A Lady of Consequence

by Mary Nichols

  ‘You know very well, my lord, that it was with pillows. Everyone is laughing about it.’

  ‘Surely, my dear Miss Bulford, it is better to be laughing than crying? And someone would certainly have been weeping if we had used orthodox weapons. It was a ruse to amuse our friends, not to be taken seriously at all.’

  ‘Oh, but the lady…’

  ‘Lady?’ he queried. ‘Whoever said anything about a lady?’

  ‘No, of course there was no lady,’ Hortense said. ‘What man of breeding is going to sully his reputation fighting over a kitchen maid? Do be sensible, Annabel.’

  Duncan opened his mouth to give her a sharp retort, then shut it again. ‘Excuse me ladies,’ he said, bowing stiffly. ‘There is someone I must speak to.’ And with that, he turned on his heel and left them.

  How dare they? How dare that…that termagant speak so disparagingly of the woman he loved? Hortense Bulford could not hold a candle to Madeleine Charron. Madeleine was more of a lady than she would ever be. He gave a twisted smile. Less than an hour ago he had denied all interest in the actress, promised himself he would put her from his mind and find himself another wife, which only proved how inconsistent he was. But if he ever married Annabel Bulford, he would make damned sure her sister was never invited to stay.

  Since he had told his stepmother very firmly that he was not considering making an offer for Annabel Bulford, this thought took him by surprise. He was not ready for that. Not yet. He needed a drink. He strode across the hall to the library where he knew his father kept a decanter of brandy and some glasses. He was in the act of helping himself when the door opened and the Duke came in. ‘Have the prattling women driven you out, Duncan?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He held up the decanter. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No, help yourself. Pour me one too.’ He sat down in one of the armchairs by the hearth. ‘We should have a little talk.’

  ‘Oh, that sounds as if you are going to deliver a jobation.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, accepting a glass of brandy from his son and nodding towards the opposite chair. ‘You are too old to scold like a child. But your reaction inclines me to think you have something on your conscience.’

  Duncan sat down and took a mouthful from his own glass. ‘No, sir, my conscience is clear.’ He paused, wondering whether his father had heard about the duel. ‘I suppose you are referring to that contretemps with Ben Willoughby.’

  ‘What made you do it?’

  ‘Willoughby demanded satisfaction, so what could I do? He is no match for me with pistols or swords and I did not want to hurt him.’

  The Duke smiled. ‘You did not consider that you might have been the one to eat grass?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. No one is infallible.’

  ‘Very true. The idea of pillows was a stroke of genius, but why in so public a place?’

  ‘That was his choice, not mine. I could do nothing about it. I think he wanted to humiliate me. It is done with now and will soon be forgotten.’

  ‘Let us hope so. What was it all about?’

  ‘I would rather not say. But he deserved the ducking.’

  ‘Then I will not pry, so long as you have done nothing to bring shame on yourself or your family.’

  ‘No, Father, I have not.’

  ‘Good.’ He paused, swilling his drink round in its glass, as if considering what to say next. ‘When are we going to see you married, Duncan?’

  ‘Oh, no, not you too. It is enough that I have to endure it from Vinny, who is so happy in her marriage she thinks anyone who chooses to be single must be short of a sheet.’

  ‘I hope this desire to stay single is not a permanent state of affairs. I do not wish to push you into matrimony, my boy, but it is time, you know. I can thoroughly recommend it.’ He paused and lifted his glass. ‘To the right woman, naturally.’

  ‘I am giving it some thought.’

  ‘Lord Bulford has indicated his younger sister would entertain an offer.’

  ‘He has spoken to you? Papa, I thought the days when parents and guardians arranged their children’s marriages were long gone.’

  ‘I think he was sounding me out, to see if I would put any obstacles in your way.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said you were of age and the decision when and whom to marry was yours and yours alone.’

  ‘And did you mean it?’

  ‘I am not in the habit of saying things I do not mean, Duncan, although I hope you would be sensible—’

  ‘And not marry a kitchen maid,’ Duncan finished for him. ‘Don’t worry, Father, it is not likely to happen.’ He noticed the puzzled look on his father’s face as he drained his glass and realised he had not heard that particular on dit. ‘Will you excuse me? I must find Major Greenaway. He came with me to see Mama. She said she would try and find the portrait she painted of Viscount Armitage’s daughter.’

  ‘Of course.’

  When he returned to the drawing room, he found Donald was still talking to the Bulfords, which surprised him. He went to join them, realising it behoved him to make amends for his abrupt departure. He smiled. ‘I am sorry I had to hurry away,’ he said.

  ‘No matter, my lord, you are back now,’ Annabel said. ‘Major Greenaway has been entertaining us with stories of his adventures.’

  ‘Indeed?’ he queried, raising his eyebrow at Donald. ‘I shall have to persuade him to tell them to me sometime.’

  ‘Did you know he is familiar with all the Bow Street Runners and often uses them to help him find people who are lost to their relatives?’

  ‘Yes, I did know that. He also finds lost or stolen jewellery and apprehends criminals. And twice he has rescued ladies who were kidnapped.’

  ‘What interesting friends you have, my lord,’ Hortense put in. ‘Do you perhaps dabble in mysteries yourself?’

  It was a direct reference to Madeleine, but he refused to rise to the bait. He smiled. ‘Occasionally, Miss Bulford, if the Major needs some help.’

  Annabel looked relieved. ‘Oh, that must be why—’ She stopped in confusion. ‘Oh, I am sorry. Major Greenaway says a lot of his work is confidential, so I must not ask. Suffice it to say, I do understand.’

  Puzzled, he looked towards Donald, who was grinning. What had the idiot been saying to them? He was at a loss to find an answer, but was saved by the arrival of Lord Bulford come to take the ladies home. There was a flurry of goodbyes and from Annabel a reminder that her come-out ball was only two weeks away and she was looking forward to seeing him there, and then they were gone.

  ‘Well,’ Duncan demanded of his friend. ‘What the devil have you been saying to them?’

  ‘Oh, something and nothing. All a closely guarded secret, of course.’

  ‘Of course. Your secret will be as safe as water in a bucket full of holes.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I told them that I was very near to solving the riddle surrounding a well-known actress.’

  ‘But you aren’t.’

  ‘No, but they don’t know that, do they? I said if they repeated the story of the kitchen maid, it could go very ill for them, when the full truth was revealed. I also said I had enrolled you to help me…’

  ‘Oh, Lord, Donald, you’ve cooked my goose now. Madeleine confessed she had made the whole story up. There never was a French comte.’ He saw the Major’s eyes widen in surprise and added, ‘But I shall call you a liar if you ever repeat that.’

  ‘Oh, Stanmore, I am sorry. I thought I was helping. Why didn’t you tell me when we spoke of her before instead of simply saying you had changed your mind?’

  ‘It is not something I want the gabblegrinders to get their teeth into; the Marquis of Risley made a complete flat by a nobody of an actress.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, though it was clear he did not see at all.

  ‘Let’s go and find my stepmother. I’ve hardly spoken two words to her a
ll afternoon and you need that portrait.’

  The Duchess had been standing by the door, saying goodbye to all her guests, but now they had all gone and the servants were clearing away the tea cups and crumb-laden plates from almost every flat surface, she came across the room to join them. ‘Duncan, I am honoured,’ she said, smiling. ‘You have attended two at-homes in as many weeks. What have I done to deserve it? Or has it something to do with the presence of Miss Annabel Bulford?’

  ‘I did not know she would be here, Mama.’

  ‘No? She evidently expected to see you.’

  ‘Did she? I said nothing to her about coming. Or was it simply curiosity to know what you had to say about that so-called duel?’

  ‘If it was, I am afraid she must have been disappointed. I professed ignorance on the subject.’ She did not wait for a reply but turned to Donald. ‘And you, Major, I collect have come for that portrait of Bella Armitage?’

  He bowed his head. ‘If you would be so kind, my lady.’

  ‘I found it yesterday up in the attic with all the lumber, covered in cobwebs. Luckily it cleaned up nicely. I left it in my studio. I’ll go and fetch it.’

  ‘She won’t let the servants anywhere near her studio,’ Duncan said, noticing the look of surprise on the Major’s face as she disappeared on her own errand. ‘Sacrosanct, it is. Even I am only allowed in by invitation.’

  He walked over to the window, which looked out on to St James’s Square. The street was busy with traffic; a dog was chasing a ball in the park, thrown by a little boy, one of three children in the charge of a nursemaid. He watched the dog return with the ball and drop it at the boy’s feet. One of the little girls scooped the dog up and it licked her face. They were all laughing. He felt an almost irresistible urge to run out and join them. Sooner, rather than later, he must set up his own nursery or he was in danger of becoming an old bachelor like Sir Percival.

  ‘Here it is.’ He turned away from the window as the Duchess returned, carrying a small canvas about a foot square. ‘I never did finish it. I think she may have disappeared about then, but I have no recollection of hearing that at the time.’

  Duncan walked over to join them as the Major took the picture from her. ‘She was beautiful. Don’t you think so, Stanmore?’ He held the canvas towards Duncan.

  ‘My God, it’s Madeleine. Miss Charron.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Frances said. ‘I painted that over twenty-five years ago. It’s been gathering dust ever since.’

  ‘But it’s her likeness. Can’t you see it? Those eyes. And the chin.’

  ‘There is a faint resemblance, I agree, but no more. If I had had time to finish it, it might look entirely different.’ She turned to Major Greenaway. ‘I am afraid it is not going to be much help to you. I am sure the flesh tones are not right and I had hardly started on the hair. It was very dark, as I recall.’

  ‘It is better than nothing,’ he said. ‘At least, I will have something to show anyone who might remember her.’

  ‘Where was she last sighted?’ Duncan asked. He was still looking at the picture. On closer examination, of course it was not Miss Charron. As his stepmother had pointed out, the likeness was only superficial, but for one heart-stopping moment he thought he had been looking at a picture of Madeleine. Had she become so ingrained in his heart and soul that he was seeing her wherever he looked?

  ‘She was living over a bakery in St Albans with her husband. It was only a year after they were married. One person I spoke to said they were a strange couple. He was a big man, very domineering, and she seemed exceptionally shy, wouldn’t say boo to a goose. She might have been afraid of him. They went out very little and lived very frugally. They moved away, no one seems to know where they went nor exactly when.’

  ‘Poor thing, she would have found life extremely difficult after being used to servants and a comfortable home with meals put on the table for her,’ Frances said. ‘She was not robust, as I recall, but rather delicate. Do you think she could have died?’

  ‘It is possible. I have been searching through hundreds of church records for a burial but, not knowing exactly where to look, it is a laborious task and so far I have found nothing. Nor any evidence of a child, though that is not to say there wasn’t one. One woman I talked to in St Albans said she thought Mrs Cartwright was enceinte when she left.’

  ‘Cartwright?’ queried Duncan.

  ‘Yes. That was the fellow’s name. John Cartwright.’

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ Duncan said, knowing that if the name had been Charron, Donald would have said so long before, but disappointed, just the same.

  ‘They are unlikely to have mixed with the haut monde,’ the Major pointed out. ‘He was one of the lower orders, according to Viscount Armitage.’

  Duncan gave a wry smile. ‘My acquaintances are not all from the top hundred, Major.’

  ‘No. Do what you can. I shall be obliged.’

  ‘And I could enquire at the orphanage,’ Frances said. ‘If there was a child…’

  Mention of the orphanage reminded Duncan so forcefully of Madeleine that he wondered why he had not pursued that line of enquiry before. But it was too late. Madeleine Charron had admitted a reprehensible deception and must be put firmly from his mind.

  Chapter Nine

  Pierre haunted the theatre after that first meeting. He was in the audience every night leading the applause, he sent her extravagant bouquets of flowers, he sat in her dressing room after the performance waiting for her to change and go out to supper with him. Sometimes she agreed, sometimes she turned him down, but then he simply smiled and returned the following night.

  ‘He is much more your style than the Marquis of Risley,’ Marianne told her, when they were preparing for the evening performance about a week later. ‘He is of good family, his antecedents are known and accepted and though he is not exactly a top sawyer, he is not so far adrift that he would not make you a perfectly acceptable husband.’

  ‘The subject has never been broached,’ Madeleine said.

  ‘It will.’

  ‘Gammon!’ Madeleine laughed, though it was a little strained. ‘I hardly know him.’

  ‘I’ll lay odds on a proposal before the month is out.’

  ‘Oh, Marianne, what shall I do?’

  ‘Do? You could accept him.’

  ‘But supposing I do not want a husband? You have never had one.’

  ‘I am different. I enjoy my life as it is. I have my friends and my work and that is enough for me, but that does not mean it would be so for you. You are made for marriage and a family. You need a family. It is the only way you will overcome the hobgoblins that haunt you.’

  ‘Am I haunted by hobgoblins?’

  ‘You know you are. This obsession to become a lady and be accepted by the haut monde, is not healthy, you know. If you are not careful, you will become an embittered ape-leader and goodness knows what that will do to your work. Can you not see that?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But I do not love Pierre and he doesn’t know there is no comte either.’ It had worried her at first that the story of her French grandfather had not been revealed as a deception. Every day she had expected some titbit of gossip to reach her that meant she had been exposed. But far from that happening, the tale seemed to have strengthened without her doing anything to advance it. What she had dreamed of all the years of her struggle to survive and her life before she met the Marquis had happened. She had been accepted.

  Oh, not in the inner circles, the true top one hundred, but near enough. She was listened to, deferred to and often addressed as ‘my lady’, a title she was certainly not entitled to use, even if her grandfather had been a comte. Tradespeople, dressmakers, shoemakers, hairdressers, cab drivers, vied with each other for her custom and were all too ready to allow her to run up bills. She was invited to soirées, routs and picnics and was not expected to perform for her supper, though she occasionally did tableaux vivants or what Lady Hamilton had c
alled ‘attitudes’ to entertain her hostess’s guests.

  But it had all gone sour. It had gone sour because it was built on a lie and because she had fallen in love with one of the hated aristocracy when all she had intended was to use him.

  She told herself she was over the Marquis of Risley and that he had turned out true to his class after all, an overweening, top-lofty, vain member of a section of society who did not know what a day’s work was like, nor what it was to feel cold and hungry and who thought money could buy anything. And when her strict sense of justice reminded her that he did a great deal of good among the inmates of the prisons, she countered this by arguing that he associated with criminals because it made him feel virtuous, not because he had any real idea of what they thought or felt.

  The trouble was that he was so enmeshed in her heart, it was almost as if he was the reason it continued to beat. Pierre Valois did not affect her in that way. Pierre was comfortable to be with; he made her laugh and he made no demands on her intellect but there was something missing, something that was always present when she was with Duncan. It was passion, fire, an overpowering need to be close to him, even when they were quarrelling.

  ‘Tell Monsieur Valois the truth,’ Marianne said, with her usual bluntness. ‘I do not suppose he will care in the least. He might even find it amusing.’

  And so she told him everything two evenings later when they were dining at Fladong’s in Oxford Street. And Marianne was right, he laughed. ‘Oh, how clever of you, my love, but why choose a Frenchman?’

  ‘Harder to trace,’ she said. ‘The English aristocracy are all known to each other. The location of every great house is common knowledge. I would never have got away with an English grandfather, but the progeny of French aristos are as numerous as sparrows. You are one yourself.’

  ‘I do not think I like being compared to a sparrow,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘An eagle, now that would be more like it.’

  ‘You do not condemn me?’

  ‘No, why should I? But are you sure there is not even a grain of truth in the story? After all Charron sounds French and Madeleine is a French name.’