Джорджетт Хейер - The Masqueraders

Robin sailed up to her and swept a practised curtsey.

“Your memory fails you, Marthe. Behold me — Prudence!”

She gave his arm a playful slap. “My memory, alors! No, no, m’sieur, you are not yet large enough to be mademoiselle.”

“Oh, unkind!” Robin lamented, and kissed her roundly.

“Marthe, there is need of secrecy, you understand?” My lady spoke urgently.

“Bien, madame;I do not forget.” Marthe put a finger to her lips. “Tenez,it must be myself to wait always upon the false mademoiselle. I shall see to it.” She nodded in a business-like fashion. “John is with you yet?”

“Be very sure of it,” Robin said.

“All goes well, then. No one need suspect. I go to attend to the bedchambers.” She went off with a rolling gait, and was found later in Robin’s room, twitting the solemn manservant.

From my Lady Lowestoft much might be learned of Society and Politics. She moved in the Polite World, and made something of a figure in it, for she had sufficient wealth, some charm, and a vivacity of manner that was foreign and therefore intriguing. There sat withal a shrewd head on her shoulders.

She was a widow of no very late date; indeed she had interred Sir Roger Lowestoft with all decency little more than a year back, and having for a space mourned him with suitable propriety she had now launched upon a single life again, which promised to be very much more entertaining than had been the married state. It must be admitted Sir Roger was little loss to his lady. She had been heard to say that his English respectability gave her a cramp in the soul. Certainly she had been a volatile creature in the days of her spinsterhood. Then came Sir Roger, and laid his sober person, and all his substantial goods at her feet. She picked them up.

“I am no longer so young as I was, voyez vous,”she had said to her friends. “The time comes for me to range myself.”

Accordingly she married Sir Roger, and as an Ambassador’s lady she conducted herself admirably, and achieved popularity.

She was ensconced now in her house in Arlington Street, with fat Marthe to watch over her, a monkey to sit in the folds of her skirts, as Fashion prescribed, and a black page to run her errands. She entertained on the lavish scale, her acquaintances were many, and she had beside quite a small host of admirers.

“You understand, these English consider me in the light of an original,” she exclaimed to Prudence. “I have an instant success, parole d’honneur!”

She was off without awaiting the reply, on to another subject. Conversationally she fluttered like a butterfly, here, there, and everywhere. She had much to say of the late executions: there were upflung hands of horror, and some pungent exclamations in the French tongue. She spoke of his Grace of Cumberland, not flatteringly; she had a quick ripple of laughter for his ugly nickname, and the instant after a brimming pair of eyes when she thought how he had earned it. Blood! England must needs reek of it! She gave a shudder. But there must be no more executions: that was decided: no, nor risings either. All that was folly; folly the most outrageous. Peste,how came the Merriots in so forlorn a galère?..

They sat alone at the dinner-table; the lackeys had withdrawn, and even the little black page had been sent away. Prudence answered my lady, since Robin sat silent. “Oh, believe me, ma’am, we ask ourselves! The old gentleman had a maggot in his brain belike. A beau geste, I am persuaded; nothing else.”

“But stupid, my child, stupid! There was never a hope. Moreover, we do very well with little fierce George. Bah, why plunge all in disorder for a pretty princeling?”

“He had the right.” Robin spoke sombrely.

“Quant à ça,I know nothing of the matter, my little one. You English, you chose for yourselves a foreigner. Bien! But you must not turn against him now. No, no, that is not reasonable.”

“By your leave, ma’am, not all chose him.”

She flashed a look at him. “Eh, so he had you under his spell, the bonnie prince? But you — no, my cabbage, you are no Jacobite at heart. A spell, no more.”

“Oh, I am nothing at all, ma’am, rest you content. I meddle no more in the affairs of princes.”

“That is wise,” she approved. “This time you escape. Another time — who knows?”

He laughed irresponsibly. “As to that, my lady, I don’t count myself safe as yet.”

His sister’s serenity was ruffled momentarily. She looked with some anxiety towards my lady, who bent towards her swiftly, and patted her hand.

“Ah, no more of that! Au fond,you do not like to see blood flow, you English. It is thought there has been blood enough: the tide turns. Lie close, and all blows over. I am certain of it — moi qui te parle!”

Robin made a face at his sister. “The creature must needs play the mother to me, madam.”

“Madam, behold my little mentor!” Prudence retorted. “Give you my word I have my scoldings from him, and not the old gentleman. ’Tis a waspish tongue, egad.”

Talk ran a while then on the vagaries of Mr Colney. My lady must needs speculate upon his whereabouts; his dutiful children could not permit themselves to indulge in the optimism of hazarding a guess. Sufficient for them that he had named London as a meeting-place: wherefore behold them here, in all obedience.

My lady professed alarm; Prudence cracked a nut. My lady was urgent to know the nature of Mr Colney’s business in the late rebellion; her queries were met by a humorous quirk of the eyebrow, and a half shrug of the shoulder. Eh bien then, might he with safety show himself in town? Had he not, in effect, been conspicuous up there in the North?

It was Robin who said with a laugh — “Lud, ma’am, and did you ever know him when he was not conspicuous? It has been dark intrigue for him, here and there — a go-between, as I take it. What does one know of him? Nothing! But I’d wager my last guinea he has his tracks well covered.”

My lady reflected on the likelihood of this, but it was evident that she continued to feel some trepidation at the thought of ce cher Robert coming to London, which was, in fact, the lion’s den.

Prudence smiled. “My lady, he has very often informed us that I contrive might well stand for his motto, and, faith, I believe him.”

“I contrive,” mused my lady. “Yes, that is Robert. But it is the motto of the Tremaines.”

“The more like the old gentleman to appropriate it,” said Robin. “Who are the Tremaines?”

“Oh, one of your old families. They are Viscounts of Barham these many years, you must know. The last one died some few months since, and the new one is only some cousin, I think, of name Rensley.”

“Then our poor papa can have his motto,” said Prudence.

She had a mind to learn something of Sir Anthony Fanshawe, and drew the trend of the talk that way. There was no word spoken of Miss Letty and her indiscretion: Sir Anthony had been chance-met on the road — also one Mr Markham.

My lady wrinkled her brow at the last name; it was plain she did not count Mr Markham amongst her friends. More closely questioned, she said that he was a man of mauvais ton,a great gambler, and received at an astonishing number of houses, for no reason that she could perceive unless it were his friendship with my Lord Barham.

“There you have two people of no great breeding,” ran her peroration. “Have naught to do with either, my children. Both are counted dangerous, and both are rogues. Of that I am convinced.”

“And Sir Anthony?” said Robin, with a quizzical look at his sister. “Is that another rogue?”

My lady found this infinitely amusing. “The poor Sir Tony! To be sure, a very proper gentleman — well-born, rich, handsome — but fie! of an impenetrability. Ah, you English!” She shook her head over the stolidity of the race.

“He displays already a most fatherly interest in my little sister, ma’am,” Robin said solemnly. “We are like to be undone by it.”

“Robin must have his jest, my lady.” Prudence was unruffled. “I believe I am not a novice in the art of simulation. I don’t fear Sir Anthony’s detection.”

“My dear, he does not see a yard before his own nose, that one,” my lady assured her. “Fear nothing from him. You will meet him at my rout tomorrow. All the world comes.”

There was no more talk then of Sir Anthony, but he came again into Prudence’s mind that night when she made ready to go to bed. She came out of her coat — not without difficulty, for it was of excellent tailoring, and fitted tightly across her shoulders — and stood for a while before the long mirror, seriously surveying herself. A fine straight figure she made: there could be no gainsaying it, but she found herself wondering what Sir Anthony, of the lazy speech and sleepy eyelids, would make of it. She doubted there might be too great a love of the respectable in the gentleman. She placed her hands on her slim hips, and looked, without seeing, into the grey eyes in the mirror. Sir Anthony refused to be banished from her mind.

Respectable! Ay, there was the sneering epithet of a vagabond for an honourable gentleman. It was tiresome of the man, but there was that in his face inspired one with trust, and a disinclination to simulate. One could not imagine the large gentleman descending to trickery and a masquerade. So much the worse for him, then, if he found himself ever in a dangerous corner. One might give the masquerade an ugly-sounding name: call it Deceit; no good ring to that. Or call it the pitting of one’s wits against the world’s; that had a better smack.

The fine mouth showed a tendency to curl scornfully. One’s wit against the world was well enough; one’s wit against a single fellow creature, not so good. The one was after all a perilous losing game, with all to risk; the other savoured a little of the common imposter. Sir Anthony would be friendly; unpleasant to think that one could show but a false front.

She caught herself up on the thought, turned away from the mirror, and began to untie the lace at her throat. Egad, she was in danger of turning sentimental because a large gentleman looked on her with kindness. A sentimental country, this England: it awoke in one a desire for security.

The neck-cloth was tossed on to the table, and a soft chuckle came. Ludicrous to think of security with Mr Colney for sire. She reflected ruefully that her father was somewhat of a rogue; disreputable even. A gaming house in Frankfort, forsooth! She had a smile for that memory. Hand to mouth days, those, with herself in boy’s clothes, as now. The old gentleman had judged it wisest, and when one remembered some of those who came to the gaming house one had to admit he had reason. A dice box in one pocket, and a pistol in the other, though! Proper training for a girl just coming out of her teens! A mad life, egad, but there had been much to recommend it. One had learned something, after all. Sure, only to live with the old gentleman was an education: one owed him a deal, but if one desired to enter into a life of security his very existence must prove a bar.

She perceived in her thoughts a tendency to edge round to the contemplation of Sir Anthony, and judged it time to have done. Dimly she could see difficulties ahead; characteristically she dismissed them with a fatalistic gesture. Time enough to ponder them when they presented themselves.

She pulled the heavy curtains back from the bed, and of habit slipped a little gold-mounted pistol beneath her pillow. She climbed into the big four-poster, and very soon lay lightly asleep. Not the dark future, nor Sir Anthony would be permitted to disturb Prudence’s repose, though fleetingly both might enter into her dreams. After all, one could not be mistress of one’s thoughts in sleep.

The morrow brought Sir Humphrey Grayson early in the forenoon to wait upon Mr Merriot. The message was brought Prudence in my Lady Lowestoft’s boudoir, where she sat in converse with her hostess. The exigencies of his toilet still kept Robin above stairs; his sister had left him to the lacing of his corsets, an operation conducted by John and accompanied by some of the young gentleman’s choicer oaths.

My lady, upon the news of Sir Humphrey’s call being brought, was all agog with curiosity. She had no notion the Merriots held other acquaintance than herself in town, and desired to be told how they were known to Sir Humphrey, who, to be sure, led something of the life of a recluse.