Perfecting Fiona

by Beaton, M. C.

  But Yvette knew her work to be excellent. She knew that Fiona’s gowns had excited interest and envy because generous-hearted Miss Macleod had told her so. Yvette longed to have enough money to start her own salon. Her hands lay idly on the folds of white satin as she saw in her mind’s eye a neat shop with her name, ‘Madame Yvette’ – ladies running businesses always affected a married title whether married or not – over the door, and perhaps, who knew? a royal coat of arms with ‘By Appointment to Her Majesty’ on top of that.

  Fortune had already smiled on her by finding her the job with the Tribbles. It had seemed like a miracle when Miss Amy had taken her out of that overcrowded slum in King’s Cross where she lived cheek-by-jowl with other impoverished French emigrés, trying to eke out a living. Her parents had been of gentle birth, fleeing their homeland during the terror of the French Revolution as so many others had done. Her mother had died after giving birth to her in this foreign country and her father had not lived much longer.

  Yvette fell to stitching again. One day, perhaps, fortune would smile on her once more. In the meantime, dreams were free.

  Despite the Tribbles’ worries, Fiona, she who had been so terrified of marriage, felt she was being borne towards the day of her wedding on a cloud of happiness. After her wedding, she and her new husband were to travel to Paris and then Rome. Everything was already being corded up in trunks for her journey, from a portable dressing-case to ‘louse-proof’ petticoats, which Fiona secretly meant to get rid of as soon as she could because they emitted a strong smell of creosote.

  Wrapped in her own golden world, she failed to notice that Amy and Effy were becoming snappish with worry and fatigue. The wedding preparations were lavish, the Tribbles determined to salvage their reputations. But now that the sisters had achieved a suitable match for Fiona, the Burgesses appeared to think they had been given enough money to cover everything. Amy, because of her recent disgrace, had lost a great deal of her courage and felt she could not ask them for more.

  By the day of the wedding, Amy and Effy finally woke up to the fact that once the wedding was over they would have barely enough to live on, let alone to keep a houseful of servants. Fretful with worry, they went on with the last-minute preparations, trying to look cheerful but dreading the vista of poverty that stretched out in front of them again.

  Their worry showed in their dress. They had both told Yvette not to make them anything new. Something they already had in their wardrobes would suffice.

  Although the Duke and Duchess of Penshire were supplying their home and servants, they had, it transpired, expected the Tribbles to pay for the catering, the hire of extra staff, and the decorations. The bill from Gunter, the confectioner’s alone made Amy ill every time she thought of it.

  Mr and Mrs Burgess were in residence in Holles Street, poking their noses everywhere and criticizing everything.

  Amy and Effy nearly forgot all their worries when Fiona came down the stairs in her wedding gown. Knowing that unrelieved white would have made Fiona appear too colourless, Yvette had embellished the low neckline of the gown with silk vine leaves and had carried out the vine-leaf theme in delicate embroidery around the hem of the gown.

  Mr Burgess fussed forward to lead Fiona out to the carriage. Mrs Burgess followed, then Effy and Amy and Mr Haddon. Mr Haddon was worrying about the cost of the wedding, but tried to comfort himself with the thought that surely the Burgesses must be paying for everything.

  A clerk dressed in black coat and knee breeches bowed in front of Amy and Effy as they walked outside and stood at the top of the steps. ‘The Misses Tribble?’ he asked.

  Amy nodded curtly and he handed her a letter with a plain seal.

  She climbed into an open carriage behind the wedding carriage with Effy and Mr Haddon.

  ‘What’s in that letter?’ asked Mr Haddon curiously.

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ said Amy, turning her head away. ‘No doubt someone’s dunning us for something.’

  Mr Haddon held out his hand. ‘I will read it, Miss Amy. It might be more work for you.’

  ‘As you will,’ said Amy, surrendering the letter with a shrug, ‘but that fellow was a lawyer’s clerk if ever I saw one.’

  Mr Haddon opened the letter, read it, and then held it wordlessly out to Amy.

  Amy took it, squinted at it, read it and then let out a whoop like a Red Indian. Effy snatched it, read it, and began to laugh with excitement. It was from Fiona’s lawyers. The Misses Tribble were to submit all bills for the wedding to them and they would be paid by Miss Macleod, who gained control of her estate on the day of her marriage. Miss Macleod had further instructed her lawyer to send a draft of fifteen thousand guineas.

  ‘Amy, sit down!’ screamed Effy. ‘You’ll overturn us!’ For Amy was doing a war dance in the middle of the carriage, waving her arms and whooping with delight.

  ‘Disgraceful,’ said Mrs Burgess, turning back after staring at Amy. ‘Utterly disgraceful. I wish I had never sent you to them, Fiona. It must have been horrible.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Fiona, ‘arriving at the Tribbles was like coming out of hell. They have a gallantry and generosity of spirit far beyond your imagining.’

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Mrs Burgess. ‘I was never so insulted . . .’ And she was still nagging and complaining and exclaiming when they arrived at the church.

  Amy and Effy and Mr Haddon wept all through the service, and the rest of the guests, not to be outdone in sensibility, wept as well, including the Prince Regent, who was heard to say it was all too demned affecting for words. It was the most deliciously mournful wedding of the year.

  ‘Quite like a hanging,’ said Lord Peter, helping his wife into the carriage after the ceremony. Fiona smiled at the watching sea of faces and tossed her wedding bouquet high in the air. Amy leaped for the sky with remarkable agility, caught the bouquet, and held it to her bosom. She took a little pink rose and shyly handed it to Mr Haddon, then screamed as Effy stuck her hat-pin into her sister’s elbow.

  Mr Haddon admonished them both and reminded them they still had their reputations to recover. After that, Amy and Effy behaved with ladylike decorum.

  At long last, the speeches and dances were over. The happy couple had gone to Lord Peter’s Town house to spend the first night of their marriage before travelling abroad and were locked naked in each other’s arms long before Amy and Effy returned wearily home, helped up the stairs to their drawing room by a sympathetic Mr Haddon.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ sighed Amy. ‘Will there ever be another wedding, I wonder?’

  ‘I should not be at all surprised,’ giggled Effy, and batted her eyelashes at Mr Haddon.

  ‘I mean will we get another job? You silly fool,’ said Amy.

  ‘I am sure you will,’ said Mr Haddon bracingly. But privately, he doubted very much that they would.

  * * *

  Down in Kent, Squire Wraxall pulled a sheet of paper in front of him and began to write, shifting a branch of candles nearer to him to provide a better light.

  The quill pen began to scrape across the paper. ‘Dear Misses Tribble,’ began the squire and then scratched his wig in perplexity with the inky end of his pen.

  How could he describe Delilah?

  How could anyone describe Delilah?