The Unlikely Rivals

by Megan Daniel

  she was, and adjusted the length of her stirrup leather. Then he swung himself up onto Pasha, his marvelous roan, and they headed up the hill to the open fields.

  Derek quickly saw that he had chosen the right mount for Saskia. The young lady and the young horse seemed to understand each other instinctively. He couldn’t know the pains she had been put to the past few days to insure the success of this moment. He only knew that she rode very well, much better than he had expected.

  Saskia was not so lost in admiration for Sunshine that she had no chance to observe her cousin and the superb way he managed the big roan. He was wearing a new fawn riding jacket and sat straight and tall in his saddle. She supposed there was much to find favor with in his appearance if one chose not to go beyond the externals.

  They spoke little, neither wanting to fall into argument with the other but apparently incapable of chatting cordially just now. But they both enjoyed the short ride, giving the horses a chance to stretch their stride to its full length, and they returned to their aunt’s house refreshed and as nearly in charity with each other as they ever were.

  Five bustling days flew past Saskia. A dozen lists were made; a thousand details seen to. Now everything was approaching readiness. The family would arrive tomorrow, and Saskia stood in the front hall of Number Two Laura Place checking the final preparations. The first gowns had been delivered that morning. Most of the new servants were settled, and the new hangings were even now being put up in Mama’s workroom. Movers in the front parlors were rearranging furnishings to Saskia’s specifications, provisioners were trooping through with coals and wine, candles and tea. Even Aunt Hester had been amazed that so much had been accomplished so capably, so quickly.

  Leaving things in the hands of Mr. Ware, the new and top-lofty butler—and whatever would he think of the madcap van Houtens?—she walked to Milsom Street for

  what she hoped would be the last in an interminable string of fittings with Mademoiselle Fleurette.

  She was gone only a little over an hour so it was with surprise that she returned to find the gentle buzz of activity in the house turned into an uproar. A carrier’s cart stood before it In the open doorway Ware wore a very displeased expression. A childish whoop and a furious barking came from an upper window to assault her ears, and Saskia knew what had happened. The van Houtens had arrived, a day early! How very like them, who were never about when you wanted them, to appear now before you didl With a feeling of doom, she stepped into the hall.

  The slate floor had disappeared under a litter of trunks, valises, portmanteaus, and bandboxes. Into one, the ample form of Mrs. Jansen was muttering imprecations in vehement Dutch.

  “God in heme'll Alles overhoop! Nou, tvaar is mijn vlugzout geblevenP”

  The furniture movers, still rearranging, merely stepped around her, toeing aside a trunk that stood in their way.

  With a whoop that would have done justice to an American savage, Willem came sliding down the polished banister to land neatly at her feet Mina, of course, followed immediately.

  “Hallo, SaskI” they chorused. “Some house, this!”

  “Saskia!” came a delightful cry as Beatrix, enchant- ingly disheveled, her golden curls all atumble, tripped in from the back garden. “Oh, Sask, did you see? There are tulips!”

  Neil wandered in from the library, the ever-present tome under his arm. “I say, Sask, did you know there is no Dr. Johnson in the library?”

  With a loud, happy bark, Rembrandt joined the melee. He bounded up to Saskia, his particular friend, nearly sending her tumbling in his exuberance.

  Now Rembrandt, be it understood, was not your ordinary everyday house pet but a very superior bulldog of

  unquestioned nobility and a pedigree that made the Rowbridges look like the veriest upstarts. Just why, when given the pup as a birthday gift two years ago, the twins had immediately agreed to christen him Rembrandt, was abundantly clear. One look at his pug nose and his gnarled and intelligent countenance, and no other name was possible. He was an angelically ugly pup whose nose seemed to begin somewhere in the vicinity of his ears and looked as if it might overspread his entire face had it not been rudely jutted aside by a very determined chin.

  He gave one more bark, a stern instruction to Saskia to deal with all these peasants, please!

  She looked around her at her clamorous family with a growing smile. This house, for all its elegance, had seemed very empty, very foreign. Now, suddenly, it was home. She looked down at Rembrandt, the easiest of the group to deal with. He cocked his massive head, wagged the stump he so obviously wished were a tail but which could not, in all conscience, be said to deserve the name, and drooled, his endearing way of smiling.

  “Odious dog!” she said kindly and gave one floppy ear a scratch. He sighed and sank to the ground, very nearly amputating one small female foot with his bulk. Saskia pulled her mangled extremity from under the canine mass, gave him a pat, and left him to snore in symphonic contentment.

  She now turned her attention to Mrs. Jansen, who was handled with like efficiency. A few soothing words in quiet Dutch sent her happily off to the kitchens to assert her authority and gloat over the luxury of the housekeeper’s room. The twins were given a coin and directed to a nearby sweet shop on Pulteney Bridge. Neil was sent back to the library to seek out a promised copy of Lord Mahon’s Treatise on Electricity, and Trix ran up to inspect Saskia’s new gowns. The movers finished and took themselves off. The provisioners drove away followed shortly by the carrier’s cart. A sudden, unnatural calm descended on the hall, and Saskia sank into a chair.

  During this little scene, the scowl on the butler s face had slowly been replaced by a look of grave admiration as he watched her efficient handling of everyone concerned. She looked up and gave him a wan smile. “I promise you they will settle in quite soon, Ware. They are not difficult. Truly they’re not.”

  Unexpectedly, he smiled. “I’d forgotten how lively a house with children can be, miss. I was once a footman to the Marchioness of Brigo, you know. She had seven. It will be quite like old times.”

  “I’m relying on you, Ware, to see me through. Now ...” She got up resolutely. “Where is my mother?’

  “I believe the mistress has retired to the back sitting room, miss.”

  Of course. Mama had the homing instincts of a pigeon. Her very own writing room would pull her like a magnet.

  Cornelia Crawley looked up from her new desk as her daughter entered. The drapery hangers were still busily at work and Mama, totally oblivious to their presence, had been scribbling rapidly with one of her new right- wing quills- And nary a sneeze! “Hello, my darling,” she chirped. “How pleasant to see you. Do tell me, dearest. How much gunpowder do you suppose would be required for Magdalena to blow up Castle Almendoro rather thoroughly?”

  “Mama, you are early,” accused her daughter.

  “No, are we? How odd. I can’t recall ever being early for anything before. You look tired, darling. Ring for some tea from that nice Mr. Ware. Just the thing.” She dipped her pen again. “Perhaps a half-dozen kegs, cleverly placed . ..”

  Chapter Nine

  The morning promenade in the Grand Pump Room was in full swing when the three van Houten ladies made their first visit next morning. There were few members of the haut ton in attendance—they no longer flocked to Bath in the huge numbers of half a century before—but the pretty room could count on all the Nabobs, Cits, India merchants, invalids, and half-pay officers with which the town was chock-a-block to fill it to overflowing every morning. The Pump Room was still the place to see and be seen.

  Saskia feared it would tax her ingenuity to coax Mama away from the trials of Magdalena and into her duties as chaperone. So she was surprised at the alacrity with which her mother agreed to accompany them. Mrs. van Houten, when she emerged from her reveries to assume the guise of fond mother, was not half so vague as her daughter thought her. She understood quite well that this stay in Bath was a golden opportunity fo
r all her children and especially for her two eldest daughters. She would do her best for them. With a sigh of resignation, but with a very good grace, she placed herself at their disposal.

  As they stepped down from their new barouche Saskia gave a quick look at her two companions. Pride shot through her. They were all three in new dresses and all of a quality they’d not enjoyed in many years. Mama looked remarkably handsome in a walking dress of amethyst levantine topped with a spencer of dove-grey silk. Beside her Beatrix was a vision in sprig muslin with ribbons of the same warm gold as her hair and a pink glow of excitement. Even Saskia felt she was not such a mean bit in her Circassian dress of moss-green lustring. The sisters traded a grin as they stepped through the graceful double doors into the elegant room.

  It was already buzzing with sounds emanating from tongues waggish and frivolous, grumbling and complaining, laughing and gossiping. As counterpoint to them all came the tinkling strains of the little orchestra hired to beguile the invalids into thinking that the hot Bath water did not taste quite so vile as they knew very well it did. At one end of the room, the statue of Beau Nash looked benignly out on the world he had created.

  This was Saskia’s third visit to the Pump Room. She had taken time away from the week’s innumerable errands to join Lady Eccles on two occasions and be introduced to a number of her cronies. It was important to her plans for Beatrix that they meet as many respectable people as possible. Now she glanced anxiously around for familiar faces.

  She spied a friend of her aunt’s with relief, a Mrs. Crinshaw. The perfect person! Mama would love her. Aunt Hester called her a “silly twit of a thing, but with a good heart.” She was certainly amiable. Her eyes were wide; her smile was wide; her head nodded in assent when anyone spoke to her. At Saskia’s first meeting with her, the conversation had taken a typical form:

  “And the house in Laura Place...,” said Saskia.

  “Yes?” replied Mrs. Crinshaw.

  "... is much larger ...”

  “Yes.”

  “... than we are used to, but...”

  “Yes.”

  . . I’m sure we shall be comfortable there.”

  “Oh yesl”

  Mrs. Crinshaw was such a very agreeable woman. Attendant on Mrs. Crinshaw this morning was her granddaughter Letitia, a young girl just Beatrix’s age. Saskia steered her two charges in their direction.

  “Why, it is Miss van Houten!” twittered Mrs. Crinshaw. “How delightful! Yes, indeed. And your family, of which we have heard so much! You know my Letty of course.” Curtsies were made and hands were shaken as the introductions were made.

  Beatrix and Letitia Crinshaw hit it off at once, as Saskia had hoped they would. Letitia was very shy, but Trix, all unknowingly, hit on the very way to bring her out Though far from plain, the girl had not Beatrix’s ! claim to beauty and had been struck dumb with admiration at sight of the golden vision. And so when Beatrix instantly declared, “That is the most becoming hair style, Miss Crinshaw. Is it all the crack? Could you show me how to do it?” Gratification flooded the girl’s face, and Beatrix van Houten had another devotee. The two of them had their heads together, whispering about all the things that seventeen-year-old girls find to whisper about.

  The two older ladies seemed also to be at no loss for conversation. Mama was detailing the intricacies of plot devices and character development while Mrs. Crinshaw nodded her turban and exclaimed, "Oh, yes,” and “I quite agree,” and “I’m sure it is so.”

  As neither conversation required her attention, Saskia was at leisure to gaze about the room. Amid the bustle of her first week in Bath, she’d been surprised to find how much she enjoyed living in a town again. She’d spent a good part of her life in a noisy Amsterdam canal house, and she found country life basically flat. The quiet joys of the country might soothe the savage breast, but they were not her preferred amusements. But here were people aplenty to set her lively mind to working.

  She had already come to recognize the faces of many of the visitors and residents of the town. Naturally she had indulged in her favorite game of assigning them all ridiculous names. She looked around the room now to see who else was present.

  There, almost directly across from her was her Mrs. McPug who looked very much as though a magnificent frame of five feet ten had been squeezed down to about four feet eight, then wrapped in a puce satin sausage skin and spewed into the room. At the moment her little pug face was turned up in a smile and her chins were jiggling with laughter.

  Beyond the round lady strutted Mr. Peacock, a rain- bow-hued gentleman in a mulberry coat and shrimp- colored inexpressibles, a tight waistcoat in parsley green, the whole topped by a large cravat of jonquil mull. He obviously longed for a return to the days when gentlemen knew how to dress, before that upstart Brummell had started them all on the road to boring soberness.

  And, oh yes, there was Miss Proboscis. She was strongly marked with a spinster’s mien, behind a much larger quantity of nose than nature usually bestowed on an individual. She was very tall, and very thin, and was principally nose. All the rest seemed to belong to it With a smile, Saskia let her eyes move on.

  They soon lighted on a very old gentleman whom she had never seen before. She cast about in her mind for a name to fit him. Benjamin Franklin, perhaps, for he was quite bald, excepting only a longish grey fringe around the back just like the one she’d seen in a print of the famous American statesman. A young man solicitously handed him a glass of water, bending over his Bath chair and carefully tucking a rug about his feet.

  Far from being pleased by this kind attention, the old man scowled and waved him away with a look of contempt. With a grimace he sipped at the rusty water. Perhaps she would christen him Sir Gordon Grumble.

  Little more than a sip could have passed his lips when he gave a start. He was looking in Saskia’s direction. His

  watery blue eyes caught there, then popped open to an alarming degree. He gasped and immediately fell to coughing violently, choking on the water. The attendant began vehemently slapping his back, which seemed to make the coughing worse, until the old man got control of himself sufficiently to wave the fellow off. When the paroxysm subsided at last, he looked up again. His look of disbelief had not evaporated.

  He seemed to be looking at her, but that surely could not be. She turned to look about her, and realized that it was Trix and Letty Crinshaw who had caught his attention. He stared as if transfixed.

 
  At this point the old man’s voice grew louder and

  quite insistent.

  “What the devil do I care! Bring me that girl!”

  “Be reasonable, sir,” the attendant replied in a lower voice. “I am not acquainted with the young lady.”

  “Must I do everything myself? \hat the devil do I pay you for if you can’t be of any use to me?” With that he grabbed the front steering handle of his invalid chair and began vigorously pumping it up and down, propelling himself across the room in Beatrix’s direction.

  The young man, looking very ill-pleased with these goings-on, gave in and pushed him in the direction he wished to go. Soon the chair stood directly before Beatrix van Houten, who had finally taken some notice of the growing commotion and looked directly into the old man’s face with those heavenly blue eyes of hers. Mouth agape, he stared back.

  Trix was too kind, too new to society, and far too modest, to consider any reaction to such an impertinent stare other than a pleasant smile and a shy, “Hello. I do not think we have met, have we?”

  “Who are yo
u, girl?” was the man’s surprising question.

  Many beturbaned and befeathered heads were now turned in their direction. Silence had fallen on a significant portion of the room. Even the little orchestra chose that unfortunate moment to cease their playing.

  Beatrix only smiled the more and gave the old man a very proper curtsey. “I am Beatrix van Houten, sir.”

  “Van Houten? Van Houten? Rubbishr was his surprising answer.

  Saskia really thought the time had come for some intervention on her sister’s behalf. She looked frantically toward her mother, who had entirely missed the building drama and chatted blithely on to Mrs. Crinshaw. Saskia, taking hold of the bit herself, stepped toward the old man’s chair.

  “I am Miss van Houten, sir. Have you some business with my sister?” She tried to make her voice sound as imperious as possible, but the man seemed undaunted.

  "I do, miss, and I’ll thank you to let me get on with it!” he growled. He looked Saskia up and down. “Van Houten, you say? Well, you may call yourself what you will and welcome. But this girl,” he continued with vehemence, pointing at Trix, “is a Weddington if ever I saw one! Now who the devil are you, girl?”

  “Weddington? Did someone say Weddington?” asked Mama, snapping out of her reverie at last.

  I did,” the old man replied, “though what the devil it has to do with you, madam, is beyond me.”

  “Weddington?” repeated Mrs. van Houten. “My mother was a Weddington. Before she was a Rowbridge, of course.”