by Joan Smith
She sailed forth to make the King and Queen of Absurdity welcome and to introduce the young lady to any of those present who had not already the pleasure of her acquaintance. With Beau Brummell at her side making the conversation sparkle, Miss Ingleside appeared to great advantage to Countess Cowper; and when Lady Sefton had her alone a minute to discover she was the daughter of Sir James Ingleside of the Wiltshire Inglesides and the granddaughter of Lord Basford, Earl of Basford, the portals of Almack’s were in a good way to opening for her. There was the Pealing to be overcome, but a well-to-do Mrs. Wintlock of whom no harm was known proved to be an acceptable chaperone. That Miss Wintlock, too, must be provided a voucher was no problem; the girl was on the verge of receiving an offer from Lord Henry Viddington, young son of a good family.
“You know nothing to the young lady’s discredit, Emily?” Lady Sefton enquired of Countess Cowper.
“No, no, quite unexceptionable. Mama has asked her to a rout this evening. Of course, it must be made clear her aunt is not to come with her. A little touchy that, but Mrs. Pealing understands these things. She has been around long enough and, if she is in doubt, Beau will straighten her out.”
“I’ll give her a voucher before she leaves, then. My, such a crowd around her. I’ll have to wait.”
“I notice St. Felix is interested. He has hardly taken his eyes off her.”
“And you off him. Take care, Emily. Yes, the girl is a charmer. One cannot but wonder that she chose to make her bows from Mrs. Pealing’s home,” Lady Sefton remarked.
“It is the Wintlocks who are actually presenting her. Odd she doesn’t stay with them.”
“But then La Pealing’s company would be more entertaining. Prinney was to call, you know. I bet Lady Hertford is in the boughs.”
“Oh, she went with him,” Emily said. The affair was being closely followed in the Melbourne circle. “But I doubt she will the next time.”
Miss Ingleside made a most favourable impression, and despite his most assiduous observation, St. Felix could not get near her without an unseemly jostling, which he did not care to undergo. He waited his chance for a private word, which did not come till she was on her way out the door, with Beau Brummell at her side. While Bess said goodbye to Beau, Daphne turned to the Duke with a pert smile.
“Did you forget to tell everyone, including yourself, to stay away?” she asked.
“I must speak to you.”
“You are speaking to me.”
“Alone.”
“You have discovered from your flirt how she wishes her name spelled? Just tell me whether it is to be the English or French version. We don’t require solitude for that.”
“About my father’s past.”
“I doubt you can tell me much I don’t know about that.”
“I don’t want the story printed. What is the price for your silence?”
“We have already discussed it. It is a voucher to Almack’s. And, really, I begin to think you are getting off too lightly, for Lady Sefton was not at all put out at the newness of my family. She called me ‘dear’ twice and said I reminded her of Miss Gunning, which is a compliment, I was given to understand. She married two dukes.”
“I’ll see what I can do. It will be very difficult—they are strict. Perhaps Countess Cowper might be persuaded.”
“I can certainly not accuse you of not trying to persuade her. If my name were Amy, I think I should not have cared for your attentions to her this afternoon.” In fact, even as Daphne she was not entirely pleased with his behaviour.
“She is a married woman! If you are intimating I was carrying on a flirtation..."
“Much that would bother you St. Felixes! In your heart of hearts, I think you demand some sort of ineligibility from your women. Married ladies, divorcées, actresses.”
“Blackmailers?” he asked with a sneering smile.
“I didn’t mean that!” she said angrily.
As they talked, it was Lady Sefton and not Countess Cowper who approached them with the cherished voucher in her hand. “A ticket to our little party Thursday evening, Miss Ingleside. I hope your chaperone—you will see it is Mrs. Wintlock’s name on the card—will bring you. And her daughter, of course. It is for the three of you.”
“How very kind of you, Ma’am,” Miss Ingleside said, accepting the ticket with a smile. With a flourish of her fingers, she waved them under St. Felix’s nose. “It seems we must reconsider the price of silence. Like candles and green peas and everything else, it is going up. What was impossible has turned out to be so extraordinarily simple, I begin to wonder whether I shouldn’t ask for the moon.”
His talk with Lady Elizabeth terminated, Beau turned to offer Miss Ingleside his arm. St. Felix bit back some angry rejoinder and said, “I’ll call on you tomorrow, Miss Ingleside, with your permission.”
“Miss Ingleside has promised me her afternoon,” Beau said, patting her hand in a proprietary manner that inflamed his grace.
“In the morning, Miss Ingleside?” Richard asked.
“Yes, you may bring that—thing to me in the morning. On a platter of course!” she reminded him.
Beau looked surprised. “Is it a cake you speak of?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Brummell, a pie. Humble pie,” Daphne smiled.
Richard glared at her with murder in his eyes. “I’ll be there,” he said.
“The pleasure will be all yours,” Daphne answered, and with a wave of her little gloved hand that still held the voucher, she was off.
It was a long while before the last visitor had left the tea party and the brother and sister could get down to serious discussion. “She wasn’t so bad,” Lady Elizabeth began. “What I can’t understand is why the girl ever lowered herself to become involved in this underhanded business of the aunt’s, for she might have been accepted without such a trick. Very charming, and she has got the Beau right under her thumb. He never was serious about any girl, Dickie, in all the years he has been on the town.”
“No mother with a pittance of mind would let him dangle after her daughter. He is amusing, of course, and has a certain ton; but his breeding is not what anyone of good blood would care to take into the family, and he has no fortune to speak of.”
“Still, there are wealthy widows and rich old spinsters aplenty who would have snapped him up fast enough had he ever looked twice at them. He has been unsusceptible till now, and I think it the biggest item of the Season that he is caught at last.”
“Caught? Caught by a blackmailer who is bearleading him into buying her silence by this show of gallantry!”
“Pooh! Everyone knows Beau is a clerk’s son with no money to speak of. He can’t be paying her not to tell what everyone knows already. It is not that.”
“I don’t know what she may have on him; he may be doing it for a lark. He threatened last year to bring the mad old King into fashion, and may have decided on Miss Ingleside, instead; but that is nothing to us.”
“Brother, you are as blind as a bat. Beau is in love. Miss Ingleside is the very lively, intelligent young girl for him. They are as well suited as wine and cheese.”
“She’s not that big a fool; but, in any case, it is nothing to us. I have been to see Uncle Algernon.”
“I should go, too. How horrid, having to visit him only because he is laid up with gout. We never bother with him when he is well, nor he with us. I don’t see that I should have to drag over to Belgrave Square only because he soaks up wine like a sponge and makes himself sick with it.”
“It is not the opprobrium of sick visits I refer to. He told me about Papa and the mysterious woman.”
“Really! Who was she?”
"Mrs. Pealing."
“It can’t be true! How can we keep them quiet? Dear Mama—to have to go through that again. And Larry—this will reflect on him!”
“It will reflect on the whole family, and we must put a muzzle on them.”
“Yes, certainly. How much? We’ll have to get our sisters t
o join, Dickie. They’ll want thousands, and I don’t see why you and I must bear the whole burden. Betty’s husband is rich as a nabob, and Alice’s expenses are very small, living in the country year round. We’ll all go shares. Did they give you any indication of how much they are asking?”
“She mentioned the moon."
Bess rolled her eyes in despair, and then sent Richard home while she jotted a note off to her two sisters, requesting them to curtail their expenses, for they must each come up with a thousand pounds to save the family’s name.
Chapter 9
The rout at Lady Melbourne’s turned out to be one of the more interesting occasions of the Season. In one of the long saloons there was the Prince of Wales holding court, presided over by two princesses, but not his two wives. Lady Hertford sat on his right hand, wearing the mask of tragedy, and Mrs. Pealing on his left, wearing no mask at all but her usual smiling face. It was to the princess on his left that most of His Highness’s remarks were addressed, and it was her glass that was kept full of wine. The Prince was a famous jilt. His casting aside of Perdita in his youth had been the forerunner of the long list of similar rude castings-off. His first wife, Mrs. Fitzherbert, had lasted longer than most of his women, certainly much longer than his formal wife.
Princess Caroline had been really only a ship passing in the night, leaving in her wake the necessary heir. But both his wives had been replaced long since by a series of plump matrons, and it was obvious to the world that Lady Hertford’s turn had come. Her repudiation was more public and shameful than some, but, on the other hand, no worse than plenty of others.
Titters erupted behind fans and raised fingers, and bets were beginning to be taken on which duo would emerge from the trio, with odds running long in the newcomer’s favour.
When one tired of laughing at the Prince, one could always nip into the next saloon to hear Beau Brummell exchange quips with his new protégé.
“You will forgive my not offering to rise and procure you a glass of wine, Miss Ingleside, but I have a touch of gout in my leg, and it is my favourite leg, too.”
“I wouldn’t dream of. disturbing you, Mr. Brummell, for I know very well you require all your time to think up clever things to say to make us all look like fools. But not quite such a fool as you look yourself. That must be my little consolation.”
“Watch your manners, young lady. I have had better people than you put out of Society for less impertinence.”
“You have had so many put out that there is a rumour the rejects are setting up their own club and calling it the Ten Thousand.”
“No, they are calling it the Court,” he returned in a drawling voice.
“You will find yourself ruling over an empty roost if you keep up with that sort of comment,” she warned.
“No roost can be said to be empty when I am ruling it.”
“Very true. It would be full of hot wind, and good for that gouty knee your old age has brought you.”
“Do they not teach good manners in Wiltshire, Miss Ingleside?”
“Indeed they do, and unlike London, they also practice them in Wiltshire. I was quite at a loss how to go on when first I came to London; but I was advised to take yourself as a model and have made such advances that I am nearly a perfect savage now.”
“Observe myself and practice a little more, and if you are a fast learner, you may yet achieve some small degree of perfection. I find you to be tolerably conversable,” he said, struggling to keep pace with her sharp tongue but on the whole satisfied to have a chance to show off.
“And not yet so intolerably conceited as my instructor, I hope.”
“Conceit has no part in the bearing of a lady or gentleman.”
“I am happy to see you don’t preach what you practice, Mr. Brummell.”
A little crowd hovered around to examine the curious sight of a young lady who gave back to the great Brummell blow for blow.
When it was time for refreshments, Mr. Brummell waited till he saw the Prince Regent, in an unusual fit of gallantry, approach the table; then he arose and offered Miss Ingleside his arm to confront the Prince.
“Some lobster patties, Miss Ingleside?” Beau offered, and she accepted.
“None for me. I am on a diet,” he added in a loud voice. “I do not intend to go to fat in my old age as some unfortunate gentlemen do. There is nothing so vulgar as a stomach. No tailoring can conceal it. In the very worst cases, a fellow may even sink to wearing a corset to brace himself.” He just barely glanced at the Prince’s creaking bulk as he spoke.
Miss Ingleside, aware of the feud between the two, wanted no part of it. She scowled at Brummell, for the Prince, though pretending not to hear, was becoming red about the ears.
“Does your aunt care for lobster, Miss Ingleside?” the Prince enquired, ignoring completely Mr. Brummell while making clear the food was not for himself.
“Yes, very much, Your Majesty,” Daphne answered in a humble voice.
“That aunt of yours has questionable taste,” Beau said loudly. He looked at the lobster, but the sting in the tail of the speech was felt by the Regent, and he longed to retaliate.
“I wonder if anyone thought to fill a plate for Lady Hertford,” Beau went on. “I see her escort has only one and it, I believe, is for Mrs. Eglinton— er, Pealing.”
The Prince could take no more. He set down the plate and returned to his seat, to let footboys serve him and his party as was his usual custom.
Lady Melbourne took Mr. Brummell severely to task, and he felt himself that he had gone far enough for one night. Miss Ingleside was vexed at having been used by Beau. The Prince did not care to exchange public jibes with the rapier-tongued fellow, but he felt he knew the cause of the anger and smiled to himself to think he had captured the charming Mrs. Pealing out from under his arch rival’s nose. He was determined to attach her after that evening, and went alone the next morning to call on her. He had not foreseen that Miss Ingleside would be present (“have to get rid of the girl”) but at least she didn’t have Brummell at her feet, as was only too possible. She soon had a caller of her own in the person of St. Felix.
For a short five minutes the four mismated persons sat trying to think of innocuous subjects of conversations, then St. Felix turned aside to Miss Ingleside. “I came to talk about that book with you, Ma’am. Shall we go to the library and have a look at it?”
While he sat in the saloon, his eyes had been trained on Mrs. Pealing. That this squat, pudgy female had ensnared his father was almost impossible for him to believe, and that she had ever borne the slightest resemblance to Miss Ingleside completely impossible. He couldn’t see a feature in common.
Miss Ingleside went with him. There was no library in the apartment, but she was grateful to get out of the Prince’s presence. He was markedly cool to her after last night’s rout. They went to the little study where the memoirs were kept and occasionally worked upon.
“I seem to be tripping over a prince every time I come here,” St. Felix said.
“I don’t hear the Prince complaining,” she replied, taking the seat behind the desk and indicating the only other chair for her caller.
“You will hear it if you persist in making him look a fool, with Brummell’s contrivance.”
“What busy little bee has been running to you with stories of last night’s party?”
“My sister was there. She said you were the centre of attention, and behaving perfectly outrageously.”
“What would you expect of a parvenue whose family can only be traced with credit for two hundred years?”
“A modicum of behaviour, when it is her aim to pass herself off with credit in Society.”
“Now here is a new twist,” Daphne said, smiling ironically. Yet she was far from happy with her own performance. “Are you setting out to reform me, Your Grace?”
“I am not so quixotic. I am merely warning you. God knows why I should bother. It would serve you well to be cast out of Society, as you
should be, but I must confess to a grudging admiration for your brass. One does tend to side with the hero of a picaresque story.”
“So now I am a knave and a rogue, am I?”
“You always were, but when you clash horns with the Prince Regent, you take on a good deal more than you can handle. You may have won a battle last night, but you will lose the war. Brummell is on his way out. It is only a matter of time, and a very little time, till he is finished.”
“Everyone defers to him.”
“He’s in debt to his neck—gambling—and he lives on a very small income. If you are wise, you will switch sides while there is still time.”
“Why do you bother to tell me this? You have wanted to see me beaten since the first day you came to this place.”
She found him to be without an answer. He didn’t know himself. He despised mushrooms, but somehow Miss Ingleside had become more than an upstart trouble-maker. He would fight to the death to prevent her revealing anything to cast aspersions on his family. His whole aim was to best her, but he would dislike to see her disgraced and humiliated, as she would be if she got the Prince turned against her.
“Is this what you are offering me in lieu of a moon?” she asked. “The benefit of your advice in payment for our silence regarding your father? You must know I have found your reading of Society’s whims somewhat inaccurate in the past. You have a definite tendency to overrate any misdeeds on my part.”
“You are in need of an adviser, my girl. It was foolish of your family to send you here alone.”
“Yet I have managed to make myself acceptable to everyone, except yourself. I have obtained a voucher to Almack’s, and as you find a prince cluttering the apartment every day, I don’t think I need fear reprisals from him.”
“He comes to see your aunt. He was not friendly towards yourself. In fact, if he proceeds in his customary fashion, he will set her up in a love nest where you will definitely be de trop. And it is the best thing that could happen to you, too. You would do better to reside with the Wintlocks.”
“Love nest! You are insane. She wouldn’t dream of such a thing. It isn’t that sort of a relationship, though. I might have known you would think so.”