Annabelle

by Beaton, M. C.

  “Hey, Captain,” yelled an officer from the next table. “Lay you a monkey you couldn’t do it.”

  “Done!” roared the Captain. He raced from the table and mounted to the buffet table by way of an empty chair, and before the cheering guests’ eyes, he plunged headfirst into the punch bowl so that only his glossy Hessians could be seen waving in the air. A small tidal wave of punch slopped over the side and straight onto Lady Jane’s lap. She began screaming and screaming while the guests roared and cheered. Lord Standish pushed his way through the crowd of the Captain’s admirers to try to pull that gentleman from the punch bowl while Lady Standish led the now weeping Lady Jane towards the house to find her a change of clothes.

  “By Jove, Miss Quennell!” howled George Louch exuberantly. “You’re a lucky girl to have a man like that. What a capital gun!”

  Am I too prim, thought Annabelle desperately? Why should I always feel so shocked and embarrassed? Everyone else seems to admire Captain MacDonald. Perhaps I have not tried hard enough to understand him.

  “It is time to go home, Miss Quennell.” At the sound of the familiar voice Annabelle looked up and saw Lord Varleigh beside her chair. His normally hard gray eyes were warm with sympathy. Without a word she put her hand on his arm and they walked towards the entrance to the marquee. Annabelle turned back briefly. The Captain was sitting in the middle of the table with pieces of cinnamon and lemon in his hair like some exotic headdress. He had started to roar out a bawdy song and was being frantically hushed by Lord Standish. Then the Captain looked to where Annabelle was standing with Lord Varleigh, and his eyes suddenly looked very sober and alert. “Heh!” he cried. “Heh!” But Lord Varleigh had firmly led Annabelle from the marquee.

  “I am afraid it is an open carnage,” he said as they waited for the curricle to be brought round. “But I shall wrap you up in plenty of rugs.”

  Annabelle did not relax until they had left the Standish mansion well behind. She dreaded the Captain coming in pursuit of her. Perhaps Lord Varleigh dreaded being pursued by Lady Jane. To her horror she realised she had voiced this thought aloud, and Lord Varleigh glanced away from the management of his team to look at his companion with a certain tinge of amusement. “No, my dear Miss Quennell, I am the pursuer, I assure you. I shall be meeting Lady Jane again this evening so she will be quite content to exist without my company until then.”

  “Oh,” said Annabelle, wondering why she felt a pang of disappointment. After all, it was not as if she wanted Lord Varleigh for herself. Or was it?

  With a start she noticed they were turning into the courtyard of a smart posting inn and, for a moment, wild thoughts of abduction and seduction flew through her brain.

  “Do not be afraid,” said her companion, reading her mind with irritating ease. “I have just heard the noisy sounds of pursuit and feel sure you do not wish to meet your beloved in his present condition.”

  She eyed him doubtfully as he swung her down from his curricle. But then she heard unmistakable roars and tantivies coming closer on the road outside.

  She peeped round the shelter of the curricle in time to see a smart phaeton, driven by the Captain, streaming past at a tremendous rate. Mr. Louch and Major Wilks were crammed on either side of him and hanging onto their tall hats for dear life. A slice of lemon rolled into the courtyard of the inn. The gallant Captain had obviously not waited to change.

  Annabelle felt strangely embarrassed when she found herself seated alone with Lord Varleigh over the tea tray. But he settled comfortably back in his chair, entertaining her with an easy flow of conversation until she relaxed.

  At last he said, “You must forgive the impertinence of the question, Miss Quennell, but is your proposed marriage with Captain MacDonald an arranged one? There does not seem to be much regard on either side.”

  “More tea?” queried Annabelle sweetly.

  Lord Varleigh’s thin brows snapped together, and then he laughed. Of course the very correct Miss Quennell would not discuss her engagement. He also longed to ask her why she had worn such an outrageously indecent gown to the opera but felt sure she would simply give him another setdown.

  But Annabelle had thought of a safe topic of conversation. Had Lord Varleigh received her note of thanks for the book he had sent her? Indeed he had. He was amused to learn it was the first novel she had read.

  “Mama would never allow me to read a novel,” said Annabelle, “although she always insisted I was reading romances on the sly. Miss Austen’s book seems all that is proper. Now the tales of the ancient Greeks are sometimes very scandalous, but Mama never objected to those.”

  “Which translations did you read?” asked Lord Varleigh, noticing that Annabelle had an intriguing dimple in her cheek when she smiled.

  “Oh, I read them in the original,” said Annabelle blithely, unaware of Lord Varleigh’s start of surprise. “Papa is a great scholar. I have been fortunate in my education. Oh, I had forgot. Godmother told me not to mention books in the presence of any member of the haut ton in case I was labelled a blue stocking.”

  “There is no fear of that. You are too beautiful,” said Lord Varleigh simply and then cursed himself. His compliment had the effect of causing a closed, tight look on Annabelle’s face, and she began to look at the clock with obvious impatience.

  “Come,” he teased. “I will take you home. But you must get in the way of receiving compliments, Miss Quennell. With your face and figure…” He allowed his eyes to roam insolently over her. To his surprise she did not blush or simper but stood looking at him with thinly veiled impatience.

  “If you have finished taking your inventory, may I suggest we leave,” snapped Annabelle. “And may I also suggest, my lord, that you save your intimate glances for Lady Jane Cherle!”

  THE Dowager Marchioness was in a tearing fury, and the reason for her bad temper had not yet arrived home. She had sustained a visit from Captain MacDonald who had complained bitterly that Annabelle was causing no end of talk by leaving the breakfast with Lord Varleigh. The Captain was obviously “well to go” as he himself would have put it, and Lady Emmeline unfairly thought Annabelle had been encouraging him to drink, or at the very least keeping insufficient control of him.

  She promised the Captain she would deal with her goddaughter when Annabelle arrived home and sent him packing. She was fully recovered from her fright of the night before and felt the need to take some action. Calling for Horley, she informed that long-suffering lady’s maid that they were going out for a promenade and told her to take that look off her face and fetch the umbrella immediately.

  For the hundredth time Lady Emmeline vowed to buy herself a new umbrella. Her old one was heavy and cumbersome but, for all that, seemed nigh indestructable. Heavy scarlet silk covered tough iron spokes and the umbrella felt as if it weighed a ton.

  As she stood on her doorstep, several heavy spots of rain began to fall, driven by the rapidly increasing force of the wind, a fact that Horley pointed out with a sort of gloomy relish. But Lady Emmeline was determined to exercise. Exercise cleaned the liver and purged the bowels, she told Horley. She also remarked that Horley’s perpetual long face was due to the disorder of her spleen.

  Feeling slightly refreshed after this lecture, Lady Emmeline unfurled her enormous umbrella and stepped briskly out onto the pavement … and straight into— What appeared to the terrified Horley—to be an absolute rain of bricks. Bricks fell from the heavens like the thunderbolts of Jove and smashed down on her ladyship’s doughty umbrella. The Dowager Marchioness was knocked to the ground by the weight of the bricks and fell screaming onto the pavement—unhurt, thanks to her umbrella—but terrified out of her wits.

  It was at that moment that Annabelle arrived home, just in time to see the extraordinary sight of her godmother lying flat out on the pavement in a pile of bricks with her dress indecently hitched up, displaying her fat little calves bulging over a tight pair of glacé kid half boots. Lord Varleigh helped the shaken lady to her feet, a
nd Lady Emmeline’s wrath erupted.

  “How dare you, sirrah,” she roared in Lord Varleigh’s surprised face. “My goddaughter is affianced—affianced d’ye hear?—to Captain MacDonald, and I will not have her traipsing around the countryside with a man who is little better than a rake.”

  “Control yourself,” said Lord Varleigh coldly.

  “And you” went on Lady Emmeline, rounding on Annabelle, “you ungrateful baggage. I bring you to London. I arrange a marriage for you with the finest young man…”

  “That money can buy,” said Annabelle, nearly as furious as her godmother.

  “Don’t be impertinent,” roared the Dowager Marchioness, oblivious of the gathering crowd of spectators. “If I have any more of your nonsense, you will be packed back to Yorkshire in disgrace and not one penny of my money will you see.”

  “Your money cannot buy everything,” shouted Annabelle, pink with mortification.

  “Quite right,” roared Lady Emmeline. “It can’t buy poverty.”

  The avidly listening crowd cheered this sally, and Lady Emmeline’s wrath fled like the black clouds above.

  “Well, well,” she said mildly. “Come into the house—you too, Varleigh. We should not be bandying words in public.”

  Begrimed with brick dust and with her bonnet and red wig askew, Lady Emmeline led the way into the house.

  “What on earth happened to you, Lady Emmeline?” asked Lord Varleigh, holding open the door of the drawing room for her.

  “Strangest thing,” said Lady Emmeline, plopping herself down on the sofa. “Bricks—great whopping bricks—came falling out of the sky. I’d better send a man up to check the chimney stack. See to it, Horley. And as for you, Varleigh,” she went on without checking for breath, “I’m sorry I let off at you like that. What exactly happened? Jimmy said you just upped and offed with Annabelle.”

  Lord Varleigh told her of the episode of the punch bowl, and Lady Emmeline laughed appreciatively. “What a man!” she gasped when she could. “Course, now I see you did the right thing, Varleigh, and I’m grateful to you. Jimmy’s a good lad. He’ll calm down once he’s married.” She rang for the butler and demanded that the brandy decanter be brought in, and Annabelle judged from the disapproving height of the butler’s eyebrows that this was an unusual request.

  Annabelle wondered what Mrs. Quennell would say if she could see her eldest daughter, the hope of the family, sitting quaffing brandy in the company of an elderly lady covered in brick dust and an aristocratic lord whose heart was well known to belong to one of the most dashing matrons of the Town.

  Horley soon came back to inform the startled party that the chimney stack had been found intact but that there were signs someone had been hiding up on the roof for, it seemed, the sole purpose of throwing bricks at Lady Emmeline should she leave her mansion.

  Lord Varleigh sat very still, his glass halfway to his lips, Annabelle was remembering Mad Meg’s prophecy and feeling shaken, but Lady Emmeline only gave her infuriating giggle. “Why,” she said, “I vow it was nothing more than some Tom or Jerry up there for a lark.”

  Annabelle had to admit that the Tom and Jerry sportsmen of the well-known cartoons were very close to real life. Was it strange that someone should throw bricks at an elderly dowager in a world where dropping live coals on a sleeping person and stealing a blind man’s dog were considered the veriest demonstration of Corinthian high spirits?

  Lord Varleigh rose to take his leave. He bowed punctiliously over Annabelle’s hand, but his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. Lady Emmeline had started to berate Horley over nothing in particular and everything in general, and Annabelle could not resist moving to the window to watch Lord Varleigh leave.

  A smart yellow landau came to a stop in front of him. Smiling alluringly at Lord Varleigh from the landau was Lady Jane Cherle. A pale shaft of sunlight shone on the magnificent pearls at her throat. Lord Varleigh joined her in the carriage, and Lady Jane rested her head on his shoulder as they drove off.

  Annabelle stood very still. Lady Jane had looked so sophisticated and beautiful. Annabelle became aware that she was engulfed in a new strong violent emotion. She wanted to see Lady Jane ruined; she wanted all London to laugh at her. Above all, Annabelle wanted Lord Varleigh to look at his mistress with contempt instead of with that heart-wrenching lazy intimacy.

  I’m jealous, thought poor Annabelle. I’m jealous of Lady Jane’s beauty. What a stupid wretch I am!

  She raised her hands to her suddenly hot cheeks. Was this then how her sisters felt? With a new understanding of Mary, Susan, and Lisbeth tucked away in the Hazeldean rectory, Annabelle removed to her room to write a new kind of letter to them—telling them how much she missed them and how she longed to be home again.

  Chapter Five

  In the following days Annabelle became more and more accustomed to the bewildering social round.

  Some of it seemed delightful, like the breakfasts among the Middlesex meadows or Surrey woods, and some, downright ridiculous. How on earth could one call an event a party when there was no room to sit, no conversation, no cards and no music—only shouting and elbowing through a succession of rooms meant to hold six hundred instead of the sixteen hundred invited? And then battling down the stairs again and the long wait for the carriage to make its way through the press so that one spent more time with the gold-laced footmen on the steps outside than with one’s hosts upstairs.

  Annabelle was to have her voucher for Almack’s since Lady Emmeline was a great social power and any girl making a come-out under her aegis must be good ton.

  In 1765 a Scotsman called William Macall reversed the syllables of his name to provide a more memorable title for his new Assembly Rooms—Almack’s. Now nearly fifty years later at the height of its fame with a great wave of snobbery sweeping London, it thrived under the management of the haughty, vulgar, and indefatigable beauty, Lady Jersey. Not to have a voucher to one of Almack’s Wednesday nights was to be damned socially and forever. So formidable were the patronesses that one of them, the Countess Lieven, was heard to say, “It is not fashionable where I am not.”

  A lady of the ton was expected to be fragile and useless and infinitely feminine. But the definition of a gentleman was the exact opposite, Annabelle learned. “An out and outer, one up to everything, down as a nail, a trump, a Trojan … one that can patter flash, floor a charley, mill a coal heaver, come coachey in prime style, up to every rig and row in town and down to every move upon the board from a nibble at the club to a dead hit at a hell; can swear, smoke, take snuff, lush, play at all games, and throw over both sexes in different ways—he is the finished man!” No wonder, reflected poor Annabelle, that Lady Emmeline was increasingly amazed that her strange goddaughter had not tumbled head over heels in love with Captain MacDonald.

  But it was sometimes exciting, particularly in the evenings from six to eight and from eight to ten when Mayfair came alive with the rumbling of carriages, their flaming lamps twinkling along the fashionable streets, past tall houses ablaze with lights from top to bottom. And the food! Périgord pie and truffles from France, sauces and curry powder from India, hams from Westphalia and Portugal, caviar from Russia, reindeer tongues from Lapland, (olives from Spain, cheese from Parma, and sausages from Bologna.

  Sometimes the sheer extravagance of the members of this gilded society seemed overwhelming to Annabelle. Lady Londonderry went to a ball so covered in jewels that she could not stand and had to be followed around with a chair. And her very handkerchiefs cost fifty guineas the dozen. Everything, as the Corinthians would say, had to be “prime and bang up to the mark.”

  Despite various discreet requests Annabelle had refused to divulge the name of her dressmaker for fear Madame Croke would discover Annabelle’s alterations to her styles.

  To her disappointment she had not yet found a female friend. In the hurly-burly of the marriage mart she was marked down as one of the few who had already succeeded. Members of her own sex who were still
out there on the battleground preferred to huddle together in groups, plotting and exchanging gossip.

  London was enjoying an unusually fine spell of hot weather so it was possible to wear the delicate lawns and Indian muslins without also displaying acres of mottled gooseflesh. Annabelle was to attend a fête champêtre onboard the Hullocks’ “little yacht.” Mr. Hullock was a wealthy merchant who entertained the ton lavishly in the hope of securing titled marriages for his daughters. But the aristocracy drank his fine French vintages and guzzled his food and remained as aloof and patronising as ever.

  A long box had arrived from Madame Croke containing Annabelle’s costume for the party. In vain had Annabelle pleaded with Lady Emmeline to be allowed to make her own. What could a country miss know of fashion, Lady Emmeline had demanded.

  Annabelle stared at the contents of the box in dismay. Madame Croke had surpassed herself. A neat label in tight script declared it to be the costume of Athene. It was of fine white lawn—so fine it was nigh transparent and the skirt ended just below the knee. Did Madame Croke expect Annabelle to show her legs in public? She obviously did.

  Annabelle recalled having seen a slim rose silk gown in her vast wardrobe. With a few tucks and changes and stitches, it could be transformed into an alluring under-dress. The flounces at the hem would have to be removed to style the dress in keeping with the Greek-goddess image.

  The gold helmet was, however, very flattering and no doubt Monsieur André, the hairdresser, would twist Annabelle’s long curls into an attractive style to suit it.

  She bent her head over the costume and began to work.

  Horley came into the room as quietly as a shadow. Annabelle guiltily thrust her work behind her. “What is it, Horley?” she demanded as Horley’s piercing black eyes seemed to stare straight through her to the costume hidden behind.

  “It’s the Captain, miss. Captain MacDonald,” said Horley, holding open the door and stepping aside to let Annabelle past. “He’s waiting downstairs.”