Talk of the Town

by Joan Smith

  “You have my character in shreds at a word,” Daphne replied and was immediately at pains to get Mr. Bosworth to herself to discover all details of St. Felix’s flirts. What she learned cheered her greatly.

  “Very active in the petticoat line,” Bosworth informed her with a knowing look. “Well, a bachelor, of course. It’s only to be expected.”

  “Not of a St. Felix bachelor surely,” Daphne prodded.

  “I don’t know about any other St. Felixes, but this one is no dashed saint. Has the prettiest chick in town under his protection. Name is Amy, or Aimée or some such thing. Well, she ain't French, but you know how those girls give themselves fancy names. A dainty little blond girl. You must have seen her dashing through the Park in that blue rig he gave her, and a pair of cream ponies. She always wears blue, to match her eyes.”

  “I know another lady who does the same,” Daphne returned, smiling more broadly by the minute.

  “That so? Well, Amy has brought it into fashion very likely. She’s all the crack.”

  “Yes, I daresay my friend got the idea from St. Felix’s flirt,” she answered, and fell into an uncontrollable fit of giggles.

  She longed to taunt St. Felix with all her new discoveries. To see him standing about looking bored to flinders, as though he had no interest in the young girls, riled her.

  He looked towards Miss Ingleside. Indeed several peeps in her direction had taken place already, as she was the only reason he was present. Upon hearing that Mrs. Wintlock and her daughter were to be of the party, he had accepted an invitation to join it. Daphne had been too absorbed to remark his other glances, but she saw this one and nodded her head, smiling broadly. St. Felix took a step towards her, which caused Mr. Bosworth to discover a friend elsewhere. He had told no more than the truth, but there is a disagreeable quality in having to face one’s victim so soon after an unnecessary telling of the truth.

  “We meet again, Your Grace,” she said in a very civil tone, but was at once busy to be teasing him. “Our new sofas and chairs have missed you. I would have thought their being blue might please you."

  “You seem well amused today,” he said with a cool look. Not a trace of a smile himself, though he was very much aware of the attractiveness of the impish smile facing him. He was wondering just what that reference to blue meant, and fearing he knew.

  “I am never so well entertained as when I am discovering new scandals,” she replied enigmatically.

  “This seems an unlikely spot for it, with innocent green nature everywhere.”

  “It is people who cause scandal, not places.”

  “I see nothing scandalous going forth.”

  “You would see the exalted Duke of St. Felix speaking to that disreputable Miss Ingleside if you had a mirror. Even in Richmond Park I am bent on mischief.”

  “And find it, unaccountably, a matter to boast of.”

  “We will all boast a little of our successes, even in our less worthy schemes.”

  “Was it your aim, then, to engage me in conversation, as you speak of success?”

  “Indeed, no, this is a quite unlooked for honour. I had hoped for no more than a glance from afar.”

  “You knew I was coming?” he asked with interest.

  “No, how should I? Even the pleasure of a glance was not anticipated in advance, thus robbing me of half the pleasure. It is the looking forward to a thing that gives a good deal of the enjoyment. I might have been aux anges all last evening had I known you were to be here. But I have something quite different to anticipate now.”

  “Am I to assume that cryptic utterance relates to myself?” he asked, regarding her suspiciously.

  “That assumption would be less wrong than some others you have made.”

  “What are you up to now?” he asked baldly.

  “What is the likes of me ever up to? Chicanery, and if you are at all curious you must bring a bale of gold to Upper Grosvenor Square and find out.”

  A glint of amusement appeared briefly in his cold grey eyes. “You are aware of my aversion to that place. Can’t you tell me here?”

  “Give up my secrets without receiving a fortune in return? How can you take me for such a flat!”

  “I take you for a brass-faced gypsy, Miss Ingleside.”

  “Unlike some people, I do not try to pass for what I am not, Saint Felix.”

  “We do not emphasize the saint.”

  “Indeed we do not. Au contraire, Your Grace.” She left with a taunting smile to return to her own group, where Miss Wintlock called her the slyest thing in nature, to be flirting with St. Felix after letting on she didn’t care for him in the least.

  Daphne returned to the apartment to be regaled with the story of the fine drive Effie had with Mr. Brummell, so very droll and amusing, and really he would be quite a fine gentleman if only he would dress up a little more smartly.

  “He is considered the apex of good taste in matters of fashion!” Daphne objected.

  “Yes, but he hasn’t a jewel or a trinket about him, poor soul. He is not too deep in the pocket, I daresay. But he moves in the very best circles for all that. He is to take us to a party at Lady Melbourne’s.”

  This was thrilling enough, but there was a more interesting piece of news still awaiting them. The mail, unopened in Effie’s usual careless fashion, was eventually gotten around to, and there in the clutter of bills and the odd card of invitation was a note from Lady Elizabeth Thyrwite requesting the pleasure of their company at a tea party to be held in two days, the afternoon of the evening they were to go to Melbourne’s rout.

  “I don’t believe it,” Daphne declared.

  “Oh, dear, I shouldn’t think we will accept this one,” Effie said, pushing it aside. “You know I do not like to have anything to do with them, because of their dear papa. I think it would be bad ton, dear, for me to be in their company. Quite a few people know of that business, though it was so many years ago."

  “You’re right. We shall decline,” Daphne agreed for reasons of her own that had nothing to do with the late Duke of St. Felix. What a joke to snap her fingers under his nose and show him what she thought of this great treat he had been threatening to withhold. And what on earth had gotten into him to let his sister send the card?

  “You send off a nice note saying we will be unable to attend,” Effie suggested. “It includes your name, too, so it will be all right for you to answer for us both.”

  “I’ll write it, you sign as you did the other one. You are my hostess, and I won’t have him think I am running the show.”

  “Larry would never notice a detail like that. I doubt he will see the letter at all. It comes from his wife.”

  “Still, you sign it,” Daphne insisted, not choosing to disabuse her aunt of the idea that it was the loose-lipped Larry whose opinion interested her.

  “What a gay visit it is turning out to be after all,” Daphne said as they sat over a cup of cocoa after returning from a successful outing at the opera.

  “We’re taking in everything except Almack’s,” Effie agreed happily. “And it is not at all interesting, my dear. You would not like it in the least. A very dull sort of a do they put on. All the very best people, and there is no hope of getting you a voucher when you live with me. I wonder if you ought not to move in with the Wintlocks. They have asked you a dozen times, I’m sure.”

  “If it is so dull, I shan’t mind missing it,” Daphne replied, a little confused at the mixed reference to the place just made.

  “No, it would not be at all agreeable. I wonder whether Mr. Brummell might not get you a ticket, if it were made perfectly clear to him that I am not interested in going myself.”

  “I don’t want to go without you."

  “There is no way in the world I would ever get in, dear child. A divorcée. I might as well expect to be invited to tea with Queen Charlotte, who thinks divorcée another word for she-devil.”

  “I don’t mind missing it. Miss Wintlock is not going either. Indeed
, a great many girls who go everywhere else aren’t being invited there.”

  “No, only the very best people are let in. Why, they turned the Duke of Wellington from the door last year only because he didn’t wear satin breeches or some such thing. Still, it is a pity. You would be invited if it weren’t for me. If your mama had brought you, you might have gotten in."

  “I don’t mean to worry over missing one dull party. We are having a marvelous time. I never thought it would be half, or a quarter, so much fun. Why, do you realize I brought my paint box with me thinking to pass the time taking your likeness?”

  “I had a feeling. Didn’t I tell you I had a feeling, and my feelings are never wrong.”

  “Indeed you did tell me. Do you have any other feelings?”

  “Yes, I have a feeling we are banging our heads against a stone wall in thinking to get you into Almack’s. Though now I come to think of it, Daphne, Lady Melbourne’s daughter, the Countess Cowper, is a patroness, and she will be at her mama’s rout for a certainty. Perhaps when she seeks us with Mr. Brummell..."

  “Still harping on that? I am not interested in Almack’s. Let us have done with it. Think—no, feel something else.”

  A tremor shook Effie’s stout frame, and she turned quite pale.

  “Auntie, what on earth is the matter? Are you having an attack?” Daphne demanded, positively worried at her aunt’s condition.

  “Arthur!” Effie said in a weak voice.

  “Arthur?” It was necessary for her niece to run over a few gentlemen before recalling that Arthur was Lord Standington, the first husband.

  “Standington,” Effie explained, putting a hand to her head to steady herself.

  “What about him?”

  “I had a feeling. One of my feelings, Daphne. I sensed he was—I don’t know. Not present, exactly, but—somewhere about. Thinking of me. I wonder if he has heard about this book I am supposed to be writing, though I haven’t put a word on paper for two weeks. He is in Ireland. He can’t have heard. Unless someone wrote him a letter. Do you think anyone would be low-lifed enough to do that?”

  “Maybe he takes the Observer,” Daphne suggested. A few minor “feelings” of Effie’s had come to pass—the appearance on their scene of an old friend forgotten for twenty years had been anticipated a day before her appearance, as well as the stepping up of their social life. Daphne was coming to entertain some respect for her aunt’s power.

  "To be sure, he always did read it. He would have seen Colburn’s notice. Daphne, do you think he thinks I am going to write about him?”

  “He must know you better than that.”

  “No, he doesn’t know me at all. He thought I loved Ansquith, only because I let him... Oh dear, I’m sure James would have a fit if he knew what I am saying to you. But he was very lonely, my dear, and his wife did not understand him at all, he said. Only I come to think that when a man says that, she understands him only too well. But I didn’t love him, despite what Arthur thought. It was nothing more than a flirtation. Well, perhaps a little more, but only once. But as to its being an affair, it was no such a thing.”

  “Arthur is thinking of you. That’s what it is. Some people have that power. It seems to run in our family, for Mama has these feelings, too. She knew when my father overturned his carriage and broke his arm. We were just sitting down to dinner one evening when Mama dropped the gravy boat and turned pale, just as you did, and said ‘James.’ It is very odd. She knew something was the matter with him and had the servants sent out. They found his carriage overturned and himself with a broken wing. She had her feeling at the very time he overturned, she calculated later.”

  “Well, the feeling is gone now,” Effie said with relief. “But it was there. He was thinking of me, I know it. Dear, I wonder if I should write him and assure him the book is in no way to touch on our affairs? Do you think I should?”

  “Yes, he must be worried in case you should announce to the world how he refused to fight to protect your honour!” This churlishness on Standington’s part bothered Daphne very much, the more as it was St. Felix who had risen to her defence. And perhaps most of all because Effie herself took no account of it.

  “I never did tell anyone but Georgiana and you, and he must know I’m not likely to start telling now what I have kept mum for so long.”

  “It is not my place to advise you, but as you have asked, I see no harm in writing to him. It is clear you still care for him, and it will be an excuse to be in touch with him again. There is no saying what might come of it.”

  “All that would come of it is a scolding letter. He is a good deal like James, now I come to think of it. How very odd that Mary and I should both choose such hard, uncompromising husbands. And our father was the very same. We knew what a dance he led Mama and should have been smarter. You’d think that would have been a lesson to us.”

  “Do what you think best,” Daphne replied and was struck with a strange feeling of her own. St. Felix, too, was one of those hard, uncompromising gentlemen, like Papa.

  Chapter 7

  St. Felix had not been around to see his sister for a few days, and as he wished to find an excuse to allow him to return to Upper Grosvenor Square without admitting to himself that seeing Miss Ingleside had anything to do with it, he dropped in on Bess.

  It happened that she was eager for Dickie’s opinion on quite a different matter from the Pealing affair, so for the first ten minutes they discussed whether gold or green should be the new decor for Larry’s office. It would require doing up as he was on the verge of becoming a minister in Liverpool’s Cabinet. There was no saying what great statesmen might be dropping in to pass the time of day with him. Larry wanted red, but his wife knew better than to let his opinion influence her. In matters of taste, she was guided by no one, while listening to Richard as having occasionally a sane suggestion. St. Felix found it a little odd that Bess should not even mention the matter that had been uppermost in her mind for so long, and had at last to bring it up himself.

  “You haven’t heard anything from the Pealing woman?” he asked.

  “No.” Deciding to take the plunge, she went on to add casually, “She hasn’t answered my invitation yet.”

  It wasn't to be slipped in this quietly. “What invitation?” he demanded, bristling.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I decided that as everyone is inviting them now, I would send them a card to a little tea party I’m having.”

  “Bess, you gudgeon!”

  “Well, the Leveson-Gowers had them to a rout, and Lady Melbourne is having them to her do. She was driving in the Park with Beau Brummell, and the girl, it seems, is even being presented. I decided to ask them, but they haven’t answered.”

  “They’re not coming!” he declared with a very firm resolution, although it was not his own home. “Remember your position, Bess. Your uncle an Archbishop and you inviting a divorcée to tea. Someone must maintain a sense of decency. They must not come.”

  "They might,” she warned.

  “Not one toe do they set in this door.”

  “Be reasonable, Richard. I have already invited them.’’

  “I’ll uninvite them.”

  “You will do no such a thing. Besides, they haven’t accepted.”

  "They’ll be here with bells on. I can’t believe you are so green as to give in to a shameless blackmailer.”

  “Everyone else is inviting them.”

  “We are not everyone else.”

  “Maybe you’re not, but I am," she insisted, then frowned as she tried to figure out what she had just said.

  “If you ladies had all banded together and showed them cold shoulders, this would not have happened. What is to become of Society if any trollop with a smutty story may make her way into the very best homes with a threat of revealing her past? Her sort should be whipped at the cart’s tail.”

  Bess shrugged. “It is done. They go everywhere, and the girl is not so bad, they say.”

  “She’s wor
se than the old lady! The boldest hussy that ever was!”

  “There is no need for you to have anything to do with them. It is only a small tea party. I hadn’t thought to ask you.” But of course Dickie must be invited to her ball, where the Pealings’ presence was to be explained by the largeness of the do.

  “You needn’t worry that I mean to have anything further to do with them,” he said angrily, already in his mind standing in the Blue Saloon. “You might at least have spared me the embarrassment of going there vowing we’d never give in an inch, if this was what you intended all along.”

  “I never told you to say that! I begged you to take them the money, and when you refused to do that, you said you’d think about it. Well I don’t know what you thought, but you certainly didn’t do anything, and I was left to handle it all by myself.”

  “I went back to see them.”

  “What did they say?”

  “More sauce from the young chit. Nothing to the point.”

  “It seems to me it is the aunt you ought to be dealing with. What has the niece to do with anything? I’m sure your intentions are of the best, Richard, but they have outmanoeuvred us. The first time you have ever failed in any undertaking. I made sure you could handle one stupid little old lady, but as she has bested you, we must now pin on a smile and pretend we are very well satisfied, like everyone else.”

  “I’ll be a pickled herring if I do,” he said and arose to stomp from the room. St. Felix did not take kindly to defeat, and to defeat at the hands of an upstart young chit from the country, he positively revolted.

  Miss Ingleside herself was so delightfully busy at this interval that she scarcely found an hour a day to wonder when she would see St. Felix again. There was her presentation at the Queen’s Drawing Room and all its attendant preparations to be dealt with. Not only her presentation gown, but several others as well had to be fitted and trimmed. Their having to be made up in such a hurry landed more than one at her door unhemmed, to be taken up by her own flying fingers.