Lady Susan Plays the Game (29 page)

The truth was that Charles Vernon was so unused to keeping matters to himself that the only way he could do it at all was through silence. He'd learnt nothing from Frederica, but he had discovered from Madam Dacre the existence of a note from a strange man. This had told her where Frederica was hiding.

The circumstance was mysterious and certainly indecorous. He'd wanted to ask his niece about it in the carriage but her obvious distress warned him off.

In her dressing room Lady Susan pushed the sobbing girl into a chair. She herself remained standing. ‘Frederica, I am extremely vexed with you,' she hissed. ‘What on earth were you about?'

‘Sir James …' stammered Frederica between sobs.

‘I want to hear absolutely nothing of that. If you know what is good for you, you will not mention him in this house. He's a fine man whom you have grossly insulted, grossly.' She walked closer to her daughter and stood over her. ‘You will be very lucky indeed if he shows any willingness to have you in future, especially after this unseemly adventuring.'

Frederica looked up at her mother through her streaming eyes.

‘And you needn't think you're going to get your way by this sort of behaviour,' resumed Lady Susan. ‘What were you doing? And who is this person you were with in the inn? No, don't tell me, it's too sordid.'

‘Mama, I truly don't know. But he was kind.'

Yes, I am sure he was – and so possibly were you
, thought Lady Susan noting the pronoun. She'd always assumed the rescuer a man – only a man would go in for this
theatrical anonymity. A ‘well-wisher' indeed. If he'd been that, he'd have got the girl back to school that night and not let her compromise herself.

Frederica was sobbing again.

‘Oh for goodness' sake,' snapped Lady Susan, ‘do stop this silly blubbing. You are safe now, and through no action of your own.'

Frederica swallowed and wiped her face on her already wet handkerchief. ‘He told me to go to you.'

‘To me,' exclaimed Lady Susan, deciding not to mention the note she had herself received. ‘The effrontery! How could he know about me? Or did you give him our name? Surely you had more sense than that – did you?'

She looked so fiercely at Frederica that the girl could not answer and began sobbing again, this time more quietly.

There was no getting more out of her, and in some ways it was prudent to leave things so. Of course the girl could have been taken advantage of. She was probably too stupid to know whether she had been or no. But if she had, then it was best for a mother to learn nothing of it and for Frederica to be persuaded to put it out of her mind – unless there were unlucky consequences. She could bring Sir James round on most points – probably even on this one – but it was as well not to have to try.

‘You must understand Frederica that nothing of all this must be breathed here. You do understand me, don't you? I don't know what you said to your uncle in the carriage but you will say nothing more either to him or your aunt.' She gripped the girl's arm. ‘Do stop this crying – it's making your face quite ugly. And there's no occasion. I say again the only need here is for silence. Do you hear me? You will promise to say nothing of the matter of Sir James or the stranger to Mr and Mrs Vernon.'

Despite her sobs, Frederica managed to nod her head weakly. ‘Yes, Mama,' she murmured. As she put her damp finger into her dangling pocket she felt the crumpled note of instructions she'd received at the inn. She'd not shown it to Madam Dacre since there had been no chance to justify herself at the school – perhaps she'd not much wanted to be taken back.

Now she wished to be rid of it, so she pulled it from her pocket and handed it to her mother. Lady Susan looked at it with distaste, then took it and crumpled it in her hand. She would deal with it as she dealt with the wonderful letters of Manwaring. It was best not to leave traces of oneself.

‘You do understand me, Frederica, don't you? You were with a strange man in a public tavern in a very notorious place for a whole day and night. If you don't know what happened, there are plenty of people who can guess. I hope you are not such an ignoramus as not to understand what effect this would have on anyone who heard of the circumstance. I am speaking for your own good.'

Lady Susan felt like boxing the girl's ears but it would not do; she would probably scream and the house would hear. But could she trust the simple ‘yes, Mama' and ‘I promise', which was all Frederica seemed able to utter. She walked up and down the room a few more times while her daughter continued to sit white-faced, occasionally jerking with poorly stifled sobs.

‘Do pull yourself together,' she said at last. ‘I'm going downstairs now and you will stay here.'

Lady Susan moved towards the bell rope. She had terrified the girl quite enough and felt sure that Frederica meant to obey. But her daughter was weak: it was better not to test her resolve just yet. And there had been an unsettling circumstance: when sobbing seemingly with little control, Frederica had – quite distinctly in Lady Susan's view – glanced at herself in the triple mirror. If the school had failed to drum any manners and decorum into her daughter, it had apparently developed in her a rather unfortunate and sentimental sense of self. Lady Susan suspected that the London experience, since it appeared not to have been quite catastrophic, was leading her to dramatics; girls of her age were given to making gratifying scenarios.

When a footman answered the call Lady Susan told him to send Barton to her. They waited in silence till the maid arrived.

‘Barton,' said Lady Susan, ‘conduct Miss Frederica to the chamber assigned to her. It is, I believe, not far from the nursery. Frederica, you will stay there the rest of the day until you have thoroughly composed yourself. Is that clear?'

Frederica nodded and got up.

‘Barton,' Lady Susan continued, ‘you will tell Mrs Vernon that my daughter will not be down for dinner today and ask her to be so kind as to order her meal sent up to her.'

Barton moved over to Frederica and looked into her smudged, almost stricken face. ‘Come, Miss Frederica.'

As they were going towards the door, Lady Susan spoke again. ‘You will not be rewarded for your disobedience by being spoilt in this family. For the time being you'll keep out of the way as much as you can. Is that quite clear? Indeed, I think it would be best if you remained in my dressing room part of the time. There is quite enough here to amuse you.'

Frederica followed Barton out of the room. She had not quite understood what was happening, especially about Sir James, but she felt that if all she had to do was be silent and withdrawn to please her mother, she could do it. She reached her chamber thankfully and lay on the bed, her eyes wide open.

When Barton returned she arranged her mistress's dress and face and rubbed a little colour into her cheeks. Then Lady Susan repaired again to the morning room.

‘Frederica will rest now,' she told the company still assembled there. ‘It has all been so much for her.' She paused and addressed her sister-in-law in particular. ‘She seems to be growing aware of the impropriety of her actions. I want to encourage this self-reflection.' Lady Susan let out a slow sigh, then continued, ‘Frederica loves music and I wonder, dear Mrs Vernon, if the small square pianoforte lying unused in the upstairs landing might be moved from there to my dressing room. It would be such a comfort if Frederica could practise there alone and have time to think without the need of conversing. Would that be possible? We should both so appreciate it and it would of course allow us to be alone together and get over this sorry business.'

Charles Vernon looked at his wife, who could do very little but agree.

Reginald had listened intently to Lady Susan; now he got up and came to sit on the sofa near her, handing her a fresh bowl of tea and generally attending to any wish she might have. ‘What a trial it must be for you, so indulgent a parent, to have an ungrateful daughter,' he said for all to hear.

Soon they were in the kind of sentimental
tête-à-tête
that so irritated Mrs Vernon. She would like to have gone upstairs to question Frederica alone but she was hampered by her training in good manners, so stayed where she was.
It is like watching a play,
she thought,
a drama whose key I haven't found. I wonder what Lady Susan says to Mrs Manwaring,
she mused. She saw no letters going out but concluded she must write often or there would not be so many replies. It was a shame that Catherine Vernon was not so acquainted with that lady as to be able to write to her.

Frederica spent much of the next days in her mother's dressing room as she'd been told to do. She had tried to play the pianoforte a little but she'd never had much skill and Lady Susan told her to stop the noise almost as soon as she'd begun. But she had pencils and paper and, though she hid her drawings when her mother returned to her rooms, she managed to make some passable copies of the strange winter flowering plants she'd discovered near the shrubbery on one of her brief walks outside. She had much to read in her seclusion, for Barton had been instructed to bring her books from the library, as well as old copies of Mrs Vernon's
Lady's Magazine
. She wished there were more novels in the house, but the few there were she devoured and there were some short stories and serialised fiction in the magazines (although the final instalments always seemed to be missing), as well as some interesting detail about medicines from plants, and she could make do with these. She passed over the dress patterns and hints at fashion.

As time went by and no Sir James was discovered in the house, Frederica calmed down. It was absurd to think he would already have been at Churchill; yet she had not been able to expel the idea from her mind, even after she'd arrived. For a time she'd expected to encounter him every time she turned a corner in a passageway or entered a room. Now the apprehension had a little diminished but her nerves remained stretched and she started at every footstep outside her chamber door or her mother's dressing room.

Her heightened awareness made her alive to the other inhabitants of the house, with whom she rarely interacted – except at mealtimes. On these occasions she felt their goodwill. She already appreciated Mr Vernon, though he didn't say much to her; she might like Mrs Vernon but was a little afraid of her: on the one occasion when she encountered her aunt
alone in the breakfast room, she'd asked her questions her mother had expressly forbidden her daughter to answer. Also she'd pressed on her some foul-tasting pills that Frederica had, after swallowing the first, wrapped up in a torn handkerchief and hidden in the drawer in her chamber.

The nursery pleased her and she wished she could go there more often. When she had first arrived she had been allowed to visit with her mother and Mrs Vernon so that she could be introduced to the children. To her surprise, Lady Susan petted the elder boy, who seemed the most truculent and overbearing of the three. None of the children had immediately taken to Frederica, who was nervous of them in her mother's company, and her aunt was disappointed in the meagre expressions of enthusiasm she'd mustered. Yet there had been a constant and unusual smile on her face, even when Arabella had been just a little rude. ‘Can you dance? I can. I expect I can dance better than you,' the child had said with a pout. Mrs Vernon had thought this a bit forward, although no doubt true, and gently chided her, but Frederica had smiled on her with real indulgence.

One other inhabitant of Churchill had neither quizzed nor much noticed her, except that he had once or twice smiled at her in a distant way. It was a kind smile, the sort that Frederica felt would have lit up the face of an Ormond or an Orville or any other hero she'd been imagining. On one occasion she met Reginald de Courcy on the stairs, he going up, she down. He'd been looking towards the window to gauge the weather and so had almost bumped into her.

‘I'm so sorry, Miss Vernon,' he said looking at her with such a frank open expression that she had to steady herself as she proceeded on her way. He was whistling softly as he went down the rest of the stairs and across the hallway. The desire to look back at him nearly overwhelmed her. Then the image of Sir James, all piglike and noisy, rose up to confront her. What a contrast was there!

At other times she saw Reginald in company. He talked with her uncle about bringing back flower beds and shrubs at Parklands when the estate was his – he had little liking for the changes Capability Brown had imposed on his father's park – perhaps he would plant some of the new species that had been brought from India and which he'd seen at Kew. He had, he said, a taste for the exotic, some myrtle and citron – and he fancied they would do well on the
dryish soil. Frederica listened enraptured. Reginald had once mentioned a plant she knew by its Latin name: it could almost have been her dear papa talking.

When he and she were both in the drawing room with only Mrs Vernon and Lady Susan present, he always sat by her mother. Very little was said that she could overhear but her eyes turned towards him. She liked his name: Reginald de Courcy had a romantic ring. She found herself gazing at him through the window when he set off in his hunting or shooting clothes with Charles Vernon. He never looked at her or caught her eye, nor did she expect it – but
she
could look at
him
if no one noticed.

‘You know,' remarked Catherine Vernon to her husband as they prepared for bed one night (she sometimes felt that, with their house so full, this was the only time she and Charles now had to talk alone) ‘we have put the pianoforte in Lady Susan's apartment for Frederica to play but I very rarely, if ever, hear a note from there. Do you not find it very strange, Mr Vernon?'

‘Perhaps she plays softly,' he replied. He wanted to tell his wife about the new pheasant shoot and the clever arrangements the gardeners had made in the open area beyond the woods but she kept interrupting.