The Season Read online

  And yet, despite having seen it all before, and so many, many times, Daisy knew that the game was already on, and she was already all too involved. She had to pair Sarah Hartley Lambert off with the best and the most suitable, or Mrs Hartley Lambert would not keep recommending Daisy to her friends in America.

  Alas, so many American mothers had been put off titled Englishmen by the unhappiness of their offspring. So naive really, as if happiness in marriage was something that was to be expected out of life! Daisy sighed out loud and allowed her long, still elegant leg, now stockinged and fastened to a beautifully placed suspender to drop back onto the bed. She could honestly say that the thought of being happy and married had never, ever occurred to her; not once, not in her whole life. It simply had not arisen as a notion, not even when she was seventeen and terribly stupid. She had always far preferred her birds and her dogs to either of her two, now fortunately quite dead, husbands.

  Husbands were so terribly, terribly – well, terrible, really. Nothing was ever enough for them. They must always have more of you than you wanted to give them. More love making, more attention to the menus, more listening, more flattering, and they never, ever thought how it was for you. They never thought about how tedious it was to be at their beck and call all the time, as if you were a servant and not a person. Always having to look beautiful for them, always having to look happy because you were married to them, always having to be thrilled that you were their wife, when really, particularly if they were married to someone like Daisy, they should be thrilled that they were your husband!

  Feeling more than satisfied with the intelligence of her own thinking Daisy, now clad in her underpinnings, arose from her sumptuous bed with the great hand-sewn silk tapestry of her coat of arms behind it, and allowed Jenkins to finish dressing her. Tonight at the ball it would be Daisy’s duty to make sure that Sarah Hartley Lambert danced every dance, that her card was full, that there would not be a moment when Daisy Lanford’s protégée would be singled out as being without a partner. It did not matter whom Miss Hartley Lambert danced with at this her debut ball, but that she danced all night was imperative.

  More than that, she must give the impression of looking more beautiful, more stunning, than any of the other debutantes. Daisy knew that Lady Medlar had Miss Edith O’Connor under her wing and that she would be this year’s entry from Medlar House. Lady Medlar was always a formidable adversary, but, most satisfyingly, Daisy had heard that Miss O’Connor was less than beautiful and only interested in horses and hunting – in short, most completely and typically Irish.

  And then again, at Lady Devenish’s ‘house of correction’, as her Ascot house was jokingly referred to by fashionable wags, there had been staying, along with Edith O’Connor, a Miss Phyllis de Nugent. Now rumour had it that Miss de Nugent was a beauty, but that she had a character flaw and was wilful to the point of rudeness. It was such a satisfactory rumour that Daisy was inclined to believe it. And of course, if it was true, it would mean that Miss de Nugent might not be so much of a threat to Sarah Hartley Lambert’s success as Daisy had first supposed.

  The great thing about Sarah was that she was pliant in her attitudes, affectionate towards her mama, and reverential towards Daisy, all of which made Daisy feel oddly fond of her in a way that she would not normally feel towards a younger woman. And moreover, although she was too tall for the average Englishman’s taste, there was no doubt that she did at least have charm, and that, coupled with a large fortune, in Daisy’s experience very often took a girl a great deal further socially than beauty.

  Whatever happened Daisy knew that tonight was all important and that Sarah must defeat all criticism from the moment she entered the ballroom, for it was not just the early bird that snatched the worm, in Daisy’s experience it was, as it were, the early debutante too.

  Not that the young men on offer this Season would be worms, not at all – they would all be aristocrats, officers on leave, heirs to great estates, with hardly grown moustaches and too young to have had much opportunity to meet the opposite sex, and they would definitely be scanning the ballroom for suitable mates. So much so that Daisy often thought, to herself only of course, that she would not be at all surprised one of these days to see the mashers entering ballrooms with binoculars around their necks, as they would at the racecourse, so openly did they quiz each new arrival at the ball.

  ‘My lady is looking quite her old self.’

  Now that she was finished with her labours Jenkins stood back and looked openly admiring of Daisy, which was really most unusual for her. This was the moment for Daisy to turn and stare at her best friend, and this time, dressed as she was for a private luncheon with an old flame, Daisy could only agree with both her dressing mirror and Jenkins. She did look quite herself. And although her former lover was old and overweight now, and although they had stayed friends (surely a miracle?), there was a real chance, provided he did not eat too much luncheon (not something on which Daisy would actually care to place a wager), that their charmed friendship might, considering how Daisy was looking that day, change back into a gentle afternoon tendresse – well, at any rate, it was certainly not out of the question. Not the way Daisy was looking.

  The fashion that year was not particularly suited to the more mature woman, and yet, although Daisy’s waist was no longer a charming eighteen inches, she nevertheless retained that peculiar aura that a beautiful woman will always emanate simply from having worn lovely things over a great period of time, as if the clothes themselves had somehow left some sort of permanent unseen imprint, as if they had somehow penetrated the pale skin of their wearer so that their elegance had seeped into her bones.

  Today Daisy was wearing a straight walking coat in silk over a perfectly cut Regency style Empire gown, which gave a slimmer look to the hips. Her coat was cut three-quarter length, and the dress pleated to continue below it where the coat left off. Her hat was – well, it could only be described as enormous, as had been the fashion some years before. And of course quite heart stopping, once placed on Daisy’s elegant head, its enormous ostrich plumes falling forward to within half an inch of its edge. The neck of the coat was filled with Daisy’s famous pearls, row upon row of them, and of such a fine quality that they seemed somehow to shine upwards and give her pale skin an added lustre, as all good pearls must.

  ‘My lady’s gloves, my lady’s umbrella, and there we are,’ murmured Jenkins, as her mistress turned from the silver-backed mirror and made her way towards her bedroom door, ready at last for the world to see her as they both, maid and mistress, liked her to be seen – as perfectly turned out as any thoroughbred racehorse being walked round the paddocks at Ascot.

  ‘Do you know, Jenkins, vis is what I particularly like. Ve start of ve Season. Everything so fresh, and even the trees in the Park seeming to make an extra effort to look better van ever. Vis is what I truly like.’

  As well as the compliment of being asked to a particularly private luncheon with a particular old flame, Jenkins thought, and she made a note in her head to write up the observation in her secret diary, which she had managed to keep up despite all the exigencies of the Countess’s demands and the travelling that their life involved.

  Happily, not only Jenkins’s diary, but also her thoughts, were hidden from her mistress, unlike the facts of her mistress’s private life, to which Jenkins had always been and always would be privy. Daisy knew, as Jenkins knew, that her maid would never, ever, betray a confidence. There would be no scandalous detail artlessly disclosed after a house party, such as had been known to drop from the lips of other people’s personal maids, or valets. Neither would Jenkins ever tell even the oldest of the servants where she had waited for her mistress, at whose houses, or with whom Daisy lunched or dined privately, for the simple reason that Jenkins was no fool. She trusted other servants as little as her mistress trusted men.

  Daisy Lanford, Countess of Evesham, was Jenkins’s work of art, as much as any painting that hung downstairs i
n the great saloon of the Eveshams’ town address was part of some painter’s oeuvre. It was Jenkins’s pride to remain as she had always been – discreet. And in the end, she knew, it would be worth it, for Daisy would reward her, not just perhaps with a cottage on her estate, but with some of her beautiful things, and that would mean that Jenkins would know that she had done her duty, pleased her mistress, but, most of all, pleased herself. For Daisy as well as Jenkins knew that the maid was essential to her mistress. They were locked together in a relationship far more powerful than any she might have had with her husbands (least of all them) or her lovers, Royal or otherwise. If Daisy was a beautiful tree it was Jenkins who, like nature herself, placed the leaves upon her, and decreed not just when they should bloom, but when they should fall.

  Jenkins followed her mistress down the grand staircase, five paces exactly behind, and watched with gimlet eyes as the menservants bowed to her, and the doors opened to her. Jenkins knew, as well as any, that those bows were shared by her, that those doors opened for her too, and that when the King’s grey-blue eyes had, in years gone by, softened with appreciation at the sight of her mistress in the great plumed hat that she was still wearing, and when His Majesty had seen that her silhouette was as trim as any woman of her age, and his guttural voice had softened, it had been as much a compliment to Jenkins as it had been to Daisy. To say that to serve the old king in this way had been satisfying to a woman of her kind was to say the very least. Nothing could have given Jenkins greater satisfaction than to know that her mistress was also his. In France, as she well knew, when the old king had been alive, Daisy had been accorded the same status as his queen, so seriously did the French, quite rightly to her mind, take the status of king’s mistress, or maitresse en titre, which was why Jenkins so often said ‘we’ in the servants’ hall, and why it was accepted that she did so. Jenkins ruled the house as much as her mistress. Like Daisy’s beauty, it was just an accepted fact.

  Sarah, poor Sarah, Mrs Hartley Lambert sighed inwardly, what ever had the poor girl done to deserve to grow so tall? It was as if, Sarah being an only child, thanks to the unhappy early demise of her sainted father, it was as if nature had been determined to make up to Mrs Hartley Lambert, and so presented her with one big baby instead of several small ones.

  Not that she did not at that moment look fine and really rather handsome in her ball gown of white silk with its beaded hem and capped sleeves – very much à la mode and slightly Grecian in feel – because she did. Not that she did not have good thick dark hair, and a fine pair of blue eyes, but oh dear what a disadvantage when to see them even her mother had to step back and stare up at her until her neck nearly cricked. If only the Countess were proved to be wrong and there were some titled English gentlemen who did have a preference for statuesque girls, if only Sarah, at her first ball tonight, were danced with more times than her two English friends, then her mother’s heart would be at ease for the rest of her days, of that Mrs Hartley Lambert was quite, quite sure.

  ‘I so wish that you were coming with me, Mama dear.’

  Sarah stared down at her mother, suddenly feeling bereft of confidence. Remembering the treatment she had been given at the hands of the Honourable Phyllis de Nugent and Miss Edith O’Connor did nothing to make her feel better.

  ‘No, darling, I promised the Countess that I would leave all your chaperoning to her. It is part of our agreement. After all, I was by your side all during our stay in Paris, and that was quite sufficient. No, darling, it is altogether more fitting, here in London, if the Countess is your chaperon. She has the entrée to Court circles in London, which I have not. And really, you know, my rheumatism, since I came to London, has not been at all good. No, while you are out dining and dancing I shall have a nice rosewater and malmaison scented bath and a lie down, and that will keep me quite tranquil until you come back with all your news of the evening. When you return you will find me still awake with my light on. I shall be reading. You have only to scratch at my door, and I will call to you. Oh, darling, what excitement, your first ball. And with the Countess by your side, let alone Lady Devenish, you will not put a foot wrong. I dare say you will not be seated for so much as a second, your card full of names, all the – what does the Countess call the young men here? Oh yes, all the mashers ready to fight duels over you!’

  Neither mother nor daughter was so stupid as not to know that this was all palpable nonsense, but it was well-intended nonsense, and so Sarah kissed her mother on the cheek, and straightening her back, and nodding to her maid to pick up her evening cloak and fan, she followed their hired steward down the grand staircase and so out into the street and to the waiting carriage that would take her round the corner to the Countess’s town house. Following which they would go in stately fashion to dine with Lord and Lady Mount William and the rest of le tout Londres, as the fashionable and aristocratic were known, before going on to Lady Medlar’s opening ball of the Season at Medlar House.

  ‘God bless you, my poor child!’

  From the first floor drawing room above, unbeknownst to her daughter, Mrs Hartley Lambert waved a little forlornly to Sarah’s departing figure. She could only thank God that she could pay the Countess to supervise Sarah’s London Season, for assuredly she herself was simply not capable of such an undertaking. It had been quite faint-making enough to deal with the Countess over their financial negotiations, to pick up all her bills, to sign agreements for the expenditure needed to finance Sarah’s coming-out ball, their innumerable outfits for Ascot (that was an event that not even Mrs Hartley Lambert would miss) and so on and so forth, but to have to bear the burden of the opening balls as well would have been simply too much. It was not just that she was herself a little shy of Society, and always had been, but also that she dreaded having to risk seeing her own daughter left languishing on a gilt chair behind the Countess, not a name scribbled in her card, while every other girl danced the night away. That she could not be asked to face.

  Besides, she was shrewd enough to know that whatever money she dispensed, however much of her fortune she lavished on her daughter’s London debut, if she herself appeared in the least bit gauche, or out of sorts socially at these opening events, it would be enough to enable the Countess to blame any failure of Sarah’s to attract the right attentions on her mother’s lack of social grace.

  No, Mrs Hartley Lambert knew that she herself was best kept out of sight, best able to help her daughter by a judicious discretion as far as her own appearances at social events in and around town were concerned. Her time would come in June with Ascot and the great moment of Sarah’s ball, when she would, she hoped, have the unquestionable delight of finding that her daughter’s social success in England was by that time quite, quite assured. She sighed at the thought. It was most reassuring.

  Sarah shivered. The intricacies of English dining had been brought home to her by Lady Devenish, and she thought she had not, as yet, made a faux pas, but there was still the ball ahead, still the truly dreadful notion, which would not be dispelled, that no-one would pencil his name in her card, no young officer come forward and ask for the next dance, no brilliant young man down from Oxford catch her eye and walking forward and bowing low over her hand (kissing was only for married women) write his name in the little tasselled dance card which hung from her white-gloved wrist beside her fan.

  Despite Sarah’s God’s being very much an American one who she imagined might not like visiting England any more than she herself had really been able to up until now, she prayed to Him as she decorously and gracefully followed the Countess up the grand staircase of Medlar House and into the long gallery which led, eventually, to the ballroom. The opening ball of the Season had used to be the province of the Duchess of Salisbury, but since she had been gathered to her Maker the honours had passed to Lady Medlar, still, even at her age, one of the three great London hostesses who were, to everyone’s minds, including the reigning political party, more than an influence on London, but in so many ways –
London itself.

  Nicknamed the ‘Great Divider’ since she had changed political sympathies and gone over to the Liberals, Lady Medlar was feared by duchess and debutante, social climber and politician alike. No believer in the softer, more compliant virtues usually associated with the fair sex, she was considered to be more overtly fearsome than any man would quite dare to be. A friend to none and a potential enemy to everyone, she had not spoken to her husband for more than twenty years, a situation which might have daunted a lesser character, but which seemed to add, in some strange way, a curious, almost satanic lustre to Augustine Medlar’s reputation.

  Aunt Tattie would often say, when Portia was enduring her own first London Season, ‘If you had ever seen Augustine Medlar eating an ortolan, her great white teeth masticating the little bird’s bones, Portia dearest, you would not, ever, wish to cross swords with her, believe me. Not ever.’

  After which, to add drama to her statement, Aunt Tattie would shudder elaborately and drift off to work on a tapestry of medieval ladies awaiting their knights’ return from the Crusades. A subject which to Portia, in some strange way, seemed to embody Aunt Tattie’s life, whether at Bannerwick or at Tradescant House in London, for ever since the dark days of her crush on the tutor who had come to teach Portia at Bannerwick, Aunt Tattie’s heart had remained firmly and obstinately unmoved by any other man.

  In the intervening years, because she was not poor, Aunt Tattie had become quite famous for her inordinate sensitivity. It was generally thought that it was this characteristic which had kept her a maiden aunt and a spinster. Not that there had not been quite overt attentions paid to her by members of the opposite sex. At least one of the rectors of the local parishes had visited her for tea on a regular basis, not to mention a local magistrate who, although somewhat advanced in years, nevertheless managed to write to Aunt Tattie weekly, sometimes daily poems, most of which, it had seemed to Portia, had a tendency to begin with Oh fairest one!