Escapade (28 page)

The evening began much as usual. Ella and Lady Sara arrived early, but the rooms were already three-quarters full. Ella glimpsed all around, taking her last look at all her old characters. There was Lord Petersham, forced to wear something other than brown for once; Prince Esterhazy who might even possibly have shared a carriage with his wife, though it was unlikely; the whole ménage from Melbourne House; a generous sprinkling of young hopeful maidens, eying the bachelors, who were eying them. The whole column tomorrow would be devoted to this party. Really everyone was here, for no one would be so farouche as to give a ball on the night of Almack's closing party. Yes, everyone was here, and why did the place seem so empty and uninteresting?

There was a noticeable shifting of eyes to the entrance door, and Ella too looked, thinking to herself, it must be Lord Byron. She had not spotted him in the throng. But the gentleman who had stepped in and turned so many heads was not Lord Byron, but the Duke of Clare, with Bippy Tredwell in tow. Ella felt weak. “Sara, it's him! We must leave!"

“Don't be such a ninnyhammer. Do you think he is going to stand up and announce to the room that you are Miss Prattle? If he comes this way, smile and say ‘good evening,’ and you may be sure he will not give you the cut direct. He always says a few words to me."

“I can't face him. I'm going."

“And how do you plan to get past the door without pushing him aside?” Sara asked. She had a good point, for Clare had not moved from the door, but stood with his quizzing glass raised, scanning the room, obviously looking for someone. Ella was positive of two conflicting facts: he was most certainly looking for her, and he was most certainly not looking for her. In either case, he would have difficulty to find her, for she had got behind her aunt, and buckled her knees so that no portion of her body was visible to him.

“Ella, for God's sake, stop acting like a confirmed lunatic,” her aunt said sharply. Ella straightened her knees and turned her back to the door. “He's not coming this way,” Sara assured her, and she risked looking towards him.

True, he was not coming towards them, but Bippy Tredwell at that point spotted Ella and raised a hand in salute. She smiled and nodded and watched, mesmerized, as he began tugging at Clare's sleeve and saying something to him. As he kept looking at them from time to time during this interval, it was but logical to assume he was informing Clare of their whereabouts. But Clare refused to hear him. He looked everywhere in the room but at them. Ella hardly knew what to think. She had feared Clare would come to her, feared he would not, feared he would stare her down, or past her, or through her, but it had never occurred to her he would find her invisible. She was deflated and pretty soon angry as well. But Clare was in high spirits, smiling and talking to everyone with a greater degree of amiability than was common to him. When the minuet was begun, he asked Sherry to stand up with him, and Ella's hand was solicited by an elderly gentleman who was a friend of Sir Herbert's.

At the dance's finish, Ella went again to Sara, who said to her, “You see there is nothing to fear. He doesn't mean to behave in any way differently from before."

“He never acted like this before!” Ella objected.

“I mean before we went to Dorset. He had a few words with me, just before the dance began."

“Did he say anything about me?"

“No, I mentioned you were here, and he just nodded. He did not appear in the least angry."

So far from being angry, Clare was enjoying his game of cat-and-mouse very much. He had decided on the third dance as the one for which he would seek Ella's hand.

For one hour he would let her fume, and wonder what he was up to. He was sorely tempted to go to her after the minuet, but Emily Cowper accosted him, and getting away proved impossible. At the end of the second dance, Belle Prentiss, who had arrived late, came up to him, her eyes sparkling. Ella observed this, as she observed every move Clare made, by a judicious and very brief toss of her head in his direction, rather as though she were lifting a curl from her forehead.

“I was wondering if you would be here,” Belle said to Clare.

“As you see, I am here,” he replied, fearing that Belle would entrap him for the next dance. His impatience to go to Ella was becoming acute.

“Everyone is here tonight. It hasn't been such a squeeze since the first assembly. There is Sherry, looking fine as a star in yet another white spangled gown. Harley and Peters are on their way in; I passed them just now. Oh, and there is Lady Sara and Miss Fairmont. Quite a regathering of your house party."

“Yes."

“Which reminds me, Clare, of the most amazing thing I have discovered,” she ran on, slipping in as if incidental the main reason for having sought him out.

He looked up with a minimum of interest, expecting to hear some dull bit of gossip and wondering how soon he might excuse himself.

“I have uncovered Prattle, and what do you think? It is Miss Fairmont."

She had his full interest now, but was hard put to account for the violent expression he wore. “Nonsense!” he said.

“No, it is true, I swear. But I must tell you how I tricked her. I was very cunning and devious. I suspected her when I read that odious piece in the
Observer
about your having a lightskirt at Clare. I bet you thought I was responsible for leaking that out, but the only one I told was Miss Fairmont, and that is what first made me suspicious."

“Why did you tell her?"

“Because I—oh I don't know. We got to talking one day as girls will do, and I told her. I didn't think it would do any harm, for I thought she could be trusted. And then when I figured out she must have sent the story direct to the paper, for there wasn't time for it to get around in the normal way because it appeared so soon, I set about confirming my suspicion. I told her a whisker, just a silly little thing about Lord Byron, to see if it would show up in Prattle. I said he bathed his face and hands in cream, and that is what makes them so white. When I read it in Prattle the very next day I knew it must be she."

“It doesn't necessarily follow. She may have told someone."

“No, she was pretending sick, and not going out at all, and it was in the very next day. I believe she must have jotted it down the minute I left. It was the last item in her column."

“Whom else have you told?” Clare asked.

“Only a few. I just got here. I mentioned it to Sally Jersey en passant, and Byron was with her. He dashed off to tell Lady Melbourne..."

“I take it you are awaiting my praise for this piece of meddling?” he asked, in the angriest voice she had ever heard.

“You should be thankful, after the things she has written about you."

“The worst she ever wrote about me was a lie promulgated by yourself. Clever, as usual, Miss Prentiss, but not so clever as my Miss Prattle. She, I think, has you beat on all suits."

“Well, she is not half so clever as you seem to think, for only look how I have caught her. And you needn't think you can hush this business up, for the room is buzzing with it already."

The merest glance around them confirmed this boast. Clare heard it with an impassive face, only the pinching of his nostrils giving any indication of his fury. His mind rapidly raced ahead to what must be done now. Within ten minutes Ella would be in a state of siege. Old Drummond-Burrell, for instance, wouldn't hesitate a moment to ask her to leave, or tell her. Already heads were together in groups, fans raised, and eyes staring towards Ella. He knew at exactly what moment she became aware of it herself. Saw her face take on that frightened look, trapped. She's going to panic, he thought. He turned to Belle—he had forgotten she was there in that instant of planning, yet the delay between their two speeches was hardly noticeable.

“Oh, no, I have no thought of hushing it up. I must go and congratulate her.” On the words, he stepped forth, and Belle was left, stunned. She knew for sure now what she had suspected all along. Clare loved Miss Fairmont. She herself had wasted the better part of two seasons chasing him as hard as she could and refused a flattering offer from Sir Geoffrey Cunningham not three weeks ago. Well, she would never get Clare now, but she doubted Miss Fairmont would get him either after tonight. She smiled ironically and followed Clare across the room with her eyes, to judge by their expressions what transpired between them.

Ella was on the far side of the room, and already one of the patronesses was making a hurried path towards her—Mrs. Drummond-Burrell, the most intractable of the lot. She reached Ella before Clare, and was just saying as he approached, “Lady Sara, the most bizarre rumor is running around the hall—nonsense, of course, but I must ask you..."

Clare barged in, heedless of his manners. “Good evening, ma'am,” to Mrs. Burrell, and again to Sara, “and a very good evening to you, Miss Prattle,” to Ella.

It would be difficult to decide which of the ladies was the most shocked. All three wore dazed, stupefied looks and were beyond making an answer.

“My dance, Miss Prattle, I think?” he said, again repeating that awful name.

Ella looked at him, her brown eyes accusing, hurt, and questioning. “I don't..."

“But, Miss Prattle, you did promise me first waltz, when you were so kind as to visit me at Clare. How can you have forgotten?” He turned to the patroness. “Now tell her, ma'am, the least she can do to repay me for all those dreadful things she keeps writing about me, is to keep her promise to waltz with me?"

Drummond-Burrell finally spoke, but it was not to do as Clare bid her. “Are you Miss Prattle?” she asked Ella directly in a firm voice.

Ella opened her mouth, but no sounds came out, and Lady Sara too was struck dumb by the enormity of the situation. “But, of course, she is,” Clare smiled brightly at the old tartar, as he folded Ella's arm into the crook of his own and patted her confined hand with his own free one. “Making a May game of us all, the naughty girl. She wants a good scolding, don't you think, ma'am?"

Mrs. Drummond-Burrell thought she wanted a deal more than that, but her mind was so disordered at this show Clare was acting that she hardly knew what she thought. The outrage Miss Prattle had been perpetrating for the last three years demanded the highest degree of contumely and censure, the latter to be administered by a public expulsion from the hallowed halls of Almack's. Yet the main butt of Miss Prattle's odium had been the Duke, and here was he, positively drooling over the sassy chit. If he meant to stand behind her, it would be difficult for the rest of society to ostracize her.

“But, of course,” Clare rattled on, seeing the indecision on the patroness's dour face, “I collect you cannot quite disapprove of my Miss Prattle, when she has called those co-patronesses of yours to account, as I have often heard you do so yourself, ma'am."

This was one column of Miss Prattle's of which the strict patroness had approved, especially as it had been mentioned that the other patronesses ought to look to herself as a model of propriety. “I could not like to see it done in such a public way,” she advised Clare, with an indecisive look at Ella.

“I am sorry, ma'am,” Ella said weakly. Lady Sara just stood, wordless, and let Clare handle the matter.

Mrs. Drummond-Burrell hesitated. There were two points in Miss Fairmont's favor. The general tone of her column was highly moral—she reported on wrongdoings only to rail against them. And of much greater importance, there was the Duke, smiling at her in a besotted manner, fondling her hand, and calling her my Miss Prattle. Her decision—and Ella's fate—hovered on the razor's edge, till Clare stepped in and gave it a push.

“Shall we forgive her this once, ma'am?” he asked playfully, his whole demeanor indicating that he had forgiven her long ago—and took the patroness's forgiveness as a matter of course.

Politics at Almack's as elsewhere was the art of the possible, and old Mrs. Drummond-Burrell was too astute a politician to put herself in check. Where Clare led, society followed, and if he led away from Almack's, the place would lose much of its
ton
. “Well—if you say so, Clare. You're the one she has most often written about.” She gave an uncharacteristic bark of laughter, the first and only ever heard to escape her lips in all her long years at Almack's. “But mind you mend your ways, Missie,” she warned, then sailed off to be the first to announce she had taken Miss Prattle to task and that she and Clare had decided to give her one more chance.

“Well!” Lady Sara said when she had gone. “If I don't suffer nightmares from this, it will be a wonder."

“I remarked it all left you quite speechless,” Clare replied. “Miss Prattle, they are beginning our waltz.” He already had her arm in his and pulled her to the dance floor. She had hardly the strength to stand up, let alone waltz.

Immediately they were alone, his mood of reckless cheer left him, and in fact he found nothing to say.

“Why did you do it?” Ella asked in a shaken voice.

“I should have thought you'd be too thankful to look a gift horse in the mouth."

“You must have told. It had to be you. No one else knew."

To ears awaiting soft words of gratitude, this accusation of such a base nature was a jolt. His nerves, though he didn't show it, had suffered from the pass with Drummond-Burrell, and it didn't take much to nudge him into anger. His arm fell from her waist, and he was about to turn and walk away when a startled glance from the Countess de Lieven brought him to reason. He put his arm back around her waist, stiffly. “You have the temerity to say that to me, after that last column you sent in from Dorset!"

This outrage had momentarily slipped Ella's mind. Reminded of it now, she turned crimson. “I am sorry about that. It was very bad of me."

“Kind of you to say so."

“It was a horrid thing to do."

The simple word “horrid” had nostalgic memories for Clare. It seemed somehow an integral part of Ella Fairmont. Glancing at her in a mood mollified a little by memories and her timid voice, he softened even further to see how stricken she looked. Ready to fold up and die away. “Buck up. It will soon be over,” he said gruffly.