The Prude and the Prodigal

Chapter One ~ 1817-1

Chapter One ~ 1817Prunella awoke and instantly began to think about Nanette.

Usually in the time between waking and being called she said her prayers, but this morning it was as if the problem that had been in her mind when she went to sleep was waiting for her like a ghoul sitting on the end of her bed.

‘What am I to do?’ she asked herself and felt that she had tried everything already.

It had seemed such a good idea that Nanette, who was so pretty and so intelligent, should be presented at Court when she was seventeen.

Many of the girls in Society made their debut at that age and, as the mourning for their father had ended in March, it seemed almost like Fate when Lady Carnworth, who was Nanette’s Godmother, should write and suggest that she should present her Goddaughter to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace at the end of April.

That gave them time, Prunella had calculated quickly, for Nanette to buy the elegant gowns that were essential for the London Season and to gain a few weeks sophisticated poise before she actually made her curtsey.

Prunella had therefore, with complete confidence, accepted Lady Carnworth’s kind invitation and had sent Nanette to London with a lady’s maid and an experienced Courier.

“I cannot think why you don’t take me yourself,” Nanette had complained.

Actually the idea had never occurred to Prunella, but, when Nanette suggested it, she knew that Lady Carnworth would not want to chaperone two girls and she had missed her chance years earlier.

“I am much too old,” she had replied, her smile taking the sting from the words.

“Of course you are not,” Nanette protested loyally.

But she had not referred to it again and Prunella knew that she was a little embarrassed when she thought of how dull and dreary her elder sister’s life had been these past three years.

Prunella, however, was not thinking about herself at the moment but of Nanette.

She had returned home the second week in June after the Prince Regent had left Carlton House for Brighton and the Season to all intents and purposes had come to an end.

“You must tell me everything, dearest,” Prunella had said the first evening of her return.

Although Nanette had chattered away, she knew her sister well enough to suspect that something was being kept back.

It was soon obvious what that was, because even before Nanette had confessed, if that was the right word, Lady Carnworth had written to Prunella,

“There is no need for me to tell you that Nanette has been an unqualified success. Everybody was delighted with her looks, her gowns that I am prepared to take full credit for and, of course, for her sweet nature and exquisite good manners.

I am not going to pretend to you, Prunella, that the fact that she is an heiress did not smooth the way and open the doors for her to receive many invitations that she might otherwise not have obtained. But, of course, a young woman with money is bound to encounter difficulties and the one I am going to tell you about in confidence is called ‘Pascoe Lowes’.

He is the son of Lord Lowestoft and has been spoilt all his life by a doting mother and the fact that he is far too good-looking for any young girl’s peace of mind. When he attached himself to Nanette, my heart sank and I did everything in my power to put him off and to make her understand that he is well known as a ‘fortune-hunter’ and therefore a most undesirable parti in every way.

I am only hoping that now Nanette has left London and returned to the country he will forget about her, but I thought it my duty to warn you that he has been very attentive and Nanette has, I am afraid, in consequence turned a cold shoulder on two quite suitable gentlemen who would, I am certain, had they been encouraged, have offered for her.

You must forgive me, dear Prunella, for not having somehow prevented this situation from arising, although I do not know what else I could have done to keep them apart once they had met. I feel sure when you talk to Nanette that you will make her see sense and that she can do far better for herself than to waste her time with Pascoe Lowes.”

Prunella read the letter over and over again and then wisely, because she loved her sister, waited until Nanette was ready to confide in her.

It was something that she was eventually obliged to do when a post chaise arrived from London containing a huge bouquet of flowers and a letter.

Naturally Nanette had been excited by such an extravagant and flamboyant gesture.

“Can you imagine him sending flowers such a long way?” she had asked.

“Your admirer must be very rich,” Prunella remarked.

Then, of course, the story came out.

“Godmama claims that Pascoe is a fortune-hunter,” Nanette related, “but it is untrue. He told me quite frankly that he has no money and he would have loved me even if I had not a penny to my name.”

“But, dearest, you are in fact very rich,” Prunella said, “and I cannot help thinking it would be a great mistake to marry a man without money.”

“He will be able to spend mine,” Nanette replied innocently.

“If he is a decent man, he would feel embarrassed at being in such a position,” Prunella added firmly.

She talked quietly and eloquently on the subject until she realised that Nanette was not listening but was looking with glowing eyes at the huge bouquet of flowers and touching the letter that had come with them, which was tucked into the sash of her gown.

A week later the Honourable Pascoe Lowes arrived to stay in a house about five miles away.

Prunella was surprised that he knew people in the area until she suddenly realised that his mother was the elder daughter of the late Earl of Winslow.

‘I took no notice of his name,’ she said to herself, ‘but now I recall that Lady Anne married Lord Lowestoft whose family name is ‘Lowes’. It was stupid of me not to remember it.’

When she thought back, she could hear the Earl, who had been a great friend of her father’s, saying how boring he found his son-in-law with the result that Lord and Lady Lowestoft seldom stayed at The Hall.

Prunella supposed that they must have done so when she was a child, but later she had heard that Lord Lowestoft was bedridden and naturally during the War the Earl seldom entertained and her father appeared to be his only guest.

‘It’s a pity he is not alive today,’ Prunella thought when she learned about Nanette’s interest in his grandson.

She was quite certain that the old Earl, a fierce and rather terrifying old man, would not have allowed his grandson to behave in any way that was unbecoming to a gentleman. And what indeed was worse than to be branded as ‘a fortune-hunter’.

When Pascoe Lowes was announced, Prunella saw at first glance that it was going to be difficult to persuade Nanette that he was only an extremely handsome, if overdressed, idle young man.

Prunella had never visited London and had therefore no idea of what the bucks, beaux and dandies actually looked like, but here was a man who was undoubtedly all three, walking towards her and to her eyes looking so fantastic that she felt she must be gaping at him with her mouth open like a goldfish.

“I am so delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Broughton,” this vision of elegance was saying. “Your sister has extolled your beauty and your virtues until I found it hard to believe that such a paragon really existed and yet I see that she has not exaggerated.”

‘He certainly puts on an excellent performance,’ Prunella thought to herself.

But at the same time the Honourable Pascoe spoke with such apparent sincerity and undoubted charm that despite herself she found herself smiling at his compliments.

He obviously was not listening to what she said but was watching Nanette and there was no doubt that he was looking at her in a meaningful and ardent manner that Prunella felt would turn the head of any girl and especially one as inexperienced as her sister.

By the time the visit was over, and the Honourable Pascoe was astute enough to make it short, Prunella was really alarmed.

He was, she was quite certain, everything that she would dislike in a brother-in-law and she felt strongly that he would make Nanette extremely unhappy.

How could any girl who was country-bred tolerate a husband, who must spend hours having his cravat tied in such a difficult and intricate fashion just to make all the other dandies envious?

The points of his collar reached exactly the prescribed position above his chin and his hair was arranged in the windswept style set by the Prince Regent.

His Hessian boots owed their fine polish, if Nanette was to be believed, to champagne.

‘Champagne!’ Prunella wanted to cry out, when he had no money and was doubtless accumulating a pile of debts.

When he left after paying more extravagant compliments to Prunella and holding Nanette’s hand far longer than was necessary, there was no doubt that he had left an impression that was not easy to erase.

Nanette was starry-eyed the whole evening and Prunella knew that, whatever she might say to disparage Pascoe Lowes, it would fall on deaf ears.

‘What am I to do?’ she asked herself again when she went to bed that night and it was a question that she had been repeating over and over again all through the week.

She heard her bedroom door open and knew that it was Charity, the maid who had looked after her ever since she was a child, who was crossing the room carefully towards the window.

Charity, who had been inflicted with such a cruel name by the orphanage that she had been brought up in, was getting on in years.

But, because she had been well-trained, she still moved as silently as when she had come to The Manor first as an under-under-housemaid, then as a nursery maid and finally, soon after Nanette had been born, she had been promoted to Nanny.

Now she was lady’s maid, housekeeper and a self-appointed chaperone to Prunella and Nanette since Sir Roderick had died.

Prunella had toyed with the idea of having an elderly lady to live with them, but first she did not know anyone suitable and secondly she knew that it would be depressing and a restriction that she would find intolerable.

‘We live very quietly,’ she told herself, ‘and anyway there is little more that the County can say about us that has not been said already.’

At this there was a hardness in her eyes and a bitter twist to her lips before deliberately she turned her thoughts elsewhere and that inevitably was to Nanette.

Charity pulled back the curtains and the sunshine flooded in through the windows. Then she turned towards the bed and Prunella knew before she spoke that she had something to tell her.

“What is it, Charity?” she asked, feeling instinctively that it would not be good news.

“Another letter came for Miss Nanette this mornin’,” Charity replied, “and it was almost as if she knew clairvoyant-like it was a-comin’. She was down the stairs and at the front door before Bates could get there!”

“Was she already dressed?” Prunella asked.

“In her dressing gown she was! I says to her, ‘really, Miss Nanette, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, comin’ down the stairs in a way no lady would’.”

“What did she answer?” Prunella enquired.

“I might as well have been talkin’ to the wall,” Charity replied. “She just rushes past me huggin’ the letter to her chest, goes into her bedroom and I hears the key turnin’ in the lock.” Prunella sighed.

“Oh, Charity, what are we to do about her?”

“I haven’t the least idea what we can do, Miss Prunella, and that’s the truth,” Charity replied. “I don’t know what your father would have said if he could have seen her, goin’ to the front door in her bed attire with the menservants about.”

It was obvious that Charity was extremely shocked by it and indeed so was Prunella.

Not that Bates really mattered for he had been with them almost as long as Charity and the only footman they had at the moment was Bates’s grandson, who was rather simple and not likely to notice what anyone was wearing.