thought they should all stay where they were until the storm had passed, but the Methodist minister, Mr Biles, had grown as brave as only half a bottle of good Nantes brandy can make a normally weak man and overrode the coachman and the others by saying this was the last stage before Bath and as soon as they descended to lower ground, the snow would turn to rain. The coachman demurred at first, but he knew the coach was already days late and so he reluctantly agreed to take them forward.
They only got a mile from Shepherd’s Shore when the full force of the storm struck. The coachman cursed himself for his folly in having listened to the drunken minister. He did not want to lose his job, as had the previous coachman, by causing more harm to befall the passengers. He saw dimly through the blinding snow a tall pair of iron gates. The guard blew on the horn and a lodge-keeper came out and swung the gates open.
‘Residence?’ called the coachman to the lodge-keeper.
‘Earl o’ Twitterton,’ replied the lodge-keeper.
‘His lordship’s in for some unexpected guests,’ muttered the coachman, and cracking the whip, he urged his team of horses up the long, wintry drive to the Earl of Twitterton’s home.
6
Thomas Moore
Had Belinda still been at the inn, the marquess might have begun to wonder at the folly of calling on her. But by the time he arrived at the Queen Bess, it was to learn the stage-coach had left.
He was as annoyed as if Belinda had deliberately avoided him. He returned to the castle, ordered his travelling carriage, and set out in pursuit. He traced them as far as Beckhampton to find they had left an hour before and learned they would probably be stopping next at Shepherd’s Shore.
He drove on, and as the ground began to rise, so he found himself enveloped in the same snowstorm that had beset the passengers. They were not at Shepherd’s Shore and he wondered whether this stage coachman was as crazy as the last had been and had forged on to Bath. He began to worry, seeing in his mind’s eye Belinda lying in a snow-drift, calling for help.
He came to the lodge-gates and remembered that the Earl of Twitterton had a hunting-box there. He stopped and inquired at the lodge and was told that the stage-coach had gone up to the house.
He was driving the carriage himself. His valet was warmly ensconsed inside and one complaining tiger hung on the backstrap.
The marquess jumped down and told his tiger to take carriage and horses to the stables. The snow was still falling fast, but it had become wetter and the air was perceptibly warmer.
He presented his card to the butler, who answered the door. The earl himself came out to meet him. He was a bluff, soldierly man who had met the marquess before on several occasions and gave him a warm welcome, not asking the reason for the unexpected visit, assuming the marquess was taking shelter from the storm.
The earl said they had already dined and that the servants would prepare something for him, but the marquess had eaten a hasty meal at Beckhampton and so he said he would change out of his travelling clothes and then join the family. As his valet laid out his evening clothes and powdered his master’s hair, the marquess wondered how Belinda would look when she saw him again. Would she blush? Would she look angry? No doubt the stern Miss Pym had read her a lecture on the folly of her ways.
He found to his surprise that he was nervous. A footman led the way down to the first floor, saying the family and guests were in the drawing-room.
The double doors were thrown wide and the marquess’s name was announced. The marquess raised his quizzing-glass and studied the faces turned towards him. His heart sank.
The earl’s son, Lord Frederick, a brutish-looking young man, was standing by the fireplace. Seated beside the fire was Penelope Jordan. On a sofa, side by side, were her parents, both glaring at him. In a corner was some sort of poor relation, a faded lady netting a purse. The Countess of Twitterton rose to meet him. She was a thin, hard, horsy woman, wearing a row of false curls over her forehead. She should not have gained such a name by marriage as Twitterton, thought the earl. ‘Twitterton’ suggested a vague, dithering sort of female. The countess should have been called ‘Basher’ or ‘Floggem’. She looked like a man masquerading as a woman.
She was an excellent shot, the marquess remembered, and killed anything furred or feathered with a deadly aim. Perhaps that was why this drawing-room, albeit a drawing-room in a hunting-box, did not show any feminine frills or china. Trophies of the countess’s hunting prowess stared glassily down from the walls. All the animals she had killed looked as if they had died in a fit of boredom. There were also various bad oil paintings of slaughtered game. There was one painting of the countess herself over the fireplace. She was dressed in a filmy blue gown, her hair powdered. The artist had done his best to romanticize his subject, painting broken columns in the background, a Greek temple, and an approaching thunderstorm. But he had painted the expression in her eyes perfectly so that the painted countess surveyed the gathering in much the same way as the real-life one was doing – with a hard, autocratic, judgemental stare.
‘Didn’t think a little bit of snow would drive you off the road, Frenton,’ she said. ‘May I introduce …?’
‘I already know the Jordan family,’ said the marquess. Penelope struck an Attitude. It was meant to represent The Broken Heart. She put one hand on her bosom, stretched the other hand out and cast her eyes up to the ceiling.
‘Got indigestion, Miss Jordan?’ demanded the countess. ‘Rhubarb pills, that’s the thing. Shouldn’t have, though. Got a splendid chef, Frenton. That venison we had for dinner was hung till the maggots were crawling out of it. Sit down, Frenton. How’s hunting?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the marquess. ‘Don’t hunt.’
‘But your papa kept the best pack in the county!’
‘One of his many extravagances,’ murmured the marquess. He looked around pointedly. ‘The lodge-keeper told me the stage-coach had descended on you.’
‘Yes, and a confounded nuisance it was, too.’
‘Hah,’ said Sir Henry in a voice he hoped was laden with sarcasm. ‘Ha! Ho!’
‘And where are the passengers?’ asked the marquess.
‘In the kitchens where they belong.’
‘Is the coach The Quicksilver?’
‘Yes,’ said the countess. ‘Why?’
‘They took refuge with me for a few days.’
‘There you are,’ said the earl. ‘Just proves what I’m always saying. This stage-coach business has got to stop. Not only does it allow the common people freedom to move hither and thither about the countryside, but come a little bit of bad weather, and they think they have the right to thrust their noses inside the door of every noble mansion.’
‘You are behind the times,’ said the marquess. ‘It is not only commoners who use the stage-coach.’
‘Go along with you,’ said the countess. ‘This lot’s got a Methody among ’em.’
‘I escaped that pleasure,’ said the marquess. ‘I entertained them as guests.’
‘With no concern whatsoever for my daughter’s feelings,’ barked Sir Henry. ‘Told you so.’
‘You don’t need to do that sort of thing any more, Frenton,’ said Lord Frederick.
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Well, let a lot of commoners put their thick boots under your dining-table, don’t you see. I mean, it was different when we thought the French Terror would spread over here, but they ain’t going to rise up and hang us from the lamp-posts, so we don’t need to be pleasant to ’em any more. And a damned good thing, too. Beg pardon, ladies.’
‘How refreshingly unsophisticated you all are,’ said the marquess. He raised his quizzing-glass, studied the cut of Lord Frederick’s coat, and sadly shook his head. ‘Now I am not so high in the instep, and by having these
