Animating Maria (7 page)

‘I think the only person who can give you any explanation is Miss Amy herself,’ said Mr Haddon as Amy choked on the brandy and her eyes fluttered open. She looked up at Mr Haddon and sighed, ‘Am I in Heaven?’ she whispered.

The duke wondered how he could ever have mistaken Amy for a man when he saw that look.

‘No, Miss Amy,’ said Mr Haddon bracingly. ‘You have a flesh wound. Goodness, does Miss Effy know of this?’

‘No. No one must know,’ said Amy brokenly. ‘Scandal. Get rid of my seconds. Couple of fellows from Limmer’s. Mustn’t know the truth.’

‘See to it, Beau,’ said the duke, ‘and get rid of Wainwright as well. Do you think they heard that shout that she was a woman?’

‘No,’ said the surgeon. ‘Mr Wainwright and the others were arguing about something. I am sure they did not hear.’

While Beau went off, Mr Haddon said to the duke, ‘We must get her somewhere she can change out of these clothes.’

The duke frowned impatiently. He had been thoroughly shocked for the first time in his life. All he wanted to do was get the disgraceful Amy out of public view before a major scandal broke about his ears.

‘Help her to my carriage,’ he said. ‘We will take her to my town house. My mother is in residence.’

Mr Haddon and Beau supported Amy to the duke’s carriage. Amy was more distressed by what she had done than by the pain from her throbbing wound. Surely there was no way such a scandal could be hushed up.

As soon as they were in the carriage, Beau began to ask questions, but the duke interrupted him, saying that there would be time enough for questions when they had reached home.

Home was the Berham town house, a large double-fronted building in Cavendish Square. The duke led the party into the library on the ground floor and asked the butler to fetch the dowager duchess.

The butler was well trained. Not by one flicker of surprise did his face display that carrying a wounded captain into the ducal library was in any way out of the ordinary.

The dowager duchess entered, leaning on a silver-topped ebony cane. She sat down and looked curiously at the odd group. ‘What’s that woman doing dressed as a sea captain?’ she asked, looking at Amy.

‘I will explain,’ said the duke wearily, and he proceeded to do just that, leaving nothing out, from his kissing of Maria to the fight with Beau in the inn courtyard to the duel with Miss Amy Tribble.

‘I do not understand it,’ said the dowager duchess when he had finished. ‘I do not understand
you
, Rupert. I misled you with a scurrilous piece of gossip and for that I am sorry. But when did you ever before behave so badly? And what on earth persuaded you, Miss Tribble, to dress up as a man and challenge my son to a duel?’

‘Because I am run mad,’ said Amy wanly.

‘I think we may well be able to keep it all quiet,’ went on the duke’s mother. ‘Miss Tribble may rest up here until she is strong enough to go home. But the scandal is not my main concern. My chief worry is why you, my son, commandeered a young lady’s room and private parlour in that high-handed manner, why you kissed her as if she were a serving wench, and why you then saw fit to make matters worse by trying to call on her. Did he see her, Miss Tribble?’

‘No,’ said Amy. ‘He was rude to me and then he cut me in the Park. I thought he needed to be taught a lesson. Unfortunately it was I who needed to be taught a lesson. I am lucky to be alive.’

‘I am a very good shot,’ said the duke. ‘I could have easily killed you had I wanted to.’

‘I think you had better marry this Miss Kendall,’ said the dowager duchess.

There was a shocked silence. ‘I see no reason for that, Mama,’ said the duke stiffly.

The duchess leaned forward, her chin on the knob of her cane, and looked up at her son. ‘If you do not marry the girl, then I shall feel obliged to talk about the duel and about your behaviour.’

Amy groaned faintly and Mr Haddon said sharply, ‘Can we not discuss this later? Miss Amy is ill.’

‘Ring the bell over there and we’ll get her put to bed,’ said the dowager duchess. ‘Take yourself off, Beau, and keep quiet, do you hear? You stay here with me, Rupert. We have much to discuss.’

When mother and son were finally alone, the duke said quietly, ‘Now, Mama, what has come over you? I am not going to marry a pert nobody who has been sent to those eccentric Tribbles for schooling – although what sort of manners she is supposed to learn in a house where one of her chaperones dresses as a man and goes about fighting duels, I do not know. She told me some rubbish about being engaged to a sea captain, and no doubt Miss Tribble decided to act out the lie.’

‘They have behaved badly, yes, and that should exonerate you – but think. You have become stuffy and high-handed and quite middle-aged in your manner, Rupert. This girl is the first one who has made you behave out of character. I saw her at that ball. Vastly fetching. Her parents are vulgar in the extreme, but rich, very rich, and we Berhams would not have stayed in our position of power if we had gone about marrying for love. You do not suppose for a minute that your father was in love with me? You show no signs of falling in love with anyone other than yourself, and so you may as well settle for an arranged marriage. I have a mind to see the succession secured before I die.’

‘Mama, I would do much to please you, but marry that oddity, Maria Kendall, I will most certainly not.’

His mother looked mulish. ‘Then I shall talk.’

‘And I shall talk, too, and say that age has finally addled your brains.’

His mother looked at him mournfully. Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her withered cheeks.

He turned away in embarrassment. He could not remember seeing his mother cry before.

‘Dry your eyes,’ he said harshly.

His mother’s plaintive voice sounded in his ears. ‘She would be perfect for you. She is young and can be trained.’

‘I shall marry a woman who will grace my rank,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘Who?’ demanded his mother with a choked sob.

He started pacing up and down. ‘I shall make amends, Mama,’ he said. ‘It is her début. I shall dance with her and pay her particular attention. But I cannot marry her. And now, if you will excuse me, I shall go and see how Miss Amy is faring.’

After he had left, the dowager duchess dried her eyes, kicked a footstool across the room, and then rang the bell. ‘Get Jessey here,’ she ordered. Mr Jessey was the ducal secretary.

When he entered, the duchess said, ‘I have good news for you, Mr Jessey. My son is to be married. Take down the details and make sure the announcement appears in every newspaper in the morning.’

The duke found Amy had changed into one of his mother’s gowns and was insisting on going home. Weakly, she said she was sorry, she would never breathe a word of the duel, that Effy and Maria believed her to be in the country.

‘And how shall you explain the wound?’ asked Mr Haddon.

‘Carriage accident or highwaymen,’ said Amy. ‘Oh, Mr Haddon, I am so ashamed of myself, I do not know what to do.’

Mr Haddon thought Amy Tribble had every reason to be thoroughly ashamed of herself and opened his mouth to say so but instead found himself saying. ‘Now, now, my beautiful and gallant lady. This is not like you.’

At his words, Amy felt strong and well. She felt she could fight any battle that lay ahead. ‘I am very sorry, your grace,’ said Amy.

‘Your apology is accepted,’ he replied. ‘But a word of caution. Miss Kendall comes from an unfortunate background and cannot hope to make a dazzling match. You must not encourage either farouche behaviour or ambitious hopes. I have a few friends in the City among the professional and merchant class who would be eminently suitable. You may call on me for help.’

Amy said nothing. Mr Haddon found himself becoming highly irritated with the duke. Under the circumstances, it was a generous offer. But there was something so cold-blooded and patronizing about it.

‘I am sure the Misses Tribble are experienced enough to find suitors for their charge without your help,’ he said haughtily. ‘Miss Amy, if you really feel strong enough to leave, then I think we should go now.’

The duke, looking at Mr Haddon, was sharply reminded of one of his former tutors who had said, ‘A gentleman should be easy and gracious in his manner with all ranks. It is a talent you lack.’

He was glad to see them go. He could now put the whole matter out of his mind.

Effy was alarmed when the wounded Amy arrived home. Mr Haddon told her soothingly that Amy had been shot by highwaymen on her road home. ‘On the road home from
where
?’ demanded Effy. ‘Who do we know in the country, Amy? Who did you visit?’

‘Don’t plague me with questions,’ growled Amy. ‘I’m going to bed.’

Effy wanted to talk to Mr Haddon about Maria, but Mr Haddon promptly took his leave. Effy was worried. She had taken Maria out on calls and there was no denying the girl had behaved just as she ought except she did not seem to be
there.
Her eyes held a vague dreamy look and she answered all questions politely but with an air of abstraction.

Baxter, the Tribbles’ lady’s maid, had told Maria that the Duke of Berham had called. Miss Effy, said Baxter, had been puzzled by the visit and had wondered why Miss Amy had said nothing about it, not realizing Amy had already done so. Maria insisted she did not know what had prompted his grace to call on her. She was sure Amy’s absence had something to do with the revenge on the duke Amy had promised and felt it would be better to remain silent on the subject until Amy returned.

Maria meanwhile was wrapped in dreams of spurning the duke. He always proposed, she always refused and he crawled away in shame taking his broken heart with him. This was the best dream Maria had had in a long time and she nourished it and embroidered it until in her mind’s eye the duke became older-looking, with a certain seedy grandeur about him as befitting a crumbling aristocrat.

She was disappointed when Amy refused to see her but accepted it was because Amy had been shot by a highwayman. Maria thought Amy a most romantic figure.

Maria always woke early in the morning because in Bath her parents always rose late and she was used to treasuring the peace of the mornings. The morning after Amy’s return was no exception.

Effy had given Maria a list of eligibles and had told her to check the engagements in the newspapers and mark off any possibles who had already been snatched up.

Maria read all the advertisements first. There was a Miss Thomas of Chancery Lane advertising ready-made dresses ‘to fit all sizes’, and F. Newbery and Sons were offering every kind of remedy from Dr James’s Powders to Convulsion Pills. A gentleman who had left a brown pelisse coat lined with fur in a hackney chariot was promising three guineas for its return. She turned to the social news and began to read about a grand party that had been illuminated with hundreds of Chinese lamps when her eye was caught by a small announcement farther down the page. She was sure she had seen the name Kendall. But then Kendall was quite an ordinary name.

And then the announcement seemed to scream at her that there was to be a forthcoming marriage between His Grace, The Duke of Berham, and Miss Maria Kendall, only daughter of Mr and Mrs Kendall of Bath. The announcement was very short, the duke’s secretary having known only what he had gleaned from the dowager duchess, who did not know whether Maria was the Kendalls’ only child, but had simply assumed that if such vulgar persons were paying the Tribbles’ costly bill, then it stood to reason Maria must be their sole offspring.

Maria slowly put down the paper and thought hard. The duke had kissed her. It now seemed as if that kiss had been the kiss of a man driven by passion rather than an insulting gesture from an enraged aristocrat. Her feelings softened towards the duke. It was an outrageous thing to do, but he must have felt it was the only way he could secure her. She knew from the social columns that his mother was staying with him at the ducal town house; therefore there would be no scandal in her visiting him. She would tell him gently she could never marry him. At the back of Maria’s brain there was a sort of stern older sister always monitoring her folly. This voice told her that the advertisement was nothing more than an embarrassing mistake, that the duke would be furious, and that she should leave the handling of the matter to the Tribbles. But the younger Maria, who had learned to live in dreams to escape the harsh reality of her parents’ pushing vulgarity and bullying, would not listen to that voice of reason.

She did not ring for her maid but dressed herself carefully in an outfit Yvette had created for her. It consisted of a cambric high gown covered with a Spanish robe of pea-green muslin worn with a winged mob-cap of white crepe under a beehive bonnet of moss straw, Limerick gloves, and green kid Spanish slippers.

She went downstairs and told a footman to fetch her a chair, for it was raining lightly outside and she did not want her dress soiled by entering a hackney carriage from the muddy street.

The footman wondered whether he should ask her where she was going, for it was odd that miss did not have her maid with her, but felt such a question might be considered impertinent.

When two Irish chairmen entered the hall carrying the sedan chair on its long poles, the footman listened to see if he could hear where Miss Kendall was going, but she told the chairmen she would give them directions once they were outside.

She was borne at a great rate through the rainy streets as her bearers ran along the pavements shouting, ‘Make way!’ and showing every sign of being prepared to knock anyone who did not heed their warning into the kennel.

They carried their burden straight into the main hall of the duke’s town house in Cavendish Square. Self-conscious under the eyes of the duke’s stern butler and a row of liveried footmen, Maria paid off the chairmen and presented her card.

She was led into a library and told to wait. Above the library fireplace was a portrait of the duke’s father. He had a look of surprise on his painted face as if wondering what such a common interloper as Maria Kendall was doing calling on his son.