Moore turned his dark eyes on Clara. “I believe we have met previously, ma’am,” he began. Clara could only stare to see him attempt to make a social occasion of being caught in a runaway marriage. She couldn’t find a word to say, with Ben’s knowing eyes just flickering a quick laugh at her poor judgment.
“You remember him, Miss Christopher?” Nel laughed.
“Come along,” Ben said impatiently.
“We are faced with a rather embarrassing predicament,” Moore offered sheepishly. Already his smile appeared less divine to Clara. It had the ingratiating, almost cringing air of the supplicant. She disliked to see such a fine male specimen sunk so low.
“No, Moore,
you
are faced with an embarrassing predicament,” Ben countered. “
I
am faced with the rapture of rearranging your smiling face. Get your wrap,” he said to Nel.
She handed it to Clara to hold for her, while she looked on in amusement at the scene going forth at the table. “Would you like to see my fan?” she asked Clara.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
The other clients were already showing interest in Moore’s table, and Clara wished they could all go outside at once. Moore, apparently fearing too much privacy, retained his seat. “I am not leaving,” he said, and picking up his fork, he began to eat his stew. Only the unnaturally rosy hue of his cheeks betrayed his discomposure.
“Leave him,” Clara urged Allingcote. The shocked look he gave her indicated this was far from being his intention. “We don’t want a scene. Let us get back to the wedding. You cannot beat him up here.”
“Yes, I can.”
“I’m going back with them, George,” Nel said nonchalantly. “It won’t be any fun getting married with no money. I have decided I want a nice white gown like Prissie’s, and lots of guests. You know I said I would not go to Gretna Green again, and I don’t want to stay with a vicar and his wife in London for a week either. It sounds very boring.” She turned to Ben. “We were going to stay with George’s uncle, Reverend Collier, till George could raise the recruits. It means get money,” she explained to Clara. “George thought he could raise quite a bit of wind with my pearls and watch, enough to get married.”
Nel’s story inflamed Allingcote anew. “Are you stepping outside or not?” he asked Moore, in a truculent way.
Moore, feeling himself safe, smiled superciliously. “I am afraid not, my lord.”
Nel turned a scathing eye on Moore. “George, you are surely not afraid of Allingcote!” she exclaimed in a loud, derisive voice.
“Let us go,” Clara begged in a lower tone. Glancing at Nel, she saw the mischievous light in her eyes and knew the girl was preparing a scene of high melodrama. Her heart sank to her shoes.
“Take a good look at your Adonis, ladies,” Ben grinned, but the only lady he regarded was Clara. In his eyes she saw mirrored Nel’s mischievous expression. “Here is your Prince Charming.” Her hopes for escaping the restaurant without a scene were not high, and though she despised Moore, she could not quite rid herself of a trace of pity for him. “I think Prince Charming wants a crown, don’t you?” Ben asked her. He turned to examine Nel’s plate with a truly wicked grin.
“Ben, don’t!” Clara said, and put a restraining hand on his arm. A good part of her life had been devoted to avoiding such scenes as she saw developing before her.
“Do!” Nel squealed, having also discerned Ben’s intention.
Ben stood undecided, looking from Nel to Clara, as mercy warred with a desire for revenge. Every fiber of his being wanted to land that plate of stew on Moore’s handsome head.
“Don’t!” Clara said, with a tightening of her fingers on his arm. Reluctantly he turned from Moore with no more than a look of disgust.
Left unobserved for an instant, Nel picked up the plate and dumped meat, gravy and potatoes, onions and carrots over Moore’s head.
“That will teach you to call me a flat,” she declared melodramatically, while peeping around the room to see that her act was appreciated, as indeed it was. The rough crowd even gave her a round of applause. She made a playful curtsy, took Allingcote’s arm, and without a backward glance at her erstwhile lover, she paraded in triumph from the room.
As Clara was already hanging on Ben’s other arm, she, too, was pulled from the scene. Over her shoulder she cast one last, commiserating glance at Moore. He sat as still as a statue. Only the stew moved, dripping in lumpy blobs from his nose and chin, and mercifully concealing his face.
“I don’t like him above half,” Nel told them in her trumpeting voice as they all hastened toward the doorway. “He scolded me for spending my money on Prissie’s wedding gift, as though it were
my
place to provide funds for our elopement. He would not pawn his watch either, but only wanted to hawk mine. I was never so taken in in my whole life. I don’t think he
loved
me, Ben,” she said, a tear welling up in her beautiful blue eyes.
Ben held the door and they all left. “I wonder why that would be?” he sneered.
As tears elicited no sympathy, Nel laughed instead. “He hasn’t a penny to pay for that lunch, and his jacket is a mess, too. I wonder what he’ll do.”
They walked briskly along the street. “Make up to some other lady before he leaves, I expect, and feed her a Banbury tale. I wish you had let me knock him down at least, Clara.”
“I don’t see why Captain—Mr. Moore should take all the blame, or all the suffering,” she replied.
“All the suffering!” Nel gasped. “I have been in agony fearing you would not come in time to pay the bill. George said we would have to wash the dishes if I didn’t give him my pearls to place on the oak. It means to hawk. These pearls were a gift from my dear mama,” she added in a hushed voice, looking for sympathy.
“Perhaps Moore’s watch was a gift from his dear papa,” Clara suggested.
Nel gave a hard laugh. “More likely he stole it.”
Their carriage was waiting at the driveway of the inn, and they all got inside to return to Branelea. “We’ll miss the wedding feast,” Nel said. “I should have finished my dinner before leaving. The stew was not half-bad. I’m starved. Ben, could we stop at this place across the road? It looks much more elegant than that horrid place George took me to.”
“No,” Ben said baldly.
“Just for coffee...”
“We’ll be home within an hour. You’re not hungry, Clara?”
She was, but was more eager to get home than to eat, and let on she was not. The return trip was enlivened by alternate bouts of pouting and merry chatter from Nel, and by Allingcote’s repeating that there was nothing to laugh at. That Nel had spoiled Prissie’s wedding was a great joke to her, and that Herbert Ormond was even now out scouting the road to Scotland a marvelous thrill. She finally fell silent, fabricating a tale of kidnapping to entertain Mr. Ormond, and make him love her madly. As they passed the church where Prissie had been married, Nel mentioned this story to her rescuers.
Ben gave her a repressing look and said, “You have been ill. And if you don’t want to end up in a convent, you’ll tell the same lie as the rest of us. You had a relapse of whatever ailed you last night. Clara has been looking after you as your abigail is not with you.”
“I notice it is Clara and Ben now, between you two. Congratulations, Clara. I’m sure I hope you’ll both be very happy,” she said. Her tone implied the virtual impossibility of anything of the sort.
Clara ignored her and said to Ben, “What is your excuse for not gracing the head of the second table?”
“Help me. Where have Ormond and I been?”
“Going for a doctor for me,” Nel suggested, naturally thinking of a story that featured herself as heroine.
“For three hours?” Clara asked.
Nel saw that her helpers were sadly lacking in imagination and gave them a hand. “They went to London to fetch Doctor Knighton. He serves the Prince Regent, you know. Perhaps I have a very rare disease...” Her eyes half closed and her face sagged into a good likeness of a consumptive.
“It had best not be contagious,” Clara mentioned.
“Egomania, I believe it’s called,” Ben said.
“The unknown illnesses are the most romantic,” Clara continued. “Some mysterious ailment that causes—”
“Inexplicably freakish behavior,” Ben supplied.
“I was going to say faintness, dizzy spells, agonizing pain,” Clara added.
“Yes, yes, that’s it!” Nel urged. “Pains of excruciating agony. But by six or so I must feel much better. These attacks come and go with no regularity. I mean to be downstairs to see Mr. Ormond this evening. Must he know the whole truth, Ben?”
“He does know it.”
She was quiet a moment, then said, “It was all George Moore’s fault. He is older, you know. He took advantage of my youth and innocence.”
“How did he get in touch with you?” Ben asked.
“Oh I am so very clever,” she crowed, forgetful of her innocence. “He knew I was coming to the wedding and hung about the village waiting for a chance to speak. When I spotted him, I pointed in the most surreptitious way to the books Clara was carrying. George, who is also very clever, knew right off I meant we would go to the library. He went on ahead and waited for us. I was afraid you wouldn’t speak to him, Clara. I nearly died laughing to see him wind you around his thumb.”
Allingcote gave Clara a frowning look, and Nel continued. “When you were busy at the desk, I told George I would escape that night from the inn and meet him in the stable, but in case I could not get away, I would leave him a note. So when you wouldn’t believe that I was ill, I just went to sleep and left a note and a shilling under my pillow next morning before we went to Branelea. I whispered to a servant girl on the way out to give the note to Moore and the shilling was hers. She already knew there was something odd about us. I told the stupid wench you two were holding me by force, and she believed it. You were my wicked stepmother, Miss Christopher.”
“Who was I?” Ben asked.
“You were trying to force me to marry you, of course. And George was my rescuer.”
“You got the characters mixed, but the story is not too far from the truth,” Ben commented.
“Well, George wasn’t forcing me, Ben.” Then, recalling her innocence and youth, Nel added, “Not exactly forcing that is to say, though he was very insistent.”
“I hope it’s been a lesson to you,” Ben said. “You may be sure there was no Reverend Collier in London.”
“There must have been. He had no money for a hotel.”
“There was your mama’s pearl necklace.”
“I don’t know how you could be such a simpleton,” Clara remarked, in her usual calm manner. “Any gentleman who tries to get you to elope with him, Miss Muldoon, is up to no good. I would bear it in mind in future if I were you.”
“Bear in mind as well, Clara,” Ben added, “that an acquaintance picked up in a library is not necessarily unexceptionable.”
As the carriage rolled up the drive of Branelea, Ben said, “We’ll all go to the stable and sneak into the house the back way.”
They followed this plan and entered the house without causing wonder to anyone but the servants, and they were too busy to do more than look.
Chapter Sixteen
Dinner was over by the time the three refreshed their toilettes and went belowstairs. Clara’s first concern was to discover Lady Lucker and tender humble apologies for her defection at the punch table.
“Maggie and I figured out what must have happened,” Lady Lucker replied. “It was fortunate I got back in time myself to oversee the mixing of it. It was a great success. Between Georgiana and Gertrude, they have drunk up nearly the whole of it, but at least it kept them out of the good wine.” The affair was proceeding so well that she had no more serious complaint than this.
“I see the saucy baggage is back,” she continued. “It would serve her well to be stuck with a runaway match. We have been putting about that she is ill, and you were upstairs with her. Everyone has been asking for you, Clara. Just like Nel Muldoon to come landing in in fine fettle, but I did not actually say what was wrong with her, so we can say it was bad food, or something that passes quickly. Make sure you say the bad food was taken at the inn, not here. Where did you catch her?”
Clara told the story, omitting only the stew over Mr. Moore’s head, not to spare Nel, but to spare the gentleman.
Lady Lucker nodded. “Maggie suspected it was so when the three of you vanished, and suggested the illness story. But do tell me, have you any notion what happened to Mr. Ormond? He is gone, too? Four great gaping holes at the table, but none of them at the head table, fortunately. I don’t believe it caused much talk.”
“He went north looking for Nel. Is he not back yet?”
“No, the gudgeon is probably halfway to Gretna Green, but I shall keep an eye peeled for him and tell him what we are saying if he comes. You must be starved, Clara. I’ll have cook take you a bite into the morning parlor. I daresay Ben and Miss Muldoon will want something, too.”
Ben, when apprised of the plan, certainly did, but Nel was too happy describing her mysterious illness to succumb to mere starvation. She had collected a large circle of sympathizers, comprised of every eligible male at the party and a few ineligible ones as well. Maximilian put an arm around her shoulder and told her he knew what would cure her: a glass of champagne, that was the thing. She also got a good sharp pinch and called him summarily to account for it in a loud voice.
Max thought it a marvelous joke to be called an old libertine and said if he were forty years younger, by gad, he’d show the young fellows the way. “You are a pretty little kitten, miss. A bit thin, but not flat-chested in the least. A woman without a bosom is like a bed without a pillow. Nowhere to lay your head.”
In the morning parlor, Ben said, “I managed to get a seat beside you after all. Major Standby will have his nose out of joint. Do you want some of this jellied salad?”
“Yes, I must try Mrs. Hinton’s famous jellied crab.”
“Who is Mrs. Hinton?”
“The lady who contributed the jellied crab. That is all I know of her. And I’ll have some of the Nesbitt’s Westphalian ham, too, if you please. I could eat a horse.”