The Chocolate Debutante Page 3
It was only when they were in the carriage on the road home that she began to make an effort to get to know Susan.
“Are you looking forward to your Season?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” said Susan, giving her enchanting dimpled smile. “There will be lots to eat, will there not?”
“I keep a good table,” replied Harriet.
“I mean at balls and parties. Lizzie Pomfret, one of my friends, told me they have all sorts of delicious ices and sugar plums.”
“They do indeed. But ladies are expected to eat little, you know. Besides, you do not want to get fat and pimply.”
“I never get fat or pimply,” said Susan tranquilly.
“Would you like me to lend you something to read?”
“No, thank you. I never read.”
“Why?”
“I cannot.”
Harriet looked at those beautiful blue eyes.
“Do you need spectacles?”
“No, Aunt, my eyesight is very good.”
“Then…”
“I never learned to read.”
“What?”
“I said”—Susan stifled a yawn—“that I never learned to read. Such a bore.”
“But you went to a seminary, surely?”
“Yes, of course. But the teachers did not pay me much heed. They liked to dress me up and display me on speech days and things like that.”
“Can you write?”
Susan shook her head.
“But, my child, this is quite dreadful. You must begin your lessons immediately after we arrive. How could your mother let such a state of affairs come about?”
“Well, you see, I am very beautiful, so I do not think it was considered necessary. Mama says that gentlemen do not like clever ladies.”
“I do not think they like illiterate ones, either, Susan. You see, when you are married, you will be expected to be able to read your dressmaker’s bills, at least. And have you thought what will happen when you lose your looks?”
“I will be married long before then and have lots and lots of doting children,” said Susan placidly.
Harriet shook her head in bewilderment. “Did the other girls in that seminary leave without having learned anything?”
“Oh, I should not think so. They seemed awfully clever to me.”
“I still cannot understand how you avoided learning anything.”
She giggled. “I was so very ill, quite a lot. You cannot make an ill person learn. The teachers were very sympathetic.”
“Surely they called a physician! And were you pretending to be ill?”
“Yes, it was all very simple. I went on just like Mama. Physicians always are happy to find something wrong with the rich.”
“Do your parents know you cannot read or write?”
“I should not think so. They did not ask me.”
Harriet felt quite low. The task of bringing Susan out, which had seemed so simple, was now beginning to look very difficult indeed. Then she wrinkled her nose and looked out the window to see if the carriage was passing any dung heap, but only wet fields stretched out in front of her view.
She looked at the soles of her shoes. “There is an awful smell,” she said. “Lucy, Susan, look at your shoes.”
But both ladies presented clean soles.
Then Harriet looked suspiciously at the glowing and beautiful Susan who was sitting so placidly beside her.
“Unfasten your cloak, Susan, and let me see your neck,” she ordered.
Susan obediently unfastened the gold clasp that held her fur-lined cloak at the neck. “Take off your bonnet and tilt your head forward.” Susan obediently did so. She had not yet begun to wear her hair up.
Harriet lifted the golden tresses. Susan’s neck was gray and grimy. Her little ears were also dirty.
“When did you last have a bath, Susan?”
“I cannot remember. I wasn’t really ill, you know, only pretending, so there was no need for baths,” said Susan patiently, obviously believing like quite a large proportion of the population that bathing all over was only for the sick.
“But you must wash! You smell!”
“My clothes are laundered each week,” said Susan, opening her eyes to their fullest, “and most people change their linen only every quarter day, or so I believe.”
“Listen to me, miss, if you are to live with me, then you are going to have to be clean. Why is it your hair looks clean?”
“I brush it out regularly with Fuller’s earth,” said Susan proudly.
“That is not enough. Your hair must be washed in soap and water.”
“But the dampness will affect my brain.”
“It seems your brain has remained totally untouched. Soap and water, Susan, as soon as we break our journey.”
Susan’s surprise was almost comical. She said half to herself, “Mama did say you were a trifle eccentric, Aunt Harriet.”
Harriet had chosen to stop at a different posting house on the return journey. She persuaded herself that the reason for this was that she was angry at the landlord for having failed to secure her that private parlor. But the real reason was buried away in the back of her brain. She simply would not admit that she was afraid of running into Lord Dangerfield again, when she was accompanied by a young lady who looked the very picture of the Griselda he had described.
So the carriage pulled in at the Bull, and Susan, to her bewilderment, found she was expected to take a bath and wash all over before sitting down to dinner.
A tin bath like a coffin was carried up to her bedchamber and filled with hot water. “Can you wash yourself?” asked Harriet.
“I think I can manage,” said Susan completely without sarcasm.
“I will leave Lucy with you. She will dry you.”
“The maid would see my naked body,” said Susan in surprise. “I cannot be doing with that.”
“Very well. But I expect you to be clean all over, and that includes your hair.”
Susan washed herself, enjoying the novelty. She also washed her hair thoroughly and dried it in front of the fire. Then she put on one of her filmy muslin gowns. Susan never felt the cold.
She brushed her curls, admiring the shine in the looking-glass and deciding that soap and water made a very effective cosmetic.
Satisfied with her appearance, she was just about to leave the room when she heard a commotion outside. She struggled with the catch of the casement window and leaned out. Four men were just arriving, their leader calling loudly to the ostlers to hold the horses’ heads. They were all very fashionably dressed. Susan looked down at them curiously. Were these, then, London gentlemen? It was all very interesting.
And then one man saw the vision at the window and called to his friends. They all looked up at Susan, their mouths hanging open and dazed looks on their faces.
Susan thought they all looked very funny. She smiled and waved her hand and then closed the window and went along to the private parlor next door.
Harriet thought with a pang that Susan looked even more beautiful than before. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked.
Susan shook her blond curls by way of reply and sat down at the table.
Dinner proved to be a fine spread. It consisted of fish in oyster sauce, boiled beef, roasted neck of pork with apple sauce, some hashed turkey, mutton steaks, salad, roasted wild duck, fried rabbits, a plum pudding, and tartlets.
But before they could begin this feast, the landlord entered with a waiter bearing a bottle of iced champagne. “What is this?” demanded Harriet. “I did not order champagne!”
“His lordship has sent it as a present.”
“Which lord?” asked Harriet, her heart beating hard as she suddenly thought he must be referring to Lord Dangerfield.
“Lord Ampleforth, madam. He and his friends are desirous of presenting the champagne to the young lady.”
Harriet’s face hardened. “Take it away. We do not know Lord Ampleforth and do not wish presents.”
“Never heard of him.” Susan eyed the food greedily. “This will all get cold, Aunt, if we do not begin.”
“Begin by all means.”
Susan fell to with a will, wielding her knife and fork like a trencherman.
“Do you always eat so much?” Harriet was just beginning, when she heard the sound of masculine voices raised in a love song coming from outside.
She went to the window and looked down. There were four young men there, one had a mandolin, and they were singing while staring up at the window.
She retreated hurriedly and sat down again.
Susan was now cramming food into her mouth with her fingers. “Don’t do that,” said Harriet sharply. “Susan, stop eating for just one moment and listen to me. There are four gentlemen below serenading, and I believe you must be the target, for it can hardly be me.”
“No,” said Susan with a giggle. “You are too old.”
Oh, the heartlessness of youth, thought Harriet bleakly.
“They must have seen you, but how could they?” she asked.
“Four of them,” said Susan, spearing a large piece of pork and cramming it into her mouth.
“Yes.”
“Oh, ’em.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Susan gulped down the pork and smiled sunnily at her aunt. “I heard people arriving before I came in to dinner, so I looked out the window and there were these four men all gaping up at me with such silly looks on their faces. I waved to them.”
“You must never do that again,” said Harriet, exasperated.
“It seemed only polite. I used to do that at the seminary. It was always so boring, don’t you know, what with pretending to be ill and all, so sometimes I would wave out my window at people passing in the street and they were most kind and would send in poems and flowers and chocolates.”
Harriet was horrified. “And did not the teachers stop these gifts from strangers?”
“Never saw them. I bribed the hall staff to smuggle them up to me. You see, it was the chocolates I liked. I wasn’t allowed any of those in the seminary, and the staff would not go out and buy them for me for fear of being discovered. Shopkeepers are a gossipy lot.”
“Susan, I am going to lecture you severely…”
Susan pointed her fork at her aunt. “If we are to deal together, you will find, Aunt Harriet, that I will listen to any stricture, but not when it comes between me and food.”
“I will bide my time on this occasion,” said Harriet.
But when pretty Susan appeared to have demolished everything in sight, burped, and wiped her mouth on the tablecloth, and Harriet proceeded to lecture her on maidenly behavior, Harriet had a shrewd idea that much as Susan liked to portray her teachers at the seminary as lax, she had heard all this before.
In the morning, when they set out, Lord Ampleforth and his friends were waiting in the courtyard. How they had managed to obtain bunches of hothouse flowers was a puzzle to Harriet. They pressed them on the delighted Susan, and Harriet could not bring herself to create a scene by making the girl refuse them.
“If only one of them had the wit to give me chocolates,” mourned Susan as the carriage drove off.
“Oh, Susan!” exclaimed Harriet.
As soon as Susan was settled in London, Harriet decided to engage a tutor for her, feeling the girl might learn better from a stranger. To this end, she hired an elderly retired vicar to teach Susan to read and write, a music teacher to instruct her to play the pianoforte, a dancing master, and a seamstress to show her the fine art of sewing.
Having successfully managed to fill up the girl’s days, she felt free to visit her friends. Her friends were also ladies of independent means. One of them, a Miss Barncastle, had prepared a lecture for them on the folly of fashion. As Harriet listened to Miss Barncastle pointing out the idiocies of the sisterhood having to paint themselves like savages and wear nigh indecent dresses and all to attract men, she glanced down at her own sober clothes and frowned.
She had not before been particularly conscious of her age and appearance. But having the ravishing Susan around had made her sharply aware of her declining years and dowdy clothes. She would need to order a new wardrobe for herself, she thought. She could not possibly take Susan to balls and parties in old-fashioned clothes. And perhaps she might indulge in one of the new fashionable crops. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a looking-glass and scowled. She had hitherto chosen her bonnets to keep her head warm in winter and shade her from the sun in summer. The bonnet she was wearing was shaped like a coal scuttle and of dark felt. Susan had exclaimed, “What a quiz of a bonnet, Aunt Harriet! But then, I suppose when one is old, one does not need to bother about fashion.” That had rankled.
But it was a quiz of a bonnet, thought Harriet, unaware that Miss Barncastle had come to the end of her lecture and all eyes were turned upon her, Harriet.
“Miss Tremayne,” chided Miss Barncastle, “we are waiting to hear your views on the folly of fashion.”
“I am not a good person to ask at the moment,” said Harriet. “I have a young niece to bring out at the Season and that means I will need to help her choose gowns and all the frivolities. She is a good girl, but heedless and not interested in anything other than food. She would not understand my views.”
Miss Barncastle raised her hands. “But you must teach her. How old is your niece?”
“Susan is nineteen.”
“But it is your duty to school your niece, Miss Tremayne. We must save our sisters from becoming mindless chattels.”
For the first time, Harriet felt like a stranger among them. She was worried about the responsibility of bringing out Susan and suddenly longed for the advice and help of someone in a similar situation. “Susan is quite happy to be a mindless chattel,” she said. She raised a hand. “No, I do not wish to discuss the girl further. I must take my leave, ladies. I have much to do.”
When she returned home to Berkeley Square, it was to find Susan sprawled out on the sofa with her gown hitched up and her face smeared with chocolate.
“Where is your dancing master?” demanded Harriet sharply.
“I’m learning,” said Susan with an angelic smile.
“Learning what?”
“How to behave. I sent him away.”
“Why?”
“He brought me these lovely chocolates, but then, when he was teaching me the waltz, he began to pant and his face turned red and he tried to kiss me.”
Harriet sat down suddenly. Mr. Gerrard, the dancing master, had come with impeccable references.
Susan gave a yawn and then smiled. “Well, he is forty if he is a day, so I said he had to go away because I did not like being pawed by old men.”
“And he went?”
“He burst into tears and ran away.”
“I am sorry you have been subjected to such indignity. In the future when you have your dancing lessons, music lessons, or whatever, I will make sure one of my servants is always in the room. Perhaps you led him on, Susan. Your airs are a trifle too free and easy.”
Susan swung her legs to the floor. “I thought it was only young men I had to be careful with.”
“To put it as plainly and vulgarly as I can, you must be careful of anything in breeches from now on. Please go to your room and wash that chocolate off your face.”
Susan tripped out. Harriet pulled the bell and told her butler to assemble all the servants. When they were all gathered, she told them that Miss Susan must never be left alone with any man, no matter what age, and she must never, ever be allowed to venture out on her own.
Then, having dismissed them, Harriet went to her desk and began to look through an old address book. Her face brightened as it fell on the name Bertha Tulloch. She had known Bertha when both were in their late teens. Bertha had been cheerful and worldly-wise even then. She had married before
her first Season, a certain viscount, now, what was his name…? Ah, Lord Dancer, that was it. She rang the bell and asked the butler to find out the direction of Lord Dancer and whether he was in town or not. After an hour, the butler returned with the intelligence that Lord Dancer resided in St. James’s Square. Harriet ordered her carriage and went to change her gown, looking at the neat rows of unfashionable garments and suddenly wishing she had something more modish.