The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (4 page)

The money stowed away inside her coat gave Alethea as much satisfaction as George Warren felt with his notes. As Mrs. Napier, she had been allowed not a penny of her own. Upon her marriage, by law, everything she owned became her husband's. Her fortune, her jewels, her clothes, her books, her music, the very cream she used on her hands, it all belonged to her husband.

In the modern world, women were no longer slaves to their husbands; indeed, Alethea doubted if most of them ever had been, even in mediaeval and historic times. Stern husbands, or would-be stern husbands, masters of their households, were usually no such thing. Look at her cousin Fitzwilliam. Fanny let him think he was master in his house, while in practice he was completely under his wife's sway.

She had had a friend, a young woman two or three years older than her, who had made a disastrous marriage. Seemingly pleasant, her husband turned out to be a tyrant within doors. A mere six months after they had left the church together, her friend was shaking the dust of her husband's house off her feet and driving back to her own family in a chaise and four.

Her father had not been best pleased, it was true, but he had felt a just indignation when he learned how his daughter had been treated, and in no way blamed her for fleeing the marital home.

As she was sure her own father would not blame her. She sighed inwardly. If only she had listened to Fanny's warning words about Napier when she had announced her intention of marrying him. Fanny had acknowledged the charm, but questioned the kindness of his nature. She had seen, as Alethea had been too distraught to do, the rigidity beneath the suave and pleasant surface.

“Take care, Alethea, that you do not throw away your life on a man for whom you have no strong feelings. You may not care much one way or the other just now, however, I beg of you to remember how binding are the marriage vows. Take your time, let us all get to know Mr. Napier better, so that you and we may be sure he is the man you think he is.”

Fanny had been quite right. Her cousin might seem to be enclosed within serene and happy walls of domesticity, but she was a shrewd judge of a man for all that. And Alethea had a notion that Fanny had a fair idea of what had passed between her and Penrose. A person of strict morals, Fanny could never approve of an illicit liaison of that kind. That was perhaps why Fanny had not been more forceful in her advice not to rush into marriage with Napier; she would think that what Alethea had done once, she might do again, and, in her view, the only safe place for such desire was the marriage bed.

Alethea blinked away the tears that started to her eyes at the memory of that night of stolen love. Wrong it might have been, misguided it certainly was, yes, and foolish, too, but how very, very different it was from what passed for love-making between her and Norris Napier.

Well, all that was in the past. Her family would be as shocked as her friends had been to learn of how her husband had treated her. How she wished that Papa and Mama were in England, that she could even now be heading for Pemberley.

They were not there; once William was completely well again, running around the grounds at Pemberley and making his tutor's life a misery, Mr. Darcy had responded to a request from the government for him to undertake a second diplomatic mission. His previous time in Constantinople had been highly successful; now he was to make a stay of some months in Vienna, accompanied, as before, by his wife. She no longer had any fears for William, she declared, and besides, Vienna was not Constantinople or China; they could very well keep in touch with their home from Vienna.

Alethea might have smuggled out a letter to them, once she had made contact with the resourceful Figgins, but she had hesitated. Letters could be delayed, opened, read, fall into the wrong hands. And what she had to say about her marriage was impossible to put down on paper. Then she had realised that she wasn't even sure she could say the words face-to-face; no one knew better than she how formidable Papa was when angry. Was there not a chance that he might feel she ought to return to the miseries of her marriage, try to make the best of it?

That was why she was on her way to Venice, not to Vienna.

Her sister Camilla and her husband were presently in Venice. Camilla, the second oldest of the Darcy daughters, was the one of her sisters that Alethea loved the best; she could trust Camilla with any secret and know that she would not be betrayed. Yes, and Alexander Wytton, too; he had more than once proved to be a man of his word, and possessed of a keen sense of honour. Lucky Camilla, to have married such a man.

No, she wasn't going to waste time on such thoughts; that way lay self-pity, and self-pity was despicable. She must count her blessings; at least there was one person in the world she could speak to without reserve. She even felt that she might be able to reveal the worst aspects of her unfortunate marriage to so understanding a man as Wytton. Her sister and brother-in-law would take her in, they would advise how best she should approach her parents.

As the miles went by, she considered the journey ahead of her. One step at a time, that was what Griffy always said to her. As she plunged into a difficult sonata, or attempted a new dance, or longed to be able to speak a language even before she had opened the grammar, Griffy would warn her to take it step by step. “You can't jump down the stairs in one leap, however much you might wish to, and you even more surely can't jump up it, but one step and then the next and there you are, at the top or the bottom and not a bit out of breath or discomposed.”

Alethea knew herself to be, by nature, a leaper. She had leapt into love with Penrose and had leapt into marriage with Napier. If she couldn't have Penrose, she had recklessly persuaded herself that it didn't matter whom she married. Didn't many women make reasonably happy lives out of marriage to a man they didn't feel any great love for? And she had acted precipitously for another reason, one that grieved her now: she had acted from pride, from the desperate desire not to appear distressed by Penrose's defection.

By becoming engaged so promptly to Napier, she had silenced the gossips; what folly to have allowed them to cause her a moment's concern. No, she wasn't going to let herself think either of Penrose or of Napier. She must not dwell on what was past. Soon they would be in London. The transfer to the stage had been accomplished without a hitch, and any enquiries at the inn about carriages coming from the area of Tyrrwhit House would be met by the information that two young men had continued their journey northwards—if anyone at all remembered their being at a busy coaching inn at that time, on that particular day.

That should put any pursuing spouse off the scent; Napier would expect Alethea to be travelling alone. A woman without her maid and with no bandboxes would be conspicuous indeed; he would waste not a moment on accounts of any men travelling quite at their ease and headed in the wrong direction.

 

London, with busy hours to be spent in the acquisition of those necessaries that Figgins had been unable to obtain. Alethea had come, she reflected, out of her marriage as though reborn.
We bring nothing into this world
—the words from the burial service rattled round in her head as she hunted for suitable reading matter to sustain her on the long journey ahead.

The redoubtable Figgins had made all the arrangements. At the appointed hour they climbed aboard the Dover Mail—“Sixpence a mile, for each of us, why it's daylight robbery,” Figgins had informed her—to find the other travellers already making themselves comfortable for the night with rugs, nightcaps, and even, in the case of one elegant young gentleman, a mask to cover his eyes.

“Though what for I can't imagine,” Figgins whispered to Alethea. “It'll be pitch black as soon as we're beyond the town, on a night like this.”

For the weather had turned sour, with overcast skies and a thin drizzle to add to the discomfort of those who chose to travel on top of the mail coach.

Alethea was convinced that she wouldn't sleep a wink. These coaches were designed for speed, not comfort, as she quickly discovered. Nonetheless, the tiredness of one sleepless night, the exhaustion of so much travelling, the turmoil of her mind and spirit which had worn itself into numb weariness all meant that her eyes were soon drooping, and within a very few minutes she was sound asleep, her head resting on Figgins's shoulder.

Catlike, Figgins slept as well, although not deeply, on the alert for any movement from her mistress, any waking remark that might give them both away. But Alethea slept the miles away in utter silence, scarcely stirring for the various changes of horses, and did not wake until the coach rattled over the cobbles of the inn yard at Dover.

Dover, with the sea a-tossing, heaving grey mass, matching the scudding clouds overhead. The packet rising and falling beside the quay, the seamen declaring that it was a capital wind, that they were destined for a swift passage. Then she and Figgins were down in the tiny cabin with its two berths, stowing the bags they had brought with them before going up on deck to say farewell to the white cliffs. Gulls swooped above the boat, their mournful, eerie cries echoing in the women's ears. The ropes were cast away, the sails filled, and the boat began to edge away from the shore.

As the vessel moved past the bar of the harbour and hit the full force of the sea, Figgins announced that she would go below and get some sleep, if Mi…Mr. Hawkins had no objection, and she—
he,
she meant—ought to do the same, while she could.

“Are you feeling unwell? Is it the seasickness?” Alethea enquired.

No, it was not the seasickness, it was merely the sight of all that nasty grey water. If God had meant them to travel on the waves he would have given them fins, and since he had not, the best way for a Christian soul to endure the voyage was to shut oneself away and pretend one was somewhere else.

Alethea remained on deck, revelling for a time in the rise and crash of the vessel, of the rattling of the halyards, the shriek of the rigging, the strong sounds of the sails. The white foam ran beneath her, the wind blew her cheeks into redness, the salt stung her eyes, and she felt a wild exaltation.

She had done it. She had escaped from her cage, had left all that painful life behind her, as shut off from her present existence as though a door had slammed and locked it away. She was off on an adventure, into the unknown. and she was travelling, joy of joys, as a man, not a woman fettered by real or imagined frailty, long skirts and convention, but a creature fully in charge of her own fate.

Then the motion of the boat became less agreeable, and her feelings took on a much more prosaic tone, as the first pangs of seasickness came over her.