Regency Sting (19 page)

That was her conclusion, and that was just what she told Cherry the following afternoon as she sat pouring out her heart to her friend in Cherry's pink-and-gold bedroom. “I shan't forgive him, ever! Not as long as I live!” she declared vehemently.

“I don't blame you a bit,” Cherry said staunchly, sitting beside Anne on the bed and patting her shoulder. “It was dreadful of him to have misled you so.”

“Oh, Cherry, you're the only one who understands. Even Mama turned a deaf ear to me this morning, telling me that I should have known better than to take a pet over his ‘teasing.' Teasing,
ha
!”

“Do you think Anne, that his lordship will still expect you to find him a bride?”

“I don't care
what
he expects! I'm through with him. As far as I'm concerned, he can marry La Belle Lexie, if she's what he wants.”

Cherry recoiled. “You can't mean it! Not
Lexie
! I know the gentlemen all dangle after her like moonlings, but none of them seem to
marry
her, do they? What would their mamas say? Even Lord Mainwaring wouldn't want a wife everyone knows is fast.”

“I don't care a jot if the future Lady Mainwaring is fast or not. The matter no longer interests me.”

“Yes, but Anne,” Cherry pointed out worriedly, “if you don't keep to your part of your bargain with Lord Mainwaring, he may not keep his part either. And then there will be no settlement.”

“I don't
want
a settlement, and neither does Arthur. I intend to tell Arthur, when he comes here later this afternoon, that I shall go to Shropshire with him, just as he wishes.”

For a moment, Cherry gaped at Anne in shocked silence. “Anne!” she breathed, rising and facing her friend awe-stricken. “You don't mean … you've
decided
at last?”

Anne shook her head in acquiescence.

Cherry's face seemed to freeze in an expression of shock. “Oh, Anne,” she whispered in a trance-like monotone, “I can't believe it!”

“Why not? What's the matter with you, Cherry? I always told you I would marry Arthur.”

“Yes, I know, but …” She turned away and wandered abstractedly to the window where she stood staring out at the spring-dressed trees. “You didn't think that you'd enjoy being a vicar's wife in a little country village …”

“I still don't think so. But
you've
been telling me and telling me how lovely it will be.”

“Yes, I'm sure it will be …” Cherry said.

“So I've decided to believe you. There, now, aren't you going to come here and wish me happy?”

“Of c-course I w-wish …” Cherry began, but as she turned from the window, she burst into tears.

“Heavens, Cherry, what
is
it?” Anne cried, jumping up in alarm and running across to embrace her friend.

“I d-don't
know
! I s-suddenly f-feel so l-lost! Oh, Anne, whatever shall I do when you've g-gone?” And she put her head on Anne's shoulder and sobbed.

“Cherry, don't! Here, come and sit down. You know that nothing will ever really separate us. Why, you must promise to ask me to come down to London every spring, to stay with you for at least a month! And you must come to me twice a year for weeks and weeks! This exile to Shropshire would be completely insupportable if I could not count on your company some of the time.”

Cherry sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I know I'm a g-goose. Of course we shall visit. B-But you and Arthur are my dearest f-friends. I shall be so l-lonely!”

“What rubbish! Before you know it, you shall be married, too, and we shall both be busy with
babies
.”

“I shall
never
be married,” Cherry said funereally. “I've only had one offer in all my life.”

“Yes, I remember it. That gentleman from some country place or other, with the stooped shoulders and the elongated arms. What
was
his name?”

“Howard. Howard Mildmay.” Cherry gave a little, reluctant giggle. “Can you imagine what sort of babies I would have had if I'd married him?”

“Monkeys!” Anne laughed. “Darling little monkeys! You should have accepted him.”

Cherry's smile faded. “You're joking, but perhaps I should have. There have been no other offers at all, and it's been more than three months since Howard made his.”

“Three whole months without an offer?” Anne teased. “That is positively shameful. Any girl who does not receive at least one offer every six weeks is not worth her salt.”

“You may laugh, but it's very lowering to think that I haven't
one
prospect.”

The friends fell silent, each suddenly engrossed in her own thoughts. Anne tried for the thousandth time to envision the country vicarage, with herself as mistress, dressed in solemn colors befitting the dignity of her station and guarding her tongue to keep from shocking the elderly parishioners with her arrogant London ways. Cherry was sunk in an overwhelming, sickening guilt. She glanced surreptitiously at her friend, wondering if Anne had any inkling of the treachery Cherry nourished in her heart. She had begun to realize, in the last few days, that she did
not
want Anne and Arthur to marry. Arthur had come to her so often of late, to unburden his heart to her and seek her comfort. It had been enormously satisfying to be able to console him. She'd held his hand and stroked his shoulder and offered him maxims of the virtues of patience and restraint. Every moment with him had been sheer joy. Once Anne married him, all that would be over. Cherry ached with shame that she could harbor such selfish desires.

Determined to expunge this wickedness from her soul, she jumped to her feet. She would set to work immediately to find herself a passably acceptable suitor and marry him. She would busy herself with her duties, have half-a-dozen babies and never think of Arthur again. Crossing the room with a decisive step, she opened a drawer in her dressing-table, and took out a large pair of shears which she held out to Anne while she covered her eyes with a dramatic gesture. “Here,” she said in a voice of doom, “go ahead and do it!”

“Do what?” Anne asked, bewildered.

“The time has come. It's now or never.
Cut my hair
!”

Two hours later, two severed braids lay curled on Cherry's dressingtable, the floor was littered with tendrils of hair, and Anne stood over Cherry (who was seated before her mirror staring at her face in horrified fascination) with a curling iron in her hand. Cherry's heart-shaped face, which as far back as she could remember had been framed in a neat band of braid, was now topped with a myriad of short, dark curls. Her face looked smaller, younger and a little less full in the cheeks. Her eyes looked enormous.

“Well, do you like it?” Anne asked.

“I … I don't know,” Cherry said, frightened. “I wonder what Mama will say.”

“
I
think you look wonderful. Completely up to the mark. The braids made you look like a governess—more nesh than dash.”

“What?”

“Never mind. That's something Lord Mainwaring's man likes to say. But no one could say you are not dashing
now
!”

“Am I?” Cherry asked shyly.

“As dashing as Caro Lamb,” Anne declared.

“Good heavens, don't let Mama hear you say
that
!” Cherry said, scandalized. But the comparison between timid little Charity Laverstoke and the notorious Lady Caroline Lamb (she had been known to dress up like a pageboy, aided by her slight figure and short-cropped curls, in order to escape detection while on her way to or from an assignation) gave Cherry such a lift that she decided to show her new coiffure to her mother immediately.

Lady Laverstoke, an indefatigable card player, was discovered at the doorway, adjusting her bonnet before a wall mirror in preparation for her departure for one of her frequent engagements for a card-game with her similarly addicted cronies. “Look, Mama,” Cherry clarioned, “I've cut my hair!”

Lady Laverstoke's hands, adjusting the angle of her bonnet, were stayed. “Charity Laverstoke,” she demanded in quelling accents, “how
dared
you do such a thing without my permission?”

Cherry's face fell, and Anne, who had followed behind her, felt her fingers clench into fists. Couldn't Cherry's own mother show a little enthusiasm? No wonder Cherry had so little self-confidence. “Don't you like it, Mama?” Cherry asked plaintively.

“Whether I like it or not does not signify,” Cherry's mother declared, turning her attention back to her bonnet. “I am very displeased that you should have taken such a step without my permission. But I shall say nothing more, since I am fully aware that your friend—yes,
you
, Miss Anne Hartley—encouraged this act. It seems to me, miss, that you have quite overstepped the bounds of friendship by encouraging Charity to take this rash step.”

Anne sputtered furiously, but before she could defend herself, Lady Laverstoke had opened the door.

“But, Mama, aren't you going to tell me if you like it?” Cherry asked again.

“The change makes very little difference in your appearance, as far as I can see,” her mother responded without looking round, and she shut the door behind her.

A woebegone Cherry turned away from the door and walked back to the sitting room, followed by an enraged Anne. Anne spent the better part of the next hour trying to convince Cherry that her mother was really pleased with her appearance but didn't want to admit it because she hadn't been consulted. Anne thought she had succeeded in convincing her friend that she did indeed look lovely, when the butler entered the sitting room to announce Arthur's arrival. Cherry gasped, screamed, put her hands to her head in a vain attempt to hide her hair and tried to flee.

Anne grasped her arm and forced her into a chair. “Sit down, Cherry, and don't behave so foolishly,” she ordered.

Cherry would have jumped up again as soon as Anne turned away, but Arthur entered at that moment. Cherry drew back into the protective shade of the wings of the chair and tried to make herself inconspicuous. Arthur, his mind on his own problems, gave her an abstracted nod in greeting and turned a worried face to Anne. “I hope you have some word for me, my dear,” he said without preamble. “If I don't send some response to Shropshire soon, I may lose this opportunity.”

Anne, without going into the details of her quarrel with Lord Mainwaring, gave Arthur the news he'd been waiting for—that she was at last in agreement with him that a Gretna Green marriage and a life in the vicarage in Shropshire were the most satisfactory solutions to their problems. Aware that Cherry was in the room, Arthur restrained his impulse to seize Anne in his arms. He contented himself with smiling at her warmly and lifting her hand to his lips.

Cherry, not wishing to be in the way, tried to rise from the chair and slip from the room, but Anne would not permit it. “Stay where you are, Cherry, because you must help us make plans. We shall need your help if we're to leave for Gretna without detection.”

The next half-hour was filled with discussion of the ways and means for the elopement: the clothing and personal effects to be packed, the type of equipage which would be necessary for the journey, the number of weeks needed for preparations, the measures to be taken to insure secrecy, and the content of the notes to be left behind. When all these matters had been thoroughly gone over, Cherry again made an attempt to take her leave. This time Anne did not stop her, and Cherry made for the door.

So engrossed had she been in the discussion that she'd quite forgotten about her shorn hair. As Arthur turned to thank her for her aid and advice, he caught his first glimpse of her altered appearance. “Good God!” he exclaimed in horror. “What have you
done
to yourself?”

Cherry stared at him, her eyes filling with tears and her lips trembling. Then her hands flew to her hair, she gave a little moan and, with tears splashing down her cheeks, she ran from the room.

“Confound it, Arthur,” Anne said in disgust, “you've really done it! Couldn't you have said something a bit flattering? I shall never be able to convince her
now
that she looks well.”

And without waiting for a response from the astounded and shaken Lord Claybridge, she ran after Cherry to offer what comfort she could.

By the time she arrived home, Anne was in no mood to talk to anyone. She had not been able to console Cherry, and although she had finally left the girl to cry out her frustration alone, she felt responsible for having made her best friend miserable. In addition, she was about to embark on a carefully planned program of deceit, a necessity which was the dark side of an elopement. Anne had no liking for it, and she knew that she would find the next six weeks (the time she and Arthur had allowed for preparations) repugnant. Handing her bonnet to Coyne, she headed for the stairs without a word.

But she was not to escape to her room so easily. First Peter emerged from the library to inform her excitedly that Jason had taken him to Cribb's Parlour, where Peter had been matched with a sparring partner of his own weight and had shown some small prowess with his fists. He added that, from the moment they'd appeared, Jason had been surrounded by several of the patrons and had been fussed over all afternoon.

Anne received this news coldly, merely remarking that Jason's doings did not interest her and that she could find little to delight her in learning that her brother showed a talent for fisticuffs. Boxing was, in her view, a disgusting and vulgar sport, and if her brother cared to indulge in such displays, he was not to expect her to applaud.

Having thus delivered a set-down to her brother, she went up the stairs and came face-to-face with her stepmother. “Oh, Anne, dearest,” Lady Harriet cried excitedly, “I've been waiting all afternoon to tell you—I've the most delightful news. Jason has received a veritable mountain of invitations, even one from the Regent himself to dine at Carlton House, and
we
are included as well!”