Sir Philip's Folly (The Poor Relation Series Book 4) (17 page)

“You are very good,” said Mr. Davy. “I shall miss you all.” He took the cheque and bowed. “I must hope that some theatre manager will find a part for me.”

“Lord Denby,” cried Miss Tonks. “You need a patron. He can help. I will go and see if I can find him.”

The earl was in his apartment and listened gravely to Miss Tonks’ eager request. “I will see what I can do,” he said. “Arabella suggested before that I should be his patron. In fact, I think I know of a way I can do it. I shall call on you this evening and let you know if I have any success.”

Delighted, and pink about the nose with a cold in the head and pleasure in the soul, Miss Tonks darted back up the stairs to tell Mr. Davy the glad news.

“So what has happened to Sir Philip and Mrs. Budge?” asked Lady Fortescue after the actor had thanked Miss Tonks.

“They are very much together again.”

“I do not want to be driven into selling this place just to get rid of that woman,” said Lady Fortescue. “We must think of something else, Colonel.”

***

The earl made his way to the theatre, where
The Way of the World
was about to open. He was fortunate in finding Mrs. Tarry in the Green Room. He said he was smitten by her charms. “That is a tawdry necklace you are wearing,” he said, raising his voice a little as his eye caught sight of Mr. Tarry standing in the shadows, listening. “You should always wear diamonds. I saw your rehearsal of the play. Such a pity the actor who plays Mirabell is not up to your weight. I confess I feel that my friend, my very dear friend, Mr. Jason Davy, would be better in the part. A pity, for had he the part then, I would have an excuse to call and see you.”

The mention of that diamond necklace was still causing her eyes to shine. He kissed her hand and gracefully took his leave, feeling pretty sure of what her next move would be. She would throw a scene and demand that Mr. Davy had the part of Mirabell and that unless Mr. Davy were in the part, she would not go on. All that Mr. Davy had to do was make sure he had a written contract so that the Tarrys would not try to ruin things for him when they found that neither the earl nor any diamond necklace was going to put in an appearance. He felt sure that Mr. Tarry encouraged men to court his wife and give her presents so that the pair could use a genteel form of blackmail.

So he went to Rundell & Bridge and bought a fine diamond necklace, but for Arabella, and was almost sorry for Lady Carruthers when he caught the look of almost blind envy on her face when he clasped the jewels around Arabella’s neck later that day.

***

The earl and Arabella visited the sitting-room together that evening and a gratified Mr. Davy learned that he probably had a part and the earl suggested he call at the theatre as soon as possible. The colonel said he would send Mr. Davy’s belongings to his lodgings, including his new clothes, and so Mr. Davy decided he would walk immediately to the theatre. Sir Philip was not present and so there was no one to jeer at Miss Tonks when she said quietly that she would see Mr. Davy to the door of the hotel.

They stood together in the hall under the glittering light of the chandelier. Mr. Davy raised Miss Tonks’ hand to his lips. “I shall miss you,” he said quietly.

“Come back and see us,” urged Miss Tonks. “I… I shall miss you as well.”

He bowed and kissed her hand, put his curly brimmed beaver at a jaunty angle on his head and left the hotel.

Miss Tonks hesitated. Then she ran quickly into the street. He was walking away. She could see him clearly in the lights from the shops, his slim elegant figure moving away from her. She stayed where she was, straining her eyes, looking all the way down Bond Street until he turned into Oxford Street, and then he was gone.

***

When she returned to the sitting-room, Sir Philip had joined the party. Despite the fact that Arabella was playing the piano and that everyone else seemed in good spirits, Sir Philip looked sour.

He neither listened to the conversation or the music. He wanted rid of Mary Budge, who now disgusted him after his recent brief and lustful lapse. He also wanted to walk away from the hotel and all its dreary responsibilities, from complaining guests to the Gallic tantrums of Despard, the chef.

“The money from the ball has not yet been lodged in the bank,” he realized Lady Fortescue was saying to him.

“I’ll take it round in the morning to Coutt’s.” Sir Philip creaked to his feet. “Going out,” he muttered.

He went along to Limmer’s. All the talk was of the horse race to take place at Ascot in two days’ time. The tables in the coffee room were littered with racing periodicals—
Bailey’s Racing Register
,
Pick’s Racing Calendar
and
The Sporting Magazine
. Names of horses were being bandied about, and very peculiar some of the names were: Kiss in a Corner, Jack, Come Tickle Me, I Am Little, Pity My Condition, Why Do You Slight Me? Britons Strike Home and Turn About Tommy.

A shadow loomed over Sir Philip as he sat at a table, and there was Mr. Fotheringay. “You should have warned me about Denby,” he said. “Snatched the beauty away from all of us.”

“Don’t talk to me about women,” snarled Sir Philip. “I’m sick of women. Horses are more interesting.”

Mr. Fotheringay slid into the seat beside him and lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you who’s going to win at Ascot.”

“Everyone always knows who’s going to win,” said Sir Philip wearily, “and they’re always wrong.”

“But this is a sure thing. Do you know who owns Lady in Her Petticoat?”

“No. Don’t care.”

“Lord Black.”

“That villain!”

“Exactly. And he’s fixed it so that his horse will win.”

“How so?”

“I’ve pulled my horse out of the race, for my jockey says that Black’s men are threatening to break the legs of any jockey who rides before his horse.”

“Report him to the authorities.”

“He’s too powerful. Anyway, why don’t we make a killing on the race instead? Why should we turn puritan?”

“You’re sure of this?”

“Ask Peters. Hey, Peters!”

A Corinthian lounged up. “Bend your head down here, Peters, till we whisper. Ain’t it true that Black’s fixed the race so as his mount will win?”

“That’s what they’re saying,” said Peters with a grin. “Tell you what, I’m laying a monkey on Lady in Her Petticoat.”

Sir Philip ordered wine, then Mr. Fotheringay ordered wine, then Mr. Peters ordered more wine, and the more foxed he became, the more Sir Philip felt his friends and colleagues had used him shamefully. Then, with the sudden seeming clarity of the very drunk, he found the answer to his problems. He would take that money from the ball and put it on this horse of Lord Black’s. He would make a killing and return in triumph to the hotel. No longer could Lady Fortescue say she had to hold on for another Season.

Had Sir Philip returned to the hotel to sleep it off, then he might have seen the folly of his ways, but he returned only to pack a bag, collect the money from the safe, and then to journey with a drunken crowd through the night to Ascot. Booked in at a local inn, the roistering continued right up until the race, when Sir Philip, who had never sobered up, was convinced that fortune was staring him in the face.

In fact, when Happy Hunter romped home, the clear leader, and Lady in Her Petticoat was trailing the field, he could not quite believe it. But reality finally struck him and all at once he was stone-cold sober and the money from that ball had melted like fairy gold. Some little grain of common sense had stopped him from putting it all on and he had kept back half. How could he face the others?

It was a sad journey back to Town as they all mourned their losses and vowed never to listen to gossip again.

Sir Philip went straight to the bank and lodged the rest of the money. There was no way he could cover up the loss. Lady Fortescue and the colonel were always calling on the bank manager.

Numb with shame, he trudged into the hotel and sent Jack, the footman, to summon the others.

When they all entered the office, they knew immediately something was up. They had never seen Sir Philip look so cast down before. In a halting voice they had never heard him use before, they heard him tell the tale of how he had lost the money.

There was a long silence when he had finished. The colonel saw all his dreams of living quietly in the country with Lady Fortescue whirl about his head and disappear. Lady Fortescue suddenly felt very old and ill. It was one thing to gallantly say they should go on when there was a comfortable sum in the bank, another to face up to the fact that they were forced to continue to work. Only Miss Tonks was relieved. Miss Tonks decided she was quite prepared to go on forever in this hotel rather than go back to her previous life of loneliness.

Lady Fortescue found her voice. “You must appreciate, Sir Philip, that we cannot trust you to handle any money again. We will pay you a strict allowance and that will need to suffice. It will be less than the rest of us draw in order to make up some of the loss. I trust you agree.”

And Sir Philip sadly bowed his head.

The colonel cleared his throat. “You have behaved disgracefully, sir, quite disgracefully. But since we must go on, we must go on in as pleasant a manner as possible. I suggest we put this behind us.”

Sir Philip’s eyes filled with grateful tears.

And then the office door opened and Mrs. Budge came in.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded. “And where have you been, Philip?”

“Mind your own business,” snapped Miss Tonks, colouring up.

“Don’t get cheeky with me, you old fright,” sneered Mrs. Budge.

“That’s it,” said Sir Philip. “Don’t you dare insult my Miss Tonks, not now, not ever. Go and pack your bags, woman, and get out of my sight.”

“But sweetheart, light of my life—”

“Get out,” screamed Sir Philip, waving his little arms. “Never let me see you again!”

And that, as Lady Fortescue was to say afterwards, was when Sir Philip began to redeem himself.

***

The wedding of Miss Arabella Carruthers to the Earl of Denby took place in London the following spring. The hoteliers were all there in their finery and Miss Tonks was maid of honour, very grand in lilac silk.

Lady Fortescue was worried about Arabella. For although the girl looked beautiful in white satin and Brussels lace, her eyes were sad and the earl looked grim.

The fact was that the unhappy pair had had just about as much of Lady Carruthers as they could stand. After Arabella had left the hotel to return to the country with her mother to prepare for the wedding, she had not seen her fiancé alone. Also, her mother had enlivened the dark months of winter by undermining her confidence, telling her that she would probably be a sad disappointment to an experienced man like the earl.

After the wedding was the breakfast at the earl’s town house, presided over by
his
formidable mother, the dowager countess, who had told Arabella that the earl’s late wife had been a saint and hinted that no one could ever match up to her. Worse than that, the couple were to spend their honeymoon at the earl’s town house, where his mother and Lady Carruthers would be in residence.

So while Arabella’s self-esteem was being undermined by her mother, so the earl’s love for Arabella was being chipped away by
his
mother, who kept warning him that the girl looked too young and was too flighty.

The wedding service was enlivened for the guests by Lady Carruthers’s loud whispers that the earl had really meant to marry
her
before her own daughter, mark you, had lured him away.

With solemn faces the earl and Arabella walked down the aisle of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and out into the windy street under the tumbling sound of the bells.

They climbed into the gaily bedecked wedding carriage, which was to drive them to the reception. “I’m going to do something about this,” said the earl.

“What?” asked Arabella nervously.

“You’ll see,” he said moodily.

Sir Philip was travelling in a carriage in the wedding procession with Miss Tonks. He took her hand and smiled at her, baring his best set of china teeth.

“Well, it’s you and me again,” he said.

Miss Tonks looked sadly out of the carriage window. A torn playbill advertising Mr. Jason Davy in the role of Mirabell fluttered in the wind. She gently drew her hand away.

The wedding breakfast appeared a merry one, apart from the bride and groom. Then, when it was over, the earl approached the colonel and Lady Fortescue and whispered urgently. Then he returned to Arabella and said, “Go above-stairs and change out of that gown and into your carriage dress.” His eyes were sparkling and he was smiling for the first time.

“Why?” asked Arabella.

“You’ll see. Just do it.”

Arabella went up to the large bedroom which she was supposed to share that night with her husband. She ordered the waiting maid to fetch one of her carriage dresses and then, unable to wait to be dressed, scrambled into it herself.

The earl was waiting for her in the hall. He seized her hand and led her outside to where his curricle was waiting.

“Where are we going?” asked Arabella as he picked up the reins and drove off.

“Surprise, my darling.”

And Arabella
was
surprised when the carriage stopped at the door of the Poor Relation in Bond Street and there stood Lady Fortescue, Sir Philip, Colonel Sandhurst and Miss Tonks in their wedding finery, waiting to welcome them.

“This is where we will spend our wedding night,” said the earl. “The hotel is closed for the month, and we will be the only guests.”

Arabella began to laugh with relief. “It’s like coming home.”

***

The hoteliers went out for dinner that night, not one of them being vulgar enough to say that they did not want to stay in the hotel while the earl and his wife were spending their first evening alone. They had chosen a modest chop-house where the food was good but unpretentious. They sat and chatted easily like the old friends they were, laughing as they imagined the consternation felt by both the earl’s mother and Arabella’s mother when those formidable ladies found their victims had escaped them.