Cousin Prudence (17 page)

“Oh Uncle Gervase is
far to fly to be caught by
that
prime piece of goods,” said Arthur, “
and
I use the term with every suspicion that any less savoury connotation may be accurate.  The on-dit was that to get Puggy a better commission she slept with everyone up to the colonel
and
his horse!”

“ARTHUR!” said George.  “Don’t let the ladies hear you say anything like that!”

Arthur grinned.

“Wouldn’t dream of it
,” he said.

George was a little shocked; but he was discovering that the men about town seemed all of them to have a fund of off-colour stories that were passed around in the masculine purviews of the rooms where smoking,

gambling, and escaping from the dancing were permitted at most assemblies.  It was a new and not especially edifying light on high society!

Lady Katherine had done all she might to make Kitty shine as the queen of the ball; and her gown was glittering, a sheer muslin with gold and silver woven threads in it and embroidery on it, over a silver petticoat; and poor Kitty confided to Emma, to whom she clung as a confidante, that she felt like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s finery.

It was a shame that she also looked like it.

Emma tried to boost the girl’s confidence by exclaiming that Kitty looked lovely; which in an insipid way she did, until one compared her to the more vibrant ladies at the ball, Emma amongst them, looking absurdly young and totally lovely in a rich azure velvet gown and her ridiculous turban.  Prudence might be no beauty but her vivacity – even whilst missing Alverston – turned heads; Lady Elvira’s appearance always screamed for attention, though her sheer gown left nothing to the imagination and Lady Katherine was left explaining to the shocked Clara that such gowns were customarily worn over  calf-length drawers of flesh coloured stockinette for just such an effect.  It had the effect required of drawing  eyes to the widow. That there were also at least half a dozen other young ladies who had more countenance than

Kitty did not help the girl to shine.  And Prudence, being a secondary debutante and presented around by Lady Katherine, managed to outshine Kitty although – or perhaps because – she had worn a simpler gown, knowing that Kitty was to be the belle of the ball.  Prudence wore a white muslin shot with a few simple strands of gold – a single strand every inch – which she wore over a dusky pink silk undergown that showed where Prudence had scalloped the bottom of the muslin and held the top of each

four inch scallop with a ribbon rose. An inch of the undergown showed, its colour modifying the sheer muslin, and it was matched by the ribbon roses, which Prudence had also applied to the top of each puff sleeve.  Matching silk ribbons formed garters for her almost shoulder length gloves; and though pink was not her favourite colour, the dusky pink looked delightful on her.  Her hair was caught artlessly in a simple white silk scarf – it had taken
Hester much time to tie it to her own and Prudence’s satisfaction – with another rose pinned to it just above and behind Prudence’s ear.

Prudence spent much time fielding compliments that ranged from the accomplished comparison to a true English rose to the stammered declaration of a young subaltern that she was j-j-just l-lovely.

Prudence might have wished that Alverston could have seen her; but she would not make compromise in the gown she had chosen for Kitty’s ball; for to do so would have been an insult to Kitty. 

Chapter 22

The Knightleys attended Almack’s again before such time as they heard again from Alverston; and Lady Jersey quizzed Prudence on whether she knew that the Marquess was out of town.

“Why yes, My Lady,” said Prudence, “he and my Cousin George discussed such things as were necessary to improve the chances of their respective crops and each went to see to what was required; only Lincolnshire is a deal further to travel than Surrey.  I believe Lord Alverston expects to be out of town for two weeks or more.”

Lady Jersey smiled.  Alverston had shown the girl particular attention in waltzing with her; but the girl had not had her head turned and did not commit the solecism of staying away when she might not expect to see His Lordship.  Lady Jersey was pleased! 

“I have a young protégé whom I would wish you might waltz with,” she said, “he is nervous and young; I am sure you will put him at his ease.  He is a tall youth and your style will suit him very well.”

“I should be delighted, Lady Jersey
,” said Prudence, hoping this youth would not stand on her feet too often.  She felt more confident in waltzing since it had been so easy in Alverston’s arms; though one could not hope for it to be as easy with anyone else.

Lady Jersey introduced her protégé after the second country dance; and he was in fact the same young subaltern with whom Prudence had danced a country dance at Kitty’s ball.  This time she found out his name; Cornet Philip Puckeridge.  He was several inches over six feet and as thin as a rake. 

“As you see I am using my military training like you told me, rather than drooping to hide my inches,” he said gravely to Prudence.  Prudence could not help reflecting that Alverston would have made a joke of it and doubtless managed to turn the joke back on her.  Still, Cornet

Puckeridge was a pleasant youth, and when animated enough to forget to stammer a personable young man who might even have a fairly bright future in a peacetime army and might even progress beyond his Cornetcy.  He had joined up just too late to do anything but run errands, he told her mournfully.  Prudence encouraged him to talk of his ambitions and about army life and the youth lost a lot of his shyness and told her about the things he and his fellow officers got up to, which sounded to Prudence like so many schoolboy pranks. 

He waltzed mechanically rather than well, and Prudence noted how odd it was that she was not really as aware of
his
hand on her back, any more than she had been aware of George’s when he had waltzed with her once; whereas she had only to think of dancing with Alverston to be able to almost feel
his
hand as though it was still there.

She wanted to sigh; stifled it in good manners and smiled brightly at young Puckeridge and gently persuaded him to tell her all about the time he and his friend managed to place the colonel’s wife’s best turban atop the statue of some general or other on the barracks’ parade ground.

She reflected that by his age, a man working in her father’s mill would have been earning a man’s wage for four years and earning for several years before that and would be shocked by such frivolity in a man of eighteen years; who was in law a boy for another three years according to the ways of the gentry.

Of course he would not have been too young to have died screaming on the field of battle at Waterloo had he but joined up a few months sooner; for death was no respecter of rank, military or social.  And perhaps it was the horrors that they had seen that prompted such young men to lark and play.  It certainly brought the laconic acceptance of death and injury that young Puckeridge told as a funny story wherein an officer, Henry Lord Paget, had received an injury quite shattering his leg; who remarked to the Duke of Wellington ‘By G-d sir, I’ve lost my leg!’ to which the Duke replied ‘By G-d sir, so you have!’.

“Of course Old Nosey didn’t much like Lord Paget because he’d run off with his sister-in-law,” confided the cornet, “so I should think he’d not care so much that he’d lost a leg.”

“Indeed
,” said Prudence who considered that this was more information than she had really wanted to know.  Seemingly the military were old women for gossip!

This evening Prudence noticed that the food at Almack’s was very poor; thin and slightly stale bread though the butter was fresh enough, pound cake and rather weak lemonade or tea that, as Prudence said to Emma and George, would be described in Yorkshire as ‘too weak to struggle out of the spout’.  

“I rather fancy, my dear Prudence,” said George, “you notice the minor irritations in the light of the absence of one who casts something of a lustre upon any gathering.”

Prudence considered.

“Is that why he is considered a leader of fashion, because he has the presence to make people notice him more than the deficiencies of their surroundings?” she asked.

George cleared his throat delicately.

“I meant, dear Prudence, something of a more personal response in you than that,” he said delicately.

Prudence flushed.

“I confess I like Alverston very well,” she murmured.

George considered enlightening his wife’s cousin that he believed that the Marquess returned her regard; but as Alverston had not spoken and was still in his own words being cautious decided that it was improper to raise such hopes perhaps, if Alverston did back off, painfully and fruitlessly.  It was after all what he had deplored in dear Emma’s optimistically profligate matchmaking.

They left a little early, Emma pleading fatigue; which was not altogether feigned.

A letter arrived the next morning, franked with the careless and forthright scrawl ‘Alverston’ across one corner so that there was nothing to pay; which was, said Emma, just as well for it was thick enough that they might have had to mortgage John and Isabella’s house to pay for receipt of it else.

Prudence laughed at her cousin’s funning ways; and was glad that Emma felt well enough to make jokes.

The letter was addressed to Prudence, at which Emma raised an eyebrow, and murmured something about the Marquess’ unconventional manners, but she did not prevent Prudence from reading it.  Prudence opened it in some curiosity.

“My dear Prudence
,”
it ran
“If you think I am going to try to spell your surname every time I address you I fear you are of optimistic frame of mind,
” at which Prudence chuckled,
“so Prudence or Pru you must be in my correspondence. Aunt Mouser will tell you that I am no hand at letter writing anyhow”

“She doesn’t have to
,” said Prudence to the letter, “your writing is abysmal, Gervase Lord Alverston! And I can only be thankful that you
can
frank it and not cross the lines into the bargain!”

“I expect he has learned that if he crosses the lines – his writing IS awful, isn’t it – that nobody ever replies for thinking he has written in Ancient Greek or Hieroglyphs from
Egypt” said Emma, peering over Prudence’s shoulder as she sat reading. .

“If he wrote in pictures like the Egyptians I might have a better chance of deciphering it
,” said Prudence and re-applied herself.

“
I find there is much that needs doing here so I may be away longer than I anticipated; I apologise sincerely.  I do not wish to alarm you but everywhere I have been seeing outbreaks of disease as already the lack of food begins to

cause famine. You must be careful in
London where the poorest will already be suffering.  I am writing to my secretary to set up soup kitchens; if you wish to contribute as I am sure you will you may find Mr Paulson at my residence.  I shall take myself  further north while I am here to see how your father does and if the disease affects the mill workers; for I feel sure that it is something that will concern you.  The building of glasshouses is under way; so all is going according to plan in other respects. My bailiff is cautiously optimistic concerning the use of glass to increase the growth of young plants and he is seeing to the purchase of glass and having it framed as in large mill windows to join in order to make tunnels with a triangular cross-section as seemed the best in discussion to solve this problem as quickly as may be possible, on a wooden frame, each ‘window’ removable with relatively minimum effort to permit tending of the plants within.  It can never protect the whole, but if the new and tender plants may be covered they will hopefully be hardier to be planted out later in the year; by which time the weather conditions may, G-d willing, have improved.  I can only hope that it is enough, and in time, to make some difference; and I hope and pray that your clever scheme has such merit that there will be less hardship on my lands, and hopefully Knightley’s too.  With these frames too the whole may be dismantled and stored against similar emergency another year, assuming the crisis passes and the climate returns to its more normal gyrations. Hoping that this missive finds you well and that you continue to thrive; do not reply since I cannot guarantee where I might be from one day to the next, for I wish to pass on this concept to others such as Mr Fairlees and too to SirThomas Fotheringill, my Aunt Mouser’s husband,” 
here Prudence giggled because the concept that Aunt Mouser had a husband was reasonable though one could scarcely ever consider describing HER as anyone’s wife.  Alverston went on, “
Uncle Tom will listen but I doubt that Adolphus Fairlees will; but I have to try.  Georgiana’s husband has also gone to his lands and Georgie is writing to my other sisters who rule their respective spouses with the rod of iron they learned from Aunt Mouser.  If you marry me I suspect we shall have some battles royal….”