The Original Miss Honeyford

by M C Beaton

  But Amy bit her lip. Honey’s hair, which had looked so outré in Kelidon, looked oddly modish in London. It must be modish to get a high stickler like Lord Alistair Stewart to smile at her that way. Lord Alistair had been pointed out to Amy a week before when that gentleman had been driving in the Park, and Amy had thought of him ever since.

  Lord Alistair thankfully set Miss Honeyford down outside Lady Canon’s home in Charles Street. His mind was full of the beautiful Miss Wetherall. There was a pearl! Miss Wetherall would not smoke cheroots, drink brandy, wave a pistol, or nearly get herself killed at a public hanging.

  Honey was glad to get away from him, horrible, nagging man.

  But the horrible nagging was not over, for Lady Canon was ready to deliver herself of her lecture. She ended up by saying she would take the liberty of dismissing Honey’s servants and write and tell Sir Edmund why she had taken the liberty of doing so.

  “Then you may dismiss me, my lady,” said Honey quietly, “for they are part of my family. They are very loyal and obedient. I ordered them to take me with them, and they could not do else but obey. You will not dismiss them.”

  Lady Canon blinked a little at the quiet dignity in Honey’s face.

  Honey had not told her of the terrible crowd deaths at the hanging, or of her rescue by Lord Alistair. Let Lady Canon continue to think for as long as possible that she had merely gone to a vulgar spectacle.

  “Well, well,” said Lady Canon rather breathlessly, “your loyalty does you credit, and I will say no more on the matter. Your servants may return to the north as planned. But I expect you, dear Honoria, to give me the same loyalty. From now on you will behave impeccably. Do I have your promise?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Honey gratefully, prepared to swear anything so as to keep Lady Canon off the subject of Jem, Peter, and Abraham.

  “Your debut is tomorrow night. It is all important,” said Lady Canon. “Put off your cloak and we will continue your lessons. You have said farewell to your servants so you need not trouble about them again.”

  But although Honey really meant to reform, Lady Canon would have been very shocked if she could have seen her niece at dawn the next day, a niece who stood in the mews hugging her coachman and grooms, the tears running down her face as she said her final farewells.

  Five

  Honey had been looking forward to her first opera. It was Gluck’s Alceste, to be sung in Italian. Although Lady Canon had told her the opera rivaled Almack’s as a social event, nothing that she had said had prepared Honey for the reality of the spectacle.

  It was certainly a place where the fashionable world went to be seen, so much so that some of the loungers strolled on the stage and danced about, which was rather disconcerting during one of the tragic scenes. Then when the lead singer was in the middle of the finest passage of a bravura song, several of the dilletantes in the boxes would scream out an accompaniment, shaking impassionedly the while, reminding Honey of nothing so much as two rival organ grinders competing on either side of the street.

  The politer members of the audience would call out, “Bravo! Bravissimo!” even though they had been engaged in private conversation all the time the soprano had been performing, and then would turn to each other and say, “Vastly fine—what was it?”

  So Honey contented herself with listening to as much of the performance as she could. But there was so much going on in the boxes that it was hard to concentrate on the stage.

  And so it was that her wandering eye fell on Lord Alistair Stewart. He had just entered the Wetheralls’ box and was bowing over Amy’s dimpled little hand. Honey wrenched her eyes away from them and tried to concentrate again on the opera.

  But she could not help wondering what would happen at the ball that was to be held after the performance in the opera house. Not that Lord Alistair would ask her to dance. Perhaps he would not even recognize her in her new finery.

  Honey was wearing a light-green silk gown, embroidered with silver leaves. It had short sleeves drawn into quarters at the top of the shoulder and separated with broad silver chains. The bottoms of the sleeves and the hem were embroidered with silver leaves. The bosom of the gown was made entirely of lace and silver leaves. On her short curls she wore a dainty little tiara of gold and silver thread.

  Beside her, resplendent in her favorite dove-gray, sat Lady Canon. She was very proud of her niece, and noticed all the glances that were being cast in Honey’s direction.

  Honey was still shocked from her experience of the hanging. She was depressed because the opera did not manage to take her out of herself. If only all this was a bad dream, and she could wake up in her bed in Kelidon. She thought of her father’s kindly face, and of how they would sit and talk of an evening, and her eyes glittered with tears.

  But when they moved to the ballroom after the performance, she had no more time to think as a ring of courtiers started to form about her. Lady Canon introduced Mister This and Lord That and considered that Honey was behaving very well indeed.

  The fact was that Honey, suffering as she was from delayed shock, mechanically remembered and followed all Lady Canon’s instructions. She flirted with her fan and laughed her charming laugh. The film of tears across her large eyes made them look lustrous and hid the hurt and shock that might otherwise have shown through.

  She danced with one and then another, trying not to wince, although her arms and shoulders ached abominably from the wrenching they had received the day before.

  Somewhere, on the periphery of her vision, she was conscious of Lord Alistair dancing with Amy. She wished he would leave the ball. He annoyed her by his very presence. It would have helped to have found society thought him a useless fop, but both men and women alike seemed to admire him.

  And then Honey was asked to dance by the Earl of Channington. She dimly registered that he was tall and handsome and extremely well dressed—almost as well dressed as Lord Alistair. But then, no gentleman in London, it appeared, could compete with Lord Alistair, except, perhaps, that leader of fashion, Beau Brummell.

  As Lord Channington swung her around in the figure of the country dance, she stifled an exclamation as the pain in her arms and shoulders became more intense.

  He promptly stopped dancing, and, taking her hand in a strong clasp, led her from the floor, much to the irritation of the other members of the set.

  “What is the matter, my lord?” asked Honey, afraid lest she had disgraced herself in some way.

  “Miss Honeyford,” he said, “my fairy princess, I was afraid you might break in my arms. You look so lost and fragile. Have you the headache?”

  “No, my lord,” said Honey. “I wrenched my arm yesterday and it still pains me.”

  “The guests are to go in to supper after this dance. Allow me to lead you to the supper room and we can be in advance of the party. I would protect you.”

  His voice was low and sincere. Honey looked at him properly for the first time. He had a square, tanned face and deep brown eyes which sparkled with an odd light but did not reveal what he was thinking. His mouth was long and thin. His burnished brown hair was a miracle of the hairdresser’s art, and his evening coat was smoothed across his broad shoulders. Emerald buttons shone on his white waistcoat, emerald rings glittered on his fingers, and a large emerald shone from the snowy intricate folds of his cravat.

  Honey nodded, and then asked cautiously, “Perhaps you should obtain permission from Lady Canon.”

  “Lady Canon has already given us permission,” he said. “Look!”

  Honey looked to where Lady Canon was nodding and smiling her approval.

  He led her into the supper room, supporting her tenderly as if he feared she might break. “Wine for the lady,” he called imperatively, while he drew out a chair for her and hovered solicitously about her until he was sure she was comfortably seated.

  But Honey asked for lemonade instead, convinced that too much canary wine in Fleet Street had addled her brains so much that she had ended up
at the hanging.

  Immediately the solicitous earl was on his feet again. Lemonade. Immediately! Iced? It must be iced.

  Honey began to feel cherished—a strange, warm, and comforting feeling. Lord Channington seemed to exude an atmosphere of protection, to throw a shield about the pair of them.

  “Please try to eat something,” he urged after Honey had been served with a cold collation and showed no signs of wanting to touch it.

  “You are very kind, sir,” said Honey. “I am not used to dining at such a late hour. I fear you will find me sadly countrified.”

  “Not I!” he cried. “I am the luckiest man here tonight. I have stolen a march on them all. They all wanted to take London’s new beauty in to dine.”

  “The reigning beauty is Miss Wetherall.”

  “She was, until you snatched the crown from her. Your rare beauty makes every other lady here look sadly earthy.”

  Honey was not quite sure how to receive this compliment, so she smiled demurely and drank her lemonade.

  Lady Canon had told her that high-flown compliments were the fashion, and so, much as she enjoyed this handsome man’s flattery, she did not believe a word of it.

  He asked her if she had enjoyed the opera, and Honey replied that she had, not wanting to seem provincial by criticizing the behavior of the audience.

  “It was vastly fine,” he said. “I saw a most odd comic opera t’other day. It was called Whistle for It. The songs were very elegant. But the opera itself was a very indifferent one. I could not conceive why the epithet ‘comic’ was given to it. Never was there a more complete misnomer. It was full of terrific situations, and ended with a prospect of a dozen or so persons being hanged. Miss Honeyford! You are become quite white.”

  “I think I will have a little wine,” said Honey in a shaky voice.

  The company began to enter the supper room to take their places at the long tables. Lord Alistair and Amy Wetherall sat down opposite Honey and Lord Channington. Honey cynically waited for Lord Channington to turn his attention to Amy, but his eyes remained fixed on her own face. Honey blushed slightly with pleasure, and Lord Channington was quick to tell her that the color enhanced her beauty.

  Honey could not help stealing a glance at Lord Alistair. His sleepy blue eyes betrayed nothing more than his customary good humor. It was hard to realize that this man had lectured her like a stern parent, that his powerful muscles had pulled her up from death.

  Amy was wearing a demirobe of white Albany gauze over a soft, white, figured satin train petticoat. Her hair was worn in a plain band on the left side of the forehead, with a few loose waves on the right and two large corkscrew curls falling to the right shoulder. A rich Barcelona scarf trimmed with a narrow border of gold was hanging negligently over one arm. Her necklace and earrings were of cornelian.

  Jealousy was adding a rather hard glaze to Miss Wetherall’s beauty. She could not quite believe that the terrible Miss Honeyford, that gruff, eccentric little girl from Kelidon, had snatched the title from her.

  Lord Alistair and Lord Channington were discussing the opera. Honey, Amy noticed, sat very still. She made no attempt to engage either gentleman’s attention. This otherworldly pose of Miss Honeyford’s would soon pall, thought Amy. Now, she herself was renowned as a conversationalist as well as a beauty.

  She waited impatiently until there was a break in the gentlemen’s conversation. “There are some vastly amusing Irish on-dits in circulation,” said Amy.

  “Since most of us here have at least a dash of Irish in our ancestry, Miss Wetherall,” said Lord Channington, “I fail to see why society should make a butt of that charming race.”

  “Oh, you are funning,” trilled Amy. “Everyone knows the Irish are so stoopid. Do you not agree, Miss Honeyford?”

  “I am sorry,” said Honey, coming out of her reverie with a start. “What were you saying, Miss Wetherall?”

  “I was saying I think Irish stories are very funny.”

  “Indeed?” said Honey vaguely.

  Amy frowned a little at this lack of encouragement, but plunged ahead.

  “There is this Irish surgeon who walks the hospitals who boasted lately that he had amputated many limbs, and that he received four pounds for each operation, which proved a slight compensation for the noise and uproar he was compelled to bear from the patients under his hands. ‘Faith, Doctor,’ said his friend, Mr. O’Brien, ‘you carry on a roaring trade!’”

  Everyone laughed dutifully, and, much emboldened at being the center of attention, Amy went on, “But the most priceless story I have heard in this age is about the Irish executioner. He had just received a very generous present from a malefactor he was about to execute, and wishing to thank him, he said, ‘Ah, many thanks and long life to your honor,’ and immediately pulled the bolt of the platform and launched him into space!”

  Amy put her little hands over her face and rocked with laughter.

  The effect on Honey was disastrous. She was transported back to the City, to the crowd, to the hanging. She could hear the screams of the dying. She swayed in her chair.

  “Miss Honeyford!” cried Lord Channington. “I fear you really are unwell. Let me fetch Lady Canon.”

  “I think brandy is the answer,” came Lord Alistair’s cool, mocking voice.

  A wave of anger drove away Honey’s feeling of nervous sickness. “Thank you, my lord,” she said coldly. “I have wine in my glass.”

  “Lord Alistair!” cried Amy. “What can you be thinking of? We delicate creatures do not drink brandy. You will be handing us cheroots next.”

  “I do not think Miss Honeyford is in a mood for jests tonight,” said Lord Alistair. His blue eyes resting on Honey were now kind. He thought of all she had been through at the hanging, and realized for the first time that any other lady of his acquaintance would have had the vapors for at least a month. He decided the best thing he could do at that moment was to attract Amy’s attention to himself. He turned to her with a charming smile and complimented her on her gown.

  “Do let me take you away from here, Miss Honeyford,” urged Lord Channington. He lowered his voice. “Miss Wetherall is fatiguing company.”

  His attentive manner, his criticism of Amy, his handsome face and dark eyes were all balm to Honey’s soul. She suddenly realized she was a success this evening. Only let Lord Alistair see how she could ensnare and entrap this earl.

  She began to ask Lord Channington about his life in Town and whether he had estates in the country, and, ever mindful of her father’s troubles, she went on to ask him if his land was in good heart.

  “You must not spoil your looks with worrying over agricultural problems,” said Lord Channington indulgently. “We men are here to handle that side of things. If I had my way, Miss Honeyford, you would not have to worry about anything, ever again.”

  A few days ago this pretty speech would have enraged Honey. But she was aware of Lord Alistair’s blue eyes fixed cynically upon her, and she could not help contrasting Lord Channington’s kindness and concern with what she considered Lord Alistair’s brutal treatment of her at the hanging. Yes, and even at the duel! He was cold and unfeeling and she wished Amy the joy of him.

  But his proximity continued to upset her and so Honey at last boldly suggested to Lord Channington that they continue their conversation in the ballroom.

  He eagerly agreed, jumping up to draw her out of her chair and help her to her feet as if she were the most fragile piece of porcelain. Again, Honey felt that warm, secure, loved feeling, and left on his arm without giving Lord Alistair a backward glance.

  Lord Alistair listened with half an ear to Amy’s prattling. He was wondering when he could conveniently rid himself of Amy’s boring company. It was always thus. Their brains never matched their beauty. He was also wondering whether to warn Lady Canon that her charge had fallen victim on the first night of her debut to the charms of one of society’s most treacherous womanizers.

  Channington, he reflected, w
as that most dangerous of Casanovas, one who always appeared more pursued than pursuing, one who managed to deflower young virgins without that fact ever coming generally to light, since the families of the girls did their best to hush things up. What made him most dangerous of all was that he always genuinely fancied himself in love with his latest victim.

  And Miss Honeyford had looked very love-able, thought Lord Alistair ruefully. What a transformation! She did indeed look like the fairy princess that society had just dubbed her. But she had the insolence to actually dislike him! And after all he had done for her. Be damned to her! He was through with rescuing her. Let her find out about Channington for herself. Lady Canon would not know about Channington’s womanizing. It was all part of one of those nasty little undercurrents one heard in the London clubs—never, of course, frequented by women.

  He dragged his attention back to his fair companion.

  Once more, she was trilling with laughter and rocking back and forth, peeping at him through her gloved fingers.

  What a monumental bore!

  Lord Channington sat at the side of the ballroom and chatted to Honey in a companionable way. He pointed out the notables to her and kept her amused with a slightly malicious fund of gossip.

  Then, as the dancing was about to commence again, he said, “Let me suggest to Lady Canon that you go home. She must be delighted with your success this evening.”

  Honey opened her mouth to protest, but Lord Channington was already on his feet and was walking toward where Lady Canon sat with the dowagers.

  She came back with him, all smiling concern. “Of course we may go, Honoria,” she said. “Say your good-byes to Lord Channington.”

  Honey rose and swept Lord Channington a deep cursty. “I may call on you, my lady?” asked Lord Channington.

  “Certainly,” said Lady Canon. “We shall be at home in the afternoon tomorrow. Come, Honoria.”

  Somewhat to Honey’s disappointment, Lady Canon did not offer any words of praise on the road home. But her aunt was very well content. She felt it was too soon to praise Honey. The girl had behaved magnificently, but praise might go to her head and make her reckless.