The Paper Princess (2 page)

But these strangers were a different matter. When Mr. Saxon himself had served them with their usual glasses of claret, Miss Chubb whispered, “We should not stay long, Felicity. These strangers may become overcurious.”

Felicity was not listening to her. She was studying the men at a table in the center of the room with interest.

They were all dressed in riding clothes, and, from their conversation, she gathered they had all been guests at a shooting party at an estate farther along the coast. There were six of them. Their riding clothes were all well-cut as the finest morning dress and each man wore an expensive jewel in his stock.

But it was the man at the head of the table who held Felicity's attention the most. Once she had seen him, she found it almost impossible to look away.

He was quite old, she decided, about thirty years, and that
was
old in Felicity's eighteen-year-old eyes.

He had a strong face with a proud nose and a firm chin. His eyes were very black and sparkling and held a clever, restless, mocking look. His brown riding coat was fitted across a pair of powerful shoulders, and his long legs encased in top boots were stretched out under the table. A ruby glittered wickedly in his stock and a large ruby ring burned on the middle finger of his right hand. His hands were very white and his nails beautifully manicured and polished to a high shine with a chamois buffer. Felicity was fascinated.

Effeminate and decadent men were laughable; decadent and powerful men, such as this one, frightening.

“Do not stare so,” whispered Miss Chubb urgently.

But as if conscious of Felicity's curious gaze, the man looked across at her.

“Gentlemen!” he called. “If you are so interested in our conversation, pray join us.”

A gentleman next to him, who had his back to Felicity and Miss Chubb, swung round and stared at them rudely through his quizzing glass.

“Never say they are gentlemen, Bessamy,” he drawled. “Just look at the rustic cut of that lad's coat.”

The other four solemnly produced their quizzing glasses and raked Felicity and Miss Chubb up and down as if studying two new and curious insects.

Then, as if finding them lacking in any merit whatsoever, they dropped their glasses and continued to talk about sport.

Miss Chubb let out a slow breath of relief. Felicity's face flamed.

“Pay no attention, my dear uncle,” she said in a clear, carrying voice. “'Tis naught but some city mushrooms aping the rudeness and the churlishness of the Corinthian set.”

There was a shocked silence. Miss Chubb muttered prayers under her breath. One of the gentlemen, the one next to the man called Bessamy, rose to his feet and slowly picked up his gloves.

“He's going to challenge you to a duel,” squeaked Miss Chubb.

Then Bessamy rose to his feet and with one hand pushed his friend down into his chair.

“Do not squabble with the locals,” he said calmly. “Too fatiguing for words, and I have been bored enough this evening. Down, James, down, boy.” He picked up his glass and, to Miss Chubb's horror, crossed over to their table, pulled up a chair, and sat down.

Felicity turned her head away.

“Permit me to introduce myself,” he said. “Bessamy. Lord Arthur Bessamy, at your service.”

“Charmed,” said Miss Chubb gruffly.

“And you are... ?” pursued Lord Arthur, his wicked black eyes fastened on Felicity's face.

Miss Chubb pulled her wide-awake hat down firmly over her eyes. “I am Mr. George Champion,” she said, “and this, my lord, is my nephew, Mr. Freddy Channing.”

Lord Bessamy swung his gold quizzing glass on its long, gold chain slowly back and forth, still looking at Felicity. Miss Chubb watched the pendulum swing of that quizzing glass with large, hypnotized eyes.

“And have
you
nothing to say for yourself, young fellow-me-lad?” asked Lord Arthur gently. “You have just sorely insulted my guests and me. An apology would not come amiss. Or do you like dueling so much?”

Felicity forced herself to look at him. “Your friends were very rude,” she said. “But I admit I was rude, too, and for that I apologize.”

“Gracefully said, Mr.... er ... Channing. Hey, landlord, another bottle here.”

“We must leave, my lord,” said Felicity, trying to rise to her feet, but he pushed her back into her chair in the same autocratic manner as he had dealt with his offended friend.

“No, you must join me in a glass of wine. I insist.”

Miss Chubb groaned inwardly. In these days of hard drinking, she and Felicity were very abstemious, both of them preferring the taste of lemonade to wine. They only drank wine as part of their adventure, part of their masquerade. Both had admitted in the past that two glasses were definitely their limit. They had once experimented with a third but had found themselves becoming dangerously tipsy and inclined to relapse into their normal, feminine voices, instead of maintaining their adopted masculine ones.

Miss Chubb watched miserably as the bottle of wine was brought to the table. She knew she must rescue Felicity. There must be some way she could create a diversion. She rose to her feet.

“By your leave, my lord,” she said. “I beg to be excused.”

“But we have not broached the bottle,” said Lord Arthur.

“I shall return very shortly.”

“But where do you go?”

“To the Jericho,” replied Miss Chubb, an ugly flush mounting to her cheeks.

“My dear sir, it is raining like mad. There are plenty of chamberpots in the sideboard over there, and we are all men here. I suggest you avail yourself of one.”

“But the serving maids...” put in Felicity quickly.

“Are not in the room at present,” he pointed out amicably.

“I insist on going outside,” barked Miss Chubb truculently.

She hurried off. Lord Arthur watched her departure with raised brows and then turned to Felicity.

“Do you belong to these parts, Mr. Channing?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Channing ... let me see. Ah, I have it. I have heard of a Mr. Channing of Tregarthan Castle.”

“Not him, nothing to do with him. Anyway, he's dead.” Felicity took a great gulp of wine to cover her confusion.

“How odd to have two Channing families in the same neighborhood and yet not related. This room is warm. Do you not wish to remove your hat?”

But Felicity knew if she removed her curly-brimmed beaver it would reveal her long hair piled up on top of her head. It was the custom for gentlemen to keep their hats on if they only meant to stay somewhere for a short time.

“I must leave soon,” she said. “I have pressing business.”

“That being... ?” Felicity surveyed this handsome lord with great irritation. Why did he ask so many questions? Then a thought struck her. If he could be made to believe she belonged to the shopkeeping class, he would probably remove himself from her table and go back to his friends.

“I am in the tailoring business, my lord,” she said. “Apprentice to a Mr. Weston.”

“But not the great Weston, as I can see from the cut of your coat. A tailor's lad, hey? Your master spoils you. I have never before seen a tailor's boy with such white hands.”

He filled her glass again.

“Tailoring is not hard labor,” pointed out Felicity. “But now that you know I am well below your class, you will no doubt wish to remove to...”

“You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Channing. I find your company quite fascinating. What is it like being a tailor's apprentice?”

Felicity took a deep breath, another gulp of wine, and prepared to lie. Where on earth was Miss Chubb?

Miss Chubb had at first headed for the outside privy. The rain was falling hard. As soon as she was sure she was unobserved, she veered off in the direction of the stables. There had been no more arrivals since she and Felicity had come to the inn, so the stable boys were in the tack room, sitting round the fire. She put her head round the tack room door and said she would lead out their horses and the boys were not to trouble disturbing themselves—something they were glad to agree to, none of them wanting to go out into the rain when they did not have to. Miss Chubb then took her horse and Felicity's and tethered them to a post in the yard of the inn over by the gate into the yard, but well away from the inn door.

Now, for that diversion.

Fear for Felicity sharpened her wits and made her brave. She returned to the stables and took a bale of hay and a small oil lamp. She carried the hay to the ground under the bay window at the side of the inn, behind which Felicity sat with Lord Arthur. The diamond-shaped panes of the windows were so old, so warped, and so small, she had no fear of anyone inside the inn being able to look out and see her.

She poured the oil from the lamp over the hay, took out her tinder box and tried to set it alight. The trouble with using a tinder box was that you had to be very lucky to get a light the first time. Often it took half an hour. Miss Chubb groaned. This looked like it would be one of the half-an-hour times.

Inside the inn, apparently enthralled, Lord Arthur Bessamy listened to Mr. Channing's highly fanciful tale of life as a tailor's apprentice. Rather muzzy with wine, Felicity kept talking and talking, frightened that if she stopped, he might ask more questions. And so this Scheherazade of The Green Dolphin launched into a long and complicated story about a fat man who had insisted on trying on a coat made for a thinner gentleman, insisting it must be the one he had bespoke because it “fitted him like a glove.”

She had just got to the interesting point when the tailor had challenged the fat man to a duel rather than let him take a coat made for another customer, when the room began to fill with black smoke.

Lord Arthur seemed unmoved. He kept his black eyes fastened on Felicity's expressive face. But his friends had jumped to their feet.

And then through the thick, rain-smeared glass of the windows came the red glow of fire.

Not knowing Miss Chubb was responsible for it, Felicity saw, all the same, a golden opportunity to escape from Lord Arthur.

“Fire!” she screamed. “The stables are on fire.”

The tap room broke into an uproar, men fighting after Felicity to get out to rescue their precious horses.

Miss Chubb seized Felicity as she erupted out of the inn door.

“Straight to the gate,” she whispered urgently. “The horses are there.”

With remarkable speed for such a heavy woman, Miss Chubb darted off with Felicity speeding behind her.

Lord Arthur's friends rushed straight to the stables. Only Lord Arthur, sauntering lazily to the front of the bay window at the side of the inn, found out where the flames were coming from. Or had come from. For the pounding rain was quickly reducing the once-flaming hay to a blackened mess.

He looked down at the hay, and then swung about as the clatter of hooves fleeing off into the night reached his ears. Then he returned to the inn.

Soon his baffled friends came back, exclaiming that they could not find the fire anywhere.

“Probably our imaginations,” drawled Lord Arthur. “More wine, gentlemen?”

Felicity and Miss Chubb reined in their mounts at the top of the cliff. The governess told Felicity of how she had set the fire to cause a diversion. “You are really very clever and bold, Miss Chubb,” said Felicity. “I declare, I am proud of you.”

Miss Chubb blushed with pleasure in the darkness. “I am glad I was able to be of help, Miss Felicity,”

she said. “Lord Arthur Bessamy is a most terrifying man.”

“Indeed, yes,” agreed Felicity with a shudder, thinking of those clever, searching black eyes. “At least we need not trouble about him anymore and need not bother our heads about him again ... thanks to you.”

But in her bed that night, as a fierce gale whipped round the castle and moaned in the arrow slits, Felicity lay awake, plagued by memories of Lord Arthur Bessamy. She had never met anyone like him before.

“And probably never will again,” said a gloomy voice in her head. “Not the sort of gentleman to be pressed into marriage with anyone, and a cut above your stepfather's usual choice of husband.”

A large tear ran down her nose, and she brushed it away. She had drunk far too much and become maudlin, she told herself severely. Who in her right mind would want the terrifying Lord Arthur Bessamy as a husband? She pulled the pillows round about her ears to drown out the crying of the wind, and plunged down into an uneasy dream where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor of a tailor's shop stitching a wedding coat for Lord Arthur Bessamy, who was to be married the next day to the Queen.

* * * *

Before he set out the following morning, Lord Arthur Bessamy made inquiries in the village for a tailor's assistant called Freddy Channing, but did not look in the least surprised to find no one had ever heard of the boy.

For the next two weeks, life at Tregarthan Castle returned to normal—that is, normal for Tregarthan Castle.

Mrs. Palfrey lay on a chaise longue in the drawing room during the day, sleeping or reading novels, or writing long letters to friends with whom she often corresponded, saying she was still too ill to receive visitors. The physician had diagnosed “a wasting illness,” and had recommended quiet. In fact, Mrs.

Palfrey would have been greatly cheered by a visit from some of her old friends, but Mr. Palfrey frowned on that idea, insisting that such excitement would be bad for her health, but privately thinking that his wife's friends were blessed with too many children—children who might chip the gloss on the legs of the furniture and make slides on the glassy surfaces of the floor.

Felicity stayed in the nursery wing with her governess, sharing all her meals with Miss Chubb as usual, rather than face formal dinners with her stepfather in the chilly, polished dining room where only a very small fire was allowed to battle with the winter cold, as a large fire might create more dust and ash to sully the pristine surfaces of tables and glass cases.

Although she should have been glad that no sign of an arranged marriage had reared its ugly head, she was bored. Very bored. The brief meeting with Lord Arthur had shown her a glimpse of a heady world of sophistication, a world where ladies could expect to be allowed one Season in London and have at least a chance of finding someone suitable out of a selection of gentlemen. But Mr. Palfrey would never countenance the expense of a Season.