Perfecting Fiona (19 page)

‘It would be interesting to see what trifle they sent,’ said the duchess curiously. ‘The insult to our name was great.’ By which she meant that the present should therefore be valuable enough to cancel out that insult.

Mr Haddon slowly unwrapped the packet, revealing a flat square box of red morocco leather. The day was dark and rainy and the oil lamps in the saloon had been lit. He clicked open the box and held it under the light of an oil lamp on a console table beside him.

Blazing with fire, red, wicked as sin, the large ruby shone with an evil light.

The duke and duchess rose as one person. Mr Haddon rose at the same time and the three stared down at the jewel.

‘Gracious,’ said the duchess faintly. ‘Why must they work when this is worth a king’s ransom?’

‘They have a few items,’ lied Mr Haddon, ‘which have been in their family for a long time. They would do anything rather than part with them, but their reputation is dearer to them than any jewel.’

‘We accept,’ said the duchess breathlessly. ‘Pray tell Miss Amy and Miss Effy to call on me this afternoon so we can discuss arrangements for the wedding reception – to be held here, of course!’

Mr Haddon bowed and handed her the box. Like twins, the duke and duchess sat down on the sofa together and gazed at the jewel.

‘Pray do not refer to the jewel,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘The Tribbles were afraid you might consider their great generosity a trifle vulgar.’

‘No, no,’ they chorused, still looking at the ruby. ‘We are vastly pleased.’

Mr Haddon bowed his way out. He could hardly wait to get back to Holles Street to tell the sisters the glad news.

Before he entered the drawing room, he could feel the mourning atmosphere of the house had changed. When he entered, he found the reason. Lord Peter and Fiona were sitting together, looking happy and relaxed. Effy and Amy, who had finally plucked up their courage to interrupt the pair, had just heard the news of the Prince Regent’s intention to attend the wedding.

In a mild voice, Mr Haddon told them that the Duke and Duchess of Penshire had forgiven all.

When Amy and Effy’s cries of rapture had died down, Lord Peter asked curiously, ‘How did you manage it, Mr Haddon?’

‘Your parents were most forgiving and understanding,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘I merely conveyed the Misses Tribble’s apologies and presented them with a trifle.’

‘A present!’ said Effy. ‘We must repay you. What was it?’

‘A little bagatelle I happened to have at home,’ said Mr Haddon. ‘A nonsense, I assure you.’

Lord Peter looked shrewdly at the nabob. He knew his parents and knew the present must have cost Mr Haddon dear.

Mr Haddon returned Lord Peter’s gaze with a slight look of warning in his steady grey eyes which only Fiona and Lord Peter noticed.

Amy and Effy were hugging each other in delight. Lord Peter’s eyes turned to the sisters. Had Mr Haddon’s gesture been purely altruistic, or was he in love with one of the strange pair? It could be Effy with her silver hair and dainty ways and delicate skin. But there was a gallantry about Amy and a directness that might appeal to the nabob.

Mr Haddon fell silent. He was worrying again about the future of his old friends. The wedding would be a social success, yes, but a social success for Fiona Macleod. Society would not soon forget that vulgar advertising display in the Park. Would anyone now dare to send their daughter into such a household? Mr Haddon could only pray that somewhere in England there was some family desperate enough. It took a whole three months for his prayers even to begin to be answered.

Squire Simon Wraxall should have been a happy man. He had a handsome house, broad, prosperous acres, and one of the most beautiful daughters in the county. Delilah had recently inherited a handsome fortune from her aunt. She had everything any lady could desire – money, looks, and a comfortable home.

Except for one thing. Delilah Wraxall was twenty-three and still unwed.

The squire walked faster as if hoping to outstride his troubles. It was his late wife’s fault, he thought gloomily. Whatever had possessed the wretched woman to insist on christening the girl, Delilah? Just asking for trouble.

And the trouble had been going on for some time. On her seventeenth birthday, Delilah had been a different creature, happy, gentle and kind. She had been all set to become engaged to a baronet, Sir Charles Digby. Sir Charles was a handsome young man, admittedly rather cold and over-elegant, and Delilah had obviously been in love with him. Then Sir Charles had gone away to London and, on his return, had announced he had enlisted in the army. He did not call on Delilah before his departure. She had gone about for months, silent and downcast. And then she had begun to live up to her name.

Surely there were no more hearts in the county of Kent left for her to break, thought the squire savagely. He found he had come to the outskirts of the village of Hoppelton, which boasted a good inn. He decided to go into the tap and comfort himself with a pint of brown ale.

There was a familiar gorilla-like figure sitting in the bay at the window. The squire, whose eyesight was not very good, moved forward for a better look and then recognized the squat figure and heavy features of the Honourable Geoffrey Coudrey.

The squire hailed him with delight. He had been a close friend of Cully’s father and had known Cully when he had been in short coats.

‘What brings you here?’ asked the squire when they had settled down at the window table facing each other.

‘I’m on the road back to London. I’ve sold my place here to Lord Peter Havard,’ said Cully. ‘He’s getting married and wants to settle down.’

‘Thought that would never happen,’ said the squire. ‘Bit of a rake.’

‘Mostly gossip,’ said Cully. ‘Mind you, he’s marrying a fine girl. Unusual. Background of trade and as rich as Croesus.’

‘Where on earth did he meet this girl?’

‘There’s a couple of old eccentrics called Tribble, twin sisters,
bon ton
, got a house in London. It seems they bring out girls damned as being difficult. Not that anyone seems to know anything difficult about Miss Macleod. Sweetest little charmer you ever saw. Still, the Tribbles got her into Peter’s orbit, and with her sort of background that was quite an achievement.’

‘What do they mean by ‘‘difficult’’?’ asked the squire, studying his glass of ale.

‘Lot of gossip about that. Seems parents these days spoil the girls something dreadful. Still lash the boys to pieces, but the little misses are not expected to do anything but lisp and sew and look pretty – not like the old days,’ went on thirty-year-old Cully with all the sententiousness of an ancient, ‘where they had to know how to do everything better than their servants. Stands to reason, their minds get weak and full of fancies.’

‘So what do these women do?’

‘Well, they run a sort of school for manners, teach ’em how to behave prettily as well as seeing they are expert at all the accomplishments – anyway that’s what I gathered. They never let up, go on right to the wedding. Last time I called on little Miss Macleod – there she was, bent over her sewing which she said she hated, but that the sisters would not let her slack on it.’

‘Interesting,’ said the squire, affecting a yawn. ‘Where do these sisters reside? Some suburb?’

‘No, smack bang in the middle of town. Holles Street, off Oxford Street.’

The squire changed the subject and began to talk of crop rotation and Cully listened with all the boredom of a man who had recently renounced living in the country and everything to do with it.

Yvette, the Tribbles’ French dressmaker, sat in her little room off the top landing and stitched away at Fiona’s wedding gown. Another wedding gown, thought Yvette with a sigh. She knew the Tribbles would stay loyal to their servants as long as their money lasted and would not turn her off. Provided that they continued to find husbands for young ladies, Yvette could look forward to stitching more wardrobes for the Season and more wedding gowns for the successful.

But Yvette knew her work to be excellent. She knew that Fiona’s gowns had excited interest and envy because generous-hearted Miss Macleod had told her so. Yvette longed to have enough money to start her own salon. Her hands lay idly on the folds of white satin as she saw in her mind’s eye a neat shop with her name, ‘Madame Yvette’ – ladies running businesses always affected a married title whether married or not – over the door, and perhaps, who knew? a royal coat of arms with ‘By Appointment to Her Majesty’ on top of that.

Fortune had already smiled on her by finding her the job with the Tribbles. It had seemed like a miracle when Miss Amy had taken her out of that overcrowded slum in King’s Cross where she lived cheek-by-jowl with other impoverished French emigrés, trying to eke out a living. Her parents had been of gentle birth, fleeing their homeland during the terror of the French Revolution as so many others had done. Her mother had died after giving birth to her in this foreign country and her father had not lived much longer.

Yvette fell to stitching again. One day, perhaps, fortune would smile on her once more. In the meantime, dreams were free.

Despite the Tribbles’ worries, Fiona, she who had been so terrified of marriage, felt she was being borne towards the day of her wedding on a cloud of happiness. After her wedding, she and her new husband were to travel to Paris and then Rome. Everything was already being corded up in trunks for her journey, from a portable dressing-case to ‘louse-proof’ petticoats, which Fiona secretly meant to get rid of as soon as she could because they emitted a strong smell of creosote.

Wrapped in her own golden world, she failed to notice that Amy and Effy were becoming snappish with worry and fatigue. The wedding preparations were lavish, the Tribbles determined to salvage their reputations. But now that the sisters had achieved a suitable match for Fiona, the Burgesses appeared to think they had been given enough money to cover everything. Amy, because of her recent disgrace, had lost a great deal of her courage and felt she could not ask them for more.

By the day of the wedding, Amy and Effy finally woke up to the fact that once the wedding was over they would have barely enough to live on, let alone to keep a houseful of servants. Fretful with worry, they went on with the last-minute preparations, trying to look cheerful but dreading the vista of poverty that stretched out in front of them again.

Their worry showed in their dress. They had both told Yvette not to make them anything new. Something they already had in their wardrobes would suffice.

Although the Duke and Duchess of Penshire were supplying their home and servants, they had, it transpired, expected the Tribbles to pay for the catering, the hire of extra staff, and the decorations. The bill from Gunter, the confectioner’s alone made Amy ill every time she thought of it.

Mr and Mrs Burgess were in residence in Holles Street, poking their noses everywhere and criticizing everything.

Amy and Effy nearly forgot all their worries when Fiona came down the stairs in her wedding gown. Knowing that unrelieved white would have made Fiona appear too colourless, Yvette had embellished the low neckline of the gown with silk vine leaves and had carried out the vine-leaf theme in delicate embroidery around the hem of the gown.

Mr Burgess fussed forward to lead Fiona out to the carriage. Mrs Burgess followed, then Effy and Amy and Mr Haddon. Mr Haddon was worrying about the cost of the wedding, but tried to comfort himself with the thought that surely the Burgesses must be paying for everything.

A clerk dressed in black coat and knee breeches bowed in front of Amy and Effy as they walked outside and stood at the top of the steps. ‘The Misses Tribble?’ he asked.

Amy nodded curtly and he handed her a letter with a plain seal.

She climbed into an open carriage behind the wedding carriage with Effy and Mr Haddon.

‘What’s in that letter?’ asked Mr Haddon curiously.

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ said Amy, turning her head away. ‘No doubt someone’s dunning us for something.’

Mr Haddon held out his hand. ‘I will read it, Miss Amy. It might be more work for you.’

‘As you will,’ said Amy, surrendering the letter with a shrug, ‘but that fellow was a lawyer’s clerk if ever I saw one.’

Mr Haddon opened the letter, read it, and then held it wordlessly out to Amy.

Amy took it, squinted at it, read it and then let out a whoop like a Red Indian. Effy snatched it, read it, and began to laugh with excitement. It was from Fiona’s lawyers. The Misses Tribble were to submit all bills for the wedding to them and they would be paid by Miss Macleod, who gained control of her estate on the day of her marriage. Miss Macleod had further instructed her lawyer to send a draft of fifteen thousand guineas.

‘Amy, sit down!’ screamed Effy. ‘You’ll overturn us!’ For Amy was doing a war dance in the middle of the carriage, waving her arms and whooping with delight.

‘Disgraceful,’ said Mrs Burgess, turning back after staring at Amy. ‘Utterly disgraceful. I wish I had never sent you to them, Fiona. It must have been horrible.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Fiona, ‘arriving at the Tribbles was like coming out of hell. They have a gallantry and generosity of spirit far beyond your imagining.’

‘Well!’ exclaimed Mrs Burgess. ‘I was never so insulted . . .’ And she was still nagging and complaining and exclaiming when they arrived at the church.

Amy and Effy and Mr Haddon wept all through the service, and the rest of the guests, not to be outdone in sensibility, wept as well, including the Prince Regent, who was heard to say it was all too demned affecting for words. It was the most deliciously mournful wedding of the year.

‘Quite like a hanging,’ said Lord Peter, helping his wife into the carriage after the ceremony. Fiona smiled at the watching sea of faces and tossed her wedding bouquet high in the air. Amy leaped for the sky with remarkable agility, caught the bouquet, and held it to her bosom. She took a little pink rose and shyly handed it to Mr Haddon, then screamed as Effy stuck her hat-pin into her sister’s elbow.

Mr Haddon admonished them both and reminded them they still had their reputations to recover. After that, Amy and Effy behaved with ladylike decorum.