Miss Fellingham's Rebellion (2 page)

“Have you told her yet?” Freddy asked, eating his eggs, which tasted just fine to him. He preferred his eggs with a little bit of run in them.

Catherine, her spleen comfortably vented, was on the verge of returning to an article on the Coinage Act, but she paused at this. “Tell me what?”

“Oh, pooh,” Evelyn cried, “does she really have to know?”

Sir Vincent, who had been on the verge of asking the same thing, turned to his wife. “Really, m’dear, was it necessary to blurt it to everyone?”

“Tell me what?” Catherine said again.

Liza Fellingham surveyed the breakfast room. Only her immediate family and Hawkins were present. “Everyone? Surely my children are not everyone. Besides, I have said nothing on the subject to Melissa.”

At this exchange, Catherine’s concern grew. There was very little her mother endeavored to hide from Melissa—or anyone. She had always been too free in her manners. “Tell me what?”

Sir Vincent harrumphed and turned to his daughter. He folded up the paper, abandoning with some regret all hope of finishing it in quiet and resolving never to attempt a meal in his own home again. “It seems your mother has gotten herself into a little fix. Nothing to raise the roof over.”

“Me? Sir Vincent,” cried the accused, alarmed by the blame being laid at her slippered feet. “If it weren’t for your gaming debts—”

Sensing that one of her parents’ ugly rows was about to erupt, Catherine interrupted. “Hawkins,” she said firmly, “we’re going to retire to the drawing room. We’ll have our tea there.”

“The drawing room?” asked Evelyn, surprised. “But I haven’t finished my chocolate yet. I don’t want to go to the drawing room.”

“Yes, you do, brat,” her brother assured her, pulling her chair out. “Besides, weren’t you not a moment ago complaining about the inferior quality of your chocolate? Come on.”

Evelyn pouted some more but complied, getting to her feet with practiced grace. Her father made a similar show of disgust before yielding. All four followed Catherine into the drawing room, which her mother had redecorated in the latest Oriental fashion, following the lead of Prinny. Although it had been more than a year, the dragon-adorned furniture, Chinese red wallpaper and beech tables carved to resemble bamboo still made her cringe. Fortunately, Lady Fellingham had been unable to gain Sir Vincent’s consent to redo the entire town house in the similar style.

They all sat down, save Sir Vincent, who chose to lean against the mantelpiece, his elbow resting next to a lacquered pagoda. He was still a youngish man, and his posture and demeanor were ingratiating. Catherine loved her father, although she often lost patience with him for the way he cavalierly treated the family’s fortune and the contemptuous manner with which he sometimes treated her mother. Of course, Catherine realized that her mother was not much better, intentionally bothering her husband with trivial matters that she knew he took little interest in in order to put his nose out of joint. They were a quarrelsome pair and often loud. She had gotten in the habit of leaving the room when she sensed things were about to get uncomfortable. She hated arguments, raised voices and ugly disagreements, so she let Evelyn have her way when she pouted and Frederick her help when he asked. It was so much easier than having a scene. And now they seemed intent on dragging her into their nonsense. She trembled at the thought of what her nonsensical mother could have done now, especially if she was acting out of petulance at her husband’s losses. If he could just leave off playing faro, the entire family would be a lot more comfortable. But nobody had ever listened to her when she talked sense, so Catherine had simply stopped talking altogether.

“Well, then,” she said after Hawkins brought in the tea and closed the door quietly behind him, “we are assembled privately. What disastrous news need you impart?”

“Disastrous?” scoffed her sister. “It’s nothing of consequence. A tempest in a teapot, really.”

“That ain’t true, brat, and you know it.” Freddy said, accepting a cup from his mother before scowling at his sister. “You don’t understand what has happened.”

“Heathens!” Sir Vincent bellowed. “Enough squabbling. Liza, tell your daughter what you’ve done now.”

Lady Fellingham, of course, would have preferred to argue some more over her husband’s uncomplimentary description, which was insulting to both her children and herself, but what little sense she had demanded that she stay focused on the more pressing topic at hand. “As dear Evie says, it is just an insignificant snarl. It’s like this, you see. You know my dear school friend Arabella Wellesly?”

“Of course,” answered Catherine, “Lord Wellington’s cousin.”

“Exactly!” her mother exclaimed. “There, you see, darling, that wasn’t so difficult.” She folded her hands in her lap and smiled blithely.

“But, Mama, you haven’t told me anything.”

“Oh, yes. Well, my dear school friend Arabella married Courtland,” she explained. “It was a beautiful wedding at St. George’s. Anybody who was anybody was in attendance, even Prinny, who was sporting an infamous waistcoat that was several sizes too small. I remember remarking—”

“Courtland reports to the Duke of Raeburn,” threw in Freddy, who thought that detail was more important than what the regent had worn to a party more than twenty years before.

“I know who Courtland is as well as to whom he reports,” said Catherine, wondering just how long this would take. Her mother was notorious for her digressions, especially on occasions like this one, when she was reluctant to get to the heart of the matter.

“Yes, well, you see, Arabella and I are very close. We are bosom friends, you see, and we discuss everything. She knows all about our family life just as I know all about hers,” she said, somewhat anxiously as her three middle fingers tapped the cushion on which she sat, a nervous habit she adopted whenever presented with an unpleasant confession.

Catherine could not imagine where all this information was leading. “And?”

“Well, she is really a wonderful, caring person, full of sentiment and quite sympathetic to my suffering,” Lady Fellingham explained.

Catherine looked around her at the opulent room, with its lavish designs, lush fabrics and extravagant details. “Suffering, Mama?”

For a moment her ladyship looked embarrassed, then she straightened her spine and looked her oldest daughter in the eye. “Yes, my dear, suffering. And dearest Arabella came up with a wonderful scheme to end my, uh, suffering.”

“I’m sorry, Mama, but you are going to have to elaborate. What do you mean by suffering?” Catherine asked.

Liza blushed in earnest. “I’d hate to talk about it.”

“Surely, Mama, you can tell me anything you can tell Lady Courtland,” she said reasonably.

As much as she wanted to deny the logic of this statement, her ladyship could not, and she expelled a loud sigh before confessing, “Money problems. Your father—”

“Damn me, m’dear,” interrupted Sir Vincent, “but this is your sin, not mine. Acquit me of any wrongdoing.”

“How can I?” she cried. “Your wretched gambling has gotten us into this straitened circumstance in the first place.”

“Your mother has been selling commissions in the king’s army for a price,” Sir Vincent declared, heedless of his wife’s feelings.

“Fellingham!” Liza exclaimed in outrage. “To come out with it like that!” She stole a peek at her daughter. “He makes it sound so sordid, Catherine, and really it wasn’t anything of the sort. These boys wanted to advance their careers, and my dear friend Arabella wanted to help them and me. You know what it’s like.…” Lady Fellingham trailed off as she watched her daughter leave the room. “Catherine, dear, where are you going? Frederick, where can your sister be going?”

Catherine wasn’t going anywhere, although she was not inclined to tell her mother that, for she was far too angry to speak. After she shut the drawing room door behind her, she escaped into one of the large leather wingback chairs in her father’s study. Since none of her relations involved themselves much in the more serious pursuits of life, Catherine often spent many hours alone in the quiet room, hiding from her family and reading the latest novel from the lending library.

Safely ensconced in the comfortable chair, Catherine told herself to calm down. A small part of her wondered why she was so upset. Her mother was always getting into scrapes, and this one was probably no worse. But that kind of cool logic didn’t fly with her this morning, for she knew better. Even if her family didn’t understand the ramifications of her mother’s most recent transgression, she, at least, did. Something like this was worse than a scandal; it was a crime. Imagine! Meddling with commissions! My God, she thought, her head pounding as the reality of the situation set in, her mother was a national security risk. Surely the 10th Hussars would march in there at any second in their sparkling blue uniforms and take her away. And where would they take her? Where do prisoners of the Crown go? Newgate? Certainly that was worse than the debtors’ prison her father seemed determined to send them all to.

Her mother was right, of course: The true cause of the problem was Sir Vincent and his careless ways. Even if they squeaked through this jam with only a few scratches, there would always be another one, for her father could not be stopped from depleting the family’s coffers and her mother could not be stopped from trying to avert the coffers’ depletion. What was she to do? Things could not go on like this for very much longer. Either her mother would do something even more extraordinary to put them beyond the pale or her father would have them rusticating permanently in Dorset.

Or would he? The truth of the matter was that Catherine had no idea of the true state of the family’s finances. She knew they were fixed well enough but just how well was a mystery. Her mother refused to speak of money with her, claiming the discussion of all things material other than clothes and hats was unbred. She herself had never made a push to understand the nature of things. She knew they had enough money to send Freddy to Oxford and to buy Evelyn crepe dresses. Beyond that, she never gave it much thought. Were they dangerously close to Dun territory or was it all in her mother’s head?

The only thing to do, she realized, in the absence of complete information was to gather more. To do that, she would have to convince her mother to share the ledgers. Then, when she had a proper understanding of how matters actually stood, she could settle on the best way to proceed. If the situation wasn’t as dire as Lady Fellingham thought, she would ease her anxieties by calmly showing her the tallies. If her predictions were on the mark, she would suggest simple economies to slim the budget. Catherine absolutely refused to believe there was nothing she could do. If there were no corners left to cut or no reasoning with her mother, then she would learn how to play faro herself and instruct her father on how to improve his game. Imagining herself in a gaming hell taking lessons from the dealer on how to wager so amused her that she began to laugh. After a few minutes, her mirth slowed to a giggle, and she stood up from the familiar leather chair. Before she could implement any plan, she had to extract her family from their current debacle, a task she hoped wouldn’t be impossible.

When Catherine returned to the drawing room, Hawkins was clearing the tea, placing cups on the serving tray next to the silver teapot.

“Well, there you are, girl,” her mother exclaimed, waving her handkerchief at her. “Where have you been? Has anyone told you that it is rude to walk out of a room like that? Have I not raised you with more manners than that ridiculous display demonstrated?”

Catherine didn’t think that given the circumstances her conduct was a subject worthy of critique and ignored her mother’s comments. She waited until Hawkins had left the room before proceeding. “Where has my father gone?” she asked upon seeing that he was the only one who was not still in the room.

“Gone,” said her mother.

“Gone where?” Catherine ignored the way her mother had thrown herself onto the divan in the simulation of a faint.

“Just gone.”

Catherine turned to Freddy. “Where did he go?”

“To his club, I imagine. He spends most mornings there.”

“What does it matter?” whined Evelyn, who stood up in a fit of anger. “I want to go shopping. Mama, you promised we could go to the milliner on Bond Street today so I could buy one of Madame Claude’s dashing bonnets.”

“I’m afraid, Evelyn, that you don’t quite understand the severity of the situation. Your mother was selling commissions in the king’s army.” Catherine said this slowly and distinctly as if clear articulation were all that stood between her selfish sister and comprehension.

Evelyn laid her head on her palm and looked very bored. “Yes, yes, I know all that. I still don’t see why you have to be such a sad Sadie about it. It was a bad thing to do and she won’t do it anymore, will you, Mama. Now, why can’t we go buy hats?”

Catherine closed her eyes and counted silently to ten. “Mayhap it hasn’t occurred to you yet that you can’t go to balls if your mother is in Newgate.”

“Really, Catherine, doing it a bit brown,” Freddy ejaculated. “I mean, we’re not completely sunk, are we?”

“I don’t know, Freddy, but we can’t run the risk. We have to scotch this immediately.”

“Not go to balls?” Evelyn squeaked, all appearance of ennui chased from her countenance. “That can’t be right, Mama. I’ll still be able to go to balls no matter what happens, no?”