by M C Beaton
The next day brought rain, fine drizzling rain, which turned to ice as soon as it hit the ground.
The glorious plans of the night before seemed like a childish fantasy, and without referring to it, Richard and Amanda had each privately decided the whole thing was madness induced by stress and brandy.
But their “uncle’s” heir, Mr. Brotherington, chose to pay them a visit. Aunt Matilda was mercifully still asleep.
He was a thick, brutish-looking man with a harsh red face and small black eyes. An expensive morning coat was stretched across his shoulders and his cravat was tied in a travesty of the Oriental, which meant his starched shirt points were cutting into his jowls. He wore an old-fashioned wig and smelled of sweat, imperfectly disguised by musk. His lower limbs dropped from the heights of fashion, being encased in moleskin breeches and square-toed boots caked with mud.
It transpired he had had a lecture from the lawyer, a lecture from the vicar, and a lecture from the local squire over his lack of concern for the destitute Colbys.
And so he had assumed that the Colbys had put these worthy gentlemen up to it and had come to give them a piece of his mind.
The Colby twins bristled with rage but were not in the way of contradicting their elders. At last, Mr. Brotherington, having had his say uninterrupted, allowed his coarse features to relax in the semblance of a smile and said he had found work for Amanda which would enable her to take up her rightful role in life.
“Which is?” demanded Amanda, her normally pale face flushed.
“As companion to my daughter, Priscilla.”
Amanda looked at Richard and shook her head in a disbelieving sort of way. Priscilla, although only two years older than Amanda, was spoiled and overbearing and had inherited the worst of her father’s bullying qualities.
“I would rather starve,” she said passionately.
“Then starve,” said Mr. Brotherington viciously. “You Colbys were always too top-lofty in your ways. Nothing like a few hunger pangs to bring the pair of you down a peg. You’ve done nothing but set yourself apart and look down your noses at my Priscilla. Well, you’ll get your comeuppance. I’ll tell Squire how you sneered at the very idea of genteel work, Amanda Colby.”
“Miss Amanda to you, Mr. Brotherington,” said Amanda sweetly. She went and held open the door. “And may I remind you, sir, since you so clumsily aspire to rise in the ranks of the beau-monde, that a gentleman making a call never stays above ten minutes, and you have been prosing on for quite twenty.”
“Pah!” shouted Mr. Brotherington, cramming his hat down on his wig.
Richard took a step forward and loomed over him.
Mr. Brotherington cast him a fulminating look and strode from the room.
Amanda whirled about and ran upstairs, her old-fashioned chintz skirts flying about her slippers. In two minutes she was back, the gold locket clutched in one hand.
“Take it to the pawn,” she said to Richard.
Richard slowly held out his hand, a troubled look on his face.
“What ails you, Richard?” demanded Amanda sharply. “I would rather die of hempen fever than die of poverty.”
“Don’t talk cant,” said Richard automatically. “If you mean you would rather hang, then say so.”
“Then what is the matter?” asked Amanda. “You are not worrying about your own neck, I trust?”
“Not I,” said Richard. “It is just… I am afraid—”
“A Colby afraid!”
“Let me finish. I am afraid I cannot dance, so how can I escort you to the assembly?”
“Oh, Richard,” laughed Amanda. “The vicar’s wife, you know, Mrs. Jolly, taught me all the steps. I shall teach you. Now, go before Aunt wakes up. She must not know our plans.”
But rage, like Dutch courage induced by brandy, did not fuel the Colbys for very long. Again, each privately put aside their rosy dreams of highwaymen. But they had taken a large step in deciding to attend the assembly. Even Richard confessed to a feeling of excitement. Aunt Matilda was roused from her stupor and firmly told that she must act as chaperone to Amanda, Richard succeeding in almost convincing his dithering, trembling aunt that a refurbished Amanda might catch the eye of some wealthy gentleman. Aunt Matilda eagerly seized the fantasy as a way of escaping from the very real problems of incipient poverty and agreed to make Amanda’s gown. She was an expert dressmaker and a very quick worker, provided her interest could be kept on the task long enough.
The news of the Colbys’ poverty had spread like wildfire throughout the county. The pawnbroker, Mr. Benjamin, gave Richard a handsome sum for the gold locket.
Mr. Johnston, who ran the haberdashery and grocery shop combined, insisted that a bale of sea-green silk was damaged in one corner and would accept only a trifling sum for it. The tailor, Mr. Easterman, presented Richard with a fine suit of evening clothes, explaining they had been ordered by a gentleman of Richard’s size some months ago who had failed to collect them. He refused immediate payment, suggesting Richard should supply him with a small monthly sum instead.
The difficulty of getting to the assembly was solved by the vicar, Mr. Jolly, and his wife, who explained they could not attend, as their children were all suffering from a bout of chickenpox, but that they would send their John on the important night with the vicarage carriage to convey the Colbys to the ball.
“It was all very successful,” explained Richard as he returned on foot from Hember Cross with his purchases piled up on a handcart. “We should have done this before, Amanda. People are amazingly kind.”
He spread out the bale of silk. “See what Mr. Johnston gave me? You will look very fine, Amanda.”
“She cannot wear that!” exclaimed Aunt Matilda, holding up her mittened hands in terror. “Young girls must wear white, or at least a pastel color.”
“Well, that’s dashed ungrateful of you,” said Richard hotly. Then he recalled that Aunt Matilda thought the finery was to be paid out of the monthly allowance, and added quickly, “If I had paid a regular price, Aunt, then we could not have lived for another month. And Easterman, the tailor, has given me a fine suit of clothes and says I need to pay him only a little a month, and by next month anyway I will have found work.”
“A Colby work!” Aunt Matilda burst into tears while the twins looked at her in exasperation.
How hard it was, thought Amanda, to feel sympathy for someone in tears who always seemed to be in tears. But she put a coaxing arm about her aunt’s waist and said, “You forget, Aunt Matilda, that if you manage to make me look very fine, then I might catch the attention of some kind gentleman, and then all your troubles will be over. And with my unfortunate color of hair, I would look quite terrible in pastels. There is no need to nod your head quite so vigorously, Richard! You might make a push to pretend I am attractive to the opposite sex instead of making me feel Friday-faced every time you look at me.”
More coaxing, more pleading, and several rallying cups of tea were needed to remove the specter of work from Aunt Matilda’s mind.
“She really is an amazingly dim-witted woman,” said Amanda with all the intolerance of youth, once Aunt Matilda was at last safely engaged in cutting out material. “Do you think, Richard, that if one cries and cries, one’s brain cells become damp and do not function as well as they ought?”
“Never mind that,” said Richard, walking through the door at the back of the hall and out onto the shaggy grass of the lawn. “I’ve been thinking. There is nothing up with work, Amanda. It seems downright immoral to take someone’s money away from him by robbery.”
And Amanda, who had been thinking that very same thought, suddenly felt cross and argumentative.
“I don’t see anything so very bad in taking a few jewels and trinkets away from people who would not miss them,” she protested.
“Just imagine if everyone felt like that,” replied Richard. “There would be a terrible revolution, like the one in France.”
“But we are only thinking of
doing it once.…”
“Have you thought how I am to get rid of these baubles? I don’t know any fencing kens.”
“What has a fencing academy got to do with—?”
“A fence is a receiver of stolen goods. Usually a low type of pawnbroker.”
“Oh,” said Amanda, breaking off a shrivelled rose head. The day was a sad sort of uniform gray. The morning’s hoarfrost was only melting in the center of the lawn but still glittered whitely in the uncut shaggy grass at the verges. A starling perched on the edge of a branch and sent down one long, dismal, piping note.
Woodsmoke drifted lazily across the fields from someone’s bonfire, carried by the lightest of breeze.
“Oh,” said Amanda again in a dismal note like that of the starling. Then her face brightened. “But we could travel to London, Richard, and find one of these low places. We could tell, you know, by simply looking at the pawnbroker. The marks of his evil life would be writ on his features. Or rather, that’s what they say in the sort of books I read.”
“We’ll see.” Richard shrugged, fighting down a rosy dream of venturing down noisome London alleys with only his father’s rusty sword as protection. “At least we are taking some sort of action. We may as well go to this ball. Perhaps some grand person might like to employ me as a secretary.”
Amanda giggled. “Not unless he doesn’t want to read his own letters. Your writing is atrocious.”
“Then I shall run away to sea,” said Richard cheerfully. “You can dress in boy’s clothes and come along as a cabin boy and we’ll sail to South America and find gold.”
“And I shall come back a fine lady,” sang Amanda, dancing across the lawn.
Richard laughed, running after her. “There’s work to be done, I have logs to chop and you have all those berries to turn into jam.”
He put an arm around her waist, and, laughing together, they went into the house.
They had had a long childhood, unmarred by any of the doubts and fears of adolescence. Amanda’s dreams of love and marriage were still those of a schoolgirl.
The twins were about to be forced to grow up.
2
Friday seemed quite far away one moment and then it was upon them. Aunt Matilda was the calmest of the three, the smell of hot hair from the curling tongs, the smells of scent and new silk and pomade reminding her of the days of her youth.
Her busy needle had transformed the sea-green silk into a demure ball gown with puffled sleeves and deep flounces at the hem. She had bravely sacrificed one of her old silk gowns to trim the hem with a thin border of gold silk and to make Amanda a handsome gold silk stole. Amanda had a pair of white kid gloves, although the palms were somewhat soiled. At last it was decided they would have to do and Amanda must remember never to show the palms of her gloves.
Amanda’s hair had been curled and brushed out and curled again, and each time it fought its way back into a soft aureole of auburn frizz.
It was decided to leave it as it was and decorate it with a pretty crown of ivy leaves, fashioned by Richard. He threaded the leaves with a gold watch chain and ornamented the base of each leaf with a small pearl taken from a box of loose ones found in the attic.
Richard himself looked magnificent, thought Amanda proudly. His face was lightly tanned and his thick dark brown hair had been curled and pomaded in what they all hoped was the latest of styles. His coat was a little tight across the shoulders but the knee breeches fitted his legs to perfection, and although one of his white silk stockings had an irremovable stain, it was on the inside of one leg and Amanda said if he danced only the very fast dances, no one would notice.
Aunt Matilda stunned them both by transforming herself into a stately dowager in a gown of crimson velvet made from the sitting-room curtains, with a huge crimson velvet turban decorated with gold fringe from the sofa in the morning room.
Amanda herself was looking remarkably pretty. The wreath in her auburn hair, the flush of animation in her thin face, and the green of her gown, which brought out the green in her hazel eyes, made her look like a wood nymph.
But Richard only saw his sister looking much as she always did and complimented her with such false heartiness that Amanda began to feel insecure about her appearance. She was just wondering whether her coronet of ivy leaves would be damned as farouche and was debating whether to remove it, when the vicarage carriage arrived, and in the bustle of departure, she forget about everything else but the heady excitement of going to her first ball.
They did not speak on the journey into Hember Cross. Richard was trying to memorize dance steps and kept cautiously shuffling his feet and humming under his breath. Amanda was wondering if perhaps he would be there, that tall, handsome man who would miraculously supply her with money, security, children, a home, and love—in that order.
The carriage began to rattle over the cobbles of the streets of Hember Cross.
In the houses on either side, winking candles could be seen descending from the upper rooms as the young ladies of the market town made their way downstairs to wait for their carriages. Some people were heading for the Feathers on foot, a link boy bobbing in front of them through the cold blackness of the autumn night.
By the time they approached the street leading to the Feathers, they had to crawl forward in line behind other carriages and gigs, flies and chaises and traps.
Amanda was all for walking, but Aunt Matilda had put on the airs of a dowager with her new gown and said languidly that it would not be at all the thing.
And then, just as the entrance to the inn was in sight, all the vehicles had to pull over to the side of the road while three splendid carriages bowled past. The Earl of Hardforshire’s party must be given preference.
“I think it is very uncivil of him,” said Amanda crossly, and Aunt Matilda gave a patronising titter and sighed. “The ways of the world, my dear. The ways of the world.”
By the time they were able to alight in the inn courtyard, an hour had passed, and Amanda felt cold and cross. They were badly jostled by the press of people in the narrow entrance to the inn. One dumpy girl trod on Amanda’s foot, glared at her, and said, “What on earth are you doing here?”
Priscilla Brotherington in pastel pink, and looking as nasty as her father, thought Amanda viciously. She smiled sweetly at Priscilla and kicked her in the ankle.
Richard edged Amanda forward through the press. Aunt Matilda and Amanda went off to leave their cloaks and Richard stood in the anteroom waiting for them, his eyes going over the dress of the other guests.
Familiar faces seemed to spring out of the crowd, and he began to relax. His evening suit was every bit as good as, if not better than, the dress of the young men who surrounded him. The girls, he observed, were very pretty and all wore white or pastel colors. It was not fashionable for young unmarried girls to wear much more in the way of jewellery than a string of pearls, a locket, or a necklace of coral, so he surmised that Amanda’s lack of jewellery would go unnoticed.
But he did wish he had refused the sea-green silk. None of the other girls was wearing anything like it.
He felt uneasy as Amanda appeared on Aunt Matilda’s arm. His sister did not look at all like the other girls, thought Richard. It must be that gown and that curst wreath in her hair, he reflected miserably, forcing a smile on his face as he stepped forward to escort the two ladies into the ballroom.
Couples were prancing their way noisily through a country dance when the Colby party entered, blinking in the sudden blaze from hundreds of candles. The master of ceremonies, Mr. Jessamyn, who was also the hunt secretary, was loudly calling the figures of the dance from a dais at the end of the room.
Richard seated Aunt Matilda and Amanda on two of the little gilt chairs which lined one wall of the assembly room and went off to fetch them lemonade.
The tinny band struck the last chord and the ladies sank into low curtsies before their bowing partners.
“That must be the earl and his party,” said Aunt
Matilda, waving towards the fireplace on the other side of the room where a richly dressed group of people was standing.
Amanda looked, and stared. She knew the earl and the countess by sight, but it was the splendour of their guests’ attire that first riveted her attention. Never before had she seen so many jewels. They blazed on men and women alike: diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and the inevitable fashionable garnets, winking in the light from the flames of the fire behind them. Two of the younger women wore muslin gowns so thin and transparent that little was left to the imagination. The blonde one had damped her gown so that it clung to every curve. Her dark-haired companion had not, but the material of her gown and petticoat was almost transparent and Amanda was amazed to see that she wore jewels on her garters. Obviously neither of the young ladies had been told by their parents that unmarried girls should wear only simple jewellery.
