Perfecting Fiona (4 page)

Effy had misgivings but was too taken up with the charms of her own appearance to worry overmuch about Fiona. In any case the girl had money, and money sang a sweeter song to the ears of London society than any siren could conjure up.

Neither thought to tell Fiona how she ought to behave at the ball. Both were sure she would behave perfectly – as usual.

Soon they were all standing in the splendour of the Penshire Town house. Other aristocrats might content themselves with being crammed into one of those tall thin Town houses while in London. The Penshires in Town maintained the same grandeur as they did in their palace in the country. Amy, Effy, and Fiona walked through a chain of rooms with porphyry columns, glittering chandeliers, and velvet carpets from a side entrance before reaching the main staircase which soared up to the ballroom. The duke and duchess had closed the main front doors and opened up the side door for the guests’ arrival so that everyone could view the downstairs rooms before ascending to the ballroom. The duke and duchess were as proud of their great wealth and possessions as if they had just recently jumped up into the higher ranks of society from obscurity instead of having been there all their lives.

Neither of the Tribbles had been inside the Penshires’ Town house before, and yet they were not surprised at receiving an invitation. Even in the all-too-recent days of their poverty, they had been invited to the best houses. The Tribbles were
bon ton
.

As they reached the head of the staircase, Fiona made her curtsy to the duke and duchess. ‘Delightful,’ murmured the duchess, a smile cracking her austere features.

Amy glanced down at Fiona in surprise, but the girl was moving away into the ballroom and so she could only see the back of her head.

Effy found three seats for them. ‘Do not worry, dear,’ she said, pressing Fiona’s hand as the first country dance was announced, ‘if you are a wallflower at your first ball.’

And then Effy looked up and found five gentlemen jostling and bowing in front of Fiona and soliciting her to dance.

‘Gracious!’ said Amy as Fiona selected one of them and walked off onto the floor. ‘Society must be more money-mad than I had imagined.’

‘But we didn’t tell anyone Fiona was an heiress,’ said Effy. ‘And only look at her. She’s . . . she’s changed somehow. Her eyes are green. Did you know her eyes were green?’

‘I think they pick up the colour from what she’s wearing,’ said Amy. ‘She’s certainly more . . . animated.’

But animated was too pedestrian a word to describe the change in Fiona. It was as if the girl had been lit up from inside. Her enormous eyes flashed like emeralds, her skin had a healthy tinge of pink, and there was something about her that made everyone look at her.

‘Who is she dancing with?’ asked Amy. ‘He is divinely handsome, and just look at those legs!’

‘I will find out,’ said Effy. She looked along the row of chaperones and then went to sit beside one of society’s gossips. After a time, she came back and rejoined her sister.

‘Captain Freddy Beaumont,’ said Effy triumphantly. ‘Bachelor, rich, handsome, rumoured to be planning to sell out, find a wife, and settle down. Could not be better.’

Amy raised her quizzing-glass and studied the captain. His nose was perhaps too undistinguished and short, but his chin was firm, his eyes black and sparkling, and his long legs were a delight.

She studied the other guests. ‘There is a fascinating-looking man over by that pillar under the musicians’ gallery,’ she said. ‘He is watching Fiona. Find out who he is.’

Effy went off and returned a few moments later. ‘That is none other than Lord Peter Havard. Very dangerous.’

Amy experienced a qualm of unease. ‘Do you think, Effy, that Lord Peter got his parents to send those invitations? He is quite a predatory-looking man, you know, and having met Fiona on the road to London, he may have decided to hunt her for sport.’

‘I should not think so. I had the gossip about him from Mrs Barnbury, and she said he breaks hearts – but only those of matrons who know very well what they are about. He has never shown any interest in a young miss before.’

‘I do not like heart-breakers,’ said Amy roundly. ‘They usually don’t like women one little bit. They like power and they like to be puffed up with vanity.’

‘But the gentlemen don’t really
like
us ladies at all,’ said Effy. ‘I mean, they write sonnets and send flowers, but once the novelty has worn off, they prefer their clubs and taverns.’

‘Mr Haddon likes us as friends,’ pointed out Amy.

Effy tittered and waved her fan. ‘Dear sis. How blind you are! I believe Mr Haddon to be romantically inclined.’

Amy felt a sudden spasm of hate for her sister.

‘Heigh-ho! Lud! Lud! We are to be admired, Effy,’ said Amy. ‘Both of us nigh in our graves and the one still believing herself an object of attraction.’

Effy’s face turned a muddy colour under her blanc. She gasped as if she had been struck and tears spurted from her eyes and fell on the satin of her gown. ‘How cruel,’ she said. ‘How monstrous. You are jealous. You have always been jealous . . . you with your red hands and great flat feet.’

‘A pox on you,’ grated Amy. ‘Well, my great flat feet, as you call them, are quite useful.’ She aimed a massive kick at the spindly leg of the rout chair on which Effy was sitting. The leg splintered and cracked. The chair toppled and Effy with it. Amy, who had forgotten she was wearing her new bronze kid Roman sandals, hopped around the floor, clutching her injured foot and roaring with pain.

Fiona came hurrying towards them, with the captain following behind. ‘My dear duennas,’ she cried. ‘What ails you?’

The very sound of her voice acted on the sisters like magic. Fiona was work and work meant money and money meant comfort for their old age. Work meant Showing a Good Example.

Effy’s tears stopped as if a tap behind her eyes had been turned off, Amy stopped hopping and yowling and helped her sister to her feet. ‘An accident,’ said Amy. ‘These chairs are so frail and dear Effy
has
been gaining a teensy bit of weight.’

The Duchess of Penshire sailed forward to voice concern and calmly accepted Amy’s explanation, although she had seen Amy kick the leg of the chair after quarrelling openly with her sister. The Tribbles were
bon ton
and Originals and must be indulged. Had a young miss behaved in such a way, it would have caused a scandal.

By the time the Tribbles were reseated, the country dance had finished and a waltz was being announced. Fiona found Lord Peter at her elbow. He smiled and asked her to dance. Fiona mutely showed him her dance card, which was full. He raised his quizzing-glass and studied it, then bowed and moved away.

But he had noted in his mind that Fiona’s partner for the supper dance was a Mr Giles Manfred. He glanced idly around the ballroom and then made his way through to the card room. Mr Manfred was standing watching the play.

‘Not playing?’ asked Lord Peter.

‘Egad, Havard. How you startled me,’ said Mr Manfred. ‘No, I lost a packet at White’s last night and I am deep in the River Tick. Like a game, but haven’t the readies.’

‘There are other things to play for,’ drawled Lord Peter.

‘House? Estates? Mortgaged to the hilt, dear boy.’

‘You do have something of value I covet.’

‘Eh? What?’ Mr Manfred popped his quizzing-glass in his mouth, sucked furiously, took it out and polished it on the sleeve of his jacket and then stared at Lord Peter with one huge magnified eye.

‘The supper dance . . . with Miss Macleod.’

Mr Manfred’s eyes gleamed. ‘Piquet or dice?’

‘Dice.’

‘Done!’

Frank, the second footman in the Tribble household, was preparing to go out. It was an important evening. He had gained free time by lying to the butler about his ailing mother. The butler did not know that the second footman’s mother had been dead for five years. Frank was to meet Mr Desmond Callaghan, Gentleman, at the Coal Hole in the Strand. He, a second footman, was going roistering with a gentleman. The first footman was on duty and so he had the tiny bedroom to himself.

He put a small, smoke-blackened tea-kettle on the minuscule fire to boil up water for shaving. When the water was ready, he poured some into a cracked teacup kept for the purpose and drew his solitary well-worn razor several times over the heel of his hand to smooth its edge, dipped his brush worn nearly to the stump in the hot water and passed it gingerly across as much of his face as he intended to shave. When he had finished shaving, he took out of his trunk an old dirty pomatum pot. A modicum of the contents he stroked onto his eyebrows with the tips of two forefingers and then, spreading some more on the palms of his hands, he rubbed it vigorously into his coarse sandy hair. After combing his hair into various different positions and finally settling on the one he judged the most attractive, he dipped the end of a towel into the little shaving water that was left and, twisting it round his right forefinger, passed it gently over his face, avoiding his eyebrows.

Then he drew out from his trunk a calico shirt with linen wristbands and collar which had been worn only twice since its last wash, taking care not to rumple the very showy ruffles at the front. Once the shirt was on, he stuck in three studs connected together with a little gilt chain. Then he insinuated his legs into a pair of white Inexpressibles, fastened the straps at his feet, and strapped up his braces so tightly that he gave the impression of a man being hoisted on high by his trousers. Then he put on a pair of Hessian boots but did not bother to put any stockings on first. Stockings did not show. He attached a pair of tin spurs to his boots in the hope the admiring populace of London might think he had just dismounted, despite the fact that gentlemen did not wear Hessian boots for riding, or indeed affix spurs to them.

Then he put on a queer kind of underwaistcoat which in fact was only a roll collar of rather faded pea-green silk and designed to set off a fine flowered damson silk waistcoat. After buckling on his stock, he put on his best blue coat with the brass buttons. He picked up a pair of sky-blue kid gloves and looked gloomily at the stains on them and then scrubbed at the offending marks with stale breadcrumbs to try to remove them. His Sunday hat, carefully covered with silver paper, was next gently removed from its box and placed on his head, tilted a little to one side to look devil-may-care, but not rakish.

Lastly, he took down a thin black cane with a gilt head and full brown tassel from a peg behind the door. He surveyed himself in an old greenish looking-glass that was propped up in a corner of the room.

He was not so very bad-looking, despite his coarse sandy hair. His forehead
was
a bit narrow and his eyes were slightly protruberant, but his mouth was well-shaped and firm, always hanging slightly open to show good teeth.

Soon Frank was setting forth down Holles Street and turning the corner into Oxford Street. A street urchin shouted, ‘My eyes. A’n’t that a swell!’ and Frank’s chest puffed out and his heart felt fit to burst with the glory of it all.

The Coal Hole, as usual, was full of heat and noise and smoke. There was a tiny stage at the end of the taproom on which a buxom girl was dancing with a hoop. Her ankles were bad, noted Frank, drooping his eyelids in what he hoped was a jaded, man-of-the-world way.

Mr Desmond Callaghan was seated in one of the darkest corners, a fact Frank did not like. He would have liked to be seen drinking with his grand friend at one of the tables in the centre of the room.

The fribble was wearing a black coat with enormous padded shoulders and a nipped-in waist. His trousers looked as if they had been painted onto his legs and he wore a gold-and-black-striped waistcoat –
very
waspy, as Frank thought with a pang of pure envy.

Mr Callaghan’s first words of greeting to the footman nearly destroyed the new friendship. ‘Hullo, sailor,’ he cried. ‘When did your ship dock?’

Frank half-turned to walk away, so great was his mortification. His blue coat and white trousers had been insulted.

‘Sit down, my friend!’ added Mr Callaghan quickly. ‘You must not mind my jest. I’ Faith, I feel outshone.’

The ice melted in Frank’s vain heart, and he sat down next to Mr Callaghan.

‘Get away without any trouble?’ pursued Mr Callaghan.

‘Dev’lish hard,’ said Frank, attempting a drawl. ‘But I lied my way to freedom.’

All at once, Mr Callaghan thought he saw a splendid way to make mischief in the Tribble household until such time as he could woo Miss Macleod. He leaned confidentially forward. ‘It seems a shame that a fine fellow like you should have to work as a servant . . .’ And while Frank, his mouth even more agape than usual, listened avidly, Mr Callaghan preached the Rights of Man, the Freedom of the Individual in general, and Revolution for the Masses in particular.

Fiona tripped daintily into the supper room on the arm of Lord Peter Havard. Ladies who had previously that evening thought Miss Macleod a charming creature decided they had been sadly mistaken. She was a wispy, undistinguished thing with bold manners.

Seemingly unaffected by all this burning jealousy, or by the fact that her chaperones were all but standing on their chairs at the far end of the supper room to make sure Lord Peter was behaving himself, Fiona was answering her partner’s questions.

Yes, it was her first Season; no, she did not know London well; yes, she was enjoying herself. Lord Peter did not quite know what to make of her. He had made it his business to find out where Miss Fiona Macleod was residing in London, not a difficult task, as society had quickly made it their business to find out the identity of the Tribble sisters’ new charge. That brief meeting on the road had sparked his interest. Learning that Fiona was being brought out by the Tribbles nearly extinguished it, for everyone knew the Tribbles only dealt with ‘difficult’ cases. But what was wrong with Fiona? Her manners were graceful and she danced like an angel.

‘I wonder, Miss Macleod,’ ventured Lord Peter, ‘why your parents, or perhaps, your aunt and uncle, found it necessary to put you in the care of the Misses Tribble?’