The Chocolate Debutante (3 page)

In between reading, he found he was looking forward to dinner immensely, rehearsing the things he would say to her to see if he could perhaps flirt with her a little and make her aware of him as a man.

But when he went to the private parlor, it was to find only one cover laid. “Where is Miss Tremayne?” he asked the landlord.

“We cleaned up another of the private parlors, the one that was to be painted, my lord, and took off the covers. Miss Tremayne and her maid are dining there.”

He felt at first disappointed and then angry. Who was this Miss Tremayne to shun dining with an earl?

He ate his meal in gloomy silence, and then, returning to his room, collected the books and sent a waiter to her with them and a curt note of thanks.

His coachman waylaid him in the corridor to say that the roads were now clear enough for travel and with my lord’s permission they would set off early in the morning.

He nodded, thinking that he would soon be shot of the place and with any luck he would never set eyes on that odd spinster again.

Harriet’s carriage jolted on its way. Watery winter sunlight gleamed in the puddles of melting snow in the surrounding fields. As she approached her sister’s home, she searched in her bag for her steel mirror to make sure there were no smuts of dirt on her nose.

Her fingers encountered a stiff piece of paper. She drew it out. It was Lord Dangerfield’s curt note thanking her for the loan of the books. She made to crumple it, planning to throw it away when she arrived, but instead, she put it back in her bag. It was a memento of a very odd meeting. She found herself reluctant to get rid of it.

Mary Colville lived in a rambling, low fourteenth-century house with many rooms, many stone floors, and not enough warmth. Harriet remembered it being cold even in midsummer and planned to stay only two nights. She wondered what illness Mary had found to “put on,” for her sister dressed herself in various ailments with all the enthusiasm of a fashion-conscious dandy sporting a new waistcoat.

She was greeted by the butler and housekeeper and shown to her usual room. She was told that Mr. Colville had taken the younger children out skating but that madam was in the drawing room. Reflecting that only her absentminded brother-in-law would think of taking his children skating in the middle of a thaw, Harriet, with the help of her maid, changed out of her traveling clothes into a warm woolen gown and shawl and made her way to the drawing room on the ground floor, where thick carpets did little to stop the chill rising from the stone floor underneath. Harriet had suggested several times to Mr. Colville that he have the flags ripped out and replaced with wooden floors, but he would only smile vaguely and say, “Perhaps next year.”

Mary Colville was lying on a daybed near the window. A table crowded with bottles of medicine was at her elbow.

“What is wrong, Mary?” asked Harriet.

“I fear I have a wasting illness,” whispered Mary. “Come closer and let me look at you, Harriet. My sight fails me.”

Remarkably sharp, beady eyes fastened on Harriet’s face.

Knowing from long experience that it was useless to tell her sister she was actually as strong as an ox, Harriet drew a chair up to the daybed and sat down.

“I received your letter,” said Harriet, “and am come to look at Susan, to get to know her. I have not seen her since she was a child. If I am to bring her out, then I must be sure that we will deal together tolerably well.”

“You will have no trouble puffing her off,” said Mary, forgetting to whisper. “She looks like an angel, has a fine dowry, and is all that is amiable.”

“I am amazed, then, that you do not want to see her success yourself.”

“Alas, I am not well enough. In fact, my dying wish is to see Susan settled.”

“I do not think you are dying yet, Mary. When do I have the pleasure of meeting Susan?”

Mary fumbled with one thin white hand among the bottles on the table until she found a brass bell which she rang. When the butler answered, she asked him in a faint voice to fetch Miss Susan.

Harriet waited uneasily. There was a commotion outside. She went to the window and looked out. Mr. Colville was hurrying to the house, carrying one soaking-wet child, the rest trailing after him, their faces bright with excitement. She turned from the window.

“I think you will find that one of your children—Harry, I think—has fallen through the ice. Mr. Colville is carrying him into the house.”

“Oh,” said Mary.

“Do you wish me to go and see if he is well?”

“We have nurses and a governess,” said Mary languidly. “That is what they are for.”

The door opened and a vision walked in.

Dear heavens, thought Harriet. It’s Griselda.

Susan Colville had a sweet, heart-shaped face and wide, innocent blue eyes. She had masses of fair curls, fine baby hair, and a perfectly shaped pink mouth. Her figure was dainty and her hands and feet small and delicately shaped. Despite the chill of the house, she was wearing a filmy white muslin gown.

“Welcome, Aunt Harriet,” she said, dropping a curtsy.

“Come and kiss your mama,” ordered Mary.

Susan tripped forward and dropped a butterfly kiss on Mary’s face.

“Your aunt is to give you a Season,” said Mary.

“I have not yet come to a decision.” Harriet was alarmed and yet could not think why. Finding a husband for this dazzler would surely be the easiest thing in the world. She was beginning to find the “sickroom” oppressive. There was now an odd smell in it, as if of bad drains.

“Mama,” said Susan. Her voice had a faint lisp. “’Tis the Harveys’ ball this night, and you said I might leave soon and stay with them.”

“I had forgotten,” said Mary. “How can your aunt see much of you if you are to go jauntering about?”

“But the Harveys’ carriage is due to arrive for me any moment, and they will be mortally offended if I do not go. You did give your permission.”

“Well, well. I suppose you must go.”

“Thank you, Mama. I am in alt at meeting you, Aunt Harriet.” Susan dropped a curtsy and left the room.

“Susan is uncommonly beautiful,” said Harriet.

“And a beautiful nature.” Mary appeared to rouse herself slightly. “You will bring her out, will you not, Harriet?”

Harriet hesitated. “I had planned to stay only a couple of days, Mary. But if Susan is to be absent, I cannot get to know her very well.”

“There is nothing to know,” said Mary. “She is as you saw her, sweet, charming, and beautiful. A very placid girl, too. Not one of your great hurly-burly creatures. ’Twould be best if you took her with you as soon as she returns from the Harveys, Harriet, for, as you can see, I am at death’s door.”

“In that case, perhaps Susan might do better to stay here and witness your last moments.”

Mary threw her a haughty look. “You are hard and unfeeling as always, Harriet. It would comfort my last hours to know that my beautiful daughter was a success at the Season.” She gave a little sigh and said in a more practical voice. “Susan doesn’t really
notice
me, or indeed anyone else. I think she lives in another world.”

Harriet felt trapped. The chill in the room was making her shiver. Two more days of this!

She excused herself and went in search of the butler and bribed him heavily to make sure a roaring fire was always burning in her bedchamber during her visit. Thank goodness for the books she had brought with her. She settled down to content herself with reading to pass the time.

By the time Susan returned, Harriet was more than ever eager to leave. Susan’s little brothers and sisters were very noisy and spoiled and given to playing practical jokes. The night before, Harriet had had to rescue a bewildered hedgehog, fortunately still alive, from the bottom of her bed and carry it outside, where it could resume its hibernation.

In the flurry of packing and saying good-byes and arranging that Susan should take only the bare minimum of clothes, as she would need a much more fashionable wardrobe in London, she had little time for the girl herself.

It was only when they were in the carriage on the road home that she began to make an effort to get to know Susan.

“Are you looking forward to your Season?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Susan, giving her enchanting dimpled smile. “There will be lots to eat, will there not?”

“I keep a good table,” replied Harriet.

“I mean at balls and parties. Lizzie Pomfret, one of my friends, told me they have all sorts of delicious ices and sugar plums.”

“They do indeed. But ladies are expected to eat little, you know. Besides, you do not want to get fat and pimply.”

“I never get fat or pimply,” said Susan tranquilly.

“Would you like me to lend you something to read?”

“No, thank you. I never read.”

“Why?”

“I cannot.”

Harriet looked at those beautiful blue eyes.

“Do you need spectacles?”

“No, Aunt, my eyesight is very good.”

“Then…”

“I never learned to read.”

“What?”

“I said”—Susan stifled a yawn—“that I never learned to read. Such a bore.”

“But you went to a seminary, surely?”

“Yes, of course. But the teachers did not pay me much heed. They liked to dress me up and display me on speech days and things like that.”

“Can you write?”

Susan shook her head.

“But, my child, this is quite dreadful. You must begin your lessons immediately after we arrive. How could your mother let such a state of affairs come about?”

“Well, you see, I am very beautiful, so I do not think it was considered necessary. Mama says that gentlemen do not like clever ladies.”

“I do not think they like illiterate ones, either, Susan. You see, when you are married, you will be expected to be able to read your dressmaker’s bills, at least. And have you thought what will happen when you lose your looks?”

“I will be married long before then and have lots and lots of doting children,” said Susan placidly.

Harriet shook her head in bewilderment. “Did the other girls in that seminary leave without having learned anything?”

“Oh, I should not think so. They seemed awfully clever to me.”

“I still cannot understand how you avoided learning anything.”

She giggled. “I was so very ill, quite a lot. You cannot make an ill person learn. The teachers were very sympathetic.”

“Surely they called a physician! And were you
pretending
to be ill?”

“Yes, it was all very simple. I went on just like Mama. Physicians
always
are happy to find something wrong with the rich.”

“Do your parents know you cannot read or write?”

“I should not think so. They did not ask me.”

Harriet felt quite low. The task of bringing Susan out, which had seemed so simple, was now beginning to look very difficult indeed. Then she wrinkled her nose and looked out the window to see if the carriage was passing any dung heap, but only wet fields stretched out in front of her view.

She looked at the soles of her shoes. “There is an awful smell,” she said. “Lucy, Susan, look at your shoes.”

But both ladies presented clean soles.

Then Harriet looked suspiciously at the glowing and beautiful Susan who was sitting so placidly beside her.

“Unfasten your cloak, Susan, and let me see your neck,” she ordered.

Susan obediently unfastened the gold clasp that held her fur-lined cloak at the neck. “Take off your bonnet and tilt your head forward.” Susan obediently did so. She had not yet begun to wear her hair up.

Harriet lifted the golden tresses. Susan’s neck was gray and grimy. Her little ears were also dirty.

“When did you last have a bath, Susan?”

“I cannot remember. I wasn’t really ill, you know, only pretending, so there was no need for baths,” said Susan patiently, obviously believing like quite a large proportion of the population that bathing all over was only for the sick.

“But you must wash! You smell!”

“My clothes are laundered each week,” said Susan, opening her eyes to their fullest, “and most people change their linen only every quarter day, or so I believe.”

“Listen to me, miss, if you are to live with me, then you are going to have to be clean. Why is it your hair looks clean?”

“I brush it out regularly with Fuller’s earth,” said Susan proudly.

“That is not enough. Your hair must be washed in soap and water.”

“But the dampness will affect my brain.”