Miss Darby's Duenna (7 page)

“Jealous, Miss Hawthorne?” asked Lord Mannerly with a mocking smile. “For shame! What would your vicar say?”

“I am not jealous, and I have no desire for your admiration!” cried Georgina hotly. “You might not credit it, my lord, but there are some gentlemen who consider beauty of the spirit more important than a pretty face and a pleasing figure.”

“I am sure your principles do you credit, Miss Hawthorne, but I wonder, if you had been hunch-backed or hare-lipped, would your reverend have been so eager to take you to wife?”

An angry crimson flooded Georgina’s face, but good breeding compelled her to bite back the stinging retort which, she was forced to admit, would probably have accomplished nothing but win one of Mannerly’s odiously mocking smiles.

* * * *

While Georgina crossed swords with the marquess, Olivia and “Lady Hawthorne” joined the crowd milling about the lobby, nodding and bowing to acquaintances. Many of the dowager’s cronies were surprised and pleased to learn of her unexpected return to Town, and as a result Sir Harry was forced to exchange the warmest of greetings with people whom he had never seen in his life. Until this moment he had not considered the possibility that he might create a scandal by unintentionally giving someone the cut direct. By the time they had completed a circuit about the lobby, he welcomed the opportunity to return to the box. Lord Mannerly might await there, but Sir Harry discovered that he vastly preferred the known danger to the unknown.

“I vow the exercise has done me a world of good, Miss Darby,” declared the
faux
Lady Hawthorne at last. “Shall we return to the others?”

Olivia giving her assent, they turned their steps in the direction of the boxes.  They were almost within sight of their goal when Sir Harry—or rather his grandmother—was hailed by an elderly gentleman in an old-fashioned satin frock coat and knee breeches.

“Lady Hawthorne!” cried this worthy, hurrying to her side as quickly as the crowded condition of the lobby would allow. “Lady Hawthorne, as I live and breathe!”

Here, at least, was a face Sir Harry knew, for he had met Colonel Gubbins only that morning.

“Colonel Gubbins, is it really you? How long has it been?”

“Far, far too long, my dear Lady Hawthorne!” Having seized Sir Harry’s gloved hands, the colonel showed no inclination to relinquish them. “I vow you haven’t changed a bit. Still as lovely as ever!”

“La, sir, you flatter me,” trilled Sir Harry, trying to retrieve his hands from the colonel’s grasp.

“Not a bit! Imagine my delight when this charming young lady told me you were in town. When she let fall that you would be at the theater tonight, I came with the express hope of renewing your acquaintance. Where are you staying, if I may be so bold?”

“Why, at Grillon’s, of course,” replied Sir Harry, improvising rapidly.

“And may I have your permission to call upon you there?”

Not knowing how to answer, Sir Harry sought refuge in indignation. “Why, Colonel, I cannot think it proper for a gentleman to call upon a lady at her hotel!”

“Not for a schoolroom miss, perhaps, but for a woman of the world, such as yourself—”

“Fie on you, Colonel, you just said I had not aged a bit! Come along, Miss Darby, or we shall miss the second act.”

“But—but—”

Colonel Gubbins was still “butting” as Sir Harry took Olivia’s arm and steered her resolutely down the corridor to Lord Mannerly’s box. For her part, Olivia had listened in some amusement to the exchange between her elderly companion and Colonel Gubbins. In spite of Lady Hawthorne’s eccentricities, Olivia could not deny a certain fondness for the dowager; she supposed it must be due to that lady’s marked resemblance to Sir Harry.

“Why I do believe you have acquired an admirer, my lady,” she said, casting a mischievous glance at her companion.

“Hmph!” was the dowager’s only reply.

It was almost midnight before Lord Mannerly’s carriage rolled to a stop before the Hawthorne family’s town house. The marquess handed the ladies down, and the front door was flung open to receive them. However, it was not Coombes, the butler, who greeted their arrival, but a distraught Mrs. Darby.

“Oh, Lady Hawthorne, thank God you have come!” she cried, twisting the fine cambric handkerchief she held in her twitching fingers. “I hate to impose on your ladyship’s kindness—still, you must see how it is—quite unexpected, poor girl—if it were not an emergency—”

“Mama, what is it?” asked Olivia, interrupting this disjointed litany.

“A groom has just arrived from Clairmont with a message from your sister Liza,” said her mother, sobbing lustily into the twisted scrap of cambric. “Her baby is coming early, and George is in Yorkshire, of all God-forsaken places! I must go to her at once! You won’t mind staying with the girls, will you, Lady Hawthorne? It is your family’s house, after all. Dear Lady Hawthorne! I knew I could count on you! You are truly all that is generous! Thank you, thank you!”

She continued in this strain for several minutes, never pausing long enough to allow Sir Harry to raise any objections to his new role as duenna. Then she hurried back into the house, announcing her intention of packing a portmanteau and departing within the hour, secure in the knowledge that her dear girls were safe in Lady Hawthorne’s tender care.

Sir Harry stood motionless in the street, staring up at his town house as the realization dawned that he, still incognito, would now be sharing it with his fiancée.

Chapter Six

Nor take her tea without a stratagem. EDWARD YOUNG,
Love
of Fame

When at last Sir Harry was sufficiently roused from his stupor to follow Mrs. Darby inside, he found the elegant entry hall in a state of chaos. Servants scurried up and down the curved staircase, some engaged in the packing of Mrs. Darby’s belongings while others busied themselves in preparing a bedchamber for their unexpected guest. In the midst of all this turmoil, Olivia remained the personification of calm efficiency.

“I am sure you must be familiar with the layout of the house, Lady Hawthorne,” she said, crossing the hall to stand beside him. “Mama has placed you in the front bedchamber, since Georgina assures us that it is your favorite. Georgina has the room next to yours, and I am in the back bedroom.”

Sir Harry nodded, grateful to Georgina for placing as much distance as possible between his room and Olivia’s. It seemed his younger sister had more intelligence than she had previously led anyone to believe.

“Of course,” Olivia continued, “you will wish to have your things brought over from your hotel. You are staying at Grillon’s, I believe? I shall send a footman over at once.” And she prepared to suit the word to the deed, raising a hand in summons as a strapping lad descended the stairs with Mrs. Darby’s trunk braced against his shoulder.

“No, no, that is not at all necessary,” protested Sir Harry in real alarm. “Only let me pen a note to my grandson, and I—that is, I am sure dear Harry will see to everything.”

Seeing nothing amiss in this request (save an overly optimistic opinion of Harry’s capabilities which could, in Miss Darby’s judgment, be ascribed to a doting grandmother’s fondness for the grandson so clearly stamped with her own likeness), Olivia yielded to the dowager’s request, leading Lady Hawthorne to the sitting room, where she produced paper and a quill from a delicate Sheraton writing table.

Sir Harry, taking pen in hand, was seized by a sudden fear that Olivia would discover him by his handwriting.   The subsequent recollection that his letters to her had been sporadic and, as a rule, brief filled him with a curious mixture of relief and guilt. His irregular correspondence made it unlikely that Olivia would recognize his undeniably masculine hand, although he could not deny that, had he been less neglectful during the early stages of his courtship, he might have had no need for subterfuge now.

Shaking these self-recriminations aside, he scribbled a brief but explicit message, underscoring certain words for emphasis.   Then, pronouncing this model of the epistolary art complete, he shook sand over his handiwork, folded it so as to conceal its contents, and sealed it with red wax.

“See that it is given to Higgins, my—my grandson’s valet,” he instructed Charles, the footman.

Some two hours later, after the ladies had long since repaired to their beds, a knock fell upon the door at the rear of the house which was designated the servants’ entrance. Coombes, having been instructed to await the arrival of this nocturnal visitor, flung open the door. As the newcomer stepped into the light, the butler’s eyes bulged. A lifetime spent in domestic service had brought him in contact with many ladies’ maids, but never had he beheld a specimen like the one who now stood before him. The creature’s lanky form was swathed in ill-fitting skirts which barely reached the ankles.   Furthermore, the servant had apparently made free with the dowager’s cosmetics, for the lean cheeks were liberally stained with rouge. A cheap straw bonnet covered curls of an improbable yellow hue, from under which peeped strands of salt-and-pepper gray.

“Well,” pronounced this vision, glaring at his mesmerized host, “are you going to stand there staring all night, man, or are you going to conduct me to her ladyship’s chamber?”

“Of course, sir—ma’am,” Coombes replied hastily, recalled to the responsibilities of his position. If the old lady wanted to smuggle her paramour into the house by putting him in petticoats, well, that was no business of his. Besides, he had always known the Quality were a strange lot. “Right this way.”

The abigail followed Coombes up the back stairs to the first floor, then down a luxuriously carpeted corridor which could not disguise the fact that the lady’s maid was possessed of a decidedly masculine tread. At last they paused before a paneled door at the end of the hall.

“Her ladyship’s chamber,” announced Coombes before beating a hasty retreat back to the servants’ quarters to regale the housekeeper with a description of the dowager’s peculiar servant.

Casting a furtive glance up and down the corridor and finding it empty, the abigail rapped sharply on the door. Upon being bade enter, she opened it, darted quickly inside, and shut it firmly behind her.

“Higgins, you look positively breath-taking,” remarked Sir Harry, surveying his servant appreciatively. He had divested himself of his wig and his evening gown (albeit not without difficulty), and now sat at the foot of the bed wearing nothing but his breeches and a wide grin.

“You may well say so, sir,” responded Higgins with an affronted sniff. “Ladies’ maid, indeed! Just how long do you think you can keep up this charade, if I might ask?”

“As long as necessary,” said Sir Harry with steel in his voice. “Until the day of my nuptials, if need be—upon which occasion I shall double your wages.”

“And if the lady discovers the rig you’re running and cries off?” Sir Harry’s grin faded, to be replaced by a worried frown.

“Ah, Higgins, that don’t bear thinking of!”

* * * *

On the day following the Covent Garden outing, Lord Mannerly paid a call on his maternal aunt, the dowager duchess of Ramsey. Upon reaching her residence in Grosvenor Square, he was met by a butler who was starchier than his uncle, the late Duke, ever had been. This awe-inspiring personage conducted him to the Chinese Saloon, where her Grace was receiving.

His mother’s elder sister, although on the shady side of sixty, still retained her slender figure, and although her fair complexion was marred by the faintest of lines about her eyes and mouth, her exquisite bone structure guaranteed the sort of beauty that age cannot destroy. Her present surroundings complemented her personal attractions, for the red satin wall coverings and black lacquer
chinoiserie
furnishings called attention to her delicate beauty.

“Forgive me, Aunt Augusta,” said the marquess, kissing her cheek. “I see it has been far too long since I called. The last time I was here, this room was Egyptian.”

“I know you did not come to admire the furniture, Selwyn,” remarked the duchess, as her nephew weighed a fat Buddha in his hand.

Lord Mannerly replaced the Buddha figure with a shudder. “Quite right. I cannot share our Prince’s fondness for the Oriental style.”

“Unhandsome! If you persist in insulting my taste, nephew, I shall be forced to ring for tea.”

“That would indeed be adding insult to injury. As if it were not punishment enough that you expect me to sit on these unnatural chairs—my dear aunt, what do you call them?”

“That is a
klismos
chair, Selwyn, as if you did not already know,” replied the duchess with asperity.

“Indeed? And I thought the
klismos
was Greek. I must call on you more often, Aunt. These visits are so educational, are they not?”

Ruthlessly, her Grace of Ramsey tugged the bell pull and ordered the butler to bring in the tea tray. Thus chastised, her recalcitrant nephew lapsed into silence.

“Now, Selwyn, to what do I owe the honor of this visit? And do not give me any nonsense about education, for I know very well that you think you know everything already.”

“Oh, but I do not,” protested the marquess. “And that is why I seek the benefit of your vast storehouses of information. What can you tell me about the dowager Lady Hawthorne, relict of a Leicestershire baronet?”

“Lady Hawthorne,” echoed the duchess pensively, casting her mind back over the decades past. “What do you wish to know?”

“I have no idea. I only hope I will recognize it when I hear it.”

“Well, if memory serves, she was several years older than I—”

“Everyone is older than you, dearest, including your own daughter,” put in Mannerly.

“Flatterer!   As I recall, she was the daughter of a viscount, Langford, I believe—yes, I’m sure of it. She had very much the look of the family, poor dear, and although the Langford men were generally accounted a handsome lot, their features did not sit well on a feminine countenance. If she produced any female descendants, I pity them.”

“You may reserve your pity for those who need it,” her nephew informed her. “Lady Hawthorne’s granddaughter is a diamond of the first water.”