‘Tish!’ he called after the lady. There was much threat in that voice and Felicity turned away, taking a cup of punch from a tap boy with a large tray, holding the necessary for the stagecoach passengers.
She had barely stepped down from the stagecoach and shaken out her pelisse to dislodge crumbs from the fat lady’s lunch and now could not help staring. They were allowed the briefest of stops for refreshment on the long journey to London and this was one, so she sipped the punch gratefully, feeling the blood flow back into all of her pinched extremities. She turned her head again towards the smart gentleman who was pacing up and down in anger or frustration and looking about the yard, Felicity thought, for something to kill. The brim of his beaver obscured his face, but Felicity was glad of the crowd in the busy inn yard, for he seemed ill-humoured and dangerous, like a villain in one of the novels she had read. But suddenly he stopped, his head turned her way, and she knew he was looking at her.
‘You’ll do!’ he said briskly. He marched towards her and Felicity backed up towards the horse-smelling man, who spilt his punch and cursed. The London swell grasped her hand, the one not holding the punch, and pulled her out of the small clutch of stage passengers.
‘Now see here!’ said the father of the small children.
‘Out of my way!’ retorted the angry gentleman, and the man backed away fast.
‘Your name is Lady Letitia Fortescue,’ he was saying to her.
Felicity gasped, ‘No sir, I assure you — I am only Miss Oldfield, I—’
He’d stopped by the inn door and was looking at her sourly with the darkest eyes she had ever seen, his brows pulled down, as he took in her figure. ‘Not good enough. Take off your bonnet!’
‘My b—?’ squeaked Felicity.
‘Come with me!’ There seemed little else to do as this man of energy had not let go his fierce grasp on her hand and dragged her into the inn in front of a team of watchful strangers. Felicity attempted several protests that came out as squeaks, hardly able to grasp what had happened in a mere three seconds. ‘Where is she?’ her captor was barking at someone, who raised an arm towards the narrow staircase. ‘Take this!’ he instructed, relieving Felicity of the punch cup and thrusting it into the lackey’s hand. They climbed the stairs, Felicity stumbling as she was pulled. There was a door opened at the top and they burst into the room where a young, and very lovely lady, lay on a bed, being tended by a chambermaid in the brown wool dress and apron of a simple countrywoman. The maid was pressing a compress to the lady’s head.
‘Sebastian! How dare you?’ cried the woman on the bed, sitting up.
But the gentleman showed no interest in her as she rose, instead looked about the room. He picked up the bonnet that was set on a chair, and the green velvet pelisse laid on the foot of the bed and turned to Felicity. ‘Put these on!’ he ordered.
There seemed less danger in the putting on rather than the taking off that he had been demanding before, so Felicity, hardly knowing what she did, obliged. The lady in the bed, who as Felicity had intuited was not at all afraid, merely petulantly angry in the way of her sister Amity when she did not get her way, shouting, ‘You are a beast Sebastian. I shall tell Aunt Charlotte what you have put me through this day. Who is this girl? What are you doing?’
‘Foiling you, Tish. You should know better than to play your starts with me.’
There was a glass in the room, and Felicity caught a glance of herself in the bonnet, whose high poke was lined in pleated silk that matched the pelisse and had, moreover, some red roses to one side. She could hardly believe it was she.
But her captor, Sebastian it seemed, was dragging her away and she looked over her shoulder at the angry young lady, mouthing “sorry” as she did so. Whatever he had planned for her, the man was at least not doing so in secrecy. They reached the inn door just as the stagecoach left.
‘Oh, my bag!’ Felicity stopped dead, even though the man was still pulling her forward.
‘What?’ he said impatiently.
‘My bag! It was on the coach. And I should be on it too.’
He frowned. ‘We don’t have time — come!’ he was dragging her to a curricle, with pale blue leather seats and body of the same shade, and wheels picked out in gold. She stopped, resisting him once more, looking astounded. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘it’s Letitia’s. Ridiculous isn’t it?’
‘It’s a carriage for a princess!’ said Felicity.
‘She certainly tools the thing around the park as though she were one,’ the gentleman named Sebastian said dryly.
Felicity’s woes came upon her again. ‘I cannot get in with you.’ She was almost crying. ‘I’ve lost the stage and my bag and there is a servant waiting for me in London to take me to my position.’
‘Governess?’ he ventured.
‘Yes.’
‘Look, I’ve behaved badly, but I will see you get back to your coach and your bag. Or at least the staging inn in London. But I really need you to be my cousin for five minutes. That’s all.’
She moved forward at these words, hardly believing him, but following her only chance.
‘How can you be sure we’ll catch the stage?’
‘Because as awful as Tish’s taste in carriages may be, she leaves it to me to buy her horses.’ He took the reins and slapped the team as he spoke, heading for the broad yard gates.
In the next ten minutes, he said little, but told her about the swift meeting that she was assisting at. Somehow, when he described her role to her, that of the cousin in the inn chamber, she understood that she was not helping a young lady to be tied by male decisions. It was simply that Lady Letitia was buying a house, the perfect house that it had taken him a long time to find, and owned by an eccentric gentleman who had an unbreakable rule about punctuality. Lady Letitia was happy with his choice (for she had been sent drawings of the house and grounds) and it was really necessary to give their mutual aunt (Lady Letitia’s guardian) a place of repose in the country during her bouts of illness. But Letitia, used to being able to order others, had heard of the eccentric gentleman’s punctuality rule (‘which I was a fool to have mentioned,’ added her captor) and was angered by it as an affront to her dignity, had decided, the gentleman said, to have a headache and be unable to go on. Felicity was too struck by the resemblance to something Amity might do not accept his account.
‘She believes that to Lady Letitia Fortescue the gentleman’s rules do not apply—’ he said, his strong jaw still working to digest his anger, ‘— she is wrong. I have spent the best part of six months searching for houses for that spoilt brat. And I have done with it. It ends today.’
‘Will not the gentleman know I am not her ladyship?’
‘Why should he? He never goes to London, and even if she has been described to him, you are her height and colouring.’
‘But she is a beauty!’ objected Felicity.
He looked down at her sardonically, seeing properly for the first time. ‘The change of bonnet has worked wonders.’ Felicity smiled, despite herself.
‘What must I do?’
‘Simply be charmed by everything, in a superior way.’ He was silent for the next minutes.
The rest happened fast. They stopped at a gentleman’s country house, which she saw only as a blur of well-kept gardens, white stone, and numerous windows. As she was handed from the curricle, Sebastian took one gloved finger and tipped her chin up a little higher , which caused her to shiver a little, and finally she walked ahead, in as lofty a manner as she could. The business took ten minutes. She had hardly sat down in the library opposite the eccentric gentleman and his official who had bowed low over her hand, when Sebastian, (whom the other gentleman called “Durant” and the official called “my lord”) was leading her once more to the carriage, having given the excuse of a pressing engagement. He drove silently, but with a lazy smile on his face, which suddenly looked handsome. They came back to the inn, where she once more went to the chamber where a furious Lady Letitia, her gl
ossy brown ringlets dancing in her fury, her beautiful face with its tiny rosebud mouth tight and that face all large blue eyes, was awaiting them. She was hardly older than herself, Felicity supposed, but of a spirit resembling her elder sister Amity’s.
‘You—!’ she threw the water jug at the Duke’s head and caught, instead, Felicity’s arm.
Durant threw the deeds at her. ‘Your house, my dear.’
Felicity retrieved her pelisse and bonnet while the other two had a hissed conversation outside the chamber. There was a slap. Lady Letitia came in the door in a more subdued manner and put on her lovely pelisse and hat. She hardly looked at Felicity.
Soon all three were bowling along at a frightening pace in the curricle, a little cramped on a seat made for two, but not nearly so uncomfortably than in the crush of the stagecoach. Lady Letitia seemed unaffected by the pace, merely gazing away from her companions. Felicity held onto the seat as for life itself. The tension between the cousins was palpable.
‘Who are you, anyway?’ her ladyship said eventually, addressing Felicity.
‘Oh, I am—’
‘A young lady going to London as a governess,’ interrupted Durant, throwing the comment at her as he kept his eyes on his task. ‘You will never see her again.’
‘What address?’
‘Hans Place,’ Felicity answered automatically.
‘Oh, never!’ said her ladyship, satisfied.
Felicity thought this sudden lurch into conversation needed a reply. ‘I think your bonnet is quite lovely,’ she ventured. Silence reigned for twenty minutes until the coach caught up with the stage, which Durant halted by means of overtaking it. The coachman screamed about waybills and lawful rights, but Felicity was handed back by Durant his fingers squeezed hers, ‘Farewell and thank you!’ They exchanged a direct look, and Felicity thought she divined a hint of an apology. She smiled at him reassuringly. ‘You are a funny little thing,’ he said, as though surprised by something. Then he was gone and the curricle and coach drove on. The occupants of the coach looked at her, even the lady with the large basket seemed interested in her fate.
‘I met with friends,’ was all she offered, and the horse-smelling man set to grumbling about Quality, thinking they could upset the plans of respectable working people, stopping coaches and the like. In this, her supporter of earlier, the father of the two famished children agreed, and Felicity had to sit quietly as the opinion of the coach turned against her. She thought of the pair in the curricle, going towards London silently resentful at each other, and preferred the stage. She was glad of the adventure, for it would give her something to put down in her journal, and she spared a last thought for the unknown Aunt Charlotte, whose bouts of illness might now be assuaged in the charming country house, and she was glad to have been of use to her. She resolved to think of the smart London couple as little as they would think of her. Neither of them had asked a single question about her circumstances, beyond what Durant guessed. She therefore asked none of them.
As the city came nearer, Felicity looked further out from the carriage window, which involved leaning over the horse-smelling fellow, wishing to see the wonders her sisters had fed her with, in their superior knowledge.
What she saw shocked Felicity very much. No poor cottage on the estate or in their village could have prepared her for the rickety abodes cheek-by-jowl, which looked as though a strong wind might fell them. The piles of ordure on the streets, whose stink effectively blocked the carriage smells, were disgusting, even for a girl raised in the country with the fertilised fields all around her at certain times of the year. This ordure was somehow less healthy than that of the country, and the clumps of people, lounging on the street, seemed to underline this. They all, to one with her rosy country cheeks, looked pallid and thin and near to death.
There was one woman in quite a respectable bonnet, clutching a baby to her bosom, who concerned her greatly. On the desperate face, Felicity may have seen the meaning of ruination, and she had a mad desire to jump from the carriage and offer her some aid. Absurd, of course. Her reticule contained only three shillings and sixpence, with another sovereign sewn by Merryweather, her family’s sainted housekeeper, into the hem of her pelisse (so that no London footpad could rob her of it). And of course, the servant from Mrs Hennessey would be awaiting her, ready to take her to her new abode — she could not miss the appointment.
A little shaken, Felicity saw the city streets widen and become cleaner, the houses ahead increasingly respectable. They stopped soon at a city inn, where she was to disembark at last, to start her new life.
Within half an hour, Felicity found herself on the London streets, with no idea what to do next.
Her interview with Mrs Hennessey of Hans Place had not gone well. She had looked her up and downs she had entered, as though she had been an intruder. The lady wore a lacy cap over very red curls with a high colour in her cheeks, and she had wrinkled her nose when she had briefly looked at Felicity, as though there was a bad smell in the vicinity. She had said only, as though to another inhabitant of the otherwise empty room, ‘This will never do—’ (which reminded Felicity of the man from the inn yard saying quite the opposite) and rang the bell.
Felicity was too shocked to speak, and when the butler entered, Mrs Hennessey said, ‘Show this young person out.’
‘You will not employ me madam?’ Felicity throat finally opened. Silence greeted her remark.
The butler coughed. ‘This way, Miss.’
Felicity turned to follow and then fear got the better of her dignity. She turned and looked piteously at the stone face of Mrs Hennessey. ‘But I have come all the way from Shropshire. Where shall I go?’
That dame merely picked up her work and commenced to sew, regarding Felicity not at all.
On the street, Felicity blinked away tears for the second time that day. She was rather disappointed in herself. She’d thought that she’d make a wonderful heroine, but so far she’d been little more than biddable when she’d been coerced by the angry gentleman, and now was overcome at her first taste of trial. Heroines were made of hardier stuff. But though this was a respectable area, she knew that not far from here was a hell she had spied from the carriage and that she did not wish to revisit, save with a stout protector and some money to help. So she began to walk towards another, more fashionable street. It might have been nice, surely, if something today had happened as planned. Aware that night was nigh she clutched her bag and bandbox to her, afraid of footpads who were supposed to haunt every London Street.
Just as soon as this thought occurred, she heard some steps running towards her from behind and rushed on a trifle more quickly. But suddenly a hand grasped at her arm. Without her volition, her carpet bag swung violently round and knocked over her pursuer, who fell to the ground. It was a young gentleman, who with his startling red hair and snub nose bore a striking resemblance to the horrible Mrs Hennessey.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Felicity contritely. ‘You startled me.’
‘What did you do that for?’ a whining voice demanded. ‘I came to help you after Mama threw you out. It was only because I saw from the window before you came in and said to her that you were pr— oh, never mind.’ He got up and looked at her sulkily, rubbing the arm that the heavy carpet bag had connected with. ‘I do not wish to help you anymore. You are a most disagreeable girl. Go to the devil for all I care.’ He walked away from her, looking back at her, still sulky.
Felicity looked at the carpet bag, surprised. She was sorry to have hit the young gentleman, but not very. She supposed he had been prompted by a kind motive, but he had an unpleasant face and his hand had felt rather grasping on her arm. But as she regarded the carpet bag, Felicity was a little proud of herself. If he had been a footpad, after all, she would have protected herself very well. Just as a heroine should. Perhaps if she’d had the bag in her hand at the inn, Sebastian, Lord of Durant or Somewhere-or-Other, might not have fared so well with her. She grinned, imagining h
im in the dirt. But one must look to the good. At least she had helped his aunt. Her head cleared a little from the despair and confusion of her rejection by Mrs Hennessey and she walked on, at last able to think a little.
Suddenly she stopped. She did know someone in London. Mad Aunt Ellingham had had the twins for a season. Surely she would welcome Felicity when all she wanted was a few nights shelter while she found another position?
A man stepped out towards her from between two houses, it seemed, and said, ‘Can I help you miss? You seem a little lost.’
Felicity regarded him hopefully. He was about thirty and wearing the apparel of a respectable, if not fashionable, man. Perhaps a lawyer, or an apothecary, she thought. ‘It is very kind of you, sir. Perhaps you could direct me to Half Moon Street where my aunt resides?’
The man smiled pleasantly, showing well maintained teeth. ‘Certainly I can. Perhaps you would let me walk along with you. It is not safe for a young lady on the streets of London at night. Did your aunt not send a man for you?’
Felicity was flustered, she did not want to walk with a man she did not know, but hardly saw how she could avoid it. Without the use of the carpet bag that was, and of course this kind man did not deserve that fate. ‘She isn’t expecting me,’ she said confidingly. ‘I came here to be a governess — but it turned out I did not suit.’
The man smiled a little wider and said, ‘Half Moon Street is this way, my dear.’
Lady Aurora Fenton, the Countess of Overton as was, surprised her sleeping husband by banging on the roof of the carriage and shouting ‘Stop!’ in a dragon voice he had never before heard. He was at alert at once though, saying ‘My dear — what is it?’
But the carriage had halted and his wife had opened the door and leapt onto the street without awaiting the groom’s tender care.
He followed her with the lazy gait that was his signature, but anyone near enough to read his expression would not have doubted the quality of his attention.
Felicity and the Damaged Reputation: A witty, sweet Regency Romance Page 2