Wicked Godmother (18 page)

A long embarrassing silence greeted this.

‘But were you not attacked?’ asked Sarah at last.

‘Yes, I was. But Beauty fought off all corners.’ There was a scrabbling at the door as Beauty tried to get in. Harriet rose to her feet. ‘Beauty shall have the best bones from the kitchen. He is a brave and noble dog. Am I become such a creature in your eyes? Is Beauty the only one who can tolerate me?’

‘You cannot have everything, dear godmother,’ said Sarah harshly. ‘You have control of our money until we are twenty-one. I suggest you comfort yourself with the thought if it were not for us you would still be languishing in that damp, pokey cottage of yours instead of being at the London Season and receiving proposals of marriage from two lords.’

‘I did not set out to win either of those gentlemen,’ cried Harriet. ‘Can you not see that?’

‘I only see,’ said Annabelle, ‘that the hour is late. Strange as it may appear, we are glad you are unhurt. But please leave us.’

They stood side by side and watched her. Now that Sarah had revealed their true feelings, neither twin could be bothered even to be polite to their godmother.

After Harriet had left, they looked at each other. ‘Well, now she knows,’ said Sarah defiantly. ‘And I don’t care.’

‘Me neither,’ said Annabelle. But neither girl could quite understand why their cruelty to Harriet did not make them feel better, but only made them feel diminished in their own eyes.

Harriet hesitated outside the drawing room. She had not told the girls about Lord Huntingdon, for she had not wanted to upset Sarah, and she still felt guilty because the marquess had proposed to her, Harriet, and not to one of the twins.

The marquess was sitting with a glass of wine in his hand when she entered the room, and he stood up to greet her.

‘I am grateful to you for this evening,’ said Harriet. She smiled. ‘And to my brave Beauty.’

Beauty came and rested his head on her knee and gazed up at her with small, shrewd eyes. She patted his thick coat. He shook himself and then crossed over to the marquess, looking for more affection.

‘Why,’ said the marquess, studying Harriet’s woebegone face, ‘did you believe the contents of that ridiculous letter and go flying off alone to the worst part of London? Surely you had no reason to believe the twins illegitimate.’

Harriet wanted to tell him all about Sir Benjamin, and all about her guilt over his favoured treatment of her. But at the same time, she was afraid he might not understand. The patronage of the great man of the village, which seemed right and innocent in the country, took on a more sinister look in Town, where everyone seemed to credit everyone else with the worst of motives.

Instead, she said, ‘But what if it is true? What if someone does have such proof?’

‘Then, my sweet widgeon,’ he said, ‘they meet you in Mayfair and probably with a lawyer in attendance. They do not tell you to come to The Rookery. Nor do they write letters in good English and push them through the letter box where they might be seen. Whoever delivered that note was confident that his or her appearance in Clarges Street would pass unremarked.’

‘I have received another shock this evening,’ said Harriet. ‘I fear Annabelle and Sarah dislike me.’

‘I did get that impression,’ he said dryly. ‘Are you sure
they
did not send that letter?’

‘I am sure,’ said Harriet. ‘They may dislike me, but they would not wish my death.’

‘They might not have thought the adventure would kill you,’ he pointed out. ‘They might have thought merely to give you a fright. Spiteful people often do not pause to think of the consequences of their actions.’

‘I wish they did not dislike me,’ said Harriet. ‘Oh, it is distressing to find that two girls one has loved and cherished should nourish such feelings.’

‘Perhaps you should try to lavish your love on a more worthy object,’ said the marquess. ‘Just because two jealous misses do not like you, does not make you unlikeable. One must learn to accept lack of love just as much as love itself. Gilbert – Lord Vere – has left the country with his regiment,’ added the marquess abruptly.

‘I am sorry,’ said Harriet, ‘but I could not marry him.’

‘Very few ladies have the privilege of turning down two handsome offers before the Season begins,’ he said.

‘If I had known Lord Vere was going to take my refusal so hard, then I would have done all in my power to make amends to him,’ said Harriet.

‘By marrying him?’

‘No. Lord Vere is a romantic, and it would not be fair to saddle him with an unloving wife.’

‘But you would have been complacent had he proposed to one of your god-daughters?’

Harriet bit her lip. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I find the care of them onerous.’

‘And I am a beast to tease you so,’ he said. ‘Enough! Let us be friends, Harriet Metcalf. It seems that the gods will not allow us to stay apart.’

‘I should like that,’ said Harriet with such innocent surprise in her voice that he burst out laughing.

He rose and held out his hand. ‘Friends, then,’ he said.

‘Friends,’ echoed Harriet, rising and taking his hand.

He smiled down at her. ‘I shall call on you tomorrow, Miss Metcalf,’ he said, ‘to see how you go on.’

‘Thank you,’ said Harriet, and the eyes that looked so trustingly up into his own were warm and affectionate.

He took his leave and dismissed his carriage, preferring to walk.

He felt quite lightheaded.

He could not remember being quite so ridiculously happy in his whole life.

Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;

’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

SHAKESPEARE

The Marquess of Huntingdon was disappointed at not being able to see Harriet alone when he called at Number 67 the next day. Sarah and Annabelle were there, beribboned and beflounced, armed with portfolios of watercolours for him to admire and needlework to examine. He could only be thankful that Number 67 did not boast a pianoforte.

The girls were very arch, very coy, and asked him if he did not consider the house haunted, in view of its evil reputation. He said, no, he did not. They asked him if he had heard Brummell’s latest witticism and he said he had, but they repeated it anyway and then giggled and slapped each other playfully with their fans. The marquess found himself becoming irritated with Harriet. Had she nothing to say for herself? Did she have to sit there with that fixed smile on her face while her charges bored him to death?

At last, he felt he could not bear any more of Sarah’s and Annabelle’s arch playfulness and took his leave. He felt quite happy, he told himself, that this silly schoolboy yearning of his for Harriet Metcalf appeared to have gone. She was nothing more than a soft marshmallow of a girl, whose only interests in life were her mongrel dog and her god-daughters. She was evidently determined to love two horrible girls who did not even like her. She was a martyr. And for such a one poor Gilbert was fighting battles under the hot sun in the Peninsula!

But by the time he had walked from Clarges Street to Berkeley Square, the old yearning for her was on him again. He knew she was to attend a ball at Almack’s Assembly Rooms that evening. He disliked Almack’s – a dreary place with a bad floor and worse refreshments.
He might
, he thought,
just look in for half an hour
.

Harriet now felt secure in society, secure enough to prepare for an evening at Almack’s without any feelings of trepidation. She was ingenuously pleased with her new ensemble of a gown of silver embroidery on the sheerest mull worn over a slip of white satin.

Harriet was proud of herself. If only her treacherous mind would stop dwelling vulgarly on the physical perfections of Lord Huntingdon, then she felt she would be able to do her duty as a chaperone more wholeheartedly. At least she was a success in that regard.

Both Annabelle and Sarah had several very respectable beaux – none admittedly as dazzling as Lord Vere or Lord Huntingdon, but all young men of good family and sound fortune.

She herself was popular with the chaperones and had come to enjoy gossiping with them at balls and routs.

Sarah and Annabelle seemed to have decided it politic to treat Harriet as they usually did. They appeared moderately affectionate, but Harriet, with her eyes opened now to their real thoughts about her, felt she could have coped with honest and open dislike better.

Once in the ballroom, she waited until the twins had been led onto the floor by their partners and then walked over to the row of little gilt chairs, smiling as she recognized Baroness Villiers and Mrs Cramp.

To her surprise, both ladies rose as they saw her approach, and without one word of greeting they walked away and stood together by the pillars under the musicians’ gallery.

Puzzled and bewildered, Harriet sat down, conscious of the empty chairs on either side of her. She sent a timid smile along the row of chaperones, and they stared at her haughtily and then bent their heads towards each other and began talking in low whispers.

Nonplussed, Harriet turned her attention to the dance floor. More accusing eyes, more whispers.

She glanced down at her gown, fearing that her tapes had come undone or that there was a large stain on her dress.

And then she saw the fat and comfortable figure of Lady Phillips.

Determined to speak to at least one friend, Harriet hastened towards her.

‘Lady Phillips . . .’ she began, and then her voice trailed away. For Lady Phillips gave her one startled look, then her chubby features became a frozen blank and she turned on her heel and walked away. It was the cut direct.

Harriet retreated miserably to her chair. What on earth had happened?

When the Marquess of Huntingdon walked into the ballroom, Harriet looked across the room at him and sent him a tremulous smile. He smiled back and looked as if he were about to cross the floor to join her when he was hailed by two friends. They appeared to talk in low voices to him for quite some time, and then all looked straight at Harriet. The marquess was looking stunned.

He felt history was repeating itself. For was it not at Almack’s that he first learned of his wife’s infidelity? And had he not stood then as he was standing now with a wrenching pain in his heart and his world crashing down about his ears?

To think he had felt unworthy of her. To think he had thought her pure and chaste. The facts were damning. Why should Sir Benjamin Hayner set her up in control of his estates, fortune, and goddaughters, and she only a few years older than they? Evidently, it was well-known in the country that Harriet had set out to seduce him. He felt sickened.

As Harriet watched, he turned and began to talk to some other friends. And then he left the ballroom.

The whispers and stares became more marked. Harriet felt her eyes filling with tears and blinked them away. Illogically, she wished she had been able to bring Beauty, the only affectionate and stable thing in a treacherous world.

All at once, she could not bear it any longer. She stumbled to her feet, watched by hundreds of hard eyes. She scurried to the door, head bent, but all too aware that backs were turned and presented to her as she passed.

She collected her cloak and fled the Assembly Rooms.

From the other side of the street, the marquess who had been pacing up and down in a rage, saw her leave.

Let her go!
he thought.

But as if joined to her by an invisible thread, he followed, quickening his pace as she plunged into the darkness of Chapel Court. Emerging from the court, she ran along New Burlington Street, Clifford Street, Grafton Street, down Hay Hill across the foot of Berkeley Square, along Bolton Row and into Clarges Street.

She was about to escape him, to plunge into that accursed house without giving him an explanation, thought the marquess, in too blind a rage to realize she owed him none.

Harriet was just opening the door of Number 67 when he caught up with her.