The Chaperon Bride

The coach from Leeds drew into the yard of the Hope Inn at Harrogate in the late afternoon and disgorged a number of passengers. Although it was still quite early in the season, the spa villages of High and Low Harrogate were starting to fill up with visitors coming to take the health-giving waters and on this occasion there were seven new arrivals. First to descend was a family of four: mother, father, a boy of about sixteen and a girl a year or so older, both with smiling faces and a lively interest in what was going on around them. Next descended an elderly lady wrapped up in a vast shawl and attended by a solicitous young man who might or might not have been her nephew. The other arrival was Annis, Lady Wycherley, carrying a small leather case and dressed in practical black bombazine and an unbecoming bonnet.

Annis Wycherley was not a newcomer to Harrogate, for she had been born near the town and had spent many happy holidays there with her cousins during the times that her papa had been on leave from the navy. The late Captain Lafoy had even bought a small estate out towards Skipton, which Annis had inherited almost a decade before and visited whenever she had the opportunity. She was not in Harrogate as often as she would like, however. Her employment, as a chaperon to spoilt society misses, took her to London or Brighton or Bath, although this latter was considered rather déclassé these days, a shabby genteel place that was not popular with the fashionable crowd. Harrogate, with its romantic setting in the wilds of nowhere, its unpleasantly smelling but healthful spa waters and its rustic northern charm, was fast becoming the new Bath in the eyes of the ton.

Annis, espying her cousin Charles in the crowd thronging the inn yard, hurried across and gave him an affectionate hug. He hugged her back, then held her at arm’s length, looking her over dubiously but with a twinkle in his very blue eyes.

‘Annis, whatever have you done to yourself?’

Annis gave a little giggle. ‘Dear Charles, it is lovely to see you too! I collect that your horror stems from seeing me in my chaperon’s attire? I always dress the part, you know.’

‘It puts years on you.’ Charles gave the black bombazine a bemused look and frowned at the bonnet. ‘Lord, Annis, it’s wonderful to see you again, but I barely recognised you!’

‘You know that it is always a mistake to travel in your best clothes. You end up either mud spattered or dusty. Besides, as a professional chaperon I cannot look too elegant.’

‘No danger of that.’ Charles tried to hide his grin. ‘Was the journey good?’

‘A little precipitate,’ Annis said. ‘I suppose that is why the coach is called the Tally Ho? The driver certainly seemed to take that to heart!’

‘I would have sent the carriage to Leeds for you, you know,’ Charles said, gesturing to a smart black chaise that stood in the corner of the yard. ‘It would have been no trouble.’

‘There was no need,’ Annis said cheerfully. ‘I am accustomed to travelling on the stage.’ She waved at the family of four as the landlord escorted them inside the inn. ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Fairlie…Amelia…James…I shall hope to see you all at the Promenade Rooms before long.’

‘You make friends easily,’ Charles observed as the couple bowed and smiled in return.

‘One must beguile the long journey somehow, you know, and they were a very pleasant family. Not like that young man over there…’ Annis nodded across at the young gentleman who was helping the elderly lady up into a barouche. ‘I am sure he is after her money, Charles. If I hear that she has passed away, I shall be most suspicious!’

‘Annis!’

‘Oh, I am only joking,’ Annis said hastily, remembering belatedly that her cousin could be a bit of a high stickler. ‘Pay no attention! Now you…are you well? And Sibella?’

‘I am very well indeed.’ Charles grinned. ‘Sib is flourishing. She and David are expecting their fourth, you know.’

‘I had heard.’ Annis smiled, tucking her arm through his. ‘She has been very busy whilst you and I, Charles, have let the family down sadly! You are not even married and I only look after other peoples’ children!’

Charles laughed and patted her hand where it rested on his sleeve. ‘Plenty of time for the rest of us. But it is fortunate Sibella did not come to meet you, Annis. She would have disowned you as soon as look at you!’

‘Sibella is lucky in that she can indulge herself as a lady of fashion.’ Annis looked around for her trunks. ‘I am obliged to work for my living. Nevertheless I am grateful to you for swallowing the family pride and coming to meet me, Charles. I know I do you no credit!’

Charles laughed again. ‘It was shock, that is all. I barely recognised you in all that frumpish black. You used to be such a good-looking girl…’

Annis gave him a sharp nudge. ‘You used to be quite handsome yourself! Where did it all go wrong, Charles?’

Charles Lafoy was in fact a very good-looking man, as most of the female population of Harrogate would testify. Like his sister Sibella, he had the fair, open features of the Lafoys, the honest blue eyes and engaging smile. As lawyer to Harrogate’s most prosperous merchant, Samuel Ingram, he had a prestigious position in village society. There was no shortage of inn servants queuing up to help his groom put Annis’s luggage in the carriage. Everyone knew that Mr Lafoy always tipped most generously.

Annis Wycherley was almost as tall as her cousin, having a height unfashionable in a woman but useful in a chaperon, since it helped to assert her authority. Her eyes were hazel rather than the Lafoy blue, but she had the same rich, golden blonde hair. In Annis’s case this rarely saw the light of day, being hidden under a succession of lace caps, ugly bonnets and ragingly unfashionable turbans. She had learned early on that no one took a blonde chaperon at all seriously; it could, in fact, be positively dangerous to display her hair, for it made gentlemen behave in a most inappropriately amorous manner.

The shapeless gowns in dowager black, purple and turkey red were all designed and worn with one intention in mind—to make her look older and unattractive. This was a necessity of her profession. Just as no one would take a blonde chaperon seriously, so would nobody entrust their daughter, niece or ward to a girl who looked as though she had only just left the schoolroom herself. Annis was in fact seven and twenty and had been widowed for eight years, but she had a fair, youthful complexion, wide-spaced eyes, a snub nose and a generous mouth that all conspired to undermine the sense of gravity required by a professional chaperon. Prettiness combined with poverty had always struck her as a recipe for disaster, so she did her best to disguise those natural assets she possessed.

‘I thought that we would go straight to the house in Church Row,’ Charles said, as they made their way across to his carriage. ‘You will have the chance to settle in comfortably before Sibella calls on you this evening. When do your charges arrive?’

‘Not until Friday,’ Annis said. ‘Sir Robert Crossley is escorting the girls up from London himself and Mrs Hardcastle accompanies them as duenna in my absence. I am persuaded that she will have licked them into shape before ever they darken my door!’ She shivered a little in the breeze. ‘Gracious, Charles, I can scarce believe that it is June. The wind off the hills is as cold as ever.’

‘You have gone soft from living too long in the south,’ Charles said affectionately. ‘These charges of yours, the Misses Crossley—do they have a large fortune?’

‘Big enough to buy half of Harrogate!’ Annis said. She grimaced, remembering the interview that she had had in London with the Crossley girls before she had agreed to take them on. ‘I fear that even that will not be sufficient to sweeten the pill of Miss Fanny Crossley’s bad manners, however. The girl is as sharp as a thorn and only passably good-looking. She may well be my first failure!’

‘I doubt it.’ Charles grinned at her. ‘Even here in Harrogate we have heard of the striking success of that matchmaker par excellence, Lady Wycherley! They say that you could catch a husband for any girl, be she ugly as sin and poor as a church mouse.’

‘One or other, perhaps, but not both together!’ Annis laughed. ‘You are not hanging out for a wealthy bride, are you, Charles?’

‘Not I!’ Her cousin watched as the last bags were strapped onto the platform of the chaise. ‘I do have a client who is looking, however. Sir Everard Doble, a very worthy but rather dull man with an estate mortgaged to the hilt. We shall arrange a meeting for him with your charges.’

‘Dear Charles,’ Annis said gratefully. ‘I feel my task is already half done. And Miss Lucy Crossley, unlike her elder sister, is a sweet girl who should make a match easily enough amongst all the half-pay officers who seem to crowd the place. I do not imagine that either sister will make a dazzling match, but it should be possible to settle them creditably. So…’ Annis sighed ‘…I may get them off my hands and then spend some time at Starbeck. It was the real reason that I accepted Sir Robert’s commission to chaperon his nieces, you know. I wanted to spend some time at home.’

Charles frowned slightly. ‘Ah, Starbeck. You know that I have not been able to keep a tenant there for the last few months and that the house is in a poor state? I need to talk to you about it at some point, coz.’

Annis looked at him sharply. There was something odd in his tone, a reluctance that made her heart miss a beat, for it boded ill. The small estate of Starbeck was a drain on her limited income and she knew that Charles thought she was a sentimental fool to hold on to it. He had administered the estate for her since her father died and he had been urging her to sell for several years. The house was tumbledown and swallowed money in constant repairs, Charles had been unable to find a tenant who would stay there for any length of time, and the home farm was so poor its owners could barely scratch a living. Since Annis had no money other than what she earned plus a small annuity, it was financial nonsense to continue to support Starbeck, and yet she did not want to let it go. She had had a peripatetic childhood following her father about the country from posting to posting and travelling abroad with her parents on several occasions. Starbeck was home, the only certainty she knew, and for that reason she did not want to lose it.

‘Of course we may talk—’ she began, but broke off as a green and gold high-perch phaeton swept into the inn yard, scattering the ostlers like nervous chickens.

‘For pity’s sake!’ Charles flushed red in annoyance and skipped out of the way as the offside wheel almost ran over his foot. Annis tried not to laugh. Her cousin had always been slightly stuffy, the responsible one amongst the three of them. Perhaps it stemmed from the fact that Charles was the eldest, or more likely it was because he was the only boy and as such was now head of the Lafoy family. Whatever the case, he deplored frivolity.

The phaeton was gleaming and new and contained two occupants, a lady and a gentleman. The lady, a buxom brunette, was swathed in furs. She was laughing and clutching a saucy hat on her dark curls. Her vivacious brown eyes scanned the assembled company, rested thoughtfully on Charles’s red face and dismissed Annis’s plain one, before she took her companion’s hand and jumped lightly down to join him on the cobbles of the inn yard. The landlord had emerged and was bowing enthusiastically, waving them towards the inn door.

‘Ashwick!’ Annis heard Charles say, under his breath.

She cast him a quick glance. Once again there was an odd note in Charles’s voice, one that she could not place. It was neither envy nor even disapproval, both of which might have been understandable from the country lawyer to the dashing peer of the realm. Annis knew of Lord Ashwick, of course; no one who had sponsored girls in ton society for the last three years as she had could fail to be aware of a man whose recent career consisted mainly of playing high and keeping low company. Adam Ashwick was a friend of such luminaries as the Duke of Fleet and the Earl of Tallant, who had scandalised the town with their exploits for years. Tallant was married now and had become disappointingly uxorious, but the gossips were still entertained by the activities of Sebastian Fleet and Adam Ashwick. It seemed extraordinary to find him in so out of the way a place as Harrogate.

The couple had to pass them to reach the inn door. Annis drew back against the side of the coach, having no wish to push herself forward for notice. To her surprise, however, Adam Ashwick paused in front of them and gave Charles the briefest of bows.

‘Lafoy.’ His tone was cold.

Charles’s own bow was correspondingly slight. ‘Ashwick.’

There was a silence that prickled with tension. Annis, looking from one to the other, sensed all kinds of undercurrents that she was at a loss to explain. Ashwick was watching Charles, an unpleasant smile on his lips, and Annis took the opportunity to study him whilst his attention was diverted.

At first glance, she did not consider him to be a good-looking man in the conventional sense, for his face was too swarthy, and its hard angles were too stern and uncompromising to be considered handsome. His eyes were wide set and a cool grey beneath straight black brows. Although he could only be in his early thirties, his thick, dark hair was turning silver, which added a certain distinction to his looks. He was above average height and had a sportsman’s physique, but he was dressed with what appeared to be deliberate understatement, in tight dove-grey riding breeches and a pristine black coat that made his linen seem a very pure white indeed. Instead of Hessians he was wearing a fine pair of leather riding boots with turned-down cuffs. He had the appearance of a man of action rather than the dissipated aristocrat Annis had been imagining, and he exuded latent power. Annis could feel the effect. It was different from the confidence that Charles possessed as a successful professional man; Ashwick’s authority was instinctive, unquestioned.

His cool grey gaze switched to her and Annis hastily lowered her eyes. She did not wish him to think that she had been staring. Adam Ashwick bowed again, with scrupulous courtesy this time.

‘Madam.’

‘My cousin, Annis, Lady Wycherley,’ Charles said, with such obvious unwillingness that Annis felt her lips twitch. She was not sure if Charles’s reluctance to introduce her sprang from disapproval of Ashwick’s reputation or a more personal dislike. A split second later, she realised that Adam Ashwick was also considering the reasons for Charles’s protective concern. As their eyes met he raised a quizzical brow and they were drawn into a moment of shared amusement. Annis broke the contact hastily, feeling a little disloyal.

She held out her hand politely. ‘How do you do, my lord.’

‘Your servant, Lady Wycherley.’ Adam took her hand. She felt compelled to look at him again, then wished she had not. He was studying her thoughtfully, his gaze moving over her features with deliberation. There was a definite masculine interest in that appraisal and Annis recognised it with a shock. She felt a little shiver go through her and withdrew her hand from his.

Ashwick’s beautiful companion was getting restive at the lack of attention. She pulled on his arm.