“I am very sorry, ma’am, but I fear I am quite unable to offer any . . . pecuniary assistance. There are many claims on my purse, you understand, and—”
“Did Ai ask it? Did Ai? No, never has Florabel Stevens begged for the ready, and never will! Ai am not yet drowning in the River Tick, Ai thenk yew! All Ai ask is a roof over my head, a bite to eat. Nobody could grudge me that! If Ai had the blunt to pay my rent, you’d not see me here on my knees before my own sweet cousin. Alas, alas, Ebenezer, could yew but see me now!” Mrs. Stevens flung herself on her knees and covered her eyes with a large spotted handkerchief.
“You wish to stay here?” asked Hester, overwhelmed. “We really have very little space, but I suppose for a day or two, until you can find somewhere else. Jamie will have to squeeze in with the boys.” Even the compassionate and charitable Hester balked at sharing her room with this excessively dramatic creature.
“My saviour! Angel of Mercy! thenk you, dear Cousin, thenk you, and my the Good Lord bless you as Ai dew.”
She enveloped Hester in a heavily perfumed embrace, pressing her to her expansive bosom. “My bags are in the hackney,” she added pragmatically.
Leaving Hester half-smothered and half-stunned, she sailed out and ordered the driver to carry in her luggage. A trunk, two valises, a portmanteau, and several bandboxes soon filled the narrow entrance hall.
“There!”
declared Mrs. Stevens with satisfaction. “Now let’s ‘ave a cuppa, dearie!”
Chapter 13
James had been out with Geoffrey, exercising Jettison and Orangepeel in spite of the rain, when Mrs. Florabel Stevens appropriated his chamber. On his return, he was disgusted to find himself once more forced to share a room with his brothers.
However, knowing his sister, and rather overawed by the unwanted guest’s histrionics, he made only a token protest.
“It’s only for a few days, dearest,” Hester assured him hopefully. “Cousin Florabel is sure she will find somewhere else to stay very soon. And she
is
a relative, after all.”
It was on the tip of Jamie’s tongue to retort that she was no relative of his, but he bit back the remark, realising in time how unkind it would be. When Geoff made a similar comment, fortunately not in Hester’s hearing, he subjected his brother to a severe scolding. Geoffrey left the house in a miff.
Mrs. Stevens proved useful in one way. Seeing Hester struggling with the repairs to her evening gown, she said condescendingly that she was not above a bit of stitchery herself. She proceeded to finish the mending and perform one or two subtle alterations that made it fit to perfection. Her tiny, neat stitches accorded so ill with her overblown appearance and addiction to dramatic gestures that Hester was moved to exclaim over them.
“Used to work for a mantua-maker, luv,” revealed Florabel, adding hastily, “before Ai met Mr. Stevens, that is.”
* * * *
Robbie found Aunt Florabel fascinating, but by the time Lord Alton came to fetch Hester on Sunday evening, she was prepared to do anything to escape from the house. It had continued to rain heavily in the interim, giving her new relation an excellent excuse for not seeking another dwelling and preventing the almost-daily drives with his lordship, which she had come to look forward to as a regular routine.
In fact, his lordship had not called for three days, and by four o’clock on Sunday Hester was beginning to wonder if she had imagined the invitation. She changed her dress early and sat in the parlour to wait, on tenterhooks at every sound in the street. To her relief, Cousin Florabel did not put in an appearance. The thought of having to introduce her to Lord Alton had been oppressing her all day.
At six fifteen precisely, the town carriage drew up outside, and his lordship was admitted by Bessie. As he entered the parlour, Hester rose to greet him, a smile of welcome on her lips. He had never before seen her so elegantly dressed. Her hair shone in the soft candlelight; her grey eyes lifted to his face, read admiration, and lowered in confusion while a soft blush coloured her cheeks.
He wanted to crush her in his arms. He had loved her in her shabby, workaday dresses and had been prepared to face the world to defend his choice. Now she looked every inch a Lady of Quality, a fitting bride for a Peer of the Realm. Let anyone dare criticise her now!
Bowing deeply over her hand, he raised it to his lips.
“Madam,” he said, “you are ravishing. I find myself unwilling to share you tonight.”
Her eyes glinted with amusement. “I protest, sir,” she answered lightly. “Should you not rather wish to show me off to your friends?”
“Alas, I must resign myself.” Taking his cue from her, he dropped into a bantering tone. “Cruel etiquette demands that we spend the evening making banal conversation with dull people.”
“I am sure the Rugbys’ friends are not dull, and whatever you think of your own conversation, it is most discourteous in you to describe mine as banal!”
“Vixen! Come, let me help you on with your wrap. It has stopped raining, but there is a chilly wind.” As he settled her pelisse about her shoulders, he had to restrain himself from kissing the nape of her neck, left bare and strangely vulnerable by the upswept braids of her hair. He had to remind himself sternly that a false move at this stage could only lead to the withdrawal of her trust.
At first they chatted comfortably while the coachman drove east along the New Road. Then they turned down Gower Street, and Hester’s responses grew abstracted until, as they entered Russell Square, she fell silent. As the horses pulled up, she laid her hand on his sleeve.
“David, I haven’t attended a dinner party in three years,” she said with a tremor in her voice.
He covered her hand with his own. “Then it is high time you did so. You were used to acting as hostess for your father, were you not? It is much easier to be a guest, and Barney’s friends are not at all alarming, I assure you. Nor is it a formal affair. Chin up, little one; you are looking beautiful.”
Reassured, she accepted his help in descending from the carriage. His brotherly kindness made her feel that perhaps it would not be so very dreadful if he married Alice. Surely in time she would learn to overcome her foolishness and appreciate him as a sister ought.
Mr. and Mrs. Rugby greeted Hester as an old friend and soon made her feel at home. Most the guests were fellow lawyers and their wives, along with a couple of Members of Parliament and an elderly banker who was Barney’s uncle and had a vast fund of amusing anecdotes about his youth in the East India Company. She soon saw that Lord Alton stood on the easiest terms with these people whom so many of his class would have stigmatised as cits. However, arriving under his aegis, she herself was treated with the deference due to a member of the Haut Ton. In response, she found herself remembering all her stepmother’s careful instruction and bore herself with a well-bred ease of manner that concealed her shyness and led Mrs. Pemberton to remark approvingly to Mrs. Rose, “Miss Godric is all affability, is not she? Not the least hint of condescension. A proper lady, Mrs. Rose, as his lordship is a proper gentleman. Do you suppose . . .”
“Just watch the way his eyes follow her, Mrs. Pemberton. No doubt about it, no doubt at all.” The two matrons nodded wisely to each other.
Lord Alton had not thought it possible to be more in love, but by the end of the evening he had to admit that it was so. With astonished admiration, he discovered that his tousled, blackberry-stained darling could, on demand, equal with ease the elegant demeanour of the grandest duchess. It was obvious to him that these middle-class, well-to-do citizens, always quick to resent any attempt by one of their own number to put on airs, accepted her as a lady born and bred. He himself knew more than one lady of impeccable antecedents who had not half her countenance.
“It was not so very bad, was it?” he queried in the coach on their return.
“I enjoyed it immensely,” she confessed sleepily. “Everyone was so very kind. I do think Bella and Barney are the dearest people.”
“They are. Bella expressed a wish to see you more often. You will not object if she calls on you?”
Hester was about to declare her delight at the prospect when a horrid vision rose before her of introducing Cousin Florabel. “She must not put herself to the trouble, in her condition,” she said quickly. “I can very well take a hackney to Russell Square.”
“I would offer to drive you, but I am sure the pair of you will not often wish for the intrusion of a mere male. If you intend to walk or take a hackney, I beg you will have your maid accompany you.”
“If you think it necessary,” she assented with drowsy docility. “I expect Bessie will consider it a holiday.”
Having proved Hester’s enjoyment of society, Lord Alton was determined to persuade her to widen her self-imposed limits. In this he was assisted by Mrs. Stevens.
Cousin Florabel showed no sign of intending to remove from the little house in Paddington, though she frequently declared her determination to do so. She had entrenched herself so firmly as to develop a regular routine, and this came to rule the habits of the entire household. In the morning she would sleep till midday. Before rising, she took chocolate in her chamber, and then descended below stairs to ensconce herself in the parlour for the afternoon. If anyone was present, she would talk nonstop about the late Ebenezer Stevens, his great position in society, and the wonderful life she had led as his spouse. Left to herself, she had more than once been surprised sleeping.
At six or so, Florabel would return to her chamber, where she spent the better part of two hours arraying herself in one of her enormous collection of shockingly décolleté gowns in a variety of lurid colours which, she assured Hester, were excessively fashionable. At eight, rouged and beribboned, she would send Bessie or one of the boys to summon a hackney, in which she departed in solitary splendour, not to return until the early hours of the morning. The only departure from this daily pattern was on Sundays, when she generally went out in the afternoon and spent the evening at home.
After she had been with the Godrics for a month, she altered her habits to the extent that the hackney was replaced by an ever-changing series of gentlemen, who picked her up in vehicles ranging from an old-fashioned landau to a high-perch phaeton drawn by a pair of horses that had Geoffrey breathless with admiration. Mrs. Stevens, it seemed, had a great many acquaintances.
Hester’s response to this schedule was to hurry through her household chores every morning, give Robbie his lessons, and be ready to leave the house no more than an hour after Florabel’s descent. At first she had to fabricate occasional excuses, but she soon found occupation enough.
Twice a week she went to see Bella Rugby, with whom she was soon on terms of the utmost intimacy. Once a week she felt it her duty to stay at home and listen to her cousin’s rambling conversation. And three times a week, Lord Alton miraculously appeared with plans for her entertainment, besides which he brought Alice to see her every Sunday afternoon and escorted Hester to the Rugbys’ almost every Sunday evening. He had encountered Cousin Florabel briefly, and privately deplored Hester’s softheartedness in bearing with her, but did not feel it was his place to intervene.
So constant was his lordship’s attendance that Hester was at times almost tempted to believe he was pursuing her, and not Alice. A moment’s reflexion sufficed to quell such wishful thoughts. Alice was her superior in beauty and in birth. Her disposition was sweetly docile; no managing female she. And she was not responsible for the welfare of a large family. Totting up these points, Hester wondered how she could even dream of the possibility of Lord Alton returning her affection. Besides, his lordship had developed the habit of attending many of the same parties as Alice, of dancing with her, keeping an eye on her partners, and reporting on her success and pretty behaviour to her sister. Hester could not guess that his only intention was to set her mind at rest.
It was one such occasion that Lord Alton felt himself obliged to disclose a disturbing situation. March, having come in like a lion, was going out like a lamb. He was driving Hester in his curricle as far as Richmond Park, taking advantage of the balmy air, and they had just finished discussing plans for the long-delayed tour of the sights of London.
“Wednesday it is, then,” he decided, and was silent for a moment, wondering how to phrase his warning. “Hester, I hope you will not think me interfering, and I do not wish to alarm you, but I must tell you that I am a little concerned about Alice. She is become the object of the most particular attentions on the part of a gentleman (though I hesitate to use the word) whose reputation is far from savoury. You know how she is too good-natured even to contemplate depressing the aspirations of any of her admirers. But Rathwycke is a dangerous man, and I wish you will advise her to be on her guard.”
“Sir Hubert Rathwycke? I thought him a friend of yours.”
“An acquaintance merely. He is wealthy and is received everywhere, in spite of behaviour which I should not dream of recounting to a lady.”
“You need not,” said Hester grimly. “It was he who ruined Grace Collingwood. But Alice is in a very different position. Surely you do not think . . .”
“In general he confines his libertinage to the lower classes and conducts himself unexceptionably in society. However, I have never seen him devote himself to a debutante as he now does to Alice, and I think it extremely unlikely that he is hanging out for a wife. Also, it now occurs to me that he has perhaps discovered Alice’s role in preserving his b . . . his child. I believe him to be a vengeful man who would not take kindly to interference in his affairs. Do you think he might know?”
“I cannot say that it is impossible, though it seems unlikely. You mean that he might intend mischief on that account? It is hard to see how he could made an attempt on Alice’s virtue while she is under the protection of Sir Humphrey and Lady Bardry.”
“Perhaps I refine too much upon a simple flirtation, but I wish you will have a word with your sister.”