Diana the Huntress (6 page)

After she had unpacked her very small stock of clothes culled from the twins’ wardrobe, she made her way downstairs. She paused in the doorway of the dining room, her heart beating hard. There had obviously been a meeting of the Driving Club that day, rivals to the Four in Hand. The room was full of boozy bucks dressed in the same uniform; drab-coloured coat with full skirts reaching to the heels, with three tiers of pockets and mother-of-pearl buttons, each the size of a crown piece, waistcoat with stripes of blue and yellow an inch wide, breeches of yellow plush with sixteen strings and a rosette at each knee, buff-topped boots wrinkled down to the ankles, a bell-shaped white beaver hat, three and a half inches deep in the crown and the same width in the brim, and the whole ensemble decorated with a huge nosegay thrust into the buttonhole. To Diana, they all looked simply terrifying. She did not even know the company boasted three of the most admired Corinthians in London: Tom Akers,
wearing a white beaver turned up with green, and with his front teeth filed so that he could spit like a coachman: Sir John Lade, who could drive the two off wheels of his phaeton over a sixpence at the start of a hundred yards: and Golden Ball Hughes, that most languid of
sportsmen
, doing his best to run through forty thousand pounds a year. Hard, rather truculent stares turned in her direction and the conversation died away.

Diana gave a nervous gulp and turned and fled upstairs, back to her room. She sat crouched beside the fire. She could never go through with it. All at once, a picture of Ann Carter rose before her mind’s eye; pretty, dainty Ann. What if Mr Emberton fell in love with Ann? How silly she, Diana, had been to simply drive on. How missish and idiotish to believe in a dirty old gypsy. There was a knock at the door, but Diana stayed where she was, too frightened to answer it.

The door handle turned and the door swung open. Lord Mark Dantrey stood on the threshold.

He was wearing a many-caped driving coat and a curly-brimmed beaver. He looked much taller and more elegant than Diana had remembered. He
removed
his hat, revealing that the old-fashioned length of his hair had been cut and styled into miraculous disorder, making poor Diana feel that her own attempts at the Windswept had been feeble, to say the least.

‘I came early,’ he said, coming into the room. ‘Have you dined?’

Diana shook her head. ‘I am not accustomed to town,’ she said. ‘Everyone seemed so drunk and noisy, and it is so very dirty here. Not at all what I expected.’

‘Ah, well, that is Limmer’s for you. It is so expensive that everyone swears they charge extra for the dirt. However, their gin punch is very good and the meals are tolerable. Do you care to join me for supper?’

He saw the hesitation in Diana’s face and added gently, ‘There is a coffee house near here which will be much quieter, if you would prefer it.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Diana gratefully. She went to the mirror to straighten her cravat and caught herself just in time as she was about to give a feminine pat to her curls.

What a difference it was to saunter along the London streets with such a tall and elegant companion. Diana gazed about her eagerly, mimicking the swaggering walk of the Bloods. They turned in at Hubbold’s coffee house and took seats in a high-backed booth. Diana began to relax. She had thought coffee houses would be noisy, boisterous places like the dining room at Limmer’s, but this was more what she would imagine a gentleman’s club to be. Everything was hushed and silent. Craning her head around the high back of the settle, she noticed men sitting quietly, writing, or reading newspapers.

Lord Dantrey ordered roast beef and salad and a bottle of hock. Diana would dearly have liked
something
else, but she was too frightened to say so. It seemed that Lord Dantrey considered burgundy and claret fit only for the ladies.

‘I do not know any of this, sir,’ said Diana. ‘I fear I lack town bronze.’

‘Innocence and a good heart are worth more than
town bronze,’ said Lord Dantrey. ‘But it amuses me to take you about. Perhaps my last bachelor outing before I settle down to find myself a wife. Will you marry, think you, Mr Armitage?’

‘Not I,’ said Diana quickly. ‘I have no time for the ladies.’

‘Indeed! I thought youth was always romantic.’

‘Perhaps. I am not without feeling for romance. I admire Lord Byron.
He
must be all that is romantic.’

‘I sometimes wonder,’ said Lord Dantrey, filling Diana’s glass. ‘You were not shocked at the scandal?’

‘What scandal?’ asked Diana, wide-eyed. She had only recently begun to listen to gossip, so it was possible that someone had tried to tell her the shocking
on dit
about Byron and his sister during the time when she only listened to gossip about horses and dogs.

‘Never mind. But to return to the question of Byron’s romanticism. Now, he says he does not like women at table because he does not like to see them eat and drink for it destroys their “etherealism” and “romance”. But I think it is because the ladies are always served first at dinner and given the wings of the chicken, of which Lord Byron is passionately fond.’

‘What of Mr Brummell?’

‘Alas, poor George, fled to the continent with his debtors baying at his heels. No, not romantic.
Amusing
, clever, sometimes cruel, but never romantic. If he had been clever enough, all the same, to keep the friendship of the Prince Regent, then I do not think his creditors would have pressed him so hard. Also, he had begun to play deep.’

‘I know why the Prince Regent took him in dislike,’ said Diana eagerly, ‘for my sis … my cousin, Minerva, told me. ’Twas because he called him fat, well not direct, but to Lord Alvanley. He said, “Who’s your fat friend?”’

‘That happened
after
. He was already out of favour. The trouble, you see, was that Brummell began to believe he could say and do what he liked, eventually considering himself above Prinny. He did not realize that he was the fashion and could be terribly rude to all kinds of people simply because of Prinny’s patronage. Of course, his contempt appealed to a servile streak in the top ten thousand for a certain time, but if one has no lands, no title, and very little money then one will, in the long run, need a patron, and a very powerful one at that. I was present on the evening when his downfall really started. It was at the Pavilion in Brighton. The Bishop of Winchester, a particular friend of the Regent, saw the Beau’s snuff box lying on the table and helped himself to a pinch without asking Brummell’s
permission
. Brummell turned to a servant and said in a very loud voice, “Throw that snuff into the fire or on the floor.” The insult to the Regent’s friend was great and the Regent was furious.’

‘You must be very important to be invited to dinner by the Prince Regent.’ Diana looked at him and then looked down into her wine glass. ‘I have heard said, sir, that you are a rake.’

‘Aha! My reputation flies before me. Perhaps I was.’

‘But not now,’ said Diana eagerly.

‘No, not now. I am an old man, looking forward to
a nursery full of squalling brats and a complacent wife on the other side of the hearth.’

‘It is said you ruined some lady.’

‘Young man,’ said Lord Dantrey in a flat voice, ‘mind your manners.’

‘Oh, I am sorry, sir. There. Only see how my tongue runs away from me.’ Diana looked at him, large eyes pleading for forgiveness. Those strange green and gold eyes met her own, quizzical at first and then narrowing.

‘Tell me about Almack’s,’ said Diana breathlessly. ‘I mean,
why
is it so important to go there? What
is
Almack’s?’

‘If you were a lady, Almack’s would be important. Not to a fellow … unless you are seeking a rich heiress. But let me see … Almack’s was a very clever idea from the first. A Scotsman named William McCall came to London about the middle of the last century as valet to the fifth Duke of Hamilton. He married Elizabeth Cullin, a waiting maid to the duchess. Then he was butler to Lord Bute. He then started a tavern in St James’s Street, the “pickings” he had made from his previous positions providing him with the means. He prepared to call his adventure “McCall’s” but was advised, owing to the unpopularity of the Scots in London just then, that this would ruin the enterprise. “Very well,” said McCall, after listening to much counsel, “I will call it Almack’s” – just a reversal of his name. The tavern proved a great success. He founded “Almack’s Club” for gaming in Pall Mall in 1763, and a year later he built “Almack’s Assembly Rooms” in King Street. It was said to be quite a sight to see
McCall’s Scotch face framed in a bag wig and his plump wife serving all the dukes and duchesses with tea and cakes. By clever management, he ensured that the assembly rooms should cater only to the very rich and so the rooms automatically became the home of the Exclusives. Now they have their awesome patronesses. Do you crave vouchers?’

‘Not I,’ said Diana, lounging back against the settle in what she hoped was a masculine manner. ‘Silly little misses and their pushing mamas.’

‘You are hard on the fair sex,’ laughed Lord Dantrey. ‘What do you wish to do now? Go to the opera?’ He raised his quizzing glass and studied Diana’s clothes. ‘I am afraid you will need something more suitable than what you have on.’

‘Could we not go somewhere a little less grand?’ said Diana nervously, remembering that the Italian opera was, in its way, as exclusive as Almack’s and that there was a supper and a ball after the performance.

‘Very well. We shall go to the play. Finish your wine.’

Lord Dantrey began to talk lightly of this and that. A shadow fell across their table as two very young men strolled past to the far end of the coffee room.

Peregrine Armitage sat down and stared at his twin, James. ‘I swear upon my life that was sister Diana, dressed as a man, sitting at that table with that gentleman.’

‘It
can’t
be,’ said James. ‘The light is poor and the candle on their table was nearly burned down to the socket.’ He craned his neck. ‘The servant has just
replaced it with a new candle. Can you see anything, Perry, without making it obvious that you’re staring at them?’

If it’s her, she’s got her back to me,’ said Peregrine. ‘I tell you what. I’ll stroll over to the door and look out and then walk back.’

James waited anxiously. Peregrine slid back into his seat and ran a worried hand through his black curls. ‘It’s Diana all right,’ he groaned. ‘Putting up a good show, and she’s wearing our clothes. What are we going to do? She must have gone mad.’

‘Who is she with?’

‘I don’t know. But he’s years older than her and he don’t look as if he’s up to any good.’

‘We’d best tell Father.’

‘We can’t tell Father, you numbskull. We’re
supposed
to be in school. If he finds out we manufactured that letter about a death in the family, he’ll curse and rant and rave, fit to beat the band. Then we’ll get expelled if it ever comes out.’

‘Then what shall we do? It’s terrible sitting here helpless while Diana behaves like Letty Lade. She must have run away from home with this man. If that’s the case, he ain’t respectable and he ain’t got marriage in mind. Oh, what
are
we to do?’

‘Tell Minerva.’

‘Worse and worse. Minerva thinks we’re still children. She’d march us back to school and read us a sermon at the same time. We’ll write an anonymous letter to Father. It is all we can do.’

‘No, it’s not all we can do. We will simply march up
to Diana and tell her we’ve recognized her. She’ll be in no position to report
us
.’

But when the twins went up to the table at which Diana had been sitting, it was to find both she and her companion had left.

‘Well, that’s that,’ said Peregrine gloomily.

‘We’ll send an anonymous letter to Father, and then we’d best return to school as fast as we can!’

Diana found herself in the pit at Haymarket Theatre, her companion having paid the three shillings each for tickets. She shifted uneasily on her hard bench, for the fop behind her had his feet up on it. The whole theatre smelled of oranges, the old prejudice against fresh fruit being indigestible having long disappeared. Despite the fact that the oranges sold in the theatre were a ridiculous price – sixpence as opposed to the twopence halfpenny that one paid outside – everyone seemed to be buying them for the express purpose of throwing them on the stage. The play was called
The Italian Subterfuge
, but what was being said or what the whole thing was about was a mystery to Diana. The audience howled and jeered and cat-called from the rising of the curtain. Snatches of cant rose and fell about Diana as those of the audience who were not engaged in tormenting the actors gossiped loudly. ‘That cover-
me-decently
is all very well’… ‘pinks in Rotten Row’ … ‘the ladybirds in the saloon’ … ‘angelics of Almack’s’ … ‘top of the trees’ … ‘legs and Levanters at Tattersall’s’ … ‘bang-up spot of the world for fun, frolic and out-and-outing’. The top of society was referred to
in various terms from roses to pink and tulips, and the lower orders as mechanical tag-rag and bobtail,
vegetables
, bunches of turnips, and strings of
ingyns
. Paying money conjured up many cant expressions – flash the screens, sport the rhino, show your needful, nap the rent, stump the pewter, tip the brads, and down with the dust.

Diana had several very nasty moments when they were promenading before the play started. She was accosted on all sides by prostitutes, bold and
business-like
, some even presenting her with their business cards.

She decided to put her surroundings from her mind and think about Mr Jack Emberton instead. Would he call at Lady Godolphin’s? Perhaps she could persuade Papa to let her return to Hopeworth for a little. This freedom, this masculine life for which she had longed, was not turning out quite the way she had expected. If only the strong, masculine, protective figure of Jack Emberton were beside her instead of this cool and elegant and decadent lord.

She gave a little sigh and suddenly found her companion’s eyes on her.