Miss Darby's Duenna (3 page)

“I say, Felix,” remarked Harry, elbowing aside a Cit who, overcome with adoration, had pressed forward and consequently blocked Sir Harry’s view. “Dashed if she ain’t the most delectable morsel I’ve ever clapped eyes on!”

“No argument from me. Not that we’re likely to clap anything else on her,” Mr. Wrexham added morosely.

“What do you mean?” asked Sir Harry, his attention momentarily diverted from the stage.

“Islington,” was Mr. Wrexham’s reply. “She’s been under the duke’s protection for the last twelvemonth.”

Sir Harry’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You don’t say! I thought perhaps she favored Mannerly.”

“Thought so, myself. If you ask me, there’s something dashed havey-cavey about the whole affair. Happened just before you left town, as I recall. Perhaps you remember. Mannerly suddenly took himself off to the Continent, leaving Islington a clear field. Know anything about it?”

Sir Harry turned back to the stage, concealing the telltale flush that stained his cheeks. “No, Felix. Not a thing.”

By the time the final curtain fell, Sir Harry had had occasion to recall the arrival of his sister and his future bride. However, a glance at his pocket watch informed him that he would not be thanked for calling on them at this late hour. And so when Mr. Wrexham suggested that they look in at his club, Sir Harry was quick to agree—a profitable enterprise which left him, in the chill gray hours just before dawn, some one hundred guineas to the better. It was only natural that he stayed abed until well into the afternoon to recover from his night of merriment, and so it was that, when the belated bridegroom finally presented himself in Curzon Street, he was met with the information that Mrs. Darby, Miss Darby, and Miss Hawthorne were not at home.

* * * *

If Miss Darby was disappointed in her lack of a reception, her sentiments were not shared by her mama.   In fact, Mrs. Darby congratulated herself on her forethought in writing to all her London acquaintances, for invitations began to arrive in Curzon Street even before she and her charges had taken up residence there. Consequently, their first full day in the Metropolis was filled to overflowing, the morning hours being spent in consultation with Madame Girot, one of London’s most fashionable modistes, while the afternoon was devoted to paying calls on the aforementioned acquaintances. Arriving at the town residence of Lady Bainbridge, Mrs. Darby and her charges were greeted with every evidence of enthusiasm by Mrs. Darby’s long-ago school friend.

“Elinor Darby, as I live and breathe!” exclaimed her ladyship warmly as the trio was ushered into a modish saloon furnished in airy shades of blue. “How long has it been? And this must be your Olivia,” she concluded, grasping Georgina’s hands.

“No, no,” protested Mrs. Darby. “This is Miss Hawthorne, whose brother is to marry my daughter.
This is
Olivia.”

“Why, she is charming!” cried Lady Bainbridge, transferring her effusions to the proper object. “I’m sure I wish you very happy, Miss Darby. But who is the fortunate young man?”

“Sir Harry Hawthorne,” replied the beaming bride. Her smile dimmed somewhat as she added, “I regret he could not accompany us today, but—”

“We shall do quite well without him,” declared Lady Bainbridge, who had seen too many
ton
marriages to wonder at the prospective bridegroom’s absence. “But you must meet my other guests. Elinor, you must remember Lady Sefton and Mrs. Drummond-Burrell; ladies, Mrs. Darby, her daughter Miss Darby, and Miss Hawthorne. Miss Darby is to marry Miss Hawthorne’s elder brother, Sir Harry Hawthorne.”

Mrs. Darby was in alt. Here under her dear friend’s roof were not one, but
two
of Almack’s patronesses! Wreathed in smiles, she urged her two charges forward.

“I well remember granting your elder daughter a voucher for Almack’s, Mrs. Darby,” said Lady Sefton, nodding a greeting. “A lovely girl, as I recall. She married Lord Clairmont, did she not?”

“Yes, and now Liza is in the family way,” replied the proud grandmother-to-be. “She hopes to present her husband with an heir by Whitsunday.”

“But how unfortunate for all our young men, Miss Darby, to discover that you, too, are already taken!” protested the patroness with a smile, as the new arrivals seated themselves on a sofa of pale blue damask.

Mrs. Drummond-Burrell, generally held to be the starchiest of the seven patronesses in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact that she was the only one of that select group without a title, remained silent throughout this exchange, but fixed Georgina with a piercing gaze, as if casting  about  in  her  mind   for  a  masculine  counterpart. “Hawthorne... Hawthorne. I don’t believe I am familiar with the name,” she declared at last.

Olivia was momentarily surprised by the patroness’s disavowal of her beloved, since she had often heard from Sir Harry’s own lips of his intimacy with the highest of the
haul ton.
Then she smiled. How very like Harry, and how devastated he would be to know that London’s most exclusive sorority did not remember his name!

“Of course you know Sir Harry, Clementina,” Lady Sefton prompted, fixing her fellow patroness with a speaking look. “If I mistake not, Miss Darby’s fiancé is a particular intimate of Lord Mannerly.”

“Ah!” uttered Mrs. Drummond-Burrell cryptically.

“Lord Mannerly?” echoed Olivia. “I have never heard mention of the name.”

“You will,” predicted Almack’s haughtiest patroness sagely. “If you remain in London for any length of time, you will.”

“And what of you, Miss Hawthorne?” put in Lady Bainbridge, perhaps a bit too quickly. “Have you any matrimonial ambitions?”

“Indeed, I have,” replied that young lady, jutting her chin forward in a manner which could only be described as mulish. “I intend to marry the vicar of our parish, Mr. James Collier.”

Lady Sefton shot Mrs. Darby a sympathetic glance. “I see,” she said, and Mrs. Darby was left with the impression that she saw a great deal more than Georgina had intended. “Still, I think I had best send you vouchers to Almack’s. Perhaps, Miss Hawthorne, you will consent to
waltz
with some of our young men, even if you do not wish to
marry
them.”

Georgina could not let this opportunity slip past. “Oh, but I could not! Mr. Collier says—”

“Your ladyship is too kind,” interrupted Mrs. Darby, sparing the patronesses the good reverend’s most unflattering opinion of the daring German dance. “I am sure my daughter and Miss Hawthorne would be delighted to attend. Indeed, no young lady’s Season may be judged a success without it.”

Having achieved this
coup,
Mrs. Darby decided not to press her luck. Precisely fifteen minutes after their arrival, she herded her charges into the carriage and set the horses’ heads toward Curzon Street, before Georgina could destroy both young ladies’ chances with some tactless—though undoubtedly pious—remark. Upon their return, they were greeted with the news that Sir Harry had called and planned to return the following afternoon at five o’clock, at which time he hoped Miss Darby would consent to drive with him in the park. This buoyed that young lady’s spirits even more than the projected visit to Almack’s, and she retired to her room that night with a much lighter heart.

Alas, the reunion was not an entirely felicitous one. Olivia had dressed with special care in a very fetching carriage gown of rose-colored lutestring, and her appearance was enough to inspire more than one gentleman to inquire as to the identity of the deuced pretty chit riding with young Hawthorne. Unfortunately Sir Harry, absorbed in pointing out the various perfections of his newly-acquired phaeton, was oblivious to the charms of his fair passenger.

In point of fact, Sir Harry was unaccustomed to paying court to ladies of quality, particularly ladies whom he had known since they were in leading strings, and he found himself quite at a loss. So long as he was boasting of his cattle or entertaining his future bride with such
on dits
as might be judged fitting for a lady’s ears, he could forget about the betrothal and think of her as the childhood friend with whom he had spent so many carefree days. It was to this less intimidating person, therefore, that he addressed his apologies.

“Deuced sorry I didn’t get by to see you last night, Livvy,” he said awkwardly, his eyes not quite meeting those of his fiancée. “A previous engagement, you know. I trust you had a pleasant trip?”

“Well enough, although a bit fatiguing. It seems Mr. Collier has much to say about the evils of the Metropolis,” she confessed with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

Sir Harry’s awkwardness vanished, and he grinned back at her. “In other words, Georgie bored you cock-eyed! Depend upon it, she’ll drop her Friday-faced airs the first time she sets foot in Almack’s.”

“Which may be sooner than you think,” replied Olivia with no small satisfaction. “We met Lady Sefton and Mrs. Drummond-Burrell yesterday at Lady Bainbridge’s, and they have promised us vouchers.”

Sir Harry, well aware of the capriciousness of Almack’s patronesses in granting the coveted vouchers, was impressed. “You don’t mean it!”

“I do! Although I confess it was a very near thing for a moment, when Georgina started to favor the patronesses with Mr. Collier’s views on the waltz.”

Sir Harry gave a shout of laughter. “About its being an instrument of the devil? That
would
have set the cat amongst the pigeons, wouldn’t it?”

“I shudder to think of it!” replied Olivia, suiting the word to the deed. “But we have vouchers, and Mama says we may attend on Wednesday. Oh, Harry, would you escort us?”

Sir Harry looked askance at the wide blue eyes gazing eagerly up at him. The childhood friend had vanished, and in her place sat the future wife. He ran his finger inside a cravat which suddenly felt too tight.

“Er, I don’t know, Livvy,” he stammered. “There’s a prize fight at Tothill Fields, and I promised Felix—Mr. Wrexham, that is—that I’d go with him. Got a monkey on Molyneux, you know, so I—Hullo, I’ve got it! I’ll meet you there! That’s the ticket, Livvy,” he said, warming to this product of his own brain. “You go on to Almack’s with your mama and Georgie, and I’ll meet you there. Only promise to save me the first waltz!”

Chapter Three

Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES,
Don Quixote de la Mancha

Selwyn St. George, fifth marquess of Mannerly, leaned against the wall at Almack’s and studied the dancers with a bored mien. Certainly no one would have guessed by his saturnine countenance that his primary emotion was relief. He flicked open his enameled snuffbox, placed a small pinch of his signature blend on the inside of his wrist, and inhaled deeply. He had been foolish, he now realized, to imagine that one minor mishap with a greenhorn fresh from the wilds of Leicestershire would close Society’s doors against one of its most eligible bachelors.    If anyone recalled the circumstances surrounding his self-imposed exile from the Metropolis, they gave no outward sign.

But
he
remembered, and the bitter memory caused his black brows to draw together in a frown of such ferocity that one young lady, passing at that moment into his line of vision and supposing herself to be the object of his disapproval, fled to the safety of her mother’s arms. He had not spent his entire adult life cultivating an air of jaded sophistication only to have it destroyed in an instant by an impudent young pup still wet behind the ears. Not, he considered, that the pup in question had intentionally emptied his wineglass over the marquess’s head; in fact, he doubted the young man possessed that much bottom. No, young—what was his name? Harley? Hawley? Hawthorne? Whoever he was, he was merely trying to catch the eye of the beauteous Violetta, the same as every other male present at Covent Garden on that fateful evening. But far from deriving consolation from this knowledge, Lord Mannerly felt doubly humiliated. It was, after all, more enviable to be the object of a rival’s jealousy than merely a hapless victim of circumstance. At any rate, there had been nothing the marquess could do, since to call the young cub out would only have lent him consequence. And so he had quit Covent Garden without further ado, his fashionable Titus crop raining Madeira down his hitherto immaculate shirtfront. He had then made haste to Paris, where he might stroke his wounded
amour propre,
and where shortly thereafter he had heard that the fair Violetta had bestowed her considerable favors upon the Duke of Islington.

“Why, Selwyn, I had no idea you had returned to town,” remarked a rather dashing young matron, playfully rapping the marquess’s sleeve with her fan. “Have you come to inspect this year’s hopefuls? But you do not dance! Shall I help you find a partner?”

“Ever the matchmaker, eh, Emily?” he replied, raising Lady Cowper’s gloved hand to his lips with practiced grace. “An exercise in futility, as you surely must know by now. Nevertheless, in order to remain in your good graces, I will do my duty. You may introduce me to—” he paused, raising his quizzing glass to inspect the rainbow of pastel-clad young ladies whirling about the room.   At length his sweeping gaze settled on a dark-haired damsel in a gown of purest white shot with silver threads. “—That one.” He pointed his glass at the fortunate chosen.

“Miss Darby? She is something out of the common way, is she not? But,” added Lady Cowper, dimpling up at him, “I think it only fair to warn you not to entertain any matrimonial hopes where she is concerned. Miss Darby is already betrothed to Sir Harry Hawthorne.”

Lord Mannerly’s quizzing glass checked ever so briefly before he let it fall. Sir Harry Hawthorne? This, surely, was the intended bride of the young cub who had precipitated his abrupt departure from London. For the first time in many weeks, the marquess’s spirits lifted, then soared. How absurd, to think he had spent the better part of a year pouting over a blow to his pride! Selwyn St. George, fifth marquess of Mannerly, sulking over the loss of a bit of muslin who was no better than she should be! His Mannerly forebears must have been setting the family crypt awhirl! But no more. He was a Mannerly, and Mannerlys did not get embarrassed; they got even. As he eyed the dark-haired beauty in white, a plan began to form in his mind—a cunning, clever, brilliant plan. By God, he would teach the impudent young pup to make a fool of the marquess of Mannerly! He would have his revenge, and this nubile nymph was the key. Turning back to Lady Cowper, he flashed his most charming smile.