The Undoing Of A Lady

Oblivion did not arrive. Gradually Nat’s senses started to register information, whether he wanted it or not. He appeared to be lying on sawdust and rough stone. The floor was cold beneath his cheek. There was a sour smell in his nostrils, a smell of damp and neglect. He could hear water dripping. He raised his head, groaned, and let it fall again. He could hear voices above his head. Someone said:

“For pity’s sake, Waterhouse…”

It sounded like Miles Vickery.

Nat opened his eyes again and saw a pair of highly polished boots. Definitely Miles. He wished his friend would go away.

Someone hauled him to his feet. Dexter Anstruther this time. Damn it, why couldn’t they leave him alone? He blinked at them, squinting to get them in focus. His head was throbbing as though he had taken too much cheap wine. He tried to form some words.

“What time is it? Where am I?”

“It is eleven o’clock and you are in Skipton gaol,” Dexter said. “You were arrested last night for breach of the peace.” He pushed Nat down onto a wooden chair. Nat winced as various bruises and cuts made their presence felt.

“You’d better start talking and it had better be good,” Miles said, his face tight and white with fury. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere after we got your message last night. What the hell are you doing here and what’s been going on? Where’s Lizzie? And why is Tom Fortune telling anyone who’ll listen that he has been blackmailing you to the tune of twenty-five thousand pounds?”

“Because he has been,” Nat said. “It’s true.” He put a hand up to his head. It seemed the only way to support it.

“You bloody fool,” Miles said with blistering contempt.

“You were a blackmailer yourself once,” Nat said bitterly. For a moment he felt so angry and violent that he almost considered knocking Miles down. But to lose his friends as well as his wife would only make him feel worse. It wasn’t Miles’s fault that he was telling him some long overdue home truths. And besides, he was not sure he could stand up straight enough to hit anyone.

“So?” Miles said coldly. “That does not make it right.”

“Never mind that now,” Dexter said, always the peacemaker. “We’ll sort it out. We’ll get you out of here, too. Nat.” His voice changed, grew more urgent. “Where is Lizzie? Tom is also saying that she found out you married her for revenge and that she has left you. The on dit in the village is that she has run off with John Jerrold.”

“It’s true,” Nat said again. “I was out all night looking for her, but I do not know where they have gone.”

It was all coming back to him now. He remembered his anguished and exhausting hunt through the night, taking the road to Skipton, searching through all the inns and boardinghouses on the way in the vain hope that he would find Lizzie. No one had seen her; no one knew anything. As he drew a blank at each place so his despair had grown. Lizzie and John Jerrold…He could not bear to think of it. It tore him apart, ripped to shreds all the newly discovered love and tenderness he had for her. He had had no idea he could feel like this nor that it could hurt so very much.

By the time he had arrived in Skipton late the previous night he had been almost beside himself with anguish and worry. He had found the town awake and feverish with the Goose Fair celebrations and had been in the Market Square when the night had erupted into a full-scale riot. The alehouses had emptied and more and more men had piled into the fight. Despite trying to calm matters, Nat had found himself plunged into a brawl and then ignominiously dragged off to cool his heels in gaol with the malefactors, a disastrous end to his night’s search.

Nat grimaced. When Richard Ryder, the Home Secretary, heard what had happened he would be furious. It was perhaps a good job that he was planning to resign his post before he was sacked.

Dexter and Miles exchanged a look. Miles’s face was still white and tight with fury. “I have known you a long time, Nathaniel,” Miles said, and his eyes were so cold that Nat almost shivered, “and so I feel that I can say without fear of reprisal or contradiction that you are the most abject fool in Christendom.”

“Miles,” Dexter intervened, “is this really the time and place-”

“Damn right it is,” Miles said. “He’s an idiot and someone should tell him. Lizzie has no father-and only a poor excuse for a brother-to protect her, so I will take the role.” He gave Nat a tight smile. “Yes, even I can see the irony of me preaching morality to others, but…” He took a deep breath. “None of us can keep silent any longer, Nat. You must be the only person in the whole of Fortune’s Folly who has not realized that Lizzie has been in love with you for months and you have ridden roughshod over her feelings and emotions with a wilful cruelty that can only remind her of how little people have cared for her throughout her entire life!”

“I know,” Nat said. “I know.” He felt wretched. “I did not intend it to be like this,” he added. “I’ve been trying to do the right thing. I love her, too.”

“Then find her!” Miles bellowed. “What are you waiting for? Why are we even having this conversation? Damn it, man, get out there-”

“Don’t shout,” Dexter said. “You’ll make his headache worse. Besides, we’ve got to get him out of gaol first.” He looked at Nat. “Go and douse yourself under the pump in the yard. You look appalling. If Lizzie sees you like that she won’t want you back.”

He slapped Nat on the back and all Nat’s bruises winced in response.

“Come on,” Dexter said, not unkindly. “You have a wife to claim.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“BACK ALREADY, EH?” Josie Simmons said, as Lizzie collected Starfire from Half Moon House that afternoon. “And wearing the same clothes as you were yesterday.” She shook her head at Lizzie, her expression suggesting that she had seen any number of unfaithful aristocratic ladies come a cropper. “Your husband was here last night looking for you,” she added. “I told him you’d gone with Lord Jerrold.”

“How kind of you,” Lizzie said. “I really do appreciate that.”

“Whole village knows now,” Josie said with what seemed to Lizzie to be grim satisfaction. “Never seen a man so distraught as Lord Waterhouse,” she added. “Except perhaps Major Falconer when he thought Mrs. Falconer would refuse to marry him. Or Mr. Anstruther,” she continued, “when he found out that Mrs. Anstruther had been a highwaywoman.” She sighed massively and placed her hands on her hips. “Any road, he was proper upset was Lord Waterhouse,” she said. “She’s a bolter,” I told him, “just like her mama. Sees a man and goes after him like a dog after a rabbit-”

“No, I am not,” Lizzie said, jumping up onto Starfire’s back. “A bolter runs away. She doesn’t run back again.”

“Aye well,” Josie said, “you might be right there, milady. Hope your husband sees it that way. You’ll be wanting to creep back meek and quiet and beg his forgiveness, I’ll wager.”

“I’ve never been meek and quiet in my life,” Lizzie said, “and I am not going to start now.”

She kicked Starfire to a gallop down the track to Fortune’s Folly. She felt exhilarated, excited and dreadfully nervous, but through her anxiety and her desperation she clung on to the thought that Nat had been distraught at her disappearance. He had been searching frantically for her, according to Josie. That must mean that he cared for her a little even if he was angry, and believed she had betrayed him. She shivered. She would never be able to prove that she had not been unfaithful with John Jerrold. Nat would have to trust her, to take her word. She wondered if he was generous enough, strong enough, to do that.

The previous night Jerrold had helped her to see that running away could never be the answer. The truth might be painful; it might not be what she wanted to hear but Lizzie knew she had to be courageous and face it. So she knew she had to talk to Nat, to beg him to explain Tom’s blackmail. In her heart there was renewed hope that they could finally lay all their secrets to rest and this time she would notlet it be extinguished. She would fight for what she wanted. She was not like her mother. Nat was the one person she was no longer prepared to lose.

“I won’t come with you,” Jerrold had said to her as he had put her into a hired carriage in the inn yard that morning. “I doubt my presence would help soothe the situation and I have no desire for your husband to put a bullet