Plain Jane (8 page)

‘Oh, I
do
wish, you know, that you had not elected to stay with me,’ said Jane, much distressed. ‘It does not become you, sir, to use such as I to humiliate my mother and sister.’

He raised thin brows. ‘I did not humiliate them, although they seemed to me to want to humiliate
you
. Are you not considered marriageable?’

‘No, my lord,’ said Jane firmly. ‘This is not my come-out.’

‘Odd. One would have supposed your mama would have wished to save herself a deal of money by presenting you both at the same time.’

Jane looked at her hands. They were trembling slightly so she bunched them in her lap. ‘I am not a beauty,’ said Jane in a low voice, ‘nor shall I ever be fashionable.’

He looked at her consideringly. ‘Your eyes are fine and the warmth of your colouring is most unusual and attractive. In order to be fashionable, it is necessary to cultivate some sort of eccentricity. What would do for you? Perhaps you could walk backwards to Brighton? Smoke cheroots? Now, there is Lord Alvanley over there.
He
always has apricot tart on his sideboard, morning, noon, and night. The man with the sharp nose over there is Lord Petersham. He has the finest snuff cellar in Europe. It was also he who told his valet to put six bottles of sherry beside the bed and call him the day after tomorrow.’

‘I notice they are all gentlemen of whom you speak,’ said Jane, fascinated. ‘What of the ladies?’

‘Ah, there you have me!’ he cried. ‘Not one of the fair sex has ever really
tried
to cultivate eccentricity.’

Jane laughed. ‘How can we discuss such frippery things? One would not think we were at war.’

There was a stillness behind the blue eyes and then they were merry again. ‘What think you of my waistcoat?’ he asked. ‘I found this material in Rome. If you look closely, you will notice a fine stripe running through the silk.’

Jane battled with a feeling of disappointment. This dashing hero of her dreams was interested only in tailoring and gossip. In truth, Jane persuaded herself she was fighting with her disappointment when in fact she was secretly nurturing it. Deep down inside her a warning voice was telling her that this lord was far above her and that she might be on a threshold of love, a love more deep and mature than she might be able to bear.

‘It
was
you,’ she said in a low voice, ‘that beat Jack Death?’

‘That was quite some time ago. Yes, it was I.’

‘I was there,’ said Jane.

‘At a prize fight?’

‘I was only ten years of age. I dressed so that people might take me for a boy, but I fell out of a tree and the blacksmith recognized me and sent me home.’

‘Just as well,’ said the beau, much amused. ‘Lots of blood.’

‘Why did you fight?’ asked Jane. Her hands were tightly clasped and her eyes beseeching. If only he would once more be the dream hero of her imaginings.

‘Well, I had a great deal of money on my Fancy, to be sure, and when the fellow took sick, what else could I do but fight myself? What a terrible mess I made of my hands. I bathed them in Olympian Dew for weeks afterwards to try to restore them to their former whiteness.’

‘Oh,’ said Jane dully. So he had fought merely for money and his only subsequent worry had been the whiteness of his hands. But what else would he fight for? jeered a little voice in her brain. The love of a fair maiden? His king?

‘Why is this house unlucky?’ she realized he was asking.

‘It is because the Duke of Pelham hanged himself here,’ said Jane, ‘and Miss Clara Vere-Baxton, daughter of the tenants a year after that, was found dead in the Green Park. I am very interested in Miss Clara, you know. You see, no one could find out how she died. There was no mark on her body.’

‘Of course, it is up to us to find out how she died,’ said Lord Tregarthan, taking a pinch of snuff.

‘Us?’ said Jane weakly.

‘Why not?’

It was then Jane caught the jealous glances thrown in her direction by a group of ladies in the front parlour. Lord Tregarthan was a Catch. She might have persuaded herself that he had fallen from his pedestal, but it was wonderful to be envied for the first time in her life. Besides, he had liked her eyes and the colour of her skin. Jane sat up straighter and unfurled her fan. ‘How shall we go about it?’ she asked.

‘I shall take you driving tomorrow and we shall discuss the matter. Dear me! How very noisy and rough this rout is becoming.’ Lord Tregarthan cocked his handsome head as more sounds of loud cheering came from above followed by screams and bangs and thumps. He rose to his feet. ‘Your servant, Miss Jane.’

Jane rose, curtsied, and then watched him leave. He stopped to chat to various people, his fair head and broad shoulders towering above the other guests. Then he was gone. He had not said what time he would call for her or whether he meant to ask Mrs Hart’s permission. Jane hoped feverishly he would not forget. Fallen Idol he might be, but it would be so pleasant to watch the look on Euphemia’s face as she, Jane, drove out with the most handsome man in London.

Lord Tregarthan had actually gone in search of Mrs Hart to request her permission to take Jane driving. He found that lady in her dining room on the upper floor in a high state of agitation. Several boozy bucks were trying to lower one of their number from the window to the street by his cravat because he had boasted he used so much material that, unwound, it would stretch from the window to the ground.

In their enthusiasm, in their crowding around the window, the members of the
ton
, lushy to a man with the effects of Rainbird’s concoction, knocked over the tables and chairs, broke a pane of glass opening the window, and were now laying bets on the length of the cravat as the young man was lowered to the street outside amid cheers and yells. The betting fever rose and the two men holding onto the length of material, which once was an intricately tied cravat, forgot what they were doing while contesting the odds, and let go. There was a crash from the street outside and a scream of pain. After a short, startled silence the betting started up again as to whether he had broken one leg, two legs or his neck. Anyone going down to check, looking out the window, or going to help would be automatically disqualified.

Euphemia, jostled and forgotten in the wave of gambling fever shared by men and women alike, pouted and sulked. She pouted and sulked even more when the handsome Lord Tregarthan accosted her mother for the sole purpose of asking permission to take Jane driving. It was all Felice’s fault, thought Euphemia, raging inwardly. She had turned Jane into a Cyprian with that low-cut gown.

Lord Tregarthan collected his friend Mr Nevill, and the two gentlemen made their way out past the young man of the cravat, who was painfully crawling back in on his hands and knees.

‘How did you fare?’ asked Tregarthan. ‘Hope you didn’t drink any of that negus.’

‘Didn’t have the time,’ said Mr Nevill. ‘I say, you will never guess who Mr Hart is!’

‘No, who?’

‘Why, he is none other than Captain James Hart of the
Adventure.
’

There was a certain stillness about Lord Tregarthan and the blue gaze he turned on his friend was suddenly sharp and inquisitive. ‘You are sure?’

‘Course I am. I recognized the man the minute I saw him. There he was, one of the heroes of England, jammed in a corner and looking like a funeral. To think that brave man with his little frigate of fourteen small guns and a crew of fifty-four men on board took that Spanish Frigate,
Infanta
, with her crew of three hundred.

‘Nelson once said Captain Hart had more dash and Hair than any man in the service.’

‘Why does our hero mope in London with a war to be fought?’ asked Lord Tregarthan curiously.

‘Women!’ said Mr Nevill in tones of deepest contempt. ‘
He
did not say so and
I
did not ask, but it was all too evident that pushing, vulgar wife of his made him sell out. I shall call on them again, but only when I can be assured of meeting Captain Hart.’

‘What of the beautiful Euphemia?’

‘She should drink less,’ said Mr Nevill roundly. ‘She went from bold to brash to sulky to petulant, all in the space of half an hour.’

‘Perhaps our beauty is not to be blamed. That so-called negus was evil stuff.’

‘And what of you?’ asked Mr Nevill. ‘You caused no end of a buzz – the great Beau Tregarthan paying court to a plain schoolgirl.’

‘Is she plain?’ asked Lord Tregarthan, stifling a yawn. ‘I confess I had not noticed. Let us talk of other things . . .’

Poising evermore the eye-glass
In the light sarcastic eye,
Lest, by chance, some breezy nursemaid
Pass, without a tribute, by.

C.S. CALVERLEY
,
HIC VIR
,
HIC EST

It is a sad fact that no heroine is as sweet and virtuous in real life as she is in, say, a Grimms’ Fairy Tale, and Jane, who had escaped early to bed and therefore evaded Euphemia’s reprisals, awoke the next day with a mild, pleasurable, gloating feeling.

She would be swept off by Beau Tregarthan in his carriage while Euphemia, pale and wan, chastened and jealous, stood at the window to watch her go. Felice would become her devoted slave, cultivating the approval of the younger sister to counteract the mean temper of the elder.

And so it was with something closely approaching pique that Jane, descending late to the dining room, found Euphemia and the lady’s maid on the best of terms. They had their heads together and were laughing over an illustration in a magazine when Jane entered.

The clever Felice had met all Euphemia’s recriminations with amazed surprise. How could such a beauty suggest that a few stitches had transformed a little schoolgirl into a rival? The compliments and blandishments went on and on until Euphemia almost purred.

Then bouquets and poems had begun to arrive, all for Euphemia. The fact was that Mrs Hart’s drunken rout had made her and her elder daughter social successes. A rout was not a fashionable rout unless it left you with something to talk about, and never before had there been such a rout as the Harts’! Two
tonnish
ladies of impeccable breeding, inebriated by Rainbird’s ‘negus’, had tried to scratch each other’s eyes out. The young man who had been dropped from the window had sprained both his ankles, although some thought he must have broken his neck, because from that day forth he went about in a cravat made of yards and yards of the strongest linen in case anyone should try to lower him from a great height and he indeed looked like the victim of a carriage accident.

Everyone had behaved so wonderfully disgracefully that Euphemia’s bad manners were quite forgotten and only the image of her great beauty remained in the fevered brains of the gentlemen of the
ton
the following day as they struggled to quench their raging thirsts with bumpers of hock and seltzer.

Society wagged heads, gossiped, and laughed over the dreadful happenings at Mrs Hart’s rout and declared her to be an Original. At one point during the evening, Mrs Hart, a trifle disguised, had broadcast to all and sundry the size of Euphemia’s dowry. The necessary gilt-edge was added to Euphemia’s beauty.

Now, dizzy with success, Mrs Hart appeared in the dining room, announcing that little Jane must have some new gowns, and disappointed Jane noticed that that pronouncement did not raise even one gleam of jealousy in her sister’s eye. For it transpired that the great and powerful Marquess of Berry was to call to take Euphemia driving. What was a mere lord like Tregarthan compared to a marquess?

Besides, Mrs Hart, although pleased and surprised at what she termed ‘Jane’s little success’, assumed that Tregarthan was merely amusing himself by entertaining such a young miss. Several ladies had been at great pains to point out to Mrs Hart that Tregarthan was a high stickler and that all his many mistresses had been divine beauties.

Euphemia, who had had this gossip of her mother, no longer considered Jane a rival and laughed and glowed while Jane sulkily helped herself to toast and tea and felt smaller and plainer by the minute. But her normally sunny disposition soon asserted itself and she slipped off to the kitchens to pump Rainbird about the late Miss Clara and so to have a fund of gossip to pour into the ears of Lord Tregarthan.