impatient sigh escaped Emma at the ridiculously wholesome imagery. ‘It might not be all so bleak for us, Mama,’ she cajoled. ‘You are right—Mr Dashwood does covet status and respectability. He will never sue Papa for fraud. Papa is known to be ailing. Dashwood would hate being seen as vindictive enough to dun a sick man without conceding him time to make amends. He will allow us a while to repay him…you’ll see.’ Warming to her theme, she enthused, ‘I can work. I am educated well enough to be a governess…or a companion to a wealthy lady…or a housekeeper…’
‘Housekeeper?’ her mother choked, outraged. ‘You have been gently reared! The success of your twenty-fourth-birthday ball was the talk of the ton for months afterwards. Had you deported yourself more…more becomingly to the gentlemen present that evening, you would have been wed these past three years or more and no longer draining us with the expense of your keep.’
As though unable to contain her fury or bitterness, Margaret’s lips and eyes narrowed in exasperation. She approached her daughter on wobbly, stiff legs in the manner of a mechanised rickety toy. As she passed a side-table something caught a glaring eye and she grabbed up the leather-bound volume and looked at it with intense loathing. ‘All this ridiculous daydreaming you do of love and heroes and happy endings…it is a shameful indulgence and not to be borne, Emma.’ She snorted a sour laugh. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ she parodied in a shaking voice, ‘that a wilful, selfish daughter of seven and twenty will prove to be a tiresome burden on her parents. Her presence should no longer be tolerated!’ The volume of Jane Austen’s work was skimmed abruptly towards her, and with chance accuracy smacked a hefty blow on a slender shoulder.
With a moan of recalled pain, Emma Worthington pushed herself upright in bed, her breathing fast and erratic and a pale hand instinctively seeking the tender bruise below her collarbone. Her head drooped forward, thick tan hair coating the sides of her face, as she waited for the pounding of her heart to steady and the vividness of the dream to recede a little.
A hand fumbled out to the unfamiliar table at the side of the alien bed and sought the candle, drawing it close to gain its weak, guttering light. She held it aloft in an unsteady hand. As she shook back tresses from her blanching face, wide, darting eyes surveyed the moon-striped tavern chamber, every gloomy nook scoured for spooks and intruders. But she knew it was nothing other than inner demons that had startled her awake.
The dream had so sharply, so accurately retraced events of two days ago that she might have been back in the drawing room of Rosemary House, facing her mother’s spite and Jarrett Dashwood’s menacing presence.
She drew her knees up close to her body, her slender arms hugged about them for warmth and comfort and she laid a cold shivering cheek atop them. A bar of silver light bathed her bent head as the moon again escaped scudding cloud. It shifted to incorporate her entwined fingers and she stretched them towards the pearlescence. Replacing the candle on the table, she quit the hard bed and padded softly over cold wood to the small leaded window.
A velvet night sky was visible through a net of shimmering nimbus. Her gaze swept the courtyard below. Immediately she shrank back. Her eyes had, by chance, located a courting couple by an outbuilding, their faces and bodies fused together. Compelled by an uncontrollable fascination, Emma slipped back, seeking again the shadowy outline of a tall man and a woman wedged between his sturdy body and the stable brickwork. She whirled away, her face stinging with hot self-disgust, and scrambled back into bed.
Shifting backwards against the crude wooden headboard, she distractedly picked up her book with one hand and the candle with the other. After a few minutes of mindless reading, she accepted that balancing the thin candle-flame this way and that to try and illuminate the pages was a pointless task. Her eyes were strained from deciphering print which seemed to merge into shapes like entwining lovers. Abruptly, she replaced the book and candle on the table and slowly sank down into the bed with a weary sigh.
Turning on her side, she stared wide-eyed and sightless at the perfect full moon as it emerged from cloud. She thought of Matthew and wistfully smiled as she wondered how he would react to her unexpected arrival; after all, they had seen nothing of each other for two years and she was still awaiting a reply to the last letter she had sent to him some six months ago now.
Perhaps it had been undelivered… ‘Please God, don’t let him have moved away,’ she whispered at the silver orb. Doubt and guilt trembled through her as she thought of her parents in Cheapside. Were they anxious? Furious? Remorseful? She should have left a proper note…not just a few lines that begged them not to worry…or to try and find her.
She twisted restlessly on the soft mattress, frowning at shadows on the ceiling, while thinking of unrequited love and a man who had buried his heart with his first wife and of whether she would ever come to love step-children.
‘Not been bit by the bed bugs, I ‘opes,’ the young man said. ‘I seen folks wi’ legs swole up an’ as red as can be from the nasty blighters…’
‘No, I’m quite well, thank you. Just a little tired still.’ Emma responded to his query as to whether she had slept well. ‘You seem very busy today.’ A look through the window indicated the bustling courtyard.
The young potman inclined his dark head to conspiratorially impart, ‘Quality wi’ a queer name turned up late last night. His nibs be travelling on early wiv ‘is family to Bath, so I ‘eard. Get you anythin’ else from the kitchens?’ he offered cheerily, stacking Emma’s plate and mug neatly together.
Emma returned him a smiling shake of the head. He swaggered off with a lewd wink for a girl sluicing tankards, and it was then that Emma, with pinking cheeks, recognised the young couple she had seen through her window.
Just as the sun was gilding the horizon, she had given up hope of sleep and made her way downstairs and into a small taproom. The cheerful landlady had served up tea and buttered crumpets, refusing to take payment, while patting at Emma’s hand in such a knowing, sympathetic way, Emma had swallowed her protestations and pocketed her coins. She had savoured the delicious crumpets as she viewed unfamiliar sun-dappled countryside through dusty square panes, and pondered the woman’s unexpected generosity. Was her unfortunate predicament so obvious? Was there something about her demeanour which branded her an impecunious spinster absconding from mercenary parents and a detested suitor? Or was the landlady simply a kind soul and, having been in the company of very few of those lately, she’d become cynical?
Collecting her carpet bag from beneath the rustic oak table, she made her way out into the fresh September morning to await the arrival of the coach and newly shod horses. She hoped the poor beast that had forced them to overnight at the Fallow Buck would be allowed to rest—one of its front legs had looked badly swollen as though more than just a blacksmith’s skills might be needed for it to continue pulling the cumbersome coach.
She was now keen to be travelling on. Even if her mother had at first dismissed her absence at mealtimes as a fit of sulks in her room, she surely would, by now, have found the brief note she had left on her dresser.
She doubted they would search for her. They had neither the resources nor, she imagined, the inclination to send investigators after her. She was, after all, a spinster of twenty-seven, not a child in need of protection. Besides, her mother had declared her presence was no longer to be borne. Far from arousing anxieties, the reverse might be true, and her removal from Rosemary House deemed a relief. How they dealt with the odious Mr Dashwood and his recompense was their own concern. She would not dwell on it…nor feel guilty! The predicament was not of her making!
September morning mist was wreathed about the low brick and wood stables of the Fallow Buck posting house and with quiet appreciation she lingered to watch a spider, stealthy on the edge of its dew-beaded gossamer web.
As she strolled to the perimeter of the dusty gravel courtyard, her wide golden gaze roamed the recently harvested cornfields. Even denuded, they had a spare barren beauty to her unaccustomed town eye. She breathed deeply of the cool morning air, now mingling with a warm aroma of baking bread wafting from the kitchens, feeling unaccountably optimistic and uplifted. Sighing contentedly, she turned from the fresh, sun-dappled