Stephanie and the Wicked Deceiver (Wild Marchmonts #2)

11. The Unfortunate Accident

Chapter 11

The Unfortunate Accident

T he Earl of Hedley and his four friends were returning to the dining room for breakfast after the morning lessons and ride. Horace Pettigrew and Stephanie went before the earl, the former at odds with his instructress who had offered him a few words of correction upon seeing him ride Derby; she said that he had been overusing his crop instead of legs.

Pettigrew thought that the girl was in competition with him, but it was not so; Stephanie simply knew herself to be a better rider and hoped to help. Pettigrew took offence because he also knew that she was correct and so he sniped back at her as he did to his sister Amabel, who was also a stronger personality than him.

Stephanie, when provoked, jeered back at Pettigrew to the amusement of Armitage, Fortescue and the earl.

‘I do not at all see,’ Horace continued, ‘why a chit like you should give Hedley fencing lessons.’ The other three men looked at him: Pettigrew’s mouth could sink them all.

‘I mean to say,’ he went on, blustering to cover himself, ‘if Hedley wishes to learn, he might be better served learning from any of us than a child who only knows how to wave her foil around under the noses of footpads.’

‘Is that how you described it, Hedley?’ enquired Stephanie, a touch affronted.

‘Certainly not!’ said Lord Fortescue stoutly. ‘Hedley said that he had been rescued by a fierce heroine who trounced the ruffians all on her own while he lay fallen.’

‘That’s not how I remem—’ began Horace. Armitage’s posterior came out of Satan’s saddle, he leaned over Pettigrew’s roan and laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder in a manner that caused him to give a slight yelp.

‘Oh, did you?’ said Stephanie, pleased. She took Hedley’s arm in the most natural way possible.

They had now dismounted in the stable yard. Hedley looked down at her and smiled. ‘Of course!’

‘Well, it was not much of a fight, you know,’ she informed the others. ‘The curs disengaged quickly and ran away.’

‘Cowards!’ opined the baronet, and Fortescue cocked a brow at him.

‘But I still say,’ Pettigrew was pursuing his point, ‘that we, as Hedley’s friends, can teach him. You just give yourself airs.’

Fortescue and Armitage looked to Hedley’s annoyed face. These lessons were as close to intimacy as Hedley could get to Stephanie (albeit that she was accompanied by the sinister Pietro), but as usual Pettigrew was oblivious.

‘ You could teach him?’ said Stephanie, as though the notion were hilarious.

‘I could, ’ replied Pettigrew stoutly.

‘I have never seen you fence, but I somehow doubt it.’ Stephanie put her head on its side as she looked at him, and Hedley was surprised she did not also stick out her tongue to make her point.

‘Well, I say! ’ said Pettigrew, outraged.

‘We could prove it now before breakfast,’ Stephanie offered. ‘If one of you gentlemen would find us foils, I will undertake to spar with you and you will see, Mr Pettigrew, if I am fit to teach Hedley.’ She wagged a finger at him, ‘But if I win, you must apologise to me, you ridiculous creature.’

‘Ridiculous creature?’ he cried.

‘We shall have it… Here at the stable yard is simplest, I think,’ said the young redhead.

Armitage had already nodded off an intelligent groom to the house, so it was not many moments before the foils arrived. The combatants took up their positions while Hedley, Armitage and Fortescue sat on a convenient hay bale and looked on.

‘What on earth are we doing?’ sighed Armitage.

‘I suppose I should stop it,’ said Hedley vaguely, but he was too amused by Stephanie’s determined stance to make a move.

‘I’m hungry,’ complained Fortescue in a voice that carried.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Stephanie, to Hedley’s delight and Pettigrew’s disgust. ‘This won’t take long.’

She was quite correct. Since she was female, Pettigrew was insistent that she took the first advance after the salute and she took full advantage to push him back. The foils danced for only a minute before Hedley gave a deep chuckle as he realised she was playing with his friend. She looked wonderful, even hampered by the long sweep of her riding dress, as she danced forward and back with a smile on her face.

‘Arm up!’ she called to Pettigrew, or ‘More wrist, you fool!’ After another minute she neatly disarmed him. While he was recovering from the shock, she ran around and behind him, hitting him with the blade on his posterior just as, on occasion, she had with her crop.

‘You brat!’ Pettigrew called and turned to her. The blade he had just retrieved was in his hand and he raised it to point at her accusingly. Too late they all saw that the button had dislodged in the fall and that Stephanie, dancing about in joy and jeering, was too close. The foil connected with her neck and Pettigrew dropped it, appalled.

The world went mad. The maid that rode with them ran forward, shouting, ‘Oh Miss!’ Hedley, Fortescue and Armitage were like bullets and arrived before her, and there was a hubbub as more grooms came into the yard.

‘Stop!’ shouted Stephanie, both arms in the air. This stopped all but Hedley, who was gently pressing his handkerchief to her neck. ‘I am quite alright.’ She tried to shake off the earl. ‘ Hold, Pietro!’

They all looked at where Stephanie’s imperious little hand was pointing. Pettigrew was now on the ground, and his own fallen foil was being held at his throat by the evil-eyed Neapolitan.

‘Pietro! It was an accident .’ Stephanie called.

The satyr Armitage was unexpectedly gentle as he removed the foil from the Italian’s fingers. Recognising the cold dead look on Pietro’s face, he muttered words to coax him back to sanity.

Horace Pettigrew scrambled up, more concerned for Stephanie than for himself. ‘Stephanie, I am desperately sorry! I—’

‘It is quite alright, silly. Just a scratch!’

Hedley had already, by dint of an imperious gesture, been given another handkerchief by Lord Fortescue and tied it around the girl’s neck to secure the pad of his own kerchief. Now she found herself in his arms.

‘ Sarah, stop!’ Stephanie said again when she realised the maid was heading to the house to alert the staff and see to her comfort. When the maid stopped, Stephanie said merely, ‘Come with us!’ She touched the shoulder of the hovering Fortescue, whose face was unusually grim, and said something in his ear.

‘What did you tell him?’ Hedley asked as he and the maid, with Pettigrew and Pietro trailing behind them, headed for the house.

‘Let us go by the kitchen,’ Stephanie instructed before she answered.

Hedley changed direction. ‘Is there much pain?’ he asked, his voice harsh.

‘A little. Not much. You could let me down now.’

‘You have had a shock.’

‘I am not missish , you know!’

He gave an ejaculation of laughter. ‘No, Stephanie, you are not missish.’ She squirmed at this and he jerked her closer. ‘Be obedient.’

She processed his last word; it was obviously not one she favoured. But he was worried, so he would not let her go. Finally, she seemed to give in and he was glad. ‘What did you say to Ben?’ Hedley asked again.

‘Just that the fencing match should not be spoken of. I fell onto a sharp stone as I dismounted. I will tell the maid the same.’

When they entered the kitchens, Stephanie said, ‘Let us not go to the dining room yet. The maid will get me some linen and a handkerchief and I will be quite well for breakfast.’

They went into his study, Pettigrew shocked and pale, while the maid was sent for basilicum powder and linen having been adjured, on her life, to tell only the tale of an awkward fall.

‘We cannot let Miss Galloway know of our fencing,’ Stephanie said. ‘It would shock her and she might then tell Morag !’

‘If your maid should wish to kill me, then I deserve it,’ Hedley murmured. ‘I am so sorry, Stephanie. I should have halted it.’

Stephanie, confused at her reaction to Hedley’s ministrations to her neck, managed to laugh. ‘It could happen to anyone – and I was once scratched in a worse manner, battered from head to toe by the branches of a tree I fell down. I hit every branch.’ This was said with a faint air of pride at a well-completed task.

Hedley touched her neck again but more as a caress than a practical action. Stephanie met his eyes briefly and saw concern, humour and pride in them. She smiled back but broke off since his hand was still at her neck. She coughed to pull herself together. His eyes were too…!

She suddenly noticed that Horace Pettigrew was still pale. Seeing Armitage enter the room, she said, ‘Oh, Sir Rupert, feed Horace some brandy, if you please. I fear he is in shock.’

‘As well the idiot might be.’ Armitage moved to the side table to pour a finger or two of the rich, dark liquid then handed it to Pettigrew, knocking his elbow to make him drink.

‘Sor—’ Horace Pettigrew began again

‘You had much better be sorry for your dreadful fencing!’ said Stephanie.

She winced as the basilicum powder was applied; she felt at a disadvantage since Hedley’s strong arms had pressed her down into the sofa so that she could be tended judiciously.

Pettigrew flushed and said miserably, ‘I will not even argue with you, for I cannot believe I hurt you, Stephanie. I am so sorr—'

‘Pooh!’ Stephanie said, more to divert her attention as Hedley’s fingers probed the wound. ‘This is nothing I tell you! I have had… Awww! ’ she yelped as the basilicum powder was pressed to the wound by a pad of folded linen.

Pettigrew laughed as his humiliation and guilt suddenly exploded, and Stephanie joined in. ‘Do you know, I think I have laughed more at you, Horace Pettigrew, than at anyone in my life?’

‘You may laugh at me as you like, Miss Marchmont,’ Pettigrew said with an air. ‘After today, I am your guilty and devoted servant forever.’

Hedley was surprised when his collar was pulled as Stephanie put her lips to his ear. ‘I have never had a gentleman servant before,’ she whispered mischievously. ‘Just watch how I will use him!’

He barked a laugh and turned to her. Their noses were just a hair’s width away from each other. She grew still, as did he, and the laughter disappeared from his eyes. His body was bent over hers; if another had entered, it could not have been other than a compromising situation. Their eyes were locked. Blood flowed to her skin, and her breath stopped.

‘Bandage the wound, will you, Hedley?’ said Lord Fortescue to break the sudden tension. ‘I could eat a goose raw!’

Dear Stephanie,

I should thank you for your letter, but can it be called such? A few scrawled, barely legible lines with so many enigmas that, once Ophelia and I had deciphered that one word meant not ‘fails’ but ‘foils’, we were hanging with bated breath to read what next you would say.

Phoebe was sure that another word was ‘footpads’ but Roseanna, shocked, could not believe it and Queenie, also shocked (they are too similar in nature to be only distant cousins), agreed. However, Phoebe and I stand firm that we have the correct reading. On the way to Reddingate you had a fight with foils against footpads and rescued someone named Hadley. Or perhaps Haslet? If I were to show your note to Mama, she would have you copy a psalm twenty times, legibly .

But we are full of questions. Where did you get the foil? Was it Pietro’s? Or did Papa keep one in the travelling carriage that we did not know of? Were you injured? Or did you actually hit someone?

We are all agreed, however, that it sounds just like you. Mama sent you off for self-reflection, and the punishment of isolation from us and being removed from the temptations of London. For the rest of us, those might be to spend too much pin money on fripperies, or perhaps eat too many delicious things and accept too many compliments from gentlemen, but for you those temptations were learning how to climb over roofs with the help of a pickpocket and jumping into the Thames to rescue stray waifs.

Stephanie laughed at this, for it was correct and it was what distinguished her from her sisters. They were all adventurous and courageous in their way, could all shoot arrows and climb trees, but Stephanie was the one who sought out the better adventures every time. Perhaps little Berthe, at eight years, was the closest to her in that regard. Berthe liked to win, to climb higher, to go further as Stephanie had always done, but with a child’s sense of competition.

Stephanie returned to her letter feeling a little ache for the absence of her family.

But I for once doubted Mama’s wisdom, for if there was a stream to fall into or a tree to fall out of, I knew you would still find it. And if there was mischief to be up to, you would find that too. Mama knows much but she does not know all of the mischief you got up to with the help of Tabitha’s key, and each of us loyal siblings have covered for you many times. There seemed to be no way to stop your death-defying stunts, but at least we were always there to save you. It must be because I am a staid married woman now…

Stephanie laughed again at her wicked sister Naomi’s ridiculous description of herself.

…but I have been concerned about you now that you are not under our eye. I feel somewhat relieved when I think about Pietro being there, though I did not see the point of Mama employing that fiendish little Italian at first. Indeed, to put a Neapolitan street thug to follow a young girl seemed bizarre, as I represented to her at the time. However, Mama replied that you were not a usual young lady, and that desperate means made for desperate measures.

As usual, our wonderful mama is quite correct. I have seen that Pietro does not restrict you (which you would endlessly resist, in any case) but does keep you safe. I have wondered what he would do if a gentleman approached you too closely, and concluded there might be a quick murder on the streets of London. I still remember the knife-throwing tricks in his troupe’s performance that made me quake in my boots. But Mama said calmly he would slay no one who did not deserve it, which made Dorian Marchmont, who was eating a peach at the time, explode with laughter and have to have his back slapped by Eliot to stop him from choking.

Anyway, when he recovered, Dorian said that such a girl as you walking the London streets was really a temptation for evil-minded gentlemen, and we all agreed. You are just too beautiful.

Stephanie stared at her reflection in the glass. Beautiful? It seemed absurd; her dark-haired sisters were beautiful, not her. The Celtic inheritance of red hair had never bothered her, but she had believed it set her apart from the beauty of her elder sisters. She had freckles, ungovernable hair and strange eyes. How was this in any way pretty?

She had received the stares of gentlemen on the streets (though Pietro’s evil eye blocked their approach) but she had merely considered that certain kinds of gentlemen took their chance with any young female where they could. Some gentlemen, said the London-wise Ophelia, had no discernment when it came to females and merely acted on their lower instincts. What lower instincts these were was a bit of a mystery to Stephanie, but she concluded that these gentlemen were like annoying little terriers who sought to attach themselves to your skirts, and some, like her brother Richard or Naomi’s husband Eliot, were noble hounds, protective and loyal.

She had seen the terrier types attach themselves to her sisters and cousins and once, when she had strayed into a salon at the London house while the girls were taking morning calls, even to her. A very persistent gentleman had followed her around for days until Pietro had told Richard.

None of Hedley’s friends had sought to attach themselves, terrier-like, so they must be noble hounds. Except Horace Pettigrew, the yapping dog, she thought with a smile. She would say that to him tonight, but he was being so nice after having hurt her that it might be difficult to get him to rise to this promising bait. Which would be a pity; she liked sparring with such an unlucky opponent.

She was sure that none of her new friends found her beautiful and it was a relief not to worry about such nonsense. It seemed, looking to the lovely Lady Cressida’s behaviour, that flirting took too much time and effort and was not always productive.

…Anyway, we all miss you and send you our love (even Richard, whose response to the arrival of your letter was, Is the brat alright? ) but you must write back and tell us more (legibly, Stephanie, I know you know how) about your life there. Are you lonely without us?

When you get this, write back by return. I mean it, Stephanie, or I will toss your favourite bow into a convenient river. (Why on earth did you bring it to London, anyway?) We worry. Morag sends Mama news of you, so I have to assume there are no actual disasters, but Mama discloses nothing, though once I saw her frown a little at something and I did not like it. Mama is to visit you (and bring you back, I hope?) after Queen Caroline's ball and the presentations.

But before then, Stephanie, before you cast this letter down and forget its existence, write back now. We worry so.

With love from us all,

Naomi.

Stephanie smiled and took up a pen. Naomi was quite right: if she delayed the task until after today’s fencing lesson, she might forget to write back even while meaning to.

She realised that Naomi’s letter was more concerned than the amusing tone suggested, for it contained none of the daily doings of Stephanie’s family that she would like to know. Though London ballrooms had not called her, she did wonder what happened to Ophelia, Phoebe, Roseanna and Queenie there. At the end of the days when Naomi, Eliot, and his sisters Ophelia and Queenie (who now lived with them in the Dower House of Tremaine Towers) had joined the Season, Stephanie had sat on Ophelia’s bed with the other girls and listened to tales of ballroom gossip and the day’s adventures such as drives in the park, or other social functions. She had generally laughed at them, but they had been so amusing to listen to and it had been entertaining to tell the girls of her day, too. Now she felt deprived of information but she pushed away the feeling and set out to write back as requested.

Her pen splattered on the page. In the spirit of legibility, she took time trimming the plume. Pulling forward a new sheet of paper, she began:

Dear Naomi,

I imagine you will show this to everyone except Mama, so it is for all of you.

The gentleman whom I aided against the footpads turned out to be a neighbour, the Earl of Hedley. The foil I used was his own, which he had dropped, due to a fall. The knaves were easily scared off and we helped Hedley back to his house on the estate of Hedley Court, which is near Reddingate.

Hedley turned out to be a good sort of man. I had the thought that he should practise the sword more, therefore I offered to help him – much to Morag’s disapproval, I should say! We went riding a time or two (with Pietro, of course, so do not lecture me on the conventions), and I was able to help him there, too. Hedley is a bit of a fashionable fribble, and his seat on a horse was quite dreadful, added to which he rode a mare far too small for his weight (he may have been a bit fearful of a stronger mount).

Anyway, he has made great progress in these last few weeks. His friends arrived a few days after I made his acquaintance and I suppose you will wish to know their names. I imagine Ophelia and Queenie might be acquainted with some of them from London, for they seem fashionable gentlemen.

Hedley’s closest friend is Sir Rupert Armitage, who is handsome, I suppose, but looks a little like the paintings of devils we saw that time in the Indies (slanted eyes, rather high cheekbones and flyaway eyebrows). Then there is Baron Fortescue, who is very nice and quietly funny in the manner of Eliot. And lastly there is a very silly friend of theirs, Horace Pettigrew. He is about your age, Naomi, or perhaps even as old as Richard, but still very silly. He has a round face, and thinks himself handsome.

Meeting them has rather foiled Mama’s punishment of solitude, for the necessity of giving lessons to Hedley has meant that I visit the Court frequently and seldom have a dinner at home. Morag was making difficulties about this absurdly, as though I were like Roseanna at the start of the Season, always hanging around gentlemen to be nice to them. But Gertrude – Miss Galloway, that is – arrived at the Court and then even Morag could not complain about me dining there, since Miss Galloway is a lady in her forties and very respectable. Anyway, I am surrounded by friends again, so do not worry that I am lonely, though I miss you all a great deal.

I hoped there might be more in your letter, like what Berthe has said to the Royals and what ructions she has caused, or how the girls are doing in the Season’s entertainments. It is hard for me to care about such nonsense as gentlemen callers, but I must admit that I miss Ophelia’s tales of ballroom intrigues. She has a trickier mind than all of us, I believe, more like Mama’s when I come to think of it.

Tabitha wrote some pages to me (which almost sent me to sleep) about a foundry she had visited, so she must be happy still.

I must go and fence with Hedley again. He was so much improved yesterday that I feared he might beat me, though he did not. It seems I still have some tricks to show him (thank goodness I trained with Sir Francis. Tell him thank you again from me, and that his pupil now has her own student!). However, it makes me anticipate today’s duel more. Will he oust me? I think, you know, that though Hedley has not much practised, he has a natural gift for me to nurture.

So do not worry that I am bored or lonely or that I am getting into scrapes, for the Hedley party keeps me from both. You would like Miss Galloway, also. She has a humorous eye like you, Naomi, and sees amusements that I do not. But she is so friendly and pleasant to be around. She must be fifteen years older than me, or even more, but she is a most practical female. Even Morag likes her, and you know she is sparing in her approval.

I won’t write more today but will seal this and send it. I have taken care that it be legible, but it was a bore to do so.

Your loving sister,

Stephanie.

Moving her sister’s letter, she discovered that the folded corner she had thought a carelessness actually concealed a postscript written diagonally.

You know that Phoebe has used her beauty to help others, but the latest is that a certain gentleman (whom we shall call Sir X) may very well have stolen an earring only to involve an innocent girl in the risk of a scandal. She is Lady Y, an heiress whom he wishes to marry. We have all tried for a solution but cannot find it. Berthe overheard and said that if Pietro were here, he could just steal it back!

Stephanie was glad she had not applied the wafer yet. After chewing the end of her quill for a moment, she wrote a postscript of her own:

About the earring… I met a marvellous man performing on the streets of London who seemed to produce objects out of thin air, move things from one person’s pocket to another’s, and finally made a tall man from the audience disappear before our very eyes. The Watch came and broke up the crowd, for apparently while he did these amazing things much robbery was going on among those assembled.

I did not care about that, but I kept my eye on him and chased him because I wanted to know how he had achieved his marvels. Pietro helped me persuade him to tell. It was quite disappointing, really. He said, ‘Do you think it was I alone who did all that?’ and of course I did. But actually, there was a whole company of people helping him do each thing when all eyes were on the one man in the stovepipe hat and red gaiters, the magician. (It turned out that the tall man who had disappeared was a dwarf sitting on a small lady’s shoulders who rolled away behind another curtain when the magician made a flourish with his cape.)

Anyway, I shall not talk about the marvels but about the company of assistants. I thought it was a great deal of trouble to go to just to pick up the pennies the crowd threw after each trick. He told me that I had never been hungry, and that each penny represented two loaves of bread to share amongst them.

In the case of Lady Y, there are enough of you to be a company of magician’s tricksters, are there not? I think so. I am not so good at planning a trick, but you and Ophelia and Phoebe ought to be, for you are all clever. And one thing that occurs to me: you have the other earring, do you not? I say so because one of the magician’s tricks used a peculiar vase that he borrowed from an audience member’s basket that we all thought was unique, but he told me later that actually there were two of them.

If Lady Y looked confident that she had recovered her earring, what might Sir X do then? If you need more ideas, you should ask Berthe. She has the most convoluted mind of us all.

The postscript had required another page, and that page did include a splatter of ink. How did Naomi write pages and pages with nary a splatter or blot? Well, thought Stephanie practically, the splatter was only at the end of a line and did not affect the legibility, just the neatness of the missive, so she found a wafer, sealed it up and gave it to her maid to have it sent on the mail that night.

Stephanie thought of last night’s dinner. The duke was splendid, she thought, not quite so splendid as her grandpapa, but he was much younger, around Papa’s age. His daughter was an enigma, but people with such bad tempers had often had unhappy lives, said Mama, and so it must be so. However, Lady Cressida’s father was so nice and friendly that she could not attribute her behaviour to him. Well, perhaps she just did not like Stephanie , just as her cousin the Earl of Tremaine did not, and there was no use in wondering why.

Lady Cressida’s spirit chafed at her father’s ban on a visit to the Court, especially as she knew that Miss Marchmont, the red-haired vixen, had no one to issue her with such a ban. Perhaps that was why she was so wild. The girl was living on her own at Reddingate with only a maid as companion, plus the house servants and the wicked swarthy groom Cressida had seen by her side that day, the one who had ridden straight at her own groom, forcing him out of his way. But the point was that Miss Marchmont had no one who could restrict her will and so she was free to impose on Hedley.

But even Cressida could not convince herself that the girl was unwelcome. However pretty her hair had been that night, she was still strange looking and no rival to her own beauty, but Miss Marchmont did not even seem threatened by this – and had largely ignored her, which was even more annoying. The gentlemen certainly seemed to treat her more as a comrade than a lady to pay court to, but they just as certainly liked the minx. It was annoying. What might this liking lead to? Even Hedley had looked amused by the girl’s despicable candour and lack of manners. Her own father, too, had laughed and chatted to the girl easily as Cressida had watched from the other end of the table.

Lady Cressida had tried to claim the earl’s attention, which he had given her, but she could not recall that any of her enticements to more intimacy were met with anything other than bland deviations into the most banal of topics. After a while she had felt the sting of the repeated rejections, however politely couched, and her papa’s remarks in the carriage had added to it.

It had not been a good night, but there was the invitation to look forward to. A day of sport, Hedley had said, and some nuncheon. Here she could display her prowess.

She believed from the chatter that Miss Marchmont thought herself a good horsewoman, but Cressida doubted she had any finesse and in the world of female sports Cressida herself was renowned. She planned her dress and knew she would rule in all particulars. Hedley, a sportsman, must be impressed; only she was a match for him.

She and Papa would likely be asked to dine but she decided that she would not drive in Papa’s carriage, but ride over on Strawberry, her magnificent and beloved mare.

She and Strawberry could do anything together. She would find a way to set her to caracole to amaze the gentlemen and Miss Galloway, as well as display herself superior to Miss Marchmont.