Romantic Rebel (12 page)

His blush faded. Relief was written on every line of his handsome face. Soon he broke into quite a natural smile. “It was unfortunate about the weather,” he said.

I played along with him. “Indeed it was. You must have wondered that I was so eager to pitch myself into Lady DeGrue’s carriage, but to tell the truth, I was freezing. I would have worn a pelisse had I known you meant to drive an open carriage.”

“I should have told you! I usually keep a wrap in my curricle, but it happens it got muddied last week, and is being cleaned. Did you have a wretched drive home?”

“Not at all.” Nothing was said of having been dropped off at Milsom Street. “Miss Bonham is better company than her aunt, you must know.”

“Ah, you are a friend of Isabel’s.”

This misconception was not disturbed. It was a tricky business, accepting Paton’s friendship as he thought me close to Lady DeGrue, and vice versa. If they ever got together and compared notes, I would be revealed as a vixen of the first water. “We have been laying all sorts of plans to rush around Bath, buying up bonnets and ogling the gentlemen on the Crescent,” I said airily.

He smiled very nicely. It was different from the smile that quizzed me about Godwin and Rousseau. It was a smile reserved for
ladies,
and something inside me still stung to remember that afternoon.

“Isabel needs a friend like you. She is kept under a cat’s paw. It is very kind of you to befriend her,” he said.

I noticed that, although I was no longer considered a lightskirt, I was still held to be more dashing than Miss Bonham. “I mean to bring her out of her shell, never fear.”

“You are just the one who can accomplish it, Miss Nesbitt. I look forward to seeing you at Lady DeGrue’s drum. You must not expect dancing, or even music, unless you or one of her guests are kind enough to oblige the party. Her drums are more muted than that.”

My hopes for Saturday’s entertainment diminished accordingly. This description was enough to make me wonder why Paton was attending. The two groups left with friendly au revoirs.

The remainder of the week passed comfortably. The writing was going well. Miss Bonham proved more diverting once I got her away from her aunt. Lady DeGrue, Isabel confessed, was eager to see her bounced off, and was loosening the reins.

We accomplished all the plans we had discussed, i.e., drove in the carriage, walked in Crescent Gardens, went to the circulating library, and visited the shops. I learned by a combination of clever questioning and deduction that Miss Bonham was quite a rich heiress. Her aunt, on the other hand, was poor as a church mouse. This being the case, I wondered that Miss Bonham did not exert her will more forcibly. I had rather thought Miss Bonham kowtowed to her aunt to secure her fortune.

On her third visit, I purposely left her waiting half an hour while I dressed, and handed her a copy of
The Ladies’ Journal
to peruse. It was my intention to open the door of independence to her at least a crack.

“Who writes such stuff?” she asked when we were installed in the carriage.

Annie coughed nervously, to warn me against revelation. “My landlady, for one,” I said. “Do you not think there is something in it?”

“I have never had much to do with men,” she confessed sadly. “I do not remember my papa at all. It seems to me that older ladies are the blight of most of our lives. They are the ones who won’t let us do anything. Oh, I do not mean you, Miss Potter!” she added hastily.

I laughed gaily. “Good gracious, if I had your money, I would live like a queen. It is true older ladies can be quite as repressive as men if you let them. It is foolish to let anyone else lead your life for you. Your aunt has no authority to bearlead you. She is your dependent, not the other way around. You are twenty-five, and in control of your own fortune—till you marry that is.”

“No one will ever marry me,” she said dully.

“I should like to know why not! You are very pretty—isn’t she pretty, Annie?”

“Pretty as a picture.”

“You have a sweet temper, and you are as rich as Croesus,” I added.

“I haven’t the knack of attracting men.”

“Shall we go to the shops today?” I suggested. “A fashionable new bonnet would be a good first step.”

Miss Bonham looked remarkably better in a high poke bonnet with dashing feathers all around the band. Several heads turned as we strolled down Milsom Street, adding a few other elegant trifles to her wardrobe. She blossomed under the attention.

“I wish I could wear my new bonnet to Auntie’s drum tomorrow evening,” she said just before she left us that day.

“You could wear a new hairdo. That would be equally effective,” I pointed out. She had never changed her style from the first day I met her.

There was a new light in her eyes. They sparkled in a mischievous way that made her appear five years younger. “Perhaps I shall,” she said, and laughed.

“Not ‘perhaps’!
Do
it. Call Jean Leclair. He is the most sought after stylist coiffeur in Bath. You would look
ravissante
in a cherubim do. Would she not, Annie?”

“Where would I find him?” Isabel asked.

It was amazing to me that an heiress did not even know the best hairdresser in town. I gave her the address, and we waved Miss Bonham, whom we now called Isabel, off.

“I’ll write this evening, to make up for all these outings,” I said to Annie. “You can amuse yourself for a few hours, I dare say?”

“Arthur is dropping by,” she replied.

Annie was making strides in her romance. Isabel was beginning to realize she had a life of her own. It occurred to me that everyone was bettering her position except myself. I had at least convinced Cousin Geoffrey that I was not returning. There had been no letters from him for some days. It was high time I looked about me for a beau. Perhaps the drum tomorrow evening would throw up someone.

While Pepper and Annie courted, I wrote on my novel. Before retiring, I caught up with my journal. When I began it, it was my intention to keep the tone high, dealing with the question of a lady’s position in society circa 1817, but I was so fatigued that I found it sinking to a mere diary about my various outings that day, and my feelings toward Lord Paton. Still, an astute student might read something between the lines regarding a nobleman’s character. It was a subject Hannah More had not found beneath her. Query: Are noblemen unscrupulous because of their wealth and position, or is a lack of scruples the way one acquires wealth and position?

Chapter Ten

I prepared myself for Lady DeGrue’s evening party with only moderate hopes that anything interesting would come of it. Paton’s attending gave hope that he might bring some of his set, who would be considered the ton of sociable Bath. In an effort to win favor, I struck a rather pretty jeweled pin in the shape of a feather in my curls. The bronze taffeta gown that had set Milverton on its ear might still impress Bath. At any rate, I looked as good as a new hairdo, my best gown, and a discreet touch of rouge could make me. It was Annie who had bought the rouge—a great divergence from her usual toilette.

Miss Bonham lived, appropriately, on Quiet Street. The street is only one block long, its chief attraction being that it debouches on to Milsom Street, just a few blocks north of the Pump Room. The house was large but gloomy. The gloom was enlivened on the evening of the drum by lights in every window, and a scurry of carriages in the roadway.

I was happy to see, upon entering, that there was a good crowd present, not all of it gray-haired. It seems an heiress, even if she has no town polish, can get out the bachelors. Isabel looked quite radiant with her sable curls now framing her face. I rather feared Lady DeGrue might take me to task for the transformation. It was no such a thing.

She got me aside early in the evening and said, “I can never thank you enough, Miss Nesbitt. You have contrived in a week what failed me for more than two decades. You have forced Isabel into bloom. It is a wonderful relief to me to know she is able to get about without my company, and still be well chaperoned. I shall hobble over and thank your Miss Potter.”

Her gait was more a prance than a hobble, but she did go to Annie and said something that made her smile. The party gathered in a dark, brown-colored room which Lady DeGrue called the Gold Saloon, and spilled over into an adjoining room. There were forty or fifty people present, which created a pleasant buzz of voices. No sooner was I seated in the Gold Saloon than I discerned the younger set were in the other room. To rise up with no excuse and desert Reverend Morton in the middle of his monologue on the Trinity seemed rude, so I contented myself by just looking through the archway.

I was soon convinced that Paton, the one member of the young ton whom I knew, had not yet arrived. I had already had a word with Lady Forrest, and began to think Paton was not coming. The only reason I mention it, of course, is that I had thought he might bring his bachelor friends along.

But at any rate, there were interesting men there, and Isabel had her share of them. She sat with a handsome specimen, dark of hair and eyes, with pale skin and the languid, wounded air of a poet. She gazed into his eyes dreamily, as if she were falling in love. A young maiden’s first bout of love will often settle on some such handsome poseur as this gentleman.

After perhaps fifteen minutes, there was a shifting about of guests, and Lady Forrest, brilliant in diamonds and puce silk, beckoned me to a chair beside her.

“Miss Nesbitt, I took pity on you, stuck with old Morton. You can hear his sermon on the Trinity any Sunday at Holy Trinity Church. You must not waste a party in such tedious company. You ought to slip into the next room with the other youngsters. I wonder Miss Bonham does not arrange some dancing, since she has rooted out all the bachelors.”

“Lord Paton tells me we must not expect either dancing or music, ma’am.”

“No doubt that is why he is not here, the wretch. Where the devil is he tonight?”

I was astonished that she should ask me. I had not seen him since the concert. “I have no idea.”

“You should keep closer track of him than that,” she teased. “When are you coming to visit me, Miss Nesbitt?”

I found myself in the absurd position of apologizing for not honoring a nonexistent invitation, for I am not such a flat as to go calling on such a vague hint as I had received at the concert. “I have been spending a deal of time with Isabel,” I explained.

“I can see the good effects of your company,” she said, glancing into the other room. “You might just give her the hint that young Etherington is a gazetted fortune hunter.”

“Is that the gentleman with her now?”

She seemed surprised that I did not know it. “Yes, Lord Ronald Etherington, a younger son of old Lord Britton. He owes every tradesman in London, and has had to retire to Bath to escape his creditors. It is public knowledge he is hanging out for a fortune. A word to the wise!”

“I shall warn Isabel.”

Lady DeGrue strode into the next room to stir up the crowd. “Go to her now,” Lady Forrest urged, and I went.

I arrived just as Lady DeGrue was distributing pieces of paper for some game. She had copied it out of a puzzle book, the object being for us to recognize in a set of clues a famous personage from history. We were to work in pairs, man and woman, to add a romantic spice.

Lord Ronald took a slip of paper and turned to speak to Isabel. Lady DeGrue forestalled him. “Sir Laurence is waiting for you, Isabel,” she said.

Turning, I saw the elderly gentleman who had stood up with Isabel at the ball. Lady DeGrue presented him as Sir Laurence Edwards, a dear friend of the family. He was not elderly in the way Lady DeGrue was elderly. I judged him to be in his middle forties. He had quite a bit of gingery-colored hair, though it was thin at front. If the man had acted his age, he would have been a passable partner for one dance. What dismayed one about Sir Laurence was that he tried so desperately to look and act young. The dazzling yellow waistcoat belonged on a university student, as did the nip-waisted jacket and high shirt collars he wore with it. He capered, he talked and laughed loud. He used the cant terms of a young buck. One felt instinctively that he would drive too fast.

“Miss Bonham, you are stuck with me.” He laughed, deepening the wrinkles along his nose. “We shall set them all on their ears, by Jove. What a charming new hairdo. You look like an angel. I have been calling on you all week to show off my new rattler and prads. It wears me to a thread to hold them down to sixteen miles an hour.”

Isabel looked an apology over her shoulder, where Lord Ronald was sulking into his high collar.

“We shall drive out tomorrow, eh?” Sir Laurence persisted. “I’ll teach you to handle the ribbons.”

“Oh, I do not drive,” she exclaimed in horror.

“High time you learned. All the crack. An out and outer like yourself ought to set up a high perch phaeton. Tell her, Miss Nesbitt.”

“Miss Nesbitt, perhaps you would accompany Lord Ronald,” Lady DeGrue suggested.

No sooner had I reluctantly accepted than Lord Paton strolled into the room. He looked all around, nodding to various people, including myself. I smiled coolly and turned to Lord Ronald.

“I despise childish games,” he said.

I found one thing in common with Lord Ronald. “I fear there is to be no dancing,” I mentioned.

“I despise dancing.”

“Ah. Tell me, Lord Ronald, am I correct in thinking you might care for poetry?”

He gave me a bold, dismissing look, but a glint of interest lit his sultry eyes. “It depends on what you mean by poetry. I have no use for flowers nodding by a lake, or violets blooming unseen.”

He was playing at being Byron then. “Corsairs and banditti are more your style, I take it?”

“At least they
live.
What foolishness have we to solve?” he sulked, and opened the paper. “Oh, God, it is history. Next to religion, it is the dullest thing they could have come up with.”

I read the paper and decided Henry the Eighth was who we had to be. “This monarch was hardly dull,” I said, and handed the paper back to him. “And we have not only to solve it, but feed clues to the others.”