Mary Nichols - Rags-to-Riches Bride

‘Should I be thinking of her?’ he asked mildly.

‘I am intrigued by her,’ the old lady went on. ‘Her situation is strange. She is educated, well spoken, deferential and neat in her appearance, but there is something secretive about her and I should like to know what it is.’

‘I cannot tell you.’

‘I wonder if it has anything to do with her father,’ she went on as if he had not spoken. ‘She says he is an invalid and is very protective of him. It is because of him she needs to work.’

‘But if she does her work well, is her private life any of our business?’

‘It is if Stephen wants to marry her.’

‘Good Lord! Does he?’

‘I think so. He asked me to invite her to my party.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She protested she could not leave her father and when I said bring him too, she began to make all manner of excuses.’

‘Then perhaps you should leave well alone.’

‘I do not want to. I need to know more. You could help me. Find a way of meeting her father, talk to him, discover all you can about his antecedents. I want to know about his family and his childhood, where he spent it, where he was educated, what happened to his parents, his mother’s maiden name. If either had any siblings, if Miss Bywater has brothers and sisters.’

‘To what end? To find out if Miss Bywater is a suitable person to marry Stephen?’

‘If you like.’

‘Then ask Stephen to do it. He is the one who will have to decide.’

‘Stephen does not have your finesse, Richard. He might alienate the man and that is the last thing I want.’

‘And is Miss Bywater to know of this inquisition?’

‘I would rather she did not. Not yet.’

‘Great-Grandmama, I cannot approve.’

‘’Tisn’t for you to approve or disapprove. Just do as you are told. Be easy, I bear the child no ill will, but I need to be sure.’

‘Is there something you are not telling me? I am very busy, Great-Grandmama, and acting the spy is not to my taste…’

She looked sharply at him. ‘Busy doing what?’

He smiled wryly. Why did everyone assume that just because he was not seen to go to work like his father and brother, that he was idle? Six years in the army had taught him many things. Serving with men from all walks of life had opened his eyes to his privileged position. Rubbing shoulders with the educated and the abysmally ignorant, those who knew no other life than soldiering and those who had enlisted as a matter of patriotism or because they were out of work or needed to escape the law, had taught him to judge a man on his merits, irrespective of his position in what his parents chose to call society. Unlike most of his fellow officers, who would not have dreamed of associating with the men under their command, he had taken the trouble to find out about their homes and their families. And what he had learned had horrified him and made him determined to do something about it.

He soon realised his attempts to help the poor and lame were too piecemeal: a good deed here, a generous donation there; taking poor artists into his home and providing them with pleasant conditions in which to work; writing articles that the more die-hard newspaper proprietors refused to publish, so they found their way into the more radical publications, which were frequently being shut down by the government on the grounds that they were seditious and encouraged unrest. He risked imprisonment himself every time he fired a broadside at those who ought to have been helping and did nothing. He had come to the conclusion that it would be better to work within the establishment. Hence his visit to the Commons.

The old lady tapped his arm with her fan. ‘Well? Will you do this for me?’

He had always found it difficult to deny her anything, but on this occasion he was adamant. ‘No, ma’am, I will not. It is an infringement of the young lady’s privacy unless you have reason to believe she is up to no good.’ He paused to study her lined face. ‘Do you?’

‘That’s what I want to find out. If you will not oblige me, I must find other ways of discovering what I want to know.’

‘And what happens if you find out she is not all she seems—what then? Will you expose her?’

‘I do not know; it depends on what turns up.’

He knew her well enough to realise she was up to something and it was more than a desire to protect Stephen. Did she already know more than she was telling about Miss Diana Bywater? It intrigued him, but not enough to comply with her request.

They turned into Grosvenor Square and drew up at the door of Harecroft House and he jumped down to lift her out of the carriage and help her into the house and up to her room. He had a feeling he had not heard the last of Miss Diana Bywater.

Diana was still at work at eight o’clock, when Mr Hare-croft came into the little cubby hole where she worked. ‘Still here, Miss Bywater?’

‘I have been trying to catch up on lost time.’

He smiled. ‘Grandmother can be a little disruptive. But stop now. I have my tilbury outside. I will drive you home.’

‘Thank you, but that will not be necessary. I can easily walk.’

‘It is the least I can do. It was not your fault you were behind with your work.’

She smiled suddenly. ‘Would you offer to drive one of the men clerks home?’

‘No, certainly not.’

‘I do not wish to be treated any differently. It was part of our bargain when you took me on.’

‘So it may have been, but circumstances have changed. I am wholly converted to lady clerks.’ He smiled as he spoke. ‘At least to one of them. You have proved yourself more than capable and I take back any reservations I might have had.’ He picked up the ledger she had been working on, made sure the ink was dry, and shut it firmly. ‘Now come along, I will accept no argument. I would have asked Stephen to take you, but he has already gone home.’ He bent and put his hand under her elbow to raise her to her feet.

They were standing close together, his head bent towards her, his hand still under her arm, when Richard came in. He had changed into a black evening suit, which, even more than the clothes he had worn earlier in the day, emphasised his strong lean figure. He stopped on the threshold, his blue eyes taking in the scene.

Thoroughly embarrassed, she drew her arm from his father’s hand and he, following the line of her startled gaze, turned to look at his son, watching them from the doorway.

‘Richard, what are you doing here?’ His voice sounded pleasant enough, but Diana thought she detected an undertone of annoyance.

‘Looking for you. You were not in your office…’

‘Well, now you have found me. I suppose there is a reason for you to set foot on the premises for the second time in one day.’

Diana sank back into her chair, feeling awkward. She wished she could leave the tiny room and find fresh air.

‘Great-Grandmother is a little truculent. She says she expected you home hours ago, she wants to talk to you. If I had not promised to come and winkle you out, she would have commanded Soames to get out the carriage and come looking for you herself.’

‘I had business to do and it was her fault, taking up so much of our time this afternoon.’

‘Are you ready to leave now?’

‘I must take Miss Bywater home first. She has been kept late on company business and I cannot allow her to go home alone at this time of night.’

‘Oh, please do not trouble yourself,’ Diana said. ‘I can walk and Lady Harecroft is waiting for you…’

‘Yes,’ Richard put in, looking down at Diana, unable to make up his mind about her. His great-grandmother had triggered his own curiosity, heightened by the sight of his father’s apparent intimacy with Diana. Was she up to no good, worming her way into the company in order to take advantage of an old lady? But his great-grandmother, though old, was not vulnerable or simple; she was as astute as they come, so what was it all about? ‘She will wait up until you get home, Father, you know she will, and she has had a tiring day. Besides, Mother is expecting you and she is not very good at coping with the old lady in one of her moods. I will take Miss Bywater home.’ He realised, as he said it, that he was doing exactly what his great-grandmother wanted, that she had probably guessed if she sent him back to fetch his father something of the sort might happen. He almost laughed aloud.

His father sighed. ‘If Miss Bywater agrees, then it might be best.’

‘But…’ Diana began again. She did not want either of them seeing how she and her father lived.

‘No buts,’ Richard said firmly. ‘It will be my pleasure.’

‘How did you arrive?’ his father asked him.

‘In a cab. I have kept it waiting. Great-Grandmama’s instructions were to make sure you came home.’

‘I will take the cab. You take Miss Bywater in the tilbury.’

‘Please do not trouble yourselves, either of you,’ Diana begged, reaching for her bonnet and light cape from the hook behind the door and following the two men from the room. ‘I am quite used to walking home alone.’

Neither listened. They seemed to be having the conversation with each other over her head; it was almost as if she were not there.

‘Are you staying at Harecroft House tonight?’ father asked son.

‘Yes, but I will probably be late back, so do not wait up for me.’

‘I gave up waiting for you years ago, Richard. Do not wake the household, that’s all.’

They reached the ground floor and left the building, while Mr Harecroft senior locked the premises, Diana tried once again to say she could manage on her own.

‘You are very stubborn, Miss Bywater,’ Richard said. ‘But rest assured I can be equally obdurate. You are not to be allowed to walk home alone and that is an end of it.’ He led the way to the tilbury and helped her into it, then unhitched the pony and jumped up beside her, the reins in his hand. ‘Now, you will have to direct me. I have no idea where you live.’

‘Southwark. I usually walk over Waterloo Bridge, so if you let me down this side of it, you will avoid paying the toll.’

‘Miss Bywater, I am not so miserly as to begrudge the few pence to take you across,’ he told her, setting the pony off at a walk.

The streets were not quite as busy as they had been earlier in the day and the vehicles on the road were, for the most part, those taking their occupants to evening appointments. A troop of soldiers were rehearsing their part in the coronation parade, a man with a cart was hawking the last of the flags and bunting he had set out with that morning. A flower girl was offering bunches of blooms that were beginning to wilt and a diminutive crossing sweeper stood leaning on his broom waiting for custom. The evening was like any other, but for Diana it was different. She was riding and not walking for a start and, instead of thinking what she would make for supper, her whole mind was concentrated on the man at her side and how to persuade him not to take her all the way home.

The prospect of him seeing the run-down tenement in which she lived, and, even worse, her equally run-down father, was enough to make her quake. She could imagine his disgust, the tale he would carry to his father. And they would say, ‘We cannot have a person like that working at Harecroft’s. It lowers the whole tone of the establishment and who knows what pestilence she brings with her? I knew it was a mistake to employ her.’ And she was quite sure Lady Hare-croft would not intervene on her behalf a second time.