The Chocolate Debutante

by M C Beaton

  “When is this duel?”

  “At six o’clock in Hyde Park on Friday morning.”

  “Does Harriet know?”

  “I should not think so.”

  “Can you stop it?”

  Charles looked horrified. “Of course not.”

  “Is Dangerfield a good swordsman?”

  “The best in England.”

  “And does Sir Thomas know that?”

  “I do not think so. The fool prides himself on his swordsmanship and thinks he lost to Dangerfield the last time because it was pistols. It is all very exciting. I have never attended a duel.”

  Susan sat and worried. She had become very fond of Harriet indeed. There was still hope in her mind that the earl and Harriet might forget their silly differences and make a match of it. Her mother and family, who had been delayed in coming to London because her mother had contracted a mysterious fever, were now on their way. After they arrived, Harriet would have no time for socializing, as they’d have to see to the last-minute arrangements for the wedding. And what use would a dead earl be to Harriet? For perhaps, despite the earl’s reputation, Sir Thomas might prove the finer swordsman.

  At the opera ball later that evening, Susan sent a smile flashing across the room in the direction of Sir Thomas. That gentleman promptly secured a dance with her. It was the waltz.

  “You are so stupid to fight this duel,” said Susan.

  He stumbled, apologized, and said, “You should not know of it.”

  “But I do and I am vastly concerned for you.”

  “I am well able to give a good account of myself,” he said proudly. “I am a fine swordsman.”

  “But Dangerfield is the best in England.”

  “I have not heard that!”

  “Perhaps because you did not ask. Dangerfield is not the type of man to brag.”

  He fell silent, became abstracted, trod on her toes several times, and Susan hoped she had given him something to worry about. But to make sure, just before the end of the dance she said, “He did not kill you last time, but he means to make a good job of it this time.”

  Sir Thomas left the ball immediately after his dance with Susan.

  He fretted all night about this news of the earl’s prowess. In the morning he went to see London’s most famous fencing master, Monsieur Duval.

  “I am to fight a duel, Monsieur,” he said, “and am desirous to perfect my arm.”

  “Who is it you fight with?” asked the small Frenchman.

  “Lord Dangerfield.”

  “Alas, Sir Thomas, Lord Dangerfield must be the only man who is better than I.”

  Sir Thomas’s heart went right down to his highly polished boots. But he said lightly, “Let us fight. Perhaps it will prove that I am better than you as well.”

  He fenced well. But each time he was easily defeated.

  “If I were you,” said Monsieur Duval by way of farewell, “I would draw up my will and make my peace with my Maker.”

  It was the arrival of her parents that made Susan’s mind up for her. Her mother promptly took to her bed and had Harriet running here and there to arrange comforts and physicians for her. The noisy children were here, there, and everywhere. Harriet, Susan decided, would be lost in domesticity, and by the time the wedding was over, the earl might be dead or have killed Sir Thomas and have to flee the country.

  So on Thursday night she told a horrified Harriet about the duel.

  “I will tell the authorities,” wailed Harriet. “This duel must be stopped.”

  “You cannot do that,” said Susan. “No gentleman would forgive you.”

  “What if he is killed?”

  “If he is not killed and yet kills Jeynes, he will need to flee the country,” said Susan lugubriously, “and you will never see him again.”

  Harriet put her hands up to her face in a helpless gesture. “What am I to do?”

  Several Colville children erupted into the room and chased one another around and over the furniture, pursued by their harassed governess. Harriet waited until the children had been shooed out. “In order to see him, I would need to go to his home. If I send for him, he may not come.”

  “Then I will order the carriage for you,” said Susan brightly.

  “Susan! You know a lady should never visit a gentleman at his home!”

  “The circumstances are such that if I were you, I would defy convention. Very well then, go heavily veiled and take a hack.”

  “What am I to do?” wailed Harriet again.

  “I just told you, Aunt. It would be very lily-livered of you to let the poor man go off into death or banishment without seeing him. The duel is over you.”

  “Over me!”

  “Of course. It was Jeynes who told your tiresome friends all those lies about Dangerfield, not dreary Miss Teale’s poxy brother. What else was Dangerfield to do? The insult to his reputation was too great.”

  Harriet made up her mind. “I must go.”

  “Of course you must,” said Susan, “and I will send Lucy to my mother while you dress and find a veil and Mama will keep her so occupied, she will not see you leaving.”

  The earl was sitting in his library, reading. He planned to retire early and so be fresh for the duel in the morning. Some of his fury had subsided. He had no intention of being forced to flee the country by such as Sir Thomas. Much as he would like to kill him, he decided it would be better to try to wound him severely. Sir Thomas, by some miracle, might, however, prove the better swordsman. His thoughts turned again to Harriet. He was sorry he had left her in such anger and such contempt. He rose and went to a writing desk in the corner. The least he could do was write to her.

  His butler entered and said, “There is a lady to see you, my lord.”

  The earl looked at him coldly. “You should know better.”

  The butler silently handed him a card turned down at one corner to show that the visitor had called in person rather than sending a servant. The name Miss Harriet Tremayne seemed to leap up at him.

  “Show Miss Tremayne in,” he said quietly. “Do any of the other servants know she is here?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Then make sure that they never do. When she is leaving, I will ring for you to make sure there are no servants in the hall.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  Harriet, heavily veiled, was ushered into the library.

  She threw back her veil and said pleadingly, “I learned of the duel. I had to see you.”

  He came forward and took her hands in his. “Do not fear for me. All will be well.”

  “But if you are killed… !”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Then if you kill him, you will need to flee the country.”

  “Much as I would like to, I will endeavor not to.” He gave her hands a little tug. “Harriet, Harriet, what is to become of us? Why did you suddenly refuse to see me?”

  “You kissed me and yet you did not declare your intentions.”

  “What a monster you think me, you goose. Of course I want to marry you. I had it all planned so well, you see. We would go to the Surrey fields, and there, far from the fashionable world, and in the sunshine, I would get down on one knee and ask you to be mine. And then the dreadful Susan interfered. I thought your spinster senses had been so shocked by the sight of such naked passion that you had decided to shrink from me.”

  “No, it was not that, although I was monstrous shocked. Perhaps I have much to learn.”

  He took her face in his hands. “I will teach you.”

  Harriet, since that sight of the abandoned Susan, had wondered how any lady could lose her dignity enough to let that be done to her. But as his kisses became more searching and the feelings in her body more wanton, it did not seem at all shocking when he removed her bonnet. And then, when his kisses punished her mouth, she did not seem to remember anything about being the independent Miss Tremayne as her body sagged weakly against his. Harriet entered into a red world o
f passion where nothing mattered, nothing at all.

  They kissed and talked and kissed and talked through the night, each going over the first time they had met, the first time they realized they were really in love. And then the earl said softly, “I will call my carriage to take you home.”

  Harriet sat down in an armchair by the fire. She decided she was not going home. She would stay where she was and try to persuade him to forget about the duel. The fire was warm and she was exhausted with emotion.

  The earl returned. Harriet was fast asleep. He hesitated. It was nearly morning, the conventions had already been broken, and they were soon to be married. He fetched a rug and covered her with it and then went upstairs to make himself ready for the duel.

  Chapter Nine

  Harriet awoke sometime later. She stared around the unfamiliar room for a few bewildered moments, and then memory came flooding back.

  She remembered him saying he would order a carriage to take her home and then she must have fallen asleep. She looked at the clock. Six! The duel would just be starting.

  She jumped up and straightened her clothes, picked up her discarded bonnet and tied it on firmly, blushing as she wondered what the butler would think about her having spent the night in his master’s house.

  But she managed to escape from the earl’s house without any of the servants hearing her. There was no hack in sight, so she set off at a run for Hyde Park. How large and empty it seemed! Where could the duel be taking place? She remembered there was a flat area well beyond the Ring and also remembered having been told that duels were often fought there.

  A thin mist was curling around the boles of the trees. Birds were singing and the world seemed young and fresh, but she was assailed by a feeling of doom, that he was dead and that she was too late.

  She ran on, holding up her skirts. Her bonnet tumbled off and rolled on the grass, but she did not go back for it. The heavy dew was soaking through her thin slippers. And then at the edge of the field she stopped and let out a great wail of anguish. For Lord Dangerfield was lying in the grass, quite still, his face turned up to the sky. There was no one else in sight, no seconds, no carriages, no Sir Thomas, no surgeon.

  She hurtled across the grass, tears streaming down her face, and threw herself down on his chest. Such was her distress, it was a moment before she realized that a pair of strong arms were tightly around her and a voice was saying in her ear, “Steady, Harriet. I’m alive.”

  Harriet sat up and looked at him in amazement. “You are alive? You are unhurt?”

  He sat up as well, gathered her back into his arms, and leaned his chin on top of her curls. “Sir Thomas did not turn up. He has probably run away abroad.”

  “But why… why were you lying here?”

  “I was so happy I did not have to fight that duel, that I had you, that I was alive, that I sent them all away and lay down and looked at the sky and thought sweet thoughts.”

  “Your coat is soaking wet!”

  “How housewifely you sound, my love. How are you after last night? You are not going to turn against me now that I am safe and well and call me a wicked man for having kissed you all night long?”

  “I… I cannot believe I behaved with such abandon. Ladies should not… do not…”

  “I will show you how it happens.” He tilted her face up. “I kiss you, like this.”

  After a moment, Harriet groaned against his mouth and he rose and pulled her to her feet and said in between kisses, “We are to be… married… as soon as I… get a special… license. Let us go home, my home. We are both very tired and should go immediately to bed.”

  And the hitherto staid Miss Tremayne, who had thought passion was not for ladies, said meekly, “Yes, dear.”

  Sir Thomas Jeynes had not gone abroad. He had dismissed his servants and was sitting behind closed doors and closed shutters in his town house with nothing other to do than drink and plot revenge. He planned to abduct Harriet, ruin her, and then leave the country.

  To that end, he finally ventured out into the street, heavily disguised, to try to seize the opportunity. He saw Harriet, the day after the duel was to have taken place, finally emerge with Susan and get into an open carriage. On horseback, he followed behind. Their carriage finally came to a stop outside Exeter ’Change. Susan and Harriet went inside. Sir Thomas tethered his horse to a post, felt in his pocket for the pistol he had primed before he left home, and followed them inside.

  Exeter ’Change was Susan’s delight. It was not fashionable but full of all sorts of wonderful bargains, and if looking at the bargains became too tedious, one could always visit the menagerie of wild animals on the upper floor. The reason for the outing was that Harriet was eager to get away from her sister and her noisy children.

  Jack Barnaby was strolling about the stalls when he saw Susan and recognized the “flash moll” he had found in the Rookeries. He stood and watched her, again taken aback by her beauty.

  Susan was admiring some cherry silk ribbons and Harriet was telling her severely that she did not need any more ribbons, when Harriet suddenly felt a gun pushed into her side and a voice saying, “Do not cry out, Miss Tremayne, or it will be the worse for you. Walk to the door. You, too, Miss Colville.” Harriet twisted around and looked up into the face of Sir Thomas Jeynes.

  “You!” she said in accents of loathing.

  “Pooh!” said Susan. “We are not going anywhere. You can’t shoot us in the middle of Exeter ’Change.”

  “He might, Susan,” cried Harriet, ashen-faced.

  Jack stared at them both, wondering what had alarmed them. He saw Sir Thomas, saw the way he was pressed close to Harriet, saw Harriet’s white face and, at the same time, Susan looked across the stalls and saw him and mouthed, “Help!”

  Jack took his cudgel in a stronger grip just as Sir Thomas was saying, “I will shoot you dead, Miss Tremayne, right here. As I have to flee the country anyway, I will be gone before anyone can find me and I will shoot your niece as well.”

  All in that moment, Harriet felt she had never before had so much to live for. She sent up a prayer for courage and said, “Then shoot us both in cold blood. You will never escape and you will hang at Newgate.”

  And then, to his horror, Sir Thomas felt a hard object jammed into his back and a nasty voice said, “Stand away from the ladies, cully, or I’ll shoot a hole in yer rotten back.”

  “Jack!” cried Susan, giving him a sunny smile.

  Sir Thomas turned around and looked into the evil features of Jack Barnaby. “It was a joke with the ladies, good sir. Only a joke.”

  A curious crowd was beginning to gather. “We don’t want no police,” said Jack.

  Sir Thomas, seeing Jack was armed with only a cudgel, suddenly darted under the stall with the ribbons, emerged on the other side, and raced for the entrance. “Let him go!” cried Susan.

  “Why?” demanded Jack, restrained by her hand on his arm.

  “All the fuss and scandal. He will never dare come near us again,” said Susan.

  “We had best tell Lord Dangerfield,” said Harriet. “He will know what to do.”

  She turned to Jack. “You must come with us. This is the second time you have saved Susan’s life. You must be rewarded.”

  “I want a reward,” said Jack slowly. “T’ain’t much.”

  “What is that, sir?”

  “A kiss from Miss Susan here.”

  “Really…” Harriet began to protest.

  But Susan smiled, stood on tiptoe, and kissed Jack Barnaby full on the mouth. Jack remained for a few moments, stunned, while Harriet led Susan away. Then he shambled out and stood dazed on the pavement while Harriet and Susan climbed into the open carriage. Susan smiled at him wickedly and dropped her lacy handkerchief. He snatched it up and held it at his breast.

  They had gone a little distance when Susan said, “Give me your handkerchief, Aunt.” Harriet gave her a fine cambric one and Susan began to scrub her mouth. “Faugh! He smelled quite vil
e. But we were so lucky he was there.”

  “Dangerfield will know what we must do,” said Harriet.

  “What is Dangerfield’s first name?” asked Susan.

  Harriet blushed. “I do not know.”

  “And you were gone all night! Fie for shame, Aunt. Were you ever correct even in his bed? Did you say ‘Thank you, my lord. That was very nice.’”