Springtime Pleasures (12 page)

Dear Charlie, the most dreadful thing has happened: I have acquired another beau, who is just as aggravating as the first one. He is a medical man (which has thrown mother into near raptures) of the most enormous proportions (which has thrown me into despair). I am not at all prejudiced against a hint of stoutness, but that man
waddles
. He is not yet 30 & has not seen his feet in years. More annoyingly, he insists on informing me that, being not of the medical profession myself, I cannot possibly understand his many humorous medical anecdotes. Truly, I shall not be sorry to hear he has succumbed to a spell of whooping cough or scarlet fever! I fear I am fast becoming what Miss P. w’d have called ‘uncharitable’. – Though p’haps I am not all lost to hope yet bec. I will still warn you to take heed in your dealings with Lord Ch. I fear most sincerely you may overreach yourself in this case. He might not like it that you take such a decided interest in hi affairs – indeed, the whole business might be terribly misconstrued. I therefore beg you, Charlie, to pay heed, & not open y’rself up to censure.

Ever your friend, Emma-Louise Brockwin

~*~

Miss Carlotta Stanton to Miss Emma-Louise Brockwin, by Two-penny Post, returned the same evening

You
are
a true friend, dear Em. But please be assured that there is no reason to worry on my account. I will be most
careful
in the execution of our plan. Isabella & I have contrived to meet Mr W. in the Park today & have settled a date when I can collect my winnings. I am v. excited, for I call it a truly
shocking
State of Affairs if a Gentleman like Lord Ch. is allowed to wallow in Melancholia. Somebody
has
to take action, Em, & for now it seems that this task has fallen onto y’r friend. I shall rise to the occasion like a true St. Cuthbertian, & given the infestation of England by People of the Criminal Persuasion, I will take my Blunderbuss. (Was it not a most
fortuitous
accident that we met with those Highwaymen on our way south?) – If your beaux vex you too much, we can always run away to Paris together. With my winnings from that game of cards we can set up a very Comfortable Establishment. & we ought to take Isabella, too – I know she w’d profit the world from your influence, Em. You w’d be much better at cheering her up than I bec. you have a much better grasp of what constitutes Suitable Topics for Polite Conversation. She is in desperate need of some cheering up, I assure you. If you c’d see how
shabbily
she is treated by Polite Society! It w’d make y’r blood boil! I have found that the Polite World is far less polite than we have been led to believe.

Always yours, Carlotta

~*~

When the knock sounded on the front door, Charlie came already bouncing down the stairs.

“Lady Isabella’s carriage is waiting in the street outside,” James the footman announced.

“I know, I know!” Charlie chanted, almost breathless with excitement. She had been pressing her nose against her upstairs window for the past quarter hour and had thus seen the landau drawing up in front of the house. “My spencer, please!”

Today was the day! Today was the
day
! Dancing from foot to foot, she waited while James Footman fetched the garment. “I wonder what he will say,” she murmured to herself. “I wonder—”

“Charlotte!” her aunt called. “Is that the Lymfort carriage waiting outside?” She came into the entrance hall, Cousin Caroline in tow.

“It is most elegant,” Caroline whispered.

Aunt Dolmore sniffed. “That may be so, but still, this is a most unfashionable hour for a turn around the Park. I do wonder at the countess letting her daughter out at this time of the day!”

“Oh Mama,” Cousin Caroline said somewhat impatiently, while James arrived with Charlie’s spencer jacket, holding it up so she could slip easily into it. “What else should the poor girl do, crippled as she is?” She gave an artful little shudder. “Seeing that
chair
always makes me feel most peculiar. I must say I find it most selfish of her to go to balls and parties and such events where that thing might give people the most shocking turn.” She shook her head. “Very selfish!”

Slack-jawed, Charlie stared at her aunt and cousin. Of all the—

“Yes, yes.” Aunt Dolmore patted her daughter’s hand. “That might as it be, but I would wish you could befriend the girl, Caroline. It might prove a most useful connexion, after all. I know you have made your opinion on Lord Chanderley quite clear, and I shan’t press you on that point, but one never frowns on aristocratic acquaintances, my dear.” She turned her gaze on Charlie. “You should have invited Caroline to accompany you, Charlotte.”

“Accompany—” Caroline gasped.

“Not today, naturally,” her mother cut in. “You are not suitably dressed after all, my dear. But in the future–” Turning her attention back on Charlie, Aunt Dolmore narrowed her eyes. “—I pray you will remember what you owe this family, Charlotte. You are being given food and a roof over your head, not to speak of all the
opportunities
! So it would behove you to show a little gratitude and not put yourself forward in this unbecoming fashion!”

Outraged, Charlie opened her mouth. “I am not—”

“Do not contradict your elders and betters, child.” The older woman eyed her up and down, her mouth pinched with displeasure. “Well, what are you waiting for? Lady Isabella will surely wonder where you are.” With a wave of her hand she indicated for James to open the front door.

Inwardly seething, Charlie picked up her new, enlarged reticule and stepped outside, where Isabella’s groom was already holding the door of the landau for her. Isabella herself awaited her with a beaming smile on her face. This, however, slowly dimmed as she caught sight of Charlie’s stormy expression. “Miss Stanton—Carlotta!” she exclaimed. “Whatever is amiss?”

Charlie climbed into the carriage and flopped down on the seat opposite Isabella’s. She grimaced as she marked the other girl’s worried frown. “Nothing, I assure you. Merely…” She sighed.

The groom, meanwhile, had climbed back on the box seat and the landau jerked in motion.

“A domestic disagreement,” Charlie finished. “A difference of opinion. An
annoying
difference of opinion, but still…” She shrugged, then forced herself to smile. What good would it do to burden her new friend with Aunt Dolmore’s and Cousin Caroline’s petty schemings and sayings? And what did Aunt Dolmore mean when she said that Cousin Caroline had made her opinion on Lord Chanderley known?

Lud! How Cousin Caroline had talked about him after his visit! It made Charlie’s blood boil just to think of it! Poor Chanderley! Oh, it was high time somebody
did
something about this whole ghastly situation. She would not let him down, Charlie swore to herself. No, she wouldn’t.

She took a deep breath. “It is alright, I assure you.”

“Oh, for a moment I believed you might have changed your mind.” Anxiously, Isabella searched Charlie’s eyes. “It would be utterly understandable, of course.”

“Changed my mind?” Charlie cut in with a laugh, shaking off her dismal mood. “Not for all the world! I understand that Mr Whitstock’s is considered the most dashing vehicle in town. If you must know, I’m positively
burning
to try it out!”

Despite her reassurance, a shadow remained on Isabella’s face. “But a high-perch phaeton… I don’t know whether it was such a good idea after all. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, yet with such a vehicle being so difficult to drive…” She leaned forward to take Charlie’s hand. “Dear Carlotta, are you really, really sure?”

An affectionate smile curved Charlie’s lips. “Truly, you mustn’t fret yourself in such a manner. I assure you, I can drive most of anything that has two wheels or four and a horse or two or three or four…” She grinned. “I have to admit, I have never attempted to drive six-in-hand like the Prince Regent, but I should say six-in-hand is somewhat excessive, don’t you think so?” Impish mischief made her add, “Yet I can do a handstand—even a handspring, if called for—on the back of a shire horse. How is that?”

“Carlotta!” Isabella clapped her hand over her mouth and gaped at her, half in shock, half in amusement. After a moment, the amusement obviously having won, she started to giggle behind her hand. “I pray you will not perform such feats today! My poor brother would probably die of shock!”

“It would be a novel experience for him,” Charlie retorted gravely. “Good for his soul and all that.” But then she, too, burst into giggles, as she imagined poor Lord Chanderley’s face when she performed a handspring from the back of a carriage horse.

The girls were still chuckling and giggling when the carriage stopped at the address Mr Whitstock had given them. True to his promise, he was already awaiting them with his horses and carriage standing ready at his side. When he attempted some last, feeble protest, Charlie informed him loftily that a debt was a debt and would he please stop making a cake of himself?

“If anybody’s making a cake of herself and flinging her bonnet over the windmill besides…” he muttered darkly.

“I have no intention of flinging my bonnet anywhere, thank you very much.”

He glanced at Isabella’s groom as if hoping the lad would come to his help, but finally, he gave a sigh and enquired in martyred tones whether miss required a hand up.

“No need,” Charlie twinkled at him and, as nimbly as a monkey, climbed up on the high-perched seat of the phaeton. “But you
may
pass me my reticule,” she offered generously. That deed done, she gave a cheerful wave, cried “Adieu!” and clattered off.

Sitting enthroned so high above the street in such a flimsy, bouncy seat turned out to be a trifle difficult at first, not at all like driving a haywagon really, where you also sat quite high up above the ground but had two large, sturdy horses or oxen in front of you and a large, sturdy cart at your back. Yet, as she had assured Isabella, she could drive almost anything, and as Mr Whitstock’s horses were not merely most handsome but also beautifully well-behaved, Charlie soon had got the knack.
And I would be a sad slowtop if I hadn’t
, she thought to herself.

The day before she had studied her map of London and had carefully memorised the way from Mr Whitstock’s lodgings to the Albany, where according to Isabella her brother resided. So she had little trouble finding her way. Negotiating busy Piccadilly Street was a bit ticklish, yet she had no compunction about giving back as good as she got when a wizened hackney driver swore at her. Indeed, she had the satisfaction of seeing him go all slackjawed at the oath she shouted at him.

Good old St. Cuthbert’s!
she thought fondly. The elderly gentleman who had once owned the mansion had left behind his well-stocked library—to the delight of the girls, who had soon found the treasures in the hidden compartments. Nothing of a licentious nature; instead his tastes had leaned towards the coarse and the vulgar. Rather shocking, if one thought about it, the things men found interest in.

Charlie wondered what Lord Chanderley’s interests might be. Fishing, she surmised, was not among them, since there had been a decided lack of enthusiasm when they had been discussing catfish and eels. What, then? Opera, perhaps? She had heard that some gentlemen had a fascination for the opera; however, she had not yet been able to ascertain this fact for herself as Aunt Dolmore had informed her in rigid tones that the opera was no place for a well-raised young girl. Charlie wondered why, for there was nothing remotely scandalous in the Mozart songs Mr Bernstone had taught Miss Pinkerton’s pupils to sing and play on the fortepiano.

“It must be
another
London thing,” she muttered to herself while she turned the phaeton into the short lane that led up to Albany. As the vehicle clattered to a stop in front of what Isabella had informed her was called the Mansion, the front door of the building was thrown open to reveal a flabbergasted porter.

Charlie waved. “Sir? Could you…” She heaved her reticule on the seat beside her and started to rummage through its contents. After a while she emerged, feeling somewhat hot, but altogether triumphant. “Could you give Lord Chanderley this missive?” She handed the porter the letter she had laboured over for most of an afternoon. It was so important to get the tone right; to impress upon the viscount the
necessity
of teaching her how to drive this vehicle that was hers for the day. That there was
nobody
else, and really, he could not let her bumble along in this very dangerous carriage all on her own, now could he? “It is of the utmost importance and urgency,” she said, dropping her voice to a tone of suitable earnestness. “A matter of life and death, really.”

A somewhat dazed expression on his face, the porter took the proffered letter. He eyed it, then cleared his throat. “Well—”

“Oh please!” Charlie said, and not for the first time rued the fact that she was not small and sweet like Emma-Lee. Instead, she was tall and scrawny and afflicted with a dratted pair of spectacles.

“A matter of life and death, you say?” the man grumbled.

Charlie opened her eyes very wide. “Oh yes,” she breathed. This really was the tricky part of their plan. If Chanderley was not at home or unwilling to step outside… It would probably not do to for her to march inside and drag him out.

Fortunately, the porter was willing to deliver her message. Indeed, she only had to wait a few short minutes before the viscount himself came storming out of the front door.

“Miss Stanton!” he exploded, yet before he could continue, Charlie bestowed her most charming smile upon him.

“Lord Chanderley! How very good of you to come and help me with this tricky matter! Truly, I feel like a veritable damsel in distress.” She wondered whether she should flutter her lashes. She had seen other young ladies do so with astonishing effects, but she was not quite certain whether she could properly accomplish this feat, so instead she concentrated on looking like a proper damsel in distress. “If it were not for you, I would be in the most awful scrape.”

“You cannot possibly—”