Finessing Clarissa (2 page)

‘Something is troubling you,’ said Mr Haddon to Amy. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s this girl, Clarissa,’ said Amy, shifting restlessly. ‘I haven’t said anything to Effy because she would fuss so and then take to her bed. But I cannot help feeling there must be something really awful wrong with her. I mean, what kind of parents would send their daughter here, after there has been murder done in this house, if they were not absolutely desperate?’

‘Now, Miss Amy, do not vex yourself. You know what the aristocracy is like. They turn their children over to the care of nurses and governesses from the day they are born and have little to do with them after that. You will probably find she is plain and did not take at the Bath assemblies and so has been sent to you.’

‘The Viscount Clarendon is very rich,’ said Amy. ‘That means the girl’s got a large dowry. When in this day and age did a girl with a large dowry have to have anything in the way of looks?’

‘Well, perhaps she is a romantic and reads too many novels and falls in love with quite unsuitable beaux. That is easily corrected. You will find it is something manageable.’

‘Trouble’s coming to this house,’ said Amy. ‘I can feel it. When that Berkeley creature was murdered . . .’

‘He was not murdered,’ said Mr Haddon gently. ‘He was killed by your brave dressmaker in order to save Delilah. Quite another thing.’

‘Well, death. Anyway, I feel disaster is upon us.’

‘The east wind is all that is upon us,’ said Mr Haddon, ‘and that always causes disorders of the spleen. Rally, Miss Amy. Rally!’

Amy grinned. ‘You may have the right of it. I’ve been blue-devilled lately.’

‘When does the Honourable Clarissa arrive?’

‘This evening sometime, or so her parents said when they last wrote. They are not coming with her. She’s been sent off with only her maid for company. Seems odd.’

‘It is of no use worrying,’ said Mr Haddon comfortably. ‘We shall know what she is like soon enough.’

‘Perhaps you might like to stay until she arrives?’ asked Amy.

Mr Haddon had arranged to meet an old friend from India that evening at his club. But he took a look at Amy’s anxious face, and said, ‘Yes, of course I shall stay. I have a letter to send to a friend cancelling an engagement and then I shall be free.’

‘If you would really rather go . . .’

‘No, no, Miss Amy. I, too, am anxious to find out what Clarissa is like.’

Effy on her return was delighted to hear Mr Haddon had elected to stay. She rushed off again to order a special dinner – just as if, thought Amy sourly, she is in the way of arranging the meals when she knows it is I who manages the household when there isn’t a man around to impress!

Dinner was held back an hour in the hope that Clarissa might arrive. They finally sat down, each one beginning to feel anxious. What was keeping the girl?

The new Earl of Greystone was a much-envied man. He had a stately home near Marlborough and fertile, rolling acres of land.

But the earl considered himself most unfortunate. He had returned from the wars in time for his father’s funeral to find not only his stepmother, Angela, but her children, Bella, eighteen, Tom, seventeen, and Peregrine, aged eight, had been left to his care. He himself had had a strict and harsh upbringing, but his father, the late earl, had doted on his second wife and had let her spoil their children. The dowager countess, Angela, was, he sometimes felt, even more spoilt than her detestable offspring. She had been a vulgar woman when his father had married her and was now an extremely vulgar widow, given to throwing scenes when she did not get her own way.

He had suggested that a season in Bath would be sufficient for Bella, but Angela had wept and sobbed until she had made him promise to open up the town house for the London Season and present Bella there.

The earl was thirty-two, but looked older. His black hair was streaked at the temples with lines of silver. His harsh, strong face had a brooding look and his pale-blue eyes were like winter ice. He was well over six feet tall. Angela told everyone who would listen that he was a tyrant and quite a few believed her and said that as the Earl of Greystone looked like Satan, then it must follow that he behaved as devilishly as his stepmother claimed.

He had had a flaming row with Tom that very day. His half-brother had demanded money to buy a new hunter. The earl had pointed out that the young man already had a fine hunter and Tom had pouted and claimed that a horse which Gully Banks, in Marlborough, had on offer, was as fine a beast as could be found going for a song outside Tattersall’s. The ‘song’ turned out to be eight hundred pounds. The earl had said calmly he knew Gully Banks to be a villain. Tom had howled that the earl held the purse-strings so tight, it was a wonder they even had anything to eat. The result was Tom had been ordered to his room and told to stay there until further notice.

Dinner was a dismal meal. Angela liked country hours and so dinner was served at four. She said that poor Tom was so wretched he would do himself a mischief and then proceeded to sob noisily throughout the meal. Then young Peregrine enlivened the scene by letting off a firework in the dining room that blasted a hole in the plaster of the ceiling. Bella shrieked with laughter but Angela simply shrieked and shrieked as the earl cuffed Peregrine and sent
him
to his room.

The earl threw down his napkin and made his escape. He decided to look in on Tom and make sure that young man was not up to any mischief.

Tom’s room was empty. A copy of a book entitled
Famous Highwaymen
lay face down on the floor, along with little bits of black velvet and a pair of scissors. The earl’s lips tightened. He went straight to the gunroom, where his worst fears were resolved. A long box that had held two duelling pistols lay open and empty on the table in the middle of the gun room.

He changed out of the evening dress which he always wore for dinner into his riding clothes, called for his horse, and set out into the night to rescue this infuriating half-brother who had obviously decided to turn highwayman.

The Honourable Clarissa Vevian was beginning to enjoy herself. The day had been quite dreadful, with Mama holding back the coach because Clarissa’s new wardrobe was not ready and then deciding that Clarissa should spend two nights at posting-houses on the road. She would be late arriving in London, one whole day late, but the viscountess was sure the Tribbles would understand.

As soon as the coach rolled out of Bath, Clarissa took out a small damp face cloth that she had wrapped in oilskin and vigorously scrubbed every bit of white lead paint from her face and then threw the cloth out of the window.

‘Miss Clarissa,’ admonished her maid, Hubbard, sternly, ‘you know my lady does not like you to go out in the world unpainted.’

‘Well, Mama isn’t here to see it,’ said Clarissa cheerfully. And the fact that Mama would not be around to see anything for quite some time sent her spirits soaring. Clarissa adored her dainty mother, but Lady Clarendon crushed Clarissa’s spirits more than a less affectionate parent might have done. Lady Clarendon tried so hard to beautify her daughter, unfortunately choosing for her fashions that would have looked splendid on her own trim figure, but made her giantess of a daughter appear even more gauche. It was very lowering to the spirits, reflected Clarissa, to have a mother who was always so sadly disappointed in one. Now the maid, Hubbard, was fat and cross and dumpy and made Clarissa feel quite pretty in comparison. Of course these Tribbles might turn out to be fearfully elegant and might make her feel like a guy, but for the moment Clarissa was determined to enjoy what little liberty she had.

Her feet hurt, for Lady Clarendon had bought her daughter shoes too small for her in an attempt to make her large feet look smaller. Clarissa bent down and untied the ribbons and eased her feet out of them with a sigh and luxuriously wiggled her toes. Then she took a flat case out of her reticule, extracted a cheroot and a tinder-box and proceeded to try to light it.

‘Miss Clarissa,’ exclaimed Hubbard, ‘don’t you dare.’

‘Do be quiet, Hubbard, I’ve always wanted to try one.’

Clarissa succeeded in lighting the cheroot. She drew in a lungful of smoke and then fell about the carriage coughing and gasping.

The carriage lurched to a halt.

‘Stand and deliver!’ called a voice from outside.

‘Highwaymen!’ screamed Hubbard. ‘We’ll be killed dead.’

‘It can’t be highwaymen. Not on this road,’ said Clarissa.

Still holding the smouldering cheroot, she tugged at the strap and let down the glass and stuck her head out. It was a clear, starry night. There was a masked figure on top of a black horse, waving a pistol in a threatening way.

‘Step down from that carriage,’ called the highwayman, ‘and bring your jewels and money with you or I shall shoot your coachman.’

‘Oh, very well,’ grumbled Clarissa. ‘Find the jewel box, Hubbard. If we give this fellow what he wants, he may ride off and leave us unharmed.’

But the fat maid was rolling on the carriage floor, sobbing and screaming. Clarissa bent down and pulled the jewel box out from under the seat and, putting it under one arm but still holding the forgotten cheroot in her free hand, she stepped down from the carriage. The highwayman edged his horse close to her. ‘Hand it over,’ he growled.

Clarissa took a step forward, but she was in her stockinged feet, and one foot came down on a sharp piece of flint. She let out a yell and dropped the box and stumbled forward, the lighted end of her cheroot brushing against the horse’s flanks. The horse reared up and threw the highwayman onto the road. He fell with a crash and lay still.

‘You are not very good protection, are you?’ said Clarissa to the two outriders, two grooms, and coachman. ‘Bring me a lantern until I get a look at him.’

She tossed her cheroot into the carriage. The maid had tumbled out onto the road, where she was now sitting, sobbing dismally.

One of the grooms brought a lantern and Clarissa took it and bent over the still figure on the road. She knelt down and removed the black velvet mask.

‘Why, ’tis only a boy!’ she cried. She loosened his cravat. Tom had only been winded but thought it better to feign unconsciousness. ‘I need water to bathe his temples,’ said Clarissa. She looked at the side of the road and caught a faint gleam. She took out a large serviceable handkerchief and went over to the ditch, soaked the handkerchief and then placed it on Tom’s brow. The ‘highwayman’ sat up with a roar. ‘Eugh!’ he cried. ‘What a smell!’ Clarissa sniffed her fingers and said in dismay, ‘It must have been an open sewer. I am so sorry. For heaven’s sake, Hubbard, stop wailing and get me the bottle of drinking water. Why did I forget that?’

‘No, no,’ said Tom. ‘Don’t do anything more to me, I beg. I am frightfully sorry. A joke, ma’am.’

‘In poor taste,’ said Clarissa severely.

The grooms, coachman, and outriders had gathered around Clarissa and the fallen Tom in a circle. Hubbard pushed her way through them and looked down at Tom. In the light of the lantern, she saw a very young man with a mop of fair curls and a face that might have been handsome had it not been smeared with Clarissa’s offering from the sewer.

‘Pooh! What a stink,’ said Clarissa. ‘Fetch me the cologne, Hubbard.’

Clarissa’s cheroot, which she had tossed into the carriage, had fallen onto the open pages of a book which she had been reading, and it had proceeded to burn merrily while she was administering to Tom. The flames had travelled to the maid’s cane basket and taken greedy hold.

As Hubbard approached the carriage, a long tongue of flame shot out of the window. ‘Fire!’ she screamed.

Swearing horribly, the coachman and grooms ran to unhitch the plunging and frightened horses and lead them to safety. Tom scrambled to his feet. His own horse had run off. But before he got a few yards down the road, a ball whizzed over his head. He stood stock-still, shaking with fright. Clarissa had seized his fallen pistol and had fired over his retreating figure.

He thought she looked like a she-devil when he slowly turned around with his hands raised and saw her walking towards him, the smoking pistol in her hand and the red glare of the burning carriage behind her.

He threw back his head and screamed, ‘Help. Oh, help me!’

And then Clarissa heard the urgent thud of hooves coming along the road towards them at a great rate. ‘Your accomplice, no doubt,’ she said bitterly.

The Earl of Greystone rode towards that incredible scene. A carriage was burning brightly and in its lurid flames he saw his half-brother cringing before a tall female who was standing in her stockinged feet and holding a pistol.

He came to a halt and dismounted. ‘Are you all right, Tom?’ he asked.

‘Keep her away from me,’ cried Tom, and burst into tears.

The earl faced Clarissa. ‘What has been going on, ma’am?’

Clarissa forgot to stoop. After all, she did not need to when faced with such a giant as this. ‘This fellow held up my coach,’ she said.

‘Tom, stop blubbing,’ snapped the earl. He turned back to Clarissa. ‘And did he also set your coach on fire?’

‘No, sir,’ said Clarissa. ‘I did that. It was the cheroot I was smoking, don’t you see?’

‘Take me home, Crispin,’ wailed Tom, clutching at the earl’s sleeve. The earl shook himself free. ‘Faugh! What is that sickening smell?’

‘I was trying to bathe his forehead,’ said Clarissa patiently. ‘You see, he ordered me down from the coach and asked for my jewels, and I was going to give them to him, you know, but I forgot about the cheroot and it burned his horse’s side and his horse threw him and I soaked my handkerchief in that ditch over there and put it to his forehead, but that ditch, sir, is an open sewer. Hence the smell. I gather you are not highwaymen?’

‘No, ma’am, I am Greystone. And you . . . ?’

‘Miss Vevian, Clarissa Vevian.’

‘Miss Vevian, what can I say? This is dreadful. I pray you, leave this young whipper-snapper to me and don’t turn him over to the authorities. I will repair any damage to your property and give you a sum of money to cover your losses.’