Imprudent Lady (6 page)

“Yes, he was at college with me. Not the same department, but I remember him very well. A pompous ass, always getting straight A's. He can't be very old. I thought he was around my age."

“Whereas
I,
of course, am seventy-five!” she retorted.

“Oh, ho, I've done it again. Pushed the foot right into the big mouth.” He put his face into his hands and grimaced. “Forgive me?” he asked, looking at her with playful fear. She laughed, but still some slight resentment lingered, and he set about talking it away. “It seems to me you managed to learn more of life in your backyard and study than
I
did in all my travels. There's more sense in your books than in a tome of philosophy."

She was forced to object to this flattery, but was overruled in his finest manner until she was restored to spirits. As well as thinking her older than she was, or perhaps because of it, he also assumed her to be worldlier. He spoke of things that shocked her, but she was determined not to show it. She had no desire to appear like an insular little country bumpkin, but occasionally she was found out, and he would laugh and say he was debauching her.

To Clarence's and Miss Mallow's delight, Lord Dammler called again a third day to drive her out. Prudence was bothered once again to have to put on her same plain round bonnet and navy pelisse, so very
spinsterish—
no wonder he took her for an old, unmarriageable lady. She was bothered even more that Clarence was on hand to tease them.

“So you two are off again,” he beamed, rubbing his hands in pleasure. “You are cutting all her other beaux out,” he added. Prudence hadn't a beau to her name, and Clarence of all people must know it.

“I am making myself a host of enemies, no doubt,” Dammler returned pleasantly.

“Ho, they are all jealous as can be. This will make them look lively."

“What nonsense you talk, Uncle,” Prudence said, tying up her bonnet strings as fast as her fingers could move.

“I guess I know a suitor when I see one,” he laughed merrily. “She is as sly as can hold together,” he added aside to Dammler. “She never tells us a thing. You will be having the banns read before she admits it. What a girl."

Dammler looked more surprised than pleased at this, and took Prudence to task about it the minute they were in his carriage.

“Is it possible your uncle takes us for lovers?” he asked in a choked voice.

Prudence would gladly have put a noose around her uncle's neck and pulled it tight, but she had to make it seem a joke. “You must know you cannot dance such attendance on me without having fallen under my spell. All my callers are suspected of concealing a ring in their pockets which they try at every opportunity to put on my finger. But you know what a sly creature I am. I keep both hands in my pockets. Mr. Murray was highly guilty, until he mentioned his four children. It is all that saved him from the altar."

As he already had categorized Clarence as a fool, Dammler accepted this answer in good part. Eager to kill the subject, Prudence said immediately, “I ought really to be shopping today. I am in need of a new bonnet."

“Don't let me deter you,” he answered with the greatest alacrity.

“Oh dear, is it that bad?” she laughed. Strange how she could already accept anything from him without embarrassment. Really he was the easiest person to get on with.

He darted a look at her, hesitantly, but soon laughed. “You look a quiz in that round bonnet, Miss Mallow. It is for protection from your legions of suitors I know, but I have been wanting to suggest a new one since the first day we drove out together. Let me take you to Mlle. Fancot, in Conduit Street. All the go. I take all my—uh—friends there."

“I don't think I want
that
sort of bonnet,” she returned.

“Afraid you'll be taken for a lightskirt? You won't. But I would like you to look less like a maiden aunt as I mean to be a good deal in your company, and preferably
not
under your uncle's roof."

With such an enticement as this held out to her, he could have demanded a whole new wardrobe and got it. “Mlle. Fancot it is."

A neat turn was executed in the middle of the road, and they proceeded to Conduit Street. “Oh, I haven't much money with me,” she remembered.

“Put it on tick. Everyone does. I'll vouch for your credit. I daren't suggest paying for it."

“You had better not. They'll mistake me for one of your—ah,
friends."

“No they won't!” he laughed, so hard that she could not like it. Was she
that
old looking?

Miss Mallow was in the habit of purchasing her bonnets, and most of her other necessities (she rarely bought a luxury), at the sale counter at the Pantheon Bazaar. Though she had lived in London for some years, she had never been in the elegant small shops, had no notion such grandeur existed in mere commercial buildings. There was glowing mahogany and velvet drapery everywhere, and the saleswoman looked like a very fashionable young lady.

“Good day, Fannie,” Dammler said, as they stepped in.

"Bon jour,
Lord Dammler,” Fannie replied. She smiled a smile Prudence could only describe as lascivious—looking up at him through her lashes with a parting of the lips.

“My—cousin wants a new bonnet. Something dashing."

Fannie's bold gaze flicked over Prudence with very little interest.
"Bien entendu.
This way, mam'selle."

“No, no, don't shove her off in a closet, Fannie. I want to see what she's buying. Bring the bonnets out here."

Fannie smiled and swayed across the store in such a provocative way that Prudence felt quite ashamed to be of the same sex. She looked out the window to avoid looking at Dammler, who was completely absorbed in Fannie's departing figure. Fannie reappeared a moment later with an armful of bonnets surely designed in heaven. They were not hats at all—they were miniature gardens, with slips of satin roses nestled in beds of soft green, bound up with narrow bands of ribbon.

“How about this one?” Dammler asked, lifting out a buff coloured chip straw with a band of buds around the joining of the rim and poke. “Try this one, Miss Mallow.” She tried it, and it was so beautiful she decided to have it, even if it cost two or three guineas. Fannie mumbled a few words that sounded strangely like
five
guineas, but she surely could not have heard her aright.

“Do you just want the one?” Dammler asked.

Was it possible a lady ever bought
two
bonnets at one time? Even as he spoke he lifted another delight from Fannie's hands. It was a glazed navy straw, with a daring tilt to the brim, and one blood red rose dripping over the tilt. It looked positively wicked, and totally irresistible. She tried it on. “That's more the thing, don't you think, Fannie?” Dammler asked.

“Very nice. Charming,” Fannie said to Prudence. “You like it, mam'selle?"

Prudence was too overcome to agree. She looked like the woman she had recently been longing to be. Sophisticated, a little naughty, almost beautiful.

“I'll take it,” she said, without even thinking about the price.

“Wear it,” Dammler said. “Throw the old round bonnet in a bag, Fannie—or do you want to bother taking it, Miss Mallow?"

Prudence was not utterly lost to thrift. She decided to keep it, but with a recklessness new to her, she took the chip straw and the navy glazed, and said airily to send the bill to Grosvenor Square.

“That's more like it,” Dammler congratulated her. “Where shall we go to show off the new bonnet? Dare we risk the park?"

Prudence was strongly inclined to risk it, but it seemed Dammler had only been joking. They drove through Bond Street—and didn't risk getting out and walking—to show it off. Prudence felt that just perhaps the
male
heads turned to view them took a look at her as well as her escort. The females, she knew, had their eyes turned on Dammler alone.

“This will put your suitors at each others’ throats,” he quizzed her. “Clarence will have to bar the door."

On their next trip out—the trips were becoming a regular thing—she wore the chip straw. The bill that arrived the next day had been staggering but was worth it. She had the money saved from her parsimonious shopping in the past, so there was no worry of running into debt.

Dammler set his head on one side and declared, “Very chic. People will be saying you're my new flirt if you keep this up.” This promising speech was followed by a chuckle to show how well they two understood the unlikelihood of such a thing. Prudence laughed a little harder than he, and waltzed gaily out the door with a heart slightly cracked.

Some subtle changes took place in their relationship as it progressed. Dammler's attitude could not have been described as reverential or anything like it even at the beginning. He admired and respected Miss Mallow's books and brains initially, then he began to like her dry wit, her understatement, her way of not pretending to be impressed with his past (and present) affairs, which he coloured bright, to shock her. When she wore her new bonnets, he thought she was rather sweet looking, in an old-fashioned way. They talked and laughed together for hours. If anyone had told him they were well suited, he would have been shocked.

More than one friend did enquire of Dammler the name of his new friend, and he was at pains to make clear she was a
professional
friend. “The new lady novelist Murray is all excited about,” he would explain. Murray had, in fact, taken more interest in her since Dammler had taken her up.
"You
must have read her marvelous books—very clever. I adore them.” Both the books and the author gained more from such speeches as these than from a hundred less exalted persons liking them. They were put on the reserved list at the lending libraries so that several ladies had to purchase a copy for themselves.

One day Dammler met an acquaintance as he came out of Hettie's house. It was a Mr. Seville, a nabob with whom Hettie had become friends. She wasn't overly particular, Dammler noticed. “Oh, Dammler, how have you been?” Seville asked.

“Splendid, what's the news?"

“Little to tell. Say, who's the pretty new chit I see you driving with these days?"

“You mean Miss Mallow, I believe. Not a chit, by the way, but a lady. A professional friend—a novelist. Very clever woman."

“That so? Not your
chère amie
then?"

“Good Lord, no! You must have seen me with Cybele. Well, you were at the opera last night.” Dammler spent many afternoons with Miss Mallow, but his evenings were still given over to his customary pursuits.

“Yes, I did see you, but since when do you limit yourself to one?"

“When the
one
is Cybele, who can afford two?"

“No, she didn't come cheap, I'll swear. Lovely gel, though. And this Miss Mallow is a writer you say."

“Yes...” Dammler went on to mention her books. “A very superior person. The best female novelist we have today I think."

“I'd like to make her acquaintance some time."

“I'll try to arrange it,” he said, and thought to himself, in a pig's eye.

The day finally came when Prudence received her first invitation to a
ton
party. It was Lady Melvine, eager to attach a new talent and always inviting twice as many people as her rooms would hold to ensure a squeeze, who sent her her first card. Prudence was greatly thrilled, yet there were problems, too. The card had only her name on it; her mama and uncle were not known to Lady Melvine. She was not a little girl, yet to go all alone to her first fine social occasion could not but be intimidating. Suppose she got there and didn't know a soul except the hostess? And even she might very well not recognize her to see her again. She really wondered that her name had been recalled, imagining Dammler to have been instrumental in the invitation. A further difficulty loomed in that both her mother and Uncle Clarence assumed she was going with Dammler. She disliked to disabuse them of the assumption lest they should think she ought to stay home, or worse, that Clarence would start to be happy to escort her.

Dammler, she knew, had begun his play for Drury Lane and was not calling as often as formerly. The day of the ball arrived and though she had sent in an acceptance and had a new gown ready, she was by no means sure she wouldn't develop a migraine when the hour for leaving rolled around. It was three o'clock. Writing proved impossible with such a decision before her and she sat in her study, now not only shelved but with several portraits of literary giants decorating the walls. Uncle Clarence had been busy while she gallivanted. There were Shakespeare and Milton on the east wall, and Aristotle between the windows, all regarding her with enigmatic smiles between closed lips, and all with their hands folded, a pen or a book to indicate their calling. With startling ingenuity, Shakespeare held a candle, which in some obscure manner represented his particular field to be drama. It was at the candle that Prudence was looking when a servant came to the door and announced Dammler. The marquis was not a foot behind her, for he never paid much heed to formality.

“Thank you,” he said over his shoulder to Rose and stepped in. “Do I disturb the genius at work? You should keep a dish of apples to throw at inconsiderate scoundrels like myself who barge in uninvited when you are busy. Shall I leave? I can come back later—just tell me when you will be free."

“No, do come in. I am particularly stupid today. I can't get a word down on paper."

“That was exactly my problem, so I came to you."

“What, are you run into difficulties with the play? You said it was going well."

“So it was, till this hussy of a heroine I've saddled myself with started cutting up on me. She is supposed to be a concubine of a Mogul but she has taken the notion into her head she's real, and I can't keep her in line."

“But that is marvelous! When that happens, I know I am on the right foot. Give her her head. She will know what to do better than you."

“But I have a plot of whose exigencies she is unaware, you see.” He sat down and threw one leg over the other. As usual, he was dressed in the height of fashion, and Prudence was aware of her own plain bombazine gown. “Her name is Shilla. She was sold to the Mogul at the tender age of eight—they snare ‘em young in the East. She is now a virgin of sixteen, having by a series of ingenious ruses saved herself from his advances, but he is quite determined to have her."