Little Coquette

by Joan Smith

  A mental picture of her father and Prissie on that bed caused her to wince and turn quickly away. On the other side of the chamber, a pink damask chaise longue sat by the grate with a white-and-gold table in the French style beside it. The dresser and desk matched the table. A telltale shaving set and a gentleman’s brushes rested beside the feminine cosmetics and brushes on the toilet table.

  At the clothespress, Beaumont continued rooting through the gowns. Lydia went up behind him, looking for jackets. She didn’t see any. He took out some black, filmy thing and held up the skirt.

  “What on earth is that?” she asked.

  “It is a black lace peignoir. Rather dashing.”

  “I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a mourning peignoir.”

  “It is an evening peignoir, I should think.”

  “I meant mourning, with a u, as in bereavement.”

  “Black has more interesting associations as well.”

  She lilted an eyebrow in derision. “I was joking, actually.”

  “Ah, that is a change. You don’t usually show much sense of humor.”

  She glared and said in a tight voice, “Unlike you, I fail to see the humor in this appalling situation.”

  “Point taken,” he said at once, mentally berating himself for insensitivity. All this was a rude awakening for Lydia. She had always adored her papa.

  He moved to the dresser and began nipping through the silken dainties there: satin nightgowns, embroidered lingerie, silk stockings in various shades.

  “Such extravagance!” Lydia complained.

  Her harping on the money Sir John spent on his woman annoyed him. The Trevelyns were far from poor. Lydia lacked for nothing. He looked over his shoulder with a quizzing smile. “Am I to assume Miss Trevelyn does not wear such alluring underpinnings?” His eyes traveled in a leisurely manner from her bonnet to her toes.

  “This is hardly fit conversation for mixed company. I doubt anyone but a lightskirt would wear such things. And please do not look at me like that, as if you were imagining—all sorts of things.”

  “Even the imagination fails at what you are suggesting.” She tossed her head. “You must admit, though, Miss Shepherd has good taste.”

  “Good taste! She has squandered a good deal of Papa’s money to very poor effect. The parlor looks as if it were put together by a color-blind twelve-year-old. As to that black peignoir!”

  Beaumont refused to admit he found the flat in poor taste. “A certain country charm,” he said. “The engravings are good.” He waved his hand toward a folder that rested on the desk in the corner.

  Lydia went to it and began to examine the folder’s contents. They were at startling variance with the rest of the flat. She stared at three austere sketches, exquisitely executed on old, yellowed parchment. One was of an old man with a beard, one of an owl, and one of a crouching rabbit.

  “Albrecht Dürer,” Beaumont said, with a question in his voice. “A sixteenth-century artist.”

  “Yes, German, I believe,” she added, to let him know she also recognized the pieces. “These must be Papa’s. I wager he gave them to her. She wouldn’t appreciate them. You notice she didn’t hang them up.”

  “They wouldn’t really suit this bower of bliss,” he said, waving his hand around the ultra-feminine room.

  “No, they wouldn’t. They are too refined. I have a good mind to take them with me.”

  Beaumont went to her side and began examining the pieces more closely. He held one up to the window and frowned. “And how would you explain to your father that you have them in your possession?” he asked, replacing the sketch.

  She scowled and put them back in the folder. She drew open the desk drawer and saw art paper. The other drawers held boxes of pens and nibs, charcoal, India ink, and paints.

  “I believe Prissie is an artist!” she exclaimed. “I wager she painted those horrid things in the parlor herself.”

  She darted back into the parlor and examined the pictures hanging on the wall. They were watercolors of women and one of a young boy, all well done as to craftsmanship. They obviously depicted real, recognizable people, but they were only illustrations. They lacked that special something, that depth and integrity that would make them art. In the corner of each picture she had signed “P. Shepherd.”

  The discovery that Prissie was an artist was oddly disconcerting. It no longer seemed possible to consider her as just a lightskirt. She was taking on a definite personality. The white-and-pink bedroom and the expensive lingerie revealed a sensual side to her nature, but this saloon was completely different. It was the work of a homebody.

  Lydia pictured her sitting in this cozy little parlor—it was cozy, if not elegant—with one of those smiling ladies in the frames, chatting as she made her sketch. What would they talk about? Their patrons? Their new gowns, their black lace peignoirs? Would they, like her mama and Lady Beaumont, gossip about their friends and servants? Who had been jilted, who had contracted a good match, and what Cook was making for dinner tonight? Were all women sisters under the skin? Even Nessie, her model, had spoken only of matches and food and fashion that morning.

  She looked up when Beaumont entered the room. “Prissie painted all these,” she said, indicating the watercolors.

  He went forward and examined them. “I recognize this one!” he said, pointing at a sketch of a blonde with green eyes.

  “Maybe we could talk to her.”

  “She’s no longer in town. I met—saw her a few years ago. She married a fellow and moved to Ireland.”

  “Oh, too bad. Did you find anything else in the desk?” she asked. “I am thinking of this Dooley that Prissie was worried about.”

  “I found this,” he said, holding out a little appointment book bound in red Morocco leather. “Dooley’s name occurs frequently, but with no address. Perhaps he met her here.”

  “A lover, you mean?”

  “Possibly your papa’s predecessor—and unhappy with being jilted. That seems unlikely, though. She had been under Sir John’s protection for the better part of a decade.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked at once.

  Beaumont regretted that he had let that slip out. “It is what I heard from friends.”

  “Ever since I was eight years old,” Lydia said in a sad, faraway voice. She was thinking of her sixteenth birthday, when he had promised to be home for her party and hadn’t come. He had sent her a string of pearls and a note of apology, claiming urgent business at the House. She had felt sorry for him, working so hard.

  He hadn’t been home for any of her birthdays since then or Mama’s either. “Too busy in the House” was always his excuse, but he wasn’t too busy to visit Prissie Shepherd. This house on Maddox Street was “the House” that kept him occupied.

  “There’s no more to discover here,” Beaumont said. “Let us have that drive in the park. It will cheer you up.”

  She gave him a questioning look. “If you think you are going to palm me off with a drive in the park, Beau, you have another think coming. I have already told Nessie we are going out this evening.”

  “That was not why I said it! Why are you so suspicious? I just wanted to cheer you up, you look so ... morbid. I have nothing better to do this evening, with the Season over.”

  “I suppose you know a few women you would be happy to visit.”

  That disparaging “women” told him what sort of women she meant. If she had meant ladies, she would have said so. In other words, she was charging him with having a lightskirt. He didn’t, at the moment, but he would certainly have to meet Prissie’s friends if he hoped to discover who this Dooley person was.

  “I am a bachelor, you know,” he reminded her. “The muslin company’s doors are open till dawn, which is why they’re called ladies of the night. I shall do the pretty with Nessie and you first. Do you want to attend that lecture?”

  “Let us try to think of something more useful we could do. Since Dooley or someone searched her
room at the inn in Kesterly, he might search her room here in London as well. If we watch, we might catch him in the act.”

  “Unless he got what he was after at the inn,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s possible. What could it be? Money?”

  “Incriminating letters, perhaps. Love letters, I mean. I may be wronging Prissie. I don’t know that she is the kind who would hold a gent to ransom over his indiscretions, but it must be something of that sort.” He looked again at the sketches on the wall.

  “Do you think you have met—er, seen that one as well?” she asked as his gaze settled on a redhead.

  “No, I wouldn’t forget a redhead with brown eyes. I was thinking of something else. Those Dűrer sketches ... The parchment didn’t seem quite right. Do you think it’s possible Prissie did them?”

  “Forgeries, you mean? I doubt she could do such a good job.”

  “It might explain what Dooley was after.”

  “No, they wouldn’t fit in her bandbox, and he—or someone—had torn the lining out of it. It’s something else. I vote for billets-doux.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  They took a last look around the parlor and went back out to the carriage for a drive through Hyde Park. The fair weather continued. Sunlight shone from the blue sky; greenery stretched all around them. The crush of the formal Season was over but there were still several handsome carriages at the barrier for the ritual meeting of the ton at four o’clock. Many of the occupants greeted Beaumont and looked with interest at Miss Trevelyn. One of the gentlemen dismounted from his curricle and came to their carriage. He was a tall fellow with blond curls and blue eyes. Beaumont introduced him as Lord Farnsworth.

  “My sister is having a little party tonight, Beau,” he said. “Be very pleased if you and Miss Trevelyn would join us. Nothing formal. Just a few friends, a bit of dancing. Didn’t know you was in town or I would have called sooner.”

  “I am just here for a few days on business,” Beaumont said. He noticed Lydia looked interested, however, and asked her opinion.

  She was not so keen a follower of Mary Wollstonecraft that she had not occasionally regretted missing her Season. And since Beaumont had made that remark about books being only an adjunct to life, she had begun to think she would make her curtsey next Season.

  “We were going to attend Mr. Coleridge’s lecture,” she said, but she said it with very little enthusiasm.

  “Dash it, you can hear that prosy old bore anytime. He is never so happy as when he has a captive audience,” Farnsworth said.

  “That is true. Very well, I should like to go, Lord Farnsworth. Thank you,” she said, with a more flirtatious smile than Beaumont had won, with all his efforts on her behalf.

  “See you around nine, then. Delighted to have made your acquaintance, ma’am. Beau knows where we live.”

  After he had left, she said to Beaumont, “I daresay you would prefer the party to a dull lecture.”

  “To a dull lecture, yes. Whether Coleridge is dull, however, is a matter of opinion. And in any case, I thought we were going to watch Prissie’s flat.”

  “It is not too late to change our minds about the party,” she said at once. “A note to Miss Farnsworth . . .”

  “Cut line, Lydia. You are dying to go to that party. Why should your papa have all the fun? We can watch the flat later. I doubt Dooley would search it early in the evening. If either of us is struck by an idea as to how else we can find him, we can leave early.”

  “Very true, though I haven’t a stitch to wear.”

  This feminine comment brought a twinkle to his eyes. “In that case, your success is guaranteed. You will certainly be the belle of the ball.”

  “Lecher!” she charged, but she could not quite hold her lips steady. It was too ludicrous to think of barging into a polite party in her birthday suit.

  “You’re the one who’s planning to attend the party naked. Personally, I think you should wear a fig leaf.” Then he paused and let his eyes drift over her body. “Or two—no, make that three,” he said.

  “Really, Beaumont!” she felt obliged to object. Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, but she was no longer wearing that prim, prudish expression.

  “Yes, really,” he said, pretending to misunderstand her tone. “Fig leaves are worn in all the better pictures of Adam and Eve.”

  She got her emotions under control and gave him a cool glance. “Shall we go now?”

  “Shall I bring the leaves this evening, or will you—”

  “We have worn this poor joke into the ground,” she said stiffly, then spoiled her prudish pose by adding, “I really don’t have anything decent to wear.”

  Chapter Six

  Nessie was delighted to hear a party had been substituted for the Coleridge lecture. Much as she liked Lydia, she could not imagine the dashing Beaumont offering for a bluestocking, and Lydia’s conversation was taking on a noticeable tinge of blue. Nessie blamed it on that book she had given Lydia last Christmas. Pity it hadn’t been a subscription to La Belle Assemblée. Her toilette had fallen into a dangerously unfashionable state.

  “Mary Wollstonecraft’s book opened up my eyes, I can tell you,” Lydia said, when Nessie came to her room for a chat before dinner. “I want nothing to do with gentlemen. They only want to keep our minds fettered. You chose wisely. I shall be an independent spinster like you, Nessie.”

  “I did not choose spinsterhood, goose,” Nessie said, horrified. “The gentleman I loved did not care for me, and I could not care for the few gents who proposed to me. I would have married in the twinkling of a bedpost if the right man had asked, and been better off, too. I regret every day of my life that I did not marry and have children. What else is a woman put on earth for, but to have a family?”

  “There are plenty of other things a lady can do—good, useful things. Helping the poor, expanding her mind.”

  “Does marriage prevent her from doing that as well? Marriage doesn’t mean one has to store her brain away in cotton wool and let her husband think for her. That was not Mary Wollstonecraft’s meaning. You may be sure she married—and not wisely either. The trick is to marry the right sort of gentleman.”

  Lydia considered this and asked, “What sort do you mean?”

  “The sensible sort who does not treat you like a child. Now, enough of that for the present. What will you wear to the party?”

  Lydia held up a blue taffeta gown that was poorly cut and badly trimmed. “I brought this evening frock with me.”

  Nessie looked at it and said, “Oh yes, that would be fine for a lecture. Pity you hadn’t realized there was to be a party, or you would have brought a fancier gown.”

  When she stood in front of the mirror, Lydia had a sinking sensation the blue gown would look dowdy beside the gowns of the other ladies at the party. Even at home it had caused very little stir. She assured herself it didn’t matter in the least. It was superficial to worry about such things, but still the frock looked dowdy. She could see it in Nessie’s eyes, and she saw it again in Beaumont’s when he arrived for dinner.

  To add to her chagrin, Nessie’s gown was extremely stylish. With her black hair in a chignon and pearls at her throat, she looked sophisticated and nearly beautiful, and made Lydia feel lumpish. She noticed Beaumont gazing in admiration at Nessie over dinner. The two of them kept up a bantering conversation, half of which flew over Lydia’s head.

  Of course, Beaumont was too polite to say anything about her own toilette, but as soon as dinner was over and they left for the party, she said in an aggrieved voice, “You need not look at me like that. I didn’t know we would be attending a party or I would have brought a different gown.”

  “I see nothing amiss with the gown,” he said politely. “If I betrayed any dissatisfaction, it is that scowl you wore that caused it.”

  “It is the gown that caused the scowl, so it amounts to the same thing.”

  “Try to talk sense to a woman! There is as fine a piece
of sophistry as I have heard this age. It might ease your mind to learn men don’t give a brass farthing about a lady’s gown, Lydia. I couldn’t tell you a single outfit Miss Lawrence wore last Season, but I could describe her sooty eyelashes and her pearly white teeth and her dimples to a nicety. Lovely eyes she had. Blue, but with little flecks of silvery gray in them. I never saw such eyes.”

  This detailed praise of Miss Lawrence did not improve Lydia’s temper one whit. “Is Miss Lawrence a lightskirt?” she enquired demurely. “All those dimples and sooty eyelashes sound quite like one of Prissie’s sketches.”

  “I hardly think the Duke of Arnprior would marry a lightskirt. Miss Lawrence nabbed him, and she had only ten thousand dowry. That usually buys no more than a baronet. Of course, Miss Lawrence’s beauty is priceless.”

  “What does a duke usually cost?”

  “Twenty-five thousand is the customary sum.”

  “Then Miss Lawrence’s beauty is not priceless. It is worth fifteen thousand pounds.”

  Beaumont gave a reluctant chuckle. “You have a good head for ciphering, Lydia. I think you would have hammered out a good bargain at the Marriage Mart.”

  “No doubt, but I chose not to auction myself off to the highest bidder.”

  To tease her, he said, “Pity,” and shook his head, as if he were personally disappointed to hear it.

  From the corner of his eye, he noticed her head flew around to look at him. He expected some argumentative response, but she just sat, thinking. Nessie regretted not having married. What if she came to regret it, too, when it was too late? Marriage to the right gentleman did not preclude living that full mental life she aspired to.

  At the party, Lord Farnsworth seemed to like Lydia despite her blue gown. When she smiled and fluttered her eyelashes at him to test Beaumont’s theory, he looked quite besotted and asked her if he might call the next afternoon. Due to the exigencies of her mission, she had to decline. Sir James Harcourt also expressed an interest in calling. All the attention left her in a strangely euphoric mood, and reinforced that Beaumont knew something of the world. She told herself none of this masculine attention meant a thing. She might remain single, but still it was comforting to know that gentlemen found her attractive, that she could marry if she wished. But it was disconcerting to learn that men, who ruled the world, were such fools as to be blinded by an insincere smile and a pair of fluttering eyelashes.