Back Roads to Bliss Page 3

  “You’ve read too many novels,” Sarah decided when Allison was slow in responding, instead smiling a secret smile. “The marriages you mention—they happen in fiction. They’re not legal. You can’t get married that way in England anymore.”

  “How about Scotland,” Allison said, slanting a gray eye toward her sister.

  Shocked silence. Then, “Gretna Green!” Sarah breathed. “Gretna Green! Allie! You wouldn’t!”

  There was a trill of delighted laughter from Allison. “Oh, wouldn’t I?” she asked saucily.

  Sarah was clearly horrified. This, her expression said, must be some sort of low joke. Allison had done some foolish things in her life, but this was, beyond all, the most madcap. Gretna Green indeed!

  Nowadays it was the custom for couples to walk up the aisle of the churches in their respective parishes and exchange vows before the altar. Banns must be published beforehand, or in some cases and for a large fee, a special license could be obtained, making a hurried wedding possible; the practice of standing before witnesses and declaring themselves husband and wife had been prohibited by an act of Parliament in 1745. But as far as banns were concerned and obtaining parental approval—no such law existed in Scotland; Allison was clear on that.

  England’s runaway couples, eluding disapproving parents perhaps, or deeming it circumspect to be married immediately, were in the practice of fleeing across the border into Scotland to the first place a ceremony could be performed. And that was Gretna Green, a changing post for stagecoaches on the London to Edinburgh route. Here a pseudo priest, rumored to be the blacksmith of the village, called in a couple of witnesses who were ready and waiting and paid well for their services, read the Anglican marriage service, and it sufficed.

  That her sister would entertain the thought of such a ceremony was shocking to Sarah. And perhaps frightening. She knew her father’s wrath well and never dared rouse it herself, though she had been a terrified observer numerous times when Allison had breached the etiquette of the day or of the home.

  “Oh, Allie,” she said now. “Papa will be so angry.”

  “Let him,” Allison answered airily. “I’ll be a married woman, and he’ll have no say over me whatsoever.”

  “And Mama,” Sarah continued, twisting her handkerchief. “How can you deny her the satisfaction of putting on the grandest wedding ever known in Midbury? I’m sure she has it all planned in her mind. The white wedding gown—”

  “Silver. I never have liked this switch to white.”

  “Queen Victoria—”

  “If Queen Victoria jumped off the parapet of Balmoral Castle, would you do the same? You and the whole wide world may wear white if you wish, but as for me—”

  “As for you, Allie, it won’t be white or silver, if you run away.”

  Allison was nonplussed, but only for a moment. “Well and good,” she said firmly. “Orange blossoms, veil of satin—they’re just popular because Victoria had them at her wedding. Did you know, Sarah, that the cost of the lace on Victoria’s dress when she married Albert was one thousand pounds?”

  “So?”

  “A thousand pounds for lace alone, Sarah! Tell that to Mama and see how quickly she changes her tune about a big wedding. Anyway,” Allison said impatiently, “why are we talking about Victoria? I never have been that impressed with her—”

  “Oh, Allison!” Sarah reproached her sister for this near-blasphemy and criticism of the august presence who so influenced an entire age that it would henceforth be known as the Victorian era.

  “Pish and tush!” Allison said. Sarah’s mouth pruned up, but at least the expletive had been milder than the one used earlier. “There’s so much to do!” Allison said, changing the subject, throwing out her arms dramatically and looking around. “Just think, Sister, I’ll never sleep in this room again. I’ll be a married woman—”

  “Living at Flagle Manor. Oh, Allie—”

  “Flagle Manor? Flagle Manor? Who said anything about Flagle Manor?”

  “But,” Sarah stuttered, “isn’t that where you’ll live? Norville doesn’t have a place of his own. Oh, maybe rooms in London—”

  Once again Allison fell back on the unmade bed, this time breaking into peals of merry laughter. “Norville Flagle! That witling? That dullard? He’d drive me to Bedlam in no time at all!”

  Sarah’s face was a study. “Not Norville?”

  “Never Norville Flagle.”

  “But Papa’s expecting . . . I know Papa’s expecting you to make an alliance with the Flagle family.”

  “Make an alliance? What am I, a political figure on the historical scene or something? This is Midbury, Sarah, not the great courts of Europe.”

  “That’s how Papa sees it—as an alliance.”

  “Where does love fit in?” Allison asked. “Don’t you ever think about love, Sarah? Dream about the one you’ll fall in love with?”

  “I guess I’ve thought that Papa—”

  “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. We don’t live back in olden days when marriages were arranged. It’s almost the turn of the century! Surely females in this enlightened time may make their own choices. I’ve certainly made mine. And it’s not Norville Flagle, I’ll have you know.”

  Afraid to ask, still Sarah wanted to know. “Who then, Allie, who then? Who is this person you’ve chosen?” Sarah could think of no one in their circle other than Norville Flagle who would be acceptable, and who was available.

  Allison sobered, sat up, breathed deeply, and confessed proudly, “Stephen Lusk. It’s Stephen Lusk, Sarah. You remember Stephen Lusk, surely.”

  “Stephen Lusk,” Sarah repeated slowly, thoughtfully. “Lusk . . . Lusk. The only Lusks I know live in the village. I remember a boy—”

  “That’s the one.”

  “A thin, blond boy. For years I’d see him driving around making deliveries. Allison! His father is a shopkeeper!”

  “So? He’s honest, isn’t he? And thrifty? And well thought of?”

  “But . . . but . . . a shopkeeper! You know what Papa will say! And Mama, too, most likely. They’ll simply die!”

  “They’ll change their minds,” Allison said, “once they get to know Stephen.”

  “Isn’t he very young to be making such an important, er, alliance? He’s your age, isn’t he?”

  “Older. A year older. Almost a year older. Plenty old enough to know his own mind. He’s been away to school, you know. His father insisted on that, wanting his son to be something more than a shopkeeper. I hadn’t seen him for a long time until I ran into him one day when I was shopping for ribbons. I just turned around, and there he was.” Allison’s pert face lit. “You should see him now, Sarah. He’s so handsome!”

  “And poor.” Sarah was matter of fact.

  “Papa has enough money for all of us,” Allison said. “And Papa has no son, remember. He can put Stephen to work in the mill, perhaps as an overseer at first, then—”

  “Allie,” Sarah said positively, “Papa will never, never, never accept a Lusk.”

  “In which case we’ll go to London and make our own way,” Allison, daughter of affluence, accustomed to opulence, stranger to bare existence, stated firmly.

  “Allie,” Sarah said, annoying her sister with her persistence, “does Stephen have any money? This elopement that you’re talking about—it’s going to cost money. The blacksmith charges to perform the ceremony, you have to pay the witnesses, and how about the trip there and back? Will you go stagecoach? You’ll have to, because Mr. Lusk has a dogcart and one old horse to pull it, and I’m sure he can’t let Stephen take it, even if you wanted to. It’s cold out there, Allie, and you’d freeze to death in the dogcart, that is if you didn’t jiggle to death over the frozen roads. And it’s painted bright yellow and green—”

  “I have money,” Allison said confidently. “You know Grandmama keeps giving us money for birthdays and Christmas and all sorts of times, and we never have any need to spend it. Yes, I have plenty to do us until we get back and
Papa and Mama set us up in housekeeping. I thought maybe the gatekeeper’s cottage, fixed up, would make a darling first home.”

  Sarah moaned. “Allie, Allie. Please wait and think this over.”

  Though Allison had trouble admitting there might be any problems whatsoever connected to the scheme, Sarah, without any trouble at all, could imagine the entire escapade coming to disaster very easily. Not an imaginative person, still she could picture, quite vividly, her father’s servants overtaking and intercepting the stagecoach, dragging her sister home ignominiously, and Allie—poor, disgraced Allie—doomed to a life of shame forevermore. Because the story would get out; the staff would see to that.

  In spite of Allison’s confidence, Sarah could not accept the plan with anything but dismay, even alarm. Too late, she wished with all her heart she were ignorant of the entire matter.

  But feeling that someone had to talk sense to Allison, Sarah did her best. It wasn’t appreciated. Her pleas for common sense, her warnings regarding their father’s reaction, her suggestion to wait, to find another way to do this, fell on deaf ears. Allison, headstrong always, brushed aside her sister’s arguments.

  “You don’t know what love is all about,” she said, “or you wouldn’t say things like that. Great lovers have always risked everything to be together.” And Sarah, with no experience at all, had no defense.

  “Now, Sarah,” Allison said at last, “we’ve wasted enough time. And you did ask if you could help. When you get to the attic, see if you can find that alligator club bag Mama uses at times. If not, how about that canvas thing . . . you know the one

  I mean. It’s old, but it would do, I think. It’s shaped like a small trunk. Whatever you choose, it can’t be heavy. I’ll have to carry it myself, of course, until I meet up with Stephen. But it has to be large enough to take everything I’ll need.”

  “Will you go out through the window?” Sarah, a dreamer of dreams in spite of it all, asked.

  “No, silly. We’re on the third floor, remember? And Mama sits down there in the room below when she’s sewing or reading. Now scoot.”

  Sarah dutifully left the room to make her way like a shadow along the hall toward the stairs leading up to the attic area where she and Allison had sometimes played in bad weather during childhood. Frightened, and feeling quite desperately guilty, she scuttled past rooms, climbed stairs, flinching at every creak, peering cautiously around corners until anyone watching would have known immediately she was up to no good. Finally, she gained the attic and slipped inside to pause a moment while her heart slowed its thudding and her eyes grew accustomed to the shadowed interior.

  Leaving the door ajar for light, she began feeling her way through mounds and mountains of the accumulation of years toward a distant corner where she seemed to remember trunks and bags and carryalls were stacked.

  “I should have brought a lamp,” she muttered to herself. With only a few bumps and scrapes, she reached the pile of baggage. The brassbound trunks she could identify easily by touch, and she turned her searching fingers toward other dark shapes, feeling around for something suitable for Allison’s need. Dust rose in a dim cloud, and she sneezed—

  “Who’s there?” The voice came from the half-open door.

  Sarah—poor, rabbity Sarah—froze into huddled immobility. Oh, no! she moaned silently. The worst possible thing had happened: She was discovered. Be sure your sin will find you out, she thought, knowing not whether it was Scripture, Shakespeare, her mother’s warning, or her own imagination. She only knew it was terribly, horribly true.

  “Who’s there, I say! Speak up, whoever you are!” Without a doubt it was the housekeeper, Mrs. Buckle.

  And then Sarah Middleton, second daughter of Quincy and Letitia and sister to Allison the beautiful and the bright, had the first flash of creativity, of originality, she had ever shown; it was born of desperation and burst all bonds of training, decorum, and tradition: She meowed.

  Folded awkwardly into a dark and dusty corner, draped with cobwebs, her hands dirty and her hair mussed, Sarah parted her trembling lips and meowed.

  One meow; she had the wit not to overdo the performance.

  “Cat!” Mrs. Buckle spat the word. “Miserable cat!” Then followed a nerve-wracking two or three minutes while she called, first persuasively, then demandingly, for the interloper to reveal itself. “Here kittykittykitty . . . ”

  All might yet have been well if Sarah had not sneezed again; muffling didn’t help. The sound brought instant silence. And then Sarah could hear the heavy footsteps of the determined housekeeper making her way through boxes and barrels and the collection of years until at last she held her lamp high over the fair head of the shaking Sarah.

  “Sarah!” Mrs. Buckle said in a terrible voice. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  Sarah’s moment of inspiration wasn’t over. Scrabbling into a box and coming up with the first item her hand touched, she held aloft a long-discarded stuffed toy—a cat of limp and forlorn appearance and once a favorite of hers.

  “Ah,” she managed to croak, “Miss Mouser—there you are. Do you remember Miss Mouser, Mrs. Buckle?”

  The face Sarah raised to her was so guileless Mrs. Buckle no doubt had trouble believing it was guilty of duplicity. Her suspicious look softened. “Why in the world would you be up here rummaging around, and in the dark?” she questioned, wavering in her grim attitude. “And for a toy you gave up long ago. I can’t see what earthly reason—”

  “For old times’ sake, Mrs. Buckle. I’m sure you understand—nostalgia and all that. Now come along, Miss Mouser.” And Sarah, still caught up in the glow of inspiration, looked into the soulless shoe-button eyes and meowed again.

  It was enough. Mrs. Buckle was convinced. With only a couple of “harrumphs,” along with a few words grumbled under her breath, she seemed to feel her duty was complete. At least there was no cat in the attic!

  Sarah rose shakily from her crouched position, her face ghastly with the fright she had endured and the dust she had encountered.

  “Now, Mrs. Buckle,” she said, with a dignity never displayed before, “if you will be so good as to light me to the door, please.”

  Perhaps it was the sound of authority in the girl’s voice, a sound the housekeeper, in service since she was twelve years old, recognized and accepted, but Mrs. Buckle led the way to the door and watched the girlish form march down the hall and out of sight with no further comment.

  Once around the corner, Sarah’s thin legs threatened to crumple. Her breath came raggedly in synchrony with her pounding heart. She opened the door to Allison’s room a veritable wraith—a dirty wraith.

  Allison ceased her humming, dropped the armload of clothes she held, and stared at her sister—distraught, wild-eyed, and clutching an old, castoff toy, a cat of dubious vintage and of no importance whatsoever.

  “Sarah!” Allison said, annoyed, “where’s the bag I sent you for?”

  Bursting into sobs, Sarah threw herself across Allison’s rumpled bed, clutching the uncomplaining Miss Mouser to her, burying her face in the familiar comfort of the discarded toy as in days gone by.

  Allison looked on aghast. Sitting down beside her sister, she put a hand on the dusty shoulder and patted it, making soothing sounds, and soon the tempest of tears abated.

  “I’m sorry if the attic was frightening. Was that it?” Allison, an adventurer at heart and rarely faced down by anything or anybody, couldn’t comprehend being terrorized by the familiar attic. Still, if that’s what had Sarah in tears, she’d go up there herself and find a carryall suitable for her needs.

  Once again Allison realized her day wasn’t going as well as it might have; she hoped Stephen’s was going better. After all, it was up to him to locate a carriage or check on departure times for the stagecoach and take care of numerous additional matters to assure the success of their venture. It was imperative to get out of Midbury, and quickly. Any lingering and someone would see and report them to her father
. The trip, one way, would take the best part of two days—there would be food to buy, drivers to pay.

  Allison shivered when she let herself imagine what it would be like to be intercepted before ever boarding their getaway conveyance; yes, Stephen’s responsibility was a big one. Stephen was not an authoritarian; Allison couldn’t help but feel a little anxiety about how he might be getting along on his own.

  She, however, was confined to her room as surely as though she were behind bars at Newgate. And with little to do to put in the time. Any unusual activity on her part would alert her mother, and the entire plan might come to an end before it ever got off the ground. She had to trust Stephen.

  Their time of meeting would coincide with the darkness that would serve to cover their getaway. In the meantime, Allison found herself wildly impatient, tense with the possibility of detection and the worry that something might go wrong.

  Sorting through items to take with her, she had been constantly on the alert for her mother’s approach. Cleverly, she had pulled a chair close to the door so that anyone entering would be delayed long enough to allow her to flee to the bed and, once again, feign illness. She didn’t know whether to be proud of being such a humbug or ashamed of her deceitfulness. Desperate situations call for desperate actions, she consoled herself.

  “I’m not afraid of the attic,” Sarah said now defensively, uncurling herself, wiping her wet eyes on Miss Mouser and dirtying herself even more in the process. “I’m not so pigeon-hearted as that, for heaven’s sake!”

  “What happened, then?” Allison asked skeptically. Privately she considered Sarah too timid to say boo to a goose, but now was not the time to mention it. “And where is the carrying case? And why have you brought back this—”

  About to say “useless old cat,” Allison used rare discretion and changed it to “worn-out toy.” Her questions caused a new spate of tears.

  Never known for her patience, Allison was fast losing what little she possessed. “Either tell me what’s wrong or hush up!” she said, adding pontifically, “Tears never help anything.”