The Last Gamble Page 3

  ‘Yes, but you see, sir,’ the man answered equably. ‘We don’t go by your watch, we go when that there clock points the hour.’ He nodded his head towards the clock above the door of the inn. ‘And that lacks two minutes to twelve.’

  Duncan subsided into his seat. It was not the least use being impatient; he would arrive when he arrived and he prayed he would not be too late.

  Almost immediately the guard called, ‘All aboard!’ and the coachman appeared. He was dressed in a brown boxcoat with several capes about his shoulders, which flapped open to reveal a striped waistcoat and small clothes which reached down to meet a pair of jockey boots halfway up his calves. Helen watched as he walked slowly all the way round the vehicle, checking the wheels and axles, and then inspecting the horses and their harness before moving to the off-side and taking up the reins in his left hand. As the clock moved to one minute to departure time he took up his whip and climbed aboard. At exactly noon by the clock, the inn staff stood back, and they were off. Duncan smiled at the girl beside him because she was looking decidedly shaky.

  ‘How long does it take?’ she asked. Being obliged to him for carrying her trunk and overseeing it loaded safely, she could hardly ignore him and besides, she was no longer in Society and did not need a proper introduction to speak to him. ‘The journey to Scotland, I mean.’

  So the lovers were travelling separately. If he had arranged to carry her off to Gretna Green, he would have made sure he was with her every inch of the way. Already he was beginning to dislike the unknown suitor. ‘It’s usually twenty-four hours to Manchester, non-stop. That’s a good deal less than halfway. After that, it depends on the state of the roads and the weather.’

  ‘Non-stop?’ she queried, wondering why she had never asked the question before. ‘You mean without going to bed?’

  ‘Yes. We should arrive in Manchester at noon tomorrow, God willing.’

  ‘Surely we must stop to sleep.’

  ‘If you wish, you may stop at any one of a number of inns on the way and continue next day in another coach. It depends on how much haste you are in. Myself, I would rather doze as I go and arrive all the sooner.’

  ‘And I certainly would not!’ she said.

  ‘Indeed? You surprise me, I would have wagered you were in haste to reach your destination.’

  ‘You do not know my destination, sir, nor my state of mind,’ she said sharply.

  ‘No, I beg pardon,’ he said, leaning back and shutting his eyes, effectively ending the conversation.

  The farmer was already asleep and snoring and the elderly man was sitting in the corner attempting to read, though how he could do it in the swaying coach Helen could not fathom. The woman sitting opposite her fetched out a packet of food and began gnawing on a chicken leg. They were as motley a collection of individuals as you were ever likely to meet, she decided, and she had to admit to being glad the Captain was there.

  She had an instinctive feeling he would protect her—she had recognised the insignia of Prince of Wales’s Own Hussars on his shako—but his manner left a great deal to be desired. He spoke in riddles and didn’t seem to mind how rude he was. Look at him now. He was dozing.

  She did not know how he could sleep in that uncomfortable position, bolt upright with his head lolling because his stiff collar prevented him from dropping his chin on his chest, and with his long legs doubled under him. The passengers sitting opposite prevented him from stretching them out and he could not tuck them under the seat because that space was part of the rear boot.

  But like that, he seemed more human, almost boyish, and she supposed he could not be much more than thirty, but there was a slight scar along his hairline and another on the back of his hand which was half covered by his sleeve, and she assumed he had been injured in the service of his country but, judging by the way he had carried her trunk, he was not too badly disabled.

  He opened one brown-flecked eye and caught her looking at him and winked at her. Confused and embarrassed, she turned to look out of the window. Mr Benstead had said her status had not altered, but he had been wrong. Yesterday, she had been the pampered daughter of an aristocrat, today she was a nobody whom a common soldier could offend with impunity! She had told her lawyer she must learn to live in the world outside her ken, among people who knew nothing of Society except as a subject for gossip, to accept their ways as her own, but oh, how difficult it was going to be.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THEY were on a good road and, apart from slowing up for the guard to pay the toll, the horses rarely dropped below a canter. Islington, Holloway, Highgate and Finchley were left behind and then they were approaching Barnet. Helen knew all this because the guard had called out the names as they passed and now he was sounding his horn to warn the next staging post of their imminent arrival.

  She was feeling cramped and slightly nauseous and she would be relieved to get out and stretch her legs. Two minutes later they drew into the yard of the Red Lion, where all was bustle as ostlers rushed forward with the new horses while the ones which had carried them thus far were taken from the traces to be rested.

  ‘It takes forty-five seconds, no more,’ the Captain said, seeing her hand on the door.

  Before she could turn to reply, the guard let out a bellow of rage and dragged the little urchin who had accosted her in London from among the boxes and packages in the rear boot where he had been hiding. It was a miracle he had not been battered to death or thrown out and killed. ‘Trying to get a free ride, were you?’ he demanded, shaking the child until his teeth rattled. ‘In my book that’s a crime.’

  ‘Lemme go!’ the boy yelled. ‘I ain’t done nothin’.’

  ‘No fear!’ He cuffed him about the ears, rocking his head back on his shoulders.

  Helen was out of her seat and down on the ground before anyone realised what she was doing. ‘Let him be!’ she ordered, pulling at the man’s arm to prevent further blows.

  He turned in surprise. ‘Go back to your seat, please, miss, this here’s company business. Riding without a ticket ‘as got to be punished.’

  The child, feeling the grip which held him slacken, released himself and threw himself at Helen, burying his face in her skirts. ‘I meant no ‘arm, miss. Only I ‘ave to get to me brother and I ain’t got the fare.’

  ‘Where does your brother live?’ she asked, putting her arm protectively round him, ignoring the fact that he was filthy.

  ‘Don’t matter where he lives,’ the guard said. ‘Now, go back to your seat and leave me to deal with the little slip-gibbet.’ He pulled the boy from her grasp. ‘I ain’t got time to hand you in, so think y’self lucky. Now get you gone.’ With a final blow to the head, he pushed the child in the direction in which they had just come.

  ‘You surely do not expect him to walk all the way back to London?’ Helen demanded.

  ‘It’s all the same to me what he does, but if I see ‘im anywhere near one of my coaches again, he’ll be for it, I can tell you.’

  ‘But he’s all alone…’

  She became aware that the Captain had left the coach and was standing beside her. ‘Please return to your seat, ma’am. There is nothing you can do and you are holding up the coach.’ He smiled. ‘That’s almost as bad a crime as travelling without a ticket.’

  ‘Never mind the coach,’ she said crossly. ‘We can’t abandon the poor child. He wants to go to his brother.’ She turned from him and called out to the boy, who had taken half a dozen steps and then stopped when he heard her spirited defence of him. ‘Where does your brother live?’

  ‘St Albans, miss.’

  ‘Then get in the coach. I shall pay your fare.’

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ the guard said, grabbing the child as he went to obey. ‘Just ‘cos this young lady is a soft touch, don’t mean you can pull the wool over my eyes; you’d have everyone’s pockets picked in the twinkling of an eye.’

  ‘No, I would not. I ain’t a thief.’

  ‘For goodness sake, giv
e him a ticket,’ Duncan said, realising that the young lady was obstinate enough to stand arguing all day and too soft-hearted by far. ‘We’ve wasted enough time as it is. I’ll see he behaves himself.’

  Helen gave him a look of gratitude, which was lost on him because he had already returned to his seat. She opened her purse and paid the requisite fare from London to St Albans, then she took the boy by the hand and followed, settling him between them.

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ she said, as they set off once againt several minutes behind schedule.

  ‘Don’t thank me. And don’t blame me, when he turns and bites the hand that feeds, because he will, you know.’

  ‘Of course he won’t. Will you?’ She smiled down at the boy, but all he did was grin happily from one to the other. This was a much better way to travel than being flung about among the baggage in the boot.

  ‘It’s disgraceful!’ the woman in the opposite seat exclaimed, endeavouring not to wrinkle her nose in case she cracked the paint on her face. ‘The boy smells and I’ll wager he is verminous. We shall all end up infested. I cannot think what the coachman was thinking of to allow it.’ She leaned forward and wagged her finger at the Captain. ‘As for you, sir, I should have thought you could have prevented your wife…’

  ‘Wife?’ Helen repeated, colouring to the roots of her hair. ‘You are mistaken, ma’am, I am not the Captain’s wife. I am not even acquainted with the gentleman.’

  ‘Indeed?’ She paused to look from one to the other, then shrugged. ‘Wife or no, he should have stopped you bringing the brat on board.’

  The Captain smiled. ‘Ma’am, I doubt if anyone could stop the young lady once she has made up her mind to something, I certainly could not. And the bratling is entitled to the ride, his fare has been paid.’

  ‘He could have ridden outside,’ the farmer put in.

  ‘It isn’t safe,’ Helen said. ‘And as for smells…’ She stopped, realising it would do no good at all to mention the fact that the pungent odour he was emitting masked any smell from the boy. Quarrelling with her fellow travellers would not endear her to them and she felt isolated enough as it was. ‘He might have fallen off.’

  ‘And good riddance too,’ the farmer said.

  ‘Oh, come now, sir,’ Duncan put in. ‘The boy is hardly more than a babe, and if the young lady is prepared to endure him, then we must acquiesce with a good grace. He will not be with us for long, after all.’

  Helen smiled. ‘Thank you, Captain.’

  The boy grinned up at her. ‘You’re a real lady, miss.’

  ‘Huh!’ The painted woman’s expression said it all.

  Helen found herself wanting to answer back, to say, yes, she considered herself to be a lady, but then thought better of it. It smacked of pride and as she had vowed to put her old life behind her, there was nothing to be gained by boasting of it. She had not realised, before now, how much difference it made to how you were treated if people knew you came from the upper echelons of society. But she was learning fast. Instead, she turned to ask the boy his name.

  ‘Ned Barker, miss.’

  ‘And how old are you?’

  ‘Ten.’

  Helen was surprised; he was so small she had taken him for much younger.

  ‘And what were you doing alone in London if your family live in St Albans?’

  ‘It’s only me brother in St Albans. Pa and Ma went to live in London when I was little. Pa were out of work—a soldier he were, back from the wars—and ‘e thought he’d find something in London. It weren’t so easy. ‘E kep’ sayin’ one day his ship would come in, but it never did and when Ma die, he give up.’

  ‘Oh, how sad. What happened then? After your mother died, I mean.’

  ‘He took to the bottle, miss. And the dubbin’ lay…’

  ‘Dubbing lay?’ she queried. ‘I have never heard of that occupation.’

  ‘It means breaking into houses,’ the Captain put in with a smile. ‘The boy’s father is a thief.’

  ‘Not any more, ‘e ain’t.’ The boy grinned up at her. ‘’E got snabbled.’

  ‘Arrested,’ the Captain interpreted for Helen.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she said, addressing the boy. ‘And that left you all alone? Is that why you were working at the Blue Boar?’

  ‘Yes, miss. But it ain’t no great shakes as a livin’, so I had a mind to go to me brother. ‘E’s married and settled in St Albans. ‘E’ll ‘ave me.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ she said. The boy’s situation was so like her own, even though it was on a different level, she could feel only compassion for him. That his father was a felon was neither here nor there. Felon or gambler, what difference did it make to the end result?

  There was silence in the coach for perhaps a minute, but the boy had evidently not heard the maxim that children should be seen and not heard. He prattled on. ‘Them’s a good set of wheelers,’ he said, nodding in the general direction of the horses.

  ‘Are they?’ The only knowledge Helen had of horseflesh was what she had learned from her riding instructor and that was little enough.

  ‘Good strong hindquarters,’ the boy went on. ‘The leaders ain’t bad neither, though one of ’em is pulling to the left.’

  ‘How clever of you to notice,’ she said, conscious that the Captain was hard put to stifle his amusement.

  The boy switched his attention to the countryside outside the coach, pointing out cows, pigs, sheep, finding something to say about each, asking questions which Helen did her best to answer though she was not very knowledgeable about things agricultural.

  ‘It’s a bull,’ the farmer said with a grin after the boy had referred to one animal as a ‘queer cow’.

  Helen felt herself go very red but said nothing.

  ‘I ain’t seen one afore,’ the boy went on, undaunted. ‘Cows in the park in plenty, but not them.’

  ‘Well, they can be dangerous,’ Helen said.

  ‘Is that so?’ And then, pointing, ‘What’s that?’

  Helen decided she would be wiser not to answer for fear of contradiction. ‘A plough, boy,’ the farmer put in. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘I’ll wager he knows the quickest way from Covent Garden to Putney Steps,’ the Captain put in. ‘The departure times of all the coaches, which hotels throw out the best scraps; the best places to scavenge in the river mud and where to sell the proceeds. I’ll wager, too, that he knows when every house in London is likely to have its knocker off.’ He smiled at boy. ‘When the owners are away, there are rich pickings. Your father taught you that, didn’t he?’

  The boy grinned. ‘You’re a sharp cove, but I ain’t ever been nabbled.’

  ‘Too slippery,’ Duncan said with a laugh.

  Helen had only a vague idea what they were talking about but decided it was a subject best not pursued. She opened the small bag she had brought to carry things she would need for the journey and took out a package of food Daisy had prepared before she left, some bread and butter, a slice or two of ham, a few chicken legs, a couple of apples. It was meant to save her having to buy anything until they stopped for the night. ‘Are you hungry, Ned?’

  ‘Starvin’,’ he said, which was nothing less than the truth.

  She offered him the package and watched as he wolfed the lot.

  The Captain was regarding her with a light in his eye which might have been mockery, but could equally have been empathy, and she found herself blushing. It was almost as if he knew all about her, knew she was pretending to be someone she was not. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said, indicating the few crumbs left on the paper on the boy’s knees. ‘Now you will have to go hungry, Miss…?’

  Again there was that hint that she should reveal her name. ‘It is of no consequence,’ she said. ‘I ate a good breakfast before I left.’

  ‘And where would that have been?’

  ‘Sir,’ she said, stiffening. ‘I do not think it is any concern of yours.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, I was simply makin
g conversation.’

  ‘Not very subtle conversation, either,’ said a voice from the corner. Helen was startled because the man, who appeared to be engrossed in his reading, had taken no part in the conversation at all. ‘But then, what can one expect from a soldier, one of Prinny’s Hussars or not. You do not seem to comprehend that not every female will fall into your arms, just because you favour her with a smile.’

  ‘You would have me glower at everyone and never open my mouth?’ Duncan queried. He had wondered about the girl, simply because she was so full of contradictions. At times she appeared lost and vulnerable, almost fearful, at others she gave the impression she could take on the world and win.

  What had made her like that? Why had she championed the boy, paid his fare, given him all her food, in the face of all opposition, not least his own? Did she like being contrary and having everyone about her up in arms? Or was she simply unaware of the effect she was creating. She was tiny, but no one could ignore her.

  ‘Oh, please, do not fall out over it,’ Helen pleaded.

  ‘If you wish for conversation,’ the dark man went on, addressing Duncan. ‘I will oblige. My name is Tinsley. I am an attorney at law.’

  ‘Blair, Captain Duncan Blair,’ Duncan said reaching across to offer his hand. ‘Have you been involved in the trial?’

  Everyone knew what he meant, even the child, though it was not technically a trial. The House of Lords were debating a Bill which, if passed, would condemn the King’s wife as an adulteress and she would forfeit her rights as Queen and be divorced from the King. Every word said and every tiny piece of evidence—some of it was very salacious indeed—was talked about and mulled over by a populace who had no great feelings for either protagonist. It was in the best traditions of a London farce.

  ‘Only in a very minor capacity.’

  ‘The poor woman.’ This from the painted lady. ‘The King has always hated her.’

  ‘And has never taken the slightest pains to hide it,’ Helen put in. ‘I have…’ She had been going to say she had met the Regent at her come-out, but stopped herself; the woman she was supposed to be would never have moved in Royal circles. ‘I have heard he is as dissolute a rake as anyone would wish to meet. If I were married to him, I should certainly not wish to live with him, not even to be Queen. Why she did not stay living quietly in Italy, I cannot imagine.’