Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

T he remainder of the trip passed in far greater comfort than the portion that preceded it. Lord Worthe had arranged it all, for reasons she could scarcely credit. Had he, great man that he was, fallen in love with her? Silly little Scarlett in her ugly fawn muslin? The reverend had been so determined that she not be carried away with dreams of being a lost heiress, it had never occurred to him to warn her against the impossibility of an earl declaring himself to her on a wooden bench in a coaching inn as she ran away to London.

Miss Mildred Rogers was a spinster of five and thirty years who lived in St Albans and had evidently performed the office of travelling chaperon to many a young lady in need. She would travel to London with Scarlett and then spend a night with her own friends before returning the next day .

She was not a handsome woman—her complexion was sallow, and she wore her mobcap pulled low over what Scarlett suspected was unwashed hair—but she was amiable and engaging in her manners. She seemed to think Scarlett was going husband-hunting and was determined to tell her what not to do.

“Watch out for the excessively charming ones,” she cautioned. “And the ones with gambling debts!”

She had numerous anecdotes about her own failed Seasons in town—it seemed that whatever griefs spinsterhood had caused her had been long since put aside for the sake of spinning a good yarn—and the time until they got to the tollgates outside London was made quick indeed.

As the sights and sounds of London began to build outside her window, Miss Rogers ceased telling her own tales in favour of showing Scarlett the town. Scarlett gasped at her first view of the bustling streets. It mattered not how many stories she had been told of London—nothing had prepared her for the wonders she now beheld. The sprawling spires of the grand edifices seemed to reach for the sky, and there was a multitude of people and carriages and horses such as she never could have imagined. There are likely as many people on this one street as I have ever met in my entire life!

She found it quite thrilling, all these people, men and women of all ages and classes, all going about their own business. Each of them with their own story , she thought. Perhaps some tragedy, perhaps some comedy, most with a mixture of each. It was something of a consolation to think it possible that she was not so peculiar with this little shadow in her background. Her tale was not even very tragic, if one considered that she might have been raised in servitude, or left in the orphanage, rather than be raised by a reverend and his wife who—if not given to excessive displays of love, or any love at all, for that matter—at least never beat her.

The carriage came to a stop in front of a narrow white edifice with a black door flanked by two urns filled with bright flowers. “Number Seven, Stratton Street,” Miss Rogers announced happily. “Very fashionable!”

Scarlett did not have a card and thus was required to go to the door and hope for entry. As she knocked, she noticed a gentleman, having just emerged from another carriage, was staring at her. She offered a slight nod, but he did not move or even seem to notice. Another man emerged from the carriage and nearly bumped into him, growling, “Hanson, pray do not stand there like a nodcock! Move! Lady Margaret awaits!”

Well, I cannot think it is that shocking to knock on a door , she thought as she saw the two gentlemen walk off, but could consider it no more for at that very moment the door opened.

“Miss Scarlett Margrave,” she told the housekeeper with trepidation washing over her anew. “Lady Leighton is not expecting me, but I am hoping she will see me nevertheless.”

The housekeeper left her in the vestibule and went in search of her mistress. Scarlett spent the time looking around her. It was a fine house, not as richly furnished as the Leightons’ house in Stanbridge, but very well-appointed. A thought struck her then—she knew the Leightons to be the first family in Stanbridge, but just how high were they amongst the Quality?

In the distance, she heard a shriek, then the sound of running feet upstairs. She glanced up the marble staircase and moments later saw Bess hurrying down at a breakneck pace. The relief she felt at seeing her dear friend nearly caused her knees to buckle.

“Scarlett! I cannot believe it!”

“Slow down,” Scarlett said with a laugh. “You will fall and break your legs at this rate!”

In an instant, Bess was upon her, squeezing her in a hug so tight it forced the air from her lungs. “I cannot believe you are here!” her friend cried over and over again. “You were not receiving visitors before we left, and I was so worried about you, did you get my note? In any case, somehow your father has relented and here you are, but where are you staying? With us, of course, where are your trunks? How did you get here?”

Bess paused one moment then, releasing her hug just enough to allow Scarlett to recover her breath. She called to the housekeeper to have the bedchamber next to her own made up immediately. “Unless you wish to share a room? Ooh, what fun, just like sisters! But your trunks, Scar, where are your trunks?”

“Bess, do let Scarlett breathe.” Lady Leighton was descending the stair, all smiles, but at a more dignified pace. “Come, let us go into the drawing room, and we shall let John worry about the trunks. Travelling always leaves one so hungry, and I could do with some tea myself.”

“There are no trunks,” Scarlett said to the footman who had arrived to do his mistress’s bidding. “Just my satchel.”

Lady Leighton only smiled and nodded to John. “See that it is taken to the yellow bedchamber next to Miss Leighton’s. Come along, girls.”

“I-I hope I have not come at a bad time,” Scarlett said once the happy welcomes were all concluded and they were seated in the drawing room with tea and a delicious lemon tartlet. Scarlett had tried not to eat hers too fast, but it was the first thing she had eaten all day, having refused Lord Worthe’s offer of luncheon, and she was ravenous.

“Bad time!” Bess scoffed. “Psh!”

“We are surprised to see you,” Lady Leighton said, leaning forwards to put another piece of the tartlet on Scarlett’s plate. “I suspect you may have a tale to tell us?”

Scarlett smiled at her thankfully and nodded, having just taken a large bite. When she swallowed, she paused, unsure how to begin. Glancing at Bess, she asked, “Did you tell her ladyship about the adoption?” A thought struck her then and she looked at Lady Leighton. “Unless…perhaps you already knew? ”

Lady Leighton shook her head, dabbing at her lips with the serviette. “When Reverend Margrave took the living in Stanbridge, you were already with them. I do recall thinking you were quite a large child for the age they said you were, but your mother kept you in your nursery most of the time.”

Scarlett nodded slowly. It seemed she had been imprisoned even then. “Another thing I did not know. I believed they had always been in Stanbridge.”

“If they had, then we all would have known of the adoption,” said Lady Leighton. “But I assure you we did not.”

“It came as quite a shock to me. I had seen a letter, some time ago, and entertained silly notions…but I never really believed them. It never occurred to me to question whether I was a Margrave, at least not until the morning after the assembly.”

She related, then, the events of the last days. Lady Leighton’s hand rose to her chest and she uttered a small gasp when she heard that Scarlett had been locked away three days complete, but otherwise the room was silent.

“It was terribly presumptuous of me to come here,” she said, “and I do not mean to insert you into my family difficulties, but truly, I do not know?—”

“Oh, do not think a thing of that,” Lady Leighton assured her. “Really! We invited you, did we not?”

“But the reverend might?—”

“The reverend relies on my patronage,” said Lady Leighton with uncommon imperiousness. “He has always been a good man, or so I believed, but I cannot approve of any of this business. Of course you wish to know where you came from. Many people who are adopted never have any idea of it, but you do, and you should know them. And as Bess says, of course you will stay right here while you find them.”

“Mama,” said Bess, “the piece that Scarlett has not told you is that the gentleman who told Scarlett about her twin—Lord Worthe , it was?—”

“A very good family,” Lady Leighton said with a smile.

“—he thought she was connected to the Richmond family.”

“Indeed?” Lady Leighton’s eyebrows rose. “I just heard something about them. A lost niece… Oh! So you might be another lost niece?”

“I am sure he was wrong,” Scarlett inserted quickly. “But it is a place to begin. I surely do not intend to impose upon such high-ranking persons, but perhaps if Lord Worthe could introduce me to them?—”

“No need to wait for that. As it happens, I am acquainted enough with Lady Tipton to warrant paying her a call. We shall go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” As much as Scarlett longed to know the truth about the mysterious young lady, she also, unaccountably, feared the meeting.

“I believe her Tuesdays are in,” said Lady Leighton with a smile. “The timing could not be better. ”

“Scarlett could wear my blue muslin round dress,” Bess suggested. “The one with the?—”

“The square collar, yes, I think that would do very nicely.”

Bess and her mother had always been excessively generous to Scarlett. Though she had only just recently come to understand that they, particularly Lady Leighton, might view her as a charitable work, it was likely it had been going on for some time before that. She squeezed her hands together in her lap, thinking about the poor babe in the orphanage, unaware that her life was due to be one of enforced asceticism and needful obligation.

Bess and her mama, caught in discussing Scarlett’s hair, did not hear her the first time she said, “You are both too good to me. You have always been.” Thus did she clear her throat, which had become tight, and repeated herself.

Mother and daughter both turned pink. Lady Leighton murmured something about it being nothing while Bess, recovering her ebullient spirits, said, “Well just be sure to remember me when you are Lady Worthe!”

The very notion of that gave Scarlett’s heart a jolt, and it was then her turn to become bashful under the other ladies’ eyes. “About that,” she said. “I, um…”

“What?” Bess demanded. “Did he come to Stanbridge? ”

Scarlett tucked her chin tighter against her neck before admitting, “Only part of the way.”

There was an immediate outburst of feminine delight mixed with dismay that Scarlett had been so far silent on the matter. Scarlett began to laugh amid the questions that fell upon her like rain, and another, far more pleasant, half an hour was spent telling her friends about the truly incomparable man with whom she believed she was in a fair way towards falling in love.