Perfecting Fiona

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘Fiona is in love with Lord Peter,’ said Effy.

  ‘How can you tell?’ snorted Amy.

  ‘Oh, the way she looks at him,’ said Effy dreamily, ‘the way she yearns for him. I can see it in her eyes.’

  Mr Haddon gave Effy a warm smile and Amy’s temper snapped.

  ‘Fustian. That chit has as much idea of love and romance as a . . . as a pig’s arse!’

  Amy saw the set lines of Mr Haddon’s face and blushed. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘But it’s enough to try the patience of a saint.’

  ‘I think,’ said Mr Haddon slowly, ‘that both of you are forgetting the nature of your job. You advertised for difficult girls. Miss Macleod has been made difficult by harsh treatment from her uncle and aunt. But there is a certain sweetness and kindness about her. She has become fond of you both. Where is she now? Does she know you are furious with her? Why is she not joining us for dinner?’

  ‘Truth to tell,’ said Amy, ‘I could not bear the sight of her. I was so disappointed we were not to have a grand wedding. I am a brute, I declare. I shall go to her room directly and bring her down.’

  Amy made her way up to Fiona’s room. Fiona was sitting by the window, staring into space. She was still wearing her outdoor clothes. She looked so wretched that Amy ran towards her, crying, ‘Do not be so sad. It will all come about.’

  ‘I went to his parents’ house,’ said Fiona in a low voice. ‘I got his address from them. Oh, I was all ready to go. But then, I felt so wretched. How can I tell him?’

  ‘Effy was right,’ said Amy. ‘You are in love with him.’ She took Fiona’s hands in her own. ‘Look, my child, I am going to urge you to do an unconventional thing. Go to him and confess the truth. No marriage can be built on a lie. He loves you, I am sure he must. I see now you would never be happy with anyone else.’

  Fiona shifted restlessly. ‘Where can I find the courage?’

  ‘Don’t try,’ urged Amy. ‘Just go. Just get up and go. Come, I shall take you outside and put you in a hack.’

  Fussing and pulling and pushing, Amy drove Fiona before her down the stairs. Outside, she called a passing hack. Then she seized Fiona roughly in her arms and gave her a hearty kiss on the cheek. ‘If I have made a mistake,’ muttered Amy, ‘don’t blame me.’

  The hack rolled off and Amy went upstairs to join the others.

  ‘Sitting in her room, moping,’ said Amy cheerfully. ‘But I had a talk with her and persuaded her that everything will work out.’

  ‘Is she going to tell him the truth?’ asked Effy.

  But Amy was already regretting her own unconventional advice. ‘I think she will,’ she said. ‘Why do we not play a hand of whist?’

  The lamplighters were already lighting the lamps in St James’s Square when Fiona reached it. She prayed Lord Peter would be at home. Now that she was actually on his doorstep, she felt she had to go on. She had forgotten to take any money for a hack or a chair back and dreaded walking through the streets unescorted.

  Lord Peter’s butler looked shocked when she asked to see his master. He took her card, told her to wait, and then shut the door firmly in her face.

  Fiona was furious. She felt almost naked, standing alone on that doorstep while a curious butler from next door stared at her with all the flat-eyed insolence of his betters.

  She was just about to turn away when the door opened and the butler, this time flustered and obsequious, begged her to enter.

  Another library to wait in, thought Fiona gloomily as the door to the book-lined room closed behind her. They always put people of uncertain status in the library.

  After some time, the door opened again and Fiona looked up hopefully. But it was only the butler again, this time bearing a tea-tray, which he set in front of her.

  She sat miserably while he poured tea, wondering if Lord Peter would ever appear. She refused to take milk in her tea, having, like most of London, been put off the very idea of milk in tea by learning that the fourth Duke of Queensberry took his early-morning bath in that liquid before it was retailed.

  If she had been able to get Lord Peter’s address quickly, thought Fiona, then it would have been so much easier to tell him the truth. She could now feel her courage ebbing away like the light outside.

  But at last the door opened and Lord Peter came in.

  He stood for a moment studying Fiona. She was wearing a dress of soft blue sarsenet edged round the hem with silver cord. Over the dress was a short coat of blue satin. Her head-dress was a small blue satin cap with square corners trimmed with silver lace and tassels, and ornamented in the front with a silver spray. She had a fine rope of pearls about her neck and little pearl earrings.

  ‘You should not have come here alone and unescorted,’ said Lord Peter, ‘and wearing such finery.’

  He crossed to the fireplace and looked down at her.

  ‘I had to come,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You have made me very angry.’

  ‘I am going to make you even angrier,’ said Fiona in a small voice.

  ‘Now, what other horrible confession have you to make?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Who else has been in your bed? The groom? The stable-boy?’

  Fiona shrank back. Here it was, what she had dreaded, the anger, the accusations, and yet she had brought it all on herself.

  ‘I wish to release you from the engagement,’ she said, mustering what dignity she could and rising to her feet.

  He jerked her into his arms and looked down into her frightened eyes. ‘Oh, you little liar,’ he said softly. ‘I could shake you. You nearly had me believing that rubbish.’

  ‘How did you know I was lying?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘I had only to think about you. At first, because of your fire and passion and my raging jealousy, my sweet, I was inclined to believe the worst. When you called, I was taking a bath – which is why I kept you waiting so long – and realizing what a fool I had been. But you must tell me why you lied, Fiona. Obviously you did not want to accept the captain, but why not simply tell him so?’

  She sighed and leaned her head against his chest. ‘I am so frightened of marriage,’ she said. ‘And frightened of being coerced into it. My parents were always quarrelling. Even when I went to bed at night, I could hear their voices rising and falling. They did not share the same bedchamber, but my father would visit my mother’s bedchamber before retiring to his own to tell her exactly what he thought of her.’ Then, in a halting voice, she told him of her friendship with the servant and her subsequent humiliation, of the other proposals and how she had lied and lied to her uncle and aunt so that, in their humiliation and fury, they would not approach any suitor’s parents and arrange a marriage.

  ‘Perhaps your parents loved each other very much,’ he said at last. ‘No, do not look so surprised. Love has many peculiar faces. I had an aunt and uncle who were always quarrelling. They would make hurtful remarks to each other in public and worse remarks in private. Then my uncle died, and my aunt, to everyone’s amazement, was distraught with grief and did not survive him very long. Love is not like the story-books. Oh, we shall quarrel. I shall be jealous of every man you smile on, and I hope you will be jealous every time I pay attention to some female. Perhaps sometimes, to our children, we shall seem a most unsuited couple, but marriage is like life – exhilarating, dreadful, and often unfair. I trust we shall not ever behave so cruelly or so unnaturally as your parents towards our own children. But we shall know through thick and thin that we love each other, and that is all that matters.’

  ‘But you are a rake,’ whispered Fiona, ‘and rakes never reform.’

  ‘I think this one has,’ he said. ‘I am sure I have. But you must trust that I shall never be unfaithful to you and I must trust that you will never lie to me again. Now, I think we should go and tell your odd guardians that they may celebrate their success with a church wedding. Look at me and say that you love me and want to marry me.’

  He set her away from him and sea
rched the expression in her eyes in the darkening room.

  ‘Yes, I will marry you, and yes, I do love you,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Then just one kiss and I shall take you back.’ But the room was warm and dark and the one kiss led to more, each subsequent kiss deeper and more lingering than the last as their bodies caught fire from each other. At last he freed his lips. ‘You must not see Aubrey again,’ he said huskily. ‘Promise me that.’

  ‘Anything,’ sighed Fiona happily, and then began to tremble as his hand slid down the front of her gown.

  ‘No, perhaps not yet,’ he said, removing his hand and caressing her cheek. ‘But very soon . . .’

  Effy threw down her cards and murmuring an excuse left the room. Amy looked after her anxiously. She hoped she was not going to visit Fiona and find that young miss gone. Sharp pangs of conscience were beginning to plague Amy. She had sent a young girl out alone to a man’s house.

  Effy came back looking flushed and upset. ‘Fiona is not in her room,’ she cried, ‘and I cannot get a word of sense out of Harris, who keeps going on about Bertha, the chambermaid, having gone missing. Oh, Amy, what if she has left us? What did you say to her?’

  ‘Just told her to tell the truth,’ mumbled Amy.

  ‘Look at me, Amy Tribble!’ cried Effy. ‘You’re blushing!’

  ‘No, I ain’t!’

  ‘Oh, yes you are. You said something to that girl in your rough, coarse way which frightened the life out of her. Tell me where she is or I shall send for the parish constable!’

  Amy hung her head.

  ‘She’s at Lord Peter’s.’

  ‘Did you not try to stop her, Miss Amy?’ expostulated Mr Haddon. ‘A young unmarried girl to visit a bachelor at his Town house!’

  ‘Oh, why am I always wrong?’ shouted Amy. ‘Why is my life nothing but a drawful of shrunken garters?’

  ‘Lawks!’ screeched Effy. ‘You told her to go, Amy.’

  Amy bowed her head in assent.

  Mr Haddon got to his feet. ‘Then I suggest, ladies, we leave all recriminations until later. We must go now and rescue her from her folly.’

  ‘Her folly!’ cried Effy, but Mr Haddon was already on his road out of the door.

  Mr Haddon had not come in his carriage. Effy sent the footman, Henry, round to the livery stables. There was a rout being held in the house next door and it seemed an age before the rented carriage and driver could make his way through the press.

  All London was coming alive for the night as their carriage began to inch its way through the streets. It was not very far to St James’s Square, but to Amy, suffering badly as she was from a guilty conscience, the distance seemed to stretch for miles.

  They received a sharp setback when Lord Peter’s butler answered the door and said firmly his master was not at home.

  As far as the butler was concerned, his master, for reasons best known to himself, was entertaining some high-class doxy in his library. And such goings-on to the butler spelled out ‘not at home’ to everyone and anyone. The fact that Fiona had called at a man’s home and without a maid put her firmly in the category of Fashionable Impure.

  But like the good members of the ton they all were, the Tribble sisters and Mr Haddon realized that not at home usually meant not available. Had Lord Peter already left Town, then his servant would surely have said so.

  ‘We are here to collect Lord Peter’s fiancée, Miss Fiona Macleod,’ he said, standing his ground.

  The butler stood for a moment, remembering the name on that card.

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I will see if his lordship is available.’

  He ushered them into the hall and then made his way to the library.

  Good servants were not supposed to knock. He rattled the doorknob loudly, scratched the door panel, and then made his way inside. Lord Peter was arranging his cravat at the glass and the lady was standing by the window.

  ‘A gentleman and two ladies have called, my lord,’ said the butler. ‘They are come to see Miss Macleod.’

  ‘Show them in,’ said Lord Peter cheerfully. He turned to Fiona. ‘If I am not mistaken, my sweeting, your duennas have arrived, bringing Mr Haddon with them.’

  Amy and Effy came hurrying in, closely followed by Mr Haddon. Fiona turned away, anxious to compose her expression. Lord Peter had been ruthlessly kissing her ‘just one more time’ when the butler had rattled the doorknob, and Fiona still felt shaken by her dizzying drop from the heights of passion.

  Amy and Effy misunderstood her averted face.

  Amy ran forward and threw her arms about Fiona and hugged her close to her flat chest. ‘There, there, child,’ said Amy. ‘I am a beast and a brute to have urged you into this folly. You are Amy’s darling, and she shall find you a gentleman who will appreciate you.’

  ‘Miss Macleod has already found a gentleman who appreciates her,’ said Lord Peter, exasperated. ‘If you continue to interfere in my marriage plans, then I shall be very angry indeed.’

  ‘We are to be married, dear Miss Amy,’ said Fiona, trying to disengage herself from Amy’s fierce embrace. ‘Really! In church, too.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Effy, sitting down suddenly. ‘I am so relieved. So very relieved.’ She began to cry. It was an age when gentlemen were supposed to show sensibility on all occasions, and so Mr Haddon gallantly cried as well. Overcome with a mixture of see-sawing emotions, Fiona burst into tears, and Amy, deeply affected by the sight of Mr Haddon’s tears, began to roar and bawl.

  ‘Dear me,’ said Lord Peter. ‘This is more like a wake than the celebration of a wedding. Champagne, Roberts,’ he called to his amazed butler, who was hovering nervously in the doorway.

  Soon the tears were dried and they were all sipping champagne. Fiona and Lord Peter sat side by side and listened with amusement as the sisters battled over the arrangements for the wedding and whether to allow Fiona to wear a veil or not.

  While the Tribble sisters argued over their glasses of champagne, their chambermaid, Bertha, was sitting in beatific state in Frank’s new trap, heading rapidly out of London.

  Frank had decided to adopt the disguise of commercial traveller until such time as he could find a place to settle down. His trap was one of Alford’s best fifty-guinea ones, painted black, picked out in light blue, with a cane back, tilbury springs, and black and blue harness drawn by a neat little brown mare. His new sandy whiskers were partially hidden by a dashing, spotted cashmere shawl. His upper coat was a handsome blue Taglioni with a small velvet collar. A large box coat with many capes and a curricle collar was thrown over the back of the gig. His inner coat was a bright blue cutaway with gilt buttons, his waistcoat, a crimson silk and worsted with black checks and a white spot in the centre. Boots of Spanish leather and a silver mounted whip with his name inscribed on the ferrule completed his rig.

  Bertha leaned against him, her eyes half closed, relishing every minute of the journey. When Frank had told her that he had come into money and added that it was Mr Callaghan’s money, Bertha thought he had only taken what rightly belonged to him. Any master refusing to pay wages deserved to be punished.

  They stopped at an inn for supper and went in to the Traveller’s Room, which was already full of drapers, druggists, dysalters, grocers, hop merchants, and representatives of a dozen other trades. Conversation rose and fell about their table. A hop merchant was bemoaning the blight of the last crop, a druggist was complaining that no one wanted bark anymore or isinglass for that matter, and a draper was showing samples of spring patterns. Bertha began to feel the first qualm of unease. All these gentlemen had jobs. How were they going to live after the stolen money and goods ran out?

  ‘Why the long face?’ asked Frank. ‘Here we both are, as free as the birds, and you suddenly look as if you’re at a funeral.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Bertha. ‘What are we going to do for money, in the bye and bye, I mean.’

  Frank laid a finger alongside his nose and drooped his eyelid in a broad wink. ‘I
’m going to do to others wot Mr Callaghan did to me.’

  ‘Whatever can you mean?’ cried Bertha, her eyes like saucers.

  ‘All that equality lark,’ said Frank. ‘It touched me here.’ He struck his chest. ‘Then I learned it was all a hum. That Bond Street Beau was just working me up so’s to cause trouble. But I’m going to get some books and read all that stuff by Thomas Paine and I’m going to learn speeches and I’m going to preach equality up and down the south of England.’

  ‘But how will that get you money?’ cried Bertha.

  ‘I go round with the hat and ask for donations to help the poor and suffering – the poor and suffering being me and thee.’

  ‘Ooo! You’re ever so clever,’ said Bertha, giving his arm a squeeze.

  ‘I know,’ said the ex-footman, and with a lordly wave of his hand, he summoned the waiter.

  Mr Callaghan was travelling down the dusty Dover road, on his way to France. At first, it had been a nightmare journey. Every time a carriage came alongside, Mr Callaghan dreaded to see Mr Haddon’s furious face poking out of the window. But as the miles rolled by, he began to feel secure – and sulky. The more he brooded on his misfortune, the more he became sure that the Tribble sisters had deliberately sent Frank into his employ to ruin him. They had driven him away from all the comforts of Town, the lounge in Bond Street, the drives in the Park, the clubs and routs, operas and plays. One day he would make them suffer.

  He thought he had been a gullible fool to have believed Effy’s story that her only money had come from what she earned. Mr Callaghan, who gambled heavily and wasted money on showy clothes and showy horses, could not understand the budgeting of people who did not.

  Somehow, some way, some time, he would hit upon a plan to ruin the Tribbles.

  10

  . . . bright, and fierce, and fickle . . .

  Tennyson

  The sisters were exalted with success when the news of Lord Peter Havard’s engagement burst upon the surprised world. The world, of course, began at St James’s Square and ended at Kensington Palace. Anyone outside that magic sphere did not exist.