Talk of the Town (6 page)

“All the worse, to have it come out after he is famous—to have his moment of glory sullied so disgracefully! I won’t stand for it, I tell you. I’ll ask her here first—to my ball—I ask everyone to that. She won’t be noticed in the crowd.”

“They are pointed out when they drive down Bond Street and in the Park. Everyone knows them by sight now. They are becoming the talk of the town.”

“What is to be done?” Bess wailed in frustration.

“Do nothing. I’ll handle it, as I have always managed your problems in the past. Let me think about it. We must have a plan. I’ll talk to some people—see how they are handling her.”

“Very well, I’ll wait awhile, but I don’t mean to let it hang fire for long. My nerves can’t take it.”

St. Felix posed a few discreet questions, ostensibly on behalf of a “friend,” and learned that the manner of dealing with Mrs. Pealing was to do exactly as she wished. He had never seen Mrs. Pealing; his quarrel was with Miss Ingleside, and he had no intention of letting her win this fall with him. But he soon became aware that she won every match she entered. Not only was she—and of course, that disreputable aunt—lining her purse, but she was beginning to go about to the odd party, as well. The girl was not making her debut, so at least one would not meet her at formal do’s. Soon even this shred of relief was snatched from him.

When the list of the young debutantes to be presented to the Queen was printed in the Gazette, Miss Ingleside’s name was amongst them. The debts had been coming in in such a heady stream that even this was to be afforded. It was not Mrs. Pealing, a divorcee, who was to be her official sponsor, but a Mrs. Wintlock. Now who the devil is Mrs. Wintlock, he wondered.

She was not only a friend of the Inglesides from Wiltshire, but a distant connection of Sir James on her husband’s side, and she knew them to be a very good family. Her daughter, Stephanie, a good-natured and not overly pretty girl, had attended the same ladies’ seminary as Daphne and the two were friends. Having come to London to present her own youngest, she had been delighted to meet Daphne on Bond Street and took for granted she, too, was to make her bows. When she discovered her error, she set up a string of letters to Ingleside Manor that once again threw the house into an uproar.

“What do you think of it, James?” Lady Mary demanded, her own smile displaying clearly what she thought of it.

“It’s a lot of nonsense and will cost me a bundle.”

“It will save sending her back next year,” Lady Mary said, thus introducing a whole new concept to the household, for it had never been mentioned that Daphne should make her bows in London.

“Once she sees Stephanie Wintlock there, attending all the do’s and snapping up a great
parti
, you may be sure she will fix her face to go back to London. And why should she not? Her father could well afford it.”

“Her father has better things to do with his blunt. Tiling the east forty, for instance.”

“Pooh! What is more important to you, your own flesh and blood or a few acres of mud?”

“The west forty wouldn’t be a mud pie if I had it tiled.”

“It is money well spent, presenting Daphne.”

“Yes, only see where it got your sister—a divorce and a scandal.”

“And a count and a millionaire along the way. And Daphne, you know, besides having the looks from my side of the family, is as long-headed as you are yourself, James. She will not throw away her chances as poor Effie did. You’ll see her a countess, too. See if you don’t.”

“Well, I won’t have Effie presenting her,” he relented, remembering how she had not bothered to pack her ball gown. He had often thought of that with a sad feeling.

“That would be entirely ineligible. Mrs. Wintlock is a different matter—your cousin’s wife. She will do nicely, and it will save our going to London next Season.” Always this little reminder was tossed in. Clearly she had fixed on getting Daphne presented, and as the manner mentioned in Cousin Wintlock’s letter seemed the easiest way, James capitulated.

Letters were sent back, a bank draft enclosed to cover the additional expenses, and the thing was done. Daphne had first laughed at the idea, but upon consideration she came to appreciate its advantages. A baronet’s daughter and the granddaughter of an earl was not suspect, and as no mention of Mrs. Pealing was made in the application, it was accepted.

The apartment on Upper Grosvenor Square was becoming so elegant with all its new blueness that Effie thought she would throw a soiree herself, though, of course, the formal presentation ball was to be shared with Miss Wintlock at the Wintlock mansion on Curzon Street.

Aunt Effie bloomed in the sunlight of all her former greatness returned to her. Daphne had observed that the first spate of callers had come once with money and were not seen again, but as the ladies began to go about, to be seen in the Park in a fancy if slightly old-fashioned carriage, to be invited to the odd small party first, then by degrees to better ones, the old friends came back a second and third time, and finally issued invitations themselves.

Effie was really rather sweet, they rediscovered, made sweeter to some by the fact that she no longer challenged their marriages and affairs by her former beauty. She looked a quiz, of course, with that blue hair and blue paint smeared on her eyes like an actress, but she was droll and had such amusing stories to tell about the olden days. Not a few found that she was still generous, too, but Miss Ingleside heard nothing of this. Effie knew James’s daughter would not approve of her largesse, and she slipped a folded bill into a hand so neatly that the twenty years of non-practice were overcome in a trice. The presence of a very beautiful young debutante on Upper Grosvenor Square did nothing to diminish Effie’s popularity, of course. Odd she was staying there, but under the aegis of Mrs. Wintlock she was turning up at very respectable do’s and being well received.

Aunt Effie did not always accompany Daphne on her excursions, but she was invited to a party at the Leveson-Gowers along with her niece, and this was the most respectable place she had been yet. It would be dignified by the title of a ton party by anyone. No less a celebrity than Lady Melbourne was in attendance, sitting quietly in a corner. She was piqued at Lady Hertford’s conquest of the Prince Regent, and as she sat looking out on the crowd, she was struck with inspiration. Lady Melbourne was not usually to be found sitting silently in any corner at a party, but on this occasion she had the wonderful company of Beau Brummell to satisfy her, and with a conquest of such magnitude, she didn’t bother to speak to anyone else.

“What do you think of the latest rage, Mr. Brummell?” she asked him.

“I doubt she will bring blue hair into style,” he drawled, raising his quizzing glass and examining the new curiosity, Mrs. Pealing, who held court in the centre of a group of elderly beaux.

“She has not your knack for setting a style, but she is quaint.”

“England always admires a freak,” he returned. “The only country that passes for civilized where cock-fighting and bear-baiting are called amusements and a woman with blue hair is called fashionable. I wonder if green wouldn’t be more harmonious with her pink face.”

“You don’t mean to take her up then?”

“Dear lady, I set the style. I don’t follow it,” was his languid response. Though a full-grown man, there remained something boyish in his face. A youthful light in the eyes and laughter lurking at the corner of his petulant lips. Life was a joke, and he was one of the few to have discovered it.

“She is a nine days’ wonder, I should think. Not really fashionable. Not even you could make her that.”

“You forget I brought the Prince Regent into fashion and retained the miracle for a decade and a half. I could make a three-legged sloth the style if I thought there were enough amusement in it to make it worth my while.”

“I have had a most amusing notion,” Lady Melbourne said.

“Your notions are always amusing, dear lady. Having your children call your husband ‘father,’ for instance.” He would only dare to go this far when they were in private, but between the two of them and a good fraction of the rest of Society, it was no secret the lady’s offspring had a miscellany of fathers. “What is your latest amusing idea?” he asked.

“Something that might interest you, I think. Wouldn’t it be fun to see Lady Hertford tremble in her boots?”

Lady Hertford was nothing to Beau, but he was too clever to think Lady Melbourne meant what she said. The reference was to Prinney. Relations between the Prince Regent and his erstwhile bosom bow, Brummell, were recently strained. Its sixteen-year duration was the longest the Prince had ever kept a friend, but even Brummell must become a bore after a while. The little dandy was chomping at the bit to make the Prince appear even more ridiculous than he already was.

He looked across the room at Mrs. Pealing. She had a placid, pink, wide face, a full bosom, and was the undemanding sort of companion the Prince was known to favour. He smiled softly to himself. “Yes, an admirable replacement for Lady Hertford,” he said, with a knowing smile. “You’re a devil in skirts, Milady.”

“Just an idea,” she said, a challenge in her smile.

“I like it excessively, but how shall we set about it?”

“You have only to be seen with her in your carriage for him to take a jealous fit and try to oust you."

“My carriage is not reinforced to tote such a load,” he replied, letting his eyes travel along the full lines of Mrs. Pealing’s blue gown.

“It might be worth your while to have it strengthened. Really, I would love to see Hertford’s face when she hears of Prinney’s calling at Upper Grosvenor Square.”

“And I would love to see Cruikshank’s caricature in the shop windows. He would have to use a quart of blue ink for half the picture, at least.”

“And a double-width page to get both their corpulent frames squeezed on to it.”

“I wonder how the Prince’s admiring public would take to his linking up with a thrice-married lady and a divorcee who is blackmailing the half of London,” Beau said.

"They’d be bound to think she had a chapter on him in her book and would be sorry to see him paying up instead of letting them read what she had to say."

“I called you a devil, Lady Melbourne, but you are the most ingenious devil that ever was. Wish me well.” He arose and ambled forth to attach himself to Mrs. Pealing’s train.

Miss Ingleside, watching his progress, could scarcely believe her eyes. Beau Brummell, the leading arbiter of taste in the whole city, was going to speak to Aunt Effie. She couldn’t bear to miss it and followed him across the room to hear what he had to say.

“Who is the devastatingly attractive lady in blue?” Beau asked of a bystander, pitching his drawling voice just loud enough that the lady in question might hear it.

Miss Ingleside also heard it, and the sardonic tone in which it was said. Beau, though long the leader of the ton, was still a young man in his late thirties, and to think he had succumbed to Aunt Effie’s well-faded charms was not considered for a moment. His reputation as a wit was notorious, and with a sinking sensation at the pit of her stomach, Daphne feared the dandy meant to make a May game of her aunt. And poor Effie no better equipped to deal with him than a mouse with an eagle! She edged closer to hear and, if necessary, to lend assistance.

The introduction was made, and Miss Ingleside listened in dismay as Effie asked laughingly, “So you’re the great Beau Brummell? You aren’t as fashionable as I imagined. I wouldn’t have looked at you twice if I’d met you in the street.”

“When a gentleman is looked at twice in the street, Ma’am, he is not outfitted as a gentleman ought to be, but is either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable. And had we met on the street, I should not have looked twice at you, either. Having once glimpsed you, my eyes would not have strayed for a moment,” he finished with a graceful scraping of the leg.

“You turn a neat compliment. I’ll say that for you,” Effie allowed.

Ignominy was surely at hand. The great Beau Brummell would not take this piece of condescension without retort.

“Will Madame be kind enough to let me remain awhile with her and see if I can’t improve the quality of my compliments to match their inspiration?”

“There’s room here on the sofa if you don’t mind crowding,” she told him, pleased with her new conquest.

The Beau held off a moment at the mention of crowding. His jackets were not to be crushed. He levelled a look at the gentleman on Effie’s right, who arose as though he had received a royal command. The Beau hitched up his trouser legs and sat down as gracefully and daintily as a lady.

“Mrs. Pealing, you must tell me all about this book you are writing,” he began. “Colburn has been after me to write my memoirs, but I fear after the world has read yours the rest of us must lay aside our pens."

“It will be nothing out of the ordinary, I promise you, Mr. Brummell.”

“I cannot credit that you have ever had one ordinary thing happen to you in your life,” he objected instantly with a gallant smile. “Surely an angel must have led a celestial life, and we shall all be in heaven to read of it.”

Daphne thought even her aunt must be suspicious of such heavy complimenting as this, but the elderly lady showed no signs of it. “I’ve had a few heavenly days in my life,” she admitted, “and many that were closer to hell.”

“Let us dwell on the sublime,” he decreed. “Now to begin with, where is an angel bred? Wiltshire, was it not?”

There was a good deal of nonsense of this sort talked. Effie saw nothing amiss in the Beau’s heavy-handed lavishings of praise, and her niece was only confused. A dozen times she felt disaster was imminent, but every time the Beau turned some maladroit remark of her aunt’s to an amusing end. Before he left, and he stayed with her a quarter of an hour, he said, “Dare I hope you will allow me the pleasure of calling on you one day soon, Ma’am?”

“I’m sure you’re entirely welcome,” Effie returned smiling.

“When will it be convenient for me to prostrate myself at your door?”

Daphne, who had joined a few remarks in the conversation, wasn’t about to let his extravagance go unchallenged. “A prostrate body blocking the door can never be convenient, Mr. Brummell, but if you care to stand on your feet and sound our knocker, we are at home mornings.”