Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Eight weeks and one brotherly letter of concern until the wedding
Oxford, 28th March
And so, dear sisters, having learned that you managed to divert our dear eldest brother from his Monstrous Marriage Master Plan – at least temporarily – I feel it incumbent upon myself to pay our kindly relatives a visit, both to congratulate you on your escape, and to persuade you to show me a few of the delights of Bath.
Until then, I would be most grateful if you could desist from any more deadly duels or other pirating activities.
Your doting brother,
Fred
P.S. I am also very much looking forward to assessing whether our dear uncle does, indeed, require surgical separation from the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, as you suggest.
‘D oes he say when he’s coming?’ Josephine sniffed into a new copy of Persuasion , which she’d found wedged behind a well-thumbed Encyclopaedia of Botanical Species in their uncle’s library.
‘I’m not sure what delights we’re supposed to show him – we haven’t exactly seen many ourselves!’ Phoebe muttered, looking over her brother’s typically short letter for anything she may have missed.
‘Oh, hush, Phoebe!’ Sophie scolded, too in love with her lace-trimmed Prussian-blue gown to find fault with anything.
‘There’s the Pump Room, The Royal Crescent, The Circus, Queen Square, Pulteney Street, The Guildhall, not to mention the Upper Assembly Rooms and Sydney Gardens of course…’
‘But those are all boring places! And we haven’t even been to the last two yet!’ Matilda grumbled.
‘Seconded,’ Phoebe nodded.
‘Yes well … that’s about to change this weekend, isn’t it?’ Sophie placated. ‘New dresses and a society picnic – even the viscount and his brother said they thought the Sydney Gardens picnic to be one of the more entertaining events of the Bath season!’
Phoebe shot her happy sister a swift glance. She hadn’t said much after their debacle of a visit to Madame Paragon’s, but she had the feeling the dancing-eyed captain had left almost as much of an impression as his brother – who appeared to have irritated every rational thought she ever possessed.
‘We should all be grateful, we could still be stuck in Devon with a new governess and the cross-stitch!’ Sophie added.
‘Actually, I quite like the cross-stitch,’ Matilda frowned, reaching for Sophie’s rouge.
Thoughtfully, Phoebe replaced Fred’s letter in her writing box, and stood up to smooth down her gown. Despite her entreaties for something plain and simple, her aunt insisted they all had two new dresses apiece. This one was cut from lavender-figured satin, with a festoon flounce caught up with rosettes, and sleeves made of fine net clasped all the way to the wrist. Phoebe surveyed herself critically; there was still no competition with Fred’s breeches, but there was something about the cut of the dress against her fair skin and burnished hair that made her feel grown-up. Almost.
‘You look different in that,’ Matilda added, with two bright pink cheeks, ‘like a lady … sort of … well, as much of a lady that you can look, anyway!’
‘Thank you – you look the least like a pirate you’ve ever looked, too!’ Phoebe retorted, bunching up a shawl and throwing it at her grinning younger sister.
‘Matilda!’ Sophie scolded, snatching back the rouge. ‘She’s right though,’ she added as Matilda grumbled. ‘I’ve never seen you look so ladylike, Phoebs! You make a very pretty debutante, the earl will have to watch his step!’
‘I don’t think the earl can see past his stomach to do that!’ Phoebe retorted, pushing out her own stomach, to ape the earl’s bulbous stoop. ‘ Well, well, your brother could do with feeding you up a bit, but you’ll do … nothing worse than a skinny countess, I say ,’ she mimicked, strutting across the floor and waggling a finger at an enthralled Matilda, who dissolved again. ‘And as for Bath and its many delights…’ She straightened to pick up a fan and bring it to her face, her eyes rolling. ‘Well, it’s a step up from quadrilles and French, I’ll give you that!’
‘Now that I do agree with,’ Sophie smiled. ‘The Pump Room is a thousand times better than conjugating être and Avoir until one feels they couldn’t ever eat another croissant…’
‘I never feel like that,’ Matilda declared.
‘And yet, how I wish we could really enjoy everything without thinking of propriety or expectations,’ Phoebe added wistfully. ‘How gloriously free that sounds!’
‘Perhaps you should ask the captain to challenge the earl to a duel, on account of his onion-scented person, and release you from Thomas’s Monstrous Marriage Master Plan?’ Matilda suggested, scrubbing her cheeks with a cloth.
‘He is by far the more amiable of the brothers, it’s true!’ Sophie giggled. ‘Though perhaps the viscount would care to oblige, he did rescue you?—’
‘The viscount would sooner shoot me!’ Phoebe retorted swiftly.
‘Phoebe!’ Sophie objected.
‘Well, it’s true!’ Phoebe defended. ‘From the moment I made his acquaintance he has done nothing but mock and ridicule! He is the proudest and most insufferable kind of gentleman, who has made me realise that there are few things more precious in life than freedom from those who view females as chattels, or inferior beings, in every way!’
She paused to draw breath as Sophie regarded her curiously.
‘Well, if it’s a little freedom you want, perhaps Miss Phoebe Fairfax of Fairfax Theatrical Company could help?’
‘You want me to imagine myself enjoying Bath without propriety or expectation?’ Phoebe frowned, feeling her sister might be underestimating her predicament just a little.
‘No, you ninnyhammer!’ Sophie exclaimed, much to Matilda’s delight. ‘I’m just saying that while you’re in Bath you can be whoever you want to be, whenever you want to be her … as long as you’re Phoebe when needed, too.’
‘Complicated!’ Josephine muttered, not even lifting her eyes from her book.
Phoebe stared at her pretty cornflower-eyed sister, wondering when she got to be so duplicitous, and yet even she had to admit the idea was attractive.
‘You mean, invent someone who can have a few adventures?’ she quizzed.
‘I mean, become someone whom Bath society would accept as entitled to enjoy a few diversions without a chaperone, such as a … mysterious widow of independent means, visiting Bath after her husband’s early demise to … the dropsy!’
‘Not the dreaded dropsy!’ Josephine objected, glancing up. ‘It’s so depressing! Why not irritation of the nerves? Much more romantic!’
‘Pah!’ Matilda jumped up, her eyes gleaming. ‘Any early demise is excessively dull – unless he was murdered, gruesomely, in a duel! But if a mysterious widow means Phoebe can do more than drink mud water while we’re here, then I say she should do it!’
She paused to survey her older sister critically.
‘Two minutes!’ she exclaimed, running from the room.
‘We might regret this,’ Sophie muttered.
Seconds later, the twelve-year-old reappeared with a rolled-up blanket, which she then discarded, with the air of a court magician, to reveal several items hidden inside.
‘One of Aunt Higglestone’s wigs?!’ Sophie gaped in horror. ‘Just because Phoebe’s going to pose as a widow, doesn’t mean she needs to look positively medieval!’
‘Actually, it’s a cap and wig powder!’ Matilda defended hotly. ‘And spectacles. Phoebe will need a good disguise if she’s to pass undetected, she can’t just go out as she is!’
There was a brief silence while they all acknowledged the wisdom of the youngest Fairfax, before Phoebe grinned and took the items from Matilda.
‘A deceased husband would explain an absent chaperone,’ she mused. ‘And a level of disguise would be highly useful should any person of our acquaintance be out at the same time.’
She popped Aunt Higglestone’s cap on her head and tied it beneath her chin. Instantly, her sisters dissolved into laughter.
‘It actually suits you!’ Sophie snorted, wiping away her tears.
‘But still, how is she to actually go anywhere?’ Matilda asked, her forehead creased with concern. ‘She can hardly waltz directly in and out of Aunt and Uncle’s front door, after all!’
‘Are you forgetting our sweet and delicate older sister holds the fastest, tree-scaling record across Dartmoor?’ Josephine smirked, nodding towards a maple tree just outside the bedchamber window. ‘I’m sure the lack of a door isn’t going to prove too much of a problem, even with an injured shoulder.’
Phoebe glanced at the tree with its conveniently thick and twisted branches, just waiting to assist an intrepid widow to the ground, and felt a flicker of hope. She wouldn’t make the same mistake as last time; there would be no devil’s brew, no duels, no interfering viscounts – just a little freedom … before everything changed for good.
She drew a breath.
‘Which just leaves the question of a name,’ she murmured, her mind filling with myriad possibilities before inspiration struck.
She sank into a curtsey.
‘May I present to you … Mrs Mary Smith!’ She grinned. ‘Younger cousin to Miss Sarah Kemble, otherwise known as Miss Sarah Siddons, darling of the theatre, and daughter to theatrical extraordinaires , Mr Roger Kemble and Sarah Ward!’
There was a brief pause before the bedchamber erupted in a chorus of groans and laughter.
‘Mrs Mary Smith, younger cousin to Miss Sarah Siddons, darling of the theatre,’ Sophie nodded, wiping her eyes. ‘It’s perfect!’
‘It sounds excessively old,’ Matilda grumbled.
‘Or a governess’s name! Everyone will expect you to talk about manners and coach-springs!’ Josephine warned.
‘I don’t care,’ Phoebe returned brightly. ‘And Mrs Mary Smith won’t care! She’s a young widow from theatrical royalty with none of the trappings of an unmarried debutante, which means she can explore Bath’s many delights without Thomas, dearest Aunt, or anyone else, suffering some kind of terminal apoplexy.
‘Unlike Phoebe Fairfax, Mrs Mary Smith is quite free!’
* * *
‘It’s glued,’ Phoebe complained.
‘No, it’s not, it’s dressed, dearest – there’s a difference!’ Sophie frowned, adding another pin before Phoebe could dismantle her tumbling creation, duly powdered with wig powder until her dark copper locks looked almost blonde.
‘Now it’s perfect, so don’t you dare touch it again! I want everyone to meet a sophisticated Mrs Mary Smith, not one who falls out of trees!’
‘I haven’t yet fallen out of the tree,’ Phoebe objected. ‘I scaled it twice today, just to practise, and didn’t so much as snag a stocking!’
‘ Anyway ,’ Sophie continued, rolling her eyes, ‘the Upper Assembly Rooms will be a squash tonight – or so the modiste said when we collected our ribbons – which means it should be relatively easy to mingle without fear of anyone identifying you.’
Phoebe raised her inky eyes to Sophie’s cornflower-blues, knowing exactly to whom she was referring.
She still couldn’t quite believe the universe had crossed her path with the viscount’s again – and in a modiste’s in Bath of all places. She closed her eyes and felt the humiliation anew. He already thought her a hare-brained fool, and now she’d confirmed it with her childish pirating antics – in front of one of the most dislikable matrons of the ton. She recalled his supercilious stare, and the way his eyes had gleamed when she’d met his gaze.
‘It seems to me, Miss Phoebe Fairfax, that if gallivanting around the countryside dressed as a bourgeois tallyman is your idea of freedom, you’re in need of your brother’s protection more than you realise. Young ladies of quality don’t get to be heroines.’
And why were her traitorous thoughts determined to keep reminding her what he thought?
She squeezed her fingers as she drew a deep breath. Let him think what he liked, she was a Fairfax first and would never apologise for it.
‘In truth, I’m just looking forward to actually seeing a little of Bath, without anyone having a fit of the vapours,’ Phoebe shrugged, picking up the spectacles and trying them.
‘Really?’ Sophie quizzed. ‘And here I was thinking you might have more pressing matters on your mind.’
Phoebe glanced at her wily sister. It was true she was feeling the ticking clock on her nuptials more than ever, but it seemed a little ambitious to hope an alias might attract a new suitor who was not only willing to overlook a peculiar dress sense, but was also desperate to marry within seven short weeks.
‘Well, I can’t wait to hear all about it,’ Sophie continued, leaning forward to rub rouge on her sister’s scowling face. ‘Bath is much more relaxed than London, so it should be easy for Mrs Mary Smith to have a little fun before the dreaded betrothal announcement…’
Her sister chattered on brightly as Phoebe conjured a picture of herself standing at an altar, next to the earl. She suppressed a deep shudder. She might laugh with the rest of her sisters, but in truth, the thought of calling herself the Countess of Cumberland in less than two months was terrifying. And it wasn’t so much the wedding day – she could grit her teeth and get through that – it was the thought of what came afterwards that haunted her.
She closed her eyes and swallowed the ready rise of nausea. There was time yet, and she was determined to use it.
‘Do you think old purple-face will be there tonight?’ Matilda asked, retying her cream sash as a trusty sword belt.
‘No one could be that unlucky!’ Phoebe returned with feeling.