by M C Beaton
He let the letter flutter to the floor and strode from the room.
Mrs. Waverley leaned back, feeling almost as exhausted as she had claimed to be. It had taken quite a bit of effort to forge that letter. She had expected him to call and had told the servants that at the first sight of him, the young ladies were to be sent to their rooms and kept there, and the name of the visitor was not to be divulged. Mrs. Waverley rose and retrieved the letter, held it over the fireplace and set light to a corner of it with a brimstone match, and waited until the whole letter was alight before dropping it into the hearth.
The end of Lord Tredair. The end of a nasty upsetting chapter. But she had done it for the best. Fanny was safe and would never leave her now.
***
The house in Hanover Square settled back into its previous gloom. Mrs. Waverley gave no more lessons, nor did she take the girls out walking around the square.
Mr. Fordyce moved in next door, but when he called on Mrs. Waverley, he was refused admittance.
Across the square Lady Artemis was suffering from a new feeling, that of an acute guilty conscience. Lord Tredair now went out of his way to avoid her. Mr. Fordyce had told her that he was shocked she had gossiped about the Waverley girls’ dreadful backgrounds, and she appeared to have lost even his admiration. She called at the Waverleys’ and sent flowers and gifts, but she was turned away and the gifts and flowers were returned. The house crouched in silence and no one but tradesmen came or went.
The friendship of the three girls was under a strain. Felicity and Frederica could not help blaming Fanny for their new incarceration. The long days dragged after each other, the sun shone, and merry voices sounded from the square outside to underline their boredom and isolation within.
And then, just when they thought they could not bear it any longer, a new worry descended on them.
Mrs. Waverley was missing her classes. She had decided to send a note to Lady Artemis asking her to resume her attendance. She enjoyed teaching and she enjoyed showing off the richness of her mansion and jewels to these society ladies.
She planned to recommence as soon as possible. She would wear her new purple silk gown and perhaps a very expensive brooch. Something simple, but rich enough to make their eyes pop. There was that diamond brooch of Fanny’s. That would look very well against her purple silk.
At first when Ricketts told her the brooch was missing from Miss Fanny’s box, she was not very worried, merely commanding the housekeeper to search the other girls’ rooms. But when it transpired the brooch was really missing, Mrs. Waverley became angry and summoned the girls and the whole household. If that brooch was not put back on her dressing table by noon the next day, she said wrathfully, then she would call in the Runners.
The girls retreated to Fanny’s room for a council of war.
“What are we to do?” asked Felicity, white-lipped. “Any Runner worth his salt will call at the nearest pawn shops and we will be undone. No one is going to believe in the nonexistent Lady Tremblant. We cannot take any jewelery to get it back, for she now has had all our jewel boxes locked in her room. What are we to do?”
“It is all my fault,” said Fanny. She thought of the guinea Lord Tredair had given her to bribe Ricketts. But it would not go far in getting the brooch redeemed. Tredair! He would know what to do. If only she could see him. Why couldn’t she see him! She knew he lived in St. James’s Square, for she had read a description of a rout at his town house some time ago.
She dared not tell the girls, for they would cry out against it. She had given her solemn promise to Mrs. Waverley not to see Lord Tredair again. But surely God would not concern Himself with the broken promises of a bastard and foundling.
“Leave me,” she said. “I will get it back.”
“How?” demanded the other two.
“It is better you do not know,” said Fanny, and refused to be drawn.
Chapter Eight
Fanny waited until later that evening and then slipped quietly down the stairs to the housekeeper’s parlor.
“Well, Miss Fanny?” said Mrs. Ricketts, looking up from a piece of sewing, “What can I do for you?”
Fanny summoned up her courage. Mrs. Ricketts was using her genteel company voice that was somehow more daunting than as if she had spoken in her normal country accents.
“I have to go out tonight,” she blurted out.
Mrs. Ricketts put down her sewing. “Come in, Miss Fanny, and close the door behind you.” She waited until Fanny was seated and then said, “I know you’ve been slipping out before, out the garden at the back.”
“Oh, Mrs. Ricketts …”
“I didn’t worry overmuch,” said Mrs. Ricketts, reaching to a bottle on a side table and pouring herself a measure of gin. “You always came back quick enough and I reckoned it didn’t do no harm to anyone.” Her country accent became stronger as she went on, “But you got us all in mortal trouble the day you went off with that Lord Tredair.”
“I went to the orphanage,” said Fanny. “I had to try to find out about my parents.”
“And all you found out was bad news,” said Mrs. Ricketts sympathetically. She tossed back her glass of gin and put the glass down on the table with a decisive little click. “Trouble is, the whole of London must know that news by now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Waverley was preaching or whatever she does to that party of ladies brought here by Lady Artemis. I was bringing in the refreshments just as a snippity little chit asked her about women’s natural duty to bear children or something. Mrs. Waverley ups and says how there’s too many unwanted brats around and that she took you three from the orphanage and that you’re bastards and foundlings. I reckon you’re all foundlings all right, but no call to leap to the conclusion that all your parents never bothered to get married.”
Fanny raised her hands to her hot cheeks. “Why should she ruin us in the eyes of society?”
“Keep you at home,” said Mrs. Ricketts. “See, that way no one’ll want to marry you.”
“So that is why Lord Tredair never came back,” said Fanny in a choked voice.
“Oh, he come back all right, and we had instructions to put you girls in your rooms and see you didn’t come out. I don’t know what madam said, but my lord left here in a fine taking.”
Fanny sat with her head bowed. The fact that she was about to attempt to see Lord Tredair again after having given her solemn promise not to do so had weighed heavily on her conscience. Now, she did not care. Would not any prisoner in Newgate lie and lie again if he knew it was the means to escape?
“Now, why do you want to go out this night?” asked Mrs. Ricketts.
“It’s that diamond brooch,” said Fanny. “I have to get it back.”
“From the pawnshop,” said Mrs. Ricketts, nodding her head.
“How did you know …?”
“Betty, the housemaid, was in Oxford Street one day and saw Miss Felicity going into the pawnbrokers. She followed her when she come out, thinking if it was bad mischief she had better report it to me. Well, she then followed Miss Felicity to Hatchard’s where young miss bought a book and then followed her home. She told me. We talked about it. You’re all laden down with jewels like heathen princesses, so we reckoned that you was pawning the things for pin money. I checked the jewel boxes when you were out walking and there was only little bits and pieces missing. When she asked me to take that inventory, I was sore troubled, for I knew I would have to speak up so as not to let the blame fall on any of the servants. Then the jewels were all there and I wondered how you had done it. Later, I checked again and found the diamond brooch missing, so I knew you’d taken that to redeem the others. Now, you are going to ask Lord Tredair for the money to get the brooch back.”
Fanny nodded her head, and then held out a guinea. “That’s from Lord Tredair, Mrs. Ricketts. I should have given it to you before. Before I went to the orphanage, he told me to give it to you. He said I would find out you alrea
dy knew. He said to tell you he would give you more if you continued to aid me.”
“What is his lordship’s interest in you, Miss Fanny?” said Mrs. Ricketts, taking the guinea and putting it in her apron pocket.
“He wishes to marry me.”
“Are you sure, Miss Fanny? A man like his lordship could get any woman he wanted.”
“I think he means it at the moment, but, of course, he would never really forget my background.”
She looked hopefully at the housekeeper as if waiting for a contradiction, but Mrs. Ricketts nodded her head and said, “That’s the way of the world. Blood is all in all in them families. Look at Lord Ponsonby what married Miss Linklater, a merchant’s daughter, for her money. All was lovey-dovey in the beginning, but now he jeers at her on every occasion and treats her something cruel.”
“How do you know this?” asked Fanny, momentarily diverted.
“Let me see, Lord Ponsonby’s scullery maid told the page at Mr. Brough’s, him next door to Lady Artemis, and the page told her footman, who told the footman next door, not Mr. Fordyce’s side, but the other, Sir Jeffrey Banks, who told our Mary who told me. But to return to your problem, if you go out, you’ll need to go out late. Mrs. Waverley doesn’t fall asleep till eleven o’clock, and I can’t let you out on your own at that time.”
“Please, Mrs. Ricketts.”
“Also, you can’t go calling at a gentleman’s town house. It would ruin your reputation.”
“I haven’t got a reputation to ruin,” pointed out Fanny bitterly.
“They may call you a foundling and bastard, but if you’re seen going into his town house, they’d call you whore as well.”
“What am I to do?” wailed Fanny.
The housekeeper sat buried in thought. Then she said slowly, “I could get Betty to tell Mrs. Waverley I was indisposed, just in case she sends for me. Then I could go to his lordship’s house and tell him to come here, down to the servants hall.”
“But surely one of the servants will talk!” cried Fanny.
“Not if I don’t,” said Mrs. Ricketts grimly. “Mrs. Waverley gives me absolute control of the staff.”
Fanny brightened. “But I have an idea! In that case, there is no need for me to meet him. I can just give you a letter …”
Her voice trailed off before the housekeeper’s withering stare. “Miss Fanny. You can’t ask an earl to go to the pawn for you in a letter!” Mrs. Ricketts got to her feet, took down a clean tumbler, poured a measure of gin into it, and then one into her own tumbler. Then she took the small smoke-blackened kettle off the fire and added hot water to each glass.
Mrs. Ricketts handed Fanny a glass and raised her own. “No heeltaps,” she said.
“No heeltaps,” echoed Fanny, tossing off her own. She coughed and spluttered as the mixture of gin and hot water burned her throat. “Why heeltaps?” she asked hoarsely. “It’s silly, but I’ve often wondered.”
“Well, you know what heeltaps are?”
“Yes,” said Fanny. “They’re that crescent shaped piece of metal on the heel of a boot to protect it from wear.”
“Practically all of the drinks used to be sweet and sticky,” said Mrs Ricketts. “What was left at the bottom of the glass was a crescent of sticky liquid. No heeltaps means drain it to the last drop. Now, you’d best be off and leave me to find my lord!”
Mrs. Ricketts waited until Fanny had gone and then put on her cloak and bonnet and left by way of the area steps after informing the other women servants that a gentleman would be using the servants hall for an interview with Miss Fanny, and they were not to breathe a word to anyone. They were to go to bed and not stir, no matter what they heard.
The night was chilly and a high wind had risen. The parish lamps flickered in their glass globes as she hurried across the square. She knew Lord Tredair’s address. Mrs. Ricketts knew the addresses of all the nobles in London. She read all the gossip columns and had a staggering memory.
She did not really have much hope of finding Lord Tredair at home. It was Wednesday night and balls at Almack’s were always held on Wednesdays.
She finally reached St. James’s Square and mounted the shallow steps to Lord Tredair’s town house and hammered on the knocker. A butler looking as grand as an archbishop answered the door and told her in tones of haughty surprise that the earl was not at home.
Mrs. Ricketts stood, baffled, not really wanting to give up so easily. She made her way to Almack’s in King Street and stood on the corner. Even at her age and with her grim appearance and sensible dress she knew that any female standing on a corner at that time of night would be taken for a prostitute, so she made her way to Oxford Street until she found an orange seller. Taking out the guinea Fanny had given her, she purchased the whole basket of oranges and went back to Almack’s and stood across the road, watching the long windows and the people coming and going in the entrance.
She was just about to give up because it suddenly seemed all so hopeless. If Lord Tredair was enjoying himself, if he was, after all, there, he might not emerge until five in the morning.
Then she saw the earl standing on the step, drawing on his gloves.
She hurried across the road. “Oranges. Buy my oranges,” she called.
One of the flunkies rushed toward her. Hawkers on the steps of Almack’s! There would be revolution next.
The earl had quickly masked his surprise at the sight of the Waverley housekeeper. He waved the flunky away. “Leave the good woman alone,” he said.
He jerked his head slightly. Mrs. Waverley fell back as he walked away and then followed him at a discreet distance. A man stopped her. “How much are your oranges, grandma?” he said.
“Oh, go away!” yelled Mrs. Ricketts, pushing past him.
The earl was waiting in the shadow of a porticoed entrance on the corner.
“Masquerade party?” he asked.
“My lord,” said Mrs. Ricketts, “you are to follow me. Miss Fanny wishes to speak to you.”
He raised his thin eyebrows in haughty surprise. “I was given a letter by Miss Fanny in which she said she never wanted to see me again.”
“Miss Fanny handed it to you personal?” exclaimed Mrs. Ricketts.
“No, Mrs. Waverley.”
“Then she wrote it herself, Mrs. Waverley, I mean,” said Mrs. Ricketts.
“Are you sure?”
“Stands to reason, don’t it, my lord?”
“Very well. Give me that basket and lead the way.”
“No, my lord. You will simply draw attention to yourself. I will go ahead and get Miss Fanny. You are to go down the area steps. You will find the door unlocked. Wait in the servants hall.”
She scurried off before he could reply.
He tried to tell himself he should not go. The Waverleys, all of them, meant trouble. But the longing to see Fanny again was stronger than anything.
He made his way at a leisurely pace through the streets. The wind was even stronger than it had been earlier, roaring through the chimney tops and sending snakes of smoke from the spinning cowls down into the streets below. He was just turning into Hanover Square when a vis-à-vis drew alongside him and came to a stop. In it sat Lady Artemis and her maid. “My lord!” she cried. “Where are you bound?”
“On my own affairs,” he said stiffly.
“Why do you regard me so coldly?” cried Lady Artemis. “Have I done something to offend you?”
“Yes, madam,” said the earl. “You gossiped to beat the band about the Waverley girls, and now they are become a sad joke and will never escape from that prison in which they are incarcerated.”
“I only repeated what Mrs. Waverley told me,” said Lady Artemis turning pink.
“You should have known that such a piece of news would have been better kept to yourself. Pray, drive on. The night air is cold.”
“But cannot I explain …?”
“You are a malicious tattletale, madam. Pray drive on before I say something much worse.
”
The vis-à-vis moved on.
The earl waited until he had seen Lady Artemis enter her own house and quickly made his way down the area steps of the Waverley mansion. As promised, the door was open. He went into the servants hall, which was lit by one solitary tallow candle on the middle of the table.
After he had been waiting only a few moments, the door opened and Fanny came in. Her eyes looked black and enormous in the flickering candlelight.
“Pray be seated, my lord,” she said in a whisper. “Did Mrs. Ricketts tell you why I sent for you?”
He shook his head. He sat down and Fanny pulled out a chair next to him and sat down as well and clasped her hands on the table.
“Now you are here, my lord,” she said in a low voice, “I find it much harder to explain things to you than I could possibly have imagined. Oh, why are you in evening dress!”
A flash of humor lit his green eyes. “I have been at Almack’s, Miss Fanny. They are sticklers for the rules. I could hardly attend in anything else.”
What Fanny really meant was that evening dress made him seem remote, less approachable. The candlelight flickered on the diamond pin in his cravat and on the little diamond chips in the buttons of his evening coat. He had placed his bicorne on the table and his hair gleamed with purple lights.
“I think you had better begin,” he prompted gently, “or we shall be here all night.”
Fanny took a deep breath and then in an urgent whisper she told him about pawning the jewels, culminating in the pawning of the diamond brooch and the desperate need to get it back.
He leaned back easily in his chair as she spoke, one hand resting on the table, the other in his pocket. His face was an inscrutable mask.
The Earl of Tredair was deeply shocked.
He could forgive Fanny all sorts of dreadful backgrounds. Her birth was not her fault. But stealing! Surely that betrayed a low streak in the blood that would come out again and again.
Although he said nothing, Fanny could feel him moving away from her. It was as if a sudden frost had settled on the servants hall.