by Carola Dunn
“And all by far too fine.”
“But, Tavy, you have worn that lavender silk every Thursday and Sunday these two years! Surely my aunt realises that you need a new one!”
“Mama thinks the money better spent on clothing the South Sea Islanders, and Papa mutters ominously about giving up politics and returning to the law. It is all I can do to wheedle a new stuff gown for daily wear now and then. And you know that I was unable to go to parties with you last year because they would not allow me to accept any of your ‘frivolous garments,’ as well as because of their dislike of the Haut Ton. It is a matter of principle with them.”
“I shall find you something sufficiently sober in my wardrobe. Let us go and look at once.”
“I am so much fatter than you that I doubt it would take a month to alter anything to fit,” Octavia replied gloomily, following Julia out.
“Nonsense.” Julia turned as she reached the landing and regarded her plump cousin. “I appear slimmer because I am taller. I’ll wager we need only turn up the hem.”
“Later perhaps. I should like to go to the park while the sun is shining.”
Julia acquiesced. In a few minutes, cloaked and bonneted, they were sauntering down a gravel path, attended by a footman. There were a number of strollers about, and even one or two carriages, but it was not yet the hour of the fashionable promenade and they met no one they knew.
On oak and elm, leaf buds were swelling. Soon the park would be fresh and green for a few brief weeks, before the city’s dust and soot cast their dingy pall.
“Is the country like this?” asked Octavia. “Only more of it?”
“Not really. It is . . . oh, it is just different. Though of course I only see it in the summer; I have not been at the Priory in the spring since I was a child. It must be very dull, because all one’s friends are in town. I wish your mama will allow you to come with us this summer, so that you might satisfy your curiosity. We always have lots of guests and it is the greatest fun.”
“I am very sure she will not. You always have such grand company at the Priory that I know I should need as much finery there as here in London, to go about with you."
“But my aunt need not see it. I have plenty for both; they need be at no expense. I must and will ask again for your company."
“I fear your pains will be for nothing, as they were last year and the year before. I am reconciled to remaining a dowdy city dweller, so let us not speak of it further, if you please, Ju dear. How delightfully the daffodils spread beneath those trees! Now tell me, we were discussing your latest suitor when we were interrupted. You had just reached ‘It is only that . . .' when our subject appeared to silence you."
Julia grimaced. “It is only that . . ." she repeated. “You will think me quite puffed up, Tavy, but he does not seem to me quite so devoted as I have been wont to find my suitors. You saw him detached from my side by a new edition of Virgil. That has not been the only instance of a mind easily distracted from the contemplation of my perfections!”
“How very shocking! But surely this is a sign that he is a serious gentleman. How often have I heard you castigate as mere fribbles the majority of those who court you! To have attached a gentleman who has more in his mind than the latest fashion in waistcoats or which horse is to win at Newmarket, is certainly no mean triumph.”
“I am far from sure that I have attached him. And besides, I have a horrid feeling that when he says he prefers to spend his time in the country he not only means it, but does not include large house-parties of congenial acquaintances among the pleasures of country living. However, I daresay I shall have him, always supposing he should come up to scratch.”
“He will scarce offer for you if he is not in love, and being in love, how can he deny his bride a house in town and as many guests in the country as she should care to invite? Only lack of means could excuse that and you say he is well-to-do.”
“Rich as Croesus.”
“He seemed both amiable and generous. I daresay you might come to love him, would you but try.”
“Do not you start to sing his praises! I hear nothing else from Mama, I vow. Let us turn down this walk beside the Serpentine. I love to see the swans. Oh, look, Tavy, is that not your friend Mr Wynn?”
James Wynn’s lean figure was indeed rapidly bearing down upon them. Octavia was dismayed to see that he had on a new coat and a snowy white cravat, neatly if not exquisitely tied. She could only put it down to a desire to impress her cousin.
He doffed his well-brushed hat and bowed bashfully as he came up, but would have passed on without speaking had not Julia addressed him.
“Mr Wynn! What a charming surprise!” She cast a mischievous glance at Octavia. “We were saying but a moment past that we were sadly in need of male company. It is beyond anything fatiguing to walk without a gentleman’s arm to lean on.”
“Pray take my arm, Miss Langston!” he offered with incredulous delight. “I am happy to be of use. Miss Gray, my other arm is at your service.”
“Thank you, sir, I am made of stronger stuff than my cousin.” Octavia was annoyed with both of them. She felt herself responsible for their meeting and knew very well how strongly her aunt and uncle must disapprove. Still, it seemed highly unlikely that the ardent reform politician and the indulged, frivolous daughter of a Tory peer should have a great deal to say to one another.
She listened in growing consternation as Julia questioned the young man about his articles in the Edinburgh Review. She sounded positively fascinated! And when they went on to catalogue mutual acquaintances, it was alarming how many they found. Not all her father’s colleagues despised the fashionable world, apparently. Mr Wynn and Miss Langston might be sure of meeting at balls and routs and breakfasts if they only made the effort.
Left out of the conversation, Octavia was the first to notice that the sky was no longer a benevolent blue. A sudden breeze shook the branches of the nearby trees and a few heavy drops fell, splashing in rippling circles into the Serpentine. The cloud blew over but there were others, darker, behind it.
“Julia, it’s going to rain. We must hurry back.”
The footman, who had been following several paces behind, stepped up and offered a huge black umbrella. Mr Wynn unfurled and raised it, and they retraced their steps towards Park Lane.
By the time they reached that grand thoroughfare, the rain had abandoned all attempts to disguise itself as an April shower and was coming down in torrents. A gusty, chilly wind make it difficult to keep the umbrella upright, and blew the moisture in beneath it. When they reached Lord Langston’s house in Chapel Street, the footman was soaked and the other three all decidedly damp.
Mr Wynn cursed himself for not turning back sooner, and vowed never to forgive himself if Miss Langston should catch cold. He took his leave at the foot of the steps, refusing, to Octavia’s relief, Julia’s pressing invitation to come in and dry himself.
Raeburn swung the door open before they reached the top of the steps.
“Miss Julia, you’ll catch your death,” he cried. “Come in, come in quick, Miss Gray. Henry, whatever were you about to let the young ladies get so wet?”
The footman, dripping miserably on the marble floor, muttered an indistinguishable excuse.
“You must not blame Henry,” said Octavia quickly. “It was entirely our own fault.”
“See that he changes his clothes at once, if you please, Raeburn,” added Julia, “and has something hot to drink.”
Henry’s expression lightened to something approaching worship as he gazed at his young mistress.
The butler hurried him off to the servants’ quarters. “I’ll see to it at once, miss,” he assured them, “and I’ll send a maid up to light the fire for your chamber, for you’ll want to get into something dry right away, and Cook shall send hot soup up as soon as she can have it ready.”
“Thank you, Raeburn, and pray do not tell her ladyship that we received a wetting. She will be quite sure I shall devel
op an inflammation of the lungs."
“My lips are sealed, Miss Julia,” he promised.
“You see,” said Julia with considerable satisfaction as they mounted the stairs, “you will have to accept one of my gowns, and a nice warm pelisse too, for yours will never dry before you must leave. I’ll call up every maid in the house that can wield a needle. It will be done in a trice. Only come and choose what you will have.”
She ran lightly up the second flight.
Octavia could not repress feelings of envy as the entire wardrobe of a fashionable young lady was opened before her. Walking dresses of Circassian cloth and mull muslin, trimmed with blond lace and embroidery; satin slips with overskirts of spangled gauze or crêpe lisse in pink and pale blue and primrose; in pride of place hung the grande toilette, white silk sewn with seed pearls and tiny silver roses, which Queen Charlotte’s death the year before had rendered useless before it was ever worn.
“Here is the very thing!” exclaimed Julia, pulling out a promenade dress of canary yellow jaconet ornamented with pale green ribbons. “There is a matching bonnet somewhere, too. Ada will find it.”
“Aye, put away in the attic, I doubt,” said her abigail severely. “You never did wear that outfit, Miss Julia, for it’s quite the wrong shade, but ‘twill suit Miss Gray’s colouring to perfection.”
Octavia gazed at it wistfully but shook her head. “That hue is by far too gay for my needs,” she said. “It will grow dingy in no time. Have you nothing darker that you can spare?”
Ada, a red-cheeked, middle-aged woman whose grim face hid her absolute devotion to her mistress, riffled through the row of gowns.
“There’s the dark blue,” she offered, “though with your dark hair and brown eyes, miss, ‘tis not the best colour. Or this grey figured silk that Miss Julia wore when her great-uncle died and left her all that money. There’s a pelisse goes to it, of lutestring as I call to mind, grey and white striped. Aye, here it is.”
“It is certainly more practical. But can you spare it, Ju?”
“Certainly. I have no more rich great-uncles waiting in the wings.”
“Let me take your measure, miss. ‘Twill be done in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
In her petticoats, a large, warm shawl wrapped about her shoulders, Octavia watched the abigail bear the gown and pelisse off to the sewing room, and with them a grey velvet bonnet with white ostrich feathers which needed new ribbons. She joined her cousin by the fire.
“It is very smart,” she said with a sigh, “but at least the colour is unobjectionable. Mama would have accused me of setting up for a Bird of Paradise in that yellow. She has worn black as long as I can remember.”
“Enough to give you the megrims. Octavia, is Mr Wynn often at your house?”
“Often enough for Papa to wonder whether he might take his last daughter off his hands.”
“Oh, no, cousin, has he indeed shown a decided preference for you?” Julia was horrified.
“Not in the least. Nothing beyond common courtesy. He knows how to make himself pleasant in company, and as he is younger than most of Papa’s friends we have seen a deal of each other. I do not consider him as a suitor, I assure you. Nor ought you, my dear, for he has certainly no more than a modest competence which must be quite unacceptable to the family of an heiress."
“Fustian! I did not look to hear you talk so. I have enough for two to live on in perfect comfort, so why I should marry a fortune I cannot understand. I suppose you will not call Mr Wynn a fortune hunter?”
Octavia laughed. “No, no. I acquit him of that. He has less interest in money even than Papa, who you know gave up a lucrative legal practice to enter politics because he thought it his duty to fight for the oppressed.”
“That is just how Mr Wynn feels. I had never considered, but he says most gentlemen in politics are looking out chiefly for their own interests, or at least those of their class. He instanced Papa’s support of the Corn Laws.”
“Certainly Lord Langston, with his vast acreage of arable land, must benefit largely from the Corn Laws. On the other hand, why should not Mr Wynn oppose them if he does not?”
“You are too cynical, Tavy. I am convinced Mr Wynn acts only from principle.”
“Let us not quarrel. Tell me who danced with you at Almack’s last night.”
Julia allowed herself to be distracted and regaled her cousin with descriptions of her partners and with the latest gossip. Octavia listened with interest, but was on the whole glad never to have been displayed at the Marriage Mart like a prize heifer at an auction. Not that it would have been of the least use, for even if she had paraded before the cream of the Ton dressed in cloth of gold, none of the gentlemen would have given her a second glance.
Just as she was reaching this lowering conclusion, not for the first time, Ada returned with the grey silk over her arm.
“‘Tis all tacked up, miss,” she announced. “If you will try it on, I can check the fit.”
Octavia cast aside her shawl and stood obediently still while the maid slipped the gown over her head and buttoned it up. It was a little tight about the bust, though less so than her old dress. When she mentioned it, Ada assured her that the seams were wide enough to let out.
“Stand straight now, miss, while I check the hem.” There was a knock on the door. “Ah, there’s the pelisse. Bring it in then, girl. Hold still, Miss Gray, while I stick a pin here, and another here. Now the pelisse. Turn around, if you please. No, don’t look in the looking glass till we’re all done. Off with it all, now. I’ve five girls working on it, Miss Julia. Give me another half an hour.”
“You can stay half an hour, can you not, Tavy? You must. Since clothes are our subject, tell me why Mr Wynn dresses so oddly. Has he not enough income even to dress with propriety?”
“I should be surprised if he even notices what he is wearing, in general. His mind is on matters of greater import."
“He admired my gown most particularly.”
“Oh, dear, he must be more smitten than I’d have thought possible after only two meetings. Pray do not encourage him, Ju. He is not the sort to take a flirtation lightly, and there can be no hope of anything more.”
Julia fell silent, gazing into the flames. Octavia lounged back in her chair and enjoyed the unaccustomed sensation of doing nothing. Rain still beat against the window panes. She would have to take a hackney home, and that would save enough time to allow her to go by Hookham’s and borrow a volume of Rob Roy. On Thursdays, being the day she visited Julia, she was not expected to help at home, so there would even be time this evening to read a little, if she could escape early from her parents’ inevitable guests.
All too soon, Ada returned with the altered garments.
“I took the liberty, Miss Julia, of adding this goffered lace down the front,” she said, draping the skirts to fall gracefully over Octavia’s petticoats. “Very slimming, I think, and I’m sure we have a hundred yards of it about the place.”
Julia laughed. “True. I cannot resist lace and cannot use half I buy. How do you like it, cousin?”
Octavia was gazing at herself in the mirror. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “I don’t know if it’s the lace, or just that it is well cut, but I do look a little thinner. Do you not think so?”
“Definitely. Now only think what the yellow would do for you! I wish you will take it.”
“I must not. Let me try the pelisse.”
The grey and white stripes were still more flattering, and the plumes on the hat added an impression of height. Octavia twisted and turned in front of the glass, studying her reflection from every angle.
“It might almost be worth going on a diet of biscuits and vinegar,” she said at last. “I never thought I could look so elegant. Bless you, Ada.” She dropped a kiss on the surprised abigail’s cheek. “Will you ask Raeburn to call me a hackney? I shall go home in style today.”
Chapter 3
The next two Thursday mornings brought notes fr
om Julia with apologies for being otherwise engaged in the afternoon. Octavia was not surprised. The exigencies of fashionable life not infrequently interrupted their longstanding arrangement.
She seized the opportunity to visit Hookham’s, retiring with her spoils to the chamber she had once shared with two sisters but which was now all her own. Rob Roy finished, she started on The Heart of Mid-Lothian, and discovered the novels of Miss Jane Austen.
Absorbed in her books, and thinking about them when she was not reading them, she found the constant coming and going in the little house in Holborn less irritating than usual. It was easier to resist the temptation to nibble, and though she did not go so far as to try drinking vinegar, she managed to eat less at the endless dinners her parents provided for their acquaintance.
She took in the seams of her new dress where Ada had let them out.
By the third week, the first Thursday in May, she was anxious to see her cousin. She wanted to discuss what she had read with her only intimate friend, and she had missed their walks in the park.
She donned the grey silk, so far worn only to church. Her mother had not even noticed the addition to her wardrobe. It was a sunny day, the sky a clear, pale blue, but the breeze was cool enough to make the pelisse welcome.
Before putting on the bonnet she tidied her hair before the mirror. What would she look like, she wondered, if she had the dark masses, so heavy and difficult to manage, cut short in one of the new styles? Her cheeks were a little thinner, but too pale, almost sallow. She pinched them to give them some colour. Brown eyes gazed into deep brown eyes and she shook her head at herself. No use dreaming of being as beautiful as Julia, but it was amazing what a difference a pretty dress and a few lost pounds made.
Julia was distrait. She listened with half an ear, could not decide whether she wanted to walk in the park, and made no comment on Octavia’s appearance.
Octavia decided sadly that the improvement she had detected must have been imaginary. She could not make out whether Julia was in a pet, in the mopes, or in alt. Sometimes a dreamy smile crossed her lips, sometimes her eyes filled inexplicably with tears, and once or twice a frown creased her smooth forehead.
