Regency Pleasures: A Model Débutante

Chapter Eight

‘There was a time—can it be just a few days ago?—when my only worry was earning my living,’ Tallie lamented as the hackney carriage made its way along Oxford Street. ‘Now I have to worry about my position in Society—or lack of it; how to invest a ridiculous amount of money wisely; how to keep an interfering, autocratic aristocrat from discovering my secrets and how to persuade you to allow me to buy you a dress or two.’

‘Tallie, I simply cannot accept expensive presents …’ Zenna protested for the third time that morning.

‘I am not trying to give you expensive presents—just one evening dress so we can go to parties together. Please, Zenna. I need your support. Lady Parry is so kind, but it is not the same as a friend my own age. And it would give me such pleasure to give you a present.’ She smiled hopefully at her friend, who sighed and smiled back.

‘Very well, and thank you, Tallie. It would be very pleasant to have a nice evening gown, I have to admit, but as for the other gowns you were talking of, that is far too much.’

‘Business expenses,’ Tallie said firmly. ‘We can put them down as business expenses. You must have some good day dresses for interviewing teachers and parents. We are aiming at the highest quality for this school, are we not?’

Zenna began to protest that arguing with Tallie was more exhausting than trying to handle a room full of six-year-old boys when the hackney pulled up outside the Pantheon Bazaar and Tallie got to her feet. ‘We will start here, then I thought Hardin and Howell, Stagg and Mantle’s and Clark and Debenham’s.’ She smiled at Zenna, who descended onto the pavement looking apprehensive at this formidable list. ‘Then this afternoon, Dickens and Smith …’ She plunged into the shop pursued by Zenna, who was grimly resolving that, whatever else the day held, it was going to include a lengthy pause at Gunter’s. A very lengthy one indeed.

At four o’clock that afternoon two very weary young ladies made their way up to Tallie’s bedroom and collapsed onto the bed, scattering parcels and bandboxes on the floor as they did so. Behind them came the faint sounds of little Annie struggling up the stairs with still more packages.

‘My feet!’ Zenna moaned, pulling off her shoes and wriggling her toes with a gasp of relief.

Tallie levered herself up on her elbows from her position prone on the mattress and sighed happily. ‘Mine too. Oh, thank you, Annie. Put them in the corner, please, and then please bring us some tea up.’ She dragged the pillows up into a heap and sat back against them. ‘A nice cup of tea and then all the fun of unwrapping everything.’ She smiled at Zenna coaxingly. ‘Admit it, Zenna, you did enjoy it a little bit, did you not?’

‘Well … yes, I have to confess I did. Thank you very much for the gown and the slippers and gloves. It felt very good to dress up for once. But we do seem to have bought a vast amount of things—do you think you have almost everything you need now?’

‘I should not think so for a minute,’ Tallie replied, reflecting on the ladies’ boudoirs she had glimpsed so frequently in her career as a milliner. ‘Lady Parry would be very disappointed if she does not have the opportunity to supervise my shopping. No, this was just so that I did not feel too drab in the first few days. My old pelisse and walking dress are on their last prayers, all my stockings have been darned and both my pairs of gloves have got splits in the seams.’

She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the images of the day’s extravagances swirl across her memory. ‘It is fun to have a holiday and to be able to buy what one wants, but I am glad we have our business ventures to be working on, Zenna. I cannot feel comfortable with the thought of Society life. From what I have seen it is entirely composed of luxury and pleasure. I am sure I would soon become bored with nothing else to think of.’

Into the images of dress lengths and slippers, fans and feathers the picture of a tall, dark, elegant gentleman rose, quite unbidden. How did Lord Arndale spend his time? she wondered. In the company of actresses and opera dancers? At the card tables? At cock-fights and the prize-ring? She tried to imagine that coolly sardonic expression giving way to excitement , passion, anticipation—and failed. His lordship was undoubtedly a prime example of the indolent and aloof members of Society whose way of life she was about to sample. It would be satisfying to cause some emotion to cross those chiselled features or to provoke a response that was neither controlled nor temperate. A small smile caught at the corners of Tallie’s lips. Yes, very satisfying indeed.

Two days later the indolent and aloof gentleman in question mounted the steps of the house in Upper Wimpole Street and found himself unexpectedly encountering almost the entire household.

Nick had spent a taxing morning with his steward, who had come up from the country estates with a formidable pile of problems and questions to be resolved, and later that afternoon he suspected he was going to have to have an equally long list of details to decide with Mr Dover before the final work could be completed on Miss Gower’s will. That evening he fully intended leaving young William to his own devices, however dubious they sounded, and relaxing with a small group of friends over dinner, cards and several bottles of excellent brandy.

But he had been waylaid by his aunt and asked to call upon Miss Grey. ‘You will tell her I will collect her in my carriage at ten on Wednesday morning, will you not, Nicholas dear? And if you can establish how many trunks she has, then Rainbird can organise the carrier.’ She had stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. ‘Thank you, dearest.’ And she had rushed away in her usual whirlwind manner before he could enquire why a note would not serve the purpose just as well.

Now he was here, he might as well take the opportunity of smoothing over the friction from their last encounter. He could not really believe she had set her sights on young William Parry, but it had been bad tactics to let her see he was concerned. If she was the sort of woman who saw opposition as a challenge, she might attempt to attach the lad’s interest simply as a game. And William was far too young to be breaking his heart over an older woman Nick decided, conveniently forgetting his own initiation into the arts of love at the age of seventeen by a beautiful, sophisticated lady more than ten years his senior.

The door was opened by a diminutive maid with a snub nose, freckles, an apron too large for her and an expression of alarm. ‘Oh, sir! Miss Grey? Oh, yes, sir! I’ll tell her you’re here, sir, if you’ll just wait in the front parlour, sir.’

She flung open the door to let him in, appeared to realise she should have asked his name to announce him, gave a scared squeak and shut the door again behind him. Nick found himself in a cosy, slightly shabby room with an indefinable air of comfort and femininity. The latter quality was enhanced by the presence on the sofa of an enchantingly pretty girl with large blue eyes and a mass of blonde curls. Tumbled in a pile by her side were undergarments of a most frivolous, intimate and dainty variety.

She bundled the lingerie under a cushion with what struck Nick as admirable quick-wittedness and got to her feet, placing a thimble and needle on the table beside her. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ she said, a faint blush colouring her cheeks. ‘Annie is not yet trained as a downstairs maid and I am afraid she does not always remember to announce callers.’

‘Nicholas Stangate. I called to see Miss Grey. May I presume to guess I am addressing Miss Amelie LeNoir? I apologise for disturbing you.’ It would not be the slightest hardship to disturb Miss LeNoir, he reflected, watching the artless pleasure at his recognition, the lovely figure in a surprisingly modest afternoon dress, the parted lips and soft curves. No hardship at all.

‘Oh, how did you guess? Your lordship,’ she added hastily, bobbing a curtsy.

‘You were described to me,’ Nick said simply, enjoying the deepening of the flush of pleasure, the flutter of the long lashes. For a man who had always favoured dark-haired women, his life suddenly appeared to be full of blondes. It made an agreeable change.

‘I … I had better go and find Tal … Miss Grey, my lord. One simply cannot rely on Annie. Will you not sit down?’ She gestured at the sofa, recalled her mending, hastily whisked it from under the cushion to under her arm and hurried out.

Nick grinned. The enchantingly fresh young woman who had just fluttered out was either an exceptional actress or that contradiction in terms, a chaste opera dancer, just as Talitha Grey had said. Instead of taking the proffered seat, he began to prowl around the room. It was a rare glimpse for a man into a feminine world that was not arranged for display or entertaining, but simply for a group of women to pass their daily lives in.

A neat stack of account books next to a spike impaling tradesmen’s bills. A basket of laces, ribbons and artificial flowers by a sewing box and a large velvet pincushion studded with glass-headed pins. A pile of novels and some copies of fashion journals upon a shelf. A chessboard set out for the start of a game. He moved a pawn in an opening gambit and continued to look around. A quill stained with red ink lay beside an open exercise book.

Nick paused and flicked open a page of the lexicon next to the exercise book. Greek! The door behind him opened to reveal not Miss Grey, but her governess friend. ‘Miss Scott, good afternoon. You have surprised me reading what I imagine must be your Greek lexicon.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ She stood there, regarding him from under level dark brows. He expected disapproval; instead, he found himself unable to interpret the assessing look in her eyes. ‘I teach both Latin and Greek, besides the modern languages.’

‘I had not realised you teach boys,’ he remarked, more to make conversation than anything, and was surprised by the flash of irritation in her steady gaze.

‘I do not. These days I teach only girls. Perhaps your lordship does not consider the female mind has the capacity for the ancient languages?’

‘I had never given it any consideration,’ he admitted. ‘But I can see no useful purpose in it for a woman.’

‘Beside the intellectual discipline, the improved understanding of modern tongues and of history and art?’ she enquired frostily.

‘Well, there is that, of course, but if a girl is to marry …’

‘Not all of us do,’ Miss Scott informed him. ‘I see no reason why an unmarried lady should have her intellectual range diminished because of that. Nor why a married woman may not be educated.’ Her expression softened slightly. ‘No doubt you consider that a married woman has no need to use her intelligence on more than the ordering of the household? Not that housekeeping is as simple a task as most men appear to think it.’

Nick thought of his mother, smiling gently whenever any problem arose. ‘Your papa will know what to do’ was her inevitable response, and more recently, ‘Whatever you say, Nicholas dear.’ And his aunt, undoubtedly intelligent, vibrant, energetic—but quite content to place her business affairs entirely in his hands.

‘There is no need for a lady to concern herself with difficult matters—’ he began.

‘But not all of us chose to be helpless pawns,’ said another voice gently. Miss Grey walked into the room behind her friend. ‘I believe you wish to see me, my lord?’

Nick took a step forward, found his foot entangled, glanced down and saw he was standing on a piece of fabric. He stooped to pick it up and found himself holding a garment he had no difficulty in recognising as a chemise. Neither young lady appeared prepared to help him out of his difficulty so he folded it neatly and placed it on the side-table. Keeping his face entirely bland, he looked up and found he had met his match in coolness in Miss Scott, whose expression showed not the slightest recognition that he had been handling a piece of intimate apparel. Miss Grey, on the other hand, appeared ready to give way to laughter. Her green eyes sparkled with amusement at his predicament and her lower lip was caught firmly between white teeth.

The thought of nipping that fullness between his own teeth struck him with a bolt of erotic heat. A flare of it must have shown in his eyes for instantly hers sobered, widened, and he wondered if she had read correctly the nature of his thoughts and was in tune with them. Then the moment of mutual awareness was gone and she was waving him towards the sofa.

‘Will you take tea, my lord?’

‘No, thank you. I have called simply with a message from Lady Parry.’

Talitha Grey answered the queries with a directness that reinforced his knowledge of her previously straitened circumstances. ‘Trunks? Why, just the one, my lord, and a valise.’

‘And several new bandboxes,’ the governess added drily.

‘Oh, yes. I was forgetting.’ She turned to him, smiling slightly. ‘I have been succumbing to the lure of shopping.’

‘Indeed? In that case I am surprised you have had the time to attend to your new business venture.’ He watched not Talitha but her friend and saw the look of surprise and speculation she directed at him. But to his disappointment the governess did not speak.

‘Ventures, in the plural. Yes, when one has been accustomed to working for one’s living, my lord, one can find plenty of time in the day for business. Shopping is hardly time-consuming.’

‘I suspect you may modify your opinion on that after a short experience of my aunt’s approach to the subject.’

Talitha merely smiled politely. It was intensely frustrating. Every time he spoke to her he had the impression that she was keeping a part of herself hidden from him and he only caught brief flashes of the real Talitha Grey. Now he had the question of her ‘business interests’ to add to the list for Tolliver to investigate.

It was not until Nick was halfway down the front steps that he caught himself wondering why he wanted to find out about that aspect of her life. She was being advised by Dover and by the bank; she was hardly going to do something imprudent. Nor was it his business if she did, as she had so frostily reminded him during that encounter in Gunter’s.

He was not given to self-deception and he did not indulge in it now. Finding out about Miss Grey’s ‘secret’ might have started out in his desire to protect his aunt. Now finding out everything about her had assumed an altogether different character. Nick Stangate smiled ruefully as he nodded to his groom and got up into his phaeton. This was becoming personal.

For Tallie, too, the encounters with Nick Stangate were beginning to feel very personal indeed. She felt gratitude, anger, fear and attraction in a disturbing mixture that was threatening to obsess her.

The degree to which she felt the various emotions he evoked varied wildly, depending on what he had just said to annoy or alarm her and also on those fleeting moments when their eyes met and locked and she felt as though a dentist’s probe had touched a nerve. When it happened her heart beat rapidly, her breath caught and she felt a strange heated ache deep inside. Tallie told herself it was fear: fear at what he might find out about her, fear of exposure. But she was very much afraid that it was another raw, basic emotion and one that young ladies, especially respectable unmarried young ladies, were not supposed to feel.

She could only be grateful that for the first week of her stay with Lady Parry in Bruton Street she did not meet him once.

‘Have you seen Nicholas lately?’ Lady Parry enquired of her son at breakfast on the Wednesday after Tallie’s arrival.

‘Hmm?’ William put down the paper he was idly conning and furrowed his brow in thought. ‘Twice … no, three times. You know Nick, he just strolls in when you least expect him. Now, when was it? Oh, yes, he dropped in at Watier’s when I was playing cards with Hemsley and some fellows on Saturday. And he arrived at Jackson’s Saloon just in time to see me pop a terrific right over Jack’s guard. That was Monday afternoon …’

‘Is Jackson the famous bare-knuckle fighter?’ Tallie enquired. ‘And you managed to hit him? My goodness!’

‘Lord, no.’ William blushed at her praise, but hastened to set her right. ‘No one lands a punch on the great Jackson unless he lets them. No, it was Jack Hemsley.’

‘Oh, I see. Still, I am sure you must be very good to be admitted to Jackson’s Saloon,’ Tallie said encouragingly. ‘Might I trouble you for the preserve? Thank you. And you saw Lord Arndale for a third time?’

‘Er, yes. Last night.’ William seemed disinclined to explain further, but Tallie, convinced she was beginning to see a pattern, persisted.