Escapade (27 page)

“Oh, no, I am not that sick. That is—I am recuperating, you know."

“You look pulled. Well, I am come to cheer you up, and tell you all the latest
on dits
.” She proceeded to do this, though there was little Ella had not already heard from her family sources. “Wasn't it a shocking thing that Miss Prattle got hold of that story I told you at Clare? I can't think who could have told her."

Belle looked closely to see how this comment was received, and was very well satisfied with the glint of malice it elicited from her listener. “I wish you never had told me,” Ella was goaded into saying.

“Oh, Ella, it was you who leaked the story to Prattle, and everyone thinks it was I. Sherry accused me of it to my face."

“I am sorry you had to take the blame. It happens I did mention it, but I had no notion it would get talked around so."

“I see Prattle has quit writing about Clare. Byron is her latest target. I am surprised Prattle has not let the world know the baron's latest folly."

“What is that?” Ella asked, with a certain eagerness. Neither her grandmother nor her aunt provided her with the sort of little follies she delighted in writing up.

“Oh, haven't you heard? But you have been sick, of course. Everyone is saying he washes his hands and face in pure cream each morning and night, and that is what accounts for their beautiful color. He has such a romantic, pallid complexion, hasn't he?” This was pure fabrication, mentioned to not a soul but Ella, and its subsequent publication in ‘Miss Prattle Says’ would constitute Belle's proof of the author's identity.

“Does he indeed?” Ella asked, smiling. “How absurd."

“Yes, the very thing Prattle would revel in. I am surprised she hasn't taken him to task over it. But I daresay she will."

“Oh, yes, I shouldn't be surprised to read it any day now, since Prattle has taken up Byron."

Belle stayed half an hour in all. Before leaving she said, “Now that you are better, will you be going to some parties before the season is over?” She wished Miss Prattle's exposure to be as public and humiliating as possible.

“No. No, I still feel a little weak."

“What a pity! I had hoped we might see you at Almack's closing dance. But then, of course, Clare won't be there, and I bet that is why you aren't bothering to go to it.” The Duke, she felt very sure, would be there, but she had a sharp idea it was a reluctance to meet him that kept Ella out of society. Really, she was a widgeon of a girl, to be so discomposed at that odd dinner party they had all attended the last night at Clare Palace.

“I believe the Duke is still in town,” Ella said.

“Yes, but he was telling me he must go to Dorset the morning of Almack's last assembly, so he won't be at it."

“I see."

Belle took her leave, barely able to keep in her delight at having so successfully completed her mission, and Ella, lacking one item for that day's column, wrote up a bit on Byron's supposed use of cream in his toilette. She wrote:

L—d B—n may be content to eat vinegar and potatoes to restrain his spreading girth, but on his beautiful exterior such stinting is not practiced. We have it that he uses pure cream instead of water to attain that maidenly complexion. He should try drinking it, to counteract the acidic quality of his conversation.

Without a backward thought, she sealed up the paper and sent it off to Thorndyke.

As the second week since the party in Dorset progressed, and still Ella remained immured within the walls of her aunt's mansion, Clare became impatient. His anger with Miss Prattle had been overcome, and he even took to scanning her column every morning to see what she had to say. He thought she might resume a more restrained mention of his own activities, but it was all Lord Byron now. He laughed with the rest of London at her roasting of him, but some jealousy was beginning to blend with the laughter. She was paying entirely too much attention to this handsome poet. And where the deuce did she see him and discover what he said and did, for she went nowhere these days.

He chanced to encounter Byron once at Manton's Shooting Gallery, and teased him a little about Miss Prattle.

“No, I don't mind,” the poet replied airily, looking dangerously handsome with his jacket tossed off, and his waistcoat hanging open. “It's my opinion, Clare, that she's actually in love with me. Such an excess of passion as she displays can't be all hate. There's bound to be some love mixed up in it. There's little difference between love and hate in any case. Two sides of the same coin. It's their indifference you have to look out for. Just stir a woman out of her indifference, and you can do anything with her."

“You take an optimistic outlook. I was not so flattered when she pilloried me."

“You should have been. Why, you have only to look at whom she chooses for her targets. You, me, Hartington—dashing beaux, all of us. She don't bother sticking her knife into any but handsome, young bachelors. I think you're jealous I've cut you out."

It was so near the truth that Clare naturally contradicted it violently.

“You've a right to your opinion,” Byron continued, “but if the truth of the matter ever comes to light, we'll see it's some romantic young chit that's doing the scribbling. And pretty fine scribbling it is, too."

“You don't subscribe to the theory I've heard mentioned that it's Lady Caroline then?"

“Lord, no, it's ten leagues above her style. Madame de Stael is more like it—but I still think it's some young chit."

This conversation gave rise to some unpleasant reflections on the part of Clare after he had left the shooting gallery. There was some truth in it, and the part most likely to be true was that Ella had diverted her attention to Lord Byron and had become indifferent to himself. Not once had his name appeared since his return to town.

He purposely performed a few rash and foolish acts to try to prod her into resuming her guardianship of him. He set up a race to Brighton with Alvanley, with a prize of one thousand pounds. This would have been worth two paragraphs at least when he was in favor with Miss Prattle, but she ignored it entirely and did a column on the indecency of the current vogue among ladies of damping their gowns. He won the bet with Alvanley and started a story, untrue but widely circulated as fact, that he meant to institute an annual pig race on Hampstead Heath with the proceeds. Harley dashed out to his country seat and put all his swine through their paces, to select the likeliest one to garner him the first prize. But Miss Prattle feigned ignorance of the whole affair and took on the debutantes that day, to warn them of the dangers of trotting too hard during the Season. Not more than three outings a day should be undertaken, she advised.

Back at Clare Palace, the Dowager Duchess of Clare waited on tenterhooks for word from her son. She received none, nor did she get her books by Jane Austen, for that matter had completely slipped Clare's mind. She did hear, however, that Clare was making an ass of himself in London, and in an excess of impatience she had her traveling coach hitched up and put to for the wearisome journey to London. I'll pretend I came for the King's birthday party on the fourth of June, she thought to herself. It will please old Charlotte. She arrived in Belgrave Square in the late afternoon of the day of the closing assembly at Almack's. Though it was nearing dinnertime when she arrived, she found Clare at home, making no preparations to go out, nor to receive guests.

“What, moping around the house?” she asked.

“I've been out every night since I got here and decided to stay home and rest. Everyone will be at Almack's tonight, and I'm not in the mood for it."

“I have been hearing very strange stories about you, Patrick. I didn't mind the race to Brighton. Congratulations, by the by. You must have flown to have beaten those famous grays of Alvanley's."

“Sixteen miles an hour."

“But to be setting up a pig race, love. So vulgar. Couldn't you have made it a horse race at least?"

“That was a faradiddle, Mama. Of course I am not seting up a pig race."

“Well, it is what everyone is saying, for I had letters from Aunt Sophronia and also your cousin Henry Wyatt, and they wrote of it as quite a settled thing. In fact, poor old Muggins is running the porkers at home till they'll be as tough as white leather when it is time to slaughter them.” Clare smiled, but the effort only emphasized the haggard lines, the weariness in his face.

“Do you know what surprises me,” she continued innocently, “is that Prattle has stopped taking you to task. She is becoming quite derelict in her looking after you. It is all Lord Byron now. Is it true that the silly young fellow eats nothing but potatoes and turpentine?"

“Vinegar, Mama. Turpentine would kill him."

She shuddered. “I can't think what the world is coming to. But the real reason I am here, of course, is to discover what progress you are making with Miss Fairmont and also to see why I have not received my books."

“I am sorry, Mama. It completely slipped my mind."

“Slipped your mind? But my dear, did you not dash off here for the specific purpose of making it up with her?"

“About the books, I mean,” he explained. “We'll go down to Bond Street tomorrow and see if we can't find them."

“Ella will tell me where to go,” she said, to get the conversation back on its proper track.

“It won't be necessary to bother Miss Fairmont,” he replied.

She directed a look of disgust at him, and said “Cloth head,” in a derogatory manner.

“Actually, she has not been well,” he said, feeling some excuse necessary for his inaction.

“And you have never heard of a pen and a piece of paper, I suppose? Certainly one would think them strangers to you for all the letters you ever write me."

“These things are best done in person,” he said.

“Yes, and they are best done now, before she goes home, for the Season is all but over, and you may be sure she will be bolting right home to Fairmont if she is in queer stirrups."

“Yes, well, I had pretty well decided to call on her tomorrow."

“What's wrong with tonight?"

“I won't want to leave you alone your first night in town."

“That is about the most hen-witted thing you've said yet. I had no idea I would find you home and had planned to go early to bed, after two days’ jostling along the potted roads, and spending a night at a very noisy inn which prevented me from closing an eye. In fact, I mean to retire the minute I've had a bit to eat, so I'm not to be your excuse."

“Very well, shrew. I'll go over to Grosvenor Square after dinner. Lady Sara and Lady Watley will be at Almack's, I fancy. The closing assembly. They won't miss that."

“And remember to ask her where I am to get my books, too."

“I mean to make an invitation from you to call on her tomorrow my excuse. You can ask her then."

“Lord, what a muddle you're making of it, Patrick. You don't need an excuse to call when you're offering for a girl, and certainly not such a lame-brained excuse as that. It doesn't make a bit of sense."

“You're a lot alike, you and Ella. Always right there with the moral support and ego builders when a fellow most needs them."

She laughed merrily. “We shall all deal famously. You won't need Prattle with me and Ella to keep you in line."

He opened his mouth to tell her he would have Prattle too, but she spoke before he could do it. “And by the way, I have something to tell you, or ask you. It was Belle Prentiss, I imagine, who gave Prattle that jumbled version of your Hebe. The butler told me Prissie was talking to her the night she landed in from the village. I'd give that one a sharp set-down if I were you."

He was in some doubt as to whether his mother would like Ella so well once she knew the truth. In fact, he was not quite positive he would tell her. “Tell me, Mama, what exactly is your opinion of Miss Prattle?"

“Oh, an upstart and trouble-maker. Some vulgar person, I have no doubt. Why, do you know who she is?"

“The rumor is that she is a young lady. Pretty well thought of, in fact, socially speaking."

“Then she's a fool, to be risking her reputation by carrying on the way she does."

“But if she could pull it off..."

“Then I should love to meet her!” she said.

Patrick smiled but saved his surprise. If Ella refused him, he would keep her secret. There was no hoping his Mama would do it.

The last two weeks since returning from Dorset had dragged by very slowly for Ella. When Sara asked her, merely as a matter of form, if she planned to attend the closing party at Almack's that evening, Ella surprised both herself and her aunt by saying she would go. “Clare will not be there, you know,” Ella said. “Belle told me he left for Dorset this morning."

It would be in the nature of a farewell to fashionable London for her. Her last look at all the people she had been writing about over the years. She dressed with care, borrowing Stepson for the arranging of the hair, and putting on a new gown not quite finished in time to take to Dorset for the visit—a pale green with dark green ribbons penciled in a double line round the hem. She had new gloves with no fingers out too, from the shopping spree occasioned by the visit to the Palace, and felt a pang that Clare would not see her in her new gown, for she looked rather better than usual. They set out, the younger lady with no very high hopes for the evening, since the only person whose presence could please her was guaranteed to be absent.

Clare had some hazy notion of asking Ella to accompany him to Almack's if she accepted his offer of marriage, and with this in mind attired himself in the formal satin breeches and black coat required by the place. He learned, of course, at Grosvenor Square that the ladies had already gone to Almack's.

“Miss Fairmont also?” Clare asked.

“Yes, Your Grace."

Remembering that the butler had tinkered a little with the truth on a former occasion, Clare asked if he would mind just to make
sure
Miss Fairmont was not at home.

“No, she's really not here this time,” the butler said, with a knowing wink, and no shame whatsoever. So Clare proceeded to Almack's, looking forward to his evening with a deal more pleasure than Miss Fairmont was doing.