Love, Lords and Lady-Birds

Chapter One ~ 1819-1

Chapter One ~ 1819The off-side leader went lame and the Earl of Staverton swore beneath his breath. Then he pulled his horses to an abrupt standstill and his groom jumped down from the seat behind the phaeton.

“It’ll likely be a stone, my Lord,” he said cheerfully as he ran forward. “These roads be terrible bad.”

“Bad indeed!” the Earl replied, repressing more forceful language.

He tied the reins to the front of the phaeton and stepped down.

The road was in fact extremely stony and he was not surprised that one of the stones had lodged in the horse’s hoof.

He thought perhaps he had been driving imprudently fast over such a rough surface, but he was in a hurry to get to London and away from the boredom he had endured in the house where he had been staying near St. Albans for a mill between two well-known pugilists.

It had been an excellent fight and the Earl had backed the winner for a considerable sum of money. But both the company of his host and the food provided had been one long yawn from start to finish.

Admittedly the Earl was not easily amused and he found a great many things and a large number of people to be what he termed ‘a dead bore’.

It was a pleasant spring morning. Wild flowers were to be seen in plenty amongst the grasses by the road and there were primroses in the hedgerows and bluebells making an azure carpet under the trees in the woods.

The Earl watched as his groom carefully prised out the sharp stone that had lodged in the hoof so as not to loosen the shoe.

He looked at his team with some pleasure. Jet black and perfectly matched, they were, he knew, the most outstanding horseflesh to be seen in the Four-In-Hand Club, which he was confident that no other member was able to equal.

To stretch his legs he walked through the grasses, regardless of the fact that the pollen marked his shining Hessians, which had been polished with champagne as originally decreed by Beau Brummell.

On one side of him there was a brick wall, higher than was usual, enclosing the Park of some important aristocrat.

The bricks, narrow and red, had mellowed with time and the wall was now deep pink in colour, which told the Earl, who was an expert on architecture, that it was Elizabethan.

The spring sunlight playing on the bricks was very beautiful and he was just wishing that the wall that enclosed Staverton House in Oxfordshire was the same colour when suddenly a heavy object flew past his head missing him by inches.

It fell with a thud at his feet and he looked down with astonishment to see that it was a leather valise not too heavy to carry but a dangerous weapon should it have struck him.

He looked to where it had come from and saw climbing over the top of the wall a female figure.

There was a most improper expanse of very shapely legs before the owner dropped to the ground with a lithe grace that kept her on her feet and prevented her from sprawling, as might have been expected, on her back.

She had descended with her face to the wall and only as she turned round did she see the Earl with the valise at his feet.

“That was an extremely dangerous thing to do,” he said coldly. “If it had hit me, I could easily have been knocked out.”

“How was I to know that anyone would be standing by the only place where it is possible to climb the wall?” she asked.

She walked towards him as she spoke and he saw that she carried her bonnet on her arm and her hair was gold with pretty red lights in it.

As she looked up at him, her eyes were very large and there was something mischievous in the way they slanted just a little at the corners. Her mouth also curved, which gave her an unmistakably impish expression.

She was not strictly beautiful, but she had, he thought, a decidedly fascinating face, quite different from that of any girl he had seen before.

“I presume that you are running away,” the Earl remarked as casually as he could.

“I should hardly be likely to climb the wall if I could walk out through the gate!” was the instant reply.

She bent down, intending to retrieve her valise and then she saw the Earl’s horses.

“Are those yours?” she asked in an awestruck tone.

“They are,” he answered, “but the leader has collected a stone owing to your abominable roads.”

“Not mine!” the girl retorted. “But your horses are wonderful. The most magnificent I have ever seen.”

“I am honoured that you should think so,” the Earl said with a sarcastic twist to his lips.

“Where are you going?”

“To London as it happens.”

“Then please – please take me with you. That is where I wish to go and I would like above all else to drive behind such an exceptional team.”

She moved towards them as she spoke, forgetting the valise, which still lay on the grass at the Earl’s feet.

“I feel it is my duty to ask you who you are running away from and why,” the Earl said.

The girl had drawn nearer to the horses and was now standing gazing at them, her eyes shining.

“They are superb!” she breathed. “How can you have found four such perfect matches?”

“I asked you a question,” the Earl persisted.

“What about?” she enquired absent-mindedly and then added,

“I am running away from school and, unless they are to find out I have gone, we should be moving away.”

“I do not wish to become involved in anything reprehensible,” the Earl pointed out.

“That sounds very stuffy,” she replied scornfully, “but, if you will not take me, then Jeb the butcher will. He should be along at any time now.”

“You have an assignation with him?”

“No, but I have talked to him about his horses and I know he will oblige me.”

She looked down the road as she spoke and then her eyes came back to the Earl’s face.

“Please take me,” she begged him. “Nothing you can say or do will make me go back, so it is either you or Jeb. But I would like so much to drive with you.”

As she spoke, the Earl’s groom straightened his back.

“It’ll be all right now, my Lord.”

The girl’s eyes were still on the Earl’s face.

“Please,” she pleaded almost beneath her breath.

“You could not be so treacherous.” she exclaimed “At the same time my reason is a really good one.”

“I will take you on one condition,” the Earl suggested.

“What is that?”

“That you tell me why you are running away and, if I do not consider it a valid excuse, I shall take you back to your school.”

He helped her into the phaeton and undid the reins.

The groom picked up the valise, stowed it away at the back as he swung himself into the high chair-like seat that he himself occupied and they were off.

They drove a little way in silence and then the Earl was aware that his companion was not thinking of him but of his horses.

“I am waiting,” he remarked.

“For what?”

“You know quite well what for and I have a feeling that you are deliberately prolonging your explanation so as to be carried as far away from your school as possible before you tell me.”

She flashed him a smile which made her lips curve most beguilingly.

“That is quite intelligent of you.”

“I am not as obtuse as you appear to think,” the Earl answered sarcastically. “Who are you meeting when you reach London?”

His companion gave a little laugh.

“I wish I could tell you it was some ardent beau, but I can assure you that if there was one I would have made him fetch me from school and not have to rely on Jeb or the lucky chance of meeting a stranger like yourself.”

“No beau? Then why this anxiety to get to London?”

“Because I am too old to be at school for any longer, and my horrible beastly Guardian insists that I spend all my holidays in Harrogate.”

“What is wrong with Harrogate?” the Earl asked.

“Everything is wrong with Harrogate! It is dull, it is full of very old and ill people. When I was there for the Christmas holidays, I never met a single man except for the Vicar!”

Her tone was so scathing that the Earl laughed despite himself.

“You have obviously suffered acutely in such a place, but then is there nowhere else you could go?”

“Not as far as my Guardian is concerned,” the girl answered. “The loathsome creature does not even answer my letters and every suggestion I make is rejected by his lawyer.”

“He sounds somewhat unfeeling,” the Earl agreed. “When you do reach London, are you intending to beard him in person?”

“Certainly not! I have no intention of going near him and I suspect that the reason why he does not want to see me or communicate with me is that he is spending my fortune on himself.”

The Earl turned to look at her speculatively. As he took in the plain bonnet with its dark blue ribbons and the simple unimaginative gown, the girl said passionately,

“You are thinking that I do not look like an heiress and is it surprising when my clothes are chosen for me by Cousin Adelaide, who is nearly eighty and paid for by my Guardian’s lawyer?”

Her lips tightened before she went on,

“I was eighteen last week and all my friends, my real friends, made their debuts last year. I was still in mourning for Papa so I suppose there was some excuse for not allowing me to be presented at Court then, but this year I was sure that I would be allowed to go to London.”

“What are your Guardian’s reasons for refusing?”

“I told you, I never hear from the brute! I wrote him pages and pages after Christmas and his lawyer simply replied that I was to stay at school until further notice.”

She drew in her breath and then continued,

“I waited until now for three months and now I have made an important decision. I will take the matter into my own hands.”

“And when you reach London, what do you intend to do?” the Earl asked.

“I am going to become a Lady-Bird!”

“A – Lady-Bird?” he questioned.

“That is what Claire’s brother, Rupert, calls them, but I believe another description is ‘a bit of muslin’ or a ‘Cyprian’.”

The Earl was so astonished that for a moment he let the reins fall and his horses broke into a gallop. He steadied them again before he asked,

“Have you the least idea of what you are saying?”

“But, of course, I have,” his companion replied. “As I am not allowed to take my place in Society, I shall make my life in my own way.”

“I cannot believe you know what you are implying.”

“My best friend, Claire, explained it all last year before she left. All the smart beaux have mistresses and that means the lady they choose is expected to belong to them and to no one else. A Lady-Bird can pick and choose. If one man bores her, she can find another one who is more interesting.”

“And you really believe that sort of – life would suit you?” the Earl asked, choosing his words with care.

“It must be more amusing than sitting all day in that deadly school, having already learnt everything they can possibly teach me. Of course I shall be very careful in selecting the man I shall spend my time with.”

“I should hope so!” the Earl remarked.

“Think what fun it will be to do what I like and not permanently have people telling me that everything I want to do is wrong and unconventional.”

“What do you imagine you will do?”

“Go to Vauxhall, for one thing, and see the fireworks. Drive my own phaeton in Hyde Park, dance every night, have a house of my own and not have to worry as to whether I get married or not.”

“You have no wish to be married?”

“Of course not. It would be far worse than being a mistress to be tied up with one man forever! Claire says that Society is nothing more than a marriage market anyway.”

“What does your friend Claire mean by that?”

“She says that every debutante is competing either to marry a nit-wit because he has a title or some fat red-faced old man because he is rich. That at least is one thing I don’t have to worry about. I have a huge fortune all my own.”