A Radical Arrangement Read Online Free PDF Page B

Keighley automatically. His mind appeared to be elsewhere. Mrs. Mayfield watched him carefully. “Where could she go?” he added. “To London?”
    His guest’s eyes glinted, though she kept her face impassive. “Oh, no. She has no friends there. I suppose she would go west.”
    “To Cornwall?”
    “Yes. We have visited several times in Penzance.”
    “Ah. She has friends there, then.” He seemed to relax a little.
    “Not any longer.” Keighley glanced sharply up at her, but Mrs. Mayfield was absorbed in pulling on her gloves. “I must go. Ralph is prostrate over this affair. He mustn’t be left alone.”
    “Too ill to travel, I suppose?” said Sir Justin sarcastically.
    “Much,” agreed the other. “Good day.” As she turned away, Mrs. Mayfield again examined him from the corner of her eye. What she saw seemed to satisfy her, and her expression as she left the house was much less unpleasant than when she arrived.
    Keighley paced his study uneasily for several minutes after she had gone. Finally he leaned on the mantelpiece and tapped it with impatient fingers. “She can’t have been telling me the truth,” he said aloud. “They must go after the chit.” He tapped his fingers and frowned, recalling all he knew about the Mayfields. They were the most pompous, stiff-necked, narrow-minded people he had ever encountered. Was it possible that they would abandon a daughter they believed disgraced, seeing that as the easiest way out? He could not quite reject the possibility.
    That girl is no more fit to fend for herself than a lame sheep, he thought. He pictured various horrible fates that might befall her. I shouldn’t have teased her. I could see that she wasn’t up to it. He thought again of the previous evening, remembering Margaret’s inexplicable behavior. She’s practically half-witted, he concluded. Then, with a sigh half exasperated, half resigned, he rang for a servant. “Is my horse ready?” he asked when the bell was answered.
    “Yes, sir, the groom has been waiting.”
    “Good. I have just remembered some business I must take care of. I may not return until late.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Sir Justin strode out, and as he mounted his horse he thought that it would scarcely take more than a day for him to catch the girl and return her to her home, with a few choice words for her parents as he did so.
    * * *
    For the first hour Margaret had ridden in an agony of apprehension. The grooms had looked at her strangely when she settled her bandbox before her on the saddle, and she was terrified that they would fetch her mother to stop her or send someone in pursuit. But as the time passed and no one came she relaxed enough to allow other worries to intrude. When she had traveled down to Cornwall before, it had been by coach, so she had a hazy recollection of the roads, but she was afraid to ask the way of strangers. Indeed, the people she met, some of whom looked surprised to see a young lady riding unaccompanied with a parcel before her, were her chief concern. Novel reading and her mother’s strictures had given her vivid pictures of what happened to lone women who had anything to do with unknown persons.
    Yet no one accosted her, and gradually the beating of her heart slowed a bit. Perhaps she could manage this journey. She need only keep going west and south, and surely there would be signposts. When she reached Penzance… Here, Margaret faltered, but her memories of that town were so filled with sunshine and flowers that she could not believe she would have trouble there.
    The July morning grew warm, and Margaret’s blue cloth riding habit became oppressive. It also occurred to her that she had done nothing about food. Though she was only a little hungry now, she would have to get something to eat before the day was out, and that meant an inn, a prospect that made her quake. She had known that she could not make this journey in one day, but she had been putting off thinking of inns and other