Minerva Read online

  Finally, all four young girls were packed into the carriage, and Minerva then woke Annabelle and tiptoed into her mother’s room to make sure her morning chocolate had been brought up and that the fire had been lit.

  She was about to wake her mother when, to her surprise, the vicar walked into his wife’s bedroom, looking about himself with a vague air of surprise as if he had never seen it before.

  He had, in fact, hardly set foot in it since his wife’s last pregnancy some eight and a half years ago. When Mrs Armitage had been delivered of twin boys, therefore presenting the vicar with double heirs instead of another girl, he decided, as he privately put it, ‘to stop the breeding’ and thankfully relapsed into a semi-celibate life, only occasionally indulging his lusts, usually around harvest time, with some country girl who was willing and able.

  He put his finger to his lips, and signalled to Minerva not to wake Mrs Armitage but to follow him from the room instead.

  He silently led the way downstairs to the parlour. ‘I’m going into Hopeminster today. There’s a horse fair on, and I want you to come with me.’

  ‘Alas, I cannot, papa,’ said Minerva with sweet patience. ‘I have my rounds to make and this is the day I read to Lady Wentwater.’ Lady Wentwater was an elderly widow who lived some two miles beyond the village.

  ‘Well, you ain’t,’ said the vicar. ‘You’re coming along o’ me. Annabelle can read to her.’

  ‘Why, Papa? You know enough about horses. There is nothing I can tell you on that subject. Furthermore, a horse fair is no fit place for a l …’

  ‘Tish, girl. Will you do as you are told! You may browse about the shops until I have completed my business and then we shall have a dinner at the Cock and Feathers before returning home. If you must know why, it’s time you spent more time around the men. Get some practice, see? Last Hunt Ball, what did you do? You set yourself up to be chaperone to Annabelle because Mrs Armitage was sick, and sat there with the dowagers for most of the evening. Now, no more argyfying. Go and tell Bella she’s to read, and make the calls, and kiss your Mama goodbye. And find a pretty bonnet!’

  Minerva bowed her head and marched upstairs to her mother’s room, seething with irritation. She had successfully coped with the boredom of country life by making herself useful and, particularly after last night’s shock, she had been looking forward to settling into her usual duties. Now this! The proposed outing to Hopeminster was making her apprehensive, but she mistook her apprehension for nervous boredom, and blamed her father accordingly.

  Her mother was awake and sipping her chocolate when Minerva gently opened the door.

  ‘Good morning, darling,’ said Mrs Armitage in a faint voice, holding up a faded cheek to be kissed. ‘I was reading a fascinating volume … there it is … give it me … I shall…’

  “Mama! Papa insists that I go to the horse fair with him. It means I will not be able to make my calls although he has said Annabelle may do them. But I do not wish to go and …’

  ‘You must do what Papa thinks best,’ said Mrs Armitage. ‘Besides, I need new ribbons for my cap. Now, only attend! For you must learn ways to enhance your beauty, you know.’

  Mrs Armitage opened the book and fumbled among the lace on her bosom for her quizzing glass. She began to read, peering through the quizzing glass with one eye and screwing up the other into a horrible wink in an effort to see.

  ‘This is called The Toilet of Flora and it is translated from the French. Now! You might care to experiment with this “curious varnish” for the face. It says you prepare it by leaving an ounce of gum sandrach and one and a half ounces of benzoin to dissolve in three-quarters of a pint of brandy. It says it gives the skin the finest lustre imaginable! And here …’

  ‘Mama! I do not think it necessary that …’

  ‘And do you think you can find a green pineapple? It says here that the juice from green pineapples takes away wrinkles and gives the complexion an air of youth! It also says if you can’t find green pineapples, onion juice will do – but I declare onion juice is hardly an attractive scent and it does cling so. Do you not ’member when Annabelle had the earache, and we put a roasted onion in her ear, and how she had the smell of that onion on her for at least a week? Yes, you must definitely go to Hopeminster. ’Tis quite providential. Apart from the ribbons, lilac silk, my dear, I need spirits of lavender and some pomatum and, oh, don’t forget the pineapple, though where you will get such a rare thing I do not know. Oh, and bring me alkanet root, for I have a mind to make some rouge for you.’

  ‘Mama!’

  ‘Do run along Minerva, I feel quite weak. One of my Spasms is coming on, and I must rest and be quiet.’

  Mrs Armitage sank back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

  Minerva gave a little sigh. Mama’s Spasms were her ultimate weapon. It would be useless to look for help. She must simply make up her mind to go to the horse fair.

  Annabelle was furious and had to be bribed with promises of sugar plums and a novel from the circulating library. Normally, Minerva would not allow a novel houseroom, but Annabelle’s temper tantrums were quite formidable. The vicar always threatened to take the birch to her, and Minerva feared that he might very well, and so she spoiled Annabelle unnecessarily, thinking she was protecting the girl from a beating.

  Then Minerva was sent back upstairs to change because the vicar took exception to her bonnet, castigating it as dowdy and saying he would not be seen driving a Friday-faced quiz, daughter or no.

  At last, they were seated in his racing curricle behind two spanking bays and bowling at an alarming pace along the Hopeminster Road.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Osbadiston is selling off his stable,’ said the vicar, tooling his curricle through the traffic in the main street of Hopeminster.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Minerva, hanging onto her bonnet. And it certainly accounted for the unusual appearance put forward by this normally quiet market town in the middle of winter.

  The Earl of Osbadiston was famous for his horses. He was also famous for his gambling debts and so it had transpired he had to sell the one to pay the other. Eccentric as ever, the Earl had opted to put his cattle up for sale at the local horse fair instead of Tattersall’s. The vicar alone did not consider the Earl foolish. Members of the Quality who had driven all the way from London were likely to be more in a frame of mind to bid high to justify the long journey than they would be in the comfort of Tattersall’s.

  And so the sale explained the presence of many dazzling members of the Quality to be seen in the town, both male and female, looking as exotic as birds of paradise. Minerva’s eyes grew rounder and rounder.

  ‘Papa!’ she cried. ‘Did you see that lady? She was wearing practically nothing but thin muslin and gauze. And in this weather!’

  ‘Don’t gawk,’ retorted her worldly-wise father. ‘They’ll take you for a yokel.’

  ‘But anyone would stare,’ protested Minerva. ‘Look at that little man over there. He’s green! I mean every single thing he’s got on is green!’

  ‘That’ll be Cope,’ said the vicar, without bothering to look round. ‘Wonder what he’s doing here. He not only wears green, his rooms are green, his furniture is green, everything’s green. Know what they say about him?

  ‘“Green garters, green hose, and, deny it who can, the brains, too, are green, of this green little man!” He’s a Dandy.’

  ‘Oh.’ Minerva digested this. ‘But he’s making himself ridiculous,’ she said at last. ‘Why does he do it?’

  ‘He’s a Dandy, that’s why,’ said the vicar, turning neatly into the crowded yard of the Cock and Feathers. ‘They’re all like that. Do anything to get attention. One of them shot himself t’other day and left a note saying he was “tired of buttoning and unbuttoning”. But, mark my words, he only did it to get attention. Now do you want tea while I go on to the fair?’

  ‘No, Papa,’ said Minerva. ‘I shall look at the shops and buy a few things for Mama and I shal
l meet you here in time for dinner.’

  Minerva edged her way along the crowded street, glad that she was wearing her best bonnet, the popular Regency hat of velvet trimmed with sealskin. The high crown was large at the top and a long ostrich plume was fastened at the right side, brought across the crown and dropped over the left ear.

  As the latest edition of La Belle Assemblée stated, ‘Everything now takes its name from our beloved Regent’. And so Minerva was also wearing the Regency jacket of cloth trimmed with narrow bias folds and edged with sealskin, and long sleeves with epaulets, the epaulets being the distinctive feature of any garment labelled Regency.

  She attracted a deal of unwelcome attention from several obvious Corinthians who were making their way to the horse fair and wished she had brought one of the maids along. There were some ladies promenading with some of the men, but they were so scantily dressed, so rouged, so outrageous, that Minerva could only surmise she was seeing for the first time that mysterious class of women referred to in whispers as Cyprians.

  Still, she managed to complete her shopping without being harassed. The gentlemen were not yet too well to go since they did not wish to addle their brains with wine before the bidding, and so they had not yet become obnoxious. Minerva suddenly wondered how her frivolous sister, Annabelle, was faring with Lady Wentwater.

  Annabelle pushed open the tall iron gates that led to Lady Wentwater’s house and dragged her feet up the drive. She was in the sulks, with all the attendant miseries of having a thoroughly good fit of the sulks with no one about to inflict them on.

  Spoilt by her older sister’s indulgence, spoilt by parental neglect, Annabelle was a prey to fits of nervous boredom and temper tantrums.

  Lady Wentwater was famous for her lack of money and acid tongue. Her large, draughty, dilapidated mansion was covered in so much ivy that it looked like a vast tree house.

  The sky was gray and the wind howled mournfully through the skeletal trees in the drive.

  Annabelle rang the bell, remembered it did not work, and petulantly kicked at the door with one bronzed half boot.

  It was opened by one of Lady Wentwater’s ancient footmen who informed Miss that her ladyship was in the back saloon.

  Lady Wentwater was a small, dumpy woman, like a lump of dough into which someone had pushed currants for eyes and a piece of cinnamon stick for a mouth. Her clothes were old and musty and smelled of some horrible things, two of which a lady was not supposed to know about.

  ‘Where’s Miss Armitage?’ she wheezed. The pug on her lap wheezed as well, the clock on the mantel wheezed prior to striking the hour, and the servant bringing in the tea tray wheezed in reply. It was as if the whole world had become one large all-encompassing bout of asthma.

  ‘Minerva has gone to the horse fair at Hopeminster with Papa,’ said Annabelle, sitting down dismally beside the tea tray and eyeing the tiny assortment of stale confections on the cake plate.

  ‘Gone to bid for one filly and auction off the other,’ gasped her ladyship.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You ain’t s’posed to. Drink your tea and read. What have you brought?’

  ‘I didn’t bring anything,’ said Annabelle. ‘I thought you supplied the books.’

  ‘Address me as my lady when you speak to me, girl!’

  ‘My lady,’ said Annabelle through thin lips.

  ‘That’s better. Well, since your sister ain’t here, you may read this. But don’t tell her, mind! She don’t like novels and she would preach me to death!’

  Somewhat startled to learn that this formidable lady was afraid of her sister, Annabelle drank the tea which she was sure had been brewed from tea dust, returned canisters and impedimenta back to the teapoy, and asked for the book and some extra candles, for the room was growing excessive dim.

  After much grumbling, Lady Wentwater agreed to the ordering of candles, insisting cheap tallow ones be brought.

  No one had ever found out much about Lady Wentwater, thought Annabelle, as she waited for the candles to be lit. No Wentwater appeared in the peerage, and yet no one had thought to challenge Lady Wentwater or call her an imposter. She dubbed herself a widow, but of the late Lord Wentwater, there was no lingering sign; no portrait or miniature.

  A tiny fire crackled on the hearth, warming Lady Wentwater’s musty skirts and vanishing in the frigid air before it reached Annabelle. Defiantly Annabelle hitched her own chair nearer the fire and asked whether my lady wished her to begin reading at the beginning of the book. It was Mr Hugh Walpole’s, The Castle of Otranto.

  ‘No, girl, begin at the marked page. Page 401.’

  Annabelle gloomily opened the book. It would have been lovely to begin at the beginning, instead of reading a bit at the end, where one did not know who all these characters were, or what they had been up to.

  She began to read in a clear, loud voice, convinced that anyone of Lady Wentwater’s age must be deaf.

  ‘“What! is she dead? cried he, in wild confusion.

  ‘“A clap of thunder at that instant shook the castle to its foundations; the earth rocked, and the clank of more than mortal armour was heard behind. Frederic and Jerome thought the last day was at hand. The latter, forcing Theodore along with them, rushed into the court. The moment Theodore appeared, the walls of the castle behind Manfred were thrown down with a mighty force, and the form of Alfonso, dilated to an immense magnitude, appeared in the centre of the ruins.

  ‘“Behold in Theodore the true heir of Alfonso! said the vision.

  ‘“And having pronounced these words, accompanied by a clap of thunder, it ascended solemnly towards heaven, where the clouds parting asunder, the form of St Nicholas was seen, and receiving Alfonso’s shade, they were soon wrapped from mortal eyes in a blaze of glory.”’

  Snore!

  Annabelle looked up and stared in disbelief at Lady Wentwater.

  She was asleep.

  How on earth could anyone fall asleep during such a splendid tale.

  Annabelle eyed the book greedily. There would be no harm in taking a quick look at page one …

  The early winter’s evening settled down over the scrubby estate and the fields outside. Crows winged to the rooky wood, and the shadows thickened in the musty room. The rising wind howled about the eaves.

  All of a sudden something made Annabelle lift her eyes from the page. The door handle was slowly turning.

  Slowly, with a great creaking of hinges, the heavy mahogany door to the saloon swung open.

  A tall, cloaked figure stood on the threshold.

  Annabelle’s hand flew to her lips and she let out a little gasp of fear. The figure, looming in the shadows, seemed to have walked out of the Gothic tale on her lap.

  And then it strode into the candlelight.

  It was revealed as no horrible spectre, but as a tall young man with a pleasant open face, a quantity of light brown hair artistically arranged in the Windswept, wrapped in a many-caped Garrick which he swung from his shoulders, revealing an impeccably tailored bottle green coat over buff breeches and glossy hessians. The whiteness of his cravat made Annabelle blink.

  He made a magnificent leg. ‘I am Guy Wentwater, my lady’s nephew. Do you exist? Have you a name? Or are you some faery vision?’

  Annabelle dimpled prettily and rose and dropped him a low curtsy.

  ‘I am Miss Annabelle Armitage,’ she said. ‘I was reading to your aunt but she fell asleep. It’s very late. I must leave.’

  His pale blue eyes mocked her. ‘So soon? And we so newly acquainted? But you shall not escape me. I am come to stay with my aunt. Since she is asleep, I shall escort you home.’

  He picked up the book and studied its title with some amusement.

  ‘Particularly as you will no doubt be seeing ghouls and ghosts behind every bush.’

  ‘I do not read novels,’ said Annabelle primly. ‘I was merely entertaining Lady Wentwater.’

  ‘And she so fast asleep? Come along Miss Annabelle
…’

  Minerva began to wish she had not delayed to study the architecture of Hopeminster church.

  The streets were narrow and dark because of the overhanging Tudor buildings and, as she made her way to the inn, although it was only half past three in the afternoon, the day was already dark and the streets were full of noisy and roisterous bloods.

  Normally calm and poised in the familiar surroundings of the village of Hopeworth, Minerva became nervous and bewildered in the crowded streets of the county town. Twice she took a wrong turning, twice she had to sidestep a group of noisy men who tried to bar her way.

  At last, she recognized the main street and hurried towards the inn.

  At the entrance to the courtyard stood an elegant group of three gentlemen and two ladies.

  The gentlemen were dressed in the first style of fashion, as were the ladies. They all seemed very tall and grand, and made Minerva feel small and countrified.

  She was about to edge past them since they took up most of the entrance to the courtyard, when one of the tallest of the men turned and looked full at her.

  For some reason, she felt breathless and flurried and her hands began to shake, and before she knew quite what had happened, she had dropped all her parcels.

  Without waiting to see if any of the group were going to help, Minerva stooped to retrieve her possessions.

  One of the lady’s voices, high and petulant, came to her ears. ‘If I had a lady’s maid as clumsy as that, I would dismiss her on the spot.’

  As she blushed with humiliation, a mocking masculine voice quite near her ear, said, ‘Come, Amaryllis. A lady’s maid would not sport such a fetching bonnet. Allow me, ma’am.’

  Half crouched over her parcels, Minerva noticed that the tallest man was also stooping to help her, while his companions looked on.

  ‘There,’ he said in a languid voice. ‘I think I have them all, ma’am, apart from those that you have yourself. ’Strordinary, fatiguing sort of business, parcel-collection, heh!’

  Minerva straightened up at the same time as the gentleman, and looked up into his face. A pair of cat-like green eyes looked down at her with an unwinking stare. Holding her parcels cradled in one arm, he swept off his curly-brimmed beaver with the other and made her a low bow. His hair gleamed in the light of the inn lantern, curled and scented and pomaded. He was wearing a blue swallow-tailed coat with silver buttons over doeskin breeches and glossy black hessian boots with jaunty little tassels. He had a beautifully shaped mouth, too beautiful for a man. His rather heavy lids gave him a slightly dissipated air. The hands, now holding both parcels and hat, were long and very white with polished nails.