Debutantes Read online

  Jane smiled back at him, shyly and with perfect innocence. ‘You’re not daft, are you, Herbert? Never was, and never will be.’ She took a sip of water from a heavy cut glass and then smiled again. ‘Now eat up, or your pie’ll catch cold.’

  A moment ago Herbert Forrester had been hungry enough to eat the proverbial horse. Now, such was the realization that was rapidly dawning on him he could barely stomach his first mouthful.

  ‘What you’re thinking, my dear, is that leaving aside the inconvenience of it, were we in fact to buy this very house,’ he said, laying his silver knife and fork slowly back down either side of his plate, ‘what with Lady Lanford being not only an intimate of the Prince of Wales but of the Princess of Wales – because isn’t that what you told me?’

  ‘That is absolutely so, Herbert. It is common knowledge.’

  ‘So what you’re thinking is that this might – and I’m only saying might, mind. The move were we to make it could well prove advantageous.’

  Jane smiled at her husband once again, but this time it was a different smile, the smile of a woman confidently in sight of a victory.

  ‘I would leave all that to you, Herbert dear,’ she said.

  ‘I’m only thinking of Louisa, mind,’ Herbert suddenly added hastily, in case he might be thought to be a hypocrite, which was privately exactly what he was feeling. ‘It’s Louisa’s best interests I have at heart, as I am sure you do, my dear. Not my own. Not yours. Louisa’s.’

  ‘Of course, Herbert dear. I know that. But like I was saying, whatever advantage there might be to be gained, I leave to you mind. After all, you are the business man. Myself, I can see no positive disadvantage, can you? Nor can I imagine any other way the likes of you and I might get an introduction to the likes of Lady Daisy Lanford.’

  ‘That’s done then,’ Herbert decided. ‘I shall make arrangements at once for us to go and view the place immediately.’

  With his appetite suddenly restored, Herbert picked up his knife and fork and cleaned his plate of every single scrap of Cook’s mouthwatering steak and kidney pudding.

  * * *

  Lady Lanford looked around her exquisite drawing room and sighed. Then she collapsed as lightly as a cloud of gossamer onto a nearby sofa.

  ‘Vis is ghastly so it is, Jenkins,’ she said to her maid who was sitting sewing in the stone-mullioned window. ‘Vis is simply and absolutely ghastly and I hate every single and wretched moment of it. I love vis place. I adore vis place. I wish to die in vis place, but here I am instead having to sell it. Imagine. Can you imagine, Jenkins? No, I doubt it, alas. I doubt if someone like you can imagine such a fing as vis.’

  ‘It is a sign of the times, my lady,’ Jenkins replied in her usual grim fashion. Much as they remained faithful to each other and had done so for many years now, Daisy Lanford could readily imagine her maid sitting knitting by the scaffold while the revolutionaries chopped off her head. ‘They say land is going for next to nothing. At least, that is the gist of what Mr Lamb was telling us all at supper only the other evening. They will be giving it away next, so he said. Thanks to Mr Gladstone, he said. All thanks to Mr Gladstone.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Jenkins,’ Daisy Lanford sighed, drawing a small lily-white hand backwards over her brow. ‘And ve Liberals too, with vair wretched half-baked philanthropy. Isn’t vat the word? For which ve likes of us are expected to pay. Expected to pay by selling off our ancestral homes. Imagine how dreadful it must be for poor Letty Hampshire having to sell Rigby.’

  Jenkins held her sewing up to check it against the light. ‘Indeed, my lady. But then she really only has Rigby nowadays. Everything else except the London house you say has been sold. So yes, that really must be heartbreaking.’

  Daisy narrowed her eyes behind Jenkins’s back and briefly poked her tongue out at her maid, before shifting her position on the sofa to drape herself even more elegantly. ‘I blame it entirely on ve banks,’ she said, changing tack. ‘Vey really should not be allowed so much say in fings.’

  ‘I do so agree, my lady,’ Jenkins replied, still examining her needlework in the light from the window. ‘But then as people have always said, neither a lender nor a borrower be.’

  ‘Vat is somefing else I hate,’ Daisy retorted. ‘People who go around saying fings uvver people have already said.’

  ‘Anyway. Selling this place is not going to put us out on the streets. We shall still have the Melcombe, and Partington, and Mount Street for the Season.’

  ‘Yes, we will, will we not?’ Daisy agreed, without a trace of mockery, but still managing a secret disdainful wrinkle of her beautiful nose without Jenkins noticing. ‘And I fink I just heard a carriage.’

  Her maid looked down from her seat at the window at the driveway one floor below and then stood up.

  ‘Quite right, my lady, you did,’ she agreed, at once beginning to tidy up her sewing. ‘Come and see the carriage. It is like something from a coronation.’

  ‘Mercy,’ Daisy whispered dramatically, having hurried to see. ‘Four horses. Perhaps vey are excessively stout. One does hear tales of how much folks eat oop north.’

  The two women drew slightly back lest they be seen spying on the visitors, but still watched closely as the coachmen sprang down from their stations to make the carriage steps ready and then to open the doors. Whereupon the Forresters descended, first Jane brightly clad in an outfit specially made for the occasion and wearing an extravagantly plumed hat and then Herbert, smaller than his wife in height but not much in girth and brandishing a large, half-smoked cigar.

  ‘I trust he puts vat vile fing out before he comes into the Saloon,’ Daisy murmured. ‘Uvverwise I shall have ve footmen take a firehose to him. And will you look at Mrs Whatchum’s costume. Imagine, Jenkins. A dress of orange and yellow. Ve one worse van ve other, and ve two worse van ve both.’

  Jenkins sighed rather than laughed, not because she didn’t understand her mistress’s blague but to signal her own disapproval of poor Jane Forrester’s choice of costume.

  ‘What a pity Tum-Tum is not here to share ve joke.’ Daisy flicked at her own pale grey gown in the cheval mirror, and stared admiringly at her own beautiful face. ‘Except we do not really find it funny, do we, Jenkins? Having people like vis finking of buying our beloved Wynyates.’

  ‘Needs must, my lady,’ Jenkins reminded her, closing up her sewing box. ‘Needs must.’

  ‘Vare you go again!’ Daisy scolded. ‘Do try and say somefing original one day, Jenkins. Uvverwise I swear I shall have you bound in levver and put up on a shelf.’

  By the time Daisy had glided down the magnificent staircase, followed at a discreet distance by her maid, the Forresters had already been admitted to the house and shown into the main Saloon. Daisy paused for a moment to make herself quite ready, then nodded to her waiting footmen to admit her. The two young men, handsome in their country tweed liveries, sprang to attention and at once flung open the large double doors either side of which they were standing. Another brief moment was allowed to elapse before Daisy entered and then stopped as she always did just inside the room, a tiny perfect figure in a beautiful light grey dress dwarfed by the huge doorway with its magnificent ornamented pilasters and superb marble lintel. She stood and smiled, a smile famous for melting everyone upon whom it was bestowed, and then still without speaking she glided forward with little quick light steps, the way she had been so famously taught to do, making poor Jane Forrester who now moved across the room to meet her look like a tug on the Thames.

  ‘So very kind of you to come all vis way to see my house, Mrs Forrester, Mr Forrester,’ Daisy smiled, touching their hands lightly in greeting while thinking as she took her visitors in that if it wasn’t so tragic such an occasion might almost be funny, the presence of such unfortunates in her beautiful and beloved Wynyates. ‘I see vat you have brought wiv you just a hint of spring, too. How very considerate and kind, because vis is just what we all need, a little sunshine to brighten us. How very sweet and how consid
erate.’

  Herbert Forrester stared at her. Initially he had been baffled by Daisy Lanford’s inability to pronounce her thises and her thats, with the result that he had taken her to be foreign, but even now that he understood her to be English he still had no idea what the woman was talking about. When all was said and done weather was weather. No one brought it with them.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, Lady Lanford, but we didn’t bring weather with us. Far as I know, not that I’ve tried, but not even money can buy weather. It just comes t’way the Lord decides, and there’s an end to it.’

  There was a second’s silence and then Daisy laughed delightedly at Herbert Forrester, clapping her two gloved hands together noiselessly as if he had made an especially good joke, which caused him to stare uncomfortably first at his hostess, then round at his wife and then finally down at the Persian rug upon which he was standing.

  ‘Oh no, no, Mr Forrester,’ Daisy Lanford laughed. ‘Il est mais un façon de parler, yes? No of course one does not bring ve weather, but it is always said one does, is it not? I see you have brought ve good weather wiv you, as one is forever being told.’

  She laughed again and so infectious was her laugh that Herbert found himself smiling even though privately he thought he understood this odd woman about as much as he would an African slavey.

  Daisy Lanford’s rightly famous blonde beauty, her soft melodious voice, and sweet-seeming disposition were not her only fascinations or claims to fame. Her laugh too was much envied and understandably so, for she had been taught to laugh by an opera singer to a musical accompaniment. It was her mother’s idea that Daisy should learn to laugh musically, insisting that a pretty laugh was one of a woman’s greatest assets and that most women lost all their appeal once they laughed. According to Daisy’s mother, as a rule women had laughs like rusty hinges or, worse, like parrots screaming at the bagpipes, while a beautiful laugh was an incalculable social asset, so very useful for filling in little lulls in conversations without drawing too much attention to itself, or decorating discussions in the salon. It should never sound, as poor Jane Forrester’s did now that she had joined in the laughter, as if the person laughing was suffering from a bronchial spasm.

  ‘Please do sit down,’ Daisy said, vaguely indicating where the Forresters were to go, while wondering to herself what she might possibly have done to deserve such an embarrassment. Heaven knows in the pale spring sunshine outside Jane Forrester’s two-toned yellow and orange dress had looked vulgar enough, but here inside the Saloon Daisy could hardly bring herself to look at her visitor for more than a second, so dreadfully did the ghastly dress stand out against the old and muted colours of the walls and furnishings. With a little private shiver Daisy wondered what on earth life might possibly be like in the provinces, where ladies wore orange and yellow together and sat – as the wretched Mrs Forrester was now sitting – with their ankles crossed. The only thing which prevented Daisy Lanford from suddenly forgetting her manners and walking out of the room was the thought that these coarse provincials were easily rich enough to afford the absurdly exorbitant price she was asking for her beloved house.

  So while waiting for the arrival of her land agent who was to show the prospective buyers of Wynyates around the house and grounds and thinking of the large sum of money which would soon be safely banked against her ever-mounting debts, Daisy led her visitors in small talk, asking solicitously about their journey down from Yorkshire and enquiring tenderly as to their accommodation in London. Much to Daisy’s private despair Jane Forrester in return answered in great detail, and had not one of her footmen arrived as previously instructed bearing on one arm a pair of his mistress’s pet finches Daisy swore she would have dropped off to sleep with boredom.

  Fortunately the arrival of her pets forestalled any such disaster.

  ‘Ah, my pretty, pretty fings,’ Daisy cooed as the footman carefully placed the beautiful little birds on her upheld wrist, to the unconcealed astonishment of the Forresters. ‘Have you ever seen such sweet little birds, Mrs Forrester?’

  ‘Upon my soul,’ Herbert Forrester exclaimed first. ‘For myself I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Oh, these little fings get very tame, don’t you know,’ Daisy said, mouthing a little kiss at each of the birds. ‘Vey simply adore people. I have – how many do we have here now, James?’ she asked, turning to her waiting footman.

  ‘Five dozen, milady,’ he replied. ‘Sixty birds exactly.’

  As the footman finished speaking one of the birds flapped its wings and tilting back its head sang out one plaintive note.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Jane wondered, leaning forward to have a closer look. ‘What a sad sound. Is the poor thing, is it all right?’

  ‘Finches always sound like vat, vey always sound sad, which is why I like vem,’ Daisy said, staring at the bird still and not looking at her visitor. ‘Too awful to keep birds vat are always cheerful and never out of sorts, do you not fink, Mrs Forrester?’

  ‘I like a canary myself, nice long notes they have,’ Mrs Forrester went on, drawing ever closer.

  Sensing someone unknown nearing them the finches quickly fluttered off Daisy’s wrist and flew to seek sanctuary on top of an enormous oil painting of the Duke of Monmouth on horseback.

  ‘Oh dear, I hope I’ve not done that, have I?’

  ‘Never mind, Mrs Forrester,’ Daisy replied. ‘Really, vey love it on tops of pictures although the pictures can get a little decorated after vey have been vere a while. James will catch vem in a net shortly and ven all will be well again. Meanwhile, I know you will forgive me,’ she said as the doors opened and the arrival of her land agent was announced by the butler, ‘but I shall not be able to accompany you around ve house because I have a very great deal of correspondence to get frew before ve start of ve Season, as of course you, Mrs Forrester, will appreciate. Mr Jackson my land agent will escort you, and if you wish to see everyfing which I should imagine you will, including ve very pretty little eighteenf century dairy, ven it will take you a little over ve hour.’ Once more she held out one tiny beautiful hand to touch her visitors’ fingers goodbye. ‘I do hope you love my dear house as much as I have always loved it,’ she said, with just enough tremble to her voice to bring a look of concern to Jane Forrester’s face and make Herbert clear his throat.

  ‘Of course,’ Jane said solicitously, advancing on Daisy and causing her to imagine for one purely dreadful moment that the woman was going to embrace her. Happily Jane stopped well short and smiled sympathetically at Daisy instead. ‘I understand just how you must feel, Lady Lanford. When we left our first house, albeit it was only small as it were, none the less it was heartbreaking and I have to confess it took me a good deal of time to get over it.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Daisy sighed, before smiling bravely back. ‘But I am hardly ever here now, you see. And a place as beautiful as Wynyates cannot stand empty, Mrs Forrester. Places as lovely as vis, well, vey have to be loved.’

  ‘If we do proceed and decide to buy the house, Lady Lanford,’ Herbert said carefully, in the way he employed when speaking to fellow city councillors, ‘if we do proceed with the purchase of Wynyates, understand that you will always be welcome here. We would be both delighted and thrilled to receive you as our honoured guest.’

  ‘Oh!’ Daisy said almost inaudibly, now from behind a little lace handkerchief which she was holding to her mouth. ‘Vat is so very kind,’ she whispered. ‘So very, very kind.’

  Then with one last look at her visitors Daisy turned and went, hurrying away from the room as quickly as she could before the mirth which was welling up inside her burst out and she collapsed quite helpless with laughter.

  After the proper interval, Jenkins followed her mistress, pausing only for the briefest of moments as she passed Jackson, the land agent, who was standing waiting in the hall.

  ‘Her ladyship sends to tell you to please take note of the dress, Mr Jackson,’ she whispered, before scuttling a
way upstairs. ‘You have been warned.’

  The moment Edward Jackson saw Jane Forrester appear from the Saloon he realized it was just as well he had been warned. In fact in order to stop himself from instantly bursting into laughter he looked upwards from the dress, only to catch sight of an equally foolish hat, so he looked even further upwards until he found himself staring at the faces of both his employer and her maid who were staring back down at him now from the first-floor landing.

  The prompt arrival of Herbert Forrester rescued him from the embarrassment of falling into a fit of laughter.

  ‘You must be this fellow Jackson,’ Herbert said. ‘So go ahead and we shall follow you. No doubt you need a map for this place, eh?’ Herbert chuckled, and stuck the end of his cigar back in his mouth. ‘Just don’t go too fast, mind. We like to see what we’re buying, if you get my drift, Jackson. So I’m expecting chapter and verse, man, chapter and verse. And be sure not to mumble.’

  Because Herbert was so insistent on knowing everything there was to know about the house and being shown every detail, down to and including the working of the boilers and the age and state of the plumbing, the tour took well over two hours rather than one.

  As he and his wife followed Jackson through the house, they learned that Wynyates had always been considered one of the finest examples of sixteenth-century architecture in the south of England and that it was architecturally so perfect that even when a few of its details were altered to suit the fashionable taste for all that was Gothic, nothing or no-one could or even dared try to alter the shape of the house or the disposition of its rooms. Except for the addition of a pair of fine Corinthian pillars on the front in the eighteenth century, Wynyates stood almost exactly as it was when it had been completed nearly two hundred years earlier.

  Its antiquity, however, was of little interest to Herbert Forrester. What Herbert Forrester admired was practicality and soundness.