“I am only here to assist your father and your coachman in the event of a mishap. A broken wheel, or an encounter with any unsavory sorts.”
“Well,” Cordelia said, “if we are set upon by unsavory sorts, I hope you give them a rousing lecture that ends withI only give you that hint.”
“I presume those individuals would be better prepared to take my well-considered hints than any of you,” Van Doren said.
Beatrice rolled her eyes, mostly because Van Doren could not abide it and had several times pronounced it coarse, unladylike, and suited to a fishwife.
While Van Doren was being questioned as to why he was there, Tattleton had somehow got all the trunks packed away in the luggage carriage, but for the jewelry cases that would travel with the earl.
Last evening, after Van Doren had finally taken himself off, they had agreed on how the carriages were to be arranged to everybody’s satisfaction.
The five sisters and Miss Mayton were to ride together. It was to be a squeeze, but they’d rather that than be separated. There would be hours and hours of interesting conversation to be had and one never knew when their aunt would recall some new detail of one of her romantic interludes. Only yesterday, they’d discovered that Hans had been wearing a green coat.
Now that Beatrice was poised to step into her own romantic interlude, it was more important than ever to glean whatever bits of wisdom they could from their aunt’s experiences.
The earl was perfectly amenable to the arrangements and would take a carriage for himself, Brown, and Tattleton. Her father was a very great reader of all sorts of literature and while some might have become sick from reading in a swaying carriage, it did not affect him at all. In his youth, he’d set off on a grand tour of the continent and had even read a book while crossing in choppy seas.
Tattleton could be counted on not to chatter, as their butler always seemed to have much on his mind. Brown was always silently brooding about the laundry or when the ironing would be done, and so would also not be a hindrance to the earl.
The lady’s maids would travel in another carriage, Cook and the footmen in another, with Mr. James keeping a stern eye on those youthful fellows.
The whole thing would be capped off with a luggage carriage. As the earl only owned two carriages and employed one coachman, three carriages and four coachmen had to be hired to accomplish the moving of household.
It was to be quite the caravan.
And now, trailing behind them all, came Van Doren.
Beatrice had hoped he was not planning to make a nuisance of himself in Town, but she began to think he probably would. Why else would he insist on this ridiculous plan? Unsavory sorts, indeed. It was not as if they were setting off at midnight and risked highwaymen. In any case, they had five coachmen at their disposal, all well-armed.
Van Doren must have gone to some trouble to arrange it. He only brought panniers on his horse and had no doubt sent his other things ahead. He did not even have his valet with him.
It was silly, she thought. If he’d had sense, he would have set off on his own, in his own carriage. Or if he were determined to ride, he might have been in London in two days, rather than three.
That was Van Doren all over, though. He was certain he knew the correct way to proceed in every situation but, to Beatrice’s mind, he was just as often wrong as right.
The earl came out of the house and surveyed the drive, nodding to Van Doren. “Well, I believe we might as well get this thing going.”
Beatrice turned from Van Doren and scrambled into the carriage, taking her rightful place in a forward-facing window seat. Miss Mayton had the other.
It should have been Rosalind and Viola in the backward-facing window seats but Viola got sick traveling backward, so she was squeezed in the middle of the forward, while Juliet was sandwiched between Rosalind and Cordelia on the other side.
The doors were shut and the horses moved forward.
The moment had finally arrived. Beatrice Bennington was on her way to Town.
*
Matthew sometimes wonderedif the earl were only absentminded, or whether he took some amusement in forgetting to relay some critical detail. He’d come to escort the Bennington caravan, at great inconvenience to himself, because the earl had asked him to.
Apparently, Lord Westmont had not seen fit to apprise anybody else of that fact.
The family’s departure from the house was as eccentric as he’d thought it would be. All five sisters and Miss Mayton crammed into one carriage, the earl going with his butler and valet, the lady’s maids tittering as they no doubt would the entire trip, and the footmen already with a pack of cards out while the cook stared at them grimly.
They’d not been a quarter mile down the road before Juliet was hanging out a carriage window and calling to her father that they must all go back. She’d forgotten her book.
“Van Doren,” the earl said from his own carriage window, “you are the only one of us on horseback. Do go back and fetch it. Juliet will not rest easy if she does not have her book. The steward will still be in the library and can show you in.”
Juliet blew a kiss to her papa, for his understanding of the importance of the matter.
