The Scandal of the Season (6 page)

“Look out there!” the owner cried, and a dozen ladies and gentlemen turned toward Teresa. She went scarlet, and pointed speechlessly to the monkey. Lord Petre swatted the man away with a wave of his hand, the other resting on the hilt of his sword.

 

His face changed from playfulness to anger when he saw that his friend had gone. “Where is Douglass?” he demanded. Arabella saw that in the place of idle amusement was a look of awakened concentration. “We had not been together five minutes before I saw you,” he added. He looked around, but his companion had disappeared.

“Did you see where my friend Douglass went, Miss Fermor?” he demanded again. Arabella shook her head coldly, put out by this change in Lord Petre's manner. He stood looking at the ground in silence, and then continued to look around, seeming for a moment as though he might walk away altogether.

But suddenly he collected himself. “There's nothing to be done; I suppose he must be meeting an acquaintance,” he said, and made an effort to smile. But Arabella believed that he had not put Douglass out of his mind.

“Will you do me the honor of introducing your companion?” Lord Petre asked after a moment.

Arabella was disappointed. Perhaps he had not singled her out after all. What if he were to smile at her cousin as he had smiled at her? In a constrained voice she said, “I present to you my cousin, Miss Teresa Blount of Mapledurham.”

Lord Petre looked up with real interest, and exclaimed, “Mapledurham! A lovely spot, on the prettiest elbow of the river. I envy your growing up in such a place, madam.”

Arabella frowned; she had forgotten Mapledurham. Of course Lord Petre would know of it. She found herself wanting to tell him that Mapledurham was Teresa's brother's—that her cousin had no money of her own—and was surprised by such immediate jealousy.

Teresa, for her own part, sensed that her moment had arrived at last.

She laughed brightly, but, because she had been silent beforehand, it sounded much louder than she had meant it to. “But you grew up at Ingatestone, my lord,” she said, “a place of which the whole world has heard a great deal. What a beautiful park you have there.”

Lord Petre nodded at her and said, “Your brother has visited my family there, has he not? Do I recall that he is a fine sportsman?”

“Oh, yes, he is!” she said. “A wonderful rider.”

“You are a fond sister, I see,” he answered kindly. “And you, do you like to ride?”

“I rode with Michael very often at Mapledurham.”

“Teresa is being modest,” said Arabella, interrupting their conversation. “She is an excellent horsewoman. I hope that we shall see you ride in town, Teresa.”

The intervention had been well judged, since Arabella was well aware that Teresa did not have a horse in London.

“Do
you
ride, Miss Fermor?” Lord Petre asked her at last.

“I ride when I am in the country, but in town I sit only pillion,” she said. “If a woman in London is mounted alone upon a horse, she declares to the world that she wants for either a carriage or a cavalier. But pillion is another thing altogether. How pleasant to ride in the green shade of the park at noon, sitting comfortably behind one's companion, just as though one were about to drink bohea on a sofa at home.”

Petre nodded. “You paint an alluring scene, and one that tempts me to offer myself as your cavalier. But since you would hardly admire a man who could fall upon a trap that he had seen you set, I shall walk away, to leave it ready for another gentleman.”

Arabella's spirits rose gloriously once again. “If the world should ever see you trapped, my lord, I, at least, will know that the device must have been very well concealed,” she answered, biting her lip to suppress a smile.

“But I suspect that Teresa is in a hurry to be gone,” she said, turning toward her cousin. “We only came to buy gloves. Shall we go upstairs to Fowler's now, Teresa?”

“We need not linger at the Exchange at all,” Teresa answered mischievously, resentful that Arabella had made her the foil in her flirtation with Lord Petre. “Why do not we go to that shop in Cheapside where my mother gets her gloves?”

But Arabella was more than a match for her cousin. “Oh, I much prefer Fowler's,” she said. “The gloves are smarter, and they have newer stock. The other shop feels rather decrepit, don't you think?”

Lord Petre said that he would accompany them, and offered an arm to each of the girls, but he looked around distractedly as they climbed the stairs to the shops on the upper galleries.

“You are being maddeningly discreet, Teresa,” Arabella began, looking across Lord Petre as she did so. “I am wild to know which young men in the town are presently your suitors. I think it only fair that you should warn me of those admirers whom you wish particularly to avoid.”

Teresa answered her cousin crisply. “I wish to avoid them all, Arabella,” she said.

“I celebrate your discretion,” Arabella replied. “But remember that if a lady is
too
discreet, people begin to suspect that she has nothing to hide.”

“There is one acquaintance of mine, lately arrived in town, for whom I shall likely make an exception,” said Teresa, and Arabella saw that she glanced at Lord Petre to make sure that he was listening. “An old friend, and in a way to becoming famous. He is a poet.” She colored as she spoke.

Arabella answered, “Ha! I was certain that you had a secret. A poet! Perhaps he will make you immortal.”

“I believe that he does have every chance of success in his profession,” Teresa continued. “Tonson has published him already, and a much longer poem of his is soon to be printed. The
Tatler
has called him the new Denham.”

“What is this gentleman's name?” Arabella asked.

“Alexander Pope,” said Teresa, gaining confidence.

“Pope?” said Arabella, amusement immediately entering her voice. “You mean that strange little man whom you know from the country?” Teresa gave a scowl. Of course Arabella would remember his crippled back.

“Yes…I suppose that must be he,” Teresa replied.

“I thought you said he was sickly,” said Arabella.

“Mr. Pope is not my suitor, Arabella. I mention him as an old friend of my family's.”

“Mr. Alexander Pope is a young poet of some note,” said Lord Petre.

But Arabella was not listening. “It would be great fun to be the heroine of a poem by someone very dashing,” she said. “Suckling, or Lovelace—or Rochester, even though he was so wicked. ‘Pope' has such a morbid ring to it.”

“Do not listen to Miss Fermor,” Lord Petre intervened. “She would do well to spare her censure of a man whose only fault lies in a misfortune he suffered as a child. Remember that excellent adage, Miss Fermor: charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”

“That is one of those preposterous falsehoods that is put about from time to time, but which no one ever actually believes,” Arabella replied. “What a prude it makes you sound! A man in
your
position, my lord, could hardly wish to discover that merit is the true source of human felicity.”

Lord Petre looked as though he had a retort ready for this observation, but he was prevented from delivering it by their arrival at Fowler's glove shop. The two girls walked up to the counter, and the shop-wench, whose name was Molly, eyed them with a resentful air. But Arabella noticed with interest that she gave a saucy sort of curtsy and a smile of half-familiarity to Lord Petre, who responded to neither overture, giving no sign that he had seen her. Instantly Arabella was curious. It was obvious that they knew each other, despite Lord Petre's affectations to the contrary.

Molly, for her part, had sighed when she saw Arabella enter. She was a keen observer of her customers, and she knew what girls such as these were like. She guessed that Arabella would walk around talking to her friend, taking down the leather gloves and dropping them carelessly upon the tables. She would have one box brought out and then another, would turn the goods over once, and ask coldly for another color that they did not stock. She would pick up the most expensive fan and flounce it open and closed, knowing that Molly's wages would be docked if it were torn. And then she would leave, buying at most a sixpenny ribbon for a hood that she would never wear again.

But Arabella had no desire to linger in the shop today. Briskly she chose three pairs of kidskin gloves, ordered ostrich feathers for her spring muff, and then waited while Teresa bought two pairs of the same gloves for herself. As the girls walked away, Lord Petre turned back quietly to give Molly a shilling. But she took it with none of her usual fluttering and flattery, seeing that he was no more disposed for distraction than Arabella. Instead she bobbed her head neatly, and Lord Petre joined the others.

They stood in the gallery in an uncertain little group, looking away from one another and toward a stout lady who was holding up a sleeve of a delicate striped fabric.

“Garden silks, ladies, Italian silks, brocades, cloth of silver, cloth of gold, very fine mantua silks, any Geneva velvet, English velvet, velvets embossed…” she called out.

Arabella said irritably, “What a fearful noise that woman is making. The trouble with this place is that one cannot get out of it so easily as one can enter. I suppose one must grant that point, at least, to the divines who would liken London to the fires of Hell.”

“Infernal as the Royal Exchange is, Miss Fermor,” Lord Petre answered, “it has yet one advantage over Hell: one can make a quick escape by chair or car. May I hand you into a carriage?”

He led them out through the back of the building, where hackney cabs were to be found.

There was a crush of sweaty, smelly men out here: Frenchmen doing business with Jews; traders shouting at the Dutch merchants about their cargo from the Indies; whores eagerly pressing up to apply for the gentlemen's custom.

The ladies walked in front, Lord Petre bringing up the rear.

They were nearly into the street at last, when they heard Lord Petre exclaim, “Douglass—you are here!”

Arabella turned around to see the man with the sable collar. He was smiling as he walked away from a fellow who called out a remark in colloquial French that Arabella did not catch. But as soon as Douglass saw Lord Petre and his companions his face assumed its habitual coolness, which, Arabella was forced to acknowledge, rendered his features all the more handsome. He walked quickly up to Lord Petre, and Arabella watched him press in closely, murmuring, “That was our man…”

But Lord Petre motioned toward the women. “Where have you been all this time, Douglass?” he demanded.

Douglass acknowledged Arabella and Teresa, and said, with a smile that announced his intention to provoke, “I got trapped in a crowd of bum-firking Italians! You were in the gallery of shopgirls above no doubt. It is a merchant's seraglio up there. For five shillings every one of them is ready to obey the laws of nature. And even better, for a guinea she'll disobey them.” Arabella's lip twitched, but Teresa turned away.

Lord Petre looked irritated. As he pushed a lock of hair from his face, Arabella noticed how like a small boy's it looked alongside the other man's harder features.

Lord Petre changed the subject. “I am going to Pontack's restaurant,” he said. “I have an appetite, and I am disposed to eat a goose or two for my dinner. Shall we make a party of it, Douglass, and order a calves' head hash and a ragout?”

“Are the ladies to join you, my lord?” Douglass asked.

To Arabella's surprise, Lord Petre did not turn to them with an immediate invitation, but hesitated before he said, “I hope that I may say yes to Douglass's question.”

Arabella answered his look haughtily. “I never dine while it is still light outside,” she said. “And I could not begin to think of eating again until after four in any case—I was drinking chocolate in my nightgown at eleven.”

“Your hair in a nice disorder and your gown ruffled with great care, no doubt,” said Douglass with a playful look. “Miss Fermor wishes us to know that she receives her admirers in her chamber, like all modern ladies of fashion. If the practice of seeing morning visitors in bed did not permit a woman to look so temptingly undressed, no one could bear the discomfort of sitting in unmade sheets until noon.”

Lord Petre caught Arabella's eye and smiled an apology. “Happily for us both, the eye of the mind may visit Miss Fermor in her nightgown at any hour,” he said. “For that is a luxury which must compensate for the total improbability of our ever seeing either of these ladies again in anything but their outdoor clothes, and then at a great distance. Even if Miss Fermor and Miss Blount were to fall in with the remarkable habit of receiving visitors in bed, they would admit only their most intimate acquaintance. After today, I am certain that neither lady will be ‘in' to either one of us again.”

Since a man of Lord Petre's experience could not be suspected of delivering a speech like this without full knowledge of its likely effect, Arabella reflected that the excursion to the Exchange had been a great success.