Honoria and the Family Obligation

by Alicia Cameron

  ‘Does it concern the attack?’

  ‘I fear so. But I cannot be sure. I have set Mr Allison to find out more from my uncle.’

  ‘Mr. Allison?’

  Serena blushed, ‘Well, we have kept him from the sickroom, so he may as well be put to use, don’t you think?’ She saw Honoria still look concerned. ‘You are still afraid of him? I can’t see why. He found me last night after Benedict had spoken and I just - well more or less ordered him to talk to Uncle Wilbert.’

  Honoria laughed. ‘Oh, Serena - how like you! I am not quite easy with Mr Allison yet, but I am not afraid of him. He has been so kind to us all.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Serena bleakly.

  ‘Is there anything else, dear?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Serena lightly. ‘A great deal more. I wish Benedict looked more like himself and that we were home with the children.’

  ‘You are not worried about the measles?’

  ‘No, no. They are all so bouncing with health. Even little Angelica is as stout as an ox, but I suppose it has all gotten to me a little. And even we don’t see enough of each other while we play at shifts looking after Dickie. I miss you.’ She smiled, ‘You’d better hurry if you don’t want to keep the lieutenant waiting.’

  The girls hugged, a little more fiercely than seemed necessary on being parted for the length of a drive. Then, with mutual sadness at the separation in their spirits, they parted quickly.

  Lieutenant Prescott had driven his cousin’s tilbury around the park once before Honoria could be brought to answer his questions with more than a syllable. Her shyness and decorum quite enchanted him - the wives and daughters who had attended the soirees in Lisbon were often loud and overly confident for females. He preferred this shy country beauty. The admiration he had often seen in her eyes also added to his consequence. Few ladies flattered him thus when he was with his equally handsome but massively richer cousin. Today, however, she did not turn her fluttering eyelashes in his direction. She was dressed in a yellow muslin and shawl, her bonnet a simple straw with long fawn ribbons, framing her dark curls and accenting the dark doe eyes. She looked like summer personified.

  ‘You outshine the flowers today, Miss Fenton!’

  She blushed. ‘I - thank you.’ But beyond the blush, her eyes returned to the path ahead, between the horse’s ears. And to whatever the lieutenant said next, she simply nodded distractedly.

  Allison’s admittance to his master’s heure de la toilette caused little more than an eye-rolling from Pierre.

  ‘Entrez, m’sieur, I beg of you. How disappointing that you are alone. C’est tout ouvert ici, I assure you. No-zeeeng of importance is happening-’

  Mr Allison glanced down at the tiny person with the high colour and the heaving chest and dismissed him with a glance. Wilbert Fenton, with a footman in white gloves at his feet applying brute force to putting on his master’s boots, said, ‘Allison. I thought that you would have been at your own toilette still.’

  ‘In the season, you would perhaps be right, sir. But this is summer and I always keep country hours in the summer.’

  Mr Fenton shuddered. ‘Well, do you bring me news of Benedict?’ He was drawling, but Allison caught the note of concern beneath and liked him the better for it.

  ‘He continues to improve, sir. But I have come to you on another matter today - I am an emissary of your niece Serena.’

  ‘Serena, eh? Thought you had eyes on Honoria.’ Allison blanched. Looking at the small valet and the footman, ‘My servants are blind and deaf. Think of the company I keep and you’ll know why. To be other is to risk their heads.’

  Mr Allison toyed with the fantasy that the Price Regent had a secret guillotine for gossiping servants, but he got the point.

  ‘And what does Miss Serena think I can tell her?’

  ‘Could we speak privately, sir?’

  Fenton nodded the footman out and lifted an eyebrow at Pierre who had stiffened in place like a statue. With slow deliberation, the little man laid his burden of cravats on a chair, then left, not deigning to glance at Allison as he passed.

  ‘If you stop calling me Sir, I’ll talk to you. Call me Fenton.’

  ‘Miss Serena harbours a suspicion, due to something her brother said in a fever, that the attack on Benedict was because of some business of Lady Sumner’s.’

  Fenton seemed to lose a little of his urbanity for a moment. ‘It was, I believe. But I was the instrument of his undoing.’

  ‘The money? It has something to do with the money that was tied around Benedict’s waist?’

  ‘His winnings.’

  ‘Pretty steep winnings for a novice gambler.’

  ‘Well, there are some games that don’t involve gambling at all…’

  ‘I don’t believe it. Benedict? Where could he have learned-?’ Allison stopped and Wilbert Fenton nodded.

  ‘Yes, well, the world may not believe that I have much honour, but I trust you know I never used my - um, skills, in any but one type of situation.’

  Alison grinned. ‘When you were playing with a card swiveller.’

  ‘And Benedict-’

  Allison sat on the edge of an occasional table, one leg thrown over the inlaid top. ‘Sumner was cheated; I suppose that made things difficult for Lady S. But I still don’t see-’

  ‘There were further factors. I am not at liberty to tell you what. But they were considered by Benedict to be unacceptable.’

  ‘He’s not enamoured-’

  Fenton shook his head. ‘I don’t believe so, though Lady Sumner is quite a woman, I find. Benedict just throws his heart over the fence at times.’

  ‘So he beat-?’

  ‘The men who cheated Sumner.’ His voice became tight. ‘I gave him the names.’

  There seemed to be nothing to be said about this, so Allison stayed still. ‘What next?’ he asked, eventually, automatically handing Fenton a starched neckcloth and watching, with sympathetic interest, while he dropped his chin in a ritualistic fashion to achieve the perfect folds.

  ‘I am going to find out which one of the three set the brute on Benedict, then struck the final blow himself.’ Mr Fenton was drawling once more, but Allison wasn’t fooled. His anger was barely suppressed.

  ‘Any help I can give you in that endeavour, just a note to me will suffice. And my friend Scribster, too, I can speak for him, I believe. We have both become very fond of your brother’s family, Fenton.’

  The flinty eyes of his senior regarded him in the glass. So much for the pudgy, lazy dandy Allison had always known. He would not like to look down the barrel to those eyes. It seemed as though Fenton might fob him off, but at last he said, ‘I might take you up on that, Allison. Look for my note.

  Chapter 20

  Genevieve Saves Herself

  Genevieve, Lady Sumner, had left Mr Allison’s house before Lady Cynthia had even had time to pack, determined on her unpleasant course. The person she was going to see was someone that she had sought to avoid, but with Benedict waking up, she felt that she had better make this attempt to save herself before he had a chance to throw himself into another dreadful scrape, or worse - only for her.

  She had ordered a closed carriage to the address, not a mile hither, and her bonnet was heavily veiled, perhaps against the summer insects, an onlooker might choose to believe. Ever mindful of the horses, she ordered the coachman to pull round to the stables in a nearby mews - she would either walk around later or send for him. She mounted the steps of the smart townhouse with trepidation, and the door flew open before she had time to ring the bell. A well trained footman had opened the door at the sight and sound of a respectable carriage, even though it was a little early for morning visitors.

  Genevieve lifted her veil as enough of an introduction, and the footman bowed and said, ‘I shall see if her ladyship is yet risen.’

  She thought of following his blue liveried back up the stairs, to have the element of surprise, but thought again. Dignity was everything in this situation.
Presently, the bewigged footman came down the stair and gestured her above. She squared her shoulders and followed.

  She was ushered into a private sitting room, which she knew to be an anteroom to the bedchamber of her husband’s aunt, Lady Harrington. This lady sat, dressed in a mauve wrap and lace cap, and looked at her a trifle more coldly than on her last meeting, but held up her cheek to be kissed, which Genevieve bent and did, briefly.

  She drew back and stood ten feet away, looking down at the old lady’s dark, glittering eyes.

  ‘Sit!’ said that lady, pettishly, ‘you will give me the headache to be standing there so.’ Genevieve did not move, and her ladyship’s eyes narrowed. ‘I suppose you are here to apologise to me for breaking our bargain. I hear that you spent time in Yorkshire whilst your husband remained in town.’

  ‘I made no bargain with you.’ As usual, Genevieve’s tongue surprised her. It would have been more tactful to be quiet at this stage. ‘But if you wish to talk of the bargain you proposed and perhaps made with my husband, then yes, I have broken it. And I make no apology.’ “Be quiet, Genevieve,” she thought, sourly. But Lady Harrington’s kind of manipulation was an anathema to her honest spirit. ‘Indeed, I intend to break it permanently.’

  ‘I suppose you know what this will mean for you - beggary and shame. You will never be able to show your face in town again.’ Genevieve gave a crack of laughter. ‘Ah! That will not trouble you, but I fancy Frederick will feel very differently. And I fancy he can make you do my will, and his.’ The old lady gave the crack of laughter this time, though it was humourless. Genevieve was surprised to see how cold her eyes could be. Manipulating her family to dance her tune was perhaps her last power, now that her famed beauty had gone, and Genevieve saw how she clung to it.

  She pulled at the lace at her neck, ‘You should be proud of how he makes me do his will.’ The marks were faded now, but still colourful.

  She saw Lady Harrington’s eyes widen, but she soon had herself in check. ‘Believe that I will speak to Frederick on this head, as on others. He will do as I bid him and desist, believe me.’ But she plucked at the skirts of the wrap, unable to quite meet Genevieve’s eyes.

  ‘I do not think so. I wish to live on Sumner’s stud farm. And for Frederick never to visit.’

  ‘Here it is!’ cried the old lady with fire in her eyes. ‘You come here to show me your wounds in the hope that I will agree to a separation. But my husband’s name must be carried on! You have made a bad bargain in Frederick. There, I admit it. But you shall have no money from me to live apart from your husband. He will likely have to sell the place anyway-’

  ‘You know he cannot, however ruined it becomes. It is entailed.’

  The old lady rose. ‘I will not permit it. It is against God and-’

  ‘I will not stay with him.’

  ‘And what will you do? Go home to your father? Trust me, I know enough of Henry Horton to know that he will not aid you in making this scandal. He, too, will cast you off.’

  ‘I will go to the stud farm and you will help me.’

  ‘I will not frank your imperious behaviour my Lady Sumner,’ said the old lady, dismissing her.

  ‘I do not need your money.’

  ‘Have you hidden money from your husband?’ asked Lady Harrington, shocked.

  Genevieve looked at her blankly. ‘I have an investor, let us say. And trust me, I will make money for him. I am a very good judge of a horse.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Lady Harrington, contemptuously, unable to approve of any but the most worldly of pursuits, ‘but there is still your duty to your husband.’

  ‘If it were just me, ma’am,’ said Genevieve, touching her stomach, ‘however dreadful, I suppose I would agree with you. But I won’t let him knock this baby out of me. Or trust him to be a gentle father.’

  Lady Harrington stumbled forward and grasped the reluctant Genevieve in her arms, ‘A baby! Oh, my dear, my greatest wish. We must hope for a boy.’

  ‘However it is, my lady, there will never be another.’

  But her ladyship was all smiles. ‘Please my dear, sit, sit,’ she said in quite a different tone, and Genevieve did.

  In the next hour of closeted confidences, Genevieve told Lady Harrington the bald facts. And they agreed that it was to be given out that Lady Sumner had retired quietly to the country estate to be confined, as she was not keeping well. Her husband would leave town to visit occasionally (though in reality he would be elsewhere) and she would remain to bring up her child. Not an unusual arrangement. Frederick would be allowed to visit his child when his aunt was present, and at no other time. This deal Lady Harrington would broker with her nephew. No doubt it would cost her dear. Enough to keep Frederick in town in his usual high-spending manner.

  If it were not a boy, well, said her ladyship, they could revisit the arrangement. If it were not a boy, thought Genevieve, it would be time to see the sights of Europe and find some secluded spot using some of the money Benedict had won. But this, of course, she failed to confide in the old dragon. In some ways, Genevieve liked the old woman, a female wielding power in a man’s world, but she did not mistake - she would be thrown under the horses to further the old lady’s ambition.

  As Genevieve left, she reflected that she was still betting. It was the like a toss of a coin, a boy and problem solved. A girl and there were still phantoms to run from. Like marriage, she thought, a little cynically. But either way, she would see her child safe from Frederick.

  She left the house with thoughts of how soon she could leave and if she should buy some horseflesh in town before she set off. The carriage was waiting for her, but before she mounted, she saw a smart high perch phaeton pass, ridden to an inch. Lord Carstairs was a passenger, but Genevieve was struck by the young man driving and stirred by a thought. She needed just such a gentleman to drive the horses she would choose and eventually breed. Taking the word of a lady when buying a horse was not an option for most gentlemen. Someone to show her horses to advantage would be the trick. Then his friends would clamour to own them. She wondered if Benedict could find out who this nonpareil was? She laughed. No doubt he’d think himself up to the task, but though Benedict could ride, his driving skills were not at all showy.

  But as Lady Sumner was standing stock-still and unveiled in the street as the phaeton bowled away, she did not see the gentleman who was looking at her from across the road. And followed her carriage through the busy London streets.

  Lady Cynthia had fallen into a troubled sleep and awoke with a start at the first stop. ‘Oh, my goodness!’ she cried. She jumped recklessly from the coach without waiting for the steps to be let down.

  ‘My lady!’ said the astonished coachman.

  ‘Never mind. I must find some writing paper directly. A portly man in a slightly grubby apron, who had come to offer her some warm punch and some cake in the comfort of her carriage, was pleased to lead her to a bedchamber. Her ladyship would have been pleased to see, if she had leisure for it, that it was a deal cleaner than the apron would have suggested. But she sat at a table and took a quill in hand and wrote a speedy note to her beloved.

  My Love, (ran this tribute to brevity) On no account (underlined three times) must Honoria be alone with either (underlined twice) Mr Allison or Lieutenant Prescott. I rely on you,

  Your own,

  C

  The landlord had only just finished enumerating the other comforts he could offer his guest (a heartier lunch, some wine or a fire to be lit) but no, her ladyship turned and said, ‘Someone must ride back to London with this note directly. To the house of Mr Allison in Grosvenor Square.’ The landlord’s face had fallen, for on this busy road he could ill-afford to lose a staff member for the hours that it would take to ride to London and back. But Mr Allison’s name cleared his brow. The leader of fashion was well known on this and every other post road in the country, keeping horses in the landlord’s own stables. Whatever he lost in inconvenience, the large-handed gentleman coul
d be depended upon to reimburse handsomely. So he bowed and said, ‘Certainly, my lady!’

  ‘Directly!’ her ladyship warned him.

  ‘Instantly, your ladyship.’

  ‘Send some tea and my maid.’

  Lady Cynthia’s sleeping brain had solved at least some of the mysteries that had troubled her, and now she felt the pull of London rather more urgently than that of Yorkshire. Her children needed her, perhaps all of them at once. The younger children were sick, but her eldest daughter may be about to do something that would change all their lives forever and risk the happiness of her family in so many ways. Never had her mother’s heart and duty been so torn. If it was not already too late, she must trust now to her husband, she thought, and laughed bitterly. She trusted her husband to die for her and her children, but in this case…

  Chapter 21

  Sir Ranalph Fails His Wife

  ‘Oh, damnation!’

  By the time Sir Ranalph received the missive at four of the afternoon, he knew that he had already failed his wife, for Honoria had left for her daily airing - with the lieutenant. He saw the swiftness of his wife’s penmanship and the lurid under-linings (made with a rather spluttering pen) and judged her urgency. She depended on him in a matter he felt ill-equipped to deal with.

  How on earth he was to change the relaxed atmosphere of intimacy they’d established here was more than he could say. And how could he stand guard on his girls all day, or forbid the gentlemen who obligingly tooled them around by carriage, or gave them an arm for a short walk in the park, all for their healthy exercise, away from the confines of the sickroom? He could hardly begin to play the stern father now, especially when they had all built such an easy rapport.

  And why? What on earth did his Cynthia fear? But in the matter of his children, he had learned not to ask, but obey. His wife had a prescience that he never doubted.