Belinda Goes to Bath Read Online Free PDF Page A

when the intrepid Child, perhaps fortified with a view of the imposing Calcott House rising above the trees, told the lady he preferred to wed her rather than try her skill. Upon which, in the twinkling of an eye, he found himself
    Clothed in rich attire,
    Not inferior to a squire
    – in fact, master of Calcott. And that all happened in 1712, less than an hundred years ago.’
    ‘I would think you were making it all up,’ said Belinda, ‘except that the poetry is so bad. There is something so honest and worthy-sounding about bad poetry.’
    ‘What is wrong?’ asked Hannah sharply. Mrs Judd had begun to sob.
    ‘Cease your caterwauling this instant,’ snapped her husband.
    ‘I h-have a p-premonition of disaster,’ sobbed Mrs Judd.
    ‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Hannah, finding to her horror that she, too, was capable of being nasty to the inoffensive Mrs Judd.
    ‘Well, I feel it. Here!’
    She touched the region of her heart.
    At that moment, the pace of the coach began to quicken. Hannah drew aside the red leather curtains, which she had drawn to shut out the vista of bleak snow. The snow was still falling thickly, but the horses were moving at a great rate.
    She let down the window and, leaning out as far as she could, screwed up her eyes and tried to make out what was happening on the box. The coachman was hunched up, and with a sudden jolt of alarm Hannah noticed the reins had slipped from his hands.
    ‘The coachman has fallen asleep,’ she said. ‘Someone has got to rouse him, or the guard.’
    Mrs Judd screamed with alarm. Mr Judd opened his window and began to shout to the guard. The guard shouted something back and Mr Judd roared that the coachman had fallen asleep. They heard athump on the roof as the guard moved from his seat at the back to join the coachman on the box.
    Hannah hung out of the window again. The snow thinned slightly and she saw a curve of the road ahead.
    Right across it, blocking the road, stood a hay wagon. She put up the window. ‘We are for it!’ she shouted. ‘Down in the straw!’ And Hannah crouched down on the floor of the carriage just as the coach swung off the road. They were thrown right and left. There were cries and sobs and swears and then the coach seemed to take flight. There was a short moment of silence and then, with an almighty crash, the whole coach landed in a river.
       
    The Marquess of Frenton was riding along the marches of his estate. Despite the weather and the time of year, he considered it his duty to see that his property was not being neglected and that the high stone walls that bound the park had not been breached by either animals or humans.
    He would not admit to himself that the real reason for the expedition was because of his house guests. With a view to choosing a bride, he had invited Miss Penelope Jordan and her parents, Sir Henry and Lady Jordan, to stay. He had danced with pretty Penelope several times during the Little Season in London. She was a stately brunette with cool, calm, chiselled features and moved with great elegance. She was very, very rich, or rather, her parents were, which meant she would come with a good dowry. Someelement of caution had prompted him to invite other house guests so as to make his motives not seem too obvious until he had fully made up his mind. But the other guests had not arrived, being stopped from travelling by the hard weather. It was not that he really had found Penelope any less suitable. The marquess was a fastidious man. He found her as elegant and well bred as ever. It was her parents’ assumption that the knot was as good as tied that grated on him.
    The marquess’s late father had been a noisy, spend-thrift gambler and drunk. His mother’s last words as she had followed her husband to the grave some four weeks later had been, ‘Do not blame your father, my son. Men were ever thus.’
    So the marquess at the age of twenty had found himself saddled with monstrous debts and a near ruin of a castle.