Talk of the Town

by Joan Smith

  Various outings with the Wintlocks occurred, and there was her aunt’s soiree still being planned and prepared, growing by leaps and bounds till they both wondered how the small apartment was to hold the more than fifty people already invited. There were letters to be written home telling Mama and Papa about her grand time, and there was as well the occasional visit from Mr. Colburn, who was becoming impatient with their slow progress. Not a page had he received from them.

  One event of much greater significance than all the others combined came to pass, and Effie had not the merest trace of a feeling connected with it to give them warning. Word had been drifting to the Prince Regent’s ears of a new Incognita on the London scene. In his set, the Incognita at Upper Grosvenor Square was not Miss Ingleside but her aunt. He had not personally clapped an eye on the delectable Mrs. Pealing since those ancient times when she had been a countess. He had some tender memories of her in her green youth, a dark-haired elf of a girl with blue eyes and the promise of a fullness of figure to come e’er long. He thought she must have ripened to a more appetizing armful by now, filled out a little, as he had done himself. The memory alone might not have impelled His Highness to have his team hitched up and himself laced into his creaking Cumberland corsets, but when it was reported to him that Beau was squiring the woman around town, he had a card sent to her—really, he must get her moved to a better address—and was soon following his card.

  Daphne was in alt to think of such a visitor—The First Gentleman of Europe—but Effie made little of it. “He used to be always with us on Half Moon Street—but when I was right on the corner of Piccadilly with Arthur, not after I moved across and a block north. I don’t believe he ever came to me after I was demoted to Mrs. Eglinton. Arthur was quite jealous of him. He was always jealous of the wrong ones."

  “What is he like?” Daphne asked eagerly.

  “He used to be all airs and graces, but Beau hasn’t a good word to say for him. Strange, too, for I thought they were inseparable. Something must have come up to cause a rift.”

  This remark would have revealed to anyone who had any small connection with Society just how far and how long Mrs. Pealing had been out of it. The rift had occurred over a year ago and was fast gathering to a head. The Beau, from his preeminent perch by the Prince Regent’s side, had taken to insulting all the great ones, but when he remarked casually about the Prince himself, “I made him what he is, and I can very well unmake him,” he went too far. He was on the brink of being unmade himself but was still hanging on to his laurels.

  “What should I wear?” Daphne asked next.

  “Just an afternoon gown, dear. Prinney wouldn’t want you to outshine him. He will be sporting some sort of a uniform, I make no doubt.”

  Miss Ingleside wore her best afternoon gown, a new rose-sprigged muslin with a wide sash at the waist and a rose-coloured ribbon in her hair. She felt terribly underdressed when His Highness arrived wearing a chestful of medals and ribbons, quite hiding his dark blue jacket. On his nether parts he wore a pair of yellow trousers and looked rather like an overgrown pear with a coat on. He came with the intention of casting off Lady Hertford, but with some slight misgivings as to the ravages of thirty years on Mrs. Pealing’s beauty, he brought along his present mistress for protective colouration, in case he did not wish to keep up any acquaintance with the new flirt.

  He hadn’t been there long before he decided to switch. Effie was as delightful as ever. Teeth still in good repair, and with a set of dimples (actually creases in her plump cheeks) when she smiled that he had forgotten. Comparing the two aging ladies as they sat side by side comparing each other, he had to give the palm to Mrs. Pealing. Besides the charm of novelty, her memories and conversation—all of matters thirty years old—recalled to him his golden youth. Campaigning for Fox, the parties at Carlton House, the building of his Pavilion at Brighton and the early revels there. She was as good as a tonic, and he was in need of a strong one the way the press and Parliament were treating him lately. He left a new man, about to take on a new woman, and as he descended the stairs, he met St. Felix on his way up.

  The Prince nodded, St. Felix bowed formally and said, “Your Highness,” and each wondered what the deuce the other was doing there. “The old biddy,” the Duke thought, while the Prince surmised, “It’d be the young filly he’s after,” and Lady Hertford had more than an inkling what was going on in both minds.

  Mrs. Pealing dashed to her room to write up the Prince’s visit in her diary, and Miss Ingleside sat smiling in satisfaction. Not knowing the relationship in which Lady Hertford stood to the Prince, nor what he had in mind with regard to her aunt, she was very happy, indeed, to see Effie achieve such a pinnacle. Daphne was positively glowing and looking very beautiful, indeed, in her new gown when St. Felix was announced, to top this splendid day. She didn’t immediately grasp the import of his opening volley.

  “What have you got against that pair?” was his first remark but saved from ill manners by the smile that accompanied it.

  “What? Oh—you cannot think we are holding him to ransom!”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you,” he replied, taking up a seat without waiting to be offered one.

  “No, no, we draw the line at royal dukes. You smaller fish are fair game, but Prince George and his brothers are above our touch.”

  “What was he doing here?” he asked. From having so often had Miss Ingleside on his mind, he felt he knew her better than he actually did and didn’t realize the question was an impertinence till it was spoken.

  “I don’t know. There is more than one gentleman whose reason for coming to our apartment is not quite clear to me. Yourself, for example.”

  “But I was invited the other day at Richmond Park, if you recall.”

  “Invited to bring us gold! I don’t see any.”

  “And you never will, Miss Ingleside. Not from me, in any case.”

  “You are come for another argument then,” she sighed wearily, while her eyes sparkled with happiness. “What are you going to tell me you won’t do this time?”

  Again he smiled, with something coming quite close to naturalness. “Not argue with you, as that is obviously what you have in mind to make me do.”

  “I think you just wanted the pleasure of admiring our new blue room again.”

  He ignored this repetition of his predilection for blue and said, “How did you enjoy your presentation at the Queen’s Drawing Room?”

  “It was a dead loss. There wasn’t a bit of scandal to keep me busy. I might as well have stayed away for all I gained there.”

  “No, you are not going to lure me into an argument, Miss Ingleside. I know that even you did not go there looking for scandal.”

  “You are determined to wave a white flag at me then?”

  “Oh, no, a white flag signifies surrender, does it not?”

  “And is it only to be a truce?”

  “Hostilities may reopen any moment. When I hear your intentions regarding my sister’s tea party, for instance,” he said leadingly. Yet he was becoming resigned to the idea she would attend and even taking some pleasure from it. With the Prince Regent calling on Mrs. Pealing, it was foolish to go on calling her an upstart. She was brazen and she had a regrettable history, but she had originally been of a good family and had apparently managed to reinstate herself within the bounds of Society.

  “So you know about that! I rather thought Lady Elizabeth had squirmed out from under your thumb and sent the card without your permission."

  “The card did not have my approval, as you rightly imagined.”

  “I am happy to hear your sister treats your commands with the disrespect they deserve.”

  “What makes you suppose I issued any commands in the matter?”

  “That disagreeable Friday face you are wearing. And don’t tell me you didn’t come here to argue. You mean to demand that we not accept the invitation. Well, I shall take the wind out of your sail and inform you we have sent a refusa
l.”

  “Indeed! May I know why?”

  “You may, if Lady Elizabeth decides to tell you. I cannot feel it necessary to make an explanation to anyone but her.”

  He thought he had come to tell her she must under no circumstances accept the invitation and suddenly found himself growing angry that she had refused it of her own accord. Mrs. Pealing scarcely figured in his reckonings at all. It had become an affair between himself and Miss Ingleside, and she had outdone him again. “But is it not what you wanted?” he asked, confused.

  “Certainly not! We never wanted anything of the sort. My aunt feels that because of the peculiar circumstances between herself and you—your family—it would not be quite proper for her to attend.” She observed him closely, to try to gauge whether he understood this reference to his father.

  He did not seem to. “The ‘peculiar circumstance’ between Sir Lawrence and Mrs. Pealing does not appear to bother my sister.”

  “No, it does not bother my aunt either, for there was very little to it after all. I speak of a circumstance much closer to home—to yourself, that is.”

  “If you mean to imply there was something between your aunt and myself, I might just point out to you what I should have thought would be clear...”

  “To the meanest capacity!” she threw in.

  He blinked. “The disparity between our ages. She is old enough to be my mother.” He thought they were joking and even let another smile come within ame’s ace of lightening his countenance.

  “And might almost have been your mother, during her affair with the late Duke of St. Felix.”

  The smile died aborning, and St. Felix’s brow darkened. He was silent for thirty seconds, catching his breath and digesting the infamy of her charge. “That is a lie!” he said in frigid accents. “My father was always a man of the highest principles. There has never been a whisper of any scandal connected with him. He lived the life of a saint.”

  “Saint Bacchus, perhaps!” she answered, her resentment at Effie’s ill usage coming to the boil.

  “If you put one word of such a calumny into that scandal-mongering obscenity you and your witch of an aunt are writing, I’ll drag you through every court in the land on a charge of libel!”

  “What a delightful prospect for you, Your Grace! A totally new mud lustre added to the family escutcheon. I daresay it would add thousands to the sale of the book.”

  “You are utterly without scruples. I thought blackmailing those who are guilty was the worst of it, but I see now there is a lower rung to your ladder of which I was unaware. You mean to smear the innocent as well with outright lies, after they are in their graves and unable to defend themselves. Well, I take leave to tell you, I will not stand still for this, Miss.”

  “I don’t expect you to. I’ll see you dance to my tune before many days are out.”

  He stared at her as though she were a devil incarnate and didn’t doubt for one moment she would do exactly as she threatened. Even in the midst of his anger, he knew he must protect the family name. “What is it you want from me?” he demanded.

  “A voucher to Almack’s,” she replied with a sweet, innocent smile, this having been mentioned as the one unattainable object.

  “Impossible! They have rules at Almack’s. It is restricted to ladies and gentlemen of quality.”

  “My father’s ancestors were amongst the first baronets created by James I.”

  “Impressive!” he said with a withering glance. “My ancestors were amongst the first dukes created by William the Conqueror five hundred years previously.”

  “And on my mother’s side, we are related..."

  “On your mother’s side you are, unfortunately, related to Mrs. Pealing. You might as well expect a voucher to heaven as to Almack’s.”

  “I haven’t given up hope of either one. And I’ll let you in on a little secret, Your Ancient Grace, I do not hold the two to be comparable as you seem to do. Heaven stands a little higher in my priorities.”

  “It is an odd way you go about securing your priorities.”

  “So it is, but efficient nevertheless.”

  “What bargain have you struck with the Almighty to wedge your way into the Celestial City?”

  “I have undertaken to lessen the pride of certain noble gentlemen who hold themselves very high. Pride, you must know, was an abhorred thing according to the Bible, to say nothing of going before a fall.”

  “You have the quotation, like everything else, inaccurate, Ma’am. Let me refer you to a more pertinent one. ‘A liar should be once heard, and thrice beaten!’”

  “I agree with you, Sir, and wonder that you lie to me. Ask your elderly friends and relatives whether your St. Papa-Duke was not in love with my aunt, whether he did not sit on her doorstep night after night, begging her to run off and marry him. Yes, my ‘unfortunate’ maternal relation might almost have been your mother. She was tempted to accept his persuasions, being divorced herself, but she could not care for the little actress he kept on the side. Neither did your mother, according to the memoirs.” She knowingly tampered with the truth to make him angrier and realized that the inkling she had given him of the truth had not been given in any form Aunt Effie would approve of; but it was really intolerable that he should speak so of Effie after she had saved his family from ruin.

  “We hear a good deal about these apocryphal memoirs. I make no doubt the two of you sit up nights inventing them and scribbling them in blood.”

  “No, no. Vitriol! Blue vitriol. Auntie dislikes red, and her blood is not the right shade of blue.”

  “I had not observed her to have much sense of discernment in her shadings of blue,” he answered with a contemptuous glance at the many tints of it present in the room.

  “Not so fine an eye for shading as your ladybird, perhaps, but I think Amy stole the idea from Auntie all the same.” She didn’t think it could be possible for him to look any angrier than he already did, but it was. He had jumped to his feet several insults ago and now took a step towards her chair. She thought he meant to strike her and was delighted rather than frightened. Even Papa had never been in such a towering rage as this.

  She continued with her attack. “When I am writing up my epilogue on the present generation, Society might be interested to hear what St. Bacchus Junior is up to between visits to the House of Parliament and the Archbishop’s Palace. Tell me, Your Grace, for I like to get all the little details correct, does your mistress favour the French spelling of Aimée for her name, or does she acknowledge her English background and call herself plain Amy?”

  He stood stock still, his face red with the stress of controlling his hands from going around her neck. “I don’t want to see your face or form at my sister’s party,” he said.

  “Then you had better stay away from it, for I have changed my mind—a lady’s prerogative you know, along with a little gossiping—and have decided to attend.”

  “I will stay away, and so will the rest of London.”

  “How disappointed your sister will be, after writing up all those cards and having a batch of food prepared. You are not very considerate of her. I have often suspected as much. Mr. Brummell will be disappointed, too. He has been begging me to go with him and has assured me it is the only place to be tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You are a good pair! An upstart clerk’s son and a..."

  “A baronet’s daughter. But the title only dates from James I, of course. Give us another five hundred years and we may achieve your degree of arrogance. Ah, you are leaving, Your Grace,” she said in surprise as he turned on his heel. “And I didn’t think to offer you a glass of wine. How remiss of me. I had the hemlock all prepared as a special treat for you, too.” The door slammed, and she was not sure he had appreciated her parting shot.

  Left alone, Miss Ingleside sat down with a pensive face. Now should she go to Lady Elizabeth’s tea party or not? Having refused made it difficult, and having pretended she would have Mr. Brummell’s escort made it alm
ost impossible to go, as she wished to, without him.

  But Fate, so kind to us in our less noble schemes, gave her a hand out of the latter difficulty. Having learned from the tattle-mongers that he had induced his fat enemy to call at Upper Grosvenor Square, Brummell must make sure the Prince continued his calls by a few more outings with Mrs. Pealing himself. He came the next morning with a bouquet of blue roses. That was impossible, but by purchasing white ones and leaving them stand in a solution of ink and water overnight, he had got a little of the liquid to go up into the petals and give them a blue veining.

  “Oh, Daphne, only look at this!” Effie gurgled, excessively pleased at the tribute. “Blue roses. It is a miracle. However did you think of it, Mr. Brummell?”

  “More to the point, how did you do it, Mr. Brummell?” Daphne asked, intrigued.

  “Roses are sweet, obliging things,” he answered with one of his sardonic smiles that promised a compliment so elaborate as to amount to an insult. “When I whispered into the petals’ ears that Mrs. Pealing’s favourite colour was blue, they grew so sad at their white tint that they turned blue in grief.”

  “You are absurd,” Daphne laughed, amused in spite of herself.

  “My absurdities are the making of me, Ma’am,” he agreed solemnly.

  “I have wondered what has made you the King of London. It wouldn’t do to suggest your tailor had anything to do with it.”

  “Oh, no, I made Weston, and quite a few others, respectable. Even that fellow, ah, Prinney, was accepted in Society for a few years while I extended my patronage to him.”

  “Absurd and dangerous,” Miss Ingleside warned him.

  “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. When I came to the city, it was struggling blindly for something. I surveyed the scene and could only deduce from the symptoms that absurdity was its goal. Having a certain knack for it, I raised it to an art form, and have been crowned King of the Land of Fools. But you and your aunt run me a close second,” he added.

  Effie looked offended, but the quick-witted Beau had been bored with this stuffed cushion since he had met her and sensed a mind more to his liking in the niece. “We entered the race quite inadvertently,” Daphne replied, understanding precisely what he was getting at and gaining a little more respect for the dandy by his assessment of himself and the world of London Society.