by M C Beaton
“Very well,” said Miss Tonks.
“What does that mean? To lie or not to lie?”
Miss Tonks gave a sudden, almost impish grin.
“To lie,” she said.
***
Sir Randolph Gray and his wife were heading for London. “I told you Bewley was the knowing one,” he said. “I told you it would all come about.”
For the happy couple had received a startling letter from Lord Bewley in which he said he had successfully courted Frederica—although the naughty puss was going under the name of Mary Jones and pretending to be common—and that he wished to ask for her hand in marriage.
“But do we wish to be seen at this Poor Relation Hotel?” ventured Lady Gray timidly. “I was under the impression that we had not yet paid our bill. Also, Lord Bewley has said nothing about the ransom, and what was that all about?”
“Listen, Bewley will have it in hand, and if he’s so keen to marry Frederica, he’ll even pay our shot. He says he loves her, that he’s in love for the first time. I’m surprised Frederica got him up to the mark. I used to think her as spiritless as you.”
But Lady Gray was used to her husband’s insults. She lived for her work in the still-room and for the tapestries which she stitched at and had stopped paying much attention to what he said a long time ago.
When they arrived at the hotel, Sir Randolph was relieved to find there was only a footman on duty in the hall. In answer to Sir Randolph’s statement that they were expected, he led the way up the stairs.
Lord Bewley greeted them with every sign of delight. He had wine and cakes sent in and then, with a broad grin and a wink at Sir Randolph, he said to the servant, “Fetch Mary Jones here.”
For a brief moment as they waited, Lord Bewley felt a qualm of unease. Perhaps he should have proposed to the girl first.
There was a light step in the corridor and then the door was opened and Mary walked into the room.
Lord Bewley stood up and took her by the hand. “Say good day to your parents, my chuck.”
There was a long silence. Then Lord Bewley looked at Mary goggling at Sir Randolph and his lady and saw that they were looking at her open-mouthed. His brows went down. “What’s amiss?” he barked.
“That is not Frederica,” said Sir Randolph. “Where is my daughter?”
“Here,” said Lord Bewley, giving Mary a shove.
“That is not Frederica,” echoed Lady Randolph, her voice trembling. “I want my daughter.”
Lord Bewley glared at Mary. “I thought you was their daughter.”
All Mary’s hopes of a noble marriage fell about her ears. In those few moments, she saw clearly why Lord Bewley had treated her with such respect. But, with a certain dignity, she drew herself up and said, “There is a girl called Frederica working here. I thought she was some relation of Lady Fortescue. I will fetch her. I have never at any time tried to mislead Lord Bewley.”
She turned and walked out of the room, her head held high. She went straight down to the kitchens.
For the first time she surveyed Frederica’s beauty clearly and felt a lump rising in her throat. How could she ever have hoped to marry such as Lord Bewley? But fierce pride kept the tears at bay.
“You are to come with me,” she said to Frederica.
Frederica followed her up the stairs. She drew back when she saw that Mary had stopped outside Lord Bewley’s room. “I cannot go in there,” she exclaimed.
In a sudden fury, Mary seized her arm, opened the door and thrust Frederica inside.
Her parents rose and stared at her, at her mob-cap and apron and at the dab of flour on her nose.
“You’ll get a whipping for this,” snarled Sir Randolph. “Yes, and you’ll do as you’re told and marry Lord Bewley here.”
“Is that Frederica?” asked Lord Bewley gloomily. “Don’t want her.” He looked hopefully towards the doorway, but Mary had gone.
“And I am not going anywhere with you,” said Frederica to her parents. “I am staying here.”
“You have no rights,” said her father, his temper mounting. “Want to see the family name dragged through the courts?”
“Who was it who kidnapped you and demanded ransom for your return?” asked Lady Randolph.
“Oh, that was this lot here,” explained Lord Bewley. “You left them with a whacking bill and they ransomed Frederica to get what you owed. I paid it, so you now owe me that as well.”
Frederica had gone paper-white. “And Colonel Sandhurst said he was offering me refuge because he was sorry for me. I thought they were the first and only friends I ever had.”
“Didn’t tell you, did they?” Lord Bewley looked at her with a certain amount of sympathy. “True, all the same. Ask ’em.”
“I’ll have the lot of them at Bow Street,” howled Sir Randolph.
“You’ll look just like the silly mean man you are,” barked Lord Bewley, made bitter by rage and disappointment. “Everyone sells their daughters in this day and age, so long as it’s never openly admitted. You take this lot of hoteliers to court and you won’t have a shred of reputation left… not that you haven’t much to start with anyway. Shoo, the lot of you. Sick of the lot of you.”
“I shall pack and come with you, Father,” said Frederica. “There is nothing left for me here.”
***
Jack Warren was worried. His friend, Captain Manners, appeared well and truly drunk, and offensive with it, too.
“S’pose I musht go and call on old leech-face,” slurred the captain, getting unsteadily to his feet and stumbling on the oyster shells strewn about the coffee-house floor. He had insisted on taking Jack to this coffee-house in the Strand and had proceeded to drink brandy at a great rate.
“Who are you talking about?” demanded Jack, following him out.
The captain executed a crazy bow and then minced along the Strand. “Who else but my dearest Belinda with her bulging eyes and thick waist.”
“How dare you insult the most beautiful creature in London,” cried Jack. “I have a good mind to call you out.”
The captain came up to where a boy was holding the reins of his horse. He tossed him a coin as he swung himself up into the saddle. He looked down mockingly at Jack. “You want her yourself,” he jeered. “And you haven’t got a hope.”
And then he rode off down the Strand in the direction of Temple Bar.
He’s crazy with drink, thought Jack. At least he’s gone the wrong way. I must get to Miss Devenham first and warn her.
He signalled to his tiger, who brought his carriage up, and Jack climbed in and drove off as fast as he could.
Miss Belinda Devenham was “at home” alone but graciously pleased to receive him. Her maid was present and the door of the drawing-room left open, so that the conventions were observed.
But Jack threw a nervous look at the maid and said, “I must speak to you privately. Send your maid away, if only for a few moments.”
“That would not be correct,” said Belinda with a smug complacency which would have infuriated her fiancé had he been there to see it.
“But I am come to warn you,” he hissed.
Belinda was intrigued. She waved a hand at her maid and said, “Leave us.”
When the woman had gone, she turned to Jack and said, “I trust what you have to tell me warrants the unconventionality of our situation.”
“Captain Manners is very drunk and insulting and is on his way here. Do not admit him.”
“Gentlemen will drink too much,” said Belinda severely. “But as we are to be married—”
“No, no,” gabbled Jack. “You do not understand. His insults are directed at you. And all because he is madly in love with some servant.”
“What insults? What servant?” demanded Belinda.
“He is so far gone in drink as to claim that you have a thick waist and protruding eyes,” said Jack. “And the servant is that girl at the Poor Relation. And, worse than that…” He took a deep breath and decided to
sink the knife further into his friend’s bosom. “Those so-called army friends of his were nothing more than actors he had hired to trick you. Oh, Miss Devenham, he don’t want you, but I do.” Jack sank on one knee. “I lay my heart before you.” He bowed his head.
Belinda, although consumed with rage at the insults against her looks she had just heard, was nonetheless taken with the romantic picture Jack Warren made.
And then she thought that the best revenge she could get on the captain would be to spurn his suit.
“You may rise,” she said. “My feelings towards you are not without warmth. You may speak to my mother and gain her permission to pay your addresses to me. When Captain Manners arrives, be he drunk or be he sober, I will tell him I want to have nothing more to do with him.”
“He comes now,” said Jack, rising and seizing her hand. There was a noisy altercation from the hall as the butler tried to stop the captain from going upstairs, and then came the captain’s raised voice, “Where is my beloved cod-face?”
Belinda clutched tight hold of Jack’s hand and together they faced the doorway. At the sight of the captain swaying on the threshold, she threw back her head and said, “Begone! I can never be yours. Our engagement is at an end. My heart is given to Mr. Warren here.”
The captain debated quickly whether to hurl a few insults at her just to make sure her intention remained firm and then decided against it. Jack might call him out and Jack was a dreadful shot and a worse fencer.
So he said, “On your own heads be it. Shend a notish to the papers in the morning.”
He then lurched off down the stairs. The butler handed him a note and said, “This has just arrived by hand.”
The captain twisted it open. It was from Colonel Sandhurst. Frederica’s parents had arrived and were taking her away, it read. The butler was to say afterwards that whatever had been in that note must have been deuced sobering, for the drunken captain immediately became a cold and determined-looking man.
Chapter Ten
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Lady Fortescue, Colonel Sandhurst, and Miss Tonks could never remember having been so guilt-stricken before. Frederica faced them all in the office and said in a quiet voice which was more terrible to their ears than if she had ranted or raged, “It is better I go home. I have been sadly deceived. You should have told me your only interest in me was to get money from my parents.”
“My dear…” began Lady Fortescue.
Frederica held up a hand. “No, there is no explanation to possibly excuse your behavior. I have left my work dresses. Perhaps the next gently bred female you trick in order to secure money will be glad of them.”
She turned on her heel and walked out.
Her parents were waiting for her in the hall, grim-faced.
“Out to the carriage,” ordered Sir Randolph.
Frederica turned and took a last look round. She hated the hoteliers for having tricked her, for having pretended to like her and care for her, and yet the days she had spent here would probably, she thought sadly, be the happiest days of her life.
She was just about to climb into the carriage when Captain Manners came riding hell for leather down Bond Street. “Stop!” he shouted at the top of his voice.
“What now?” demanded Sir Randolph. “Don’t stand there with your mouth open, girl. Get inside.”
But the captain had mounted his horse on the pavement. He leaned down from the saddle. “I wish to have a word in private with your daughter, Sir Randolph.”
“My daughter is going home with us!” howled Sir Randolph. “I do not know who you are, or care. Frederica, do as you are bid.”
But Frederica put her hand up to the captain and said, “Goodbye.”
Lady Fortescue, Colonel Sandhurst, and Miss Tonks had moved out to the front of the hotel.
In front of all the watching eyes, the captain seized hold of that little hand and pulled Frederica bodily up onto the saddle in front of him and, spurring his horse, he rode straight off down the pavement of Bond Street, scattering pedestrians.
“Get the watch, get the constable!” shouted Sir Randolph.
The colonel stepped forward, a smile of relief on his face.
“That was Captain Peter Manners,” he said. “The rich Captain Peter Manners, and if I am not mistaken he will shortly be returning to this hotel with your daughter safe and sound, and he will ask your permission to marry her.”
***
The captain slowed his hectic pace. “Where are we going?” asked Frederica, half laughing, half crying.
“Anywhere where we can talk,” he said in her ear as he held her tightly against him.
He finally ended up in Berkeley Square. He swung down and tethered the horse to the railings and then lifted Frederica tenderly down.
He tucked her arm in his and led her onto the square of grass and sat her firmly down on a bench.
He stood looking down at her and then he smiled and took out a handkerchief, dropped it on the ground and then knelt in front of her and took her hands in his.
“Miss Frederica Gray,” he said, “I am a free man. Miss Devenham does not wish to marry me. Will you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?”
Frederica looked down at him, dazed, her bewildered senses trying to become used to being snatched from hell to heaven.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I love you with all my heart.”
“My parents will not allow it.”
“I do not care. We will go to Gretna. We will be married whether they approve or not. What do you say?”
“Yes,” said Frederica. “Oh, yes.”
He sat beside her on the bench and gathered her into his arms. He placed his hands on either side of her face and his mouth descended hungrily on hers. People passed and repassed across the grass, looking curiously at the entwined couple.
The Duchess of Darver, walking her pug, raised her lorgnette and studied the pair.
“Goodness,” she said to her maid, who was a pace behind her. “That is that servant gel with Manners. Poor thing. Mark what can happen to a servant girl, Lucy.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Lucy meekly, but staring at the handsome captain so lost in love, she was thinking that for such an experience she would happily allow herself to be ruined.
The captain and Frederica were oblivious to the watchers as they kissed and hugged and kissed again. Rain began to fall, and about them people hurried for shelter and still they kissed, raindrops trickling round their joined mouths.
At last the captain reluctantly freed her. “My horse must not be allowed to stand in the rain.” Frederica laughed up at him. “Do you mean it is all right for me to get wet but not for your horse?”
“Something like that. Now to face your parents.”
“I wish I did not have to see those hoteliers ever again,” said Frederica as she and the captain walked back across the grass.
“Why? I thought they were most kind to you?”
Frederica told him about the ransom.
“Well, that’s very shocking, to be sure,” said the captain, “but I am most indebted to them. It was Colonel Sandhurst who told me to face up to the task of disaffecting my fiancée. It was Colonel Sandhurst who sent me an urgent note to say your parents had arrived and that you were leaving. They have behaved reprehensibly but you cannot say they do not care for you.”
“But to do such a thing!”
“They are very unconventional and quite eccentric, but were they any other way we would never have met. I am afraid you are going to have to forgive them.”
***
Lady Fortescue, the colonel, and Miss Tonks were sitting with Sir Randolph and Lady G
ray in the hotel coffee room, being waited on by Mr. Davy.
The angry colour had left Sir Randolph’s face. “So you tell us, Colonel,” he said, “that this Captain Peter Manners is the wealthy son of Lady Manners, who resides in Berkeley Square, that he is a nephew of Lord Billington, who has those vast estates in Essex?”
“Yes, indeed,” said the colonel. “We have Frederica’s best interests at heart. I made it my business to find out about him. Even if, by any chance, the widowed Lady Manners disapproves of his marriage, he is rich in his own right, having been left a healthy sum three years ago by an aunt.”
“Well, well, well.” Sir Randolph rubbed his hands. “Why didn’t he just approach me and ask leave to pay his addresses, hey?”
Lady Fortescue’s voice was tired. “Your daughter ran away from home to escape being forced into a marriage with a man she had never even met and a man considerably older than she. Captain Manners knows this.”
“Frederica was always flighty.”
Lady Gray spoke for the first time. “She was never flighty. She was ruined by your determination to make her into a boy. And then you found out you could sell her at a profit. You have only yourself to blame for this mess, Sir Randolph, and if everything turns out for the best, it is more than you deserve.”
“You stupid woman!” he raged. “How dare you blame me!”
“Goodness knows,” said Lady Gray quietly and relapsed into her usual abstracted silence.
***
Lord Bewley paced up and down his hotel room. His fury had long burnt out, to be replaced with a desolate feeling of loss.
He had to admit that Mary Jones had only spoken the truth when she had claimed not to be Frederica. He missed her enthusiasm and laughter and her glowing good looks. He missed the sheer pride he took in being seen out with her. Dammit, she dressed like a lady and of late had even begun to speak like a lady. He thought of his dark and gloomy home in the country, which all too recently his mind’s eye had decorated with the glowing Mary to brighten his life.
He stared at himself in the looking-glass. His face was still beefy and florid, but his small eyes held the look of a lost child.
Then, in the depths of his despair, he began to hear a nagging little voice in his head. Why not marry her, after all? They could go everywhere together and have laughs and cuddles and she would be all his. Hope grew somewhere inside him and burst into a flame. He reached out and rang the bell and said to the waiter who answered it, “Fetch Mary Jones here.”
