Free The Viscount's Revenge (The Royal Ambition Series Book 4) by M. C. Beaton Page A

his way,” said Aunt Matilda, once the formalities were over. “He says the roads are treacherous and we should take advantage of the early start if we are to meet the mail. But I feel we should take Mr. Cartwright-Browne over Fox End before we leave.”
     
    “Indeed, yes,” chorused Richard and Amanda.
     
    “No need for that, ma’am,” said the old gentleman. “Mrs. Jolly says she knows your house as well as she knows her own and she will be calling later to put me in the way of things.”
     
    In vain did Amanda and Richard protest. In vain did Amanda try to delay their departure by inventing missing fans and bonnets. Mr. Cartwright-Browne stood smiling outside the stables and it seemed as if he were set to stay there all day.
     
    “I’ll find some way of riding back from town and getting them,” whispered Richard to Amanda at last. “We can’t stay any longer.”
     
    And with that, Amanda had to be satisfied.
     
    The vicarage coach rumbled forward. Amanda craned her neck until the tall chimneys of Fox End had vanished from sight. They were headed for London and the uncertain future, and the unknown Mrs. Pitts and her daughter.
     
    They made a fairly silent journey of it. Aunt Matilda had suddenly lost all her vigour, and slept most of the way.
     
    After the mail coach had deposited them in the City, Richard commandeered a hack. “Where to?” he asked Aunt Matilda.
     
    She opened her reticule and fumbled around until she found a small pair of steel spectacles, which she balanced on the end of her long pink nose. Then she scrabbled and fumbled again, spilling out papier poudre, a vinaigrette, a lead pencil, a box of lucifers, a whole forest of bone pins, two combs, and a steel looking glass, before she found a slip of paper. “Oh, here it is,” she sighed. “Berkeley Square. Number five.”
     
    “Are you sure?” asked Richard. “That is one of the most fashionable addresses in London.”
     
    “Quite sure,” said Aunt Matilda. “Mrs. Pitts wrote it down for me herself.”
     
    Amanda climbed into the hack, wrapping her skirts around her ankles to keep them clear of the dirty straw on the floor. She felt no excitement at being in London. She felt deafened by the noise and bustle.
     
    Postmen in scarlet coats with bells and bags were going from door to door; porterhouse boys were running with pewter mugs of beer for the evening’s suppers; small chimney sweeps with gigantic brushes were wearily trudging home; bakers were calling “Hot loaves,” their raucous voices competing with the bells of the dust carts and the horns of the news vendors. Apprentices were chattering and shouting to each other as they put up the heavy shutters on the bow-fronted, multipaned windows of their masters’ shops; ragged urchins were leapfrogging over posts; and hawkers with bandboxes on poles were threading their way through the jostling crowd.
     
    There were vast hooded wagons with wheels like rollers, and brewers’ drays drawn by Suffolk Punches, those huge and powerful draught-horses; bullocks on their way back from Smithfield wandering into yards, and rickety hackney coaches with their ancient jehus, like the one bearing Amanda out of the City and towards the West End of London.
     
    Every house seemed to have the same unadorned face of freestone-bordered sash, the same neat pillars on either side of the pedimented door, the same stone steps over the area crowned by a lamppost.
     
    They made their way along Cheapside to Newgate Street and then along Holborn, from Holborn to Oxford Street, and then from Oxford Street through Hanover Square. Now that they were in the West End, the London of fashion, bounded by Grosvenor Square and St. James’s Square, Amanda could see signs of wealth all around in the carefully ordered streets and the huge town houses and in the very absence of bustle which had so marked the rest of the capital that she had driven through.
     
    Berkeley Square was reached all too soon for