Felicity and the Damaged Reputation: A witty, sweet Regency Romance

by Alicia Cameron

  A head appeared upside down in the window, it was the little man’s and he was holding onto his disreputable hat. ‘If we stop—,’ he said.

  ‘We ain’t a-stoppin’’ said the loud voice of the driver.

  The little man paid no heed. ‘It might take us time to find another conveyance, and you will once more miss an appointment. Also, you could be left without any chaperon at an insalubrious inn.’

  ‘I know. But I must try. No doubt she’ll think me terribly interfering, but I cannot go on—’

  ‘All righty then miss,’ said the cheerful little person. ‘It’s coming up. ‘Old tight.’ The head disappeared. ‘Stop in the name of the law!’ The little fellow’s voice was suddenly full of force, and Felicity was not surprised when the coach halted violently and the little man opened the door. She got out, with inn gates before her. The little man walked towards the back of the coach saying, ‘I’ll just get our bags,’ but the coachman drove on shouting, ‘Pick ‘em up in the Mail office in Brighton, if you can!’ and they heard him laugh as he drove away.

  ‘Jarvey!’ shouted Mr Mosely, demeaning the coachman’s rank to a mere hackney coach driver.

  Beyond the gates, they saw a dusty travelling coach, with steaming horses being seen to by ostlers, and Felicity breathed a sigh of relief.’

  ‘I knew it!’ said the little man with a grin.

  ‘Sir, what is your name? And are you indeed a Bow Street Runner?’

  ‘Name of Mosley, miss. And just between us, miss, I’m not a Runner any more, more of a private man these days. Just worked for a very rich young lady indeed, and she sent me something in the way of a thank you that me and Adam’s Rib couldn’t spend in all our lives.’

  ‘Yet you travel on the mailcoach, sir?’

  ‘Always the mail, or the stage for me, missy. You meets such interesting people. It’s a bit of a habit now.’

  ‘Well, sir, I am Felicity Oldfield,’ she stopped and held out her hand and he took it, smiling.

  ‘Very glad to make your acquaintance, Miss. And your tale surely sped the miles behind us. It didn’t seem possible that all that could happen to one young miss in just a few months, but then I have had some pretty interesting periods in me own life. And now miss,’ he took the hand and squeezed it a little, comfortingly, for they were standing just behind the other coach and very near to the inn door, ‘I think we must go in.’

  Felicity looked at the door and sighed, then said, ‘Yes! I know it! Whatever happens Mr Mosely, thank you for coming with me.’

  And with that, they entered the inn.

  When the storm had calmed down, Lady Aurora let all the attendant company greet Felicity as was their desire — her two young friends hugging her, Sloane bowing over her hand, Lady Sumner giving her a short sharp hug, Benedict patting her back heartily, so that she almost fell over. Then Mr Fenton, who had stood aside for a moment, moved forward and used one finger to tilt her head up to his, and looked at her gravely. ‘Never do that again.’ Felicity opened her mouth, but his eyes burned into hers. ‘Never.’ He said, dangerously.

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on his cheek, tears coursing as she said, ‘Never!’

  Anne Clarence, meanwhile, after scratching a note on the small table for the purpose at the side of the room, had gone to the smiling butler, and said, ‘Ransom isn’t it?’ He remembered himself and adopted his visage of disinterest once more, ‘Have a servant take this note to Durant House and deliver it to Miss Charlotte Fortescue’s maid, if you please.’

  ‘Certainly madam.’ He bowed, and with a last look into the room, he closed the door.

  Durant, with Lady Letitia in his arms had not addressed her, but he finally was able to ask, in a loud tone to cover the din, ‘How is this possible?’

  ‘They must have met on the Great North Road,’ said Benedict. ‘It would have been me who found them.’ He added with satisfaction.

  ‘No indeed,’ said Lady Letitia, ‘We met on the Brighton Road, at an inn called the Cat and Mouse.’

  Lady Aurora had sat down, pulling Felicity with her, unwilling to be parted from her. She was only partially listening to her young ladyship. Her eyes were only for Felicity. ‘Never forgive you!’ she said again, gripping her hand. Felicity smiled and laid her head briefly on her mentor’s shoulder.

  ‘I thought that old devil gave up Stanford’s direction too easily. He said you’d gone to the border.’

  ‘I would not consent to that. To travel with a man, to have to stay some nights at inns with him, was not right. Especially as I could not take my maid.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Said Durant, at the end of his tether. He was watching Benedict Fenton seat himself on the arm of the elegant sofa that held Felicity. Fenton leaned back and put his arm over the back of the dofa in what Durant considered an over-familiar way.

  ‘Because she would tell you — I know that she is your slave.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t have been there to tell me, until after you were married, if you had only instructed her to come with you at the last minute. She’d have been with you.’

  ‘I did not think of that,’ said the lovely Lady Letitia, deflated.

  Mr Joyce, at Anne Clarence’s shoulder, made another strange noise and she hissed, ‘Don’t!’ but her shoulders shook anyway. She saw the hooded eyes of Wilbert Fenton look at her and raise an eyebrow and she blushed.

  ‘How came you to consent to such a thing?’ the viscount continued.

  ‘I know, I know it was wrong. But Lord Stanford was the only person being nice to me at all. You were furious, even some of my friends were a little distant and I knew that Aunt Charlotte would be on your side. And then, I did know that I had done wrong. It was spiteful and wicked, but I really did not know it would go further than the terrace. I was just so afraid that Felicity would make me look ridiculous … if it was ever known—’

  ‘You’ve said sorry enough, dear Letitia, please do not,’ said Felicity.

  ‘But how can I not? After all you have done for me this day?’ said Lady Letitia passionately.

  ‘Aunt Charlotte! I must tell her immediately!’ said Durant suddenly.

  ‘I have already sent a note,’ said Anne Clarence calmly.

  ‘Thank you my dear Anne,’ Durant said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Felicity, turning to her, ‘then you are the lady the viscount will marry?’

  ‘I—’ ‘We—’ said the Viscount and Anne together. They were saved by Lady Letitia.

  ‘I agreed to go with Lord Stanford. He was always so charming, and it seemed to me that though I did not love him, it would free me from you, Durant, and from my aunt. I could run my own household and have parties, and, oh, I don’t know—’

  ‘When did you know that it was a bad idea?’

  ‘Oh, almost from the first. The dreadful carriage he hired, and the fact that there were no attendants. And he asked me for money at the inn. I told him I wanted to go home. But he would not, of course, let that happen. I said I would give him a large sum if he consented. My whole quarter’s allowance. But he said … he said, why should he eat just a part of the cake, when he could have it all.’

  ‘The beast!’ said Vivien Althorpe, but with relish.

  ‘And then he attempted to kiss me.’

  ‘Only attempted?’ asked Mr Joyce with interest that made Anne Clarence nudge him.

  ‘I hit him with a vase.’

  ‘Oh, very good.’ Approved Miss Carter-Phipps.

  ‘And so I did not rescue you at all, by the time you met me you had already knocked him out!’ said Felicity.

  ‘I am so glad I came today!’ whispered Mr Joyce in Miss Clarence’s ear.

  ‘But then, you know, Bastian,’ Lady Letitia’s high curls bounced lustrously as she turned to him, ‘I was beastly again.’ Miss Carter-Phipps and Miss Althorpe exchanged significant glances.

  ‘Tell me the worst!’ said Durant with a sigh.

  ‘I saw Miss Oldfield, I mean my dear Felicity, and I was so shoc
ked to be meeting anyone I knew. As I was hurrying out to have the ostlers put to the horses once more, she told me she had jumped from the mail coach, to stop me eloping with Lord Stanford. I told her to go away and mind her own business, and to take that horrid little man with her.’

  Mr Wilbert Fenton, by now fully returned to his urbane self, had taken a chair nearby Miss Clarence and Mr Joyce, rather out of range of the action, the better to spectate. At a nod from him, a footmen brought him some wine, he crossed his legs and prepared to be entertained. He nodded the footman to Mr Joyce, who took a glass with an acknowledging smile to Mr Fenton, and joined Miss Clarence on a sofa.

  ‘Who was the horrid little man?’ asked Benedict, looking down at Felicity with his eyebrows raised.

  ‘Oh, just the ex-Bow Street Runner that I met on the mail coach.’

  ‘Of course he is!’ said Mr Wilbert Fenton smoothly, causing the curate to choke on his first sip of wine.

  ‘Wha—’ said Durant pulling his fingers through his long hair. He met Benedict Fenton’s amused glance and sat, as Lady Letitia, very fine in a froth of pink muslin, with a silk embroidered bodice, took centre stage.

  ‘And Felicity, darling that she is, tried to reason with me, not knowing that I agreed with her, but was only seeking to escape as soon as possible. The ostlers told me that the horses were too tired to go back to London, having been pushed too hard by that idiot Stanford, and I promptly wept. And instead of leaving me to my just deserts, Felicity asked the man if there were more horses to be had and he said ‘no’. I was in a terror in case Lord Stanford should awaken. And to cap it all, that vile old Viscountess Swanson came into the inn yard with her maid.’

  ‘Who is she?’ whispered Mr Joyce.

  ‘Dreadful old gossip who has made life more difficult for Felicity,’ said Lady Sumner, joining the audience on the sofa.

  ‘The old vixen—,’ said Letitia, looking an apology at Lady Aurora for her language, ‘—pulled up short and said, “Lady Letitia, what are you doing here?”’

  ‘More to the point, what was she doing there?’ asked Benedict, ‘Dashed rum sort of place with no fresh horses, if you ask me.’

  ‘I think Mr Mosely said it was another sort of establishment. Not a staging post. And Viscountess Swanson turned out to be in a dreadful mood, having walked two miles because her carriage had broken a shaft. This was the first inn,’ said Felicity.

  ‘It was perfectly vile. Not even a very clean inn,’ said Lady Letitia. ‘But that is when it happened. Lord Stanford staggered out of the inn, looking quite dreadful.’

  ‘Obviously, you gave him a nice clean hit,’ said Miss Carter-Phipps still approving.

  ‘What a bloodthirsty brood of young ladies London is breeding today,’ said Durant, and Benedict Fenton laughed.

  ‘Well, when my dear Letitia told me what had occurred, I believe he deserved it.’ Felicity said, championing her new friend.

  ‘Anyway, Viscountess Swanson looked at Lord Stanford, and then at me, and then down her nose, and said, “I see perfectly what you are doing here. I beg your pardon, Lady Letitia.” In such a knowing way that I was ready to sink. And then Felicity, my dearest girl,’ Vivien and Althea’s eyebrows could not go any higher at one more endearment, ‘came from behind me and said. “She came to aid me, Viscountess” and then she gave this even more terrible look at Felicity, and at Lord Stanford, who was too far off to hear the exchange, and who looked too confused to know where he was even.’ Letitia sobbed suddenly. ‘What kind of girl would do that, Bastian? To ruin herself even further to protect the girl who had ruined her?’

  The Viscount looked steadily at Felicity, with a fire in his eyes. ‘Only the best kind of girl,’ he said. Felicity looked away, blushing profusely.

  ‘I know, I could hardly believe it.’

  Durant seemed about to say something. Lady Letitia recovered herself.

  Lady Aurora said to her charge with pride, ‘You foolish, foolish, girl. How brave, how foolish.’

  ‘Oh no!’ said Felicity, standing now and joining Lady Letitia, ‘It was only that my reputation was already ruined, why let the horrid Lord Stanford ruin another’s—’

  ‘It was my own fault. I consented to that dreadful plan. I know it Bastian, I know it.’

  ‘But no one’s reputation was ruined for Mr Mosely saved us,’ added Felicity happily.

  ‘Yes, what a completely wonderful little man. He took off his hat and approached us, just as Viscountess Swanson was enjoying her horrible leering smile, and said, “The carriage will be repaired in a half-hour, ladies. If you would just take some tea in the inn. Lady Aurora will be worried that you are late, but I’ve sent the boy ahead with a message.” You should have seen the smile disintegrate on the viscountess’s face.’

  ‘We ended up having to spend the next ten minutes with her having tea. That was the worst bit,’ said Felicity.

  ‘Oh I know, we had to chatter about a visit to a friend.’

  ‘On the Brighton Road?’ said Durant aghast.

  ‘Oh, a reclusive friend,’ said Felicity laughing.

  ‘Very reclusive, almost a hermit,’ giggled Letitia.

  ‘Anyway, at that point Mr Mosely came in, and he looked very like a groom by this stage, and said that he had a conveyance to take us to you, Lady Aurora.’

  ‘It turned out to be a farmer’s milk cart, but the Viscountess couldn’t see it from the inn.’

  ‘You don’t mean to tell me that you both drove all the way to London in a dashed milk cart?’ asked Benedict.

  ‘What about Lord Stanford?’ Said Lady Sumner. ‘I should have something to say to a man who pushed his horses so on that distance.’

  Benedict laughed. ‘Oh Jenny, Jenny!’ he said, ‘Always the horses!’ she gave his unholy glee a twisted smile.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lord Durant, more dangerously. ‘What did become of Lord Stanford?’

  ‘After he talked to us outside the inn, Mr Mosely went and spoke to Lord Stanford. He said he’d taken care of him.’

  ‘What on earth does that mean? By what you say, Mr Mosely is half the size of Lord Stanford.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the butler to his master, ‘but if Viscount Durant is wishful to speak to Mr Mosely, I believe he is below stairs at the moment, partaking of some ham soup the cook happened to have prepared.’

  ‘By all means, send him up!’ said Mr Fenton.

  ‘My dear, shall we order some refreshments? You look fully restored to beauty after the return of Felicity to her home,’ Felicity blushed at this, ‘but I fear the rest of us are made of lesser stuff.’

  ‘By all means. What an interesting story, don’t you think, my love? I can almost enjoy the adventure now that Felicity is safe home. I do think you are a gifted orator, Lady Letitia,’ she added comfortably.

  ‘The refreshments have been set out behind you, master. I took the liberty—’

  ‘Very good, Ransom.’

  ‘Well’ said Anne Clarence, to the other members of the sofa club, ‘He had to take the liberty, or how else could he have heard the rest of the story?’

  ‘I didn’t hear the food arrive. One forgets how unobtrusive London servants can be.’

  ‘My Maggie can be heard coming for miles!’ said Anne, smiling.

  ‘I admit I prefer a little warning—’ it seemed he’d said something risqué, he blushed. But she laughed silently and their eyes held.

  ‘So do I, at times.’

  Lady Sumner blinked. Durant was paying no attention, both he and Benedict had all their attention on Felicity, both with admiration. Her heart tightened a little. But this would be good. One of them would marry her and all would be well. She hoped that Benedict would not be too hurt if Durant won the contest. She wondered when Anne Clarence would tell the viscount she loved another. If not soon, then Benedict would have the advantage. These thoughts, swift as they were, were interrupted by the arrival of a little man with a sharp feral face that belonged to generations of London working
poor, and a moleskin waist coat, with a grin on his face as he bowed low to the assembled company.

  ‘Mr Mosely, is it?’ said Mr Fenton, holding out his hand in an unusual gesture of friendship, which Mosely took without a blink. ‘I am Mr Fenton. This is my house and the Viscount Durant and myself—,’ (the viscount bowed) ‘wish to thank you for the return of our relatives in good health.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the little man cheerfully, ‘the two wicked abductors. Miss Oldfield told me all.’

  ‘I trust,’ said Lord Durant, ‘that you will strive to forget what you heard and saw today?’

  ‘An application to the magistrates at Bow Street will give testimony to my discretion, your lordship. But wi’ miss trying to run away because she was a nuisance to you, and burden on you sir,’ he pointed at Mr Fenton senior, I was fair interested in ‘elping the lady. She’s a right one!’

  ‘Indeed she is.’

  ‘Would you be Lady Aurora, my lady?’ he bowed to her. ‘The poor lil ‘un cried the most to be leaving you. And then to be ‘elping—’

  ‘The black-hearted lady,’ interrupted Lady Letitia with a smile, ‘that’s me, you know. It’s from some novel she read, and it quite fits.’ She said sadly. ‘But we laughed about it on the journey home.’

  ‘In the milk cart?’ said Benedict, interestedly.

  ‘No, no. That were just to get the young ladies away from the ol’ dragon.’ Begging your pardon, my Lady.’

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ said Lady Aurora, ‘I have called her much worse.’

  ‘I knew I could get a rig at the next halt and so it proved.’

  ‘And Stanford?’ asked Durant.

  ‘I told his lordship that abduction was agin the law, in case ‘e didn’t realise. And there were no attendants to back up ‘is tale that the lady came willingly. I told ‘im the magistrates at Bow Street would come down hard on ‘im. I advised ‘im to make ‘isself scarce and never open ‘is mouf.’