‘But it isn’t only Julia, is it?’ The damp towel went the same way as the ruined stockings. ‘You cannot have forgotten that awful letter his mother wrote suggesting he may as well look Phoebe over while he is here? In case he finds a very young girl, whose opinion is not yet fixed, might be more easily moulded to the position she would fill. Moulded! As though she were a thing of clay, a puppet for him to play with. Not a real person at all.’ Her voice was barely above a whisper as she concluded, ‘Em, she’s barely sixteen. I cannot condone a man of his age and experience forcing a girl so young to his bidding, simply because he has not so far been able to find what he wants from a wife elsewhere.’
Emily handed her a pair of clean stockings. ‘Neither of your cousins object to the prospect of marrying a marquis, though, do they? And he could not have come visiting if either your uncle or aunt had indicated he was not welcome.’
Hester sighed, one stockinged foot curling over her cold, bare toes, remembering how her cousins had waltzed each other round the parlour, giddy with glee on the day her aunt received the letter confirming his intent to make one of them his wife.
‘I think that is the worst aspect of the case. They are willing to sell themselves to this heartless, horrible man simply because of his stupendous wealth and the position he occupies in society. By the end of this week, one of my poor cousins will have given herself into the keeping of a virtual stranger, a man cold enough to take a wife on his mother’s recommendation, sight unseen, heartless enough to run a defenceless female off the road and despicable enough to berate his groom for wasting time going to her help.’
She thrust her other foot into a neatly rolled stocking and jerked it up her leg. ‘If I hadn’t been only a few yards from the vicarage, and known I could rely on you to provide me with a quick change of clothing, I would have had to go home instead of…’
She bit her lower lip, knowing her friend must disapprove of the way she had intended to spend this afternoon. As she had guessed, Emily laid a hand on her shoulder, before saying gently, ‘Perhaps you ought to look on him as a messenger of divine providence then. Sent to deflect you from—’
Hester leaped to her feet, throwing her friend’s hand from her shoulder. ‘I am not doing anything wrong. Not really.’
‘Nevertheless—’ Emily’s voice was muffled as she rummaged in the bottom of her wardrobe for a spare pair of boots ‘—you do not want any of your family to know what you are about, do you? Not to mention the fact that your aunt must need you today, with so many guests arriving.’
Hester stamped her feet into the shoes Emily set in front of her. ‘I have spent the last few weeks ensuring that everything will run like clockwork. The staff all know exactly what to do, and my aunt will be in her element. Nobody will miss me. They will all be far too busy fussing over the new arrivals.’ Then she shrugged. ‘I deserve a day off.’
Emily went back to the wardrobe to select a dress suitable for the errand she knew Hester was embarking on. ‘It’s the talk of the village that the gypsies set up camp in The Lady’s Acres last night. Running off to visit them behind your uncle’s back is not at all proper and you know it.’
‘If I asked his permission, he would not let me go, not today,’ Hester cried. ‘And it has been a whole year since they were last here.’
Emily sighed. ‘You are determined to go?’
‘Yes.’ Hester raised her chin defiantly, knowing that though Emily disapproved, she would not betray her.
‘Then would you consider letting me come with you, so that if anyone were to find out, you can at least say you had a chaperon?’
Hester felt her dark mood dissipate as swiftly as it had descended. ‘I would be delighted to have your company, if you are sure? I know Jye can be a bit…’
‘Scary?’ Emily shivered.
‘I was going to say unpredictable, but, yes, I know he scares you. That is why I would never have asked this favour of you. And the meeting today is not likely to go smoothly, either, now that I’ve lost the basket of provisions I intended to sweeten him up with.’
‘I can run quite fast, you know, if he decides to set his dogs on us.’
Hester laughed. ‘And no man is going to stop us from following the dictates of our conscience, be he marquis or gypsy.’
Having washed her face and changed into dry clothing, Hester set out back down the lane, with Emily at her side, to see if she could rescue anything from the ditch before heading off to the gypsy camp. She managed to hook her bonnet from the hawthorn branch that had earlier snagged it so painfully from her head. She could sew new ribbons on to it. The old ones had got a bit threadbare anyway. There was nothing left of the pies, pastries and preserves that had been in the basket but an unappetising reddish mush studded with shards of broken pottery. But a package containing coloured paper and a box of crayons had survived. Triumphantly she wiped the gloss of freezing mud from her spoils with the sleeve of her borrowed coat.
They had not gone far when Emily, who had clearly been turning something over in her mind for quite some time, said, ‘Has it occurred to you that it might not have been the marquis himself who ran you off the road? You did say he was bringing a friend with him.’
‘Oh, it was him,’ Hester breathed. ‘He more than matched the description my aunt Susan provided us with.’ Her lip curled. ‘Of course, she used terms that were meant to make him sound attractive. Saying he had the physique of an accredited Corinthian, besides being tall and distinguished in his bearing.’ She snorted in derision. ‘The truth is that he is a great brute of a man with shoulders like a coal heaver and a permanent sneer on his face. He has eyes as hard and black as jet. I don’t think I have ever seen a man who is so…dark. Like a creature of the night.’ She shivered. ‘Everything about him was black. His clothes, his hair, even the language he used came straight from the pit. And,’ she concluded, ‘expressed complete contempt for lesser mortals.’
Em looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose he must have thought you were just a simple working woman, though, Hester, since you are dressed for visiting…um…the disadvantaged, and were without a chaperon.’
‘Well, that would excuse him, of course!’ Hester’s pace quickened as her temper seethed, forcing Emily into a trot to keep up with her longer-legged stride. ‘In effect, it was all my fault for getting in his way.’
‘No, that was not what I meant at all,’ Emily panted. ‘Only that it might have accounted for his attitude. I am sure he would not treat your cousins with the same—’
‘Contempt?’ Hester supplied. ‘Oh, he might gloss it over with society manners, but that is exactly how he will treat them. Men of his class think of women as playthings at best. Have you forgotten what I told you about the poor women Mrs Parnell takes in?’
Hester had renewed her acquaintance with her former schoolfriend during her short, disastrous Season, and become heavily involved with the refuge she ran for unwed mothers and foundling children. She had found it increasingly hard to mingle, in the evenings, with men who she knew full well were capable of using and discarding women of the lower classes without a qualm. Who would then compound their villainy by duping an innocent girl of their own class into marriage with the intention of squandering their dowries on vice. When any of them had looked her over with the sort of lascivious gleam in their eye that other girls regarded as a form of flattery, she had gone hot all over, and then icy cold, and then begun to tremble so violently that she usually had to flee the room altogether.
‘And wives have no legal rights,’ she continued. ‘A husband can do what he likes with his wife, as he can with any other of his possessions, while she must turn a blind eye to his conduct if she values her own skin. I dread to think of either Julia or Phoebe in the hands of such a brute as Lord Lensborough.’
She