Felicity and the Damaged Reputation: A witty, sweet Regency Romance

by Alicia Cameron

  Wealth, had thought Delphine, was already having some benefits.

  ***

  'The richest?'

  'Oozing'

  'How wonderfully vulgar you are, Hildegard. How came town to be ignorant of this? If we cannot trust the wag tongues, what use have they?'

  'Lived with her mother in the country. Religious women.'

  'As are we all. Young, then?'

  'Practically past her prime. Twenty-two, I believe.’

  'Youth gone and the bloom left her cheek. But life teaches us that there are always trials to be borne.'

  'Old Midas says she is richer even than him.'

  'Then I suppose we must forgive her the face.'

  'Her face?'

  'The face that prevented the rich mama from presenting her to the town.'

  'Foggy saw her. No disfigurement that he could see. Just dresses in an old out-dated manner - oddly, he said.'

  'Well, Foggy himself dresses oddly so we'll give little credence to that... I do hope it doesn't start a new fashion. Just when society has settled to a dream of classicism - it would be bad manners for a rich young debutante to attempt a coup. I should have to cut my hair. But a wondrously rich orphan with no obvious disfigurement. It’s a rare, unprotected, prize.'

  'As to that, there are a number of maternal aunts.'

  Gascoigne sighed. 'It is ever thus. Who?'

  'Well, Lady Carswell, Foggy’s mother, of course, Mrs Lynfield, and Lady Mags Pelleter.'

  'Good God! As well take on the Duke.'

  ‘Wellington might be preferable to Lady Mags. Well, anyway, I believe I will try my luck at the Castlereigh's ball where it is rumoured she will make her first appearance!'

  'So, I suppose, must I. The hounds are even now baying at my door. How desperately dull. Should I wear a wig, do you think, to curry favour?'

  'Yes. It sounds odd - hair a mile high like portraits of one's grandmamma, Foggy says.’

  ***

  Delphine Delacroix was sitting on her Aunt Sybilla's pale gold covered settee which matched another three such (plus several chairs) in her aunt's commodious morning room in Russell Square. Mrs Sybilla Lynfield was the richest of her sisters, having failed, happily, to catch a poor aristocrat like the others. Mr Lynfield was handsome, rich and kind, delighting in his plump and amusing little woman. Fifty now, her French embroidered muslin dress was in a rich green colour that cleverly complimented the red in her hair. This was styled in the latest (and daring) short crop, enhanced today by a broad green silk band.

  Her niece was wearing a heavily corseted blue brocade dress, which may make some suitable upholstery for any number of chairs, and her brown hair (despite the strict instructions given by her hostess to her lady's maid) was piled on her head precariously in coils and rolls (no doubt some of them false) with an ornate pleated ribbon arrangement threaded though. One ringlet hung over her shoulder to finish it. It was surprising that she did not also wear powder and patch. She sat perfectly straight in her chair and did not move. Her face had regular features, was triangular in shape; her large turquoise eyes could have offered it distinction, but as their expression was as closed off and cold as her mother's, they failed to do so.

  Here sat the richest unmarried girl in England, thought Mrs Lynfield, and much good has it done her.

  It had been thought by the three aunts that Sybilla, not having a daughter to bring out, would be the person best suited to take Delphine in charge after the strict period of mourning had passed. They had all determined to rescue her from Delacroix House, where she had lived as a bird in a gilded cage all her life, speaking only to her mother and to servants, allowed no visitors. Mrs Lynfield herself had, five years ago, written to her sister offering to bring the girl out - but she had received no reply.

  Mrs Sybilla Lynfield had been chosen to house the girl, since it was obvious that her sisters' as yet unmarried daughters (Christiana Carswell and Lady Roberta Pelleter, both thankfully pretty) would get stampeded underfoot in the attempt to get near Miss Delacroix's fortune. Mrs Lynfield, with only a son away at sea, had happily agreed.

  Mr Lynfield (with a change from his usual suave tone) had, last evening, grasped Delphine’s shoulders, which caused her to stiffen, and said, ‘you are very welcome here, my dear girl.’ He’d leaned forward and kissed the girl’s cheek, which had caused her eyes to enlarge in shock, as though she had been struck.

  When Lord Peregrine (Pinky to his friends), also there with the family to welcome her, had tried his inarticulate best to express his feelings on the occasion, she had almost jumped. Mind you, the big, , face of his lordship coming towards one was a trial, but he meant well. As different as could be to Mr Lynfield’s debonair person, he was bluff and a little overweight and heavily dependent on his charming wife. Eloise, the kindest of the sisters, had become engaged to the tortured young man in her first season precisely because he was always strangled with embarrassment when asked to speak to young ladies. Her compassionate heart had sought to make him more comfortable, and eventually he proposed, with Eloise filling in a great many blanks in his declaration with imagination, and she had consented. Lord Carswell, last evening, had made do with patting his niece’s arm, which had caused the girl to look at him as if he were an escaped lunatic. Which was unfair, thought Sybilla, he was only an idiot.

  It had seemed that all that would be needed to launch her niece on the world was to take her to the best dressmaker in town and update her antiquated (if expensive) wardrobe, have her hair done, and steer her past the shoals of fortune hunters towards some worthy match.

  But her niece had proved more difficult than she had imagined. To all her expositions of the latest modern fashions she had asked 'Must I?' and when her aunt had said peevishly that she thought it would be a treat for her, said firmly, ‘It is not.’

  ‘Well, it would be a treat for me!’ said her exasperated aunt. ‘You really cannot be seen in London looking such a fright.’

  There was a flicker in Delphine’s eye at this, and her soft-hearted aunt was stricken with guilt. ‘I did not mean you, but only your clothes.’

  ‘My mama had this fabric imported from Italy at great expense, and had it made in the village by a seamstress who once worked in the finest London establishments.’ She heard her aunt mutter, ‘Thirty years ago!’ but ignored it. ‘I must suppose that the cost of my gown is vastly superior to yours.’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Sybilla Lynfield, acidly, ‘and if you were a cushion, or a dining chair, or some such thing, I would consider you very elegantly appointed. But as you are a young lady making her debut in the polite world, you will wear something fitting.’

  The two sets of eyes met each other and Delphine’s cool turquoise ones were rather surprised at the fire in her erstwhile kind aunt’s. The eyes held for perhaps a minute, then Delphine rose calmly. ‘I shall consider the matter,’ she said regally and moved from the room.

  Her aunt sat with a phoph! on a well upholstered chair and looked at the tall, ancient figure of her butler, who allowed himself to meet her eye briefly. ‘I do not know what to do with that girl, Fiennes!’ she confided, beyond convention.

  ‘A great deal of spirit,’ the butler muttered, with a cough.

  ‘Is that what it is called? More like Emilia’s-’ she said referencing her dead sister, but she recalled herself. Fiennes knew all her sisters, having worked for her father before her, but it was unbecoming to discuss such things with him. Their eyes met and she did not have to finish with “stubbornness” for him to understand it.

  ***

  Mr Rigby-Blythe had the veiled young lady ushered into his office, reflecting that the discretion of the veils was quite redundant since the dress of the last age (this time a voluminous cloak of purple velvet over such a profusion of lavender silk as would fashion evening gowns for three young ladies of today) made it quite unnecessary to await the lifting of the veil, to say:

  ‘Miss Delacroix, a pleasure.’

  ‘Mr Rig
by-Blythe. We may converse at last.’

  Seeing her to the seat beside his large mahogany desk, his eyes twinkled.

  ‘Our stolen conversations at Delacroix House seemed almost clandestine, had I not been an old man.’

  Delphine smiled, the first he had seen from her, ‘I believe if you had offered for me sir, I may have run away with you.’

  ‘Alas that I had not a steed with the stamina to speed us to Gretna Green!’ he smiled.

  ‘No, I believe your Trusty might have failed us before Speltham.’ She said, a trifle sadly, mentioning the town twenty miles distance from her home.

  ‘Well, we must not repine for what might have been, my dear girl. What may I do for you? Your uncle Lynfield has said to me quite clearly that I must deal with him in all matters relating to you.’

  Delphine frowned. ‘And you replied?’

  ‘I did the lawyerly thing my dear, and smiled. If Mr Lynfield chose to conclude that I agreed, he was quite free to do so.’

  ‘I knew, sir, that to further my acquaintance with you would be a joy for me. Now that we are at our leisure to talk, let me enjoy it - might I have some tea?’

  With a large gesture of acquiescence, Mr Rigby-Blythe rang a bell.

  Over tea Delphine learnt a great many things about her fortune. It would become hers fully when she was twenty-five, although the assumption was that she would have a husband to manage it before then. Her maternal uncle, Mr St John Beauford, now living in Paris, was the executor, with the practical aid, in London, of Mr Rigby-Blythe. All accounts would be sent to Mr Beauford - but he had already resolved on a princely sum as her quarterly pin money. He would be resistant, as any gentleman would, to his niece’s interest in the financial matters regarding her estate, for women’s brains were not formed to deal with such things.

  ‘I may have other expenses over and above the clothes that my aunts wish to foist on me. Might I draw on you?’

  Mr Rigby-Blythe’s merry, rheumy old eyes looked into hers, ‘I suspect,’ he said, ‘that you will be a very fashionable and expensive young lady.’

  ‘I do not think so.’

  ‘If there are a plethora of expenses,’ he suggested sagely, ‘some more than might be considered usual, who knows what bills might be lost among?’

  ‘So I must embrace the dress maker?’

  ‘Oh, I thinks so. And the manteaux-maker and the milliner. And you may wish to set up your stable, perhaps. A number of fashionable young ladies have horses and carriages of the latest design, to tool around the park and be remarked upon.’

  ‘I do not wish to be remarked upon,’ said Delphine flatly.

  Mr Rigby-Blythe sipped his tea. ‘Then you had better not wear the clothes your mother had made for you. They may be finely wrought, but they are so outmoded as to make you a figure of fun.’

  Delphine had already been pointed out by people on the street enough to know this to be true. Her resistance to her aunt’s entreaties burst like a bubble. She had refused merely to escape another version of her mother’s control. But when her true ally told her the same thing, she gave in. At least this way she would no longer be an oddity. ‘And the horses?’ she enquired.

  ‘Are the sort of expense that your uncle St John would not take issue with. He wishes you to make your mark upon the world so that you may gain a husband and relieve him of the burden of your financial empire. It is rather more than he bargained for at his time of life.’

  ‘Shall you tutor me in the business of my holdings?’

  His eyes considered. ‘It is perhaps a little tedious work for a young lady, but if you wish it, I will.’ He sighed, ‘My dear girl, if I might be permitted to call you so, it will do you little good. Your wealth will be dealt with by your husband, whose name we will find out by the end of the season, I have no doubt.’

  As if she had not heard him, she said coolly, ‘My aunt visits with her sisters on a Thursday afternoon, saving more pressing invitations. They like to speak of me, so it will be quite convenient for me to come to your office on these days, on the pretext of attending the lending library.’

  ‘I should not have guessed that subterfuge would come so easily to you, my dear.’

  ‘I did not previously have the scope.’ She saw Mr Rigby-Blythe’s eyes water a trifle more than their rheumy best even as he smiled at her jest, and added gently, ‘My aunts are a great deal kinder than my mother, sir, in their individual ways. But I fear finding myself in a trap worse than I have lived. Marriage is their answer to all, but I think them all too silly to be trusted with my future.’

  ‘I would I could advise you, my dear, but the polite world is not my area of expertise. I have a few clients, I hear gossip, but I doubt it enough to avoid a possible mésalliance.’

  ‘Ah! You do understand. I always believed that you would. Though we exchanged so few words, I saw a wealth of understanding in your eyes.’

  ‘And I in yours. Your mother was a challenging woman. I cannot imagine the life you lived there.’

  Delphine’s eyes became a little cold. ‘She did not like me, but she could never let me become attached to another person. More than one servant was cast off simply for showing me a morsel of affection, including my old nurse. I should like you to find her, sir, and to make sure she was adequately pensioned.’

  The lawyer took up his quill and asked some questions, writing down his client’s scant knowledge. ‘I shall set enquiries in motion at once, it may be that her direction is in some old papers of your mother’s that I have not yet perused.’

  ‘Before I left, I visited with Miss Beauford, a cousin of some distance, I understand. She was most thankful that her late sister and she were permitted to live in the cottage by my so-generous parent. Aunt Eloise took me on a polite visit before we left Delacroix, and I could see that even she was shocked. The running water on the wall, the leaking roof and this sweet creature with her mother’s china and her clean white linen. How could my mother allow it? No wonder she did not take me to visit my only relative in the village. I wish that her cottage be repaired as quickly as possible.’

  ‘I believe that I have the authority to keep Delacroix house and all its properties in good order, without recourse to your uncle. It shall be done,’ he paused, ‘Might I propose something to you, Miss Delacroix?’

  She nodded graciously, still sitting stiffly on her chair.

  ‘While the work is done on the cottage, might you not invite Miss Beauford to London as your companion? With her accompanying you, I feel your aunts might grant you more freedom in London with little fear.’

  ‘It is a good notion, but much as I pitied her, sir, I must say that Miss Beauford was even sillier than my aunts.’

  Mr Rigby-Blythe laughed at her from beneath his caterpillar brows, ‘your honesty is refreshing, my dear girl. But I have known Phoebe Beauford since she was young and though not exactly sharp in her wits, I know her to be two things you might need in a companion. Both loyal - and biddable.’

  She gave a laugh, a delightful and unusual sound to emanate from this young lady ‘You persuade me, sir. Once I have permission from my Aunt Sybilla to invite her, I shall write to her tonight.’ Delphine rose and her lawyer joined her, she buttoned her kid gloves and said, ‘Goodbye sir. I look forward to our next meeting.’

  Mr Rigby-Blythe shook his head and chuckled when his client had gone. Long had he wished to help her because the beautiful hermitage she had lived in, with her ice-cold mama, had been no life for a young girl. She was allowed in the garden and the village, but the latter only with her mama. He believed she was used for show, finely kitted out like the daughter of the great house - the daughter of a mother whose self-interest was of an order close to madness. They had exchanged some words and many looks over the years, and he had espied beneath her upright bearing a humorous eye and a desperate spirit. But her sense of purpose and determination amused him. He hoped it would not be sold to the first charming smile, the first caressing words that she heard. Yet, after a l
ife such as she had had, how could she fail to be moved by any affection? Hold fast, young mistress, against the suave tongues and dastardly hearts of the Beau Monde.

  getBook.at/Delphine