‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, very sure. Miss Pym seized that tray and the bullet hit it instead of you. I wish this storm would end so that we could get away and be safe.’
He took her cold hands in his. Hannah Pym peered round the door. She saw them sitting holding hands and shut the taproom door quietly and then stood with her back against it. Things were progressing nicely and she did not want anyone to go in and spoil the budding romance.
‘When you say you wish we could get away,’ said Mr Fletcher in a voice that trembled slightly, ‘I could find it in my heart to wish you meant you and me … together.’
Lizzie blushed and hung her head. ‘I cannot press my suit,’ said Mr Fletcher, ‘for I have only a very little money and everyone would say I was pursuing you for yours.’
‘No one who knows you could think that,’ said Lizzie shyly. He tightened his grip on her hands.
‘Oh, my poor heart,’ said Mr Fletcher desperately. ‘I do so awfully want to kiss you.’
‘Then kiss her, you fool!’ muttered Hannah, who was listening outside the door. She saw Mr Hendry approaching and held up her hand. ‘You cannot go in there, Mr Hendry. I have just washed the floor.’
‘But I thought I saw Mrs Bisley go in there with Mr Fletcher.’
‘No, you are mistaken,’ said Hannah, a militant gleam in her eye.
Inside the taproom, Mr Fletcher closed his eyes and leaned towards Lizzie. His first kiss fell on the side of her mouth, his second on her nose, until, with a shy little laugh, she put her hands on either side of his face and guided his lips to her own.
As soon as Mr Hendry had retreated, Hannah pressed her ear to the door panels. Silence. Beautiful silence, thought Hannah with satisfaction.
7
William Makepeace Thackeray
Hannah arose promptly at five. The first thing she became aware of was the utter silence. Then she realized what it was. The wind had ceased to blow. She drew back the curtains and opened the window and looked out. It was a clear, starry, frosty morning. But the fallen snow lay deep and high and hard and glittering. They would not be able to travel that day.
She turned and looked at Emily. The girl was lying asleep with a volume of the romance she had been reading lying open on her chest. Hannah gently removed the book. She firmly believed that reading novels was a very bad thing for a young impressionable girl to do. It gave her exaggerated ideas of romance. Hannah shook her head sadly, thinking of Mrs Clarence. All that love and passion that had fizzled away like a guttering candle, leaving two people bound by the ties of marriage who had nothing in common. It was much better, thought Hannah as she went to the kitchen, to find someone one liked and then, if one was lucky, love might follow.
She could see that wretched under-butler in her mind’s eye. His name had been Mirabel Flannagan. Mirabel had been a popular name among the aristocracy about fifty years before and, like all fashionable names, had died out at the top level and lingered on at the bottom. Men should have names like George, or John, or Harry, thought Hannah. It was Mirabel’s legs that had seduced her mind, Hannah remembered ruefully. He had splendid calves. Also it had been spring when he had begun to pay her attention, and spring was a dangerous time. Now Emily would be a perfectly suitable bride for Lord Harley. She was beautiful and had good bones, so her beauty would last. She was young and would change and grow as soon as she was removed from the doting affection of her parents and governess.
Whether Lord Harley might make Emily a suitable bridegroom did not enter Hannah’s head. He was not like the captain, he seemed reasonably kind, he was rich and handsome and a lord. Hannah was very much a woman of her age. Outside the servant class, the only career open to a woman was marriage. As a servant, you were lucky to get a job and asked only that your employer be tolerable. It was the same with marriage. It was just as well, thought Hannah with a little sigh, that everyone knew that life was merely a painful journey to future happiness. But what, nagged a treacherous little voice in her head, if there were no afterlife? What if Heaven had been thought up by the human race because people could not bear the idea that life, which was for most of them wearisome, and which ended in the indignities and pains of old age, was all there was?
She immediately banished the thought, looking nervously around, as if she expected some angel of judgement to fly into the kitchen and take the ungrateful Hannah’s legacy away.
The kitchen door opened and Emily walked in.
‘What got you out of bed so early?’ exclaimed Hannah.
‘I felt I should help,’ replied Emily primly, although the fact was that the lurid story she had been reading had given her nightmares, and when she had awoken in the dark room she had seen monsters lurking in every shadow.
‘I’ve made some tea,’ said Hannah. ‘Have a dish of bohea and then you may begin, although you’re supposed to be let off work for finding that slipper.’
She put a cup of tea down on the kitchen table. Emily sat down and picked it up and looked at Hannah over the rim. ‘Do you really think,’ ventured Emily, ‘that Lord Harley has no interest in me whatsoever?’
‘Not a whit,’ said Hannah cheerfully, kneeling down and stirring up the coals with great vigour.
‘Then what, think you, is he looking for in a bride?’
‘That’s the trouble with men,’ said Hannah. ‘They don’t think. One day, a man decides he wants children and so he enters into the matter like a business deal. That is if he is an aristocrat. He settles on some suitable female and then his lawyers settle the rest.’
‘So love does not exist?’
‘I think it does,’ said Hannah, pulling her nose. ‘But it’s usually a sham and a deceit and it don’t last. Hard on the lower orders because they’ve got to see the husband day in and day out, but for a young lady like yourself, well, the gentlemen spend most of the time in their clubs, or in Parliament or on the hunting field. Being a married woman would give you a lot of freedom. Settle for someone kind and complacent.’
‘How dull,’ said Emily, burying her nose in her cup. ‘So Lord Harley is not likely to fall in love?’
‘He’s probably been in love a score of times already,’ retorted Hannah cynically.
‘So why didn’t he marry one of them?’
‘Probably weren’t marriageable.’
‘Does it not seem odd to you, Miss Pym, that such as I must walk to the altar unsullied, and yet a man like Lord Harley can have scores of affairs without losing one whit of his reputation?’
‘It’s the way the Good Lord has arranged things.’ Hannah banged pots and pans with unnecessary noise because she thought there was a lot of truth in what Emily had said, but felt at the same time that a young lady should not even allow such thoughts to enter her head. Furthermore, she was determined not to encourage Emily to think Lord Harley might become interested her in any way. If Emily thought that, her wounded vanity might be satisfied. If she stayed puzzled and hurt by his apparent indifference to her, then perhaps, thought Hannah, she might make more of an effort to engage his attentions.
There came a stamping and shuffling from the yard and then the outside door, which led through the scullery to the kitchen, opened and three shivering maids came in.
‘Go tell Mrs Silvers some of her staff have returned,’ said Hannah to Emily.
Emily went through to Mrs Silvers’ room. As she opened the door, Mrs Silvers sank lower beneath the bed- clothes and demanded feebly, ‘Yes, what is it?’
‘Some of your maids have managed to return to the inn,’ said Emily.
‘Then I must rise and see to the lazy-bones,’ said Mrs Silvers.
‘Are you sure you are well enough?’ asked Emily maliciously.
‘I be proper poorly, but it be right bad for them girls to see gentlefolk in the kitchen,’ said Mrs Silvers. ‘They’ll
