by M C Beaton
“What a bad liar you make, my love,” said the duke. “Rougement here will escort you to your apartments, and there you will stay confined until you choose to tell me the truth. Besides, I forbade you to have anything to do with Mrs. Carruthers.”
“I did tell you the truth,” cried Matilda, determined to lie and lie rather than reveal Annabelle’s true situation.
The duke smiled maliciously. “Escort Her Grace, Rougement,” he ordered, “and tell the servants that she is to be supplied with nothing but bread and water until she comes to her senses.”
Matilda backed away as Rougement approached her, a leer on his face. She was all at once sure he meant to take her by the arm, and she could not bear to be touched by him. She gave a stifled sob and turned and ran up the stairs with Rougement following behind.
Meanwhile Annabelle and Miss Davenant waited and waited for the earl to arrive. At last Annabelle sent a servant to inquire whether he meant to visit her or not. The servant returned with the news that the earl had left for his estates.
Relief mixed with a strange disappointment flooded Annabelle.
“So now we can be comfortable again,” said Miss Davenant, “for I must confide that I never liked Darkwood above half!”
While the earl lay in the black grip of his fever, Annabelle and Miss Davenant resumed the gentle pattern of their days. They were driving in the park at the fashionable hour one afternoon when a light carriage drew alongside them, and Annabelle found herself looking into the startled features of Cressida Knight, who was sitting with her aunt, Lady Kitson.
After the introductions had been made, Cressida said, “Do give me your direction, Annabelle, so that I may call.”
Annabelle felt miserable. She did not want to risk damaging Cressida’s reputation, and it would most certainly be damaged when the news got out that she was visiting a lady of ill repute. If only the earl would do one thing or the other, either take her as mistress or cast her off.
“I am only visiting Miss Davenant at the moment,” said Annabelle, “and I would prefer to leave it for a little.”
“Oh, I see,” said Cressida huffily, thinking Annabelle had become too grand to want to know her.
“No, it’s not what you think,” said Annabelle quickly. “Only that I am not in a position to meet guests. I shall see you very soon.”
Cressida gave her a relieved smile. “It is all so strange here,” she whispered. “And the gentlemen are so very terrifying.”
Lady Kitson bowed to Annabelle and Miss Davenant, Cressida waved cheerfully, and their carriage moved off.
“Now what?” said Annabelle. “Shall we return home?”
“Yes, but there is a fine-looking gentleman staring at you,” whispered Miss Davenant. “See, he is stopping.”
Annabelle looked across into the square handsome features of a fashionably dressed gentleman who was driving a phaeton with a diminutive tiger perched behind.
He promptly called to his tiger to hold the horses and jumped down and bowed low before Annabelle, sweeping off his hat to reveal a thick head of golden curls.
“Westbourne, at your service, ma’am,” he said. “Peter Westbourne. Friend of your late husband. I saw you at Vauxhall but did not consider the place right to offer you my deepest condolences. I often played cards with Carruthers.”
“Thank you,” said Annabelle, liking his fair hair and blue eyes. “You are most kind. In fact you are the first of my husband’s friends to approach me, although I have recognized many of them while driving in the park.”
“He was a sad loss,” said Mr. Westbourne mournfully. “But you go on well?”
“Yes, I thank you.”
“It would give me great pleasure to call on you. May I have your direction?”
Annabelle bit her lip, but Miss Davenant said eagerly, “Number ten, Clarence Square. We are at home most afternoons.”
“Then I shall make it my pleasure to call on you very soon.”
He bowed again and leapt lightly into his carriage and drove off, his tiger scrambling onto the back strap.
“Now, then,” said Miss Davenant, pleased. “That is a pretty fellow. Westbourne… let me see. I must find out about him.”
“Some of my husband’s friends were not all that is respectable,” said Annabelle. “And we do not know anything about this Mr. Westbourne at present.”
“But I shall find out,” said Miss Davenant. “Oh, yes, I shall find out.”
To that end Miss Davenant departed the following afternoon to call on various ladies of the impoverished aristocracy with whom she had remained on close terms.
While she was gone, Annabelle received a call from Mr. Westbourne.
As she was a widow, there was nothing unconventional about her receiving a visit alone from a young man. Mr. Westbourne, she felt, was an antidote to the earl. He was unaffected and sunny-natured and above all, he seemed to admire her greatly. He only stayed the regulation ten minutes, but got her to promise to go driving with him on the following day.
Her heart lifted when Miss Davenant returned, bubbling over with good news.
“It seems Mr. Westbourne hails from the Sussex Westbournes; father is a retired admiral, mother was a Jacey from Kent, distantly related to the Earl of Exminster’s family, comfortable income, unmarried, what could be better?”
“I do not think I want to marry again, if that is what you mean,” said Annabelle.
“But you must!” exclaimed Miss Davenant. “It is the only way out of…” She colored with embarrassment.
Annabelle looked at her curiously. “What were you about to say, Miss Davenant?”
Miss Davenant looked miserable.
“I think you know,” said Annabelle gently.
Miss Davenant hung her head.
“I take your silence to be an affirmative answer. Miss Davenant, I shall take a risk. I believe you know I am Darkwood’s mistress, and yet I cannot understand how you allowed yourself to be used in this way.”
“But I didn’t know, not until I overheard you telling the Duchess of Hadshire. I should not have listened, but I was concerned for you. I thought that when Darkwood finally decided to take you up on your offer, I would suggest we find somewhere cheap and pleasant, like a little cottage, and you could live with me, for Darkwood has made me an allowance for life. But you should marry again, and when I saw Mr. Westbourne, so fine and fair, I could not help hoping…”
Annabelle’s eyes misted with tears. “You are so very kind, and you make me feel so spineless. I must have been mad to ever offer myself to Darkwood. I had a little money. I could have taken cheap lodgings and tried to find work as a governess.”
Miss Davenant held up her hands in horror. “A lifetime of respectable and impoverished gentility, being bullied by pupils and abused by their masters! Heaven forbid.”
“There is so little women can do to turn an honest penny,” said Annabelle, half to herself. “All the jobs are done by men—even the mantua makers are men and the staymakers.”
“God put us in our appointed stations in society,” said Miss Davenant firmly, “and to try to lower oneself is flying in the face of divine providence.”
“I often worry about that,” said Annabelle with her chin on her fist. “It is a wonderful belief for we need not feel guilty about the poor and they need not envy the aristocracy, but if all men are born equal, then why are we supposed to accept such an idea?”
“Fie, for shame!” said Miss Davenant robustly. “You must not pity the poor, for they do not have the same feelings as we and not being nearly so refined, they do not have our sensibilities.”
“I wonder,” mused Annabelle. “When a lady loses, say, her father, she weeps and moans and is cosseted by her friends and treated by the physician. When the father of a servant dies, she is allowed one day off, if she is lucky, to attend the funeral and then is expected to get back to work and if she cries too much, she may be dismissed. I have even heard my late husband complain about a weeping m
aid, saying she was too depressing and did not know her place, and how dare she affect the sensibilities of her betters. You yourself must have been in straitened circumstances to take such a post.”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Davenant, “but that is different. My circumstances were genteely straitened.”
Annabelle began to laugh. “What a fix I am in and how relieved I am that you know. If you could bear to have me as a pensioner for a little, Miss Davenant, I could set up as a dressmaker.”
“But the long hours! The drudgery!”
“Only for a little if I am successful. Then I can soon hire seamstresses.”
“It is every young lady’s duty to marry,” admonished Miss Davenant. “But if we aim to be independent ladies, I think we should tell my nephew as soon as possible.”
“If he ever returns from the country,” said Annabelle.
The next day, while Annabelle enjoyed a drive in the park with Mr. Westbourne, the earl recovered from his fever and felt very sorry for himself. No one had called. He had forgotten his instructions to Barnstable to tell everyone he was out of town. His bed felt uncomfortable, and although his bedroom was still clean, there were no fresh flowers, and there was no cool hand on his forehead and no quiet voice to read to him.
He felt irrationally angry with Annabelle. He did not expect her to be his mistress, but he felt he did merit a little sympathetic attention from that quarter.
And then on the following day as he sat in the library wrapped in a dressing gown, still feeling weak, he received a surprise visit. Barnstable, considering him fit to receive visitors ushered in the vicar and his daughter, Cressida.
They fussed around him and quite restored him to a good temper with their obvious concern for his health.
“I met Mrs. Carruthers in the park the other day,” said Cressida. “She was driving with a Miss Davenant.”
“Yes, my aunt. She is staying with her.”
“How odd! Annabelle, Mrs. Carruthers, would not give me her address. I wonder why?”
The earl cursed inwardly. He must see Mrs. Carruthers as soon as possible and tell her she was simply his pensioner, nothing more. Of course, she would shy away from having respectable visitors. It was this damned fever which kept addling his wits.
After Mr. Knight and Cressida had left, the earl called for his valet and asked for his carriage to be brought around. He must see Mrs. Carruthers without any further delay.
Chapter Eight
Miss Davenant jumped in surprise as the earl was announced. Annabelle was out driving in the park with Mr. Westbourne.
“Sit down, nephew,” she said faintly. “Mrs. Carruthers is out taking the air with a… with a friend. Have you just returned?”
“I have not returned from anywhere,” said the earl crossly. “I have been ill, extremely ill.”
Miss Davenant reflected cynically that men were always “extremely” ill. “But your butler told our footman that you had gone to your estates.”
The earl’s face cleared. “I wondered why no one came around to bathe the fevered brow. Now that I remember, I did say to Barnstable to say that I was away from home. I suddenly did not want the ton to know of my illness. Pride, I suppose.”
He gave his aunt a blinding smile. Miss Davenant blinked. He was too disgracefully handsome. Annabelle must not be put at risk.
“It is pleasant here,” said the earl stretching out his booted legs. He looked about him. The drawing room was filled with vases of flowers. The windows were open to the square where the russet-colored leaves of autumn fluttered to the ground. There was dainty furniture in the drawing room upholstered in yellow silk with heavy gold brocade curtains at the windows. A little gilt clock ticked busily over the mantel, and a small fire crackled on the hearth sending out a pleasing smell of woodsmoke.
“Yes, we are very happy,” sighed Miss Davenant. “I shall be sorry to leave.”
“How so? Is Mrs. Carruthers thinking of marrying again so soon?”
“Now, how could she, when she is tied to you by that terrible promise.” Miss Davenant blushed deep red and stared miserably at the earl.
“So she told you. Well, I am here to tell her I never at any time wanted her as mistress. I had a feeling she might not take charity. My dear aunt, do you think for a moment I would have placed you in residence with a doxy?”
“I do not really know,” said Miss Davenant pathetically. “And men can be so very wicked. Mrs. Carruthers is so beautiful. I thought you were going to snatch her like a blossom and then cast her off like a worn-out glove.”
“My dear aunt!”
“Well, that is what they are always doing in the books I read. They are always casting off ladies like worn-out gloves.”
“I have no intention of casting either of you off. I will continue to make you an allowance for life, Aunt, as I should have done this long time past. As for Mrs. Carruthers, her allowance will continue plus a dowry, and I sincerely hope that she will soon find a husband to take care of her financially as soon as a decent period of mourning has been observed.”
“Oh, you are so good!” exclaimed Miss Davenant. “She will not have to start that dreadful dressmaking business, and I will not have to protect her honor, for I was prepared to do mortal battle with you, Darkwood, if you so much as laid a finger on her.”
“Do not become so exercised,” said the earl lazily, “I have plans to lay all of my fingers on someone else, and with respectable intentions.”
“Was it that dark little frumpy creature I saw you with at Vauxhall?”
“That dark little frumpy creature as you very well know is accounted the most notable beauty in London. She is Rosamund Clairmont as I already told you, and I intend to make her my bride.”
“Are you so very much in love with her?”
“I respect her. She would make a most suitable wife and hostess.”
“How dull!”
There came a rattle of carriage wheels from outside. “That will be Annabelle,” cried Miss Davenant, running to the window. The earl rose in a leisurely way and joined her. The long windows opened onto a little wrought-iron balcony. The earl leaned over.
Annabelle Carruthers was being helped down from a phaeton by a handsome young man. She was wearing one of the new “transparent” hats, a creation of stiffened gauze. She stood for a moment talking to the gentleman who then kissed her hand.
The earl felt a tide of anger well up in him. Here was a woman who believed herself to be his mistress, and yet she was cavorting about London like the veriest lightskirt. He had a damned good mind not to tell her the true circumstances of the arrangement, but as soon as Annabelle had entered the room, Miss Davenant flew at her, burbling out the good news.
Annabelle looked past her to where the earl was coming in from the balcony. He looked remote and severe. She dropped him a curtsy and thanked him warmly but then alarmed Miss Davenant by saying she could not live on his charity for much longer and that she planned to become a dressmaker.
She unpinned her hat as she spoke. She was wearing a gown of lilac silk trimmed with black ribbons and with a mantle of gray silk over it. Her rich brown hair shone with little fiery lights, and she exuded that tantalizing air of fragility and femininity that Rosamund tried so hard to achieve without success. He looked at her mouth and remembered that kiss at the inn. Miss Davenant stood between them, her mouth slightly open, looking from one to the other in dawning surprise. She always said afterward that the very air of the room had become charged with intense emotion and electricity, like the air just before a thunderstorm or a shock from one of Dr. Galvan’s machines.
Then the earl said abruptly, “As you will. But do not involve my aunt in your dressmaking scheme. It is beneath her dignity.”
“Oh, no,” wailed Miss Davenant. “We could take a sweet little cottage in, say, Hampstead, honeysuckle, and lambs and shepherds and live very quietly, and all the grand ladies would come to order gowns from Mrs. Carruthers.”
“Grand l
adies are not going to travel to Hampstead or anywhere else,” said the earl testily. “They expect the dressmaker to come to them.”
Annabelle smiled. “It is not such a mad scheme as it sounds, my lord, and I am sure I would soon be able to repay your generosity. I would certainly live somewhere closer to the center of London than Hampstead.”
The earl decided to play for time. He most certainly did not want to see his aunt involved in trade. “Perhaps it would be better if we discussed this after the Little Season,” he said. “Your friends, the Knights, are in town, and Miss Knight would be glad of your company.”
“Very well,” said Annabelle reluctantly. She would have to find time and tranquility to digest all he had just told her. He did not want her as mistress. That news which should have delighted her left her feeling oddly flat.
“Who is the gentleman with whom you were driving?” demanded the earl.
“A Mr. Peter Westbourne.”
“Of the Sussex Westbournes,” said Miss Davenant eagerly, “for you may be sure I found out all about him. Old Mrs. Harris, you remember, the lady who is fourth cousin of Lord Honeyford, told me she remembers Peter Westbourne as a boy. He must be twenty-eight now, and unmarried.”
“I have never heard of the Sussex Westbournes. Which part of Sussex?”
“Let me think. Oh, I have it. Brighton. A little outside, Wedderston, the Westbournes of Wedderston, that’s it.”
“He has taken a box at the playhouse, Miss Davenant,” said Annabelle, “and we are both invited this evening to see Love’s Revenge or The Wicked Count Vanquished.”
Miss Davenant clapped her hands in delight.
“May I point out, Mrs. Carruthers,” said the earl, feeling bad-tempered and middle-aged, “that you are still in mourning.”
“Mr. Westbourne thought of that,” said Annabelle. “I shall be seated in the back of the box, and we shall leave before the harlequinade. All very proper,” she added, sensing she was irritating the earl by her friendship with Mr. Westbourne and finding she was enjoying doing so. Before the earl could say anything further, Annabelle went on, “I believe I shall soon have the pleasure of congratulating you on your engagement.”