Working Man, Society Bride

The final exciting novel in Anne Herries’sThe Hellfire Mysteries

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

July 1844

After waiting outside the station for twenty minutes while a train from another line passed through, the train from London drew into Leicester and hissed to a halt. The Countess of Luffenham and her daughter, Lady Lucinda Vernley, waited until a porter came along to open the door before stepping down on to the platform.

Lucy was glad to leave the sticky heat of the carriage and breathe fresh air again. She would have liked to open the window as soon as they left London, but her mother forbade it on the grounds that they would be choked on the smoke and covered in black smuts, which they would never be able to clean off their clothes. And as their clothes had cost the Earl a pretty penny, they would have to put up with the heat. And so, for six interminable hours, they had sat and cooked.

Mama did not like travelling by train and would have much preferred to go by coach, but that would have taken even longer and necessitated changing the horses every dozen or so miles and staying at least one night somewhere on the road. The Earl, for all his apparent wealth, was a careful man and begrudged the cost when they could travel first class by rail and reach London inside a day. When his wife had mildly pointed out that they still had to be taken to the railhead by carriage and fetched again on their return, he had given her a lecture on the economics of using his own horses for a short ride and railways for a longer trip, and she had fallen silent. Arguing with the Earl was something she was not prepared to do.

‘Good afternoon, my lady,’ the porter said, touching his cap and taking her small valise from her to carry it out to the waiting carriage. ‘Shall the wagon be coming for your luggage?’

‘Yes. You will find everything labelled. See that it is all loaded properly. The last time we travelled a hatbox was lost and it took days for it to be found and returned to me.’

‘I was very sorry about that, my lady. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

They swept past the luggage van where two porters were busy disgorging boxes, trunks, portmanteaux and hatboxes on to the platform. They looked up from their task to watch the ladies go. The Countess, who did not deign to notice them, walked past, looking straight ahead, her back ramrod straight. She was dressed in a gown of some silky, striped material in three shades of brown: chocolate, amber and coffee. Her hat, trimmed with feathers, flowers and loops of ribbon, echoed these colours. Her daughter was in deep pink, the bodice of her gown closely fitting, its voluminous skirt arranged in tiers each trimmed with matching lace. She wore a short cape and a tiny bonnet set on the back of her pretty head. They were followed by a maid in dove grey. When all three disappeared from sight, the men shrugged their shoulders and returned to their task.

The carriage was waiting with the hood down and they were soon on their way through the familiar countryside of Leicestershire. This was rolling terrain, with hills and dales, some quite steep, good hunting-and-shooting country. Cattle and sheep grazed in the meadows and cut hay lay on the fields to dry. Field workers, who were turning the hay with rakes, looked up as they passed; some who recognised the carriage touched their caps or gave a little bob of a curtsy. The Countess graciously acknowledged this with a tiny inclination of her head.

At the halfway point the carriage drew into the yard of a posting inn where Mr Downham, the Earl’s steward, had arranged for fresh horses to be brought to complete the journey. The ones that had met them at the station would be taken on to Luffenham the next morning after they had been rested. While the change was being made, the Countess and her daughter went inside the inn for refreshment. It was a time-honoured practice that was rapidly dying out as the new railways spread their tentacles across the countryside. But there was still no line near enough to Luffenham Hall to obviate the need for a change of horses.

When they returned to their seats, the hood had been put up because they would not be home before late evening and by then it would be dusk and growing cooler.

‘Well, Lucy,’ the Countess said, when they were on their way once more, ‘nearly home.’

‘Yes, Mama.’ In one way Lucy was glad to be going home after two months in London as a dеbutante; she loved the countryside and countryside pursuits, especially riding her mare, Midge. On the other hand she would miss the excitement of the balls, soirеes, picnics and other outings, which had filled her days and evenings while she had been in the capital, not to mention the young men who had danced attendance on her. It would have been flattering if she hadn’t known it was because she was the daughter of an earl and therefore a catch.

‘It is to be hoped you have benefited from your season,’ her mother went on. ‘Your father was of a mind that something might come of it.’

‘I know, Mama.’

‘You did like Mr Gorridge, didn’t you?’

Mr Edward Gorridge was the son of Viscount Gorridge, a neighbour and old acquaintance of her father, although Lucy had never met the young man before being introduced to him in London. He had been away at school and then university and after that had been on the Grand Tour and their paths had never crossed.

‘Yes, Mama. But I am not at all sure that I should like to be married to him.’

‘Why ever not?’

Lucy found it hard to explain. Edward Gorridge had been polite, fastidious in his dress and behaviour, but there was something about his pale eyes she found disturbing. ‘I don’t know, Mama. I think he is a cold fish.’

‘Fish! Lucy, how can you say so? I thought he was charming.’

‘Charming, yes—but was he sincere? And is charm a good basis for marriage?’

‘It is a start.’ Her mother had used every opportunity, every wile known to her, to throw her and Mr Gorridge together without breaching the bounds of propriety and Lucy had more than a suspicion that her parents had already decided he should be her husband. She did not know why they were in such a hurry to have her married—she had not yet reached her twenty-first birthday and, as far as she was concerned, there was plenty of time. She wanted to enjoy being a young lady a little longer, to find just the right man, and was convinced she would know him when she met him.

‘Why him, Mama? Why not one of the others?’

‘Did you find yourself attracted to one of the others? If so, you gave no indication of it. You said Mr Gorridge was a cold fish, but you did not appear to warm to anyone yourself.’

‘I found them all a little shallow.’

‘No doubt some of them were, but surely not all? I thought you would take to Mr Gorridge. He has a little more about him.’

Lucy laughed. ‘More about him! You mean he’s heir to Viscount Gorridge and will come into Linwood Park one day.’

‘It is a consideration.’

‘For you and Papa perhaps, but not for me. I want to be in love with the man I marry.’

‘Love is not the only consideration, Lucy, nor yet the first. It grows as you learn to live together and accommodate each other. Papa has a great regard for me, you know he does, and I hold him in deep respect and affection, but that was not how it started.’

‘How did it start?’ Lucy would never have dared to ask such a question a few weeks before, but her mother seemed to be inviting it.

‘We met at a ball, during my come-out Season. My papa had looked over all the eligibles—that’s what we used to call them in those days—and decided your father was the best choice. He was already a Viscount, heir to the old Earl, whose country home was Luffenham Hall. The family, like my own, was a very old and respected one. I had nothing against the match and neither had he and we met frequently at balls and soirеes and tea parties, and it was taken for granted he would propose….’

‘Which he did.’

‘Yes. Very properly, after our fathers had agreed a settlement.’

‘Were you never carried away by passion?’