Escapade (16 page)

“No."

“We'll have to chop down some saplings then and strip off the branches. And don't tell me you have no saplings in the home woods, for you've hundreds of them."

“The boys at home use turnip rooting sticks,” Ella volunteered.

“We don't grow turnips at Clare,” the host said, “and if you chop down so much as one sapling I shall sue you for malicious destruction of property."

“We grow turnips at Strayward,” the Marchioness said, for Honor had been passed a plate of scones and was too busy to speak.

“Get ‘em from the side of the road then,” Harley said, ignoring this bulletin.

“It sounds terribly dangerous,” Sherry offered.

“Yes, it'll be great sport,” Peters said. “We'll hack down to the home woods after breakfast and choose our poles. You coming, Tredwell?"

“Oh yes, might as well, you know."

“I shall have three warrants drawn up then,” Clare said casually. No one, of course, paid him any heed.

“You must each choose your lady first,” Sherry reminded them, dimpling prettily at Harley. He was a far cry from a duke, being only a baron, but held the only other title of all the gentlemen.

“Yes, shall we draw straws?” the callous fellow suggested.

“I'll give you a blue ribbon,” Lady Honor told him. No more than Miss Sheridan did she intend to bestow her color on a man without a title, and Belle had already told her in a gleeful aside that Clare had chosen.

“Thank you,” he muttered. There was something unchallengeable in the graven face of Lady Honor.

“Guess that leaves you to bestow a ribbon on
me
,” Bippy said to Miss Sheridan, who happened to be sitting beside him. “What's your color?"

“I look best in pink,” she said, a trifle sulkily.

Peters looked to Belle Prentiss. “Green,” she said in disgust.

Breakfast over, the gentlemen went to select and prepare their jousting poles, with the exception of the Duke, who rode to the village to attend a meeting with his local banker and some other gentlemen. The young ladies, at the instigation of Belle Prentiss, decorated the curricles with flowers and ribbons. Lady Sara did Honor's work for her, and the lady was kind enough to say, “That is all right,” when she was finished.

“You're welcome,” Sara replied pointedly.

During the morning's work, the young ladies called each other by their first names so often that Sara's ears were ringing with Belles, Sherrys, and Ellas. No one, however, was brave enough to drop the “Lady” before the name of Honor, but in any case, few remarks were addressed to her, as she had taken up a comfortable seat on a bench some distance apart from them.

A clearing in the park was chosen for the tournament, and chairs lugged out to allow comfort for the ladies and their Mamas. Several kitchen maids and footmen were allowed off work to attend, and the parson's six children were invited, when they accidentally dropped in at an auspicious hour, so that there was a fair-sized audience for the contest.

Belle had been closely observing Miss Fairmont's success with the Duke and decided the time had come to put a spoke in her wheel. She was not so unwise as to charge Clare directly with what she knew of Prissie Muckleton, for he had pokered up angrily at even the mention of having been seen in the village. She thought the better course to reveal his behavior to Miss Fairmont who was a bit of a prude.

“What a tease Clare is, singling you out for special attention,” she began when they were off away from the others.

“He is no more than polite to me,” Ella said brusquely, arranging a loop of ribbon higher, so it did not catch in the wheel of the curricle.

“Pshaw, Ella, you are not such a flat as that! It is always ‘Miss Fairmont will do this', or lately, ‘Ella will tell us that,’ and ‘What do you think, Ella?’ It would be enough to turn a girl's head if she didn't know the truth."

Ella disliked this conversation very much, but was too human to ignore that tantalizing phrase, ‘the truth.’ “What do you mean?” she asked, her heart thudding fast, she hardly knew why.

“Oh, Ella, you don't mean you don't know about the lightskirt he has picked up in the village?” she laughed. “We are all on to him. We saw them together a few days ago in Kitswell. He nipped into a doorway with her, trying to hide from us, but we all saw her—Sherry, Peters, Harley, and myself. She was very beautiful—he is so fastidious about his real flirts’ looks. His women must be the fairest of them all. I think the only reason he has brought us all down here is to cover his traces, the rogue. And you, of course, are the one he has chosen to pretend he is interested in, to turn us off the scent."

Ella stared at Belle and had for one instant an overpowering desire to claw her hazel eyes out of her head. But sense overcame passion in the same instant, and she naturally did nothing of the sort. To her credit, she even managed a smile, a sardonic parting of the lips. “That's rather pointless, isn't it? Throwing you off the scent when you all know about it and have even seen his girl friend."

“But that is the best part of the joke! He doesn't know we saw him. Peters and Harley won't let us say anything to him. Well, they have convinced us we ought not to, and only the four of us know. We didn't tell our mothers, Sherry and I, and your aunt doesn't know, I suppose, unless he told her. But I made sure you would know,” she finished up, with some thought of remaining on a friendly footing with Miss Fairmont, just in case.

“I don't know how you thought I should know, when you four who spied him appear to have made a pact of silence,” Ella said, her anger channeling itself to the bearer of bad news, as it so often does when the doer is beyond range.

“We were not spying on him!” Belle took her up immediately.

“I said when you spied him—happened to see him was all I meant. My, you're touchy, Belle.” Ella had been shocked and angered to hear Belle's story, but Miss Prattle was advancing to the fore, curious for reportable details, and it was Miss Prattle who spoke out, in Ella's voice. “This girl, what did she look like?"

“As pretty as could be,” Belle informed her, with a thrill of pleasure. “A petite blonde. She was clinging to his arm. We caught only a glimpse then, but she is young and attractive, as I learned later, though very common—a servant I think. Prissie is her name."

“Did you see them again?"

“Ha ha, I most certainly did, and you might see her yourself if you open your door one night, when we are all supposed to be asleep. He brings her right here to the palace! I was downstairs late one evening, and she came in wearing a shawl, asking for the ‘dook'—a very common accent. I was surprised he had her come here, with his Mama in residence, but it is supposed to be a secret from her, I make no doubt. The butler gave her what for, for not slipping up the back way."

Ella's senses were reeling, but she had enough pride to hide her hurt from this prying witch. “I am shocked that he brings her under his mother's roof,” she said.

“Yes, so am I, for he is usually very discreet. But then it saves him the trip into the village, I suppose, and so far as that goes, he would be well known there and more likely to cause gossip by haunting her house, than by having her here. So that is why he has latched on to you—to fool us all."

“But I see you are not so easily fooled!” Ella said calmly.

“Yes, and I am glad I told you since you didn't know, for it is too bad of him to fool you."

“He isn't fooling me,” Ella said in a steely voice and began to work on the carriage with great concentration, till Belle hopped away.

Ella did not rate her attractions high. She had been as much amazed as the others at her meteoric rise to favor in His Grace's eyes and was entirely ready to accept Belle's reason for it. Even without Sara's warning she would have believed it. She had held a grudge against Clare for many a long year—and was aware of his arrogance, vanity, conceit. She had not known him to be a rake, but Belle had mentioned his discretion. That would account for it. She had been a fool to think he cared for her—indeed she had never thought him serious. But she had not thought he was using her in this sly way, to conceal his own lechery. She had been a fool, and as if that weren't bad enough, everyone at the party who mattered, all the people her own age, knew she was a fool and were laughing at her. Well, she was in a position of preeminence to turn the tables on Clare, and she soon set about doing it.

She slipped up to her room before lunch, dipped her pen in vitriol, and wrote her revenge. Without taking a cool second look at what she was doing, she dashed off in colorful phrases the atrocities of Lord Clare, to be read and discussed in London. She addressed it to her grandmother and took it below for posting. This activity acted as a catharsis for her emotions, and when she met His Grace, she could treat him calmly, knowing that retribution was in store for him.

The first event in the tournament was to be the curricle race. The vehicles were tooled up to the starting point by the drivers, each with a band of ribbon streaming from his hat. They made a gay sight in their decorated carriages, and a pleasant cheer arose from the gathered crowd. A footman had been given a hurried lesson on the long horn by Miss Prentiss, and blasted four hoots to initiate the race. The ladies, always excepting Lady Honor, stood cheering their knights on, and from then till the drivers had disappeared down the road, executed an alarmingly sharp turn, and come back into view, there was little for the girls to do but talk and call each other by their first names some more. Miss Prentiss, now Belle to all, sought to ingratiate herself with Ella, when she observed that her tale-bearing had not turned her against Clare, as she had hoped. It had seemed to have almost the reverse effect, for Miss Fairmont was a little livelier than usual.

She formed the excellent notion of inviting her to her home for New Year's, to take part in the play about Anne Boleyn.

“Come for the New Year, Ella. Clare is coming.” As things stood, it seemed a good deal more likely he would come if Ella were known to be of the party, and one could always forget to remind her later if the friendship with the Duke petered out. “We'll get together in London, and you can choose a part. Jane Seymour is not taken. I have given her some very good lines.” She had to cut the conversation short as Sherry was lending an ear, and she was definitely not to be invited, however strongly she hinted. Belle needn't have worried. Sherry hadn't the slightest notion of inviting herself until Clare's plans were stated.

In a short time the sound of wheels and hooves bespoke the return of the charioteers, and the ladies had once more to urge their knight on. Harley and Clare were bolting along, neck to neck, with Bippy two lengths behind, and Peters out of it. He had made a poor turn, and lost a minute righting himself after the disaster. Every one of the young ladies was cheering Clare on to break the tie. Even Lady Honor said in a calm, deliberate voice, “Clare must win.” It was impossible he should not when Honor had decreed it, and he edged Harley out by a half a length, to be welcomed from his curricle by a shouting mob. Belle had been defoliating roses under the disapproving eye of the Duchess while she stood chatting, and had two handfuls of red petals to shower over him.

“That's one for us, Ella,” Clare said when he had shaken himself free of petals. “Have you no favor to confer on me? A token of your gratitude?"

She reached down and grabbed a sprig of red clover from the lawn and handed it to him. “In the lapel, if you please,” he said. She felt extremely awkward and forward, inserting it in his lapel, as though she were a brazen hussy like Belle Prentiss. But it was all a part of the show he was putting on, of course, pretending he liked her.

This was too much for Belle to tolerate. She elbowed Ella aside, and stuck a nice red rose on top of the clover, while the Duchess glowered at this repeated desecration of her garden.

“There, that's more like it,” she said saucily.

But before he returned to his curricle, Clare pointedly reached down and pulled the clover to the front, with a smile at Ella.

“Time for the jousting contest,” Harley called. “This time I'll take you, Clare."

“No, you won't. I'm not jousting."

“What, afraid?” Belle taunted.

“It's dangerous, and I don't think you others ought to either,” he stated, yet there was a certain look of longing on his face as they began hoisting the prepared saplings.

His mother arose from her chair and walked over to him. “I wish you would not, Patrick."

“Don't worry, Mama. I'm not about to risk my neck till I've produced an heir.” They stood chatting a minute, and Belle turned to Ella.

“It's because of his brother, I suppose. He broke his neck falling from a horse. I ought not to have said anything. The title would go to his cousin, George Foley, if anything happened to Clare."

During an enthusiastic morning of preparations and discussion, Harley had decided the contenders ought to carry shields for protection. These had been duly removed from the armaments room and brought to the site, but were soon found unwieldy and were cast aside. Next they had to discover the proper grip for their swaddled saplings. Harley maintained that the only possible position was tucked firmly under the right arm, while Peters found it rested more comfortably against the abdomen. Clare advised them that both hands ought to be used, while using the legs to keep a seat on the horse.

“That's easy for you to say; you ain't competing,” Harley responded.

“Ask Miss Fairmont how they do it at Fairmont,” Bippy advised.

“Yes, she'll know,” Harley agreed. He was nearly as strong a supporter of Miss Fairmont as Peters was.

“It is a matter of style merely,” she reported. “Bertie, my older brother, always uses two hands, but Tom uses a shorter pole and holds it in one—up quite high so that he strikes the opponent in the shoulder. But a blow to the head is illegal."

“Have we got the sticks the right length?” Peters asked her.

She examined them, and pronounced them just right. “You don't want them too long or you can't strike a true blow."

“They actually
do
joust at Fairmont?” Clare asked her.