Sir Philip's Folly (The Poor Relation Series Book 4) Read online

  “He’s too powerful. Anyway, why don’t we make a killing on the race instead? Why should we turn puritan?”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “Ask Peters. Hey, Peters!”

  A Corinthian lounged up. “Bend your head down here, Peters, till we whisper. Ain’t it true that Black’s fixed the race so as his mount will win?”

  “That’s what they’re saying,” said Peters with a grin. “Tell you what, I’m laying a monkey on Lady in Her Petticoat.”

  Sir Philip ordered wine, then Mr. Fotheringay ordered wine, then Mr. Peters ordered more wine, and the more foxed he became, the more Sir Philip felt his friends and colleagues had used him shamefully. Then, with the sudden seeming clarity of the very drunk, he found the answer to his problems. He would take that money from the ball and put it on this horse of Lord Black’s. He would make a killing and return in triumph to the hotel. No longer could Lady Fortescue say she had to hold on for another Season.

  Had Sir Philip returned to the hotel to sleep it off, then he might have seen the folly of his ways, but he returned only to pack a bag, collect the money from the safe, and then to journey with a drunken crowd through the night to Ascot. Booked in at a local inn, the roistering continued right up until the race, when Sir Philip, who had never sobered up, was convinced that fortune was staring him in the face.

  In fact, when Happy Hunter romped home, the clear leader, and Lady in Her Petticoat was trailing the field, he could not quite believe it. But reality finally struck him and all at once he was stone-cold sober and the money from that ball had melted like fairy gold. Some little grain of common sense had stopped him from putting it all on and he had kept back half. How could he face the others?

  It was a sad journey back to Town as they all mourned their losses and vowed never to listen to gossip again.

  Sir Philip went straight to the bank and lodged the rest of the money. There was no way he could cover up the loss. Lady Fortescue and the colonel were always calling on the bank manager.

  Numb with shame, he trudged into the hotel and sent Jack, the footman, to summon the others.

  When they all entered the office, they knew immediately something was up. They had never seen Sir Philip look so cast down before. In a halting voice they had never heard him use before, they heard him tell the tale of how he had lost the money.

  There was a long silence when he had finished. The colonel saw all his dreams of living quietly in the country with Lady Fortescue whirl about his head and disappear. Lady Fortescue suddenly felt very old and ill. It was one thing to gallantly say they should go on when there was a comfortable sum in the bank, another to face up to the fact that they were forced to continue to work. Only Miss Tonks was relieved. Miss Tonks decided she was quite prepared to go on forever in this hotel rather than go back to her previous life of loneliness.

  Lady Fortescue found her voice. “You must appreciate, Sir Philip, that we cannot trust you to handle any money again. We will pay you a strict allowance and that will need to suffice. It will be less than the rest of us draw in order to make up some of the loss. I trust you agree.”

  And Sir Philip sadly bowed his head.

  The colonel cleared his throat. “You have behaved disgracefully, sir, quite disgracefully. But since we must go on, we must go on in as pleasant a manner as possible. I suggest we put this behind us.”

  Sir Philip’s eyes filled with grateful tears.

  And then the office door opened and Mrs. Budge came in.

  “What’s going on here?” she demanded. “And where have you been, Philip?”

  “Mind your own business,” snapped Miss Tonks, colouring up.

  “Don’t get cheeky with me, you old fright,” sneered Mrs. Budge.

  “That’s it,” said Sir Philip. “Don’t you dare insult my Miss Tonks, not now, not ever. Go and pack your bags, woman, and get out of my sight.”

  “But sweetheart, light of my life—”

  “Get out,” screamed Sir Philip, waving his little arms. “Never let me see you again!”

  And that, as Lady Fortescue was to say afterwards, was when Sir Philip began to redeem himself.

  ***

  The wedding of Miss Arabella Carruthers to the Earl of Denby took place in London the following spring. The hoteliers were all there in their finery and Miss Tonks was maid of honour, very grand in lilac silk.

  Lady Fortescue was worried about Arabella. For although the girl looked beautiful in white satin and Brussels lace, her eyes were sad and the earl looked grim.

  The fact was that the unhappy pair had had just about as much of Lady Carruthers as they could stand. After Arabella had left the hotel to return to the country with her mother to prepare for the wedding, she had not seen her fiancé alone. Also, her mother had enlivened the dark months of winter by undermining her confidence, telling her that she would probably be a sad disappointment to an experienced man like the earl.

  After the wedding was the breakfast at the earl’s town house, presided over by his formidable mother, the dowager countess, who had told Arabella that the earl’s late wife had been a saint and hinted that no one could ever match up to her. Worse than that, the couple were to spend their honeymoon at the earl’s town house, where his mother and Lady Carruthers would be in residence.

  So while Arabella’s self-esteem was being undermined by her mother, so the earl’s love for Arabella was being chipped away by his mother, who kept warning him that the girl looked too young and was too flighty.

  The wedding service was enlivened for the guests by Lady Carruthers’s loud whispers that the earl had really meant to marry her before her own daughter, mark you, had lured him away.

  With solemn faces the earl and Arabella walked down the aisle of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and out into the windy street under the tumbling sound of the bells.

  They climbed into the gaily bedecked wedding carriage, which was to drive them to the reception. “I’m going to do something about this,” said the earl.

  “What?” asked Arabella nervously.

  “You’ll see,” he said moodily.

  Sir Philip was travelling in a carriage in the wedding procession with Miss Tonks. He took her hand and smiled at her, baring his best set of china teeth.

  “Well, it’s you and me again,” he said.

  Miss Tonks looked sadly out of the carriage window. A torn playbill advertising Mr. Jason Davy in the role of Mirabell fluttered in the wind. She gently drew her hand away.

  The wedding breakfast appeared a merry one, apart from the bride and groom. Then, when it was over, the earl approached the colonel and Lady Fortescue and whispered urgently. Then he returned to Arabella and said, “Go above-stairs and change out of that gown and into your carriage dress.” His eyes were sparkling and he was smiling for the first time.

  “Why?” asked Arabella.

  “You’ll see. Just do it.”

  Arabella went up to the large bedroom which she was supposed to share that night with her husband. She ordered the waiting maid to fetch one of her carriage dresses and then, unable to wait to be dressed, scrambled into it herself.

  The earl was waiting for her in the hall. He seized her hand and led her outside to where his curricle was waiting.

  “Where are we going?” asked Arabella as he picked up the reins and drove off.

  “Surprise, my darling.”

  And Arabella was surprised when the carriage stopped at the door of the Poor Relation in Bond Street and there stood Lady Fortescue, Sir Philip, Colonel Sandhurst and Miss Tonks in their wedding finery, waiting to welcome them.

  “This is where we will spend our wedding night,” said the earl. “The hotel is closed for the month, and we will be the only guests.”

  Arabella began to laugh with relief. “It’s like coming home.”

  ***

  The hoteliers went out for dinner that night, not one of them being vulgar enough to say that they did not want to stay in the hotel while the earl a
nd his wife were spending their first evening alone. They had chosen a modest chop-house where the food was good but unpretentious. They sat and chatted easily like the old friends they were, laughing as they imagined the consternation felt by both the earl’s mother and Arabella’s mother when those formidable ladies found their victims had escaped them.

  “How wonderful it is to be waited on,” sighed Lady Fortescue, and they all agreed, just as if they did not have John and Betty to wait on them back at the hotel. “We are fully booked for the whole Season despite the horrendous amount of money we are charging.”

  “We are all the crack,” said Sir Philip. “They no longer stay with us to economize on the price of a town house and I believe the matchmaking mamas think they have only to check their plainest daughter in with us to get her married off.”

  “I miss that actor, Davy,” said the colonel, ignoring Sir Philip’s sudden scowl. “Friendly fellow. Always good for a laugh.”

  “Then I have a surprise for you,” said Lady Fortescue. “I have purchased tickets for the play. We will all go to see him this very evening.”

  “Oh, rapture!” cried Miss Tonks, clasping her hands.

  “Oh, be still, my heart,” sneered Sir Philip.

  But nothing could damp Miss Tonks’ pleasure for the rest of that evening. With shining eyes, she watched Mr. Davy performing Mirabell, thinking with wonder that she actually knew this god, had talked to him, and that he had said he would miss her.

  Only Sir Philip grumbled after the play when Lady Fortescue proposed they go backstage. So once more Miss Tonks stood in the Green Room, once more Mr. Davy kissed her hand, and she treasured every look and every gesture.

  ***

  As Miss Tonks indulged in celibate love, the earl and Arabella tumbled about the great double bed in the hotel’s finest apartment, exploring each other’s bodies, until Arabella said in a wondering voice, “I never thought I could ever behave in such a shameless way.”

  “You were shameless enough going to the Pantheon in that dreadful costume.”

  Arabella had a longing to tell him that it had been Sir Philip’s idea all along, but she had given Sir Philip her word and could not break it even now.

  “How long do we stay here?” she asked.

  “A few days, and then we will go to Italy. And then, after a long time, we will come back and tell Lady Carruthers that there is no way she is going to live with us.”

  “Mama expects it!”

  “Mama can go back to concentrating on getting married herself and leaving us alone.” He gathered her to him, pulling her close against his naked body. “Kiss me again, Arabella. I can never have enough of you.”

  And so the engrossed couple did not hear the quiet footsteps of the poor relations as they made their way up to their sitting-room.

  ***

  “Play us a tune, Sir Philip,” ordered Lady Fortescue.

  “I will play something for Miss Tonks,” he said, “for I have never seen her look better.”

  He smiled at Miss Tonks affectionately and then flipped up his coat-tails and sat down at the piano and began to play.

  But Lady Fortescue, noticing that Miss Tonks’ eyes were full of happy dreams, knew what had caused that rare illusion of beauty to lighten the spinster’s usually plain face.

  Miss Tonks was in love.

  And not with Sir Philip Sommerville!