Page 30 of Fortune Favors the Frivolous
If Mrs. Gascoyne had only spent one week in Venetia’s position, she’d know that Aunt Pike was mean-spirited and that she thrived on malicious gossip and anything that would diminish the respect and dignity of the underlings in her household, namely Venetia, but also of the cowed servants who lived there. The woman’s thin smiles always preceded her cruelest remarks.
For three years, Venetia had been hoping to meet a nice gentleman who was able to discount the fact she came with no dowry and for whom she felt more than a faint feeling of affinity. There had been Mr. Bilby who had seemed promising in the beginning but who’d decided he really did need her to come with a dowry.
And then, just a few months later, she’d met the most charming and engaging Mr. Barnett during a provincial assembly she’d attended with her aunt. His warm brown eyes and gentle manner had made her heart skip when they’d danced. He, too, was not sufficiently plump in the pocket—Aunt Pike’s words—to support Venetia in a manner that would not harm Aunt Pike’s reputation, and the romance had consequently been nipped in the bud.
But he had been a very nice man and even just thinking about him made Venetia’s heart beat a little more rapidly.
Just as it was now as, with heavy footsteps, she followed Mrs. Gascoyne up the stairs.
Soon her lie would be revealed, and then what would happen? Mrs. Gascoyne took almost as malicious a delight asher aunt in condemning moral transgressions. And she would most certainly see the fact that Venetia was alone at an inn as a moral transgression. In fact, not only was Venetia alone at an inn, but she’d been seen walking out of a bedchamber alone with a young gentleman. Her skin prickled with dread. Even if there had been talk of a betrothal between them, it was still a moral transgression for a young lady to be alone with a man.
“If I’d known your aunt was staying at the same inn as Mr. Gascoyne and myself, we could have arranged to have shared a saddle of beef downstairs in a private chamber rather than have ours in our chamber, as Mr. Gascoyne did not care for the idea of descending the stairs when, to be quite truthful, we were not entirely sure of the reputation of this lodging house. But for the necessity of changing horses and the late hour, we’d have continued to Marbury, where we know there is a very respectable inn. Of course, with your aunt under this same roof, our fears in that quarter are now put quite to rest. Now, I shall knock just a little loudly, for it is not too early that your Aunt Pike shouldn’t be awake if not up already.”
Mrs. Gascoyne rapped sharply on the door.
Bracing herself for the inevitable silence, Venetia stared stony-faced at the wooden floor, then at Mrs. Gascoyne, for she could not give up so easily when it was possible the woman could be reasonable. Though the set of the older woman’s jaw suggested otherwise.
“She is sleeping, I am sure of it.” Venetia gave an exaggerated sigh, twisting her hands in the folds of her dress. “Poor Aunt Pike. Her megrim must have been worse than I thought. And to think I have been downstairs all this time talking to you when I should have been attending to my dear aunt with cold compresses and soothing possets.” Lordy, Venetia couldn’t count the number of hours she’d had to do just that.
“I am worried.” Mrs. Gascoyne frowned. “Deeply worried, as you should be, young lady! Yes, you must go in and ensure that she is not expired as we speak!” Her voice trembled. “And I shall follow you with the necessary fortitude should it be needed. Rarely a more uncomplaining, stouter woman than your Aunt Pike could be imagined. Open that door, my girl, and we will ensure that your poor aunt is still on this mortal earth.”
Well, there was nothing for it, really, Venetia thought, adopting a phrase that Henry would have used; closing her eyes as she turned the door handle, almost willing her deplorable aunt to be lying, eyes closed and feverish upon the bed.
But, of course, she was not. The room was bare, the bed slightly crumpled with no other evidence of habitation—other than the fact that Venetia and Henry had emerged from it earlier… together and alone.
Damning, damning! Even though nothing untoward had occurred.
But of course, Mrs. Gascoyne, and people like her with fevered imaginations, always thought the worst, Venetia knew. She’d lived with “people like that” since she’d been eight years old and her aunt had taken her in.
In the gloom, Mrs. Gascoyne looked like a blind baby bird as she peered about, stretching out the silence, her frown growing deeper as she seemed to think she really might find Aunt Pike beneath the bed. She even bent to check, her stiff skirts rustling as she stooped.
Finally, turning with great deliberation towards Venetia, she said heavily, “Your Aunt Pike is not at this inn, is she, Miss Playford?”
Venetia shook her head, her stomach sinking with dread. The game was up.
“You and that young man emerged from this chamber… alone… before he… abandoned you.” Each pause in Mrs. Gascoyne’s speech felt weighted with judgment.
Just as Venetia had expected to have the woman’s deep disapproval and disappointment unleashed upon her, Mrs. Gascoyne’s severe frown suddenly crumpled and she put her hand on Venetia’s shoulder, gripping it fiercely as she said, “That young man shall not succeed in ruining an innocent young girl like you if I have any say in it.”
“Please, Mrs. Gascoyne, nothing happened. I promise—” Venetia’s voice rose with desperation.
“But you were alone in a bedchamber with him, hours from London, alone and unchaperoned,” the woman went on, her fingers digging painfully into Venetia’s flesh. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but those are the facts of the matter—is that not correct?”
“Yes, but Mrs. Gascoyne, it was not my fault. I was… taken against my will.” Venetia swallowed hard, trying to organize her thoughts into a coherent explanation.
“He abducted you!” Mrs. Gascoyne’s wizened face took on a horrified quality, her eyes widening until the whites showed all around.
“No, not Henry—” Venetia tried to interject, but Mrs. Gascoyne was not listening.
“Henry, is it? Got you cozy with Christian-naming so he could spirit you off to the country. Did you not suspect his evil intentions? Did your aunt not warn you—” Spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth as her indignation mounted.
“Henry rescued me. He didn’t abduct me. No, that was—” Venetia’s words tumbled over each other in her haste to explain.
“Did you sleep in that bed?” Mrs. Gascoyne stabbed her finger towards the offending object by the window, which clearly had been slept in, the sheets rumpled and bearing the indentation of two bodies.
“I slept, but… that is all. I slept because I’d been in a carriage all night and I was frightened and exhausted, and then Henry came—” Tears stung Venetia’s eyelids.
“And your Henry will atone! Mr. Gascoyne!” Barking an order that carried into the passage where her husband had just appeared through the open door on his way to presumably their own chamber, Mrs. Gascoyne made it clear that escape was not an option. Her thin chest heaved with righteous fervor.
