Wish For Love

CHAPTER ONE 1818-2

“Help – you?”

“If highwaymen have any sense, they hunt in pairs. Otherwise, while one of them is taking money and jewels from the passengers in a carriage, the men on the box could shoot him in the back or at least hit him with something.”

Mariota began to clear the breakfast things onto a tray.

“I am not going to listen to you,” she said. “You are talking nonsense and, if you want something to do, you might see if there are enough new potatoes in the garden for luncheon.”

Jeremy did not answer, but walked across the room to stare out of the window.

Mariota looked at him apprehensively, thinking once again how handsome he was and how difficult it must be for him to have nothing to do but ride inferior horses round the estate, which was as neglected and impoverished as the family who owned it.

She knew by the way he was concentrating and the expression on his face that he had one of his madcap ideas which she dreaded, because they invariably proved disastrous and landed him in a great deal of of trouble.

“You are not listening to me, Jeremy.”

“I have got it!” Jeremy ejaculated. “We will go to the Worcester Road this afternoon. There are certain to be carriages containing rich people going either to Worcester or Malvern and we will pick out one and see if we can fill our pockets as highwaymen have done for the last five hundred years!”

“How can you think of doing anything so ridiculous and so dangerous?” Mariota questioned. “You must surely be joking!”

“I am not joking. I am going to have some money so that I can go to London just for a week and buy myself some decent clothes and perhaps find an heiress to marry.”

“An heiress!” Mariota exclaimed.

“Why not? If I can marry somebody rich and restore the house, we could all live here in comfort. I want to be doing all the things I ought to be doing at my age instead of mouldering away like a rotten apple.”

The bitterness in Jeremy’s voice was very apparent and Mariota walked round the table to put her hand on his arm.

“I am sorry, dearest,” she said, “but we will just have to go on hoping that something will turn up.”

“For how long?” Jeremy asked sharply. “Until I am in the grave?”

Mariota had no real answer to this. She merely sighed and looked up at him and her grey eyes were very soft and sympathetic.

“No!” Jeremy said so loudly that she jumped, “God helps those who help themselves! That is what I am going to do and you are going to help me.”

“That is something I will not do!” Mariota said positively.

“Very well. I shall be a highwayman on my own and, if I am shot in the back with a blunderbuss and lying in my own blood, you will be sorry!”

“How can you say such – wicked things?” Mariota asked.

“I am only being practical,” Jeremy replied. “If you come with me there will be no danger. We will hold up a coach together. You can keep the coachman and the footman with their hands above their heads, while I snatch everything I can from inside. Then we gallop away and are never seen again!”

“I am sure it will not be as simple as that,” Mariota said feebly, “and anyway, we might be – recognised! Think of the – scandal that would – cause!”

“We shall not be recognised,” Jeremy said scornfully, “because we shall be wearing masks. But wait – I have another idea! You will be dressed as a boy.”

“As – a boy?” Mariota said faintly.

“All those old clothes of mine are hanging up somewhere. You will find a pair of breeches to fit you and I am sure the riding coat I wore when I was at Eton is about your size.”

“I cannot do it – I cannot!”

“Very well, if you will not help me, I will do it alone,” Jeremy said. “Goodbye, Mariota! You will not have to put flowers on my grave because they will hang me from the gibbet at the crossroads as a warning to other highwaymen.”

Mariota gave a cry of sheer horror.

“You cannot be serious – you cannot!” she said pleadingly.

Even as she spoke, she knew that in his usual impulsive manner Jeremy would become a highwayman with or without her help.

*

Riding from the house at four o’clock that afternoon, Mariota was extremely conscious of how unladylike she appeared.

She was wearing a pair of breeches, which Jeremy had worn when he was thirteen and a coat that was actually a little large for her. But there was nothing smaller in the wardrobe where all his old clothes had been put away when he had no further use for them.

She also wore a velvet hunting cap pulled low over her forehead and a well-tied cravat around her neck added to her disguise.

When they were some way away from the house in the shelter of a small wood, Jeremy pulled a black mask from his pocket and held it out to her.

“You must put this on,” he said. “I made them this morning and I am quite certain that once you wear it nobody will recognise you.”

Jeremy certainly looked unrecognisable behind his mask.

Yet Mariota thought that with his tall hat on the side of his head, his broad shoulders and the way he sat his horse, it would be easy, even with the mask, for anybody if not to recognise him, certainly to remember him.

But she knew there was no point in saying so.

They had argued most of the morning while Jeremy went on looking through his clothes for her to wear and she knew that anything she said now was just a waste of breath.

When Jeremy made up his mind, she thought, it would take an earthquake to move him and only because she was desperately afraid he was right when he had said that doing this crazy thing alone was dangerous had she finally consented to go with him.

Now she put on the mask, tied the narrow ribbon at the back of her head and hoped that in whatever lay ahead, her hat would stay firmly in place, otherwise her hair might come tumbling down and reveal that she was not the young man she pretended to be.

“Now take your pistol,” Jeremy was saying, pulling it from the pocket of his coat. “It is primed and loaded, so be careful!”

“I don’t have to – use it – do I?” Mariota asked in a low voice.

“Not unless it is to save yourself from being captured, in which case if you don’t you will be hanged.” Jeremy replied. “But if you do need to use it, shoot at the arm or the leg, not the body or the head.”

Mariota’s lips tightened, but she did not say anything.

She was actually a good shot because, when they were much younger, her father had taught Jeremy to shoot first at a target before he attempted to shoot at live game and she had pleaded to learn too.

“You are a girl. You will never have to use a pistol!” Jeremy had said scornfully.

Their father had contradicted him by saying,

“It’s always useful for a woman to know how to defend herself.”

He had therefore taught Mariota to handle not only a shot gun but also a duelling pistol and, although she hoped now she would never have to use it, she felt that she was experienced enough not to kill a man by mistake.

“Are you ready?” Jeremy asked. “At least, Mariota, you must admit this is more exciting than sitting in the house and counting the cobwebs!”

Mariota did not reply because her heart was beating frantically and her lips felt dry.

She was quite certain that Jeremy’s new idea would be disastrous and already she was thinking how terrifying it would be if they were captured and taken before the Magistrates.

However, there was nothing she could say and she could only pray that her father would never know what they were doing

He had luncheon with them, but he was in one of his most absent-minded moods and she knew that he was concentrating on some particular research he was doing into the family history.

Because Jeremy too had been concentrating on a very different project, the meal was almost a silent one and, as there was not much to eat, it did not take them long.

Only Jeremy exclaimed as Mariota brought in a dish from the kitchen,

“Not rabbit again!”

“I am sorry, dearest,” Mariota replied, “but there is really so very little else at this time of the year and it’s the only thing we don’t have to pay for.”

Old Jacob, who ran the house with his wife, caught them in snares in the shrubberies and, because there were plenty of rabbits and very little else, it had become their staple, if very monotonous diet.

There were ripe gooseberries to follow and the bushes, which were vastly overgrown, had scratched Mariota abominably when she picked the fruit from them.

But while her father ate them like an automaton without appearing to taste what went into his mouth, Jeremy gobbled them up and said when he had finished the dish,

“I am still hungry!”

“I am afraid there is only a very little cheese left,” Mariota said, “but Mrs. Robinson has promised me some this evening.”

It was Mariota who had arranged that the Home Farm, which had once been run to serve the big house, should be let to tenant farmers for an infinitesimal rent, so long as they provided them with eggs, milk, butter and when it was available, cheese.

At first the Robinsons had been very pleased with the arrangement, but now with the end of the war and the difficulties of peace, many farmers had become bankrupt and the rest were afraid of the future.

Because of this Mariota felt that the farmer and his wife grudged everything they had to give her.

Because she felt apologetic and was also very sensitive to other people’s feelings, she hated going to the farm to ask for what they required and whenever possible sent Jacob instead.

But he had so many other duties in the garden at this time of the year, it was essential that the vegetables they had planted should be weeded and there were also the pigeons to be prevented from eating every leaf before it came to the table, so that he could not always be spared.

Jeremy ate the remains of the portion of cheese that had been put on the table with the last scrap of butter.

Mariota felt he should have shared it with his father, but Lord Fordcombe was still far away in his thoughts and did not seem to notice that the meal was finished without his having what constituted, somewhat inadequately, the last course.

He rose from the table saying,

“I shall be very busy this afternoon, Mariota, and I do not wish to be disturbed.”

“I am sure nobody will do so, Papa,” Mariota replied. “And I am glad your book is coming along so well.”

“Not badly, not badly at all,” Lord Fordcombe replied.

He left the dining room and they had heard his footsteps going down the passage.

“Who does he think is likely to disturb him?” Jeremy asked. “If anybody paid us a visit, it would be a miracle!”

Mariota did not answer and he said,

“Well, at the moment that is a blessing in disguise. As soon as you have finished clearing the table, let’s go upstairs and finish choosing the clothes you will wear.”

When Mariota was ready, Jeremy, having saddled the horses, brought them around to the side of the house where there was a shrubbery and where they could mount without Jacob or his wife Mrs. Brindle being able to see them.

Not that they were likely to be looking, for Mrs. Brindle was growing old and, when she had washed up the luncheon plates, Mariota knew she would settle herself in one of the comfortable armchairs which she had arranged for the Brindles in the kitchen and doze off to sleep in front of the fire.

The large servants’ hall, which in the old days had held twenty or more servants for every meal, was closed and so were the sculleries with their paved floors and huge sinks and the larders with the long marble slabs on which Mariota could remember there would be big open bowls from which the cream was lifted every morning.