8 On The Road To Northumberland

" W hat do you mean, I cannot have any funds?"

Izzy glared at the portly bank manager, who was wringing his hands nervously.

"I am very sorry, my lady, but I have had explicit instructions from his lordship not to disburse any moneys at all to you, for any reason. It is his lordship's account, my lady. I cannot disobey a direct order."

"Then what am I to do, sleep under a hedge? Is that how my husband expects me to contrive? Am I to starve?"

"His lordship enclosed a letter to be given to you, my lady."

He unlocked a drawer and brought out a sealed letter. Izzy snatched it from his hand.

‘My dearest Izzy, Forgive me for thwarting your plans. If you have some funds left, I suggest you go to Corland directly, and await me there. If you are utterly at a standstill, then find an hotel and send word to Corland. Your father will pay your shot, and look after you until I arrive. However, he too has instructions not to fund you any further on this reckless adventure of yours. When I catch up with you and we are safely in wedlock again, I shall be happy to advance you some of your next quarter's allowance so that you may continue your travels. I would not for the world deprive you of any pleasure, but we must settle this business once and for all. Yours in affection, Ian.'

"Pft! This is ridiculous." She crumpled the letter angrily in her hand. "Go to Corland, indeed! That I shall not! If he thinks he can stop me like this, he is very much mistaken."

"My lady, I am so very sorry but—"

"Of what use to me is your apology? It is money I need, not words."

Without another word, she spun on her heel and strode out of the bank. York was bustling, as ever, but the quality of her clothes and the rage emanating from her ensured that the crowds thronging the streets skirted warily round her. In the inn yard, a post chaise was being readied under Olly's watchful eyes.

"A problem?" he said, seeing her countenance. "Maybe I should have come with you."

"It would have made no difference, and the problem is only temporary. Where are the boxes? Still inside?"

He nodded, and she turned to enter the inn, but stopped, suddenly arrested by the sight of a black horse being saddled.

"That is a fine beast," she said. "It is very like one I saw in Scarborough, and perhaps also at Bridlington."

"One horse looks much like another to me," Olly said.

"But this fellow has a notch out of one ear. Very distinctive. Strange. I suppose it is not impossible that there are two such in the country."

Entering the inn, she went along a narrow corridor, past the common room and into the private parlour where Sophie was still nibbling at the cold collation that had been laid out for them.

"Oh! They would not give you any money?"

"No. Ian had written to them. Look at that!" She thrust the letter at Sophie and knelt down to unlock her box. "It is a pity I have none of my good pieces with me, for that would have kept us going for months. However, this will do for now."

"Your lovely diamond pendant? Oh, Izzy, you are not going to sell it?"

"Not sell, no."

"A pawnbroker? A money lender?"

Izzy laughed. "Look out of the window, Sophie, across the street. What do you see?"

"Oh. ‘Garthwaite and Sons of York, Jewellers of distinction to the gentry since 1689'"

"Precisely. Mr Garthwaite has supplied many pieces of jewellery to my family. I am sure he will be happy to oblige a long-standing customer by advancing me a suitable sum. Ian may redeem the pendant when he is next here, or I can, when I have my next quarter's allowance."

"How much will you get for it?"

"Perhaps two hundred. Two hundred and fifty, if I am lucky."

"And your allowance will cover that?" Sophie said, her eyes widening.

"Well… almost. Ian is very generous. Before we were married, he asked me how much I wanted as pin money. What would be ‘a comfortable amount', as he put it. Papa had given me two hundred a year, so I asked for five hundred from Ian, and he just laughed and said, ‘Shall we say eight hundred — two hundred a quarter?' I could not imagine how I would spend half so much, and said so, but he said, ‘You will find a way, but you must not exceed that amount, and no gaming debts, ever, or I shall lock you up at Stonywell until they are cleared.' I have never been sure whether he was serious, so I take the greatest care only to spend what I can afford. But I must have money now and Mr Garthwaite will oblige me, I am sure. Back in five minutes."

It was slightly longer than that, for Mr Garthwaite wished to celebrate her visit with a glass of wine, but at the end of it her purse was heavier by an astonishing five hundred pounds.

She returned cock-a-hoop to the inn, to be greeted by a pair of serious faces.

"Izzy, what does Lord Farramont mean, ‘safely in wedlock again'?" Sophie said in a small voice, waving Ian's letter.

"Oh. That."

"Yes, that. Olly thinks it must be about the chaplain who was murdered. Was there something underhand about him? Was he defrocked, or some such?"

"He was never ordained in the first place, that was what was wrong with him," Izzy said crisply. "Ian and I are not legally married. The girls are illegitimate. And since he married my mother and father, too, I am illegitimate. Everything I had has been taken from me, so can you blame me for being angry and not wanting to see Ian? I have been given my freedom, for a little while, and I intend to make use of it."

Sophie chewed her lip, an anxious look on her face. "Izzy… I do not like this. First Mr Marsden, and now we are going north again, and I am guessing to Northumberland, to see Sydney Davenport. I do not know where Mr Osborn is from, but—"

"Scotland. His principal seat and most of his land is in Scotland."

"So, you plan to visit Mr Davenport next and then Mr Osborn, is that it? Because you are free now and could marry someone different, and pretend your marriage to Lord Farramont never happened?"

"It is not pretence," Izzy said, anger rising inside her. "It is the truth — I have never been married. I am illegitimate and a spinster. My daughters are illegitimate. I doubt anyone else would even want to marry me now, but yes, I want to understand, if I can, what my life might have been like if I had chosen differently five years ago. I could have married any one of the four of them, Ian or Godfrey or Sydney or Robert. They all offered. They were all eligible. But I could only marry one of them, and I chose Ian. Was that the right thing to do? I thought I would never know, but now I have been given this opportunity to find out… to discover if my life might have been incomparably better if I had chosen differently. Or incomparably worse, of course, as with Marsden. There is a reason a rich man is rich after all — it is because he never spends his money. But the others… Sophie, I have to know, once and for all."

Sophie nodded. "I understand but… the past is gone, Izzy. Whatever has happened between you and Lord Farramont, he wishes to marry you again and is that not for the best? For you and for your daughters?"

"I have no idea what is for the best, Sophie, and nor do you," Izzy snapped. "That is what this journeying is all about, to answer that question. Am I not entitled to find my own happiness wherever I may?"

"What about your daughters' happiness?" Sophie shot back. "What about your husband's happiness? Do they count for nothing?"

For an instant, Izzy's heart quailed. Her girls… and Ian, who was the best of husbands, in so many ways. But she must not surrender to sentimentality now. She had made her plan and she would follow it, no matter what.

"They are better off without me, Sophie. Believe it or not, I am well aware of my own shortcomings. Ian deserves a better wife, and now he is free to find her — someone better suited to his quiet disposition, who will not throw the decanter at his head… someone who will give him a son. That is what he wants, after all, and I have signally failed in that regard. As for the girls…"

She paused. Her daughters! How could she leave them behind? She might never see them again. For a moment, despair washed over her, but she must not waver now.

"If I never go back, the girls will forget their wayward mama soon enough," she said, lifting her chin defiantly. "Ian will look after them. Now, are you going to stand my friend and help me on my way, or shall I point you to the stage coach office, and you can go back to Durham and that miserable house?"

"We will come with you, of course," Olly said quietly, before Sophie could speak. "It will be an opportunity to take a look at my own estate, but even without that, we would come. That is what friends are for. But we would not be your friends if we did not tell you when we think you are making a mistake."

Izzy paced twice across the room, keeping her anger below the boiling point. The cheek of it! To presume to offer her advice! Surely she was allowed to manage her own life as she saw fit? But she could not rage and throw things with friends as she could with Ian or her own family, and besides, she had five hundred pounds in her purse and had bested Ian royally, so she could not be angry for long. The post chaise was still waiting and the Great North Road was calling to her. It was time to leave York behind, and head for Northumberland.

***

O n their last overnight stop on the road, Izzy was in an odd, brittle mood. She had slept badly the night before, waking fretfully not long after dawn, her mind filled with images of Ian and the girls, her beloved daughters. She regretted now so many days and weeks spent away from them. And Stonywell! If she walked away from her marriage now, it would not only be Ian and the girls she would be leaving behind, it would also be the house that had been her home for five years, that she had grown to love. And not just the house, the people there — Henry and Mary, for instance, and their string of children, and her loyal servants who smiled even as they swept up broken china. They would hate her if she abandoned them all.

But she must not waver now. She had set out on this path, and she was determined to see it through to the end, whatever that might be. She forced her mind to focus instead on Sydney Davenport, the most romantic of her suitors. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, as well, and the Davenports were a respectable family, not titled, not as wealthy as some, but long-established in Northumberland. And he was not married, or at least no marriage had been announced in the newspapers.

She had not seen him for several years now. He had appeared briefly in town the year after she had married Ian, but then his father had been taken ill and he had rushed home again. Now his mother was ill, too, and he had stayed with them at Harringdon Hall ever since. Four years since she had seen him, and five since he had sat adoringly at her feet, reciting his florid poetry to her. She could not tell whether it was good or bad poetry, but she loved that he wrote it for her… was inspired by her.

Inevitably she compared him with Ian, practical, sensible Ian. She could not fault him as a husband, not in any specific way, but he had not a romantic bone in his body. He had tried to keep a straight face whenever Sydney read one of his poems in a dramatic manner worthy of Drury Lane, but she could see his lips twitching. Ian had never so much as read a poem to her, let alone written one. He had never chosen meaningful passages about love from literature to read aloud. He had never told her that she was so lovely that even the sun was dimmed in respect, as Sydney once had. The highest compliment Ian had ever paid her was to say that she looked very well. At the final ball of the season, the one when she would finally make her choice, he greeted her with, ‘You look extremely well tonight, Lady Isabel.' That almost eliminated him from the field on the spot, but common sense prevailed. Or rather his title and six thousand a year prevailed. It was possible to live without compliments, she told herself, but not without money, and the title was a big inducement, too.

She was so absorbed in her own reflections that she almost failed to notice that Sophie and Olly were nearly as silent as she. Only when the dinner things had been cleared away did she realise that not a word had been exchanged for the whole meal.

"We are all very dull tonight," she said, ambling about their small private parlour with a wine glass in her hand. "I suppose we are all tired of travelling with the same small group of companions. Tomorrow, if all goes to plan, we shall be at Harringdon Hall and in better frame, I trust. The Davenports are very good company, would you not agree, Sophie?"

"Oh, yes, but do you think they will have room for us?"

Izzy shrugged. She was accustomed to room being found for her, wherever she went. "It is a big house, and we can double up."

Olly looked up from his glass of port. "I think, if you do not mind, I will not come to Harringdon with you."

"Not come? But they are old friends, are they not? Your estates are barely ten miles apart. The Davenports brought Sophie out, so—"

"Nevertheless, I should prefer not to go there. And I should be obliged to you if my name need not be mentioned."

Izzy pulled out a chair and sat down. "Olly, going there or not going there is entirely your own affair, but lying for you is—"

"It is not a lie!" he said, with sudden fierceness. "I do not ask you to lie, only to refrain from mentioning my name."

"And how are we to do that? The Davenports are bound to enquire about you, so what is Sophie supposed to say? And then you leave two ladies exposed to censure for seemingly travelling without a male escort. It cannot be done."

"I had not thought of that," he said sheepishly.

"Perhaps if I knew why you have this sudden aversion to the Davenports, I might more readily understand your reasoning," Izzy said.

Olly smiled suddenly, his thin face lighting up. "Oh, I have no aversion to them, but they might very well feel some towards me. Have you any idea why I was sent to India?"

"None at all. People go to India all the time for a multitude of reasons, both good and bad. I assumed you were attempting to make your fortune."

"Then I will tell you how it came about," Olly said. "Sophie and I used to go to Harringdon all the time. Our mother and Mrs Davenport were great friends, and so every summer we went to stay there, Sophie doing boring things with the girls, while I was part of the boys' group. Sydney was older than me, but there were several cousins nearer my age, doing all the things that boys do — climbing trees, chasing the chickens, falling in the lake, fighting each other. One day I got into a fight with one of the cousins… Jonathan, but we called him Jonny. We were only twelve, and at that age… well, you are not aware of your own strength… I suppose that must account for it, because one minute I had my arm around his neck and the next minute he went limp."

"Dear God!" Izzy cried. "Dead?"

"No! Thank God, no, but for a moment I feared it. I called frantically for help. Sydney came running over and shook Jonny back to life, and although he was winded for a couple of days, he was fine. But… but the Davenports decided I was too violent to be allowed to run free, so they asked my father to send me out to my uncle in India."

"I see," Izzy said, her panic subsiding to a more general puzzlement. "But surely… it was eight years ago. They cannot bear a grudge all this time, surely?"

"This is exactly what I have told him," Sophie said eagerly. "Mrs Davenport made it very clear to me that she did not blame Olly for what happened, and it was never mentioned again. Certainly no one mentioned it when I was in town with them. Whenever she writes, Mrs Davenport asks very kindly after Olly, and hopes the heat in India is not too much for him. And you are so much better now, Olly. Is it not time to… well, to come into the open? Show yourself up here?"

Now Izzy was mystified again. "Is there any reason he should not show himself? Olly, you are not on the run from justice, or anything of that nature, are you?"

He laughed and shook his head. "When I first returned from India, I was very ill… a fever, of the sort that is common out there. I had never been much afflicted when I was there, but so many months on the ship wore me down, and so I succumbed to another bout, and the worst I had ever had. I had made a friend on the ship, and he very kindly got me home, somehow… I cannot tell you how. He helped Sophie nurse me back to health. But because of the fever, they agreed to keep me hidden, in case the Hearles misconstrued it as some kind of insanity and had me locked up in an asylum."

"They could hardly do that," Izzy said. "They have no power over you… do they?"

"Olly is still under age," Sophie said, "and when my father died, his will specified that Martin and our uncle in India were to be joint guardians, and two uncles on Mama's side joint trustees. But all of those are now dead, and… and Martin's father has assumed those r?les. Believe me, he would not hesitate to get Olly out of the way, if he could."

"Out of the way of what?" Izzy said. "Oh… Bayton House, I suppose. It must be very profitable, with tenants in the house as well as the farm land."

They both shook their heads. "No tenants, at least none that pay rent," Sophie said. "My father-in-law lives there now, with Martin's eldest brother and his family. All the profits from the farms go to them. My dowry and the widow's portion it should have provided is gone. All that is left is Olly's inheritance from our mother — five thousand pounds."

"They have not been able to get their hands on the principal," Olly said, "although they take the interest. But once I come of age, I shall have access to that, and I can begin the legal process of reclaiming Bayton House. All I have to do is to keep out of their way until then. I should like to have a discreet look at Bayton House while we are here, and that I can do while you are with the Davenports. If you drop me at the nearest cross road, I can walk the two miles to the village and stay at the inn for a day or two… listen to the gossip in the tap room. Then I shall be better placed when I go to the lawyers in a few months' time."

"And if the Hearles are clever, the lawyers will grow fat on your five thousand pounds while you wait and wait," Izzy said.

"That is a risk I must take," Olly said. "It is my home… it is mine , and I will do whatever it takes to reclaim it. But you see why I have been so cautious to let anyone know I am in the country."

"Indeed, you do not want to give them any warning before you point your lawyers at them," Izzy said, excitement rippling through her. Secrets! What fun! "We must keep you hidden away at all costs. Very well, here is what we will do. You have returned from India but you arrived very ill. You are now recovering in the care of a man who befriended you on the ship. That will explain why we do not know precisely where you are. But if you are not to be with us, we shall need to engage an outrider… or a courier or some such to accompany us to Harringdon. It will occasion comment if we arrive without male protection. What a pity we did not think of this in York. It may be difficult here."

"I can find someone, I am sure," Olly said. "Shall I go and make enquiries now?"

"Please do, but someone respectable, Olly, not some half-pay officer who has been sleeping under a hedge for months."

"Of course," he said with a grin, and rushed off at once on his errand.

"Well, he is certainly full of enthusiasm," Izzy said, picking up her wine glass and resuming her circuits of the parlour, for she could never sit still for long. Then, reproachfully, "It is a great pity you did not trust me with Olly's history long before this, Sophie."

"The fewer people who know, the better," she said, lifting her chin a little. "Besides, until you turned up on the doorstep in Durham, I had not seen you for five years, remember? Our letters were sporadic at best, and stopped altogether when I moved to Durham."

"I certainly wrote to you there, but you never replied," Izzy said. "I suppose your unspeakable in-laws intercepted all your letters, in or out. Please tell me that Martin was not like this?"

Sophie's face softened. "Martin was sweet, but then he left his family when he was only twelve to work for his great-uncle in London. He never had the kindness stamped out of him, although perhaps he was a little too gentle."

"Is that possible?"

"He always said he never wanted to hurt me, so… we never had children."

"You mean, you… never… not at all?" Izzy said, shocked.

"We tried a couple of times, but it was awkward and Martin hated it, so… we never attempted it again."

"But what else is marriage for, if not for children, or at least the possibility of them?"

"Companionship," Sophie said with a rueful smile. "Or ‘mutual society, help, and comfort' , as the marriage service has it. We were good friends, Izzy, and fond of each other, and I would not say we had a bad or an unsatisfactory marriage. We were both very contented. The only thing wrong with our marriage was that it ended too soon."

"Perhaps he was already starting on the path to his final illness when you married," Izzy said tentatively.

"Yes, perhaps that was it," Sophie said with a finality that closed the subject. "Shall we go to bed? Olly may be a while looking for an outrider for us. He will have to have a drink with the fellow… talk to him a little."

Izzy agreed to it, but sleep was long in coming that night.