Kitty (5 page)

As he crossed to Kitty’s side, Mrs. Jackson watched him with an angry glare. She was thirty-two years old and very beautiful. But, looking at Peter Chesworth dancing with Kitty, she began to feel old for the first time.

Kitty was in seventh heaven. The Baron was not at all as cruel and supercilious as she had expected. He was charming and kind—and every other woman in the room was jealous of her; Kitty was feminine and human enough to like that.

When her formidable escort finally took her home, she was in such a happy daze that she allowed her maid to undress her without her usual shiver of distaste.

Lord Chesworth called promptly at eleven the next morning, resplendent in a gray frock coat, biscuit-colored trousers, and a yellow silk waistcoat embroidered with gold and scarlet humming-birds.

Lady Henley was waiting for him in the morning room, sitting contemplating a plate containing six poached eggs, with great satisfaction.

“Trying to lose weight,” she explained. “I always have a light breakfast.”

Mrs. Harrison came fluttering in wearing an unfortunate choice of pastel-colored organza, which highlighted her yellowish complexion.

“Dear, dear, Peter. I may call you that mayn’t I?” she gushed.

“Better let’er,” mumbled the poached eggs.

“Well, Peter. We have a lot to arrange. But first I would like to speak to you privately.”

Lady Henley was about to protest but at that moment the butler entered bearing a fresh plate of toast, dripping with butter. She gave a primeval grunt and settled back in her chair.

In the study at the back of the house, Lord Chesworth politely waited for Mrs. Harrison to come to the point. In his short acquaintance with her, he would not have thought her shifty. But she moved about the room nervously, picking things up and putting them down. At last she said, “It’s about Kitty. We are very honored by your proposal of marriage, but it suddenly seems all so mercenary.”

“Of course it’s mercenary,” said Lord Chesworth. “You never tried to pretend it was anything else.”

Mrs. Harrison’s pins started to rattle to the floor, a sure sign of inner tumult. She said, “Kitty is such a young thing. It would be nice if you—if you—well, if you could pretend to be a little in love with her.”

Lord Chesworth’s gray eyes narrowed. “You mean the girl knows nothing of the arrangement?”

“Well,
of course
, she does. But young girls are romantic.” Another hairpin fled the nest.

“I don’t call it romantic to want gilt on the gingerbread in this situation,” said the Baron roundly.

The softer emotions deserted Mrs. Harrison’s bosom. The business gleam was back in her eye.

“I have agreed to restore your estates at no small cost, Peter. Surely this little thing is not too much to ask.”

Peter Chesworth sighed. It was all so squalid but… there was Reamington Hall and it must be saved. In an unconscious imitation of Kitty, he bowed his head in assent.

Mrs. Harrison gave a grim smile. “I shall send her to you.”

Kitty, who was enjoying the unaccustomed luxury of a long lie in bed, struggled awake as her mother erupted into the room and began dragging dress after dress from the wardrobe.

“Lord Chesworth is below, waiting to see you. I shall let him explain everything,” said Mrs. Harrison, tugging at the bell rope to call Colette.

The two women thrust her into her stays and laced them so tight she could hardly breath. Then a delicate Indian muslin was put on her slim figure and her brown hair was piled over the pads on the top of her head.

“Quickly, quickly,” hissed Mrs. Harrison. Her hour of triumph was at hand and she did not wish the Baron to escape at the last minute.

She pushed Kitty ahead of her into the study and slammed the door on the happy couple. Mrs. Harrison stood in the hall for a moment, leaning her hot forehead against the cool wall. “And how’s that, Frederick Harrison?” she muttered. “If you had been alive, you old miser, you would have had her married to the butcher’s boy!”

She marched into the morning room. Lady Henley looked at her over a piece of toast. “Don’t go leaving them alone too long,” she commented.

“Chesworth’s got a bit of a reputation.”

But in the privacy of the study, Lord Peter Chesworth was all that was correct. Clasping Kitty’s trembling hand in his, he explained that he had fallen in love with her at first sight. He had to declare himself immediately before she was snatched up by someone else. Would she marry him?

Kitty looked up into his white, handsome, aristocratic face with her heart in her eyes. Would she? She would indeed. All her dreams had come true. She was marrying for love after all.

What a little actress, thought his lordship, gathering her into his arms.

He pressed his mouth to the fresh young lips in a chaste kiss and suddenly thought longingly of a pair of warm and fiery ones. What on earth was Veronica Jackson going to say to all this?

Mrs. Harrison opened the door and beamed on them. Ever correct, his lordship turned, holding Kitty by the hand. “Mrs. Harrison, your daughter has just done me the inestimable honor of accepting my hand in marriage.”

After Lord Chesworth had left and she and Kitty and Lady Henley were sitting in the drawing room celebrating their triumph in their separate ways, the butler entered. “Lady Worthing and the Misses Worthing,” he intoned.

Mrs. Harrison got to her feet and turned her back to the door.

“We are not at home.”

There was an outraged gasp and the sound of retreating footsteps.

It was Mrs. Harrison’s finest hour.

Kitty sat down wearily after enduring the final fitting for her wedding dress and wished for the hundredth time that her fiancé were not quite so correct.

They were never alone. He had punctiliously escorted her to every society event—parties, operas, balls. Other engaged couples managed to spend some time alone together—on a balcony at a party, outside the box at the opera—there were endless opportunities. But not one of them did Lord Chesworth make use of.

Increasingly elegant and withdrawn, he chatted with her politely but never so much as kissed her glove. Arrangements were going ahead to furnish a pretty house in Green Street, but never once had her taste been consulted.

Then there was that time at the Royal Academy when she had entered one of the galleries with Lady Henley and seen him sitting on one of the benches with a lady whom he had introduced as Mrs. Veronica Jackson. Kitty recognized the lady of the red chiffon dress. Her blue eyes, amused and cynical, had raked Kitty from head to toe. “So that’s your little bride, Peter!” she had commented lazily, keeping her primrose-gloved hand possessively on Lord Chesworth’s. His lordship had simply given the lady an enigmatic look from under his hooded lids.

But they seemed to share some sort of secret, thought Kitty. Every pleasant ordinary thing they said to each other seemed to have a double meaning.

Well, he would change after they were married. And he had said he loved her. And Miss Bates had always said that a gentleman never lied.

London was in full summer bloom. Geraniums blazed in the window boxes and roses rioted in the gardens. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers. And in the evenings, the ballrooms and parties were so bedecked with great tubs of blooms that it was like stepping into a magnificent garden.

Kitty decided to forget her troubles and be “cheery.” She rolled the new word round on her tongue and felt very dashing and modern.

If only she had some friends. She had been to various tea parties and “at homes” but, with the bear-like shadow of Lady Henley next to her, conversation seemed to be inhibited. The only people who came to call were old friends of Lady Henley. Surely these bright young people must have confidences and best friends, and Kitty, thinking of Hetty back in Hampstead, did long for a best friend.

The day of the wedding arrived at last. No expense had been spared. Mrs. Rosa Lewis’s catering service had been hired and her staff of girls with their high, white, laced boots, white dresses, and chef’s hats had taken over the kitchen.

Kitty stood in her bedroom, patiently raising her arms so that Colette could drop the white gown of Brussels lace over her head. The waist and the bodice were embellished with tiny seed pearls and the train was so long it required the attentions of six bearers. Even Lady Henley’s forceful personality had not been enough to raise the necessary maids of honor and so the small children of various society families had been pressed into service.

A distant relative of Lady Henley, Mr. James Bennington-Cartwright-Browne, had been recruited to give the bride away. Kitty’s timid suggestion that she might send an invitation to Hetty had been coldly received. “Ask the baker’s daughter? Are you mad?” said Mrs. Harrison, dropping only one hairpin to show how minor the irritation was.

At last there was the church and there was the steeple, but who on earth were all these people? The pews seemed to be crowded with all of London’s fashionable society and not a friendly face among the lot of them. They had come to see the Baron marry “his little shopgirl.”

It was Veronica Jackson who had called Kitty that and society had delightedly taken up the phrase and exchanged story after gleeful story of Kitty’s terribly middle-class “refeened” behavior. It made such good gossip that Kitty’s quiet, well-bred manner was unable to contradict it. She was the latest joke in a season thin of jokes. So the shopgirl she remained.

It seemed as if it were all over so quickly. One minute she was Miss Kitty Harrison, the next she was Lady Kitty Chesworth, Baroness Reamington.

The reception was excellent, run with the firm hand of the famous Mrs. Lewis in the background. The aristocratic guests were obviously surprised, for they kept saying so in very loud voices.

Kitty waited patiently beside her new husband at the head of the long table. Would they never be able to leave? They were to spend their first night in their own town house and then travel to Reamington Hall on the following day. Kitty had secretly hoped to go somewhere exotic like Paris or Rome.

Her new husband seemed to be drinking a great deal of champagne in a quiet, steady manner. Mrs. Harrison was positively radiant; she would read about herself in the society columns at last! Lady Henley sat with her head sunk over her plate, for once absolutely stupefied with food.

The plover eggs served with cream cheese had been removed. That had been the eighteenth course, Kitty noted. Surely now it would end. But the last and nineteenth—
soufflés glacés à l’entente cordiale
and
bonbonnières de friandises
—was brought in and all the guests fell to cheerfully as if they were attacking the first. Then came the toasts. Kitty groaned inwardly. She had forgotten about them.

Mr. James Bennington-Cartwright-Browne was called upon to give the toast to the bride. But the gentleman had fallen sound asleep, his heavy, white, tobacco-stained moustache rising and falling gently and his freckled old hand stretched out toward his glass. His neighbor nudged him rudely and he came to life. “Eh, what? What, what?”

“Speech,” hissed his neighbor.

“Oh, eh, harrumph. Just so.” Mr. James Bennington-Cartwright-Browne lurched to his feet and surveyed the room with his rheumy eyes.

“I—ah—now—ah—declare this bazaar open.” And amid cheers and hoots from the guests, he sat down and promptly fell asleep.

He was again nudged awake. “Toast to the bride,” he was told.

“Eh, what bride?” said the old gentleman. “The shop-gel, Kitty,” hissed the woman on his other side. Once again Mr. James Bennington-Cartwright-Browne got to his feet. “Here’s to the bride. Don’t know ’er but I’m sure she’ll do,” he said and sat down again.

The shopgirl slur was not new to Kitty, but it was to her mother. Mrs. Harrison sat as if in a trance while the roar of conversation swept around her ears like the unheeding sea. “Shopgirl.” For this, she had endured the gluttony of Lady Henley. For this, she had filled her house with these laughing, uncaring, and sneering people. And—oh, bitter blow—for this she had sacrificed her daughter. Hairpins fell as thick as the leaves in Vallembrosa.

The best man was then called. He was a cheerful-looking young man with the uninspiring name of Percy Barlow-Smellie. A young matron across from Kitty leaned over and squeezed her arm.

“You mustn’t mind Percy. He’s a terrible wag,” she said.

Percy, after clowning around for several minutes pretending to have lost his speech, began.

“I couldn’t think what to say, so I wrote a poem.”

(Cheers. Good old Percy.)

Other speeches followed while Mrs. Harrison sat on as if turned to stone. These people would drink her wine and eat her food but never, never would they accept her.

The babble died down as Mrs. Harrison got to her feet and glared around the room.

“Get out,” she said in a venomous whisper. Then her voice rose to a scream. “Get out, get out, get out!”

What a horrified rustling of lace and chiffon, satin and silk. Like a poultry yard after the fox had just broken in, the ladies rose in a flutter of feather boas and large feathered hats. The men stolidly got to their feet. Everyone paused. Mrs. Harrison
must
be drunk. They could not possibly have heard aright.

Suddenly, there was an upheaval near Mrs. Harrison. Like some huge primeval beast erupting from its swamp, Lady Henley rose from a litter of bones and crusts and crumbs.

“You heard ’er. Get out. Go on. Shoo!” And putting a pudgy arm round Mrs. Harrison’s shoulders, she said, “C’mon, Euphemia. Let’s get out of here.”

The Baron turned to his new Baroness. “Well, Kitty. Shall we leave?”

Kitty gratefully took his arm. She simply wanted to get away. Everything would be all right as soon as she was alone with her new husband.