Miser of Mayfair (16 page)

‘Oh, miss,’ said Rainbird sadly. ‘I know.’

‘When Mr Jamie died and I was left to the protection of Mr Sinclair, I did not mind. Mr Sinclair is kind. He has no money. He is not a miser. We planned that to explain our lack of wealth and so that I should have as many suitors to choose from as possible.

‘But on the road south, we were forced by a storm to seek hospitality at a house where Lord Harrington was also a stormbound guest. He was the first man who ever told me that I was a beauty whom I believed. Mr Jamie had told me so many times I was ugly that I believed him. But Lord Harrington said it in such a cold, matter-of-fact way I was able to understand it at last. Also, his eyes did not stray from my face. He did not assault my body with his eyes the way men do. I wanted him, but I was still not sure.

‘I guessed our host, Mr Pardon, planned to attack me during the night because he considered me far beneath him in social station and was therefore sure I would cause no problems. I changed rooms with Mr Sinclair. It amuses me to make people think I am vague and stupid. Mr Sinclair believed me when I told him I did not like the colour of the bedchamber.

‘I waited with a glass against the wall so that I could hear what was going on in the next room. Mr Pardon came into Mr Sinclair’s room and leapt on the bed, thinking I was in it.

‘I thought I would rather die than have to marry some man like that with hot hands and hot eyes and hot breath. I decided I must have Lord Harrington.

‘I dreamed about him for so long I persuaded myself that so fine and noble a man would not blame me for my poor background were his affections truly attached.

‘But he is like all the rest,’ said Fiona, striking her breast. ‘I dropped a hint about the orphanage, hoping he would go out of his way to find out about me, dreaming that he would come and tell me it would not matter.

‘Oh, Mr Rainbird, I am so young and silly.
I!
I, who thought myself old and clever. Oh, Mr Rainbird, my heart is
breaking!
’

Ugly sobs tore at her, and Rainbird caught her and turned her about and held her to him, rocking her against his breast and saying, ‘Shhh, Miss Fiona. There, there. Please do not cry. Rainbird will take care of you.’

Poor Rainbird was shattered. The cool and beautiful Miss Sinclair had disintegrated into a sobbing lost child. His heart was wrung with pity.

Fiona at last hiccupped and dried her eyes. ‘I should have been a servant and worked for you, Mr Rainbird,’ she said.

‘No, miss,’ said Rainbird seriously, ‘that would not do. Servants may not marry or they lose their jobs. You love Lord Harrington and I am sure he loves you. Who would not?’

‘Lord Harrington has humiliated me,’ said Fiona in a stifled voice. ‘To kiss me so, and not a word of love. I will never forgive him.
Never!
’

‘If only I could help,’ said Rainbird wretchedly, his mobile comedian’s face turning into a sad clown’s face.

‘Ah, Mr Rainbird, my outburst is over,’ said Fiona. ‘Let us put on our masks again. We are home.’

‘Yes, miss. I will never speak of this to a soul, Miss Fiona. Do you wish us to continue with our plans?’

‘No, Mr Rainbird. I will marry the first respectable man who asks me.’

‘Wait a bit, miss. Just a little. The Season is only begun.’

‘Perhaps.’

Rainbird went slowly down to the servants’ hall and ordered Jenny to take a hot posset up to Miss Fiona as the poor lady had the headache.

‘I hope she is not furious with us for being late,’ said MacGregor anxiously.

‘No,’ said Rainbird. ‘She is very pleased with us all.’

‘Oooh, Mr Rainbird, you looks as if you are about to cry,’ said Lizzie.

Rainbird forced a smile. ‘No, Lizzie. I have the headache, too. It must be the heat.’

But Rainbird had the heartache. He felt like the father of a large and needy family. So many to love and care for, and now Miss Fiona added to them.

‘If Miss Fiona wants Lord Harrington,’ said Rainbird, loudly and fiercely and striking the table with his fist, ‘then, By George, she’ll have him, if I have to tie his lordship hand and foot!’

Reflect. You have prejudices on the score of parentage. I have not conversed with you so often, without knowing what they are. Choose between them and me. I too have my own prejudices on the score of personal pride.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK,
CROTCHET CASTLE

It was exceeding unfortunate, in view of the sad events of the following two weeks, that Lord Harrington was gone from town and Sir Edward Kirby was not.

Sir Edward Kirby’s appearance on the scene was the result of a plot to ruin Fiona by the ladies of society. Not that any of them, with the exception of Lady Disher, ever put it into words, but the general consensus was that such as Fiona Sinclair deserved to be ruined.

Gambling hostesses felt their losses keenly. Unlike the respectable gentlemen’s clubs, their establishments were geared to fleecing and winning. But Fiona seemed to side-step all their machinations and become richer by the day.

Matchmaking mamas were furious because all the eligible gentlemen could not see past the glare of Fiona’s beauty to their own daughters lurking in the shadow of it. The expense of a Season was such that few could contemplate putting their daughters on the Marriage Market for yet another year.

Lord Harrington had written to the powerful patronesses of Almack’s before his departure, recommending they send vouchers to Miss Sinclair, but such was the general female enmity towards the girl that even those stern social rulers dared not allow her to cross the threshold of their famous assembly rooms in King Street.

It was Mr Pardon who suggested to Lady Disher that Sir Edward Kirby might be interested in ruining Fiona for a certain sum.

Sir Edward Kirby had recently returned from abroad. He was a man of great charm, an inveterate gambler, and he had the morals of a tom cat. Many were the debutantes he was rumoured to have ruined, as his taste in women ran to young virgins. Any time he looked like being called to book for his crimes, he simply left the country.

Like all womanizers, he appeared genuinely to like women. Even girls warned against him fell like ninepins before his charm. He was not particularly good-looking, being only of average height and with rather thin hair, but he had a merry boyish countenance and twinkling blue eyes. He never seemed to age, and his charm of manner and dexterity in seduction improved with the years.

Although he enjoyed all the luxuries of life, like most hardened gamblers he was often plagued by duns.

Mr Pardon invited him to dinner with Lady Disher and three of the other gambling-hell owners whom Fiona had made poorer. No one was quite so vulgar as directly to order Sir Edward Kirby to persuade Fiona to elope with him and to thereby trick her into losing her virginity, but such was implied with many nods and becks and wreathed smiles by the good daughters of faro, and it was left to Lady Disher to take him aside at the end of the evening and name a sum of money that made his boyish blue eyes twinkle like sapphires.

Sir Edward was prepared to meet with heavy competition, but fate played into his hands. Lord Harrington had decided to take himself off to his estates. There was a boundary dispute to settle and repairs to the tenants’ cottages to be seen to, discussion of new farming techniques with his estates manager, and a myriad of other jobs to be done, which were more than enough to persuade him to leave town.

The fact was that that cautious misogynist had decided to keep away from Fiona Sinclair until such time as he received news of the respectability or lack of it of her background. All his pet theories about bloodlines and care in marriage were at risk. He felt Fiona had bewitched him. She was like a sickness in his blood, and it enraged him that he should be so held in thrall by a mere girl.

So Lord Harrington, the one person who might have stepped in to warn Fiona before she fell under Sir Edward’s spell, was off the scene, and the other, his friend, Mr Toby Masters, had gone with him.

The second ace the fates dealt Sir Edward was that the maid at Number 67 Clarges Street, Alice, caught measles, the latest scourge of London, which was almost more dreaded than cholera. Suitors, learning of the plague at Number 67, kept away, contenting themselves by sending poems and bouquets. Sir Edward had had measles and was therefore in no danger, but he did not mean to tell Fiona that.

The other ace handed to him was Sir Andrew Strathkeith. Mr Sinclair, feeling that nothing could be done to push Fiona out of the nest while there was measles in the house, had found consolation in carousing with Sir Andrew from sunup to sundown. He had also come to the conclusion that Fiona was able to take care of herself, especially when he opened his strongbox and found even more money had been added to it. He conveniently forgot to remind her he had forbidden any more gambling.

Made selfish by strong liquor and a return to his old hedonistic ways, Mr Sinclair left Fiona to nurse the maid. That she should do so personally when she could have easily had hired a nurse did not strike Mr Sinclair as strange. He had known of many Scottish ladies who had devotedly nursed their servants, Scottish households being more democratic than English establishments.

So everything stood fair for Sir Edward.

Perhaps the only other person who felt that there was some good coming out of Alice’s illness was Joseph. Although in his heart of hearts, he enjoyed the easy democracy of the hard times in the servant’s hall, he was a great stickler for appearances
outside.
The Running Footman was the social centre of Joseph’s world and, finicky and over-sensitive, he felt that Luke’s courtship of a housemaid diminished him, and therefore diminished his friend, Joseph, in the eyes of the upper servants who frequented the pub.

So when Luke gave Joseph posies of flowers and notes to take to Alice in the sick room, Joseph gave them to Jenny instead, fighting down his guilt by telling himself that he was preventing Luke from social ridicule. Jenny blushed as she accepted the flowers and notes, assuming the fickle footman had transferred his affections from Alice to herself.

He dreaded Luke finding out the trick he had played, but Joseph felt that Luke would thank him one day.

In an age when it was believed that jaundice was cured by swallowing nine live lice every morning, and that a frog tied to the neck stopped nosebleeds, it was as well for Alice that Fiona had met several of the great Scottish doctors of the time who had not been too high in the instep to do charitable work at the orphanage when there was an epidemic – which there frequently was.

Many doctors, such as Abernethy – who had told an overindulgent alderman to cure his problems by going home and learning to live on sixpence a day, and earning it – had come to believe in the efficacy of a good diet. MacGregor, wooed by Fiona’s soft voice and courteous ways, had become her devoted slave and brewed all the herbal potions she suggested without a murmur. Fresh fruit and vegetables began to appear regularly on the servants’ table, and Rainbird had instructions to dose them all with a spoonful of cod liver oil every day.

Little Lizzie, standing on tiptoe one morning to peer into the greenish glass above the fireplace in the servants’ hall, saw with a kind of wonder that her spots had disappeared. Fresh air was important, insisted Miss Sinclair. Mr Rainbird was instructed to take his small staff walking in the parks as soon as their duties were over.

Weak and listless, Alice nonetheless seemed to be over the worst of her fever and disfigurement by the time Sir Edward Kirby arrived on the scene. Fiona, who did not know Lord Harrington was out of town, had bitterly assumed him to be as afraid of the infection as all the rest.

Normally she would not have received any gentleman with Mr Sinclair gone from the house, but she was so grateful to Sir Edward for his kindness and courage that she entertained him for a whole half hour. It was hard to tell his age because of his cherubic, youthful appearance, but he had travelled a great deal and was able to tell Fiona many strange tales of his journeys in the Ottoman Empire.