by M C Beaton
“Have you… have you met anyone?”
“No, not yet. But I shall. London is thin of company, but there is enough.”
“It is all so sordid,” muttered Arabella, tracing the pattern in the worn Persian rug with one little kid slipper. “Why cannot people fall in love like they do in books?”
“Oh, romances.”
“Not only romances, but in Shakespeare and in other great works of literature.”
He smiled into her eyes. “So you believe in love?”
She looked back at him defiantly, tilting up her chin. “Of course.”
Her lips were very soft and pink. He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the mouth. “Then I hope you find your heart’s desire,” he said. A lump rose in her throat. She got quickly to her feet. “The hour is late, my lord,” she said. She dropped a low curtsy. “Your servant, my lord.”
And then she quickly left the room. He could still smell her light perfume. He could feel her lips. He should not have kissed her. But she was worth more than a fellow like Fotheringay!
***
Arabella herself came to that conclusion the following day. Mr. Fotheringay drawled, Mr. Fotheringay talked about horseflesh and hunting, Mr. Fotheringay talked endlessly about his pet subject, which was Mr. Fotheringay, so that by the time he returned Arabella to the hotel, she was feeling quite desperate, particularly when her mother greeted her with a pleased smile and said that young Fotheringay would do very well after all and she had not expected to have her daughter off her hands so soon. In order to get rid of this beautiful daughter, attractive bait though she was, Lady Carruthers had obviously made up her mind that life would be more comfortable with Arabella married.
So in the dining-room that evening, it was the mother who flirted with the earl when he stopped at their table and the daughter who studied her plate of soup as if she had never seen anything quite so interesting in her life and barely looked up.
“Such a handsome man,” sighed Lady Carruthers. “And did you mark the way he looked at me? Would you not like such a handsome father, my dear?”
“Yes, Mama,” said Arabella, thinking privately that to be jealous of one’s own mother must really be plumbing the depths of moral depravity.
Lady Carruthers was going to the play with a Mrs. Banks, an old friend. Arabella pleaded a headache. She felt wretched, and the only person she could think of who might be able to help her was the awful Sir Philip.
***
Neither Mrs. Budge nor Mr. Davy were in the sitting-room that night after dinner. Sir Philip was in a foul mood because Mrs. Budge had said she was going to sleep, but when he had tried the door of her room, he had found it locked, and now, with the absence of Mr. Davy, he feared that the man was either in there with her or out somewhere with her and he felt sorely betrayed.
Miss Tonks, too, was silent and depressed. But Arabella was determined to get help, so after sitting next to Sir Philip and thanking him very prettily for having helped her, she said, “I would beg you to help me again, sir, for you are the only person I can turn to.”
Sir Philip’s mood immediately lightened. He loved praise, and praise from such a pretty young thing was doubly welcome. He patted her hand and said, “What is the problem? I will see what I can do.”
“It is Lord Denby, as usual,” said Arabella. “Thanks to you, Mama took me out to the Macleans’ rout, but he did not arrive until after I had left.”
“Routs aren’t the place for courting,” put in Lady Fortescue. “Never could stand them. As crowded as Bartholomew Fair, and every bit as noisy.”
“But a great many men paid me compliments,” went on Arabella, “and a Mr. Fotheringay invited me to go driving with him this afternoon, which I did.”
“Fotheringay’s a loose fish,” said Sir Philip, picking at his false teeth with a goose-quill.
“Exactly,” cried Arabella. “But Mama wants me off her hands and thinks he would do very well. But there is worse to come.”
The colonel smiled on her indulgently. “Go on.”
“After Mama had gone to bed I came up here, looking for company, but you had all gone to bed, so I began to play the piano. Lord Denby came in. He said he had heard about Sir Philip’s success and wanted to know how he had done it and so I told him. He said I would be engaged before he was and laughed at me because I said I believed in love. Then he kissed me.”
“He should not have done that, Arabella,” exclaimed Miss Tonks. “Not the thing at all. But surely that means he has some tender feelings for you.”
“But that is the problem! It was a casual, indifferent embrace, the kind an uncle will give to a niece.” Arabella clutched Sir Philip’s coat-sleeve. “You must help me. You must! Please! You must do something to make him look on me as a real woman.”
“Now, then,” admonished Lady Fortescue, “I cannot see what Sir Philip can possibly do.”
“Ho, you can’t, can you?” demanded Sir Philip. “Lay you a wager I can.”
Lady Fortescue’s black eyes sparkled. “Very well, Sir Philip. If you succeed in bringing about a match between Miss Carruthers and Lord Denby, we will pay Mrs. Budge’s bills.”
The colonel looked alarmed. “I say, that’s not fair.” He meant that as they had been going to pay Mrs. Budge’s bills to make up for financing Mr. Davy trying to get rid of her, it was hardly fair that this should be the subject of a wager.
“Never mind him,” said Sir Philip gleefully. He turned to Arabella. “Now I’ll bet you want me to fix up something noble for you to do so that Denby can see you are a mature woman of worth?”
Arabella clasped her hands. “Oh, that is it exactly!”
He shook his head. “Wrong! Gentlemen don’t like clever ladies. Need to bring out the knight errant in him. Need him to save you from folly.”
“What folly?” Lady Fortescue’s voice held a warning note.
“Shan’t tell you,” said Sir Philip gleefully. “I’ll tell Miss Carruthers here when I’m good and ready!”
***
Arabella began to think that Sir Philip had forgotten about her. In the week that followed, she went everywhere with her mother and drove out in the afternoons with various gentlemen and wondered what the earl was doing and if he had found someone. But a week to the day she had spoken to Sir Philip, Miss Tonks called on her in the morning and said Sir Philip wanted to see her in the office. “But do be careful, Arabella,” said Miss Tonks. “Sir Philip can come up with some very wild schemes indeed.”
When they both entered the office, Sir Philip said brutally to Miss Tonks, “Off with you, sheep-face.”
“Why are you so horrible to Letitia?” demanded Arabella.
“Cos she’s horrid to me that’s why. Don’t worry about Miss Tonks. Lots of bottom there. Shot a highwayman stone-dead. Tell you that, hey?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Don’t let’s bother about it. Here’s what you’re to do. There’s a costume ball at the Pantheon tonight. Full of disreputable people. You’ll be going as my partner. I’ve got you a costume… in the box over there. Now you just do as I say and everything’ll come right and tight. After tonight, he won’t be able to look at you and see anything but a woman. Tell your mama you’ve got the megrims and leave the rest to me. Take the costume and hide it in your room where she can’t find it, or that maid of hers, for that matter. Do you trust me?”
“Yes, I do,” said Arabella, fighting down a pang of uneasiness.
“Right. Don’t breathe a word of where you are going to Miss Tonks or any of the others. Promise?”
“Yes, I promise,” said Arabella.
She passed the rest of the day in such a high state of excitement that her mother, who had some residue of maternal feeling, became concerned over her daughter’s flushed cheeks and readily agreed that a quiet evening in bed would be just the thing to restore Arabella to good health.
Arabella waited until Lady Carruthers had left and then slid the box containing her costume out
from under the bed. She drew it out and held it up and looked at it doubtfully. There seemed to be very little of it. A label on the box said simply “Venus.”
There were pink tights to go with it. The costume itself was of the finest white muslin, and there was a pretty head-dress of gold vine leaves, and gold vine leaves adorned the high waist.
Arabella undressed and put the flimsy costume on. The drapery of the white gown felt quite reassuringly substantial. She peered in the glass wishing she had a full-length mirror. There was one in her mother’s bedroom, but her mother locked her bedroom door as a security precaution when she went out in the evening. Arabella was still young enough and innocent enough to believe that older people knew best, and Sir Philip was so very old. She put a long fur-lined cloak about her, sat down and nervously waited for Sir Philip to call for her.
***
The earl was playing cards in his club when a note in the shape of a cocked hat was handed to him. “My lord,” he read, “I am at my wits’ end. I understand our Miss Carruthers has crept out to go to a ball at the Pantheon in an indecent costume. I am an old man and beg your help in rescuing her from a disastrous evening. Your Humble and Obedient Servant, Sommerville.”
The earl threw down his cards, crumpled the note and stuffed it in his pocket. He glanced at the clock. Midnight! How long had that innocent been there, and to what insult might she have been exposed?
***
“I hope he hurries up,” said Sir Philip anxiously. “I’m not strong enough for this.”
He was uneasily aware that Arabella was creating a sensation. In the diaphanous gown over the pink tights and pink silk bodice, she looked half-naked and very desirable. He felt guilty. He had not thought she would look quite so seductive. Various young men had tried to crash into the box and he had sent them about their business. But there had been heavy drinking going on. And then he saw a party of bloods in various historical costumes eyeing the box and whispering together.
Then they began to march purposefully towards it. “Oh, Lord, here it comes,” moaned Sir Philip. “Why didn’t I bring my gun?”
“What is happening?” asked Arabella. She stood up to get a better look.
And that is how the horrified earl saw her. She looked magnificent, she looked half-naked, she looked as if she had come to be raped, and that, thought the earl, noticing the men approaching the box, was exactly what was going to happen to her.
He thrust his way across the floor, through the sweating, leering costumed dancers, noticing as he did so that most of the women were prostitutes.
“Denby, thank God,” said Sir Philip, seeing the earl’s approach. “Now you are to say you wanted a bit of fun and it was all your idea, mind?”
Just as the men reached the door at the back of the box, the earl vaulted over the front. He seized Arabella round the waist and swung her over the side onto the ballroom floor, jumped after her, picked her up in his arms and thrust his way forcefully back through the crowd, who laughed and cheered.
“My cloak,” wailed Arabella as he carried her straight outside and tumbled her into his carriage.
“Drive on,” shouted the earl to his coachman. He jumped in after her and slammed the door.
“Not a word,” he said, “until I have you safely back.”
In vain did Arabella protest that she did not think it would be quite so dreadful; he only repeated, “Not a word.”
She felt it had all gone dreadfully wrong. She should not have listened to Sir Philip. She fought down the tears. She would not cry. But how was she to explain why she had gone to a place like that? If she was not to mention Sir Philip’s part in it, and she could not or the old man might tell the earl how she had appealed to him for help, how could she explain why she had gone?
He took off his cloak and said harshly, “Put that round you.”
When they arrived at the hotel, he said, “Come with me. Thank goodness all the guests are obviously still out.”
Arabella hesitated outside his apartment. “I cannot go in there,” she pleaded.
“I am not going to rape you, which is more than I can say for the men at the ball. In with you. Ah, Gustav, take yourself off.”
“Very good, my lord,” said the wooden-faced servant.
“Wait there,” commanded the earl after the servant had gone. He went into his bedroom and returned carrying a long mirror on a stand. “Now take off that cloak,” he ordered roughly, “and look at yourself.”
Arabella did as she was bid and stared in horror at her reflection. Her legs, those members which were never even mentioned in polite conversation, were clearly visible through the thin muslin of her gown, as were her nipples. She gave a little shriek and seized up the cloak again and wrapped it around her.
“Exactly,” said the earl with grim satisfaction. “I did not think you were fully aware of just how dangerously disgraceful that costume is.”
“I d-did n-not know,” wailed Arabella, her face red with shame.
“Sit down,” he commanded, “and tell me what possessed you.”
Damning Sir Philip in her heart but determined to keep her promise to him, Arabella tugged the cloak closer about her shoulders and said, “I have, my lord, led a very isolated life, a very prim and respectable life. I wanted to see the real London and… and I had never been to a costume ball. Someone in the street sold me a ticket. I am so sorry I caused you and Sir Philip so much trouble.”
“Promise me you will never do such a thing again.”
“I promise,” said Arabella in a low voice.
“Then you had better return to your room.”
“I shall return your cloak tomorrow.” Arabella looked up at him pleadingly. “Do not be angry with me.”
He was suddenly sharply aware of that magnificent half-naked body under the cloak, of her perfume, of the glory of her hair, and his face softened. “Go along with you,” he said quietly, “before I forget myself. I shall never be able to think of you as a schoolgirl again.”
And it was that sentence which came back to Arabella during a night of fitful sleep, that sentence which suddenly warmed her, that sentence which showed her at last that the wicked and ruthless Sir Philip Sommerville had known what he was doing.
The following day, the earl persuaded himself it would be a good idea to take young Arabella out for a drive and lecture her further on her folly. But a delighted Lady Carruthers seemed to think the invitation was for her, with Arabella added as an afterthought, and so they drove off in his curricle, with Arabella sitting between the earl and her mother.
As the carriage rounded a corner, he could feel Arabella’s hip against his own and once more he had a vision of her in that wretched costume. She needed someone to look after her!
Chapter Seven
Open and obvious
devotion from any sort
of man is always pleasant
to any sort of woman.
—RUDYARD KIPLING
It was when an official acceptance from the Prince Regent arrived that the Poor Relation Hotel was thrown into more of a turmoil than it had ever been before in its chequered career.
Not one of them, and that included the earl, had ever supposed that the prince would really attend. Sir Philip sent a notice of the fact to the newspapers, and acceptances and money poured in by post and by hand. Aristocrats were even travelling up from their country estates for the big event.
But with the strain of all the preparations, tempers ran higher than they had ever done before, and even the colonel and Lady Fortescue squabbled over trifles. Sir Philip tried to advise the head chef, Despard, on the menu for the supper and had a pot thrown at his head. Only the guests did not mind the uproar or that they now had to take their meals in their rooms, as downstairs—that is, dining-room, hall and coffee room—were stripped bare preparatory to turning the whole space into a ballroom, for to be a guest in the hotel automatically meant securing a prized invitation.
Only Mrs. Budge ate her way pla
cidly through the days. Mr. Davy had found the reason that she would not commit herself to him was that she was determined to attend the ball, and she said that if she left Sir Philip, he would make sure her invitation was torn up. So Mr. Davy extracted a promise from the widow that she would leave Sir Philip directly after the ball. He knew that in preparation for this, Mrs. Budge had informed her tenant he must leave at the end of the month. Mr. Davy said that to protect her reputation, Mrs. Budge should return to her own flat for a discreet few months, until their wedding, for he had gone as far as proposing to her.
The earl did not see much of Arabella, although he met her at several functions, for Lady Carruthers was always there and always monopolizing his attention. Furthermore he was ashamed at having kissed Arabella. He was ashamed also of his thoughts when he looked at her, for that half-naked Arabella appeared to be burnt into his brain. How young and virginal she seemed set against his increasingly wicked thoughts. And yet his eyes followed her around the room and he could not bring himself to pay much attention to the other young misses and their mothers who were clamouring for his attention.
It came as almost a relief when Lady Fortescue invited him to the “staff” sitting-room one evening for a consultation about the final arrangements for the ball. Arabella, too, was invited. She found herself looking forward to another “family” evening. Neither she nor the earl had had time to visit the hoteliers.
Not wishing to tell her mother she was going, for she knew Lady Carruthers would insist on being present as well, Arabella once more pleaded a headache, saying she could not go to the Humphreys’ turtle dinner but adding mendaciously she had overheard someone say the earl would be there.
With relief, she watched her mother sally forth for the evening before changing into one of her new gowns, a confection of pink muslin with little puffed sleeves and three flounces at the hem. The high waist was bound with a broad silk satin sash. Miss Tonks had supplied a long glass from the hotel store and Arabella whirled round in front of it, admiring the way the fine muslin floated out about her body. She often wondered now if Sir Philip’s plan had had any effect. The earl showed no signs of courting her. Certainly he danced with her at balls and talked to her at parties, but he was always correct and a trifle distant. But surely in the comfortable atmosphere of the upstairs sitting-room he would relax a little bit and perhaps she might be better able to judge whether he felt anything for her at all.
