Marrying Harriet (13 page)

‘And what did you reply?’ he asked.

‘I laughed at the very idea. The minx said then that she would do her best to discourage our visits and encourage the visits of Mr Lawrence.’

Mr Randolph put away his quizzing-glass, took out a lace-edged handkerchief and mopped his brow. Then, fussily tugging down his swansdown waistcoat, he took out an enamelled snuff box and helped himself to a hearty pinch, raised his glass and drained it and filled it up again, drank that, and then said, ‘You should not have laughed for me.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘I mean you laughed at the idea on behalf of us both. I shall do my own laughing, if you don’t mind,’ said Mr Randolph, becoming visibly angrier by the minute.

‘My dear friend . . .’

‘It is a shock, you see, to think of marriage after having evaded it for so long. But is it such a ridiculous notion? It might be quite jolly. I do not like the idea of poor little Miss Effy working for a living. She has had too many frightening adventures for a lady of her sensibility. Admittedly, the case of Miss Amy is different.
She
is as strong as a man and well able to take care of herself . . .’

‘Nonsense. She is capable of getting into more scrapes than a schoolboy.’

‘So, I repeat, you should not have laughed, or you should have explained your nasty jeering laughter was for Miss Amy, not Miss Effy.’

‘You are becoming more and more ridiculous,’ said Mr Haddon testily.

‘I am not. I am not! Miss Brown will tell the ladies how you laughed, and they will continue to fawn on that ridiculous old fop, Lawrence, and it will be all your fault.’ Mr Randolph’s eyes filled with tears.

‘Do you really mean to say you would consider the idea of marriage?’ asked Mr Haddon, amazed.

‘Of c-course,’ hiccupped Mr Randolph. ‘I am going to go the proper way about it. I am going to court Miss Effy, and Lawrence can have Miss Amy if he wants!’

He collected his hat, cane and gloves. ‘Where are you going?’ asked Mr Haddon.

‘I am going to buy a bouquet of flowers, and I am going to send them as soon as possible. The shops are open until ten.’

Mr Haddon watched him go and then refilled his glass. He thought of all the adventures he had had with Amy. He thought of Amy married to Lawrence, not free from worry about money, but doomed to spend an itinerant life travelling with her spendthrift husband from one rich relative’s home to another while he borrowed and borrowed to pay his gambling debts. Then Mr Haddon summoned the waiter and complained that the wine was sour.

Set me a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.

The Song of Solomon

Jack Perkins sat in his lodgings with the newspapers spread about him. He had read the account of Harriet’s abduction several times. Alas for Mr Lawrence. Everybody loves a lord and the newspapers chose to make Lord Charles the hero of the hour. Jack sighed. If only he could turn back the clock. It was only such a short time ago that they had been roistering together and he had basked in Lord Charles’s popularity. Lord Charles boxed and fenced well, and was an expert shot and a capital whip. When they were friends, Jack had assumed these assets of personality and skill to be his own. He blamed his present unpopularity on the fact that Lord Charles had soured his soul, and his lack of skill in every manly sport on the fact that Lord Charles had taken his confidence away. But more than anything did he blame Harriet Brown.

Many might think Harriet Brown, expensively gowned, to be a tolerably fine woman, but Jack damned her as a dowd. His idea of beauty was the beauty of the most luscious whores with their saucy dresses, highly painted faces and raucous laughter. To think that his friend had fallen for such as Harriet Brown proved the war must have addled his brains.

As he pondered the matter, Jack reflected on Lord Charles’s dislike of whores. Now if he, Jack, could prove that this Miss Brown was whorish herself, then Charles would no longer continue to court her. Jack firmly believed in any case that all women were whores under the skin. He knew she was to attend the Raby’s ball, as he himself had received an invitation and had gleaned that information from the secretary when he had called on the Marchioness of Raby personally to deliver his acceptance. He was also relieved that he had received the invitation, glad that all of society had not cut him off, and not knowing the Marchioness of Raby still believed him to be a friend of Lord Charles Marsham.

He decided to try to seduce Harriet Brown at the ball or do something that would make it look as if she had at least led him on.

*   *   *

A few streets away from him, another gentleman was wondering how to bring about the downfall of Harriet. Mr Desmond Callaghan, the Tribbles’ old enemy, thought that a disgraced Harriet would bring shame and distress on the Tribbles. But how was he to get close enough to her to effect that disgrace? He knew she was to attend the fancy dress ball, for he gossiped on the fringes of society and had learned the now famous Miss Brown was to attend. He himself did not have an invitation, but he was an expert at getting into houses to which he had not been invited. He usually hovered outside until a large and distinguished group of guests arrived, attached himself to them and was usually accepted as being part of their party. Everyone had a guilty secret, thought Mr Callaghan. Miss Brown was bound to have something in her past she did not want anyone to know about. He must get her to confide in him. But what woman at a ball was going to confide in a strange man?

His friend ‘Sniffy’ Carpenter interrupted his worryings. Sniffy, so called because of his nervous habit of perpetually sniffing, was another beau of the demimonde, almost as foppishly dressed as Mr Callaghan. He had heard a highly false account of how the Tribble sisters had stolen Mr Callaghan’s inheritance and, being of weak brain, encouraged his friend in all his plots and plans.

‘So you see, Sniffy,’ said Mr Callaghan, after he had outlined his vague plan. ‘I want to get her to confide in me, but I’m blessed if I know how to go about it.’

‘Pity you ain’t a female,’ said Sniffy. ‘M’sister says females always chatter away at balls and talk scandal.’

‘That’s it!’ cried Mr Callaghan. ‘I’ll masquerade as a female. It’s fancy dress.’

Sniffy looked intrigued. ‘But will you be able to recognize her? They’ll all be wearing masks.’

‘She’s got masses of black hair, and most of the ladies have theirs cropped short. Besides, I’ve been watching the house, and that dressmaker, Yvette, has been coming and going. I paid a visit to her workshop, ostensibly to look for ideas for a costume for a lady friend who was going to the ball, and flattered her handiwork, so she showed me round her work room, saying this costume was for Lady This and that costume for Lady That. So I picks up one at random and says, “Is this for Miss Brown, the Tribbles’ gal?” And she says, “Oh, no,
this
is Miss Brown’s costume,” and holds up some dreary Puritan outfit. So I shall go dressed the same and use that to enter into conversation.’

He minced up and down the room and his voice rose to a high falsetto, ‘La, ma’am, we are gowned the same. I declare you must hate me.’

Sniffy fell about laughing and said it was better than watching any play.

Jack Perkins, too, had finally thought of the problem of recognizing Harriet among so many costumed and masked people. To that end, he hung about Holles Street until he spotted a maidservant taking the air at the top of the area steps. He bribed her generously and so learned that Miss Brown was going in the dress of a Cromwellian maid.

That evening, Yvette tenderly wrapped Harriet’s costume in tissue paper, told the nursery maid to take care of George, and set out to deliver it to Harriet. Yvette walked slowly towards Holles Street, thinking of the time she had lived there as the Tribbles’ resident dressmaker. She knew neither of the sisters had quite forgiven her for leaving and setting up her own business, but did not know that it was her happy baby the Tribbles missed. Amy, in particular, had doted on George, imagining he would always be with them. She had chosen a school for him, then university, and then a fine regiment. Initially the sisters had been frequent visitors to Yvette’s dressmaking business, but when they called, it was to find George enraptured by his nursery maid, a jolly young country girl, and indifferent to their presence, and so they had begun to feel unnecessary and unwanted.

Harriet was sitting in her bedchamber, ruefully surveying her new crop in the glass when Yvette entered. ‘I feel like a shorn lamb,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘But those abductors cut off such a hank of hair that Miss Amy said it would be better if I had it all short.’

‘It looks well,’ said Yvette, laying the costume on a chair and coming to stand behind her. Harriet’s hair was curled all over her head. The effect was to make her look much younger and her blue eyes larger.

Harriet turned round in her chair and looked up at the dressmaker. ‘Yvette, do you ever think of that man, Monsieur Duclos?’

‘
Bien sûr
,’ said Yvette with a shrug. ‘But what would you? He is gone and that is that.’

‘But if he ever came back . . . ?’

‘He will not come back, Miss Brown. We are now at peace with France and he could have returned any time he chose. He did not choose. So I forget him as much as possible.’

The door opened and Effy came in bearing a bouquet of flowers. ‘More flowers!’ said Harriet as Effy laid the bouquet down on the chair on top of the costume. Amy appeared behind Effy in the doorway.

‘I assume they are from Mr Randolph,’ said Amy.

A flash of malice lit up Effy’s eyes. Over the years, she could never understand why it was that Amy was usually the one favoured by the gentlemen. ‘Perhaps not,’ she said slyly. ‘Perhaps I have more than one admirer.’

Amy snorted. ‘Like who?’

‘Like Mr Haddon.’

Something snapped inside Amy. She was engulfed by such a wave of jealousy that Effy, Harriet, Yvette and the flowers swam before her eyes in a red mist.

‘A paltry offering,’ said Amy thinly, ‘and some of the flowers are faded already. They would be better on the fire.’ And before any of the others could stop her, she had seized up the bouquet, catching up the costume underneath at the same time, and thrown the whole lot onto the fire, which was burning briskly.

‘My flowers!’ screamed Effy.

‘My gown!’ exclaimed Yvette. She seized the tongs and dragged the dress in its blazing tissue paper from the fire, but it continued to burn merrily. Harriet picked up a jug of water from the wash-stand and threw it over the gown.

‘It is ruined,’ wailed Yvette. ‘How could you do such a thing, Miss Amy?’

‘Yes, how could you?’ said Harriet severely. ‘You know those flowers were from Mr Randolph. Miss Effy was simply teasing you.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Amy, and slammed out of the room.

Amy went down to the drawing room and sat beside the fire, her legs shaking. She wondered whether she was going mad.

But it was hard to bear, this courtship of Effy. Mr Lawrence had abruptly ceased to call and, not knowing he had been ordered to drop the game by Lord Charles the minute Harriet had told him of the start of Effy’s courtship, Amy wondered and wondered if she had said anything to give him a disgust of her. Mr Haddon called, of course, but the evenings were not the same. Now Mr Randolph fussed over Effy and Mr Haddon’s normally polite and correct behaviour seemed chilly to Amy by comparison.

Amy thought miserably of her own atrocious behaviour. She never knew where these rages came from, bringing with them headaches and an aching back. She would have to go and apologize, but perhaps it was better that Harriet would not be able to go in that severe costume.

She thought wearily of the long years of hopes and dreams. She had believed when she was younger that age would bring resignation and calm, that the sexual fires would slowly burn away, and that she would become placid and serene. Her lined face and grey-streaked hair told her every day that youth was long past; but inside, she still felt like a young girl, so that her mirror image mocked her and silently cried out to her that her dreams were ridiculous and undignified.

She felt she could not bear one more ball or party. If only Harriet would wed just someone, anyone, then she would wait until Effy’s marriage and then sell the house, retire to the country and become one of those crazy old spinsters.

Could she have guessed, Amy would have been vastly cheered to know that Mr Lawrence was missing his visits. The gambling tables had lost of lot of their charm. Gambling meant drinking and smoking, and for the first time in his life he began to fret over days wasted in taking rhubarb-pills and drinking hock and seltzer in order to fortify himself for another evening ahead. The Tribbles were never boring. They seemed to lead highly adventurous lives. Amy’s tough and agile mind and her occasional unmaidenly outbursts of swearing amused him. He had enjoyed sitting in their drawing room among the feminine clutter. His nephew had told him the game was over, but surely there was no reason why he should not go on calling for his own sake. He knew they were to go to the costume ball. He would seek them out there and renew the friendship, and if Charles did not like it, then Charles could go to the devil.