by M C Beaton
At last Frederica pointedly yawned and said she was too tired to stay awake any longer and the party broke up.
Then Frederica had to firmly shoo her sisters out of her bedchamber, her sisters who were avid to hear how she had walked and talked with Lord Granton. When they had gone, she took off her ball gown and laid it tenderly away in its tissue-paper wrappings. She put on her old blue muslin gown and wrapped a brightly colored shawl about her shoulders and went down the back stairs to the garden.
He was pacing up and down, waiting for her, a tall figure in the moonlight. She stopped short, suddenly shy of him.
But he turned and saw her and held out his arms. She ran into them, feeling them close about her, feeling that demanding mouth descending on her own and then feeling nothing but hot, searing passion while the moon, the stars, and the garden whirled about them until there seemed to be only the two of them fused together at the center of a spinning world.
It was when his hand cradled her breast that Mrs. Hadley, who had been watching from the window, felt things had gone far enough.
“Lord Granton!”
Lord Granton reluctantly freed Frederica. “We have been discovered at last,” he said with a shaky laugh.
Upstairs, Mrs. Hadley turned to her husband, who was lying in bed. “You had best talk to my lord about getting a special license. I tell you this. Frederica is as much of a problem as she ever was! So abandoned! I could hardly believe my eyes!”
The Crown family held a council of war the following afternoon. Lady Crown had done as much as she could to repair the damage done to Annabelle, saying that Annabelle had been party to the betrothal and had only playacted that scene. But it was evident no one had believed her.
“He is wicked, evil!” cried Sir Giles, pacing up and down. “Do you know what I think? I think he was not writing a book at all but sneaking out like a thief in the night to meet that wretched, scheming little slut from the rectory.”
“That Frederica is a witch,” said Lady Crown coldly. “Undistinguished, no manners, no breeding. A snake! A viper! And after all we have done for that family. You must tell Dr. Hadley to get out, and as soon as possible.”
Annabelle’s eyes gleamed. “And I would like to be present when you tell him.”
“And so you may,” said her father. “I will send a footman to the rectory and have him brought here.”
But they waited and waited until the footman returned with a letter. Sir Giles opened it and his face became mottled with rage. “Can you believe this? Dr. Hadley takes leave to inform us that he is unable to call on us because he is engaged in entertaining his guests.”
“Then we will go and tell him,” hissed Annabelle. “We will tell him to quit the rectory in front of Lord Granton and that dreadful family.”
“Wait!” Lady Crown held up one beringed hand for silence. “We are not thinking clearly.”
“What is there to think about?” demanded Annabelle. “They must be shamed; they must be humiliated….”
“No,” said Lady Crown in a flat voice, “we must not offend them.”
“What is this?” Sir Giles looked on the point of having an apoplexy. “Not offend them?”
Lady Crown, who had been pacing, sat down as if suddenly weary. She leaned her head on her hand and said, “Annabelle is not yet wed. She will need another Season next year. Lord Granton is a leader of society, Frederica will be”—she choked a little—“will be his viscountess. If we offend them and they cut us, then what of poor Annabelle’s chances? It’s not as if anyone wanted her last Season.”
“Mama!” Annabelle began to cry, but her mother looked at her coldly. “It is all your fault, Annabelle. You should not have been so blind. You should have tried harder to attract him. Had he fallen for a beauty, our shame would not be so great. But Frederica Hadley of all people! Everyone in London will get to hear of it. Let me think, let me think. There is nothing else to be done. We will need to go to the rectory and congratulate the slut, the jade, with every sign of joy and complacency.”
“I would rather die,” said Annabelle tearfully.
“You will be dead socially if we do not,” rasped Lady Crown.
“Mama!” cried Harriet, who had been looking out of the window of the rectory drawing room. “The Crowns are arrived.”
“Come away from the window!” shrieked her mother. “We will say we are not at home. Where is Frederica?”
“Out walking with Lord Granton. Oh dear, too late. Mary has gone to meet them.”
Harriet and the major made for the door to escape but found they were met by the Crowns, who were just entering. Lady Crown swanned toward Mrs. Hadley, “We are come to offer our felicitations to your daughter.”
“Frederica?”
“Who else?” said Lady Crown with a laugh like brittle glass. “Where is the dear child?”
“Frederica is out walking with Lord Granton.”
“Then we must wait for her return.” Lady Crown sat down on the sofa and patted the seat next to her to indicate that Annabelle should sit down as well.
The major looked miserably at Annabelle, who looked miserably back. Her eyes were red and swollen.
He cleared his throat. “Perhaps Miss Annabelle would care to take a walk in the gardens with me?”
“You are too kind.” Lady Crown smiled her permission. “Poor Annabelle is still overset by her near escape from death.”
“We will go, too,” said Amy.
“I am sure that will not be necessary,” said Lady Crown with all her old autocratic air. “Annabelle and Major Delisle are already good friends.”
The major held out his arm. Annabelle rose and with bowed head and averted eyes walked out with him.
When they were well clear of the house, the major said in a low and sympathetic voice, “I did try to warn you.”
“So you did,” mumbled Annabelle, “and I treated you shamefully.” She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“Of course,” said the gallant major.
“I was led astray by my parents’ ambitions,” said Annabelle, whose ambitions had equalled those of her parents but was not going to betray that to this, she now regarded, as her last hope of marriage.
“We will forget about everything and start afresh,” said the major. “Did I ever tell you about a vastly amusing play I saw in London?”
Annabelle knew that the major had probably told her already in boring detail about every play he had ever seen in London, but she said, “No, do tell me, sir.”
The major talked away busily, laughing at all the remembered comical scenes while Annabelle leaned on his arm and laughed as well, that tinkling laugh taught to young ladies by singing masters that started at the top of the scale and ran down it.
They did not even notice Lord Granton and Frederica returning from their walk and entering the rectory.
Mrs. Hadley had been dreading this encounter between Frederica and Lady Crown. Looking up as her daughter entered the room, she stifled a groan, for Frederica’s lips were swollen and her hair was in disarray. She carried her bonnet in her hand.
Frederica stopped short at the sight of Lady Crown and Sir Giles.
Lady Crown rose to her feet. “We are come to offer you our felicitations, my dear, and apologize for any unpleasantness, and to you, too, Lord Granton. I am afraid we had the silly idea that you were to propose to Annabelle, but now I see how stupid we have been.”
“We accept your apology,” said Lord Granton, giving Frederica’s hand a warning press.
“Yes, indeed,” said Frederica coldly. “I beg you to excuse me. I am hot from walking and must change.”
“Ah, but my little Annabelle is anxious to apologize to you as well. Here is the dear girl.”
Annabelle came in on the arm of Major Delisle, looking radiant. “Major Delisle and I are to be wed, Mama!” she cried. “Papa, give us your blessing.”
But Frederica murmured a hurried excuse and fl
ed from the room. Lady Crown’s glare at her daughter spoke volumes. Frederica was to be a viscountess while her own daughter was going to be only the wife of a soldier.
Frederica and Lord Granton were married three months later in the village church. The splendor of her jewels and of her wedding gown was talked of by the villagers for years to come.
Lady Crown had offered the hall for the wedding breakfast, but Frederica and Lord Granton said it would be held in the rectory.
Lady Crown felt bitterly that it was really so like the Hadleys to invite the whole village so that one found oneself rubbing shoulders with people like the butcher and the baker.
Annabelle was not present. She had sent her excuses to say that she was feeling unwell. She was bitterly regretting her decision to wed a mere major and did not want to watch Frederica marrying a lord. Annabelle was on the point of begging her parents to find a way of releasing her from the engagement. She was soon to go to London, a London full of earls, marquesses, and dukes, and she wanted to go unencumbered by Major Delisle.
She did not know that the major, standing in front of the altar by his friend Lord Granton, was paying little attention to the wedding service. Instead he was wondering how to escape from Annabelle Crown, whom he had begun to find every bit as tedious and boring as his friend once had.
Lady Crown thought sourly that Frederica did not look virginal at all. Instead she looked indecently happy.
She was in the hall of the rectory after the wedding breakfast as Frederica was about to mount the stairs to change into her traveling clothes, for Frederica and her new husband were to start their married life at his house in London before moving to his place in the country. “I wish you well, my dear,” Lady Crown said, her eyes narrowing. “But I confess I never took you for a sophisticate.”
Frederica paused, one hand on the newel post, the other holding up the white lace train of her wedding gown. “What does that mean?” she demanded.
“I assume you know that once a rake, always a rake. But before your husband goes philandering again, I advise you to make sure to produce an heir.”
Frederica turned and marched up the stairs, her head high.
But Lady Crown’s words began to burn and sear. How could she expect Rupert to remain faithful to her?
“You are very silent, my love,” said Lord Granton at last when they were in the carriage alone together and had waved good-bye to the guests.
“I am wondering what I will do when you are unfaithful to me.”
“Why on earth should I be unfaithful to you?”
“Because you are a rake.”
He held her close. “I am a rake who has fallen in love for the first time and the last. Now kiss me and do not talk any more fustian.”
Lord Granton was to marvel later how all his dreams of tenderly making love properly to his wife for the first time in a goose-feather bed had come to nothing as he and Frederica, gasping and clawing and kissing and panting, fell onto the carriage floor.
But Frederica had never behaved like any woman he had ever met.
And she probably never would!
