Taming of Annabelle

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Annabelle breathlessly, realizing she had gone too far. Memory of the vicar’s threat of a horsewhipping came back. ‘I am really sorry I behaved in such a hoydenish way, Merva. Please say you forgive me.’

  Now, the old Minerva would promptly have looked noble and accepted the apology on the spot. But this new, poised, strangely different sister only replied, ‘Well, we shall see how you go on. You wished to know about the young gentlemen. They are all a trifle too old for you, being in their twenties, but I thought it would be an opportunity for you to study how the other young ladies behave.’

  ‘Other young ladies?’

  ‘Yes, we are not without competition,’ smiled Minerva. ‘I had better tell you the names of everyone you are to meet. There is, of course, the Duke and Duchess of Allsbury. Lord Sylvester’s older brother, the Marquess, is travelling in Russia and will not be with us. Then there are two cousins, the Misses Margaret and Belinda Forbes-Jydes; Lady Godolphin, of whom you have heard; Lady Coombes, a most elegant lady who is a relative; Sally and Betty Abernethy, Scotch ladies who are related to the Duchess’s family, and that makes up the female side of the party.

  ‘The gentlemen consist of a Colonel Arthur Brian who is by way of being a friend of Lady Godolphin.’ Here Minerva’s lips pressed into a severe disapproving line and Annabelle wondered why. ‘Then there is the Honourable Harry Comfrey with his brother, Charles, both cousins, Lord Paul Chester, a friend of Lord Sylvester, as is Mr John Frampton . . . oh, and I had almost forgot, the most exciting guest of all arrives tomorrow.’

  ‘Who . . . ?’

  ‘Why, Peter, Marquess of Brabington.’

  ‘But why is that exciting? He is a very fine gentleman but . . .’

  ‘Do but listen! He is a hero! He sailed from Portsmouth shortly after we last saw him at the vicarage to rejoin his regiment in the Peninsula. But shortly out of Portsmouth, the ship, the Mary Belle, was hit with a mighty storm and the men had to take to the boats. The Mary Belle sank very rapidly and a deal of men were struggling in the water, and Lord Brabington, who was on one of the long boats, kept going back and back, time after time, into that dreadful sea.

  ‘It is estimated he saved the lives of ten men before he collapsed with exhaustion. He contracted a fever and is being brought here to rest until he is well again. He will be too weak to do little more than keep to his bed but we are all agog to welcome him.’

  ‘He is a very brave man,’ said Annabelle sincerely.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ laughed Minerva, ‘I noticed that he was quite taken with you, Bella.’

  ‘Really!’ said Annabelle, affecting a yawn. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘I believe Sylvester said he had thirty years.’

  ‘Oh, Merva. And you just said the gentlemen in their twenties were too old for me!’ teased Annabelle.

  ‘Well, if one meets an . . . an older man who is out of the common way then such a difference in age does not matter.’

  ‘No! It did not stop you from becoming engaged to Lord Sylvester despite a difference of fourteen years. But I forget. You were not looking for a love match. It was necessary for you to marry anyone with money to save our fortunes and I think it was all very noble of you, Merva.’

  ‘I was not noble at all,’ laughed Minerva. ‘It is a love match.’

  Annabelle’s heart fell. But Minerva did not look like a woman in love. And she would say such a thing because it would not be right to say otherwise. So Annabelle tried to console herself.

  As one grows older, the difference in ages seems to narrow. Someone of forty-five will feel on equal terms with someone of sixty. But between seventeen and twenty yawns a large gulf. Annabelle was still an adolescent girl while Minerva had become a woman. Added to that, Minerva had acted as substitute mother to the Armitage children, Mrs Armitage being too taken up with practising to be an invalid. One does not think at seventeen of one’s mother having ever endured the burning fires of love, and so Annabelle could not bring herself to think that her aloof sister had ever felt the tremblings of passion. Nothing is more intense, or more self-centred than calf love.

  Annabelle became aware that Minerva was speaking. ‘We are to join the Duchess for luncheon. We have breakfast, luncheon and dinner here, quite like London. We do not sit down to dinner until eight o’clock in the evening! I shall lend you something grand for evening but we are quite informal for luncheon. Betty has laid out your pretty blue muslin.’

  But Annabelle immediately pouted. ‘Lend me one of yours, please,’ she wheedled.

  Visions of Lord Sylvester waiting below at the luncheon table crowded into her mind. She could almost hear his mocking voice, see his beautifully sculptured mouth.

  ‘No,’ said Minerva firmly. ‘There will not be . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to wear that old blue thing,’ said Annabelle, her voice rising. ‘It’s just like you to want to keep all the finest things for yourself.’

  ‘That is unkind,’ said Minerva. ‘What has come over you, Annabelle?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annabelle, bursting into tears. ‘But I do so want to look fashionable.’

  She is still such a child, thought Minerva indulgently.

  ‘There now,’ she said. ‘Dry your eyes. You may choose any gown you want.’

  ‘Really? Anything?’

  ‘Anything at all.’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ cried Annabelle, her tears miraculously disappearing.

  ‘Then come with me.’

  An hour later, Annabelle was ready to descend the stairs. She had chosen a morning dress, with an apron front and stomacher let in and laced across like a peasant’s bodice with coloured ribbons. It was made of jaconet muslin, white with a small design in cherry red, and with cherry-red silk ribbons.

  Her blonde hair had been put up in a loose knot on the top of her head, allowing a cascade of ringlets to fall to her shoulders. Minerva thought Annabelle had never looked more beautiful – and Annabelle thought so too.

  It was with great bitterness that Annabelle found she was to waste all this sweetness on the desert air.

  Luncheon was to be served in the Yellow Saloon on the ground floor, a pretty room affording an excellent view of the park.

  But it was the sight of the company that depressed Annabelle so. There were no gentlemen present, and, worst of all, certainly no Lord Sylvester.

  The company for luncheon consisted only of the Duchess of Allsbury and Lady Godolphin.

  The Duchess was a small, plump lady with beautifully dressed white hair and large green eyes which had faded with age to a sort of pale gooseberry colour. She had an easy outer manner covering a rather frosty interior. In truth, her grace privately disapproved of her youngest son’s forthcoming marriage to Minerva Armitage, thinking he was throwing himself away by affiancing himself to some little nobody from a country vicarage. But Minerva, in her way, could be almost as intimidating as Lord Sylvester, and so she had kept her thoughts to herself. It would certainly be understandable if she had disapproved of Lady Godolphin, but Lady Godolphin came from a very old family, and so the Duchess found nothing up with that reprehensible old quiz.

  Annabelle had not really been warned about Lady Godolphin since she had not quite taken in her mother’s remarks, and Minerva would have considered it disloyal to criticize the lady who had been her chaperone.

  Lady Godolphin was a squat lady in her late fifties with a bulldog face and pale-blue eyes. She wore a great deal of pearl powder over a covering of white lead paint. Two round circles of rouge glared from her withered cheeks and a scarlet wig perched at an improbable angle on her head.

  She was wearing a very low-cut gown of acid-green velvet and the ageing flesh of her breasts quivered under their coating of white lead every time she moved like the winter water shivering under a coating of thin ice on the lake outside.

  Lady Godolphin sprang to her feet at their entrance, and, without waiting to be introduced, enfolded Annabelle in a warm and smelly embrace. Annabel
le extricated herself as soon as she decently could, noticing as she did so that some of her ladyship’s white paint had smeared the cherry-red ribbons of her bodice.

  ‘Ain’t you the pretty one,’ crowed Lady Godolphin. ‘You’ll have all the fellows shaking in their shoes like blankmanjies. I don’t know how Charles Armitage produced such beauties. He’s so obesed with the chase, one would expect him to have sired a pack o’ fox-faced long-nosed antidotes.’

  ‘Where are the gentlemen, my lady?’ asked Annabelle, looking anxiously at the four settings on the table and wishing there were more so she might at least hope.

  ‘Gone out riding with the ladies,’ said the Duchess calmly. ‘Pray be seated, Miss Annabelle. I trust your journey was not too fatiguing? No? Good. That is a pretty gown you are wearing.’

  ‘I remember it well,’ said Lady Godolphin, as they all seated themselves at the table. ‘I bought it for Minerva. It’s as well you are of a size and you ain’t too proud to wear hand-me-downs.’

  Annabelle’s glorious beauty seemed to pale and fade under the mortification inflicted by these words. But the thought that this amiable-looking Duchess might one day be her mother-in-law stiffened her spine, and she contented herself with smiling vaguely at some point over Lady Godolphin’s shoulder.

  The Duchess launched into a conversation with Lady Godolphin of the do-you-know and how-are-the-so-and-sos variety while Minerva and Annabelle were obliged to sit mum and behave like good little girls.

  Annabelle gamely, at one point, tried to break in by saying to the Duchess, ‘You have a beautiful house,’ but her grace only fixed her with a pleasant smile which did not quite reach her eyes, replied, ‘Yes,’ and continued to talk to Lady Godolphin.

  After some time the Duchess asked Lady Godolphin, ‘And how goes Mr Brummell? Still ruling the roost?’

  Annabelle immediately pricked up her ears for Lady Godolphin’s reply, for Mr George Brummell was fashion. It was said the Prince Regent had blubbered like a baby when Mr Brummell had criticized the cut of his coat.

  ‘Oh, tol rol,’ said Lady Godolphin, waving her pudgy fingers in a dismissive kind of way. ‘He still works so hard at being the fashion which, of course, anyone with a doubtful pedigree must do. He toadies very cleverly when he is not being frightfully rude and they all love him for it. Like those women who like being insulted by their hairdresser. It appeals to their love of dollar and humiliation.’

  There was a little silence while the other three ladies tried to think what Lady Godolphin could possibly mean by ‘love of dollar’.

  It was rather like doing an acrostic, thought Annabelle.

  ‘Douleur – the French for pain,’ said Minerva suddenly, her face clearing.

  Lady Godolphin nodded her large head. ‘That’s just what I said, Minerva. There’s no need to go on repeating my words, you know. We ain’t deaf.’

  Annabelle and Minerva solemnly bowed their heads over their food.

  At last, the meal was over and the two Armitage girls were free to make their escape.

  ‘How could you bear being brought out by her,’ whispered Annabelle as they were mounting the grand staircase. ‘She is awful. And I don’t think the Duchess likes us one bit.’

  She expected this latter remark to shock Minerva for she had never thought her sister a very perceptive sort of girl, but Minerva said, ‘I will not have to see much of her once I am married . . . the Duchess, that is. Lady Godolphin is quite shocking, I agree, but she has a very kind heart.’

  ‘It’s a wonder you noticed it,’ said Annabelle acidly, ‘hidden as it must be under at least three feet of blanc.’

  ‘Hush!’ said Minerva. ‘We must not criticize our elders.’

  ‘Oh, Merva, if you don’t really think she’s a frightful old hag then you are a hypocrite, or, as her ladyship would no doubt say, a hippopotamus.’

  But Minerva was not to be drawn on the subject of Lady Godolphin. ‘You must lie down and rest,’ she told Annabelle. ‘For they keep very late hours here. No! You must be guided by me. Off to bed!’

  Rather sulkily, Annabelle complied, but no sooner was she in the privacy of her rooms than she was overcome by a fit of rebellion. ‘Late hours’ probably meant nine o’clock to Minerva. And why waste time sleeping when she could be on the watch for Lord Sylvester?

  Finding the windows of her sitting room over-looked the main entrance, she settled down to wait.

  Small flakes of snow, round and hard as pellets, were beginning to fall. Annabelle watched as the bare branches of the trees began to bend in the rising wind and the sky grew even darker above.

  She stared down the long straight drive. At one moment, she would think she could see a party of riders, and then the next, would realize that the blowing, thickening snow was tricking her vision.

  And then all at once they appeared, clattering up the drive, Lord Sylvester and a middle-aged woman in a smart frogged riding dress leading the way.

  Annabelle sprang to her feet, and then stood irresolute. She did not want to confront all these strangers. At last she decided to creep quietly to the top of the stairs and see if she could find a chance to speak to Lord Sylvester when the others had retired to their rooms.

  There was an alcove with a large bronze statue of Zeus on the first landing and Annabelle managed to hide behind it without being seen by any of the guests or servants.

  Several young women and men mounted the stairs and passed her. After what seemed an unbearably long time, the middle-aged lady came up and walked past, holding the long train of her riding dress over one arm. She looked very elegant and mondaine. That must be Lady Coombes, thought Annabelle, remembering Minerva’s description of the guests.

  Then there was a long silence, punctuated only by faint sounds of voices and laughter from the rooms above.

  Annabelle slipped quietly down the stairs to the main hall. The statues surrounding the hall seemed to watch her with their bronze eyes.

  There were so many rooms. Where could he have gone? A butler wearing a green baize apron came into the hall and Annabelle flashed him a bright smile.

  ‘Can you tell me the whereabouts of Lord Sylvester Comfrey?’ she asked.

  ‘In the library, miss,’ replied the butler.

  ‘Which is . . . ?’

  ‘Over there, miss, at the far end of the hall on the right.’

  Annabelle’s heart began to beat hard and she felt a suffocating constriction at her chest. For one desperate moment she wanted to turn and flee, but the butler was standing gravely watching her so she put up her chin and marched to the back of the hall.

  Gently she pushed open the library door and walked inside. Lord Sylvester was standing over at one of the long windows, a calf-bound volume in his hand. He was wearing a dark forest-green coat over a short waistcoat of printed Marseilles, kerseymere breeches and brown top boots. His light-brown hair was artistically arranged as if he had just left the hands of the hairdresser. He did not look up as Annabelle entered, seeming totally immersed in his book.

  ‘One would not think you had just been out riding,’ said Annabelle in a breathless voice. ‘You look as if you had just stepped out of a bandbox.’

  Lord Sylvester lowered his book and turned and looked at Annabelle, his green eyes totally expressionless.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Annabelle,’ he said languidly. ‘I did not hear what you said.’

  ‘I-I said you looked as if you had stepped from a bandbox instead of having been out riding,’ repeated Annabelle weakly. ‘I-I m-mean in this weather.’

  ‘Indeed?’ His lordship stood calmly surveying her, obviously waiting for her to go on.

  ‘There are a lot of books here,’ said Annabelle.

  ‘Yes. We are in the library.’

  ‘Do you read much?’

  ‘When I am allowed time to do so . . . yes.’

  ‘I . . . I read a lot too.’

  ‘Then you are in the right place,’ said his lordship blandly, tucking his book unde
r one arm and making for the door. ‘You will find something to suit your taste, I am sure.’

  ‘Wait!’ said Annabelle desperately. Had he not noticed how fine she looked in the gown with the cherry ribbons? ‘Perhaps you could suggest something . . . ?’

  ‘No. I could not. I do not know your taste.’

  ‘Oh. Well . . . well then . . . you see it is so strange here.’

  His face relaxed and he smiled. ‘I am surprised my conscientious Minerva left you to your own devices.’

  ‘Yes, she is very severe, isn’t she?’ said Annabelle with a giggle. ‘Does she bully you too?’

  ‘Oh, yes, quite dreadfully. But you have not answered my question.’

  ‘Minerva thinks I am lying down having a rest.’

  ‘And you could not?’ said Lord Sylvester, making a half turn towards the door.

  ‘No. I was too excited. And I wanted to see you.’

  ‘Here I am. And here I go. Old fogies like me need our rest, Miss Annabelle.’

  ‘You are not at all old,’ said Annabelle, her eyes glowing. ‘I like mature gentlemen.’

  ‘Thank you. I am glad I find favour in the eyes of my future sister-in-law. Now if you will . . .’

  ‘And . . . and . . . the men I have met have been so dull.’

  ‘There are many charming young men here, and you will meet them all this evening.’

  ‘What is that you are reading?’ asked Annabelle, coming to stand close to him.

  ‘Ovid’s Metamorphoses.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  ‘As you wish.’ Lord Sylvester held out the book to her and Annabelle looked down at the musty pages in an unseeing kind of way, racking her brains to say something that would keep him.

  Suddenly she hit upon an idea. ‘Will there be dancing this evening?’ she asked, turning a glowing face up to his.

  ‘Very possibly. After dinner. We often have dancing and cards when we have guests.’

  Annabelle took a deep breath.

  ‘And will you dance with me?’

  ‘Yes I will dance with you, my child,’ he said, taking her hand and kissing it. ‘And now I must go.’

  Annabelle stood alone in the library for a long time after he had left, holding the hand he had kissed to her cheek and staring out at the falling snow.