Chapter Eleven #2
Miss Sprite took her up to her bedchamber with a glass of sherry to calm her. If anything could tell Beatrix how serious the situation was, it was the sherry. Miss Sprite was a great proponent of nursery tea and to have thrown that over for spirits was alarming.
She’d been got into her nightclothes while Miss Sprite huffed and muttered. Beatrix took the glass of sherry and sipped it. To think, her primary worry about the evening was not knowing how long she was to play the pianoforte.
As it happened, she had not played long at all.
“Miss Sprite,” she said, “why would an actress say that Lord Chester was in love with her?”
“Never mind it, forget you ever heard it.”
That was, of course, Miss Sprite’s recommendation for any and all unpleasantness. It would not do now, though.
“Miss Sprite, while I applaud your efforts to keep me and Caroline protected from the more unseemly parts of life, I really think it does not answer anymore.”
Miss Sprite sank down into a chair, clearly startled that her charge had thought to challenge her ideas.
Beatrix assumed she’d better explain herself more fully.
“It was all well and good when we were at home in our little neighborhood. But now, I feel as if I am a lamb thrown into a paddock full of wolves and I do not even know where the gate is to save myself. Do you see what I say? If I am to navigate society, I have to have some idea of what is going on. I’m just blindly going forward and it seems dangerous to be so na?ve. ”
“Dangerous,” Miss Sprite said pensively. “I had not considered.”
“You do see what I say, though?”
Miss Sprite sighed. A very long and deep sigh, as if she’d been holding in that sigh all her life.
“Yes, I see your point. Perhaps I have been looking at you as I did when you were a child. Especially with the idea that you were to wed Lord Chester. I imagined you’d be safely married before you had to do any navigating.
As well, I really do not want you to see… well to see how things are sometimes.”
“But I must face it, and I can face it. I am not weak, I am not prone to fanning myself. I feel you know more about this actress, this Annie, than I do, even though you’ve never set eyes on the lady.”
“Best take a sip of that sherry to prepare yourself for it then.”
Beatrix did as she was asked, rather impressed with herself. It was the first time she’d argued and won a point in combat with Miss Sprite.
“I can only make an educated guess, you understand,” Miss Sprite said. “Certain gentlemen of the ton have been known to keep a woman. Actresses are often preferred. They pay their rent and incidentals.”
“Really. Why?”
“Lord, I really have kept you na?ve. Do not make me say it.”
Then, of course, it dawned on Beatrix why. It was the thing they were never to think of. Relations between a man and woman. “Oh. Goodness.”
“That would be one word for it. I am afraid Lord Chester has ruined everything. I cannot imagine your father would agree to go forward after…what happened.”
Beatrix drained her sherry. “He’s ruined nothing, actually,” she said to Miss Sprite’s evident surprise. “I do not like him. I really never did. I’m more relieved than anything else.”
“It will be a blow to the countess,” Miss Sprite said.
Beatrix knew that well enough. Her mother had pinned all her hopes on this match.
As much as she did not wish to let her mother down, it really would be necessary.
“It must be for the best, though,” Beatrix said.
“Lord Chester and I may have got on like a house on fire when we were toddlers, but we do not now. Anybody can see it, if they will only look.”
“Ah yes, as to that initial encounter, perhaps the joys of the initial meeting were somewhat exaggerated.”
Beatrix stayed silent as she very much wished to know how they were exaggerated. As far as she knew it, they had adored one another at that first encounter.
“They came here to the house, so I was present, all those years ago. I will admit surprise to hear of how genial it was afterward. What I recall is Lord Chester taking your precious Lily of the Dales—”
“Lily!” Lily had been her favorite doll when she was younger.
She’d never go anywhere without Lily of the Dales.
Beatrix had invented a whole history for her, including being a dairymaid who made her own cheese, had a dog named Sass, was friends with forest sprites, and lived in a magical set of rooms over her barn that was fit for a princess.
“Lord Chester tore Lily’s dress and then laughed when you cried over it. That is my memory of the encounter. Mind you, I repaired the tear after you were abed and I do not think you even recalled it the following day.”
Beatrix leaned back. Though she could not recall the encounter herself, she knew well enough that if she had witnessed Lord Chester tearing her dear Lily’s dress, and then laughing about it, she would have despised him with a passion.
This whole thing, this whole dream between the countess and viscountess, had been conjured out of air.
“Well now, the countess has always wanted the best for you,” Miss Sprite said. “That much I know.”
“I know it too. Somehow, my mother and the viscountess just got carried away by an idea. They kept writing back and forth about it until it seemed as if it must be true. Do you think she approves of Lord Harrelston?” Beatrix asked.
“Do you approve of Lord Harrelston?”
Beatrix nodded. “I do, I really do.” As she said it, a ghastly idea occurred to her. “Miss Sprite, Lord Harrelston was there, on the street. He lives nearby. He would have seen at least some of what went on.”
“Did you encounter him?”
“Yes, we saw him as we were leaving.” Beatrix paused. “He said he would not keep us.”
Miss Sprite frowned. Beatrix did not think it was a very hopeful expression.
What would Lord Harrelston have made of the situation? Did this actress turning up and causing a scene somehow reflect on Beatrix? She had not invited the lady!
She had heard ad nauseum about gossip in London.
She did not see a way in which what had occurred would not be talked about.
The servants would certainly talk about it in the secret club her father thought they had.
And then she had noticed various flutterings of curtains on Portland Place when she’d come out to the carriage.
That was now two things people could talk about!
She was already worried that there was some sort of rumor about that book she had claimed to read.
She still did not know what it was about, other than it was shameful.
Had that comment that had been read at the Duchess of Ralston’s Secrets Exposed party been in reference to that, or to something else?
Now, she had certainly been seen leaving Lord Chester’s house directly after an hysterical actress had caused a scene on the street.
Had Lord Harrelston heard anything about the book? She could not bear it if he thought she’d read something shameful, whatever it was. And then he must wonder why she’d been dining with that hysterical lady. He might think they were friends!
And then, Lord Harrelston knew she was going to Lord Chester’s house for a musical evening. What he had observed would not have looked like a usual musical evening. Ladies did not require being wrestled into carriages at a usual musical evening.
It was terrifying. She did not know what he knew or what he thought.
If those ideas did anything at all, they rather solidified how she felt about Lord Harrelston. She would be devastated if he no longer approached her. What was she to do if he began to studiously ignore her, as if they’d never spoken?
“Miss Sprite, I have several questions that must be answered, now that I am to be not as na?ve as I have been.”
Miss Sprite looked decidedly leery over that.
“One, I must know why it was so terrible to mention that book. Fanny Hill.”
“Perhaps that sort of question is best answered by the countess,” Miss Sprite said.
“You know it will only make her uncomfortable, though. She rather depends on you to answer uncomfortable questions. Remember when Caroline and I came to you about Assassin?”
Miss Sprite nodded reluctantly. Beatrix and Caroline had gone to the countess about why Assassin, the barn’s mouser, was looking so strange. Her poor belly got bigger by the day and was almost touching the ground. They were quite sure the cat was dying and nobody was doing anything about it.
The countess had explained that she was to have a litter of kittens. She and Caroline had been delighted to hear it. But then they had inquired as to how the kittens were to get out of Assassin.
They’d been sent straight to Miss Sprite for an explanation. Of course, Beatrix knew now that they’d not actually got an explanation. Miss Sprite had said God would come and get them out. Beatrix had since seen enough goings on with the Earl’s animals to know that was not how it was accomplished.
“That book,” Miss Sprite said slowly, “well I have not read it, obviously. It is my understanding that it is a shameful account of how an innocent young girl might take up a life similar…to Lord Chester’s actress.”
“The whole book is about that?” Beatrix asked.
“As far as I understand it.”
“I see. My other question is about the servants’ club.”
“What servants’ club?”
“My father thinks that gossip goes round so fast because the servants of different houses all talk and are in a club.”
Miss Sprite looked genuinely surprised to hear it. “If there is such a club, I have not been invited into it.” She tapped her chin. “Though I’ve always noticed Mr. Feldstaffer is very chummy with several of the other butlers on the square.”
Beatrix snorted. “It is a bit funny to think of Mr. Feldstaffer in a club.”
“Ridiculous, I suppose,” Miss Sprite said. “He’s too grim for it. Now I think that’s enough answers to questions for one night.”
Miss Sprite hustled her into bed. The sherry should have soothed her, but it did not. There was too much to worry over for sherry to have had a chance at overcoming it.