Work Text:
Mama and Papa had always detested London, Abigail and Jane knew, but Abigail was 18 now and Jane just 15 months younger—and Giles down from Oxford for good—and Peter finally over the measles—and Mary old enough to weather the journey—so it was time for the Deveril family to fill out the two well-sprung carriages Grandpapa Chawleigh had given them (oh, how Peter and Mary liked to trace the gilt and the brocade vines on the interior walls) with trunks and baskets and Nanny and Saxon the beagle and head off for the Season.
Mama, especially, did not travel well, and it was odd for the children to see her so fagged; quite unlike her usual calm cheer. Papa and Giles spent most of the time riding ahead of the carriages, but on the second day Papa undertook to sit in the carriage for a full 10 miles, so as to pat Mama's hand soothingly and cast glares at Peter, who would not sit still. For those 10 miles all was calm, but soon Papa grew restless and departed the carriage so as to ride ahead and make sure the inn at Huntingdon had all that Mama and the children might desire.
Free from the quelling influence of his father, Peter felt moved to reassert himself. "Mama!" Jane shrieked. "Peter keeps pinching me!"
"Oh, Peter," Mama said. "Do desist. And Jane—if he pinches you again, pinch him back!"
Jane flushed; she, of all the Lynton children, felt her mother's heritage, and so was constantly affecting a prim missishness that cast her quite apart from her much easier siblings. "But Mama!"
Abigail, who had been quietly stitching an exquisite sampler in shades of pink and green, elbowed her sister. "Hush, Jane!" she whispered. "Cannot you see that Mama is fatigued?" And Mama was, her hands tightly grasping her skirts and her eyes shut tightly against the unsteady rocking of the carriage over the terrible road. Even Peter had fallen silent, staring out the window at the fields rolling past.
For perhaps half-an-hour more, the carriage continued slowly along, all of its occupants silent—rare, for a group of children; rarer still for the Deveril family—until the surface of the road changed from dirt to gravel and then, soon after, to cobble, whereupon the carriage jolted to a stop and Burke opened the door, so that Papa could assist Mama down the steps, and Giles his sisters.