A Dangerous Undertaking Page 2

  ‘Never. I bid you goodnight.’ With that, he clapped his hat on his head and left the room to go to the stables, where he confidently expected that an ostler would have changed the horses on his travelling carriage.

  Charles sat on while the room he asked for was prepared. A faint smile played around his lips. Roland would never have his heart’s desire if someone didn’t take him in hand.

  Margaret opened her eyes to bright sunshine, and hurried to the window. It looked out on to the market, which was dominated by the great cathedral. The street was muddy and unpaved and was busy with carts loaded with produce, carriages, farmers on horseback, and men herding cattle and sheep to the pens from which they would be sold. Men and women hurried past and a coach rolled down the street and under the archway below her window. Perhaps when it had changed its horses it would be going on, and pass somewhere near Winterford. She washed and dressed and went downstairs.

  The coffee-room was full, as it had been the previous night, and the waiters were hurrying to and fro serving breakfast. She hurried over to the one she had spoken to the previous night. ‘The coach that just came in. Does it go anywhere near Winterford?’

  He turned from serving a gentleman with ham and eggs, and smiled thinly. ‘No, nothing goes out there; there’s nothing to go for. You’ll have to hire privately or walk—-’

  ‘Excuse me, did you say Winterford?’ the man he was serving interrupted.

  Margaret turned to him, a smile on her lips which faded when she realised it was one of the men who had been surveying her so openly the evening before. ‘Yes,’ she said coolly, to let him know she deplored his insolence.

  ‘I am going there myself. I could take you.’

  ‘We do not know each other, sir.’

  ‘I beg your pardon. Let me introduce myself. I am Charles Mellison, of Mellison Hall in Huntingdonshire. You may have heard of the family.’

  ‘I have not.’

  He smiled. ‘Ours is an old family with the very best of antecedents, I assure you. I am going to Winterford Manor, the country home of Lord Pargeter. You and your maid will be quite safe in my company, I promise.’

  ‘I have no maid,’ she said, and then wished she had not admitted it when she saw a little gleam of triumph in his eye. ‘But that does not mean I will allow myself to be taken up by a perfect stranger.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I only thought I could help you out of a difficulty. Lady Pargeter would not like to think a guest of hers had been left to make her own way.’

  ‘I am not a guest of hers.’

  ‘No? Then I do beg your pardon.’

  ‘I am going to Sedge House. Mr Henry Capitain is my great-uncle.’

  ‘But the Capitains and the Pargeters have known each other for centuries!’ he exclaimed, as if that made everything right. ‘You must allow me to escort you…’

  ‘Well…’ She hesitated. Was she in a position to look a gift-horse in the mouth?

  ‘Have you broken your fast?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Do join me. Waiter, set another cover at once.’

  He would not accept no for an answer. As they breakfasted, he drew her out, little by little, and by the time the meal was finished he knew almost all there was to know about her, and she had relaxed. It seemed perfectly proper to allow him to escort her to Winterford in the curricle which appeared as if by magic when they went outside.

  There had been a sharp frost overnight, and the hedges and trees as they left the town were covered in sparkling rime. In no time, they seemed to have left these and all other signs of civilisation behind them and were on an uneven lane, going straight as a die, towards a flat expanse of nothingness which stretched for miles, with hardly a hillock to be seen. There were no trees either, except a few frosted willows and alders growing along the banks of the ditches. There were a great many of these dykes, where geese and ducks swam on gaps in the ice. Strange windmills with buckets, instead of paddles, were dotted about the landscape, their sails hardly turning in the windless air. But the sky was magnificent, layer upon layer of dark cloud rising from a horizon that was so wide, it seemed to take on the curve of the earth itself. Each cloud was streaked by fire, red and mauve and awesome. Margaret found herself admiring it at the same time as it frightened her. She felt tiny and insignificant.

  ‘Most of this land was drained in the last century,’ Charles told her. ‘All but a few acres are owned by the Pargeters. Lord Pargeter is a good man, a fine fellow all round.’

  ‘What of Sedge House?’

  ‘That is not exactly in Winterford, but two or three miles further on. Have you not been there before?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘It’s a bleak place, right on the edge of the unreclaimed fen, and Henry Capitain has done nothing to improve it. I doubt you will like living there.’

  ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘Everyone has a choice,’ he said softly, wondering whether to broach the subject of Roland and his dilemma. ‘You could marry.’

  ‘One day perhaps,’ she said with a sigh. ‘At the moment I cannot bring myself to think of it.’ She smiled. ‘Are you married, Master Mellison?’

  ‘I am betrothed to Lord Pargeter’s sister. We hope to marry soon. His lordship is unmarried, though his grandmother has been pressing him to find a wife for some time. He has to secure the lineage, you understand.’

  ‘Does he not wish to marry?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but he cannot find anyone prepared to live in this out-of-the-way place. But whoever becomes Lady Pargeter would have to, you see, at least three-quarters of the year. Roland is almost resigned to never marrying.’ He hoped his friend would forgive him the half-truth.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she murmured politely.

  ‘I shall introduce you to him.’ He turned to her as if suddenly thinking of it. ‘I’ll wager you would deal well together.’

  ‘I thought the days of matchmakers were gone,’ she said, smiling and revealing a twinkle in her eye and a dimple at the side of her mouth he had not noticed before; it gave him a twinge of conscience.

  ‘Sometimes it is necessary. Shall we stop at Winterford Manor, so that you may make his acquaintance?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly. ‘I am flattered that you should think me worthy, but we are strangers and I am in mourning. Making calls will have to wait until I have settled down.’

  He sighed and turned the curricle away from the village they had been approaching and down a narrow rutted track which ran alongside a high bank, on the other side of which was a wide ribbon of water which was too straight to be a river. Halfway along it was one of the strange windmills she had noticed before.

  ‘What are those for?’ she asked, pointing.

  ‘The land round here is often flooded in winter. The windmills take the water off the fields in the buckets and tip it into the dykes.’

  ‘How clever.’

  They rode on in silence, Charles wondering how he could further Roland’s cause without frightening her away, and Margaret apprehensive of what she would find at the end of her journey,

  She realised he was making for a speck on the horizon which, as they drew nearer, was revealed as a house. It was a big square brick building which stood almost abutting the lane. On its other side, an overgrown lawn went down to a boat-house and a tiny jetty where a rowing-boat was moored in the water of the fen. The road went no further.

  ‘Do you want me to wait?’ he asked as he pulled the horses up at the door.

  ‘No, thank you. I am grateful for your trouble, but I shall manage now.’ She did not want a witness to her first encounter with her great-uncle and was glad he took her at her word.

  ‘Very well. But if you change your mind about meeting his lordship, do not hesitate to let me know.’

  As soon as she had alighted he turned the vehicle round and was soon bowling away along the flat road, back to Winterford. She sighed and turned to knock on the thick oak door.

  She was taken completely aback when i
t was opened by a girl with a white-painted face, full red lips and several patches. She wore a pink satin open gown whose laces strained across her bosom, and a petticoat of red silk, beneath which Margaret could see white stockings and red high-heeled shoes. She stared at Margaret. ‘Well, you’re a little out of the ordinary, I must say.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Different, I mean. You look as if you couldn’t say boo to a goose.’

  ‘Then my looks belie me,’ Margaret retorted, putting her chin in the air. Who did the hussy think she was? ‘Is Master Capitain at home? I wish to speak to him.’

  ‘Henry!’ the girl yelled over her shoulder. ‘Come on out here and see what’s turned up.’

  There was a shuffling noise behind her and a man pushed past her to stare at Margaret with myopic eyes. He wore white small-clothes which were stained with wine or tea, or something of the sort, and a shirt which was opened almost to the waist, revealing an expanse of flabby white flesh. His legs were clad in dirty white stockings but he wore no shoes. He had discarded his wig and his thin white hair stood up at all angles round his head. He had about six chins which wobbled down into a thick neck. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Did I ask you to come?’

  ‘No, but I wrote to you. Did you not receive my letter? I am Margaret Donnington.’

  ‘Margaret who?’

  She countered with a question of her own. ‘Are you Master Capitain?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. Who else would I be? And I don’t remember any letter.’

  ‘I am your great-niece. I am Felicity’s daughter.’

  ‘Great Jehosophat! I thought she was dead.’

  Margaret gulped hard to take control of herself, though she felt like fleeing back down the road. ‘She is dead. She died two weeks ago.’ She paused, but he seemed unable to take in what she was saying. ‘Before she died, she told me to come to you.’

  ‘Why, for God’s sake? We ain’t seen each other in…’ He racked his brain to remember. ‘It must be nigh on thirty years. I did hear she had married. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Margaret Donnington.’

  ‘How did you arrive here?’

  ‘I came by stage to Ely and then a gentleman going to Winterford Manor brought me on.’

  ‘Pargeter!’ There was no attempt to disguise the contempt in his voice.

  ‘No, it was one of his guests.’ She paused, waiting, then added. ‘Are you not going to invite me in?’

  ‘The house is all in a muddle,’ he said. ‘Not fit to be seen. This slut——’ he indicated the girl at his side, who had continued to stare at Margaret with unveiled amusement ‘—Nellie, here, don’t go much on keeping house.’

  ‘’Tain’t what I came for,’ the girl retorted. ‘I’m not a servant. If you don’t like it you know what you can do.’

  Margaret was wondering if she was ever going to be allowed over the threshold, and he was looking at her with bright little eyes, almost buried in the flesh of his cheeks, as if he wished her anywhere but on his doorstep. It was a wish she shared. At last he said, ‘Better come in, though this ain’t the place for a well-brought-up young lady.’

  The girl he had referred to as Nellie laughed as she led the way through a dusty hall to an even dustier drawing-room with heavy old-fashioned furniture and faded velvet curtains. ‘That’s a fact and no argument,’ she said, with a chuckle that hinted at something Margaret was not sure she wanted to know.

  ‘Get us all a drink,’ Henry ordered the girl, then, turning to Margaret, indicated the settle. ‘Sit down. Tell me what happened.’

  The telling did not take long, and he was silent at the end of it, his many chins resting on his chest and his eyes glazed. The glass in his hand was empty and so was the girl’s, but Margaret had not touched her wine.

  ‘My, that’s a turn up for the books,’ Nellie said. ‘What are you going to do now?’

  Margaret looked from her to her uncle, who did not deign to answer for several seconds.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t know. Ain’t you got anyone else you can go to?’

  ‘No, or I would, believe me.’

  ‘Where’s your father?’

  ‘He died in India. I was born out there in 1727, but the climate did not suit my mother and, when my father died, she brought me back to England. I was only a baby then; I do not remember him.’

  ‘Nineteen years old,’ he murmured. ‘Felicity took her time about producing, considering she left here in ’15.’

  ‘My parents were married two years before I was born, no more.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he mused. ‘Fancy that little chit managing on her own all that time. What did she do? For a living, I mean.’

  ‘She was a mantua-maker, and a very good one.’

  ‘Is that so? Hardly the occupation of a lady of breeding.’

  ‘Perhaps she had little choice,’ Margaret snapped in defence of her beloved mother, though she had no idea what had happened in the past. If Great-Uncle Henry was a sample of her family, then she did not blame her mother for never mentioning them.

  ‘And you expect me to welcome you with open arms?’ her uncle asked.

  Nellie giggled. ‘Why not? You do everyone else…’

  ‘Shut up, you witless cow,’ he said to her, then to Margaret, ‘You’d do better turning right round and going back where you came from.’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve no money.’

  ‘Neither have I and that’s a fact.’ He sighed. ‘You’d better stay, I suppose. Just until we can think of something else. Nellie, my dear, show her where she can sleep and tell Mistress Clark there’ll be one more for dinner.’

  The house, neglected as it was now, had once been very fine, Margaret decided as she followed Nellie up the carved oak staircase and along a wide landing. The people who had built it must have been quite wealthy and had some standing in the community; the building materials would have had to be transported some distance because, apart from willows and a few aspen, there were no trees locally. The proportions of the house were on a grand scale too; lofty ceilings and long windows with leaded panes. Some of the doors along the landing were standing open and revealed large rooms full of worn furniture which had once been good.

  One room was obviously in use. It was even more untidy than the rest of the house—the bed was unmade and garments were scattered all over the bed and the floor. Margaret could not help noticing that there was a man’s night shirt and hose as well as women’s clothes. She averted her gaze hurriedly; so Nellie was her great-uncle’s wife! She was younger than Margaret herself and she was certainly not a lady of breeding. But who was she to criticise? Margaret asked herself as she followed her hostess into a bedroom at the far end of the corridor.

  ‘You won’t be disturbed here,’ Nellie said. ‘I hope you’re not used to being waited on, because there aren’t any servants except Mistress Clark, and she don’t sleep in.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘She don’t approve of Henry’s goings-on, as she calls them, but she stays on account of she knew the old master.’

  ‘My mother’s father?’

  ‘Yes; I suppose it would have been Henry’s brother. He was a few years older than Henry. Before that, of course, there was your great-grandfather. Henry don’t talk about them.’

  ‘Is there no one else in the family?’

  ‘Not that I know of, but then I ain’t known Henry that long.’ She paused, looking round the room. ‘It’s a bit dusty. It ain’t one of the rooms we use often.’

  ‘Do you entertain much, Mistress Capitain?’ Margaret asked, going over to the wash-stand and noticing the scum on the top of the water in the jug.

  Nellie threw back her head and laughed. ‘Bless you, I ain’t Henry’s wife.’

  Margaret was shocked to the core. She was not blind to some of the things that went on in the less salubrious parts of London; she knew men took mistresses and some wives took lovers, but she had never expected to find it happening in her own family, nor
in the family home away from the capital. She sat down heavily on the bed, sending up a cloud of dust.

  ‘Don’t look so stricken,’ Nellie said. ‘Henry and me, well, we’re just good friends. I came down here ’cos I needed to get away for a bit, understand?’

  Margaret didn’t and she said so.

  ‘Never mind,’ the girl said, and laughed again. ‘You’re like a fish out of water, here, ain’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d find somewhere else to go, if I were you.’ It was said almost kindly. ‘Later on, or mayhap tomorrow, there’s a whole lot more coming.’

  ‘More like you?’ It was out before Margaret could stop it.

  ‘Yes, only worse. Men and women—they’re coming to gamble and… Well, you know.’

  Margaret shuddered. Her mother could not possibly have known it would be like this when she’d told her to come here. Now where was she to go? For a fleeting moment she thought of Charles Mellison and his friend, Lord Pargeter, looking for a wife who would be prepared to live in this outlandish place. She had heard that fen people were all slightly mad, and she was beginning to believe it. What could she do? She lifted her chin. ‘Perhaps you should be the one to leave,’ she said. ‘After all, you have no ties here… .’

  It was a silly thing to say and she realised it as soon as Nellie began to laugh. She was still laughing as she went back downstairs, leaving Margaret alone in the grubby bedroom.

  It was a corner room, having windows on two sides which would have made it a pleasant bedchamber if it had been clean. It had a bed, a dressing-table and a cupboard, standing on a carpet so faded as to be colourless. She did not unpack, but went to the window and looked out on a landscape so bleak that she didn’t know how anyone could like it. She saw nothing but acres and acres of flat land, some of it meadow, some of it ploughed, intersected by dykes, whose banks were higher than the surrounding land. From the other window the view was of water, with clumps of frost-blackened sedge and reeds. A rowing-boat rocked on its moorings beside the landing-stage. Overhead, in the great bowl of the sky, a heron flew. But her mother had loved her childhood here and had spoken of the special magic of the fen country—its glorious sunsets and red dawns, its plentiful wildlife, fish and fowl, its close-knit communities and hardy, superstitious people. What she had never told Margaret was why she had left and why she had never been back. As she stood at the window, a little of the atmosphere communicated itself to her and for the first time she began to understand.