The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet Read online

  “Mr. Sinclair?”

  He turned to see Edward Skinner approaching, and frowned. An interesting fellow, deep in Fitz’s confidence—a fact he had always known, yet somehow on this visit that fact was reinforced. Perhaps thanks to Mary and Lydia? Not an ill-looking man, if your tastes ran to massiveness and swarthiness. His eyes bore the same cool detachment as Fitz’s, yet he was too old to be Fitz’s by-blow—nearing forty, was Angus’s guess.

  “Yes, Mr. Skinner?” he asked, giving Ned his due.

  “Message from Mr. Darcy. He can’t bear you company today.”

  “Oh, too bad!” Angus stood still for a moment, then nodded to himself. “Well, no matter. I feel like a gallop to blow the cobwebs away, so I’ll ride alone. Would you tell Mrs. Darcy that I will be back in time for dinner?”

  “Certainly.”

  A vain hope, that he could do anything significant in the time; it was already noon when Angus set out for Chesterfield, which he didn’t reach. His horse cast a shoe, he was obliged to seek a blacksmith, and all he had for his pains was a headache from facing the setting sun as he returned.

  “I know your mind is occupied with Mrs. Wickham,” he said to Elizabeth before dinner, “but I am more perturbed about Mary. I never met a person more meticulous, more addicted to the minutiae of timetables and schedules than Mary, yet she has disappeared in spite of informing me how she meant to go.”

  “I think you dwell upon it too much, Angus,” Elizabeth said, her mind indeed preoccupied with hideous thoughts about Lydia. “Give Mary two or three more days, and she’ll emerge from her hiding place unaware that she has caused consternation. She was ever thus, you know. Her meticulousness was usually to do with mere trivia, and her concentration upon the timing of events was not sensible. Life always surprised her, however hard she tried to strip it of its astonishments.”

  “You do not know her!” he said in tones of wonder.

  She flushed, annoyed at his reaction. “She is my sister, sir. I do know her, and better than you.”

  He lifted his brows, leaving them to say without words that he did not agree, but Parmenter’s announcing dinner saved them from a serious falling out.

  On Monday, Angus, Charlie and Owen started for Nottingham shortly after seven, determined that they were going to find out whether Mary had been seen there. It was a logical place for one going north from Hertford to Manchester, given the stage-coach routes. If Huckstep the horse master was puzzled when they chose strong, steady horses rather than the goers Mr. Charlie always rode, he knew better than to ask. Embarrassed that Mr. Sinclair’s last mount had cast a shoe, he made sure that would not happen today.

  The distance from Pemberley to Nottingham was about fifty miles; by riding conservatively they hoped to reach the town in four or five hours without exhausting their steeds, though, said Charlie, “I warned Mama that we may not be back tonight. We are hot on the heels of the notorious Sheriff of Nottingham of Robin Hood’s day, and may choose to spend the afternoon quizzing the locals.”

  “What do they teach at Oxford?” Angus demanded of Owen.

  “Myths and legends, among other airy-fairy things. Was it not so at Edinburgh?”

  “Very sedate, very down-to-earth. Is there a decent inn at Nottingham?”

  “The Black Cat,” said Charlie, who knew the country north of Birmingham intimately.

  Their horses having held up very well, they reached Nottingham at noon, and ate luncheon at the Black Cat before setting out for the coach station posting house on foot.

  And finally, news!

  “Yes, sirs, I remember the lady,” said Mr. Hooper, manager of the stage-coach company in Nottingham. “She come in from Grantham last Thursday—one of them unfortunate journeys, I gather. Five louts shared the cabin with her, and I can imagine what a time she had of it! I was busy when the Grantham stage come in, but I run a decent sort of establishment here, and that were a coachload of bad trouble—them on the top were drunk and brawling. In fact, I sacked Jim Pickett the coachman for not running things shipshape. Threw the lady’s bags in the dung pile. Hard to find coachmen that don’t drink, and Jim drank. Well, he’ll have no more rums on me!”

  The three men listened in growing horror, but when Charlie would have interrupted the flow, Angus trod on his foot.

  “Seems the lady wouldn’t have nothing to do with them five louts,” Mr. Hooper went on, hardly drawing a breath. “So they got their own backs, they did. Tripped her when she was getting out—flat in the muck she went, poor lady! Knocked the wind clear out of her. Ruined her coat and dress—horse piss. I was told a man helped her up, dusted her off. But the muck ain’t prone to be fixed by a dust-off. Her reticule went flying, but she got it back, and the man put her gold guineas back into it too. I only saw her a-going out of the yard—a regular mess.”

  Charlie’s face was a study in grief; he gulped, held onto Owen’s sleeve. “The curs!” he cried, almost in tears. “I—I cannot credit it! Five men picking on a defenceless woman in a public stage-coach? Wait until my father hears! There will be hell to pay from the highest to the lowest!”

  A look of acute apprehension on Mr. Hooper’s face did not bode well for further information; Angus trod on Charlie’s foot again. “Was that the last time you saw her, sir?” Angus asked “No. She come back at seven next morning—I were busy again, always am busy. London don’t give me enough help, expect the whole thing to run like clockwork. Well, it don’t.” He fulminated for a moment, then returned to his tale. “Two stages. One bound for Derby, one for Sheffield. The lady got on the Sheffield coach and away she went. Looked fairly tuckered, she did. No coat, new dress, but it weren’t no great shakes, and Len told me she stank of horse piss. Still, sir, she had gold in her reticule. Daresay she’ll be right and tight.”

  A groan wrenched itself out of Charlie. “Sheffield! Oh, Mary, why Sheffield?”

  “Something must have drawn her there,” said Owen, trying to see the bright side. “A factory she heard of, perhaps?”

  “So tomorrow we’re for Sheffield,” said Angus with a sigh. He dropped a guinea in the manager’s hand. “Thank you, sir. You’ve been a great help.”

  Eyes round at the sight of the coin, Mr. Hooper closed his fist on it; by the time he recovered his breath, the three gentlemen—terrific swells!—were walking away.

  “Here!” he called after them, the guinea working magic on his memory. “Don’t you want to know the rest, good sirs?”

  They stopped in their tracks.

  “The rest?” from Angus.

  “Yes, the rest. My coachman told me yesterday. The lady got off in Mansfield. Turns out she thought she were on the Derby stage, not the Sheffield stage. My man had to charge her for the fare from Nottingham to Mansfield—sixpence—then went on to Sheffield without her. Last he saw of her, she were going into the Friar Tuck. Looking for transport to Chesterfield.”

  The richer by a second guinea, Mr. Hooper could find no more to tell his auditors until long after they had gone. So enthused was he at the prospect of earning a third guinea that he trotted off to the Black Cat at once to impart his afterthought. Too late! The three gentlemen had ridden off.

  “Oh, well, ’tain’t important,” said he to himself. Just that it was very peculiar to have two lots of enquiries about the same lady inside three days. Big, surly, black bugger, last Saturday’s enquirer had been. Blotted out the sun. Did not bestow guineas—his idea of largesse had been a shilling. A shilling, and he the manager!

  All of which left Mr. Hooper with some questions of his own: who was this lady, why did she have gold in her reticule, who were the gentlemen in search of her, why were there two lots of them, and who was the pretty young man’s dad?

  They rode for Mansfield at once, Charlie having decided that their horses were rested enough to survive another fifteen miles. Neither Angus nor Owen disputed Charlie’s authority in the matter of horseflesh; Owen’s father was a farmer, but topnotch mounts were as far from his ken as they we
re from Angus’s.

  By six that evening they were dismounting in the yard of the Friar Tuck, and agreed that they would go no farther that day.

  When they entered the inn they found its proprietor hovering expectantly.

  “Your three best bedchambers, landlord,” said Angus, every bone in his body aching; a carriage-based London existence was not conducive to careering around the countryside with Charlie Darcy. His rump was very sore, but he could still sit down; heaving a sigh of content, he did so.

  “It’s too late for ale—your best wine, landlord!”

  “Ask him, ask him, ask him!” Charlie kept muttering.

  “In due time. First, we wet our whistles.”

  “Lord, I’m tired,” said Owen.

  “Cawkers, both of you.” Charlie subsided with a scowl.

  The cellars of the Friar Tuck yielded an excellent claret; after consuming two bottles of it, they repaired to their rooms to freshen up. In the kitchen Mrs. Beatty, exhorted by Mr. Beatty, was cooking what she termed a “tidy meal.”

  After doing the tidy meal justice, Angus finally broached the subject of Mary.

  “We are in search of a lady,” he said to the landlord. “We believe she came in on the Sheffield stage last Friday, it seems thinking she was on the Derby one. On learning her mistake, she alighted, apparently to seek some means of going to Chesterfield. Did you see her?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “I thought the Sheffield stage-coach stopped here?”

  “It does. But I weren’t here, sir. I was visiting my son at Clipstone, didn’t get back until well after the Sheffield stage. It don’t wait, sir, just sets down and picks up.”

  “Surely it changes horses here?”

  “No, sir. It does that in Pleasley, two mile farther on. Another of my sons has the King John there, and we split it—he changes the northbound coaches, I change the southbound.”

  “And does your son in Clipstone have an inn?” Owen asked, fascinated at so much nepotism.

  “Yes, sir. The Merry Men.”

  Charlie sat looking as if the world was ending. “If you did not see her, landlord, did anyone else?” he asked curtly.

  “I could ask my wife, sir.”

  “Kindly do so.”

  “Is there a Robin Hood hostelry in the family?” Owen asked while Mrs. Beatty was being sent for.

  “How amazing of you to know that, sir! The Robin Hood belongs to my son Will, over in Edwinstowe, and the Lion Heart to my son John, in Ollerton. Though it’s a tavern, not an inn.”

  Expecting praise for her dinner, Mrs. Beatty bustled in engaged in a private debate—did they like the roast venison or the stew delicately flavoured with sage and lamb’s kidneys? But the faces of her diners, she now discovered, did not belong to gentlemen with food on their minds. In fact, all three looked forbidding. She began to stiffen, some instinct telling her that she was in trouble.

  “Matilda, did a lady get off the Sheffield stage on Friday?”

  “Oh, her!” Mrs. Beatty sniffed. “I would have to call her a woman, for a lady she was not.”

  Charlie yelped; Angus’s foot had made contact with his already bruised toes.

  “What happened to her, madam?” Angus asked, heart sinking.

  “I sent her about her business, that’s what! She stank! Dirtying my clean floors, and them not even dry! I’ll have none of you, I said, and marched her out my door.”

  “Do you know where she went?” Angus asked, swallowing an ire quite as hot as Charlie’s.

  “Only that she wanted to go to Chesterfield, but first she needed a room. I sent her to the Green Man.”

  “Oh, Matilda!” cried Mr. Beatty, looking horrified. “She was a lady! Our guests are in search of her.”

  “Happen they’ll find her at the Green Man. Or Chesterfield by now,” said Mrs. Beatty, unrepentant. “She didn’t look no lady to me. She looked like a dirty drab. Too pretty for her own good.”

  “Charlie, hold your tongue!” Angus snapped. “Then we go to the Green Man in the morning. Prepare an early breakfast.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Beatty.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Go to the Green Man. ’Tis a felons’ haunt. Every rogue and thief on both sides of the Pennines congregates there. As well as the highwayman Captain Thunder.” He rounded on his wife. “Which is why, Matilda, I take leave to say that you are a sour and bitter woman, to send a lady anywhere near the Green Man. You are always prating about God and you won’t even let your daughters dance, but mark my words, God will punish you for your lack of charity! Methodism! Making it impossible for your daughters to find husbands outside of the church, and a more dismal lot than those young men I don’t know! Well, this episode is the last straw for me! My daughters will wed men who like a drink and a dance!”

  Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, Angus yawned until his eyes watered and shepherded Charlie and Owen bedward before the domestic storm could break.

  “There is no point in fretting, Charlie” were his final words to that indignant young man. “We’ll be on our way early tomorrow, so get some sleep.”

  “Just as well I brought my pistols,” Charlie said, eyes sparkling. “If the Green Man is half as bad as the landlord says, we may be glad of a pair of barkers.”

  “I’d feel better about that if I knew you could shoot.”

  “I can culp a wafer at twenty paces. Pater may deem me bellows to mend in a boxing ring, but he’s seen me shoot too often to despise my skill with a pistol. In fact, he had Manton make me my own pair.”

  Angus’s staunch façade fell once he was safely inside his room; surprised because he had felt no pain, he found that his nails had cut into the palms of his hands, he had clenched them so hard. Oh, Mary, Mary! Turned away as a common trollop by an imperceptive bigot like Mrs. Beatty! Filthy from her fall—wherever she had stayed in Nottingham had not offered her a bath, probably not even hot water. Well, no doubt Nottingham’s inns were stuffed with Mrs. Beattys too. He had good reason to think that his Mary would not be intimidated, including by a pack of felons, but worry he must.

  A state of mind Mr. Beatty did not improve when he knocked softly on Angus’s door a few minutes later.

  “Yes, sir?” Angus asked irritably, clad in his nightshirt.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Sinclair, but I judged you the leader of your search party, and did not want to wait until the morning—we have a group of visitors arriving to view Sherwood Forest, and I may not get the time.”

  “What is it you want to say?” Angus asked, feeling a qualm.

  “My wife told me that Captain Thunder was lurking last Friday noon when the Sheffield coach arrived. To do her a meed of justice, she was frightened, and very anxious to bolt the door. Though why she couldn’t shout for the grooms I have no idea.” He scratched his head, dislodging his wig. “After the coach went north to Pleasley she took a peek outside, and there was your lady walking down the road to the Green Man. Captain Thunder was following her, but at a distance. It seems that under her dirt the lady was very pretty, which, my wife being what she is, led her to make a false judgement. So she never called the grooms. Instead, she bolted the door.”

  “I see,” said Angus quietly. “What can you tell me of this Captain Thunder, sir?”

  “No good, and that is certain. Folks are afraid of him, and with reason. ’Tis said he is a murderer, though I never heard of him killing anyone he bailed up. Shot one courageous old geezer through the shoulder, but he lived.”

  “Then whom does he murder, Mr. Beatty?”

  “Rumour has it, women. The Green Man is a bawdy-house as well as an inn, and Captain Thunder has first choice of new light-skirts. If one goes all shrewish, like, ’tis said he kills her.”

  “Thank you.” Angus shut his door.

  He had no sleep that night.

  When he stepped into the parlour to partake of breakfast, he still had not made up his mind how much of Mr. Bea
tty’s news to impart to Charlie and Owen. Only when he saw their fresh, rested faces did he decide to tell them virtually nothing. If Charlie went off half-cocked their troubles would multiply, but he needed to be sure that pair of Manton pistols were ready for use.

  “I do not wish to sound unduly pessimistic,” he said in the Friar Tuck stable yard amid the racket of unharnessing several carriages that had brought the sightseers, “but have you loaded your pistols, Charlie? For that matter, where are they? Can you reach them in a hurry if you have to?”

  Grinning, Charlie lifted one saddle bag to reveal an elegant, silver-mounted pistol beneath it, a neat firearm ten inches long. “There’s one in the other holster too. They’re loaded and almost ready to fire. Flick the frizzen up off the powder pan, cock the hammer, and pull the trigger. I assure you they’ll not hang fire or flash in the pan—Manton don’t make second-rate pistols.”

  “Good,” said Angus, smiling apologetically. “There’s more to you than meets the eye, Charlie.”

  “I’m not afraid to throw my heart over.”

  “Let us depart this chaos.”

  When Angus nudged his roan into a trot, Owen restrained him. “Since the Green Man is but a mile away, might it not be better to walk our horses that far? We should look for signs that Mary passed this way.”

  Seeing the sense in that, Angus reined in his steed to a walk and the three of them separated to spread across the road, Angus down the middle, Owen near the right ditch, Charlie near the left. The thickness of the woods to either side dismayed them; no chance of riding in to investigate.

  Perhaps a half a mile from the Friar Tuck, Owen gave a loud whoop. “Hola! I see something!”

  He swung from the saddle and hopped down into the ditch, hands scrabbling in the weed-choked grass, and came up holding a tapestry handbag. Angus opened it without a scruple upon sad women’s under-things and the Book of Common Prayer. Her name was neatly written upon the front endpaper. Every item of clothing stank of horse excrement; he remembered Mr. Hooper’s saying that the coachman had thrown her bags onto the dung pile. Poor, poor Mary! Armed to fight the injustices of the world without dreaming that she too might fall prey to them.