‘Sea green. Sea sick,’ laughed George.
Both took out long quizzing glasses and squinted at the material.
‘What you want it for?’ demanded George.
‘Coat . . . to wear at Almack’s next Season.’
‘No, no, no, dear chap!’ exclaimed Cyril, raising his white hands in horror. ‘They’ll think you’re Henry Cope. Can’t wear green. Definitely old hat, dear boy.’
George let out an almost feminine scream of laughter. ‘Oh, let’s be on our journey. I do not know why you must stop in these dingy places.’
They drifted out, arm in arm, leaving a strong aroma of musk behind them.
‘It’s not my place to criticize my betters,’ said a burly coachman roundly. ‘But them back gammon players make me want to flash my hash. Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss. I forgot you was there. I hope you didn’t understand what they were saying. Not for the ears of a lady.’
‘I didn’t hear a word,’ lied Annabelle sweetly.
‘That’s a mercy,’ said the coachman. ‘It’s all the fashion for them fribbles to talk coachee as they calls it, but there’s few of us would use that sort of cant, ’specially when there’s ladies around.’
He moved away to buy green tea at the opposite counter and Annabelle turned over in her mind all the mysterious conversation she had heard.
She had heard that it was fashionable to use coachman’s slang and underworld cant. Now Minerva would never use a cant word but would not she, Annabelle, appear to advantage if she mastered the art? The men had not been saying anything very bad, after all. They had been talking about some friend at college. And then they had said green was ‘old hat’. Well, that obviously meant something that was no longer fashionable.
It is to be understood that Annabelle was suffering from a kind of mini-madness. She no longer paused to think much about the fact that plotting to take Lord Sylvester away from her sister was wrong. Annabelle had always rather despised Minerva, much as she loved her. Minerva always seemed to be moralizing about something, and although much of the old priggish, martyred Minerva had disappeared since her engagement, she had not been home much, and, in any case, Annabelle, blinded by jealousy, had noticed no change. The lovelight shining in Minerva’s eyes seemed to her younger sister very much the manifestation of Minerva’s former do-goody fervour.
She did not think for one moment that Minerva was passionately in love with Lord Sylvester. Minerva had been sent to London to catch a rich husband so that the failing Armitage fortunes might be saved. Had not papa told her she must be a martyr? And so Minerva had martyred herself. Now, should Lord Sylvester prefer the fair Annabelle, then there would be no harm done. The Comfrey money would be kept in the family.
These cheerful thoughts occupied Annabelle’s mind after she had purchased the ribbons and was walking home towards the vicarage. At dinner that evening Mrs Armitage was irritatingly vague about the Duke’s residence. Lord Sylvester had, of course, his own estate. The Allsbury mansion was called Haeter Abbey, Haeter being one of the family names. Yes, it was large. Yes, there were a lot of servants. But although Annabelle’s four younger sisters, just back from school in nearby Hopeminster, also plied their mother with questions, none of them could gain a clear picture of Haeter Abbey. The twins were in London, cramming for Eton at a preparatory school.
Then Annabelle noticed that fifteen-year-old Deirdre was wearing one of her best dresses and had put her red hair up.
‘How dare you!’ snapped Annabelle. ‘Sitting there like a guy. Do talk to her, mama. That is one of my gowns which Betty should have packed.’
‘It is very becoming with her unfortunate colour of hair,’ said Mrs Armitage. ‘Minerva will have many gowns for you, Annabelle. You should not grudge your little sister one.’
‘Deirdre is thoroughly spoiled,’ sniffed Annabelle, who like most of the human race was quick to criticize her own faults in others. ‘Go upstairs this instant, miss, and take it off.’
‘If you wish,’ whispered Deirdre, ‘but I shall tell papa that you are in love with Lord Sylvester.’
‘Hey, what’s that?’ demanded the vicar from the head of the table.
Annabelle felt her cheeks burning. ‘I was just telling Deirdre that she may keep my gown,’ she said.
‘Oh, hey! Women’s stuff,’ said the vicar. ‘Which reminds me, I’ll have a word with you after dinner, Bella.’
Annabelle eyed her father nervously. He was a thickset man with a round, ruddy face and small, twinkling shoe-button eyes. Although he appeared to give all his thoughts to his horses and his pack, he sometimes had an uncanny knack of knowing exactly what one was up to.
And so it was with a certain feeling of trepidation that she followed him into the study after the meal was over.
The study was crammed with old game bags, muddy boots, stuffed foxes, guns and rods and whips. The vicar shoved aside the miscellaneous clutter on his desk and sat down.
‘Well, Annabelle,’ he said, turning in his chair and facing her. ‘Off to join the world, hey?’
‘Yes, papa.’
‘See here. You’re a trifle young to be thinking o’ marriage. But I was never one for lookin’ a gift horse in the mouth and that there Marquess of Brabington seemed to have a liking for you.’
‘Indeed, papa?’ said Annabelle primly. ‘I had not noticed.’
‘No?’ The vicar’s gaze suddenly became very sharp. ‘You ain’t got any silly notions into that brain box o’ yours, hey? Ain’t formed a tendre for Comfrey?’
‘Lord Sylvester? No,’ said Annabelle faintly, glad that she was not blushing.
‘If you say so. Gels at your age get these fancies for an older man sometimes. He’s thirty-four.’
‘He’s not too old for Minerva.’
‘No. Cos she’s matured and you ain’t. She spoiled you, you know. You were only sixteen when you were canoodling in the six-acre with Guy Wentwater. Aye, that brings you to the blush. Didn’t know I knew about that!’
‘Mr Wentwater was merely expressing his affection, and, furthermore, I have not heard from him since.’
‘Nor are like to,’ said the vicar grimly.
‘You did something to frighten him away,’ exclaimed Annabelle.
‘Not I,’ said the vicar, looking the picture of innocence, and mentally reminding the Almighty that it was sometimes politic to lie.
‘Anyways,’ he went on severely, ‘I want you to behave yourself. No flashing your eyes and ogling the fellows, mind!’
‘Papa!’
‘And you will mind Minerva at all times. She’s got her head screwed on the right way and you ain’t.’
‘Yes, papa,’ said Annabelle through thin lips.
‘And if you make any mischief, I shall get to hear of it and I’ll take the horsewhip to you which is a thing I’ve had a mind to do many’s a time, but Minerva always stepped in an’ stopped me.’
‘You would not dare!’ gasped Annabelle. ‘I, sir, am a lady.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ said the vicar calmly. ‘I’m warning you, Annabelle, you keep your conversation civil and your manner modest.’
‘Very well, papa.’
‘“Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” Peter 1, Chapter 8, verse 11.’
‘Yes, papa.’
‘Now, here’s a purse for you. Pin money and money for the servants. Off to bed with you.’
Folding her lips into a mutinous line, Annabelle stalked up the stairs to her room.
Deirdre was sitting at the toilet table, trying various creams on her face.
Annabelle’s temper erupted and she ran at her younger sister and shook her till her teeth rattled.
‘Get to your own room,’ she hissed.
Deirdre wriggled out of Annabelle’s grasp and danced to the door. ‘You haven’t a hope of Lord Sylvester even looking at you, Bella. Fair-haired women aren’t fashionable.’
‘Neither are carrot tops,’ screamed Annabelle. She seized a ha
ir brush and threw it at her sister, but Deirdre quickly nipped around the door and was gone.
‘Spiteful little cat!’ muttered Annabelle, sitting down at the toilet table and anxiously studying her reflection in the glass. Anger had brought a flush to her cheeks and a sparkle to her large blue eyes. Her blonde hair, which she still wore down, formed a golden aureole about her pretty face.
‘I’m beautiful,’ said Annabelle defiantly. ‘Much more beautiful than Minerva.’ Then suffocating excitement began to rise in her throat. Soon she would see Lord Sylvester. She began to weave rosy fantasies of returning to the vicarage with a doting Lord Sylvester on her arm and savoured the thought of Deirdre’s consternation. ‘This is my little sister,’ she would say, patting Deirdre’s hair. ‘We must do something to reform her, darling. So wild in her ways, she will never catch a beau.’
But it was a rather small and scared and schoolgirlish Annabelle who bade farewell to her parents and sisters on the following day. The girls had been kept from school especially to say goodbye to her. The vicar promised to write to the twins that very day and tell them of Annabelle’s visit to the Duke of Allsbury.
The magnificent glass-wigged coachman, grander than an archbishop, cracked his whip. Annabelle leaned out of the carriage window, seeing her family through a blur of tears. Two tall footmen jumped on the backstrap, the housemaid Betty clasped her hands in sheer ecstasy at the glory of the soft leather upholstery, the bearskin rugs, and the hot brick at her feet – and they were off.
‘G-Goodbye,’ choked Annabelle, fluttering her handkerchief. ‘Oh, I will be good, papa.’
But the vicar’s startled shout of, ‘You weren’t setting out to be anything else, were you?’ was drowned in the rumble of the wheels.
Annabelle sat back in the corner and dried her streaming eyes. Was this how Minerva felt? she thought uneasily. Was this how she felt when she set out to London with instructions to find a husband? And wasn’t it monstrous wicked even to think of depriving her of her catch?
The coach rumbled on down through the village, casting its reflection in the still waters of the village pond, the four great horses pulling it sending out snorts of smoky breath into the frigid air.
Past the Six Jolly Beggarmen; past the wrinkled little figure of Squire Radford, who raised his hat.
And on past the gates of The Hall, home of Annabelle’s uncle, Sir Edwin Armitage. Sir Edwin, the vicar’s brother, and his wife, Lady Edwin, had had their noses quite put out of joint by Minerva’s success on the marriage mart. Their conceited daughters, Emily and Josephine, had not taken at all, and were all set to try again at the next Season.
At the thought of Josephine and Emily, Annabelle’s uneasy conscience fled to be replaced by a rosy fantasy of presenting Lord Sylvester to them as her fiancé and watching the look on their Friday-faces.
The carriage swayed over the hump-backed bridge that spanned the River Blyne, and sent echoes flying back from the high mossy walls around Lady Went-water’s estate.
By the time the coach had swung out on to the Hopeminster Road, Annabelle’s fantasy had faded, and once again she began worrying about how she would behave at the Duke of Allsbury’s.
She tried to reassure herself by remembering that she had been on visits to their neighbour, Lord Osbadiston, who had lived in rather a grand style before his debts had caught up with him. But she had gone there with her family, very much one of the children. Now, visiting a Duke was almost as good as visiting royalty. It was said the Duke and Duchess of Allsbury held very fashionable house parties. Mrs Armitage would not have felt intimidated. She was so determined to prove that she was an ailing invalid that she did not really notice much of what was going on around her. Minerva, with a London Season behind her, would be quite at ease, but here Annabelle frowned. If she were to impress and charm Lord Sylvester, then she did not want to hide behind her sister’s skirts.
If only she did not have to meet these mysterious young men! And if Minerva found them suitable, they must be boring in the extreme, thought Annabelle, determined to hang on to the idea that Minerva’s engagement to Lord Sylvester had been a result of a temporary mental aberration on the part of that gentleman.
‘Oh, Miss Bella,’ cried the maid, Betty, breaking in to her thoughts. ‘Ain’t it scary to be visiting a real live dook?’
‘You must learn to know your place, Betty,’ said Annabelle severely, ‘and call me Miss Annabelle from now on.
‘Yes’m,’ said Betty with a little toss of her head. It was Miss Bella who would soon find she didn’t know her place, thought Betty gleefully. And that would be fun to watch. Too full of herself was our Miss Bella!
TWO
After two days of travelling, Annabelle arrived at Haeter Abbey on a cold grey morning, with black massed clouds threatening snow.
She had expected a palace like Blenheim and experienced a sharp pang of disappointment as Haeter Abbey hove into view. It seemed a large, rather ugly house set in a flat park. In 1758, the young architect, Robert Adam, had designed the interiors, but by the time he had shown his plans for remodelling the outside of the building, the duke at that time had remarked curtly that he had spent enough money, and so the dull bare brick front with its squat row of columns stayed as it was.
The inside was another story. But, at first at least, Annabelle did not even notice its magnificence.
She was ushered into a large hall and stood hesitantly on its broad expanse of black-and-white tile. Adam’s cool colours set off the Roman statuary which surrounded the room. At the end, a double flight of stairs curved up to the state rooms on the first floor.
Annabelle saw none of this magnificence. She dimly saw Minerva, her arms stretched out in welcome. But clear and sharp, she saw the tall, elegant figure of Lord Sylvester and hurtled towards it.
Throwing her arms around him, she turned her glowing face up to his. If ever a girl was waiting to be kissed, it was Annabelle.
Lord Sylvester Comfrey gave her cheek a careless flick of his hand and then gently disengaged himself.
‘Welcome, Miss Annabelle,’ he said. ‘Your sister is waiting to greet you.’
Annabelle flushed delicately, realizing her mistake. Of course dear Sylvester would not show any unnecessary warmth in front of Minerva.
‘I am so sorry, Lord Sylvester,’ she said. ‘You must think the long journey has addled my wits. I simply rushed into the arms of the first person I saw. Merva, it is so good to see you.’
She hugged and kissed her sister, noticing out of the corner of one blue eye that the rather blank look had left Lord Sylvester’s green eyes and he was surveying her approvingly.
As she drew back, Annabelle was still so intent on charming Lord Sylvester that she did not notice Minerva’s rather heightened colour.
‘Come and I will take you to your room, Annabelle,’ said Minerva, ‘and we can have a comfortable coze. Lord Sylvester will excuse us.’
She put her arm around Annabelle’s waist and led her up the stairs.
Annabelle was only dimly aware of a glory of rich colours and ornaments and paintings. She half turned on the landing and glanced down into the hall. A footman carrying a large candelabra was crossing it, but, of Lord Sylvester, there was no sign.
The bedroom allotted to Annabelle had a sitting room leading from it and a powder closet which had been turned into a small dressing room. The rooms were decorated in rich golds and crimsons with a seventeenth century tapestry depicting the death of Remus along one wall of the bedroom.
Annabelle rattled on breathlessly about the doings of the parish while Minerva helped Betty to unpack.
Then she changed out of her boots into a pair of beaded slippers and warmed her toes at the hearth. For the first time she looked fully at Minerva and felt a pang of sheer jealousy.
Minerva was wearing a classical, high-waisted, vertical gown with a high neck and deep muslin ruff in palest pink. The untrained skirt was ankle length with a slightly flared hem ornamented with
Spanish trimmings. The sleeves were long and close fitting, ending in a muslin wrist frill. Her black hair was dressed à la Titus, artistically dishevelled curls springing from a centre parting. Her large grey eyes seemed almost silver and her cheeks were faintly flushed.
‘You make me feel like a yokel,’ said Annabelle with a rather shrill laugh. ‘Mama said you would lend me some gowns, Merva. Please let me look at your wardrobe. I must look my best. And who are these gentlemen you wish me to meet?’
Minerva dismissed Betty to the servants’ quarters, softly closed the door behind the maid, and came and sat down opposite Annabelle, looking rather grave.
‘Yes, you may choose any of my dresses you please,’ said Minerva, ‘and I shall tell you about the other guests shortly. But first I must explain something to you. The ways of the haut ton are not so very different from our ways. To be modest and pleasing at all times and not to talk too much are some necessary things to remember.’
Here Annabelle sighed loudly and tapped her foot impatiently on the fender.
‘Don’t prose so, Merva,’ said Annabelle.
‘Neither Mama nor Papa is here, so I stand in their place,’ said Minerva severely. ‘I must, therefore, tell you that your behaviour on arrival was disgraceful.’
‘You refine too much upon it,’ said Annabelle hotly. ‘I explained. I was delighted to have arrived safely after a tedious journey. Sylvester is to be my brother-in-law . . .’
‘Lord Sylvester to you, miss.’
Annabelle suddenly grinned. ‘You’re jealous, Merva,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Minerva coldly, ‘you do me an injustice. Where Lord Sylvester is concerned, I have nothing to be jealous about.’
Minerva seemed so utterly sure of herself, so completely serene, that Annabelle experienced her first qualm of doubt. Could Lord Sylvester really love Minerva?
‘You are very young, Bella,’ said Minerva. ‘Perhaps I was wrong to arrange this invitation for you.’
Taming of Annabelle Page 2