As he stood mopping his flushed forehead, he became aware of a faint cry of distress and swung round. The small figure of a lady was collapsed in the arms of her companion. Her eyes were closed and she looked about to faint.
“Oooh! My ankle!” cried a faint little voice.
The Honorable Toby gave a hunted look around him, hoping to espy some gentleman who would leap to the rescue. But the street was deserted, as most of the fashionable throng were promenading in the park.
He took a deep breath and stepped forward. “May I be of assistance, madame?”
A pair of gray eyes swimming in tears looked confidingly into his own. “So stupid of me,” murmured Lady Margery. “I have twisted my ankle, and my poor friend, Lady Amelia, is not strong enough to support me to a carriage. Perhaps, sir, since you seem so powerful and strong, you could...”
Toby puffed out his chest. “Certainly, ma'am. Lean on me. That's the ticket! Why, you're as light as a feather. Hey! Cabbie!”
Unlike the response to Viscount Swanley, cabbies halted immediately at the sound of the Honorable Toby's stentorian tones. He helped his fair burden into the carriage.
“Thank you, sir,” said Lady Margery, her gray eyes still swimming with tears. “It is not often that one finds such a
strong
rescuer exactly when one needs one.”
That was enough for Toby. The female sex were apt to shrink from his strong escort, claiming he talked and smelled of the stables. But, now, this pretty wench showed intelligence and appreciation!
“Escort you home,” he said climbing into the carriage. “Can't have a little thing like you struggling out of the carriage by yourself at the other end.”
Lady Amelia gave the cabbie the address and Toby looked suspiciously around the carriage and began to sniff. “Damme, if I shouldn't have brought round m'curricle,” he said. “This demned wagon reeks of onions. I shall have a word with that cabbie fellow soon as we stop, demme if I don't.”
“Oh, please,” pleaded Lady Margery faintly. “Please do not make a fuss. I have a terror of scenes. Now, it is different for you gentlemen. You look as if you would not be afraid of
anything
!”
“She'll come unstuck,” thought Lady Amelia. “She's buttering the bread too thick.”
But Toby looked immensely gratified. “I'm not feeling as strong as usual, ma'am. Just had a round with the gloves with Gentleman Jackson.”
“Oh, dear,” said Lady Margery with an artistic shudder. “Pugilism! It is not a subject for a lady, sir.”
“No more it is,” said Toby in high good humor. “But we knights have to keep fit in order to rescue fair ladies, eh what!”
“Yes, indeed,” said Lady Margery in a gentle voice.
Toby could not quite say why he was so attracted to this stranger. She was wearing a very dashing hat of scarlet feathers which hid most of her face so that all he got a glimpse of was a pair of large tear-filled gray eyes. She was very small, no bigger than a child, and so ... so ... yielding, that was the word. He felt about ten feet tall.
It seemed like no time at all before the carriage rumbled into Berkeley Square. Toby sprang down first, and assisted Lady Margery into her house as if she were made of glass.
An elderly butler with powdered hair opened the door and bowed low before the Honorable Toby. “Bless you, sir,” said Chuffley in quavering accents. “My mistress is indeed lucky to have the help of such a renowned sportsman.”
“You know me?” beamed Toby in surprise.
“Who has not heard of the Honorable Toby Sanderson?” said the butler impressively. “Curricle Sanderson, I believe you are called, sir?”
“Quite so, my man,” said the much-gratified Toby, who had never heard the term before, and pressed a guinea into this excellent retainer's hand.
Introductions had been made in the carriage, and Toby realized with some dismay that he should have to take his leave of this warm world of praise and approval. All his life he had stumbled and fled from the female presence, but now he wished very much to see more of the intriguing Lady Margery.
“I say,” he said, bowing low over Lady Margery's little hand. “Is it possible I might have the honor of the first dance at Almack's opening ball?”
Lady Margery blushed prettily. “I have promised the first dance to Viscount Swanley, but I shall certainly save the next for you.”
“Delighted! Gratified!” spluttered Toby, bowing his way out.
Both ladies collapsed in the drawing room and burst into giggles.
“Really Margery,” protested Amelia, “that
poor
man.”
“Pooh!” retorted the unrepentant Margery, “I made him feel no end of a splendid sportsman. And look at all the suffering I went through, sniffing a
vinaigrette
full of onion juice. I thought I
would
faint when he started complaining about the smell. And Chuffley was simply marvelous! ‘Curricle Sanderson,’ indeed! And that splendid quavery voice.”
Lady Amelia looked solemn. “My dear Margery,” she protested, “have you considered that you do not seem to hold any of these young gentlemen in any kind of high regard, and yet you are proposing to spend the rest of your life with one of them?”
“I will endure anything to save my home,” said Margery grimly. “So far, I have had a successful day, but I have not finished. Ring for Chuffley.”
Chuffley appeared promptly, looking well pleased with himself.
“Where shall I find Mr. Freddie Jamieson this evening, Chuffley?” demanded his mistress.
Chuffley took out a small slip of paper. “Let me see,” he said. “I sent our potboy to engage Mr. Jamieson's potboy in conversation. Mr. Jamieson has been ordered to attend his aunt's
musicale
this evening. His aunt is Mrs. Mary Divine, who is in residence in Grosvenor Square."
“That
is
a setback,” said Lady Margery, removing her feather hat and throwing it on the sofa. “I cannot inveigle an invitation at such short notice.”
Chuffley proudly produced a gilt-edged card. “I took the liberty, my lady, of calling at your father's residence at Grosvenor Square. It is not generally known that he is in Paris. Among his correspondence I found an invitation from Mrs. Divine. It is, of course, addressed to the earl and countess but, as you know, it is quite in order for his daughter to accept the invitation and go in his stead.”
Lady Amelia groaned and Margery clapped her hands. “Tonight we attack the well-lubricated soul of Mr. Freddie Jamieson!”
“Hey, Edgecombe,” he called cheerfully. “Can I take you up?”
The marquess leapt up nimbly next to Toby. “You can drop me at Brummell's. I promised to call and I am already late. You are looking in fine fettle. Did you defeat Jackson at last?”
Toby's face darkened momentarily at the thought of his lack of sporting success and then brightened as he recalled the later glories of the afternoon.
“Never mind about Jackson,” he said. “Would you say I was a ladies’ man, Edgecombe?”
The marquess twisted in the seat of the high-perched curricle and stared at the beefy face of his friend.
“No,” he said baldly.
“Thought not,” said Toby with a sigh, “but I mean to learn. I tell you, Edgecombe, when the lady's worth it, a chap will go to any lengths.”
“Dear me, Toby, I was not aware of the softer side of your nature. Who is this lady?”
“Lady Margery Quennell, and the prettiest little thing you ever saw.”
The marquess stared at his friend in amazement. “It cannot be the same Lady Margery. How did you meet?”
Toby proudly told of the sprained ankle and his rescue and how he had been promised a dance at Almack's.
This was too much for the marquess. “Toby, my dear fellow,” he remonstrated. “All the world and his wife knows you don't dance!"
“Hired a dancing master,” said Toby, turning a darker shade of red.
“Dear me,” said the marquess. “Lady Margery has had a busy day. First she collides with Swanley, who immediately falls under her spell, and only a few hours later she is conveniently swooning in your arms.”
“Mind your tongue, Edgecombe,” said the normally good-natured Toby. “I don't want to call you out, but damme, I shall, if you go around casting asperates.”
“Aspersions,” corrected the marquess faintly.
They had arrived outside Mr. Brummell's residence at 13 Chapel Street, and a much bemused marquess took his leave of his friend.
He was ushered into the Brussels-carpeted drawing room, where he could chat with the Beau through the open door that led to his dressing room.
The famous Beau Brummell was attired in a muslin dressing gown and seated facing a mahogany-flamed cheval glass with two brass arms for candles. He was sitting in a low armchair waiting for his valet, Robinson, to attend to his hair, which was rather light and thin and needed to be waved with the curling tongs.
“Charles!” cried the Beau, seeing the reflection of his friend in the glass. “Just the man I wanted to see. Have you heard what Charles Lamb is saying about Prinny? No. Then listen.”
Brummell waved away his valet and began to declaim:
“By his bulk and by his size,
By his oily qualities,
This (or else my eyesight fails)
This should be the Prince of Wales.”
“Poor Prinny,” said the marquess indifferently. “Lord Thanet is calling him ‘the
Bourgeois Gentilhomme'
after that fat vulgarian in Molière's play. I am sure he does not deserve such general unkindness.”
“Perhaps,” said Brummell. “You look worried, my friend.”
“I am,” remarked the marquess. “There is a certain Lady Margery Quennell who is about to turn up for yet another season. A drab girl in her twenties. This year, however, she has managed to enslave two of my friends in this one day, and the most unlikely two at that!” He told Brummell of the infatuation of the Honorable Toby and of Viscount Swanley.
“You amaze me!” said the Beau. “And you obviously think Lady Margery is deliberately trying to enslave your friends.”
“Exactly.”
The Beau thought for a minute and then said, “Swanley and Sanderson always follow the fashion. The first time I come across Lady Margery Quennell I shall make sure that she becomes downright unfashionable.”
“Do that, George,” said the marquess, remembering his own conversation with the infuriating Lady Margery. “The little minx needs a set-down.”
Battersby had first shocked Lady Margery by announcing that my lady's hair must be cropped. She had then added insult to injury by insisting that my lady's sandy eyebrows and eyelashes should be darkened. Tired of arguing, Lady Margery had at last let her have her way, but warned her that if this transformation did not please, then she, Battersby, would be searching for other employment.
The stern warning left the maid unmoved and she immediately got to work. She then dressed her mistress in a rose-colored muslin gown and fastened the long row of tiny buttons at the back. “You may look now, my lady,” said Battersby, holding a branch of candles up beside a long pier glass.
The young, slim, dashing stranger stared back at Lady Margery. Her sandy hair had been cropped so that it rioted in feathery curls over her small head. The darkened eyelashes and eyebrows made her eyes seem enormous.
Margery took a deep breath. She knew the hand of a genius when she saw it.
“Battersby,” she said, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this transformation. It means more to me than you can possibly imagine.”
“Just so, my lady,” said Battersby impassively. After all, Battersby knew she was the best, but society ladies were inclined to favor those frivolous Frenchwomen, which was disgraceful when you considered the war was just over. Downright unpatriotic, that's what it was.
She draped a fine Norwich shawl over her mistress's shoulders, and Lady Margery went downstairs to join Amelia.
Amelia's delighted cry of “I declare, we shall succeed after all!” was all the reassurance Margery needed.
Although the spring night was warm, Mrs. Divine's mansion retained all the chill of a town house suddenly opened up and not given enough time to air. Lady Margery huddled in her little gilt chair, waiting for the music to begin and regretting that she had surrendered her shawl. Her quarry, Mr. Freddie Jamieson, was sitting quite near. He was sucking the gold knob of his cane and gazing vacuously into space.
Lady Margery was beginning to wonder desperately how she could effect an introduction.
The
musicale
began. A heavy-set German was howling out what had been described as love songs but seemed to Lady Margery's ears to sound like a series of oaths. She shivered in the cold, occasionally leaning forward to see if she could catch Mr. Jamieson's eye. Her best tactic, she decided, was to claim acquaintanceship with him. After all, he did not seem to be the sort of young man to have any sort of a retentive memory.
There was a short interval, in which they were urged to remain seated, as the celebrated singer would soon be finishing his splendid performance to rush off to another engagement.
Lady Margery leaned forward again. Between her and Mr. Jamieson sat two enormous dowagers. They had loud, opinionated voices, and every time Lady Margery leaned forward they would both cease talking and turn and stare at her rudely from the top of her curly head to the bottom of her little kid slippers. Lady Margery began to develop a positive hatred for them both.
One was now declaiming to another in a loud voice. “I declare, it's George Brummell this and George Brummell that. Why, the man is nothing more than a popinjay.”
The nervous strain of the day was beginning to tell on Lady Margery. She had never been introduced to the famous Brummell but had admired him from afar, liking his well-bred manner and mischievous smile and the way he had introduced the virtues of cleanliness and loyalty to one's friends into a society which had been supremely deficient in both. She fixed the nearest dowager with a hard stare. She said: “Mr. Brummell is an asset to society. His manners are unfailingly well-bred and he does not make cruel, ugly, or stupid remarks about people he has never met.”
“Well,
really
,” said the dowagers.
“Well done, ma'am,” said a light, amused voice behind her.
Lady Margery turned round and looked up into the brown eyes of the famous Mr. Brummell.
There was no time to say anything. The singer was coughing and gargling as a sign that the second half of the programme was about to begin. Mr. Jamieson had fallen asleep and had begun to snore, but nobody seemed to mind, since it added a fitting counterpoint to the guttural songs roaring from the rostrum.
British society always applauds rapturously any form of culture they cannot understand and cannot possibly enjoy. Agonizing boredom is a sure sign that one is hearing something “damned deep.” This evening was no exception. Margery had been so busy keeping her eye on Mr. Jamieson that she had actually forgotten the presence of the famous Beau, who had stationed himself behind her.
She rose to follow the others to the supper room, planning to fortify herself for the attack on Mr. Jamieson's sensibilities, when her hand was taken in a warm clasp.
“I am Mr. George Brummell,” said the Beau. “May I know the name of the lady who has so gallantly defended me?”
“Quennell. Lady Margery.”
“Ah, of course,” said the Beau, much amused. “I was speaking to one of your admirers today, the Marquess of Edgecombe.”
“The marquess is no admirer of mine,” said Lady Margery sharply. “I doubt if he has forgiven me for an injudicious impertinent remark I made last season. It is a pity,” she added wistfully. “A friendship with the marquess could have brought me into fashion, and I would
so
like to be fashionable just for one season. I have had so many failures, you know.”
“But you
are
in fashion,” said the Beau, smiling. “I am taking you into supper, am I not? And
that
, dear lady, is enough for anyone.”
Lady Margery realized with delight that she was the center of a certain amount of envious attention.
“I must,” went on the Beau smoothly, “do my best to help my champion. Dear me. After all, just look at the dragons you slew for me.” He raised his quizzing glass and surveyed the outraged dowagers insolently from head to foot.
Lady Margery gave an infectious gurgle of laughter, and the Beau looked down at her tiny figure in surprise. Why! The girl was enchanting. She really must have said something outrageous to Charles, Marquess of Edgecombe, to disturb that aristocratic gentleman's usual languor.
“Since I am engaged to help you socially,” remarked Mr. Brummell when an unappetizing cold supper had been demolished, “is there anyone present you would care to meet that you have not met already?”
“Mr. Freddie Jamieson.”
The Beau looked in an amazed way to where Freddie was sneering dismally over a glass of negus and obviously praying to Bacchus for something stronger. “Are you by any chance, Lady Margery, making a collection of originals?"
“Yes,” said Margery feebly, knowing that if she told the Beau she thought that Mr. Jamieson was a devastatingly handsome man, she would not be believed.
“Very well,” said her escort. “But I will leave you after I introduce you. One second of Freddie's wit is enough for me.”
It was an inauspicious beginning. Lord Freddie stared at Margery with gloomy disinterest, obviously categorizing her as just one other part of a curst dull evening.
Lady Margery waited until the Beau had moved out of earshot and then began her plan of attack. “I see,” she remarked in a brisker voice than she had used on her other two targets, “that you are obliged to drink negus. I confess I do not like my wine adulterated with hot water!”
A faint look of animation crept into Freddie's fishlike eye. “You're right,” he said gloomily. “Dashed poisonous stuff.”
“I think I shall serve myself a glass of burgundy,” pursued Lady Margery.
Now she had Freddie's full attention. “By George, Lady M ... M...”
“Margery,” she prompted gently.
“Lady Margery. Do you mean to say you have found a vein of gold among this dross?”
“Exactly.”
Freddie eyed her suspiciously. Was she going to take him straight to the stuff or was she going to start babbling about music?
He underrated his companion. “Follow me,” she said in a firm voice, and Freddie followed, his eyes burning with an unaccustomed fire. Any girl who could wring a decent bottle out of his aunt's establishment was not in the common way.
Margery led him to the far corner of the room where there was a little table screened by some tired and dessicated palms. She rapped her fan across the back of her hand three times, her signal to Mrs. Divine's heavily bribed butler to conjure up a bottle of the best. To Freddie, it seemed to appear on the table in front of him, complete with two glasses, as if by magic.
Margery had hoped that her arrangement with the butler would not have been necessary. But after one look at Mr. Jamieson's singularly lackluster stare, she had been glad of her scheme to fall back on.
Freddie demolished two glasses in a twinkling and then looked across at his companion with something approaching benevolence. “I say, Lady Margery, that's a ‘ceedingly fine wine. Thought all you gels preferred negus or ratafia.”
“I don't normally drink much wine,” said Margery with a friendly, open look, “but I do know that a gentleman detests ladies’ drinks.”
“You're a right one, ‘pon rep if you ain't,” said Freddie cheerfully, downing another quick glass. “I must say this stuff simply rolls off the palate.”
“Whoooshes over it, more like,” thought Lady Margery. “He swallows it as quickly as if it were medicine.”
Freddie began to relax. He had never felt so warmly towards a girl before. Girls, in his experience, were apt to lead him firmly away from the bottle rather than directly to it. His companion, he noticed, had an engaging conspiratorial grin. With her cropped curly hair, she reminded him vaguely of a chap in his form at Eton. And when a girl reminds a young man vaguely of the chap he knew at school, then it is a sure sign that the shy young Englishman is well on the way to falling in love.
Freddie was nearing the end of the bottle and already looking hopefully round for more, but Margery did not want him to forget one iota of this important meeting.
She moved into the attack. “I have often found, Mr. Jamieson, that gentlemen who appreciate good wine are often good dancers.”
“Quite so,” said Freddie, who was in fact an excellent dancer. “I don't wish to seem vain, ma'am, but even the Prince Regent himself commented that Freddie Jamieson could shake a nifty leg. His ‘zact words, ma'am. Shake a nifty leg.”
“Shall you be at the opening ball at Almack's?"
“I wasn't planning to go,” said Freddie. “They've got nothing there stronger than orgeat and lemonade."
“It seems a shame that ladies such as myself should be deprived of a good partner,” commented Margery, looking directly into Freddie's eyes.
He began to feel slightly hunted. Then he remembered that, were it not for this little girl, he would still be standing over a glass of negus. And Brummell had introduced her, which meant she must be all the crack.
Freddie made a great decision. “Tell you what, Lady Margery, I'll come to Almack's just for the pleasure of standing up with you. There!”
Lady Margery looked suitably gratified. To Freddie's surprise, she opened her reticule and took out a small piece of paper and a pencil. “Write it down,” she said.
Freddie's mouth fell open and his chin rested on the starched folds of his cravat.
“Eh?”
For a minute, Lady Margery reminded him less of his old school chum and more of his former schoolmaster.
“Please write it down,” pleaded Margery prettily. “Now, I know a gentleman like you, Mr. Jamieson, will have lots and lots of ladies trying to get you to dance with them. I must make sure you remember your promise.”
“Oh, since you put it that way,” said the much-gratified Freddie, “I will.”
He carefully printed a note to the effect that one dance was promised to Lady Margery Quennell and then tucked it in his pocket. “Keep it next to m'heart,” he said with great daring.
His companion did not let him down. She blushed rosily and hid her face behind her fan. “Oh, Mr. Jamieson,” she sighed.
By now, Freddie had forgotten to look for another bottle of wine. He felt no end of a splendid fellow. He leaned forward to make another dashing and witty remark and then stared in amazement. His companion had gone.
He looked moodily at the empty bottle and then peered into it as if to see if Lady Margery had been some sort of genie. Then he noticed she had left her fan.