Refining Felicity (6 page)

‘By all means,’ Felicity heard the marquess say in an amused voice. There came a gurgling of wine being poured, and then the marquess’s voice again. ‘To your success, ladies,’ he said, ‘and may you find Lady Felicity a husband. It should not be too difficult. There will be plenty of gentlemen prepared to overlook her gaucherie for the sake of her dowry.’

Felicity walked angrily away. And so she did not hear Amy’s gruff reply. ‘You are too hard on the child, Ravenswood. She simply needs some Town bronze. She is not precisely beautiful by fashionable standards, but, bless me, she has a figure like a Greek goddess, which is, to my mind, far more appealing than these roly-poly dimpled misses you gentlemen swoon over.’

The night was clear and frosty, and Felicity stopped outside the door of her room and leaned her elbows on the wooden rail of the gallery and looked down into the courtyard. There was a young man strolling up and down, smoking a cheroot. Lord Bremmer.

Felicity dived into her room, soaked her handkerchief in the water jug, and returned to the balcony. As the young man walked below her, she squeezed the handkerchief. A drop of moisture fell on Lord Bremmer’s hand. He looked up. Felicity gave a choked sob.

He could see her in the moonlight. She was wearing a white muslin gown and had a richly coloured Norwich shawl about her shoulders.

‘Lady Felicity,’ he called softly. ‘Why do you cry?’

‘Oh, sir,’ said Felicity in a choked voice. ‘What is to become of me?’

Lord Bremmer mounted swiftly up the stairs. ‘What has happened?’ he cried.

‘Shhh!’ said Felicity. ‘If they find you here, they will beat me.’

‘Who? Ravenswood?’

‘No, the Tribbles.’

‘This is monstrous. What are your parents about to send you off in such company?’

‘My father has gone to America,’ said Felicity, ‘and Mama is not strong. These wicked women advertised themselves as chaperones in the newspaper and Mama was quite gulled by them. They say I must marry the first man who asks me, for Mama is to pay them well if I am engaged before the Season is over.’

‘I shall ride to your home and tell your mother of your plight,’ said Lord Bremmer.

Felicity looked at him with a certain amount of irritation. He was supposed to propose to her, so that she might know that her new act worked well.

‘Alas, she would not believe you,’ said Felicity with another pathetic sob.

‘Then,’ he said, striking his chest and tossing back his curls in a way that Byron would have envied, ‘I shall marry you myself!’

Felicity swayed towards him like a sapling in the breeze. ‘You are too kind, so very kind,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘But Ravenswood is in league with them. He wants me for himself, and even Mama says it is her heart’s desire that I should marry Ravenswood.’

‘But why does he want to marry you? He does not seem to look on you with affection.’

‘Ravenswood has recently lost all his money on “Change”,’ said Felicity, ever inventive. ‘I am very rich, you see.’

There came the sound of the marquess’s voice raised in farewell. ‘Goodbye . . . forever,’ breathed Felicity, and she fled to her room and collapsed face down on the bed, giggling. The beginnings of an absolutely splendid plan were beginning to form in her head. She was still giggling helplessly when Wanstead came in to prepare her for bed.

The Tribble sisters were beginning to feel more and more apprehensive as London drew nearer. They felt they would be starting at a disadvantage when Lady Felicity found they had not any servants. Amy privately meant to ask the marquess for help. She knew Effy would be shocked at such a suggestion and planned somehow to see the marquess on his own. They stopped again at another posting house. Both sisters were now too worried to notice the strange docility of Lady Felicity.

Dinner was over and still Amy had not found any opportunity for a private talk with the marquess. Sharing a room with her sister, she lay in bed and read and read until gentle snoring told her Effy was asleep. Amy rose and dressed and made her way quietly along to the marquess’s room and scratched on the door.

There was a surprised ‘Enter.’ Heart beating hard, Amy pushed open the door and went in. The marquess was lying in bed, a book on his lap.

‘Miss Amy!’ he cried. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘I need your help, my lord,’ said Amy, carrying a chair over to the bed and sitting down. ‘The fact is, we have no servants.’

‘None at all? No lady’s maid. No . . . ?’

‘Nothing,’ said Amy, flapping her large feet up and down in embarrassment. ‘We now have enough of the ready from Lady Baronsheath to hire the lot, but it will look bad when we arrive with Lady Felicity and she finds an empty house. We cannot discipline the child and we do not gain her respect.’

The marquess lifted his dressing-gown from the end of the bed and put it on. ‘Let us sit by the fire, Miss Amy,’ he said, ‘and try to decide what is best. You could always say it was the servants’ day off.’

‘Yes, but she would see us interviewing servants on the following days, and she will think we are tricksters who have taken her mother’s money on false pretences.’

The marquess’s face cleared. ‘I will send one of my men ahead to my Town house and tell him to move my staff to your home for the first week. You must let me have the key to your house.’

Amy opened her reticule and emptied it out on the floor in front of her. There was an odd assortment of pins and books, knitting, an enormous key, and a half-eaten pie. ‘Don’t know how that got there,’ said Amy, blushing and stuffing the pie out of sight again. She handed him the key. ‘My lord,’ said Amy solemnly, ‘you are an angel.’

‘I am only helping to set you up in business.’ He laughed. ‘Go to bed, Miss Amy, and leave everything to me.’

Felicity had been out walking in the posting-house garden. She had hoped Lord Bremmer might have followed them, but there was no sign of him. She was returning to her room when the door of the marquess’s room opened. Felicity drew back into the shadows, not wanting him to see her.

As she watched, Miss Amy came out looking flushed and happy. She was followed by the marquess, wearing his dressing-gown.

‘Your price is above pearls, my dear Miss Amy,’ said the marquess. He raised Amy’s hand to his lips and kissed it.

Felicity began to tremble. Disgusting! She had heard whispers of the decadent behaviour of certain London gentlemen. He had been entertaining that old fright in his bedchamber, and Felicity was sure ‘entertaining’ was too polite a word.

Hot tears ran down her cheeks. The Tribbles deserved every shame she could bring on them.

On the remainder of the journey to London, the Marquess of Ravenswood’s interest in Lady Felicity Vane was at last aroused. He found her attitude to him most odd. When he took her hand to help her enter or alight from the carriage, her whole body seemed to shrink from him, and her wide startled eyes were always quickly veiled by her lashes, but not before he surprised a look of disgust in them. From treating her casually like a naughty and rather tiresome schoolgirl, he set himself to please. But she replied in monosyllables and then seemed to spend a great deal of time pretending to be asleep.

It was when they broke their journey for the last time outside London that Amy decided to take matters in hand. She and Effy had been alarmed at Felicity’s cringing air. Each nourished hopes of startling and amazing Lady Baronsheath by presenting the Marquess of Ravenswood as a son-in-law. Now the marquess was showing a very pretty interest in the girl, Felicity must needs spoil it by near-fainting with disgust every time she looked at him.

The sisters conferred in the room that had been reserved for them to wash and rest in before continuing on the last stage of the journey.

‘Perhaps I have the more delicate touch, Amy dear,’ said Effy. ‘You have too robust a manner to broach such a tender subject.’

‘And I think it should be left to me,’ said Amy, striding up and down and waving her arms like a windmill. ‘For I, too, am a subject of her disgust and I want to know why. You are not plain-spoken enough, Effy, and you will hint and hint and never get anywhere.’

Effy appeared to remain adamant, and it was only after Amy swore most terribly and said that if they could not agree, then she would have to ask Ravenswood himself to deal with the matter, that Effy caved in.

Effy went off to fetch Felicity, who at last entered and stood near the doorway, her eyes lowered.

‘Now, let’s have it,’ said Amy, after her sister had reluctantly left. ‘What is the reason for your scarcely veiled hatred of me?’

‘I am bound to dislike two strangers who have set themselves up as my mentors and are, in my opinion, ill-qualified for the job,’ said Felicity icily.

Amy’s temper broke. ‘Christ and slut on ye,’ she roared. ‘We were not so mealy-mouthed in my generation. It is not only I who suffer from your dumb insolence but Ravenswood, too. Speak out, or are you as gutless as you look at this moment?’

Colour flooded into Felicity’s white cheeks and she clenched her fists. ‘How dare you lecture me, you old trollop,’ she hissed. ‘I saw you with my own eyes, coming out of Ravenswood’s bedchamber and he in his undress and kissing your hand. Pah!’

Amy stared at her in amazement, and then she began to laugh. She roared with laughter and slapped her thigh. At last she choked out, ‘Bedamned. If that ain’t the biggest compliment I have ever had in my life. Me, Amy Tribble – a light-skirt! Fie, for shame. I went to ask Ravenswood a favour. Don’t you see, you goose, that only a lady of my looks and age can safely visit a man in his bedchamber? Ravenswood! He, who could have any female in the land. What does he want to bed an old warhorse like me for? Hey?’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Felicity, ludicrous in her dismay. She was furious with Amy for having made her feel like a fool, but her sense of the ridiculous got the better of her and she began to giggle helplessly.

‘That’s better,’ said Amy, surveying her with satisfaction. ‘I tell you, Lady Felicity, had I not been able to laugh at some of life’s problems, I would ha’ been in my grave this while since.’

Felicity felt a rush of affection for the odd Amy which she quickly stifled. The Tribbles must be punished for having taken her away from home. But somehow, the light, happy feeling persisted and the marquess later was rewarded with a blinding smile as he helped her into the carriage.

He raised his thin eyebrows in surprise. ‘If you go on smiling like that, Lady Felicity,’ he said, ‘then no gentleman in London will be safe from you.’

There was an almost festive air about the party now as they rolled towards London.

A light snow had begun to fall, decorating the sooty black buildings with a sparkling frosting of white. A man standing on his roof was brushing off the snow and it spiralled down in a white column in front of the brightly lit windows of a haberdasher’s.

The glowing Aladdin’s cave of a confectioner’s shone through the darkness: pineapples and plums, peaches and pears, and other exotic hothouse fruit; chocolates and comfits and sugarplums. Then a jeweller’s with the soft gleam of silver and sparkling prisms of light from diamonds and rubies.

Two guards in scarlet uniforms rode past the carriage, their mounts curvetting and prancing.

To Felicity, it was all part of an exciting overture. The curtain was about to go up on that most dramatic set piece of all – London Town.

For a little while, she even forgot her plans to run away at the first opportunity.

So Mary got me to bed, and covered me up warm. However, she stole away my garters, that I might do myself no harm.

Jonathan Swift

Mr Haddon cautiously approached the Tribbles’ home in Holles Street. He had called a few days before but had been intimidated by the sight of so many liveried servants coming and going. He was frightened to ask if the sisters had returned, for he feared to learn they had sold the house and had gone out of his life.

London was still a strange and bewildering place to him. Even accents and modes of speech had changed. The gentlemen drawled out their words, looking down their noses with their eyes half shut, and the ladies interlarded their conversation with bad French.

His bloodline had always, in the past, been much better than his fortune. Now that he had returned a wealthy nabob, all doors were open to him. But he knew society regarded him as an odd old stick.

Taking a deep breath, he mounted the shallow steps to the door and hammered firmly on the knocker.

The door was answered by the very epitome of the English butler. His heavy-lidded eyes surveyed Mr Haddon out of a fat white face shadowed by an enormous white wig. His striped waistcoat was stretched over a generous paunch and his green silk coat had gold shoulder knots. His knee breeches were tied with gold ribbons and his white silk stockings ended in flat black pumps. His feet were placed in the fifth position and his white-gloved hands held an imaginary tray.

‘I am called to see the Misses Tribble,’ said Mr Haddon, handing over his card.

The butler inclined his head, took the card by one corner in a gloved hand, and stood aside.

Mr Haddon stepped into the square hall with its black-and-white-tiled floor. He noticed an elaborate bouquet of hothouse flowers in a vase on a console table. He waited uneasily as the butler slowly mounted the stairs. What had happened? Perhaps Lady Baronsheath had employed them, but no fee could account for this sudden air of luxury emanating from the house. He noticed the wall of the staircase now boasted portraits and yet he was sure they were not of the Tribble family.