by M C Beaton
‘Yes, indeed, and that is why I am come. First I must tell you about the Beverley obsession with Mannerling, an obsession I must admit of which, I hope, they have all been cured. You have no doubt heard from local gossip how they were vastly rich and proud and lived at Mannerling. They tried to reclaim it through marriage, but fortunately the two elder girls made suitable marriages for love. Their last attempt nearly ended in disaster, for Harry Devers was the target. But no doubt you have heard that scandal.’
‘Yes, I did. And I must admit I took against these Beverley girls. Such blatant ambition is so crude.’
‘And yet such ambition would not be considered crude in a man. Do you remember young Charlie Anderson? He was about to lose his home and estates and was at his wit’s end. He married a sugar heiress, a blowsy common girl from the West Indies. How clever of him, everyone said. What sterling behaviour!’
Lady Evans gave a reluctant laugh.
‘And my girls are as good as they are beautiful,’ pursued Miss Trumble. ‘Lady Beverley, perhaps because of such misfortunes, has become somewhat of a miser, and my ladies do not go anywhere. To that end I am come to beg you to send them invitations to your ball.’
‘I will do this for you, Letitia. I am now curious to see them. I will have a fair number of eligible men at the ball, but what hope have you when, as I gather, they have no dowries? It is very odd that the two married for love because, as you know, that usually only happens in books. Any man’s family will quickly find out all about the Beverleys and dissuade him if he shows any sign of taking an interest. But we will see. We were talking of young Harry Devers. Do you know he is expected home on leave?’
Miss Trumble’s heart gave a lurch. Barry had told her that but it hadn’t really seemed anything to worry about. Now she had a sudden vivid picture of the twins’ fleeing at her approach. But she said, ‘I doubt very much if we will see anything of him. He will not be at your ball, I hope?’
‘No, he will not. Mrs Devers called. She kept assuring me he was a sweet boy and a completely reformed character.’
‘That one will never reform,’ said Miss Trumble with a shudder.
Lady Evans rang the bell. ‘You must take tea, Letitia, and we will talk about the old days. So few of us left!’
Barry lounged outside, talking to one of the grooms, but privately wondering what was keeping Miss Trumble so long. He had thought it a bit forward of her to approach Lady Evans on the matter of invitations to the ball and had expected her to emerge from the house after only a few moments. But the sun sank lower in the sky, burning red through the skeletal branches of the trees bordering the drive, and still Miss Trumble did not appear.
It was a full hour later and he had already lit the carriage lamps when Miss Trumble emerged.
‘How did it go?’ asked Barry.
‘Very successful,’ said Miss Trumble, drawing the carriage rug up over her legs.
‘You just asked, just like that?’
‘Just like that,’ said Miss Trumble calmly. ‘Lady Evans is a friend of one of my previous employers and was always kind to me.’
‘Which employer was that, miss?’
‘Barry, would you be so good as to stop at the coal merchant’s in Hedgefield? I have a desire to order a quantity of coal.’
‘Coal is expensive, miss.’
‘Indeed it is, which is why Lady Beverley never has enough. We will let her assume it came from some mysterious benefactor.’
‘And I reckon you’d consider it impertinent were I to ask you where you found the money for such a luxury?’
‘Very impertinent. Drive on.’
The Beverleys were all in the parlour the following afternoon when Barry appeared carrying a scuttleful of coal. He proceeded to pile coal on the meagre fire.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Lady Beverley. ‘You are putting a month’s coal ration on that fire.’
‘A ton of coal arrived this morning as a present from an unknown benefactor,’ said Barry.
‘Oh, how nice!’ Lady Beverley looked delighted at this unexpected largess for which she did not have to pay.
‘Dear me,’ said Miss Trumble, putting down a piece of sewing she had been working on, ‘I would have thought you might have considered it a trifle humiliating, my lady.’
‘How so?’
‘As the girls go nowhere socially and have no admirers, the gift was obviously prompted by charity.’
‘Charity!’ Abigail looked shocked.
‘Well, you know how it is.’ Miss Trumble bent her head over her sewing again. ‘Shopkeepers will gossip, and to their betters, too. It is well known that this household buys the cheapest of everything – the cheapest cuts of meat, tallow candles, things like that. So it has got about how very poor we are.’
‘We are not poor!’ Lady Beverley looked outraged. ‘Merely thrifty.’ She fumbled for her smelling salts.
‘Of course, my lady,’ murmured Miss Trumble.
Barry suppressed a smile as he left the room.
A few moments later, he popped his head round the door. ‘Footman coming up the drive, my lady.’
‘Mannerling!’ cried Abigail. ‘It is an invitation to Mannerling.’
Miss Trumble walked to the window and looked out. ‘It is not the Mannerling livery,’ she said quietly. Then she turned and looked thoughtfully at Abigail, who blushed a miserable red, suddenly aware that she had betrayed herself to this sharp-eyed governess.
Now there’s going to be trouble, thought Rachel, feeling suddenly guilty and wishing she had never encouraged Abigail to talk about Harry Devers.
The maid, Betty, came in, dropped a curtsy, and handed Lady Beverley a pile of invitations. ‘Dear me,’ said Lady Beverley, ‘Lady Evans has invited us all to a ball at Hursley Park next month at the full moon. How extraordinary! There is even an invitation for Miss Trumble as well. How odd to invite a mere servant.’
‘Lady Evans was a friend of one of my previous employers,’ said Miss Trumble quietly. ‘I took the liberty of calling on her yesterday. If you but remember, my lady. I told you I was going. The girls are in need of new ball gowns. Of course, if they go in their old ones, perhaps someone else in the neighbourhood will decide to honour us with some more charity.’
‘That is enough,’ said Lady Beverley sharply. ‘My girls shall have the best. Gowns must be ordered for them, and from London, too.’
The next couple of days were a bustle of activity. Their measurements had to be carefully made and dummies of the girls prepared in wood by the local carpenter. Where Miss Trumble had managed to secure all the latest fashion magazines from was a mystery, but the girls were too happy and excited to ask. Fashions were chosen, and then Barry had to load up the dummies, complete with a letter of instructions to take to the mail coach, where they would be hurtled up to the dressmaker in London.
In all the excitement, Abigail had hoped that Miss Trumble had forgotten that cry of ‘Mannerling,’ but no sooner had Barry rumbled off in the little open carriage with the wooden dummies lurching crazily in the back that Miss Trumble said, ‘Abigail, Rachel. A word, if you please.’
Both looked to their mother, hoping she would delay them, but Lady Beverley was bent over the household accounts again, her lips moving soundlessly.
Reluctantly they followed their governess out of the room. ‘My room, I think,’ said Miss Trumble, leading the way upstairs. The room was neat and clean, with a large fire blazing in the hearth. ‘Draw up chairs by the fire,’ commanded Miss Trumble. When the girls were seated, she said, ‘I was disturbed at your eagerness, Abigail, to believe that footman was from Mannerling. You ought not to have been considering any invitation from Mannerling with anything other than dread. You are not to see or go near Harry Devers again . . . either of you.’
Abigail tossed her fair curls. ‘Who are you to command us as to who we should see or not see? That is for Mama to say.’
Miss Trumble sighed. ‘Which means you still harbour ambitions in tha
t direction, you silly girls. Jessica was assaulted and arrived here with her gown ripped. What on earth do you think happened to her? Too warm a kiss? This craziness must cease.’
Rachel flashed a guilty look at her twin and mumbled, ‘We thought perhaps Jessica had been a trifle missish.’
‘Missish! Your sister was brutally assaulted and frightened out of her wits.’
The twins hung their heads.
‘Let me hear no more of your nonsense,’ said Miss Trumble severely. ‘You must look your prettiest for this ball. There will be eligible men there. If you behave well, then other invitations will be forthcoming. Now, off with you!’
The twins went out. Each usually knew what the other was thinking and so, by a sort of unspoken agreement, they went to Abigail’s room. Abigail sat down wearily on the edge of the bed. ‘She did make me feel the most utter fool.’
‘I feel she spoke nothing but the truth about Harry and Jessica,’ said Rachel. ‘I remember now that Jessica’s gown was ripped, but what happened was evidently so awful that no one would tell us about it and I had forgotten about the state Jessica arrived home in that day.’
‘Perhaps if it stays dry tomorrow,’ said Abigail, ‘we will walk over to Mannerling for one last look. I feel if I go and say goodbye, then my brain won’t trick me any more.’
‘We will not be allowed to go out walking alone,’ said Rachel.
‘We will take pails and say we are going to pick blackberries. Then we can leave the pails in the nearest hedge and make our way.’
Miss Trumble was so sure that she had knocked sense into their heads that she did not worry about anything when she saw the twins setting out with pails to collect blackberries. She would have been worried had she known that Lizzie and Belinda had offered to go with them and had been rudely told that their company was not wanted.
After hiding their pails in the hedgerow and resolving to pick at least some blackberries before they returned home, Rachel and Abigail made their way towards Mannerling, under a clear, cold blue sky, the iron rings on their pattens clattering on the frost-hard road. Birds piped cold little dismal cries from the hedgerows, which gleamed red with hips and haws. There was a scent of decay in the air.
When they reached the great gates of Mannerling, they both gazed hungrily through the iron bars.
The gardens had been laid out in the last century by Capability Brown. He had earned the nickname Capability because of the noble simplicity of his vision in remodelling great parks. In fact, his boast was that he could not go to Ireland because he had not yet finished refashioning England. The gardens at Mannerling contained all the hallmarks of Brown’s landscaping. Great sweeps of greensward, relieved by clumps of trees, extended right up to the house itself and sloped down to a level sheet of water created from diminutive streams. A belt of trees encircled the whole park, breaking in places to open up vistas onto the surrounding country. Humphry Repton, Brown’s successor, had added the long line of trees on either side of the drive, the rose garden, the kitchen garden, and the terraces.
The sound of a carriage made the twins turn round in alarm. It was shameful to be discovered thus in their old gowns. The carriage stopped and Mrs Devers looked out. ‘Pray join me, ladies,’ she called as the footman jumped down from the back-strap to let down the carriage steps. ‘We will take a dish of tea.’
The normally haughty Mrs Devers’s impulse was prompted because she felt ‘poor Harry’ was still in deep disgrace because of that ‘little misunderstanding’ over Jessica Beverley. Therefore it followed that if she became on good terms with the Beverley family, people would discount that story about Harry.
Rachel and Abigail shared the same thought as they climbed into the carriage. How furious Miss Trumble would be if she could see them now.
Once inside Mannerling, Abigail gazed about her with something close to despair. So does a woman feel when she thinks the obsession she has suffered for some man has finally left her, only to see him again and find the obsession is as strong as ever. Every room seemed to call to her, ‘I belong to you.’
‘I think this place is haunted,’ said Mrs Devers as she led the way into the drawing room.
‘By Mr Judd?’ asked Rachel.
‘No, I think it takes people’s souls. I would have persuaded Mr Devers to sell it, but of course Harry would not hear of it. He loves this place.’
She rang the bell and asked for tea to be served. Soon the tea-kettle was bubbling on its tall three-legged stand. Japanned trays swirling with patterns of blush roses were carried in, laden with biscuits. Then there was the cake basket they remembered, and wondered why their mother had not taken it with her. It had ‘barley-sugar’ handles and pierced sides. The rosewood tea caddy and silver tea-strainer, the little silver cream jug, all stood on fragile tables among the cups and saucers of so thin and fine a china as to be almost transparent.
‘I believe Lady Evans over at Hursley Park is to give a ball,’ said Mrs Devers.
‘Yes, we are invited to go,’ said Abigail proudly.
‘Really! I have no doubt our invitations will be arriving shortly. I apprised Lady Evans of the intelligence that Harry is shortly due home on leave. This terrible war. Will it never end?’
The twins said nothing. The lecture from Miss Trumble still rang in their ears.
‘Of course,’ went on Mrs Devers hurriedly and without her usual stately calm, ‘Harry did behave so badly towards your sister and it did get about. But he was always such a wild boy. Young men are so headstrong, and he was so terribly much in love with your sister that he got quite carried away. He is such a romantic fellow and he knew he was losing Jessica’s affections to his cousin, Robert Sommerville, and he lost his head. He has been so dreadfully punished for his folly and has become so changed, so quiet and gentlemanly, you would not recognize him at all.’
‘Perhaps he will be at Lady Evans’s ball,’ suggested Abigail.
Mrs Devers busied herself with the tea-kettle. ‘Well, as to that,’ she said with an awkward laugh, ‘Lady Evans is so very old, don’t you know, and the old are so intolerant of foibles in the young, quite as if they had never been young themselves.’
Miss Trumble, thought Abigail, would no doubt wonder acidly whether Lady Evans had assaulted anyone in her youth.
Rachel changed the subject and chatted about the dresses they were having made for the ball at one of London’s leading dressmaker’s. Mrs Devers then turned the conversation to London, saying she had been there recently, and began talking of plays and operas she had seen.
The twins suddenly realized that time was passing, and if they did not hurry, Barry would be sent out looking for them. They rose to their feet to make their goodbyes.
‘But you must not walk,’ Mrs Devers exclaimed. ‘I will send you home in the carriage.’
Rachel opened her mouth to say hurriedly that they would enjoy the walk home and heard, to her horror, Abigail accepting the offer. She did not say anything until they were in the carriage and bowling down the drive.
‘Are you run mad?’ she demanded angrily. ‘What will happen when Miss Trumble sees us arriving in the Mannerling carriage?’
‘She won’t,’ said Abigail. ‘We’ll tell the coachman to stop where we left the pails and walk from there.’
Rachel heaved a sigh of relief.
Miss Trumble met them as they came in, swinging their empty pails. ‘No blackberries?’ she asked.
‘Not a one,’ said Abigail cheerfully. ‘We were playing at swinging our pails and we upset them all over the road.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Beyond the entrance to Currie’s farm, where that thick hedgerow is,’ said Abigail.
After dinner, Miss Trumble took a lantern and walked along the road until she reached the hedgerow by Currie’s farm. She held the lantern high. Frost sparkled like marcasite on the road, but of spilled blackberries there was not any sign at all.
She walked slowly back. Should she accuse them of ly
ing? Where had they really been? But if she accused them, that might make them more secretive than ever. She would wait and watch.
The fine weather broke and the rain came down in floods, turning the roads about Brookfield House to rivers of mud. The girls began to fret. The roads were impassable. Their dresses would never arrive in time, and how could they get to the ball anyway in such weather? Even Miss Trumble began to lose hope and suggested they look out their old gowns so that she might reshape them.
But the rain ceased as suddenly as it had come, followed by an unseasonably warm drying wind from the south. The dresses duly arrived and everything was set fair for the ball.
Miss Trumble received a note from Lady Evans. In it Lady Evans had listed the eligibles who were to attend the ball and said, ‘Lord Burfield is the prize. He is vastly rich and vastly handsome. But he is in his early thirties and no girl has caught his eye yet. I wonder why?’
I wonder, too, thought Miss Trumble. He might prove to be another Harry Devers!
TWO
O, Love’s but a dance,
Where Time plays the fiddle!
See the couples advance, -
O, Love’s but a dance!
A whisper, a glance, -
‘Shall we twirl down the middle?’
O, Love’s but a dance,
Where Time plays the fiddle!
HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON
Lord Burfield would have not been in the least surprised had he learned that he was the talk of every family that was to attend the ball. He was used to being the centre of attention. As a child, he had been doted on by his parents – a most unusual state of affairs in the Regency, where children were expected to stay out of sight, watched over by governesses or tutors. But he had been a rosy-cheeked cherub with a mop of golden curls, and the pet of the servants as well.
He had left the comfort of his home at the age of eighteen to join the army. His father, the Earl of Drezby, had cried fond and proud tears at the sight of his golden-haired boy in his hussar uniform. It was a tradition in England that the aristocracy went into the army and the gentry to the navy, and neither the earl nor the countess expected army life to change their sweet-natured scholarly son in the slightest. Rupert, Lord Burfield, had ridden off to fight the French and ended up in the misery of the Duke of York’s disastrous campaign in the Low Countries. The countryside was in the grip of ferocious frosts, and it was, wrongly, assumed that the French would keep to their quarters until the hard winter was over. But the French came speeding down the frozen canals, defeated the Dutch, seized all their ports, and sent the exhausted redcoats staggering towards Hanover, into a new hell of cold and wretchedness. ‘I shall not feel this as a severe blow,’ the Duke of York wrote to his royal father, but the British public viewed it differently and chanted in the streets:
