that! I’ll go out and earn my own bread rather.’
‘Earn your own bread? What is this? Your taste for the dramatic is regrettable and too reminiscent of your French relations,’ he said disdainfully, walking away from her towards the tall windows.
When he turned again, his face wore an implacable expression and he spoke in a voice that brooked no further disagreement.
‘You have been made a highly advantageous offer, Amelie, which will secure this family’s future and your own. You will go to your room immediately and stay there. In the morning you will make yourself presentable. Sir Rufus will be with us at noon and you will accept his offer. Do I make myself clear?’
The interview was at an end. Lord Silverdale sank wearily down at his desk, and began listlessly to leaf through his scattered papers. His daughter, overcome with angry tears, turned on her heel and noisily banged the oak-panelled door behind her.
Once in her room, she cast herself down on to the damask bedspread and wept. Her grief was intense and though her tears soon subsided, her fury remained. To be forced into a repugnant marriage because of her brother’s stupidity! And by her own father! She knew him to be autocratic, but never so unfeeling that he would contemplate selling her to the highest bidder. He might try to wrap it up in clean linen, but that’s what it came down to. When she was a child he’d been an indulgent parent, reading with her, schooling her on her first pony, bringing surprises each birthday. Yet, if crossed, he could be unrelenting.
Until now she’d been spared this side of his character, but she knew the suffering it had caused his wife. Her heart ached for her dead mother. Louise St Clair’s life had not been a happy one: an émigrée from France, an unhappy marriage to an English aristocrat and then an early death.
Lord Miles Silverdale must have seemed like a white knight when Louise first met him, just months after her dangerous journey from the outskirts of Paris to exile in England. The Bastille would not be stormed for another year, but revolution was already in the air. Signs of dissent and rebellion were everywhere and when the St Clair family home was ransacked without any attempt by the servants to prevent it, Brielle St Clair had decided it was no longer safe for the family to stay. She and her eighteen-year-old daughter, disguised as servants themselves, were forced to steal away under cover of darkness and embark on a slow and tortuous journey to the Channel coast. They had travelled by night, resting beneath hedges in the daytime, and ever fearful of discovery.
To a refugee in a foreign land, Lord Silverdale’s offer of marriage must have seemed like a miracle. He promised happiness and security, a new future for the young, homeless girl. Happiness, though, had lasted only a year until the birth of Robert. Louise was sickly for months afterwards, needing constant nursing, and unable to share in the social flurry of her husband’s life. Miles Silverdale, having fallen violently in love with a youthful form and a beautiful face, found himself without either as a companion.
The constant miscarriages that followed year after year pushed them yet further apart. Amelie’s birth and her unexpected survival had brought a brief reconciliation only. Even as a child she’d understood the pain written on her mother’s face, as her husband left for yet another lengthy stay at a friend’s country house, knowing that most of his time would be spent enjoying the company of other women.
But that was not going to happen to her! She had her mother’s beauty, certainly, but also her grandmother’s spirit. Louise might have been scared half out of her wits by that flight across France, but Brielle St Clair had exalted in it. Her tales of their adventures had enthralled Amelie as a child. Brielle’s subsequent life would always be a shadow of the excitement she’d known. Understanding this, it seemed, she had deliberately made her new home amid the dull gentility of Bath. Amelie smiled wryly as she imagined her mettlesome grandmother exchanging vapid gossip at the Pump Room every day. She’d visited Bath as a young child, but the last time she’d seen Brielle was five years ago at her mother’s funeral, a sombre and painful affair.
She stiffened. That was it. She would go to her grandmother. Brielle would be her refuge and would be sure to defend her from the man she blamed for her own daughter’s decline and early death. She had warned Louise not to marry Lord Silverdale, but, desperate for stability, her daughter had not listened.
Amelie got to her feet and straightened the green satin ribbons that encircled her waist. Her grandmother would be her champion, she was certain. But how to get to her, how to get to Bath? Deep in thought, she didn’t hear the bedroom door open until a tentative voice disturbed her meditations. Her maidservant, pale and concerned, white cap slightly askew, hovered in the doorway.
‘Oh, miss, is it true? Are you really going to marry Sir Rufus Glyde?’
‘No, Fanny, it’s not true.’ Her voice was sharp but adamant. ‘I’ve no intention of marrying. And I detest Rufus Glyde. He’s twice my age and not a fit husband.’
‘But, miss, he’s very wealthy, or so Cook says, and moves in the best circles.’
Amelie shook her head in frustration. ‘He may be invited everywhere, but there are whispers that he is a vicious and degenerate man. He repels me.’
Fanny shut the door carefully behind her and said in a conspiratorial voice, ‘Mr Simmonds told Cook that Sir Rufus was coming here tomorrow to make you an offer of marriage.’
‘You shouldn’t listen to gossip,’ Amelie chided her. ‘He may be coming to the house, but I shan’t be meeting him.’
‘But, Miss Amelie, how can this be?’ In her abstraction the maid picked up a stray hairbrush and began to rearrange her mistress’s locks.
‘I’m going to escape—I’m going to Bath to my grandmother. But mind, not a word to anyone.’
Her maid, brushing Amelie’s chestnut curls in long, rhythmic strokes, gaped at her open-mouthed. ‘However will you get there?’
‘I’m not sure at the moment. How would you get there, Fanny?’
‘On the stage, I suppose, miss, though I wouldn’t want to travel all that way on my own. It’s sure to take a whole day. Master’s old valet used to visit his daughter in Bath sometimes and there was always a fuss about how long he was away.’
‘Do you know where he caught the stagecoach?’
‘It was an inn in Fetter Lane. The White Horse, I believe. He used to leave first thing in the morning.’
‘Then that’s what I shall do. You’ll need to call me early.’
‘You’re never thinking of taking the common stage, Miss Amelie?’
‘Why ever not, it’s a public conveyance. What harm can I come to?’
‘But it’s not right. All sorts of vulgar people take the stage—you’ll be squashed in with the likes of clerks and pedlars and I don’t know what. And I’ve heard it’s dangerous. There are highwaymen on Hounslow Heath and they’ll slit your throat for a necklace. And if they don’t get you, then the coachman will get drunk and land you in a ditch.’ Fanny shook her head ominously.
‘Nonsense. If other people travel on the stage, I can, too.’
‘But, miss, you’re Quality,’ Fanny maintained stubbornly. ‘Quality don’t travel on the stage. And you mustn’t go alone.’
‘I have to, and no one must know where I’ve gone. I need time to reach Lady St Clair and explain the situation to her before my father realises where I am.’
‘But you can’t have thought.’ Fanny’s voice sank low. ‘You’ll be unchaperoned, you’ll receive Unwanted Attentions,’ she whispered in a horrified voice, emphasising the last two words.
‘Well then, I must do something to blend into my surroundings,’ her mistress said practically.
She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Who wouldn’t be noticed on a stagecoach, I wonder? A maidservant such as yourself? I’ll go as a maidservant