A Duel of Hearts

1-1

1“What is the hour?” Caroline asked, not taking her eyes from the road ahead of them.

Sir Montagu pulled his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, but it was difficult for him to see the hands. They were moving fast and, although the moon was rising, trees cast dark shadows over the narrow roadway so that it was a few seconds before he was able to reply,

“It wants but three minutes to nine-thirty. We have done well!”

“I hope you are not over optimistic, sir,” Caroline answered, ‘for methinks this by-lane of yours, although unfrequented, has taken us longer than if we had kept to the highway.”

“I swear it is shorter,” Sir Montagu replied. “I have travelled it often enough and, I suspect Lady Rohan will be bemused at having the other road to herself.”

Caroline laughed.

“If we do reach your sister’s house before they arrive, I shall ache to see their faces when they perceive us a-waiting them. Do you really think, Sir Montagu, they are watching the road behind them and wondering why we are not in sight?”

“I imagine that is precisely what they are doing,” Sir Montagu smiled, “unless they think we are ahead of them.”

“Which - pray Heaven - we are!” Caroline cried fervently. “How much further have we to go?”

She whipped up the horses as she spoke and the light phaeton sprang forward at an even greater speed.

“Not more than four miles, I should think,” Sir Montagu replied, “We join the main, highway about a mile from here.”

“ ... In front of Lady Rohan’s greys,” Caroline added, her voice gay and excited.

She saw that they, were approaching a turn in the road and reined in the horses slightly. Although they had been going for over an hour and a half, the chestnuts were by no means tired and Caroline, with a little thrill of pleasure, realised that Sir Montagu had not boasted when he averred they were the finest bred pair of high-steppers in London.

The phaeton swung round the corner and the moonlight revealed two or three cottages clustered round a village green. Facing the stocks and duck-pond was a small gabled inn, its signpost swinging creakily in the wind, its windows bright with light. But Caroline noticed only that the road widened and was straight for the next quarter of a mile. She lifted her whip but as she did so the small groom at the back of the phaeton raised his voice.

“Cuse, m’lady, but I suspicions there’s somethink powerful wrong with th’ off wheel.”

“Something wrong?” Caroline asked in consternation. “I feel nothing.”

“Tis rattling like a bone-box, m’lady, and I reckons us ought to ’ave a look at ’un.”

“Lord! If it isn’t enough to try the patience of a saint,” Caroline exclaimed, reining in-the horses and pulling up opposite the small inn “Hurry, boy, hurry,” she added impatiently. “I swear you are but imagining disaster.”

The groom scrambled down. Sir Montagu, after leaning over the side, of the phaeton, also descended. He spoke to the groom in a low voice and they both peered at the wheel.

“Surely there is nothing amiss?” Caroline asked after a moment, her voice anxious.

“I am afraid the boy is right,” Sir Montagu replied. “There is a pestilential crack in the axle. I believe it would be definitely dangerous for us to continue.”

“This is beyond everything,” Caroline cried.

“Well, maybe it isn’t as bad as might be feared.” Sir Montagu said soothingly. “Suppose, Caroline, you wait in the inn while I enquire if there is anyone in the yard who can repair the axle.”

The groom ran to the horses’ heads while Caroline descended.

“Was there ever such ill-fortune?” she asked Sir Montagu angrily. “Here we are well up to time and only a few miles to go when this occurs.”

“Mayhap it will only take a few minutes,” he suggested consolingly. “Come inside, Caroline. It is not too ill a place. I have rested here before and a glass of wine will serve us well. My throat is dry with dust.”

“Very well, if it please you,” Caroline said. “But instruct them to attend to the wheel with all possible haste.”

Sir Montagu turned to the groom.

“Now hurry, lad, find the ostler and bring me tidings as to what can be done.”

“Aye, sir,” the boy replied, as Sir Montagu, sweeping off his hat with a gesture, opened the door of the inn to allow Caroline to enter.

It was a small place low-ceilinged and oak-beamed, with an atmosphere of cleanliness and cheer and the parlour had a log-fire burning brightly in the big fireplace. There was only one occupant sitting before it, his feet outstretched to the flames, a glass of wine at his elbow. He glanced up casually as the door opened. When he saw who stood in the doorway he sat up abruptly, his eyebrows raised in astonishment.

He was a young man, Caroline noted, dressed in the height of fashion, his well padded olive-green coat trimmed with sparkling buttons. His dark hair was arranged in the latest windswept style and he would have been good-looking save that his thick eyebrows nearly met across the bridge of his nose in what appeared to be a perpetual frown, and his full mouth turned down at the corners as, if he viewed life with a constant sneer.

“If you will seat yourself by the fire,” Sir Montagu was saying to Caroline as they entered the room, “I will order a bottle of wine” He raised his voice, “Hi, landlord.”

The young man in. the green coat sprang to his feet.

“Reversby!” he exclaimed “What are you doing here?”

It was obvious both by the tone of his voice and by the expression on his face that he was none too pleased to see Sir Montagu. The latter turned slowly and paused before he replied in his most suave tones,

“I collect no reason why I should answer that question? You have not bought the place have you?”

Caroline felt uncomfortable, for it was obvious that the two men had no liking for one another, then she suddenly remembered her own position and that she did not wish to be recognised. She turned her head away, hoping that the size of her fashionable bonnet would cast a shadow over her face and she was thankful to hear a woman’s voice ask,

“Would her ladyship like to step upstairs?”

“Indeed I would,” Caroline answered and she moved quickly from the parlour into the outer hall where a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman curtsied to her and, lifting high the candle she held in her hand, led the way upstairs.

“This, way, your ladyship. Mind the top step if you please. Tis not the same height as the others and is often a trap for the unwary.”

They reached the landing in safety and the woman opened a door.

“I hope your ladyship will find this room comfortable. It is our best and seldom in use but when we received Sir Montagu’s message this morning, we set to and gave it a right good clean. The bed has been aired too, your ladyship, and hot bricks have been in it the whole day. You will find it comfortable enough, I swear to that for, only last Michaelmas I filled it afresh with the finest goose feathers.”

The landlady pulled back the covers ready to display to Caroline the comforts of the big feather bed which bulged high under the oak four-poster, but Caroline was standing very still, her eyes wide and dark

“Did I hear you say you had a message from Sir Montagu this morning?” she asked.

“Indeed I did, m’lady. A groom arrived just before noon. He told us that Sir Montagu would be staying the night here, and very honoured we were to hear of it for Sir Montagu is an old and valued customer, to be sure. And when the groom added that Sir Montagu would be accompanied by his lady, we were fair excited, for though Sir Montagu has been coming here at various times the past two years and more, 'twas the first we had heard that he was wed. Oh, he’s a fine gentleman, m’lady, and though maybe ‘tis a little late, may I offer your ladyship our most humble felicitations.”

“Thank you – thank you,” Caroline said slowly, and in such a strange tone that the landlady glanced at her sharply.

“But ‘tis tired you are, m’lady and here I am chattering away when I should be getting your supper ready. It’s hoping I am that it will gain your ladyship’s approval, though maybe ‘tis not so fine as what you are used to, but there, we can but do our best, and if your ladyship will ring when you’re ready, I will come back and, escort you downstairs.”

“Thank you,” Caroline said again.

The door shut behind the landlady and Caroline was alone. She stood very still for several seconds and then gave a sudden shiver before she raised both her hands to her cheeks.

Now she was in a mess, in a tangle such as she had never dreamed or imagined. As the full significance of the landlady’s words crept over her, she felt herself shiver again. So Sir Montagu had meant to stay here, had arranged it all, and the trouble over the wheel was but a bit of play-acting between him and his groom. Fool that she had been to be tricked so easily. And yet had she not been more of a fool to be inveigled in the first place into taking part in this wild race, if indeed it had been a race?

Bewildered and frightened Caroline began to think back over all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours and to blame not only Sir Montagu but herself too. Yes, she was at fault from the very beginning.

She had known Sir Montagu Reversby was an outsider. She had been warned about him often enough, and yet it was those very warnings which had obstinately made her accept his company. How crazy, she had been! How wilful, how perverse! And it had brought her to this.

The Countess of Bullingham, Caroline’s godmother, was presenting her this season because her mother was not well enough to leave the country and endure the exhausting formalities of launching a debutante. There was not, however, room in Lady Bullingham’s town residence for Caroline to stay with all her retinue of attendants so her father’s magnificent mansion, Vulcan House, in Grosvenor Square, had been opened, and Caroline resided there with a cousin, the Honourable Mrs Edgmont, as chaperon.

But this did not prevent Lady Bullingham from keeping a strict surveillance over her charge, and little escaped her ladyship’s eagle eye.

“I detest that man Reversby, Caroline,” she had said as they drove home from a ball at Devonshire House. “I should give him the cold shoulder if I were you.”

Caroline laughed.

“He is very persistent, Ma’am. He offered for me for the third time this evening.”

“Offered for you?” Lady Bullingham’s voice was shrill. “How dare he? What impertinence! As if you, the toast of the season and the greatest heiress of the year, would look at him.”

“His very impertinence amuses me,” Caroline answered. “He is not easily cast away.”

“He will never enter the portals of my house,” her ladyship replied. “Offered for you indeed! I cannot imagine what your father would say.”

Caroline laughed. She could well imagine the chilly indifference with which her father would sweep Sir Montagu from his path, but at the same time it was an undeniable fact that she met him everywhere. He seemed in some way or another to obtain the entree to most houses, and the way he asserted impertinently that he intended to marry her made her laugh even while she did not take him seriously.

She might have heeded her godmother’s warning more readily had not Lady Bullingham with a singular lack of tact incited Lord Glosford also to warn Caroline against Sir Montagu. Caroline considered the Earl of Glosford a bore. She was well aware that her godmother wished her to marry him for, as the future Duke of Melchester, he was a notable catch from the matrimonial point of view.

Caroline, however, cordially disliked Lord Glosford’s la-di-da and effeminate ways, and as she had no more intention of taking his offer seriously than she had Sir Montagu’s, it was irritating to be lectured by him.

“The fellow’s a trifle smoky, you know,” he said languidly, ‘in fact, he’s not up to scratch Caroline. I should give him the go-by.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Caroline remarked “but I consider myself a better judge of human nature than your lordship is of horseflesh.”

This was a palpable thrust because Society had been chuckling for weeks over the tale of how Lord Glosford had paid five hundred guineas for a horse which had been found after a few days to have been doped for the sale.