Christmas. Sorry to be tardy. By the way, I've been told there's a Mills & Boon with the same title so what do people think of The Hasty Proposal instead?
Chapter 19
Edward sent a letter round the next day to Beth, a dreadful scrawl that she puzzled over with Letty.
“He appears to have lost sleep and needs to help with deformed lavender,” said Beth. “Oh! Can it be that he has lost some sheep and needs to help with the orphaned lambs? Really his steward ought to be able to manage that, though I know Edward does like to be involved,” she said. “Oh, I see, something about lambs having a disease called bent-leg, deformed lambs, I see, and of course he wants to be there to make sure that he may do all he can, poor things. He writes that he will certainly be back in time for the ball at Arvendish House. Well, if he is not, he is not; he must attend to his livestock.”
“And that, my dear, is why you are the perfect wife for him,” said Letty, “because you enter into his concerns about his livestock, and are not jealous of the time he spends with them.”
“Well, I would prefer that his livestock did not need him to post up to Suffolk, obviously,” said Beth, “but when we are married, I shall not need to be apart from him, since I will be, I hope, helping him.” She sighed. “I wish he might have couched the letter in more lover-like terms, though; perhaps you are wrong that he feels a partiality to me.”
“He only writes such terse notes to those people he values most,” said Letty. “I know Edward; he puts notes to people who are not his nearest and dearest into flowery periods, and makes sure his handwriting is legible.”
Beth brightened.
“Well, in that case, we have almost a week without him which must be filled, and I confess something I should like to do is to see the sights of London. We must visit the menagerie, and see the Tower, and St Paul’s, and the British Museum. I am keen to see the black stone on which nature has inscribed the likeness of Chaucer, you know, ever since I read about it. Papa was going to take me to London to see it, before he died. Isaac D’Israeli wrote about it in an essay which was printed in a newspaper, wherein I read about it.”
“Well we must certainly see that!” said Letty, “Though if I were you, I would be prepared for some disappointment, for what some people see easily with their imaginations, may not be as clear to others.”
“Well, there must be some resemblance, or the curators would have sent away the finder of it with a flea in his ear,” said Beth, “but I shall allow for some exaggeration.”
“We shall not, however, go tomorrow,” said Letty, “for I recall reading a rumour that the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg is to visit the British Museum, and we do not wish to be caught up in the crowds looking at her as much as at the exhibits, nor do we want to be trammelled by her people, who will naturally wish to keep her at a distance from ordinary folk.”
“I should hate to be a Grand Duchess, even if we had such things in England,” said Beth. “But I pray you, let us go and see her; for I should like of all things to have seen Grand Duchess Catherine, for she is said to be as beautiful as any princess in a fairy tale!”
Letty laughed.
“Oh, very well,” she said, “and then we might see St Paul’s today, and the museum on Monday.”
Beth was suitably impressed by the grandeur of St Paul’s Cathedral, and she and Letty amused themselves by testing the tales of the whispering gallery. However she was looking forward to seeing the controversial Grand Duchess, whom, rumour whispered, disliked the Regent almost as much as he disliked her. Russia, however, was an ally in the defeat of the monster Bonaparte, so rumour must not be spoken too loudly. Some said that the Grand Duchess was in England, on behalf of her brother the Tsar, to break the betrothal of Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange, the alliance not being to the liking of Russia. Beth just wanted to see the spectacle!
The crowds waiting to see the Grand Duchess were considerable, and as the carriage was held up by them in any case, Beth suggested to Letty that they climb up beside John Coachman, the better to see. It lifted them too above the noise and bustle of the crowd, and the smell of bodies packed closely together.
Letty smiled, and agreed, for Beth would need a chaperone in so exposed a position, but Letty had not the heart to spoil the younger woman’s fun, and readily climbed up with her. John Coachman grimly flourished his whip to make sure that any lewd fellows who might think to make game with two ladies would be thinking again; and any ribald comments died unspoken at the determination on his face.
The ripple of excitement running through the crowd at the far end of the street told those waiting of the impending arrival of the Grand Duchess, and the ringing of the hooves of horses was heard above the ragged cheers that thronged the way.
The sound of so many hooves was explained quickly since Grand Duchess was accompanied by outriders of cuirassiers in splendid uniforms, and aggressively Russian military moustaches. The plumes on their golden helmets bobbed as they trotted in step, a prodigiously difficult thing to do, as many of the crowd were knowledgeable enough to realise, applauding spontaneously. The Grand Duchess herself was in an open carriage, despite the chill weather, plainly adoring the adulation of the crowd, and waving occasionally a languid hand. Her dark curls and smouldering eyes attracted attention of all, as did the many and massive pearls that adorned her person!
“Why, how jealous Amelia Hazelgrove would be,” said Beth, “for I know that the Grand Duchess is in her thirties, yet she outshines Amelia, for having the look that Amelia would like to have, seductive and smouldering.”
“She’s also reputed to be quite as unpleasant as Amelia can be,” said Letty. “However, at least we do not move in the sort of circles where we have to avoid the spite of someone as influential as a Grand Duchess; for though Amelia Hazelgrove is all that is amiable, I cannot help thinking that she is still pursuing poor Edward, and likely to do you an ill turn if she knew that he was betrothed to you. But she at least has little enough influence! Well, that was a pleasant spectacle, to be sure; and we shall enjoy the museum the better when illustrious persons are not there. Come, Beth, let us resume the carriage!”
Beth climbed down.
“I should like to purchase a book that I saw advertised in the papers, it is by Mr Ackermann, and is the first volume of something called The Microcosm of London,” she said, “for I believe it features the British Museum in its pages.”
“We must see if it is available,” said Letty. “It will be an instructive volume, I am sure! And I very much admire Mr Ackermann’s prints, so I hope it will be illustrated, as is the Repository of Arts. There is so much to be seen in the museum of course, one might take all day and not see it all! There are many Egyptian artefacts of course, for some were seized from French ships conveying them to France, and other antiquities too, from Greece and Rome and other ancient places; and there are the natural exhibits, stones and minerals, animals and birds stuffed in a most lifelike way, and so on.”
It may be said that Beth found that the visit to the British Museum felt somewhat flat without Edward, with whom to discuss the exhibits, though there was much to marvel at with the Egyptian artefacts, some donated by British antiquarians, as well as those captured from the French. There too was a the celebrated sarcophagus of Alexander, as well as all the Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities, which could only be enhanced, as Beth said, by the addition of the Townley collection, whose purchase for the museum was to be debated in the House of Commons.
As both the second and the fifth rooms contained portraits of Oliver Cromwell, Beth went back and forth from one to the other, and studied them closely.
“Now I shall definitely recognise him, if he should indeed haunt us,” she laughed.
“Oh Beth, you are funning! But I think so austere a fellow would scorn to do anything so frivolous as haunting, as we were agreed when first told the story!” said Letty. “Did you not see the exhibition of native boats, clothes and weaponry from Australia and the like? it is most quaint!”
“It did not interest me so much as the antiquities of our own ancient Britons, nor the classical or Egyptian displays,” said Beth. “I cannot think, however, that Cromwell would be found to be very happy, if his portrait might only speak of it, to be found in company with heathen idols from all over the world in the one room, and with a royal companion like Tsar Peter the Great in the other room.”
“Oh, I beg to differ, my love,” said Letty. “For Peter the Great came incognito to Britain to work in a shipyard, to take back techniques to his own country. He was as practical as even Edward!”
Beth gazed anew on the portrait.
“Somehow I could not imagine the current tsar being able to turn an honest day’s work, and still less can I imagine it of the Grand Duchess,” she said.
Letty chuckled.
“I agree!” she said.
Beth thought that her favourite exhibit was in the banqueting hall, where a portrait of George II stared down on an amazing table all inlaid with different samples of lava.
“Oh dear, it is a shame, perhaps that we have done the whole in order,” she sighed, “For I have wanted very much to see the lavas, spars and minerals, and too the shells and petrifications, but I fear I shall be too tired to enjoy it as much as I hoped, and I cannot, just cannot go on to view the natural history of animals and serpents.”
“Why, my dear, we have plenty of time, and might view them another day, and the minerals and petrifications too, if you wish,” said Letty.
“No, I am determined to see the stone that looks like Chaucer,” said Beth.
Alas for Beth’s determination, the stone resembling Chaucer appeared to no longer be on display! It made a disappointing end to a day not entirely as well enjoyed as might have been expected, but Letty smiled.
“Cheer up, Beth! Perhaps Edward will be back before too long, and will be able to escort us another time.”
Beth brightened.
“That would be splendid,” she said. “It is not that I do not enjoy your company, dearest Aunt Letty, but…”
“But it would be wonderful indeed if a young woman did not prefer the company of her young man,” said Letty.
Beth sighed.
“I would rather be feeding orphaned sheep through a fine glove finger or whatever is needful than dressed in finery in the Capital of the world, as some call London.”
“Of course you would,” said Letty. “But most ineligible until you are wed!”
Edward was missing Beth’s company as well, for he would have welcomed her thoughts on the disease of bent-leg, which he had read about, as most common in young tups between six and twelve months. Edward suspected that it was a form of rickets, and was sorry that the grass was poor with so little warmth from the sun. His shepherds had not thought to supplement the feed of the sheep, and Edward was certain that being hungry had contributed towards the lambs having succumbed so readily to the disease as they weaned, which was not a condition he had come across before.
“I seen it afore, master,” volunteered one of the shepherds. “When we hed wet, winter and spring, ar, must be ninety-seven. It’s when there be-ant much sun jew see? Thass a bad thing. Moi ol’ granpa, he say ‘dew yew feed un on milk and butter, thass gwine ter help, John moi lad, and get ‘em in th’ sun’, and thass what I done, and thass helped some back then. An’ when the weather got better, so did they, them as wasn’t deformed permanentually.”
“Milk and butter, eh?” said Edward. “Have you been trying that?”
John Shepherd shook his head, and spat.
“Them ow’ steward o’ yourn say ‘do-ant yew be so daft-loik, John-bor’ oony he say it his jaw-crack voice wass come outa thinkin’ as how he moight be a gen’lman which he aint, nowise.”
“I’ll speak to him,” said Edward. If he put it diplomatically enough, he might even have Michael Fowler volunteering John’s suggestion scornfully, and then be able to suggest that it was worth trying anything. “I know it’s cold, John, but shear them along their backs too, leave the belly wool for warmth, because if it is a lack of sunshine, odd as that may seem, letting what little sun there is reach to warm them when it is out might help. If you build shelters out of hurdles for the night they should take no harm. I recall seeing something similar in city children, who were also pale, and saw little of the sun; and though it seems unlikely that sun alone can cure it, we have no harm in trying.”
“Ar,” said John. “Reckon thass as good a thing to try as any, master.”
Michael Fowler was willing to animadvert about the old wives’ tales of John as Edward believed; and Edward listened.
“Let John do as he will,” he said, “and provide him with as much milk and butter as possible, which is precious little at this time of year in so cold a spring, I fear. But it cannot harm, save to our meagre dairy profits, and if it works, then the old wives’ tales are vindicated. We have little to lose because this year’s hoggets will all have to be killed if we cannot cure it in a hurry.”
“Well, Mr Brandon, if you say so,” said Mr Fowler. Edward hid a smile at the accuracy of John’s description of his jaw-crack voice. Mr Fowler’s father was a bailiff who had managed to send his son to a grammar school, even if he had not managed to penetrate the haunts of gentlemen so far as to go to university. Edward decided he might leave matters in the hands of an obedient and well-educated, if not especially innovative or brilliant steward, so he might return to Beth.
Chapter 20
Edward arrived at his London house too late to escort Letty and Beth to the rout party he knew they were attending, at Elizabeth’s house, and he debated putting his feet up for the evening, and going to call on the morrow, because he was tired; but then, the thought of Beth gave him the impetus he needed to put on evening clothes and go to the rout to meet them there.
As it happened, there were other people arriving as late as Edward, but they were arriving fashionably late, and treated the Medlicotts as though they were doing them a favour in turning up at all. Edward apologised punctiliously, explaining that he had just driven into town from Suffolk.
“Oh, I .d..do hope your sheep are d…doing better, Mr B…Brandon,” said Elizabeth. “Beth t…told me you write a t…terrible hand, but that she thinks they have b…bandy legs.”
“Essentially, yes,” said Edward. “It’s a form of rickets, I think; and I have hopes of relieving the condition, but nobody really knows how to cure rickets, so I’m going with the old wives’ tales of my shepherds in the hopes something works.”
“Well, I h…hope they know what they are t…talking about,” said Elizabeth. “Beth is p…playing for some dancing, perhaps you will like to r…relieve Mrs Grey of t…turning her pages?”
“I’d be delighted,” said Edward.
He was doomed to be delayed.
“EDWARD!” cried Amelia. “Where have you been? Beth tried to tell me some hum about sheep with bent legs!”
“No hum at all,” said Edward. “It’s a serious condition and could make a huge deficit in the farm profits, even if there is a profit this year, which could be doubtful, if they have to be slaughtered early.”
“Oh pooh, I have enough money for both of us, when we are married you won’t need the farm,” said Amelia.
“My good Miss Hazelgrove, even if I intended to marry you, which I do not, I should not permit you to pursue such a laissez faire attitude to money,” said Edward. “Why, your grandfather must be turning in his grave! He amassed your fortune, and it is not there to be squandered. Money is like a farm, if you do not nurture it and care for it, it withers and dies. I take my farm very seriously, as a result of which I am quite well off.”
Amelia flounced, and tittered.
“Why, you cannot expect ladies to understand money!” she said.
“Actually, I do,” said Edward. “I might not expect a lady to have been taught how to understand consols, shares and compound interest, but I consider that the blanket assumption that women cannot understand money at all is insulting on the part of a man who says so, and wilfully foolish on the part of a woman. A woman has to understand, if nothing else, how to hold a household, and oversee its accounts.”
“That’s for the housekeeper,” said Amelia, sulkily.
“And how do you check whether the housekeeper is cheating you?” asked Edward, gently. “I think you might be pleased to have avoided marriage with me; because discovering such an appalling ignorance in any lady I took as my wife would mean that I felt it behoved me to hire a tutor for her.”
“I suppose Beth Renfield is a paragon who understands how to play the stock market,” said Amelia, sulkily.
“No, but she knows how many beans make five, and is amenable to being given instruction,” said Edward. “But that is neither here nor there; and speaking of Beth, I am supposed to turn pages for her, your servant, Miss Hazelgrove!” he bowed punctiliously and moved off. Amelia stamped her foot. Edward had no right to want to insist on her changing; he was the one who would have to change. With that wretched Renfield woman out of the way, he would stop being so tiresome.
The smile Beth gave him made Edward feel that it was well worth having scrambled into his evening clothes. He did not know that his answering smile made Beth’s heart sing.
Letty readily ceded her place to Edward, and Beth played another measure and declared it was time someone else took a turn.
“How are your sheep or lambs or sleep or lavender?” she asked.
“Was my writing that bad?” he looked contrite.
“Worse, I assure you,” laughed Beth. “I believe you were talking about deformed lambs with bent legs.”
“I was,” said Edward, soberly, and explained all about it.
“In which case, if it works for sheep, as it might, then perhaps you should be looking to give country holidays to foundlings of the kind who made you think about it,” said Beth.
Edward brightened.
“Indeed, or even perhaps set up a foundling asylum in the country specifically for children with rickets, and then I may employ old soldiers to teach them skills, and women who wish to turn aside from crime too, and kill two birds with one stone!”
“I think that is an excellent idea, Edward!” said Beth. “And now the war is over, perhaps we might experiment with taking a few children to warmer climes to see whether or not it might work!”
“And even if it don’t, it ought to make them feel better for not being hurting in this dreadful cold,” said Edward. “I took two wounded soldiers I had encountered with me to Suffolk, and they told me the frost makes wounds hurt cruelly. One was a farm hand before he was wounded, and knows how to build hazelwood hurdles, so I have set him doing that, and the other can cook, which will help in the kitchen, which is stretched when feeding all the hands. Naturally his cooking is a bit basic, but the shepherds and swineherds and other hands won’t mind that he can’t manage any fancy sauces or haut cuisine.”
“No, indeed, and they would probably rather that he did not,” said Beth.
“You are probably correct,” said Edward. “As someone else is about to play, will you dance a measure with me?”
“I should like it of all things, dear Edward,” said Beth.
“Dear Edward? I like that,” said Edward. “Oh Beth, I have missed you! And I only hope that you can feel some regard for me after I made such a cake of myself over that little fool Amelia!”
“Hush, someone will hear you being censorious of the poor thing,” said Beth. “She is most terribly spoilt, poor girl, and cannot help not having had the advantages of being made to learn how to do anything much.”
“I was saved from making a terrible mistake,” said Edward. “How could I think I was in love? I was a cawker!”
“I believe a lot of young men make cawkers of themselves over beauties,” said Beth.
“You are not jealous?”
“How could I be jealous? I am the gainer from her making you lose your temper.”
Edward blushed.
“I did not behave well,” he admitted. “But oh Beth! I am come to love you!”
“Oh Edward, I have loved you since I first met you,” said Beth.
“And you watched me make an idiot of myself without trying to stop me, and attract me to you instead?” said Edward.
“Edward, it never occurred to me that you would ever look at me as an eligible female – especially when you were heir to a barony too – when I was a poor relation, with nondescript hair and a poor figure,” said Beth.
“What’s wrong with your figure? It looks quite perfect to me,” said Edward.
Beth laughed.
“Now I know you love me truly, my dear; because I am short-waisted and rather overly well endowed above, with nothing much to speak of below, rather like a man o’ war in full sail.”
“Well, I rather like watching ships sailing too,” said Edward. “Oh, I know that a large fundament is fashionable… I can’t say that, can I? you are giggling at me.”
“There are worse words to call it,” said Beth, “and at least you are not being a total farmer to refer to it as a rump, but actually it is not a part of the anatomy generally mentioned at all.”
“The clothes are designed to show it off though, especially in a stiff breeze,” said Edward.
“There is a difference between what is displayed and what is mentioned,” said Beth, “not that it troubles me. I have no doubt we shall have earthier conversations over the breeding of animals.”
“True,” said Edward, brightening. “And our own children.”
“Sir! You cannot want me merely as a brood mare!” said Beth with mock severity.
“I don’t. I want children, but if it don’t happen, I have a heap of aunts with brats for the wretched title to pass to, and we shall have our foundlings to keep us occupied,” said Edward.
“You are a good man, Edward,” said Beth, softly.
Amelia was not pleased to see that Beth had abandoned the piano to dance the impromptu measures for which Elizabeth was now playing the accompaniment. At least Beth would be out of the way soon, even if she might end up being a marchioness. That would be hard to swallow. But then, a poor little dab of a thing like Beth would never be able to stand up to a terrible man like Finchbury, as she, Amelia, had stood up to him. Amelia’s recollection of the encounter, which had left her feeling bruised, was becoming rapidly tinged with the roseate hue of time, that permitted her to see her actions as brave and uncompromising, ordering the wicked rake to do her bidding. People always did what she wanted, after all. And Edward would be no exception when he realised that it was inevitable.
Only another couple of days. Amelia managed to smile at Beth and Edward as they finished the measure, and politeness dictated that Edward should ask her to dance.
“I am sure that dear Beth is such a comfort to you about your sheep,” said Amelia.
“Beth enters into my interests regarding my stock,” said Edward, stiffly.
“Yes, one would not think her to be so clever, from looking at her,” said Amelia, with a tinkling laugh.
“Why not? Beth has intelligent eyes, you can see that she thinks deeply,” said Edward.
Amelia fought not to grind her pearly teeth. He had totally missed the innuendo!
“Why, yes, indeed, and as one discovers, quite clever enough to entrap a man in the throes of disappointment into promising, marriage; she must have guessed that Tiffany Pelham would play your uncle false. And you put such a good face on it, dear Edward!” said Amelia. “But I wager if a higher title came along, Beth would soon be after it, for all that she looks like a sheep chewing on the cud.”
“Sheep don’t chew on the cud, and how you can think pretty Beth looks like a sheep, I do not know,” said Edward. “It is cows who chew on the cud, since they are ruminants, and have several stomachs. The digestion is incomplete without the regurgitation of the partially digested cud to be re-chewed and….”
“Edward! That is not a fit subject for the ears of a lady!” said Amelia, almost gagging.
“Oh, sorry, of course, you are less capable of dealing with country matters than Beth,” said Edward, hiding a chuckle that Beth would chide him for using a misquote from Shakespeare with rather improper overtones. “You seemed interested enough to have brought up the subject of cud-chewing. For your information, I am not trapped into anything. I wish you will realise that I have no intention of marrying you, and I am not about to change my mind.”
“Well, I shall be here when you have been let down by her,” said Amelia.
“I shan’t be,” said Edward.
Amelia permitted herself a small, knowing smile. It had worked out all for the best that Finchbury was a marquis, because it would look as though Beth had abandoned a putative heir to a barony for a certain marquis. Because Adam Brandon might yet remarry.
When she was married to Edward, Amelia decided that she would just have to make sure Adam Brandon never remarried. One might easily find ways to scotch a budding romance. And as he had fallen in love so hard, it was said, with Tiffany, after having mourned his wife for many years, he was unlikely to be so trusting again. It would all work out very nicely.
Evelyn, Lord Finchbury, was making his own plans. The mail might manage London to Bristol in nineteen hours, but that was with a huge infrastructure of changes of horses and such. With the roll of soft the Hazelgrove girl had given him, it made sense to hire six good horses and a postillion as well as his own coachman to drive, but travel more than eight hours in one stretch, Finchbury refused to do. With six horses they might make it to Marlborough overnight, and there they might rest, and then drive on, avoiding Bath like the plague, and heading north of Bath and Bristol for Gloucester, and thence into Wales. Having once got out of London, the pace might be taken more slowly, as the likelihood was that Brandon would go haring off on the Great North Road. Finchbury intended sending his man ahead to arrange another team of horses at Marlborough, which would mean a quick change would be possible if necessary. He hoped, however, that the girl would be ready for a bit of a tumble by then, once fortified by coffee and breakfast. He could work on her in the coach, inuring her to the inevitable and wooing her. And it was another reason not to take too hurried a pace, because it would merely give any woman the megrims. Maybe heading for Marlborough was too ambitious. It was not as though he seriously feared pursuit. Newbury was some six hours away, perhaps less with a good team of six horses pushed to their limit, and a safer distance than Reading, more comfortably situated at perhaps four hours distant. Well, at that, if his man had a change of horses ready at Reading, he and the wench might afford to rest for a couple of hours and then press on, past Marlborough, and then take a more leisurely trip to Wales. If he could bed her, she’d be willing to put up with the discomfort, and if she was missish, well, a turn of high speed would dampen her spirits and make her more grateful for proffered kindnesses in return for a kiss or two. And Finchbury was confident enough of his skills in kissing that once a girl was kissed she was ready to do anything for him. He chuckled nastily. He could have easily had the Hazelgrove girl; he had repelled her and attracted her in equal measure. Once kissed and pleasured she would have been his to command. But then, he did not like brunettes, and he did not like scheming hussies. The Renfield girl was not precisely blonde, but she was more akin to the type of girl he preferred, and being quite plain she should be pleased to attract a man of the world like himself. And if he did decide to marry her, he would treat her kindly. Finchbury was very well pleased with himself.
Chapter 21
The day of the ball at Arvendish House arrived, and Beth dressed with care, just for Edward. She also laid out a heavy cashmere shawl, woollen spencer, and heavy cloak, both for travelling to the ball, and waiting to see Cressida off, helping her with her bandboxes. Molly was sworn to secrecy and would help Cressida’s own maid bring Cressida’s band boxes where they were to be secreted under the seat of the Stonhouse family carriage. This had necessitated some negotiations with the Stonhouse coachman too, but so long as he had not got to do anything to actively help, the man was willing to give tacit support. Cressida was cold and unbending with others of her own kind, but was a much loved mistress, who saw the needs of her servants and addressed them to the best of her ability. Molly would be wearing Beth’s second best cloak, which as Beth also said would mean that she was less likely to be questioned if moving around someone else’s coach.
“I hope Lady Cressida will be very happy!” said Molly, “Ooh it is romantic!”
“It is,” agreed Beth, reflecting that at least Cressida had a practical head on her shoulders as well as a sense of romance, and had been quite ready to live on a small income for her beloved Mr Chetwode. That Mr Chetwode was also very wealthy was to Cressida merely a bonus, not one of the reasons to wed him.
Beth greeted Cressida warmly when she saw her at the ball.
“How are you feeling?” Beth asked.
“A bit numb,” said Cressida. “Scared. Excited. Happy. Worried. Mostly excited, I think. StClair has been a Trojan; he caught me smuggling bandboxes down, and helped. He likes Brook; and Brook has promised to pay for him to do university, which StClair wants of all things. Even if it is more to get away from home than for the study, I fear!”
“Oh, I expect young men need to find themselves one way or another,” said Beth. “StClair will doubtless settle down to work if he respects Mr Chetwode’s kindness.”
Cressida brightened.
“Yes, he will. He’s not a bad boy, just a bit wild, but then what do you expect at sixteen? He feels it very deeply that our parents expect him to marry an heiress as his duty to the family, and he doesn’t like it above half. So he kicks over the traces a bit.”
“University will give him the chance to cut larks without being under your parents’ eyes,” said Beth, “and get it all out of his system. I’m glad you had a chance to talk to him, I had a feeling something was worrying you about this elopement, and it was your brother, wasn’t it?”
Cressida nodded.
“Indeed,” she said. “I did worry how he would take it, but he has given me his blessing and promised to break it to out parents, not only that I have gone, but that Brook is a very Croesus. I can’t help wanting to giggle at the thought that I’m running away with a man my parents would almost force me upon if only they knew of the extent of his wealth, especially as he has no hint of shop about him. His family are as clever with speculation as with music! He says the Stock Exchange is as nice and regular as a Bach Cantata, which I cannot see myself but I am glad that he can.”
“The Stock Exchange makes my head ache,” confessed Beth, “Though I do try to follow and understand it.”
“I suppose I shall have to make an effort to do so,” said Cressida. “How nice it is to know people like you and Elizabeth who are willing to admit to learning things for sheer interest! I am no bluestocking like Elizabeth, but at least I am no prattling ninny. Why are you laughing, Beth?”
“The haughty Lady Cressida is the last person anyone in the world could accuse of being ‘prattling’, ninny or otherwise,” said Beth.
“It’s a way of keeping people at arm’s length,” said Cressida. “I don’t stammer like Elizabeth, but I do find people intimidating. I think that being drawn into the coterie of you girls by Brook is the best thing that ever happened to me, and when we are wed, I will do what I can for poor cousin Madelaine, to rescue her from her horrid mama. And have Abigail’s next brother to stay, along with StClair, and hope they will be friends but not drag each other into too much mischief.”
“You are kind, Cressida,” said Beth.
“I have much kindness to pay back,” said Cressida, simply. “You accepted me, without shying away and whispering behind your hands about me being stuck up.”
Beth linked arms with her and gave her arm a friendly squeeze. Mr Chetwode was engaged to Cressida for the supper dance, and was to slip away two dances earlier, to ready his carriage, and Beth and Molly, Cressida and her maid, would transfer Cressida’s band-boxes from her coach to his, and bid her farewell in time to go back in for the supper dance with Edward. And since Cressida and Brook Chetwode were supposed to be dancing and dining together, there would be no outraged partners looking for them; Cressida had been careful to leave her dance card vacant after supper, pencilling in some spurious names in scrawling handwriting. Aspirants to her hand for a dance would, perhaps, have been outraged had they been able to read that she planned to dance with J.S. Bach, Henry Purcell, George F. Handel and John Gay.
So far as Cressida was concerned it was barely a lie, since she anticipated living with these composers and more for the rest of her life.
Amelia was quite as wildly excited as Cressida, in arranging her own future marriage; that satisfying her own desires meant degradation and misery for another girl did not really enter her head, or only in a superficial way with the thought that it was only what such an encroaching creature as Beth Renfield deserved. Somehow she had to persuade Beth to go outside before the end of the ball, but if necessary she could ask Beth to come out with her as she felt faint, and view the illuminations left up for the ball. Amelia was sure she could get gullible Beth outside for Finchbury. She had to separate her somehow from that icicle of a woman, Lady Cressida first, a female who looked at Amelia as if she knew about the family fortune coming from beer. If Amelia had but known it, this was Cressida’s normal expression to people outside of her new group of friends, with which she guarded herself, but Amelia did harbour enough insecurities about the origins of her fortune to take it personally. Elizabeth, more nearly connected to trade than she, never saw that expression directed at her, for Cressida appreciated Elizabeth’s frank friendliness and indifference to the difference between them in social rank. Had Elizabeth attempted to toad-eat at all, Cressida would have frozen her out, but such never occurred to Elizabeth. Amelia, on the other hand, had been sufficiently impressed by an earl’s daughter that her manner to Cressida had put Cressida’s back up from the first time they had met.
Amelia was meanwhile giving quite abstracted answers to her many admirers, for trying to keep an eye on Beth, and wondering how to prize her away from Cressida that she quite opened the eyes of one love-struck swain, by saying “oh yes, quite so, I agree,” when the unfortunate Honourable Mr Thomas Hawkesbury had stammered that he had a poem for her, even though it was not very good at all. The youthful poet was cut to the quick by such a slight, and stalked off, to brood in what he hoped was a Byronesque manner. Mr Hawkesbury would have given his eye teeth to resemble in any particular the hero of The Corsair, who was as much a household name as Byron himself since it had been published in February. However, nature had cursed Mr Hawkesbury with a slight frame and pale, wispy hair, and eyebrows so blonde as to appear non-existent. However, he did have aspirations of poetry, when perhaps his own epic heroes might be spoken of in the same breath as Byron’s Conrad, and perhaps add their lustre to his rather overlooked frame. Mr Hawkesbury was under no illusions about his own physical charms for the ladies, but he did fancy, self-deprecation aside, that his poetry was both good, and witty, and to have his self-deprecation agreed with by a beautiful, but undeniably hen-witted girl was a blow to his ego, and his infatuation, that may have left him a wiser man, if no better as a poet.
Amelia was not to discover the defection of this swain until later, when she was to wonder who had dared steal one of her court, being entirely unaware of her own foolishness. However in the meantime, the ‘fair cruel one’ showed her court that she had weightier things on her mind than their adulation, until such time as the dance before the supper dance.
Suddenly Amelia was aware that both Cressida and Beth had left their accustomed place, near to Elizabeth, Abigail and Madelaine, and appeared to be moving towards the vestibule.
Amelia lost another swain, whose shy devotion was too devastated to ever consider approaching her again, when his Goddess of Beauty got up and almost ran out of the ballroom as he approached her to collect her for the dance. It would not have improved his blighted ego to have been told that Amelia had not even noticed him. Amelia almost screamed with frustration when her hostess stopped her and asked if she felt quite well, as she seemed flustered, and Amelia had to invent a sudden spurious faintness and a need to visit the ladies’ dressing room. Which she did, in case the other girls were there, but to no avail.
The operation to go outside had been accomplished with speed. The maids were already dressed for outside, and had their mistresses’ spencers, cloaks and other accoutrements ready for them. They had left the dressing room, and indeed the hous, before Amelia caught up with them. Wrapped up warmly the two young women and their maids slipped outside to cool their faces, as Beth said gaily to the footman. He goggled slightly, but shrugged; they really did want to cool their faces, not use it as an euphemism.
“The lights are so pretty,” added Beth. “I did not have a chance to look at them properly on the way in. You will let us back in again presently?” she slipped the young man a vail.
The footman’s face cleared and he nodded comprehension. Some of these poor young ladies were positively chivvied by their mamas, almost as much as if they were prime dells with Haymarket ware, he thought in his own idiom. Ay, and bargains struck with no more sentiment than such common streetwalkers sold by their bawds. Let the poor things have a few minutes freedom!
The one that followed them had a sly look to her face, and Tom the footman had no intention of telling her where those nice-looking ladies had gone, when she asked. He pocketed the shilling vail though.
“Why miss!” he said. “The Jericho is out through there, for them as wish to cool their faces.”
It was not a lie. There was a convenient office where he indicated, as well as the jordans provided for the ladies in their dressing room. The look of blank confusion on this other lady’s face was right funny. Thought she’d caught them out at something no doubt, and planned on tattling to whichever harridans had the keeping of them. Tom watched her go out of the back door, hoping, no doubt, he thought, to catch them at some illicit dalliance. Well, if they were meeting anyone on the sly, good luck to them! He thought.
Amelia’s search outside showed her where the earth closet was; and she ran back indoors again as she discovered that this was where the men cooled their faces, and any female approaching those waiting to use it might be subject to a few ribald remarks. She could not see either naïve Beth nor frosty Cressida coming this way! When she returned, Tom had prudently made himself least in sight, and another footman was on duty. Well, they must have gone out the front, thought Amelia, and hoped that Finchbury was sufficiently up to snuff to keep his side of the bargain.
Outside, the four young women rapidly removed the band boxes from Cressida’s carriage, ably assisted by Mr Chetwode, who had fettled his team with promptitude. Cressida kissed Beth on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Godspeed, and good luck,” said Beth, kissing her back. “Invite me to the christening.”
“I shall,” said Cressida, blushing.
Beth and Molly watched the carriage as it went down the road.
“Oh Miss Beth, I do hopes they don’t go off the road in the dark!” said Molly.
“Mr Chetwode is very capable,” said Beth. “The illuminations are pretty, are they not? I like the transparency of the Prince of Wales’ feathers, it is delicately painted.
“It is pretty,” said Molly, critically, “but if you ask me, men didn’t ought to wear feathers; they should leave it to the ladies.”
Beth laughed.
“Oh, it is but a heraldic device, such as knights of old had painted on shields, so people would know who they were inside their armour,” she said. “Our Princes of Wales have used it since the time of the famous Black Prince, who took it from the King of Bohemia.”
“Fancy!” said Molly, who had no idea who the Black Prince was, and less of the King of Bohemia.
They were standing in shadow, the better to see the lights, the contrast marked, when a carriage came clopping up beside them. It was unusual, having six horses and a postillion riding one of the leaders, so both Beth and Molly turned to stare. The door opened and a male voice asked,
“Miss Beth Renfield?”
“Who wants to know?” asked Molly, before Beth could say a thing.
“I do, Miss Renfield,” said Finchbury, for it was he! He was certain that this must be Miss Renfield, brought out by Amelia Hazelgrove. They were a little early, but then perhaps the Hazelgrove girl had bethought her of getting the girl well on the way before she would be missed at supper. And probably she had to take what chances she might, in any case. No matter! He lifted Molly bodily by the arms to pitch her into the carriage, and jumped in after her, slamming the door.
Chapter 19
Edward sent a letter round the next day to Beth, a dreadful scrawl that she puzzled over with Letty.
“He appears to have lost sleep and needs to help with deformed lavender,” said Beth. “Oh! Can it be that he has lost some sheep and needs to help with the orphaned lambs? Really his steward ought to be able to manage that, though I know Edward does like to be involved,” she said. “Oh, I see, something about lambs having a disease called bent-leg, deformed lambs, I see, and of course he wants to be there to make sure that he may do all he can, poor things. He writes that he will certainly be back in time for the ball at Arvendish House. Well, if he is not, he is not; he must attend to his livestock.”
“And that, my dear, is why you are the perfect wife for him,” said Letty, “because you enter into his concerns about his livestock, and are not jealous of the time he spends with them.”
“Well, I would prefer that his livestock did not need him to post up to Suffolk, obviously,” said Beth, “but when we are married, I shall not need to be apart from him, since I will be, I hope, helping him.” She sighed. “I wish he might have couched the letter in more lover-like terms, though; perhaps you are wrong that he feels a partiality to me.”
“He only writes such terse notes to those people he values most,” said Letty. “I know Edward; he puts notes to people who are not his nearest and dearest into flowery periods, and makes sure his handwriting is legible.”
Beth brightened.
“Well, in that case, we have almost a week without him which must be filled, and I confess something I should like to do is to see the sights of London. We must visit the menagerie, and see the Tower, and St Paul’s, and the British Museum. I am keen to see the black stone on which nature has inscribed the likeness of Chaucer, you know, ever since I read about it. Papa was going to take me to London to see it, before he died. Isaac D’Israeli wrote about it in an essay which was printed in a newspaper, wherein I read about it.”
“Well we must certainly see that!” said Letty, “Though if I were you, I would be prepared for some disappointment, for what some people see easily with their imaginations, may not be as clear to others.”
“Well, there must be some resemblance, or the curators would have sent away the finder of it with a flea in his ear,” said Beth, “but I shall allow for some exaggeration.”
“We shall not, however, go tomorrow,” said Letty, “for I recall reading a rumour that the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg is to visit the British Museum, and we do not wish to be caught up in the crowds looking at her as much as at the exhibits, nor do we want to be trammelled by her people, who will naturally wish to keep her at a distance from ordinary folk.”
“I should hate to be a Grand Duchess, even if we had such things in England,” said Beth. “But I pray you, let us go and see her; for I should like of all things to have seen Grand Duchess Catherine, for she is said to be as beautiful as any princess in a fairy tale!”
Letty laughed.
“Oh, very well,” she said, “and then we might see St Paul’s today, and the museum on Monday.”
Beth was suitably impressed by the grandeur of St Paul’s Cathedral, and she and Letty amused themselves by testing the tales of the whispering gallery. However she was looking forward to seeing the controversial Grand Duchess, whom, rumour whispered, disliked the Regent almost as much as he disliked her. Russia, however, was an ally in the defeat of the monster Bonaparte, so rumour must not be spoken too loudly. Some said that the Grand Duchess was in England, on behalf of her brother the Tsar, to break the betrothal of Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange, the alliance not being to the liking of Russia. Beth just wanted to see the spectacle!
The crowds waiting to see the Grand Duchess were considerable, and as the carriage was held up by them in any case, Beth suggested to Letty that they climb up beside John Coachman, the better to see. It lifted them too above the noise and bustle of the crowd, and the smell of bodies packed closely together.
Letty smiled, and agreed, for Beth would need a chaperone in so exposed a position, but Letty had not the heart to spoil the younger woman’s fun, and readily climbed up with her. John Coachman grimly flourished his whip to make sure that any lewd fellows who might think to make game with two ladies would be thinking again; and any ribald comments died unspoken at the determination on his face.
The ripple of excitement running through the crowd at the far end of the street told those waiting of the impending arrival of the Grand Duchess, and the ringing of the hooves of horses was heard above the ragged cheers that thronged the way.
The sound of so many hooves was explained quickly since Grand Duchess was accompanied by outriders of cuirassiers in splendid uniforms, and aggressively Russian military moustaches. The plumes on their golden helmets bobbed as they trotted in step, a prodigiously difficult thing to do, as many of the crowd were knowledgeable enough to realise, applauding spontaneously. The Grand Duchess herself was in an open carriage, despite the chill weather, plainly adoring the adulation of the crowd, and waving occasionally a languid hand. Her dark curls and smouldering eyes attracted attention of all, as did the many and massive pearls that adorned her person!
“Why, how jealous Amelia Hazelgrove would be,” said Beth, “for I know that the Grand Duchess is in her thirties, yet she outshines Amelia, for having the look that Amelia would like to have, seductive and smouldering.”
“She’s also reputed to be quite as unpleasant as Amelia can be,” said Letty. “However, at least we do not move in the sort of circles where we have to avoid the spite of someone as influential as a Grand Duchess; for though Amelia Hazelgrove is all that is amiable, I cannot help thinking that she is still pursuing poor Edward, and likely to do you an ill turn if she knew that he was betrothed to you. But she at least has little enough influence! Well, that was a pleasant spectacle, to be sure; and we shall enjoy the museum the better when illustrious persons are not there. Come, Beth, let us resume the carriage!”
Beth climbed down.
“I should like to purchase a book that I saw advertised in the papers, it is by Mr Ackermann, and is the first volume of something called The Microcosm of London,” she said, “for I believe it features the British Museum in its pages.”
“We must see if it is available,” said Letty. “It will be an instructive volume, I am sure! And I very much admire Mr Ackermann’s prints, so I hope it will be illustrated, as is the Repository of Arts. There is so much to be seen in the museum of course, one might take all day and not see it all! There are many Egyptian artefacts of course, for some were seized from French ships conveying them to France, and other antiquities too, from Greece and Rome and other ancient places; and there are the natural exhibits, stones and minerals, animals and birds stuffed in a most lifelike way, and so on.”
It may be said that Beth found that the visit to the British Museum felt somewhat flat without Edward, with whom to discuss the exhibits, though there was much to marvel at with the Egyptian artefacts, some donated by British antiquarians, as well as those captured from the French. There too was a the celebrated sarcophagus of Alexander, as well as all the Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities, which could only be enhanced, as Beth said, by the addition of the Townley collection, whose purchase for the museum was to be debated in the House of Commons.
As both the second and the fifth rooms contained portraits of Oliver Cromwell, Beth went back and forth from one to the other, and studied them closely.
“Now I shall definitely recognise him, if he should indeed haunt us,” she laughed.
“Oh Beth, you are funning! But I think so austere a fellow would scorn to do anything so frivolous as haunting, as we were agreed when first told the story!” said Letty. “Did you not see the exhibition of native boats, clothes and weaponry from Australia and the like? it is most quaint!”
“It did not interest me so much as the antiquities of our own ancient Britons, nor the classical or Egyptian displays,” said Beth. “I cannot think, however, that Cromwell would be found to be very happy, if his portrait might only speak of it, to be found in company with heathen idols from all over the world in the one room, and with a royal companion like Tsar Peter the Great in the other room.”
“Oh, I beg to differ, my love,” said Letty. “For Peter the Great came incognito to Britain to work in a shipyard, to take back techniques to his own country. He was as practical as even Edward!”
Beth gazed anew on the portrait.
“Somehow I could not imagine the current tsar being able to turn an honest day’s work, and still less can I imagine it of the Grand Duchess,” she said.
Letty chuckled.
“I agree!” she said.
Beth thought that her favourite exhibit was in the banqueting hall, where a portrait of George II stared down on an amazing table all inlaid with different samples of lava.
“Oh dear, it is a shame, perhaps that we have done the whole in order,” she sighed, “For I have wanted very much to see the lavas, spars and minerals, and too the shells and petrifications, but I fear I shall be too tired to enjoy it as much as I hoped, and I cannot, just cannot go on to view the natural history of animals and serpents.”
“Why, my dear, we have plenty of time, and might view them another day, and the minerals and petrifications too, if you wish,” said Letty.
“No, I am determined to see the stone that looks like Chaucer,” said Beth.
Alas for Beth’s determination, the stone resembling Chaucer appeared to no longer be on display! It made a disappointing end to a day not entirely as well enjoyed as might have been expected, but Letty smiled.
“Cheer up, Beth! Perhaps Edward will be back before too long, and will be able to escort us another time.”
Beth brightened.
“That would be splendid,” she said. “It is not that I do not enjoy your company, dearest Aunt Letty, but…”
“But it would be wonderful indeed if a young woman did not prefer the company of her young man,” said Letty.
Beth sighed.
“I would rather be feeding orphaned sheep through a fine glove finger or whatever is needful than dressed in finery in the Capital of the world, as some call London.”
“Of course you would,” said Letty. “But most ineligible until you are wed!”
Edward was missing Beth’s company as well, for he would have welcomed her thoughts on the disease of bent-leg, which he had read about, as most common in young tups between six and twelve months. Edward suspected that it was a form of rickets, and was sorry that the grass was poor with so little warmth from the sun. His shepherds had not thought to supplement the feed of the sheep, and Edward was certain that being hungry had contributed towards the lambs having succumbed so readily to the disease as they weaned, which was not a condition he had come across before.
“I seen it afore, master,” volunteered one of the shepherds. “When we hed wet, winter and spring, ar, must be ninety-seven. It’s when there be-ant much sun jew see? Thass a bad thing. Moi ol’ granpa, he say ‘dew yew feed un on milk and butter, thass gwine ter help, John moi lad, and get ‘em in th’ sun’, and thass what I done, and thass helped some back then. An’ when the weather got better, so did they, them as wasn’t deformed permanentually.”
“Milk and butter, eh?” said Edward. “Have you been trying that?”
John Shepherd shook his head, and spat.
“Them ow’ steward o’ yourn say ‘do-ant yew be so daft-loik, John-bor’ oony he say it his jaw-crack voice wass come outa thinkin’ as how he moight be a gen’lman which he aint, nowise.”
“I’ll speak to him,” said Edward. If he put it diplomatically enough, he might even have Michael Fowler volunteering John’s suggestion scornfully, and then be able to suggest that it was worth trying anything. “I know it’s cold, John, but shear them along their backs too, leave the belly wool for warmth, because if it is a lack of sunshine, odd as that may seem, letting what little sun there is reach to warm them when it is out might help. If you build shelters out of hurdles for the night they should take no harm. I recall seeing something similar in city children, who were also pale, and saw little of the sun; and though it seems unlikely that sun alone can cure it, we have no harm in trying.”
“Ar,” said John. “Reckon thass as good a thing to try as any, master.”
Michael Fowler was willing to animadvert about the old wives’ tales of John as Edward believed; and Edward listened.
“Let John do as he will,” he said, “and provide him with as much milk and butter as possible, which is precious little at this time of year in so cold a spring, I fear. But it cannot harm, save to our meagre dairy profits, and if it works, then the old wives’ tales are vindicated. We have little to lose because this year’s hoggets will all have to be killed if we cannot cure it in a hurry.”
“Well, Mr Brandon, if you say so,” said Mr Fowler. Edward hid a smile at the accuracy of John’s description of his jaw-crack voice. Mr Fowler’s father was a bailiff who had managed to send his son to a grammar school, even if he had not managed to penetrate the haunts of gentlemen so far as to go to university. Edward decided he might leave matters in the hands of an obedient and well-educated, if not especially innovative or brilliant steward, so he might return to Beth.
Chapter 20
Edward arrived at his London house too late to escort Letty and Beth to the rout party he knew they were attending, at Elizabeth’s house, and he debated putting his feet up for the evening, and going to call on the morrow, because he was tired; but then, the thought of Beth gave him the impetus he needed to put on evening clothes and go to the rout to meet them there.
As it happened, there were other people arriving as late as Edward, but they were arriving fashionably late, and treated the Medlicotts as though they were doing them a favour in turning up at all. Edward apologised punctiliously, explaining that he had just driven into town from Suffolk.
“Oh, I .d..do hope your sheep are d…doing better, Mr B…Brandon,” said Elizabeth. “Beth t…told me you write a t…terrible hand, but that she thinks they have b…bandy legs.”
“Essentially, yes,” said Edward. “It’s a form of rickets, I think; and I have hopes of relieving the condition, but nobody really knows how to cure rickets, so I’m going with the old wives’ tales of my shepherds in the hopes something works.”
“Well, I h…hope they know what they are t…talking about,” said Elizabeth. “Beth is p…playing for some dancing, perhaps you will like to r…relieve Mrs Grey of t…turning her pages?”
“I’d be delighted,” said Edward.
He was doomed to be delayed.
“EDWARD!” cried Amelia. “Where have you been? Beth tried to tell me some hum about sheep with bent legs!”
“No hum at all,” said Edward. “It’s a serious condition and could make a huge deficit in the farm profits, even if there is a profit this year, which could be doubtful, if they have to be slaughtered early.”
“Oh pooh, I have enough money for both of us, when we are married you won’t need the farm,” said Amelia.
“My good Miss Hazelgrove, even if I intended to marry you, which I do not, I should not permit you to pursue such a laissez faire attitude to money,” said Edward. “Why, your grandfather must be turning in his grave! He amassed your fortune, and it is not there to be squandered. Money is like a farm, if you do not nurture it and care for it, it withers and dies. I take my farm very seriously, as a result of which I am quite well off.”
Amelia flounced, and tittered.
“Why, you cannot expect ladies to understand money!” she said.
“Actually, I do,” said Edward. “I might not expect a lady to have been taught how to understand consols, shares and compound interest, but I consider that the blanket assumption that women cannot understand money at all is insulting on the part of a man who says so, and wilfully foolish on the part of a woman. A woman has to understand, if nothing else, how to hold a household, and oversee its accounts.”
“That’s for the housekeeper,” said Amelia, sulkily.
“And how do you check whether the housekeeper is cheating you?” asked Edward, gently. “I think you might be pleased to have avoided marriage with me; because discovering such an appalling ignorance in any lady I took as my wife would mean that I felt it behoved me to hire a tutor for her.”
“I suppose Beth Renfield is a paragon who understands how to play the stock market,” said Amelia, sulkily.
“No, but she knows how many beans make five, and is amenable to being given instruction,” said Edward. “But that is neither here nor there; and speaking of Beth, I am supposed to turn pages for her, your servant, Miss Hazelgrove!” he bowed punctiliously and moved off. Amelia stamped her foot. Edward had no right to want to insist on her changing; he was the one who would have to change. With that wretched Renfield woman out of the way, he would stop being so tiresome.
The smile Beth gave him made Edward feel that it was well worth having scrambled into his evening clothes. He did not know that his answering smile made Beth’s heart sing.
Letty readily ceded her place to Edward, and Beth played another measure and declared it was time someone else took a turn.
“How are your sheep or lambs or sleep or lavender?” she asked.
“Was my writing that bad?” he looked contrite.
“Worse, I assure you,” laughed Beth. “I believe you were talking about deformed lambs with bent legs.”
“I was,” said Edward, soberly, and explained all about it.
“In which case, if it works for sheep, as it might, then perhaps you should be looking to give country holidays to foundlings of the kind who made you think about it,” said Beth.
Edward brightened.
“Indeed, or even perhaps set up a foundling asylum in the country specifically for children with rickets, and then I may employ old soldiers to teach them skills, and women who wish to turn aside from crime too, and kill two birds with one stone!”
“I think that is an excellent idea, Edward!” said Beth. “And now the war is over, perhaps we might experiment with taking a few children to warmer climes to see whether or not it might work!”
“And even if it don’t, it ought to make them feel better for not being hurting in this dreadful cold,” said Edward. “I took two wounded soldiers I had encountered with me to Suffolk, and they told me the frost makes wounds hurt cruelly. One was a farm hand before he was wounded, and knows how to build hazelwood hurdles, so I have set him doing that, and the other can cook, which will help in the kitchen, which is stretched when feeding all the hands. Naturally his cooking is a bit basic, but the shepherds and swineherds and other hands won’t mind that he can’t manage any fancy sauces or haut cuisine.”
“No, indeed, and they would probably rather that he did not,” said Beth.
“You are probably correct,” said Edward. “As someone else is about to play, will you dance a measure with me?”
“I should like it of all things, dear Edward,” said Beth.
“Dear Edward? I like that,” said Edward. “Oh Beth, I have missed you! And I only hope that you can feel some regard for me after I made such a cake of myself over that little fool Amelia!”
“Hush, someone will hear you being censorious of the poor thing,” said Beth. “She is most terribly spoilt, poor girl, and cannot help not having had the advantages of being made to learn how to do anything much.”
“I was saved from making a terrible mistake,” said Edward. “How could I think I was in love? I was a cawker!”
“I believe a lot of young men make cawkers of themselves over beauties,” said Beth.
“You are not jealous?”
“How could I be jealous? I am the gainer from her making you lose your temper.”
Edward blushed.
“I did not behave well,” he admitted. “But oh Beth! I am come to love you!”
“Oh Edward, I have loved you since I first met you,” said Beth.
“And you watched me make an idiot of myself without trying to stop me, and attract me to you instead?” said Edward.
“Edward, it never occurred to me that you would ever look at me as an eligible female – especially when you were heir to a barony too – when I was a poor relation, with nondescript hair and a poor figure,” said Beth.
“What’s wrong with your figure? It looks quite perfect to me,” said Edward.
Beth laughed.
“Now I know you love me truly, my dear; because I am short-waisted and rather overly well endowed above, with nothing much to speak of below, rather like a man o’ war in full sail.”
“Well, I rather like watching ships sailing too,” said Edward. “Oh, I know that a large fundament is fashionable… I can’t say that, can I? you are giggling at me.”
“There are worse words to call it,” said Beth, “and at least you are not being a total farmer to refer to it as a rump, but actually it is not a part of the anatomy generally mentioned at all.”
“The clothes are designed to show it off though, especially in a stiff breeze,” said Edward.
“There is a difference between what is displayed and what is mentioned,” said Beth, “not that it troubles me. I have no doubt we shall have earthier conversations over the breeding of animals.”
“True,” said Edward, brightening. “And our own children.”
“Sir! You cannot want me merely as a brood mare!” said Beth with mock severity.
“I don’t. I want children, but if it don’t happen, I have a heap of aunts with brats for the wretched title to pass to, and we shall have our foundlings to keep us occupied,” said Edward.
“You are a good man, Edward,” said Beth, softly.
Amelia was not pleased to see that Beth had abandoned the piano to dance the impromptu measures for which Elizabeth was now playing the accompaniment. At least Beth would be out of the way soon, even if she might end up being a marchioness. That would be hard to swallow. But then, a poor little dab of a thing like Beth would never be able to stand up to a terrible man like Finchbury, as she, Amelia, had stood up to him. Amelia’s recollection of the encounter, which had left her feeling bruised, was becoming rapidly tinged with the roseate hue of time, that permitted her to see her actions as brave and uncompromising, ordering the wicked rake to do her bidding. People always did what she wanted, after all. And Edward would be no exception when he realised that it was inevitable.
Only another couple of days. Amelia managed to smile at Beth and Edward as they finished the measure, and politeness dictated that Edward should ask her to dance.
“I am sure that dear Beth is such a comfort to you about your sheep,” said Amelia.
“Beth enters into my interests regarding my stock,” said Edward, stiffly.
“Yes, one would not think her to be so clever, from looking at her,” said Amelia, with a tinkling laugh.
“Why not? Beth has intelligent eyes, you can see that she thinks deeply,” said Edward.
Amelia fought not to grind her pearly teeth. He had totally missed the innuendo!
“Why, yes, indeed, and as one discovers, quite clever enough to entrap a man in the throes of disappointment into promising, marriage; she must have guessed that Tiffany Pelham would play your uncle false. And you put such a good face on it, dear Edward!” said Amelia. “But I wager if a higher title came along, Beth would soon be after it, for all that she looks like a sheep chewing on the cud.”
“Sheep don’t chew on the cud, and how you can think pretty Beth looks like a sheep, I do not know,” said Edward. “It is cows who chew on the cud, since they are ruminants, and have several stomachs. The digestion is incomplete without the regurgitation of the partially digested cud to be re-chewed and….”
“Edward! That is not a fit subject for the ears of a lady!” said Amelia, almost gagging.
“Oh, sorry, of course, you are less capable of dealing with country matters than Beth,” said Edward, hiding a chuckle that Beth would chide him for using a misquote from Shakespeare with rather improper overtones. “You seemed interested enough to have brought up the subject of cud-chewing. For your information, I am not trapped into anything. I wish you will realise that I have no intention of marrying you, and I am not about to change my mind.”
“Well, I shall be here when you have been let down by her,” said Amelia.
“I shan’t be,” said Edward.
Amelia permitted herself a small, knowing smile. It had worked out all for the best that Finchbury was a marquis, because it would look as though Beth had abandoned a putative heir to a barony for a certain marquis. Because Adam Brandon might yet remarry.
When she was married to Edward, Amelia decided that she would just have to make sure Adam Brandon never remarried. One might easily find ways to scotch a budding romance. And as he had fallen in love so hard, it was said, with Tiffany, after having mourned his wife for many years, he was unlikely to be so trusting again. It would all work out very nicely.
Evelyn, Lord Finchbury, was making his own plans. The mail might manage London to Bristol in nineteen hours, but that was with a huge infrastructure of changes of horses and such. With the roll of soft the Hazelgrove girl had given him, it made sense to hire six good horses and a postillion as well as his own coachman to drive, but travel more than eight hours in one stretch, Finchbury refused to do. With six horses they might make it to Marlborough overnight, and there they might rest, and then drive on, avoiding Bath like the plague, and heading north of Bath and Bristol for Gloucester, and thence into Wales. Having once got out of London, the pace might be taken more slowly, as the likelihood was that Brandon would go haring off on the Great North Road. Finchbury intended sending his man ahead to arrange another team of horses at Marlborough, which would mean a quick change would be possible if necessary. He hoped, however, that the girl would be ready for a bit of a tumble by then, once fortified by coffee and breakfast. He could work on her in the coach, inuring her to the inevitable and wooing her. And it was another reason not to take too hurried a pace, because it would merely give any woman the megrims. Maybe heading for Marlborough was too ambitious. It was not as though he seriously feared pursuit. Newbury was some six hours away, perhaps less with a good team of six horses pushed to their limit, and a safer distance than Reading, more comfortably situated at perhaps four hours distant. Well, at that, if his man had a change of horses ready at Reading, he and the wench might afford to rest for a couple of hours and then press on, past Marlborough, and then take a more leisurely trip to Wales. If he could bed her, she’d be willing to put up with the discomfort, and if she was missish, well, a turn of high speed would dampen her spirits and make her more grateful for proffered kindnesses in return for a kiss or two. And Finchbury was confident enough of his skills in kissing that once a girl was kissed she was ready to do anything for him. He chuckled nastily. He could have easily had the Hazelgrove girl; he had repelled her and attracted her in equal measure. Once kissed and pleasured she would have been his to command. But then, he did not like brunettes, and he did not like scheming hussies. The Renfield girl was not precisely blonde, but she was more akin to the type of girl he preferred, and being quite plain she should be pleased to attract a man of the world like himself. And if he did decide to marry her, he would treat her kindly. Finchbury was very well pleased with himself.
Chapter 21
The day of the ball at Arvendish House arrived, and Beth dressed with care, just for Edward. She also laid out a heavy cashmere shawl, woollen spencer, and heavy cloak, both for travelling to the ball, and waiting to see Cressida off, helping her with her bandboxes. Molly was sworn to secrecy and would help Cressida’s own maid bring Cressida’s band boxes where they were to be secreted under the seat of the Stonhouse family carriage. This had necessitated some negotiations with the Stonhouse coachman too, but so long as he had not got to do anything to actively help, the man was willing to give tacit support. Cressida was cold and unbending with others of her own kind, but was a much loved mistress, who saw the needs of her servants and addressed them to the best of her ability. Molly would be wearing Beth’s second best cloak, which as Beth also said would mean that she was less likely to be questioned if moving around someone else’s coach.
“I hope Lady Cressida will be very happy!” said Molly, “Ooh it is romantic!”
“It is,” agreed Beth, reflecting that at least Cressida had a practical head on her shoulders as well as a sense of romance, and had been quite ready to live on a small income for her beloved Mr Chetwode. That Mr Chetwode was also very wealthy was to Cressida merely a bonus, not one of the reasons to wed him.
Beth greeted Cressida warmly when she saw her at the ball.
“How are you feeling?” Beth asked.
“A bit numb,” said Cressida. “Scared. Excited. Happy. Worried. Mostly excited, I think. StClair has been a Trojan; he caught me smuggling bandboxes down, and helped. He likes Brook; and Brook has promised to pay for him to do university, which StClair wants of all things. Even if it is more to get away from home than for the study, I fear!”
“Oh, I expect young men need to find themselves one way or another,” said Beth. “StClair will doubtless settle down to work if he respects Mr Chetwode’s kindness.”
Cressida brightened.
“Yes, he will. He’s not a bad boy, just a bit wild, but then what do you expect at sixteen? He feels it very deeply that our parents expect him to marry an heiress as his duty to the family, and he doesn’t like it above half. So he kicks over the traces a bit.”
“University will give him the chance to cut larks without being under your parents’ eyes,” said Beth, “and get it all out of his system. I’m glad you had a chance to talk to him, I had a feeling something was worrying you about this elopement, and it was your brother, wasn’t it?”
Cressida nodded.
“Indeed,” she said. “I did worry how he would take it, but he has given me his blessing and promised to break it to out parents, not only that I have gone, but that Brook is a very Croesus. I can’t help wanting to giggle at the thought that I’m running away with a man my parents would almost force me upon if only they knew of the extent of his wealth, especially as he has no hint of shop about him. His family are as clever with speculation as with music! He says the Stock Exchange is as nice and regular as a Bach Cantata, which I cannot see myself but I am glad that he can.”
“The Stock Exchange makes my head ache,” confessed Beth, “Though I do try to follow and understand it.”
“I suppose I shall have to make an effort to do so,” said Cressida. “How nice it is to know people like you and Elizabeth who are willing to admit to learning things for sheer interest! I am no bluestocking like Elizabeth, but at least I am no prattling ninny. Why are you laughing, Beth?”
“The haughty Lady Cressida is the last person anyone in the world could accuse of being ‘prattling’, ninny or otherwise,” said Beth.
“It’s a way of keeping people at arm’s length,” said Cressida. “I don’t stammer like Elizabeth, but I do find people intimidating. I think that being drawn into the coterie of you girls by Brook is the best thing that ever happened to me, and when we are wed, I will do what I can for poor cousin Madelaine, to rescue her from her horrid mama. And have Abigail’s next brother to stay, along with StClair, and hope they will be friends but not drag each other into too much mischief.”
“You are kind, Cressida,” said Beth.
“I have much kindness to pay back,” said Cressida, simply. “You accepted me, without shying away and whispering behind your hands about me being stuck up.”
Beth linked arms with her and gave her arm a friendly squeeze. Mr Chetwode was engaged to Cressida for the supper dance, and was to slip away two dances earlier, to ready his carriage, and Beth and Molly, Cressida and her maid, would transfer Cressida’s band-boxes from her coach to his, and bid her farewell in time to go back in for the supper dance with Edward. And since Cressida and Brook Chetwode were supposed to be dancing and dining together, there would be no outraged partners looking for them; Cressida had been careful to leave her dance card vacant after supper, pencilling in some spurious names in scrawling handwriting. Aspirants to her hand for a dance would, perhaps, have been outraged had they been able to read that she planned to dance with J.S. Bach, Henry Purcell, George F. Handel and John Gay.
So far as Cressida was concerned it was barely a lie, since she anticipated living with these composers and more for the rest of her life.
Amelia was quite as wildly excited as Cressida, in arranging her own future marriage; that satisfying her own desires meant degradation and misery for another girl did not really enter her head, or only in a superficial way with the thought that it was only what such an encroaching creature as Beth Renfield deserved. Somehow she had to persuade Beth to go outside before the end of the ball, but if necessary she could ask Beth to come out with her as she felt faint, and view the illuminations left up for the ball. Amelia was sure she could get gullible Beth outside for Finchbury. She had to separate her somehow from that icicle of a woman, Lady Cressida first, a female who looked at Amelia as if she knew about the family fortune coming from beer. If Amelia had but known it, this was Cressida’s normal expression to people outside of her new group of friends, with which she guarded herself, but Amelia did harbour enough insecurities about the origins of her fortune to take it personally. Elizabeth, more nearly connected to trade than she, never saw that expression directed at her, for Cressida appreciated Elizabeth’s frank friendliness and indifference to the difference between them in social rank. Had Elizabeth attempted to toad-eat at all, Cressida would have frozen her out, but such never occurred to Elizabeth. Amelia, on the other hand, had been sufficiently impressed by an earl’s daughter that her manner to Cressida had put Cressida’s back up from the first time they had met.
Amelia was meanwhile giving quite abstracted answers to her many admirers, for trying to keep an eye on Beth, and wondering how to prize her away from Cressida that she quite opened the eyes of one love-struck swain, by saying “oh yes, quite so, I agree,” when the unfortunate Honourable Mr Thomas Hawkesbury had stammered that he had a poem for her, even though it was not very good at all. The youthful poet was cut to the quick by such a slight, and stalked off, to brood in what he hoped was a Byronesque manner. Mr Hawkesbury would have given his eye teeth to resemble in any particular the hero of The Corsair, who was as much a household name as Byron himself since it had been published in February. However, nature had cursed Mr Hawkesbury with a slight frame and pale, wispy hair, and eyebrows so blonde as to appear non-existent. However, he did have aspirations of poetry, when perhaps his own epic heroes might be spoken of in the same breath as Byron’s Conrad, and perhaps add their lustre to his rather overlooked frame. Mr Hawkesbury was under no illusions about his own physical charms for the ladies, but he did fancy, self-deprecation aside, that his poetry was both good, and witty, and to have his self-deprecation agreed with by a beautiful, but undeniably hen-witted girl was a blow to his ego, and his infatuation, that may have left him a wiser man, if no better as a poet.
Amelia was not to discover the defection of this swain until later, when she was to wonder who had dared steal one of her court, being entirely unaware of her own foolishness. However in the meantime, the ‘fair cruel one’ showed her court that she had weightier things on her mind than their adulation, until such time as the dance before the supper dance.
Suddenly Amelia was aware that both Cressida and Beth had left their accustomed place, near to Elizabeth, Abigail and Madelaine, and appeared to be moving towards the vestibule.
Amelia lost another swain, whose shy devotion was too devastated to ever consider approaching her again, when his Goddess of Beauty got up and almost ran out of the ballroom as he approached her to collect her for the dance. It would not have improved his blighted ego to have been told that Amelia had not even noticed him. Amelia almost screamed with frustration when her hostess stopped her and asked if she felt quite well, as she seemed flustered, and Amelia had to invent a sudden spurious faintness and a need to visit the ladies’ dressing room. Which she did, in case the other girls were there, but to no avail.
The operation to go outside had been accomplished with speed. The maids were already dressed for outside, and had their mistresses’ spencers, cloaks and other accoutrements ready for them. They had left the dressing room, and indeed the hous, before Amelia caught up with them. Wrapped up warmly the two young women and their maids slipped outside to cool their faces, as Beth said gaily to the footman. He goggled slightly, but shrugged; they really did want to cool their faces, not use it as an euphemism.
“The lights are so pretty,” added Beth. “I did not have a chance to look at them properly on the way in. You will let us back in again presently?” she slipped the young man a vail.
The footman’s face cleared and he nodded comprehension. Some of these poor young ladies were positively chivvied by their mamas, almost as much as if they were prime dells with Haymarket ware, he thought in his own idiom. Ay, and bargains struck with no more sentiment than such common streetwalkers sold by their bawds. Let the poor things have a few minutes freedom!
The one that followed them had a sly look to her face, and Tom the footman had no intention of telling her where those nice-looking ladies had gone, when she asked. He pocketed the shilling vail though.
“Why miss!” he said. “The Jericho is out through there, for them as wish to cool their faces.”
It was not a lie. There was a convenient office where he indicated, as well as the jordans provided for the ladies in their dressing room. The look of blank confusion on this other lady’s face was right funny. Thought she’d caught them out at something no doubt, and planned on tattling to whichever harridans had the keeping of them. Tom watched her go out of the back door, hoping, no doubt, he thought, to catch them at some illicit dalliance. Well, if they were meeting anyone on the sly, good luck to them! He thought.
Amelia’s search outside showed her where the earth closet was; and she ran back indoors again as she discovered that this was where the men cooled their faces, and any female approaching those waiting to use it might be subject to a few ribald remarks. She could not see either naïve Beth nor frosty Cressida coming this way! When she returned, Tom had prudently made himself least in sight, and another footman was on duty. Well, they must have gone out the front, thought Amelia, and hoped that Finchbury was sufficiently up to snuff to keep his side of the bargain.
Outside, the four young women rapidly removed the band boxes from Cressida’s carriage, ably assisted by Mr Chetwode, who had fettled his team with promptitude. Cressida kissed Beth on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Godspeed, and good luck,” said Beth, kissing her back. “Invite me to the christening.”
“I shall,” said Cressida, blushing.
Beth and Molly watched the carriage as it went down the road.
“Oh Miss Beth, I do hopes they don’t go off the road in the dark!” said Molly.
“Mr Chetwode is very capable,” said Beth. “The illuminations are pretty, are they not? I like the transparency of the Prince of Wales’ feathers, it is delicately painted.
“It is pretty,” said Molly, critically, “but if you ask me, men didn’t ought to wear feathers; they should leave it to the ladies.”
Beth laughed.
“Oh, it is but a heraldic device, such as knights of old had painted on shields, so people would know who they were inside their armour,” she said. “Our Princes of Wales have used it since the time of the famous Black Prince, who took it from the King of Bohemia.”
“Fancy!” said Molly, who had no idea who the Black Prince was, and less of the King of Bohemia.
They were standing in shadow, the better to see the lights, the contrast marked, when a carriage came clopping up beside them. It was unusual, having six horses and a postillion riding one of the leaders, so both Beth and Molly turned to stare. The door opened and a male voice asked,
“Miss Beth Renfield?”
“Who wants to know?” asked Molly, before Beth could say a thing.
“I do, Miss Renfield,” said Finchbury, for it was he! He was certain that this must be Miss Renfield, brought out by Amelia Hazelgrove. They were a little early, but then perhaps the Hazelgrove girl had bethought her of getting the girl well on the way before she would be missed at supper. And probably she had to take what chances she might, in any case. No matter! He lifted Molly bodily by the arms to pitch her into the carriage, and jumped in after her, slamming the door.