The Chocolate Debutante (17 page)

“That is my affair,” said Harriet, withdrawing her hands. “We had best discuss who is to be at the wedding rehearsal…”

“No, I won’t until you tell me what ails you!”

“If you must. I have made a fool of myself. I thought Lord Dangerfield’s intentions were honorable, but he was merely playing a game with me. I have it on good authority that he has been laying bets in the clubs that he can ‘have me,’ as he so cruelly put it.”

“And who was this good authority?”

“My old friends, Miss Carrington, Miss Barncastle, and Miss Teale.”

“Those old cats! Good authority! Let me tell you, Aunt, I am now more wise to the ways of the world than you will ever be. Those three frumps are not invited anywhere. How could they possibly know what goes on in the gentlemen’s clubs of London? And Charles would have told me if such had been the case. Of course he would. How stupid you are! Did you not think to ask Dangerfield?”

“He would have denied it. And Miss Teale’s brother does go about in society, and it was he who told her.”

“I do not believe a word of it. Send a note by footman, John, to Dangerfield’s and get him here. All that you have to worry about is that he may never forgive you for being such an idiot!”

Harriet covered her face with her hands.

“I cannot bear to see him.”

“Then
I
will see him.” Susan went to the writing desk and scribbled a note, rang the bell, handed it to John and told him to seek out Lord Dangerfield and bring him back with him immediately.

“But what if it is true?” asked Harriet, white-faced. “What if he laughs at me?”

“Then you will have something genuine to be miserable about instead of moping and mowing over what was nothing more than a fictitious and malicious piece of gossip from three old tabbies! And put another gown on. One of your new ones. You look the veriest frump.”

Susan rang the bell again and summoned the maid, Lucy, who brightened on being ordered to make her mistress “like a fashion plate.”

Harriet was torn between hope and misery. What if he did not come? What if he
did
come and jeered at her?

When she had just finished being made ready, John put his head around the door to say that Lord Dangerfield was in the drawing room.

Harriet rose and went slowly down the stairs. When she entered the drawing room, Susan, who had been sitting with the earl, rose to her feet and made a hasty exit, slamming the door behind her. Harriet made to open the door so as to observe the conventions, but his harsh voice stopped her. “What is this farrago of nonsense I have been hearing from Miss Colville?”

Harriet hung her head. “My friends, Miss Barncastle, Miss Carrington, and Miss Teale called to inform me that your intentions toward me were dishonorable and that you had been laying bets in the clubs that you could take my virtue.”

“And you believed them?”

“Miss Teale said her brother, John, who does frequent the clubs, said so.”

His gray eyes filled with contempt. “And so you readily accepted such scurrilous scandal without even asking me whether it was true or not?”

“I thought it must be,” said Harriet pleadingly. “I am not young, my lord. I am a spinster beyond the years when most women can accept a proposal of marriage.” His eyes softened and he made a move toward her, but her next words stopped him in his tracks. “And… and you had consorted with such as Mrs. Palfrey—a murderess—or would have been if her plan had succeeded.”

“I explained my liaison. I opened my heart to you. But it seems I am never to be forgiven. Well, madam, I do not forgive you for having listened to the spite and malice of your so-called friends!”

He marched from the room.

As he collected his gloves and stick from the butler, he asked for the address of Miss Barncastle, and having secured it, set out in the direction of South Audley Street.

So awesome was his title and presence that Miss Barncastle’s maid ushered him in without warning her mistress first.

Miss Barncastle, Miss Teale, and Miss Carrington sat looking up at him, frozen, teacups half raised to their lips.

“So, you are the three witches,” he said savagely.

“How dare you burst in here…?” began Miss Barncastle in a thin, reedy voice.

“And how dare you interfere in my life with your scandalous spite?”

“If you mean what we said to dear Harriet,” quavered Miss Teale. “We had it on good authority. My own brother…”

“So you are Miss Teale, I presume. Well, Miss Teale, I take leave to inform you that I am going in search for your dear brother and I am going to call him out.”

“You cannot do that. He is sickly.”

“He won’t be sickly by the time I have finished with him. He’ll be dead.”

Miss Teale fell to her knees and held her hands out to him. “Oh, my poor brother. It was not he. It was Sir Thomas Jeynes.”

She took one look at the naked rage blazing in the earl’s eyes, gave a little hiccup, and fainted dead away.

The other two knelt down beside her and held a hartshorn under her nose and slapped her wrists.

“Tell me one thing,” said Lord Dangerfield. “If it was Sir Thomas who poured this silly poison into your ears, then why did you tell Miss Tremayne it was Miss Teale’s brother?”

“Neither Miss Carrington nor I did that,” said Miss Barncastle. “It was all Miss Teale’s idea.”

“An idea you were happy to go along with. Why?”

Miss Carrington said, “Sir Thomas told us he was in love with Harriet himself and so she would merely think him jealous.”

Without another word, the earl turned and strode from the house.

He tracked Sir Thomas down that evening in White’s Club. He was playing cards with a party of dandies. Charles Courtney was there, watching the play, as was Lord Ampleforth.

He drew off his gloves and walked up to the table.

“Jeynes,” he said, “you are a cur and a bastard.”

Sir Thomas turned pale, but said evenly, “Go away. You are drunk and you are interrupting the game.”

“You are not only a cur and a bastard,” said the earl, his eyes glittering, “but a whoreson, an insect, a crawling louse.”

Silence fell on the gaming room. Everyone sat frozen, some of them wearing silly hats and their coats turned inside out for luck.

Sir Thomas rose to his feet. “You shall pay for those insults.”

“By all means.” The earl struck him across the face with his gloves. “Name your seconds.”

“I’ll second you, Jeynes,” said Lord Ampleforth gleefully. A Mr. Anderson, a weedy Scot on his first visit to London and delighted that the game had been interrupted, for he had been losing heavily, eagerly volunteered to second Sir Thomas as well.

Charles Courtney said he would act for the earl, as did Lord Tasker.

Lord Dangerfield turned and walked away. The time, place, and weapons would be arranged by the seconds.

Charles found it very difficult to see Susan alone. He longed to tell her about the duel. Sir Thomas wanted swords rather than pistols, and Lord Dangerfield had agreed. The duel was to be fought on Friday morning in Hyde Park at six o’clock.

But Harriet always seemed to be there, a sad Harriet, always watching and listening to make sure the couple was not about to slip off to some convenient bedroom.

But on Wednesday evening, when he escorted both ladies to the opera, he saw his opportunity. Harriet, unlike most of society, became so engrossed in the music that she became deaf and blind to anything else.

As soon as he noticed Harriet leaning forward in the box, her lips slightly parted, he pinched Susan’s arm and whispered, “Dangerfield is to fight a duel with Sir Thomas Jeynes.”

Susan let out a little shriek, and Harriet immediately turned her head and gave an admonitory “Shhh!”

Both now waited until her attention was once more focused on the stage. “Why?” asked Susan in a soft voice.

“It was Sir Thomas who told those cats, those friends of Miss Tremayne’s, that Lord Dangerfield’s intentions were highly dishonorable. He told me this the other day.”

“When is this duel?”

“At six o’clock in Hyde Park on Friday morning.”

“Does Harriet know?”

“I should not think so.”

“Can you stop it?”

Charles looked horrified. “Of course not.”

“Is Dangerfield a good swordsman?”

“The best in England.”

“And does Sir Thomas know that?”

“I do not think so. The fool prides himself on his swordsmanship and thinks he lost to Dangerfield the last time because it was pistols. It is all very exciting. I have never attended a duel.”

Susan sat and worried. She had become very fond of Harriet indeed. There was still hope in her mind that the earl and Harriet might forget their silly differences and make a match of it. Her mother and family, who had been delayed in coming to London because her mother had contracted a mysterious fever, were now on their way. After they arrived, Harriet would have no time for socializing, as they’d have to see to the last-minute arrangements for the wedding. And what use would a dead earl be to Harriet? For perhaps, despite the earl’s reputation, Sir Thomas might prove the finer swordsman.

At the opera ball later that evening, Susan sent a smile flashing across the room in the direction of Sir Thomas. That gentleman promptly secured a dance with her. It was the waltz.

“You are so stupid to fight this duel,” said Susan.

He stumbled, apologized, and said, “You should not know of it.”

“But I do and I am vastly concerned for you.”

“I am well able to give a good account of myself,” he said proudly. “I am a fine swordsman.”

“But Dangerfield is the best in England.”

“I have not heard that!”

“Perhaps because you did not ask. Dangerfield is not the type of man to
brag.
”

He fell silent, became abstracted, trod on her toes several times, and Susan hoped she had given him something to worry about. But to make sure, just before the end of the dance she said, “He did not kill you last time, but he means to make a good job of it this time.”

Sir Thomas left the ball immediately after his dance with Susan.

He fretted all night about this news of the earl’s prowess. In the morning he went to see London’s most famous fencing master, Monsieur Duval.

“I am to fight a duel, Monsieur,” he said, “and am desirous to perfect my arm.”

“Who is it you fight with?” asked the small Frenchman.

“Lord Dangerfield.”

“Alas, Sir Thomas, Lord Dangerfield must be the only man who is better than I.”

Sir Thomas’s heart went right down to his highly polished boots. But he said lightly, “Let us fight. Perhaps it will prove that I am better than you as well.”

He fenced well. But each time he was easily defeated.

“If I were you,” said Monsieur Duval by way of farewell, “I would draw up my will and make my peace with my Maker.”

It was the arrival of her parents that made Susan’s mind up for her. Her mother promptly took to her bed and had Harriet running here and there to arrange comforts and physicians for her. The noisy children were here, there, and everywhere. Harriet, Susan decided, would be lost in domesticity, and by the time the wedding was over, the earl might be dead or have killed Sir Thomas and have to flee the country.

So on Thursday night she told a horrified Harriet about the duel.

“I will tell the authorities,” wailed Harriet. “This duel must be stopped.”

“You cannot do that,” said Susan. “No gentleman would forgive you.”

“What if he is killed?”

“If he is not killed and yet kills Jeynes, he will need to flee the country,” said Susan lugubriously, “and you will never see him again.”

Harriet put her hands up to her face in a helpless gesture. “What am I to do?”

Several Colville children erupted into the room and chased one another around and over the furniture, pursued by their harassed governess. Harriet waited until the children had been shooed out. “In order to see him, I would need to go to his home. If I send for him, he may not come.”

“Then I will order the carriage for you,” said Susan brightly.

“Susan! You know a lady should never visit a gentleman at his home!”

“The circumstances are such that if I were you, I would defy convention. Very well then, go heavily veiled and take a hack.”

“What am I to do?” wailed Harriet again.

“I just told you, Aunt. It would be very lily-livered of you to let the poor man go off into death or banishment without seeing him. The duel is over you.”