Lady Madeline's Folly (20 page)

“Your father will find something suitable at Tatt’s.”

In the old days, she would have asked him on the spot to do it for her. The questioning eye he turned to her might have indicated some curiosity in the matter, but there was a little stiffness in him still that held her back. It would be so very humiliating if he refused. “Yes, I’ll ask him to make inquiries for me.”

They reverted again to items of political and social gossip. The park was busy. They stopped at the barrier to chat with friends, at which time Madeline noticed how many of her lady friends were handling their own carriages. It was strange she had fallen behind them all; she was more usually a leader in matters of fashion. Lady Susan was there, with a tidy team of bays harnessed to a green phaeton.

“Eskott! You see how I am progressing! Driving all alone. Your lessons were most helpful,” she said, drawing up beside him. “You were quite right about this pair too. They are a little more frisky than I like, but I am determined to master them. Hello, Madeline.” Her eyes were bright with curiosity to see her new flirt with his old flame, but she was too civilized to betray her feelings.

“Is Eskott giving you a lesson?” she asked. “I expect you will be setting up your carriage one of these days.”

“I intend to very shortly,” Madeline answered, ignoring the first question.

“Is Eskott going to teach you?”

As Eskott said nothing, Madeline said, “No, I shall be learning in the country. I am going to Highgate soon.”

“What—rusticating in the middle of the season? Whatever for?”

“For a change,” Madeline replied, feeling a fool.

“You are just afraid to drive in the city,” Susan chided. “There is nothing to it. I learned in a week. I’ll teach you, if you like.”

“I would not suggest so perilous a course,” Eskott said, speaking to Madeline, but casting a swift, laughing smile at the other lady, indicating some shared incident during their lessons, Madeline was left to conclude. And still he did not offer his services.

“Wretch! How dare you deride my skills!” Susan laughed. “I didn’t do a bit of damage to the mail coach.”

“I think Lady Elizabeth wants to pass,” Madeline was happy to point out, thus forcing Susan to continue on her way.

“See you tonight, Eskott,” was her parting speech.

Madeline’s heart sank. She understood now why Eskott had not volunteered to help her. He was involved with Susan, more seriously involved than she had heard. His smile, bordering on the sheepish, proclaimed the secret as clearly as words.

“I had better go home now,” she said. “We are having company for dinner.”

He made no objection, but turned the curricle around and drove her to her door. There was a moment of self-conscious restraint between them as she prepared to leave. Should she invite him to call? Would he suggest it himself?

“Nice seeing you again,” was his only remark.

“Thank you for the ride. I enjoyed it.” She turned and began to hurry toward the house.

“When are you going to Highgate?” he called after her, on an impulse.

Angry, disheartened, and frustrated, she called back, “Tomorrow. I leave tomorrow.”

“Oh. Then I shall say good-bye now. Have a nice trip.”

“Good-bye, Eskott.” She blinked back a tear as she wrenched the front door open.

Chapter Eighteen

Highgate Park, stuck off alone in the country, was suddenly the last place in the world Lady Madeline wanted to be. Why had she said such a stupid thing? She wanted to buy the liveliest team in town, set up a dashing high-perch phaeton, much higher than Lady Susan’s. She wanted to buy six new gowns, none of them white, and find herself a handsome new flirt.

If she could induce Lady Margaret to come to town, it would be an excuse to stay. She wanted to break out of her father’s fusty old Tory circle and make friends in the livelier Whig aristocratic group. Eskott was not the only gentleman who could educate her, let her know what was really going on in the city. There was the handsome new poet, Byron.

She took no conscious notice that her strange lethargy was dissipated. She only knew she wanted to be doing things again. The first thing to be done was to find an excuse to remain in town. She dashed off a letter to her Aunt Margaret, first outlining how enjoyable a season she was missing, then added a fact more likely to bring her aunt running: Lord Fordwich was not well. He was assigned a recrudescence of his cold, coughing dreadfully, poor man, and he would not curtail his work in the least, hard as his daughter tried to make him. “That should do it,” she said aloud as she sealed it up and set it aside to await her father’s frank.

If Lady Susan was seeing Eskott that night, as she obviously was, there was no doubt where they were going. Lady Susan’s best friends, the Donaldsons, were having their annual ball. Madeline had cards for it, had even sent in her acceptance some days ago, when she was drifting around in a cloud, not knowing what she wanted.

She did not normally wear the same gown twice within a short space of time; but as Eskott had not seen her new emerald green, she wore it again, with again the diamond clasp in her hair, and the elbow-length white gloves. She admitted modestly, as she whirled in front of her mirror, that she looked quite ravishing. It was ridiculous to feel old when she was only twenty-four, going on twenty-three.

She went to the ball with her spirits soaring, determined to win Eskott back, and received two surprises. Eskott was not there, and Henry Aldred and his bride were. The trip to Scotland must have been canceled. Such a lack of decorum in Henry did not surprise her. Once he had landed his lady, fulfilling any promises made would not occur to him. The creature had the gall to present his simpering wife to her, to tell the girl this was his former patron “about whom you have heard so much.”

“Don’t believe all you hear, Mrs. Aldred,” she advised, in the coolest accents she owned.

Henry laughed lightly, refusing to take offense. “I have told Agnes she must call on you,” he persisted.

“What poor advice to give your bride,” she answered. “You know we only receive Tories at the Second Court of St. James, Mr. Aldred.”

“You receive Lord Eskott,” he pointed out, making a joke of it.

“True, but his advanced years appeal to me. We
old ladies,
you must know, insist that all our callers be dry behind the ears. Good evening, Mr. Aldred, and Mrs. Aldred.” She turned and strolled nonchalantly away.

“She’s marvelous, isn’t she?” she heard Henry say in a loud voice. Demmed jackanapes!

Her next item of business was to discover why Eskott was not present. She walked up to Mrs. Donaldson and asked in a spirit of polite disinterest, “I thought Lady Susanwould be here, ma’am. She must be ill, if she is missing your ball?”

“Ill? Oh no, she is acting hostess for Eskott’s dinner party. They will all be along shortly.”

Madeline had suddenly had enough of the ball.
She
should have been his hostess. The honor was always offered to her when his aunts declined. That the role was Susan’s was too ominous an event to be considered in this public place. She must find Papa and go home.

“It is hardly worth having the horses put to, if we are to stay for under an hour,” he grouched.

“I have a headache. Papa, I’ll go home alone if you want to stay.”

“I
don’t
want to stay. I told you I did not want to come at all, but you insisted.”

“If you don’t want to stay, then let us leave,” she said, resigning in her temper.

She wished she had not posted her letter to Aunt Margaret. She
would
go home tomorrow. She would not stay in town and have to smile her congratulations when the match between Eskott and Lady Susan was announced. Humankind could bear only so much in one season.

“Wait till Saturday and I’ll run down with you for the weekend,” her father suggested when she told him of her decision in the morning.

“Very well.”

The team and phaeton were a diversion. She’d get them when she went home, if she got them at all. One of the grooms would teach her to handle the ribbons, on the privacy of country roads. She had the modiste in to discuss designs for a new outfit to wear when she set up her carriage, to get in the day. She took lunch alone, rifling through copies of
La Belle Assemblée
to select other patterns for autumn wear. She was just arising from the table when Eskott came pelting in, without disturbing the door knocker.

He looked pale, shocked,
awful.
“What’s the matter, Eskott?” she asked, running forward.

He took her two hands in a tight grasp. “You haven’t heard?”

“No, nothing. What is it? Is it Papa?” she asked, deciding that only death could have shaken him so.

“No, Perceval. The prime minister has been assassinated, shot through the heart.”

“Oh, my God! Who did it? How did it happen? When?”

“In the lobby of the House of Commons. I saw it. A man ran up to him, a madman, deranged. Before anyone could stop him, he raised his pistol and shot him through the heart. He didn’t get away. He was apprehended before he could run. I can’t believe it. It’s—it’s like a melodrama on the stage. It was awful.”

“The poor man. Oh, this is dreadful. What a confusion Parliament will be thrown into,
again.”

“Bellingham is the assassin’s name, they say. He had been in prison in Russia, it seems, and our representative there did not help him. He was bankrupted over the business. It affected his brain certainly. It was our representative from Russia he wanted to kill, but he was not around, so he shot Perceval instead. It’s incredible. I hoped I would catch you before you left. You are going to Highgate today...”

“No, I had decided to wait till Saturday. Papa asked me to. The trip will be off now of course. He’ll have to stay in town. There will be meetings... It was kind of you to take time to come and tell me.”

“That’s not really why I came, Maddie,” he said, in a softer, hesitant voice. “Let us sit down. We must talk. I think you have some idea what I want to say.”

She could not speak for the lump in her throat. A gentleman to the end, he was going to tell her he was engaged to Lady Susan, before she heard it in some public place. He took her hands in his, holding them tightly. She swallowed down the lump and replied, “Yes, I have a pretty good idea, Eskott.”

“There’s no use fighting it, is there? I know I should be angry with you: you have treated me with abominable disregard for years, culminating in that outrageous accusation! How
could
you say such a thing to me? What really hurt was that you could believe such treachery of
me,
but not of
him.”

“A madness most indiscreet. I have paid for it, and will go on paying.”

“You’re not telling me you still care for him!”

“Good gracious no! I nearly slapped his face last night when he came bowing up to me, with his simpering bride in tow.”

“I am ashamed to be in the same party as him, but at least he takes a very inactive part. He is turning brewmaster, I hear.”

“I can’t believe I ever cared for him. But love is blind, they say.”

“It is infatuation that is blind. Love sees the flaws only too clearly, but goes on caring just the same, in spite of all,” he said with a rueful smile that made her wonder if his mind was unalterably set on Lady Susan.

“Then I am disinfatuated. I see only the flaws now. I don’t even find him handsome. The best part of him is his jacket, and I made him order that. He doesn’t merit a Weston jacket.”

“He doesn’t merit any more remorse either, Maddie. Life is too short.”

“Yes,” she said, thinking of poor Perceval, cut down in his prime. “I must make the most of what is left. Do something useful and worthwhile.”

“Helping the poor, making the world in general a more just place?”

“Yes.”

“Welcome to the party,” he said, taking her fingers and squeezing them. “You’ll make a perfect Whig hostess. Converts are always enthusiastic partisans. That woolsack I’ll be sitting on one of these days is big enough for two. Care to join me?”

“Lady Susan...”

“I did such a poor job of hiding my disappointment last night when I learned you had left the ball that she gave me my congé on the spot. She said it was kind of me to
try
to fall in love with her. Wasn’t that sweet? I was so happy I kissed her. The two of us received congratulations from half a dozen bystanders.”

“Well they should congratulate you. She’s a lovely girl,” Madeline said with a surge of affection for the hussy.

“I am a fool to let her slip through my fingers. I want to make my position absolutely clear this time. I am not here to resume my role as your delivery boy-cum-convenient escort. I am thirty-five years old. I realized when I saw Perceval shot today how tenuous a hold we have on life. He was only fifty. He little thought when he tied his cravat and shaved this morning that he would never do those things again. It could have been me that got the bullet as well as he, for the assassin was quite obviously deranged. I don’t plan to waste another day of my life. It’s marriage immediately, or the end of our relationship. This is the third time I’ve asked you. Three and you’re out. What do you say, old girl?”

“I would be honored to join you on the woolsack, dear Eskott. Or anywhere else.”

“Good, I have a few other places in mind as well,” he said, pulling her into his arms. She felt safe and warm and loved, and every bit as excited as a bride-to-be should feel on such an occasion. She was entering a new phase of her life, her “boys” left behind, their place taken by one fully mature man. When he kissed her, the past fell from her mind and she envisioned a bright future, in which helping the poor played a much smaller part than loving dear Eskott.

Copyright © 1983 by Joan Smith

Originally published by Fawcett Crest in September, 1983

Electronically published in 2006 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED