Animating Maria (5 page)

The ball finished in the small hours with an announcement that the duke’s estate workers had diverted the torrent and repaired the road. The travellers would be able to continue their journey.

Beau had been drinking a great deal. He became more determined than ever to see Maria alone.

Maria was sitting at her toilet table and Betty was just about to unpin the silk roses from her hair when there came a scratching at the door and then a note was slid underneath it.

Betty picked it up and gave it to Maria. ‘What is it?’ asked Miss Spiggs avidly. ‘What an odd time to deliver a message.’

Maria swung away from her and quickly read the message: ‘Meet me in the coffee room as soon as possible, Beaumont.’

‘I must go,’ said Maria. ‘Miss Sunningdale wants to see me about something. Don’t wait up for me, Betty. Both you and Miss Spiggs go to bed.’

She swung a long cloak about her shoulders, made her way down to the coffee room and pushed open the door.

It was empty except for Lord Alistair Beaumont, who was standing, leaning one arm on the mantel and looking down into the embers of the fire.

He swung round as Maria entered.

Maria knew she should not have come, but the prospect that Lord Alistair might mean to propose marriage to her was too big a temptation. She thought of the duke’s outraged face when he learned she had enslaved his best friend. That was almost as good a revenge as spurning the duke.

‘My darling, I knew you would come,’ said Beau. He strode towards her, caught her in his arms and began to kiss her passionately.

Maria struggled and then managed to kick Beau hard on his shin.

He yelped and released her.

‘How dare you!’ whispered Maria fiercely. She longed to shout and scream, but she knew her very presence alone in the coffee room in the middle of the night with Lord Alistair would damn her morals, and wondered miserably why she had not thought of such a thing in the first place.

‘Don’t come the prim miss with me,’ laughed Beau. ‘I confess your air of innocence had me fooled, but when Berham told me how you gave your favours away in the pantry at the Comfreys’ hunt ball, I decided I may as well help myself to your rose-buds.’

‘I do not know what you are talking about,’ said Maria furiously. ‘You are a drunken lecher, sir.’

She darted out of the coffee room and locked the door behind her.

Head held high, she marched up the stairs to her room. She met the Duke of Berham in the passage.

He started to give her a bow and then reeled back, for Maria had swung back her fist and boxed him hard on the ear. She went into her room and closed the door.

He recovered from the shock and was going to hammer on her door and demand an explanation when his mother came along the passage in a billowing night-gown and enormous nightcap.

‘Oh, there you are, Rupert,’ she said. ‘Shall you be returning home tomorrow, or do you plan to go to London directly now the road is clear?’

‘I shall be returning home for a couple of days, Mama, and then I shall leave.’

‘Very well.’ The dowager duchess half-turned away and then turned back and said, ‘I have just remembered. It was not the Kendall girl who behaved so disgracefully at that hunt ball. It was Miss Caroline Moray. I really do seem to get things mixed up these days. So sad. A sign of age, I fear.’

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.

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.