Buch lesen: «Mr. Trelawney's Proposal»

Chapter One

1814

‘So you are travelling back from visiting your sister in London, Miss Nash,’ remarked that unpleasantly soft voice for the second time in five minutes.

‘Indeed, yes, I am,’ Rebecca Nash agreed, struggling to keep impatience from her voice and revulsion from her eyes as she again raised them from her teacup to glance at the slightly built man sitting opposite her. Having redrawn her attention to himself, Rupert Mayhew lounged his wiry frame back into the battered leather wing-chair.

Rebecca forced a polite smile and tried to prevent her eyes from fixing too obviously on the arrangement of lank, greying strands of hair which threaded across the man’s balding pate. At one time he must have had a thatch of gingery-fair hair, she guessed, judging by what remained. The colour would have been similar to those beastly yellow eyes that leeched on to her every movement.

During the twenty minutes or so since she had arrived, whenever she had shifted slightly on the ancient hide wing-chair, a pair with the one in which he was ensconced, his feline eyes had stared boldly as though anticipating something interesting might be revealed.

Rupert Mayhew slid his scrawny frame forward on his seat, enquiring solicitiously of the beautiful young woman opposite, ‘And how is your dear sister? And the new babe? Well, I trust?’

‘Thank you, yes,’ Rebecca replied civilly, suppressing the urge to shrink back as he leaned towards her.

‘My own dear wife is in the same delicate condition…as I believe I mentioned in my last letter to you,’ he reminded her with a sly smirk.

This time Rebecca was unable to prevent a tremor of revulsion, clinking her delicate china cup against its saucer.

‘Had she not been indisposed, Caroline would, of course, have been happy to meet with you today,’ Rupert Mayhew informed her smoothly. ‘But we are about to be blessed with our infant at any time now, so Dr Willis informs me. So my lady wife is staying with her dear sister in Shoreham for her confinement.’ Yellow eyes slid from Rebecca’s face to craftily linger on the closely buttoned bodice of her sprigged cotton gown.

The ensuing lengthy silence seemed to be metered by the sonorous tick of the heavy oaken grandmother clock positioned behind Rupert Mayhew’s chair. Rebecca felt her spine stiffen and her flesh creep. Desperate for casual conversation to distract his hooded, wolfish gaze, she remarked lightly, ‘You must be glad of your stepdaughters’ company while your wife is away. Lucy is fifteen, is she not, and the younger, Mary…?’ She hesitated, expecting him to advise her of the younger girl’s age.

His only response was to mutter on a grunting laugh, ‘At times they have their uses.’ His manner and words heightened her uneasiness.

Rebecca replaced her pretty china cup and saucer on a low table close by. ‘I am most grateful for the refreshment, sir, but I really need to be back on the road to Graveley, without delay,’ she informed him with a busy, professional tone. ‘Perhaps you would discover whether your stepdaughter is now ready to depart. I’m sure you’re aware this unseasonable heat makes travelling after noon quite unbearable.’

As though to reinforce her anxieties about the climate, Rebecca dragged her eyes from Rupert Mayhew’s sparsely covered head, where they had once again drifted, and stared through the casement window to one side of her.

On this late September morning. the atmosphere glowed bright and lucid, threatening another blazing, sultry afternoon. Her intention to be directly abroad had as much to do with the valid reason voiced as with the desperation to escape this odious man’s presence.

Rupert Mayhew’s thin visage pinched further. He straightened himself in the chair and leaned stiffly back into it. Bony fingers steepled together and he regarded Rebecca imperiously across them and the hooked bridge of his nose. He obviously had no intention of acceding to her courteous request and wanted her to be aware of it.

It was hard to determine what about him was the most repellent, Rebecca realised: his puny build, his ugly countenance or his objectionable manner. Thank goodness all prior contact had been carried out by letter. Had she previously been subjected to his obnoxious presence, she might well have turned down his application to send his stepdaughter, Lucy, to board at her school. The notion that she could afford to reject custom, however unwelcome, caused a wry smile to escape her.

Misinterpreting this melancholy humour as cordiality, Rupert Mayhew’s arrogant bearing relaxed. One blackened tooth was displayed centrally in an otherwise surprisingly clean set as he smiled widely. His eyes narrowed to gleaming yellow dots as he purred insinuatingly, ‘You barely look old enough, Miss Nash, to have acquired the teaching experience to which you lay claim.’ His unpleasant smile was back as he noticed her reaction.

An attractive blush immediately rimmed Rebecca’s high cheekbones, accentuating the sculpted contours of her ivory-skinned oval face. Her youthful looks were a constant source of embarrassment to her. But her chin tilted defensively.

Rupert Mayhew’s avid appraisal continued, his beastly eyes targeting full, shapely lips that hinted at a promise of sensuality. A small straight nose was skipped past as he examined a pair of wide, lustrous eyes of the most extraordinary and exquisite colour. He stared into glossy turquoise depths, lushly fringed with lengthy dusky lashes before his voracious interest roved on to her thick dark-gold hair. Loosely wound ringlets dropped to curl like honeyed silk against the crisp sprigged cotton of her serviceable travelling dress.

But for Rupert Mayhew, the most outstanding feature of this delectable young woman was that she chose to earn her living by running a young ladies’ academy situated in the backwoods of a small Sussex coastal hamlet. He had travelled widely and visited the fashionable spa towns of Bath and Harrogate, yet he was hard pressed now to recall a face as classically beautiful. Her figure was too slender for his profligate taste. Yet even so, he knew of skinnier wenches who had procured wealthy protectors and opulent lifestyles only dreamed of by most young women in straitened circumstances.

He regretted now not having taken the time to visit her and her poky establishment at Graveley. He knew from the meagre fees she charged that the business she ran must be struggling to survive and had accordingly negotiated even more favourable terms through their correspondence. Rupert Mayhew knew himself for nothing if not an astute businessman.

And he’d imagined her to be some spinsterish blue-stocking! Undoubtedly she kept herself hidden away in that wooded copse, for Graveley was little more than that as he recalled from passing through. Or did she? he reflected with quickening pulse, his tongue flicking out to moisten thin lips. She resided on the Ramsden estate. Robin Ramsden was her landlord. He could have hardly overlooked her.

‘Wily Old Ram’, as he was nicknamed, was reputed to exercise his droit de seigneur at every opportunity. The last laundry maid he had impregnated had been ejected from Ramsden Manor and bundled off into a labourer’s cottage as second wife and mother to that widower and his brood. Bawdy jesting had abounded amongst Rupert Mayhew and his cronies, especially when gossip had it that the newly wed girl had been sneaked back into the house for a repeat performance. The labourer now, by all accounts, had two brats undeniably resembling the lord of the manor.

His darting, foxy eyes pounced on a glimpse of ankle as Rebecca shifted on her chair. She seemed a haughty chit, though. Perhaps increasing her prospects by lowering her principles—and certain items of clothing, he inwardly smirked—was beneath her. How he’d like her beneath—

‘I am twenty-five years old, Mr Mayhew, as I believe I mentioned to you in our earliest correspondence,’ Rebecca cut coldly into his lecherous musings, having conquered her indignation. ‘I believe my qualifications also met with your approval at that time.’

‘My dear Miss Nash, don’t feel you have to be defensive with me,’ he smugly dismissed, waving a bloodless hand. ‘You come most highly recommended. I contacted Mr Freeman as you suggested I might. He continually regaled me with the successes his daughter has enjoyed since leaving your establishment two summers ago. She has bagged a Viscount as fiancé, no less. Mr Freeman was generous enough to credit your establishment with helping them snare the quarry.’

‘I’m pleased to hear—’

Rebecca’s mild approval was cut short as Rupert Mayhew interjected bitterly, ‘Should you be able to achieve anything similar with the lazy, sullen minx skulking upstairs, I shall be above contentment.’

At the mention of her prospective new pupil, Rebecca stood up with a purposeful finality. A hint of genuine amusement hovered about her full, soft mouth as she was abruptly made aware of two things. Firstly, that her ex-pupil, Alexandra Freeman, a girl of little talent and even less to recommend her in the way of either looks or personality, had done so well for herself. Secondly, that the odious little man, who now rose from his chair to stand over-close to her, had little liking for his eldest stepdaughter. Rebecca sensed an immediate empathy with the fifteen-year-old girl she had yet to meet. Judging by the barely concealed envy in Rupert Mayhew’s tone as he recounted Alexandra Freeman’s excellent prospects, he was now anticipating some similar good fortune to befall the Mayhews.

‘Well, the sooner your stepdaughter and I are able to set upon the road, the nearer we come to achieving your ambitions,’ Rebecca announced, striving to banish mockery from her tone.

Rupert Mayhew’s ochre eyes were on a level with her own and she was certainly not regarded as tall for her sex. Yet she had misjudged in thinking him perhaps frail. There was a wiry strength about him which was now apparent close up. A squat, corded neck and thick expanse of collar bone were exposed by his open-necked linen shirt. The same sparse greying hair that streaked his scalp poked from the unbuttoned collar.

The weather recently had been uncommonly hot for late September, but even so, she wished he had made some effort to dress in the manner as befitted a wealthy gentlemen farmer in the presence of a lady caller. Perhaps he classed her as just an employee and unworthy of any special considerations. Well, she was just such, she supposed, and the sooner he settled his account for Lucy’s board and lessons and the sooner they were on their way to Graveley, the happier she would be.

Rebecca tore her offended gaze away from the coarse hairs sprouting from his throat and distanced herself from him by wandering to the large casement window. She gazed out. Heat was beginning to shimmer across the meadow just glimpsed beyond the formal gardens of Rupert Mayhew’s house. A splendid house it was too, she realised, rather forlornly, because its solid graceful character was so at variance with that of its master.

When she had alighted from the London post here in the village of Crosby some forty-five minutes ago, the house’s classical porticoed façade set in mellow stonework had seemed welcoming and auspicious. At that time, she had imagined cordial introductions between herself and her new pupil, perhaps an opportunity to discuss with Lucy’s fond parents any matters of special interest concerning their daughter’s ultimate refinement before she was launched into society. And then they would travel on to the Summer House Lodge, her home for the past five years.

She remembered Rupert Mayhew informing her of his wife’s delicate condition. But nothing in any of his correspondence had prepared her for the vile man she had met today. From his letters, she had guessed him to be perhaps a little pompous. And she recalled thinking it a trifle odd that the girl’s parents had not taken it upon themselves to visit her establishment to assess its suitability for their daughter. The hamlet of Graveley and the village of Crosby were, after all, barely fourteen miles apart along the coast road. Rupert Mayhew had obviously been content to settle his stepdaughter’s future on the strength of his neighbour’s success. Rebecca couldn’t grumble at that: such recommendations were what kept her small, thriftily run establishment in business. No doubt the low fees she charged had also been a consideration. Rupert Mayhew didn’t seem a man generous in spirit or coin.

An abrupt noise from behind splintered Rebecca’s musing, jerking her attention from the tranquil garden scene into the spartanly furnished parlour. Rupert Mayhew was overlooked as Rebecca gazed towards the polished mahogany door which now gaped wide on its hinges.

The auburn-haired young lady who slouched in its opening was quite lovely, despite the aggressive glower, the sulky, slanted mouth and the livid purple bruising which shadowed one sapphire eye.

Luke Trelawney’s dark head fell forward to momentarily rest in his cupped hands before long, blunt fingers threaded through thick, raven hair, drawing it away from his damp forehead. He jerked himself back against the uncomfortable squabs of the hired travelling coach and swore. An irritated flick of a glance took in the sun-yellowed grassy banks along the road side as a dark hand moved to release yet more mother-of-pearl buttons, hidden among the snowy ruffles of his lawn shirt.

‘If you’re intending supping at the Red Lion naked to the waist, don’t expect me to protect your honour,’ Ross Trelawney remarked with a grin from the opposite side of the coach. He nevertheless followed his handsome older brother’s lead and loosened his upper torso from the clinging confines of a perspiration-soaked shirt.

‘Infernal weather,’ Luke Trelawney growled. ‘That damned fool of a coachman must have taken a wrong turn. He promised us this Red Lion inn was within spitting distance some ten miles back. If we’re not upon it soon, I’m out and walking.’ Another black glance took in the arid scenery, scorched by a lengthy summer parched of rain, before he relented and half-smiled at his younger brother. ‘I told you we should have used one of my coaches…at least we could have roasted in comfort. The springs in this contraption are more out of the seat than in it.’

Ross grimaced a wry apology at his older sibling, aware of his exasperation and the reason for it.

Luke Trelawney was one of the largest landowners in Cornwall. He owned Melrose, a magnificent house set in parkland. He owned an impressive fleet of traders sailing from the port of Bristol and mining interests closer to home in Cornwall. Today, however, the most piquant irony was derived from the fact that the coach house at Melrose was filled with every type of conveyance any gentleman was ever likely to need. The estate also boasted stables full of thoroughbred horseflesh the equal of any aristocrat’s equine collection. And it had been Ross who had persuaded Luke to hire a coach for this journey…just for the hell of it, he had said. And hell it had been…complete with furnace. For himself, though, ever seeking just another untasted experience, he rather enjoyed the beggarly novelty of it all.

He looked across at his brother, scowling at passing scenery again, irritation distorting his narrow yet sensuously curved mouth.

Luke had strived to provide himself with the very best. As the oldest son of Jago and Demelza Trelawney he had, on their father’s death, taken that gentleman’s sizable bequest and increased it a thousandfold. He now had wealth and reputation that no other Cornish landowner could match. There were other things they would certainly never equal, Ross realised wryly: his astounding dark good looks; his eligibility, which had every hopeful mama, trailing nubile daughters, visiting their mother and sister under any ridiculous pretext they could deviously devise. And all to no avail for, at thirty-two, Luke had resisted all temptations, threats and ludicrously transparent plots to hook him.

Ross dwelt on Wenna Kendall, with some relish and not a little envy. The voluptuous dark-haired mistress Luke had installed in fine style in Penzance obviously satisfied him physically, but emotionally…? He gazed at the side of Luke’s lean, tanned face, still idly turned towards the uninspiring passing scenery. Emotions were not something often associated with his older brother. They were kept tightly reined, as controlled as every other aspect of his life. Their father’s death some eleven years ago was the last time he could recall witnessing Luke in distress. Apart from that, family problems, business pressures, all were dealt with in the same calm, disciplined way.

But he knew how to enjoy himself…as all Trelawney males did. Roistering bouts of drinking and wenching were a regular part of life, so long as business never suffered. And dependable Luke was always there to ensure it certainly never did. Status and wealth were Luke’s motivation and priority.

An urgent solicitor’s letter, hand-delivered from Bath, had set Luke on the road, unwillingly and with many a curse, but it had moved him as Ross had known it would. For Luke never shirked his responsibilities, even those that disturbed memories of generation-old family rifts. But that estrangement was of little consequence to the present Trelawney clan.

Ross had decided to go along for the ride and to alleviate the insatiable restlessness that dogged him. Melrose had been left in the capable hands of their imperturbable brother Tristan who, at thirty, happily married and living on the Trelawney estate, was the most sensible choice. Being second eldest also made him natural deputy, Ross always thought, when justifying his need to slope off, courting fresh excitement.

Besides, Luke had made it clear the matter was to be dealt with as expediently as possible with a quick return to Cornwall. Luke had neither the time nor inclination to linger in rural Brighton once business was satisfactorily settled.

Luke relaxed back into the battered squabs. He withdrew a half-sovereign from a pocket and tossed it in his palm a few times. The pair of nags doing their best to convey the ancient coach towards Brighton was increasing pace: a sure sign that, having travelled the route many times, they recognised water and sustenance were soon to be had. ‘A half-sovereign says we reach this dive within five minutes,’ he challenged his younger brother, stretching long, muscular legs out in front of him and flexing powerful shoulders in an attempt to ease niggling cramps.

‘Three minutes,’ countered Ross, as aware as Luke of the horses’ renewed efforts. They were fairly bowling along now.

Five minutes later the rickety coach swung abruptly left and into the dusty courtyard of the Red Lion inn.

‘Order up whatever they’ve got that’s long, cool…’ Luke hesitated, noting the direction of Ross’s gaze, which had, on alighting, immediately been drawn to a titian-haired tavern wench ‘…and comes in a tankard,’ he finished drily. ‘See what sort of food they’ve got about the place too,’ he said but with little enthusiasm, as cynical peat-brown eyes roved the dirty, whitewashed building.

The seedy-looking Jacobean hostelry was nevertheless a hive of activity. Well situated along the coastal road to refresh those travelling from the west country towards the fashionable gathering place of Brighton, it attracted the patronage of both farmer and gentleman alike.

Luke glanced around in cursory fashion. A coach, displaying an Earl’s coat of arms, protected its glossy paintwork beneath the shade of a massive spreading oak on the perimeter of the courtyard.

Two young ladies, elegantly and coolly dressed in pastel muslin, sat, with parasols twirling, beneath the shielding canopy of boughs on a spread tartan travelling rug. Their coy attention was with Ross and himself. Aware of his observation, their daintily coiffured heads collided as they chattered and giggled, parasols whirling faster. He glanced away, feeling unaccountably irritated. The fact that Ross was now torn between giving them or the flame-haired serving girl the benefit of his hazel-eyed silent charm irked him further.

Not that he was unused to female interest: all Trelawney males had the tall, dark good looks women seemed to find hard to resist. He knew without particular conceit or satisfaction that due to his superior height, and the classical set of his features, framed by a mass of thick, jet-black hair, he, more than any, was most sought after. His looks, coupled with his status and wealth, ensured a limitless supply of eager women. Thus the need for charm or seduction was rarely required for amorous conquests. When the mood or need took him, therefore, he seldom bothered with either, exploiting his attractiveness and willing partners to the full. Occasionally, acknowledging this callousness made him uneasy. Why the sight of two simpering debutantes at a strange tavern on a blazing afternoon should induce one of those conscience-ridden moments he had no idea, and it only served to needle him further.

He kicked at the parched, powdery gravel beneath one dusty Hessian boot and looked down the two or more inches at the top of Ross’s sun-glossed chestnut head. He smiled slowly, consciously lightening his exasperation which he knew had much to do with the unwanted responsibility that brought him to this neck of the woods. He inwardly cursed all the Ramsdens to perdition as his businessman’s brain sorted through all he’d left in abeyance at Melrose and all that awaited him at Brighton. He clicked his fingers in front of Ross’s line of vision, redrawing his brother’s attention to himself.

‘I’ll visit the stables and see what sort of horseflesh they’ve got on offer. I’d sooner ride a farm hack the remaining miles to Westbrook than set foot back in that boneshaking contraption.’

‘If she dunt wanta move then she dunt and she wunt,’ the old man announced morosely, nodding sagely, yet eying the horse with what seemed to Rebecca like any amount of satisfaction.

‘Can’t you coax her a bit?’ Rebecca suggested with a wheedling smile at the squint-eyed old groom, as her lacy scrap of handkerchief again found its way to her perspiring brow.

‘Just beat the stupid animal,’ was Lucy Mayhew’s heartless instruction to the granite-faced old retainer, who served as a stablehand for her stepfather now that advancing years had numbered his farm-labouring days. Bert Morris stared straight ahead not deigning to react at all to this outrageous proposal of treatment for his old Bessy. He fished in his shirt pocket, removed a clay pipe and began to stuff the bowl of it with some foul-looking dried grass extracted from the same source.

Rebecca alighted nimbly from the one-axle carriage and immediately flexed her cramped limbs. The worn benchseat was barely wide enough for two people travelling in comfort. For three packed close together in this stifling early afternoon heat, it was unbearable. The fact that Bert Morris smelled as though he not only groomed but slept amongst his treasured horses had largely added to the discomfort.

Rebecca bestowed a sympathetic look on the exhausted elderly mare who refused to travel up the steep wooded incline towards the Summer House Lodge in the hamlet of Graveley. As though aware of observation, the animal swayed her head round. Such solemn, apologetic eyes, Rebecca thought, before she lifted her face towards the breeze, closed her eyes and, momentarily, savoured the wonderfully refreshing sensation. Soft cooling air disturbed honey-gold hair clinging in damp tendrils to her slender, graceful neck. Then she gazed up into the carriage where the old man smoked stoically, apparently undisturbed either by circumstances or the heat. Lucy Mayhew returned her a sullen look, swiping a careless hand across her forehead to remove beading perspiration.

‘We can walk from here,’ Rebecca encouraged her with a smile. ‘It’s barely a quarter of a mile and mostly through woodland. The shade will be delightfully cool and most welcome.’ She anticipated objection but Lucy had gathered up her cotton floral gown in eager hands and jumped from the carriage in a trice.

Rebecca reached up behind the benchseat, grasping her own and Lucy’s travelling carpet bags. Old Bert Morris stirred himself enough then to aid her attempts at unwedging them, dropping them carelessly to the dusty ground.

‘You will ensure that the trunks are delivered as soon as possible?’ Rebecca enquired of the old man. He grunted some unintelligible noise past the pipe clenched in stained teeth which she took to be an affirmative.

Rupert Mayhew had testily decreed that a carpet bag of essentials must suffice today and the trunks be forwarded later in the week. Had they travelled in a sturdier carriage pulled by an energetic pair they could have brought all with them and would now be alighting at the familiar white-boarded doorway of her Summer House Lodge.

Without another word, Bert Morris clicked encouragement at the tired mare to back step along the narrow path. The animal did so with amazing briskness, considering its previous lethargy. Soon the small trap had turned in the clearing and was making good progress back towards the village of Crosby.

With a smile at her new charge, Rebecca directed brightly, ‘Now you take one of the handles to your bag, Lucy, and I shall take the other. Thus we can share the load as we walk, for the woodland path is a little on an incline.’

‘What of your bag?’ Lucy asked doubtfully. ‘Will you manage that too?’

‘There’s little in it,’ Rebecca reassured her with a smile, surprised and heartened by the girl’s concern. Lucy had hitherto on the hour-long journey from Crosby displayed nothing apart from a scowling profile and a great reluctance to be drawn into any light conversation. Uncomfortable silence had been the prevailing feature of the journey: the blistering heat and her travelling companions equally to blame.

Rebecca stole a quick glance at her new pupil, trying to ascertain her mood. Lucy’s small hand was fastened on the crown of her poke bonnet, shielding her face from the sun’s fierce rays as she dragged her bag across shrivelled yellow grass. Rebecca took the same sensible precaution, settling her own straw headgear firmly on her golden head.

With an encouraging smile, Rebecca lead the way towards the cool, inviting wooded pathway.

Rebecca sensed that the girl now might chat, but her attention was sidetracked by the painful-looking bruising shadowing one of Lucy’s eyes. An aged yellowing could be glimpsed amongst the fresh purple and Rebecca’s heart went out to the young girl.

Lucy informed her abruptly, ‘He did it…but you know that, don’t you.’

‘I guessed…yes, that your stepfather must have chastised you.’

‘Chastised me?’ Lucy repeated with a sneer coarsening her voice. ‘I don’t mind it when he hits me,’ she muttered vehemently before changing the subject abruptly. ‘Do you always collect your new pupils from their homes? I would have imagined you to be too busy. Where are the other pupils? Who’s looking after them?’ she ran on, barely pausing for breath.