The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  Henrietta had engaged suites of rooms for herself and Miss Scattersworth at the principal hotel, which, from the sound of frenzied banging, was now rapidly in the process of turning itself into a palace.

  Miss Scattersworth watched the tranquil face of her friend, wondering if she ever thought of Lord Reckford or of her brother. The sound of another carriage arriving broke into her thoughts and she idly crossed to the window which overlooked the courtyard. Henrietta heard Miss Scattersworth’s indrawn hiss of breath and looked up startled. “What is it, Mattie?”

  Miss Scattersworth hurriedly let the curtain fall. “Oh, nothing!” she remarked gaily with an attempt at lightness which even to her own ears rang terribly false. Two rapid steps took Henrietta to the window. She jerked back the curtain and stared down.

  Lady Belding, complete with nose and a plethora of bandboxes and trunks was descending from her travelling coach. Her daughter, Alice, was just discernible behind a heavy veil.

  “I am not a child,” said Henrietta slowly. “There is nothing the Beldings could say or do which would matter to me now. After all it was Lady Belding herself who recommended Luben. She was most insistent and kept informing me in sinister accents that all the most interesting people come here. But now it seems that she actually does favor the place herself. I must confess I thought at one time that she might have had a nasty motive and I would not have come here had I been able to think of anywhere else outside of the country to go.”

  “Then I shall go and investigate,” said Miss Scattersworth brightening. The prospect of seeing a familiar face, however detested, was a welcome diversion.

  After she had gone, Henrietta picked up her book. After some minutes, she realized she had been reading the same sentence over and over again and put down her book, staring into space, experiencing a dawning feeling of panic.

  What if Alice Belding were engaged to Lord Reckford? Or, for that matter, married to him.

  Henrietta leaned her head against the cool glass as memories came flooding back. It had been easy to shut Lord Reckford out of her mind after she had endured the first hurt of his seeming neglect. When she was recovered, she had even timidly written a note to say that she was travelling to Luben and would not be back in England for some time. He did not reply. Perhaps, Henrietta had thought bitterly, his lordship is high in the instep after all and does not wish to associate with a family containing a murderer. She had steadfastly schooled herself to forget him since then. Why, she had even toyed with the idea of accepting Mr. Montmorency Evans proposal of marriage.

  Mr. Evans had been a visitor in the little spa for almost as long as Henrietta. He was suffering, unromantically, from a complaint of the bowels and longed to be cured and return to England to take up his studies. For Mr. Evans, although hailing from a wealthy Welsh landowning family, was an amateur engineer and pined for the delights of London—different from the delights Miss Scattersworth sighed for. He longed to see Trevethick’s locomotive, the Catch-Me-Who-Can, with all the passion that Miss Scattersworth longed for another evening at Ranaleigh with her court of adoring young men.

  Henrietta was not allowed to brood much longer for Miss Scattersworth erupted into the room, the ribbons of her cap flying and her eyes shining with excitement The spinster forgot all about her determination not to mention Beau Reckford’s name again, plumped herself down in an armchair, and began.

  “Well, I had such an exciting gossip with Lady Belding’s maid….”

  “Gossiping with the servants. Really, Mattie!”

  “…and she told me all about the scandal, my dear…” said Miss Scattersworth, ignoring her friend’s interruption… ‬the scandal involving Lord Reckford and Alice.

  “It happened like this. Lady Belding was becoming desperate. The Beau showed no signs of fixing his attention with Alice. So she engineered another invitation to Lord Reckford’s home in the country. There were a lot of guests invited. One evening, Lord Reckford sat up later than usual with the men, the ladies having retired to bed. It was about two of the morning, he was headed for his bedchamber, when he saw Alice standing outside his door. He drew into an alcove and watched. She hesitated, looking up and down the corner, then she opened the bedroom door and slipped in, after signalling to someone out of sight.

  “Lord Reckford immediately grasped that there was a plot afoot to compromise him so he dashed off and rounded up several of his friends to bear witness that he had not yet gone to bed. I think there were about four of them.

  “They hid at a turn in the corridor and waited for results. Lady Belding came along, shouting at the top of her voice, ‘I know you have my daughter in there, you lecher,’ and other things of that nature. Alice came to the door and said, ‘Go away, you silly fool. He is not yet come to bed and I shall never get him to wed me if you do not play your cards aright,’ and then both of them turned round and found Lord Reckford and his friends listening to every word.

  “Well, there was nothing else to do but for Alice to rusticate. Although Lord Reckford swore them all to secrecy, Mary Britton—and you know what a gossip she is—was one of the guests and heard every word. It went round every saloon in London so it was not enough for Alice simply to retire to the country. She had to retire out of the country. So here they are!”

  Miss Scattersworth finished breathless and excited and then looked at her friend in dismay. “Oh, I am so sorry, Henrietta. Lord Reckford’s name was not to be mentioned to you again and I forgot.”

  “What is all this rubbish?” said Henrietta faintly.

  “Well, it was the doctor. He told Lord Reckford, the first day you were ill, that it would be best if he never saw you again… because of the damaging effect on your poor brain.”

  Henrietta sat down, suddenly feeling very weak at the knees. “Mattie, I was in danger of going out of my mind because I thought he had forgot me!”

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed Miss Scattersworth. “And we have endured this stuffy town for so long, listening to complaints of agues, humors and disorders. Oh, Henrietta! How could you.”

  As ever, Miss Scattersworth was able to bring Henrietta’s strong sense of the ridiculous to the fore and she began to laugh. “Mattie, you will be the death of me. I was bored to tears myself but I did not mind because I had decided that you were enjoying this tranquil existence very well.”

  “Then let us go!” said Miss Scattersworth, getting to her feet and pulling clothes out of the closets and drawers, flying round the room like a whirlwind.

  “Wait, Mattie. Wait! You have forgot Mr. Evans.”

  “A pox on Mr. Evans!” cried Miss Scattersworth, cheerfully throwing a lifetime of ladylike speech to the winds. “That man and his steam engines and hobbyhorses and sewers. Pah!”

  “Just another day,” pleaded Henrietta. “Poor Mr. Evans. I feel I must explain things to him gently. He will miss me, you know.”

  “Set him to re-designing the drainage system of this hotel, and he’ll soon forget all about you. Ah, well, one more day, it shall be. Now let us go down for tea, my dear. I am sure Lady Belding will not upset you any more.”

  “No, indeed!” said Henrietta. “I’m quite looking forward to the meeting.”

  The public rooms and terraces of the hotel were crowded with the new fashionable arrivals. The older residents glared at the silks and satins and elaborate dress of the aristocratic newcomers with disdain.

  Mr. Evans was already seated at their customary table on the terrace and for all her new found hope and bravery, Henrietta noticed, with a slight sinking sensation in her stomach, that Lady Belding was at the next table, her high-bridged nose pink with disapproval as she recognized Henrietta.

  Alice stared at her plate but Lady Belding said, “Good day to you Miss Sandford,” and then stared straight ahead.

  Miss Scattersworth greeted Mr. Evans with a cheerful cry of, “Good afternoon, Mr. Evans. Miss Sandford and I consider that the drainage system of this hotel is abominable and we feel you are the man to reorganize
it.”

  Mr. Evans eyes began to burn with an almost religious fervour. He was a small, dark thick-set man in his thirties, plain and correct in his dress, and with the wide-eyed stare of a curious and intelligent child. Henrietta suddenly found that two separate sets of remarks were being addressed to her as Lady Belding turned her head and Mr. Evans rhapsodised on drainage.

  “Have you heard from your dear brother! A much maligned man, I fear.” (Lady Belding)

  “…put the water closets under the stairs or somewhere like that—without a window or a ventilated pipe. Why, we could die in our beds from the foul gases….” (Mr. Evans)

  And so the conversations went on, neither Lady Belding nor Mr. Evans paying any attention to each other.

  “Lord Reckford was too high-handed in the matter of Mr. Sandford. No one could deny you were acting strange…”

  “…a stink trap is what is needed. Gaillet’s trap is not self-cleansing but Cumming’s trap is infinitely superior. The valve in the closet takes the form of a slide although Bramah gets the credit…”

  “…and of course, Reckford is not to be relied on. Nothing but a Dandy. Why, the other day….”

  “…envisage a Golden Age when the drains themselves are ventilated….”

  “…looking considerably older, Henrietta, although I am glad to see you are wearing caps…”

  “…unless you live in the Strand, no sewers in London at all,” finished Mr. Evans triumphantly.

  Lady Belding suddenly took note of Mr. Evans. “The water closet is not a subject to be discussed in the presence of ladies.”

  “And never will be,” said Mr. Evans, “so long as pride goes hand in hand with stupidity.”

  Lady Belding rose to her feet and uttered the classic reply of those who have been left almost speechless. “I have never been so insulted in all my life.”

  “Then it’s time you were,” said the unrepentant Mr. Evans seriously.

  Lady Belding made a peculiar sound like “Euff!” and marshalling her daughter and her belongings swept from the room.

  Henrietta laughed till the tears ran down her face. Mr. Evans looked at her in some surprise. “I was not being funny, my dear Miss Sandford. It behoves every Englishman and woman to take his or her drains seriously.”

  “Indeed,” choked Henrietta.

  Mr. Evans turned to Miss Scattersworth who was hiding her head behind her fan. “I had not realized before, Miss Scattersworth, what a highly intelligent woman you are. I shall see the hotel manager directly. Pray excuse me, Miss Sandford.”

  He bustled off and Miss Scattersworth slowly lowered her fan to reveal her face crimson with suppressed laughter. “I told you Henrietta,” she giggled. “Drains will outweigh your attractions every time.”

  Henrietta composed herself. “I shall write to Lord Reckford, then we shall have a whole big bottle of the hotel’s best champagne for dinner and then, tomorrow morning, we shall go home. Oh, Mattie! I had forgotten so many things. Have you been pining for Mr. Symes?”

  “Frequently,” said Miss Scattersworth cheerfully. “But we are leaving this dreadful, dreadful place so nothing matters. And if anyone so much as mentions Friars Balsam or rhubarb or Family Plaisters or roasted onions or agues or humors, I shall… I shall call them out!”

  Henrietta composed several drafts of a letter to Lord Reckford. They varied from the cold to the coy to the downright formal. At last she wrote a simple, straightforward declaration of love, saying how much she missed him and how she longed to see him again.

  Down the corridor, Lady Belding was also composing a hurried letter to a small town on the German border. “My dear Mr. Sandford,” she wrote. “You will be amazed to learn that Alice and I met no other than your sister, Henrietta, at tea this afternoon. She was looking prodigious old and her latest beau is an exceeding common young man who discourses on drainage….”

  In the morning, the heavy travelling coach lumbered off across the square. Henrietta took a last look at the little town where she had spent such a long year with a tiny twinge of sadness. At least she had been secure from upset and violent emotions. What if Lord Reckford had forgotten her? Mr. Evans already had, she thought with a wry smile. When she had descended in the morning to take her leave, he was seated in the manager’s office surrounded by sheets of drawings and he accepted her goodbyes vaguely, his eyes shining with excitement as he assaulted the manager’s ears with a barrage of descriptions of intricate drainage systems.

  “We shall not race back to London,” she said slowly to Miss Scattersworth. “We shall travel slowly and comfortably, stopping at places here and there.” Miss Scattersworth gave a resigned nod. They were at least on the road home and that was all that mattered.

  Henrietta felt the bulk of her as yet unposted letter to Lord Reckford. Everytime she decided to mail it she stopped and wondered if perhaps this sentence or that could not have been changed. What if he had forgotten her?

  ***

  Lord Reckford dropped his quill with a sigh and stared unseeingly across the sun dappled lawns of the Abbey. He owed it to his name to find a wife and continue the line and goodness knows, he had tried. He had paid court to pretty debutante after pretty debutante, rejecting each one in turn. They were all so young and their more mature sisters were either shrews, vulgar or timid. His masculine pursuits had palled and his fun-loving friends had been startled when he had declared that an excellent race between two pigs in Hyde Park was “damned childish.”

  It had filtered back to him through the society grapevine that Henrietta was still in Luben where she had been for the past year. She must indeed be ill, he mused, to endure the suffocating life of a small resort peopled with chronic invalids and dowagers though it was said to be becoming fashionable.

  The morning post was brought in and he seized on a heavy letter from his friend, Mr. Jeremy Holmes, who had been spending the summer, wandering about Europe. His letters were always lively and full of adventures and had passed many a tedious morning for the Beau.

  He settled down to enjoy the latest of Jeremy’s adventures and then his mobile face went hard and tight as he read the first paragraphs over and over again. “I called in at Luben to visit Henrietta because, if you recall, the good doctor said nothing about me keeping out of her way.

  “I was told that Henrietta had already left but she is to be wed! And to a very intense young man called Evans who talks of nothing but plumbing. Women are indeed strange creatures! And talking of strange creatures, I had this piece of information from none other than Lady Belding herself who assured me it was a definite love match and that Mr. Evans would be shortly returning to London where the marriage is to take place.

  “She positively threw Alice at my head but after that little minx’s efforts to entrap you, I could not admire her beauty as before.

  “Now comes the really worrying part. I escaped from the Belding clutches and travelled post-haste through Germany, stopping at a small town on the border with one of those jaw-breaking German names…. Kirchenhause Am Schleinsenstein… and there, sitting at the café in the square… was none other than the vicar! He calls himself Lord Henry Sandford and appears to be a leader of the town society. Now, I had gathered that Henrietta was making her leisurely way through Germany and I searched the towns and villages between Kirchenhause and Luben with no success.

  “Feeling she was in need of a protector, I posted back to Luben to apprise her fiancé that she might be in need of protection and did he know which route she had taken.

  “Well, the idiot removed his head from a hotel drain as though loathe to leave it and seemed to be surprised that she had gone. I told him the story of brother Henry to which he listened with ill-concealed impatience and then said I was suffering from Gothic hallucinations brought on by bad drainage and then put his head back down the drain. There really is no accounting for love….

  Lord Reckford dropped the letter and stared with unseeing eyes across the room. She was to be married. And to some
idiot with his head in a sewer when she might have had him. With a wrenching feeling of anguish, he realized that if he could not marry Henrietta himself, then he could marry no one.

  He cursed himself for a fool. The least he could do was to travel to Germany and make sure she was safe. The doctor had said he must not see her but better she have a shock at his reappearance in her life than be murdered by that maniac of a brother.

  He spent the rest of the day in feverish preparation for his departure and by the following morning was ready to leave. As he stepped into the coach, his secretary, Monsieur Dubois, came running out with the morning’s post. Did his lordship wish to peruse it on his journey? No, his lordship did not. It could be thrown on the fire for all he cared. The heavy coach rumbled off down the drive.

  Monsieur Dubois went in to the study and placed the correspondence on the desk and went about his duties.

  Henrietta’s tender avowal of her love for the Beau—finally posted after much hesitation and mental anguish—lay on top of the pile of unwanted letters as the rumbling of his lordship’s coach wheels faded in the distance.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Henry Sandpord leaned back in his customary café chair at the side of the town square. Things had worked out well, very well indeed. His comfortable income from home—and Henrietta would have been horrified if she had realized in the penny-pinching days of Nethercote just how comfortable that income was—went a long way in this little town. He was held in esteem, an English lord—though self-designated—and with none of the rigors of church duty to mar his life.

  He sent his recently hired German valet on frequent trips to London to buy his clothes and he felt he looked a very Pink of the Ton in his long swallow-tailed coat with its shining silver buttons and his swansdown waistcoat—the latest thing in Autumn wear.