by M C Beaton
Deborah found Abigail lying face down on the bed, weeping.
‘Now, now, Miss Conningham,’ said Deborah, ringing the bell and telling the servant who answered it that Miss Pym must present herself as soon as possible. While she waited for Hannah, Deborah sat down on the edge of the bed and patted Abigail helplessly on the shoulder and wished she could find something to say other than, ‘Now, now.’
Hannah Pym swept in and took in the situation at a glance.
‘Dear me,’ she cried, ‘this will never do. Miss Conningham, you will ruin your looks with weeping. Come, sit up and let me bathe your face.’ Her crisp voice had the effect of calming Abigail. She got up shakily and stood like an obedient child while Hannah sponged and dried her face.
‘Now, let me guess,’ said Hannah briskly. ‘Your mama has found out the captain is in funds and has chosen to forget the existence of Mr Clegg. She gushed all over the captain and the more she gushed, the more silent and withdrawn he became.’
‘It … it … was awful,’ gulped Abigail. ‘He hardly spoke to me. At last, just before we were to leave, he looked around and said it would have been a wonderful place to bring up his boy.’
‘Well, you will not repair the damage by looking like a wreck.’ Hannah turned to Deborah. ‘Did you bring the dress?’
‘Yes, one of my prettiest.’
‘Fetch it here,’ commanded Hannah.
She took Abigail’s hand and led her to a chair. ‘I am going to talk to you very severely, my child. If something is worth fighting for, then you need to fight very hard, and you need a suit of armour. We were going to put this to you more delicately, but we do not have time. Lady Deborah has brought you a fine gown and you must look your best for the captain. We need not tell your mama of this. She will notice, of course, but you can say afterwards that Lady Deborah assumed all your grand gowns were being sent down to Dover from London and chose to lend you something. Goodness, look at the time!’
‘But there are two whole hours to go before dinner!’ exclaimed Abigail.
‘And it will take all of that to get you in shape.’ Hannah rolled up her sleeves. ‘I will be your lady’-smaid. Undress down to your shift and sit at the toilet-table.’
Deborah, returning with a small trunk containing the gown, was pressed into service. Hannah was stirring up a wash for Abigail’s face which she said was guaranteed to whiten the skin. ‘I made this myself,’ said Hannah. ‘It consists of fifty parts milk of almonds mixed with rose-water and four parts aluminium sulphate. See that Miss Abigail bathes her face well, Lady Deborah, while I get the beauty cream.’ Hannah bent over and began to rummage in a capacious bag of cosmetics she had brought with her.
‘Do you make all your own cosmetics?’ asked Deborah, amused that such a spinsterish and upright lady as Hannah Pym should be so conversant with beauty aids.
‘Yes, Mrs Clarence taught me.’
‘A friend of yours?’
‘A good friend,’ said Hannah, who had no intention of telling Lady Deborah that Mrs Clarence had been her employer. Yes, she had told previous aristocratic ladies she had met on her travels the truth, but she still did not know Lady Deborah very well.
‘And how did you make this cream?’ asked Deborah, peering into a large jar.
‘It is made from,’ said Hannah, ‘ten grams of powdered alum, two whites of egg, three grams of boric acid, forty drops of tincture of benzoin, forty drops of olive oil, five drops of mucilage of acacia and a sufficient quantity of rice flour and perfume.
‘You mix the alum with the white of egg, without any addition of water whatsoever, in an earthen vessel and dissolve the alum with the aid of gentle heat from a small lamp, and with constant, even stirring. This must continue until the water content of the albumen is driven off. Care must be taken to avoid curdling of the albumen – which occurs very easily, as we all know. Let the mass obtained in this manner get completely cold, then throw it into a Wedgwood mortar, add the boric acid, tincture of benzoin, oil, mucilage et cetera, and rub up together, thickening it with the addition of rice flour to give the desired consistency, and perfuming as you go along.’
‘Goodness!’ exclaimed Deborah. ‘It sounds like skin remover!’
‘Nonsense,’ snapped Hannah. ‘She will look very beautiful.’
Deborah worked patiently under Hannah’s instructions, laying the gown out on the bed, heating the little spirit stove and putting the curling tongs on it to heat, and passing Hannah jars and bottles out of her bag.
Deborah found it strangely soothing, the murmur of Hannah’s voice as she worked away, the smell of the salves and creams and washes and pomatums, the closeness of three women working hard to trap a man.
She finally helped Hannah to slip the gown over Abigail’s head and tie the tapes. The gown was of gossamer blue chiffon over a silk underdress of paler blue. It had little frills on the puffed sleeves, a deep neckline revealing that Abigail boasted an excellent bosom, and three deep, frilly flounces at the hem.
‘And I brought you these things to set it off,’ said Deborah, and Abigail cried in amazement as she produced a thin, delicate sapphire-and-gold necklace with two thin gold-and-sapphire bracelets, a headdress of blue silk cornflowers, and a pair of long white kid gloves.
Abigail was made to sit down in front of the mirror again while the headdress was tenderly placed on her freshly curled and pomaded hair. Hannah studied her critically and then brought some lampblack and proceeded to darken Abigail’s eyelashes. ‘A little dusting of rouge and you are done to a turn,’ cried Hannah.
Oh, the wonder of clothes! Abigail felt like a new and alluring woman. Her eyes were shining with excitement.
‘The dinner-bell,’ said Hannah in dismay.
She and Deborah rushed off. Deborah was already dressed for dinner in a rose silk gown, a necklace of garnets, and a gold-and-garnet tiara – garnets being the latest vogue – but she wanted to study her reflection and add extra perfume, and Hannah had not even changed.
In the drawing-room before dinner, it became clear that Mrs Conningham was not offended by Deborah’s lending her daughter a gown. Far from it. She could hear herself genteelly murmuring to her friends over the teacups, ‘So sad for poor Abigail to have nothing really proper to wear, but her friend, Lady Deborah, who is monstrous fond of her, rushed to the rescue.’
Hannah made sure that she held all Mrs Conningham’s attention to keep that lady away from the captain.
She was too busy enjoying the effect Abigail’s appearance was having on the captain to notice that the Earl of Ashton was taken aback by the picture Deborah made.
The rose silk gown flattered Deborah’s excellent figure and showed the whiteness of her bosom. As was the current fashion, she carried one end of the skirt looped over her arm to show one excellently shaped leg. Deborah had muttered to her surprised brother that he must appear to make something of a play for Abigail but without interfering in that young lady’s conversation with Captain Beltravers, and so Abigail found herself being flattered by the handsome Lord William and appeared almost as pretty as she thought she now looked.
They all sat down to dinner in high spirits. The captain was once more thinking seriously of asking Abigail to wed him; Abigail was glowing with an infectious happiness; Mrs Conningham was in high alt to be so surrounded by titles; Hannah was proud of her success as lady’s-maid; Deborah was enjoying the occasional flash of admiration she caught in the earl’s eyes when he looked at her; William was thinking of Clarissa and wondering how soon he could get to London; and the earl was pleased that the twins should show themselves to be such a goodlooking, pleasant pair.
All was going as merry as a marriage bell until the earl turned to order more wine, caught the eye of one of his elderly footmen, and the footman crossed his fingers to ward off the evil eye.
‘What do you mean by that?’ roared the earl. ‘Judd,’ he said to his butler, ‘what does James mean? Has he gone mad?’
The butler approached
his master, trembling. ‘It’s said the devil is in this house, my lord,’ he quavered.
‘What superstitious rubbish is this?’ demanded the earl.
‘It was Lady Carsey. She came here this afternoon, my lord, and she saw something which unhinged her mind. While she was waiting for her carriage, she was weeping and praying and making the sign of the cross.’
‘Lady Carsey?’
‘I think that has something to do with me and Benjamin,’ said Hannah. ‘I sent him up that tree outside the drawing-room windows to get a cat down – it turned out to be one of the stable cat’s kittens. Lady Carsey was looking out. She must have seen Benjamin’s face looming up out of the mist and her conscience must have smitten her at last, for she did try to have him hanged.’
William began to laugh and laugh. In desperation, Deborah tried to signal to him to be quiet, but he paid her no heed.
‘You know something about this, Lord William,’ said the earl, his green eyes narrowing. ‘Out with it!’
‘She did send someone to kill Miss Pym and Benjamin,’ said William, mopping his eyes. ‘Deb and I went on the stage-coach masquerading as Miss Pym and Benjamin. Lady Carsey sent some creature called Fotheringay to put poison in our coffee. Deb caught him in the act and switched the cups. God, was that fellow ill. I found him in the necessary house, puking up his guts.’ William burst out laughing again while the rest looked at him in horror.
‘Well, don’t you know, I didn’t want any scandal,’ said William, ‘and he had got rid of the poison and it would only be our word against his, and then, Ashton, you turned up to take us home.’
‘Yes, go on,’ said the earl grimly, remembering how strangely meek and biddable the twins had been.
‘There’s better,’ crowed William. ‘We thought, why should this Lady Carsey get off scot-free, so Deb and I decided to haunt her. We dressed up in our disguises and crept into her bedchamber at old Langford’s and gave her the fright of her life. You should have heard her scream when I lit that magnesium powder! Like a hundred cats with their tales in the mangle. Don’t you see the prime joke? It was misty this afternoon, and when she looked out, she must ha’ thought Miss Pym and Benjamin had come up from the grave to get her!’
And William leaned back in his chair and laughed and laughed.
The earl waited in stony silence until he had finished. Then he said coldly to his butler, ‘And why is it that I, who had nothing to do with this, am supposed to have the evil eye?’
The butler miserably shuffled his feet. ‘The servants say so, my lord, as how you look like the devil since you came back from the wars.’
There was a long silence. William had caught his sister’s horrified look and had stopped laughing. Both he and Deborah were suddenly thinking the same thing. The furious earl would write to their father now.
And then there came a snort of laughter. The Earl of Ashton was actually laughing. He was leaning back in his chair and roaring with laughter. Everyone else began to laugh as well out of sheer relief.
‘Be off with you, Judd,’ said the earl when he could, ‘and take that clown, James, with you. I will talk to all the servants later.’ He smiled at Deborah. ‘You have saved me a journey, for I fully meant to travel to Esher to warn Lady Carsey never to approach Miss Pym or Benjamin again. But Fotheringay is not a hired thug, he is an effeminate fop and her nephew. One day he will cross my path and then he will be sorry. But you ridiculous pair, you could have been killed!’
Deborah flushed and looked miserable, Hannah noticed. The earl was once more looking at the twins as if they were reprehensible scamps. ‘I think she wants him!’ thought Hannah, her matchmaking mind racing. ‘I must do something.’
Hannah was so absorbed in this new problem that she forgot to keep a close watch on Mrs Conningham and realized too late, when they were all gathered again in the drawing-room, that that lady had trapped the captain in a corner and was talking animatedly. There is nothing worse, nothing more terrifying, thought Hannah, than a widow woman of small means with marriageable daughters. The captain’s smile was becoming fixed.
‘Do play us something, Miss Conningham,’ urged Hannah, hoping that the captain would walk to the piano to turn the music. But it was Lord William who stood beside Abigail.
‘Lady Deborah,’ begged Hannah, ‘do go and get that woman away from the captain, please.’
The earl curiously watched all this by-play. He saw Deborah sail up to Mrs Conningham and say something and then both she and Mrs Conningham retired to a corner. Then Hannah went over to the piano and murmured something to William, who looked up with a start, nodded, and walked over to the fireplace.
‘Why, Captain Beltravers,’ said Hannah, ‘I do believe Miss Conningham has been left neglected.’ He gave her a half-bow and went over to the piano to turn the sheets of music.
Hannah next bore down on Mrs Conningham and Deborah, waving a piece of needlework she had extracted from her large reticule and begging Mrs Conningham to examine the laying of the stitches – ‘But the light is poor here. We would be better over by the candelabrum.’
That left Deborah alone. The earl politely joined her, shooting a suspicious glance at Hannah Pym, and wondering if that was what she meant to happen.
‘All sorts of undercurrents, Lady Deborah,’ he said. ‘Am I wrong, or does our indefatigable Miss Pym mean to try to make a match between Miss Conningham and the captain?’
‘If she does, I think she will prove to have a lighter hand than poor Miss Conningham’s mama,’ said Deborah.
‘And Miss Conningham is wearing a very modish gown. Five hundred guineas at least, by my reckoning. It would not be one of yours, by any chance?’
Deborah bit her lip and then said, ‘And why not? Her own gowns are sadly dashed.’
‘True. But it fascinates me to see you aiding and abetting Miss Pym’s machinations. Iwould have said you had not one streak of femininity in your whole body.’
That hurt. Deborah felt a stabbing pain. Was she not wearing one of her best gowns, one she had never worn before? She forgot that it was her father who had ordered her wardrobe and that she normally preferred to wear men’s clothes. All she could think of was that before she came down, her glass had told her she was looking very pretty and that now she felt like a drab.
‘You must not go by outside appearances, my lord,’ she said quietly.
‘I was not going by outside appearances. At this moment, you look one of the most beautiful and delectable ladies I have ever seen,’ said the earl lightly. ‘I was referring to your hoydenish behaviour.’ Deborah really only heard that he had called her beautiful and glowed with an inner light which lent such a radiance to her golden hair and blue eyes that the earl caught his breath.
Over at the piano, the captain had just said he felt tired and thought he would turn in early, and in Abigail’s soul all the lights went out, leaving her sitting on the piano stool, a young lady of no particular charm or looks whatsoever. One curl unwound itself from the perfect arrangement on her head and drooped down to her shoulder, as if her very hair were straightening in sympathy with her mood.
William stood moodily by the fireplace, wondering what to do. The evening had turned curst flat and there was Deb behaving like a flirt. The earl was saying something and Deb had a pink colour on her cheeks and was lowering those long eyelashes of hers and waving her fan slowly to and fro. Now it was William who felt the end of the closeness he had shared with his sister and resented it. He did not stop to think it odd that he himself had been captured by such feminine behavior from Clarissa. He only knew he wanted to put a stop to it. Ashton was old enough to be Deb’s father, he thought, becoming furious. He went over and stood in front of them.
‘What about taking a rod out tomorrow, Deb?’ he asked, ignoring the earl.
She blinked up at him as if coming back from a long way away.
‘I do not think so, William. Miss Pym and the others will be here tomorrow. It would be pleasant to spend a
little time with them.’
‘Pooh, if you want to waste your time with a redcoat who has little to say for himself, and a dowdy matron and her tiresome daughter, you can do it without me.’
‘Don’t be so rude!’ flashed Deborah.
But the earl put a hand on her arm and said quietly, ‘You surprise me, William, as no doubt Miss Clarissa Carruthers will be surprised.’
‘What do you mean, sir?’ asked William.
‘Why, only that I am going to finish writing a letter to Mr Carruthers and his sister on the morrow. I promised to let them know how the coach party got on. Miss Carruthers was much taken with Miss Pym and her stories.’
‘As I am,’ put in William quickly.
‘And Miss Abigail Conningham. Miss Carruthers thought her such a sweet girl.’
‘Demme, if I don’t think the same,’ said William, tugging at his shirt collar.
‘But you said …’
‘Talking nonsense. Bit liverish.’
‘And you so young,’ mocked the earl. ‘Shall I give Miss Carruthers your wishes when I write?’
‘Of course, please do.’
‘I am glad she still holds your interest. I was beginning to think you were paying court to Miss Conningham.’
‘Oh, that was Miss Pym’s matchmaking plans,’ said William quickly. ‘Get the captain to show an interest.’
‘How worthy of you.’ The earl turned to Deborah. There was now a warm caressing note in his voice that William did not like. ‘Why trouble to travel back to Downs Abbey tonight? I can send the servants over to collect your night-things. Stay here.’
‘Thank you,’ said Deborah and lowered those ridiculously long eyelashes of hers again. But William felt he could not protest. The earl was writing to Clarissa, and that report must be favourable. But he did not want to lose the boyish Deb, his sister, and see her permanently become this strange new creature who flirted and who moved with a new sinuous grace as if suddenly aware of her own body for the first time.
He moved away and then an idea hit him and he muttered excuses and left the room. He would have been relieved had he stayed to listen to the conversation between the earl and his sister. The earl, encouraged by Deborah, had started to talk of all that needed to be done to the house and estate, and as Deborah took a great interest in the running of her father’s estates, she was able to offer sensible advice. Surprised, and gratified, the earl talked on, and while he talked, Deborah thought rather bleakly that he was talking to her as if she were a man. No more pretty compliments.
