Refining Felicity (11 page)

There is a tide in the affairs of women,
Which, taken at the flood, leads – God knows where.

Lord Byron,
Don Juan

Descending the stairs the following morning, the Marquess of Ravenswood paused. Felicity was leaving to go to the review in Hyde Park with Lord Bremmer. Amy and Effy were seeing them off. Felicity, the marquess noticed, was clutching a huge parcel.

‘What on earth is in that parcel?’ he called.

The little group turned to face him. Amy and Effy were smiling, Lord Bremmer scowling, and Felicity looking defiant.

‘Lady Felicity is going to drop off a parcel of her old clothes at St George’s,’ said Effy.

‘And you on your way to see the review!’ said the marquess, descending the stairs. ‘I shall be passing St George’s myself this morning. Allow me to deliver the parcel for you.’

‘That will not be necessary,’ said Felicity. Lord Bremmer had turned a muddy colour. ‘Let us go,’ added Felicity impatiently. The marquess watched them with narrowed eyes as they collided in the doorway in their haste to escape.

‘Why do you look so angry?’ asked Amy. ‘Bremmer is all that is suitable, although I confess I would have thought a man slightly older than Felicity would be more the thing.’

‘I think she’s up to mischief,’ said the marquess. He turned to the hovering butler. ‘Fetch that female here – the French dressmaker.’

‘What do you want to see Yvette for?’ asked Amy. ‘Does Miss Andrews wish her services? For she can’t have ’em, you know. Yvette is my find. And she’s busy now, making clothes for me and Effy.’

‘You’ll see’ was all the marquess would say.

Yvette appeared behind the butler. She was a young Frenchwoman in her twenties, with black eyes, a sallow skin, neatly dressed brown hair, and a trim figure.

‘Follow me, Yvette,’ said the marquess.

‘Shall we go and see what he is up to?’ asked Effy as the marquess strode up the stairs, with the dressmaker scurrying after him.

‘No,’ said Amy. ‘You never can tell with gentlemen. Their moods are most odd. He is probably going to get her to make Miss Andrews’ wedding gown or something like that and does not want to offend us.’

The marquess led the way into Felicity’s bedchamber. It looked as if a bomb had hit it. Yvette clucked in dismay. Clothes were lying everywhere, where they had been dragged from drawers and closets.

‘Now, Yvette,’ said the marquess. ‘You should know the contents of Lady Felicity’s wardrobe by now. Tell me which clothes are missing.’

The maid quickly began to search the room. ‘That new gold silk pelisse with the swansdown trimming is missing,’ she said half to herself, as she looked, ‘and the pink muslin with the five flounces, and the green carriage dress with the frogs, and—’

‘Enough! I gather these were not old.’

‘Oh no, my lord. They were my best creations and Lady Felicity seemed to like them.’

‘That will be all,’ said the marquess.

He hurried down to the drawing room and confronted the sisters. ‘It is my considered opinion,’ he said, ‘that Lady Felicity has eloped with Bremmer. The clothes in that parcel were her best.’

Effy let out a faint scream, but Amy said robustly, ‘Why would she do that?’

‘To have her revenge,’ said the marquess. ‘To disgrace us all. It is of no use my going to the review. I am sure they will not be there. They are probably on the road north. Do not worry. I shall punch Bremmer’s head and bring her back. She can have Bremmer if she wants, but in church and properly. The devil! I was to take Miss Andrews driving. Send a footman with my apologies.’

After he had left, the sisters sat looking stricken. ‘Can he be mistaken?’ said Effy at last. ‘Lady Felicity must know what this means. Not only will Lady Baronsheath be furious, but no one in society will ever want our services. Oh, Amy. Back to the days of cold rooms and stewed scrag-end of mutton.’

‘I hope she breaks her neck,’ said Amy savagely. ‘Of all the cruel and spiteful little minxes . . . Oh, why did we have to advertise for difficult girls. I didn’t like that Miss Andrews, but now she seems like all that is good and worthy in comparison to Felicity.’

All went well with the eloping couple. It was another fine spring day. Great fleecy clouds sailed overhead as they sat up on the box of Lord Bremmer’s travelling carriage. Lord Bremmer had no regrets. Every time he turned to look at Felicity she gave him a soft, glowing smile. He felt ten feet tall. He was sure his parents’ fury would be short-lived when they learned he had had the good sense to elope with a titled heiress.

Confident that no one would be looking for them for some time, as the review was expected to last for over two hours, they broke their journey at a posting house in Barnet. They had been sitting amicably side by side in the coffee room, drinking coffee and eating cake, when Felicity excused herself.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Lord Bremmer.

‘To the Jericho,’ said Felicity calmly.

Lord Bremmer blushed painfully. He felt it was very unwomanly of Felicity to be so graphic. She should have said she was retiring to straighten her gown or something like that.

When Felicity had left, he picked up an old copy of the
Morning Post
and idly studied the advertisements on the front.

The Tribbles’ advertisement seemed to leap out of the page at him. Felicity had confided in him that her misguided mother had answered an advertisement in the
Morning Post
. But surely it could not be this one – ‘If you have a Wild, Unruly, or Undisciplined Daughter . . .’

He put the paper down and shook his head as if to clear it. This could not be the one. It must have been some other advertisement.

He sipped his cooling coffee and waited, and waited. At last, fearing something might have happened to Felicity, he sent a maid to the privy in the inn garden to see if she was still there. But before the maid returned, Felicity erupted into the coffee room, her eyes shining.

‘Such luck,’ she cried. ‘I have bespoke a couple of hunters for us.’

‘Gad! Hunters? Why?’

‘The hunt, man. The hunt. They are already off and running.’

‘You cannot mean to join a hunt in the middle of an elopement.’

Felicity stamped her foot. ‘No one will be after us for hours. It is a perfectly splendid day and the scent is high. Here! Give me that parcel. I must change.’

She seized her brown paper parcel and ran out.

His mouth in a firm line of disapproval, Lord Bremmer went out into the inn courtyard to cancel the order for the hunters. But the landlord had been impressed by Felicity’s forceful personality and said he would not do anything until he had the lady’s permission.

Felicity appeared dressed in the men’s clothes the chambermaid had bought her, but minus the greatcoat and whiskers.

Lord Bremmer closed his eyes at the sight of his beloved in breeches, top boots, and padded coat. She looked like an effete and shoddy Dandy, fallen on hard times.

‘Don’t fall asleep,’ laughed Felicity. ‘Up and away, Bremmer, or we’ll lose them.’

When Lord Bremmer opened his eyes, it was to see Felicity leaping into the saddle.

‘I – I say,’ he called desperately. ‘Gad, Lady Felicity. Oh, Gad.’

With a turnip grin on his face, the landlord was leading a hunter forward. ‘Better get mounted, my lord,’ he said, ‘or you’ll lose your lady.’

The marquess, sure that the couple would not try to break their journey anywhere until nightfall, pressed on through Barnet. The
we-aw, we-aw, we-aw
of a hunting-horn was sounding over the fields to his right. He brought his attention back to the road just in time. A section of the road had fallen in, probably having been cracked and undermined by the winter’s frosts. By forcing his team round by the narrow grass verge, he just managed to miss it. He glanced back over his shoulder. Had he not been in such haste to catch Felicity, he would have cut a stave and tied a handkerchief on top of it and fixed it in the hole as a warning to other drivers.

He stopped eventually at a large posting house to change his horses and inquire after the couple. But it had been a quiet day, they said, with hardly any traffic on the road. The marquess was puzzled. He began to wonder whether he had made a mistake, whether the couple had gone to the review after all.

He hesitated before driving on. He sat, holding the reins loosely in his hands. He deliberately banished the image of Felicity as she had looked the previous evening from his brain – that image of a seductive, accomplished, mannered Felicity, which had haunted him ever since. He thought instead of a selfish and spoilt Felicity. And then he remembered the sound of that hunting-horn.

She wouldn’t – would she? In the middle of an elopement? But then he doubted if Felicity was in that happy state of mind where the world was well lost for love. It was a gamble. But it was a gamble he decided to take. He swung his team about and headed back towards Barnet.

Night was falling fast, and he studied the landmarks on either side. He wished now he had marked that hole in the road. But he had noted that, from the direction he was approaching, a weirdly twisted willow stood just at the roadside before it.

He swung round a bend. He saw the willow, outlined against the greenish-purple sky, and then he saw a carriage on its side in the hole. A figure of a man was stooping to cut the traces while another soothed the plunging rearing horses. The slimmer, slighter man led the horses to the side of the road away from the hole.

The marquess reined in his horses, tethered them to a fence and walked forward. The slimmer man suddenly said to the stockier one in a very feminine voice, ‘Don’t start on a jaw-me-dead, Bremmer.’

‘It’s all your stupid fault,’ came Lord Bremmer’s anguished voice. ‘You
would
take the ribbons. Drive to an inch! Pah!’

‘I
can
drive to an inch,’ howled Felicity furiously, ‘but John Lade himself would have fallen into that hole in this light.’

The marquess darted towards Felicity and clipped her round the waist in a strong grasp from behind. She screamed and twisted and struggled until he clipped her on the back of the head and told her to be quiet.

‘Now, Bremmer,’ said the marquess. ‘You will both get into my carriage and come with me to the nearest posting house till I find out how we can keep your escapade a secret.’

He frog-marched Felicity to his open carriage, shouting over his shoulder to Lord Bremmer, ‘Leave those cursed horses alone. We’ll send an ostler for them.’

Felicity stopped struggling and sat sullenly beside the marquess. Lord Bremmer climbed in and sat next to her.

‘Ravenswood,’ he cried. ‘I must explain—’

‘Not a word,’ snapped the marquess, inching his team round both hole and carriage, ‘until we get to Barnet.’

At the inn, he demanded a private parlour and then ushered the guilty couple up the stairs in front of him.

Wine was brought in and the inn servants dismissed before the marquess began in an even voice, ‘Now, Bremmer, since you could have had her in church, I assume the elopement must have been her idea.’

Lord Bremmer made a brave stand although, with a sinking heart, he was already sure everything Felicity had told him was a pack of lies.

Without looking at Felicity, he said, ‘She told me you wanted her for yourself.’

The marquess flicked a contemptuous look at Felicity, who was still dressed in men’s clothes. ‘You must be mad,’ he said. ‘My engagement to Miss Andrews has just been announced.’

‘Lady Felicity said that was because she had spurned your advances,’ said Lord Bremmer, blushing to the roots of his hair. He looked pleadingly at the marquess’s hard face. ‘Well, she did, and she said although you were to marry Miss Andrews, you had sworn that no other man should have her and had given those sisters instructions to repulse any proposal.’

The marquess took a sip of wine and leaned back in his chair. His eyes glittered in the candlelight. ‘And do you still believe that?’ he asked softly.

Lord Bremmer struck the table. ‘No, by Gad!’ he said. ‘Not a word of it.’

‘Then,’ said the marquess in a deceptively mild voice, ‘perhaps you will be more cautious in future and take what your wife says with a pinch of salt.’

‘Wife?’ Lord Bremmer’s mouth fell open in dismay.

‘Yes, wife. You shall marry her in church with your parents’ blessing after asking both the Tribbles and Lady Baronsheath formally for their permission to pay your addresses to Lady Felicity. Which is what you should have done in the first place. This sorry episode will be hushed up. Do I make myself clear?’

‘I can’t marry her!’ cried Lord Bremmer. ‘You must save me from her, Ravenswood.’

Felicity, who had been sitting with her head bowed, jerked upright at that and stared at Lord Bremmer with a shocked look on her face.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ snapped the marquess. ‘You were so much in love with the creature that you ran off with her.’

‘But I did not know what she was like,’ cried Lord Bremmer. ‘Oh God, believe me, Ravenswood, she was so winsome, so womanly, and so charming, I—’

‘And then unfortunately a fox-hunt threw itself in your path,’ said the marquess.

‘Oh, yes, and she became like a demon,’ said Lord Bremmer. ‘We rode and rode and she was shouting and cheering and swearing . . . well, I have never heard such language. But it was a good hunt and we nearly had our fox when she disappeared. I cursed her but separated from the hunt to look for her. I saw her! I saw what she did.’

‘What?’ asked the marquess, glancing curiously at Felicity, whose face had become as red as fire.

‘She had a red herring on a string. She must have stolen it from the inn kitchen. She dragged it across the ground and then threw it into a spinney. The hounds picked up the smell of herring and by the time the whole hunt descended on that spinney, she was at the back of them, looking as innocent as anything. Lord! The master’s face when his dogs came out of the spinney, quarrelling over that herring! I nearly died of shame.’

‘I never could stand the kill,’ said Felicity in a suffocated voice.

‘I am glad you have some womanly feelings, however idiotic,’ said the marquess. ‘Do you not know the damage foxes do, and you a countrywoman?’