The Baron's Honourable Daughter

by Lynn Morris

  Everleigh, unabashed, grinned and said, “Hylton, I must say your timing is wretched, I was just in the middle of telling Miss Segrave something of great import.”

  “Pray continue, then, don’t mind me,” Hylton said, deadpan.

  “Very well. I was just saying, Miss Segrave, that you are—”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Mr. Everleigh, Lord Hylton doesn’t want to hear your nonsense,” Valeria said, her color high. Turning to Alastair, she said with a trace of stiffness, “Again, sir, please accept my sincerest gratitude. I’m afraid my mamma was right, it was much too cold for me to work at all, but still, it is a gift I shall always treasure.”

  “You’re welcome, Miss Segrave, it was my distinct pleasure,” he said with a small bow.

  Everleigh frowned. “What’s this? Hylton’s giving you gifts, and you wouldn’t even let me buy you flowers at Covent Garden? That’s not at all fair.”

  “No, he didn’t give me a gift, he found out how, exactly, one might purchase oil paints and supplies, which until now I was thinking might be quite as illegal as Napoleon brandy, for the difficulties I’ve had trying to track them down,” Valeria said spiritedly. “There appeared to me to be a vast conspiracy keeping women from purchasing them at any cost. But he managed to find out how Lady Hylton might buy them for me. Again, I am indebted to you, sir.”

  “Yes, you are, poor Miss Segrave,” he said with a strange small smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m engaged for a game of hazard.” He went down the hall toward the card room.

  Everleigh sniffed. “If I had known you wanted oil paints, I could have found them for you. What do you want oil paints for, anyhow?”

  “To paint with, silly,” she replied, but her voice was distant. Her eyes were on Lord Hylton’s broad back, as she pondered his last remark.

  Poor Miss Segrave, indeed.

  * * *

  Valeria soon forgot all about her new paints, for the next several weeks passed with an extraordinary, dreamlike speed.

  The families of Polite Society began to stream “up to Town,” as was commonly said regardless of the direction in which one traveled to London. Morning calls, given and received, became much more numerous; riding in Hyde Park reverted to its usual time between five and seven o’clock; balls, parties, and routs became more frequent; and Valeria’s social calendar filled up with so many engagements that she saw Joan more than she saw her mother or St. John. In Town, dinner parties were held much later, sometimes as late as eight or nine o’clock, which meant that the party would not break up until midnight—or, if there was dancing or cards, sometimes Valeria wouldn’t arrive home until two or three o’clock in the morning. Nights at the theatre sometimes went until the early morning hours, and then there were often late après-théâtre suppers given. Valeria’s schedule turned into that of a true lady of leisure; most days she didn’t rise until eleven o’clock or noon. She regretted that she missed going to St. George’s with the family and servants for morning prayers, but soon it slipped her mind.

  One blissfully sunny warm noon, as Valeria sleepily ate her toast and drank her morning tea, Joan said, “Oh, ma’am, your presentation dress arrived this morning. It came, you know, not boxed up but on a dress stand, all wrapped in a long, long length of pretty blue muslin, and there’s not room for it in the dressing room, so Lady Maledon had them put it in her bedroom, and poor Mrs. Platt has had the devil of a time keeping his lordship and Niall from unwinding it, like a maypole, as they said it was, until Mr. Chalmers grabbed them by the nape o’ the neck and led them out to play in the park.”

  Valeria smiled. Joan’s diction had improved since she had become an exalted lady’s maid, but she still lapsed into low slang sometimes. Lazily Valeria reflected that so did the Quality, the men at least. In fact, at one of Lady Hylton’s dinner parties, whose guests varied but always included Daniel Everleigh because Valeria begged her, for some reason they had gotten into a spirited conversation about low cant, and he had taught her several phrases that were not raunchy, but were definitely not included in a well-bred young lady’s vocabulary. Valeria and Daniel were sitting close together in a corner, and Lady Hylton had overheard Valeria repeat, with laughter, “Rum cully, all the crack, boozing-ken!” Later Lady Hylton had told Valeria that if she ever heard her say those words again she would box her ears. Alastair Hylton, who as usual joined in whenever Valeria was being corrected, told his mother that he could supply some strong carbolic horse soap to wash out Valeria’s mouth.

  At this point Valeria cared nothing for what Alastair Hylton thought of her; in fact, she had grown really reckless about the more stringent of Polite Society’s strictures. As the days and weeks had sped by, she had noted no censure, no apparent disdain emanating from the most respectable people. Her hopes were confirmed when she received her voucher from Almack’s, and attended the first ball; none of the Lady Patronesses had shown the slightest bit of disapproval toward her.

  So she thought that perhaps, against all odds, her St. James’s folly might have gone unnoticed. As time went along, and her popularity grew, she became more and more careless.

  As she sipped more of her sweet scalding tea, she finally began to wake up and pay attention to Joan’s raptures, which, apparently, could only be about the blue muslin covering the dress. “You and Craigie must unwrap it, and place the hoop skirts and petticoats under it so that we may see it in all its glory. And you may have the blue muslin, Joan, we’ll cover it up again with some bed linens.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, ma’am!” Joan cried. “It really is ever so beautiful. But surely you’ll want to try it on? Before we substitute the bed linens, I mean.”

  “I certainly do not,” Valeria said. “I’ve tried that thing on for fittings eight times already, and it is the heaviest, most cumbersome, most awkward beast I’ve ever had the misfortune to wear. I don’t know how I shall—” She broke off and pressed her fingertips to her head. “Oh dear, oh dear, what is today?”

  “It’s Sunday, ma’am,” Joan answered, puzzled.

  “Sunday? It’s already Sunday? And I’ve missed church again…but what I was groaning about was that next week is the Queen’s Drawing Room, and I haven’t even practiced my curtsy yet, much less shipping along with that frightful train, and that horrible feather perched on my head.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Craigie, not to say her ladyship, have been worried about that,” Joan said with some reproof. “Her ladyship says that she practiced every night for two weeks before she was presented to the Queen.”

  “Oh, dear,” Valeria moaned again. “Quick, Joan, fetch my calendar.” Joan gave her the small black leather-bound journal in which Valeria wrote her social engagements, various reminders of Who was Who, and infinitely complex notations on Who called When, When Whose at-home days were, and When Whose calls must be returned. “I’m engaged to a card party at Lord and Lady Lydgate’s tonight, thank heavens. I can readily beg off from that. I must, I really must practice.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But may we perhaps see the gown first?” Joan asked with longing.

  “Yes, I should like to see it again, my last fitting was a full week ago.”

  When Valeria had received her summons from the lord chamberlain, included was a thorough description of the rules for dress for those being presented to the Queen. Arms, neck, and shoulders must be bare; a single ostrich feather must be worn in the hair; the train must be at least six feet long; white was the preferred color, but pale pastel hues were acceptable.

  Valeria had thought with her customary rebellion that she would choose a pastel shade, but when she saw the white satin, richly gleaming, thick and luxuriant, she decided on it immediately. It was a simple dress, considering how some young ladies adorned their presentation dresses with frills, furbelows, tassels, overskirts, side swags, ruffles, complications of lace and gauze, and spider-netting.

  The bodice was plain, off the shoulder and low-cut (but not scandalously so), with tiny cap sleeves. The skirt had only on
e flounce, a particularly wide one of twenty-four inches, made not of net or lace but of the white satin gathered slightly. It was the embellishment that made the dress spectacular. The sleeves, waist, and flounce were richly embroidered with tiny rose-pink grapes, with entwining pale ivory ivy. The border of the train was trimmed with small ivory satin squares with the bunch of grapes repeated all along it. The delicate, intricate embroidery traced up three feet of the train, diminishing slightly over the rest of the length, until halfway up the train had only sprinklings of the grape-and-ivy motif.

  “Oh, oh,” Joan breathed as they unwrapped the “maypole,” as St. John had named it. “I’ve never seen such a gorgeous dress in all my life.”

  With satisfaction Regina said, “It is so much like you, Valeria—unique, a true original. I admit I was uncertain about the ivory on white, but it turned out extremely well. You’ve shown exquisite taste, dearest.”

  “Let’s go ahead and put it over the hoop skirt and put the necklace around the neck of the form,” Valeria suggested. “I haven’t tried it on with my jewelry.”

  Regina had bought Valeria her first parure of precious gemstones. Among all the jewelers’ shops in London (and they had searched a dozen or so of the more well known) they had found one, Rundell & Bridge on Ludgate Hill, that had a selection of those rarest of jewels, pink diamonds. Valeria had been staggered when she heard the cost, but Regina had insisted. “I am wealthy, my dear, while you are the poor relation,” she had teased Valeria. “We must have them.”

  A parure—a matched set of pieces—might include as much as a necklace, a comb, a full tiara, a more modest diadem, a studded bandeau, both drop and stud cluster earrings, two bracelets, a ring, a pin, a brooch, and a belt clasp. But Valeria had insisted that she would be positively vulgar with so many trinkets, although of course they were never worn all together. She chose a simple choker necklace, a comb, a diadem, one bracelet, and drop earrings.

  Now they put the delicate choker around the neck of the dress form and stepped back to admire it. Craigie sighed a little, no doubt remembering the skinny, awkward little girl who had clung so tenaciously to her after her father’s death, and her great sorrowful misty pools of eyes. Now Valeria was tall, slim, elegant, self-possessed—most of the time, at least. She had grown into lovely young woman.

  “Mamma, I’ll never be able to thank you enough,” Valeria said softly. “You truly are an angel.”

  Regina smiled her sweet smile—the old one, Valeria was glad to note, with no trace of sorrow in it. “You’re welcome, darling. But I must correct you, you know. Today I am the Queen.”

  * * *

  That evening in the Maledon town house drawing room, a Queen’s Drawing Room was held. Regina played the Queen, Craigie played the princesses and the ladies-in-waiting, and Joan played the lord chamberlain and a lord-in-waiting. Regina had required the footmen to move the furniture back so that there was a long open space from the door to the far end of the room, where the French doors were. Here Regina sat on one of the straight-backed dining room chairs, which more nearly approximated a throne. Since the Queen’s throne was on a platform, Regina had insisted that the chair’s legs be placed on several thick books to give her height so that Valeria would have a truer sense of the scene in the Queen’s Drawing Room. When she seated herself, she couldn’t help but smile and playfully kick her legs like a child. “I feel like a Lilliputian,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly, my lady, you’re the Queen of England,” Craigie said, wholly gratified to see Regina looking so happy. It had been a slow, painful process for Regina to recover from her husband’s death, and the scandalous circumstances surrounding it. When they had first come to London she had still been pale and wan, and often wept late at night, and many times when she was at prayers. But slowly her youthful bloom had returned; and she had stopped wearing the glum all-black mourning dresses. From Madame Tournai she had ordered several attractive half-mourning gowns of lavender and a becoming pale blue-gray trimmed with white.

  “Oh, here she comes, Your Majesty,” Craigie said. “Just like a cork in a fat bottle she is, too.” She and Regina could hardly stifle their girlish giggles.

  From the far end of the room Valeria said with exasperation, “Mamma, it’s going to be very hard for me if the Queen is dissolved in laughter when I march in. Joan, we shall begin again.”

  Valeria did indeed look whimsical. She had no intention of practicing in her real dress, not only because she was loath to put it on again, but also because she was deathly afraid of its getting soiled or stained. She had no gown that allowed for the great bell-like hoop skirt, so she wore it over a plain white gown tucked up under her bosom. To simulate the train Joan had first tried a bed sheet, but Valeria had insisted that it wasn’t nearly heavy enough, so Joan had, rather precariously, tied a thick damask tablecloth onto the shoulders of the dress. One towering white ostrich feather was pinned in Valeria’s hair.

  Joan, as the lord-in-waiting, spread the “train” behind Valeria, then took Valeria’s card and went to stand in front of the Queen. Now she was the lord chamberlain; but Joan had absorbed much of Valeria’s nervousness, and she stuttered, “Miss-Miss Saleria Segrave—oh, dear.” After a confused silence, she, Regina, and Craigie burst into laughter.

  “Oh, you’re all perfectly hopeless,” Valeria grumbled. “Never mind, here I come, Your Majesty.”

  Joan, Regina, and Craigie all managed to sober up as Valeria majestically made her way down the room. When she reached the “royal throne,” she sank into a deep curtsy, much deeper than usual, so that her right knee, behind, almost touched the floor. At the same time she bowed low.

  Her feather brushed Her Majesty’s face, and Regina abruptly sneezed.

  Again there was scandalous laughter, and this time Valeria couldn’t keep her countenance either. Still in her curtsy, she began to giggle, which utterly threw her off balance, and she collapsed, her hoop skirt ballooning high over her legs.

  “This—this is hardly—what I’d call an auspicious beginning,” Valeria gasped as Joan and Craigie helped her struggle to her feet. “Then again, the Queen might never see a more entertaining presentation.”

  Wiping her eyes, Regina said, “You’ll be fine, dearest. In fact, you’ll be perfect.”

  Chapter Twenty

  STANDING IN THE LONG, LONG line of ladies with their sponsors in the chilly endless hall called St. James’s Gallery, Valeria said anxiously to Regina, “Oh, Mamma, how shall you bear it? The draft in here is dreadful, and it looks as if we might have to stand in line for hours.”

  The rigid rules of presentation at court began at the front doors of the palace of St. James’s. Ladies were not permitted to wear their shawls or pelisses while waiting on the Queen; outerwear must be left in the carriage. Although the dress code for young ladies making their debut was more strictly defined, the rules of court dress extended to anyone attending royal functions. They were somewhat more relaxed in the case of ladies in mourning or half mourning, but still Regina’s arms, neck, and shoulders were bare. She was wearing a lovely lavender dress trimmed with black Brussels point lace, and the obligatory ostrich feather in her hair was much smaller than Valeria’s, and dyed black. Her hoop skirt was not nearly as wide, and her train was only three feet long.

  They spoke in low whispers, for although the ladies weren’t standing too close, for fear of crushing their dresses, the gallery definitely had a hollow echo. “Never mind, dearest, I’m perfectly fine,” she replied to Valeria. “And to tell you the truth, I’m rather grateful to see that the line is nowhere near as long as I had feared. Since the Queen hasn’t held a Drawing Room in two years, Letitia and I were afraid that there might be five or six hundred girls begging to be presented; and I would imagine that there are, or maybe even more. But it seems to me that this group is closer to the Queen’s usual Drawing Rooms, certainly no more than a hundred.”

  “But we’re at the back of the line,” Valeria fretted. “I knew
that we’re presented according to rank, and since barons are the lowest of the peerage, other girls would be presented before me, but I hadn’t thought of having to stand in a drafty, chilly hallway for hours.”

  “Hush,” Regina warned her, “You really musn’t criticize the royal palace, dearest. And you should understand that just in front of you is Miss Caroline Tree, who is the daughter of Viscount Hering. And behind you are at least a dozen young ladies, so that you are accounted the highest-ranking baron’s daughter here.”

  “Oh, very well, I’ll be good. It does cheer me up considerably that my name is not Tree, daughter of a Hering.”

  “Really, Valeria,” Regina scolded, but her blue eyes were lit with amusement.

  To their surprise, once the presentations started, the ladies did seem to move along the Gallery fairly quickly. Regina whispered to Valeria that the Queen sometimes, but not always, said a few words to the girl being presented, though to judge by the rapidity with which they heard the lord chamberlain announcing names, Her Majesty must not be too much in the mood for chatting. It was well known that Queen Charlotte had been devastated by her husband’s illness and decline into insanity; and little more than a year previously they had lost their beloved youngest daughter, Princess Amelia. It was said that her death had likely worsened the King’s decline, and that even the rather shallow, flighty prince regent still burst into tears at the mention of her name. The idea of being presented to the Queen made Valeria nervous enough, but the idea of being presented to a queen who was merely performing a dreary duty and possibly resenting it made it even worse. Regina, sensing her discomfort, patted her arm. “Please don’t worry, darling, you’ll do very well. I was, myself, pleasantly surprised at the Queen’s kindness, and I’m certain you will be too.”