She wandered off.
The duke stood for a moment, his face flaming. Beau must have tried something. Damn. He would apologize to her in the morning. He had always prided himself on his courtesy and manners. Never in his life had he behaved so badly to anyone as he had behaved to Maria Kendall. Never before had he related such a damning piece of slanderous gossip about anyone.
* * *
Maria did not go to bed. She changed into her travelling clothes and waited by the window for dawn. Then she went downstairs and summoned her servants to bring the carriage around and then went back to her room and roused Miss Spiggs and Betty.
A red sun was glaring across the watery fields as they set out. Maria’s heart felt as heavy as lead. The miles crept by. The harness creaked, the joists rattled, and Miss Spiggs snored.
And then out of the gloomy soil of misery, Maria cultivated a splendid dream. Her captain did exist. He was tall and powerful and gallant. She could see him striding into White’s in St James’s and drawing off one of his gloves and striking the evil duke across the face. The dream moved to Parliament Hill Fields. The spires of London rose through the morning mist as her gallant captain shot the wicked duke right through the heart.
‘Forgive me, Miss Kendall,’ whispered the duke brokenly just before he breathed his last.
The fantasy was warm and comforting. Maria might have been more comforted if she could have seen what was happening in reality at that moment outside the inn. The duke had told Beau of his mistake and the infuriated Beau had demanded satisfaction. So, stripped to the waist, the two aristocrats were ferociously punching each other around the inn-yard. The landlord was running a betting book and the fight created high excitement in the neighbourhood but was accounted a great disappointment in the end, for the men were so equally matched that they all but punched each other senseless before they were dragged apart.
The ladies, too, were disappointed, for original gossip had it that both men were fighting over some female, but it transpired that Beau had said that the duke’s cravat was a disgrace and the duke had taken it as an insult.
Maria had feared the Tribbles would turn out to be stern taskmasters, and therefore her welcome took her aback. Miss Amy Tribble, a tall and commanding figure, hugged her and burst into tears, said she was glad she was safe, and pretty little Miss Effy fluttered about her, reciting a catalogue of all the things that had been done to ensure her comfort. Miss Kendall would find the bed in her room was new and the mattress was stuffed with the best eiderdown. A fire had been lit and if she needed anything she had only to ring.
Maria’s eyes filled with grateful tears as she thanked them.
When she had gone upstairs, Effy looked at her sister anxiously. ‘We knew the roads were bad, Amy. It is not at all like you to be so overcome.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ said Amy gruffly. ‘Don’t know what’s up with me these days.’ And Amy did not. Her emotions seemed to see-saw wildly. Occasionally she was plagued with great flushes of fiery heat but somehow she could not discuss this with her sister. To add to Amy’s discomfort, her desire for marriage to Mr Haddon had been manageable while it remained a simple desire not to remain a spinster. But she had fallen in love with him and there was no one to tell Amy that love in the fifties can be as agonizing and piercing as love in the teens. She did not even know herself that she was deeply in love, for love was supposed to be a happy state, not this terrible yearning to see him and then, when he did come, feeling gauche and desperately inadequate.
‘I think we should get shot of that companion of hers,’ said Effy. ‘A sad creature.’
‘Yes, don’t want her underfoot. Nasty smile and creeping ways,’ said Amy roundly.
But getting rid of Miss Spiggs proved to be a difficult task. No sooner was that lady told she was expected to return to Bath the following day than she broke down and wept that no one wanted her, no one would ever want her. Maria’s kind heart was touched and she asked leave to keep Miss Spiggs just for another week; the sisters reluctantly gave their permission.
They regretted their magnanimity when Mr Haddon and Mr Randolph called after dinner. Both gentlemen showed Miss Spiggs every courtesy and Miss Spiggs flirted with them quite appallingly.
Then came a distressing scene. Yvette was called down to the drawing room to meet Maria. Yvette was the resident French dressmaker. To Maria’s surprise, she entered carrying a large and healthy rosy-cheeked baby. While the baby was placed on the carpet and Yvette began to tell Maria she would take a look at her wardrobe and see what could be altered, Miss Spiggs quietly asked Effy if Yvette’s husband was resident as well and Effy, who was feeling tired and besides had become used to Yvette and the baby, said that Yvette was not married because some wicked French seducer had disappeared after having got her with child.
Miss Spiggs began to shriek that dear Maria could not remain in such a household and appealed to Mr Haddon. Mr Haddon was not allowed to reply because Amy called Miss Spiggs ‘a mealy-mouthed, Friday-faced bitch’s offspring with a face like a twat’ and Miss Spiggs fell on the floor in a spasm and drummed her heels. Maria carefully removed flowers from a vase and tipped the water over Miss Spiggs, who relapsed into sobs.
Effy rang the bell and told her own lady’s maid, Baxter, to remove Miss Spiggs, which Baxter, being very strong and powerful, did with great ease.
‘I must apologize for my companion,’ said Maria, ‘but she was not my choice. Still, it must be very hard to cope with genteel poverty and to always be ingratiating.’
‘I did not find her ingratiating in the least,’ said Amy hotly. ‘In fact, she was damned rude. Not that you gentlemen seemed to notice, the way you were hanging around her.’
‘I was sorry for her,’ said Mr Haddon sternly. ‘She is a poor creature’ – by which he meant a poor sort of creature, but Amy’s jealousy flared up.
‘Well, if your fancy is a lady with great fat bosoms shoved up under her chin and a penchant for tight silk gowns, then I have no more to say to you,’ Amy lashed out.
Mr Haddon and Amy were both very tall, and Effy and Mr Randolph both small and neat and dainty. Amy and Mr Haddon stood glaring at each other while Mr Randolph and Effy fluttered about them in a useless kind of way.
Yvette picked up baby George and said she would go to Maria’s room and look at her gowns, and Maria eagerly said she would go with her.
Amy half-turned to follow them, but Mr Haddon said quietly, ‘No, Miss Amy. At this moment Yvette is setting a better example in manners and courtesy than you.’
‘Ho!’ said Amy. ‘It was not I who screamed out in shock over Yvette’s bastard but your latest fancy, sirrah.’
‘What is up with you, woman?’ shouted Mr Haddon. ‘You have lost your wits. You may stay, Randolph, but I have had just as much of this company as I am going to take this evening.’
Amy stood, her large hands hanging at her sides as Mr Haddon, that normally quiet and polite gentleman, stormed his way out. Mr Randolph cleared his throat nervously. ‘I must say goodbye as well,’ he said.
Effy made a bleating sound of protest, but Mr Randolph almost ran from the room.
Mr Randolph caught up with his friend at the corner of Holles Street. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the club. I’ve had enough of females for one night.’
‘But you know,’ said Mr Haddon as he fell into step beside Mr Randolph, ‘that female did have a face like a twat.’ And then he began to giggle in a most unmanly way.
3
Youth had been a habit of hers for so long that she could not part with it.
Rudyard Kipling
It was unfortunate for Amy that Mr Haddon contracted a severe cold after that noisy argument. He did send a servant around to Holles Street with a letter explaining his illness, but the servant dropped the letter by mistake on the way there and, being new in Mr Haddon’s household, was too fearful of losing his job to tell the truth. Mr Randolph had gone off to see friends in the country on the
comfortable assumption that Mr Haddon would be around to explain his absence, and so it was that the two Tribble sisters felt sadly neglected and Effy blamed Amy and Amy blamed herself.
Still, they were mindful of their duties and set about behaving like paragon duennas to remove any unfortunate first impressions that Miss Maria Kendall might have been given of them. After four days of Miss Spiggs, both sisters set about dispatching that lady back to Bath so firmly and so determinedly that she could find nothing left to make her stay longer.
Maria watched her go with a sigh of relief. She was enjoying the Tribble household. She had only been out for short drives with Effy. Most of her time was taken up with pinnings and fittings as Yvette remodelled her wardrobe while baby George played and gurgled at their feet.
Amy’s sensitivities were still raw. She felt she should write to Mr Haddon, begging forgiveness, but a stiff-necked pride would not let her do so. Effy was still enjoying Amy’s guilt and so did not write either. Although Effy preferred Mr Randolph, it would be a sweeter victory to snatch Mr Haddon from her sister, and so the longer the couple remained estranged, the better. It was the first time Effy had even admitted to herself that the nabob’s feelings towards Amy might be a trifle warmer than they were towards herself.
Effy and Maria had gone out driving one fine afternoon and Amy was left to her gloomy thoughts when the Duke of Berham was announced.
She told Harris, the butler, to send him up to the drawing room.
Now, when she was miserable, Amy regressed back to the days of her poverty and liked to soothe her spirits by doing housework. She had been engaged in cleaning out closets, and her hair was tied up in a scarf and she was wearing an old apron.
The Duke of Berham entered. His glance rested briefly on Amy and slid away.
‘Please be seated, your grace,’ said Amy.
‘No, thank you,’ said the duke haughtily. ‘I shall wait until your mistress arrives.’
His gaze contemptuously took in the scarf and apron.
Amy blushed furiously. ‘I am Miss Amy Tribble,’ she said crossly.
‘Indeed!’ The duke sat down. ‘I had hoped to see Miss Kendall.’
‘Miss Kendall is out driving. I was not aware you were acquainted with her.’
The duke looked silently at Amy. If Miss Kendall had not troubled to tell this odd chaperone of the unfortunate happenings at the inn, then perhaps he should let sleeping dogs lie. He was not interested in Miss Kendall, and to pursue the matter might raise false hopes. The duke was used to being pursued.
He rose and bowed. ‘I am sure Miss Kendall will not remember me. I should not have called. Please do not tell her of my visit. It is of no consequence.’
His glacial manner, his air of consequence, and the lurking contempt in those eyes of his made Amy hate him with a passion.
‘I am sure you can see yourself out,’ she said, and before he had even left the room, she had seized a feather duster and was busily cleaning gleaming furniture without a single speck of dust on it.
Amy decided to put the duke’s visit out of her mind. Maria Kendall was of too low an order to aspire to a duke.
After Amy had finished cleaning, she decided to go for a ride in the Park and went and changed into her riding costume.
She was cantering through the Park when she saw the duke approaching in his carriage. Feeling she had not behaved very well, and, after all, a duke was a duke, Amy decided to speak to him. She moved alongside his carriage and cried, ‘Good day.’
It never dawned on Amy that the duke would not recognize her, that Yvette’s creation of smart blue velvet riding dress and blue velvet hat would make her look a different person entirely from the angry woman with her hair tied up in a scarf. The duke was used to being hailed by encroaching people to whom he had not even been introduced. He slightly raised his thin eyebrows, clicked his tongue at his horses, and bowled away at a smart pace. It was the cut direct. Amy’s face flamed.
The Tribbles, even in their poorest days, had never been cut by anyone. They were bon ton.
Amy was furious. She returned to Holles Street, now determined to find out what Maria knew of the duke.
Effy had gone to lie down. Amy found Maria in her room. She was sitting in a chair by the window, dreamily staring at nothing.
‘The Duke of Berham called when you were out,’ said Amy.
To her surprise, tears started to Maria’s eyes and she covered her face with her hands. ‘Dreadful man,’ she mumbled incoherently. ‘I could kill him!’
Amy snatched Maria’s hands away from her face and demanded, ‘What is the matter? What has he done?’
Maria controlled herself with an effort. The duke may have behaved badly, but she felt sure she had brought some of the trouble on herself by her own behaviour. She was not afraid of Amy, cleverly recognizing the sympathetic and soft-hearted soul which lurked under Amy’s hard mannish exterior. And so she told her everything. About the kiss, about the ball, about her own fantasy of humiliating him and her lie about her fiancé, about how Lord Beaumont had been told by the duke that she had already lost her virginity. ‘I even told him my fiancé, Captain Jack Freemantle, would call him out,’ said Maria.
It was an age when not very many women survived into their fifties and there was no one to tell Amy that occasionally in the lives of women of a certain age, there could be times when they were not quite sane. Amy had been completely thrown off balance by what she saw as Mr Haddon’s rejection of her. The duke’s snub had added fuel to her temporary insanity. She forgot about Maria’s fantasizing and did not realize that here was surely a good opportunity to point out the folly of living in a dream-world. She merely patted Maria on the hand and said, ‘Leave things to me. You shall have your revenge.’
Maria, who was impressed by Amy’s bold manner and standing in London society, assumed Amy would send for the duke and read him the lecture he deserved. Had she known what Amy was planning, she would have been horrified.
Amy was going to challenge the duke to a duel.
The fact that she had once masqueraded as a man to break up a duel between Mr Haddon and a fribble called Callaghan, and had been instantly recognized as Miss Amy Tribble by Mr Haddon, did not deter her. She simply thought that on that occasion she had not taken enough pains over her disguise.
The following day, she went to a naval outfitters and ordered a sea captain’s uniform. She told them it was for a fancy dress ball and urged them to make haste. She then sent for the hairdresser and told him she wanted one of the new fashionable crops and felt quite weepy as her heavy iron-grey locks were shorn, since Amy considered her long hair the only feminine attribute she had possessed. While Amy plotted and planned, Effy and Maria went on calls, went shopping, went to Gunter’s for ices, and remained unaware of the volcano of revenge that was smouldering inside Miss Amy Tribble.
Maria was to make her début in two weeks’ time at a grand ball given by Lord and Lady Livingstone. Amy knew the social calendar inside out and knew at which functions before then she would be likely to meet the Duke of Berham. There was to be a concert given at the home of Mrs Darby, and all the cream of society was expected to be there. Amy called on Mrs Darby and told her that a dashing and handsome sea captain, a Mr Jack Freemantle, who was distantly related to her, would be in London and longed for the civilizing sounds of good music. Much intrigued, Mrs Darby offered an invitation to the captain. Amy said that neither she nor Effy could attend because they had to school their latest charge and bring her up to the mark for her début.
With the invitation secure in her reticule, she next called again on the outfitters for a final fitting. The naval costume would be ready in time for Mrs Darby’s concert.
The naval outfitters had been told no expense was to be spared, and thinking that the captain’s costume was meant for a fancy dress ball, they had added a great deal more gold embellishment to it than a sea captain would ever dare to wear.
Amy’s next worry was how to make
her escape from home dressed as a naval captain on the eve of the concert. She hired a dancing master to come round that evening to instruct Maria in the steps of the waltz, although Maria protested she knew the steps very well. Amy then pleaded the headache and begged Effy to play the piano for the dancing lesson. As soon as she heard the first chord of the waltz sounding from below, Amy locked herself in her room and pomaded and powdered her new short hair. Then she donned the naval uniform: short blue dress jacket with brass buttons and gold epaulettes, and medal ribbons worn over a white waistcoat. White knee breeches, white silk stockings and black leather slippers completed the ensemble. She looked doubtfully at the hat before putting it on. It was surely an admiral’s hat. She shrugged. She would not be wearing it when she challenged the duke to a duel.
She tugged down her dress jacket and looked at herself in the mirror. A distinguished tall slim naval man with a harsh face stared back. Amy blinked away sudden tears. She had always longed to be a pretty woman, but her mirror showed her it would have been better for her to have been born a man. She then picked up a small trunk into which she had packed the masculine clothes for previous masquerades and fancy dress parties, hoisted it onto her shoulder, and crept quietly down the stairs and let herself out, after leaving a note on the hall table in which she said she had gone off to visit a friend in the country. She then took a hack to Limmer’s Hotel, where she had already booked a room under the name of Captain Free-mantle. It was traditional for seconds in a duel to call and try to talk the antagonist out of it, and she could hardly have them calling at Holles Street. Not once did she stop to think that perhaps she might have run mad. Amy felt she had a purpose in life. It was not only the duke she would be getting even with but all the world of men who made life so hard and lonely for unwanted spinsters.
When she arrived at Mrs Darby’s concert, she was glad she had told that lady that the captain was a relative of the Tribbles, for Mrs Darby kept exclaiming over the captain’s resemblance to Miss Amy.
Animating Maria Page 4