“Good afternoon, madame. It’s very kind of you to invite me into your coach. Are you quite sure I won’t be making you uncomfortable?”
“Not at all, sir. I’m glad to be of service. Pray get in, before the rain soaks you through.”
He climbed in, Nan and Tansy moved over to make room for him, and the coach started off. “My name is Samuel Dangerfield, madame.”
“Mine is Mrs. St. Clare.”
Mrs. St. Clare obviously meant nothing to him, and for once she welcomed the anonymity. “Did my coachman tell you that I’m only going as far as Tunbridge? I don’t doubt you can hire horses and another coach there.”
“Thank you for the suggestion, madame. But as it happens I too am going to Tunbridge.”
They talked little after that and Nan explained her mistress’s silence by saying that she was suffering wretchedly from a quartan ague. Mr. Dangerfield was sympathetic, said he had had that ailment himself, and suggested bleeding as a sovereign remedy. Within three hours they arrived at the village.
Tunbridge Wells was a fashionable spa and the previous summer her Majesty and all the Court had paid it a visit; but now, in mid-January, it was a dreary deserted scattered little village. Not a person was in sight, the elms that lined the single main street were naked and forlorn, and only the smoke drifting from several chimneys gave evidence of life.
Amber and Samuel Dangerfield parted at the inn, where he had accommodations, and she promptly forgot him. She rented a neat little three-room cottage, furnished with very old polished oak, chintz curtains, and an array of shining brass and copper utensils. For four days she did not get out of bed but lay sleeping and resting, and by the end of that time her vitality and energy began to return. She started worrying again about what was to become of her.
“Well, I can’t go back to London, that’s sure as the small-pox,” she told Nan as she sat morosely in bed, propped against pillows and plucking at her brows with a silver-plated tweezer.
“I’m sure I don’t see why, mam.”
“Don’t see why! D’you think I’d ever go back to that scurvy theatre again, and have every town-fop laughing in his fist at me? I will not!”
“Well, after all, mam, you can go back to London without going back to the stage, can’t you? It’s a sorry mouse that has but one hole.” Nan liked well-worn aphorisms.
“I don’t know where else I’d go,” muttered Amber.
Nan drew in a deep breath to prepare for her next speech, but kept her eyes on her deftly stitching needle. “I still think, mam, that if you’d take lodgings in the City and set yourself up for a rich widow you’d not be long a-catching a husband. Maybe you don’t want to—but beggars should be no choosers.”
Amber looked at her sharply. Then suddenly she flung the tweezers away, tossed the mirror aside and slumped back against the pillows with her arms folded. For several moments both women remained silent and Nan did not even glance at her glowering mistress. But at last Amber smoothed out her face and gave a sigh.
“I wonder,” she said, “if Mr. What-d’ye-call—who had his horses stolen—is rich enough to bother with.” Mr. Dangerfield had sent two days earlier to inquire if her ague was improving; she had returned a careless ungracious reply and had thought nothing of him since then.
“He might be, mam. He’s got a mighty handsome young footman I could go talk to for a while.”
Nan came back a couple of hours later flushed and excited—not altogether, Amber suspected, by the news she had heard. “Well?” asked Amber, who was lying out flat with her arms braced behind her head. She had spent the time since Nan’s departure gloomily mulling over her past errors and disliking the men she considered to have been responsible for them. “What did you find out?”
Nan swept into the room, bringing with her a gust of cool fresh air from the outside and a buoyant energy. “I found out
“One of the richest men in—England!” repeated Amber slowly, still incredulous.
“Yes! He’s got a fortune! Oh, I can’t remember! Two hundred thousand pound or something like that! John says everybody knows how rich he is! He’s a merchant and he’s—”
“Two hundred thous—Is he married?” demanded Amber suddenly, as her wits began to revive.
“No, he isn’t! He was but his wife died—six years ago I think John said. But he’s got fourteen children; some other ones are dead—I forget how many. He comes up here every year to drink the waters for his health—he had a stroke. And he’s just getting ready now to go down to the wells—Big John’s going with ’im!”
