The Chocolate Debutante

by M C Beaton

  Chapter Eight

  At two o’clock that same afternoon, Sir Thomas Jeynes called on Miss Barncastle, and when he was ushered in, was delighted to find two other ladies there. He wanted an audience larger than that of Miss Barncastle for what he planned to do.

  He was introduced to Miss Teale and Miss Carrington. Having not met Harriet in her dowdy days, he was amazed that such a fashionable lady, although such a prosy one, should have such dull and staid friends. But, he reflected, the duller and plainer, the better.

  “We are not acquainted, Sir Thomas,” began Miss Barncastle, “but my maid tells me you have urgent news for me concerning a friend.”

  “Yes, indeed. May I be seated?”

  “Pray do. Some wine, or tea, perhaps? The tea is fresh.”

  Sir Thomas said graciously that he quite doted on tea, although, in fact, he seldom drank anything less heady than wine.

  He flipped up his coattails and sat down. It was a dismal room, he thought, glancing quickly around, redolent of good works and good thoughts. The tables were covered in heavy leather-bound tomes. The ladies all had their workbaskets out and had been knitting dingy clothes in the dingy colors ladies always chose when knitting for the poor, as if a bright color might corrupt the lower orders.

  He accepted a cup of tea, took a sip, pronounced it delicious, refused a seed cake, and said, “I am come about your friend Miss Tremayne.”

  Miss Barncastle bridled slightly. In fact, thought Sir Thomas uncharitably, she looked remarkably like a horse.

  “Oh, dear,” said Miss Teale, all aflutter—an almost pleasurable flutter—“has something bad happened?”

  “Very bad,” said Sir Thomas portentiously, and the ladies shrieked in dismay.

  “Have you heard of the Earl of Dangerfield?”

  Miss Barncastle said, “We saw Miss Tremayne being driven along Piccadilly by a wickedly handsome man. I overheard someone say that he was the Earl of Dangerfield.”

  “I need your help, ladies, to save Miss Tremayne’s very soul.”

  How they gasped and hovered around him, offering him more tea and cake.

  “No, no, I thank you,” he begged.

  “Is she in peril?” asked Miss Teale, who was a secret reader of the kind of novels the others affected to despise.

  “Deadly peril.”

  “Her life?” cried Miss Carrington.

  “Worse than that. Her virtue.”

  “Alas, I knew only bad would come of poor Harriet venturing into corrupt society,” mourned Miss Barncastle, or, rather, her voice mourned while her eyes gleamed with excitement.

  “Tell us about poor Harriet,” urged Miss Teale.

  “Miss Tremayne has fallen in love with Lord Dangerfield. Lord Dangerfield never proposes marriage, only a carte blanche.”

  “Mercy! You must warn her,” gasped Miss Carrington.

  He stared at the floor and then put a hand to his brow. “Alas, I am not indifferent myself to Miss Tremayne. She might think I was jealous.”

  Three pinched faces looked back at him, three minds thinking that it was the outside of enough for Harriet Tremayne to have a handsome earl after her without having snared this extremely attractive man as well. But then three minds promptly refused to believe that they had anything other than good thoughts.

  “Do not worry,” fluted Miss Barncastle. “We will go to dear Harriet directly. She must be warned.”

  Sir Thomas took out a large handkerchief and covered his face as though overcome with emotion. “You are too good,” he said in a stifled voice. “Dangerfield is even betting them in the clubs that he can have Miss Tremayne.”

  When he took his leave after being pressed to “call at any time,” he felt he had done a good job. He only hoped he had spiked Dangerfield’s guns in time. It would be irritating in the extreme to learn that the man had already proposed.

  Harriet was feeling more comfortable. Charles had gone to get a special license. She had sent an express letter to Susan’s parents saying they must get ready to travel to London. She said that because of pressing family affairs, Mr. Charles Courtney wished to be married as soon as possible. After worrying for some time about what Charles’s parents would think of the rushed wedding, she decided that as Susan was the female catch of the Season, they would probably have no objections at all. That proved to be the case when a letter arrived a few moments later from Mrs. Courtney stating that she would be calling on Harriet the following day to discuss the guest list.

  So Harriet was just about to give herself up to the luxury of dreaming of the earl, when she learned that Miss Barncastle, Miss Teale, and Miss Carrington had called. She told the butler to send them in, although she found she really did not want to see them. But she felt guilty at having ignored them for so long.

  As soon as she saw their grim, disapproving faces, she knew she had made a mistake.

  She forced a smile on her face as three pairs of eyes took in the modishness of her gown and the glossiness of her curls.

  “We are come on a serious mission,” began Miss Barncastle. “You are encouraging the attentions of Lord Dangerfield.”

  Harriet’s eyes were like ice. “What I do is none of your concern.”

  “But it is,” said Miss Teale. Desire to humble Harriet made her inventive. “My brother, John, is bon ton, as you know, and au fait with what is going on in society. He said that Dangerfield was laying bets in the clubs that he could have you outside marriage.”

  Miss Barncastle and Miss Carrington looked at Miss Teale in admiration, realizing that if one of them had said they knew what was going on in the clubs of London, then Harriet would not have believed them.

  “We are so sorry for you, poor misguided thing,” cooed Miss Barncastle.

  Harriet looked at their sanctimonious faces, and fury, like bile, rose in her throat. She rang the bell. When the butler answered it, she said, “The ladies are leaving. Please escort them out.”

  “I realize you are upset,” said Miss Carrington, “but on calmer reflection you will thank us.”

  Harriet snapped. “Get out!” she shouted.

  When the door was closed behind them, she sat very still, too frightened to move, as if she had just fallen off a tall building. She felt stiff and sore with grief. At last she rose and went to the mirror. In it she saw the old Harriet, dowdy Harriet, spinster Harriet.

  How he must have laughed about her with his friends! Her normal good sense had deserted her. Having hitherto shunned the marriage market because she firmly believed she preferred to stay single and independent, she had never realized that she had escaped from life into the dull embraces of ladies of the salon in South Audley Street. She knew only that she had no reason to disbelieve them.

  Love can blind people to reality and make the most intelligent stupid. And so Lord Dangerfield, on being told for the second time by Harriet’s stone-faced butler that she was “not at home,” came to the furious conclusion that Harriet had been playing some game with him, leading him on only to snub him. She was such a frozen spinster, he thought savagely, that her niece and the amorous Mr. Courtney in bed together must have overset her mind. Harriet’s bitter thoughts had also worked against Sir Thomas. She could no longer believe that any man was interested in her, and so he had been refused admittance as well as the earl.

  A day before the arrival of Susan’s parents, Susan emerged from her dream of love to take in the fact that her aunt was miserable and tetchy. Lucy, the maid, had told her dismally that Miss Tremayne was no longer a credit to her talents as lady’s maid, and now wore only the simplest of toilettes and was refusing to see Lord Dangerfield every time he called.

  Susan also realized that Harriet was turning down many invitations. She had thought this was because of the flurry of wedding arrangements and pinnings for the wedding gown but, observing her aunt sharply, she noticed that Harriet was indeed looking wretched.

  After the dressmaker had been dismissed, Susan sat down on the sofa beside Harriet and to
ok her aunt’s hands in a firm grip. “You are looking so blue-deviled,” she said. “I thought it was because of all the wedding arrangements, but has it something to do with Dangerfield?”

  “That is my affair,” said Harriet, withdrawing her hands. “We had best discuss who is to be at the wedding rehearsal…”

  “No, I won’t until you tell me what ails you!”

  “If you must. I have made a fool of myself. I thought Lord Dangerfield’s intentions were honorable, but he was merely playing a game with me. I have it on good authority that he has been laying bets in the clubs that he can ‘have me,’ as he so cruelly put it.”

  “And who was this good authority?”

  “My old friends, Miss Carrington, Miss Barncastle, and Miss Teale.”

  “Those old cats! Good authority! Let me tell you, Aunt, I am now more wise to the ways of the world than you will ever be. Those three frumps are not invited anywhere. How could they possibly know what goes on in the gentlemen’s clubs of London? And Charles would have told me if such had been the case. Of course he would. How stupid you are! Did you not think to ask Dangerfield?”

  “He would have denied it. And Miss Teale’s brother does go about in society, and it was he who told her.”

  “I do not believe a word of it. Send a note by footman, John, to Dangerfield’s and get him here. All that you have to worry about is that he may never forgive you for being such an idiot!”

  Harriet covered her face with her hands.

  “I cannot bear to see him.”

  “Then I will see him.” Susan went to the writing desk and scribbled a note, rang the bell, handed it to John and told him to seek out Lord Dangerfield and bring him back with him immediately.

  “But what if it is true?” asked Harriet, white-faced. “What if he laughs at me?”

  “Then you will have something genuine to be miserable about instead of moping and mowing over what was nothing more than a fictitious and malicious piece of gossip from three old tabbies! And put another gown on. One of your new ones. You look the veriest frump.”

  Susan rang the bell again and summoned the maid, Lucy, who brightened on being ordered to make her mistress “like a fashion plate.”

  Harriet was torn between hope and misery. What if he did not come? What if he did come and jeered at her?

  When she had just finished being made ready, John put his head around the door to say that Lord Dangerfield was in the drawing room.

  Harriet rose and went slowly down the stairs. When she entered the drawing room, Susan, who had been sitting with the earl, rose to her feet and made a hasty exit, slamming the door behind her. Harriet made to open the door so as to observe the conventions, but his harsh voice stopped her. “What is this farrago of nonsense I have been hearing from Miss Colville?”

  Harriet hung her head. “My friends, Miss Barncastle, Miss Carrington, and Miss Teale called to inform me that your intentions toward me were dishonorable and that you had been laying bets in the clubs that you could take my virtue.”

  “And you believed them?”

  “Miss Teale said her brother, John, who does frequent the clubs, said so.”

  His gray eyes filled with contempt. “And so you readily accepted such scurrilous scandal without even asking me whether it was true or not?”

  “I thought it must be,” said Harriet pleadingly. “I am not young, my lord. I am a spinster beyond the years when most women can accept a proposal of marriage.” His eyes softened and he made a move toward her, but her next words stopped him in his tracks. “And… and you had consorted with such as Mrs. Palfrey—a murderess—or would have been if her plan had succeeded.”

  “I explained my liaison. I opened my heart to you. But it seems I am never to be forgiven. Well, madam, I do not forgive you for having listened to the spite and malice of your so-called friends!”

  He marched from the room.

  As he collected his gloves and stick from the butler, he asked for the address of Miss Barncastle, and having secured it, set out in the direction of South Audley Street.

  So awesome was his title and presence that Miss Barncastle’s maid ushered him in without warning her mistress first.

  Miss Barncastle, Miss Teale, and Miss Carrington sat looking up at him, frozen, teacups half raised to their lips.

  “So, you are the three witches,” he said savagely.

  “How dare you burst in here…?” began Miss Barncastle in a thin, reedy voice.

  “And how dare you interfere in my life with your scandalous spite?”

  “If you mean what we said to dear Harriet,” quavered Miss Teale. “We had it on good authority. My own brother…”

  “So you are Miss Teale, I presume. Well, Miss Teale, I take leave to inform you that I am going in search for your dear brother and I am going to call him out.”

  “You cannot do that. He is sickly.”

  “He won’t be sickly by the time I have finished with him. He’ll be dead.”

  Miss Teale fell to her knees and held her hands out to him. “Oh, my poor brother. It was not he. It was Sir Thomas Jeynes.”

  She took one look at the naked rage blazing in the earl’s eyes, gave a little hiccup, and fainted dead away.

  The other two knelt down beside her and held a hartshorn under her nose and slapped her wrists.

  “Tell me one thing,” said Lord Dangerfield. “If it was Sir Thomas who poured this silly poison into your ears, then why did you tell Miss Tremayne it was Miss Teale’s brother?”

  “Neither Miss Carrington nor I did that,” said Miss Barncastle. “It was all Miss Teale’s idea.”

  “An idea you were happy to go along with. Why?”

  Miss Carrington said, “Sir Thomas told us he was in love with Harriet himself and so she would merely think him jealous.”

  Without another word, the earl turned and strode from the house.

  He tracked Sir Thomas down that evening in White’s Club. He was playing cards with a party of dandies. Charles Courtney was there, watching the play, as was Lord Ampleforth.

  He drew off his gloves and walked up to the table.

  “Jeynes,” he said, “you are a cur and a bastard.”

  Sir Thomas turned pale, but said evenly, “Go away. You are drunk and you are interrupting the game.”

  “You are not only a cur and a bastard,” said the earl, his eyes glittering, “but a whoreson, an insect, a crawling louse.”

  Silence fell on the gaming room. Everyone sat frozen, some of them wearing silly hats and their coats turned inside out for luck.

  Sir Thomas rose to his feet. “You shall pay for those insults.”

  “By all means.” The earl struck him across the face with his gloves. “Name your seconds.”

  “I’ll second you, Jeynes,” said Lord Ampleforth gleefully. A Mr. Anderson, a weedy Scot on his first visit to London and delighted that the game had been interrupted, for he had been losing heavily, eagerly volunteered to second Sir Thomas as well.

  Charles Courtney said he would act for the earl, as did Lord Tasker.

  Lord Dangerfield turned and walked away. The time, place, and weapons would be arranged by the seconds.

  Charles found it very difficult to see Susan alone. He longed to tell her about the duel. Sir Thomas wanted swords rather than pistols, and Lord Dangerfield had agreed. The duel was to be fought on Friday morning in Hyde Park at six o’clock.

  But Harriet always seemed to be there, a sad Harriet, always watching and listening to make sure the couple was not about to slip off to some convenient bedroom.

  But on Wednesday evening, when he escorted both ladies to the opera, he saw his opportunity. Harriet, unlike most of society, became so engrossed in the music that she became deaf and blind to anything else.

  As soon as he noticed Harriet leaning forward in the box, her lips slightly parted, he pinched Susan’s arm and whispered, “Dangerfield is to fight a duel with Sir Thomas Jeynes.”

  Susan let out a little shriek
, and Harriet immediately turned her head and gave an admonitory “Shhh!”

  Both now waited until her attention was once more focused on the stage. “Why?” asked Susan in a soft voice.

  “It was Sir Thomas who told those cats, those friends of Miss Tremayne’s, that Lord Dangerfield’s intentions were highly dishonorable. He told me this the other day.”