The Original Miss Honeyford (7 page)

“But it seems so cold-blooded. How can I live with someone I do not love or respect?”

“Quite easily,” said Lady Canon. “Bless the gentlemen! If it were not for their clubs and gambling, their prize fights and tedious parliamentary speeches, we ladies would be bored to death. Rely on it, my dear, one does not need to see much of the creatures, once one is wed.”

“But children!”

“A necessary part of marriage. Unfortunately, I was not blessed with any. But there are wet nurses, nurses, governesses, and tutors. One does not need to see much of them, either. Marriage is a business transaction. If you want love, then you must wait until
after
you are married.”

Honey looked wretched.

“Do not look so sad. You were not put on this earth to think only of yourself. You must pay your debt to your papa. Freedom! No such thing exists for an unmarried lady. Only after marriage may she do as she pleases.”

“I will need to become like Amy Wetherall,” wailed Honey.

“And a very good model too. She arrived shortly before you, and is already the reigning belle. A very pretty miss with charming ways.”

“She
is the cause of all this,” said Honey passionately. “I was very happy as I was.”

“I will forgive such an extreme show of emotion because you are overwrought owing to the fatigues of the journey,” said Lady Canon severely, “but in future, never laugh or cry to excess, or show too much anger or passion. It is vulgar. Furthermore, it causes excessive wrinkles. But tell me about Miss Wetherall.”

So Honey did, ending up by saying again that she did not want to be like Amy; she wanted to be on equal terms with men.

Lady Canon shook her head reprovingly. “You want a man to treat you as an equal, Honoria, but you must trap him first. Men must be manipulated, not ordered about. I must send a card to Lord Alistair. It would be disastrous if he broadcast your behavior.

“From now on, Honoria, you will be guided by me.” The face was kind but the voice held a hint of steel. Honey looked about the pretty room as if seeing the prison bars closing in on her.

“Now, as to your servants,” said Lady Canon. “Sir Edmund will be needing them, so they may rest this night and set out tomorrow.”

Honey took a deep breath. She thought of Jem and Abraham and Peter, and how proud they were of their new liveries, and how they had talked endlessly of all the sights they would see in London.

“I am sorry, Aunt Elizabeth,” she said firmly. “My father promised them they might have two weeks in Town. It is a visit that will last them a lifetime, and they have come a very long way.”

To her dismay, Honey felt her eyes filling with tears.

Lady Canon turned her face away in embarrassment. It was quite shocking to see her dear sister’s child reduced to crying over
servants
. But, better let her have her way, for the main thing was to get this wayward child brought strictly to heel as far as manners and dress were concerned.

“Very well,” she said, “provided you promise faithfully to carry out your father’s wishes,
and
my wishes, and behave as prettily as we
both
would desire.”

Honey gulped, too tired and too beaten down with all the conflicting emotions inside her to argue. She nodded.

“Good!” said Lady Canon with satisfaction. “You could easily take the crown from Miss Wetherall. Think on that, Honoria Honeyford. Think on that!”

Lord Alistair, in answer to Lady Canon’s summons, called on her at the end of the following week. Honey was confined to her bedchamber and surrounded by dressmaker’s assistants, the terrifying dressmaker, Madame Vernée herself, and Lady Canon’s dragon of a lady’s maid, Clarisse Duval.

Lady Canon looked speculatively at Lord Alistair and thought it was a pity he was such a confirmed bachelor. He was wearing a corbeau-colored coat and the latest thing in scarlet waistcoats with kerseymere breeches and brown top boots.

He inclined his head gravely as she recounted Honey’s view of the adventures on the road, but a look of faint hauteur crossed his face when she went on to say she hoped he would not talk about Honey’s behavior to any member of the ton.

“I have been called many things, my lady,” said Lord Alistair coldly, “but never, I think, a bore. I am not likely to prattle around the saloons about some fatiguing child.”

“It is as I thought,” said Lady Canon. “But you must see, I had to make sure.”

Lord Alistair smiled at her sweetly and then looked vaguely about. “Miss Honeyford is gone from home, I see.”

“No, she is abovestairs being fitted with new clothes. When I take the wrapping paper off her, she will take the town by storm. She is very beautiful.”

“I fear Miss Honeyford’s idea of taking the town by storm might not be the one you want, Lady Canon.”

“Meaning she will behave shockingly? No, my lord, I find that a great deal can be done with the young and headstrong with firmness and kindness. So useless to humiliate them, don’t you think? No one likes to be sneered at—even you, Lord Alistair.”

“Oh, I have a hide like a rhinocerous,” he said lazily. “Give Miss Honeyford my regards.” He rose and made her a sweeping bow, and took his leave.

“Wonderful man,” sighed Lady Canon, walking to the window and watching him walk off down Charles Street in the direction of Berkeley Square.

“Old
bitch!
thought Lord Charles venomously. “As if I would dream of gossiping. That wretched girl would only cause me embarrassment. I must make a point of cutting her dead at the first opportunity, or goodness knows what fix she will land me in.”

Honey did behave well. She felt she was in a foreign land, learning strange native customs in order to survive. Not only were there hours of fittings and pinnings, but hours of mock conversation with Lady Canon, who would take the part of the flirtatious man while Honey had to learn to parry compliments that were “overwarm” and gracefully accept the flowery ones.

And then, the day before her planned debut at the opera, Lady Canon announced that she was going out for most of that day to make calls.

She left Honey a pile of fashion plates to study and then took herself off in a cloud of lace and perfume.

Honey threw down the fashion plates as soon as Lady Canon was out of the door, and paced restlessly up and down. She decided to walk around to the mews to see how her servants had fared and to wish them Godspeed on their journey home on the following morning. Lady Canon would have expected Honey to summon the servants to the hall to make her farewells there, but Honey was itching to get out of the house.

Wearing her old brown silk and covering it with her sage-green cloak, she skipped down the stairs. She met her first setback in the hall. Beecham, the butler, loomed up out of the shadows.

“Are we going out, Miss Honeyford?” he said reprovingly, eyeing her hatless head and ungloved hands.

“Only around the mews, Beecham,” said Honey. “I must say good-bye to my servants.”

“Then I will send the second footman to fetch them here.”

Honey ran past him to the door. “No, no, that will not be necessary,” she said breathlessly. She opened the door and darted out into the street.

Beecham wondered whether to send a footman after her.

Then he decided to wait about fifteen minutes, and, if she had not returned by then, he would send John, the second footman, to fetch her back.

Honey whistled like a boy as she strolled around to the mews, the whistle dying on her lips as the full flavorsome smell of a London mews caught at her throat.

She found Jem, Abraham, and Peter just setting out to enjoy their last day.

“Where are you bound?” asked Honey wistfully.

“Over to the City,” said Jem. “We wants to see the beasts at the Tower.”

“Oh, take me with you,” pleaded Honey, “and then I will leave you to enjoy the rest of the day.”

“’Twouldn’t be fitting,” said Peter. “T’other servants say as how you’re to be a fine lady now.”

“And I am so weary, so
bored,”
cried Honey. “Just let me come with you, just a little way. I have forgot what freedom is like.”

“Can’t see it would do any harm,” said Abraham, shuffling his feet. He had a soft spot for Honey, and he hated to see his young mistress look so miserable.

“Yus,” echoed Jem. “S’pose it won’t do no harm. You run back, Miss Honoria, and ask her ladyship.”

“She won’t even know,” said Honey triumphantly. “She’s gone for the whole day.”

The three brightened. “Then off we go,” said Abraham.

“And we will pretend we are friends,” said Honey. “Equals!”

“That’s going too far,” said Jem severely. “Them that doesn’t know their place is flying in the face o’ Providence.”

“Jem, you are just as bad as Lady Canon.”

“I know what’s right,” said Jem stubbornly, “so if you wants to come, you walk two paces ahead and we’ll follow you up as we should.”

As they were about to leave, one of Lady Canon’s grooms strolled up. “Off again, are you?” he said jealously.

“Going to see the beasts at the Tower. Do you know of a good place we could get a bite to eat on the road?”

“The Cock at the head o’ Fleet Street, opposite St. Dunstan’s, is as good as any,” said the groom. “Maybe I should get a place in the country, then I could go jaunterin’ around for weeks like you lot.”

“Come along,” called Honey from the entrance to the mews.

They set out walking in the direction of the City, that great mercantile hub of London: the
real
London it had been before the Fashionables moved west. Along Oxford Street they went, peering into the shops, stopping to stare at the acrobats and tumblers performing at the side of the road.

They turned down the Haymarket and then through the Strand, stopping to see the wild animals at Exeter Change, which they all voted a poor shabby lot and hoped the ones at the Tower would be better. They darted across the busy road to look at the prints in Ackermann’s Repository of the Fine Arts.

They stopped at The Cock in Fleet Street and had roast beef and salad and several bottles of canary wine, Honey paying out of the pin money her father had given her, and comforting her conscience with the thought that he would have behaved the same way in her shoes. Sir Edmund was more father than master to his servants.

Honey had had nothing stronger than tea to drink since her arrival at Lady Canon’s, that lady having been so shocked over the description of the brandy drinking and, fearing Honey might be cursed with a Fatal Tendency, she had given her no alcoholic drink at all.

The wine went straight to Honey’s head, engendering a light-headed, floating sensation.

As they went over Fleet Bridge, leading to Ludgate Hill, Honey quickly pulled out her scented handkerchief to block out the smell rising from the Fleet. Alexander Pope’s lines swam through her tipsy head:

Her servants had forgotten their rigid code of etiquette and were walking along beside her as they went up Ludgate Hill. A great crowd of people were hurrying in the same direction. Jem went over to one and asked where they were all going.

He came back, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

“There’s a hanging at the Old Bailey,” he said.

“A Lunnon hanging,” said Peter. “But would it be right to take Miss?”

“Course it would,” said Jem, pointing to carriages bearing several finely dressed ladies in the same direction.

The wine had now hit Honey with even more force and so she was not quite able to understand where they were going or what was happening, and so, before long, she found herself jammed in a swaying, shouting crowd outside the Old Bailey in Newgate.

Two men were being hanged for murdering a gentleman at the eleven-mile stone on Hounslow Heath, and a woman for stabbing her husband in the eye with a penknife.

Honey stared up at the gallows and felt sick. She wanted to escape, but she was pressed so tightly by the crowd that she could not move an inch.

The three condemned mounted the scaffold. Honey shivered, thinking of their plight, thinking of the dreadful night that had just been endured by these wretched people.

The bellman would have stood outside the condemned hole intoning:

They used to take the condemned to Tyburn where they were hanged just outside the gates of Hyde Park. Honey remembered her father telling her that it was quite common to see twenty-one people hanged at once.

“Boom!” went the great tenor bell of St. Sepulchre’s. Honey groaned and closed her eyes and began to pray.

Then disaster struck. The crowd, anxious to hear if the prisoners were going to confess, surged forward. At the same time, a cart over-laden with people trying to get a better view, broke and collapsed. People falling from the vehicle were trampled to death. More people fell under the feet of the crowd as panic set in. The screams of the dying and wounded were dreadful. There were cries of, “Murder! Murder!”

The three prisoners kicked their lives out in the air above the screams and groans and curses of the crowd which surged forward and backward like the waves of some nightmarish sea.

Honey was separated from her servants. She felt she was being crushed to death. Her head swam. She was terrified of fainting, for she knew once she went down, she would never be allowed to rise again.

She thought of her father. She thought that all his care and concern were going to go unrewarded as his daughter met her end by being trampled to death at a public hanging.

“Nonsense!” said Lady Canon. “Gone to a
hanging!
I’ll not believe it. It is too late in the day for a hanging in any case.”

“This one was delayed, my lady,” said Beecham, “on account of repairs to the scaffold. When Miss Honeyford did not return, I sent John around to the mews to find out what had happened. He learned that she had left with her servants but could not find out where they had gone. Then, after an hour, that groom, Perkins, volunteers the information that they’ve gone to see the beasts at the Tower, and that he had recommended The Cock in Fleet Street as an eating place. I did not like to trouble your ladyship with this until your return because Miss Honeyford was protected, and it seemed an innocent place to go.