Perfecting Fiona

by Beaton, M. C.

‘But you must realize,’ said Fiona with a tinge of irritation in her voice, ‘that you cannot marry me.’

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed the captain. ‘Believe me, ma’am, your secret is safe with me. If there is ever anything I can do . . . ?’

  ‘I will let you know,’ finished Fiona. ‘Good day, my dear Captain Beaumont. Please do not disclose any of this to the Misses Tribble.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said, seizing her hand again but this time working it up and down like a pump-handle. ‘Er . . . know it might be a misalliance, but can’t you marry this footman? Make an honest . . . er . . . of you?’

  ‘Alas, he married someone else,’ said Fiona. ‘I must take my shame with me to the grave.’

  ‘Damme,’ swore the captain, his black eyes gleaming with admiration. ‘I’ve a good mind to marry you after all!’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Fiona sadly. ‘It would be all right at first, don’t you see, but later you would come to despise me.’

  The captain hesitated. He thought of his martinet of a father and his prim mother. ‘You may be right,’ he sighed. ‘Goodbye, Miss Macleod, and thank you for your honesty.’

  He nearly collided with the Tribble sisters as he left the drawing room.

  ‘Going so soon?’ twittered Effy.

  ‘Lud, yes,’ said the captain, all mad cheerfulness. ‘Got what I came for.’

  ‘Our congratulations,’ said Amy, surprised. ‘But won’t you stay? There is much to be discussed – marriage settlements, wedding . . .’

  ‘’Fraid you misunderstood, ladies,’ said the captain. ‘Came to get a recipe of that Scotch dish for m’ mother. Haggis, that’s it. Very tasty. Good for the spleen. Goodbye, ladies.’

  Strangled sounds of protest followed his hasty exit.

  Amy and Effy walked slowly into the drawing room. Fiona was standing by the window, looking vacantly out into the street.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ demanded Amy. ‘That man came to propose marriage and now he says he only called to get a recipe for haggis, whatever that is.’

  ‘It’s a pudding made from minced offal and onions and cooked in a sheep’s stomach,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Listen, you trollop!’ said Amy, advancing on Fiona with her fists clenched. ‘You can take your haggis and you can stuff it up your—’

  ‘Mr Haddon,’ announced the butler.

  ‘Perhaps I am called at a bad time,’ said Mr Haddon, looking from Amy’s scarlet face to Fiona’s blank one and then at Effy, who had begun to cry.

  ‘No,’ said Amy heavily. ‘What fools we were not to listen to her uncle and aunt. Captain Freddy Beaumont came here and asked leave to pay his addresses to Fiona. He was only alone with her for a few minutes and then he leaves, swearing blind that all he had called for was a recipe for some Scotch muck.’

  Effy rallied and dried her eyes and blew her nose. ‘What did you say to him to put him off, Fiona?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Fiona. ‘I have the headache, and when I have the headache I cannot remember a thing.’

  ‘Go to your room,’ said Amy, controlling her temper with a great effort. ‘We will speak to you later.’

  Fiona curtsied to Mr Haddon and left.

  ‘You told me she had done this sort of thing before,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘Did you not think to stay in the room with her while the captain made his proposal?’

  ‘We had a contretemps with the servants,’ said Amy, ‘and I’m blessed if I didn’t think anything other than the triumph of having secured such a splendid match for the girl.’

  ‘Trouble with the servants?’ asked Effy. ‘What trouble?’

  ‘Tell you later,’ said Amy. ‘What are we going to do about Fiona? I could whip her!’

  Mr Haddon leaned back in his chair and put the tips of his fingers together. ‘That is what the Burgesses would do. That, if I remember rightly, is what you told me they did do. No, we simply must find out what it was she said to the captain. I shall go and see him myself.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Amy gruffly.

  Effy fluttered up to Mr Haddon, trailing wisps of gauze. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she breathed. ‘It is so wonderful to have a gentleman to help us.’

  After Mr Haddon had left, the sisters decided to wait for his report before confronting Fiona again and trying to drag the truth out of her. At three in the afternoon, the gentlemen callers began to arrive. It was the custom for gentlemen to pay their respects the following day to the ladies they had danced with the night before. Most usually did not trouble to call in person but merely sent their servant, along with a card or a bunch of flowers. But with the exception of Lord Peter Havard, all the rest turned up at the Tribbles’. Fiona behaved like a model miss, chatting innocuously of this and that while the sisters sat and watched her with hot angry eyes.

  By four o’clock, the last caller had gone and the sisters left Fiona in the drawing room to play the piano while they retreated to the morning-room for a council of war.

  They were rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Burgesses had been right and that there was something sly about Fiona when Harris, the butler, entered and informed the startled sisters that Lord Peter Havard was in the drawing room, being entertained by Miss Macleod.

  ‘And I’ll bet the little minx is being as charming as possible to that crass waste of time,’ grumbled Amy. ‘Come along, Effy, and let’s not go in for a moment. We’ll listen at the door and find out what she says when we’re not there.’

  Lord Peter had been discussing Fiona’s aversion to marriage and teasing her about it. Fiona was about to interrupt when she heard a rustle of taffeta petticoats outside the door. ‘I have been practising a new piece for the pianoforte,’ said Fiona. ‘Allow me to play it for you.’

  ‘I should be charmed to hear it,’ said Lord Peter, but with some surprise at being so ruthlessly cut off in the middle of his monologue about marriage.

  After ten minutes, Lord Peter wondered if he would ever be allowed to escape. He did not recognize the piece. It seemed very dull and endless. He shifted restlessly in his chair and then rose to his feet to go and turn the pages of music for her.

  She was wearing a delicate flower perfume. Her head was bent over the keys and her neck was very white and fragile. He had to admit she intrigued him. He wondered if her total lack of interest in him was because of her father’s disreputable background. Marrying a duke’s son, albeit a younger one, might be considered flying too high. Then, as the dreary music tinkled on and on, he began to wonder seriously why people in trade were damned as being beyond the pale. He knew shopkeepers who were more gentlemanly and respectable than their clients. He himself gambled on the Stock Exchange. That was trade. He was irritated to find himself possessed of ideas that were surely very old-fashioned. He deftly turned five pages at once so that Fiona found herself playing the last page.

  ‘Oh, now you have spoilt my pretty piece,’ she said. ‘You have missed such a large bit of it. I shall start at the beginning again.’

  The sisters came into the room. Lord Peter noticed with surprise that they were looking at little Miss Macleod with dislike in their eyes.

  ‘I am sorry you have been left alone,’ said Effy. ‘But I am sure you are just finishing your call.’

  Lord Peter bowed and took his leave.

  That the Tribbles wanted to be rid of him was all too evident. He decided to forget about the infuriating Miss Macleod. He and his friends were holding a party backstage at the opera and there were several very pretty opera dancers who would not dream of boring the handsome Lord Peter by playing dreary music.

  Mr Haddon came back about nine in the evening. He had had a difficult time finding Captain Beaumont. He sadly informed the sisters that Captain Beaumont stuck to his story. He had never proposed marriage. He only wanted that recipe.

  ‘So what’s to be done?’ cried Effy.

  ‘It is very important for your reputations to get this girl married off,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘Another success would secure your
success. I suggest therefore that one of you ladies remains here with Fiona while the other travels with me to Tunbridge Wells. If we can find some of Miss Macleod’s previous suitors, then perhaps we can get them to tell us what it was she said to them.’

  ‘I feel like giving her a good thrashing,’ grumbled Amy.

  ‘As you recall, she has been thrashed before, to no avail,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘Tunbridge Wells it is. Now which of you will come with me?’

  Effy looked at Amy, and Amy looked at Effy. Both longed to be the one. But Effy was afraid of the countryside. She hated trees and bushes, cows and fields with a passion. Hyde Park was the nearest to grass and trees that she was prepared to go. Besides, what had she to fear from Amy’s being alone with Mr Haddon? Poor Amy, with her flat chest and great feet.

  ‘I feel Amy should go,’ she said meekly. ‘She is such an Amazon, and poor delicate little me would find the journey too, too fatiguing.’

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘Miss Amy, I feel we should leave tomorrow. There is no time to be lost.’

  4

  Walking about their grove of trees,

  Blue bridges and blue rivers,

  How little thought them two Chinese

  They’d both be smashed to shivers.

  Thomas Hood

  Despite the butler’s secrecy, the staff at Holles Street soon found out from Baxter that the Tribbles had no intention of dismissing them, and so they settled down to work like ordinary London servants and less like frightened slaves.

  The Tribbles, like many of their kind, did not concern themselves with the lives of their servants. Strangely enough, unpopular employers were those who did. Servants left under the control of a butler, provided the butler was a reasonable man, could organize their lives free from interference and even occasionally gain some time off.

  Harris was not a typical London butler in that he was small and fussy instead of being large and fat. He did his job competently, but he had a soft heart for the women servants, particularly for a certain pretty chambermaid called Bertha.

  Not that Bertha would generally be accounted pretty for she had red hair, and since the prejudice against the Scots still ran deep, red hair was considered something of a defect, like having a hump or a squint. But Bertha had a neat figure and a roguish eye. Perhaps what had drawn her to the now ex-second footman, Frank, was that his sandy hair was classed in the same low category as red.

  Frank knew that when the mistresses were gone from home, the lower servants were often allowed to emerge from the basement and take the air at the top of the area steps.

  By assiduously watching the house, he was fortunate enough to see Bertha’s jaunty cap and red curls emerging from the lower depths two days after Amy and Mr Haddon had departed for Tunbridge Wells.

  Mr Callaghan had lent his new footman a domino and mask for his nightly spying activities. Ridottos were still popular, and so it was not an uncommon sight to see a masked man.

  But when the muffled and masked figure of Frank crept up on her, Bertha let out a squeak of alarm.

  ‘Shhh! It’s me, Frank,’ whispered the footman.

  ‘Oh, Mr Frank. You did give me a turn,’ gasped Bertha. ‘Whatever happened to you?’

  ‘I left before they could shove me off,’ said Frank with a swagger. ‘Walk a little with me, Bertha.’

  Bertha glanced nervously down the stairs. Through the barred and lighted window of the servants’ hall, she could see Harris decanting port. That would take up all his attention for a bit.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But just a little way. You was wicked, Mr Frank, to get us all so worked up. They’re going to pay our wages, and they forgave us like the ladies they are.’

  ‘I could tell you a thing or two,’ said Frank darkly. ‘I’m working for a gentleman in Jermyn Street what was cheated out of his inheritance by them Tribbles.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Fact!’ Frank began to tell a highly false and dramatic story of a forged will and multiple intrigues, finishing up with the final whopper that his gentleman suspected the Tribbles had poisoned their aunt.

  Betha turned white. ‘I’m going back to my mum in Shoreditch,’ she gasped. ‘I’m never going to stay in a house with murderers!’

  Frank cursed under his breath. He needed Bertha to stay where she was. ‘They’ll never touch you,’ he scoffed. ‘But my master is sweet on that Miss Macleod and fears for her. Why don’t you find out when she goes out walking and leave a little note in that crack between the first and second steps?’ This was where they had left little messages for each other in the past.

  Bertha shivered and protested until he kissed her cheek and whispered that his master had promised him an independence should his, Frank’s help amount to anything, and then Frank would be free to marry his Bertha.

  There is nothing like a proposal of marriage to banish fear. Bertha’s cheeks turned back to their usual healthy pink and her eyes glowed.

  The very next day, Frank prised a slip of paper out of the crack at the top of the area steps. ‘Wokking in Park at 2’, it said.

  Triumphantly he returned to his master. But when Mr Callaghan presented himself in the Park at two o’clock, it was to find Miss Macleod followed by that dragon, Baxter, who had hated him so passionately when she had been lady’s maid to the Tribbles’ late aunt.

  There was nothing for it but to beat a retreat. He cursed Frank roundly, blaming him for not having warned him about Baxter. Frank replied sulkily that he had not known where Baxter had been previously employed. He was ordered to return to Holles Street that night and try to get Bertha to do something to Baxter so as to put her out of commission.

  Frank waited and waited, but there was no sign of Bertha. Effy, who had been out at the theatre, returned, and one by one the candles in the tall house were snuffed out. Frank was about to turn away when one of the little windows in the attic opened and Bertha leaned out.

  She saw the muffled figure in the square waving to her and hesitated only a moment. She knew it was Frank, but she shared the room with three other maids and could not call out. She muttered an excuse that she was going out to the privy in the back garden, and ignoring the surprised remarks of the other maids to the effect that there was a perfectly good chamber-pot in the room, she pulled an old cloak over her night gown and ran down the stairs.

  Some of Frank’s drunken preaching of the equality of Englishmen and women had stayed buried in Bertha’s breast to give her courage. She knew she was defying Harris’s orders, but Harris to a chambermaid was a member of the higher class and disobedience was a way of striking back. There were many Britishers, including Lord Byron and a great section of the Whig party, who admired Napoleon and cheered French victories. This heady atmosphere of liberty, equality, and freedom had infected even the London servants to a certain extent, which was why Frank’s preaching had fallen on such fertile ground. Feeling as if she were storming the Bastille, Bertha unlocked the area door and crept up the stairs.

  Frank’s hissed instructions were quite simple. Bertha was to put some laudanum in Baxter’s tea so that another maid or the footman would be sent with Miss Macleod when she went to the Park.

  Now truly carried away by all the romance and secrecy, Bertha promised.

  But it was another matter in the clear light of the following morning. Baxter was such a dragon that Bertha knew she could not possibly do it, even though it was one of her duties to take Baxter up her morning cup of tea.

  Feeling like a very ordinary London chambermaid and not at all like a heroine of the revolution, Bertha pushed open the door of Baxter’s bedchamber and went in and deposited the cup of tea, innocent of anything except tea-leaves, on the table beside Baxter’s bed.

  A dismal cough greeted her ears as Baxter came awake. Bertha turned round. Baxter’s nose was red and her eyes were streaming. ‘Got a code,’ groaned Baxter.

  Bertha immediately saw the chance of pleasing Frank while not harming Baxter. �
�Then you oughts to stay in bed,’ said Bertha.

  ‘Miss wants to go walking in the Bark,’ said Baxter through her nose.

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t do that,’ cried Bertha. ‘You could die of an inflammation!’

  The chambermaid tripped off to Fiona’s room and scratched at the door and went in. Fiona was awake and reading a morning newspaper. Bertha bobbed a curtsy and said breathlessly, ‘You must speak to Miss Baxter, miss. She has a terrible cold and ought to stay in bed. But she says as how she has to go to the Park.’

  Fiona climbed out of bed and pulled on a wrapper. ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Henry, the footman, will do just as well.’

  And so it was that Mr Callaghan had the pleasure of seeing Fiona walking across the grass of Hyde Park accompanied only by a footman. He was so pleased that he even contemplated paying Frank some wages.

  He waited until Fiona was about to walk past him and bowed low. Fiona inclined her head and walked on. Mr Callaghan skipped in front of her and bowed again. Again, Fiona nodded. Mr Callaghan darted off round a stand of trees to appear in front of her once more. Fiona stopped. ‘You are making yourself appear ridiculous, sir,’ she said calmly. ‘Pray do stop running about the Park like a March hare.’

  Mr Callaghan flushed. He was wearing his newest bottle-green coat and his swansdown waistcoat. Surely the combination of both was enough to melt a heart of stone.

  ‘I have seen you before,’ went on Fiona, scrutinizing this Pink of the ton with uncomfortably shrewd eyes. ‘You seem to spend a great deal of your time in Holles Street.’

  ‘I confess it, madam. I confess. I watch and wait for even the slightest glimpse of you.’

  ‘Are you so deeply in debt?’ asked Fiona with interest. Mr Callaghan looked at her in a baffled way. But Fiona’s train of thought was quite simple. Mr Callaghan, she had quickly decided, spent a fortune on showy clothes. He wanted to know her; he probably wanted to marry her, having heard she was an heiress, and so he was now chasing her in the Park.

  ‘I may as well add that I am never going to marry anyone,’ said Fiona.