Althea (4 page)

“If I cannot go as a housekeeper, perhaps you had better let
me start a vogue for tall country bumpkins. I do not intend to be made into a
schoolroom miss at my age, Mary, so remember it. And in the meantime, whatever
is that edifice?”

Having successfully distracted her sister’s attention from
herself, Althea spent the next few minutes quizzing Maria about the city and
was stunned to find that her ladyship knew less than Althea herself about
certain of the sights.

“I for one confess myself vulgarly curious about the city,
and I shall think you to be the meanest creature on earth if you don’t allow me
some time to go about openmouthed and gaping at the Tower and the Houses of
Parliament. As for the rest, I think the only thing for it is to start a vogue
for dark ladies of height, for I’m too tall by far ever to learn to be a
swooning maiden. And I fear that if ever I should faint away, I should carry
some hapless bystander with me, and think how embarrassing that would be. If I
find some man willing to marry me, Sister, I can only hope that he will not
expect such a one as you detail, for that I shall never be.”

“Althea!” Lady Bevan said in tones of the greatest horror.
“You are not going to be strong-minded, are you? That would be too much! I beg
you will not speak so before anyone else in London but me, and I hope you will
not talk so even then, for I consider it excessively unbecoming. I have the
most uncomfortable feeling you mean to be a fractious pupil, and I will brook
no disobedience from you. But listen: I cannot think that Madame will have any
but a very few garments ready within the next few days, if she takes you on as
a customer, which she certainly will. So in that time I shall let you have your
fill of London — it will be a fortnight before you are fitted out decently —
and I will contrive to give you some notion of what you must expect in London
Society. No, don’t look rebellious at me. I may be a widgeon, as Papa says, but
I know what’s what in town, and you do not. Why, you might” — Lady Bevan paused
to consider a social crime of dire consequence — “you might dance the waltz at
Almack’s before you had leave, or ride down St. James, or do all manner of
terrible things.”

“Better give me no leave to waltz at all, Mary, for I’m
shocking bad at it and have had no practice since Miss Brandywine made us dance
around the nursery in the arms of the rocking chair.”

By the time this image and the other amusing remembrances it
evoked had been duly examined, the barouche had drawn up to the door of Madame
Helena’s shop. And at that, Althea, having promised to behave herself in a
decorous fashion, preceded her sister out of the carriage, and together they
entered the shop.

Madame Helena herself emerged from the back rooms to greet
the young Lady Bevan and her guest. Though Lady Bevan had a sizable unpaid bill
to her credit, Madame was confident of eventual payment — whether from the lady
herself or from her irate husband, Madame neither knew nor cared. She had a
good eye for clothing and a genius for recognizing those garments and styles
that brought out the best in her customers. Tiny and rotund and sharp-eyed,
Madame spoke her English with a heavy French accent and muttered fluently to
herself in that language, but for all that she had been born in Cheapside. Her
success was due to the kind offices of a former admirer who, at the end of
their connection, had given her the shop as a parting gift. Madame had made it
prosper, until it was said that she had as much to do with making or breaking a
young belle as Mr. Brummell or any of his set.

Very conscious of this power, Madame Helena now designed
only for a very few, leaving the rest to her assistants. It was only when her
curiosity — or her rage — was roused that Madame could be prevailed upon to
oversee a wardrobe personally.

One dowager had gone so far as to cross Madame, and in
retaliation, Madame had created for her a new ball gown in the sublime shades
of lime and chocolate, the fold, flounces, and ribbons of which were designed
to show the Honorable Mrs. Laverham to the worst advantage. It was hard to
believe that Mrs. Laverham did not know the figure she presented when she wore
that gown, but she wore it frequently and even went so far as to solicit
compliments upon her toilette for the sheer joy of explaining that it had been
designed for her by Helena. Madame’s immense power could only be exposed by
this, so that both women were very happy at the transaction.

Althea was duly introduced to Madame, who abruptly set her
to walking about the room, then running, then dancing. With a pair of scissors
that hung about her waist, Madame snipped off a lock of Althea’s dark hair and
noted the color of the lady’s eyes as gray. Maria, made nervous by Madame’s
august presence, began to chatter about white and pink and a girl’s come-out;
but one glance from over the rims of Madame’s pince-nez quelled her. Madame
condescended to give her opinion: no whites or pastels or any furbelows
suitable for debutantes.

“Mademoiselle is not in the common way, and it would do her,
and my toilettes, a disservice to dress her so.” Althea made a face at Maria.
“Mademoiselle will stand above the milk-and-water misses! I shall make her the
storm of the town!” Upon which Gallic declaration of war, Madame shrugged, gave
orders regarding fittings to the seamstress at her elbow, and stalked off.

Althea, as she was measured, made an effort to suppress her
merriment at the spectacle of Madame, so tiny and plump, prepared to tackle all
of the
ton
in order to make her new protégée the rage. The storm of the
town, indeed! Maria was not so amused and begged her sister to smother her
mirth, lest Madame become incensed and do something dreadful in retaliation-and
then bill them for her revenge. Althea managed to control her amusement for the
quarter-hour that the fitting lasted and then, safely in the barouche, gave
vent to the fullness of her amusement.

“It appears that I must reconcile myself to becoming a
diamond of the first water if you and Madame must have it so. Poor Papa little
knew what a service he did me when he cast me on the mercy of the parish — and
my competence.” Lady Bevan eyed her sister wrathfully for a moment, but the
wrath turned to inspiration, and Althea experienced a very low feeling at the
look in her sister’s eye.

“The very thing! We shall hire you a dancing master!”

“No such thing! I will, if I must, stand above the
milk-and-water misses, although I think that to be a singularly ill chosen
simile to apply to one of my height, but I will not consent to being led around
the drawing room by some smirking fellow used to dealing with children half my
age.”

Lady Bevan could not answer this sally as she would have
liked, for the carriage had now arrived at the door of her favorite milliner,
and the conflict that seemed imminent would have to wait upon the delights of
straw satin bonnets and ostrich feather festoons. The subject of a dancing
master did not recur, for they were in and out of shops and stalls for the rest
of the afternoon, inquiring after ribbons, shawls, fans, vinaigrettes,
reticules, and slippers — all of which must accompany the toilette of any
pretender to fashion. When at last, having exhausted the resources of the
Pantheon Bazaar, Lady Bevan and Miss Ervine climbed into the barouche for the
journey homeward, they both seemed to feel that the less said about the dancing
master the better, so the subject was scrupulously avoided.

“Did your Madame say when I might have some replacement for
this sad rag I wear now? If she delays much above a week I shall start to
sewing myself.”

“A week? Ally, you are in London, not Hooking. Madame’s
assistant said we might have the first morning gowns and the rose round gown
within three days. She said that she could well understand our impatience to
rid you of those garments. And I for one am not about to jeopardize my standing
with the
ton
by driving out with you before you have something suitable
to wear, so that means that for three days at least I am entitled to keep you
locked up to consider your sins.”

Althea would only smile and agree that this must be a very
good idea indeed. It was almost the hour of five when they returned, and Maria
said with a sigh that she feared she must miss her afternoon drive in the Park.
Althea asked, in some confusion, how her sister could talk about driving out
when they had only just returned.

“No, stupid! This is the social drive. All the world is out
in the Park between four and six, but today I fear I could never be ready to
drive before six, and that would not serve at all. So I must forget it,
obviously.” She sighed in heavy tones of self-sacrifice. Instead of driving
out, they decided that a restorative glass of ratafia might be in order and repaired
to the drawing room, where they discovered Lord Bevan sitting at an escritoire,
studiously not writing letters. When he saw them he dropped his pen with a sigh
of relief and rose to greet them. He had an airy, casual kiss for his wife, and
then he stood for a moment and took in Althea’s appearance. Althea, hoping he
would not start surveying her with that same evaluative air Maria used, availed
herself of the opportunity to examine Francis.

She had liked her pleasant brother-in-law from their first
acquaintance, the more because of his undisguised affection for Maria. He was
slight and fair, had aristocratic bones, and possessed a sweetness of temper
and a not overly clever mind. Althea was surprised to see that in matters of
dress, he had changed a great deal from the man she had known on his visits to
Hook Well, and she concluded that in the country he had been dressing to suit
country notions of propriety. In London, while his dress was really no more
flamboyant (and indeed rather less so) than that of most of the beaux she had
seen from the barouche that afternoon, it did display a marked tendency toward
dandyism. His collar points, although uncomfortably high, did not entirely
impede the motion of his head, and the shoulders of his coat, though padded,
were only of a moderate height. He wore only three fobs, which Althea had come
to realize was a show of great restraint. And if his hands could have done with
some small attention from soap and water, his neckcloth showed not a sign of
having been tied by those smudged fingers.

“Ally! Good to see you here. Cheer Mary up like nothing else
— loves to have you about, and damme if I don’t too. Letter for you and Mary
upon the table. Must be from your father, unless you’ve advised some others of
your arrival? Must be all done up if what Maria’s been telling me of your
leaving is true.” Althea frowned slightly at her brother-in-law’s foppish
drawl. That, too, had changed since his visit to Hook Well.

“I vow
I
am quite done up by this magnificence,
Francis, for I think in Lancashire you were never used to exhibit your full
plumage. I am awed by your splendor.”

She received his kiss on her cheek and stood for a moment
smiling at him. Despite the foppery there was much to like in him. Althea
resolved that if there was any trouble between her sister and brother-in-law,
she would be the one to mend it.

“Althea, only come and read this letter!” Lady Bevan, her
bonnet only half untied, stood staring at a letter with an expression that
defied rational description. “Only look at this!” With a squeak that boded
hysterics, Maria sank into the nearest chair, holding the offending notepaper
at arm’s length. “Althea, how ever came I to be your sister — or rather you
mine, since I am the older, and you the last? But whatever have you done to
poor Papa? Oh dear, I mean, did he do to —” Maria went into a fit of weak
giggling while her sister rescued the letter from her clutch and spoke with
some asperity to the deranged Maria.

“Maria, it is bad enough that I sit here in all stages of
disarray, but the
ton
will know that the last trump has surely blown if
Lady Bevan sits about in such a sad case, waving her bonnet like a flag of
truce!” Lady Bevan instantly snatched the offensive bonnet from its precarious
position, while her sister sat and began to peruse the note. It was couched, as
she knew it must be, in the most purple of prose, with a great many references
to Christian Charity, Filial Duty, Forgiveness, and such like terms, but
despite the volume of words squeezed in a tight hand upon the sheet of paper,
there was remarkably little sense to be made of it.

It was some minutes after she had finished reading the
letter before Althea could sufficiently recover her countenance, and then her
thoughts were for her unfortunate maid, Miss Banders, who had been left behind
to the storm in the wake of Althea’s defection.

“Poor Banders! I infer from Papa’s scrawling that she has
been packed off to Suffolk to be a charge upon her father until I repent my
sins and return to the fold. I shall have to send for her immediately. But only
think, Maria, what sort of odious tasks you can set me to that might bring me
to a full sense of my perfidy. Peeling onions in the scullery? Oh dear, a Viper
in his Bosom! What a letter for Papa to write — the house must be completely
beyond his management if he is so angered, and I only gone a few days.”

o0o

In the following week Althea found herself under a more
rigorous tutelage than any she had enjoyed in the schoolroom at Hook Well. She
learned the rules of Almack’s Assembly until she maintained that she could, and
did, repeat them in her sleep. Maria’s only sally was to inquire as to how her
sister could know whether or not she did so, since she must be sleeping at the
time. Over Althea’s protests, a dancing master was found, and she began to
relearn the arts of the quadrille, the country dance, and the waltz — this time
without benefit of the chair.

“It is so very different when you are dancing with a real
person rather than with that horrible chair. But then, the chair does not use
oil of lavender pomade on its hair, which Signore Francesco regrettably does.”