Barbara Metzger (11 page)

“She won’t think anything, because I dressed myself. I couldn’t think of waking her at daybreak.”

“But you are the mistress, poppet.”

“Yes, but I’m sure it takes her longer to dress. She’s so starchy she only needs one name!”

*

Later that morning Lord Claibourne was to see how seriously my lady’s maid took her position. When they reached Madame Bertin’s, the premier modiste of London, Vincent examined every bolt of fabric and scrutinised every design modelled.

“If I may be permitted, Miss Trevaine, knowing London ways as I do, the pink sarcenet, not the emerald lutestring,” and, “With your pardon, miss, all debutantes must wear white for their come-outs.”

The earl, lounging in one of the showroom’s comfortable seats, wondered how long it would take for the fireworks. He wasn’t in the fitting room, of course, when the superior dresser felt it was her duty, in accordance with Lady Parkhurst’s wishes, to adjust upward the neckline of an azure blue crepe. Vincent had to step over the little fitter’s apprentice, making the girl drop all her pins, which earned her a scolding from Madame Bertin herself, coming into the draped cubicle to make sure all was going smoothly with this new, favoured customer.

Madame had had her doubts, at first, that the girl in the chic orange muslin mightn’t just be Claibourne’s latest convenient, but the maid seemed proper enough, and one mustn’t discount all the rumours. Madame was always happy to have the dressing of a future countess, and this one would only add to her already high standing, if Miss Trevaine didn’t fold under the maid’s pressure to dress as demurely as any other debutante.

In her haste to take Miss Trevaine’s side, figuratively and literally, the dressmaker also tripped over the apprentice, who was kneeling to gather up the pins she’d lost. There followed a lot of French words that would have made
Tante
Simone blush. Although none of the audience understood entirely, the gist of the modiste’s angry speech was obvious: the little red-headed Marguerite was ham-handed and hen-witted, more suitable for milking cows than for serving in a fine shop.

“Forgive me, Mademoiselle, I only took on such a one as a favour to my coachman. Farm girls, pah. This one shall bother us no more. About the neckline…”

The ’prentice sobbed quietly, still trying to collect the pins into her apron, and the fitter scowled, and the dressmaker gave Jacelyn a toadeater’s smile, and Vincent gave the neckline another tug.

“With all due respect, Miss Trevaine, please recall that my previous employer was the Duchess of Richmond’s daughter, so I know whereof I speak. That amount of cleavage is quite, quite common-looking. Not at all the thing for—”

“Mademoiselle sets her own fashion. Any imbecile can see she is not of the usual mould.”

Jacelyn had had enough. She stamped her foot. “I shall ask Claibourne.” At the cluckings, she added, “I’m sure he knows more about ladies’ bosoms than any of us,” scandalising two avidly listening dowagers in the next cubicle.

Trailing yards of blue crepe and a shower of silver pins, along with the fitting room entourage and the interested matrons, Jacelyn stomped out to the showroom and demanded of Claibourne, “My lord, will you tell these peahens where a lady’s gown must start and end.”

Fireworks indeed. Not twelve hours in Town and she was putting on a show for Lady Rivington. Leigh recrossed his legs and raised that one expressive eyebrow.

Flushing, Jacelyn amended her request: “Forgive me, my lord. Would you please give us your opinion of this gown? Is the décolletage suitable?”

Leigh almost ached to show her just what that creamy expanse now tinged with pink was suitable
for
. Instead he told her, “You’ll have to decide, Miss Trevaine. You’ll be the one drawing attention. I can tell you that many ladies”—he emphasised the last word—“wear theirs even lower, though not usually such young ladies. Then again, many young women wouldn’t look as attractive. You have to consider whether you wish to be approved or admired.”

That was all very noncommittal, Jacelyn felt, when what she really wanted was
his
approval and
his
admiration, without having to ask. “As you will be the one escorting me, my lord, I thought my choice would affect you.”

“Quite right, my dear. Tell me when you are going to wear it so I can buckle on my sabre to fight off all the smitten mooncalves. Proud to be of service, ma’am.”

“Gudgeon. Well, I can always wear a shawl. Thank you, Lord Claibourne, ladies.” She turned to go back to the fitting room when the abigail tried one last time.

“Lady Parkhurst is sure to object, miss, and I regret that I must agree.”

“Lady Parkhurst isn’t paying your wages, Vincent, and I regret that I am. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we will suit at all, so if you will return to Portman Square and pack your things, I’m certain Lady Parkhurst will write you a glowing reference. Lord Parkhurst’s secretary is handling my accounts, so you may discuss your wages with him. That will be all.”

Scarlet-faced, Vincent rushed out the door. When it closed on a stunned silence, Claibourne softly applauded. “To the manner born, my lady. What a countess you’ll make! Why, Princess Caroline couldn’t have done it better.”

Grinning, Jacelyn lifted her straight little nose in the air, pronounced “Quite,” and glided regally out of the room.

Mme. Bertin was not amused. Such a scene in her showroom was bad for business. Still, she smiled at Jacelyn, guaranteeing that, yes, the gown could be hemmed by the next day, the others made up within the week. She expressed her annoyance again on her way out by berating the apprentice.

When she was gone and Jacelyn was being helped out of the pinned gown, she asked the red-eyed girl why she stayed in such a place.

“It’s m’mum, m’lady. I send her the wages, so my little brothers won’t have to go to the mills. I was happy to get this position, ma’am.”

Jacelyn took a good look at the girl, a little younger than herself, and liked what she saw: curly red hair and wide, honest green eyes, and many more freckles than Jacey had. She appeared country-clean, healthy, and unhappy. Impulsively, Jacey asked, Tell me, um, Marguerite—”

“Margaret, ma’am,” the girl said, bobbing a curtsey as she fastened Jacelyn’s buttons, “but my brothers call me Pinkie.”

“Pinkie, tell me, what did you think of me in the blue dress?”

“I thought you looked a treat, ma’am, ’n the way you held your head, why, no one would mistake you for anything but a real lady. I been working here a month, nearly, and seen all the young ladies and their mums. Not a one could hold a candle to you.” Jacelyn hired herself a maid.

*

It took a very short time, while Pinkie gathered her few belongings, to settle the girl’s contract. Jacelyn had only to voice her doubts over the almond-coloured cambric for Madame to lower her outrageous demands. Claibourne’s reminder that Miss Trevaine still had to consider a presentation gown, while Jacelyn herself fingered the lace of a bridal doll, had madame toss in the girl’s grey and white uniform, and good riddance!

A very well-satisfied threesome, four if you counted Lem in his fine new livery on the footman’s ledge at the back of the carriage, proceeded to every fashionable shop on Bond Street, and a few not so well known down side streets. As is often the case, Jacelyn found more courtesy and cooperation in the smaller shops, so she was able to ignore the fact that Claibourne seemed known by name in each establishment. Busy with cottage bonnets and kid slippers, she didn’t need to disturb herself over his knowledge of women’s fashions or his remarkable patience. She simply accepted, and enjoyed, both.

When the carriage was nearly filled with boxes and tissue-wrapped parcels, they proceeded to Gunther’s, for ices, then drove around some, showing Jacelyn the sights.

“There is so much I want to do and see, like the Tower and Hatchard’s bookstore and the Pantheon Bazaar and—”

“Hold, my dear. Enough for one day! I promised your aunt to have you returned in time for tea. We have months to do the town, unless you were planning on becoming a couch-kitten, sitting at home looking pretty, entertaining all the beaux.”

Miss Trevaine just gurgled delightedly.

Fashionable London was like a sharp-beaked dowager in a purple turban: nosey. Miss Trevaine’s appearance in Hyde Park that afternoon in Claibourne’s curricle made the
ton
twitch with curiosity.

“There’s that girl Claibourne escorted to the shops. Sophrina Rivington saw them at Bertin’s. Said she bought out the place.”

“They say it’s a match; she’d better be rich.”

“But who
is
she?”

Or, “Merrill’s been driving around all day with that chit. Never known him to be so obvious before. Milbrooke told me they were laughing together at Gunther’s. Handsome girl, but who is she?”

Speculation continued whenever two riders stopped for conversation, and in nearly every carriage. In one satin-lined brougham, however, a little girl, dressed as a precious miniature of her mother, was heard to ask: “Mama, why may that lady have her dog in the carriage and I cannot take Tippy?”

London also had a long memory. When Claibourne’s curricle pulled up next to Amabel Parkhurst’s, enough people recalled she was expecting her niece; others could identify Lady Parkhurst’s black-clad companion as Claibourne’s great-aunt, so they made the same deduction. Either way, the question now was: “Wasn’t that the chit with the monkey?”

*

If the
belle monde
had caught a glimpse of Miss Trevaine in the afternoon, that night they were to get an eyeful. Since Jacelyn wasn’t officially Out, she couldn’t attend large parties until her presentation at court, a formal come-out ball or, at the very least, an appearance at Almack’s. Of course, without the last, she’d still not receive many invitations. In any event, Lady Parkhurst had chosen the Royal Opera House for the evening’s entertainment, and had invited some young people to share their box.

“How kind of you, Aunt Amabel. What is the programme?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. No one goes to listen, at any rate.”

“Oh. And who else is coming?”

“Claibourne of course, though his aunt would rather stay home, and his friend Ponsonby, and Ponsonby’s sister. She’s all the crack, you know. You can take some pointers from how she goes on.”

“But Aunt Amabel, I don’t like Priscilla Ponsonby.”

“What’s that to the point? It will do you good to be seen with her.”

“Is Priscilla’s mother coming too?”

“Yes, so see that you do nothing exceptional. She has agreed to forget the Treverly incident, for my sake.”

*

“Has the blue dress been delivered, Pinkie? Yes, it should be perfect for this evening….” The azure was not a hide-in-the-woodwork colour, even if the gown’s low cut didn’t cry for attention. It had silver ribbons at the high waist, and Pinkie threaded a silver ribbon through the curls she’d arranged atop Jacelyn’s head, and wove another into the one long ringlet allowed to trail down across Jacelyn’s shoulder. Nothing exceptional, indeed.

“Better take a shawl, ma’am, in case it gets chilly,” the maid advised, draping a Norwich silk with silver fringe around Jacey’s bare shoulders.

Contrarily, the theatre box grew more chilly after she removed the shawl. Lady Parkhurst’s mouth hung open like a flounder on ice, while Lady Ponsonby sniffed her frigid disdain. Priscilla turned her back entirely, to survey the rest of the audience. It was Arthur, though, who thought he’d give Miss Trevaine a set-down by staring at her exposed parts through his monocle. She cured him of that with one raised eyebrow so much in Claibourne’s manner that the earl applauded.

“How long have you been practicing, brat?” he asked, smiling and very casually placing his arm across the back of her seat where his hand could just touch the top of her neck. If that didn’t put the seal of approval—and possession—on her, nothing would. Lady Parkhurst started chattering to Priscilla and her mother, while Leigh directed Arthur to point out the notables to Jacelyn. Lord Parkhurst, who arrived late with his young aide, Mr. Carter Sprague, kissed his wife’s hand absently, but told Jacelyn, twice, that she looked fine as fivepence. Ignoring the other ladies, he and Mr. Sprague took the rearmost seats and began discussing the day’s Parliamentary debates.

A soprano seemed intent on shattering the prisms of the huge crystal chandelier with her piercing notes, yet no one except Jacelyn gave her a moment’s notice. Jacey gave up trying to decipher the warbled Italian over the din in the boxes, and gave in to enjoying the spectacle. All the women were in their finest, many trying to fit much larger girths into much less material than made up her own gown, to Miss Trevaine’s satisfaction. What they lacked in fabric, they made up in jewels, rivalling the same chandelier for glitter. The men were only slightly less gaudy, with their diamond stickpins and striped waistcoats. Many, like Claibourne, wore the dark evening shades decreed by Brummel, their intricately tied white neckcloths more gleaming by contrast. The Tulips in the pits were another matter. Wearing every hue imaginable, every ring or ruffle they could manage, they made a kaleidoscope of colour, especially since they never sat still. Despite the ongoing performance, the fops and bucks in the pit constantly moved around, calling to friends, teasing the orange girls, making arrangements with the women who plied their trade at other entertainment, and ogling the ladies in the boxes. Jacelyn drew her fair share of their attention, even laughing back when one of the blades bowed in her direction, blowing kisses.

Intermission brought even more noise and movement, as though the audience needed a break from their concentration. Leigh and Arthur left to fetch lemonade, and the older women joined Lord Parkhurst for a brief turn about the corridors. Priscilla preened. She smoothed her cornsilk curls and adjusted the folds of her shell-pink skirts, ignored the hungry-pup gaze of Mr. Sprague, and smirked at Jacelyn. Now I’ll show you, Miss Nobody, her expression clearly read, what it means to be an Incomparable.