Honoria Or The Safety 0f The Frying Pan

by Catherine Bowness

  “You must have been watching very closely,” she said, immediately suspicious.

  “Yes, I own that I was. I confess that I was fascinated by what you told me and could not help trying to understand something of the unusual relations between you and your adoptive family.”

  “I did not tell you they were unusual; I had believed them to be perfectly ordinary,” she answered repressively, beginning to wish she had not been so open.

  “How could you have known until someone else pointed out their oddity?”

  “I seem to have been excessively naïve.”

  “Understandably so. You, if I am not mistaken, are a straightforward person who says what she means and means what she says. I suspect your family – such as they are – resemble you very little in that.”

  “I have been a bird for the plucking,” she admitted. “But I shall make sure I am more wary in future.”

  “I suppose,” he hazarded, “that you have golden feathers.”

  “Yes,” she conceded, seeing no point in trying to pull the wool over his eyes since he had already demonstrated a high degree of perspicacity.

  “And they want you to marry your cousin? It is understandable if they have not many feathers of their own; there is also, of course, the possibility that they have been making use of your dowry; its diminution will not be so apparent if it passes straight into your cousin’s hands.”

  “Could they have done that?” she asked, so shocked that her steps faltered.

  “Very likely. You see, they might quite legitimately have spent some of it on your bed and board for the last twenty years and it would have been an easy matter to use a little more than was in fact required.”

  “Oh! They would not have taken it for themselves – I am certain of that!”

  “I hope you may be proved right but if, without it, they would have had to make disagreeable retrenchments, they might be able to justify their pilfering as having been necessary to secure your comfort. Do you know the full sum that will come to you at your majority?”

  “No, although I asked my uncle to find out and let me know.”

  “And he has prevaricated, I suppose?”

  “Yes. And it was directly after that conversation that Frank – my cousin – began to – to behave differently towards me.”

  “Well, I do not know the ins and outs of it and all may be perfectly above board; I do not wish to worry you unnecessarily or to make you doubt those people in whom you have placed your trust but I would counsel you not to raise your hopes too high about what you may be able to do when the reckoning is made.”

  “I had hoped to set up on my own,” she said in a small voice.

  “Buy your own house?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would hazard a guess that, if such is your intention, you have not had a particularly happy childhood and I wonder what precisely has made you feel that way.”

  “Nothing disagreeable; it is just that we never go anywhere and Helen – my cousin – and I have no friends except each other. It is a little stifling.”

  “Truly? That is not the lot of most young ladies. I am expecting to entertain a large party over Christmas. Would you like it if I were to introduce you to my sister, who keeps house for me, so that she could invite both you and your cousin to join us for some of the entertainments? My sister is not here tonight – she is several years older than I and prefers to stay at home - but I can assure you that she is an excellent hostess and will be delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  “That is excessively kind of you, my lord! Do you not think she would object to having two more females – wholly unversed in social niceties – thrust into your party?”

  “Not in the least. I will bring her to call upon you some time next week.”

  With that promise, Honoria was obliged to be content. She wondered what her aunt would make of Lord Ninfield and his sister paying them a social call. She supposed that, in the distant past, a few intrepid souls must have called upon them but, receiving a rebuff, had not repeated the exercise.

  In the carriage on the way home, no one spoke for some time until Lord Charles stretched out his legs, heaved a sigh and observed to no one in particular, “Well, thank the lord that’s over.”

  “I am so fatigued I am sure I shall be obliged to take to my bed for a week,” the wife of his bosom said.

  Silence fell again, nobody daring to question this prognosis for fear of exacerbating the poor lady’s suffering, and the coach rumbled on, swaying not so much soporifically as nauseatingly from side to side.

  “Did you girls enjoy yourselves?” Frank asked when a decent interval had elapsed since his parents’ complaints to make the idea of anyone having found the evening agreeable not altogether unfeeling.

  “Yes, very much,” Honoria replied.

  “Have you gone to sleep, sis?” Frank asked when Helen did not take up his invitation.

  “No.”

  “Has Mr Hallett not expressed a wish to see you again?” he teased.

  “He said he hoped our paths would cross before too long,” she admitted with a nervous glance in her mother’s direction.

  “Hope alone is unlikely to cut it,” Frank said. “If he wants to see you he will have to make an effort to arrange something.”

  “If we attend next week’s ball he may be there,” she said tentatively.

  “Did you not make any promises?”

  “No. I wish you will stop badgering me, Frank.”

  “Oh, you mean because Mama will succumb to a fit of the vapours if she is forced to contemplate returning so soon as next week? She will have recovered by then. Did you not say that you had both bought two dresses? What would be the use of that if you do not attend again?”

  “We do not have to return as soon as next week,” Honoria said, aware that her aunt had begun to breathe rather fast.

  “I shall certainly not feel up to going back in as little as a se’nnight,” Lord Charles interjected. “It was the most tedious evening I have passed for a long time.”

  “Oh, come, Papa, you exaggerate. There were any number of pretty girls and I saw you looking at them. Was not that worth an hour or so separated from your newspaper?”

  “That female with whom you danced might as well have been unclothed,” the older man muttered.

  “Nonsense, Papa. Her gown was a little revealing but not unbecomingly so – she looked ravishing.”

  “I cannot think how she was allowed to present herself like that!” Lady Charles exclaimed in a high voice.

  “I daresay she damped it in the cloakroom after she had been permitted to enter,” Helen reminded them, suppressing with difficulty a tendency to giggle indecorously.

  “Have you formed an attachment to her, Frank?” Honoria asked, trying to make him the object of his parents’ attention.

  “Good God, no! She was an excessively tedious young woman and could talk of nothing but Lord Ninfield; her only advantage was her appearance.”

  “Did you stand up with her more than once?”

  “Oh, yes, several times. What did you think of your suitor?”

  “Which one?”

  “Lord Ninfield. He’s the son of the Earl of Tendring but, if you are congratulating yourself on the rank of your beau, I must tell you that rumour has it that his pockets are well and truly to let. Does he know how plump yours are?”

  “Yes, I am afraid he does, although at first I was determined not to tell him,” Honoria admitted, blushing with shame and thankful that it was too dark for anyone to notice.

  “He winkled it out of you, did he? Well, there, you see, that is one of the particular skills with which a fortune-hunter learns to equip himself – smelling out heiresses. He will no doubt be calling upon us in the next few days.”

  “Are you setting him up as your example?” she asked unkindly. “Does the almost-unclothed Miss Hamston have a fortune?”

  “Oh, Good Lord, no, I should not imagine so; if she had, he would have be
en dancing with her. And, if she had a fortune, she would not need to damp her dress because the flies would swarm round her even if she was a complete antidote, which she is not.”

  “So, if you were to make a list of the qualities you seek in a young woman, it would run thus, I suppose: first, fortune; second, a pretty face and, languishing a long way behind, a lively mind.”

  “I would not seek a lively mind at all,” he responded at once. “If I were looking for a fortune, I would certainly prefer a pretty face and a trim figure in addition, but I would be inclined to steer well clear of a lively mind. Why, she might be as argumentative as you, full of her own opinions and adept at giving me set-downs. No, on the whole, I believe I would prefer a dull woman who would know her duty and be quite content to carry it out.”

  He sat back and waited for the storm to break over him but Honoria managed to resist the lure. She said, “I see.”

  “I suppose you are thinking that such a preference must rule you out; it does not; after all, one cannot, I suppose, expect to have everything one wants,” Frank continued after a pause.

  Still determined not to rise to the bait, Honoria kept her lips closed.

  “Do you prefer Lord Ninfield?” he asked, clearly unwilling to let her off the hook. “Earlier you said he was far from handsome; was he otherwise to your taste?”

  “Not in the least.” Honoria had revised her first opinion of his lordship as unbearably top-lofty and had even begun to find him sympathetic, but now that Frank had told her that he was on the look-out for a fortune, she felt herself to have been taken for a fool and began to wish they had not gone to the assembly rooms at all.

  “Oh well; you had better stick to your familiar cousin after all; at least you know where you stand with him.”

  “I know no such thing,” she protested, her temper, so painfully held in check, beginning to break its bonds. You have betrayed me, Frank.”

  “Fustian!”

  She had a strong desire to hit him; why must he be so provoking? But, as the conversation was being conducted in whispers in the presence of the rest of the family, she could not. It seemed to her that only Helen was innocent of the conspiracy to make her a fixed member of a family from which she now wished at all costs to escape.

  But where would escape take her for even Lord Ninfield, to whom she had been persuaded to confide her situation, was probably pursuing his own interests? No doubt he had smelled out her fortune, as Frank suggested, and had only asked to be introduced to her on account of it. He had then, by showing her sympathy – very likely false – succeeded in turning her against Frank whilst at the same time confirming his initial suspicion that, beneath her unpromising exterior, she concealed a fortune.

  “I wish we had not come tonight,” she muttered.

  “You seemed keen enough earlier when Helen suggested it,” Frank reminded her.

  “I am aware of that but I did not know what it would entail.”

  “I think you are refining too much upon one aspect of what you have learned tonight. It seems to me that your brief acquaintance with Lord Ninfield – although I daresay it will not be so very brief for he is bound to follow up what he believes to be his advantage – has shown you something of the wiles of the world. Before you met him, you had become convinced of my malignity – betrayal, as you call it – and were ready to do almost anything to thwart what you believed were my family’s and my ambitions. But, really, would it not be altogether unnatural for a family such as mine – short of the ready and with no aged aunts about to leave any of us a fortune so far as we know – to consider that an alliance between a dearly loved niece, most fortuitously provided with more than a handsome competence, and an agreeable, if indolent, son would not be the answer to everyone’s dilemmas? You, when you reach your majority, will need to decide what you want to do: do you really wish to leave the people with whom you have lived all your life and set up home on your own? You have just discovered how vulnerable you are to fortune-hunters; how, in the future, will you protect yourself against such persons? Would it not be wise to remain safe amongst those who love you and whom you love?”

  “No! Of course I love you, Frank, or I did, but as a cousin. I cannot suddenly be expected to look at you differently – and nor, I am persuaded, can you look at me in that way either.”

  “I have no difficulty at all, as I believe I have already demonstrated, and, while I do not wish to be too blunt, the truth is that you have no difficulty in that direction either, as you also have already proved comprehensively.”

  “Because I kissed you?”

  “It was the way you kissed me, dear girl. I am only two years your senior but I have been away from home for some time and cannot claim to be as innocent as you. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I have met a number of young women and kissed one or two. I daresay I am not as sophisticated an operator as Lord Ninfield but I am not without some skill in that department.”

  “You need not go into detail,” Honoria exclaimed on a note of horror, staring at what she could see of his face in the dimness of the carriage, and shuddering.

  He laughed. “Very well, I will spare you that but, dearest coz, I would not make you unhappy and I cannot deny that I hold you in great affection.”

  “That is not enough! With every word you utter you make me less inclined to accede. Yes, I can see that it makes some awful kind of practical sense, but every fibre of my being revolts against being absorbed in such a horrid, soulless manner into your family, my money and independence taken from me. I daresay you believe that you will be kind to me, but you will not. You will leave me alone, you will have dealings – I can hardly bear to think of them – with myriad other women and I will be able to do nothing but bear your children and run your house. The very thought makes me shudder; what is the point of a life so restricted, so denuded of all excitement?”

  “It is the life that most women seek,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, in the end: to spend a lifetime bearing children and running the household of a man you love – but not - not just to sink into it! No, I do not wish for that!”

  “Would you rather marry Lord Ninfield?”

  “No, but there is surely some man with whom I might one day fall in love – someone who will love me for myself, for what I am, not for what I possess.”

  “I doubt it. Men love women for all sorts of reasons but they are rarely, so far as I can see, for what they are. Mostly, they do not even know that when they marry them. They tie the knot because they are taken by a pretty face and – quite frankly – simply want the opportunity to kiss the girl – and so on. Since you clearly do not wish to hear any more on that score, I will desist. Or they marry for money - and men who aren’t provided with much are obliged to take that into consideration. A girl like you who comes with both money and a pretty face is more valuable than pearls. You may seek a title and I am sorry that I can’t provide you with that; all I have to offer is the person you know and whom, until today, I believed you held in deep affection. To be frank, you could do a lot worse - but I will not conceal from you that you could also do a lot better.”

  Chapter 14

  The following morning, as Cassie was putting on her hat, Lisl ran up the stairs to inform her that a young lady was at the door, insisting that she was a teacher of the German language and had been sent by Lord Waldron for Mrs Morley’s approval.

  “Oh!” Cassie exclaimed. “How kind of him to have found someone so quickly; unfortunately I am about to go out, but I will speak to her directly. Please ask her to wait in the small saloon.” Of course, although this was what Cassie initially said, by the time she had laboriously translated it into a string of words which she hoped conveyed some morsel of what she meant, she was convinced that, unless the young lady should turn out to be odious, she was much in need of her services.

  She wondered if his lordship had explained that the potential pupil was quite hideous to look at and whether – for fear of frightening her future teache
r – she should present herself veiled. In the end she decided that it would look decidedly odd to receive so lowly a visitor with her face, however hideous, concealed and went downstairs as she was.

  When she entered the saloon the young woman stood up and dropped a respectful curtsey. She was, Cassie estimated, probably in her twenties and, while possessed of a cheerful and agreeable countenance, was by no means pretty. She was short and round, both of figure and face; what could be seen of her hair beneath a woollen bonnet, was light brown; her complexion was exceedingly pink – unsurprisingly since she had recently come in from the cold – and her large round eyes were a celestial blue, a colour much paler than Cassie’s but pretty withal.

  “Good morning, Gnädige Frau,” she said, holding out a card on which her name was engraved.

  She was a Fräulein Brunner, Teacher of the German Language.

  “It is kind of you to call,” Cassie said in English, hoping that the teacher could speak both languages for, if she were to instruct her pupil entirely in her own tongue, Cassie did not think she would find her lessons any easier than conversing with her servants, although she supposed that the subject matter might be more varied.

  “My lord Waldron told me that you wished to learn German. I would be pleased to help you if that would suit, my lady.” This sentence was delivered in perfect English, only the faintest hint of an accent embellishing the words.

  “I am not a ‘my lady’,” Cassie said. She did not much care for being addressed as ‘Gnädige Frau’ the whole time but, although already living under a false identity, she did not think she would be able to bear the added deception of claiming to be a ladyship.

  “Would you prefer me to call you Mrs Morley?” the girl asked.

  “Not all the time. In England it is usual to address a married lady – or a widow, as I am – as ‘Madam’.”

  “Very well. I apologise, Madam. I have with me testimonials from former pupils and have previously instructed several of the Embassy staff – as well as their families. When they first arrive in Vienna it is quite common for them not to have any knowledge of the language but, after as little as three months, they are usually able to conduct a simple conversation. By the end of a year, many are almost fluent.”