Wicked Godmother (10 page)

She rose and sank into a curtsy. Her blue eyes swimming with tears were raised to his own. ‘Please accept my deepest, my most humble apology,’ said Harriet.

He took a step towards her. He wanted to take her in his arms and crush her against him, to feel that soft body against the length of his own. And then he backed away, feeling like some awful slavering satyr. Without a word, he turned on his heel and walked out.

Harriet sat down in the chair again and indulged in a hearty burst of tears. She was a failure. She had learned enough of the world to know that this dashing marquess was a leader of the
ton
. If she had slapped Beau Brummell’s face in the middle of Almack’s, she could not possibly have done more damage to her social reputation.

After a few minutes, Harriet dried her eyes. The damage was done. All she could do was promise to school her tongue and behave as prettily as possible when he called again that afternoon. Sarah and Annabelle must never know how badly she had behaved. They would be so disappointed in her!

Then Harriet remembered Lizzie, the scullery maid, and took herself off down to the servants’ hall. Beauty, overcome with his exertions, had fallen asleep and did not try to follow her.

There was only Mrs Middleton and Angus Mac-Gregor in the servants’ hall.

‘Where is Lizzie?’ asked Harriet.

‘She is lying down on her bed,’ said Mrs Middleton, curtsying. ‘She will be about her duties soon.’

‘I do not think she should rise from her bed this day,’ said Harriet, looking worried. ‘You may engage more help if you wish. Where is Lizzie’s room?’

‘She doesn’t have a room, ma’am, there being so little space, but she has her pallet in the scullery.’

‘Please show me where she is,’ said Harriet.

Mrs Middleton led the way. Lizzie tried to struggle up when she saw Harriet. Harriet looked sadly down at the thin straw mattress on which Lizzie lay.

‘I must ask you to rise for a little, Lizzie,’ she said gently. ‘Perhaps, Mrs Middleton, you could help me lift her.’

‘Bring a chair, Angus,’ called Mrs Middleton. Once Lizzie was lifted onto the chair, Harriet bent down and raised the thin mattress. Straw was sticking out all over it and the underside was damp.

‘Are you sure there is nowhere else she could sleep?’ asked Harriet, looking worried.

‘We don’t have the space,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘She’s only a scullery maid, so it is not as if she can move in with me.’

‘I think,’ said Harriet, ‘a truckle bed with fresh blankets is needed here. Please fetch Mr Rainbird.’

But Rainbird entered at that moment with a physician. The staff and Harriet retired to the servants’ hall while the doctor examined Lizzie.

At last he came out and said, ‘The girl has merely caught a bad chill from sleeping on damp straw. Get her something dry to sleep on, and I will give you a resorative cordial for her.’ Then he cheerfully told Harriet he would send her his bill and bustled off.

The butler said with Miss Metcalf’s permission, he would purchase a truckle bed that very day.

Later, when Lizzie was tucked up in her new bed, the servants discussed her health in low voices. They had not realized how badly off little Lizzie had been, sleeping on that dreadful mattress, but servants had their rigid caste system and after all were more callous to their inferiors than any lord or lady.

But soon they were too busy to worry about Lizzie, running hither and thither, as the house prepared for those two all-important callers. Harriet sent up a prayer that the marquess would not, please not, talk about her rude and bold behaviour all over London. Enough to be snubbed by him, but how ruinous for poor innocent Sarah and Annabelle to be snubbed by everyone else.

By the time Lord Vere called, Harriet was in a miserable state, imagining she had brought down social disaster on the twins’ heads. She was subdued and so colourless that Lord Vere, in an effort to raise her spirits, made much of her two darling goddaughters, flirting with them and flattering them. He went so far as to try to pat Beauty, but even that brave gesture failed to raise a smile on Harriet’s lovely face. At last, it was time to take his leave. He assured Harriet he would engage a box at the opera for her. He longed to have words with her in private, to find out what had distressed her so much, and resolved to call the next day early in the morning when he could be sure of finding her irritating charges still in bed.

It was too early to go on the strut in Bond Street, too early to drive a carriage in the Park. Lord Vere set out for the Marquess of Huntingdon’s town house, which was an undistinguished building in Charles Street, the marquess belonging to the breed of aristocrat who considered money spent on town property a waste of time.

He found the marquess in his library, going through a pile of bills and invitations.

‘Why so gloomy?’ asked the marquess, glancing up at his friend’s lowering face.

‘I have just been paying a call on Miss Metcalf.’

‘Ah, that explains everything,’ said the marquess, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head. ‘Quite a little shrew is our country blossom.’

‘How can you say that?’ demanded Lord Vere. ‘She was sweetness itself, but so unhappy, so miserable, I longed to get her alone so that I might beg her to tell me what ailed her.’

‘I’ll tell you,’ said the marquess with a malicious grin. He outlined the morning’s events, ending up with a description of Harriet’s rude remarks.

‘You must have goaded her quite dreadfully,’ said Lord Vere. ‘And she was so wretched.’

‘Of course she was,’ said the marquess cynically. ‘She must fear my broadcasting her social gaucherie to the
ton
, and that would most certainly be social damnation for those two dreary debutantes of hers.’

‘But you would not!’ cried Lord Vere. ‘Miss Metcalf is unaccustomed to our ways. In the country, it is not the practise to flaunt one’s mistress openly in public.’

‘When were you last in the country, dear boy?’ said the marquess. ‘The woods and copses of England are thick with members of the Fashionable Impure. One cannot enjoy a peaceful dinner with the Quorn without some jade rapping on the dining-room window and crying her favours.’

‘But she is so innocent, so easily hurt . . .’

‘Then she should learn not to hurt others. It is only human to want to retaliate.’

‘But you will not!’

‘No, not I. After this afternoon, I shall cut Miss Metcalf dead.’

About three o’clock or four o’clock the fashionable world gives some sign of life, issuing forth to pay visits, or rather leave cards at the doors of friends, never seen but in the crowd of assemblies; to go to the shops, see sights, or lounge in Bond Street – an ugly inconvenient street, the attractions of which it is difficult to understand.

LOUIS SIMMOND

Harriet was in a terrible state of nerves as the time approached for the arrival of the Marquess of Huntingdon. She was now sure he would not come.

Sarah and Annabelle sat attired in thin muslins and ribbons and modish bonnets.

‘Tell me, Sarah,’ essayed Harriet timidly, ‘would you be so very disappointed if Lord Huntingdon did not come?’

‘Stoopid. He
is
coming, so what’s to do?’

Harriet glanced nervously at the clock. It lacked one minute to the quarter to five. She took a deep breath. ‘A most unfortunate thing happened today—’

‘There he is!’ cried Sarah, rushing to the window.

Harriet stood up, drawing on her gloves. ‘We should go and join him,’ she said. ‘Gentlemen do not like to keep their horses standing.’

The marquess, however, had his coachman up on the box, having decided to do the thing properly. Harriet, as befitted her role as duenna, sat with her back to the horses while Sarah, Annabelle, and the marquess sat facing her.

He felt he should cross over and join Miss Metcalf, but he was sure it would start all sorts of female chatter and protests. Sarah and Annabelle realized only too late that they had put themselves at a certain disadvantage by taking the best seats. Although they were on either side of the marquess, both were wearing the very latest thing in poke bonnets, which acted like horse blinkers, and each had to twist around quite uncomfortably to catch even a glimpse of Lord Huntingdon’s face.

Harriet, who was wearing a charming little straw confection with a wisp of a veil that fluttered against her face, had a full and uninterrupted view of the marquess.

‘The weather is very fine, is it not?’ said Harriet.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he said equably. ‘I trust there will be no further storms or squalls.’

‘I can assure you, my lord,’ said Harriet, not meeting his eyes, ‘that you may have no fear of a recurrence of bad weather.’

‘Good,’ he said with a sudden blinding smile.

Sarah fidgeted angrily. What a bore Harriet was! Prosing on about the weather.

‘Did you see Mrs Siddons in
The Country Girl
?’ she asked the marquess.

He began to tell them his views on the play and Mrs Siddons’s performance. Sarah and Annabelle hung on his every word. Harriet heaved a little sigh of relief and turned her attention to her surroundings, feeling free to enjoy the view. She was very lucky to have such well-bred charges. The marquess need have no fear that either of them would utter any impolite remarks. And so Harriet gazed happily up at the new leaves as the carriage rolled under the trees in Hyde Park and dreamed of seeing Sarah and Annabelle at a double wedding. She suddenly knew that the marquess had no intention of taking revenge on her by ruining her socially. The pale sunlight shone down on the glittering carriages and glittering jewels of their occupants. There were so many things to see, and it was lovely to sit in a well-sprung carriage and feel the warmth of the spring air and smell the blossoms after such a long and dreary winter.

Harriet’s thoughts swung back to the marquess. It was a pity he was so unsuitable, but if he proposed to one of the girls, then she would need to give her permission. Sarah did not mind the idea of a rake for a husband and would probably behave like most society wives after marriage and turn a blind eye to her husband’s indiscretions.

But that would not do for me
, thought Harriet with a smile. She looked across at the marquess and started as she met the angry glare of his eyes.

The marquess was furious with Harriet. He felt he was behaving very prettily towards her charges, but what right had Miss Metcalf not only to completely ignore him, but to sit there with that silly smile on her stupid face, exactly as if she were dreaming of someone else?

Her eyes dropped before his, and she sat there, subdued, pliant, the very picture of submissive and sensual womanhood. Despite himself, he felt his senses quicken. He looked at Harriet and wondered what she would look like naked. His own thoughts shocked him. The trouble was, he decided, that Harriet Metcalf, with her sweet, innocent air, her soft, swaying pliancy, and the troubled vulnerability in those huge blue eyes brought all the most primitive lusts rising in the masculine breast.

Well, Gilbert certainly seemed to have fallen head over heels for her, but in a purely romantic way. Good luck to Gilbert. He, Huntingdon, would not stand in his way. Annabelle had just essayed a pun, and Sarah was joining her in a wild fit of giggles. The marquess smiled and said such beauty combined with wit quite overset him. Sarah slapped him painfully on the wrist with her fan, and she and Annabelle went off into another peal of laughter.

Wretched, boring little creatures
, thought the marquess. But were they so very awful? They were behaving exactly as he had come to expect young ladies of the
ton
to go on. Liveliness and spirit and a certain amount of unconventionality were to be found in the demi-monde. One would not expect one’s wife, say, to go around being as openly and brutally honest as Harriet Metcalf.

He could see it now. ‘Good morning, my love. Did you sleep well?’ ‘No, Huntingdon, you snored prodigiously and gave me the headache.’ ‘I must go out to my club, my sweeting. I promised Brummell his revenge at piquet.’ ‘You are not going to your club, my lord, you are going to call on a demi-rep whom you have had in keeping this age.’