Lady Fortescue Steps Out (The Poor Relation Series, Vol. 1) Read online

  “Sounds like an actress or an opera dancer,” said Harriet reprovingly. “I know; Mama’s maiden name was Ward. Miss Ward will do.”

  “How dull, but Miss Ward it is. Now you must not dance off and abandon me or I shall be cross!”

  But no sooner were they in the ballroom than Susan eagerly hailed her friends, the ones that were carrying face masks on little poles and could therefore be easily recognized, and left Harriet on her own.

  Harriet looked about nervously. She, too, recognized many people but could not hail them because of the social disgrace that would result from her even being there.

  She recognized the Duke of Rowcester despite his black velvet mask. He was dancing with Lady Stanton, who was almost as tall as he. She was holding a mask on a jewelled stick in front of her face but dropping it from time to time so that the duke could receive the full effect of her beauty. And she was beautiful, thought Harriet. Fair hair was damned as unfashionable, but the duke did not seem to have noticed that. Lady Stanton’s blonde locks were dressed in a Roman style under a headdress of ostrich plumes. Her gown was of gold tissue, damped to her body. She had heavy-lidded eyes and a lazy, caressing gaze.

  Harriet looked about for Susan, but Susan was already dancing with a guardsman and seemed to have forgotten Harriet’s very existence.

  Harriet suddenly wished she had not come. It was agony to be on the outside looking in, no longer a real part of this glittering scene. She decided to go and sit quietly in the corner beside some dowager and wait patiently, unobserved, until the evening was over.

  A very old lady was half asleep behind a stand of hothouse flowers. There was an empty chair next to her. Harriet went and sat down. The old lady roused herself. “Evening,” she said harshly. “Name’s Rumbelow.”

  “I am Miss Ward,” said Harriet.

  “Well, Miss Ward, and what are you doing sitting next to an old crone like me? Are all the young men blind?”

  “I came as Lady Darkwood’s companion,” said Harriet, “but I do not feel like dancing.”

  “Just as well, perhaps,” said Lady Rumbelow. “Loose affairs, these masked balls. The very presence of masks gets everyone excited, as if no one could tell who they are. Lady Stanton don’t even bother to cover her face, she’s so busy flirting with Rowcester. Wasting her time there.”

  “Why do you say that? Lady Stanton is extremely beautiful.”

  “He won’t notice. He’s very unromantic.”

  “Indeed. Perhaps that is why he is not married. But why do you say he is unromantic?”

  Lady Rumbelow cackled and then said, “He was at the first subscription ball at Almack’s. All the beauties were there. Not Lady Stanton, mind you, because the patronesses don’t let her have vouchers, for she quarrelled with one of them, can’t remember which. Where was I? Ah, yes, well, Rowcester was dancing with the latest belle, Miss Simms, and I heard later, he asked if he might ask her something. She of course thought he meant to pop the question in the middle of Almack’s, but he ups and asks her where he can get a stove. She don’t know. Her generation can’t even blow their noses. So he comes to me and I send him to Carter’s. Mark this!” Lady Rumbelow nudged Harriet in the ribs with one pointed elbow. “He wants to present this stove to a lady, and so determined is he that he rushes out of Almack’s to go and rouse the stove man.”

  A warm glow started somewhere in the pit of Harriet’s stomach. He had thought of her, he had thought enough of her to go out in the middle of the night to find that stove. But he was smiling down into Lady Stanton’s eyes, his eyes glinting behind his mask, and how beautifully they danced together! He probably thinks of me as a charity case, reflected Harriet, the warm glow dying away.

  “Oh, Lor,’ here’s m’ granddaughter,” said Lady Rumbellow as Miss Fanny Trust came tripping up. “Enjoying yourself?” she said to Fanny.

  “Tolerable well,” replied Fanny. “All the talk is of Rowcester. Is he here?”

  “Of course he’s here, you widgeon, dancing with Lady Stanton. No other man here has legs like that.”

  “You must introduce me,” said Fanny firmly.

  “May I present Miss Ward? Miss Ward, Miss Trust,” said Lady Rumbelow, deliberately misunderstanding her.

  “I mean Rowcester,” pouted Fanny. “You had him at Almack’s and let him get away.”

  “I could hardly chain him to the floor, could I?” remarked her grandmother. “The dance is over. Drift elegantly in his direction. No, wait. He has asked Lady Darkwood for a dance and she is giggling in that awful way she has. Beg pardon, Miss Ward, I had forgot she was your friend. Ah, here’s a beau for you, Fanny. Young Daventry, if I am not mistook.”

  A young man in a scarlet mask bowed before Fanny, caught sight of Harriet, and stood irresolute. Lady Rumbelow took pity on him. “You were about to ask my granddaughter to dance, were you not, Mr. Daventry?”

  “Yes, yes.” He wrenched his eyes away from Harriet with an effort. “If I might be so bold as to crave an introduction to …”

  “After your dance,” said Lady Rumbelow. “Off with you.”

  “Smitten the moment he saw you,” she said to Harriet after the pair had walked off. “But I have to look after my own flesh and blood.”

  Harriet’s eyes followed not Fanny and Mr. Daventry, but the Duke of Rowcester. She was confident that she could barely be seen behind the barrier of hothouse plants. Mr. Daventry must have followed Fanny, for he could not have seen her from the ballroom once she had begun to talk to her grandmother.

  The duke and Susan were now dancing the cotillion, Susan making the most of every chance to flirt when the figure of the dance brought them together.

  And then, as Harriet watched, the duke said something, Susan laughed and looked about, then shrugged in an I-don’t-know sort of way. The duke continued to dance with elegance and grace, but his eyes raked round the ballroom and Harriet wondered breathlessly if he was looking for her.

  “What do you think of Fanny?” she realized Lady Rumbelow was asking her.

  “Miss Trust? She is a very pretty lady.”

  “But my daughter has quite ruined her. She showed all signs of having a brain behind that pretty face when she was a child, but that was looked on with alarm. She was taught to lisp, speak bad French, and baby-talk. What will happen to her after marriage? What will happen to a young woman with only an empty uneducated brain for company?”

  “You are very modern in your views,” said Harriet. “It is well known that gentlemen do not like intelligent women. She will have many children to keep her occupied.”

  The old lady stared at her in surprise. “But after the birth the wet-nurse and then the nursery maid take over, followed by a governess or tutor. What gently bred young lady ever spends time with her children? Why, here’s Rowcester? Get your stove?”

  The duke bowed. “Thank you, Lady Rumbelow.”

  “Well, Rowcester, this here is Miss Ward. You may take her for a dance, if that is your intention.”

  For a moment the duke was dismayed, thinking he had not found Harriet, but the eyes looking up at him were as green as a cat and that glossy black hair could not belong to anyone else.

  “Miss Ward,” he said, his eyes dancing, “may I have the honour?”

  Harriet rose and took his arm. As he led her to the floor, she was aware of watching eyes, of Susan, of Lady Stanton, and of the sudden buzz of speculation.

  “A waltz, Miss Ward,” he said. “Not yet sanctioned by Almack’s, but I feel somehow we have danced it before.”

  As he put his arm at her waist, he was vividly reminded of what she had looked like naked, and only her little gasp of surprise recalled him to his senses and made him realize he was pulling her against his body instead of holding her the regulation twelve inches away. Harriet let the music flow over her and around her. She forgot about the hotel, about the other poor relations, and lived only for each moment of that dance. If anyone had told her that her rapture was because of the duke’s hand
at her waist, she would have been horrified. She would have said she was losing herself in a secure past when her mother and father were alive and she was making her debut. But when she curtsied to him at the end of the dance, the present rushed back on her, the avid curious eyes glinting through masks, the fluttering fans, and the fact that she was now in trade and should therefore not be at the ball at all.

  “Supper, I think,” said the duke easily, leading her towards the refreshment room. Well, as Susan was to point out later, she need not have gone. He could hardly have dragged her there in front of everyone.

  The refreshments were a copy of those served at Vauxhall Gardens: wafers of Westphalia ham and rack punch. Harriet was very hungry, for with all the preparation for the ball, she had not had time to eat, but her appetite appeared to have gone, so she drank rack punch on an empty stomach. The powerful drink had the effect of relaxing her and so, when he said, “I know it is you, Miss James,” she was able to reply calmly, “Masks are not a very good disguise, but I hope no one else recognizes me or Lady Darkwood would never be forgiven.”

  “It is ridiculous, your having to hide like this,” he said, “although you have brought it on yourself.”

  “Your grace, in my all-too-recent state of genteel poverty I had as little hope then of being accepted in society as I do now. I am practically an ape leader and have no dowry.”

  “Perhaps there is some man to whom your lack of dowry would not matter.”

  “In society?” She laughed. “Even if there were such a one besotted enough, his parents, relatives, or lawyers would soon step in to stop it.”

  “A man in love would not bow down before any pressure.”

  “Fiddlesticks. You yourself were out to ruin the hotel because of the disgrace of having a relative as a hotelier. I have it on good authority that love has nothing to do with marriage.”

  “Which authority?”

  “Lady Darkwood, for one.”

  “That rattle? Not suitable company. She has few morals.”

  “Lady Darkwood is extremely kind and is risking her reputation by bringing me here.”

  He leaned back in his chair and studied her. She did not blush or turn her head away from him but regarded him steadily and curiously through the slits in her mask.

  “Did Lady Fortescue tell you that I had offered to buy all of you out?”

  Harriet looked surprised. “I understood the offer was to take care of her. No, she did not mention it. But as I warned you, the hotel has given her new life, as has it done to us all. We squabble occasionally, but we are like a family and very loyal to each other.”

  “Folly. Pure folly. What if I should offer you the sum I was prepared to pay to buy you all out? That would furnish you with an excellent dowry. Think on it, Miss James—once more restored to your place.”

  Harriet looked about her and several hard curious eyes stared back. She gave a little sigh. “Perhaps my soul belongs to the merchant class now. Seen from outside, society seems … shoddy. Lady Rumbelow was concerned about her granddaughter’s future. She is worried that after marriage Miss Trust will have nothing to occupy her time or make up for her lack of education. I suggested children as an occupation, quite forgetting that no lady need concern herself with anything other than having them. My soul is already in the merchant class. Yes, I like being in trade. It is better to do something with one’s life, even if that something is only running a hotel. But I thank you for your offer.”

  “I also owe you an apology,” he said. “I had the temerity to suggest obliquely that you might become my mistress. Am I forgiven?”

  She smiled at him suddenly and his heart turned over.

  Then, to his fury, Lady Stanton came up to them and sat down.

  “Lady Stanton,” said the duke, “may I be of some assistance to you?” His voice was as cold as ice.

  “I wish to be introduced to this charming lady,” said Lady Stanton.

  “Of course you do,” said the duke lightly. “Such beauty always excites admiration and curiosity. But, alas, we must leave you. Our dance, I think.”

  Lady Stanton watched them go, her eyes narrowing in fury. Who was this unknown charmer who was spoiling her evening and her chances so effectively? She had asked Lady Darkwood, who had looked flustered and murmured something about “just a friend” before escaping, and now Rowcester was obviously going out of his way not to introduce her.

  Lady Stanton thought hard. Perhaps she is pock-marked under that mask. Or perhaps, she thought with increasing fury, Rowcester has chosen to bring some member of the demi-monde to my ball and Susan Darkwood has connived at it because she is silly.

  The ball was becoming rowdy. Masked balls always were. Some of the men were very drunk. Harriet was dancing the Sir Roger de Coverley with the duke. She noticed Lady Stanton had gone up to the gallery over the ballroom where the orchestra was playing and was staring down at her.

  “I should leave,” she whispered urgently to the duke. “Lady Stanton has become over-curious as to my identity.”

  “Let her be curious,” he said with a laugh and then the dance separated them again.

  But when the dance finished, Lady Stanton’s voice could be heard calling for silence.

  “My friends,” she cried, “the moment of unmasking is here.”

  Laughter all round. Men and women were untying the strings of their masks. The duke slipped his into his pocket and whispered to Harriet, “Faint!”

  She closed her eyes and slid towards the floor. He caught her up in his arms and strode from the room with her while Susan let out an audible gasp of relief.

  Still holding her, the duke ran down the stairs. The hall was empty. The footmen who had supplied the guard of honour on arrival were now on duty in the ballroom and supper-room, apart from three who were talking to the coachmen outside. The duke opened the nearest door leading off the hall and slipped inside, put Harriet on her feet and, turning round, locked them in.

  “Lady Stanton’s library, I presume,” said the duke, looking around. Glass cases of books bought by the yard for appearance rather than content ranged the walls. The room had a musty smell and was probably little used.

  “Now what?” asked Harriet anxiously.

  “Now we wait a few moments in the hope that Lady Stanton will believe we have left. Then I will leave you here and slip out and tell a footman to have my carriage brought forward. It is some way down the street.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Harriet. “Lady Darkwood would indeed be in deep disgrace were my identity to become known.”

  “Let us hope she remains aware of that, otherwise she will gossip. I will go now. When the carriage is ready, I will knock twice on the door.”

  “My cloak,” protested Harriet. “It is in the dressing-room.”

  “I shall fetch it.”

  He unlocked the door and looked out. Then he went out into the hall and Harriet locked the door behind him. She felt nervous and at the same time elated.

  When a double knock sounded on the door, she started in alarm, then remembered his signal and cautiously opened the door.

  “Quickly,” he said. “Put on your cloak. Now I must pick you up again so that should we be seen I can protest that you are still unwell.”

  Harriet closed her eyes and felt strong arms lift her up, felt herself pressed against his chest.

  He carried her out just as his coach drew up outside the house. “Now we are safe,” he said as they moved off. “You may open your eyes and remove your mask.”

  He leaned forward and untied the strings of her mask and dropped it in her lap. The carriage lurched in and out of a hole in the road and she was thrown against him.

  She tried to struggle back, but the steadying arm he had put around her tightened. She saw his lips descending, and instead of pushing him away, she closed her eyes again. His lips were warm and urgent, passion rising in him as he remembered that scene in the kitchen. She was responding to him, fuelling his ardour, and his kiss deep
ened and his long hands caressed her face. He finally drew back with a ragged sigh. “Oh, Harriet,” he said, “you bewitch me. When I saw you naked in the kitchen, I thought of Venus rising from the foam.”

  Her face went rigid with shock and she shrank back, her eyes wide. Then she blushed, a deep red painful blush which he could see clearly in the jogging light of the carriage lamp. Then her hands stole up to hide her face.

  “I should not have said that.” The duke looked at her wretchedly. “I went down to the kitchen to talk … to talk to you … and I saw … I saw …”

  “No more, if you please,” said Harriet, lowering her hands and now as pale as she had been scarlet a moment before. She looked out of the carriage window and saw with relief that they were drawing up outside the hotel.

  “Your grace,” she said, “I have had to be father and mother to myself for quite some time. I have had to be my own chaperone. I do not blame you for kissing me. I did not repulse you. But I will never be able to look at you again without disgust and embarrassment.”

  The footman opened the door and then drew back startled as Harriet leaped out past him before he had time to let down the steps.

  The duke gloomily told his coachman to take him back to the ball. He had not behaved like a gentleman. The fact that he had seen Harriet naked and had admitted it would never be forgiven or forgotten by her. Old Lord Plomley at the club, who had sired fifteen children, had once confessed in his cups that he had never seen his wife naked, all the rites of the marriage bed having been performed in the pitch-black and under cover of several blankets. “But that’s the way of the world,” the old man had sighed. “Only tarts take their clothes off.”

  Chapter Six

  Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.

  —CHARLES KINGSLEY