by M C Beaton
Patricia put it on and surveyed herself in the mirror.
The glory of the gown lay in the intricate embroidery of the overdress. Margaret and Patricia had discovered a talented young Frenchman in Boston who was able to make paste jewelry which looked real. Patricia had bought many fake gems from him and had woven an intricate pattern ornamented with paste diamonds and rubies onto two broad silk bands of embroidery down the front of the white gauze overdress. The thickly encrusted embroidery depicted flowers and leaves in a Jacobean pattern. The underdress was a simple sheath of white silk.
Her silk slippers were ruby red and her headdress was a circlet of red silk flowers with a “ruby” in the center of each one.
She had let her hair grow long and the ruby red of her silk flowers, instead of detracting from the color of her hair, enhanced it.
On a girl of lesser beauty, the whole ensemble might have looked vulgar. On Patricia, it looked magnificent.
The following evening when Patricia entered the drawing room Lord Charles felt his breath catch in his throat.
She blazed with beauty, like her gems. Her eyes were large and dark and sparkling in the perfect oval of her face.
Then his face hardened. He had allowed Patricia a generous allowance during her stay in Boston, but that allowance surely did not stretch to the payment of jewel-encrusted Paris gowns.
“Who paid for all this magnificence?” he demanded.
“I did,” said Patricia. “Do you not like it?”
“On the allowance I sent you, you could not possibly afford so many jewels. You are wearing a king’s ransom!”
“I made the gown myself,” said Patricia. “The jewels are paste. Oh, I should have known you would spoil my evening. I thought you would have been proud of my skill.”
Her large eyes filled with tears.
“My dear Patricia,” said Lord Charles, horrified. “I did not know… the jewels look so real… please do not cry.”
But Patricia subsided gracefully on to a sofa and, shaking out a wisp of a handkerchief, applied it to her eyes.
“I must admit, I do consider Patricia’s gown entirely unsuitable for a debut,” said Miss Sinclair. “Simple white would be best. Patricia has some very pretty gowns…”
“She will do very well,” said Lord Charles. He reached down, took Patricia’s hand holding the handkerchief, and drew it gently away from her suspiciously dry eyes.
She quickly dropped her lids, her thick lashes fanning across her cheeks.
“Come now,” he said gently. “Miss Chalmers is waiting for us.”
Eyes still downcast, Patricia rose to her feet. He held out his arm, looking down at her sharply, suddenly sure she was laughing at him. But she raised her eyes to him and said simply, “Thank you, my lord,” and took his arm. He felt absurdly large and protective. He paused in the hall and took Patricia’s cloak from Miss Sinclair and put it about his ward’s shoulders.
Patricia was wearing a light flowery scent. He wondered what it was. He smiled down at her as he escorted her out to his carriage. Miss Sinclair wished bitterly Lord Charles would smile at her in that caressing way, and the first seed of envy of her beautiful charge was planted in Miss Sinclair’s bosom.
She was not to be alone in her envy. Mrs. Chalmers and her daughter did not see the full glory that was Patricia until they arrived at the ball, since Patricia had been shrouded in her cloak. It was only when they were removing their wraps in the anteroom at the Earl and Countess of Strathairn’s London home that the full glittering effect of Patricia’s ensemble burst before their eyes.
Miss Chalmers put a restraining hand on Patricia’s arm as she was about to leave the anteroom. “My dear Miss Patterson,” she said, “I can see you are not quite au fait with our London ways. Modest attire is deemed suitable for any young lady making her come-out. Your gown will draw too much attention to you.”
“It will?” said Patricia sweetly. “Oh, good!” And with that she walked past Miss Chalmers and out into the hall where Lord Charles was waiting for them.
Mary Chalmers rounded on Miss Sinclair. “I would have thought you, as a woman of sense, would have advised your charge better,” she said.
“I tried to say something,” said Miss Sinclair, “but Lord Charles did not pay any attention. I am surprised. When we were in Boston, Patricia was a model of propriety.”
“I shall speak to you further on this matter,” said Miss Chalmers. “The gentlemen do not notice such nuances of fashion. But she will disgrace poor Charles!”
They, too, went forward to join Lord Charles.
Miss Chalmers was wearing dove gray silk edged with purple ribbon. Her gown had a modest neckline and long, tight sleeves.
Lord Charles found himself wondering with a certain amount of irritation whether his beloved meant to get married in half mourning. Again, he blamed Mrs. Chalmers.
But Mary’s fondness for mourning had little to do with her mother. Mrs. Chalmers was beginning to get worried. Her poor moth of a Mary was completely outshone by the dazzling butterfly that was Patricia Patterson.
She had begged Mary to encourage a proposal from Lord Charles a long time earlier, saying that if she did not snap him up, someone else would. But Mary had a solid core of vanity and was very sure of Lord Charles. It suited her very well to be courted. She enjoyed her single state and did not wish to hurry into marriage. She had been courted before, many times, because she was a wealthy heiress, but had always considered that her attraction lay in her well-bred and ladylike appearance. The fact that girls much prettier than herself were still unwed, she put down to their vulgar, pushing ways, not noticing that the unwed girls she so pitied had very little in the way of a dowry.
Love and beauty did not play much part in the Marriage Mart. Marriage was a way of increasing one’s land and fortune. But Mary Chalmers, despite the fact that she prided herself on being knowledgeable about the ways of the ton, refused to grasp these simple facts, and had come to think herself irresistible.
She had never needed to feel possessive about Lord Charles before this evening. He had dutifully danced with other ladies, but had always returned to her side with a sigh of relief.
But tonight his pride in his beautiful ward was there for all to see.
Patricia was mobbed. The gentlemen all swore she was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen, and the ladies set out to woo Miss Sinclair to try to discover the name of Patricia’s dressmaker.
Loyalty to Lord Charles rather than loyalty to Patricia kept Miss Sinclair from telling anyone that Patricia had made her gown herself.
Lord Charles danced twice with Patricia, which was to be expected. But at the end of the evening when he stood up with her for a third time, eyebrows started to raise. Lord Charles knew he was causing gossip, but for once he did not care. Patricia was his ward. It was his duty to look after her. She flirted with him and teased him and he felt light-hearted and amused and much younger than he had felt since his mother had died and saddled him with the worries of bringing six sisters up and “out.” His older brother, the heir, had been no help, being taken up with the cares of the estate.
When they were promenading after their third dance, he looked down at her, his green eyes glinting, and said, “Now, look what you have made me do. Three dances. I shall never hear the end of it.”
“Pooh! You are my stuffy old guardian,” laughed Patricia. “And you are happily engaged to a sterling lady. In fact, you are the most respectable person at this ball.”
His thin brows snapped together in annoyance, and she added lightly, “But you are also the handsomest man in the room.”
His face lightened. “You are a terrible flirt, Patricia. What of Mr. Brummell over there?”
“Well, he is very clean. He is the most polished man I have ever seen. His face glows like a sunrise.”
Lord Charles laughed appreciatively. The famous Beau Brummell had a habit of scrubbing his face with a flesh-brush until he looked “very much like
a man in the scarlet fever.” The result was actually a salmon-colored glow. He was not content with merely shaving, but went over his face with eyebrow tweezers afterward to make absolutely sure that no stray whisker marred his face. His morning toilet took as long as five hours: two hours bathing in water, milk, and eau de cologne, a further hour inching himself into skin-tight buckskin breeches, another hour with his hairdresser, and a final hour discarding as many as a dozen cravats before he was satisfied with the result.
“At least we must be grateful to the Beau for having introduced clean linen and plenty of washing to the ton,” said Lord Charles. “Many of them are still in need of it. Now, you smell exactly like a bouquet of freshly-picked garden flowers. What is the name of your scent?”
“I haven’t given it one yet,” said Patricia. “I made it myself in Boston and brought some bottles back with me.”
“There is no end to your talents.”
“Perhaps,” said Patricia, flirting with her fan. “Perhaps I have some hidden talents, not yet tried.”
“Such as?”
“Making love.”
“Fie for shame, Patricia Patterson! That is the remark of a member of the demimonde.”
“You interest me. Do ladies never make love?”
“Never. They are made love to.”
“How boring,” said Patricia lightly. “I must search around for a gentleman who does not hold such stuffy ideas. All my heroes cannot be in books.”
“You will find they are, and better where they are. Or do you dream of some Lochinvar who will ride out of the West to sweep you away?”
“Of course.”
“Then you will never make a suitable marriage,” he said, suddenly serious. “I had hoped you had grown out of such fantasies. Only look where such nonsense led you when you were sixteen.”
“You are cruel to remind me of that. I wonder where the dear captain is now?”
“You are incorrigible.”
“No, simply young and happy and determined not to die an old maid. Oh, do look at Miss Chalmers. You have neglected her sorely.”
“You are right. And here is your next partner.” He bowed and left her and went quickly to join Mary.
“I have had little opportunity to speak to you this evening,” she said when he sat down beside her. “I am very shocked at Miss Patterson’s outlandish gown.”
“It is unconventional,” he agreed. “But, by George, she knows how to wear it, and what is more, get away with wearing it.”
Mary smoothed down the silk of her gown. “Dazzling, I agree, but then it will attract the wrong sort of man. Any man who admires that showy style is not au fond a gentleman.”
He was irritated by her remarks, but, nonetheless, had come to rely on her wisdom.
On their return to Cavendish Square in the early hours of the morning and when they were drinking tea in the drawing room, Lord Charles pointed out to Patricia that her dress had been a trifle outrageous and was bound to attract the wrong sort of gentleman.
“What an old-maidish thing to say,” laughed Patricia. “Never mind. I planned to cut a dash on my first evening. Everything I wear from now on would not even raise an eyebrow in Boston.”
She rose gracefully to her feet.
“Hey ho, how weary I am of lectures. What a bear you are, my wicked guardian. I shall leave you to your evil thoughts.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek, and then turned and tripped from the room. Miss Sinclair rushed after her, and soon Lord Charles could hear the governess’s voice, scolding Patricia for being so forward all the way up the stairs.
Lord Charles’s hand strayed to his cheek where she had kissed him. Perhaps he would take her driving in the afternoon and introduce her to some suitable gentlemen.
But surely he had said something about calling on Mary. He gave a little shrug. It was his duty to concentrate on Patricia. After all, he was going to marry Mary.
It was sunny in the Park, the dust from the wheels of the many carriages rising in the air, making the multi-colored scene look like a tapestry.
Patricia sat up beside Lord Charles in his high-perch phaeton, wearing a dashing straw hat, the underside of the brim ornamented with a whole garden of flowers. Her gown and pelisse were of palest yellow muslin and she carried a lace and gauze yellow parasol. She was highly amused and not at all impressed by the various dandies she saw on the strut. “They look like wasps,” she said, “with their puffed-out chests and nipped-in waists and striped waistcoats. That gentleman over there has such high heels on his boots he can hardly walk!”
“You must not laugh so openly at them,” warned Lord Charles. “They can be malicious.”
She looked at him curiously, at the elegance of his clothes and the strength of his legs in their leather breeches, and asked, “And what are you, my lord? Dandy or Corinthian, Choice Spirit, Fop, Pink of the Ton, or Buck?”
“I am myself,” he said. “I have never tried to set the fashion.”
“And yet you do!” exclaimed Patricia. “Several gentlemen I danced with last night were more interested in the name of your tailor than they were in any of my charms. I was quite cast down, I assure you.”
“A little casting down might be good for you, Patricia. You are too ebullient. One is not supposed to appear to enjoy the Season.”
“I should behave like this?” Patricia leaned back in the carriage and adopted an air of petulant world-weariness.
“Something like that,” he laughed. “Are you enjoying your drive?”
“I always enjoy being with you,” she said in a casual voice, and he looked at her sharply.
“I am flattered,” he said. “I thought you considered me to be as old as Methuselah.”
“That was when I was sixteen. Now I am older and more mature, I think you are quite the right age.”
“For what?”
“I cannot possibly answer that. You are affianced to Miss Chalmers.”
“That cannot possibly prevent you from answering my question.”
“You are being deliberately obtuse,” said Patricia. “You know exactly what I mean.”
He felt a dangerous, heady excitement as if he were slightly drunk. To change the subject, he said, “Is there anything else in London you would like to see?”
“All the unfashionable places,” said Patricia. “I would like to see the wild beasts at the Tower.”
“Very well.” He neatly turned his carriage about and started to drive smartly toward the gates of Hyde Park.
“Never say you are taking me there,” said Patricia, much amused. “The great Lord Charles behaving like the veriest yokel. People will say I have bewitched you.”
“How could they say such nonsense when all the world already knows I have been bewitched by Miss Chalmers?”
Patricia tilted her parasol to hide her face. She did not believe for one moment he was in love with Mary Chalmers. One had only to see them together. Patricia’s conscience gave her a sharp stab. It was really rather a dirty trick to try to woo Miss Chalmer’s fiancé away from her—unlikeable and prissy though she might be. But I am only borrowing him, she told herself fiercely. He is not in love with Mary, and so, after I have rejected him, he will return to her arms with a sigh of relief and their marriage will probably be happier than it would otherwise be.
“We are to go to Vauxhall tonight,” said Lord Charles, breaking into her thoughts. “Did Mr. Johnson tell you?”
“Yes,” said Patricia. “Or rather he told Miss Sinclair, who told me.”
“You and Miss Sinclair must have become very close in Boston.”
“Not exactly,” said Patricia cautiously. “I was very friendly with Margaret Munroe and Miss Sinclair spent most of her time instructing the young Munroe boys. She likes to teach and is a good instructress. It is a pity, however…”
Patricia bit her lip and fell silent. She had been about to add, “It is a pity she is so silly.” But that would have been unfair. Patrici
a thought a great part of Miss Sinclair’s silliness was caused by the governess’s forming a tendre for Lord Charles. She had suspected it, but had not been sure until she had begun to notice Miss Sinclair’s breathless excitement as they approached London and how often she studied her face in the glass.
“What is a pity?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Patricia vaguely. “Who is going to be at Vauxhall?”
“There’s you and Miss Sinclair, myself and Miss Chalmers—”
“And, of course, Mrs. Chalmers,” said Patricia wickedly.
“And, of course, Mrs. Chalmers,” he said equably. “Then there are the Lucases, and a friend of mine from my army days, Colonel Brian Sommers. Very handsome.”
“Perhaps I shall fall in love with the colonel.”
“You could do worse. He is an amiable man and a bachelor.”
He then began to tell her about Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens on the south side of the river, describing the music and fireworks, and Patricia scowled under the shade of her parasol, feeling he was once more talking to her as if she were a child.
The Tower of London loomed up against the clear blue sky.
“Where are the animals kept?” asked Patricia.
“In the Lion Barbican. I do not know if they make an impressive spectacle. I have not visited the Tower since I was a boy.”
“Did your mother take you?”
“No, of course not. My tutor took me along once on my birthday.”
“Were you always in the care of servants when you were small?”
“I was, as is everybody.”
“Not everybody. You mean only the small world of the ton. I have observed the lower orders do not leave their children to the care of others.”
“You do not approve of servants bringing up children? Yet you seem to have been much indulged by your nanny and Miss Simpkin.”
“I was lucky. Others are not, I believe, so fortunate. Besides, it strikes me as unnatural. If I had a baby, I would wish to caress it and sing it lullabies.”
“In my case,” he said, “my mother was ailing for much of my childhood. When she died, my father and elder brother did not know what to do about launching my sisters into the world. Either I would have to undertake the task, or they would have been left with the servants at home. I had no desire to see them suffer. The servants were… unkind. I took the house in town, engaged an elderly aunt as chaperone, and did my best for them. An unusual arrangement, I think.”