At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple Read online

  As the earl took another purposeful step toward her, she raised the tazza and flung the contents full in his face.

  “Hellcat!” he shouted, wiping green jelly from his face. “I’ll have you for that!”

  Henrietta went completely insane with anger. As she darted about the shop, as he tried to catch her, she threw everything at him she could lay her hands on—tarts, crystallized fruit, wet confects, dry confects, cream cakes, and followed it all up by hurling a whole regiment of marzipan soldiers at his head.

  “Be damned to you,” he shouted, blinded by cream and pastry. He scrubbed the mess from his face and strode to the door, opened it, and marched out into the street.

  A large apple pie caught him right on the back of the head.

  He hailed a passing hack and climbed in.

  Henrietta sat down amid the wreck of her confectionery, amid the wreck of her dreams, and cried her eyes out. She was still sitting there, sobbing, when Charlotte, Josephine, and Miss Hissop came back.

  Bitterly she sobbed out her tale of the earl’s iniquities. Josephine and Charlotte began to cry as well. There was no doubt in their minds that Mr. Clifford and Lord Charles had the same low ideas about them. Just like Mr. Clifford and Lord Charles, the earl had appeared to show Henrietta every respect and attention before this last terrible visit. The stigma of being in trade weighed heavily on their souls. It stopped Josephine and Charlotte from thinking clearly. The attentions of such great personages as Lord Charles and Mr. Clifford had always seemed too good to be true.

  Esau crept quietly in and set about clearing up the mess. He felt a mean and evil person. He was sure now that God would punish him. In fact, he became so sure of the divine wrath about to be visited on his head that he finally threw down his cleaning cloth into the bucket and sat down on the floor and added his sobs and wails to the general lamentation.

  Henrietta was the first to dry her eyes. “London is a wicked and evil place,” she said. “I was overambitious in setting up business here. Thank goodness we have made enough money so that we may close up here and open somewhere else.”

  “Where?” sobbed Josephine.

  “Bath,” said Henrietta. “That’s it! We’ll go to Bath. I could not bear to stay here, knowing everyone considered us no better than doxies.”

  “Could we not just go home?” ventured Miss Hissop.

  “No,” said Henrietta. “Josephine would be beaten, and there is not enough money yet to set up Charlotte for life. Esau must be taught the trade, and I must have a thriving business to turn over to him. He is a good and loyal servant.”

  Esau rolled about the floor in an agony of guilt and remorse when he heard Henrietta’s words. He had been so unused to any kindness in the past that it had never crossed his mind that she would make provision for his future at all, let alone such a magnificent offer.

  Henrietta knelt down beside him. “You take our troubles too much to heart. Do not cry, Esau. I really always wanted to go to Bath. And do you know, I don’t care a fig for the Earl of Carrisdowne.”

  Esau stopped crying and sat up. “Do you mean that?” he asked eagerly.

  “Yes, Esau,” said Henrietta, clenching her fists. “I hate that man as I’ve never hated anyone in the whole of my life. Oh, and there is another reason why we must leave.” She told them about Lady Clara. “So you see,” she ended, “there is no point in trying to take her to court. It would only be my word against hers—and what judge is going to prosecute Lady Clara Sinclair? Let us get away from this wicked city before it kills us!”

  Mr. Clifford and Lord Charles had gone to Newmarket to see Lord Charles’s horse, Calamity, run in the races. They had not wanted to leave London, but it had been learned that Lord Charles’s jockey was a trifle overweight, and although he was reported to be stewing between two featherbeds to get down to the right weight, Lord Charles felt he should be there in person to make sure the man was trying hard enough.

  Mr. Clifford had a bet of a thousand pounds on Calamity. It was the largest bet he had ever laid on anything. He hated leaving Josephine, but he was determined to be on the spot to assist Lord Charles in bringing about a successful race.

  The horse won, Mr. Clifford was considerably richer, and both men made their way back by easy stages to London. Life appeared very sunny and secure. Not for one moment did they doubt that the earl and Henrietta would be engaged on their return. It was over a week since they had seen the girls, and so they decided to call at Half Moon Street first.

  “That’s deuced odd,” said Mr. Clifford as they turned the comer from Piccadilly.

  “What is?”

  “Look! No golden pineapple. It’s gone.”

  “Probably taken it down to get it cleaned.”

  They drove up to the door of the shop. The windows were shuttered and the door boarded up. A sign on the door proclaimed the shop was available to rent.

  “Gone!” Lord Charles pushed back his beaver hat and scratched his head. “They can’t have gone.”

  “Oh, I have it,” said Mr. Clifford. “You know what a high stickler Rupert is. He’ll have got Henrietta to close down immediately. He’d never stand for having his fiancée working in a shop.”

  Lord Charles’s face cleared. “That’s bound to be the reason. Let’s go to Upper Brook Street immediately and offer our congratulations.”

  Lord Carrisdowne, they were told in sepulchral tones, was in the study. They both breezed in and stopped short on the threshold. The earl was sitting in an armchair by the fire, a glass of brandy in his hand.

  “Well, well,” he said, his voice slightly slurred, “the lovers have returned. I can save you a visit to Bascombe’s. Or perhaps you might have more success than I if you send your banker first.”

  “What are you talking about, Rupert?” Lord Charles walked forward and stood over his brother.

  “Miss Henrietta Bascombe,” said the earl in a weary voice, “is a slut and a whore. To think she sat in this house and told me she would do anything for money, and I believed she was referring to the selling of confections. She meant herself, her favors, her body. Gillingham and Brummell have already had the pleasure. She is nothing more than an abbess, running a genteel brothel with a row of pretty cakes as a smoke screen.”

  “Never!” cried Lord Charles. “I will not believe you. Charlotte Webster is the sweetest angel I ever beheld.”

  “Then, go and ask them if you do not believe me.”

  “But they’ve gone,” said Mr. Clifford. “Where have they gone? The shop is closed and shuttered and being offered for rent.”

  The earl half closed his eyes as a great black wave of misery engulfed him. “So,” he forced himself to say with a shrug, “they have fled, and London is well quit of them.”

  “Where did you come by this information? Surely Miss Bascombe never demanded money from you.”

  “Her servant told me,” said the earl.

  “Her servant!” Mr. Clifford gave a scornful laugh. “A boy she took from the workhouse. When did you ever pay any heed to servants’ gossip?”

  “The boy was crying with distress. I have no reason to doubt his word.”

  “But what in heaven’s name did Miss Bascombe say when you taxed her with it? Or did you simply walk away and never see her again?”

  The earl shook his head as if to clear it. After all, what had she said? He remembered vividly the look of shock and betrayal on her face. But he could not be wrong.

  “She threw the contents of the shop at me.”

  “At you? At one of the richest men in England? And yet you still believe her to be mercenary?”

  “She was playing for higher stakes. She had expected an offer of marriage. I took her to the play and introduced her to Lady Browne in front of everyone. I asked Miss Hissop’s permission to call on her.”

  A mulish look settled on Mr. Clifford’s face. “I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe it for a minute. I think they are all as sweet and innocent as they appear. You’re
very high in the instep, Rupert, and I’m sure you readily believed the servant because you’ve always thought there was something demmed unladylike about them going into trade. Begad, man! I do not mind you bringing about the ruin of your own hopes, but to ruin my future and Charles’s…”

  The earl held up his hand. “Enough! Did I not receive just such protestations before when each of you was about to form a mésalliance with a disreputable female?”

  “When real love comes along,” said Lord Charles simply, “there ain’t any doubt about it. You know… that is if you ain’t blinded with your own pride. Where have they gone?”

  “I neither know nor care.”

  “But you must know,” said Mr. Clifford. “When you saw Bascombe’s was closed…”

  “I did not know it was closed. I have hardly stirred from this house for a week.”

  Mr. Clifford and Lord Charles exchanged surprised glances over the earl’s head. So he had been hit harder than they had thought! It seemed Lord Carrisdowne had at last been wounded in his heart as much as in his pride.

  “We’ll find ’em,” said Mr. Clifford. “They’re bound to have told somebody where they were headed. You can’t move a whole shop without someone stopping to ask where you’re bound. And it isn’t any use you trying to stop me, Rupert.”

  “I shan’t,” said the earl, filling his glass again. “I’m weary of the whole thing. The pair of you may go to hell for all I care. Just never mention Henrietta Bascombe to me again!”

  At first neither Lord Charles nor Mr. Clifford could believe that the ladies of the confectionery had disappeared without a trace. They asked and asked. But no one had even found out where they had all come from in the first place.

  As the days passed into weeks, and the Earl of Carrisdowne appeared at fewer and fewer fashionable functions, Mr. Clifford and Lord Charles became moody and depressed. Lord Charles saw as little of his brother as possible, and Mr. Clifford, seeing the earl in the street one day, pointedly crossed over to avoid him.

  The earl tried to forget that scene in the confectioner’s. But in the middle of restless, sleepless nights, Henrietta’s shocked face would rise up to haunt him. The little voice, which at first had nagged at him that he should not have listened to Esau, gradually became a shout. He could have gone and taxed Brummell or Gillingham and asked them about their relations with Henrietta, but he shrank from doing so. They would either confirm his worst fears, or, if the girl proved to be innocent, his very questions might lead both men to think her a jade.

  Lady Clara had been persistent, sending letters and presents. He had burned the letters and returned the presents. Finally he had become tired of finding her “passing just by chance” when he left the house and had given her a cruel set-down.

  As the longing to see Henrietta became stronger and stronger, as he became more convinced he had damned her without a hearing, he became determined to find her. But inquiries at livery stables and coaching inns drew a blank. It was as if there had never been a Bascombe’s, as if Henrietta, Josephine, Charlotte, and Miss Hissop had never existed.

  Lord Alisdair Sinclair returned home one evening to find his sister, Lady Clara, in tears.

  “Haven’t seen you cry this age,” he said. “What’s to do?”

  “It is Carrisdowne,” said Lady Clara. “He told me if he found me waiting outside his door again, he would need to order his servants to tell me to go away. He said… he said he was tired of being annoyed by me.”

  “Never say you’ve been hanging about his doorstep like a trollop?”

  “No, it was coincidence, nothing more,” lied Lady Clara, not meeting his eyes. “I often walk down Upper Brook Street on my way to the park.”

  Lord Alisdair wondered whether to point out that his sister always went to Hyde Park in the carriage and walked as little as possible but decided against it. Lady Clara’s temper could be vicious.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s the way of it. He don’t want you. May as well cast your eye elsewhere. You’ve ruined a whole Season. Now we’re all off to Brighton, you’ll be able to put him from your mind.”

  “No,” said Lady Clara mutinously. “He loved me once. I am convinced he will love me again.”

  “Don’t look like it.”

  “It’s that Bascombe woman.”

  “Can’t be. No one’s seen hide nor hair of her. Must have got a fright after the fire.”

  “Toby Miles said t’other day that Carrisdowne had emerged from the confectioner’s covered in cream, and before he could get into a hack, a pie came sailing out and struck him on the back of the head.”

  “Did it now,” grinned Lord Alisdair. “I’d give a monkey to have seen that—the great and stately Carrisdowne getting his comeuppance. It looks, then, as if Miss Bascombe took against him, doesn’t it? I mean, you don’t go around shying pastry at someone you respect.”

  Lady Clara tapped her foot impatiently. “Listen! It is no secret that Carrisdowne’s servants are trying to find out where the Bascombe creature has gone to. He must be obsessed with the woman.”

  “You are all about in your upper chambers, sis. Leave Carrisdowne be. You will have gallants aplenty in Brighton.”

  “I want Carrisdowne,” said Lady Clara shrilly, reminding her brother forcefully of the days when they had both been in the nursery and baby Clara had wanted one of his toys.

  “You can’t have him,” he said, “and let that be an end to it.”

  “Even you have deserted me,” said Lady Clara, beginning to sob again.

  He looked at her impatiently. There was little room in his weak and selfish heart for love or affection, but what little there was, he reserved for his sister.

  “Don’t cry,” he sighed. “I shall find the Bascombe woman. I’ll let Carrisdowne find her for me. Our servants will be given instructions to ask his servants about his movements. As soon as he shows any signs of leaving town, we shall follow him. But how we are going to ruin La Bascombe is another matter.”

  “Find her,” said Lady Clara, drying her eyes, “and I shall think of something.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Although still one of the most beautiful towns in England, Bath had seen better days. When the great Beau Nash had acted as master of ceremonies, he had made the Bath assemblies as exclusive as Almack’s. He had ruled with a rod of iron. Ladies who turned up at his assemblies not dressed according to his rigid standards were turned out. At the end of his life he had become helpless and poor and had died neglected and miserable. The inhabitants of Bath then erected a statue to this man they had suffered almost to starve.

  His loss was felt keenly. Only a short time before Henrietta’s arrival, two ladies of quality had quarreled in the ballroom. The rest of the company took part, some on one side and some on the other. Beau Nash was gone, and they stood in no awe of his successor. They became outrageous, and a real battle royal took place, and the floor of the ballroom was strewn with caps, lappets, curls and cushions, diamond pins and pearls.

  The town was full of cardsharpers and adventurers, and it had more of death’s advance guard than anywhere else in Britain as the sick and self-indulgent filled the pump room to take the waters.

  Henrietta had been lucky in securing the lease of a shop in the center of the town. With it went the apartments above so that they each had a bedroom and a cozy parlor.

  Although she herself was regarded as highly unfashionable, Henrietta’s confectionery was not. Her cakes and confections insured her success, and so long as Miss Bascombe and her ladies remembered their place and did not try to attend any of the assemblies, then society was pleased to give her its custom.

  Henrietta was disappointed. She had hoped to provide Josephine and Charlotte with some social life. But the only men who seemed interested in any of them were seedy adventurers prepared to marry into a profitable business.

  Josephine and Charlotte appeared resigned to their fate, Esau was receiving a full training in the making of confectionery fro
m Henrietta, and Miss Hissop enjoyed their unadventurous life of hard work and sedate walks.

  Henrietta marveled at her friends’ seemingly cheerful demeanors. She herself kept as busy as possible, but there was always a dull ache at her heart, always an irrational surge of hope when she saw a tall black-haired man at a distance. The most bitter thing she had to live with was the realization that she had fallen in love with the Earl of Carrisdowne, and though her mind daily lectured her emotions on their folly, there was nothing she could seem to do to alleviate the hurt and the longing.

  The sight of the earl’s sister, Lady Sarah, sitting in a corner of the shop, wolfing cakes and sweetmeats, did nothing to help. Despite her plump appearance and fat cheeks, Lady Sarah had the earl’s black eyes and high-bridged nose.

  Henrietta knew the earl would be furious at his sister eating so many cakes, but Henrietta could hardly turn her out of the shop.

  And then one day, the Dowager Countess of Carrisdowne accompanied Lady Sarah on one of her visits. From their raised voices, Henrietta learned that Lady Sarah was supposed to have been visiting her music teacher all the times she was actually in the confectioner’s.

  “So this is where you go,” demanded the countess, black eyes snapping, “and I would not have found out except I met that music teacher of yours in the street and asked him why he did not call at our house to give you lessons. He said you had had one lesson of him, and then had given him a letter, supposed to have come from me, canceling the rest of the lessons.”

  The countess waved an imperious hand and summoned Henrietta. “I believe you are in charge of this establishment,” she said.

  “Yes, my lady,” replied Henrietta, who knew the countess by sight, having often seen her passing the shop, attended by her footman. She looked very like her son the earl, although her hair was snow-white.

  “In future, I beg you, do not supply my daughter with any confections. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, my lady,” said Henrietta meekly.