the road, and have an early supper there.”

“I will be glad to eat, my lord... Gerard, I mean,” said Jane. “I have not eaten yet today.”

“My dear girl! Surely you were not too excited to eat breakfast for what was to have been your stepsister’s wedding?”

She threw him a derisive look.

“Too excited? Too busy. I had to beg off caring for Madelaine not to appear at the wedding in my old calico print with my hair in plaits!  I had no time for breakfast by the time I had seen to bringing breakfast to Madelaine in bed, organising a bath for her, setting out her clothes, doing her hair. I did tell you she treated me as her dresser, and Helen had a dozen jobs for me as well.  I seized a piece of bread, but that was many hours ago.” She considered. “About five of the clock when I was supervising the servants in the household preparations.”

“Good G-d!” said Gerard, disgusted. “I have had a lucky escape; and my wife is the queen of being the hostess of the ballroom, but my wife will also delegate more, and take time to have proper meals. My first order to you as your husband.”

“What can a poor mouse say but ‘yes, my lord?’” said Jane.

They swung into the inn yard of the ‘White Hart Inn’ at that moment, and Jane had a glimpse of a large, timber-framed hostelry of considerable antiquity. Gerard undid the door, and leaped down, holding his arm for Jane to use it to aid her descent. She was glad of it, and smiled her thanks, looking around to see that they were in the yard of a large inn with steep, red-tiled roof, wherein the servants doubtless dwelt, and two main floors on the quadrangle on which it was built, including a room over the back gate.

Gerard took her arm, and led her inside.

“Danvers, I want a private parlour and dinner for me and my bride,” he said to the landlord. “Jelves will eat in the tap-room.”

“My lord! I heard you were getting married today, what are you doing here?” cried that worthy.

“Eloping with the bridesmaid having found my betrothed wife making a fool of me with my former best friend.”

“No! Not Mr. Freddie?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. And he’s welcome to her,” said Gerard. “Congratulate me; I plan to have the younger sister.”

“Well, congratulations, my lord... I think,” said Danvers.  “I haven’t got any dinner ready yet, not as such.”

“Well, do what you can,” said Gerard. “We’re hungry.”

 

Half an hour later, Jane felt much better, having addressed some pea soup, Melton-Mowbray pie, cold beef with beetroot and horseradish pickle, a speciality of the house which moved Jane to ask for the recipe, a well-stuffed cold chicken, salamagundy, and sorbet to finish up.

“I suspect I may sleep in the coach,” she said, in contentment.

“There’s nothing to stop you doing so,” said Gerard. “An hour’s nap would do you good. I’ll see if he can let me have a pillow and a quilt to roll yourself up on the other seat; and would you like to change into a more comfortable gown?”

“I’d love to, if there are any amongst Madelaine’s going away trousseau,” said Jane.

“Jelves will bring in the overnight band-box,” said Gerard. “It must surely have a morning gown in it.”

“Oh, yes, I believe the jonquil yellow muslin is in there,” said Jane.

Gerard stood outside the door whilst Jane changed, and brushed out her hair to plait into a single braid. She opened the door when she was done.

“That was fast,” he said.

“I have to be fast so I can see to Madelaine,” said Jane. She giggled. “She’s going to be lost without me, and I wonder if Freddie can afford a dresser?”

“He can scarcely afford a valet,” said Gerard, cheerfully. “You look ridiculously young.”

“I didn’t want to travel with my hair loose,” said Jane. “And sleeping with it up is painful.”

 

Jelves turned up with a girl in tow.

“I told you I knew who would do for my lady,” he said. “This here is my sister’s girl, Alice, and I talked them into taking her on here, but now she’s learned enough to do for my lady.”

Alice bobbed a curtsey.

“Ooh, miss, you do look a picture,” she said. “Not like a dog’s breakfast like most of the ladies who gentlemen bring here, you look a real lady.”

“Well, perhaps you will help me take the excess trims off some of the dresses my stepsister considered suitable; did Jelves tell you the circumstances?”

“Ooh, yes, miss, milady I should say, an’ how milord ended up with the right sister at last. It’s so romantic!” said Alice.

“You watch your tongue not to babble,” said Jelves.

“Yes, Uncle Henry,” said Alice.

“You know we are going on right away, Alice?” asked Gerard.

“Ooh, yes, milord, I’m all packed, an’ Uncle Henry says I can sit up along ‘o him to leave married folks alone together. It’s ever so exciting!” said Alice.

“Alice!” said Jelves, awfully.

“My lady ain’t complained,” said Alice.

“You are delightfully natural,” said Jane.

 

 

The journey on to Dunstable was moderately tedious, though Jane did, indeed, sleep, wrapped in a quilt the landlord of the White Hart had been happy to sell, along with a pillow. The quilt was old and faded, but well-filled with feathers against the chill of the evening. Jane woke suddenly as the coach swerved and bucked a little.

“Oh, what is it?” she cried.

“Some young bravo, hunting the squirrel – trying to overturn us in the ditch,” said Gerard, grimly. There was a haunted look to his face. “If he stops at Dunstable, I’ll give him some home-brewed... er, I will fight him and knock him down. I should not have mentioned that, I am sorry; I will make sure you do not see it.”

“But I want to see it!” said Jane. “I want to see you knock him down, and make him apologise. How could he know who was in a coach? Why, I might have been with child, and then there’s that child, Alice, as well as Jelves, who might have fallen off the box and broken their necks!”

“Definitely all the instincts of a true lady,” said Gerard, pleased. “Really, you will not mind the unpleasantness of blood, urine, sweat, and other things that go with boxing?”

“I want you to black his eye, break his nose, and leave him in no doubt but that your lady was displeased,” said Jane.

“Or, as we should say in sporting cant, plant him a facer, and draw his cork,” said Gerard.

“How very picturesque such language is!  Yes, I want to see... I think you call it his claret? I recall Helen telling off my stepfather for using the term.”

“Then, my most martial mouse, you shall,” said Gerard. He rapped on the communicating panel.

Jelves opened it.

“See where that puppy is headed, I want to draw his cork,” said Gerard.

“My lady won’t like that.”

“My lady wishes me to plant him a facer and show his claret,” said Gerard.

“You’re corrupting her, my lord.”

“Yes. Delightful, isn’t it?”

Jelves grumbled to himself and shut the little window.

 

“The sign of the Sugarloaf is, as in a grocery store, the pyramidal shape of a sugar loaf,” said Gerard. “It appears that our puppy is going all the way to Dunstable. Oh, and Jelves has determined my wishes,” he added, happily, as the coach moved out into the road. “We are overtaking him right before we enter the town.”

“That should dash his spirits somewhat,” said Jane. “I confess, I am looking forward to you forcibly explaining his shortcomings.”

There was a brief period of the coach rocking with the speed to which Jelves coaxed the horses, then a tight swing as into a coach yard.

Gerard alighted unhurriedly, assisting Jane.

The driver of a high-perch phaeton rolled into the yard behind them, and the youthful driver, a boy of perhaps nineteen summers, stared.

“W... Winterheart!” he stammered.

“Even so,” said Gerard, ignoring the boy being shocked into using his nickname.  “I think you should know that had you succeeded in forcing me into the ditch, and you harmed or killed my bride, her young maid, or my coachman, I would have pursued you with the full rigor of the law. If you had killed my bride, I would have killed you.”

“Sir! But devil take it, how was I to know that there was a bang-up sportsman in so antiquated a coach?”

“That, boy, is hardly the point, is it? Had I been an elderly clergyman with wife and hopeful progeny, the skill of my coachman saved you from being a murderer. Hunting the squirrel is not ‘sport.’ Any true sportsman despises a man who shows off his dubious skill by ditching those with less flashy equipages, or a lesser ability to drive to an inch. It is in the same category as a man who would boast of having beaten a woman to a pulp to show off his skill at pugilism.” His face was a sneering mask, and he was plainly holding himself in check.

“I say, sir! That would be low!”

“And tipping over the coach of someone who does not have a sporty carriage like yours is not? It is exactly the same, boy!  And beating you is beneath me, but I am going to do it anyway, not as a sporting proposition, but to enact punishment on you for upsetting my wife! Now, strip to your shirtsleeves, sirrah, and prepare to defend yourself!”

“Uh, the lady....”

“The lady wants to see my retribution on a callow puppy,” said Gerard.

The youth had an ugly look on his handsome face.

“Well, we shall see who hurts whom,” he said.

Another gentleman had strolled out.

“I will act as second, if I may?” he said. “Edward Danvers at your service. There is a grudge?”

“The puppy tried to overturn my bride and me and our servants,” growled Gerard. “Gerard Wintergreen.”

“Arthur Whittington,” said the youth, sulkily. “I don’t know why he makes such a fuss about a little sport.”

“Deaf and daft as well as lost to decency,” said Gerard.

Danvers held up a handkerchief and dropped it to signify the start of the fight.  Jelves had taken the team to uncouple, feed, and water, but the high perch phaeton, handed off to a groom, was still there, all the ostlers having come out to see a bang-up mill, as Jane heard it called, between one gent who fought with Gentleman Jackson, and another gent of sporting mien.

Gerard took a blow to the arm in order to pile two hard punches onto his opponent’s chest, having turned and swayed enough that Whittington’s blow slid across his upper arm instead of numbing the arm as intended. He danced, thought Jane, like a march hare boxing in their displays in the meadows in the early mornings. Another blow caught Whittington, who spat out a tooth and some blood. The younger man was blowing.

“So sorry; I missed,” drawled Gerard. “I did promise my bride to leave you with a nosebleed.”

Whittington fell back slightly, and then painfully pursed up his bruised mouth to whistle.

His team twitched away from the light hold of the ostler at their heads, to come forward, making Gerard step out of the way in a hurry, turning to see what this threat might be; and with his attention distracted, Whittington used both hands together to hammer a blow onto Gerard’s kidneys, making the older man fall to one knee, voiding his bladder.

“I win! I win!” said the youth.

“You little cheater!” flared Jane, darting forward and punching with all her strength, with arms strengthened by heavy housework such as she had had to do in carrying coals and bath water for Madelaine.

Whittington fell to her lucky blow on the point of his chin.

The ostlers cheered.

“The win to the lady, and to hell with the little cheat!” shouted one of the ostlers.

“Put those dratted horses up for the chub!” ordered Jane, and went to Gerard.

“Jane! I am sorry!” gasped Gerard. “I did not for one moment suppose....”

“No, and no gentleman would for one moment suppose that a man pretending to be a gentleman would cheat in such a fashion,” said Jane.

“He wanted to be the man who defeated Wintergreen,” said Gerard.

“Well, now he’s the man who was knocked down by Lady Wintergreen,” said Jane, in satisfaction. “Goodness, Gerard, put your shirt on, do, you are shivering.”

“Partly it is the shock of pain.  Hit a man in the kidneys and there is nothing he can do,” said Gerard, pulling on his shirt, and putting his coat about his shoulders. “I... I am unmanned in front of you; will you always despise me now?”

“I am proud of you, my lord, for fighting for my honour, and for being human enough to fall to a sly and dastardly trick.  Of course I don’t despise you! But I am still angry about that Whittington fellow.”

“I am not happy myself,” said Gerard. “A filthy little cheat, as well as a knave to hunt the squirrel. I fancy he is not just the heedless brat I thought him, but an entitled little snot.”

“My lord, I will be sure to tell the truth in Town,” said Danvers. “A clever enough trick if a man is menaced by highwaymen, but low down when practised to interrupt the noble art of pugilism.”

“My thanks, Danvers,” said Gerard, holding out his hand to shake that of the referree. “Now I have to see is I might bespeak a room, and looking as disreputable as I do, I wonder if I will get one.”

“Be pleased to change in my room, my lord,” said Danvers. “I have some warm water where I have washed for the evening, which you may use to clean up.”

“Many thanks; you are a friend in need,” said Gerard.

“And I will valet for you,” said Jane.