Diana the Huntress (8 page)

‘With Lady Godolphin in Hanover Square. You see, I arrived there and pretended to be my own servant. Although I was supposed to arrive last Wednesday, I altered Papa’s letter so she does not expect me until
next
Wednesday. I am … you see, it is all very hard to explain. I am to make my come-out next Season and Lady Godolphin is to teach me how to go on. I dread the thought of wearing silly gowns and simpering and flirting and not ever again being able to hunt. No one knew I had been at your home. There was no scandal. I only wanted one week of freedom.’

‘And what is wrong with finding a husband and bearing his children? Women are fit for naught else.’

‘They
must
be. There must be more to life for a woman than a life given over to triviality.’

‘Most of the gentlemen at this hotel,’ he said drily, ‘live lives completely given up to pleasure. Had you, Miss Diana, been born into a lower order of society, then you would have had to work from sun-up to sundown. The fact that the good Lord has seen fit to put you in a higher station should be enough for you. Think you not that the scullery maid does not envy the ladies who go to balls and routs dressed in their finest?’

‘I can ride better than most men,’ said Diana. ‘And my father taught me to fish and shoot.’

‘Then, what would you? Do you wish to become one of the half creatures, neither fish nor fowl? Shame on you, Miss Diana. Stand up!’

Diana miserably rose to her feet and he seized her by the shoulders and twisted her about so that she was facing the mirror above the mantel.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘Neither handsome man nor pretty woman. Look, Miss Diana Armitage.’

Diana looked. Her rough-cut hair was standing out around her face in spiky curls. Soot had blackened her nose at either side of her nostrils and her cravat was a limp, soot-spotted rag. There was a smut of soot on her forehead. She wrenched herself out of his grasp and went and washed her face at the toilet table, noticing, despite her humiliation and misery, that flecks of soot were floating in the washing water.

She scrubbed her face dry with a towel and then turned to face him, some of her courage returning. ‘If,’ she said coldly, ‘you knew me to be a woman, then why
did you keep up the pretence? Why do you think I sought your company?’

He smiled, a wicked glint in his eyes.

‘I thought the reasons obvious, Miss Armitage. I have possessed a considerable fortune for some time. I am used to all the subterfuges to trap me into marriage. I merely thought this one was more original than the others.’

‘You conceited coxcomb,’ said Diana, outraged. ‘You thought that
I
had a
tendre
for
you
.’

‘It has been known.’

‘Insufferable!’ Beside herself with rage, Diana crossed the room and slapped him full in the face.

He clipped her arms behind her back and held her against him so tightly she could feel the beating of his heart.

He moved his face down towards her own.

‘No!’ said Diana, twisting this way and that. She was a powerful girl and it was terrifying to find herself so helpless, to find how easily he could pin her against him with one hand. His mouth came down on hers. Her whole body shook and trembled with outrage. Then she decided the best thing to do was to stay still. But her trembling increased and he raised his mouth and looked down at her with a teasing smile. ‘Oh, Diana,’ he said huskily, and bent his head to hers again.

Diana marshalled all her strength and brought one foot shod in a clumsy, heavy boot with full force down on his toes. He released her with a yelp of agony.

‘Go, sir!’ said Diana, white with rage. ‘Don’t ever look at me or speak to me again.’

He took a step towards her and she grabbed the remains of the washing water and threw the contents full in his face. Then she nipped past him and hurtled down the stairs, careering off the banister in her headlong flight. The clerk stared amazed as she shot past him and out into the street. She ran blindly, desperately, until she was sure he was not in pursuit. It was then that she found herself in Hanover Square. She looked down at her masculine clothes and shuddered. Never again would she wear them.

She must throw herself on Lady Godolphin’s mercy.

Diana marched up to the door of Lady Godolphin’s imposing mansion and rang the bell. She announced herself, hopefully for the very last time, as David Armitage. Mice, the butler, cast a cold eye over her oiled and rumpled clothes, but said he would see if my lady was awake.

Heart beating hard, Diana sat in a hard chair in the hall. Over and over again she rehearsed her speech, and her lips were moving soundlessly when Mice at last returned to lead her upstairs to my lady’s bedchamber.

‘Who are you?’ demanded Lady Godolphin crossly, struggling up against the pillows. ‘Don’t know any David Armitage.’

Diana did not reply. She turned and looked at Mice, patently waiting for the butler to leave.

‘Oh, go on,’ said Lady Godolphin to her butler. ‘He obviously ain’t going to state his business with you in the room.’ Mice cast one suspicious look at Diana and went out and closed the door.

‘Now, young man,’ said Lady Godolphin.

Diana began to cry. Great tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘I’m Diana Armitage,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, Lady Godolphin, what am I to
do
?’

‘Gad’s Hounds!’ said Lady Godolphin, getting out of bed. ‘Sit down and calm yourself. What a way for a miss to go on.’

Diana gulped and sobbed but managed to choke out the whole story. Lady Godolphin sat down by the fire and rested her heavy chin in her hand. She had not removed her paint the night before and her bulldog face peered out from under a thick thatch of a red wig. Pulling on what she described as a peeingnoir, Lady Godolphin rang for her maid.

‘I will read you a sermon later, Diana,’ she said. ‘At this moment, the best thing I can do is to try and salvage your reputation. I shall call on this Dantrey at Limmer’s and make sure he’s going to keep his mouth closed. How on earth your father did not guess what you were about is beyond me. You will go to bed and sleep and we shall decide what’s to be done after that. I have a new maid, good at her job, but stupid. Nothing ever seems to surprise her. She won’t make comment.’

The maid, Sally, was a thin, wiry, middle-aged woman whose nut-cracker face was screwed up into permanent lines of simpering gentility. She was told to put Miss Diana to bed and to return to prepare her mistress for the street.

All this the maid did with many arch winks and grimaces. Diana, despite her misery, wondered if Sally were quite sane. But it was wonderful to sink into a soft feather bed, the scallop-shaped bed which had so
shocked Minerva on her first visit to London, and snuggle down into sheets heated by the warming pan. Diana’s last thought before she fell asleep was one of gratitude that she had such an unconventional
chaperone
.

‘Lady to see you, my lord,’ said the hotel servant with a cheeky grin which quickly faded before the icy look in Lord Dantrey’s eyes.

‘Show her up,’ said Lord Dantrey So she had come back. He might have known. Any girl who dressed as a man and flouted the conventions so blatantly must have the morals of a tom cat.

He walked to the door and looked along the corridor. Two large zebra striped feathers followed by a hideous scarlet turban followed by Lady Godolphin’s pugnacious face, rose jerkily into view.

Lord Dantrey swore under his breath. So Diana was not so green. He was about to be blackmailed into marriage.

‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ snapped Lady
Godolphin
as soon as she saw him. ‘You’re Dantrey by the looks of you. What I’ve got to say is personal.’

‘I have no doubt,’ said Lord Dantrey grimly, standing aside to let her pass.

Lady Godolphin’s faded blue eyes raked up and down the length of Lord Dantrey’s elegant figure. Then she plumped herself down in an armchair.

‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘and don’t loom over me. Diana’s with me and crying her eyes out. Why were you party to the silly girl’s deceit? There’s plenty of
lightskirts in London. What made ye think a vicar’s daughter was for sport?’

Lord Dantrey sat down opposite her and stretched out his long legs. ‘When a girl behaves as boldly as Diana Armitage, I assume she knows what she is about. She cannot possibly have expected me to believe her a man.’

‘She seems to have gulled most,’ said Lady
Godolphin
. ‘You’ve got a bad reputation, Dantrey, but I thought that was only the mud of some youthful folly still sticking to you. You’re old enough to know better.’

‘It is no use forcing me into marriage …’

‘No one wants you to marry the girl. Far from it. Unless you’ve taken her vaginal.’

‘Lady Godolphin!’

‘Aye, well, she said you hadn’t. Only kissed her. Why I am here is to see the matter goes no further. You keep quiet, Diana keeps quiet, and no more will be said.’

‘I confess I am relieved,’ said Lord Dantrey, looking curiously at Lady Godolphin. ‘You may think my behaviour odd, but then I have heard some very warm tales of the Armitage girls on my travels. There was a certain Mr Hugh Fresne who implied they were all lightskirts …’

‘Ah, that coxcomb. Minerva made a fool of him.’

‘And then when I was in Virginia, Mr Guy
Wentwater
said the sisters were better hunters than the father when it came to catching a rich husband. He said certain things …’

‘You keep low company,’ snapped Lady Wentwater. ‘All these gels are as pure as the driven lambs.
Wentwater has a black past. Neither of those charlatans would dare say such things in England. You have not answered me direct. Will you keep quiet about Diana’s masquerade and will you keep away from her?’

‘You may have my oath on that,’ he said. ‘What a termagant!’

‘She is a shocked and frightened little girl.’

‘She is a giantess who not only stamped on my feet but threw water in my face.’

‘Bags of spirit,’ grinned Lady Godolphin, getting to her feet. She looked up at him curiously. ‘You recognized me immediately. Did we ever meet?’

Lord Dantrey’s lips twitched. He had never actually been introduced to Lady Godolphin – but what member of the top ten thousand did not know that outlandish-looking lady by sight? ‘I have long admired you from afar,’ he said, bowing from the waist.

Lady Godolphin gave her largest crocodile-like smile. Lord Dantrey wondered if her lip rouge ever stained her ear lobes.

‘You don’t have the manner of a rake,’ said Lady Godolphin. ‘Ain’t heard of you playing the fool or going on debauched sprees. I ’member now. It was a certain Miss Blessington you wouldn’t marry when folks said you ought.’

‘I should really send you packing and tell you to mind your own business,’ said Lord Dantrey. ‘Miss Blessington, as you may know, is now happily married with a nursery full of children. The fact is, she set a trap for me and I was young and gullible. I knew, too late, her family had aided and abetted her with an eye to my
fortune and a desire to add my name to that of their own undistinguished tree. So I refused to marry her. I preferred to take the blame. One mistake,’ he said bitterly, ‘and it seems destined to damn my reputation for life.’

‘But did you not think you might find yourself in the same position with Diana? Why on earth did you encourage the girl in such folly?’

Lord Dantrey looked into the glowing embers of the fire. Why had he done such a thing? Because he had been bored and she had come out of the storm, fresh and wild. Because she did not seem to be governed by any conventional laws. Because what he had heard of the Armitages led him to believe them unconventional, to say the least. And because he had been so sure she would have covered her tracks and he had longed for the week’s escapade as much as she had done. Aloud he said, ‘Folly. Mere folly. Let us be thankful that that is the end of it and no harm done.’

‘It’s a pity,’ leered Lady Godolphin, ‘for you’ve a good leg on you.’ Lord Dantrey blinked. ‘Just like my Arthur, although he’s thinner in the calf.’

‘Your husband?’

‘No. My sissybeau.’

‘Cicisbeo?’

‘Him. He was. Now he ain’t and more’s the pity.’

Lord Dantrey shook his head as if to clear it. ‘Pray forgive me for not offering you any refreshment, Lady Godolphin. Would you like some tea?’

‘Not here,’ said Lady Godolphin with a shudder. ‘Pooh, ’tis filthy. Good day to you, my lord. I’ll have
Miss Diana married before the Season begins. Look how well I did for the other girls!’

Lord Dantrey watched her until the feathers and then the turban disappeared down the stairs. He was well rid of Miss Diana Armitage. He shrugged and confessed to himself he had got off lightly. He turned and walked to the window and stared out into the thick fog, seeing only his own reflection in the dirty glass. All at once it seemed a very good idea to go to his club and get thoroughly drunk.

A week had passed since Diana’s adventure. Neither she nor Lady Godolphin went out much since the town was thin of company. Diana found herself enjoying the staid uneventfulness of it all. By an effort of will she had pushed all thoughts of the horrible Lord Dantrey from her mind. Minerva confided to Lady Godolphin that she was delighted with the change in her hoydenish younger sister.

And then, just as Diana was preparing to go driving with Lady Godolphin, Sally scratched at the door and called out that there was a gentleman waiting
belowstairs
to see Miss Diana. Diana’s heart began to hammer against her ribs. Dantrey! It could not be anyone else. She had not met any gentlemen, since her outings had been confined to visits to Minerva and to Lady Godolphin’s circle of elderly friends.

She searched her face in the glass to make sure there were no traces of David Armitage. She must look every inch a lady in order to keep Lord Dantrey at a distance. Her hair grew quickly and Sally’s clever fingers had
done wonders with it. Diana was wearing a carriage dress consisting of a Russian mantle of pomona sarsnet trimmed with rich frog fringe. A bonnet with a tall crown framed her face and she wore slippers of green kid on her feet.