III Departures and Meetings
Cecily waited for the house to go quiet. Whilst she waited, she packed a bag, including such cloths as she would need for monthly problems, two gowns, and underlinen. Her valise was not full, but she had ideas for the rest of it. Finally, all the creaks of movement settled down.
If her father had left the key in the lock, all well and good; if not, well, that might be a problem.
Fortunately, he had done so. Cecily tore a page from her commonplace book to push under the door, and used a paintbrush handle to push against the barrel of the key. She felt it shift, and slowly, slowly worked it out. It fell with a dull clatter. Cecily eased the paper back, glad that the sill was not large and was gently rounded. It took an hour to ease the key onto her side of the door. Cecily was almost sobbing with relief. She waited to make sure nobody had been disturbed, and unlocked the door. She almost screamed to see what looked like a tall, silent figure waiting on the landing; but it was no more than a curtain which had blown over a wall-mounted candelabrum and hung like a man in a hooded cloak. She breathed long and slow breaths whilst her hammering heart slowed down. She crept out of the room, locked it again, leaving the key in the lock. She headed for the servant’s stair, in stockinged feet, and made her way up to the attics. Here she found a box room which, as well as the obvious boxes of the servants, contained trunks of old clothes. She knew what she was looking for, and uncovered the box of the schoolclothes of her dead brother, before whose demise life had been good, and Papa had neither drank nor gambled any more than any other man. She cut her hair in the gown she wore, which was soiled anyway, poking the hairs from her front ringlets and the hair long enough to make into a classical-style bun behind the water tank. Then she stripped to the skin, and put on the clothes which had once belonged to Christopher. The clothing seemed awkward, but she managed it at last, and was glad that one of the garments was a long, soft, woollen cloak, which was almost certainly wind and water-proof. She made her way back downstairs and into the kitchen, where she helped herself to a meal of bread, cheese, and ham, and emptied the servants’ fine box. It netted her no more than three shillings, but she hoped she would have enough to pay for a ride on a stage coach somewhere, anywhere, where she might get some kind of work. She went out of the back door, staying by the fence, in the shadow, to the walkway behind Gay Street’s houses. She crossed the grassy square of Queen’s Square, which was supposed to be locked at night, but rarely ever was; then down past the theatre, down Westgate Street, and into Stall Street, and into the White Hart Inn. Her purpose for choosing this inn was that there were coaches coming and going at almost every hour of the day and night, and she hoped to lose herself in anonymity, as nobody could be expected to remember one more boy out of doubtless dozens.
She was lucky that one traveller, stopping for a hasty breakfast, had been called to the coach; the coaches did not wait on convenience. Cecily finished the barely-started hot cup of coffee, and ate the second coddled egg and toast that went with it.
The sky lightened as she sat back, feeling better, and another coach came into the yard. A tall man came in, with a many-caped coat and a top hat; and Cecily might have thought him a gentleman, but for the yellow scarf worn instead of a neckcloth, with red, black, and white birds’ eyes patterns on it. She went over to him.
“Excuse me, are you the coachman for a stage coach, and do you have room for one?” she asked.
“I tell you what, you can ride on the box with me, and pay your way by talking to me so I don’t drift off into the killing sleep of cold,” said the man.
“Thank you,” Cecily replied.
Beatrice could not afford a vail for someone to lug her trunk down for her, and must perforce do it herself. She went out into the yard of the Angel Inn, and checked the pocket book in her reticule, on which she had written the times of the coach to Cheltenham, where Mrs. Fenchurch and her hopeful progeny resided. A very fashionable looking young man on a high-perch phaeton of the most modern kind, painted pale yellow and picked out in dark blue, swept into the yard and came to a halt. He had crisp curly hair, as she might see, as he doffed his hat to her, as if she was a real lady, and under a heavy cloak, he wore a coat of dark blue superfine, with pale yellow Inexpressibles, matching his equipage’s paintwork. The colour echoed the colours of the waistcoats once worn by the now largely defunct Four Horse Club, and Beatrice wondered if it were deliberate. She sighed; partly over having to wait in the cold for her transport, as she was not about to drag her trunk back in, and partly over imagining that so smart a young gentleman had raised his hat to her as an acquaintance, not out of general politeness. The freezing air promptly enveloped her in a cloud of embarrassing condensation.
The young exquisite spoke up.
“I suspect the stages will be behind schedule on these treacherous icy roads; going up and down hill,” he said. “Can I give you a lift anywhere?”
“It depends where you are going, sir,” said Beatrice, hoping he was heading north, and wondering about lying and going with him anyway wherever he went.
“Oh, I’m exercising my nags,” said the young man. “I can please myself. Or, indeed, you.”
“Oh, well, if you are going part of the way, I was heading for Cheltenham,” she said.
“Well, if you’ll hold my horse’s heads, I can load up your trunk and we can get going,” said the young man.
Beatrice was nothing loath to hold the horses’ heads; she had no fear of horses, though she had had very little opportunity to have much to do with them. She talked gently to them, and he lifted her trunk, and tied it down, over the rear axle in the shelf below the body of the phaeton. She stepped away when he remounted and took up the reins; then he was leaning over to help her scramble in.
“Here,” said he. “There’s a blanket to put over yourself; it gets chilly.”
“You are very kind,” murmured Beatrice. Her heart hammered.
I am having an adventure and I am going to enjoy it, however horrid the Fenchurch children are, she thought to herself.
Lily ate her ‘doorstep,’ and felt much better for it. She had a few rather leathery roast chestnuts in her pelisse pocket as well, from the last time she had been out, and had had a penny for roast chestnuts, and had carefully saved about a third of them. It added to the meal. She climbed up onto the dresser, which gave her the height to reach the window. It was the work of a moment to be out of the window, with practised ease, and into the gutter behind the fancy stonework of the facade which hid the servants’ rooms. She went back through the window of the room next door, which was the box room. This was never locked, and was her way out of a locked room. It also had discarded and laid aside clothes in trunks in it. Lily helped herself to a couple of gowns which Annabelle had had put away the previous year to refurbish; she had worn each just once. There was no point travelling in finery, but it was worth having two decent gowns, even if they were last year’s fashion, and moreover, it deprived Annabelle of having them to have made over. This piece of petty spite heartened Lily considerably. She was not usually given to spite, but the demand to hand over her legacy had been the last straw.
She made her way downstairs, and let herself out into the area, rather than risk rousing the footmen at the back of the house. She ran up the steps on light feet, and headed up towards the centre of town, planning to go into an inn to eat, and then go to the bank to instruct her bank manager, and put it in writing if need be, that her legacy was never to go to her sister or her parents.
She was crossing the Market Square when a young man in a gig drove up beside her, and lifted his hat from sleek, dark locks.
“Excuse me, you look as if you need help,” he said. Lily gasped. One heard stories of dreadful rakes. But he appeared amiable.
“Oh! I should not... you look harmless,” she said.
“I am harmless,” he replied. “Where are you off to?”
“Milsom Street, number two,” she said, and then realised this was a stupidly trite answer. “I... I need to visit the bank before I do anything else.”
The young man fetched his watch out of his pocket in his sober, but rich waistcoat, and consulted it.
“It’s almost eight; there should be someone there. You are not leaving Bath?” he sounded disappointed.
“Oh! Yes, but I must see my bank manager first, so I am not defrauded.” She flushed, realising that she looked like some modern day Cinderella. “I know, I do not look as if I have much to be defrauded from, but now I am one-and-twenty, I resent my small portion being usurped.”
“Intriging!” The young man seemed genuinely interested. “And where to, after the bank?”
“Anywhere,” she said, recklessly.
“Hop up, then; the bank first, and then, my lady, your carriage awaits, and I shall hi you off to Lady Frideswide Wrothling, who is as senile as a coot, but has some entertainingly warm stories of her days at court,” said the young man.
“May I ask your name?” asked Lily.
“Simon Havershall, at your service,” said Simon.
“May I rely on you to put a notice in the Morning Post if anything happens to me, mentioning Lily Flowers and Cinderella? I am about to make my will and leave everything to my maid, Ella, who has been the only decent person in my life until you stopped to help me; but I do not think you are short of money, and it would make all the difference to her.”
“I’d be delighted,” said Simon. “And you can tell me the whole story on the way.”
Lily was glad that she was able to see her bank manager, and make a will, naming Simon Havershall, esq, as an executor alongside her bank manager.
“I was shocked when your father wanted me to draw up a document in which you handed all your inheritance to your sister,” he said. “I am happy to comply with your wishes, and to tie up the capital too tightly to be accessed by anyone but yourself, in person. However, you will need an introduction to another bank to draw on the interest; if you are leaving Bath, I suggest that you carry a sum with you which will cover all immediate needs; perhaps one hundred pounds, in smaller notes, and some in coin.”
“Yes, I think that is a good idea,” said Lily. She told him about Simon.
“I am not acquainted personally with the young man, but I know nothing to his detriment, and if he is taking you to Lady Frideswide Wrothling, there can be no concern,” he said. “Mr. Havershall is a cousin of her great-nephew, Jeremy, Viscount Wrothlington, a young man about town, but of good reputation, like his other cousin, the Honourable Nicholas Derwent.”
Lily went out, beaming, and got into the gig with Simon.
“My bank manager has heard of you and knows nothing to your detriment,” she said.
“By Jove! I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult!” laughed Simon. “There’s a soft furnishings store up here somewhere, need to buy you a quilt to keep you warm. Can you hold the nags?”
“I don’t know, but they don’t seem fiery, so I’ll do my best,” said Lily. “How thoughtful of you!”
“I don’t think much of people who treat family like Cinderella,” said Simon.
“I’m the ugly one,” said Lily.
“Ugly! Why, you’re beautiful!” said Simon. “And what glorious hair you have!”
“I... you mean it?” gasped Lily.
“I do; now give me a name for a name,” said Simon.
“Lily – Elizabeth, that is – Hendry,” said Lily.
“A Tiger-Lily indeed!” said Simon. “Here, hold the nags.”
He was in and out of the store quickly with an exotically patterned quilt.
“You outshine it, but it will not blush as much for being cast in the shade as some of the paler and plainer ones,” he said. “It has feathers in it so you should be warm. Why are you crying?”
“I’m not used to people being kind,” said Lily.
