Mr Emberton was invited in to share the tea tray at Lady Godolphin’s. But, as she was about to lead her little party into the Yellow Saloon, Lady Godolphin found her arm caught by Colonel Brian. ‘I crave a word with you in private, dear lady,’ he whispered.
Lady Godolphin cast an anguished look at Diana. She felt she should not leave the girl unchaperoned. On the other hand, she felt she might die of curiosity if she did not find out as soon as possible what Colonel Brian had to say. Lady Godolphin thought quickly. If she ordered tea and asked for the fire to be made up, then there would be servants coming and going. She would leave the door of the Yellow Room open.
And so Diana found herself alone with Mr Jack Emberton. She sat silently on a sofa in front of the fire, playing with the sticks of her fan.
He sat down beside her and studied her averted face.
‘Who was that man?’ he asked abruptly.
‘What man?’ Diana’s voice was low, almost a whisper. A log shifted in the grate and sent up a spurt of smoky flame. Fog veiled the room, giving a tapestry effect to the furniture and pictures.
‘You know. He was in the park. And he looked at you in the theatre.’
‘Dantrey,’ said Diana wearily. ‘Lord Dantrey.’ She added bitterly, ‘I thought you knew everyone in London.’
‘Ah, Dantrey,’ said Mr Emberton. ‘Of course I know him. That is why I asked you his name – because his face looked so familiar.’
All at once, Diana found herself engulfed by a great wave of terror. She was sure that as soon as her father returned she would be forced to marry Lord Dantrey, hell-bent on meting out a life of punishment. Her hopes that Lord Dantrey would deal with her father as he had dealt with Miss Blessingham’s parents had quite gone. Diana could not imagine anyone standing up to her father. Despite her fear, she found it almost strange that she no longer regretted being a woman. Men were not forced into marriage, she thought naively, forgetting all the younger sons pressed to marry heiresses they did not like. But her escapade with Lord Dantrey had cured her of any longings in that direction. The only advantage in being a man that she could now think of was that one could hurt without fear of censure.
Mr Emberton sat beside her, solid and reliable. Suddenly Diana could not bear him to learn of her forthcoming marriage without offering him an explanation. Her real motive was a desire to unburden herself, combined with an aching need for help.
‘Mr Emberton,’ she said, ‘I am in very bad trouble and it concerns Lord Dantrey. I must tell someone. I must tell someone who will never speak of it. Can I trust you?’
He put his hand to his heart, his blue eyes serious. ‘I would die rather than breathe a word of anything you may tell me, Miss Diana. I would die for you.’
Was there a staginess about his statement, about his voice? But Diana hesitated for only a moment and then plunged into her tale. She told him everything, including the gypsy’s prediction, although she changed ‘lover’ to ‘gentleman’.
Mr Emberton listened carefully and wondered how to turn it to his advantage. Although his friend, Mr Peter Flanders, had accused him of blackmail, Mr Emberton did not care to use that method. His original plan of getting Diana to fall in love with him and then getting the vicar to pay him off was by far the more attractive course. That way, he would come out of it rich, and apparently the injured party, and with his reputation intact. Any open, criminal threat could injure his future at the card tables. Furthermore, there had been a quiet air of menace about Lord Dantrey which made him nervous. Unlike Lord Dantrey, he considered all women to have loose morals. Some were only better at disguising the fact than Diana. His brief amorous adventures had been with the lower stratum of the Fashionable Impure, or with gullible young matrons looking for a release from marital boredom. Being in society but not of society, Mr Emberton considered the ton, both male and female, to be mostly eccentric. He was unmoved by Diana’s humiliation at Lord Dantrey’s hands. In fact, looking furtively sideways at Diana’s deep bosom, trim waist and neat ankles, he could only wonder that his lordship had shown such restraint.
He finally grasped that, although Diana considered the marriage inevitable, no decision had been reached and the vicar was still absent.
He prided himself on being a man of action and, as soon as he finally decided on a way to turn the affair to his advantage, he wasted no time.
‘So I do not know what to do, Mr Emberton,’ Diana was saying.
He seized her hands. ‘Let us elope … Diana!’
‘I could not. Oh, Mr Emberton, I would not have you marry me simply to save me from Lord Dantrey.’ In a burst of gratitude, Diana picked up a cup of tea and held it out to him, the first thing she could think of to give him to thank him.
Unfortunately, that was the precise moment that Mr Emberton decided to take Diana in his arms and the tea went down his waistcoat.
‘I am sorry,’ babbled Diana miserably, jumping to her feet and oversetting the silver bowl of sugar loaves which went scattering across the carpet into the foggy shadows in the corners of the room.
‘Diana,’ said Lady Godolphin, coming in, much flushed. ‘You are a clumsy girl.’
One of Lady Godolphin’s well-trained footmen materialized with a dustpan and brush and began to clean up the mess.
‘Where is Colonel Brian?’ asked Diana, shaken by Mr Emberton’s proposal and upset by her own clumsiness, which she thought she had left behind with her masculine clothes.
‘Gone,’ said Lady Godolphin lugubriously. ‘I shall never understand men.’
She sat down and the three talked in a desultory way, each wrapped in their own thoughts. Mr Emberton was wondering how he could get Diana alone again so that he could persuade her to elope. Of course he didn’t plan to marry the girl. He would drive north in the direction of Gretna Green as slowly as possible and make sure the letter he left for Mr Armitage would have the desired effect. With any luck, they would be stopped as early in the journey as Barnet. That way, it would save him expensive tolls and, provided they were stopped before they had racked up for the night, then the vicar would be reassured that Diana was still a virgin and would therefore be eager to pay Mr Emberton to go away.
In order for the plan to work he would need to get her away by tomorrow morning, before the vicar returned.
Diana was turning his idea of elopement over and over in her brain. And the more she thought about it, the more attractive it seemed. Oh, to be able to run away from the whole horrid mess and disgrace. A wave of self-pity engulfed her. Frederica, the only one who might care, was at school. Her other sisters were happily and respectably married. Her father cared for nothing but the hunt, thought Diana miserably, forgetting that only a short time ago she had thought of little else herself. Mama was kind and loving any time she managed to surface from her twilight world of drugs and concotions, but had never been the sort of mother a daughter would run to in time of trouble.
Lady Godolphin discoursed on the weather (terrible), the absurd fashion for white bread (full of chalk), and the state of the nation (unspeakable), while inside her mind she was fretting over her recent conversation with Colonel Brian. Instead of suggesting he should join her in her bedchamber as she fully expected, he had talked long and mournfully of his increasing years and his desire to reform his life before his place in Heaven was given up to somebody else. In vain had Lady Godolphin suggested he take rhubarb pills to clear his system, in vain had she cried that an upset stomach always led to gloom and despondency; it seemed the colonel was determined to spend a good, decent and blameless life and that Lady Godolphin was not going to be part of it.
At last Mr Emberton rose to take his leave. There was no chance for even a brief word in private with Diana.
He walked to his lodgings where his friend, Peter Flanders, was waiting for him, and lost no time in recounting the adventures of Diana Armitage.
‘Don’t tangle with Dantrey,’ said Mr Flanders, winding his long limbs around his chair leg. ‘A hard man to cr
oss, I’ve heard.’
‘If I could get the girl to elope with me in the morning, then I would not need to cross swords with Dantrey,’ snapped Mr Emberton, ‘but that over-painted tart, Lady Godolphin, came in before I could really begin to persuade her. If only there was some way …’
‘Send her a note,’ said Mr Flanders.
‘What?’
‘I said, send her a note. You’re always so devious. Simplest way is best. Write out something and we’ll both walk round to Hanover Square and deliver it. Simply tell her you’ll wait at the far corner of the square at about seven. Can’t make it earlier or you might not wake up. Once you’re off, I’ll call on the Reverend and tip him off. Gone away, has he? He’ll be back some time tomorrow so, to slow things up, stage a breakdown before you even get out of London.’
Mr Emberton looked at his thin friend with reluctant admiration. ‘By George, I’ll do it!’ he said. ‘Where’s pen and paper?’
Soon he was bent over his desk, breathing heavily as he laboriously penned the words, pausing every few minutes to consult Dr Johnson’s dictionary.
At last he was well satisfied. ‘It will mean rousing the servants,’ he said, sanding the letter, ‘and that butler might tell Lady Godolphin.’
‘Need to take a risk,’ said Mr Flanders cheerfully. ‘All’s fair in love and war.’
He repeated, ‘All’s fair in love and war,’ nodding his head wisely, too pleased with the neatness of the phrase to consider that Mr Emberton was not at war and never likely to expose his person to such a danger. Nor was he in love.
Mr Tony Fane shifted uneasily in his chair. Watier’s, that club at the corner of Bolton Street famed for its cuisine, gambling and suicides, was thin of company, due no doubt to the thickness of the fog outside.
Mr Fane was meditating miserably on the vagaries of male fashion while sharing a bowl of Rumfustian – a punch composed of twelve eggs whisked, a quart of strong beer, a pint of gin, a bottle of sherry, and nutmeg, sugar and lemon rind – with Lord Dantrey, Mr Harvey-Maxwell, a dreamy poet, and that old war horse, Lord Saunders.
Pantaloons, mused Mr Fane, had been quite comfortable when they had become high fashion not so very long ago. They were tights, reaching down to where the calf narrows into the ankle and buttoned there over a neat expanse of striped silk stocking. Their sides were braided in semi-military fashion. Top boots were worn with breeches, but hessian boots or shoes with pantaloons. So far so good. But then fickle fashion had decreed that a gentleman should put on his pantaloons when they were still damp and let them dry on his body in order to render them skin tight. How did the rest fare, thought Mr Fane, as the conversation about him rose and fell. For his part, the insides of his plump thighs were already rubbed raw, what with the damp inside and the cold outside, and the excellent dinner he had just enjoyed was straining at the seams as if grouse, pheasant, quail and venison fought to escape and return to their natural habitat. His black waistcoat, embroidered with gold flowers, no longer lay over his stomach in a smooth line but in a series of hard ridges.
His attention turned to his friend, Lord Dantrey. Dantrey was leaning back in his chair, his odd green and gold eyes under their heavy lids looking amused at something Mr Harvey-Maxwell was saying. But there was something about that Armitage girl that upset Dantrey badly, reflected Mr Fane.
With a great effort, Mr Fane forced himself to listen to the conversation. Mr Harvey-Maxwell was hailing all females as divine creatures ‘without whom we men would be boorish, savage brutes’.
‘Perhaps the female of the species is not as weak and feminine as she would like to appear,’ said Lord Dantrey.
‘I don’t think the fair creatures enjoy playing the part of helpless innocents,’ said Lord Saunders. ‘I’m not just talking about the ones in society. I remember my great-grandfather who was in Marlborough’s campaign telling me that a great number of women disguised themselves as men and enlisted in the military.’
‘I can hardly believe that,’ said Mr Fane, his interest aroused. ‘Surely they must have been discovered easily.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Lord Saunders. ‘One woman got forty lashes in the navy and even then she was not discovered. It was only when she had to be stripped off completely after receiving a wound that the matter came out. The men they were sharing quarters with never discovered these women’s secret either. Most of them drank and swore like troopers.’
‘Then if it was such a great secret,’ said Lord Dantrey, ‘how did they guess there were so many enlisted women?’
‘Oh, because once these Amazons had enough prize money, once they were gettting older, they left the military and set up a shop or something and reverted to their former female status.’
‘Why do they do it?’ asked Lord Dantrey with increasing interest. ‘Why should any woman want to be a man?’
‘Freedom,’ said Lord Saunders. ‘Aye, you may stare. But in my day we spoke more open on such matters, and in my father’s day, even society women swore something awful. They do it to get away from the tyranny of babies, seduction, more babies and, in the lower orders, poor servants’ wages and horrible servants’ conditions. Look at all the Penelopes and Clarissas getting ready for the next Season. They are told they must catch a man and most of them are happy with that idea. But after they catch their man, what then? They never see us. We’re either in our clubs or on the hunting field.’
‘Any woman I loved,’ said Mr Harvey-Maxwell, ‘I would worship until death. I would sit with her in the evenings and …’
‘Card her wool,’ said Lord Saunders with a great horse laugh. ‘Nonsense. Fellow like you would worship your wife up till the first two brats and then you would attach yourself to some other reigning belle and sigh at her feet.’
‘But these women – the ones who enlisted – would be expected to fight,’ exclaimed Mr Fane. ‘I can just imagine the dears throwing away their guns and shrieking like the blue devil.’
‘It is said a lot were braver than the men,’ laughed Lord Saunders. ‘Here! I’ll tell you a real story from my great-grandfather’s time about a woman called Christian Cavenaugh. Whether she was christened Christina, no one will ever know. Anyway, Christian lodged with an aunt who kept a public house in Dublin. On her aunt’s death, she married the waiter and had by him three children. He was kidnapped and carried off to Holland and pressed into the army. When Christian heard what had happened, she placed her children under the care of her brother, dressed herself as a man, enlisted as a private soldier, and went out in search of her husband.
‘She fought in the battle of Landen where she got a wound in the ankle, and then she was made prisoner by the French. When there was an exchange of prisoners between the French and the English, she was able to return home. On her return, she quarrelled with a sergeant in her regiment over a girl. A duel followed in which she wounded her antagonist. After this, her relations were able to get her a discharge to escape the consequences of this encounter. She then, however, enlisted in another regiment. At Donauwath she received a bullet in the hip, but still managed to escape discovery.
‘After the battle of Hochstadt, she found her husband, who was making love to a Dutchwoman. Christian was much altered in appearance by this time but she told her husband who she was and reproached him with his infidelity, nevertheless pointing out that he must not think of her as his wife until the end of the war.
‘She went through the Battle of Ramillies and had her skull fractured, in the treatment of which she had her sex discovered, since they stripped her off when she was unconscious.
‘She was then allowed to join her husband and was permitted, first, to cook for the regiment, and afterwards to become sutler. Her husband was shortly afterwards killed in battle, and a few weeks later she found consolation with another husband, Hugh Jones, a grenadier. She was now an official marauder as well as sutler, and ranged over the field of battle after every encounter, searching and stripping the dead. At one of the many sieges she lost
her second husband.
‘She then returned to England and presented a petition to Queen Anne, setting forth that she had served in the Earl of Orkney’s regiment for twelve years, had received several wounds, and had lost two husbands in the service. The Queen gave her a bounty of fifty pounds and a pension of one shilling a day. She went to Dublin, set up a pieshop and married a third time, again a soldier. Once more she joined the barracks as sutler, and so continued until her husband was admitted to Chelsea Hospital, where she lived with him until his death in 1793. She was buried in Chelsea Hospital with full military honours.
‘So fill up your glasses and let’s have a toast. Gentlemen! I give you Christian Cavenaugh.’
They all drank. Mr Harvey-Maxwell said dreamily it was the most romantic story he had ever heard. Mr Fane shuddered and said Miss Cavenaugh sounded as tough as old boots and all he could think of was her ranging the battlefields, stripping the dead. Lord Dantrey was silent. He was thinking with some surprise that he had never really before considered women as anything but an amusement. He did not know if he quite liked the idea of them having courage and brains. Of course, there were plenty of blue stockings around, but one always assumed they were pretending to be clever. But it seemed that Diana Armitage was not unique and her behaviour did not reflect low morals but only a desire for freedom. Strange! He found himself becoming ashamed of his own behaviour, and that annoyed him so much that he called for another bowl of punch and suggested a game of hazard.
Mr Fane managed to forget his fashionable discomforts in the excitement of the play until about five in the morning, when he at last declared himself too sleepy to continue any longer. Mr Harvey-Maxwell said he felt wilted like a flower and opted to leave with Mr Fane. Neither Lord Dantrey nor old Lord Saunders seemed tired and so they were left to their game.
Diana the Huntress Page 10