Belinda Goes to Bath (7 page)

And then it was over. He freed her lips and said in a husky voice in which surprise and passion were mixed, ‘You enchant me.’ Then he opened the door and, still holding her tightly, strode across the courtyard.

From a window overlooking the courtyard, Hannah Pym looked down on the pair in deep satisfaction.

From the window of her bedchamber farther along, Penelope Jordan also saw the marquess and Belinda and bit her lips hard to stop herself from crying out. She had been schooled from birth to learn that only the vulgar showed an excess of emotion. Ladies must never laugh out loud or show anger or passion of any sort. To produce a few affecting tears to demonstrate
fashionable sensibility was in order, as was the occasional swoon. Of course, a
type
of laughter was permitted, the silvery laugh, taught by one’s music teacher, which began on a high note and rippled down the scale.

As she watched, the marquess set Belinda down and indicated her ankle. Then he put an arm about her waist and helped her into the house.

Penelope let out a slow breath of relief. That clever minx had affected to be suffering badly from that sprain and had cleverly manipulated Frenton into carrying her. But the marquess surely could not favour the few charms Miss Earle had above her own. Miss Earle had unfashionably high cheek-bones as well as an unfashionably large mouth.

She rang for her lady’s maid and put that servant through a gruelling hour and a half – choosing clothes, brushing her hair and trying it in different styles, seeing if rouge would improve her beauty and then deciding it would not, trying on olive-green stockings and then rejecting them in favour of pink, until at long last she was nearly satisfied with her appearance.

Penelope shivered slightly despite the warmth from the bedroom fire. She was wearing a very thin spotted muslin gown under a pelisse of black lace trimmed with narrow bands of sable. On her pomaded curls the maid finally placed one of the latest turbans, decorated with two scarlet plumes to match the scarlet spot in the muslin. Penelope carefully examined her elbows, her beautiful eyes narrowing as she thought she detected a sign of red roughness on them. She
carefully applied some white lead, but the two white patches stood out, so she applied more white lead to her upper arms and drew on a thin pair of scarlet gloves that reached to just below the elbow.

Then she made her way to her parents’ rooms. They were in their sitting-room, breakfasting in front of a roaring fire. Her father was dining on shrimp and old ale, his favourite breakfast, while her mother had wafers of toast and tea.

‘You must make ready to accompany me downstairs,’ said Penelope, cross because both were still in their undress. ‘That Earle female is like to snatch the prize from me.’

‘Hardly likely,’ said Sir Henry. ‘She is nothing out of the common way and a man as high in the instep as Frenton would not prefer the charms of some female from the stage-coach to yourself.’

‘I am persuaded she is clever and cunning. I have just seen him carrying her across the courtyard. She must have pretended to have hurt her ankle again. Rally to me! There is no time to be lost.’

Hannah made her way back to the sitting-room she shared with Belinda and found that young lady sitting in an armchair while the doctor examined her ankle. ‘Another bad wrench,’ said the doctor. ‘I shad strap it more tightly, but you must now lie in your bed with the ankle raised on a cushion.’

‘It is much better now,’ pleaded Belinda. ‘I shall be so very bored if I have to stay confined to my bedchamber.’

‘Lord Frenton,’ said the doctor, strapping Belinda’s ankle, ‘must be anxious for you all to recommence your journey. You should oblige your host by recovering as quickly as possible.’

Hannah noticed a shadow of disappointment fall over Belinda’s expressive eyes.

She waited impatiently until the doctor had taken his leave, and then asked eagerly, ‘What happened? Did you really sprain that ankle again?’

‘Of course I did,’ said Belinda. ‘He took me to the top of the tower to look at the view and I trod on a pebble and wrenched it again. He kindly offered to carry me, nay, insisted on it.’ Her eyes began to shine.

‘And …?’ prompted Hannah.

‘He … he … kissed me.’

‘The deuce!’ Hannah looked alarmed. ‘That was very fast and forward of his lordship. Your companion is laid up and your relatives are not here to protect you. Would you like me to ask him his intentions?’

‘No!’ said Belinda. ‘I can handle my own life, Miss Pym. He seems much taken by me and even said I enchanted him.’

‘Fine words don’t butter any parsnips,’ said Hannah crossly. ‘An experienced man of the world can say anything he likes. Hark you, Miss Earle, the servants tell me that he is as good as engaged to Miss Jordan.’

‘Well, that’s as may be,’ said Belinda doubtfully, ‘but could it not be that I have struck him all of a heap?’

‘Marquesses with every female in the land after ’em don’t get struck that easily,’ said Hannah cynically.
‘Hey, what’s happened to that young lady who didn’t want to marry?’

‘Oh, I don’t
know
,’ said Belinda wretchedly. ‘I wish I had never told you. Now it all seems soiled.’

‘Are you in love?’

‘How can I tell? I have only met the man.’

‘I tell you what I will do,’ said Hannah. ‘I will observe his behaviour towards you and let you know whether his intentions are indecent or honourable in my opinion. Would you like that?’

‘No! Well, maybe yes. But I don’t have to promise to listen to you.’

‘Now,’ said Hannah, ‘I suggest you get to bed and spend the rest of the day there and I’ll get two footmen to carry you down to dinner. What else did he talk about?’

‘He told me about the castle and how a room in Robert’s Tower was haunted by the ghost of a governess. He offered to show me the torture chamber but I said such things did not interest me, that the days of chivalry were in fact very cruel, and he said surely this age was cruel and commanded me to observe the bodies on the gibbet.’

‘How eccentric!’ said Hannah. ‘He cannot have been trying to endear himself to you. Besides, these modern times are very humane, no racking or crushing or gouging or pouring boiling oil on people. He must have been teasing you.’

After Hannah had left, Belinda lay looking at the bed-hangings, seeing mocking faces in the patterns made by the brocade. All her elation had gone. He
had only been flirting. He could not have meant anything warmer, not with his nearly-to-be fiancée as a guest. Then, despite her troubled thoughts, Belinda fell asleep.

Hannah visited the Judds in their quarters. She could see Mrs Judd had been crying. Hannah’s temper snapped and she rounded on Mr Judd. ‘Will you never be done with tormenting your wife?’ she exclaimed. Mr Judd’s face turned dark with anger and he took a menacing step towards Hannah. ‘Just you try it,’ said Hannah. ‘I have strong arms and strong muscles, and besides that, if you lay one finger on me, I am like to brain you with the poker. Fie, for shame, you monster! Ruining your future career. One would think you had no interest in money.’

‘Money!’ The angry colour slowly died out of Mr Judd’s face.

‘Money,’ echoed Mrs Judd in a whisper.

For money had been the cause of this latest marital row. Mr Judd had said his wife had cut a shabby figure at the marquess’s supper table compared to the other ladies, and she had shouted at him that they had no money at all for finery and how could he be such a half-witted baboon? Aghast at his wife’s temerity, Mr Judd had had no inclination to hit her, but then she had begun to cringe and cry and beg his pardon, and so he had struck her and immediately felt so guilty that he was sure his guilt must be her fault, and so he had struck her again.

‘Sit down, both of you,’ said Hannah, ‘and listen to me. Your vanity, Mr Judd, does not seem to stretch to
your playing and singing. Nor do you seem aware that your wife has a first-rate voice.’

‘What has all this to do with anything?’ demanded Mr Judd, his temper rising again, although he did sit down and eyed Hannah warily as if facing a dog liable to bite.

‘I could not help noticing how entranced the marquess was with your singing. A couple such as you, I have heard, can command a great deal of money for a drawing-room performance, provided that couple has a patron. If you play your cards aright, you could perhaps have the marquess as that patron.’

Mr Judd looked at her open-mouthed and Mrs Judd in dawning hope.

‘What is your history?’ asked Hannah. ‘I am not being impertinent. I only want to help.’

‘It is a dreary story,’ said Mr Judd. ‘My father was a successful lawyer and I had a comfortable upbringing. I studied music and singing for my own pleasure. Then I met Persephone.’

What an exotic name for the frightened Mrs Judd to have, thought Hannah.

‘I am from The Bath. Persephone was music teacher at the seminary where I now teach. My father disapproved of my interest in her. He had high hopes for me and wished me to enter the law. Persephone’s parents had no money at all. Nonetheless, I was in love and I married her and my father turned me out.’

‘And your mother?’

Mr Judd looked surprised. ‘Women have no say in such matters,’ he said. ‘In any case, the seminary
promised to engage us both, but after we had both been there for a week, they said they could not afford the two of us and so they told my wife to leave. My father and mother died a year later, both of the fever, and he had cut me out of his will. Persephone’s parents are also dead. And so we struggled on. We had been to London to see if we could both find employ in different educational establishments, but we met with failure.’

Hannah turned to Mrs Judd. ‘And you, where did you learn to sing so beautifully?’

‘My father was a dancing master,’ said Mrs Judd, ‘but he had ambitions to make me an opera singer and to that end he hired the best tutors he could afford. Oh, Miss Pym, do you really think we could find a patron?’

‘There is hope,’ said Hannah, ‘and I will have a word with his lordship myself when the time is right. But there is one thing you must do or I cannot help you.’

‘That being?’ demanded Mr Judd.

‘No one is going to be interested in furthering the career of a constantly quarrelling couple. You must appear at all times affectionate. You must start practising in private. A woman must obey her husband, everyone knows that, but all dislike a bully, Mr Judd, and forgive me, but that is how you appear, and an unpleasant one at that.’ She raised her hand to stall an angry retort from Mr Judd.

‘Come now, you are not going to protest that you don’t bully your wife when I and everyone else must know that you do.’

‘He is really very kind,’ said Mrs Judd, flying to her husband’s defence.

‘Then let him show that side of his character or I cannot help you,’ said Hannah roundly.

There was a long silence after Hannah had left.

‘Strange woman,’ said Mr Judd gruffly.

Mrs Judd clasped her hands tightly. ‘Do you think she meant what she said?’

‘Yes, I do,’ he said slowly. Then he gave an awkward laugh. ‘I don’t really
bully
you, do I, my sweet?’

The usual meek denial trembled on Mrs Judd’s lips. Then she thought about the money they could make instead of scrimping and saving and rowing on the pittance paid to her husband by the seminary.

‘Yes, you do, Mr Judd,’ she said firmly. ‘You are become a monster. You nag and criticize me for every little fault and my life is wretched.’

Mr Judd looked uneasily round as if expecting to find the marquess or Hannah Pym listening.

To apologize for or to admit to his bad behaviour would be going too far. And yet there was a steely determination in his little wife’s eyes that had not been there before.

‘And if you do anything to jeopardize our future by indulging your bad temper,’ said Mrs Judd, ‘I shall
leave
you.’

He looked as startled as if some mild-mannered family pet had suddenly decided to savage him. ‘We’ll see how it goes,’ he mumbled, and Mrs Judd, knowing
her husband well, realized that was as near an apology and a promise of reform as she was likely to get.

Hannah went into Miss Wimple’s bedchamber and was reassured to see that lady looking much recovered.

‘How is Belinda?’ demanded Miss Wimple in stern accents.

‘Very well,’ said Hannah. Her eyes sharpened. ‘Have you had a visit from his lordship?’

Miss Wimple put a hand to her brow. ‘I recall he came to see me last night.’

‘And what did you say?’

Miss Wimple bridled. ‘I do not see that what I said or did not say is any of your concern, Miss Pym.’

‘But Miss Earle should be your concern, Miss Wimple. That, after all, is what you are being paid for. You did not, by any chance, let fall to his lordship about Miss Earle’s unfortunate episode with the footman?’

‘I cannot remember what I said,’ said Miss Wimple huffily. ‘My head aches. Go away.’

‘I wish to counsel you to hold your tongue on that matter in future,’ said Hannah, ‘for the young lady may arrive in Bath with a reputation already ruined and, if that be the case, I shall have no hesitation in telling her parents the reason for her downfall. If you did let fall anything indiscreet about your charge, then I suggest you tell his lordship as soon as possible that you were rambling.’

Miss Wimple lay very still after Hannah had left. She did recall what she had said to the marquess. She
had felt it her duty, thought Miss Wimple defiantly, not knowing that she had been prompted by the jealousy of an unmarried middle-aged woman of small means for a young lady of fortune. She would not eat her words when she saw the marquess, but mindful of her job and Miss Pym’s threat, she would beg him to keep silent on the matter.

And so it came about that Miss Wimple did more damage to Belinda’s reputation than she had done before. She sent for the marquess and begged him so emotionally never to speak of Belinda’s affair with the footman that she left him thinking that Miss Earle must have behaved very shockingly indeed.