Chapter Seventeen

 

 

 

Half an hour later, a hastily packed bag in her hand and the hood of her cloak concealing her face, Sophie slipped out of the garden room door and through the mews towards the King’s Head.

Her sense of relief at escaping was dampened by the pain of not being able to say goodbye to Hal. Which is ridiculous, she told herself firmly, I am just going to have to become accustomed to being apart from him. They had been thrown together for almost a week, now it felt as though part of her body had been cut away.

As she hurried through the crowded, cobbled streets, Sophie reflected that he would soon forget her, be glad he was not obliged to marry her. He would propose to the very eligible Lady Hariette Miller and doubtless she would read of their doings in the social columns of the smartest journals.

In the bustling inn yard she realised that she should have purchased a ticket in advance and this caused some delay while it was established that there was room and, luckily, an inside seat. Sophie had no desire to spend the night bouncing along on one of the exposed rooftop benches.

The groom hoisted her portmanteau on board and Sophie had one foot on the step of the coach when a hand grasped her shoulder and pulled her back. ‘Oh, no, you don’t!’

‘Hal. Let me go. Please.’

‘You all right, miss?’ The coach driver rolled over, a massive figure in his many-caped greatcoat, his long whip in his fist. ‘This gentleman bothering you?’

Hal turned to the man and spoke quietly to him for a moment. Sophie took the opportunity to scramble into the coach and take her seat, only to be unceremoniously hauled out again, this time with the coachman standing by, commenting to all who cared to listen that it was scandalous the way young people carried on these days, running away from home and upsetting their guardians.

‘He is not my guardian!’ Sophie protested.

‘Stand aside there,’ the coachman called, totally ignoring her and climbing on to the box. ‘Let go their heads, Joe.’

Her portmanteau was tossed down, narrowly missing her foot, and the mail rattled out of the yard, to the sound of a long blast on the horn.

 

Hal found himself dizzy with relief and with an armful of indignant, struggling woman.

‘You must see – ’ Sophie began.

He kissed her. It was neither the time, nor the place, given that they were standing in the middle of the yard of one of York’s busiest hostelries, and the fact that after a startled gasp she began kissing him back was neither here nor there.

Eventually he lifted his head, but continued to hold her close, despite the fact that they were the object of a great deal of interest.

‘Did he say he were her guardian?’ one ostler asked another, not bothering to keep his voice down. ‘Funny way for a guardian to carry on, if you ask me.’

 ‘People are staring at us,’ Sophie protested.

He held her even tighter. ‘I do not care if the Archbishop and the full Minster choir is watching. We stay here until you tell me what you think you are doing.’

Sophie glanced up. She looked miserable. ‘This is impossible, Hal, you know that. I can’t marry you.’

‘This morning you agreed to be my wife. What has changed, Sophie?’

‘I realised I should not do it. I am not the wife for you and your family do not want me to marry you, I know that. And if the story of the last few days comes out, there would be such a scandal. It would affect John and Emma and Elizabeth and you...’ Her voice broke with a wobble that was so unlike her that it took him a moment to realise what must be wrong.

‘I see what it is, you are tired and emotionally drained from all that has happened. You coped wonderfully and now the emergency is over you are overwhelmed.’ He freed her from his embrace, to a collective sigh of regret from the interested audience, and just touched her lips with his fingertips. ‘And perhaps there are things you are... nervous about. You should talk to Emma. Now, come along home.’ He tucked her hand through his arm, stooped to pick up the portmanteau and steered her firmly out of the yard, ignoring the onlookers.

Sophie walked along meekly enough, although he began to sense that perhaps he had misjudged matters somewhat. By the time they reached the Minster precincts he felt he was escorting a small volcano, about to erupt at any moment.

‘Sophie? ls something wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Sophie demanded. ‘How dare you patronise me like that? Tell me I had coped wonderfully but that you have now decided that I’m falling prey to feminine vapours. I thought George was smug, but this… this…’

 She broke off abruptly and they exchanged smiles and bows with a passing lady Hal recognised vaguely as one of Emma’s neighbours. ‘Wrong?’ she continued in more moderate tones when the woman was past them. ‘You manhandle me in the middle of York, for all to see, then you patronise me and speak to me as if I was a silly girl prone to the vapours. How do you expect me to feel, Hal?’

‘I know how I want you to feel,’ he said slowly, and the look in her eyes told him she knew what he meant.

‘I...I really feel that this is not the right thing,’ she began, then broke off abruptly when a young cleric stopped in front of them and doffed his hat.

‘Miss Haydon, good evening. We meet again, so soon.’

Hal stood and waited to be introduced, not wanting to snub this inopportune arrival who was presumably one of his brother’s fellow clerics.

‘Allow me to introduce myself, sir, Henry Winstanley, at your service. I can claim long acquaintance with Miss Haydon. Imagine my surprise and delight when we met this morning, quite by chance.’

Sophie’s hand tightened convulsively on his sleeve before she relaxed it quickly.

Hal glanced down at her but her head was slightly averted and he could not see her expression. He returned the other man’s bow with a slight inclination of his head. ‘I am Weybourne. Are you one of the clerics of the Minster, Mr Winstanley?’

‘Yes, indeed, Your Grace. Newly appointed here from a curacy in North Wales. York is delightful, is it not? I collect you must be visiting your brother, my senior colleague, Lord John Wyatt.’

His smile was ingratiating, his tone insinuating and Hal felt an instinctive dislike. Little toad-eater.

Beside him Sophie was fidgeting. ‘So pleasant to have encountered you again, Mr Winstanley,’ she said. ‘But we must hurry on, Lady John is expecting us. Good evening.’

‘You did not seem very pleased to see an old acquaintance,’ Hal observed once they were out of earshot. ‘Not that his timing was very good. Now, where were we?’

‘If you insist on discussing this in the street, then stop and listen to my answer. I am not going to marry you, not now, not ever.’

Definitely nerves and reaction. ‘What about the Archbishop?’ Hal enquired mildly, opening the garden gate for her.

‘Oh, to the devil with the Archbishop,’ Sophie said, much to the shocked amazement of Grayling who had just opened the door.

‘Good evening, Grayling,’ Hal said, and handed the butler the portmanteau.

‘Dinner will shortly be served, Your Grace, Miss Haydon. May I bring some refreshment to the drawing room for you?’

‘Thank you,’ Sophie said tightly, ‘but I must go and dress for dinner.’ She had one foot on the bottom stair when his sister came running down, hair unpinned, a handkerchief clasped in one hand.

Hal leaned against the wall and braced himself for drama.

‘Sophie! He has captured you. How can you ever forgive me?’

Grayling sighed audibly, and vanished through the green baize door to the servants’ quarters. Lucky man.

Sophie rocked back and stepped down hastily into the hall. ‘Elizabeth, what are you talking about?’

‘I betrayed you,’ Elizabeth pronounced, her blue eyes brimming with tears. ‘I did not mean to say anything, but Hal was so unkind he made me lose my temper and I told him what I had overheard between you and Emma.’

‘So it was you at the chamber door,’ Sophie said. ‘I thought it wasn’t latched properly. Never mind that now, Elizabeth. Please, let me pass. I must change  and I am far too tired to deal with hysterics.’

Elizabeth, burst into tears and fled upstairs, wailing, ‘I knew it. You will never forgive me, never.’

‘Women,’ Hal said with a groan.

‘You might just as well say men,’ Sophie snapped as she started to climb the stairs. ‘This is all your fault – if you did not insist on marrying me I could be home in Hertfordshire and no one would be any the wiser. And if you were not so horrible to Elizabeth she would not spend all her time having the vapours.’

‘I am not horrible to her,’ Hal protested. ‘She has been indulged all her life. If there is a fault in her upbringing, that is it. And I would be obliged if you did not meddle in my family affairs.’

‘Meddle?’ Sophie came back down until her eyes were on a level with his. ‘Who involved me in your affairs in the first place? You were quite happy to let me meddle when you thought I could provide Elizabeth with respectability. And now you are determined on forcing me to become her sister-in-law.’

‘I am not forcing you to do anything,’ he growled. ‘I am merely representing to you the only way out of the situation your unconventional behaviour has landed you in.’

‘How dare you blame me? My behaviour is at fault? My unconventionality suited your purposes very well when you needed female assistance. Now you are behaving just like George.’ That was probably the worst insult she could think of.

In the brief, heavy silence that followed the study door opened and John looked out. ‘What is going on out here? I am trying to write a sermon. Oh...’ He hastily shut the door again when they both glared at him.

‘You are behaving like a fishwife,’ Hal retorted feeling his own temper unravel. ‘I am beginning to feel some sympathy for your unfortunate brother if he has to put up with such headstrong, unladylike, intemperate behaviour.’

‘Well, if I am so comprehensively unsatisfactory, it is fortunate you have discovered it before the Archbishop married us. Will you now accept that our connection is at an end?’

Hal regarded her between narrowed lids. ‘After this exhibition you may take it that I am as unwilling to marry you as you are to marry me. However, I know my duty: I intend going through with this marriage come hell or high water. And if you continue to object, you should reflect that if you had done your duty and remained at home in obedience to your brother, we would not find ourselves in this coil now.’

Before Sophie could speak, or even react, he had turned on his heel and marched into the sitting room, his shoulders rigid, his back straight. He closed the door behind him with controlled emphasis then found himself confronting Emma’s lap dog that looked horribly as though it was about to be sick. He opened the door again, shooed it out and then leaned back against the panels, seething.

 

Sophie had no very clear recollection of going upstairs or letting herself into her room but she found herself lying across her bed, pummelling the pillows as her anger ebbed. Finally she sat up, pushing her hair off her hot face and saw her own reflection in the mirror across the room. A dishevelled young woman stared back at her.

So now she knew what Hal really thought of her. She had known he desired her, had believed that he liked her and enjoyed her company, found her spirit and independence stimulating. Now she knew his true opinion, spoken in anger with all restraint abandoned. He considered her wayward, disobedient and had made it quite clear that the independence which she thought he had admired and enjoyed was a severe flaw in her character. He obviously had far more in common with his clerical brother than she had realised.

Sophie swung her legs off the bed and smoothed down her crumpled gown. There was cold water on the washstand and she splashed her cheeks until the colour subsided and she felt she could face her maid. She pulled the ribbon out of her curls and shook them, disguising their disorder, then tugged the bell pull.

 

If tea had been dreadful, it was as nothing compared to the atmosphere at dinner, Sophie thought. Emma, looking pale and drawn, was obviously anxious that John would find out about Sophie’s escape to the mail coach and her own part in it. Elizabeth, who had taken her place at dinner on her best behaviour, was startled by a sharp reprimand from her sister-in-law for having overfed the lap dog with macaroons.

‘Poor little Pippin was most unwell – and in the front hall,’ Emma scolded. ‘He has a delicate constitution and it was very thoughtless of you, Elizabeth, to give him all those sweetmeats.’

If her intention had been to prevent the girl revealing any of the afternoon’s events, Sophie thought she succeeded only too well. Elizabeth, pouting tremulously, spent the rest of the meal pushing her food around her plate and irritating both her brothers by producing martyred sighs every few minutes.

John, presumably because he had overheard part of the quarrel between Hal and Sophie, kept launching into awkward conversation gambits to cover up the chilly silence between them. ‘The Bishop of Exeter was kind enough to remark upon that article of mine I wrote on the various problems in studying the Ephesians. He went so far as to say that it would become the established work and be of great interest to future scholars.’

‘How gratifying,’ Hal remarked with a heavy irony lost on no one round the dinner table.

Sophie shot him a look of reproach and said, ‘It sounds fascinating, Mr Wyatt, I do hope you will allow me to read it.’

Hal’s eyebrows rose. ‘Your range of academic interests constantly amazes me, Sophie. Perhaps John could arrange for you to attend a lecture on the subject.’

‘l would not dream of doing so without the permission of my hostess,’ Sophie retorted sweetly. ‘And, naturally, with an appropriate escort. One meets all kinds of men at these lectures, I understand. Positive rakes, some of them.’

But there was little pleasure in sparring with Hal. No matter what he said, what he did, she loved him. She looked across the table at his austere profile, turned towards Emma, and her heart missed a beat. More than anything she wanted to throw herself into his arms, but how could she?

If she had thought it wrong to marry him before, when at least she had believed him to like her and enjoy her company, how much worse would it be now, after the bitter words that had passed between them?

 

‘Oh what a relief to have the house so peaceful,’ Emma sighed, pushing a heap of cut flower stems on the table to one side and sinking into the chair. Pippin, no longer in disgrace, jumped on to her lap and settled down contentedly on her apron. She absent-mindedly fondled the dog’s ears as she looked at Sophie, who had just wandered into the garden room. ‘What have you been about, my dear?’

Sophie sat down opposite her and reflected that the one good outcome of the situation she found herself in was that it had brought the two of them closer together. ‘I have mended the hem on that sprigged muslin you lent me which I caught on the grate the other morning and I have finished matching those silks you found in such a tangle.’

‘Thank you, so much. Elizabeth would normally have done it, but the mood she is in, she would have made them worse, not better.’

‘Perhaps her ride with Hal this afternoon will help. It does seem to be a nice day.’ They both looked out of the glazed doors into the small back garden. The breeze was up, tossing the new green leaves of the lilac, but the sunshine was strong and bright. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ Sophie suggested. ‘Or perhaps you are expecting callers?’

She hoped not. After a wretched night, with those bitter words of Hal’s still running over and over in her head, a quiet stroll with Emma was all she could tolerate. The day before, being Sunday, had been filled with church attendances. There were guests for luncheon and it had passed with no real contact between Hal and herself. And no sign of Henry, thank goodness.

‘It is not my usual day for morning callers,’ Emma said. She looked cheerful at the thought of getting out of the house. ‘And with John occupied at the Deacon’s all day, I am entirely at your disposal, Sophie. Where shall we go? I have some lace to match for my new bonnet, but after that I am quite at liberty. Would you care to go to the circulating library?’

‘I have been missing my weekly visits to Hookham’s, I must confess,’ Sophie admitted. ‘Do you enjoy poetry? I understand that Mr Coleridge’s Kubla Khan has finally been published and I believe, although I have not yet seen it, that Lord Byron’s The Siege of Corinth is also out now.’

‘Byron?’ Emma looked faintly alarmed. ‘I do not think that John would approve of his works. And Mr Coleridge does have a somewhat strange reputation... Although I suppose it is on a historical subject,’ she added vaguely.

‘Do not worry. If Lord Byron’s poem is available, I promise I will read it in my room and not allow Elizabeth to borrow it.’

‘Oh dear, just when we thought we were free,’ Emma said as the door knocker rattled. ‘Who can that be?’

‘Mr Winstanley, my lady,’ Grayling announced, offering Emma a silver salver with one calling card on it. ‘A young clerical gentleman. Are you at home, ma’am?’

‘Mr Winstanley?’ Emma’s brow furrowed as she studied the card, then cleared. ‘Oh, yes, I collect Lord John did speak of a young curate, newly arrived from Wales. I am sure he would wish us to offer hospitality. Please show him in, Grayling.’