Love and Lady Lovelace (The Changing Fortunes Series, Vol. 8)

by M C Beaton

  But Lady Lovelace had not heard her acid remark. She was talking aloud, thinking out her strategy. “I must become the fashion, Tabby. All the crack, you know.

  “I must appear witty, which is quite easy, you know, for one is never really supposed to be actually witty since intelligence is not at all fashionable. My toilette must be a tiny bit daring but in a ladylike manner. I must capture a husband in the first month of the Season, for I really don’t think we can afford more than a month. I must become an Exclusive and be invited to all the very best places and never of course dance anywhere on Wednesday but at Almack’s. Don’t look so worried, Tabby-cat. I can assure you, I am no more or less mercenary than any other female on the marriage mart. Yes, I think a youngish man. Not necessarily attractive but rich. Oh, dear, he must be very rich… if I am ever going to get us out of this coil!”

  “Saved all the money you ever gave me,” said Miss Wilkins, staring fixedly at her plate. “Have it. Don’t want it m’self.”

  Lady Lovelace felt a lump rising in her throat. She had not broken down, no, not once, since she had realized the full extent of the disaster, but that simple offer from Miss Wilkins nearly overset her.

  “No, Tabby,” she said gently. “I did not fail before, and I shall not fail this time. I would go into the poorhouse before I would touch one penny of your earnings. Dear Tabby.”

  She reached her hand across the table but Miss Wilkins, dying of embarrassment and inarticulate love, affected not to notice it.

  Lord Philip Osborne, youngest son of the Duke of Dunster, leaned on the rail of the ship which was bearing him slowly across the Indian Ocean, back home to England.

  The sun beat down on his uncovered head; the water stretched for miles, hard and blue under a hard and blue sky.

  He was thirty-four years of age and had come to the conclusion that his life had been wasted. All he had ever wanted to do was satisfy his interest in agriculture and farm some land. But as the youngest son, he stood to inherit very little. He had therefore made the army his career and had ended up a sepoy colonel in India. After years of army life so far from home, he was tired of harsh colors and foreign voices. Tired of the petty politics of regimental life. Tired of the memsahibs and their lack of understanding of the Indian and the petty snobberies they had brought with them from England. Tired of himself because he had not been greedy enough to make his fortune. He had some prize money and a pension, that was all.

  He wanted to spend his life under gray English skies looking at wet, green England fields. He wanted to put down roots. He wanted money.

  “I want a lot of money,” he told the uncaring ocean, not aware he had spoken aloud until an amused voice said in his ear, “And how do you propose to go about it, Phil?”

  He turned from the rail and smiled down into the eyes of his friend, Mr. Harry Bagshot.

  “I don’t know, Harry. Have you any ideas?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Bagshot, pulling his lower lip. “You won’t take any of mine and I’ve offered you money often enough. I think you should marry an heiress. Lots of the chaps do.”

  “But isn’t that a trifle unfair? Surely a girl, heiress or not, would expect me to be in love with her?”

  “Oh, no,” said Harry blithely. “Not in London. No one marries for love, you know. In fact, it’s quite frowned on. Not at all the thing. One marries for money or a title. Now there are plenty of rich Cits who want to marry into the aristocracy. Their daughter gets the title, you get the money, everybody’s happy. ’Course it’s a good idea to pretend you’ve got a bit of money at first. Otherwise you don’t get invited to the best places. You know what people think of younger sons.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Lord Philip. “Good enough to make up a table at a dinner party but not good enough to marry.”

  “Exactly. Now just look at yourself. You’ve got everything but money. When it comes to sports, you’re a top sawyer so all the men like you, and all the ladies think you’re Adonis.”

  “Spare my blushes!”

  “Fact,” said Mr. Bagshot, looking up at his tall friend. “I sometimes think you don’t know how handsome you are! Now take me, f’r instance. I’m glad I’ve got money. That’s what makes me attractive.”

  “I never think it matters much what men look like,” said Lord Philip. “Surely it’s a matter of personality.”

  “Only to another man,” said Mr. Bagshot gloomily.

  Mr. Bagshot was, in fact, not unattractive. He was small in stature but he was slim and had twinkling blue eyes and an unruly mop of chestnut curls and a puckish face.

  Lord Philip, on the other hand, was often described as Byronic, although that was not the case. There was nothing wild or poetic in his attire. His coats were tailored to perfection. His locks were carefully arranged in the style known as the Windswept. From Calcutta to Bombay, he had been dubbed as the Beau Brummell of India. He had jet-black hair and a lightly tanned skin. His eyes were bright green and heavy-lidded. He had thin black brows which gave him a somewhat satanic appearance. His nose was high-bridged, his mouth firm, if a trifle thin, and his chin square.

  His movements were slow, languid, and lazy, belying the hard muscle and sinew of his slim figure.

  As far as the ladies were concerned, he had never set himself to please, and many disappointed hopefuls had claimed to have been repelled by his icy manner. One colonel’s lady had described him as being “insufferably polite at all times.”

  He did not gamble much and he drank little. Mr. Bagshot suspected at times that Lord Philip was a bit of a Puritan. He was undoubtedly a rigidly self-disciplined man.

  “I might do it,” said Lord Philip suddenly, his back to the rail. “I might just do it.”

  “What?”

  “Find myself an heiress.”

  “That’s the stuff,” said Mr. Bagshot. “We’ll be home in time for the Season. I’ll trot you around all the Fashionables. But you’ll need to… to… well, flirt, and unbend a little.”

  Lord Philip smiled down at him. “If,” he said lazily, “I find it a chore, I shall gaze into my heiress’s eyes and therein I shall see some green pastures and good farming land and she will find me the most passionate of men.”

  “You know,” said Mr. Bagshot, “I don’t know who you’ll form a tendre for… but, damme, when you look like that, I declare I feel sorry for her already!”

  Two

  Society in London in the Regency was so much a kind of club that you could be said to be “in” or “out.” Only the “in,” or the Exclusives, as they called themselves, went to Almack’s.

  Almack’s, the famous Assembly Rooms, was to be found just off St. James’s Street, in King Street. In the preceding century an enterprising Scot named Macall had juggled the letters of his name and founded Almack’s, thereby supplying Society with a secure rendezvous. Admission was by ticket only, called “vouchers of admission,” and the subscriptions were harder to secure than a peerage. You had to be scrutinized, put through your paces, and have your bloodline picked over by six formidable patronesses, who did, in fact, everything short of examining your teeth before you were finally accepted.

  And all this for a superficially unexciting weekly event. A ball was held every Wednesday evening throughout the Season. There the very flower of the English aristocracy danced against a dull backdrop of plain, badly lit rooms and refreshed themselves with weak bohea, weak lemonade, thin slices of brown bread and butter, biscuits, and stale cake. This was all part of the very snobbery of Almack’s. Rich bankers and suchlike people might lavish hospitality on their guests, but at Almack’s, the guests themselves were the entertainment.

  It is doubtful whether Lady Lovelace would have been allowed past these august portals had the patronesses had any length of time to study her background. A parson’s daughter who had married and outlived two elderly men would be suspect, to say the least. But Amaryllis had met Sally, Lady Jersey, at a party in Naples and had not liked her one bit, thinking her a vulgar, push
ing woman, but she had carefully concealed her thoughts, and Lady Jersey, far from home and disoriented, had found Lady Lovelace charming.

  On hearing that Amaryllis had arrived in London, she had sent her vouchers for Almack’s without really consulting her fellow patronesses and so Lady Lovelace was “in.”

  The late Lord Lovelace had not favored the Season, considering anything that took him away from his beloved Beaton Malden a sheer waste of time. And so he had not maintained a town house.

  Amaryllis had therefore rented one in Green Street and had already established a modest salon and a modest reputation as a beauty and a wit by the evening of Almack’s opening ball.

  She had calculated the amount of money she would need to pull herself and her dependents out of the River Tick to a nicety and, although she had several possible suitors on a string, not one of them had enough wealth to suit her needs. When she had been in Naples, Amaryllis had spent money and entertained lavishly, and Lady Jersey was quick to put it about that the young widow was an heiress of considerable means.

  This tantalizing piece of gossip worked its way up and down the clubs of St. James’s and finally came to the ears of none other than Lord Philip Osborne.

  Rather in the manner of Lady Lovelace, Lord Philip had spent much of the money he had on setting himself up in style so that he would be able to attract an eligible fortune. He had so far put off stepping out into the world to look for a suitable partner since he thought he would stand a better chance with the daughter of some rich merchant. But the sheer mercenary aspect of his hunt made him hesitate. He was not familiar with any rich merchants and the idea of scraping acquaintance with them for the simple end of marrying one of their daughters went against the grain. He knew he was shortly about to dislike himself heartily as soon as he began his pursuit, and so he put it off from day to day.

  At his friend Harry Bagshot’s insistence, he had learned to gamble enough and drink enough to have himself accounted “no end of a good fellow.” He was a good judge of horseflesh and his curricle and pair were the envy of every blood in town.

  He had put himself in the hands of Weston, the tailor, and soon the dandies at the opera were craning their necks to see what Lord Philip was wearing with the same intense interest as they studied the famous Beau Brummell.

  He had received vouchers for Almack’s, as had Mr. Bagshot. Harry Bagshot ruefully said he owed his own invitation to Lord Philip’s friendship rather than to any qualities that he himself might possess. In an effort to further his friend’s ambitions, Harry Bagshot had carefully put it about that Lord Philip was “a veritable nabob.” In fact, he had overdone it, and Lord Philip was happily unaware that Society considered him to be one of the richest men in England.

  On the afternoon before Almack’s opening ball, Mr. Bagshot joined Lord Philip in the library in White’s Club in St. James’s Street, bubbling ever with news.

  “I say, Phil,” he began. “You’ll never guess. I have the most tremendous news.”

  “Why on earth don’t you remove your hat, dear boy?” said Lord Philip, looking at his friend’s curly-brimmed beaver.

  “What!” exclaimed Mr. Bagshot, momentarily diverted. “One doesn’t remove one’s hat till one has been in the club over ten minutes!”

  “Mad,” shrugged Lord Philip. “You’re all mad. Sit down and tell me the news that I can see bursting out of your ears.”

  “I’ve found you an heiress,” said Mr. Bagshot, plumping himself down. “She will be at Almack’s tonight.”

  “What? No rich merchant’s daughter? Who is this lady?”

  “Lady Lovelace. Widow. Sally Jersey met her in Naples and says she’s as rich as Golden Ball. This Lady Lovelace is not in the first blush of youth….”

  “Aha! There’s the rub! An antidote.”

  “Not a bit of it. Toby Sommers says she’s vastly pretty and no end of a wit. He was at her salon t’other day—she has a salon on Mondays—and Maria Friend was there, you know, the bluestocking?”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “Oh, listen and stop interrupting or you’ll never find out anything. This Maria, she says to Lady Lovelace, she says, ‘Have you read Jane Austen? I just adore Jane Austen.’”

  “To which your paragon replied?”

  “To which Lady Lovelace replied, ‘I never read Jane Austen. Her books are so full of utterly commonplace people.’ There!”

  “What an extremely silly remark to make,” said Lord Philip with distaste.

  “Oh, you are such a stick-in-the-mud, Phil. Everyone thought it was monstrous funny.”

  “Everyone is a coxcomb. I do not think I want to meet this Lady Lovelace.”

  Harry Bagshot surveyed his friend. “I did not know you were looking for true love.”

  “I’m not. I’ve made it quite clear to you, Harry, that I am looking for a fortune.”

  “Then I’ve found you one.”

  “There must be a certain amount of compatibility. I cannot see me sharing a marriage bed with a woman who makes pompous and stupid remarks about an author who is a genuine wit.”

  “What a stoopid thing to say. When I share my marriage bed, I won’t be discussing novels, dear fellow. I say,” Harry looked furtively about the room and lowered his voice, “you ain’t, well, one of those?”

  “One of what?”

  “One of those,” whispered Harry, turning pink to the roots of his hair under Lord Philip’s cool, green gaze.

  “I think the hot sun of India has addled your brains. Are you by any chance in fear and dread that I might form a tendre for you?” Lord Philip had taken out his quizzing glass the better to scrutinize his friend and one green eye, hideously magnified, stared awfully at the outraged and scarlet Mr. Bagshot.

  “I didn’t mean that,” howled Mr. Bagshot. “I meant… are you a virgin?”

  Lord Philip dropped his quizzing glass and looked with dawning amusement on his furiously blushing friend.

  “No,” he said gently, “I am afraid I am not. It is possible, you know, to sample the delights of the marriage bed without actually being married. What on earth put such a totty-headed notion into your brain-box?”

  “Well, I mean to say, taking a young woman in dislike just ’cos she don’t like Jane Austen.”

  “I do not object to her dislike of Miss Austen. I object to her feeble attempt to set herself up as a wit at the expense of a writer who is one.”

  “Well, you’re a hard man, Phil.”

  “Perhaps you are right. I shall attend Almack’s and look at the… er… merchandise. There! Does that please you?”

  “Now you’re being sensible. Remember to wear knee breeches and arrive before eleven o’clock or they won’t let you in.”

  “Knee breeches” was not to be taken too literally. What was frowned on was the full-length informal trouser or pantaloon, a garment said to resemble two Continental towns in being Too-long and Too-loose. The more common and equally acceptable costume, introduced by Brummell, was the form-fitting black tights showing a modest amount of striped silk stocking encased in a flat black dancing slipper.

  No one, but no one, was allowed into Almack’s after eleven o’clock. George Tickner, the American publisher, overheard the following dialogue at Almack’s.

  “Lady Jersey, the Duke of Wellington is at the door, and desires to be admitted.”

  “What o’clock is it?”

  “Seven minutes after eleven, your ladyship.”

  “Give my compliments—give Lady Jersey’s compliments to the Duke of Wellington, and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of exclusion is such that hereafter no one can complain of its application. He cannot be admitted.”

  “I won’t disgrace you,” said Lord Philip. “I really think all these silly despotic rules are ridiculous. The trouble with Society is that it has nothing better to do than play at being exclusive. Oh, don’t look so. I shall charm your heiress.”

  “Lady Lovelace is supposed to b
e very frivolous,” said Mr. Bagshot doubtfully. “I trust you don’t mean to be strong and silent.”

  “Not in the least. I shall be strong and garrulous.”

  The object of this discussion was lying on a chaise longue in the drawing room of her house in Green Street reading a copy of Pride and Prejudice.

  “I thought you didn’t like Miss Austen,” remarked Miss Wilkins, leaning over her shoulder.

  “Oh, because I made that silly remark everyone is talking about? I have to say things like that, Tabby. That’s what passes for wit. Now, if I said anything at all witty or intelligent, no one in Society would find it in the least funny.”

  “I have heard of a possible husband.”

  “Really, Tabby! Don’t lean over me like that. Come around where I can see you. How did you find out and who is he?”

  “While you were engaged in denigrating Miss Austen,” said Miss Wilkins dryly, “I was talking to Miss Armitage’s companion.” Miss Priscilla Armitage, a gushing young debutante, had attached herself to Amaryllis, after meeting her at a supper party at Vauxhall. Miss Wilkins went on, “Miss Armitage, it appears, had great hopes of attracting the attention of the latest star on the London scene.”

  “Who is…?”

  “Who is Lord Philip Osborne. No, don’t look up the peerage. I did that. He is the youngest son of the Duke of Dunster and stands to inherit practically nil. But he went out to India with his regiment and is come back a nabob. Not only is he extremely rich, but he is reputed to dress as well as Brummell, drive to an inch, and to be prodigious handsome in a devilish kind of a way.”

  “La! This paragon will not be searching around for a widow in her twenty-seventh year.”

  “I don’t see why he should not find you attractive,” said Miss Wilkins. “You have never really been courted, my lady. As I understand it, your first husband, Squire Rumstead, took advantage of your predicament and practically proposed marriage over your poor father’s coffin.”

  “Well, perhaps. But he was a kind man. A little bit noisy and loud in his cups but so contrite afterwards. And he was so kind to little Sarah and Bella.”