by M C Beaton
“But he is not for her,” said Mrs. Waverley, drying her eyes. “He would only break her heart.”
“We may have been mistaken in him,” said Felicity slowly.
All Mrs. Waverley’s fears of being abandoned came back. “I have not told you, Felicity dear, but there are things about him which I have learned which scandalize me. Pray be guided by me. He is a libertine and a rake and they never reform.”
“Are you sure of this?” asked Felicity.
“On my word of honor,” lied Mrs. Waverley.
“Then I would send him a courteous letter of thanks and a gift, and then I shall help you to keep Frederica away from him.”
“You are the dearest of all my girls,” cried Mrs. Waverley. “You must never leave me.”
“I promise,” said Felicity.
* The First Rebellion, Book I of “The Waverley Women”
Chapter Eight
The furor caused by this latest attempt on the Waverley jewels excited society for a few days. But as all invitations sent to the Waverley household were refused, and all callers turned from the door, the ton soon lost interest again.
Mrs. Ricketts took letters from Frederica to Lord Harry and then delivered his letters to her. The housekeeper had warned Frederica not to confide in Felicity. Mrs. Ricketts said that she often thought Mrs. Waverley only pretended to champion the rights of women, whereas Felicity believed every word she had been taught.
Had Colonel Bridie come to call, then Frederica would not have been so closely guarded. But he had not been near Mrs. Waverley for a week, and that lady grew increasingly depressed and could be heard saying loudly that it was a mistake to blame women for being fickle when men were much more so.
The colonel had, in fact, contracted a bad cold and had been confined to bed. He had not troubled to read any of the newspapers and so remained ignorant of the latest drama. He felt very ill done by as the days passed and no letter of concern appeared from Mrs. Waverley. At last he felt well enough to go for a short stroll on Primrose Hill. The rain clouds had rolled back at last and London lay spread out at his feet, glittering in the sunlight, new washed, lying under a sky of pure blue.
For the first time in days he realized that Mrs. Waverley could not possibly have guessed he had been ill. He decided to wait another day, until he was really stronger, and then go to see her. He had menservants in his gloomy house in Primrose Hill and he missed all the pleasure of being looked after by women that he had become accustomed to enjoying in Hanover Square.
He ambled back down the hill toward his house. When he came in view of it, he saw there was a carriage in front of his door with the royal arms emblazoned on the coach panels. He began to hurry, his heart beating hard.
As he hastened up to his front door, his butler opened it and said in an awed voice, “A messenger from His Majesty, The Prince Regent.”
The liveried messenger was standing in the hall. He handed the colonel a huge letter and bowed.
With feverish fingers, the colonel broke the enormous seal and groped for his quizzing glass. It was too dark in the hall, so he went out on the front steps with it.
It was a gigantic sheet of parchment, but the message was brief. He was summoned to Clarence House at the request of the Prince Regent. He was to present himself there at six that very evening.
He hastened back in. “Wait here.” he said breathlessly, “and I shall pen a reply.”
The messenger looked haughtily down his nose. “That will not be necessary, sir. Your presence, as a loyal subject, is expected.”
“Of course, of course,” said the colonel, crackling the parchment nervously in his square fingers.
By the time late afternoon arrived, the colonel was beginning to feel ill again with worry and nervous tension and rushing about. He had had to hire court dress at great expense and spent a whole hour being instructed as to how to walk easily with a dress sword girded about his waist.
It was only when his carriage was bowling southwards, in the direction of Clarence House, that a stab of sheer alarm hit him somewhere in the region of his stomach. Why did the prince want to see him? The prince had met him, but His Majesty had not seemed to be pleased by the presence of Mrs. Waverley.
The colonel thought hard. If Mrs. Waverley had offended the royal presence in any way, then he would swear he barely knew the woman.
Flambeaux were blazing outside Clarence House, the smell of burning resin tickling his nostrils as he climbed down from his carriage.
He clutched the letter, now much thumbed, in his gloved hands. He had to show it many times as he was transferred from hall to anteroom, anteroom to saloon, and then through a great number of rooms, being stopped in each doorway and having to produce the letter again and so finally to the prince’s bedchamber.
The Prince Regent was in his bedchamber, but not in bed. He was seated at a table in the middle of the vast, gilded room with several other men, playing cards. No one even bothered to look up and the colonel waited and sweated and waited and sweated, and began to wonder if he would have to stand at the doorway all night.
At last the prince looked up, saw him, and frowned. He said something to his companions who all rose and filed from the room, all of them looking at the colonel with open curiosity.
“Come forward,” commanded the prince when he found himself alone with the colonel.
The colonel’s sword seemed to have taken on a life of its own and to be determined to trip him up. He wrenched at it feverishly, so that it was hanging over his bottom, and approached the prince. The Prince Regent was wearing a new, nut brown wig, a blue coat embellished with jeweled orders, and white, buckskin breeches stretched to cracking point over his enormous thighs. The colonel was reminded of the nasty poem which called him The Prince of Whales.
He bowed and then tried to kneel and kiss the royal hand, but the end of his scabbard stuck in the floor and so he was confined to a half crouch.
“Rise and stand before us,” said the prince. “You are, we believe, Colonel James Bridie.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, an it please Your Majesty.”
“We met you t’other evening at the Heatherington woman’s.”
“Yes, sire.”
“With a certain Mrs. Waverley. Fat fainting woman.”
“Yes, sire.”
“You are an officer and a gentleman and it is your duty to serve me without question.”
“Indeed, sire, with my life.”
“Not asking that much, hey!” There was a long silence. The prince sat with his hands folded on his stomach. He then picked up a card and let it drop.
“We do not wish to see Mrs. Waverley again… in London.”
“Sire?”
“It does not please us. You must take the lady out of London and keep her there.”
“As my prisoner, sire?”
“As your wife. You are not married?”
“No, sire.”
“Well, then…”
The colonel looked at him with the pleading eyes of an old dog that has just received an unexpected whipping from its master. “Sire, Mrs. Waverley does not seem to hold with marriage. Perhaps if I explained your royal wish to—”
“No! You must persuade her and swear never to mention a word of this interview to anyone.”
Overawed and trembling, the poor colonel said, “I swear on my life.”
“We have made enquiries concerning you. You have a house and land in Shropshire… a place called Melden?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Give me your sword, Bridie.”
The colonel performed a sort of mad dance, twisting and turning to get the sword belt back round where it should be and then pulling and straining to get the wretched thing out of its scabbard.
“Kneel!”
The colonel struggled to his knees, the Apollo corset he had donned in order to get his dress breeches to fit creaking and straining like the timbers of a four-master rounding the Horn in a force-twelve gale.
The colonel got to his feet and looked down at the prince in a dazed way. “Mrs. Waverley may only know that you have received your title because your bravery has found favor with us. You will receive the official confirmation and papers as soon as the notice of your marriage has appeared in the newspapers.”
“Yes, sire.”
“Should Mrs. Waverley, or as she will soon be, Lady Melden, be seen in London again, I shall find ways to remove your title from you.”
“Yes, sire. Certainly, sire. May I ask…?”
“We thought we had made it clear you are to ask nothing. Nothing! Be off with you.”
“Yes, sire.” Bowing and scraping, the colonel made his way backward toward the door, proud, amid all his confusion and bewilderment, that he had not tripped over his sword once.
He strode through the ornately scarlet and gold rooms, back the way he had come, his head held high. In his brain, he heard celestial trumpets sound a fanfare.
Lord James Bridie, Baron Melden marched out to his carriage and then paused, his one foot on the step and his mouth hanging open in ludicrous dismay. What if she refused him?
By the time his carriage rolled into Hanover Square, he was in a greater state of terror than he had ever been at any time in the Prince Regent’s presence.
Mrs. Ricketts left him waiting in the hall and mounted the stairs with maddening slowness to announce his arrival.
He marched up and down the hall, his sword clanking against his dress spurs.
Then Mrs. Ricketts started to descend.
“Well?” called the colonel.
“Madam will see you now, sir.”
To Mrs. Ricketts’s amazement, the colonel bounded up the stairs past her, shouting, “See we are not disturbed or it will be the worse for you!”
Mrs. Waverley looked up in alarm as the colonel walked into the drawing room and then turned about and went back and locked the double doors.
“What is the meaning of this?” she cried, one plump hand fluttering up to her throat.
The colonel dropped to his knees with such force that he glided toward her across the polished floor on a small rug, as if sledging, and bumped against her knees.
“Be mine!” he cried.
“Colonel Bridie, you are drunk!”
“With love, madam!” he shouted, striking his heart. “And no longer colonel, but Lord James Bridie, Baron Melden.”
“What… how…?”
“This very evening, the Prince Regent himself summoned me. ‘You are the bravest man in England, James,’ he said, and there were tears of emotion coursing down his cheeks. Before, I felt unworthy of you, madam, and only that held me back. Now I wish to make you my baroness.”
Mrs. Waverley looked at him in a dazed way. “But—but—I do not think of marriage.”
The colonel seized one of her hands. “You have been alone in the world too long, Mrs. Waverley, a defenseless creature with no one to support you.”
“How very true,” said Mrs. Waverley, hanging her head.
“We will leave this decadent city and live in Shropshire like two lovebirds.”
“Pray rise and be seated, colonel,” begged Mrs. Waverley. “A little refreshment?”
“Not a drop, madam,” said the colonel, rising and pulling up a chair next to hers, “until I have your answer.”
“What of my girls?” asked Mrs. Waverley. “What of Frederica and Felicity?”
“They are not your flesh and blood. Leave them. Send them back where they came from. You have squandered your love and affection on them, and how do they repay you? By being a constant problem.”
“I cannot. What would people say?” Mrs. Waverley threw back her head. “I am admired throughout the world for my principles.”
“And what have they brought you?” demanded the colonel. “Who loves you except for this trusty soldier who lays his heart at your feet?”
A shrewd glint appeared in Mrs. Waverley’s pale eyes. “I am a rich woman, sir.”
“Leave your fortune with those ungrateful girls, if it will ease your conscience. I have money enough. What do I need of yours?” The colonel spoke the truth. All he wanted in life was to hang on to this most precious of titles.
A soft glow lit Mrs. Waverley’s eyes. “I believe you really mean that, Colonel, but there is a great deal of business to attend to. My money comes from coal mines in the north. Two girls such as Frederica and Felicity would not know how to handle such a large concern. Of course, I have my man of business, but he is guided by me.”
“Why should they have it all? Leave them this house and all that jewelry which has caused you so much distress.”
“But two such young girls alone in London…”
The colonel did not like either Felicity with her cynical eyes or Frederica with her odd gypsy ways and uncomfortable intelligence.
He looked at the floor and sighed. “If, however, you are determined that two such odd creatures, and not of your blood, mark you, should come between us… Two girls singularly lacking in love and gratitude… Ah, well.”
He made a move as if to rise.
“No, no!” cried Mrs. Waverley. “Pray do not be so hasty. You must understand all this has come as a great shock. I need time to think.”
“I was led to believe you cared for me a little,” said the colonel. “Perhaps you were only trifling with my affections, trying to break this old heart.”
Mrs. Waverley felt a heady sensation of power. And her mind was racing. She would be a married woman with a respectable husband. She would have a title. A tinge of spite lit up her eyes. Frederica and Felicity had always taken her great gratitude for granted. Had she not lavished love and attention and education on them? She would be away from the threat of further blackmail from that orphanage. She would be secure from anyone who might one day reveal her past. Let Frederica and Felicity fend for themselves as she had had to fend for herself for so many years. Her spinster friends would feel she had betrayed them. Had she not cried out against marriage? Let them cry out against her. She would not be in London to see or hear them.
“There is only one way I could marry you,” she said. “It would need to be an elopement and marriage by special licence.”
“Done, madam!” cried the colonel triumphantly. “We shall send a notice of our marriage to the London newspapers after it has taken place. But there is only one other leetle condition—I do not want to live in London ever again.”
“That is something I can easily agree to,” said Mrs. Waverley.
They talked for two hours after that, Mrs. Waverley occasionally showing alarming signs of being about to change her mind, and the colonel pretending to leave. Wrapped in an armor of happy selfishness, Mrs. Waverley did not trouble to even mention Lord Harry’s name or talk about Frederica’s capture.
At last it was agreed that he should call on her in the morning and they would go together to the City to discuss matters with Mrs. Waverley’s lawyers and man of business.
“Who was your husband, my love?” asked the colonel. The doors had been unlocked and Mrs. Ricketts had brought in champagne and cakes, her eyes gleaming with curiosity.
“I do not want to talk about him,” said Mrs. Waverley, glancing nervously toward the now open doors to make sure the housekeeper was not standing on the landing, eavesdropping. “He was a beast.”
“Ah, so that is what made you so bitter against the idea of marriage. Oh, my poor crushed blossom.”
And with that phrase, all Mrs. Waverley’s defenses collapsed. She felt like a blushing virgin again, and tittered and sighed and flirted with her eyes over the rim of her champagne glass.
After the colonel had left, she rang the bell and asked Mrs. Ricketts to fetch Felicity and Frederica.
When they came in, she looked at them with pale, cold eyes.
“Do you
love me?” she asked.
To Frederica and Felicity it was simply a recurrence of one of Mrs. Waverley’s many emotionally blackmailing scenes. Both looked as hot and uncomfortable as they felt.
“You must realize, Mrs. Waverley,” said Frederica, “that we are both most grateful to you and always will be.”
“Ah, how cold you are! If you but knew… Come and kiss me.”
They walked reluctantly forward and each stooped and placed a brief kiss on Mrs. Waverley’s, rouged cheek.
“Mrs. Waverley,” said Frederica, “why is it that the orphanage is so reluctant to give us any information? When Tredair tried, they sent a messenger to warn you, and the same with Lord Harry. Warn you of what? I wonder.”
Mrs. Waverley’s face hardened. “Warn me, quite rightly, of nosy people meddling in my affairs. You know as much of your background as I do.”
“I cannot be convinced of that,” said Frederica slowly. “There is some mystery—”
“The only mystery,” yelled Mrs. Waverley, working herself up into one of her rages, “is your ongoing lack of love and affection. You do not deserve a benefactress such as I. Vipers that I have nourished in my bosom.” Her voice rose to a scream. “I despise you!”
“Mrs. Waverley,” said Felicity, “if you would but listen—”
Mrs. Waverley rose to her feet, threw back her head, put one hand on her brow, and with the other hand pointed to the door. “Begone!” she said awfully.
“What on earth came over her tonight?” asked Frederica as she and Felicity walked up the stairs together.
“Oh, I think it was just one of her usual scenes. Too much champagne.”
“Sometimes,” said Frederica, “I cannot help but feel she has the right of it. We are a pair of cold fish, you know.”
“That is because she does not love us and never has,” said Felicity practically. “She took us for our looks. She went shopping for a family and she got us. Have you ever noticed in her any genuine affection or tenderness? Have you ever noticed anything other than a desire to keep us close so that she will not be alone in her old age? But I am grateful to her. Very. And she does have sound principles and sticks by them. We do lead a confined life, but think what our lives might have been like otherwise. I trust you have not been seeing Lord Harry again, Frederica.”
