Jack Chiltern's Wife (1999) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Judith, I would have taken you with me. Which is what I am doing now. You will come, won’t you?’
    ‘I couldn’t have borne it if you had asked someone else to look after you.’
    ‘You aren’t going to try and tempt me to go back then?’
    ‘Would it serve?’
    ‘No, it would not.’
    ‘Then I shan’t waste my breath.’
    ‘Thank you, Judith. You know I was very desolate and frightened, but now you are here, I feel so much better.’
    ‘I took the liberty of bringing some more of your things,’ Judith said. ‘I thought you might be going somewhere a mite warmer.’
    She heaved the basket onto the bed and opened it to reveal two lightweight gowns, one in green silk, the other blue muslin,a thin lawn petticoat, shoes and a pelisse, as well as a carriage dress in brown taffeta for travelling and a flannel petticoat to wear in the January weather then prevailing and which they would not leave behind for some days.
    ‘What made you think that?’
    ‘You left Master James’s letter lying on your bed.’
    ‘Did anyone else see it?’
    ‘No, Miss Kitty, I put it in the basket and brought it with me.’
    ‘Oh, now you are here I feel quite cheerful again, so you may take that sorrowful look off your face and smile. We are going to have some high old adventures, you and I, and we are going to enjoy them. Can you imagine James’s face when he sees us?’
    Judith could not. That meeting was so far in the future that even thinking about what might happen in the mean time filled her with foreboding. But she smiled and began repacking the basket and Kitty’s valise.
    It was four o’clock the following morning when the two women arrived in Dover after travelling in a public coach since seven the previous evening. They were cold, tired and hungry, not to mention filthy.
    ‘We must bespeak a private room here,’ Judith said, as they climbed stiffly from the carriage. ‘For I declare I can’t go a step further until I have washed, eaten and slept.’
    Kitty, who had quite regained her spirits, laughed. ‘It is less than twenty-four hours since you left home and already you are complaining.’
    ‘I am not complaining,’ Judith denied the accusation sharply. It would never do for her mistress to think she was not up to the rigours of the journey or she might be left behind. Already she had had her own way about crossing the channel by the shortest route, having a great terror of the sea.
    She would rather face revolution in France than be drowned trying to sail round it, she had told Kitty. Adding that, if shewere sick, how could she look after her darling? And that, she declared, was the one purpose of her life, to look after her charge and protect her from all the dangers that faced them, from lascivious sailors and Frenchmen who would chop off her head, to bad food and bed bugs.
    ‘Very well, we will stop here for a few hours, but then we must go to the harbour and find out when the next packet is due to leave, for I mean to be on it.’
    ‘And what story do we put about for a lady and her maid to be travelling alone without so much as a linkboy for an escort?’ Judith demanded, as she picked up Kitty’s luggage and followed her into the inn. ‘Everyone will know at once that you are running away.’
    ‘I am not running away. I have just lost my parents and am going to Italy to join my brother, he being the only relative I have left in the world. It is as near the truth as makes no difference.’
    ‘Your poor uncle would not think it so.’
    ‘No, but when we reach Calais, I shall entrust the captain of the packetboat with another letter to him, so that his mind is set at rest.’
    It was Judith’s opinion that a letter from the other side of the Channel was more likely to inflame the Rector’s mind than set it at rest, but she did not voice it.
    Picking up their luggage, Judith followed her mistress into the inn and demanded a room in a way which brooked no argument. They were soon ensconced in an