Carola Dunn Read online

  Resorting to nursery language, Lord Wendover snapped, “Can too!” as he stood up and reached for the pole.

  A brief tussle rocked the boat, till Miss Dirdle’s cry of alarm made Tom let go. A moment later, Lord Wendover was left clinging to his trophy as the punt moved on without him. Tom made a grab for his friend, the punt tilted, and Bea found herself floundering in the chilly Cherwell.

  Annoyed, but not particularly alarmed, for Tom had taught her to swim years ago, Bea quickly found her feet in three feet of water. She looked around, recovering her breath. The punt, tenantless, was heading downstream for the Isis. Lord Wendover still clutched his pole as it slowly tilted riverward. Tom stood waist-deep laughing at him, heedless of the plight of his cousin and her companion.

  “Miss Dirdle!” Where was she?

  “I have her, ma’am.” The shabby fellow from the footpath emerged from the river like Neptune from the waves, the elderly gentlewoman coughing and spluttering in his arms. “Just let me carry her to the bank and I’ll come back to give you a hand.”

  “Thank you, sir!” Bea exclaimed gratefully. She started to wade towards the bank, her thin muslin skirts dragging at her legs. Miss Dirdle’s heavy bombazine gown (“Ne’er cast a clout till May be out” was one of her favourite maxims) together with panic must have pulled her down. She might have drowned but for her gallant rescuer.

  He laid her on the grass and turned to help Bea.

  “Don’t come in again,” she said, looking up at the hatless figure, water streaming from his short, dark hair. “Though you can scarcely get any wetter, I admit.” Reaching the bank, she held out her hands.

  Grasping them, the young man hauled her out. She stumbled against him and he caught her in his arms, but he let her go at once. As he stepped back, one hand out to steady her, their eyes met.

  For an instant, an electrical current seemed to sizzle between them. Bea lost her breath again.

  Then his gaze rose to her hat and he said, a quiver in his voice, “I fear your bonnet will not recover from its ducking.”

  “N-no matter.” Her voice quivered too. “I shall enjoy shopping for another. I must thank you, sir, for saving my companion.”

  “It was nothing.” His eyes dropped and a slow flush rose in his cheeks. Hurriedly he turned away, stripping off his sodden coat. “I hope the lady... Ma’am, are you all right?”

  Miss Dirdle sat up, gasping. Dye from her black bonnet streaked down her cheeks, and the bombazine adhered to her bony chest. Bea took a step forward to join the old lady.

  The young man stopped her and thrust his coat into her hands. “Here,” he muttered with apparent confusion, “it’s no drier than your...than you are, but...but...”

  “Lady Beatrice!” cried Lord Wendover, sploshing up onto the bank. “I say, I’m most awfully sorry.”

  “Bea, you are a sight!” That was Tom, of course.

  Bea looked down at herself and realized her gown clung like a second skin. With renewed gratitude, she shrugged into the stranger’s coat. He was tall, so the tails reached almost to her ankles and concealed—from the back, at least—the greater part of her exposed figure.

  He was leaving, at a rapid stride. Bea hurried after him, as close to running as allowed by her wet skirts and Miss Dirdle’s rigorous training in ladylike conduct. She caught his shirtsleeve.

  “Sir, how shall I return your coat?”

  Half turning towards her, but not looking, he mumbled, “Alan Dinsmuir, at Wadham College, ma’am.”

  The patched cambric slipped from between her fingers, and he hastened on.

  “Bee-ya!” Tom called.

  She paused for a moment, staring after him, hugging his coat about her. Had she imagined that shock of awareness between them? It had struck her like the jolt from the electrical apparatus Tom once brought home to Hinksey Hall. Mr. Dinsmuir must have felt it! Or had his voice shaken because he was trying not to laugh at her disgraceful appearance?

  * * * *

  Alan’s feet bore him automatically across Magdalen Bridge, up Headington Hill, and through the village. He was unaware of the stares as he passed soaking wet, hatless, in his shirtsleeves. Before him floated a piquant face with golden curls, and rosy lips parted in a saucy smile, and eyes the blue of a cloudless summer sky—which yet had the power to strike a man with lightning.

  His gaze still on this vision, he came to his mother’s cottage, a short way beyond the village. Opening the gate in the high hawthorn hedge, where bees hummed amidst the may-blossom, he crossed the tiny garden in a few strides, and stepped into the low-ceilinged, stone floored kitchen-parlour.

  Mrs. Dinsmuir dropped her sewing in her lap. “Dearest,” she exclaimed, “what has happened?”

  “I have just met the most beautiful girl in the world, Mother,” he answered dreamily.

  “And she robbed you of your best coat and hat, and pushed you in the river?” Mrs. Dinsmuir asked in horror as he stooped to kiss her.

  Alan returned to Earth, glancing down at his sodden clothes with a rueful smile. “No, she was boating on the Cherwell with a couple of oafs who overturned the punt.”

  “So you pulled her out?”

  “Not even that, alas.” He sighed. “She found her own feet and was obviously safe, whereas her elderly companion went under and failed to reappear. I had to find the old lady first, so I cannot even figure as Lady Beatrice’s gallant rescuer. Yet she thanked me as prettily as if I were. She is the dearest creature!”

  “Lady Beatrice,” said his mother, dismayed, “the daughter of an earl, or marquis, or even a duke. Alan, pray do not set your heart on a female so far above your touch.”

  “I’m hardly in a position to support a wife of any sort, Mother, far less one accustomed to a life of luxury. I cannot even support you.” He scowled at the needlework she had taken up again, piecework which added a meagre sum to her meagre annuity. “I wish I had not promised Father to qualify as a lawyer.”

  “It was his dying wish, dearest, that you should not be a poor schoolmaster all your life, as he was. Think how well we shall live once you are a solicitor...but not with an expensive wife.”

  “You need not fret, Mother. I’ve only seen her once, and barely spoken to her. In the unlikely event that she accepted my proposal, her father certainly would not. But at least I shall see her once more. She asked where to find me so as to return my coat.”

  Mrs. Dinsmuir glanced around her clean, tidy, but sadly humble dwelling in alarm. “She will not come here?”

  “No, I told her Wadham College. Come to think of it, she will no doubt send a footman with my coat.”

  “Very likely, dearest. What became of your hat?”

  “It floated off down the river,” Alan admitted with a sheepish look. “Stupidly, I didn’t take it off before I plunged in. I’ll have to make do with the old one for now, and look about the second-hand shops in town.”

  That reminded him of the curiosity shop, and the present he had bought for her birthday. Unless it had fallen out of his pocket in the river, Lady Beatrice would find the parcel and return it with his coat, but with no sense of urgency. Too late now to buy something else.

  “Mother, I had something for your birthday, but it was in my coat pocket—”

  “I am far too old to celebrate birthdays, dearest. But it was a kind thought, and I thank you. Go and change now, before you catch a chill,” Mrs. Dinsmuir urged. “Your things will dry in the garden before you have to go back to Wadham.”

  Alan went up to his cubby-hole under the eaves, across from his mother’s slightly larger chamber. Here he kept the tattered clothes he wore for gardening. He changed and took his wet things down to drape over a bush in the back garden, then he did some weeding. When his mother called that the kettle was boiling for tea, he pulled a few radishes and took them in.

  She always had fresh tea-leaves when he came, though he knew she would reuse them more than once. He suspected the bread and radishes they ate with their tea would be he
r last meal of the day. As a Scholar, he would eat a good dinner, for his room and board were provided by his college during the term. When he graduated in June, he would lose that. The pitiful salary he expected to earn during the required three years as an articled clerk would scarcely make up for it.

  No, he had nothing to offer Lady Beatrice.

  After tea, Mrs. Dinsmuir sat down by the open front window and took up her sewing again. “Read to me for a while before you go,” she requested. “There is light enough, these long evenings.”

  “The Arabian Nights?” he asked with a smile, going to the book-shelf.

  “Yes, let us have one of the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor.” At a sound outside, she glanced out of the window. “Oh, who can this be?”

  Alan joined her. A plump young woman in grey calico and a plain chipstraw bonnet was coming down the path to the front door. As she raised her hand to knock, Alan opened the door.

  “Can I help you, miss?”

  She looked him up and down and said doubtfully, “Be you Mr. Dinsmuir? Mr. Alan Dinsmuir.”

  Wishing he had changed out of his gardening clothes, even if the others were still damp, Alan said, “I am. What can I do for you, miss?”

  For answer, she turned and hurried back towards the gate, calling, “It’s him, my lady, it’s him right enough!”

  In consternation, Alan backed into the cottage, madly trying to smooth his hair with his hand.

  Out in the lane, Bea’s footman handed her down from the barouche. “Bring the parcels, Ephraim,” she ordered.

  CHERRY TREE COTTAGE read the sign on the gate. Passing her maid with a murmur of thanks, Bea trod firmly up the garden path. The well-kept garden was full of gay tulips, candytuft, sweet williams, and columbines. A rambler rose with swelling buds climbed the tiny thatched cottage, its leaves glossy against the whitewashed wall.

  Bea scarcely noticed. She was concentrating on not appearing as nervous as she felt.

  The proper thing to do would have been to send a footman to return Mr. Dinsmuir’s coat and the odd object she had found in its pocket. It was not that she wanted to see him again, she told herself. That instant of world-shaking communication between them must surely have been pure fancy. But she could not count on a footman to explain properly about the hats.

  She glanced back. Yes, Ephraim had all three parcels, the two big ones and the little one, rewrapped when the soggy paper tore.

  When she turned her head again, Mr. Dinsmuir stood in the doorway. The clothes he now wore were not merely shabby, but ragged and grubby, Bea saw in dismay, glad she had worn her simplest gown, blue-sprigged white muslin with a blue sash at the high waist. His face was the same, though, except that his hair had dried to light brown. His eyes were brown, too—she had been too stunned to notice the colour before. This time there was no shock, just a feeling of warm, comfortable recognition.

  Gladly she saw his embarrassment fade, felt her own ebb. Smiling, he bowed.

  “Good evening, Lady Beatrice. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I went first to Wadham College. The porter told me you were out, and directed me hither to your mother’s house.”

  “Alan,” came a voice from within, “do not keep the young lady standing on the doorstep, pray.”

  Seeing his uncertainty, Bea said, “Will you not present me to Mrs. Dinsmuir? I must tell her how her son so nobly rescued my poor Miss Dirdle.”

  “How is the lady?” he asked hurriedly, stepping aside to allow her to enter.

  “Perfectly well, but she has retired to her bed as a precaution. Against what, I am not perfectly sure!”

  As her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside, Bea saw a tall woman in black, who rose and came to meet her. Her brown hair, neatly banded, was scarcely touched with grey. She could not be more than fifty, while Alan appeared to be in his mid twenties, older than most undergraduates.

  “Mother, Lady Beatrice... Good lord, I don’t know your surname!” said Mr. Dinsmuir as the ladies curtsied to each other. “How odd!”

  Heartened by this evidence that he felt the same sense of long-standing familiarity, Bea said, “Albrough is my family name, ma’am.”

  “Hinksey’s the title,” said a loud, disapproving voice behind her. “The Most Honourable, the Marquis of Hinksey.”

  “Thank you, Ephraim,” snapped Bea in annoyance. “Put the parcels on that table, if you please, and then you may go back to the carriage.”

  “I didn’t ought to leave your ladyship alone in here,” the footman said obstinately.

  “Don’t be tottyheaded! Molly will stay with me, not that I have any need of her. Do as I say.” As Ephraim reluctantly obeyed, Bea moved to the scrubbed white-wood table. “Mrs. Dinsmuir, I have brought back the coat your son lent me. I do hope it has not shrunk. Molly, have you scissors to cut the string?”

  “I didn’t bring none, my lady.”

  Mrs. Dinsmuir said quickly, “I shall untie the knots in a trice.” She set to work on the large, flat parcel.

  Realizing that string was a valuable commodity in this household, Bea stripped off her gloves and reached for the top knot on the bulky, odd-shaped package.

  “What is that?” asked Mr. Dinsmuir. “All you had of mine was my coat, and that.” He indicated the small parcel, but as he made no move to untie it, Bea did not comment on its curious contents.

  “However, you lost something else, I think,” she said as the knot loosened.

  “My hat, entirely through my own carelessness.”

  She smiled at him. “Entirely through your chivalrous haste. There.” She folded back the paper to reveal a stack of top-hats, nested one inside the next. “Not knowing what would fit you, I brought one of Papa’s, one an uncle once left behind, and three of Cousin Tom’s—one new and two grown-out-of.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” he said gruffly, taking the largest.

  “You must not suppose I intend to leave you with a cast-off. It is for emergency wear. I shall buy you a new one as soon as...Oh!” She clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. “Oh dear, even that is too small. You must have a great deal more brains than Papa.”

  The hat perched precariously on his head, he grinned at her.

  “I shall have to make do with my gardening hat for the present,” he said.

  “Here is your coat, Alan,” said Mrs. Dinsmuir. “It looks none the worse for wear. Try it on.”

  “Excuse me a moment, Lady Beatrice.” Taking the coat, he turned towards the stairs.

  “Don’t go,” Bea said. “I have seen you in your shirtsleeves already and am none the worse for it. Change coats here.”

  So he pulled off his tattered coat and put on the other—struggled into it, rather. It was tight across the shoulders and the sleeves were now a good four inches too short. As he stood there with his arms sticking out like a scarecrow and the too small hat wobbling on his head, Bea tried desperately not to laugh.

  Her eyes met his, and the laugh escaped, and it was all right because he laughed too, and in that moment she knew she was going to marry him. What if he was a poor scholar? Papa was already furious with her, had dragged her down to the country in the middle of the Season, because she had rejected a duke’s heir. Besides the sheer folly of her behaviour, half the Beau Monde thought he had not come up to scratch. Either way it was a delicious scandal, and Bea was in disgrace. Her father could not be any more furious because she accepted a nobody. Somehow he must be won over.

  She had not the least doubt that, given the proper encouragement, Mr. Dinsmuir would propose.

  “Well, Mother,” he said now, “since you have a clown at hand to assist in the festivities, let me present your birthday present.” With a bow made awkward by the tight coat, he handed over the little package.

  “Is it your birthday, ma’am?” Bea asked as Mrs. Dinsmuir untied the knot. “May I wish you many happy returns?”

  “Thank you, my dear. Oh, Alan, just like Aladdin’s lamp in the picture
! How splendid! Wherever did you find it?”

  “In a shop in town. It’s badly in need of cleaning, I’m afraid. I meant to polish it before giving it to you.” Taking the lamp from her, he picked up the paper it had been wrapped in and rubbed at the verdigris.

  A sound like a rushing wind filled the room, and a sharp, cold scent which made Bea think of darkness and unimaginable distances. She and the Dinsmuirs all recoiled as a column of swirling mist arose in their midst and began to coalesce into something huge and dark.

  Unable to tear her eyes from the apparition, Bea felt for Mr. Dinsmuir’s hand, found it, and clung.

  The Jinnee was immense, his turbaned head bent beneath the low ceiling. “I was asleep,” he said in a voice like thunder with a distinctly pettish undertone. “What do you want?”

  Chapter II

  With a piercing shriek, Molly fainted. Bea hurried to tend to her maid, a crumpled heap in the corner. She knelt beside the girl, trying to make her more comfortable while not losing sight of the magical monster. In a moment Alan’s mother joined her, with a bowl of water and a cloth to bathe Molly’s face. Mrs. Dinsmuir, too, kept glancing over her shoulder.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Dinsmuir addressed the creature. If he had lost his wits in his surprise, it had not been for long.

  “For a start,” he said with commendable composure, “please reduce your size if you can, and the volume of your voice. You are frightening the ladies.”

  “Sorry,” muttered the Jinnee, shrinking rapidly until he was merely a tall, robust man. He forgot to adjust the size of his clothes, so that the smoke-grey robes draped in folds on the ground and the turban fell down over his fiery coal-black eyes. “Damn!” The garments contracted to fit.

  “And don’t swear in front of ladies,” Mr. Dinsmuir admonished him.

  “All right, all right. Did you wake me from centuries of sleep just to find fault? What can I do for you? You don’t want me to repeat all that stuff about being the slave of the lamp et cetera, do you? You seem to know what’s what.”