Belinda Goes to Bath Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  About the Author

  Titles by M.C. Beaton

  Copyright

  1

  Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

  Oscar Wilde

  Hannah Pym arose at four in the morning in a bedroom in the Bell Savage Inn in the City of London and prepared for adventure.

  For Hannah, adventure lay in the Flying Machines, as the stage-coaches were called. A legacy left her by a late employer had given her new freedom. She had already made one journey to Exeter and had had many adventures, which had only whetted her appetite for more.

  She lived in Kensington, and the thickening fog of the day before had made her take the precaution of travelling to London and booking a room for the night at the inn so as to be in time for the coach in the morning. She lit a tallow candle on the mantelpiece of her bedchamber and carried it to the toilet table, where she sat down and studied her face in the glass.

  Hannah had taken to studying herself closely in the glass since her last journey, not because she thought she was beautiful, for she knew she was not, but to see if she had begun to look like a lady. Her late employer’s brother, Sir George Clarence, had befriended Hannah Pym, ex-housekeeper now and, thanks to his brother’s generous legacy, a lady of independent means. Hannah was flattered and pleased at this new and unlikely friendship and hoped that the elevation to such distinguished company would begin to show in her features.

  Her gown was of fine cambric and her linen of the best because of Sir George’s suggestion that she help herself to Mrs Clarence’s wardrobe. Mrs Clarence was the wife of Hannah’s late employer, who had run off years ago with a footman, leaving her clothes behind. The clothes were all very well, thought Hannah, but it was the face that was the problem. She was middle-aged, in her forties, with thick sandy hair and large, odd eyes that seemed to change colour according to her mood. Her nose was slightly crooked, her skin sallow, and her mouth long and humorous. Her figure was distressingly thin and flat-chested, but she had fine hands and neat ankles and long, slender feet. It was the eyes that betrayed her late servant status, thought Hannah. Ladies had hard, autocratic stares. They did not have curious, eager eyes.

  Hannah felt she could not expect such adventures as she had experienced on her last journey on the Exeter road, when she and her fellow passengers had been drawn together by accident, robbery and snowstorm. Hannah knew that it was possible for a coachful of people to travel long distances without saying a single word, English reserve always triumphing over curiosity.

  From down below came the bustle of preparation. The coach she was to take to Bath – no, The Bath, Hannah corrected herself; only people who did not know the glories of travel referred to that city as just ‘Bath’ – was called The Quicksilver. She wondered what her fellow passengers would be like and then reminded herself sadly that it did not befit her new station in life to be nosy about other people. She practised haughty indifference in the glass, but decided she looked silly and pulled her nose in distress.

  She rose from the toilet table and packed her trunk. Then, with a feeling of great daring, she put on her head a velvet turban with a ‘banditti’ plume and a veil hanging to the shoulders.

  Hannah had paid her shot in advance. The inn waiters were hovering in the corridors, eager hands outstretched for tips. Hannah parted with some small change and then went out into the foggy courtyard. She gave her ticket to the coachman, noting that he was a dandified young man in a double-breasted coat and with a wide, low-crowned hat. Most coachmen were like Old Tom of her previous journey, fat and grog-faced and muffled in shawls. But this coachman belonged to the new, younger breed. He had adopted a haughty, supercilious air and looked as if he was hoping for the arrival of some outsiders to talk down to. The outsiders were the people who paid half-fare to travel on the roof of the coach. But it seemed that Hannah was the first arrival.

  She stood for a moment surveying the coach. It was a new, smart turnout with high red wheels but with the body of the coach covered in the usual studded black leather, the oval windows being picked out in red. She climbed inside.

  The early morning was freezing cold, and she could smell the fog, a sulphurous smell that seemed to emanate from the hell it created to the London onlooker’s eye. Figures outside the coach flitted in its gloom like demons. Who would the other passengers be? thought Hannah. An article in a magazine she’d read said the passengers of coaches usually consisted of one drunken sailor, one lawyer, one military gentleman, one mother with a nauseous child, and one faded lady who always complained mendaciously that her own private coach had gone ahead with her baggage.

  The coach door opened on the far side from where Hannah sat and a couple climbed in. Hannah flicked a curious glance at them. The woman was small and pretty in a kittenish way and the man was handsome in a regular, uninteresting fashion. He helped her to a corner seat before taking the seat opposite and she thanked him effusively, calling him Mr Judd, and he replied, calling her Mrs Judd. A dull married couple, guessed Hannah, hoping the other passengers might prove to be more entertaining.

  There was a rattle of wheels in the courtyard and Hannah rubbed at the glass with her glove and looked out to see an expensive carriage rolling into the courtyard. A coachman in splendid livery of scarlet and gold sat on the box and two footmen stood on the backstrap. The carriage drew up alongside the coach. The footmen jumped down and opened the carriage door and let down the steps. A young lady, fashionably dressed, got down, followed by a stern, middle-aged woman. The footmen then started to unload a quantity of luggage from the roof and hand it up to the guard of the coach.

  The dandified coachman opened the door of the coach and ushered both ladies in, bowing very low. The young lady took a seat in the corner opposite Hannah and her companion sat beside her.

  Hannah immediately noticed that the girl had been crying. Not that her eyes were puffy and red, but there was a weary sadness about them.

  The girl saw Hannah looking at her and gave a tentative smile; her companion frowned awfully and tapped the girl on the wrist in an admonitory way before throwing Hannah a haughty look.

  The coach dipped and swayed as the coachman climbed up on to his box. The guard sent out a triumphant fanfare and The Quicksilver set out slowly on its way into the blinding, choking fog.

  The roads would be frozen hard, thought Hannah, so there was no danger of their being stuck in the mud outside the village of Knightsbridge. Her eyes began to feel sore with the strain of peering out as she searched for familiar landmarks. Inside the coach was an ivory timetable lit by an oil-lamp, marking out the times and stages of their route.

  The soft light of the lamp fell on the girl’s face. She had fallen asleep, as had her companion, so Hannah had an opportunity to study them both at leisure. The girl was not beautiful. She had a thin, sensitive face and high cheek-bones, which were considered most unfashionable in an age when women wore wax pads inside their cheeks to give them the required Dutch-doll effect. Her mouth was full and sensitive and peculiarly sensual, and the lashes that covered her eyes were long and silky. Under her bonnet, her slate-coloured hair was fine and wispy.

  Her companion was rigidly corseted. She had the bosom and profile of a figurehead on a ship. Her clothes were fine but looked as if they had been made for someone else. The servant part of Hannah’s mind decided they probably had been. This woman was a paid companion and the clothes had probably belonged at one time to an employer.

  Hannah turned her attention
back to the outside world. The fog was thick. They would soon be nearing Kensington and Thornton Hall, where she had lived all those long years, working her way up from scullery maid to the rank of housekeeper. Sir George Clarence, who had inherited the Hall, had told her that he had started work on the gardens. Hannah had looked forward to seeing the improvements, but the fog blanketed everything.

  She tugged at the strap and let down the window and hung out. The Quicksilver was travelling in a line of coaches and mail coaches, one lighting the way for the other. She could see their torches flaring up ahead, but as for the scenery at the side of the road, she could not even make out where she was.

  She sank back in her seat with a little sigh and jerked up the glass.

  She found the other passengers awake and looking at her with varying degrees of outrage. ‘Have you no consideration for others?’ demanded Mr Judd. ‘My wife is most delicate. Are you not delicate, my dear?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Judd,’ said his wife in a low voice.

  Then the young lady’s companion gave tongue. ‘I have a delicate chest,’ she said, tapping that huge part of her body. ‘Do not dare to open that window again.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Hannah mildly. ‘I wondered where we were. A friend of mine has a house outside the village of Kensington and he told me he was working on the gardens and I was anxious to see the improvements.’

  ‘And could you see anything?’ asked the girl. Her eyes appeared to be a sort of greenish-grey, Hannah noticed.

  Hannah shook her head. ‘The fog is very thick,’ she said. ‘We are travelling slowly in a convoy with other coaches and mail coaches.’

  ‘We shall never reach The Bath at this rate,’ said Mr Judd crossly.

  Hannah thought the young lady opposite muttered, ‘Good,’ but could not be sure.

  After they seemed to have been travelling for a considerable time, the coach stopped. Hannah looked out again. ‘Why, we have only reached The Half-Way House at Knightsbridge,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Disgraceful!’ said Mr Judd. ‘Is it not?’

  He glared at his wife, who had been half asleep. She promptly sat up straight and said, ‘Yes, dear,’ in a mechanical voice.

  The coach door opened to reveal a waiter with a tray. He handed round tankards containing a steaming-hot mixture of milk and rum and nutmeg.

  ‘What is in this?’ demanded the companion suspiciously.

  Hannah realized the young lady was looking at her with a sort of appeal in those strange eyes of hers. ‘It is an innocuous beverage,’ said Hannah.

  By the time the companion had sipped hers and discovered there was a large measure of rum in it, the young lady had finished hers off.

  At last the coach moved off again, crawling over the cobblestones of Knightsbridge. The cold was intense. Hannah, although she was wrapped in a fur-lined cloak and was wearing two flannel petticoats under her dress, began to feel quite sick.

  She buried her feet in the straw on the floor, seeking warmth and finding none.

  ‘I am so very cold,’ said Mrs Judd suddenly.

  ‘We are all very cold,’ said her husband repressively. ‘Contain yourself.’

  She is going to say, ‘Yes, dear,’ thought Hannah, and Mrs Judd did.

  It was all very well for her husband, thought Hannah crossly. He was enveloped in a greatcoat over a coat and breeches and two waistcoats. His wife’s cloak was not very thick and under it she was wearing a sky-blue muslin gown.

  Because of the thinness of fashionable gowns, it was estimated that at least eighteen thousand women dropped dead of cold during the English winters. When Hannah had read that figure in the newspaper she had thought it a wild exaggeration, but now she was not so sure. Women had even abandoned their stays. It was almost a point of honour to appear in all seasons in the most delicate of muslins.

  The girl opposite Hannah suddenly leaned forward and held out a gloved hand. ‘I am Miss Belinda Earle,’ she said, ‘and this is my companion, Miss Wimple.’

  Miss Wimple bridled. ‘Really, Miss Earle. Such familiarity.’

  ‘And I,’ said Hannah pleasantly and firmly, ‘am Miss Hannah Pym and very pleased to make your aquaintance.’

  Miss Wimple tapped Belinda again on the wrist as a warning against further intimacies, but Belinda, whose spirits seemed to be recovering despite the cold, ignored her.

  ‘And why do you journey to The Bath?’ she asked Hannah.

  ‘I am travelling because I like travelling,’ said Hannah. ‘I have never been to The Bath and wished to see it.’

  ‘In a freezing fog? In mid-winter?’ Belinda sounded half-incredulous, half-amused.

  Hannah gave a reluctant laugh. ‘I am ever optimistic, Miss Earle. I am sure the sun will rise and we shall find ourselves out of the fog. At least in this procession of coaches, we shall be safe from highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, unless the ghost of the Duke of Richmond’s page appears to haunt us.’

  ‘Who was he?’ asked Belinda. She shrugged off her companion’s hand crossly. ‘Miss Wimple, if we are to pass this freezing cold, uncomfortable journey, it would help to be amused. Tell me about the Duke of Richmond’s page, Miss Pym.’

  Hannah settled back in her seat. She had read a great number of books about the highways of England and the adventures that had taken place on them.

  ‘His name was Claude Duval,’ said Hannah, ‘and he was the greatest of highwaymen. He was born at Domfront in Normandy. His father was a miller and his mother a tailor’s daughter. He travelled to Paris and did odd jobs for Englishmen and eventually made his way to England in time for the Restoration, where he entered the service of the Duke of Richmond. He was a gifted and elegant ruffian. He gamed and drank and soon took to villainy to help pay his debts. He was finally arrested at the Hole in the Wall in Chandos Street, committed to Newgate, arraigned, convicted, and condemned, and on Friday, January twenty-first, 1670, executed at Tyburn. He was only twenty-seven years old. It was said he was a man after Charles the Second’s heart and not unlike him, except that he was better looking. It was also said that the king would have spared Duval if he had had his way.

  ‘Duval was buried in the middle aisle of Covent Garden Church. The ladies made up the largest part of the crowd in attendance. Flambeaus blazed and the hero was laid under a white marble stone on which you can still read this inscription:

  DU VALL’S EPITAPH

  Here lies Du Vall: Reader If Male thou art

  Look to thy Purse: if Female to thy Heart.

  Much Havoc has he made of both; for all

  Men he made stand and Women he made fall.

  The second Conqu’ror of the Norman Race

  Knights to his arms did yield and Ladies to his Face.

  Old Tyburn’s glory, England’s illustrious Thief,

  Du Vall the Ladies’ joy; Du Vall the Ladies Grief.

  ‘His name was spelled D-u-v-a-l, in one word, but on the tomb it is Anglicized and spelled ‘D-u V-a-l-l, two words. ’Twas said that ladies travelled over Hounslow Heath praying he might stop their coaches.’

  ‘How romantic,’ sighed Mrs Judd.

  ‘Fiddlesticks,’ said her husband. ‘A thief romantic? Of what can you be thinking, Mrs Judd?’

  ‘My apologies, my love,’ said his wife faintly. ‘It is the intense cold, you see.’

  ‘Do not utter such foolishness again,’ he snapped.

  The coach lurched and began to roll forward, gaining speed. Hannah looked out of the window. They were clear of the fog and the sky was turning light grey. But they were now past Kensington and she would have no opportunity of catching a glimpse of Thornton Hall or of its gardens.

  ‘We shall breakfast soon,’ she said cheerfully. And after a few miles, the coach rolled into an inn yard and the stiff and frozen passengers climbed down.

  Hannah thought in that moment that there ought to be a hymn of praise to the English coaching inn. Blazing fires greeted them, and the air was redolent with the smells of hot coffee, fresh bread and
bacon.

  Before she could sit down at the table, Miss Wimple drew Hannah aside. ‘Do not encourage my charge to prattle. She must be kept aware at all times that she is being sent away to The Bath in disgrace.’

  ‘Why? What did she do?’ asked Hannah, her odd eyes snapping with curiosity.

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ said Miss Wimple.

  As soon as breakfast was over, Hannah slipped away and asked the landlord if the ladies of the party might have the use of a bedchamber in which to put on some more warm clothes, and also if hot bricks could be put on the carriage floor. She tipped the landlord generously and then had to tip the coachman equally generously so that the ladies’ trunks might be unloaded.

  Mr Judd said firmly that his wife was very well as she was. Hannah ignored him and addressed Mrs Judd directly. ‘I have a spare cloak in my trunk. If you put it over your own, you would be so much warmer.’

  She cast a scared, rabbit-like look at her husband. ‘Come along with me,’ said Hannah bracingly. ‘We shall only be a moment, Mr Judd.’

  She led Mrs Judd up the stairs and Belinda and Miss Wimple followed.

  ‘This is an excellent idea,’ said Belinda, throwing back the lid of a trunk. ‘I am going to put on two more petticoats.’ Even Miss Wimple seemed to be thawing towards Hannah as she took a large shawl out of her own baggage and wrapped it around her massive shoulders.

  Hannah found a scarlet merino cloak and insisted Mrs Judd put it on over her own.

  It was a much more cheerful party that set out on the road again, all exclaiming with gratitude at the heat provided by hot bricks placed in the straw on the carriage floor. Mr Judd did slightly sour the atmosphere by lecturing his wife on having borrowed Hannah’s cloak, but Hannah noticed that Mrs Judd drew the scarlet cloak more tightly about her and that her soft mouth was folded into a firm line of defiance.

  A red sun rose, sparkling on frost-covered fields. Bare branches of trees stood out skeletal and black against the red sky.

  Mrs Judd fell asleep first, followed by her husband and then Miss Wimple.