Danse De La Folie, Page 2

  “Tarval Hall?”

  “Our house. It is—”

  “Kit! “ A door beyond Clarissa’s range of vision opened with some force. She winced as a voice said in a forceful whisper, “You were supposed to lie low. Now he’ll ride rusty, and no mistake.”

  Her companion looked up apologetically. “Oh, Ned, I couldn’t let her wake up, and not know what happened.”

  “Hey day! Come help me with the—the trim. We have to bring her in, and the wind is up something fierce.”

  Kit got to his feet with a swift and apologetic smile, and left.

  Clarissa tried to move her aching head as little as possible while taking in her surroundings. She lay on the floor of a bare cabin. Her gown had been thoughtfully smoothed about her ankles, and a sack of some sort had been folded and put beneath her head. Where were Mr. Bede, Rosina, Aunt Sophia and the others?

  Presently the door was opened again with a clatter, and this time two men came in. A lantern swinging in one’s hand played light crazily over his grizzled features as he said, “Come, missy, and pull your cloak about ye.”

  As Clarissa got slowly to her feet the second figure sprang into the room to offer an arm. The light of the lantern on the shelf showed Kit’s concerned face. The ship under her feet was rolling steadily, and Clarissa fought for balance.

  As soon as they stepped up on deck the cold air turned into a strong, icy wind. Sleet ripped at her clothes, and yanked her hair free of its loosened pins. Clarissa squinted about her, and Kit shouted, “This way! The rowboat is waiting.”

  “My aunt,” Clarissa replied, but the wind shredded her feeble voice at her lips.

  “Please! You must come away!” Kit shouted.

  “My aunt—my father’s steward.” Clarissa lifted her voice.

  “They’re in the other boat,” a new voice spoke at her elbow. She looked up as lightning flickered, meeting a searching gaze, grayish green, the color of the sea. This gentleman was older than Kit. “I’m desolately sorry for the accident but we shall contrive to get you to safety,” he shouted, and Clarissa thought he sounded like a gentleman.

  The grizzled man took her arm, and guided her to the side of the yacht. There was only a rope ladder, which swung as the ship rolled and tossed. Sprays of water splashed up to sting her face. “Can you manage?” Kit called, his voice high.

  Clarissa gripped her skirts firmly at the knee with one hand, too frightened to reply. With her other hand she grasped the rail and eased one foot over the side, feeling for the swaying rope. The older man took a strong grip on one of her arms as she felt her way down, rung by rung. The wind pulled at her, and the movement of the ship made it seem she would fall into the darkly boiling water below, and be lost forever.

  But then someone yelled, “Hi there! Drop now!” as arms clasped around her middle. She was lowered to a wooden bench in a pitching rowboat. Other figures were dim lumps about her; there was a high, thin sound, like a kitten in a closet, which she recognized as Aunt Sophia’s wailing voice.

  The rowboat was pushed from the side of the cutter, and it seemed that the wind redoubled its fury. Clarissa could not discern any division between the high sea-waves and the low and thunderous clouds.

  Aunt Sophia sat as rigid as a stone, and so Clarissa took hold of her, using her own weight to try to get her aunt to move with the movement of the boat.

  Clarissa was frightened, more than she had ever been in her life, but even as the boat was tossed and huge spumes of winter-cold water splashed across their faces she was aware of a feeling of exhilaration.

  Two men rowed mightily, often ruddering the little craft as the storm flung them toward the shore. Then the men jumped over the sides, and held tightly to the boat so that the fast breakers would not push it to crash on the shore.

  The rowboat beached itself with a swift motion, jarring them from their benches to the hard sand. Aunt Sophia fell, shrieking, and would not get up. Clarissa tried but could not budge the heavy, rain-soaked woman. Bulky-coated sailors came to Clarissa’s aid, and she gestured wordlessly toward her aunt. Supported by the two men, the older woman was lifted to her feet.

  Clarissa followed, joined by three bent figures: she barely recognized Rosina and Bardle, Aunt Sophia’s maid, Becky behind them. They stepped carefully; their thin half-boots did not protect their feet from sharp stones.

  When they stopped, Clarissa made out the welcome sight of two carriages, and horses stamping and shaking their heads. Weak yellow light flickered in several storm lamps.

  One of the carriage doors was pulled open, and a lamp set on its floor. Aunt Sophia was handed in first, where she collapsed at full length across one of the seats, moaning piteously. When one of their rescuers held out a carriage rug for the women to put across their laps, Aunt Sophia snatched it, and wrapped it securely about herself.

  “Aunt Sophia, you will have to make room for another,” Clarissa said breathlessly as she stepped in and took the seat opposite her aunt. “It will be warmer, so.” Clarissa motioned Bardle to take the place next to her aunt, and beckoned her own maids to crowd in beside her.

  The lantern light shifted wildly as the man who had helped her began to shut the door. His face was obscured by a high, thick muffler and a hat pulled low over his forehead and ears. All she saw were two sea-hued eyes looking back at her appraisingly. She recognized the eyes as belonging to the commander on board the cutter.

  “I apologize for the inconvenience, ladies,” the man said, speaking in the accents of a gentleman. She had to admit, if only to herself, that she felt a degree of easement in this fact, though she was very well aware that persons of high degree could be as untrustworthy as anyone else.

  As she studied him, he studied her.

  Braced as he was for vapors and hysteria, instead he found the youngest of the rescued females calm, with a faint air of question in an intelligent face. She seemed unaware of her sodden clothing and hair half-tumbled down her back.

  He half-stretched out a hand. “The steward said the yacht belongs to a Lord Chadwick.”

  “My father,” Clarissa said.

  “Whither were you bound?”

  “To Holland,” she said, her lips bluish, and the lantern light creating dancing light motes in her eyes.

  “Then you were very much off course,” he said, recollecting himself. “I am afraid that your luggage was lost as well as the yacht. But your Mr. Bede informs me that all persons are accounted for.”

  “I am truly grateful to hear that.” Clarissa spoke with feeling, shivering in the cold air coming inside the coach. “May I know who is our benefactor?”

  “Hardly that, in the circumstances.” The man bowed with a rueful air. “I am St. Tarval, and I assure you — little as we look it — we are indeed civilized. With your permission, I will take you to my home, Tarval Hall, where my sister, Lady Catherine —” His voice betrayed a tremor of laughter. “— will look after you.”

  St. Tarval? Had she not heard that name before? Clarissa’s head hurt too much to think past the conviction that she had not met anyone of that name. She thanked him, then before any further words could be exchanged, a man yelled incomprehensibly from somewhere outside the coach.

  The gentleman touched his hat courteously, and pulled the door shut.

  After a couple jerking false starts, the carriage began to move.

  “Might we share that rug more evenly?” Clarissa asked her aunt. “Becky here is quite chilled.”

  “And leave me to die of the cold?” Aunt Sophia pulled the closer to her chin.

  Clarissa stretched out the second rug between the rest of them, each taking a corner. She suppressed the desire to take more than her share when icy water trickled inside her sleeve, and dripped from her hair down the back of her neck.

  Clarissa said, “Rosina? Becky? Are you injured?”

  Even in her distress, Aunt Sophia made a soft noise of disgust. She had stated so many times that it was inappropriate to use Christian names with
maids, that they would take advantage, and that it would give them airs above their station. But Clarissa had known both all her life, and refused to change now.

  Rosina said, “We did not come away with the vinaigrette, but I did find your trinket box.” There was a wet slap as she struck her bosom.

  Clarissa smiled in the darkness. “Thank you, Rosina. Such loyalty can only be repaid in kind. You may take your pick of anything in that box, when next we are in comfort.”

  Rosina’s shivering words of thanks were cut short by a sniff of disgust from Mrs. Latchmore, who pulled the rug over her head. Silence settled over the coach’s occupants, each of whom was endeavoring unsuccessfully to stay warm.

  The horses were splashing along at a good pace in spite of the wind, when they slowed, then stopped, the coach rocking. Clarissa leaned forward, listening to men’s voices shouting. She could not hear the words; the door was violently pulled open, and the boy named Kit stood, clutching his lantern with one hand, the other raised to his mouth. His eyes were round with terror.

  “What —” began Clarissa.

  “’Tis the horrid Riding Officer,” Kit said, his voice high and very near tears.

  “Riding Officer?” Clarissa repeated, wondering if she ought to revise her estimation of Kit’s age lower.

  Kit glanced over a hunched shoulder, his under lip caught between small white teeth then he turned large, sooty-lashed eyes Clarissa’s way.

  “It — he knows me,” he whispered, tears barely held in check, and with a sense of shock, Clarissa saw past the old coat and the breeches: Kit was a female.

  THREE

  A female dressed in male attire? Clarissa had never heard of such a thing, outside of the sort of plays of a hundred years previous that her governess would not permit her to read. Riding Officers, females dressed as... were they fallen in amongst thieves? Riding Officers were employed to investigate practitioners of the smuggling trade, or worse.

  A single glance at Kit’s terrified face, and Clarissa instinctively felt that she could dismiss the ‘worse.’

  Just as Clarissa had no notion of herself as heroine, she had no idea that she had just met her fellow heroine. The dance had not begun; the prelude still played. For my just-met heroines, the dark, wintry night was fraught with new dangers.

  The instincts of a kind heart prompted Clarissa. She stretched out a hand, and grasped Kit’s wet sleeve. “You must come in with us. Put off that hat,” she whispered, glancing at her aunt, who still had the rug pulled rug about her head.

  “Where should I…” Kit looked about wildly.

  “Sit upon it.”

  Kit did as told, while Clarissa tore at the clasp of her sodden, woefully inadequate cloak.

  She flung the cloak around Kit. “Tug it close,” she whispered, and motioned for Becky to take Bardle’s place on the bench opposite. Kit sank into Becky’s place next to Rosina, casting Clarissa a grateful look before Clarissa snatched the lantern and blew out the light. She set the lantern at her feet, and pulled a fold of Rosina’s cloak across her lap and over the lantern.

  No one spoke. Not many minutes later, tramping feet approached, and the carriage door was opened again. A big lantern was held up, casting its light over the occupants of the carriage. A weathered man glanced inside, his eyes narrowing when he recognized Kit.

  “Ho, Lady Catherine,” he exclaimed.

  Clarissa did not like his tone. “And who might you be?”

  “My name is Talkerton, and I am on Official King’s Business. And who might you be, Miss?”

  “I am Miss Harlowe, daughter of Viscount Chadwick. My aunt, Mrs. Latchmore, as you see, is quite ill. Our yacht foundered. These people were kind enough to rescue us.”

  “That’s what he says, or much the same, and there ain’t nobbut in t’other rattler, neither.”

  Aunt Sophia moaned loudly again, and her head emerged from the rug. Talkerton gazed at her, and when she moaned in rising shrillness that he should help her, save her, that she was about to expire from cold, he shut the coach door rather hastily. Soon the carriage began to roll.

  The women sat for a long time in silence. Presently there was the sound of wet cloth moving, and a cold hand reached across Rosina, found Clarissa’s equally cold and sodden gloved one, and squeezed it. “Thank you,” Kit whispered.

  Clarissa said nothing, but sat back tiredly to think over the startling events of a night that seemed destined to go on forever.

  The ride was long. Clarissa’s headache returned, and she could not contain the chills shuddering through her body.

  The carriage rolled directly to a huge door in an impressive old-fashioned columned façade. The house was lit welcomingly, and as soon as the ladies were assisted out of the carriage, they were bustled indoors and straight to the state apartments which, they were informed, were “all they had for visitors,” by a fat, pleasant faced housekeeper.

  Clarissa scarcely noticed the others being escorted in different directions by unfamiliar figures. The throbbing in her head had increased. She was vaguely aware of a grand hall very much in the old style, and beyond that an antechamber with a fine vaulted, carved ceiling. She was escorted to a huge state bedchamber complete with thirty foot canopy above the bed, and a railing around. On the other side of the room stood a massive marble fireplace with a copper tub set up before it. A kitchen maid poured steaming water into the tub.

  The housekeeper led her beyond to a smaller cabinet-bedchamber, with the fireplace also lit, and a more accessible bed.

  “I am obliged to say, ma’am, that we are somewhat shorthanded here, and I am to convey the marquess’s apologies.”

  “I understand. Please see to my aunt, and I shall be fine lying next to this fire,” Clarissa said, for she had been trained to respect her elders, and she was also disinclined to move.

  She gazed into the fire, finding it helped calm some of the pounding in her head. She was vaguely aware of voices somewhere in the vast room behind her, but did not turn; Kit, shivering in her wet shirt, waistcoat, and breeches, grasped the housekeeper’s plump, warm wrist. “Mrs. Finn, see to the young lady Miss Harlowe, as soon as you may. She took a nasty knock on the head, and the old one is just vaporish. Perhaps...” She gave a breathless laugh. “Perhaps you should give her brandy, and say it is cordial.”

  Mrs. Finn glanced into the next room, where the older woman was moaning and complaining while her sodden, shivering maid was busy chafing her hands. “You let me handle her, Lady Kitty,” Mrs. Finn said. “Did my lord get the cargo in?”

  “ Yes. That is, I think so. He and Edward went back with Scott and the men to make certain. Talkerton stopped us...”

  “That I know, and you may be sure I am going to speak to your brother, lord or no lord, about your taking part, dressed in that heathenish way. No good can come of it, or him either, smuggling, I make no mind what your Papa did in his day. And so I will tell him before he is much older. Now get you into some dry clothes. I directed Alice to wait upon you.”

  Kit fled upstairs.

  Clarissa still gazed into the fire, mildly soothed by the low voices of the two women. But rouse she must, for there was a rustle and a step, and a very young housemaid bobbed a curtsy. “Miss, I am to help you, and will have a hot bath directly. And Lady Kitty, that is, Lady Catherine, she invites you to have a late supper and tea. Right here, if you wish. And Martha is bringing chocolate if you are wishful for some.”

  Clarissa must stir, and must find the words to thank this girl. It took all her strength, but her reward within the hour was to be warm and dry, wearing a borrowed gown, and swathed in a robe of softest wool.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  Clarissa recognized Kit, who was dressed more like a Lady Catherine—or a Lady Kitty— should be, in an old-fashioned round gown. She clutched around her shoulders a knitted shawl of wool. Her thick profusion of black curls was tied back with a ribbon, framing a heart-shaped face of such loveliness that Clarissa wondered how s
he ever could have mistaken her for a boy.

  Kitty clasped her hands, her head tilted a little to one side, reminding Clarissa of a kitten hopeful of milk. “Did you say your name is Clarissa Harlowe?”

  “My mother, unfortunately, was very romantical,” Clarissa admitted, blushing. “By rights, one of my sisters should have been named for Mr. Richardson’s interesting heroine.”

  Kitty said, “Mrs. Finn shall soon bring a supper on a tray, so you need not stir from the fire. She believes we should eat before retiring, as it will give us strength to resist whatever illnesses are lurking in the night air.”

  “Thank you,” Clarissa said with real gratitude.

  “I also wished to thank you for speaking up for me as you did before Mr. Talkerton. I am persuaded, that is, I know that this is not what you are used to, and I wish to explain.”

  Clarissa looked down at the fire. “My father has had converse with the ‘Gentleman’ as I believe the free traders style themselves. As for...” Her gaze flickered toward Kitty’s gown and then away.

  Kitty hurried into speech. “I was dressed as I was to aid my brother. I have only done so at night, when they are short-handed, for I would not dare in the light of day. It has been my job to drive, but this time, I needed to go aboard to tend the helm.”

  Clarissa thought it ought not to be done at all, but forbore commenting. Several years of Aunt Sophia’s remonstrations had engendered in her a profound dislike of expatiations from the moral summit.

  Kitty, encouraged by her silence, went on. “My second brother, Ned, says that it is horrid luck that Carlisle inherited along with an exalted title equally exalted debts. And I’m sure you must know his betrothed, that is Carlisle’s, not Edward’s, for Ned is not betrothed, what I mean is, you must know her in London. And so I wish to beg of you, that no word of my... Of me, or, or any of us smuggling might reach her ears.” Kitty tipped her head again, looking anxious.

  Clarissa hastened to assure Kitty. The urge to laugh bubbled inside her at the notion of introducing the topic of smuggling into any London conversation. But she hid it, afraid to injure Kitty’s sensibilities. “To whom is your brother betrothed, pray?” she asked.