Elisabeth Kidd (14 page)

When Imogen came in later to call her to tea, she found Antonia humming contentedly as she tried on various bonnets she had brought
with her. Antonia told her friend about their invitation to drive out with
the viscount and confessed that she felt a wish to do something that very
evening, new clothes or no.

“I must say, it is very provoking of Uncle Philip to be away just at this
moment!” Antonia complained. “There are so few places where ladies
alone may be seen on their own without being considered unladylike. Do you think we
might take dinner at Grillon’s Hotel? It is said to be excessively genteel.”

“With the result that no one except persons of excessive gentility
would see us there,” Imogen said, effectively defeating what little enthusi
asm Antonia had for the idea.

However, when Isabel came home, bearing the tale of her day’s
adventures, Antonia began to perceive that the delicate matter of their social calendar could all too easily be resolved contrary to their most
careful calculations.

Isabel had begun the day in a state of acute apprehension, which was
not alleviated by Esme’s habit, in which Isabel joined, of running to the window whenever she heard a particularly loud noise in the street. When
she was not thus engaged, she was chattering with the servants who had
come down from Wyckham before her arrival, until Antonia, to curb her
excess energy, pretended to see a stain on Isabel’s skirt and advised her to
go upstairs and change her gown before Cloris arrived to fetch her.
Fortunately, Miss Beecham proved the very person to put Isabel at ease,
by assuring her with supreme confidence in the truth of her assertions
that nothing could be smoother than the passage of such a pretty,
well-mannered, self-possessed young woman as Isabel through the por
tals of the Ton. Isabel thus returned from their outing transformed, at
least temporarily, into just such a paragon—although for a few apprehen
sive moments Antonia had to wonder if Miss Beecham had perhaps not
gone too far.

“We went to look at the botanical gardens at Kew,” Isabel reported
breathlessly to her aunt. “We met a Lord Geoffrey Dane there, who is an
acquaintance of Clory’s. She had told me he is a
beautiful
young man, as
indeed he proved to be, and excessively eligible as well. On our return, we
passed Mr Gary in Park Lane. Oh, and Clory invites us to a very informal dinner tomorrow evening to meet Mr and Mrs Worthing—Clory’s mama and step-papa, you know.”

Antonia’s perverse imagination immediately conjured up visions of
an entirely ineligible Lord Geoffrey, made dispiriting note of the off-
handedness of Isabel’s mention of Mr Gary, and prodded herself with
the nasty suspicion that the Worthings might prove as dull as their
name. But she smiled brightly and said only that a small dinner party
among friends would be an acceptably modest start to their careers
and that she would send an acceptance around to Grosvenor Square
immediately.

“Isabel
...”
she began, as her niece started off again to change for
dinner.

“Yes?” Isabel turned back, but did not sit down again. Antonia post
poned her intended attempt to persuade Isabel to confide in her.

“Shall we add Lord Geoffrey’s name to your list of ball guests?”

“Oh, yes, I think so,” Isabel said. “I expect we shall see him often before then.”

It did not escape Antonia’s still-acute notice that there was a decided
note of calculation behind this statement. When Isabel had gone, she sighed and hoped—as perversely as ever—that Lord Geoffrey would
prove either a paragon or totally impossible.

Every day after the Fairfaxes’ arrival in London brought further glad
news from abroad—that Bonaparte’s marshals had deserted him, that the
French senate had thrown him over for their exiled Bourbon king, and
that the Allied sovereigns were resolved upon his abdication. London, which
had been living in a disbelieving dream, now woke to the realisation that
it was all true. Church bells rang with an extra thanksgiving on Easter Sunday, and a large portion of the population was literally singing and
dancing in the streets. Lord Byron, who, after the success of
The Corsair
,
had announced his resolution to leave his mountebank profession forever,
promptly broke his vow to compose an ode to his fallen hero, Bonaparte.

The poet’s melancholy outlook was shared by very few, however. No
one but he was displeased when Bonaparte abdicated at last, but at
least one gouty old man who had been living in rustic security in Buckinghamshire was somewhat nonplussed when he learned that the
French senate had proclaimed him king. The Comte de Lille—known as
Louis
le Desire
to his admirers and Louis
le Gros
to such as my lord
Byron—and his exiled court may well have felt some small annoyance at
being made to pack up and begin the long uncomfortable journey back to Paris, but he could scarcely say so when the Prince Regent himself, in all his corpulent finery and accompanied by a troop of the Blues, met him at
Stanmore with the intention of escorting him on his ponderous progress to London, where a tumultuous welcome awaited both royal gentlemen.

Crowds of Londoners wearing the white cockade of the House of
Bourbon had filled Hyde Park from early morning, supplied with picnic lunches, which they spread out in the sunshine along Rotten Row while
they waited for the procession to pass by. It was an excellent opportunity
to ogle and remark upon the celebrated beauties and notable horsemen
who vied with one another for the admiration of the throng—and the
Misses Fairfax were not above taking advantage of the opportunity to
preen their own fine feathers.

Fully conscious that this would be Isabel’s first important public
appearance, that morning Antonia had merely taken a quickly appraising
glance in the mirror after donning her new morning gown of amber
crepe and her villager hat with long amber silk ribbons, before going in
to assist Isabel with her toilette. Pausing at the door to her niece’s room,
however, she could not help smiling at the spring-like picture Isabel
presented as she placed a charming chip-straw bonnet over her silver-gold
hair. Isabel looked up and, returning her smile, observed that Antonia
had lost an earbob.

Antonia laughed and felt her earlobe. “Oh, dear—and here I had come to be certain that
you
were ready, which you quite obviously are, while I
am going about half-dressed and doubtless looking a positive hoyden!”

Isabel assured her that she looked no such thing, and after many
expressions of mutual admiration, in addition to Imogen Curtiz’s only
slightly more restrained compliments to both young ladies, the three of them went downstairs to meet their escorts not more than five minutes
tardily—but with Antonia’s earbob forgotten once again—and set off for the day’s adventure. Miss Cloris Beecham had declined to join them,
declaring unequivocally, “Thank you, no!
I
to be outshone by an old
man—too old men! —so fat they cannot stand without swaying? No, I shall remain quietly indoors until they have gone away again.”

Miss Beecham had, however, agreed to meet them in the park at
whichever hour public attention should have left the royal gentlemen to
seek a pleasanter focus. The Fairfax party, therefore, consisted only of the three ladies in a newly rented carriage, accompanied by Lord Kedrington
and Mr Gary on horseback. Antonia had no doubt, on laying eyes on his lordship, that any attention there was to be had would immediately focus
itself on him, who had come arrayed in an unusual but striking ensemble consisting of an ivory-coloured coat, matching pantaloons, and, in place
of the prescribed tall beaver hat, a wide-brimmed straw concoction.
Antonia had no means of recognising this headgear as the sort common in tropical climates, and she therefore regarded it with a kind of suspi
cious fascination but was determined not to pander to Kedrington’s
vanity by enquiring about it.

They made their way first to Grillon’s Hotel in Albemarle Street,
where the king would be putting up. There, another, more sedate crowd
had cleared a passage from the door of the hotel toward the spot where, after an hour’s wait—only partially relieved by Kedrington’s irreverent account of the new king’s petulant reluctance to have his throne back after Bonaparte had sat upon it—they began to hear faint cheers in the
distance, which gradually became louder and then nearly deafening as
the royal coach neared the hotel.

Then the king was lifted bodily from his vehicle and set down. In the
manner of a man far too given to indulgence, he moved toward the hotel, swaying and nodding acknowledgement of the tribute of his admirers. He was escorted to a large chair thoughtfully provided for him, and when he
had lowered himself onto it, the Regent, who had been following at a
discreet distance, bustled forward and burdened the weary king further
with the Order of the Garter, which he buckled with a theatrical flourish
around Louis’s knee. Then he rose, puffing a little, and made the kind of flowery speech he imagined appealed to the lower orders. The king made
a contrastingly simple speech in which he declared that he owed the recovery of his throne solely to the efforts of the British Army on his behalf. On another chorus of cheers from the crowd, he then went into
the hotel, the Prince Regent huffing along after him.

The Fairfaxes declared themselves vastly amused by this first part of
the day’s entertainment, and as soon as there was room to manoeuvre
their carriage in the crowded street, they set off for the park to see the
commencement of the next act. Their progress was somewhat slow, but
enlivened for Antonia and Imogen by recognition of several familiar faces
from the past and their exchanged whispered comments on how this or
that person had changed, or had not done so a whit. Kedrington’s acquaintance was even wider, if seeming to consist mainly of matronly
ladies with bashful younger ladies in tow. There was one lady, however,
riding alone behind her coachman, who turned her head toward Kedrington
as she passed. He appeared to recognise her as well, despite the veil
pulled forward over her face, although he gave her only the curtest of
bows.

“Not the Creole countess, I take it?” Antonia said.

He looked at her uncomprehendingly, and for an uncomfortable instant
she thought she must have gone a step too far in her teasing. But as soon
as it had appeared, his frown vanished.

“
She
is not a Creole,” he said, smiling.

They had little difficulty locating Miss Beecham in the crush, thanks
to the huge pink ostrich plumes in the bonnet she had recently pur
chased for an extravagant sum for just such a public occasion. Her stylish
barouche, containing Cloris and a prim, apprehensive Miss Blaine, had already attracted a retinue of gentlemen escorts, whom the Fairfaxes
subsequently discovered to be Oliver Beecham; his best friend, Harley Chatham-Hill; and Clory’s “beautiful young man,” Lord Geoffrey Dane,
heir presumptive to his grand-uncle, the bachelor Earl of Danesmere
(who was reported, if not actually known, to be a veritable Croesus) and
therefore the new darling of the matchmakers.

Mr Chatham-Hill was an attractive if not striking young man of
medium height, characterized chiefly by an expressive pair of light blue
eyes. Like Oliver, who was two years his junior and regarded Harley in the
light of a brother with whom he might indulge in sparring matches, cock
fights, race meetings, mutual insults, and the other masculine pursuits
common to boys of their age, Harley did not appear at all disconcerted
that Clory was at that very moment engaged in a flirtation with a slender
young man with curling chestnut locks. This commotion had an unfor
tunate tendency to obscure the young man’s vision so that he was obliged to
toss his head prefatory to any remark he wished to address to Miss
Beecham.

It was otherwise with Lord Geoffrey. This fair-haired exquisite had a
face and figure which were fortunately so near the ideal of fashion that he
was able, after the briefest of toilettes, to be assured of the impeccability
of his appearance. Aided by such charms, Lord Geoffrey was able to
devote his public self exclusively to his goal of contracting a matrimonial alliance acceptable to his grand-uncle in order to induce the old scratch—
that was to say, the old gentleman—to loose his hold on the pursestrings
and allow Geoffrey an allowance sufficient to keep him—and his new
wife, of course—in the style to which Geoffrey had accustomed himself,
to the despair of numerous creditors who were becoming decidedly
restless at his nonpayment of their long-standing accounts.