by M C Beaton
To a great number of the aristocracy, visitors were a bugbear, and most preferred the private life of town. In the country, one lived a public life. Any Tom, Dick, Harry, or Jane who took it into their heads to have a guided tour of your castle, palace, or country mansion had simply to knock at the door. Some families had started to build private wings in order to escape running into strangers at every hour of the day, not to mention a constant stream of tenants and farmers calling to lay their grievances before the master or mistress.
The upper servants were the only ones who enjoyed these public visits since they were usually given at least a sovereign.
“The trouble with Beaton Malden,” went on Foster, “is that it’s not on any common road and although it’s a fine place, it doesn’t have much in the way of history, you know, like a castle or an abbey.”
“You mean, if we had a deal of folk a-calling, we wouldn’t have to worry so much about our wages?”
“Exactly. But I cannot see how it is to be done. We do not even have a ghost or a priest’s hole or anything of that nature.”
“We didn’t,” said Mrs. Jarrett, savoring her wine. “But we have now.”
“I do not comprehend you, Mrs. Jarrett.”
“Well, I do now call to mind that his late lordship is in the habit of haunting the picture gallery.” She laid a finger alongside her nose and gave the butler a fat wink. “You’ve seen him yourself, Mr. Foster, now haven’t you?”
Foster gave a broad grin which seemed to vanish up into his face under the shadow of his nose. “Now, how could I have forgotten a thing like that? I wish my lady well this Season, Mrs. Jarrett, but we’ll drink to his lordship’s ghost as… well… insurance, shall we say?”
“I have my jewels, Tabby,” Amaryllis said. “Pooh, this is dreadful wine.”
“But you musn’t sell your jewels,” wailed Miss Wilkins. “If you start going about without any jewels, everyone will know that you are near destitute!”
“No, they won’t. I shall have them copied in paste and no one will be any the wiser and that way we can survive in style until the end of the Season and a little after. I danced at Almack’s with the Earl of Harrisfield. He seemed much taken, I think, although I did not pay much attention at the time.”
“The Earl of Harrisfield,” said Miss Wilkins repressively, “is all of sixty and nearly in his dotage.”
“La! A charming age,” said Amaryllis in a brittle voice. “I shall hunt him down this evening. I am a thruster when it comes to the chase of elderly gentlemen. Now, I am going to bed for an hour. Wake me at midnight, Tabby, and ask Foster to find out where the Earl may be found.”
“I feel Lord Philip has hurt you badly,” said Miss Wilkins, watching her anxiously.
“Nonsense,” said Amaryllis roundly, for she would not even admit to herself how badly Lord Philip had wounded her.
Miss Wilkins said, with a painful blush, “I feel I must caution you before you refuse to acknowledge your marriage…. I mean, what if there is a child?”
“I have survived two marriages without children,” said Amaryllis. “I am not likely to breed now. Do not mention Lord Philip’s name again. The whole episode is such a bore. You must rest also, Tabby. Tonight, we hunt down the Earl!”
“I said, I don’t want to discuss it,” snapped Lord Philip over his shoulder to his friend Mr. Bagshot. “I’m curst tired and this cravat has a life of its own and you cannot seem to understand a simple request. The marriage never took place and that is all I am going to tell you, Harry. Now, we will toddle along to the opera and I will search for another heiress.”
Mr. Bagshot sat gloomily swinging his leg over the arm of his chair and watched his friend’s reflection in the looking glass. He had hardly been able to believe it when Lord Philip’s Swiss had arrived at the club with a rather peremptory note asking Mr. Bagshot to present himself at Lord Philip’s lodgings.
“You know what?” ventured Harry Bagshot at last as Lord Philip successfully tied his cravat at last in the Trône d’Amour.
“No. What?”
“You ain’t cut out to be a fortune hunter.”
“Oh, I am, dear friend. Do you hope to see Miss Armitage at the opera?”
Mr. Bagshot’s face brightened. “That’s the only reason I’m going. Can’t see what this fuss about Catalini is all about. I think she screeches.”
“Well, since neither of us is really going to see or hear the diva, it is of no matter. Come along, Harry. Romance awaits you, and, with any luck, a fortune awaits me!”
Amaryllis awoke at eleven o’clock in the evening and struggled to consciousness. She knew there was something very important she had to do. Then she remembered Lord Philip’s perfidy and a wave of pain engulfed her. She rolled over and turned her face into the pillow, biting the silk of the cover to stop herself from crying out. Then she remembered also that the hunt must go on and no time was to be lost.
She rang for her maid and demanded that Foster be sent to her immediately. The butler arrived in a few moments with the intelligence that the Earl of Harrisfield had gone to the opera and was to be found at Ranelagh afterwards.
“Then Ranelagh it shall be,” said Amaryllis.
“Tell Miss Wilkins to make ready, and Simpson”—to her maid—“lay out the pink gown with the spangles. Oh, and Foster, I shall want the carriage in exactly three-quarters of an hour.”
It was a scrambled toilette but Amaryllis did not want any time to think.
Miss Wilkins was refreshed after her nap but troubled and uneasy about the night that lay ahead.
In no time at all, they were “making the round” in the famous Rotunda and bowing and smiling to several acquaintances.
The Rotunda at Ranelagh was one of the finest buildings in London, a fine circular room some 150 feet in diameter, built in 1742 by Mr. Jones, the architect of the East India Company.
In the middle was a circular bower composed of all kinds of firs in tubs, from twenty to thirty feet high. Underneath them were orange trees, with small lamps in each orange, and below them all sorts of the finest auriculas, and festoons of natural flowers hanging from tree to tree. There were booths for tea and wine, gaming tables, and dancing.
On the canal which ran through the gardens was a sort of gondola adorned with flags and streamers and bearing a small orchestra.
Ranelagh in Chelsea was more fashionable than Vauxhall, and the Exclusives loved to promenade there after the opera or the play.
The fat and florid Prince of Wales was there, surrounded by his cronies. He was dressed exactly like his idol, Brummell, but the severe fashions instigated by the Beau did not flatter Prince George’s portly figure.
Amaryllis was delighted by her first close sight of royalty and almost forgot her woes, when suddenly the crowd parted and she saw, down, it seemed, a channel of people, Lord Philip talking to a meek little miss. The tableau was brightly lit, as if the performers were on a stage. Lord Philip was smiling down at the blushing girl. What looked like the girl’s parents stood a little to one side, smiling in approval. Behind them stood Harry Bagshot with Priscilla Armitage on his arm. He was staring at Lord Philip and the young girl and he looked worried.
Then the crowd closed in and the scene was lost to view. Amaryllis was almost gasping with hurt. She wanted to run away, to run home, to bury her head under the pillow, to blot out the memories of this man’s body moving so passionately on top of her own. She… she saw the Earl of Harrisfield.
Amaryllis took a deep breath. This was war. Never, never should that deceitful lord begin to guess how much he had hurt her.
Taking her companion’s arm in a firm grasp, Amaryllis made her way across to the Earl.
“Be careful,” hissed Miss Wilkins. “You are going to walk right into him!”
“That’s the idea,” murmured Amaryllis. “Oh, I declare! You are such a wit, Tabby!” The latter was said in rather a shrill voice as Amaryllis laughed up into Miss Wilkins’s face so that she would appea
r not to know where she was going. Her plan worked and she bumped full into Lord Harrisfield’s corpulent stomach.
“Ooops!” said that gentleman, quickly recovering himself as he recognized Amaryllis as the pretty widow he had seen at Almack’s.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” said Amaryllis, all pretty confusion. “You must forgive…”
“Forgive, ma’am! Stuff and fiddle! Grateful. ’Pon rep! Name’s Harrisfield. Servant.”
Amaryllis sank into a low curtsy and introduced herself and Miss Wilkins.
“Delighted! Acquaintance! Make the round, heh!” Lord Harrisfield offered a pudgy arm and Amaryllis took it, as Miss Wilkins grimly fell into line behind them and prayed to God to protect her foolish mistress.
It was not that the Earl was exactly repulsive. But he was rather old and creaky, both literally and figuratively speaking, since his corsets squeaked abominably at every step he took.
He was a fat man above the average height. His florid face was quite hidden under a coat of white paint and his blue eyes were crisscrossed with small red veins. He wore a nut-brown wig of youthful curls. His mouth was small and rather petulant but he affected an elliptical mode of speech and a jolly, breezy manner.
“Take you out. See canal. Pretty. Very,” said his lordship.
“But surely Lady Harrisfield will be looking for you?”
“Ain’t one. Was. Dead. Quite.”
“Oh, very well, in that case…”
“Don’t like,” said the Earl, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Miss Wilkins. “Get rid of. Have fun. Heh?”
“No,” said Amaryllis severely. “I am a young widow and I need to be careful, especially when I am escorted by such a dashing Pink of the ton as yourself.”
Lord Harrisfield visibly preened and his corsets moaned under the strain.
No sooner had they stepped outside and into the gardens than Amaryllis became aware that Lord Philip and his new lady love were walking straight toward them. She expected him to cut her but, to her horror, he stopped.
“Ah, Lady Lovelace,” he said smoothly, “allow me to introduce Miss Belinda Fang. It is her first Season.”
Miss Fang curtsied and murmured she was “hoffly pleased.”
She was even more insignificant close to than she had looked from a distance, thought Amaryllis savagely. But she was wearing quite the most magnificent diamonds that Amaryllis had ever seen, and obviously that was part of her attraction for Lord Philip.
“It is very romantic in the gardens,” commented Lord Philip languidly. He pressed Miss Fang’s hand and Amaryllis edged closer to Lord Harrisfield.
“We could explore the gardens a little further if you would but step aside, my lord,” interposed Miss Wilkins from behind Amaryllis.
Amaryllis flashed her a smile of gratitude over her shoulder but the Earl was studying Lord Philip with new interest. “I say. Nabob. India. Jewels. Curry. Interestin’ talk. Ladies follow.” And before Amaryllis could guess what he was about, he had lumbered forward and seized Lord Philip by the sleeve. Somehow Miss Belinda Fang ended up walking beside Amaryllis and Miss Wilkins while Lord Philip and the Earl went off down the walk in animated conversation.
Amaryllis forced herself to make polite conversation. Waves of fatigue were beginning to engulf her. Only her vast hate for Lord Philip kept her senses sharp.
“I believe this is your first Season?” she asked Miss Fang.
“Yes,” whispered that young lady.
“And you are enjoying it?”
“Hoffly nice.”
“And you have known Lord Philip for some time?”
“’S evening,” volunteered Miss Fang.
“Fang,” mused Amaryllis, “I don’t quite recall any…”
“Wouldn’t,” said Miss Fang. “Pa’s a Cit.”
Really, thought Amaryllis crossly, Miss Fang and Lord Harrisfield do not believe in wasting words. She gathered from Miss Fang’s brief remark that her father was a merchant in the City and therefore the Fangs were not gentry or aristocracy.
“Those are very beautiful jewels you are wearing, Miss Fang,” pursued Amaryllis.
“Hoffly nice,” said Miss Fang and gazed longingly after Lord Philip. She was, decided Amaryllis, like a little Pekingese, with her bulging eyes and long frizzled hair falling on either side of her face like shaggy ears.
Suddenly Amaryllis experienced a pang of pure fear. What if Lord Philip were telling the Earl something about her to give the Earl a disgust of her? But when the gentlemen at last stopped and turned around, the Earl’s face was as stupidly cheerful as ever.
Lord Philip drew Miss Fang’s arm through his own. How long and sensitive Lord Philip’s hands were, thought Amaryllis suddenly. Those hands that only such a short time ago…
But he was saying good-bye, his eyes avoiding Amaryllis’s wide gaze. And he was gone. And the gardens were dull. And she was tired.
But Amaryllis remembered Beaton Malden and all the people who were dependent on her for their livelihood and so she marshaled her forces and smiled upon the old Earl, who was thoroughly enchanted with her and forgot his gout for quite half an hour.
Miss Fang sometimes wondered in the weeks to come why Lord Philip was so warm and attentive on some occasions and, on others, quite cool. Her mother, Mrs. Emily Fang, knew the reason but did not confide in her daughter. Mrs. Fang was a shrewd matron who had studied the ton as one studies a foreign race until she had mastered its modes and manners and speech. Her husband was a bluff merchant with neither airs nor graces, and although her daughter, Belinda, had been finished and polished as assiduously as a piece of Chippendale, she remained uncompromisingly common in speech and manner.
Mrs. Fang therefore carried the social burden for the three of them. She was ambitious. The Fangs were wealthy. Now they needed a title in the family. Lord Philip had made no pretensions of wealth to the Fangs and Mrs. Fang liked him for that.
But she did not like the way his eyes would fasten on Lady Lovelace at a ball or a party or that that was what seemed to warm his attentions to her daughter.
She knew, however, that Lord Philip was after Belinda’s money. She also knew that his lordship had rightly guessed that the Fangs were after his title and that was why he had been honest about his lack of funds. After some thought, Mrs. Fang decided that Lord Philip was in love with Lady Lovelace and that Lady Lovelace had rejected him. But Belinda was in love with Lord Philip and Mrs. Fang knew Lord Philip would not be unkind to his wife and so she encouraged the match.
Meanwhile, Harry Bagshot was falling deeper in love with Priscilla Armitage. Priscilla was well aware of it and had sulkily decided to accept him since she was determined to leave the Season engaged to anyone. Harry interpreted her sulky looks as smoldering passion and her long, bored silences and abstraction as intellectual thought. It was unfortunate that Harry could not see clearly and was blinded by love or he would never have done what he did.
London Society awoke one morning at the end of the Season to read in the social columns that Lady Lovelace was engaged to the Earl of Harrisfield and that Lord Philip Osborne was engaged to Miss Belinda Fang.
That was the momentous day when Harry Bagshot proposed marriage to Priscilla Armitage and was coldly accepted. Flushed with love, Harry took her driving in the park and decided to unburden himself.
“I say,” he began. “I’m frightfully worried about old Philip.”
Priscilla yawned and tried batting her eyelids at a simply gorgeous guardsman who was cantering past. The guardsman hurriedly averted his eyes and Priscilla yawned again.
“What?” she asked in a bored voice.
“I said I was worried about Phil,” said Harry Bagshot. “He really shouldn’t be marrying anyone.”
“Why not?” asked his beloved in tones of vast disinterest.
“Well, it’s like this. I mean we’re to be married, Priscilla, and I know you’re the soul of discretion. Also you’re so wise and I would dearly appreciate y
our advice. The fact is… dash it all… Phil’s married already.”
Now he had Priscilla’s full and fascinated attention. “But how… why?”
“I’ll tell you. At the beginning of the Season, Phil asked me to be best man. He said he was marrying Lady Lovelace.”
“Amaryllis! The sly minx! And she said naught to me! I shall tease her!”
“No! You musn’t! It’s a secret. Look, I’ll explain. They were married by this bowzy preacher with only me and that companion of Lady Lovelace and two of the servants. But it was a marriage all right. Well, we had the wedding breakfast and they went off on their honeymoon—one night at some inn—and then damme if Phil didn’t return the next day saying the marriage never existed as far as he was concerned. That very night, he’s out at Ranelagh paying court to Miss Fang and Lady Lovelace is trotting the round with old Harrisfield.”
“So they’ll both be committing bigamy!”
“I s’pose so. Look here, my love, you won’t breathe a word of this. I’ve decided what’s best to be done. I’ll have a stern talk with old Phil and try to talk some sense into his head.”
“The preacher will see the notices,” said Priscilla.
“Oh, not he. I doubt if he even reads his Bible! Furthermore, I’m blessed if that fellow will remember a thing about the wedding. He collapsed in a drunken stupor immediately the ceremony was over and we had to scrape him off the carpet.”
“I should have a little chat with Amaryllis.”
“No, you musn’t. I gave Phil my word I wouldn’t breathe a word of this, but we’re to be married and it’s different telling you. Now promise you won’t say a thing.”
Priscilla nodded her head, her eyes shining. “Not a word shall pass my lips.”
It was a week later that the ax fell. Amaryllis was to look back, in future years, at what she considered the two most distressing days of her life and associate them with bright sunshine and color. The first was, of course, the day after her wedding.
The second was the Duchess of Courtland’s breakfast.
“Breakfasts” were those affairs which began at three in the afternoon and went on all night. The Duchess of Courtland had added a charming villa in Kensington to the Courtlands’ many possessions. It lay near enough to Brampton Park Nursery to enjoy the fragrant smells of flowers and just far enough away from London to escape the almost constant rain of soot which fell on the city, winter or summer.
