Taming of Annabelle (4 page)

‘Who . . . ?’

‘Why, Peter, Marquess of Brabington.’

‘But why is that exciting? He is a very fine gentleman but . . .’

‘Do but listen! He is a hero! He sailed from Portsmouth shortly after we last saw him at the vicarage to rejoin his regiment in the Peninsula. But shortly out of Portsmouth, the ship, the
Mary Belle
, was hit with a mighty storm and the men had to take to the boats. The
Mary Belle
sank very rapidly and a deal of men were struggling in the water, and Lord Brabington, who
was on one of the long boats, kept going back and back, time after time, into that dreadful sea.

‘It is estimated he saved the lives of ten men before he collapsed with exhaustion. He contracted a fever and is being brought here to rest until he is well again. He will be too weak to
do little more than keep to his bed but we are all agog to welcome him.’

‘He is a very brave man,’ said Annabelle sincerely.

‘Ah, yes,’ laughed Minerva, ‘I noticed that he was quite taken with you, Bella.’

‘Really!’ said Annabelle, affecting a yawn. ‘How old is he?’

‘I believe Sylvester said he had thirty years.’

‘Oh, Merva. And you just said the gentlemen in their twenties were too old for me!’ teased Annabelle.

‘Well, if one meets an . . . an older man who is out of the common way then such a difference in age does not matter.’

‘No! It did not stop you from becoming engaged to Lord Sylvester despite a difference of fourteen years. But I forget. You were not looking for a love match. It was necessary for you to
marry
anyone
with money to save our fortunes and I think it was all very noble of you, Merva.’

‘I was not noble at all,’ laughed Minerva. ‘It is a love match.’

Annabelle’s heart fell. But Minerva did not look like a woman in love. And she would say such a thing because it would not be right to say otherwise. So Annabelle tried to console
herself.

As one grows older, the difference in ages seems to narrow. Someone of forty-five will feel on equal terms with someone of sixty. But between seventeen and twenty yawns a large gulf. Annabelle
was still an adolescent girl while Minerva had become a woman. Added to that, Minerva had acted as substitute mother to the Armitage children, Mrs Armitage being too taken up with practising to be
an invalid. One does not think at seventeen of one’s mother having ever endured the burning fires of love, and so Annabelle could not bring herself to think that her aloof sister had ever
felt the tremblings of passion. Nothing is more intense, or more self-centred than calf love.

Annabelle became aware that Minerva was speaking. ‘We are to join the Duchess for luncheon. We have breakfast, luncheon and dinner here, quite like London. We do not sit down to dinner
until eight o’clock in the evening! I shall lend you something grand for evening but we are quite informal for luncheon. Betty has laid out your pretty blue muslin.’

But Annabelle immediately pouted. ‘Lend me one of yours,
please
,’ she wheedled.

Visions of Lord Sylvester waiting below at the luncheon table crowded into her mind. She could almost hear his mocking voice, see his beautifully sculptured mouth.

‘No,’ said Minerva firmly. ‘There will not be . . .’

‘I don’t
want
to wear that old blue thing,’ said Annabelle, her voice rising. ‘It’s just like you to want to keep all the finest things for
yourself.’

‘That is unkind,’ said Minerva. ‘What has come over you, Annabelle?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Annabelle, bursting into tears. ‘But I do so want to look fashionable.’

She is still such a child
, thought Minerva indulgently.

‘There now,’ she said. ‘Dry your eyes. You may choose any gown you want.’

‘Really? Anything?’

‘Anything at all.’

‘Oh,
thank you!
’ cried Annabelle, her tears miraculously disappearing.

‘Then come with me.’

An hour later, Annabelle was ready to descend the stairs. She had chosen a morning dress, with an apron front and stomacher let in and laced across like a peasant’s bodice with coloured
ribbons. It was made of jaconet muslin, white with a small design in cherry red, and with cherry-red silk ribbons.

Her blonde hair had been put up in a loose knot on the top of her head, allowing a cascade of ringlets to fall to her shoulders. Minerva thought Annabelle had never looked more beautiful –
and Annabelle thought so too.

It was with great bitterness that Annabelle found she was to waste all this sweetness on the desert air.

Luncheon was to be served in the Yellow Saloon on the ground floor, a pretty room affording an excellent view of the park.

But it was the sight of the company that depressed Annabelle so. There were no gentlemen present, and, worst of all, certainly no Lord Sylvester.

The company for luncheon consisted only of the Duchess of Allsbury and Lady Godolphin.

The Duchess was a small, plump lady with beautifully dressed white hair and large green eyes which had faded with age to a sort of pale gooseberry colour. She had an easy outer manner covering a
rather frosty interior. In truth, her grace privately disapproved of her youngest son’s forthcoming marriage to Minerva Armitage, thinking he was throwing himself away by affiancing himself
to some little nobody from a country vicarage. But Minerva, in her way, could be almost as intimidating as Lord Sylvester, and so she had kept her thoughts to herself. It would certainly be
understandable if she had disapproved of Lady Godolphin, but Lady Godolphin came from a very old family, and so the Duchess found nothing up with that reprehensible old quiz.

Annabelle had not really been warned about Lady Godolphin since she had not quite taken in her mother’s remarks, and Minerva would have considered it disloyal to criticize the lady who had
been her chaperone.

Lady Godolphin was a squat lady in her late fifties with a bulldog face and pale-blue eyes. She wore a great deal of pearl powder over a covering of white lead paint. Two round circles of rouge
glared from her withered cheeks and a scarlet wig perched at an improbable angle on her head.

She was wearing a very low-cut gown of acid-green velvet and the ageing flesh of her breasts quivered under their coating of white lead every time she moved like the winter water shivering under
a coating of thin ice on the lake outside.

Lady Godolphin sprang to her feet at their entrance, and, without waiting to be introduced, enfolded Annabelle in a warm and smelly embrace. Annabelle extricated herself as soon as she decently
could, noticing as she did so that some of her ladyship’s white paint had smeared the cherry-red ribbons of her bodice.

‘Ain’t you the pretty one,’ crowed Lady Godolphin. ‘You’ll have all the fellows shaking in their shoes like blankmanjies. I don’t know how Charles Armitage
produced such beauties. He’s so obesed with the chase, one would expect him to have sired a pack o’ fox-faced long-nosed antidotes.’

‘Where are the gentlemen, my lady?’ asked Annabelle, looking anxiously at the four settings on the table and wishing there were more so she might at least
hope.

‘Gone out riding with the ladies,’ said the Duchess calmly. ‘Pray be seated, Miss Annabelle. I trust your journey was not too fatiguing? No? Good. That is a pretty gown you are
wearing.’

‘I remember it well,’ said Lady Godolphin, as they all seated themselves at the table. ‘I bought it for Minerva. It’s as well you are of a size and you ain’t too
proud to wear hand-me-downs.’

Annabelle’s glorious beauty seemed to pale and fade under the mortification inflicted by these words. But the thought that this amiable-looking Duchess might one day be her mother-in-law
stiffened her spine, and she contented herself with smiling vaguely at some point over Lady Godolphin’s shoulder.

The Duchess launched into a conversation with Lady Godolphin of the do-you-know and how-are-the-so-and-sos variety while Minerva and Annabelle were obliged to sit mum and behave like good little
girls.

Annabelle gamely, at one point, tried to break in by saying to the Duchess, ‘You have a beautiful house,’ but her grace only fixed her with a pleasant smile which did not quite reach
her eyes, replied, ‘Yes,’ and continued to talk to Lady Godolphin.

After some time the Duchess asked Lady Godolphin, ‘And how goes Mr Brummell? Still ruling the roost?’

Annabelle immediately pricked up her ears for Lady Godolphin’s reply, for Mr George Brummell
was
fashion. It was said the Prince Regent had blubbered like a baby when Mr Brummell
had criticized the cut of his coat.

‘Oh, tol rol,’ said Lady Godolphin, waving her pudgy fingers in a dismissive kind of way. ‘He still works so hard at being the fashion which, of course, anyone with a doubtful
pedigree must do. He toadies very cleverly when he is not being frightfully rude and they all love him for it. Like those women who like being insulted by their hairdresser. It appeals to their
love of dollar and humiliation.’

There was a little silence while the other three ladies tried to think what Lady Godolphin could possibly mean by ‘love of dollar’.

It was rather like doing an acrostic, thought Annabelle.

‘
Douleur
– the French for pain,’ said Minerva suddenly, her face clearing.

Lady Godolphin nodded her large head. ‘That’s just what I said, Minerva. There’s no need to go on repeating my words, you know. We ain’t deaf.’

Annabelle and Minerva solemnly bowed their heads over their food.

At last, the meal was over and the two Armitage girls were free to make their escape.

‘How
could
you bear being brought out by
her
,’ whispered Annabelle as they were mounting the grand staircase. ‘She is
awful.
And I don’t think the
Duchess likes us one bit.’

She expected this latter remark to shock Minerva for she had never thought her sister a very perceptive sort of girl, but Minerva said, ‘I will not have to see much of her once I am
married . . . the Duchess, that is. Lady Godolphin is quite shocking, I agree, but she has a very kind heart.’

‘It’s a wonder you noticed it,’ said Annabelle acidly, ‘hidden as it must be under at least three feet of
blanc.
’

‘Hush!’ said Minerva. ‘We must not criticize our elders.’

‘Oh,
Merva
, if you don’t really think she’s a frightful old hag then you are a hypocrite, or, as her ladyship would no doubt say, a hippopotamus.’

But Minerva was not to be drawn on the subject of Lady Godolphin. ‘You must lie down and rest,’ she told Annabelle. ‘For they keep very late hours here. No! You must be guided
by me. Off to bed!’

Rather sulkily, Annabelle complied, but no sooner was she in the privacy of her rooms than she was overcome by a fit of rebellion. ‘Late hours’ probably meant nine o’clock to
Minerva. And why waste time sleeping when she could be on the watch for Lord Sylvester?

Finding the windows of her sitting room over-looked the main entrance, she settled down to wait.

Small flakes of snow, round and hard as pellets, were beginning to fall. Annabelle watched as the bare branches of the trees began to bend in the rising wind and the sky grew even darker
above.

She stared down the long straight drive. At one moment, she would think she could see a party of riders, and then the next, would realize that the blowing, thickening snow was tricking her
vision.

And then all at once they appeared, clattering up the drive, Lord Sylvester and a middle-aged woman in a smart frogged riding dress leading the way.

Annabelle sprang to her feet, and then stood irresolute. She did not want to confront all these strangers. At last she decided to creep quietly to the top of the stairs and see if she could find
a chance to speak to Lord Sylvester when the others had retired to their rooms.

There was an alcove with a large bronze statue of Zeus on the first landing and Annabelle managed to hide behind it without being seen by any of the guests or servants.

Several young women and men mounted the stairs and passed her. After what seemed an unbearably long time, the middle-aged lady came up and walked past, holding the long train of her riding dress
over one arm. She looked very elegant and
mondaine.
That must be Lady Coombes, thought Annabelle, remembering Minerva’s description of the guests.

Then there was a long silence, punctuated only by faint sounds of voices and laughter from the rooms above.

Annabelle slipped quietly down the stairs to the main hall. The statues surrounding the hall seemed to watch her with their bronze eyes.

There were so many rooms. Where could he have gone? A butler wearing a green baize apron came into the hall and Annabelle flashed him a bright smile.

‘Can you tell me the whereabouts of Lord Sylvester Comfrey?’ she asked.

‘In the library, miss,’ replied the butler.

‘Which is . . . ?’

‘Over there, miss, at the far end of the hall on the right.’

Annabelle’s heart began to beat hard and she felt a suffocating constriction at her chest. For one desperate moment she wanted to turn and flee, but the butler was standing gravely
watching her so she put up her chin and marched to the back of the hall.

Gently she pushed open the library door and walked inside. Lord Sylvester was standing over at one of the long windows, a calf-bound volume in his hand. He was wearing a dark forest-green coat
over a short waistcoat of printed Marseilles, kerseymere breeches and brown top boots. His light-brown hair was artistically arranged as if he had just left the hands of the hairdresser. He did not
look up as Annabelle entered, seeming totally immersed in his book.

‘One would not think you had just been out riding,’ said Annabelle in a breathless voice. ‘You look as if you had just stepped out of a bandbox.’

Lord Sylvester lowered his book and turned and looked at Annabelle, his green eyes totally expressionless.

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Annabelle,’ he said languidly. ‘I did not hear what you said.’

‘I-I said you looked as if you had stepped from a bandbox instead of having been out riding,’ repeated Annabelle weakly. ‘I-I m-mean in this weather.’