The Original Miss Honeyford

by M C Beaton

  “But there is nothing wrong with our life,” said Honey. “We are happy.”

  “There’s no going back. I thank the good Lord that you are young enough, and what has been done can be undone. You must be trained to become a lady, Honey, a lady of whom I can be proud.”

  “It’s that wretched Amy,” said Honey. “She has ruined everything. You were proud of me once.”

  “I still am, in a way. No, do not blame Miss Wetherall. One day you will thank her for raising the shutters from my eyes. Do you remember your aunt, your mother’s eldest sister, Lady Canon?”

  “Aunt Elizabeth. Yes, vaguely.”

  “Last year she wrote to me offering to be your chaperone during the London Season. I refused, saying you were too young, but, in truth, I wanted to keep you by me. This very night I am going to write to Lady Canon to say you will be traveling to London to join her.”

  “I cannot leave here,” said Honey, beginning to cry. “Amy will be leaving soon and then we can be comfortable again.”

  “I can never be comfortable until I see you married to a good man who will appreciate your fine qualities.”

  “But marriage! You have encouraged me to have an independent mind, to think for myself. Marriage means being a slave, tied at home, a lifetime of childbirth and illness!”

  “Hush, child, you will come to long for marriage once you are away from my crude influence. It is no use crying, my child. My mind is made up.”

  “I shall go to London if you wish, Papa,” said Honey, drying her tears. “But nothing, and no one, is going to turn me into a simpering, posturing miss like Amy Wetherall.”

  “I think love might do what I have failed to do,” said Sir Edmund.

  “Love! I will never love anyone, if by love you mean romantic love. It demeans a woman and turns her into a groveling lapdog, panting for the sound of the master’s footstep.”

  “We’ll see,” sighed Sir Edmund. “Now leave me.”

  By the time Honey awoke the next morning, she had managed to convince herself that her father had had a kind of brainstorm.

  And it did seem during the following week as if Sir Edmund had forgotten about the whole thing. But the young men who used to call to chat with Honey and Sir Edmund were conspicuously absent.

  Honey decided at the end of the week to go for a long country walk to release the nervous energy which had plagued her since the Wetherall’s party. She crammed a depressing beaver hat down on her curls and shrugged herself into her garrick, quite forgetting that she had sworn never to wear it again.

  After she had walked several miles, she began to feel more relaxed and cheerful. She walked through the town, stopping to chat with various townspeople, and then, almost despite herself, she made her way out of the far end of the town toward where the Wetheralls lived.

  “I am being very silly,” she chided herself. “The gentlemen must be engaged in other pursuits, which is why they have been absent. They cannot be spending all of their time spooning Miss Wetherall.”

  As she rounded a bend in the road, the entrance to the Wetherall house was in front of her and there was a great commotion outside on the road as a carriage drew out. Every eligible man in the county was clustered around the gates. Amy Wetherall was leaving for London.

  They were laughing and holding up gaily wrapped packages and flowers. The coach stopped and Amy stepped down into the roadway to receive her farewell presents.

  Despite the chill of the day, she was wearing a round dress of fine French cambric under a pelisse of amber-shot sarcenet, ornamented with blue satin ribbons. Her Oatlands hat, which matched the pelisse, was tied with a checkered ribbon of blue on white and was surmounted with a bunch of tuberoses. Morocco shoes of light blue peeped out from below the fashionably short hemline. Long Limerick gloves were drawn up her arms to above the elbow, and her glossy brown curls were dressed forward on her forehead.

  Honey turned and walked away quickly. She had long held the view that a lady should dress for comfort instead of being a hostage to fashion. But her own clothes now seemed simply eccentric. The gown she had worn to the musicale had been hot and scratchy. How much more sensible had been the loose, light muslins of the other female guests.

  But by the time she returned home her spirits were quite restored. With Amy gone, life would return to its usual pleasant pattern.

  The house looked dark and shabby. Why had she never noticed that before? Stuffed foxes glared down from glass cases in the hall and a huge stuffed pike was set over the fireplace. A wind had got up and moaned dismally in the eaves.

  She saw for the first time what the young men of the district must have seen—this odd, dark, gloomy house with its frumpish daughter. She had a picture of the Wetherall’s place, bright with flowers and candles, and Amy, charming and flirting, every movement delicate and studied.

  The footman, George, who had just opened the door into the hall from the nether regions, looked more like a poacher than a footman. His livery started off well above the waistline, being of faded claret laced with silver, but from the waist down, he was dressed in stained moleskin breeches and a pair of Sir Edmund’s old hunting boots.

  “Master wants to see you in the library, Miss Honoria,” he said.

  Honey let him help her out of her garrick and then she went into the library where her father sat before a small, smoking fire. He had a letter in his hand.

  “Sit down, Honoria,” he said, and Honey’s spirits plummeted at the sound of that “Honoria.”

  “I sent an express to Lady Canon, and she has done me the courtesy to reply by the same. She says she will be delighted to take you in hand as soon as possible. I told her in my letter that I would be sending funds so that you may have a grand London wardrobe.”

  “Oh, need I go, Papa? If I promise to go next year….”

  “There is a mercenary side to all of this,” sighed Sir Edmund. “The truth is, I do not know how to manage the land to make a profit. These valuable documents called leases are binding on the landlord, but wholly inoperative on the tenant. Because the tenant farmers do not know how to manage the land either, and scorn all new improvements, they end up paying me half the rent they owed to my father. I am afraid the reputed honesty of the British farmer is a mere fiction. When I try to find what they have in pocket, they declare their capital is someone else’s—their aunt’s, uncle’s or grandmother’s—and so the rents stay very low. The rent once put down is very difficult to get up again when they continue to plead poverty, and my agent, John Humphries, is too lazy and easy-going.

  “It would help to have another man in the family, a son-in-law. To put it bluntly, a son-in-law with money.”

  “But you should have told me this before,” wailed Honey, aghast. “I could have studied agriculture and learned all the new improvements.”

  Sir Edmund sadly shook his head. “The farmers and John Humphries will not take orders from a mere girl.”

  “I hate being a girl,” said Honey passionately. “I wish I had been born a boy.”

  “Your odd upbringing makes you think so,” said Sir Edmund. “Honey, do not turn into a country bumpkin.”

  “Papa,” said Honey, blushing. “You were wont to say I had a fine mind.”

  “And so you have, my child, which is why Lady Canon should find you teachable.”

  “But anyone can learn what girls like Amy Wetherall learn—to play, draw, sing, dance, make wax flowers, bead stands, do decorative gilding and crochet work. And what good is that? A man cannot profit by a woman who can only bead slippers.”

  “Nor can he profit by a young girl who knows Greek and Latin,” said Sir Edmund dryly. “In your mother’s day, any young girl was expected to know as much about housewifery as the servants. But you have not even been trained in that. Honey, it is a woman’s role in life to marry and bear children.”

  “Unless she is lucky,” said Honey, jumping to her feet and beginning to pace up and down. “I despise young ladies like Amy Wetherall.�
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  “Odso? Then why so jealous of her?”

  “I! Jealous? Of that… that… posturing, simpering miss?”

  “Yes, jealous. Jealousy is the one character defect that everyone claims everyone else has except themselves. There is no need to become a simpering miss, and the man who would want a wife like that is not the son-in-law for me.”

  “I am being sent off to the Marriage Mart like a cow!”

  “Like a very lucky young girl. Have you not passed by that vast new edifice in Kelidon that they nickname the Bastille? That, my dear, is the workhouse. Think of the young women in there before you start sulking over fine balls and fine company.”

  Tears sprang to Honey’s eyes. “You are harsh, Papa.”

  “I am being deliberately harsh so that you will take your leave with better grace. For you leave tomorrow.”

  “I have made no preparation. I cannot leave tomorrow.”

  “But I have. You have little to pack since you have nothing that is suitable. The only thing that concerns me is that I have not been able to find a woman in the town who could act as a lady’s maid.”

  “I have never had a maid. I do not need one.”

  “You will have two grooms and the coachman. But it is not fitting for a young lady of Quality to stay at a posting house without a female companion.”

  “I am perfectly capable of managing on my own,” said Honey.

  “We will see. There is still a little time. Now go to your room and pack only the things you think will be suitable for London.”

  “What about Jasper and Casper?” Jasper and Casper were Honey’s pet foxhounds.

  “They will do to keep me company.”

  “Oh, Papa, why don’t you come with me?”

  “Because the two of us in London would be just too much expense. Please do not make it hard for me, Honey. You must go.”

  Honey went and knelt in front of him and looked pleadingly up into his face. “If I try very hard to dress prettily and look like a lady,” she said, “then I might marry someone locally—perhaps like Captain Jocelyn.”

  He ruffled her short curls, and sighed, “No, my child. Captain Jocelyn and the others would still see the Honey of the hunting field. Do not tear my heart any longer with your pleas. You are going, Honoria, and that is that!”

  Two

  The servants who were to travel to London with Honey, that is, the coachman, Jem Judkin, and the two grooms, Peter Dasset and Abraham Jellibee, were more concerned with the niceties of fashion than was their mistress.

  They complained their waistcoats had horizontal stripes and no decent coachman or groom wore those; only indoor servants wore those. Vertical stripes were the thing. They protested they could not appear in “Lunnon” looking countrified with such passion that Sir Edmund relented and delayed Honey’s departure until new liveries could be run up by the three-shilling-a-day man. Since Honey was to be furnished with a new wardrobe in London, he quite forgot she might need new clothes for the journey, and so it was a very unfashionably young lady who at last took the road.

  And yet Honey felt she had done her best. Under her gown of blue kerseymere, she wore a long linen corset and two petticoats. The very discomfort of her underwear convinced her that she was suffering to be fashionable since the length of the corset made it impossible to lounge, and the only way she could achieve any modicum of comfort was by sitting bolt upright. Over her gown, she wore a mantle of white bombazine, and, on her head, a cavalier hat ornamented with a rather tired-looking ostrich feather.

  She bade her father a tearful farewell and set out on the road to London.

  The spring weather was fine. The new wheat formed a green haze over the fields. The long line of Lombardy poplars at the edge of the six-acre field showed their new leaves, more yellow than green, giving the trees an odd autumnal air. The flowering spikes of the horse chestnuts stood up proudly against a pale blue sky. Coots were quarreling beside the village pond, and the first bluebells were growing in patches in the woods. Small white butterflies performed their zig-zag dance over the early bracken.

  Skylarks were rising straight up from the fields until they were mere dots against the sky, sending down burst upon burst of song.

  Everything was new, fresh, and bustling. With the resilience of youth, Honey dried her eyes and began to look forward instead of back.

  If she did not manage to find a husband, it would not be so very terrible. They would manage somehow. They had always managed in the past.

  But, then, there just might be a husband waiting for her, a man perhaps like Captain Jocelyn, or, rather, as Captain Jocelyn had been before the arrival of Amy.

  So Honey dreamed the first day’s journey away, thinking of some man with whom she could share the winter evenings, the two of them on either side of the fire, drinking brandy and smoking cheroots, not realizing she only wanted someone like her father, only wanted things to be as they had always been.

  Honey was glad her father had not been able to find a maid to accompany her. How much pleasanter to dream without being interrupted by some silly female.

  She had only been as far as twenty miles from Kelidon before. Then she had gone to a large cattle market with her father. She remembered with amusement the coaching inn called The Blue Boar. She certainly did not need the company of some lady’s maid to give her ton at any such English hostelry.

  She remembered their meal being interrupted by the arrival of the coach. The passengers who traveled inside were very conscious of their superiority, and no “outsider”—the ones who traveled on the roof—would dream of finding a seat at the table before the insiders were seated. The coach passengers were only allowed half an hour to eat, and most complained bitterly about the menu, which was made up of pork in various shapes, roast at the top, boiled on the bottom, sausages on one side, fried bacon on the other. Then the coachman, a large strong-smelling man in a mountainous greatcoat, indicated with a bob of his head and a sort of waltzing motion of his hand behind his back that tipping time had come. The passengers had barely time to eat before they were shrugging themselves back into their husks, accompanied by dives into pockets and reticules for the needful, and everyone wondering how little he could tip without getting a snubbing from the coachman. Then a monstrous cry of, “All right! Sit tight!” was heard, showing that the coach was out on the road again. Hardly a tonnish scene, thought Honey. Putting on airs would be a waste of time.

  But, until this journey, Honey had never stayed at a really good posting house, and her heart sank a little as The Magpie hove into view.

  It was a modern building with a glistening white portico and glossy green shutters. There was a very fine traveling carriage being led around to the stables, and, in the light of the big oil lamp that swung over the inn door, Honey could make out a crest on the panels.

  Her servants were so used to Miss Honoria’s taking charge, that, once they had seen her safely deposited in the hall of the posting house, they went off to the stables to make arrangements for the new team to be harnessed in the morning.

  Honey looked about her nervously, at the bright fire in the hall crackling before the solid brass fender, at the polished floorboards, and then at the very superior individual in black knee breeches and a swallowtail coat who turned out to be the manager.

  The manager explained he had set up a truckle bed in Miss Honeyford’s room for her maid, and raised his thin eyebrows superciliously when she explained she had not got one.

  He eyed Honey’s clothes with a quick, practiced glance. Honey defiantly turned away from him and straightened her hat in the long mirror on one side of the hall. She blushed as she saw that Jasper’s and Casper’s enthusiastic farewell had left its mark—or marks. On the white of her bombazine coat were four black paw prints.

  “Have my bags taken upstairs,” said Honey, turning around, “and show me to my room.”

  The manager turned and walked upstairs, presenting to Honey’s gaze the most insolent-looking pai
r of shoulders she thought she had ever seen. It was as well, she thought ruefully, that Papa had bespoke her room at this inn by sending a letter by the mail coach, otherwise, she felt sure, the supercilious manager would have turned her from the door.

  The room was better appointed than most country house bedchambers. There were pretty rose and white chintz curtains at the window and the bed hangings were of the same design. Brass-bound cans on the toilet table held piping hot water, and there were two unused cakes of Joppa soap.

  Honey dismissed the manager after he had told her supper would be laid for her in the dining room as soon as she cared to put in an appearance. His manner was a little more polite. Honey was used to giving orders and her self-confidence had been restored by the comfort of the room.

  She changed her gown for a dark brown silk of old-fashioned cut after having sponged her face and combed her hair. She consoled herself with the thought that they were not yet on the main London road, and so, with any luck, she would have the dining room to herself.

  The very quietness of the posting house added to this hope as she went down the stairs. There were no noisy voices resounding from the tap. It was easy to find the dining room because each room had its sign in curly letters over the door.

  Honey bumped into a chair which was awkwardly placed just inside the door, and, being under the impression that the dining room was empty, she relieved her feelings by cursing loudly.

  “No, no, no,” urged a gentle voice. “Pray don’t swear, ma’am. Spoils the shape of the mouth.”

  Honey, who had bent down to straighten the chair, jerked upright and stared.

  Lit by two tall candles placed on a small table by the bay window sat a gentleman. As Honey stared, he took out his quizzing glass and calmly surveyed her from head to foot.

  Honey flushed and put up her chin. Lord Alistair Stewart dropped his glass and gave her a bewitching smile.

  Then he blinked and his heavy lids came down to veil the expression in his blue eyes. For Lord Alistair, youngest son of the Duke of Bewley, was not used to being viewed with just that gleam of contempt that he had caught in the hazel eyes which were studying him from the doorway. He gave an infinitessimal shrug and poured himself another glass of wine. It did not really matter what some country schoolgirl miss with an outlandish coiffure and a dowdy dress thought of him.