Ms. Davenport's Christmas

by M C Beaton

  Miss Davenport’s Christmas

  M. C. Beaton/ Marion Chesney

  Copyright

  Published by Constable

  ISBN: 9781472101891

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright ©1993 by Marion Chesney

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Constable & Robinson

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  www.constablerobinson.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter One

  It was often assumed that members of the Regency aristocracy were free spirits, not bound by the rigid moral conventions of the middle class.

  But this was certainly not the case in the household of Mr. and Mrs. Davenport, members of the untitled aristocracy. Davenports had fought with Cromwell during the English Civil War against the Cavaliers. Davenports had been outstanding Puritans.

  Davenports did not celebrate Christmas. Christmas to them was still a regrettable pagan festival.

  Mr. and Mrs. Davenport had two daughters, Gillian and Amanda. Gillian was twenty, and Amanda, nineteen. They were nicknamed Jilly and Mandy, possibly the only sign of paternal affection towards them that Mr. and Mrs. Davenport had ever shown.

  Perhaps if a regiment of soldiers had not encamped near their Yorkshire home, the girls’ life would have dragged on in misery under the tyrannical rule of a woman called Abigail Biggs, who was supposed to be their maid but was more of a wardress. Neither of them could remember life without Abigail: Abigail, who had tormented their childhood by devising cruel and ingenious punishments. It might be supposed that the girls would be able to chatter together in private, but Abigail, with the consent of the Davenports, saw to it that they had separate bedrooms and were never alone together.

  Until the arrival of the redcoats, Jilly and Mandy were expected to marry suitable Yorkshire gentlemen when their parents got around to choosing husbands for them. But to the Davenports, a regiment of soldiers meant balls and parties and wild officers who might corrupt their girls by their very proximity. The Davenports believed that loose living traveled on the very wind like an infectious disease. This prompted them to decide to travel to London and open up their little-used town house. It was not as if either Jilly or Mandy was to be launched on society; rather they were to be kept away from sin until the regiment in Yorkshire moved on.

  A cruel childhood was not an unusual state of affairs during the Regency, when children were always being brutally thrashed for something or other, some sin either real or imagined. The devil was a presence in every young person and had to be periodically thrashed out. Until they arrived in London, neither Jilly nor Mandy had considered their lot a particularly cruel one.

  But the Davenports’ town house was in a fashionable square, and since Abigail had not thought to forbid the girls to look out of the windows, they could see young misses in flimsy gowns going to parties and balls. For the first time, they began to feel really depressed. Jilly was a willowy redhead with long green eyes and slanting brows. Mandy was small and dark-haired and plump where her sister was slim. But both had been beauties in their way until depression began to take its toll.

  And then one day the arrival of visitors lifted their spirits a little. Sir John and Lady Harrington had come to call. Sir John was a cousin of Mr. Davenport’s, several times removed. The Harrington ancestors had also been famous Puritans, which was why the Harringtons were now being received. Also, the Harringtons appeared “our kind” to the Davenports, because both Sir John and his lady had heavy colds and were wrapped up in warm, drab clothes and draped with scarves.

  Although the Harringtons appeared subdued, Jilly suspected they were kind and was sorry the visit was so brief. Mr. and Mrs. Davenport urged the Harringtons to call again.

  They would have been shocked if they could have heard the conversation between the couple afterwards. “I shall never go there again,” said Sir John. “Shockingly cold house, and did you mark those poor girls? Hardly a word to say between them, and their little noses red with the cold.”

  “We could invite them on a visit to Greenbanks,” suggested Lady Harrington, Greenbanks being their beloved country home. “We could invite them for Christmas.”

  “That dreadful couple hate Christmas,” said Sir John, and the matter was dropped.

  But fate stepped in again into the lives of Jilly and Mandy. A smallpox epidemic descended on London. The Davenports were at their wits’ end. Either they kept their daughters in London and exposed them to danger or they took them back to Yorkshire, where they might be corrupted by the army.

  “I have it,” said Mr. Davenport, rising from his knees after praying to a God who in his imagination looked remarkably like himself. “Sir John has a place in Gloucestershire in the Cotswolds. He will surely not be remaining in London. We could beg him to take our daughters while we ourselves return to Yorkshire, my dear.”

  And so the Harringtons, who were summoned, went with great reluctance. Mr. and Mrs. Davenport were slightly taken aback by the appearance of the couple, who had got over their colds and looked extremely fashionable. Sir John’s spare figure was clothed in Weston’s best tailoring, and his silver hair was cut in a Brutus crop. His plump wife was wearing a modish gown.

  They listened to the Davenports’ plea to take the girls out of London.

  Lady Harrington was about to refuse, to make some excuse, but the sight of the two sad-faced girls with some awful grim maid standing behind them and scowling down at them moved her heart. “We should be delighted to entertain them over Christmas,” she said.

  “Christmas?” demanded Mrs. Davenport awfully. “I hope you do not celebrate Christmas.”

  Sir John was about to say wrathfully that Christmas celebrations were the joy of his life, but as he opened his mouth he caught a little pleading look from Jilly’s green eyes, and nudging his wife, he said cheerfully, “Wouldn’t dream of it. We lead a very quiet life. Never entertain. Hope the young ladies will not be bored. But we are leaving today to visit friends in Banbury. Perhaps the girls may travel as far as Banbury, say, in two days’ time, and I will call for them and take them home?”

  Privately Jilly and Mandy had each given up hope that the Harringtons would prove to be other than every bit as grim as their parents. In retrospect, Jilly thought she must have imagined that look of sympathy on their faces. Abigail Biggs was seated across from them in the traveling carriage as the streets of London fell behind them. As usual, she read the Bible to them. Conversation was not allowed.

  The Davenports always made journeys in short stages, and so it was on the following day that they arrived in Banbury. Rooms had been booked for them at an expensive posting house called the Spread Eagle. But by the time they got there, Abigail Biggs had succumbed to a fever. For once, she was too weak to protest when the coachman, outriders, and grooms said she would need to return to London. Mr. and Mrs. Davenport would never forgive her
if either of their daughters caught her complaint. Sir John would be at the posting house in the morning to convey the girls to his home, they had a private dining room, and nothing could happen to them.

  So the girls stood in the innyard watching solemnly as Abigail Biggs was at last borne off. As the carriage turned out of the innyard, Abigail let down the glass and hung out of the window, her heavy red face redder than ever with the fever. “Be good,” she shouted, “or God will punish you.”

  And then she was gone. Jilly took her sister’s hand in her own, a familiarity Abigail would never have allowed, and said, “Dinner is early here. Country hours. Come inside, Mandy. Do you know, we have the same bedroom for the first time.”

  “I am a little frightened,” confessed Mandy. “I keep expecting Ma or Pa or the servants to pop up and tell us we are doing something wrong.”

  “We have one evening out of prison. Let’s make the most of it,” said Jilly.

  When they reached their bedchamber, Jilly boldly pulled the bell, and when a waiter answered, she said calmly, “We will not require our private dining room. We wish to dine in the public.”

  He bowed and went away, but his place was soon taken by the worried landlord. “Now, ladies,” he said, “that aunt of yours gave me strict instructions that you were to be kept apart from any company.”

  Jilly drew herself up to her full height. “That creature is our maid, landlord. Our maid! It is what we say that matters, and the vulgar creature will leave our employ for her impertinence.”

  “I… I… b-beg your pardon, ladies!” exclaimed the landlord. “The lady did not say she was your aunt, so don’t be punishing her for that. I assumed—”

  “You assume too much,” said Jilly. “We will be in the public dining room at four.”

  “Very good, miss. Certainly, miss.”

  Jilly stood with her head back and one hand draped across the mantelpiece, but when the landlord had gone and closed the door, she darted across to the bed and fell on her back, laughing. “Oh, that was lovely,” she cried. “I am going to be free and independent before Sir John arrives to put us back in fetters tomorrow.”

  Mandy timidly perched on the end of the bed and looked at her laughing sister. “What if the landlord tells Sir John, and Sir John tells Pa?”

  “We will be beaten or locked up in a cupboard or… Oh, Mandy, what does it matter? We have always been beaten and locked in dark cupboards for nothing at all. So what does another punishment matter?”

  “Just one evening,” said Mandy cautiously. “We cannot go to hell because of one little evening.”

  “I don’t believe in hell at all. So there!” said Jilly.

  Mandy looked up at the beamed ceiling as if expecting a bolt of lightning to come through it and strike her sister down.

  Jilly swung her legs out of bed. “Let us put on our finest. I want to see people, strange people. I hope the dining room is full of strange people.” She swayed across the room, one arm stretched out to the side. “People will gasp and say, ‘Who are these shiners?’ and the whisper will go around, ‘The Davenport girls. Those famous beauties.’ And two handsome lords will ride to Sir John’s and sweep us up and carry us off to Gretna.”

  Mandy giggled and then put a hand quickly over her mouth as if expecting Abigail to erupt into the room.

  There were few visitors to the posting house, for it was midweek, and so when they entered the dining room, there were only two families occupying the long tables. But no sooner had they sat down at the end of one long table, the landlord still hoping to isolate them, than the door of the dining room opened and two gentlemen sauntered in.

  At first Jilly did not notice them. She was too busy trying to give her sister courage. Neither she nor Mandy had been allowed to eat anything other than the plainest food, the Davenports not holding with spices or sauces. Even at inns and posting houses, Abigail was sent to the kitchens to make sure the food arrived bland and uncorrupted at the Davenports’ table.

  “We will just need to eat what is set before us, however rich,” Jilly was saying. “We cannot create a fuss in the kitchens.” She noticed Mandy’s timid look and added, “It is our Christian duty not to make a fuss.”

  “Oh, in that case…” said Mandy weakly.

  “And I think we should order champagne,” went on Jilly.

  “But that is alcohol,” squeaked Mandy. “‘Look not upon the wine when it is red,’ that’s what the Good Book says.”

  “And so it does,” agreed Jilly placidly, “which is why I am not ordering red wine. Champagne is a good antidote against the fever which we may have caught from Abigail. I am only looking after you in her absence, Mandy.”

  At the other end of the table, studying them with interest, sat Lord Ranger Marden with his friend, Lord Paul Fremont. Both men were in their early thirties, both the younger sons of dukes, both recently retired from the military. Lord Ranger was tall with thick, fair hair and blue eyes, a proud nose, a firm mouth, an athletic figure, and “the best legs in England.” Lord Paul was small and neat and dark with a sallow skin and clever black eyes. Both were on their way to stay with an old army friend in Moreton-in-Marsh. Despite a career of wars and battles, they had led carefree lives compared to the Davenport girls. They had drunk hard, played hard, fought hard, and seduced every woman who wanted to be seduced. Both were damned by strict matrons as a pair of reprehensible rakes. But neither of them had ever been guilty of chasing virgins.

  “Look at that,” drawled Lord Paul. “Did you ever see such bonnets?”

  The girls’ “finest” consisted of drab mud-colored gowns and coal-scuttle bonnets.

  “No maid,” commented Lord Ranger, but without much interest in his voice. “No doubt some dragon will join them presently.”

  But both began to look down the table with increasing interest as champagne was produced. They could not see the faces of the girls, for their bonnets acted like horse blinkers.

  Jilly drank one glass of champagne. Then she untied the strings of her bonnet. “You’re never going to take your hat off and show your hair,” cried Mandy. “Saint Paul said—”

  “I am wearing a cap underneath and so are you, and I am too hot,” said Jilly. She removed her hat to reveal a plain white muslin cap.

  “Well,” said Mandy, made bold by champagne, “I may as well do the same. Have you noticed that roaring fire, Jilly? I am so used to being cold.”

  Soon both bonnets were hanging by their strings from the chairbacks. Lord Ranger put up his quizzing glass. The Davenport girls, despite their age, had not yet been allowed to put their hair up. Jilly’s red hair spilled down her back in a glorious shining cascade of color. Amanda’s was a riot of dusky curls. Champagne and warmth and freedom from the oppressive presence of Abigail Biggs had restored to them all the beauty they had lost in London.

  “They’re turning into a pair of beauties before our eyes,” remarked Lord Paul. “Let’s join ’em.”

  “We never have anything to do with young misses,” said Lord Ranger. “That pair spell trouble. Despite the glory of their hair, their clothes are expensive but very dowdy. There are stern parents in the background, my friend.”

  And then Lord Ranger found that Jilly was looking full at him. Jilly decided that he was the most wicked-looking man she had ever seen from his mocking blue eyes to his long, long legs, which were stretched out in front of him under the high table. He endured her gaze for a few moments and then quite deliberately winked. Jilly promptly winked back. She felt elated and free and not at all like her usual cowed self.

  “Not ladies after all,” said Lord Ranger, amused. “I think we should join them, Paul.”

  But the landlord, seeing what they were about to do, stepped in. He explained that the Davenports’ coachman had told him to make sure the misses came to no harm, that their parents were very, very strict. Also, their maid had left him a list of instructions. Sir John Harrington was collecting them in the morning. He, the landlord, had allowed
them to give up their private parlor and eat in the public dining room and he sincerely hoped Sir John would not be furious with him for allowing them to do so, but the elder Miss Davenport had been very high and mighty about her wishes. Both men, who had half risen from their seats, ruefully sat down again, much to Jilly’s relief, for the horrified look on her younger sister’s face had sobered her.

  Very conscious of the men’s eyes on them, they at last left the table, both quite drunk. When they got to their bedroom, Jilly strutted up and down, doing an impersonation of Abigail, and then both laughed till they cried. Then they had a pillow fight, and then they chased each other round the room, rolling on and off the bed and shrieking with delight until angry guests hammered on the walls and called for quiet.

  At last they fell asleep, a deep sleep caused by champagne and the first warm room in which they had ever slept in winter.

  Jilly was the first to wake. She yawned and picked up her little fob watch, which she had placed on the table beside the bed the night before, and squinted at it. At first she turned it this way and that, unable to believe her eyes. Then she let out a shriek of dismay. Mandy struggled awake, crying, “What is it? Is Abigail back?”

  “It is past eleven,” said Jilly tremulously, “and Sir John is to call for us at nine. Oh, what if he has left in a fury? Why did no one wake us?”

  Both made a scrambled toilet and scampered down the stairs. The landlord glared at them. “Sir John is in the coffee room,” he said.

  That glare terrified them. Sir John must be furious. But the landlord was in a bad mood because he had tried to make trouble for Jilly, whom he considered far too uppity, and so he had told Sir John about the girls drinking champagne and eating in the public dining room, to which Sir John had said with raised eyebrows, “What on earth has that to do with me? Let the poor little things enjoy their sleep; get me the newspapers and coffee, or are you prepared to stand there all day telling tales?”

  Sir John looked up from his newspaper and saw the two dowdy misses in front of him. The elder girl, he noticed, was trying to put a bold front on it, but she held her sister’s hand tightly. The younger one gazed on him with wide, scared eyes and said in a trembling voice, “We are so very sorry, Sir John.”