Just Deserts (6 page)

A moment longer the look held between them. Then Penelope
seemed to wrench her eyes away. A laugh escaped her. Not the
spontaneous peal of silver bells. A brittle sound, harsh, like the
voice she had used to rate Chiddingly earlier in the
day.

‘
I must go and assist Papa. Good day, Lord Fitzwarren.’ She
began to move away.

His heart cracked. ‘
Pen!
’

She looked back. ‘Yes, Fitz?’

His smile was rueful. ‘Am I still invited to your
debut?’

‘
Of course.’ She turned and retraced the few steps that lay
between them. There was a trace of the old warmth as she gave him
her hand to kiss. ‘I am depending on you, Fitz. Don’t
fail.’

A moment later she had vanished into the quayside
throng.

***

Lady Rossendale’s saloons were as full as they could hold.
It was a triumph so early in the season. But her ladyship had timed
it well. Any earlier and many of the notables would not yet have
come to town. Any later and their diaries would be too full to
accommodate her.

She had wisely forborne to send out her cards of invitation
until interest in the nabob and his family was aroused. Then she
had offered her guests a mere five days’ warning so that no other
matron had a chance to nip in and snaffle the most favoured society
dignitaries, a practice not uncommon among rival hostesses anxious
to have their functions voted the success of the season.

Viscount Fitzwarren was one of the stars in
the
bon ton
firmament for whose arrival her
ladyship kept out a jealous eye. But she need not have worried.
Fitz would not have been absent for a fortune. Penelope had bade
him not to fail her and that was enough. What was more, he dragged
the unwilling Baron Chiddingly along with him, saying that he would
spread the news of his wonder horse among his racing cronies if he
did not come.

‘
They will hear of it soon enough, I dare say,’ Chiddingly
said indifferently. ‘These things are bound to leak
out.’

‘
Leak out? I shall shout it from the roof-tops and ruin all
your chances.’

Chiddingly smiled, but persisted in his refusal. ‘I have no
desire to meet Miss Winsford.’

‘
Do you mean to shun fashionable circles?’

‘
Of course I don’t.’

‘
Then you are bound to meet her. And you may as well do so
at this ball.’

But in the event he was not called upon to do so, as the
guests of honour did not appear to be present. Though a steady
stream of fashionables were set down at the door of the great
mansion, there was no sign of the nabob or his family.

Mrs Harraton, still anxious for Chiddingly to claim a share
of the nabob’s coffers, sought out her friend Lady Alice
Chumleigh.

‘
Alice, where are they?’ she demanded, coming upon her
friend at the dais where that lady was conferring with the
musicians on her mother’s behalf.

Lady Alice turned, a worried frown creasing her plump
countenance. ‘They will be here presently.’

Though she tried to infuse conviction into her voice, she
only succeeded in conveying her own doubts. She was a dumpy young
woman whose recent pregnancy had rendered her a trifle stout. Like
her brother, she had taken after her father in stature, though
inheriting Lady Rossendale’s nervy disposition.

‘
But I thought the Winsfords were staying with you,’ said
Mrs Harraton, puzzled.

‘
Oh yes, but my Uncle Archie took a house. In Hanover
Square, you know.’

‘
Bought a house in Hanover Square?’ echoed Cordelia, her
eyes popping.

‘
He might have done so, but no. He is the oddest man,
Cordelia,’ she confided. ‘He says he may never have use for a town
house again, and why go to such extravagance?’

‘
You mean he has hired it?’

‘
Yes, indeed. Was ever anything more shabby? Though he may
purchase an estate, he says, when he should have leisure to look
about him and decide where to settle. It is Mama’s belief, however,
that he is waiting to find out where the girls will be, for he
dotes on them, you must know. I am sure he will never bear to be
far away from them, even when they marry.’

‘
Girls? Oh yes, I recall now you said there was a sister. I
had gathered she must be too young to come out,
however.’

‘
Oh no, she is to be here tonight. At least we
hope
—’
She broke off in consternation. ‘I should not
have said anything. Pray do not regard it.’

Mrs Harraton was looking at her reddening cheeks in the
liveliest astonishment. ‘What in the world—?’

‘
Pray excuse me, Cordelia,’ her friend said hastily. ‘I must
go to Mama.’

She almost dashed away, leaving Mrs Harraton somewhat
puzzled, though she could see that most of the guests seemed to be
well enough entertained, and undismayed by the possible defection
of the Winsford clan. Her brother particularly so, she noted in
disgust.

In fact the baron, in the thick of his racing cronies, was
trying to ward off the burgeoning interest in his latest
acquisition.

‘
Come now, Chid, no need to be shy. All friends here, ain’t
we?’ one gentleman offered, his jovial laughter very much at one
with the bulk of his protruding stomach.

‘
In breeding for the turf, there is no such thing as
friends, Billy,’ said Sir Charles Bunbury with austerity. ‘If there
were, we’d have no need for the Club.’

Lord Egremont, who boasted at Petworth the biggest stud in
the country, agreed with him. ‘You keep your own counsel, Chid. I
would.’

‘
Lord, yes,’ Clermont put in, shuddering. ‘The qualms I
suffered over Aimwell until I had him safely on the
ground.’

Aimwell had won the Derby for Lord Clermont the previous
year. His fears were not without foundation. The turf was by no
means free from dishonesty and cheating, or even downright
crime.

‘
Stuff and nonsense,’ scoffed Billy Bolsover. ‘There’d be no
racing at all if we all went in fear of our entries. Why, I have
never had an instant’s concern over any of my nags.’

‘
You’ve never had an instant’s concern over anything,
Billy,’ Chiddingly said, grinning, ‘bar what you put in your
belly.’

There was a shout of laughter in which Bolsover himself
heartily joined. He was almost as short as he was stout and
presented so comical a figure in his tight stretched breeches and
his long bob wig that he was obliged to endure much chaffing. But
he did so very good-naturedly and never took offence, so that none
ever had a bad word to say of Billy.

This did not prevent Bunbury, the perpetual president of
the Jockey Club, from setting him straight.

‘
All very well, Billy, but Clermont’s in the right of it.
You would not credit the complaints we get, of grooms riding on the
wrong side of the post, or a jockey crimping his mount to throw the
race.’

‘
Yes by God,’ averred Egremont. ‘And what of Miss
Nightingale at Boroughbridge? Died the Sunday before the race and
they found two pounds of duck-shot in her stomach.’

Several men nodded, and Sir Charles, who had a longer
memory, reminded them of earlier atrocities.

‘
There was Tosspot given a dose of physic at Scarborough,
and Rosebud poisoned at York.’

‘
Yes, yes, but these are isolated cases,’ Bolsover objected,
still smiling. ‘Great God, there is not one of us here would dream
of such a thing.’

‘
Oh, isn’t there just?’ muttered Chiddingly, casting a
darkling glance across at another group.

On the fringes of this, one man, tall, with a hawk-like
countenance, hovered as if he did not belong. The other men had no
difficulty interpreting this cryptic remark. Lord Goole’s racing
career had been summarily terminated by the Jockey Club committee
only last year for cheating practices, and this hard core of turf
notables cast repulsive looks at the man whom they had
cold-shouldered into seeking other company than their
own.

‘
Come, come, you are all very gloomy,’ chided
Billy in heartening tones. ‘And for all that Chid may choose to say
nothing, it is very evident that we all know
something
.’

His little baby-blue eyes twinkled merrily at the baron and
there was a general laugh and an easing of the
atmosphere.

‘
I suppose you could not help but do so,’ Chiddingly agreed.
‘Though I’d give a monkey to know how you came by your
knowledge.’

‘
What do you take us for, Chid, a parcel of noddies?’
laughed Bolsover. ‘Can’t send a whole collection of Arab horseflesh
off to Tatts without raising a lot of questions.’

‘
Clatterbridge!’ Chiddingly said in disgust. ‘What a
blabbermouth the man is. What did he say?’

But it appeared that the head groom had been discreet.
Only, from a man usually given to chatter easily about his master’s
stables, his firmly closed lips had led everyone to suppose there
must be something to hide.

Chiddingly, finding Bolsover disinclined to drop the
subject, inadvertently lent colour to this belief by making his
excuses and going off to find Fitzwarren. He left behind him a
speculative group who began to murmur among themselves.

Viscount Fitzwarren had meanwhile become the
centre of an animated circle of fashionables like himself. He was,
when Chiddingly joined them, engaged in examining a snuff box
presented for his judgement by Count Leopold, an impecunious
runaway from the Hanoverian court whose high rank and engaging
address had secured for him a place in the
beau monde.

‘
Fitz,
liebchen,
you say
nothing,’ he complained in an agony of apprehension. ‘But speak, I
pray you.’

The viscount did not raise his eyes from the object resting
in his palm. He traced a finger across the surface of the delicate
box, made of translucent shell with a pinkish pearly sheen, and set
in a silver filigree frame.

‘
Ten guineas you gave for it, you say?’

‘
I say he was robbed,’ commented Lord Buckfastleigh. ‘What
is the use of such a thing? It would break in an
instant.’

‘
Hush,’ reproved his lady. ‘You are not asked for your
opinion, Buck.’

‘
No, veritably,’ agreed the count, rolling a fiery
eye at him.
‘Mein
Gott
, that one should seek
from you the eye of beauty? Change first the
tailor!’

As his lordship’s abominable taste in dress was well
established, his over-embroidered suit of garish hue being no
exception tonight, this insult provoked a deal of
hilarity.

‘
I’ll lay a pony Fitz condemns it, then,’ snapped
Buck.

‘
No one would take you, Buck.’ Chiddingly had entered the
lists. ‘Fitz never condemns anything. You should know
that.’

‘
Oh, you’re there, are you? Well, I’ll thank you
to stick to horses and leave beauty alone.’ Buckfastleigh grinned.
‘Unless you care to furnish the name of
your
tailor to
Leopold.’

The count shuddered eloquently, but Chiddingly merely
smiled at the titters about him. He was too used to Fitz’s comments
on his careless dress to take offence.

Fitz himself, though smiling at the raillery of his
friends, had continued to scrutinise the snuff box. At last he
raised his head and everyone fell into respectful
silence.

‘
Well, Leopold.’

Count Leopold held his breath. The last time he had
presented a very unusual fan to Fitz, the Arbiter had smiled
faintly, said ‘Enchanting!’ in a bored tone and walked away,
leaving the crestfallen count to the comfort or laughter of his
friends. Leopold had ripped the offending fan to shreds.

‘
Name your price,’ Fitz said softy.

Leopold flung up his hands with a joyous shout and there
was a spontaneous outbreak of applause. The count named no price,
but took back the box and turned to relay his excited triumph to
the confounded Buckfastleigh. For Fitz, as was well known, never
bought anything. No matter the price named, he would insist that
the owner kept it on the score of not wishing to deprive them of
it.

‘
You know, if I ever did buy one of those things,’ he
murmured, as he strolled away with Chiddingly, ‘I have a strong
suspicion my opinion would be severely devalued.’

‘
What
opinion?’ his friend mocked. ‘And where is your precious
Miss Winsford? I thought this was to be her
debut.’

‘
I am at a loss to account for her absence,’ frowned Fitz,
looking towards the big double doors at the end of the
ballroom.

The room was so large that it was not that
difficult to see them, in spite of the mass of groups of persons in
the way, and the bobbing of feathers, fringes and ribbons on the
ladies’ overlarge hats which were
de rigueur
even with
full dress.