Imprudent Lady

by Joan Smith

  When a loud knock was heard without, they neither of them jumped up in guilty alarm. They supposed it to be Knighton, or a menial of the establishment. “Come in,” Prudence called, and Lord Dammler stepped through the door, his face haggard and furious.

  “How cosy!” he said in a cold tone, and advanced towards them with murder in his eye.

  Seville jumped up. "Just leaving,” he said, edging towards the door. Dammler blocked his way with his body.

  “I will have a word with you first.”

  “What are you doing here, Dammler?" Prudence asked, reeling from the shock of seeing him when she thought him still at Finefields.

  “More to the point, what is he doing here?” he jerked his head towards Seville.

  “He has been helping me. The most dreadful thing has happened..."

  “I can explain,” Seville began, knowing by the cast of Dammler's countenance that he was more involved with the Miss Mallow than he had ever supposed.

  “You had best make it very good,” he was told through taut lips.

  “There’s a sick woman in there,” Seville began, pointing to the adjoining door.

  “You celebrate the event in an unusual manner," Dammler replied, glancing at the laden tray on the table.

  “It’s Mama,” Prudence stated.

  “Well?” Dammler asked, his voice rising.

  “She had poisoned food and was taken ill,” Seville explained.

  “That does not account for your presence in Miss Mallow’s bedroom at midnight!” Dammler snapped, advancing towards Seville.

  “He has been helping me,” Prudence told him, throwing herself between them.

  Thus protected, Seville headed for the door. “Miss Mallow will explain everything,” he said.

  “I’m not finished with you,” Dammler rapped out, pushing Prudence aside and hastening to grab Seville’s shoulder before he got the door open.

  “How dare you!” Prudence flew to him. “Making a disturbance when Mama is lying ill in the next room. What right have you to come in here, making insinuations. You! You, of all people!”

  Dammler turned to her, the anger shocked out of him. “Miss Mallow will explain,” Seville repeated, and got out the door while he had the opportunity. He took the precaution of bolting his own door, then went to put his ear to the adjoining wall to see what he could overhear.

  “I want a full explanation of this, Prudence,” Dammler told her.

  ‘Do you indeed?” She turned on him, her blue eyes flashing. “I see one explanation has already occurred to you. The very one I might expect to occur to one of your moral laxity. The explanation is that Mama very nearly died, and would have died had not Mr. Seville summoned a doctor for her. He has been everything that is good and kind, as he always is. He is a perfectly honourable and worthy gentleman.”

  “How does it come about you two are here together, at this inn, with rooms next door?”

  “I don’t know what brings him here. Very likely he is returning to the city from Bath, but I am very glad he is here. But for him I should have been distracted.”

  “I have a very good idea why he is here. You are travelling together.”

  “Yes, in opposite directions!”

  “You are on your way to Bath with him.”

  “Am I indeed? It is kind of you to tell me so. And what great event managed to tear you away from your lover for a moment? It must be something of major importance—a new Phyrne perhaps.”

  “Lady Malvern is not my lover.”

  “She is, and all of London knows it. Do you take me for a fool?”

  “I take you for a scheming, designing hussy!”

  “That’s enough. Get out! Out this instant, or I shall call for help.”

  “Seville never offered to marry you. He offered you a carte blanche, didn’t he?”

  "No."

  “Yes, and you regret you didn’t accept it, too.”

  “Is it so incomprehensible to you that a gentleman should want to marry me?”

  “He no more intended marrying you than he intended flying to the moon. It is known all over town he has offered for Baroness McFay.”

  “He offered for me first.”

  “Offered to make you his mistress. With his flowers and diamond necklaces. Did he say ‘Will you do me the honour to be my wife?’ or did he not?”

  “Yes. No, I don’t know. I don’t recall his exact words. How should I?”

  “But you recall hailing him on Bond Street? Telling him you should love to go to Bath with him. That cannot have slipped your very convenient memory.”

  “My memory is not deficient, Lord Dammler. I remember very well meeting Mr. Seville on Bond Street. I also remember meeting you there one night, in your cups, and dragging a redhead along with you. I remember as well seeing you making a fool of yourself at the opera with a blond lightskirt, and though I hadn’t the dubious pleasure of seeing you at Finefields, I make no doubt you were equally attentive to your brunette. Certainly you wasted no time on your work.”

  “I was working like a dog!”

  “Ah, well, when lovemaking becomes a chore, it is time to move on to the next woman. You will be all out of complexions, and have to turn to grey-haired ladies next, like the Prince of Wales.”

  “Don’t think to get out of it by dragging up my past.”

  “Past? You are confused in your tenses, milord.”

  “The fact is, you were alone in your bedroom at midnight with that scoundrel of a Seville.”

  “It’s none of your concern if I was in my bed with him! You have no right to come charging in, demanding explanations. I am alone in my bedroom past midnight with you, but I assure you I have no intention of losing my virtue.”

  “You cannot lose that which you lack to begin with.”

  “I doubt you have any to lose. Honi soit qui mal y pense, Dammler, if I may borrow your phrase. Now perhaps you will be kind enough to leave.”

  “I will leave, and you may tell your lover I will call on him tomorrow. This is not the end of it.”

  “If you bother Mr. Seville with these absurd accusations, I’ll..."

  “Kill me?” he asked. “You might as well, but first I’ll have the exquisite pleasure of putting a bullet through that jackrabbit’s liver.”

  He turned and departed, closing the door quietly behind him. Prudence sat on the chair and cried into her lap, from worry and fatigue and nervousness.

  Next door, Seville had heard enough to send him into a state of shock. Dammler was out to kill him, and all because of a misunderstanding. The girl has assured him she was not under Dammler's protection. How the devil was he to know? He sat on the edge of the bed, his hand on his brow. He recalled the conversation to himself, looking for a respectable escape. His chief consolation was that the silly chit still thought he had meant marriage. He must convince Dammler of the same thing. Now what had he said to Lady Melvine? Hinted at the truth, but not quite stated it. He’d have to get to her and convince her she had misunderstood him. Dammler couldn’t call him to account for making the girl an offer in form. No insult in that. Dashed compliment—and what if the Baroness heard it? Then there was this night’s work to straighten out. Knighton—get him to tell Dammler how sick the mother was. Wouldn’t think he’d been making up to Miss Mallow with the mother dying in the next room. He wasn’t that big a gudgeon.

  His instinct for self-preservation warned him to flee. To get into his carriage that very night and bolt for London. Give Dammler a chance to cool down. Miss Mallow could soothe his ruffled feathers if she weren’t such a goose cap. Crazed about her. Yes, and she could get him to marry her, too, if she were half as smart as everyone said she was. Trying to bam her he wasn’t playing parlour games with Lady Malvern. Why the deuce was he, if he was so crazed about Miss Mallow?

  Half an hour later, Seville came to a decision. He would write Knighton a line, mentioning that Dammler was here and concerned about Mrs. Mallow. Thus Dammler would learn the old lady was real
ly sick, then he would pen a note to Miss Mallow couched in such respectful terms as were bound to lead Dammler to know there was never any impropriety in his thoughts. A deft mention of their former association

  “Though you declined the offer to be my wife, I hope we may always be friends.” Something of that sort. She’d be bound to show it to Dammler. By Jove, he couldn’t afford a duel with the papers all ready for the Baroness to sign. Slip out the back door at dawn, and be halfway to London before Dammler knew he was gone.

  He executed this wily scheme, and saved his liver from perforation.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Dammler called on Seville the next morning, he was gone, and when he went to see if Miss Mallow also was gone, he found her in conference with Dr. Knighton, receiving instructions for the tending of her mother.

  “Seville wrote me you were here,” Knighton said to him. "He was a big help to Miss Mallow last evening. Can you believe, the foolish fellow here at the inn didn’t call me, but had Miss Mallow sending around town for a physician. There is no accounting for such stupidity. I had mentioned I did not wish to be disturbed, but had no notion he would take me so literally. An emergency, of course, was quite a different matter. I have just been telling Miss Mallow her mother must not be moved for one or two days.”

  Knighton soon took his leave and Dammler, somewhat calmer but still furious, said, “Your friend has turned tail and run. Did you warn him I was coming after him?”

  “Don’t think he would be afraid of you,” she answered in a sneering way. “I had a note from him. You will find him in London, if you are intent on making a fool of yourself and a shambles of my reputation.”

  “Your reputation needs no help from me to be made a shambles of.”

  “Would you not convince everyone the affair between myself and Mr. Seville was dishonourable by calling him out?”

  This aspect of the matter had already occurred to Dammler and he was regretting his rash statement, but having made it, he did not intend to retreat. Nor was he entirely convinced Seville was innocent. “No names need be mentioned. If anyone suspects, it will be a lesson for Seville to be wary in his dealing with you, and to avoid making the sort of offer he made.”

  “For your information, Lord Dammler, Seville’s offer was not as you think. He mentions in his note, you see,” she handed it to him, “that though I declined the offer to be his wife, he hopes we will remain friends. And so we shall, too.”

  Dammler took the letter, read it, and felt a great fool. Hettie, the blundering idiot, had misunderstood. “It does not excuse his being here last night,” he said, trying to save some small portion of his face.

  “As to what passed last night, I should prefer to forget it. I must go to Mama now.”

  “Your mother, does she prosper? She will be all right?”

  “Yes, but loud, acrimonious discussions in the next room are not good for her.”

  “Well I'm sorry, Prudence, but I misunderstood.”

  “Yes, misunderstandings are likely to occur when we judge others by our own standards,” she replied bitingly. “Having nothing but lechery in your own mind, you naturally impute it to others.”

  “I had no lechery in mind with regard to yourself.”

  “I realize I am not your type, and thank God for it.”

  He stood uncertainly, hoping to re-ingratiate himself before leaving, and seeing it would be hard going, with Prudence in the boughs. “You go on to Bath then?”

  “In a few days.”

  “I will be happy to stay and accompany you.”

  “How very kind, but I should prefer to go without any disreputable companions and see if I can’t recover from the shame of having received an offer of marriage from an unexceptionable gentleman.”

  He swallowed this with difficulty. “I only wanted to help you.”

  “I find your help a sad hindrance, however,” she said airily, and succeeded at last in goading him to anger.

  “Then I shall remove my hindering presence. I wish you good day, ma’am.”

  Prudence nodded her head silently and watched him leave. I never thought to ask him how he came to be here, she remembered after he was gone. And how very badly he behaved, too, accusing me of carrying on with Seville. Behaved like a childish, jealous young hothead. And why should he have been so jealous, if he doesn’t care for me more than he knows? And I was the same— showing my jealousy of Lady Malvern and all his other flirts. Prudence hardly knew which of them had been the bigger fool, but she could not be entirely despondent. He seemed to be realizing slowly that he loved her more than as a mere sister.

  With all her helps and hindrances gone, the two days before she might proceed to Bath passed slowly, despite the most solicitous concern on behalf of the management of “The George.” The three cases of food poisoning caused a slight stir in the local press. The event of the eminent Dr. Knighton’s presence made it more newsworthy, and when picked up by a journal in Bath, it was discovered that Lord Dammler, always of prime interest, had also been present, apparently on a visit to another young writer. The other writer was found out, and a brief interview with her added the information that she was on her way to Bath, and that she was working on a new book. When the story was finally published in Bath, it had become a large piece of human interest.

  Bath hadn’t presently many great persons visiting it, and even a minor somebody assumed importance. A letter from the Prince of Wales complimenting Prudence and inviting her to Carlton House upon her return to London was soon added to her lustre; and after she had been in Bath a few days, Mr. King called in person to invite her to put her name on the register at the Pump Room, and to attend the local assemblies. Within a week, she was a bona fide celebrity, whose entry into the Pump Room each morning with her mother caused a stir of no small degree. Her books were displayed in the shop windows, and—glory upon glory—a cartoon of her appeared in the window of the lending library. She was portrayed as signing autographs for her books, with crowds clambering all around her.

  Prudence was too busy to write it all down for Uncle Clarence, but she laughed to herself to think how happy he would be. Uncle Clarence had one other correspondent besides herself. Her mother, who as often as not elected to remain home from the “do’s” when her chaperonage was not required, was busy with her pen and sent off cuttings from the newspapers vaunting Prudence’s new fame in her letters.

  When these reached London, Clarence realized he was missing out on a deal of interesting activity, and posted off in his carriage—again hiring an extra pair of horses to arrive in a style befitting his niece’s renown. He scarcely took time to dash over to see Mrs. Hering and Sir Alfred and tell them of his trip.

  “Well, Prudence, so you are the talk of the town, naughty puss,” he beamed in approval when he saw her. He discerned the reflected glory of a letter from Carlton House on her brow, and a cartoon in the shop window in her eye. “You are up to all the rigs. You won’t be recognizing your old uncle next thing we know. Hardly a line for me.”

  “Oh, but Mama wrote. There was no point in both of us writing the same thing.”

  “Aye, you are too busy. I know just how it is. I am very busy myself. We all are. I painted the Chilterns all done up in style, but had time for only one study of Richmond Hill with so much going on.”

  “What was going on in London, Uncle?” she asked eagerly. Her own thoughts often flew to London, where she imagined Dammler to be, though she didn’t actually know it.

  “Why, everyone wanted to hear of your success. I have had a dozen callers a day stopping to congratulate me.”

  Prudence correctly interpreted this to mean he had been running around telling his friends of her fame, and smiled weakly.

  “So, Wilma, you became ill eating oysters,” he chided gently. ‘I never eat an oyster. They are no fit food for human beings. They are well enough for seagulls, but I never serve them at my table. Nasty looking things. But Knighton came to help you. That was well thoug
ht of, Prue, sending to London for Knighton.”

  “He happened to be at the inn. It was the greatest chance.”

  It was well done of Knighton to be on hand, but not quite as wonderful as having him dash down from London, and this was soon transformed into the more acceptable story. “He is very good about making a call. I’ll say that for him. I will have him over to look at my chest when I return to the City.”

  “What’s the matter with your chest, Clarence?” his sister asked.

  “It is giving me a little trouble,” he answered vaguely, having just that second thought what consequence it would add for McGee to see Knighton’s carriage outside his door. “But the waters might cure me. We will all go to the Pump Room tomorrow. I daresay there is quite a little stir when you walk in. Everyone turning and staring and wanting a book signed.”

  “Yes, there is quite a commotion,” Wilma assured him.

  “Very unpleasant for you. Very unpleasant indeed,” he smiled his gratification. “We will go early. I want to have a look at your cartoon in the window first. You didn’t describe it to me at all, Wilma. Is it well done? Have they given her a good profile? I know those fellows never tackle a front likeness, with foreshortening. As to hoping for an eyelash..."

  “It is very like,” Prudence told him. “I am sitting at my table in the Pump Room, with one person knocking my glass over, and another climbing upon my chair.”

  “So that’s how it is, eh? It is well I am here to fend them off,” he smiled.

  “It is not really so bad as that. They exaggerate in a cartoon. I am gratified to be asked to sign an autograph.”

  “You are good-tempered. It sounds dashed encroaching to me,” he decreed, pleased as punch.

  His next overture was, “Where is Dammler? I thought he would be here with you. I don’t see you wearing his ring.”