The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy by Elizabeth Aston Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
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    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.
    â€œThough 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