“Tell me more,” Anthea begged.
“See that chap?”
The Marquis pointed with his stick at a handsome man with bold dark eyes, dancing with a pretty girl who was rather on the fat side.
“Colonel Dan McKinnon – a great jokester,” the Marquis said. “Notorious for practical jokes!”
“What sort of jokes?”
“Once in Spain he impersonated the Duke of York and kept it up, with the connivance of his Regimental friends, for several hours.”
“What happened?”
“When a huge bowl of punch was served by the Mayor at a banquet given in his honour, he suddenly dived into it throwing his heels into the air!”
Anthea laughed again.
“You make everyone sound very funny!”
“They are, if you watch people, as I do. I’ll tell you another story about Colonel McKinnon. He is a favourite with your sex. Women go mad about him, but they soon bore him and, when he leaves them, they weep their eyes out”
“I can understand that.”
She thought that Colonel McKinnon with his dark eyes and athletic figure was unusually attractive.
“One lady,” the Marquis went on, “wrote McKinnon a letter full of reproaches. She threatened suicide and demanded the return of a lock of her hair she had given him.”
“Did he return it to her?”
“He sent his Orderly with a large packet containing several locks of hair ranging from blonde to red, from black to grey. With it was a message – pick out your own!”
“That was cruel!” Anthea cried.
The Marquis was obviously pleased to have an audience and he continued to chatter on, telling Anthea stories that she knew would fascinate the girls.
The Duchess of York, she learned, had an obsession for dogs that was making her look ridiculous. At one time she had a hundred, many of them rather dirty, sharing her apartment.
A man called Akers – Anthea never learnt if he had a title or not – who enjoyed driving a four-in-hand, had had his front teeth filed, and paid fifty guineas to ‘Well Fire Dick’ the driver of the Cambridge Telegraph Coach, to teach him to spit in the familiar coachman style!
Anthea was so enthralled with what the Marquis was saying that she did not realise that the Countess, at whose side she was sitting, had risen to dance with the Duke.
As they passed by, the Marquis looked at them and said,
“That is the Countess of Sheldon – devilish pretty woman, but hot to the touch. I imagine Sheldon has a hard time keeping her within bounds.”
Anthea was not certain what this meant, so she was silent as the Marquis continued,
“Well, she will have met her match with Axminster! He is another who leaves a trail of broken hearts behind him.”
“He looks very proud,” Anthea ventured.
“Got something to be proud about!” the Marquis retorted. “Ancient family, great wealth! They have all tried to catch him, but the betting in White’s is that they will fail.”
“You mean – girls want to marry him?” Anthea asked.
“That is right but he likes them already married and sophisticated. Who shall blame him? And it is safer, unless the husband turns nasty.”
Anthea watched her Godmother and the Duke with renewed interest.
From what the Marquis was suggesting, it sounded as if the Duke was in love with the Countess.
Then she told herself that the married women her mother knew all behaved with the utmost circumspection. If people were saying unkind things, it was undoubtedly a piece of malicious gossip because her Godmother was so beautiful.
She was wondering whether she ought to reveal to the Marquis that she was in fact staying with the lady he had just described as ‘devilishly attractive’ when the Countess stopped dancing and came across the room to Anthea.
“Dearest child,” she said, “I have been most remiss in not finding you a partner. The Duke would be delighted if you would finish this dance with him.”
“Oh, no!” Anthea tried to protest.
But the Countess moved away and the Duke put his arm round Anthea and, without speaking, started to waltz. She was fortunately not afraid of disgracing herself on the dance floor, having practised the waltz with her sisters and always been in demand at local balls.
At the same time she had never danced with anyone as important as a Duke and she looked up at him from under her eyelashes hoping he would not find her too countrified or not proficient enough to follow his lead.
She realised with some consternation that he was in fact looking extremely bored.
There was no misunderstanding the expression on his face and she was sure as he swung her round the room that he had been forced by her Godmother into dancing with her against his will.
Because her mother had always said that silence was boring and people should try to make polite conversation whoever they were with, Anthea said after a moment,
“The Marquis of Chale was telling me the most interesting things about some of the people here.”
“I should not believe more than half he tells you,” the Duke replied coldly. “His Lordship is known as the most inveterate gossip in the whole of White’s!”
Anthea knew that this was the most important Gentlemen’s Club in London and she remembered hearing that the Dandies lounged in a bow window eyeing the women passing in the street and making rude remarks about them.
She would have liked to ask the Duke about White’s, but there had been something crushing in the manner in which he had spoken about the Marquis.
She thought to herself that it was obviously an effort for him not only to dance with her, but also to converse with anyone so unimportant.
It was therefore with a sense of relief that she heard the band stop playing and realised that the dance was over.
The Duke took her back to her Godmother, moving so swiftly that it was in itself an insult. Very different, Anthea thought, to the languid way in which he had moved while dancing.
“I hope you enjoyed your dance,” the Countess said as they joined her. “After all, it is not every debutante who has the privilege of dancing with a Duke the very first night she makes an appearance at Almack’s.”
She glanced up at the Duke with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as she added,
“I am sure you would like to stand up with Anthea in the Quadrille.”
“I think it is time for me to return home,” the Duke said. “I don’t like keeping my horses out late.”
He spoke sharply and Anthea fancied there was an almost defiant look in his eyes as he met the Countess’s. Just for a moment it seemed as if it was a battle of wills and then she capitulated.
“It is getting late, Garth,” she agreed, “and Anthea has had a long day. I am sure she has seen all she wants of Almack’s.”
They said goodnight to the Princess Esterhazy, Anthea thanking Her Highness prettily for having been her sponsor.
“It has been a pleasure, Miss Forthingdale,” she said, “and you must persuade your cousin to bring you here again next week.”
“I shall try to do so, ma’am,” Anthea answered.
There was a great deal of curtseying and a large number of gentlemen who seemed to wish to kiss the Countess’s hand before finally they were outside and stepping into the Duke’s carriage.
As they drove back to Curzon Street, neither the Duke nor the Countess seemed to have much to say.
As they stepped out onto the pavement, the Countess held out her hand to the Duke and said,
“I thank Your Grace for your kindness to me and to my guest. We are both very grateful.”
Anthea curtsied.
They went into the house and the butler, who had let them in, stood at the open door until the Duke’s carriage drove away.
“We will go straight up to bed, Dawson,” the Countess said as he closed the front door. “As his Lordship is not here, there is no need to, leave a footman on duty in the hall tonight.”
The Countess smiled at him and started up the stairs.
“Come along, Anthea,” she urged. “You need your beauty sleep and I have a great many delightful things planned for you tomorrow.”
“You are very kind,” Anthea answered. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am and how thrilling it was to visit Almack’s this evening.”
“I can see I am going to enjoy having you here,” the Countess said.
They reached the top of the stairs and she moved her head forward, obviously inviting Anthea to kiss her cheek.
“Sleep well, dear child,” she said. “There will be no reason for you to hurry in the morning. I never breakfast before ten o’clock.”
She moved away as she spoke towards her bedroom and Anthea saw that her maid, Maria, was waiting for her.
Emma too must have heard their arrival for she came hurrying into the bedroom almost as soon as Anthea reached it.
“Did you have a nice time, miss?” she asked.
“I had a lovely time, Emma!” Anthea replied. “And Almack’s was all I expected it to be.”
“The ladies at dinner had very fine gowns,” Emma enthused. “We was all peepin’ over the banisters when the company left and we thought the jewellery alone must be worth a fortune!”
“I thought that too,” Anthea replied.
It only took a short time to put on her nightgown and brush her hair. As soon as Emma left her she climbed into bed.
She thought that she would fall asleep the moment her head touched the pillow, but instead she found herself remembering everything that had happened, all the people she had met and all that the Marquis had told her.
‘I must not forget anything,’ she told herself.
An hour later she was still awake.
She got up and, lighting the candle by her bed, looked around for a piece of paper.
“I will write down the names,” she said aloud and then wondered how one spelt ‘Alvanley’.
Her room was too small to contain a writing desk and unfortunately, when she had come away, she had left in such a hurry that she had not brought a writing pad or even her sketching book with her.
She had, however, packed her paint box and several pencils, but they were of no use without paper to write on.
Then she remembered that she had noticed in the salon when she was waiting to be shown upstairs to her Godmother’s boudoir a very elegant Louis XIV secretaire standing in one of the windows.
It had been open and she had seen on it a blotter embellished with the Sheldon coat of arms, and a silver rack containing the thick white vellum paper on which the Countess had written to her mother.
‘I will go downstairs and get some,’ Anthea decided.
She put on a wrap over her nightgown and, thinking that she would be quieter if she moved barefoot, she did not bother to put on the slippers that Emma had arranged beside a chair in her room.
She opened her door quietly.
The house was very quiet.
There were only two or three candles alight in the silver sconces in the hall and on the stairs, but they gave enough light for Anthea to find her way without difficulty.
She reached the salon and found that by leaving the door open she was able to find her way to the secretaire. As she had suspected, there was plenty of paper in the silver rack and she took several sheets.
As she would doubtless awaken long before her hostess, she thought that she would write a long letter to the girls telling them all that had happened to date.
She came from the salon and as she did so she heard a sound at the front door.
She stood still, thinking she must have been mistaken. Then it came again and it seemed as if someone was interfering with the lock.
Thoughts of burglars and robbers swept through Anthea’s mind and she wondered whether she should scream or run for help.
She had an idea that the servants slept in the basement, but she was not sure.
She had seen only the first two floors since her arrival and had no idea where the menservants’ quarters might be.
Then the front door opened and a man came into the house.
He turned round to shut the door behind him and as Anthea stood watching, feeling as if she was paralysed and could neither move nor make a sound, he turned towards the stairs.
To her complete and utter astonishment she saw that it was the Duke!
At the same time as she recognised him, he saw her standing in her white wrapper staring at him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked sharply.
“I-I thought you were a – burglar!” she faltered. “I was – just going to – scream!”
There was a moment’s silence.
Then the Duke said,
“I remembered something important that I had to tell her Ladyship.”
Anthea walked towards him.
“C-cousin Delphine has retired. If it is – important, I could – take her a message.”
The Duke was standing with one foot on the stairs.
In the dim light of the flickering candles he looked very large and overpowering.
“I will convey the message myself,” he said after a moment.
“But – Cousin Delphine is in – bed,” Anthea insisted.
Again there was a pause before the Duke with a note of amusement in his voice said,
“My good girl, go to bed yourself and don’t interfere in other people’s affairs.”
He did not wait for a reply.
He walked up the stairs as he spoke and on reaching the landing turned in the direction of the Countess’s room and disappeared from sight.
Anthea stood staring after him.
Then, as the full implication of what he had said and what he was doing swept over her, the colour rose in a crimson tide up her pale face.
CHAPTER THREE
Anthea was both shocked and embarrassed.
Although she had read the passionate love poems that interested her mother, she had never mentally translated them into actual physical activity.
The fact that the Duke was, as she now realised, the lover of her Godmother seemed to her to be shocking and an outrage against decency.
She had never imagined that older people or rather women of her mother’s age would have the type of liaison that she connected with the Kings of France or Charles II.
They had just seemed to be mythical figures with no real semblance of humanity about them.
To be confronted with the fact that her Godmother was having a clandestine affair with the Duke of Axminster was a revelation that exploded in her mind like a bombshell.
She also felt very ignorant and the blush that had suffused her face when the Duke told her not to interfere in other people’s affairs seemed to burn its way into her consciousness all through the night.
If she could have had a choice, Anthea, when morning came, would have sped back to Yorkshire to hide herself amongst the familiar objects she knew and understood.
She wondered frantically whether the Duke had told her Godmother what had occurred.
She was in fact sure he had done so when at half past nine, half an hour earlier than her Godmother usually was called, she was summoned to the Countess’s bedroom.
As Anthea walked along the passage, she tried to think of what she could say, what explanation she could make, but could only feel that being gauche and countrified was hardly an excuse for making such a bêtise.
The Countess, looking more alluring than ever, was propped up against a profusion of lace-edged pillows, her red hair falling over her shoulders, her eyes very green in the morning light.
Anthea stood just inside the doorway, wondering apprehensively what her Godmother would say and was surprised when the Countess said with a smile on her red lips,
“Good-morning, Anthea. I thought you might like to drive with me in the Park this morning an
d after that I feel we should visit Bond Street and see if there is some little object that takes your fancy and which I might give you as a present.”
Even as she spoke Anthea realised she was being bribed.
It affronted her pride and her self-respect that her Godmother should think for one moment that she could not be trusted to be discreet without an inducement to keep her lips closed.
She was just about to reply that there was nothing she needed when the Countess gave a cry so shrill and sharp that Anthea was startled.
“Is that the best gown you have?” she asked. “And I noticed the one you wore last night! Oh, Anthea, how remiss of me! How inexcusable that I should not have thought of it!”
“Thought of – what, Cousin Delphine?” Anthea asked bewildered.
“That you would need new gowns coming to London from Yorkshire and I forgot too that your father was not wealthy. How could I have been so negligent?”
Without giving time for Anthea to answer, the Countess picked up the bell beside her bed and rang it violently.
When Maria ran in, she exclaimed,
“Why have you not have told me, Maria, that Miss Forthingdale required new gowns! We knew that she was coming from the country. I am mortified that we have been so obtuse as not to have had some ready for her.”
“I don’t – wish to be a – nuisance – ” Anthea began, only to have anything she might have said swept to one side.
Her Godmother imperiously commanded Maria to bring from the wardrobes everything that she did not need that could be altered immediately.
“I will buy you some new gowns,” the Countess said, “but they will of course take time. What we must do in the meanwhile is to contrive that you look fashionable and well-dressed in my clothes and there are in fact plenty for which I have no further use.”
This was an understatement, Anthea found an hour later, when she was being presented with dozens of gowns all so smart, so exquisitely made, that she could not understand how her Godmother could bear to part with them. But the Countess had a valid excuse for everything she gave away.
Maria would hold up a dream of sparkling gauze.
“I wore that at the Duchess of Bedford’s Ball,” the Countess explained. “It was the envy of every woman present, but I cannot appear in it again.”
Never Laugh at Love Page 5