"And Willa?" Fifi managed.
"Yes." Willa Sheffield, daughter of the Earl de Courcy, loved the May Day event. Other school friends attended often. Millicent Weaver, a shy young lady with a rapier wit. Sandrine De Compiègne, whose poor parents had fled Danton and his radicals in France. "Willa wrote me the other day to say she'll come if she's recovered from her sniffles. The Frolic is always a wonderful reunion for us."
Fifi gulped down her tea. "And your point?"
"Your Aunt Courtland always ensures there are enough young gentlemen in attendance to partner with each unmarried lady."
Fifi fingered her next treat. "Wallflowers."
"Hmm. Yes. But we ten at Miss Shipley's were never that."
"No." She chewed the pastry, savoring the silky creme. "Something to be thankful for, eh?"
"So that means the numbers are always equal."
Fifi picked up her serviette and wiped her mouth. "Always. And?" She waved her hand. "Come now. Fire, flood, men. You have a solution to any problem."
"You are too kind. That fire—"
Fifi scolded her with a sharp look. "You put it out and saved my life and two others'."
"Only quick thinking—"
"That saved your puppy from drowning, too!" Fifi sniffed. "Your solution here is what? Out with it!"
Mary lifted her nose in the air. "You'll pick one."
"Pick one what?"
"Man."
"Who?" Fifi needed facts, names, not generalities. It's how one kept track of cards at the table. Who had what. When.
"Anyone," Mary said.
"Not one specific man?"
"No. You must choose. Not I. I've not had much luck match-making lately."
"I see. That bit with Millicent went awry. But then why am I choosing just any man? I refuse to romp around the May Pole with Lord Hornsby or that Mister Weymouth." She widened her eyes with seeming implications.
Mary laughed. "With someone who appeals!"
"If they invite the same neighbors who've attended the past two years, my answer is no. We're in for a good snore."
"They won't. They'll invite new faces this year."
"How do you know?"
Mary drew in a breath. "I had a letter from Esme this morning."
"Oh! How could you not tell me?" Esme had often confided in Mary. The were friends, although not as firmly so as Mary and Fifi. And Fifi had never minded. Not really. Because Mary was not a gossip or a snitch. Fifi could trust Mary with her life. "What did she say?"
"That her mama has invited four more gentlemen in addition to the regular coterie of past years."
"Hunh! About time. Ivy and Grace threatened to leave last year after they got tied up in the May Pole ribbons. Trussed up like chickens, they said, with two local men."
"In any case," Mary assured her, "there will be more gentlemen to chose from."
"Did Esme give any names?"
"No. Because she wanted to surprise us."
Fifi blew air up and ruffled the curls over her brow. "She'll suitably surprise me if she breaks her engagement."
Mary set her gaze on Fifi. "Before next Tuesday, Fee, you must come round. Perk up. Make an effort to have fun at this party."
"I will. Don't worry."
Mary look angry, but then she often did when she said things that were...well...not quite polite. And she did that often.
"So? What's your plan?" Fifi threw her a rueful look. "Dance with a new guest?"
"More than that."
Hmm. "How much more?"
"Smile. Laugh. Kiss him."
She grimaced. "If I can find one with dry lips."
"Be serious, Fee!"
"I am. Have you ever kissed a man with wet lips?" She shuddered. "Like Mister Weymouth?"
Mary wrinkled her nose. "Did you kiss him?"
"Absolutely not! He kissed me." Fifi shivered.
Mary dismissed that with a shrug. "You must show Esme that you don't care if she marries Northington."
"What? That's not true!"
"Of course not. But you must prove to her that you don't care for Northington so that he will believe it." And so will you.
Fifi put down her empty plate. "Good point. And I'll do that by... I know." She snapped her fingers. "Giving him the cut direct."
"Forget Northington. Choose another man, someone kind and sweet. Allow him to pay his attentions to you. Smile. Dance. But at any cost, do not play cards with him!"
"Very funny." Fifi shook her head and her glasses slipped. "I don't always win, you know. Last week, I lost—Never mind." She couldn't reveal that she'd gone to that hideous card parlor. "In any case, I couldn't pretend to like a man. I'm not a good actress."
"No acting involved. Just look appreciative. Interested. It'll be easy, Fee."
"How?"
"Keep to the fun of it. No kisses if you don’t want them. No disappearing into the library. Or whatever one does. Just simpering and cow eyes."
"Cow eyes? Ba! I can't see well enough to do that!"
Mary laughed.
"I'm not kidding. I failed at flirting our first year out." Fifi reached for another choux. "It doesn't work."
"Oh, god, Fee! Pretend!"
Fifi regarded Mary with the perspective of ten years' of knowledge of her friend. Mary would go to this event and not have fun herself. She hardly ever did. Though Mary had never voiced it, Mary thought of herself as less than worthy. A faulty leg did not necessarily a wallflower make. Except Mary had become one. Not dancing. Not flirting. Sitting conversing with the spinsters at house parties and balls. She deserved to enjoy life. She was young, pretty and learned. Especially about plants and gardening. "I'll pretend if you will."
Mary startled. "Oh, I couldn't."
Fifi hated to see her so cloistered. "It would be easy. Isn't that what you're telling me?"
"Well, I—"
"Mary, it's simple. Smile. Dance. Play cards!"
"Now you're being funny."
"I'm deadly serious, Mary. You do so many things to help others, but never yourself. Do this. Just once. And have a bit of fun."
Since she'd never asked much of Mary in all their years of friendship, Fifi was shocked and delighted that her friend agreed. Even if she did so, reluctantly.
Chapter 2
April 30, 1816
“You are quite certain you'll be able to manage without me?" Fifi asked her butler and her mother's nurse one last time. They stood in the upstairs hall outside her mother's suite with Fifi in a muddle.
Jerrold bristled, insulted, and drew himself up into his dignity. "Yes, milady."
"Oh, yes, ma'am," said the nurse who'd weathered many a storm caused by Fifi's mother in her bouts of hysteria.
"You'll fetch Porter if you need him?" Fifi insisted on the footman intervening whenever her mother became agitated or unmanageable. Porter was a former bare knuckle boxer. With broken nose and cheekbone, he was a hulking mountain of a man.
The butler and maid assured her it would be so.
Her mother was particularly worrisome this morning. Raving on about her hair, how silver it was, how the nurse must have dyed it in the night as she slept, running at the dutiful servant as if she were a mouse to be chased through her rooms.
"We'll get on," Nurse Pritchard said, a mournful downturn to her mouth. She'd been with the family all her life and felt maternal toward Fifi. "You must go to this party, my lady. You always do. It will do you good. Spring air, you know."
"The doctor's suggestion of laudanum is not one I wish you to use."
"Yes, ma'am." The nurse nodded, her eyes cast downward. "I remember."
"Only in severe situations." The trouble was every one of her mother's outbursts could be termed just that. Fifi did not like the addictive nature of the poppy, but she didn't like her mother to be tied to her bed, either. Still, they had few options to calm her when safety of others was a concern. In a fit the countess had been known to pick up chairs, destroy furniture, yell obscenities at the top o
f her lungs. Unnerving to say the least. And at worst...
Fifi swallowed on the harsh matter of restraining her mother. "I don't like to subject any of you to the terror of it, but I frankly do not know what else to do." The physician offered no alternatives of any value, save the opium extract which given liberally made her mother listless.
Jerrold scowled. He'd served in this household for three decades. He could tell tales Fifi did not wish to hear, not only about her mother's irrational behavior but also her father's rake hell nature. "If she cannot be dissuaded, my lady, we can usher her into the back room we've prepared."
Fifi grimaced. Over a year ago, Jerrold had led the staff to strip their mother's dressing room not only of clothes and hats and shoes, but also of any hairbrush or comb or instrument she could use to attack them. The countess had done so twice, sending one poor footman to the servants' quarters with a broken arm and another, a maid, against the wall, head first. Dizzy and crying, the girl recovered quickly, but others on staff grew leery of their mistress. Fifi had been horrified, outraged as she had never been since before her father died.
After that incident, Fifi had ordered a tiny room carved out of her mother's quarters. This room was minus all furniture and contained only soft bedding. Fifi also sought out a giant of a man as a servant to protect them during her mother’s rages. In Bath, she'd found a former pugilist. Porter was now their footman and he helped defend them all from her mother.
Why her mother acted as she did was a mystery to Fifi. The woman was free of her abusive husband and to Fifi's thinking, her mother should rejoice at that. The old earl had always acted brutishly to his wife. How Mama could not celebrate that monster's passing, Fifi could not fathom. She lived each day without him with a joy untold to anyone. Even to her best friend Mary, Fifi had not breathed a word of her father’s abuse. Though the man had never laid a finger on Fifi, she damned him to eternity for what he'd been and what evil he'd visited upon her mother. From snippets of arguments between her parents that she’d overheard, Fifi concluded her father had probably treated other women cruelly as well.
Fifi nodded at her staff. "Yes, if you must, do lead her to the quiet room. Our best alternative." She inhaled, eager to escape to the country for the respite from care of her mother that she dearly needed. "I will go in and bid her adieu."
Pritchard curtsied.
Fifi collected her courage, for she feared her mama would violently object to her departure. "You may go, Jerrold. Do send on my luggage to the coaching station. I meet Lady Mary there at half the hour. No need to open the door for me here. I'll go in as I wish."
"You will call if you need me."
If her mother was agitated this morning, Fifi would need her strong footman rather than her frail butler. "Of course, Jerrold. Not to fear." Good words for herself, too.
Both servants backed away.
Collected and calm, Fifi stepped to the door, knocked and entered.
Her mother was not in her sitting room but in her bedroom. Attired in the simple cotton gown without ties or adornment, her aging mother—white-haired and lovely still at sixty-four—sat in her enormous wing chair near the window. The chair, upholstered and solid walnut, was one the woman could not lift to hurl at anyone.
"There you are, Fee. Come." She crooked a finger at her only child as if Fifi were a scullery maid. This morning, the lady had agreed to bathe, but would not allow Pritchard to comb her hair. The long silver tresses flowed over her tall, sturdy form like an untamed river.
Fifi approached her. Closer than she had drawn near to her earlier this morning, Fifi detected that her mother had dispelled her earlier rage and would not attack her. "I wished to tell you that I am off to the market."
"Oh, bother! Allow the maids to shop! Why dirty your hands! I need you here."
Fifi inhaled. She would go to this May Day party. She had to learn why and how her cousin Esme had captured the elusive Northington as her husband. "I must go, Mama. The maids don't choose the best cuts of meat."
"Dismiss them then. Who needs them?"
"I'm off to my dressmaker's after that." She had to build in a few chores so that her mother, who could no longer track days or weeks, would not say she had not informed her that she had left the house.
"Good. Tell that witch I need a new ballgown. The last one she sewed was a disgrace. Your father said so. Would not permit me to wear it. That's why I'm in this hideous sack! He tore it to shreds. Beast." She nailed Fifi with her fierce brown gaze. "You will tell her?"
"I promise."
"Because you didn't yesterday."
Fifi had to go along with this. Dear god. When would this nightmare ever end? "I shall tell her, Mama. Now I bid you adieu. I must run before all the good items are snatched up!"
She bent to kiss her mother's papery cheek.
The woman sniffed. "You put on good perfume. Why? For the butcher? He's not for you, my chick."
"No, Mama. I wouldn't tempt the butcher."
"I should say not! But your father has the bad grace to swive the butcher's wife."
Oh, no. Mama's most scurrilous rant. The one with a thousand faces of Eve and only one villain, her brutal, philandering husband, thankfully dead, may the devil torment his soul.
"I'm leaving. Be good, Mama. Pritchard will be in immediately!"
She smiled falsely, then spun, her fear pricking at her skin that she might not escape this never-ending chaos, not for a day or two or four. Her heart pounded that she must leave for a brief glimpse of heaven.
But then she’d return, wouldn’t she? Return here to the depths of the hell that was her daily existence.
* * *
"I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you thought of this little ploy." Fifi smiled, relieved and overjoyed to be away from home. Even if it was for the dubious task of seeing her conniving cousin Esme Harvey marry the man Fifi thought had been hers, she had escaped the house and her dreary responsibilities.
For a while, at the least.
And one consolation was the very good time Fifi had at her dressmaker's. She wore a new sapphire silk redingote and beneath, a sea blue gown that exactly matched her eyes. She'd checked that in the dressmaker's mirror. Often. And nothing gave her confidence like an addition to her wardrobe. "I haven't had such a good time at my seamstress's in years."
"And she did well by you." Mary gazed out the dirty window of their hired coach.
Fifi sighed. Only a few more minutes and they'd be in Chippenham. The little town was not far from Courtland Hall and her uncle, Lord Courtland had promised to send his own traveling coach into town to take Fifi and Mary the next three miles to his home.
Fifi relaxed into the cushions, much as one could in the rickety old thing. Despite her dismay at Esme for snatching up the marquess whom Fifi had always thought should court her, she was no longer angry at her cousin. She simply wanted a few days of peace and fun. To that end, she'd also apologized to Mary for her churlish behavior the other day. Mary had accepted, saying she was always pleased that Fifi was forgiving of others and that she never held a grudge. Fifi took that as a compliment. Life was too short and definitely too bitter to make more problems by acting mean or spiteful.
She brushed her hand down her coat. "I needed a few new gowns. To help me face the gentleman I'm to marry." She fluttered her lashes like a conspirator at Mary, then at Mary's lady's maid, Welles, who sat across from them. Courtland Hall was a grand house, but each year those invited to the Frolic were so numerous that the ladies could take only one maid between them. Fifi was not demanding, nor was Mary. So Welles cared for them both.
Mary grinned at her reference to their agreement about gentlemen.
Fifi inhaled the crisp spring air. "So I didn't mind the expense. Mama needs for nothing these days. Poor dear. She always loved a party. And she especially always adored this one. Yesterday, she had a moment of clarity and asked me what time of year it was and would I go to Courtland Hall." She never told Mary any of the luri
d statements her mother would blurt. She was too embarrassed and more often than not, too ashamed. "When I said I would, she beamed at me. 'Dance, ma sirène,' she said. So I humored her and told her I would stand up for each one."
"Really?" Mary squeezed Fifi's gloved hand.
Fifi opened her mouth to object. She claimed to have no rhythm and longed to sit out every ditty.
"You will dance? Ha! That means I'll play cards."
Fifi threw her a rueful glance. "You should dance. I'll play cards!"
"And rob the men blind?" Mary chuckled, but rubbed her thigh, an old injury that prevented her from ever taking to a chalked floor with a man. "Not the way to a man's heart, Fifi."
"I don't want any man's heart." That sad thought was one she'd had often lately. What man would want to be associated with a mother-in-law who was unnerving. Indeed that was the nicest word Fifi could put to her mother's behavior. "I just want his agreement to appear that I have it. For three days only." She wrinkled her dark brows. "I keep trying to figure out which man I should approach."
"What of Lord Marleigh? A polite young man. Eyes black as licorice. Dances well."
"Perhaps. But I've gone over all the regular guests and not one inspires me. You?"
Mary pressed her lips together. "My usual problem."
"Shall I start my sermon?" Fifi pushed up her little spectacles and gaily challenged her.
"No. I know it by heart."
Mary was very picky about men. Fifi often thought her too much so. Yet she questioned if Mary bore some man a secret passion. "I think you need a new interest. A Highlander."
"I canna decipher the brogue."
"Ha! How about an Army man! Someone who's been to France and Belgium and—"
Mary winced. "I don't want to talk about the war."
"I don't blame you." Fifi sighed.
They rode in silence for awhile.
"I'm glad we weren't joined by any more passengers this morning." Fifi shifted as the conveyance creaked and groaned over the road east. "Odd, don't you think, that so few are traveling?"
Lady Fiona's Tall, Dark Folly: Four Weddings and a Frolic, Book 1 Page 2