by Joan Smith
“Is that what she says—that I offered for her? Ha, ha, well it never does to contradict a lady, what? But don’t spread it around. A certain Baroness you know, would not like to hear it.”
Lady Melvine’s suspicions were naturally aroused at this veiled statement “Why, you rascal, Seville, I believe you deceived the poor girl.”
“Deceived her? There was some deceit in the business I begin to think, but you must not be too hasty in placing the blame.”
He left, eager to extract himself from the unpleasant predicament without being too specific. But his words fell on fertile soil. Miss Mallow was not seven years old, and she must have known as well as everyone else in the city that Seville was dangling after the Baroness. Why, he had offered Prudence nothing but a carte blanche, and she had elected to turn it into an offer in form, and for no other reason but to make Dammler jealous. All her sly questions and comments about being displeased of the Countess Malvern. What a clever little article she was, to be sure, and making herself out the picture of innocence. She, with her drawing the line at five by-blows, and her Maidenhair Ferns, and its being the births Dammler was interested in. Such wily behaviour as this was sheer joy to Hettie. She went straight home and penned a long letter to Dammler telling him the whole amusing story, together with every other bit of gossip she could think of, then set it aside and forgot about it until, two days later, Bishop Michael’s wife left him. This was written into another letter, and when she prepared to send it off, she discovered the first one still on the desk, and slipped it into the envelope also.
“Our innocent Miss Prudence has been bamming us all,” she had written. “Seville’s offer may have been in form, but not the form she would have us believe. It was nothing else but his mistress he meant to make her, as I told you all along. Yes, and I think she regrets turning him off, too, for she was fairly throwing her cap at him today on Bond Street. But he escapes her and goes to Bath (with his chère amie, I fancy). How surprised he will be if Miss M. follows him down. She claimed a great interest in seeing Bath. But I may be mistaken—I believe she has some other beau in her eye, as well. She is full of engagements. She tells me to inform you she is not pleased with your ‘distraction’ keeping you from work. What can she mean, I wonder!”
She reread it with a chuckle before sealing it, unaware that she had done anything more than give her nephew a good laugh. He seemed always to be laughing over something Miss Mallow had said or done.
Prudence went home in a state of nerves. Not only her study but all of London was becoming intolerable to her. The book was going poorly, and she wished for a change. Dammler had claimed to want peace and quiet to work—she wanted a noisy holiday with not even the pretence of work. Brighton, where the ton would soon be going with the Season coming to a close, was too steep for her poor resources. Mr. Seville’s mention of Bath came to her. Mama had been feeling poorly lately; the waters might do her some good.
The major flaw in the plan was that Mr. Seville would be there. She did not like to give the impression she was trailing after him, as he might be forgiven for thinking after the saucy way she had hailed him on Bond Street. But he was leaving tomorrow—staying only for a week. By the time she had arranged through an agent for lodgings and got herself and Mama there, the week would be up. In fact, she would not go before a week was up. That this also gave Dammler more than double the time he had claimed to require at Finefields had nothing to do with it. He might stay as long and be as distracted as he liked. It was nothing to her.
The subject of the trip was broached at home, with some little trepidation lest Clarence might object to letting his horses take such a journey on their behalf. But to her relief it proved the very thing to put her back in his good graces. Her manner of introducing it may have had something to do with it.
“I was speaking to Mr. Seville today, Uncle,” she said cleverly.
“Seville? Were you indeed? Well, that is nice. I think you gave the marquis short shrift. I am happy to see he is dangling after you again. A Spanish title is no small thing when all’s said and done. So, Seville is back after you, is he? I am happy to hear It.”
“He is going to Bath,” she added. “He spoke very highly of it. I quite wished I were going myself. I shouldn’t wonder if the waters would be good for you, too, Mama.”
Mrs. Mallow was delighted to see her daughter divert her thoughts from the impossible direction of Lord Dammler and she too thought the waters would do her a world of good. The very thing. Even more good to see Prudence settled with Mr. Seville. She had no illusions as to his having a title up his sleeve.
“So you are off to Bath with Seville, eh?” Clarence ran on, making up a story to please himself and Mrs. Hering.
“Not with Mr. Seville, Uncle. He leaves tomorrow. But I should like to go along a little later.”
“You will be needing the carriage then. I am happy I had John Groom give it a good scrubbing down for you. We will hire an extra team and send you off in style with four. We wouldn’t want Seville to think us skints.”
"I am not going there for the purpose of meeting Mr. Seville,” Prudence pointed out very precisely. “It was not his idea, but my own.”
“Ho, you are waking up now, milady. You are well named. Very prudent of you to tag along after him. Well, I don’t expect he will be surprised to see you show up all the same. The idea will not be displeasing to him.” Before many more such sentences, it was Seville who was following her there, a week before her.
A trip to Bath for a month’s holiday might have been a small undertaking for some, but for the Mallows, who hadn’t spent a night away from Mr. Elmtree’s house since their moving in with him but for their two weeks’ visit with friends in Kent, it was an operation of major dimensions. There were many trips to the agent’s office to determine where they would stay, whether they must take their own linen and plate, what servants, if any, were provided, and a dozen other details. A week was hardly long enough to arrange it, but the great day was finally looming close before them.
Prudence was anxious to know one more thing before she left. When did Dammler intend to return to London?
She also wanted to tell someone he knew and whom he would be seeing where she was going. She didn’t hope he would actually drive all the way to Bath to see her, but she wanted him to know she was there, in case he should be in the vicinity. Lady Melvine occurred to her only to be rejected; they were not close enough to make such a quizzing visit possible. A much better person would be Murray, their publisher. She must tell him she was leaving. If she went in person, he might have news of Dammler. She went to his office the day before she left, and it was he who mentioned his most famous writer, but alas, he didn’t know when he would come back.
Nor at Finefields did Dammler know himself when he would be returning to town. He had arrived in a peaceful state of mind, happy to be away from the hurly-burly of London to get down to serious work. The first two days went amazingly well. Shilla agreed to part with her fakir with no reluctance at all—almost seemed glad to get rid of him. He knew his choosing Finefields for a retreat had raised eyebrows in certain quarters, but his and Lady Malvern’s relationship was not what it appeared to the world. She had quite a different lover hovering in the neighbourhood, but he was not known or glorious, and she was happy to give the illusion of being better occupied than she actually was. Dammler was content to let the world think what it would; it gave him some measure of relief from the other importunate females who badgered him. They met only at meals, and for a ritual flirtation under her husband’s nose for half an hour after dinner. Old Malvern took it as a personal insult if you didn’t fall in love with his lovely wife. He was more jealous of her suitors than she, and more demanding. He would not have approved of Mr. Varley, the present possessor of Constance’s heart.
Dammler wrote in the mornings, rode or hunted in the afternoon, for he was an active person and couldn’t stay cooped up all day, and returned to his work at night. But after
almost two days of successful writing, he came to a halt. Shilla, having parted with her fakir, dug in her heels and refused utterly to return to either the Prince or the Mogul. Under duress, he forced her back to the first, then the other, but she wouldn’t say a clever word. He could not think a sullen, scowling face would please the audience at Drury Lane for two acts. He wished Miss Mallow were there for him to talk to. Shilla had a lot of Prudence in her, he realized. What would Prudence do in such a circumstance? She had turned off her hypocritical Doctor friend, just as Shilla had given her fakir the boot. He wondered if the Ashington incident had influenced him. Very likely, and here he had thought it a fine inspiration on his part.
Sitting at the Louis XVI desk in Lord Malvern’s spacious study set aside for his use he found himself thinking about Miss Mallow more than his play. Well, they were related—he had really turned Shilla into a good likeness of Prudence. The same sharp tongue, the same innocent mind in a milieu too sophisticated for her, though Prue would die sooner than admit it. Their many conversations replayed themselves in his head. Well then, quit deceiving yourself; Shilla is anyone but Prudence. Give her her head, and let us see what develops. Miss Mallow’s heroine—surely herself in disguise—did not sit down halfway through the book and content herself with turning off one lover without having a better one in view. He needed a new character to be acceptable to Shilla-Prudence. Now why was it himself in his literary guise as Marvelman that darted into his head? Why was it himself and no one else he wanted to put into the last acts to rescue Shilla from her woes? Would Prudence approve? “Patience,” he thought, would not. “Looks are not enough,” “a handsome face,” “a fine tooth and a tumbling lock of black hair” were soon replaced by a worthier hero.
Dammler looked into the large gilt-framed mirror across the room, and the first thing that struck his eye was the black lock falling across his brow. Oh, yes, she was too polite to say it, but it was this lock of hair she took exception to. “A fashionable fribble” she had called Hero Number One, and had replaced him by chapter ten. His black jacket, tailored by Weston, set to perfection on his fashionable shoulders. His white cravat was immaculate and tied intricately. Even alone, working at his desk, he was not dishevelled. How often he had gone into Prue’s ascetic little study and seen her head over her work, ink on her fingers, and her hair tumbling about her ears or tucked up under that cap!
“You are quite the ‘Tulip,’ ass!” he told his reflection. He had flaunted his Phyrne in her face, and called her prude. Shilla vanished from his mind and it was now only of Prudence and himself that he thought. His thoughts were not pleasant company. Prudence could hardly think worse of him if he had purposely set out to disgust her. Not a redeeming trait. Women and warm talk, urging her to have Seville, running down Ashington in a fashion she disliked—in a jealous, spiteful manner. How had he not realized, when he wanted to kill Ashington, that he loved Prudence? He had some thought of it the last time he had seen her. More outrageous behaviour! Had whined and begged for sympathy by parading his poor weak attempts at virtue before her, and telling her he was an orphan. What a fool! What a snivelling, underhanded way to try to get around her. But she wasn’t fooled for a minute. “I wasn’t hellraking last night either, but I hadn’t meant to brag to you about it.”
So, jackanapes, you are in love with a clever little prude, and like the simpleton you are, have turned her against you. You will have to get busy and do a volte face to win her over. After a day’s deliberation, he did put Marvelman into the play. Wills would like it—Marvelman had gone over well, and his appearance would ensure some interest in the play. But he’d have to keep Wills from putting an eye patch on whomever played the part. He worked hard, often with success, but as often with worries scuttling through his head that had nothing to do with the play. He postponed his return to London in hopes of finishing it and of being free for romance when he got there.
In the second week of his visit, his man of business found a building he considered suitable for his Magdalen House, and he took a few days off to inspect it. While in the vicinity, he also went to Longbourne Abbey to begin putting it in shape. He didn’t want to have it in a shambles when they arrived. Presumption! In his mind it was quite a settled thing that Prudence would accept him.
And then Hettie’s letter arrived to send his plans all to pieces.
Chapter Fifteen
The letter arrived in the morning, dated several days previously, he observed at a glance. Hettie was up to her old trick of waiting for the good fairies to post her letters for her. He started to read it through, his interest quickening as he saw Prue’s name lash out at him down the page. He could scarcely believe his eyes—read it twice, then a third time to be sure he had it right. It was fatally easy to believe Seville’s offer had not been an offer of marriage, Clarence’s exhortations to the contrary. The man was clearly unreliable, but that Prudence for one moment thought it to be anything else he could not credit. The remainder of the passage threw him into a spasm of fear. She had decided to have Seville after all, then—God knew he had given her every encouragement to nab him! What foolish thing would she be likely to do? “Throwing herself at his head” had a bad ring to it, and a strangely uncharacteristic one. He couldn’t envisage Prudence to be so lacking in pride. Turned into a virago when Ashington offended her professional pride. What nonsensical things had he said to her that day they had discussed it? He’d rather see her Seville’s mistress than Ashington’s wife—that at least was the gist of it. So she would deter her folly on his account. But surely she thought it was marriage Seville meant.
He read the letter yet a fourth time. Seville was going to Bath with a chère amie (possibly), so Prudence was safe for the present. But he knew he would get no work done here with this business tearing at his insides. He had his valet throw his things into a bag, made a hurried apology to the Malverns, and a quick departure to London. He arrived in the late afternoon, and stopped first at Hettie’s place.
“What is the meaning of this letter you wrote me, Hettie?” he asked at once.
It had been penned days ago. She scarcely knew to what he referred. “The one about Bishop Michaels?” she asked.
“No, about Prudence Mallow.”
“Oh, Miss Mallow and Seville! Isn’t it shocking? So brass-faced and clever of her. I quite dote on the little minx. If it is a rich lover she wants, I mean to help her find one.”
She sat benumbed at the reaction this friendly intention called forth. Dammler jumped from his chair and looked ready to murder her. “She is not a minx! She’s as innocent as a lamb, and if Seville has ruined her, I’ll kill him.”
"Dammler! What foolishness have you got into your head? He never offered her his name, and she knows it well. She only said so—to impress you, I fancy, and it seems to have worked remarkably well, too.”
“She does not know it! Is he spreading this tale around town?”
“Lord, no, he’s scared to death the Baroness will hear it. I doubt he has told a soul. But if you had seen her making up to him on Bond Street last week you would be less sure of her innocence. It was compliments and promises to go down and see him off with the Four Horse Club—yes, and as broad a hint for him to take her to Bath with him as she could well make with me standing by.”
His mouth set in a grim line, and his fists clenched. “This is all my doing. Is he gone to Bath?”
“I believe so. I haven’t seen him since that day, or Miss Mallow either, now I come to think of it. It seems to me there is more between you and Miss Mallow than either of you have let on. All her questions, and sending you word she disapproves of the Countess... And how does it come you promised her to be a good boy?”
“How does it come you were telling her I was not a good boy—revolting phrase. I suppose you told her I wasn’t getting a line down on paper. She’ll think I was carrying on with Lady Malvern.”
“It is what everyone who knows where you have been thinks. Weren’t you?”
&nb
sp; “No—only the flirtation Malvern requires from all his male guests. I was working, Het.”
“Dammler, are you telling me you are having an affair with Miss Mallow?”
“No!”
“You are so--I know the signs. Both of you jealous as green cows, and she with her little messages to send you. Oh, she wanted me to tell you she was after Seville in order to get you back. She is up to anything! And how well it worked!”
“That is the first encouraging word I've heard since I set foot in this house. Did she seem jealous?”
“Yes, and bound and bent not to show it. So she is your mistress.”
“No, but she will soon be my wife,” he said firmly.
He left the room with long strides and bolted his horses straight to Grosvenor Square. Hettie sat reeling on her sofa, wondering if she had heard aright.
Dammler received with dismay the information that Miss Mallow was not at home, and would not be home in the near future—she had gone to Bath. He requested an interview with Mr. Elmtree, who pretended to his sitter, a Mr. Sykes, brewer, that he was peeved, but in fact he was in alt. “It is Lord Dammler, the marquis, you know—he writes rhymes. A great friend of my niece. He has been off visiting an earl, but he is always about after my niece when he is in the city. He is sweet on her.”
Dammler’s return, not only to town but to Grosvenor Square in person, did much to re-establish him as an eligible parti. “Well, well, I had best see what he wants. As he has sought an interview with me, he is probably ready for his sitting now. We are trying to work out a mutually agreeable time, but I am very busy these days. Lawrence’s taking up his time with the Royal Family throws a lot of extra work on my shoulders.”
He took his time about wiping his hands clean, relishing the thought that Dammler would see how busy he was. He left on his frock, as a hallmark of his profession, and excused himself for it as he entered the saloon.