Perfecting Fiona

by Beaton, M. C.

  He finally came to his senses and freed her mouth. She was shivering and he felt cold himself. ‘I am sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’ He sat down again but took her hand in his and ran his thumb gently over the palm. ‘So what do we do about you and your odd views on marriage, Miss Macleod?’

  ‘They are the same as your own, sir,’ whispered Fiona.

  ‘And you are still of the same mind?’

  Fiona stared at him with a drowned look. He frightened her. Her body frightened her. Should he turn cruel, he could hurt her more than any of Mrs Burgess’s lashings.

  ‘I will never marry,’ she said.

  ‘You little doxy,’ he said in a sudden fury. ‘I’ve a good mind to give you the shaking of your life.’

  He heard a step on the landing outside. He walked over to the fireplace and stood with his back to it. Fiona snatched up the tambour-frame. Amy strode in and looked at the pair curiously.

  ‘Shouldn’t be in here with the door closed. You know that, Lord Peter, even if she don’t.’

  ‘It is of no matter,’ said Lord Peter. ‘I have overstayed my welcome.’

  He bowed and left.

  Fiona forced herself to go on embroidering.

  ‘Where is Effy?’ demanded Amy.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Fiona. ‘Out, I believe.’

  ‘Odd,’ said Amy. ‘I never would have gone and left you without a chaperone if I had known she meant to be absent.’

  ‘Baxter was with me for most of the afternoon. Lord Peter called unexpectedly.’

  ‘Well, I promised you we wouldn’t interfere,’ said Amy, ‘but if he’s what you want, you’re going to have a hard time getting him. Nothing but a flirt. Don’t take him seriously. Good Heavens, child! What crooked stitches! Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ said Fiona in a resigned voice.

  ‘Never tell me that a Tartar such as Mrs Burgess let you get away with stitches like that.’

  ‘I never got very far, you see. She would give me a piece of plain hemming and then tut-tut when I couldn’t get the stitches to lie neatly and would rip them out and set me to it again.’

  Amy shook her head in amazement. ‘And here we were thinking you didn’t need any schooling. You had better start right away. Put that down. Yvette shall start you on a sampler.’

  ‘I hate sewing,’ said Fiona.

  ‘What’s that to do with it?’ exclaimed Amy. ‘So do I. But the art of being a lady is having to do a whole lot of things you hate doing. All holes in your accomplishments must be plugged. I have a secret to tell you. I have been taking singing lessons. Now Effy does not know, nor Mr Haddon. We are going to the Perrys’ musicale tonight and I told Mrs Perry of my new accomplishment and she said it would be a splendid idea if – when the diva has finished – I entertain the company with a short ballad.’

  ‘It sounds a very sedate sort of evening,’ said Fiona, thinking that Lord Peter would surely not attend and therefore she ought to feel comfortable. She remembered Lord Aubrey. ‘Oh, Miss Amy, Lord Aubrey will no doubt ask permission to pay his addresses. I do not want him.’

  Effy came in at that moment. She looked as if she had been lit up from within. Her eyes sparkled roguishly under quite the most dashing little hat Fiona had ever seen.

  ‘Where have you been?’ demanded Amy, and then added, ‘Never mind. Leave us, Fiona.’

  When Fiona left the room, Amy poured out the tale of Lord Peter’s having been present, of how Fiona didn’t want Aubrey, and of how she couldn’t sew a stitch. Effy listened to the tirade with a dreamy half-smile on her face which made Amy break off and accuse Effy of having been at the gin again.

  ‘No, no,’ said Effy with a secret smile. She made an obvious effort to bring her mind to present problems. ‘I think, Amy, that we had best appear not to be against Lord Peter, but we must contrive to keep them apart. It is a great pity about Aubrey. We shall not refuse him outright but tell him to wait a month or so, until the girl is more settled in London.’

  Mr Haddon came that evening to escort the ladies to the musicale. Amy was amazed to notice that Effy hardly seemed aware of his presence.

  There were not a great many people at the musicale. The Perrys were not very fashionable and lived in Chelsea, which Effy considered as being almost as bad as living in the country; she suspected the Perrys’ neighbours of being shopkeepers and dreadful people like that. She voiced this thought aloud, and Fiona asked sharply what was so terribly disgraceful about respectable shopkeepers, whereupon Effy pressed the girl’s hand and murmured, ‘So sorry, dear. I had for the moment forgot your unfortunate background.’

  ‘Then why attend the Perrys’ if they are not bon ton?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘They are extremely endearing and likeable, and that’s a novelty to society,’ said Amy. ‘And Brummell liked them, ’tis said.’

  Fiona was relieved to find only a small audience already seated in a small music room at the back of the house.

  And then she twisted her head at the sound of a new arrival and saw Lord Peter Havard. She was all at once painfully aware that the chair on her left was empty. Would he sit next to her? An elderly gentleman made to sit down next to Fiona and she glared at him fiercely and dumped her reticule on the seat so that he backed away, muttering apologies.

  Fiona twisted her head round again. He was still there, but he was chatting to a diminutive brunette and smiling down into her eyes. As yet unrealized jealousy and anguish mingled in Fiona’s bosom and she removed her reticule from the empty seat and placed it on her lap and stared unseeingly in front of her.

  Effy was sitting on Fiona’s other side. ‘Where’s Amy?’ she whispered.

  Fiona shook her head. She had forgotten about Amy’s singing. Lord Peter was approaching. She could feel him coming nearer. He stopped at the end of the row. He bent to talk to an old woman. Of course she was terribly old, thought Fiona. Fifty if a day!

  He straightened up. He saw the seat next to Fiona and his lips compressed into a firm line. He half turned away and then changed his mind and edged along the row of gilt chairs and sat down.

  Both of them stared rigidly ahead.

  The opera singer who was to entertain them came into the room. The pianist took his place. The audience settled back, prepared to be culturally bored and to enjoy it, for everyone knew that culture, like medicine, must be really nasty or it was not culture. But the soprano had recently been to Italy and had decided to entertain the company with popular Italian songs. She sang meltingly of love while Fiona’s body seemed to melt into Lord Peter’s side and she wondered how he had managed to move so close to her without shifting his chair. Fiona felt as if her soul and body were doing alternate somersaults.

  It was a relief when the soprano finally finished.

  Little Mrs Perry held up her hands for silence. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen,’ she cried, ‘I have a surprise for you. Our own diva – Miss Amy Tribble.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ cried Effy weakly. ‘Someone stop her.’

  But Amy had bowed to the audience and was bowing to the pianist. Yvette had managed to persuade her to wear a new creation in scarlet merino. On her head, she wore a scarlet turban decorated with gold fringe. The style complemented her flat figure, and the long, trailing skirt of the gown hid her large feet. Her red hands were encased in white kid gloves. Fiona thought she looked very fine.

  The pianist began to play and Amy opened her mouth and began to sing. It was a simple country ballad of a shepherd’s love for his shepherdess, but Amy could not seem to hit the right key. The struggling pianist desperately tried to hit the same notes as Amy. Her voice was dreadfully flat. She cast anguished looks at the pianist as she battled to find the right note and the pianist threw anguished looks back.

  Amy forgot the words and stood with her mouth wide open. Then, ‘Oh, slut on it!’ she said cheerfully and went to read the words from the sheet of music on the piano, bending over the pianist, who cringe
d down on the stool. Someone at the back of the room let out a terrific snort of laughter. Fiona could feel laughter bubbling up inside her. Amy, having got over her initial stage fright, was now blissfully unaware of the horror of her performance or of the fact that her audience was slowly collapsing with mirth. She shrieked and roared while the pianist shut his eyes and ploughed manfully on.

  When she had finished, there was a roar of applause. No one could remember having laughed so hard in ages. One man seized a bunch of flowers from a vase and ran to present them to Amy – Amy who had eyes only for Mr Haddon and wondered why that gentleman was sitting with his arms crossed and staring at the tops of his shiny pumps.

  ‘I shall tell her what a fool she made of herself,’ said Effy, fanning herself angrily.

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘Too cruel. Only see how happy your sister is.’

  Lord Peter bent his head and whispered in Fiona’s ear. ‘There is a garden here. Can you meet me there in ten minutes? I have something to say to you.’

  Then he moved away. Fiona wondered if he was going to propose marriage and whether she would have the courage to accept him. She thought of Lord Aubrey. Now, he would make an amiable and placid husband. No fireworks, no hurts, no jealousy or aching or burning.

  Despite Mr Haddon’s protests, Effy tried to get through the press of people who were crowded about Amy to tell her forcibly that all were really laughing at her, but she could not get through. Then she thought of her wonderful afternoon with Mr Callaghan, of how he had said he had never met anyone like her, of how he would like to spend the rest of his life with her, and she forgot all about everything and anything else. She was to meet him again on the Thursday, when the Dunsters had arranged a party on a barge on the Thames.

  Mr Haddon was worrying about what to do about Amy. He knew that cruel society would engage her for concert after concert, and when she finally found out everyone was laughing at her, the blow would be cruel indeed. But Amy, her face flushed and her eyes sparkling, was still accepting compliments. Mr Haddon thought he had never seen her looking so happy or so well. He continued to worry about how to tell her she was making herself ridiculous.

  So the three people who might have noticed Fiona’s disappearance were all occupied with their own affairs.

  Fiona slipped away to find the garden. There were windows leading to it from the music room, but that would have been too obvious. She found a sashed window in the library next door which overlooked the garden, pushed it up and looked out.

  Lord Peter was walking up and down in the moonlight. ‘How did you get down?’ called Fiona.

  He came to stand under the window. ‘I simply walked out of the front door and around the side of the house.’

  ‘Why didn’t I think of that,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Never mind. Jump!’

  ‘Jump?’

  ‘It is only a small drop and I shall catch you.’

  Fiona drew back a little, suddenly afraid of him, afraid of the effect he had on her, afraid of his virility, and, more than anything, afraid of his experience. Just then a voice sounded outside the library door. Fiona climbed out onto the sill and dropped down into Lord Peter’s arms.

  ‘What do you want?’ she whispered.

  ‘I think I want you,’ he said in a low, husky voice. ‘Let me kiss you again.’

  He did not wait for her reply but folded his arms about her and kissed her very tenderly and softly on the lips, then harder, then harder still, until both were kissing furiously and straining against each other and muttering incoherent noises of passion. Her low-cut gown offered delicious moonlit areas of flesh to kiss. Fiona had to content herself with his face and mouth, as he was armoured in a dress coat and starched cravat.

  He was just about to search down the neck of her dress with his questing hand when cold common sense told him he had to make up his mind and not go any further.

  ‘Tell the Tribbles to expect my call tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think we should suit?’ asked Fiona anxiously, while inside her a warning voice screamed, ‘You must not marry. Marriage is pain and disaster.’

  ‘That is a risk I am prepared to take before you drive me mad, you Scottish witch.’ He cradled her face in his long fingers and looked searchingly down into her eyes, which were black, fathomless pools.

  Amy was chattering away nineteen to the dozen. ‘I swear your voice has enchanted me!’ cried a young man while turning slightly to wink at his friends. Amy blushed and turned her head away and then her mouth fell open, rather as it had done when she had forgotten the words of the song. For she had a sudden glimpse through the long windows of Lord Peter Havard and Fiona, clasped in each other’s arms. Passion had made the couple careless and they did not realize they had moved under the music-room windows. Lord Peter glanced up and then pushed Fiona hurriedly into the shadows of the garden.

  Amy started to sway like a poplar in a chopping wind. ‘Faint!’ she gasped. ‘Air! Must have air!’ Someone opened the French windows and Amy’s admirers bore her down the steps into the garden.

  Amy glared about her at the empty garden, silvered with moonlight. ‘I’m fine,’ she growled. ‘Champagne. Must have champagne.’

  What an original Miss Amy Tribble was! She was borne back indoors.

  Lord Peter helped Fiona to her feet in the library after lifting her in through the window.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he whispered. He gave her one fierce kiss and then moved to the library door. ‘You go in first and I shall follow you later.’

  Fiona slid quietly out of the library. When she entered the music room, Effy caught hold of her. ‘What have you been doing?’ she snapped. ‘Come with me. Your hair is a mess and your mouth looks odd. All swollen and nasty.’

  During the journey home, Fiona said quietly, ‘Lord Peter Havard will call on you tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Amy bluntly.

  ‘To ask your permission to pay his addresses to me.’

  Both sisters experienced a glow of sheer triumph. Lord Peter, that perpetual bachelor, had crumbled at last. What a prize! In the bliss of achievement, they quite forgot their disapproval of him.

  Then both thought immediately of the Burgesses. They would be furious. The only thing to do was to get Fiona off to bed and plan a campaign.

  Amy sat on the end of Effy’s bed. ‘What should we do?’ she asked. ‘By the look of Fiona this evening, it’s perhaps better he should marry her and as soon as possible.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She had been well and truly kissed by that rat. Did you not mark her swollen lips and that bite on her neck?’

  Effy turned scarlet. ‘Gentlemen do not go on thus except with tarts. We have not schooled Fiona well enough. Because she appeared so accomplished, we neglected to talk to her about the nastier side of romantic behaviour.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it nasty,’ said Amy. ‘I mean, if the man’s spoony about her, stands to reason he gets carried away.’

  ‘You shock me,’ said Effy. ‘No gentleman ever behaves like that with the lady he plans to marry. No, Lord Peter Havard will not do. We shall see him and tell him that Fiona is too young and innocent to know her own mind. That he must wait. Then we shall tell her he didn’t propose, he only apologized for his bad behaviour, and if that don’t keep ’em apart, then nothing will. And talking of bad behaviour, there is something about your performance tonight, sister, that I should tell you. People were laughing at you, laughing fit to burst. I feel—’

  ‘Jealous cat,’ said Amy with a grin. ‘I have indeed put your nose out of joint for once. I even left Mr Haddon speechless.’ And before Effy could say another word, she left the room.

  7

  I said to my heart between sleeping and waking,

  ‘Thou wild thing that always art leaping or aching

  For the black, or the fair, in what clime, in what nation,

  Hast thou not felt a fit of pitapat-ation?’

  Charles M
ordaunt, Earl of Peterborough

  Fiona was up early the next day, nervous with anticipation. She changed her dress several times and fussed with her hair, tried a little rouge and then wiped it off. She kept running to the window every time a carriage rattled over the cobbles outside.

  By one in the afternoon, her rumbling stomach reminded her she had not eaten. She refused to go down to the morning room for breakfast but had it served on a tray in front of the window of her bedchamber. At last a carriage stopped outside. But the gentleman who descended was Lord Aubrey.

  Fiona hoped the sisters would not forget their promise. But she half expected to be summoned to the drawing room to receive a proposal from the poet. It was with great relief that she saw Lord Aubrey leaving some ten minutes later. He did not look at all downcast. Fiona did not know the Tribbles had told him that there was every hope his suit might prosper if he was content to wait a little.

  At two o’clock, she became weary of her long vigil, and was wondering whether to read a book or to go downstairs, where no doubt she would immediately be charged to start her sewing lessons, when she heard the sound once more of a carriage arriving in the street below.

  She peered down from the window and breathed a sigh of relief as Lord Peter’s tall, athletic figure bounded up the front steps.

  Heart beating hard, she primped herself in the glass, and waited . . . and waited.

  At last, she heard to her amazement Lord Peter’s voice raised in farewell. Once more she went to the window. He was climbing into the carriage, his handsome face set in severe lines.

  Fiona ran downstairs to the drawing room. ‘Come in,’ said Effy when she saw the girl in the doorway.

  ‘Why did you not send for me?’ demanded Fiona. ‘It is customary, you know, after a gentleman has received permission to pay his addresses.’