Perfecting Fiona (7 page)

‘I feel like giving her a good thrashing,’ grumbled Amy.

‘As you recall, she has been thrashed before, to no avail,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘Tunbridge Wells it is. Now which of you will come with me?’

Effy looked at Amy, and Amy looked at Effy. Both longed to be the one. But Effy was afraid of the countryside. She hated trees and bushes, cows and fields with a passion. Hyde Park was the nearest to grass and trees that she was prepared to go. Besides, what had she to fear from Amy’s being alone with Mr Haddon? Poor Amy, with her flat chest and great feet.

‘I feel Amy should go,’ she said meekly. ‘She is such an Amazon, and poor delicate little me would find the journey too, too fatiguing.’

‘Then that’s settled,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘Miss Amy, I feel we should leave tomorrow. There is no time to be lost.’

Walking about their grove of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese
They’d both be smashed to shivers
.

Despite the butler’s secrecy, the staff at Holles Street soon found out from Baxter that the Tribbles had no intention of dismissing them, and so they settled down to work like ordinary London servants and less like frightened slaves.

The Tribbles, like many of their kind, did not concern themselves with the lives of their servants. Strangely enough, unpopular employers were those who did. Servants left under the control of a butler, provided the butler was a reasonable man, could organize their lives free from interference and even occasionally gain some time off.

Harris was not a typical London butler in that he was small and fussy instead of being large and fat. He did his job competently, but he had a soft heart for the women servants, particularly for a certain pretty chambermaid called Bertha.

Not that Bertha would generally be accounted pretty for she had red hair, and since the prejudice against the Scots still ran deep, red hair was considered something of a defect, like having a hump or a squint. But Bertha had a neat figure and a roguish eye. Perhaps what had drawn her to the now ex-second footman, Frank, was that his sandy hair was classed in the same low category as red.

Frank knew that when the mistresses were gone from home, the lower servants were often allowed to emerge from the basement and take the air at the top of the area steps.

By assiduously watching the house, he was fortunate enough to see Bertha’s jaunty cap and red curls emerging from the lower depths two days after Amy and Mr Haddon had departed for Tunbridge Wells.

Mr Callaghan had lent his new footman a domino and mask for his nightly spying activities. Ridottos were still popular, and so it was not an uncommon sight to see a masked man.

But when the muffled and masked figure of Frank crept up on her, Bertha let out a squeak of alarm.

‘Shhh! It’s me, Frank,’ whispered the footman.

‘Oh, Mr Frank. You did give me a turn,’ gasped Bertha. ‘Whatever happened to you?’

‘I left before they could shove me off,’ said Frank with a swagger. ‘Walk a little with me, Bertha.’

Bertha glanced nervously down the stairs. Through the barred and lighted window of the servants’ hall, she could see Harris decanting port. That would take up all his attention for a bit.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But just a little way. You was wicked, Mr Frank, to get us all so worked up. They’re going to pay our wages, and they forgave us like the ladies they are.’

‘I could tell you a thing or two,’ said Frank darkly. ‘I’m working for a gentleman in Jermyn Street what was cheated out of his inheritance by them Tribbles.’

‘Never!’

‘Fact!’ Frank began to tell a highly false and dramatic story of a forged will and multiple intrigues, finishing up with the final whopper that his gentleman suspected the Tribbles had poisoned their aunt.

Betha turned white. ‘I’m going back to my mum in Shoreditch,’ she gasped. ‘I’m never going to stay in a house with murderers!’

Frank cursed under his breath. He needed Bertha to stay where she was. ‘They’ll never touch you,’ he scoffed. ‘But my master is sweet on that Miss Macleod and fears for her. Why don’t you find out when she goes out walking and leave a little note in that crack between the first and second steps?’ This was where they had left little messages for each other in the past.

Bertha shivered and protested until he kissed her cheek and whispered that his master had promised him an independence should his, Frank’s help amount to anything, and then Frank would be free to marry his Bertha.

There is nothing like a proposal of marriage to banish fear. Bertha’s cheeks turned back to their usual healthy pink and her eyes glowed.

The very next day, Frank prised a slip of paper out of the crack at the top of the area steps. ‘Wokking in Park at 2’, it said.

Triumphantly he returned to his master. But when Mr Callaghan presented himself in the Park at two o’clock, it was to find Miss Macleod followed by that dragon, Baxter, who had hated him so passionately when she had been lady’s maid to the Tribbles’ late aunt.

There was nothing for it but to beat a retreat. He cursed Frank roundly, blaming him for not having warned him about Baxter. Frank replied sulkily that he had not known where Baxter had been previously employed. He was ordered to return to Holles Street that night and try to get Bertha to do something to Baxter so as to put her out of commission.

Frank waited and waited, but there was no sign of Bertha. Effy, who had been out at the theatre, returned, and one by one the candles in the tall house were snuffed out. Frank was about to turn away when one of the little windows in the attic opened and Bertha leaned out.

She saw the muffled figure in the square waving to her and hesitated only a moment. She knew it was Frank, but she shared the room with three other maids and could not call out. She muttered an excuse that she was going out to the privy in the back garden, and ignoring the surprised remarks of the other maids to the effect that there was a perfectly good chamber-pot in the room, she pulled an old cloak over her night gown and ran down the stairs.

Some of Frank’s drunken preaching of the equality of Englishmen and women had stayed buried in Bertha’s breast to give her courage. She knew she was defying Harris’s orders, but Harris to a chambermaid
was
a member of the higher class and disobedience was a way of striking back. There were many Britishers, including Lord Byron and a great section of the Whig party, who admired Napoleon and cheered French victories. This heady atmosphere of liberty, equality, and freedom had infected even the London servants to a certain extent, which was why Frank’s preaching had fallen on such fertile ground. Feeling as if she were storming the Bastille, Bertha unlocked the area door and crept up the stairs.

Frank’s hissed instructions were quite simple. Bertha was to put some laudanum in Baxter’s tea so that another maid or the footman would be sent with Miss Macleod when she went to the Park.

Now truly carried away by all the romance and secrecy, Bertha promised.

But it was another matter in the clear light of the following morning. Baxter was such a dragon that Bertha knew she could not possibly do it, even though it was one of her duties to take Baxter up her morning cup of tea.

Feeling like a very ordinary London chambermaid and not at all like a heroine of the revolution, Bertha pushed open the door of Baxter’s bedchamber and went in and deposited the cup of tea, innocent of anything except tea-leaves, on the table beside Baxter’s bed.

A dismal cough greeted her ears as Baxter came awake. Bertha turned round. Baxter’s nose was red and her eyes were streaming. ‘Got a code,’ groaned Baxter.

Bertha immediately saw the chance of pleasing Frank while not harming Baxter. ‘Then you oughts to stay in bed,’ said Bertha.

‘Miss wants to go walking in the Bark,’ said Baxter through her nose.

‘Oh, you shouldn’t do that,’ cried Bertha. ‘You could die of an inflammation!’

The chambermaid tripped off to Fiona’s room and scratched at the door and went in. Fiona was awake and reading a morning newspaper. Bertha bobbed a curtsy and said breathlessly, ‘You must speak to Miss Baxter, miss. She has a terrible cold and ought to stay in bed. But she says as how she has to go to the Park.’

Fiona climbed out of bed and pulled on a wrapper. ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Henry, the footman, will do just as well.’

And so it was that Mr Callaghan had the pleasure of seeing Fiona walking across the grass of Hyde Park accompanied only by a footman. He was so pleased that he even contemplated paying Frank some wages.

He waited until Fiona was about to walk past him and bowed low. Fiona inclined her head and walked on. Mr Callaghan skipped in front of her and bowed again. Again, Fiona nodded. Mr Callaghan darted off round a stand of trees to appear in front of her once more. Fiona stopped. ‘You are making yourself appear ridiculous, sir,’ she said calmly. ‘Pray do stop running about the Park like a March hare.’

Mr Callaghan flushed. He was wearing his newest bottle-green coat and his swansdown waistcoat. Surely the combination of both was enough to melt a heart of stone.

‘I have seen you before,’ went on Fiona, scrutinizing this Pink of the
ton
with uncomfortably shrewd eyes. ‘You seem to spend a great deal of your time in Holles Street.’

‘I confess it, madam. I confess. I watch and wait for even the slightest glimpse of you.’

‘Are you so deeply in debt?’ asked Fiona with interest. Mr Callaghan looked at her in a baffled way. But Fiona’s train of thought was quite simple. Mr Callaghan, she had quickly decided, spent a fortune on showy clothes. He wanted to know her; he probably wanted to marry her, having heard she was an heiress, and so he was now chasing her in the Park.

‘I may as well add that I am never going to marry anyone,’ said Fiona.

‘I could melt your heart,’ cried Mr Callaghan. He clutched his heart and sank to one knee on the path in front of her.

‘Shall I clear it away, miss?’ asked Henry, surveying Mr Callaghan with dislike.

‘I do hope that will not be necessary,’ said Fiona. ‘Do rise, sir, and stop making a cake of yourself.’

‘Can I be of assistance, Miss Macleod?’

Fiona turned to face Lord Peter Havard, who was walking quickly towards her.

Mr Callaghan leaped to his feet, his face aflame. ‘Dear me, Callaghan,’ drawled Lord Peter. He took out his quizzing-glass and walked around the embarrassed fribble, scrutinizing his clothes. Then he gave a shudder. ‘I can think of nothing worse, Miss Macleod,’ he said, ‘than having such clothes thrust under one’s nose on a sunny day.

‘Are you insulting me?’ cried Mr Callaghan.

‘My dear chap,’ said Lord Peter, ‘I am simply making an observation. Don’t kill me. Kill your tailor.’

Fiona to Lord Peter’s disgust, suddenly gave Mr Callaghan a warm smile. ‘I suggest, sir,’ she said, ‘that you ask my chaperones for permission to call. Good day to you.

Mr Callaghan puffed out his buckram-wadded chest and flashed a smile of triumph at Lord Peter. ‘Thank you, Miss Macleod,’ he said. ‘I am honoured.’

Fiona walked ahead, and Lord Peter fell into step beside her. Mr Callaghan quitted the field of battle, feeling he had achieved a great deal for one day.

‘Now why did you encourage the attentions of that creature?’ demanded Lord Peter.

‘I was sorry for him,’ said Fiona. ‘There I was, disliking him immensely and quite able with Henry’s help to get shot of him, when you must needs step in and insult the poor little man, who has neither the physique nor the bottom to challenge you to a duel – a fact of which you were well aware. I fear you are a bully, Lord Peter.’

‘
I
thought I was being a knight errant,’ he said. ‘The next time I see you in distress, I shall turn the other way.’

‘Do that,’ said Fiona. ‘What are you doing in the Park, unmounted, and at this unfashionable hour? It is two o’clock, you know, not five o’clock.’

‘I like walking,’ said Lord Peter, ‘and I am not bound by the dictates of fashion.’

‘Perhaps. Yet why do you and the other gentlemen so slavishly follow the fashion set by Mr Brummell? Gone are the days of silks and laces. Now you are all like wasps or crows.

‘May I point out, Miss Macleod, that a lady never insults a man’s dress.’

‘Which you just did. Poor Mr Callaghan. He has a certain charm. Like a whipped and overclipped and scented poodle.’

Fiona was wearing violet. Her eyes were violet too, he noticed despite his fury. He turned to walk away, and yet something made him turn back and continue to walk beside her. He remembered the party at the opera. What an orgy of champagne and breasts and thighs and dissipation! What would Miss Macleod think of him if she knew of his licentious behaviour?

‘No,’ said Fiona, seemingly apropos of nothing, ‘I do not approve of rakes.’

‘Why?’ he demanded, although he had received a sharp shock and wondered whether she was a mind-reader.

‘Well, it
sounds
all right,’ said Fiona. ‘You know, dashing and dangerous. Understandable and forgivable in a very young man, but in an older man, say in his thirties, rather sad and immature.’