Refining Felicity (4 page)

‘The wearing of drawers is a masculine fashion.’

‘Not any more, it ain’t,’ said Amy. ‘Besides, you’ll freeze to death.’

‘Perhaps we should consult my dear Mr Haddon,’ ventured Effy.

‘
Our
dear Mr Haddon,’ said Amy furiously. ‘No time. Do stop maundering and mopping and mowing because you’re frightened a tree will up and rape you.’

‘Amy!’

‘Get along, do,’ said Amy, and marched off to book a post-chaise, determined to charge the countess for the cost of it should their services be refused.

* * *

Unaware that fate in the shape of the Tribble sisters was bearing down on her, Felicity rode out on a still November morning two weeks after the ball. It was unusually mild for the time of year. The air was full of the smell of wood-smoke and the winy tang of rotten leaves. She was alone. Her father had never insisted that a groom should accompany her, and although the earl had left, Felicity saw no reason to change the freedom of her ways. Her mother had been unusually quiet and abstracted and had not even chided her for her behaviour at the ball.

But in the past few days, Felicity had begun to wonder what the future held for her. With her adored father gone, the desire to please him by drinking, roistering, shooting, and hunting had left her. She preferred to be alone. It had been raining for days and the ground was heavy and soggy. The trunks of the tall trees glittered with green mould, and only a few red and yellow leaves still clung to their branches.

Her mare, Titbit, clopped along the country lanes, as content as her mistress to wander slowly and aimlessly. The trees which had arched overhead gave way to brown fields bordered by thorn hedges and then to open heathland.

At the top of a rise was a man on a horse. Felicity recognized the Marquess of Ravenswood. He was dressed in a pink hunting coat, leather breeches, and boots with mahogany tops. He wore an old-fashioned three-cornered hat on his head.

Felicity raised her riding crop in salute. He touched his hat, and then, spurring his horse, set off away from her as fast as he could.

‘Damn him,’ muttered Felicity. ‘If he prefers little sugarplums like Miss Betty Andrews, he is not the man for me.’ But a nasty little voice seemed to be trying to tell her that the taste of all gentlemen was for fluffy little blondes. At the ball, her cronies of the hunting field had treated her like another man, and a few had even forgotten themselves enough to confide in her their hopeless passion for Miss This or Miss That.

The marquess had ridden off, more because he wanted to be alone than because he particularly wanted to avoid the company of Lady Felicity Vane. He had no strong feelings about the girl. He had a certain warm sympathy for the plight of her mother being cursed with such a wayward daughter, and a contempt for girls who behaved like men. He wanted to think about Miss Betty Andrews and to wonder again whether she would make a suitable wife.

The fact that she did not have much in her brain-box did not worry him greatly. He wanted an attractive, compliant wife and several sons and daughters. Miss Andrews had a round bottom and generous hips. She would probably breed well. The marquess might have viewed his intended less like a farmer looking over a cow at market had he ever been in love, but he had not. Not even in his adolescence had anything other than lust troubled his life. He regarded books and poems about romantic love as a form of necessary sophistication, to give a polite varnish to baser feelings.

The lowing of cattle, mixed with the shrill sounds of someone screaming, interrupted his reverie. He rode to the top of a small hill which overlooked the Lewes Road and looked down.

A herd of cows was ambling slowly past a dusty post-chaise. In the chaise was a little lady, screaming like a banshee through the open window, while a tall companion tried to soothe her. The cowherd was grinning and deliberately not trying to make the herd move any faster.

The marquess rode down to the road, dismounted, tethered his horse and began to wave his hat to shoo the cows into a faster pace. The cowherd, recognizing the marquess, moved the herd along as well, and soon the post-chaise was left on the clear road.

The marquess went up to the carriage on the tall woman’s side and made a low bow. She jerked down the glass.

‘Thank you,’ she said gruffly. ‘That pox of a yokel would have kept us here all day and my sister is in hysterics. Oh, do shut up, Effy. The bloody things have gone and here is a Sir Galahad, come to rescue you.’

The sobbing stopped and a pretty lady with white hair appeared beside the tall one.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘You are so brave.’

The marquess looked amused. ‘I did not rescue you from footpads, ma’am. Merely from a herd of cows. I am Ravenswood.’

‘And I am Miss Amy Tribble,’ said the tall woman, ‘and this here is my sister, Effy Tribble.’

‘Miss Effy,’ said the other faintly. ‘You must forgive my sister, my lord. Her speech is very plain.’ Effy knew the names of all the peerage.

‘Can you give our silly Jehu the direction of the nearest inn?’ asked Amy. ‘We are bound for the Baronsheaths but do not want to arrive in our dirt.’

‘My home is quite near,’ said the marquess. ‘If you would care to follow me, I would be glad to entertain you and send a man over to Greenboys with the intelligence of your arrival.’

‘So kind,’ said Effy, batting her lamp-blackened eyelashes at him. The marquess fought down an unmanly desire to giggle. How old were these ladies? Fifty or so, surely. And yet the white-haired one was flirting outrageously.

He told the driver of the post-chaise to follow him, remounted, and set off in the direction of his home, Ansley Court.

Soon the Tribble sisters found themselves ushered into a bedchamber where they could wash and change before travelling on to Greenboys.

As soon as they were alone, Amy rounded on Effy. ‘How could you be so wanton?’ she cried. ‘Flirting and ogling like a very strumpet. You are old enough to be his mother.’

‘He is in his thirties,’ said Effy defiantly.

‘Still too young for you.’

Effy began to cry. Amy looked at her impatiently and then her face softened. She had bullied and bullied to get Effy down into the dreaded country. Enough was enough. ‘I am truly sorry,’ said Amy, hugging her sobbing sister, ‘but you must see how important Ravenswood is to our plans.’

Effy dried her eyes. ‘No, I don’t see,’ she said huffily.

‘He is unmarried,’ said Amy, ‘and our job is to find a suitor for this Lady Felicity. Let us sound him out and find out if he has any tender feelings for the girl.’

Changed and washed, the Tribbles were soon sitting in the library in front of the fire, being refreshed with ratafia and macaroon biscuits.

‘We are looking forward to meeting Lady Felicity,’ said Amy. ‘A charming girl, I believe.’

The marquess said nothing.

‘I said she is a charming girl,’ said Amy very loudly.

The marquess winced. ‘I am not deaf, Miss Amy.’

‘Well, my lord?’

‘Well, what?’ he demanded impatiently.

Amy cleared her throat and tried again. ‘What is your opinion of Lady Felicity?’

‘I thought I was making it plain I did not want to voice an opinion.’

‘Why?’ demanded Amy with the stubbornness of a child.

‘Do not go on so, dear sister,’ interrupted Effy. ‘We are understandably anxious to know as much as possible about this job before—’

She broke off in confusion as Amy glared at her.

‘Job?’ The marquess looked surprised. ‘Are you joint governesses or something of that nature?’

The look of frozen hauteur on Effy’s face made him colour slightly.

‘My lord, I would have you know we are chaperones extraordinary,’ said Effy. ‘We could not possibly be governesses. We are the Wiltshire Tribbles. We are
bon ton
. Our job is to bring Lady Felicity out.’

‘Is Lady Baronsheath unwell?’ asked the marquess.

‘No, my lord,’ said Effy stiffly. She had still not forgiven him for thinking they might be governesses. ‘Her ladyship is in need of our special services.’

‘Those being?’

‘We make the best of the worst,’ said Amy.

‘What an exhausting profession,’ said the marquess, thinking of Felicity.

‘This is our first job,’ said Amy bluntly, ‘and we need all the help we can get.’

The marquess thought ruefully of all the stories he had heard about Lady Felicity since he had returned from abroad. His neighbours had told him that she had been disgracefully behaved from the time she could first walk and had routed several nurses and governesses.

‘I have some business which takes me to Town,’ he said slowly. He had taken a liking to these two odd sisters. He noticed the faded and shabby grandeur of their old-fashioned clothes. Effy’s one modern gown, the transparent muslin, had been hidden before departure by Amy. ‘Perhaps if you can send me word when you intend to return, I could escort you. I have a very comfortable travelling carriage.’

Effy leaned forward and rapped him playfully on the knuckles with her fan. ‘We are most grateful to you, my lord,’ she said. ‘The terrors of the countryside would appear as nothing in your company.’

‘What terrors, Miss Effy?’

Effy shuddered. ‘Oh, fields and cows and bulls and birds and trees and all that sort of thing. So undisciplined! So threatening! There is just too much of it.’

‘But what of London with its footpads and badly lit streets and almost constant smell of sewage?’ asked the marquess.

Effy turned pink and frowned. The marquess, she thought, was almost as distressingly plain-spoken as her sister. Talking to a gently bred lady about sewage. Fie!

‘London is the centre of elegance and wit,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘Perhaps the difficulty with Lady Felicity – if there is any difficulty – is that the poor girl has been too long in unrefined surroundings. The country is a monstrous coarsening sort of place.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the marquess. ‘And yet it does not seem to have had a destructive effect on the manners of any of our other local belles. In truth, Lady Felicity is a spoilt brat.’

‘I am sure you are overharsh,’ said Amy hopefully.

‘We shall see. Now, if you are ready, ladies, we shall be on our way.’

Felicity had been told of her mother’s plans for her that morning. She had been highly amused. The Tribble sisters would soon be routed just like that long line of governesses and nurses. She was, however, prepared to offer them a courteous welcome until she made up her mind how best to be shot of them.

But the Tribbles, having paid off their post-chaise, arrived in the Marquess of Ravenswood’s carriage. The marquess himself courteously helped them to alight before driving off. All this, Felicity saw from her bedroom window.

Felicity smarted with humiliation. That
he
of all people should know her mother considered her so unruly that she had sent for help made her burn with rage.

Lady Baronsheath received the Tribbles in her drawing room. She was taken aback by their appearance. Miss Effy was all that was genteel, but the swansdown trim of her pelisse was yellowish and ragged and there was a neat darn in one of the elbows of her gown. Miss Amy had divested herself of her balding fur cloak to reveal a dingy brown round gown with the waist in the wrong place. Neither lady appeared to possess one scrap of jewellery.

For their part, the Tribbles were delighted with the countess. She was well-bred and quiet with a charming, if diffident, manner. Both were beginning to entertain high hopes of Felicity.

Lady Baronsheath questioned them closely as to their friends and connections and looked happier as she recognized the names of several of her own friends.

‘My daughter,’ said Lady Baronsheath, ‘is wayward and spoilt, but I know that,
au fond
, she has a good heart. She has not had much in the way of religious training. Our vicar, Mr Simms, is a very good man, but quite timid, and I am afraid his little talks with Felicity do not seem to have done any good at all.’

‘Don’t worry, my lady,’ said Amy gruffly. ‘Lady Felicity shall read her Bible every night and every morning.’

The countess blinked. ‘Well, well, perhaps that might help, if by any chance you can get her to obey you.’

‘Oh, Lady Felicity will obey me,’ said Amy. ‘Or else.’

That was when Lady Baronsheath began to regret the whole thing. Amy looked so tall, so strong, so eccentric, and so menacing, that she feared her poor Felicity would be ill-treated. The Tribbles’ fate hung in the balance. Then Lady Baronsheath decided to send them packing.

She half-rose to her feet. Her mouth opened to issue the dismissal, when Effy said, ‘So kind of Lord Ravenswood to offer to escort us to London when we depart with Lady Felicity.’

Lady Baronsheath sat down again. ‘Ravenswood! Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ said Effy innocently. ‘He bravely rescued us from a herd of charging bulls—’

‘Cows! Cows!’ put in Amy.

‘Bulls,’ said Effy firmly. ‘And then he took us to his home so we might change into our best before we met you, Lady Baronsheath. When he heard we were to take Lady Felicity to London, he offered his services as escort.’

Lady Baronsheath worried only briefly over Effy’s artless remark about changing into their best clothes. If those are their best, she thought, what on earth are the second-best ones like? But Ravenswood! Surely his offer to accompany them showed he must have some feeling for Felicity.

‘You shall meet my daughter now,’ said Lady Baronsheath.

She walked over to where an embroidered bell-pull hung beside the fireplace and gave it a firm tug.