Miss Fellingham's Rebellion

by Lynn Messina - Miss Fellingham's Rebellion

  Flushing with pleasure at the compliment, she said, “I’m glad, my lord, that the season hasn’t made me too rusty. It feels as though it’s been years and years since I’ve ridden like that, but it has been only a few months.”

  “Then I sincerely hope that you will accept my offer to use Daisy whenever you want,” he said. “As I mentioned previously, you would be doing me a favor since she doesn’t get the exercise she needs.”

  Instead of instantly demurring again, she promised to think about it, and indeed she would. Her mind was already flooding with possibilities. To have a horse to ride whenever she wanted! Surely nothing could make her happier. And would she not meet more eligible men if she did? Perhaps that was what Deverill himself was thinking—her having her own mount would make her fashionable more quickly. “We shall see, my lord.”

  “Good. We should probably be getting back. As much as I’d prefer to spend the day in Hyde Park with you, I have some business matters to attend to this afternoon.”

  “Of course,” she said, a little disappointed, even though she knew she had no cause to be. It had been a wonderful morning, and she herself had business to attend to, as well. Mama had promised to go over the household accounts with her after lunch.

  “How is your sister Melissa?” he asked on the ride back.

  “Very well, my lord,” Catherine assured him. “Although far from sating her, our brief visit to the museum seems to have only whetted her appetite. She talks of nothing but seeing more of the marbles.”

  “Have you figured out a plan for returning?” he asked.

  “Not quite. Mama was very cross with me for taking her once, so I do not know how I’ll take her a second time. Of course, things are so much easier since I’ve started spending time—” She broke off, her cheeks turning a deep shade of red at the thought of what she almost confessed. She could just imagine the look on his face if she had finished the sentence. No doubt the marquess knew the truth—that any matchmaking mama worth her salt gave her daughter more latitude when an excellent connection was on the verge of being formed—but it, like a peer’s consequence, was not discussed.

  “Regardless, I do not know when we’ll make a return trip,” Catherine said as her embarrassment began to fade. “Melissa has already started the campaign but I’m not—”

  Here Catherine broke off a second time, but now she looked at Deverill in a new, predatory light. “Although,” she said consideringly, squinting her eyes in concentration, “we could go back if you offered to escort us.”

  “I, Miss Fellingham?” he said, looking at her with more hauteur than she’d ever seen on his countenance.

  The look was daunting, but Catherine refused to be cowered by it. For one, it was an excellent way to gain her mother’s approval of a return visit. Lady Fellingham would have suggested tea with the noseless Lord Elgin himself if she thought it would further her daughter’s cause. For another, she thought it would do Deverill good to be maneuvered into a situation that was not to his liking. It was an occurrence that could not happen very often.

  “Yes, of course. It is the perfect solution. Mama would never say no to you. You are far too important.” There she went again, referencing his consequence. No matter, she thought, as she trooped gamely on. “Oh, what marvelous fun it shall be. I can just see her face now. She will say all manner of good things about the expedition, but privately she will be appalled.” Catherine looked at her companion to gauge his compliance with her plan. “Will you do it, my lord? I assure you, my sister would be forever in your debt.”

  “It is not your sister’s good opinion I wish to cultivate,” he said pointedly with a look that Catherine was convinced had broken many a heart like hers.

  But not hers, she resolved. Never hers.

  “No, of course,” she agreed calmly. “I would appreciate it as well.”

  “In that case, how can I refuse? When shall we go?”

  “Tomorrow?” she suggested before reining in her enthusiasm and behaving with a modicum of decency. “No, you must name the day since we are forcing you to escort us.”

  His lips twitched. “I wouldn’t quite say ‘forcing.’”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You are decidedly too well-bred for that,” she pointed out. “And here I am behaving like a veritable jade. I daresay, if I were more well-bred, I would release you from your promise and turn away, blushing over the entire affair. And yet I remain perfectly composed. Whatever’s the matter with me? Now, Deverill, pick a day that is most agreeable with your calendar.”

  “Tomorrow is out of the question because I have some business that I must look into. However, I have no pressing engagements on the following day. How is that for you?”

  “Perfect,” she said, delighted with the scheme and with him. “Then it’s a date. Tuesday, shall we say after luncheon?”

  He nodded his head slightly in agreement, and they finished their ride in companionable silence. Catherine did not feel the need to chatter.

  When he was taking his leave of her, he said, “Will you be in attendance at my Aunt Bedford’s rout this evening?”

  “I must confess, my lord, that I am in complete ignorance of your aunt’s route,” she said.

  Deverill looked surprised. “How peculiar. I am sure she invited you.”

  Catherine wondered how he could know such a thing but chose not to dwell on her curiosity. “Not really peculiar, as my mama often forgets to mention things to me and then gets cross when I am not dressed at the appointed time,” Catherine explained, her gold eyes glowing with humor. “It’s not that they don’t want my company; it is simply that they forget about me. I am very quiet, you see.”

  He laughed. “No, I haven’t seen that, Miss Fellingham.”

  Catherine blushed profusely and muttered goodbye as Deverill kissed her hand, lingering with his lips a shade longer than was necessary.

  Once inside the town house, she went to her room to change into a walking dress and to think about her ride with Deverill. As much as she wanted to take him up on his offer to provide her with a mount, she knew she would never do it. The gesture was by any account generous and kind, and that, of course, was the problem. Her mother would find the loan of a horse to be as good as a declaration, and Catherine would have to spend the rest of her life apologizing for letting such an eligible catch get away. It would become yet another failure for her to shoulder.

  Deep in thought, she did not notice her mother in the hallway until she heard her squeal. “You are back! Why have you returned so quickly? Has the weather turned? Did you not invite the marquess in for tea? How ramshackle he must find us, though, I must say, arriving at nine for a ten o’clock appointment isn’t entirely the height of courtesy either. Nevertheless, do invite him in for tea next time.”

  “Quickly, Mama?” she asked in wry amusement. “I was gone for almost two hours.”

  This reasonable response did little to quell her mother’s anxiety. “How are you going to bring him up to scratch if you spend so little time with him?”

  The accusatory note in her mother’s voice, so much in evidence during her daughter’s first season, quite destroyed Catherine’s good humor and she had to bite back a sharp retort. Losing patience with her mother would serve no purpose and would only make the trip to the British Museum harder to arrange. Instead she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about the rout tonight?”

  Lady Fellingham gaped at her in amazement and even dropped the bud vase she was holding. The little vessel bounced on the rug and landed at her feet. “Tell you?”

  Catherine looked at the forlorn rose and water stain on the floor, then at her mother, baffled by her response, which seemed more overwrought than her usual histrionic reaction. “Yes, tell me,” she said calmly.

  “Because,” her mother said, pausing for dramatic effect, “the last time you went to a rout, you assured me that you never wanted to hear about another one for as long as you lived.”

  Catherine flinched as she recalled tel
ling her mother precisely that after a particularly unpleasant affair last season. The event had taken place on an unusually hot night, and there had been too many people pressed into the room than was either safe or sane. Additionally, the Dowager Duchess of Lennox stepped on her toe and a pink in a purple waistcoat spilled lemonade on her dress. In the carriage immediately after, she had vowed to never attend another such function.

  Slightly embarrassed by the abrupt about-face, Catherine floundered for a graceful way of assuring her mother that she would like to go to this rout on this night without committing to going to other routs on other nights. As she did so, she noticed that the lady in question’s eyes were suspiciously bright.

  “Mama, whatever can the matter be?” she asked, instantly concerned. She had seen her parent cry before, of course, but only in the presence of Sir Vincent after he had lost a particularly large sum at gaming.

  Lady Fellingham wiped the tears away before skillfully skirting the bud vase to wrap her arms around her daughter. “It is nothing.”

  Unaccustomed to displays of maternal affection, Catherine stood stock-still and wondered if she should comfort her mother. Perhaps she should pat her gently on the shoulder. “But why are you crying?”

  Eliza raised her head and straightened her shoulders, though her grip on Catherine remained firm. “I’m just so happy that you are finally showing some interest in the social whirl. This is the first time you’ve ever asked me about a social engagement. I assure you, my dear, this is a moment I have dreamed of since your debut six years ago. I knew you wouldn’t take. You were always an unnaturally shy child. I saw the way you hated going to routs and balls.”

  “I ask about the theater all the time,” Catherine pointed out.

  “The theater? The theater?” she repeated, contempt dripping from every syllable. “My dear, nobody falls in love at the theater.”

  Catherine took a step back so she could look her mother in the eye. “I am not in love,” she said with quiet force.

  Lady Fellingham shrugged as if this fact were a mere trifle. “That’s all right, give it time.”

  “And Deverill,” she added just as firmly, “he’s not in love with me.”

  “I know, dear. Men don’t fall in love as easily as women,” she intoned wisely, dabbing at her tears. “Don’t tease yourself on that account. Deverill isn’t a greenhead. He may cavort with women like the one we saw at the modiste, but he knows his responsibility to his name and consequence. When he marries, it will be to secure an heir, not because he’s in love. Still, my dear, it doesn’t hurt to have some affection toward one’s husband. It makes marriage so much more palatable.” There was a trace of bitterness in her voice, and Catherine wondered if she was getting the wealth of her mother’s experience.

  The discussion of marriage, even one so unlikely to happen as hers, made Catherine feel oddly queasy. She knew Deverill didn’t—and couldn’t—love her, but the thought of entering into a union in which the affection was one-sided sounded miserable to her and she knew she would never do it, no matter what the provocation. She would much rather lead apes into hell than be the smitten wife of a man who married her only to beget heirs and to propagate the family name.

  Unwilling to discuss it further, she turned away from her mother and leaned down to pick up the vase and the rose. “I have to go change my dress but after that I will be available to look over the accounts. Shall we meet in the study in twenty minutes?”

  Lady Fellingham agreed and said it sounded like an excellent plan, but she didn’t join her daughter in the study for another two hours. When she finally did, she found Catherine curled up in a large wingback chair fast asleep with a book on her lap.

  “Really, my dear,” she said, coming into the room, followed by one of the footmen. “I wish you wouldn’t waste candles so.”

  She woke instantly at the sound of her mother’s voice but was nevertheless disoriented for a moment or two. She stretched her legs and yawned, causing the book to tumble to the floor.

  “Regis, put the accounts on the desk there,” she directed the servant, who was carrying the heavy volume, before returning her attention to her eldest daughter. “Why must you choose this room of all rooms? It gets so little natural daylight. The front parlor, with its lively shades of light blue, is much happier than this dreary room, with its daunting reds and cheerless browns.” Her mother took the candle from next to Catherine and placed it on the heavy oak desk. Then she sat down. “I don’t know why we must have a library and a study. Your Aunt Louise has only a library and, as I am sure you know, she’s one of the most fashionable hostesses of the beau monde. Prinny attends all her parties. I wonder why your father insists on having both. He doesn’t study anything except cards, and he never gets any better despite the attention he devotes to them.”

  Catherine picked up A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was lying at her feet, and tucked it under the seat cushion so her mother would not read the title and lecture her on unbred females with indecent ideas. “I like the study,” she said, pulling the chair up to the desk so she could look at the accounts along with her mother. “And the darkness doesn’t bother me. I find it comforting.”

  “Yes, but you always were strange. Even as an infant. Your nursemaid—Adelaide or Adela, or was she Freddy’s wet nurse?—had such a time with you, I couldn’t bear to look in on the nursery.”

  Since she had heard this complaint before, it didn’t upset her in the least. She just pulled her chair closer to the desk and rested her chin on her hands as she looked down at the garble of numbers. Without Melissa’s genius for mathematics, she found the notations meant nothing to her. “So tell me what I am looking at.”

  Lady Fellingham took Catherine through the entire ledger, explaining which numbers referred to the salaries of the staff, which covered the cost of food, which went to clothing the family and so on.

  As she listened, Catherine realized how little she knew about money matters. She was amazed to see that their maid Betsy received annually little more than Evelyn spent on a few dresses. Granted, Evelyn’s gowns where made of the finest-quality muslin and heavily embellished with lace, bows and elaborate embroidery, but still…the equivalent of a whole year’s salary? Because she read newspapers and journals regularly, she had expected to have a better grasp of these things and was surprised to discover how wrong she was.

  “Why are some figures in black and others in red?” Catherine asked.

  “The red ones have yet to be paid.”

  Some of the numbers in red were extremely large, and Catherine wondered at their ability to pay them. “Mama, this figure here is from eight months ago. When do we plan on paying it?”

  Her mother leaned over. “Don’t tease yourself over the candle maker.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s a tradesman,” she said sensibly, “and nobody pays the tradesmen. It’s unbred, my dear.”

  Catherine very much suspected that this wasn’t true—or if it was, the tradesmen very much wished it weren’t—but she didn’t want to argue with her parent about it. She simply resolved that as soon as she took over the accounts, the tradesmen would get paid in a timely fashion.

  “And what is this figure here?” she asked of an extremely large amount that had her name next to it.

  “Those are your new dresses that we purchased yesterday morning.”

  “My dresses?” she echoed, aghast. “But that’s so much.”

  “Not just dresses, my dear, but kid boots and gloves and bonnets and hosiery and reticules and that beautiful pelisse that I insisted you get.”

  Catherine was horrified. She didn’t need a wardrobe that cost more than the downstairs servants’ salaries combined. It was indecent. “Then we shall cancel those orders right way. I am very glad that we had this talk, Mama. I wish you had made me aware of the situation sooner.”

  “My dear child, you are being absurd,” Lady Fellingham told her, laughing happily at her daughter. It
was unusual for Catherine to misunderstand something. “’Tis a paltry sum, really. Sir Vincent has been known to lose twice that on the turn of a card.”

  That such a significant amount could be called paltry staggered Catherine, and she understood now what a wretched fix they were in. “B-but that is so much money,” she stammered finally. “How can this be?”

  Her mother smiled, satisfied. “Why else would Arabella and I have come up with our excellent scheme? I assure you, dear, it was nothing short of completely necessary.”

  Catherine was beginning to see that. “Are there any economies we can practice?”

  “We could use rushlights, of course, but I would feel so wretched about it. What happens when my sister Louise comes for tea? Louise would never use rushlights instead of candles. They’re for servants. And we already are poor ones for entertaining. I’ve told Sir Vincent several times that we should host a rout or even a musicale. Something small and intimate for our closest friends. How I loved giving parties for my father. I was very good at it, in fact. I always knew exactly what to do. That’s the rub, my dear, knowing when to do what. So many hostesses are paralyzed by decisions. Have the servants set the table or hang the decorations? I assure you, it is not easy.” Lady Fellingham’s eyes shone as she remembered. “But you’ll see, my dear, when you are married to Deverill. His house in Grosvenor Square has a beautiful ballroom. They had an extravagant coming out for Deverill’s sister years ago. Then you’ll see how hard it is to coordinate a large, lavish affair. Perhaps you could throw a ball for your dear sister Evelyn.”

  With her mother lost in a dream world of future possibilities, she studied the books carefully, looking for a corner to cut. She knew her family’s income was modest, and she could tell from the accounts that they owed money to many creditors. Not that they were in Dun territory, for they weren’t at all. The monies they owed could be covered by next quarter’s income. Unless, of course, they spent next quarter’s allowance before it came.