Barbara Metzger (8 page)

Marie was different. Her mother was a housekeeper, so she had been raised with the children of a great estate. She was used to the limbo of governesses and companions, and women who were educated beyond their usefulness as maids and dressers. She was polite without being deferent and friendly without being encroaching. She never asked about Cristabel’s circumstances, so Miss Swann had to curb her own curiosity, which was hard, since she had little to occupy her at these times between headaches and sleepiness. Marie, on the other hand, was always sewing.

“Are you a seamstress, then?”

“I do piecework. The other girls are always tearing a hem or ripping a flounce. Sometimes I’ll copy a gown for them from the fashion plates. It’s extra money.”

“Do you think you could…? I’d pay you, of course.” Cristabel plucked at the brown bombazine dress she wore.

“I was hoping you’d ask! I kept thinking you would feel so much better in brighter colors, but I didn’t want to offend, if you were in mourning.”

“No, only in what Miss Meadow deemed respectable garb.”

“Grain sacks, more like,” and they both laughed, the friendship sprouting on the fertile ground of fashion. Marie was running up and down the stairs with ladies’ magazines and pattern pieces, swatches of colors and textures to debate and select. She wouldn’t hear of Cristabel accompanying her on the shopping expedition once their lists were complete. “What, in this damp? Mac would have my head on a platter.” Marie made no comment on Cristabel’s pink cheeks, only reassuring her that this was just a preliminary foray to Grafton’s, where the quality was high, the prices low.

“As soon as you are up and about, there’s the Pantheon Bazaar and the silk warehouses…and there are more booteries and corsetieres than you can shake a feather at. Plumasiers too, of course. What we need to do is make you presentable enough to go shopping!”

“I’d be happy just to go for a walk, but Fanny and Mac—Major MacDermott say I mustn’t yet.”

“They’re quite right. You need to be much stronger. Why, you can hardly hold your head up now. You need to loll around eating all the pastries Fanny buys and the bonbons Mac brings you so I won’t have to keep letting out seams later. What’s more, no lady of fashion would be caught dead in a gown buttoned up to the throat, and bones aren’t what’s meant to show in a décolletage.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t—”

“Why not? You’ve got the perfect figure for it. Wait till you get out and see what the duchesses and grande dames are wearing. Next to nothing, that’s what. You won’t be able to tell the titled ladies from the…the…”

“The fashionably impure? I’m not such a green gudgeon, you know. Such things are talked about, even in Bath.” She didn’t mention that such women were only mentioned in whispers, behind schoolmistresses’ backs. Neither did she see the need to boast that she would recognize a fast woman instantly. Hadn’t she just seen that rouged redhead at Harwood House? That entire sequence was too embarrassing to discuss with gentle Marie, who, for all her London sophistication—town bronze, Fanny called it—was too polite to utter the words. It was the whole terrible memory, furthermore, which was most likely causing Cristabel’s nightmares!

Marie was just as eager to change the subject. “In the meantime, why don’t you let me and Fanny do something about your hair?”

“My hair?” Cristabel had pulled her hair back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck ever since she stopped wearing it loose. The style was one of dignity, maturity—and boredom, now that she thought about it. A new life, new clothes, new friends. Why not a new hairstyle?

The two girls primped and pulled. They washed her hair with lemon juice and ale, eggs and honey, and made her sit by the fireplace to dry it. Then they started snipping and crimping. Having friends was maybe the best part, Cristabel mused, while she drowsed in the chair.

For all her years at the academy, Cristabel had no friends, not one single soul to care if she even reached London, or to miss her. Oh, the young girls in her room might weep over her leaving—for a day. They were past the age when anyone who was kind to them became a substitute mother, and Cristabel was too young for that role anyway, but they had liked her, she knew. Of course they did, she bought them things! It was one of her discoveries in her first months at Miss Meadow’s, that given enough to play with, youngsters would leave her own things alone. Just like puppies. So she brought them the lending library novels and colored chalk and jackstraws, and in return they gave her a modicum of privacy, along with some affection.

If she was being harsh, considering their fondness a shallow, store-bought commodity, it was from experience. She recalled their tender parting gifts, just as she remembered her reign by terror, threatening to cut their eyelashes off while they slept, if they ever dared to blacken them with boot polish again. She also thought back to all the other years of young girls who, once out of her room and her care, found likelier objects of respect, idolizing the older girls and barely acknowledging the music teacher.

Some of the less haughty senior girls could have been her friends, especially when she first came and was near to them in age. To Cristabel, coming from a small country vicarage, however, they seemed to speak a different language. When the girls reviewed the evening lesson with Miss Meadow, memorizing the London patronesses to whom they must be polite, Cristabel could only wonder. “How peculiar,” she chided them. “I was taught to be polite to everyone,” which earned her a reputation for quixotic notions and fusty opinions. There was nothing she could teach them about drawing room behavior except an etude, so they ignored her.

The other instructors were older, harried, living for their holidays and a nod of approval from the headmistress. Like Miss Meadow, their satisfaction seemed to come with creating another paradigm of British debutante, ready to take her place on the marriage mart for auction to the highest bidder. The voice teacher would be the only one missing Cristabel, she’d bet, if only for all the extra work that would fall on Miss Macklin’s shoulders. As for Miss Meadow—

“There, now you can look,” Marie told her, interrupting Cristabel’s reverie before she could fall into sleep and nightmare.

“Ain’t it a treat? I never would have thought it, even with my mum’s receipts. One time she did up my sister Bonnie’s hair and it all turned green. Before it fell out.”

“Fanny, you never tried that out on me!” Cristabel shrieked. Her bun may have been severe, but it was better than being bald!

“Hush, Fanny, go fetch the mirror.”

Cristabel could, indeed, have had no hair at all for the shock of her image. That streaky, stringy hair of hers was suddenly gold but not blonde, honey-colored but not brown, and it fluffed! Little curls actually bounced as she moved her head and tickled the back of her neck. What remained of the despised bun was a seemingly artless twist of curls at the top of her head.

“Won’t I seem even taller?” she asked doubtfully.

“You are tall,” Marie answered firmly. “And graceful and quite lovely.”

“I bet Mac won’t even recognize you, Miss Cristabel.”

“I don’t recognize me, Fanny!” she said in amazement.

“Now all it needs is for me to finish the new blue gown and for you to be well enough for an outing. You’ll set all of London by its ear. Or maybe one gentleman in particular?” Marie teased.

Marie never liked to talk about her own beau. He was in the country, that was all she said the only time Cristabel asked, and looked too sad for Cristabel to pry further. That didn’t stop Marie from bringing blushes to Cristabel’s cheeks, though, with her taunts about the handsome Highlander.

Blushes, at her age!

A beau, at her age? Cristabel wasn’t sure, which did not stop her from speculating, naturally. Those air castles of her dreams—her much more pleasant waking dreams—were now filled with air babies, two boys in kilts and sidebars, and a blond-haired and dimpled little girl. She was just trying them for size, of course.

There was no denying the major’s attentiveness and kindness, however. He was forever popping in with little gifts to cheer her, candy to tempt her appetite, books so she wouldn’t struggle with the ledgers before she was recovered, flowers to brighten her rooms. He had a knack for knowing her tastes, finding Miss Austen’s latest novel, bringing nosegays of daisies and jonquils instead of more flamboyant bouquets.

“Major” and “miss” soon turned to Lyle and Cristabel; before long he was calling her
ma belle
and then simply Belle. She could not bring herself to call him Mac like everyone else, nor could she deny him the familiarity of the pet name, not when he spoke it with such fondness.

She had a hard time, for that matter, refusing to take tea with him after dinner anymore, fearing it would cost her his company, even though she felt the heaviness on her stomach was contributing to her disturbed sleep. It was a standoff, however, for his company contributed to her sense of well-being. His smiles, gentle flattery, and tender concern added more to her blossoming than any of Fanny’s possets. He cared for her!

“But you cannot keep me wrapped in cotton wool, Lyle. There is so much to be done. I thought that if I could get the kitchen in order and hire a cook, the boarders would take their meals here, for an additional fee, of course. And there’s the attic floor. If some of the walls were knocked down, it might make a charming suite for a young family. And the yard needs seeing to, now that the weather is turning, and—”

“Hold,” he said, so dismayed that she would think of overtaxing herself that he stumbled over his words. “Soon. That is, too soon. Too much, too soon. There’s no hurry, and you’re not fully recovered and the weather—”

“How kind you are, Lyle, to worry so about me. I really do appreciate your consideration, but I must start doing things.”

“Of course you must,” he told her, the ready grin returning to his face. “You’ve been in the house too long, that’s all, and I know just the thing. I’ve been impatient myself, wanting to be the one to show you your first glimpse of London and to witness London’s first sight of you.” His blue eyes twinkled as she smiled at the implied compliment, as he’d intended. “You’ll set them by the ears,
ma belle,
see if all the swells in Rotten Row don’t stare.”

“They don’t really stare, Lyle, do they?”

“Of course they do, that’s why they come. You’ll see for yourself, tomorrow afternoon, if it is warm enough. I’ll hire a carriage and we’ll ride in the park, maybe even see Prinny. That’ll put roses in your cheeks, my dear.”

Needless to say, Cristabel consigned all those lists of housekeeping chores to a rainy day—and prayed it wouldn’t be tomorrow, please.

*

“It’s been damn near a week, Mac, ’n no one’s come callin’ or sendin’ a message. Not even a inquiry. And she ain’t sent anyone to post a letter for ’er, neither. What’s that do to your cork-brained theories?”

MacDermott was disarranging his hair again. “Devil if I know. We cannot keep drugging her either. She’s been tossing blunt around though. Gave Fanny a nice roll for foodstuffs, and sent Marie off for yard goods and trimmings.”

“Think she’s got a bundle, then? She ain’t been to no bank.”

“You’ll have to find out. I’m taking her out tomorrow afternoon. See what you can uncover in her rooms. Look in those books she brought, and that portmanteau.”

“You don’t have to spell it out for me, bucko. Mayhap you’ll explain instead about takin’ ’er to the park for the world to see.”

“The chit’s like a plum ready to fall. I mean to see whose lap she lands in.”

“Yours wouldn’t be one of those standin’ by, just in case, would it?”

“Perhaps, depending on what you find in her room.”

“Mayhaps she keeps ’er blunt ’n important papers on ’er, what then?”

“Then maybe I’ll be the one to find them, after all.”

Chapter Eight

“It’s too low.”

“It’s fashionable.”

“It’s indecent!” The dress was exquisite, what there was of it. Cristabel finally had her cornflower blue gown, tied with pink ribbons under the high waist and edged with a band of pink at the hem. Her golden curls peeked out from a chip-straw bonnet tied with matching ribbons, the bow brushing her cheek. The simplicity of the outfit accentuated her height and elegance—and her bosom.

Marie wouldn’t heed her complaints, only repeating that the ensemble was modest by the standards of the day, and she’d see for herself as soon as she stopped dithering and joined the major outside.

“What’s more,” her friend told her, “that scrap of lace you want me to add would only ruin the lines.” So Cristabel appealed to Fanny, who was sitting on the floor playing with the kitten, grinning with pride.

“It’s all the crack, Miss Cristabel, really it is. It’d be different if you had no shape to mention. Then you’d want to hide what you didn’t have, kind of. ’Sides, you’ll need a shawl anyway, till you get to the park. You’re not going to waste all my hard work by getting another chill. Why, it was my pa’s Aunt Cora what moved to Basingstoke who lived through the typhus, only to go”—snap—“just like that, the day after getting her feet wet in a rain shower.”

Cristabel laughed as Marie draped the paisley silk around her shoulders. “I’m sure this will keep me warm and dry,” she said, tugging it closer, to Marie’s disgust.

Lyle’s reaction was all she could have wanted. His mock astonishment, his bow to her beauty and homage to her sparkling blue eyes and creamy skin were just what she needed to insure her happiness. Until she saw all the other women in the open carriage.

“It was such a lovely day, I thought I would give some of the girls a treat. The carriage has lots of room; I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not,” she replied politely, if insincerely, then asked, “Shouldn’t they be at work?” How catty she sounded!

“Kitty is between positions, Alice has a free afternoon, Gwen…”

At least Marie was correct, her own outfit was nowhere near the most revealing. Still, the day’s light dimmed a bit for Cristabel. It was just that these girls, now laughing and making room for her and Lyle, were not her personal favorites, she told herself, not that she wanted to have the handsome major to herself. Sure.

Well, more fool was she for thinking such an engaging man would reserve his admiration just for her. He laughed and joked with the others, complimenting them as extravagantly as he had Cristabel, to their giddy delight and Cristabel’s disappointment.

Still, she wouldn’t let a little setback ruin her pleasure in the day, the warm sunlight, her new outfit, her top-of-the-trees escort, as Kitty described him. Lyle was wearing that powder blue jacket she’d first seen and yellow pantaloons. He had big silver buttons, a flowered waistcoat, and a ruffled cravat. Complete to a shade, Alice pronounced. Cristabel thought so, too, though she didn’t feel it was quite the thing to say. Some of the other jokes and comments seemed a bit warm to Cristabel also, but she put that down to a working class lack of reserve or London’s looser ways. Trying not to be judgmental, for this was, after all, their afternoon off, Cristabel settled back in her corner of the carriage and ignored the silly prattle around her in favor of the wider spectacle.

As they neared the park, the roads were crowded, so traffic moved slowly. Cristabel had time to note the variety of vehicles, the dress of the pedestrians. Marie had been right about the scanty gowns: the only thing keeping many of the women warm was their escorts’ smiles. She had also been wise in her warning that there was no telling baronesses from bachelor fare.

Those women at the gates of the park, now those—Mac directed her attention to a smart racing curricle with yellow-picked wheels so her suspicions were confirmed. After that, inside the park itself, the lines were more finely drawn and Cristabel needed Kitty to tell her that the lovely woman in the pink-lined carriage, with her companion demurely beside her, was Harriet Wilson, the best known of all of London’s demi mondaine. On the other side of the carriage drive, surrounded by a host of admirers, was a young woman at the reins of a dashing phaeton. This female, Kitty pointed out, was none other than Lady Hanneford, darling of the
ton,
crowned the Incomparable of this season’s debutantes.

Cristabel might feel her lack of worldly wisdom, but she was saved from appearing a goggle-eyed provincial by her hat’s brim, and by the fact that everyone was indeed staring at everyone else. Especially the men.

Cristabel couldn’t feel comfortable under the scrutiny, but the girls would laugh, and Mac often waved back, so it must be acceptable. Cristabel couldn’t help smiling herself sometimes, at the beautiful horses with their buckskin-breeched riders, or the mincing dandies with their striped waistcoats and dish-sized buttons.

The women in their sedate broughams or their military-style riding habits were almost as obvious in their inspections of the carriage’s occupants as the men, only less friendly, which Cristabel could well understand. If one could not be sure of greeting a high-flyer or a high-stickler, reticence was the safer course. Still, the women had no need to turn away, Cristabel bristled. They wouldn’t be contaminated by the mere sight of the lower orders!

The afternoon parade swirled on with Cristabel trying to get a glimpse of Brummell, or the unicorn rig Lyle admired. Instead, she got a headache.

“Do you think we might stop awhile, Major? My head is spinning from the motion.”

“‘Ma belle,
forgive me! I wasn’t thinking! Here you are on your first outing, and I’ve been so busy catching envious looks I didn’t notice you might be tiring. Here, we’ll stop by those trees. Perhaps a stroll would do you better.”

Mac forgot all about the promised walk, however, for as soon as their carriage came to a halt, a group of scarlet-uniformed riders trotted over. The officers dismounted, then made a game of racing to hand Kitty and Gwen and Alice down, clamoring for introductions. Cristabel didn’t trust those restless horses so close, and the officers’ greetings seemed overloud. Lyle’s friends couldn’t be foxed, could they?

“I think I’ll sit in the carriage a moment, Lyle, and catch my breath. You go make the introductions.”

He raised her hand to his lips before climbing down.

* * *

“I tell you, Perry, it’s the prettiest sight I’ve ever seen! England in the springtime, the trees starting to get new leaves, the grass turning that yellow-green of new growth.”

“The chits in their skimpy gowns. I don’t know why we couldn’t take a drive to Richmond, if you were anxious to see the countryside.
This
ain’t pretty scenery, Kenley.”

“It is to me, Perry, indeed it is.”

The new Viscount Winstoke was sitting up in Perry Adler’s high-perch phaeton, drinking in all the flavors of Hyde Park like wine. The colors, the movement, the spectacle of the
ton
on the strut, he was drunk with his first sight of the world outside Harwood House in over a month. That he could see at all was cause enough to rejoice, but this, this was the bubbles in the champagne!

Perry would rather have ale. That Corinthian saw a drive in the park as a waste of harnessing his cattle. He’d rather be tooling his high-bred pair on the open road, instead of jobbing at their mouths to keep them at the slow pace of the carriage drive while his friend ogled the ladies.

“Not in the petticoat line, you know.”

“I know, Perry. You’re the best of good fellows for carting me about. But pull up, do. Look at the vision over there, the one in the carriage near those trees, in the blue gown. Even a dyed-in-the-wool misogynist would have to have his heart melted at such a picture. I bet she has blue eyes, too.”

“Haymarket ware,” was Perry’s succinct reply.

“Never say so. I didn’t cut my eye teeth yesterday, you know. That gown, the simple bonnet. No jewelry, either.”

“Bound to be,” his friend insisted. “She’s with MacDermott, ain’t she?”

“I thought he joined up with the Highlanders.”

“Yes, when his uncle bought his commission, rather than have him bring any more scandals into the family.”

“But that doesn’t brand her”—nodding at the woman he hadn’t taken his eyes off—“as a lightskirt.”

“She’s not as flashy as MacDermott’s usual style, but you can bet she’s in his stable, or will be. There’s a house of accommodation out in Kensington.”

The viscount was disappointed to hear his swan was a soiled dove, which he couldn’t deny, seeing MacDermott kiss her hand. Still, the disdain in Perry’s voice was surprising. “What’s so bad about a bordello? Don’t say you’ve gone Puritan on me! Just think, such places get the muslin trade off the streets. And where else are the ladybirds going to sleep? No respectable place would have them. I know of a rooming house in Kensington, in fact, where the landlady would have a straw damsel drawn and quartered.”

“It ain’t the house,” Perry explained. “It’s that dirty dish himself. ‘Ma’ MacDermott, they call him. I mean, an abyss is one thing, but a gentleman taking a fee for ‘making introductions’ goes beyond the pale. They’re not happy about it at Whitehall either, I hear.”

“What, he’s still an officer?”

“Not if Wellington has anything to say about it. MacDermott got invalided home, all right, but no one saw him get injured. It wasn’t at the front lines, for sure, where his men were cut down without a commanding officer to relay orders. There’s even a rumor about whose gun fired the shot into his leg.”

“Devil a bit, no wonder you call him a loose screw. I suppose the rich uncle is pleading his case?”

“Wouldn’t you, if there was hope he might get shipped back to the front?”

Lord Winstoke gave a last, lingering look at the willowy blonde. “It’s a deuced shame, still and all.”

“I can drive over if you want,” Perry offered, starting his horses.

“No, if I decide to mount a mistress, I won’t need any man-milliner to handle the negotiations, nor would I share her with any man who had the price.”

Major MacDermott remembered Cristabel’s presence when he saw the smart rig turn to come past. “Belle,” he called, hurrying back to her side, “look who’s coming. It’s Viscount Winstoke and Mr. Adler.” His shout was louder than necessary, it seemed to Cristabel, who was already a tad miffed at being ignored for so long on this, her special outing; now he was making her the center of more vulgar attention. The two men may have been his close associates, but, really now, the major should have known better. She couldn’t help noticing that the men were a great deal more restrained in acknowledging MacDermott’s hail. The driver merely flicked his whip; the other, taller gentleman nodded and raised one corner of his mouth.

Something about that sardonic half smile tickled the back of her memory where she couldn’t reach. She would remember him now, that was for sure. Mr. Adler’s team was a superb pair of matched grays, and both men were dressed to the height of elegance, yet it was the expression on the dark-haired Lord Winstoke’s chiseled face that made the lasting impression. He had character, that was it. He had a firm jaw and an assertive nose, and thick black curls tumbling down his forehead. He was handsome in a very different way from Lyle, seasoned, confident, mature—and that smirk had changed to a tender, wistful smile in the moment the carriages passed and he looked directly into her eyes. That was what she would remember most.

Lyle was staring after the carriage and trying very hard not to rumple today’s hairstyle, the Windswept. If he were home it would be more like gale-tossed, but for now he had to make do with twirling his cane, which flew out of control and struck one of the high-strung horses. Being pelted in the rump by an object falling out of the sky naturally unnerved the beast, who took to bucking and kicking, which set the officers to running and cursing, and Alice to high-pitched squealing. Which of course set the other horses off, plus one lady’s mount on the carriage path, and Kitty, who was looking for a pair of strong arms into which to swoon.

Cristabel fled. Rather than sit high and conspicuous in the midst of a dreadful scene, she scrambled down from the carriage and tried to blend into the shade under the trees. Totally out of patience with Mac now—the name seemed to suit him just fine suddenly—she kept walking.

Proper young ladies do not wander about London by themselves. Cristabel knew that precept well, and ignored it. This was the park, not the city, and her companions were not far away. She’d seen Gwen stroll off with one of the Army men earlier, and no one except Cristabel had looked shocked, so a lot of Miss Meadow’s rules must not apply to ladies without a capital L. Furthermore, she told herself as she continued on past the trees to a secluded grassy area, schoolmistresses had always been exempt. A student was not allowed to set a dainty little slipper-shod foot outside the academy without a maid—or a teacher!—in attendance. The chances of a servant being delegated to follow an instructor’s shabby footsteps were so low as to be laughable.

In fact, Cristabel had to chuckle, picturing Miss Meadow’s reaction to the fast London ways. She’d go all pinch-faced and puff-chested, and start gabbling like a chicken with a fox in the henhouse. And it didn’t matter! The sun was shining, Cristabel had her house and her harp, and Miss Meadow could go hang! To prove her point, Cristabel took her bonnet off and swung it by its ribbons, lifting her face to the sun and laughing out loud.

* * *

Lord Winstoke also wandered away from his friends. Perry had been stopped by two Belcher-tied members of the Four-in-Hand Club to discuss the merits of Lord Shearhaven’s racing stables, soon to go on the auction block. The conversation could go on for hours, Kenley knew, tediously detailed, statistically researched, and excruciatingly boring to one who was not horse-mad. He liked horses well enough, and was looking forward to renewing his acquaintance with the breed as soon as his papers were all processed and the investiture was performed. Then he could finally go home and see if an old salt remembered how to sit a horse without embarrassing himself in front of the
ton.
As for driving, he’d had deuced little experience with the sport, with fifteen years at sea. He’d have to learn, but not today.