Read Online The Country Gentleman by Fiona Hill - Free Book Online

two counties back). Finally she was obliged to accept one Henry Highet had found in his frock-coat pocket, which he hadbeen trying to give her all along. Looking away, she blew her nose, stuffed the handkerchief into her sleeve and muttered, “I shall send it back laundered to-morrow,” then added very faintly indeed, “Thank you.”
    Mr. Highet begged she would not trouble to return it. Miss Guilfoyle insisted she must and would. Mr. Highet, turning the topic, declared his attention of accompanying the ladies’ party to Linfield, with or without tea. “Though I’d much prefer it if you stopped here the night,” he added earnestly, with an excess of generosity calculated, it seemed to Anne, to make her feel small. “We have plenty of rooms. I’ll wake my mother—”
    Miss Guilfoyle could not think of it, nor of his accompanying them to Linfield. “We have roused one inhabitant from his bed here this night,” she said, striving for dignity as another sneeze threatened to overset her. “That is sufficient.” And, taking up a candle, she began to walk out of the parlour and retrace, as best she could recall them, the steps they had taken from the hall to the parlour.
    Mr. Highet, bowing Maria out, followed after them anxiously. “Do you mean me? I was not asleep. It don’t signify at all. I was reading in bed, Miss Guilfoyle, listening to the rain. Now you must— Excuse me, dear lady.” He caught up with her and gently guided her shoulders in the opposite direction to the one she had been turning. “That’s the way to my library,” he explained kindly. “The door—you are looking for the door you came in?—is along here…”
    In the end, after many polite offers and many firm refusals, Maria intervened. She had had quite enough of wandering over the countryside for one night.
    “I must say,” she broke in, softly but deliberately, “itseems to me the height of foolishness to set forth again without a guide. Perhaps if Mr. Highet has a groom he could send, or…”
    Anne cast her a dark, angry look; but Maria, content that she had both common sense and prudence on her side, received it with serene indifference. Since Anne knew she was right (and was even a little relieved by her interference) no objection was made aloud, and Mr. Highet was permitted to oblige his visitors at last.
    “The very thing,” he said, ushering them into the front hall, then begging to leave them for a moment. He disappeared forthwith, ostensibly to rouse a groom, but actually, as it developed, to dress himself to go out. He returned looking much less risible in riding-breeches and a country coat. “Couldn’t bring myself to wake the lad,” he explained, though it was clear a minute later that he had waked someone, for a saddled chestnut mare was brought round to the door. “Your horses are tired.” He led the ladies out to the carriage sweep again. “I have taken the liberty of replacing them with mine—to be returned with the handkerchief,” he added gravely to Miss Guilfoyle, apparently intending no humour. John and James were already mounted on their respective boxes, and a moment later Anne realized the others were inside the curricle. Mr. Highet accepted a lantern from a tiger, handed the ladies into their carriage before they had an opportunity to protest, and mounted the mare. And so the party set off into the foggy night.
    With a knowledgeable guide to keep them off the poorer roads and to steer them on course, they arrived at Linfield in a matter of forty-five minutes or so. In good weather, Mr. Highet informed the ladies as he handed them out onto the wooden portico of a decidedly smallerhouse than Fevermere, the journey was twenty minutes to ride (across the land that joined the properties) and no more than thirty to drive. “It is a road I have often taken to visit Mr. Herbert Guilfoyle. He is gone and we regret him,” he went on, with a bow to Anne by way of condolence (they were waiting at the lighted