by Joan Smith
“Of course,” he said, vastly relieved.
“She was a friend of Papa’s.”
“A pity Algernon’s going to Spain.”
Lady Helena was too astute to push her questions further at this time. She would soon find less exacting friends who would put her on to Mrs. Petrel-Jones. With a busy afternoon arranging for modistes and a coiffeur, and with a letter to write to Papa telling him that Mrs. Petrel-Jones was still single, she had no objection to returning to Belgrave Square.
Chapter Five
Over lunch, the ladies discussed modistes and gowns, and immediately after, Lady Hadley sent off a note to the Season’s reigning queen of the needle, Madam Belanger. The bank note of a large denomination folded inside brought a prompt reply. Madam would attend her ladyship the next morning at eleven, with her samples and designs.
The afternoon’s activities were delayed by a visit from Mrs. Audrey Comstock and her daughter Marion. Lady Helena’s main interest was in the daughter, in whom she hoped to find a friend and confidante. Her hopes withered before Miss Comstock had uttered two sentences. Indeed they withered at the first glance of this “pale, unripened beauty of the north.” Helena was convinced no lady who looked so very much like a Flemish painting could possibly have a thought in common with her.
It was unkindly said of Marion that her face was her chaperon. Her etiolated complexion looked as if she had spent the past month hiding under a rock. Her hair also had an unhealthy look and the consistency of dried grass. Her features—pale blue eyes, long nose, thin lips—wore that expression of strained tolerance often observed in Flemish portrayals of the Virgin.
“I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Cousin,” Miss Comstock said. Her pale blue eyes raked Helena from head to toe. Marion was usually the first over the fence in pursuit of the Season’s quarry, and she sensed stiff competition here.
“And I with you, Cousin,” Helena replied stiffly. She wished to add some friendlier words, but those chilly eyes stopped her in her tracks.
“Lady Hadley tells me Severn showed you London this morning. It must have been exciting for you, after living in Spain.” Her tone suggested that Spain might as well be Africa, so far as civilization went.
“Yes, indeed. It was quite ... different.”
For some obscure reason, Miss Comstock took this as a personal compliment and thanked her.
Mrs. Comstock, who was an older version of her daughter, with a layer of condescension added due to her age, said, “I have just been telling Lady Hadley we shall be happy to help her shoulder the burden of your debut, Lady Helena, for at her age, you know, it will be a sad imposition on her peace and quiet.”
Mrs. Comstock was a stripling of five and forty. “My Marion has already arranged her gowns and all that sort of thing. It will be a dreadful chore trying to find a modiste at this late hour. If I were not so busy, I would make some inquiries, but with the Season about to begin ...”
“We have already arranged for Madam Belanger to come tomorrow morning, Audrey,” Lady Hadley replied.
“That French creature? I daresay you had no choice, at so late a date. Odd your papa did not send you home sooner, Lady Helena.”
“Spain is my home,” Lady Helena said.
Next Mrs. Comstock turned her conversation to Lady Hadley. “You want to watch that Belanger. She is a Frenchie, you know. Her designs can be quite lascivious. Not suitable for a deb. I had Marion’s gowns made up at Bath, before coming to London.”
If the lifeless shroud encasing Marion’s bones was an example of Bath couture, Helena was happy she had escaped such a fate.
Sherry and biscuits were served. Mrs. Comstock asked if it would be too much trouble to have tea for the youngsters. “I do not encourage Marion to take wine. It causes blotches. Indeed Lady Helena would be wise to avoid an excess of wine as well.”
Determined to behave like a proper lady, Lady Helena drank the insipid liquid and conversed in stilted phrases with Miss Comstock for the half hour of the visit. When Mrs. Comstock rose, she repeated her offer to help shoulder the burden of Lady Helena’s debut. The exact nature of her assistance was vague, except that she would call again soon to see how they were going on.
When the guests had left, Lady Helena asked in a small voice, “Are the Comstocks very good friends of yours, Madrina?”
“Audrey used to be, thirty-odd years ago. You will scarcely believe it, but when we made our bows together, she was one of the liveliest creatures you ever saw. Something has changed her. I don’t know whether it was marrying an ecclesiastic or removing to Bath.”
“Or having Marion for a daughter,” Lady Helena added.
“Pour your cousin a glass of wine, Edward,” Lady Hadley said. “She is going into a decline before our very eyes. I don’t think we need worry too much about Audrey’s assistance in ‘shouldering the burden’ of Helena’s debut. I believe she came only out of curiosity, to get a look at her.”
Lady Helena drew a great sigh of relief. “I am so glad you don’t like them either,” she said.
“Marion is not unattractive,” Severn objected, but he knew he was lying. “There is no reason to disparage her. She is family, after all, and will be a suitable companion for Lady Helena. In behavior, she is all one could wish.”
His mama rolled a jaundiced eye at him. “Don’t let us detain you, Edward. Do you not have some business at the House? You were to see Brougham.”
“I shall drop in for a few moments, at least. What will you ladies be up to this afternoon?”
“Lady Helena spoke of having a coiffeur in to tend to her hair. The ladies are wearing it shorter this year.”
Severn scowled in displeasure. “I thought you disliked the do the ladies were sporting on Bond Street, Cousin. You mentioned their looking like moo—”
“Muchachos,” she said. “Like little boys.”
“You are to set your own style, I think? That boyish do would not suit you.”
“Don’t worry, Eduardo. I shall not disfigure myself. I shall need all the feminine allurements to nab a husband, shall I not, Madrina?”
Lady Hadley had gone off into a reverie, and when she spoke, it was on a different subject. “Muchacho, eh? There is another bit of Spanish for me. I think I can handle two new words a day. Tell me another.”
“What word would you like to know, Madrina?”
“As you call me Madrina, why do I not call you by the Spanish for goddaughter? What would that be?”
“Ahijada.”
“God bless you. Not coming down with a cold, I hope?”
“But no. Why do you ask?”
“I think Helena means ahijada is Spanish for goddaughter?” he said, looking a question at her.
“Exactly.”
“Good gracious, I could never get my tongue around that. Never mind, I shall call you Cousin-o instead. I know those Spaniards like to put an o at the ends of all their words.”
A very confused Spanish lesson ensued. Prima led to so much confusion that in the end Helena agreed to the hybrid name Cousina.
“I can see something in the word displeases you, so I shall stick to plain old English,” Severn said. “Good day, Cousin.” He bowed and left.
Lady Hadley sent off for Alfredo, who was arranging all the better heads that Season. After much discussion and looking at sketches of coiffures, Lady Helena selected the victime do. “For my hair is naturally curly, and when it is short, it will curl by itself and remove the onus of using papers at night. I daresay Eduardo will not approve. He suggested I should keep my hair long.”
“We shall not pay any attention to him,” Lady Hadley said. “Now, where can we do the cutting without making a mess?”
She was not much inclined to leave her comfortable sofa. She had the servants lay papers on the floor and set a chair in the middle of the saloon for Helena. She watched as the sable locks fell from the flying scissors. One flew beneath a side table and was left behind when Alfredo scooped up the rest. He kne
w a wig maker who would pay a fine penny for these specimens. Sally then washed Helena’s hair, and Alfredo performed some magic with his brush until it sat in a cap of loose curls around her face.
“I feel light-headed,” she exclaimed. “It will be such a relief not to have all that hair pinned up. The pins quite give me the megrims after a long day. Do you like it, Madrina?”
“I feared the victime would look dowdy,” she said, “for it was all the crack twenty or more years ago. It was named for the victims of the revolution in France, you must know. I don’t know exactly why, for it was the heads they cut off, not the hair, but so it is. However, it does not look in the least dowdy. Folks do say that if you hold on to old things long enough, they will come back into style. I wonder if I could get away with that bonnet I bought in eighteen hundred.”
“Perhaps with that hairdo, you could, your ladyship,” Alfredo said daringly.
“Why, thank you, Alfredo.” She smiled and bid him adieu.
“That was a very pretty compliment, was it not, Cousina?” she said when they were alone. “But I put no faith in the compliments of coiffeurs or modistes. It is all part and parcel of their trade. Well, it is time to change for dinner. I wonder if Edward will be back. His papa would often stay at the House till late into the night, scheming with his cohorts. Their meetings had something to do with unseating the Tories,” she confided with a sage nod. “Now that I have talked Edward into calling on Brougham, I daresay he will always be busy, too. Brougham is the leader of the Whigs.”
Lady Helena knew that keeping Severn in good curl was important to her comfort, and she made a careful toilette for dinner. As they were dining at home, she felt free to wear one of her late mama’s more dashing gowns. It was a rich peacock blue, drawn tightly at the waist and flaring below. The top was cut low but not immodestly so. She pinned a white silk rose into her curls.
Over her shoulder she said to Sally, “I asked Madrina to send up a lemon each day. Did Cook give it to you, Sally?”
“Yes, miss, I’ve already squeezed one, but the freckles are still with me.”
“It takes a little while.” She took a last look in the mirror. “Do I look all right?”
“You look like a queen, miss. The Spanish queen,” she added, as it struck her that Queen Charlotte could not touch Lady Helena for looks.
Lady Helena made a moue. “If you knew Queen Maria Luisa, you would realize that is not a compliment.”
“Ain’t she pretty, then?”
“She has a face like a hatchet.”
“You have to wonder how she ever nabbed a king. I daresay it’s like you and Lord Severn—an arranged match, for the money and all.” Helena looked at her strangely. “I shouldn’t be gossiping, milady. It’s only what Lord Severn’s valet said, that Lord Hadley told his son he’d best marry you, if he knew what was good for him.”
“Of course,” Helena said, and dismissed her servant. So Lord Severn was under orders, was he? No wonder he was chafing at the bit. If his aim was to marry her, he was surely setting about it in an odd way. One could hardly describe his behavior as gallant. Yet he was not behaving badly enough to give a lady a total disgust of him, if his aim was to win a refusal. He was lukewarm, lacking the courage to flout his papa and hoping his indifference would make her reject him. A coward, in other words. Her lip curled in disdain. But until she had devised her strategy, she would continue to be pleasant.
Belowstairs, Lord Severn had been notified that Lady Helena had had the coiffeur in during his absence. “Yes, Edward, she had all her hair chopped off, and I must say it looks lovely,” his mother informed him.
“What! I told her not to!”
“My dear, that is hardly your place! I am her chaperon, and I agreed to it. The poor child’s head aches from carrying such a load of pins to loop her curls up. You men have no idea what we have to put up with to make ourselves presentable. Strawberry packs to bleach our skin, and having our hair cranked up in papers and never allowed to go out in the sun. Lessons in walking and talking and dancing and pouring tea. We might as well be racehorses, for all we do is train, train, train, until we nab a parti. And then we are expected to bear children. Do you think that is a picnic? I think we must all be saints without knowing it,”
Severn’s real wrath was not with his mama, but with Lady Helena. He had asked her not to cut her hair. That she had done so showed a disregard for his opinion that not only annoyed but greatly surprised him. Her behavior until now had suggested that she admired and liked him.
He was ready to be as stiff as starch when she appeared belowstairs in her new coiffure. He would not denigrate it. He would be more subtle than that. “Very nice,” he would say with a pained look that revealed his true opinion. All those lovely curls gone forever ...
But when she appeared without warning at the doorway of the saloon, the breath caught in his throat. She looked like a vision out of some exotic Eastern tale. Her mama’s peacock gown hugged the contours of her lithe body. Above it, an unseemly expanse of creamy flesh rose enticingly. The hair, much as it vexed him to admit it, looked charming. A black riot of curls bounced when she walked forward and made an exquisite curtsy.
“I, in case you don’t recognize me, am your cousin Helena, Eduardo,” she said, with an arch smile. “Please don’t say I look horrid! The deed is done now, and I am stuck with it. What do you think?”
“Very nice,” he said, in not quite the strained voice he had prepared.
She turned a saucy smile on her godmama. “There, Madrina! I told you he would like it. Gentlemen never know what they like until they are shown.”
“Gentlemen have entirely too much to say about what they like, if you want my opinion,” Lady Hadley said, with an angry glare at her son. “They do not ask us if we like their hair all hacked off like those moochachies in Spain. They are too wise to be bothered doing their hair up in papers for us. Why should we carry the burden of having to be ornaments, I should like to know?”
Having delivered this piece of spleen, she added, “You look very nice, dear, and never mind what he says. Get Cousina a glass of wine, Edward. One would think you were bred in a stable.”
While they enjoyed their wine, Severn pestered them with some very dull on-dits from Westminster. He had agreed to act as temporary chancellor of the exchequer in the shadow cabinet until a permanent appointment was made. He feared it was a horrible mistake. He had no idea how much money the Tories were squandering or how much work was involved preparing questions to raise in the House. A large case of papers awaited him in his study, but it would all stand him in good stead with his father later.
Lady Hadley had the inspiration of discussing Cousina’s ball to stop the flow of financial talk, and this filled the remainder of the meal more interestingly.
Severn took his port alone and was astonished to see, when he went to join the ladies, that Helena had retired to her room to write some letters and peruse the latest fashion magazines.
“Did you tell her I was going out?” he asked his mama.
“No, dear, I most particularly told her you were remaining at home this evening. Perhaps that is why she decided to go abovestairs. I believe I shall do the same.”
On this set-down, she rose and left Severn alone, staring at the walls and wondering where he had gone wrong. Helena, while all smiles and charm when he was present, obviously cared nothing for him. A few questions from his bachelor friends at the House had alerted him that Helena was likely to cause quite a stir when she was let loose in society.
“Who was that Incomparable you were on the strut with this morning, Severn?” one had asked. Several had asked permission to call and be presented to Lady Helena.
He rose and began pacing. Something at the edge of a side table caught his eye, and he bent over to pick it up. It was a lock of sable hair. Her hair, soft and silky. He looked about in vain for somewhere to dispose of it. The side table had a drawer. He drew it open and dropped the curl in on top of a few new
spaper clippings yellowing with age.
Then he went like a lamb to the slaughter to peruse the large volume of papers awaiting him in his study.
Chapter Six
Life was a busy whirl of preparations over the next fortnight. The first priority was to have some suitable gowns made up for Lady Helena to wear even before the formal commencement of the Season. The obliging Madam Belanger worked her minions overtime so that her ladyship might make a decent appearance when she received company at home and when she enjoyed such informal outings as tea parties and drives.
There were also Lady Helena’s presentation at court and her own ball to arrange. Due to her late arrival, her ball would not occur until the middle of May. Even in advance of her presentation to the queen, she enjoyed a raft of callers. As circumstances permitted, she made discreet inquiries for Mrs. Petrel-Jones, but she had no luck in finding anyone who knew her.
Lady Hadley could only wonder at her son’s smiles when Cousina was such a great success. Did he not realize every caller was a rival? He seemed to be spending more and more time at Whitehall. Mrs. Comstock and her daughter’s calls became a daily event, once they discovered where all the gentlemen were hiding themselves. Their condescension did not diminish with familiarity. Quite the contrary, even Miss Comstock took to dropping Lady Helena hints as to her conduct.
“You must not be too familiar with gentlemen, Cousin,” she cautioned, “or they might try to take advantage of you.” Her sharp look seemed to suggest she had suffered this fate, which was so ridiculous that Helena completely ignored her advice.
The ball and the presentation gown were very expensive. When Lady Hadley complained that she could not keep track of so many bills and checks, Severn, now the financial wizard of the family, volunteered to take charge of the banking. He deemed it prudent to read Lady Helena a lecture when he got the bill for her presentation gown.
“You must bear in mind that this gown is not likely to be worn again. It is too ornate for an ordinary ball.”