Diana the Huntress

by Beaton, M. C.

  At first Diana was too concerned for the welfare of her mare to think about the predicament she was in. First she gave the thirsty horse half a bucket of tepid water, for to give it a large bucket of cold water might bring it out in a sweat. She thoroughly checked its coat for the presence of small wounds or thorns. Then she rubbed the horse down and covered it with a blanket warmed at the tack room fire. At last she was finished and was able to turn and reluctantly face her host.

  ‘I know this is the old Osbadiston house,’ said Diana gruffly. ‘I have been here many times as a child. You must be Lord Dantrey.’

  Lord Dantrey was sitting at his ease beside the tack room fire.

  ‘You have the advantage of me,’ he said. ‘Your name, young man?’

  ‘David,’ said Diana, blushing furiously. ‘David Armitage. I am a nephew of the Reverend Charles Armitage of Hopeworth.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the vicar with the six beautiful daughters. Are they all married?’

  ‘The four eldest, I believe, sir.’

  ‘Which leaves?’

  ‘Diana and Frederica, my lord.’

  ‘And are the remaining two as beautiful as the other four?’

  ‘Well enough in their way,’ mumbled Diana.

  ‘You disappoint me. I would have supposed them to be diamonds of the first water. I had hoped to meet the divine Armitages quite soon. I am recovering from an illness and have not been about much.’

  Diana looked down at her muddy boots. She desperately wanted to escape. There is nothing more terrifying to the immature country dweller than an exquisite, languid sophisticate, and Lord Dantrey somehow contrived to make even cleanliness seem decadent. His shirt frill was too white, his nails too immaculately manicured, and the sheen on his white hair was like frost on flax.

  Lord Dantrey rose to his feet. ‘We can’t stay here all night. Come along, Mr Armitage, and I will find you some supper.’

  ‘I am putting you to a lot of trouble,’ said Diana desperately. ‘If you would be so good as to allow me to leave my horse here until morning, I will return this night to Hopeworth …’

  ‘You can’t go out in this storm,’ said Lord Dantrey gently. ‘What would the good vicar say? Also, I have been too much in mine own company of late. We shall talk.’

  Diana groaned inwardly but had not the courage to protest further.

  As Lord Dantrey led the way back to the house and then ushered Diana into a comfortable library, she regained a little courage.

  ‘I cannot sit down in my dirt, my lord,’ she protested.

  ‘Neither you can,’ smiled Lord Dantrey. ‘My housekeeper will take you up to the room that has been prepared for you and my valet will attend to you.’

  Feeling she had roused the whole household, Diana followed a stately-looking housekeeper up a wide, carved oak staircase. When the valet had found her a pair of breeches, a shirt and a dressing gown, Diana told him that she preferred to dress herself and locked the door firmly behind the little valet. She was not afraid that any of the servants might recognize her. None of them had seen her since she was very young.

  The breeches and shirt were rather long. The dressing gown was fortunately a bulky, padded affair which successfully hid her female figure. Once dressed, she rang for the valet and told him that her soiled hunting clothes were to be left in her room and not taken down to the kitchens for cleaning.

  Diana planned to make her escape during the night.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said the valet, trying not to stare at this odd gentleman who apparently meant to dine with Lord Dantrey, still wearing a muddy beaver hat.

  ‘Tell my lord I will be with him in a very short while,’ said Diana. Once again, she locked the door. She pulled off her hat and looked in despair at the masses of black hair cascading about her shoulders.

  There was only one thing to be done. She picked up a long sharp pair of scissors and began to cut her hair, feeling oddly weak and feminine and tearful when she finally picked up the shorn tresses and threw them on the fire.

  Her hair had a natural curl which disguised the amateur cut.

  Despite her fear, Diana still managed to notice the richness of the furnishings on her way back downstairs. On the first floor a gallery ran around three sides where one could look down into the spacious hall. Diana remembered how it had looked in the days of the waning Osbadiston fortunes … cold and shabby. Now the hall was carpeted, the walls hung with fine paintings, and set about with sculpture. Candles had been lit, many candles, an overwhelming expense to welcome one tired provincial huntsman.

  ‘If only I were a man,’ thought Diana for about the thousandth time in her young life. ‘I would be nervous, but we could talk and eat, and then I could retire to bed with an easy conscience. Can he possibly guess I am a woman? Oh, I am so tired and I must be on my guard.’

  When she walked into the library she noticed with a feeling of thankfulness that it was not brightly lit. A table had been set with cold meat, bread and wine. Diana’s stomach gave an unladylike rumble, reminding her that she had not eaten all day.

  Lord Dantrey waved her into a chair at the table and sat down opposite her. He carved her some roast beef and poured her a glass of wine, and, as she bent her head, he studied her cropped hair with interest.

  ‘Where do you live when you are not at the vicarage?’ he asked abruptly. Diana choked on a mouthful of wine and murmured an apology. ‘I live at Datchwood on the other side of Berham county.’

  ‘How old are you, Mr Armitage, if it is not too personal a question?’

  ‘Nineteen, my lord.’

  ‘Indeed! I would have thought you younger despite your inches. What awaits you in the future?’

  ‘I do not know, my lord.’

  ‘You have dreams and ambitions, surely?’

  Diana gave a little sigh. What did one more lie matter?

  She thought of the many hours she had day-dreamed of having the freedom of a man.

  ‘I should like, above all things,’ she said slowly, ‘to have the freedom to wander about London and discover its wonders for myself without being tied to the environs of St James’s Square. I would like,’ she continued dreamily, beginning to feel the heady effects of the wine, ‘to be a Dandy.’

  ‘Not a very creditable ambition,’ said Lord Dantrey.

  ‘But surely a Dandy is the admiration of society?’

  ‘Not he. Do you know how a Dandy is described? A coxcomb, a fop, an empty-headed vain person. The Dandy was got by Vanity out of Affection – his dam, Petit Maître or Maccaroni – his grand-dam, Fribble – his great grand-dam, Bronze – his great-great-great grand-dam, Coxcomb – and his earliest ancestor, Fop. His uncle, Impudence – his three brothers, Trick, Humbug and Fudge, and allied to the extensive family of Shuffletons.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Then I shall be a Buck, a Blood, a Choice Spirit.’

  ‘Worse and worse,’ mocked Lord Dantrey. ‘All the same and all quite terrible. A riotous set of disorderly young men who imagine that their noise, bluster, warwhoops and impertinence impress those who come into contact with them with the opinion that they are men of spirit and fashion. The nocturnal exploits of the true, high-mettled and fast-going Blood consist of throwing a waiter out of a tavern window; pinking a sedan chairman or jarvey who is so uncivil as to demand his fare; milling and boxing up the Charlies; kicking up rows at Ranelagh or Vauxhall; driving stage coaches; getting up prize fights; breaking shop windows with penny pieces thrown from a Hackney coach; bilking a turnpike man and at other times painting out his list of tolls payable. What else? Funking a cobbler – that is, blowing smoke into his stall; smoking cigars at divans and club houses; fleecing each other in the Hells around St Jermyn Street; drinking champagne at Charlie Wright’s in the Haymarket, claret and brandy at Offley’s in Covent Garden, and early pearls and dognose at the Coal Hole; wearing large whiskers and false noses and moustaches; exchanging blackguard badinage with women of the town in and about Covent Garden, the Haymarket and Piccadilly, sho
uting, “Demme, that’s yer sort. Keep it up! Keep it up!”’

  Lord Dantrey leaned back in his chair and watched with interest the tide of red rising in Diana’s cheeks.

  ‘Forgive my use of cant,’ said Lord Dantrey. ‘I had supposed a young man like yourself would have heard worse on the hunting field.’

  Diana affected a yawn and leaned back in her chair, thrusting her hands in her breeches pockets. ‘I was not turning red with embarrassment,’ she said. ‘The heat from the fire is great and I confess to being deuced tired.’

  ‘Then finish your wine and go to bed.’ He watched her intently while she picked up her glass. ‘I have been away from England for a very long time,’ he said, ‘and I have a mind to savour the delights of town once more. If you wish, you may tell your father I will take you as my guest.’

  ‘You are too kind, my lord,’ gulped Diana. ‘Unfortunately, m-my f-father is d-dead and I am the sole companion of my widowed mother.’

  ‘Sad. But should you change your mind, my offer still stands. And now to bed. Can you find your way?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ gabbled Diana, springing to her feet and oversetting a chair. Miserably, she quickly bent and picked it up. ‘I thank you for your hospitality, my lord, and bid you good night.’

  ‘Good night, Mr Armitage,’ said Lord Dantrey softly. ‘Sleep well.’

  Those green and gold eyes of his held a mocking look.

  Diana ran up the stairs to her room, locking the door behind her and letting out a deep breath only when she was sure she was safe.

  Safe? What an odd thought. For her host had been all that was proper.

  Diana went to the window and leaned out. The storm had died away and the night was cold and still. She pulled a chair up to the window after changing back into her riding clothes and settled down until she judged the time right to make her escape. She would leave a letter for Lord Dantrey, of course, and then hope and pray she would never see him again.

  But as she sat waiting, his offer to take her to London returned to plague her. If only, before the rigours of feminine boredom closed down on her for life, she could be free just once.

  She had not been missed. Frederica had gone to sleep over a book, Mrs Armitage had dosed herself with laudanum, and the vicar had spent a tiring and humiliating evening with Squire Radford.

  The vicar could never stand up to the normally gentle squire and sometimes thought bitterly that Jimmy Radford had been sent to earth for the sole purpose of giving uncomfortable jabs to Charles Armitage’s conscience.

  But the matter, put by the squire, had alarmed the vicar. He, the vicar, had put his daughter’s future in jeopardy. It would get about that she had been hunting, dressed as a man, and riding astride. Her morals, her manners, and the intactness of her virginity would be in question. Her value on the marriage market would slump.

  No man would wish to be allied to a girl who had shown herself capable of the grossest, the most indecent behaviour. Diana must be broken, like a wild colt, the squire had insisted. The bit must be put in her mouth and the saddle on her back before some man took up the reins. Diana, in short, must be feminized. There was time and enough for little Frederica. Schooling and the company of her peers was what she needed at present. It would be arranged that she would be sent to a boarding school for young ladies. The squire privately thought Mrs Armitage a useless sort of mother. As for Diana? She must be sent to Lady Godolphin in Hanover Square as soon as possible to begin her training for her debut at the next Season. Lady Godolphin had been instrumental in bringing out the elder girls. Let her do what she could with Diana.

  As a weak protest the vicar pointed out that a certain Lord Dantrey had taken the Osbadiston place and was reported to be rich. That hope was quickly dashed. Mark Dantrey, the squire had said severely, was in his mid-thirties, and although he had been travelling abroad for some years, he had had the reputation of being a terrible rake when he was younger. Not at all the sort of son-in-law for the Armitage stable.

  Weary with worry, bad conscience and the aches and pains of a long day’s hunting, the vicar retired to bed, vowing to face Diana in the morning.

  Diana had arrived home in the small hours, having climbed back up the ivy to her room, after stabling her still-weary horse. She took off her hunting clothes and locked them carefully away in a trunk so that the maid, Sarah, would not find them. Something would have to be done about her hair before she faced her father in the morning. He would be in a towering rage in any case and Diana did not want to make his temper any the worse.

  She had managed to make her escape from Lord Dantrey’s mansion without even alerting one of the servants. She had left a letter of thanks, apologizing for her early departure. Before she fell asleep, she heard Lord Dantrey’s voice in her ears offering to take her to London.

  Sarah, the maid, who had been rattling at Diana’s locked bedroom door for most of the morning, succeeded at last in awakening her. She exclaimed in amazement over Diana’s cropped hair, wondering aloud why miss should take it upon her head to change her hairstyle in the middle of the night. Sarah finally decided that with a little extra curling she could contrive a style she had recently seen in one of Mrs Armitage’s magazines – ‘irregular curls, confined in the Eastern style and blended with flowers’. Sarah, for all her brash country air, was a good lady’s maid with a sophisticated touch that Betty had lacked.

  ‘Flowers are a bit odd for morning, Miss Diana,’ she said, neatly placing small pink silk rosebuds among Diana’s black curls, ‘but master’ll be pleased to see you looking so pretty.’

  Diana consented to wear a Polonese robe with a petticoat of fine cambric and jaconet muslin.

  When she went downstairs the vicar was waiting for her, striding up and down, slapping his short riding whip against his boot.

  He swung around furiously as Diana entered the room but his angry stare softened somewhat as he beheld the unusually elegant Diana Armitage.

  ‘Sit down,’ he barked, ‘and listen to me. Squire Radford recognized you and so there’s no more hunting for you, miss. Before any more damage is done, I’m sending you to Lady Godolphin to get some training in the genteel arts. Your manners is awful to behold,’ said the vicar, pausing to spit in the fire. ‘Thought there might be hopes in the direction of Lord Dantrey but it seems he’s some old rake and Ann Carter is welcome to him.’

  Although Diana had expected hunting to be banned, she had not expected to feel such pain and such loss. ‘There are things a gently-bred miss does not do,’ went on her father inexorably, ‘and hunting’s one of them. I’ve allowed you too much licence and it’s time to mend your ways.’

  ‘I don’t want to get married,’ said Diana. ‘Ever.’

  ‘Stuff. A strong man is just what you need and Lady Godolphin will see to it that you get one.’

  ‘If she is not too involved in her own amours,’ said Diana caustically.

  ‘Enough o’ that, miss. We all know she ain’t exactly a saint but Minerva tells me she’s settled down amazing.’

  ‘Can’t I go to Minerva?’ begged Diana, her eyes filling with tears. Before her marriage, Minerva, the eldest, had acted as ‘mother’ to the smaller girls, and although they had all chafed somewhat under her strict rule, that rule had brought them love and warmth and security.

  ‘Minerva’s baby is ailing, not Julian, Charles. Annabelle ain’t got children but she’s so taken up with that husband o’ hers, she won’t have time to give you her undivided attention and Daphne and Deirdre are in the country. You’ll be best off with Lady Godolphin.

  ‘Now I’ve got this here letter to say you will be arriving on Wednesday of next week. We won’t trouble to wait for a reply,’ added the vicar with a crafty look. ‘Just you give this to the post boy when he comes.’

  The vicar rode over to the hall that afternoon to pay a visit on his brother, Sir Edwin Armitage. If there was any bad gossip going about the neighbourhood about Diana then Sir Edwin would be sure to know. Sir Edwin
had never been able to understand why the poor vicarage girls had married so well while his own daughters, Emily and Josephine, had fared so badly.

  Josephine was now married to a middle-aged squire over in Hopeminster, and Emily had grown plain and sour and like to be an ape leader. The only time she showed signs of animation was when a letter arrived from America from Mr Wentwater, the former slave trader who had plagued the vicar’s family. No one had heard of his aunt, Lady Wentwater, for some time, and her ivy-covered mansion still stood empty.

  As usual, Sir Edwin, thin, pompous and fussily dressed, quite obviously did not relish a visit from his brother. He loathed the vicar’s hunt, which he blamed for the ruin of his crops and the scarcity of his pheasants.

  But although Sir Edwin made a few snide remarks about Frederica’s bookishness and Diana’s hoydenish ways, he showed no sign of having heard anything of Diana’s hunting exploits. The vicar then rode over to the squire’s to tell Jimmy Radford of Diana’s forthcoming visit to London, waxing quite eloquent and sanctimonious over the whole business as if he had thought of it himself.

  Diana spent most of the day in a daze of misery. She dared not go near the kennels or stables for fear of breaking down. It was only when she was sitting in her room in the early evening that she suddenly realized the sound of sobbing was coming from outside of her and not inside. Frederica! Diana went quickly along to her sister’s room.

  Frederica was lying face down on the bed, crying her eyes out. Diana gathered the younger girl’s slender body into her arms and rocked her against her breast.

  ‘There, there, Freddie,’ said Diana. ‘Tell me about it. You are always such a dreamy little thing, I never thought you were so unhappy.’

  It was some time before Frederica could compose herself enough to reply. She raised a blotched and tearstained face to Diana’s. ‘I am being sent away,’ she moaned. ‘I am to go to school to board. I-I d-don’t want to go away. I’m frightened.’ Frederica began to cry again.