Chapter 15

This is no very great mistake, but it is always ominous to stumble at the threshold.

—Thomas Baker, Reflections upon learning, wherein is shewn the insufficiency thereof, by a gentleman (1699)

Until the night of Lady Aurora Robillard's rout, Beatrice's stay with the Huftons had been no bed of roses. The redbrick townhouse they had taken in Green Street was both elegant and convenient, to be sure, and Beatrice was given her own pink-and-yellow papered room overlooking a pocket handkerchief of a back garden, but these domestic pleasures had been counterbalanced by the shock of London itself and her stepcousin's hostility.

Lady Hufton called the West End the "quiet part of town," but to Beatrice's provincial ears they were nothing of the sort. All through the night the watchman's voice called the hour, giving way in the early morning to the coal wagons, bumping along and stopping at every house to shovel out the day's rattling load. Then came the milkmen, followed by the tradesmen's carts along Oxford Street heading for the markets. In between jolted the mail and flyer coaches delivering their burden of post and people. While the residents of Mayfair rose late following their nightly entertainments, when they were at last ready to face the world, they swept into the streets, walking, riding, driving, observing, shopping, and talking talking talking. Beatrice had never seen so many people in so small a compass, nor heard such a din which never fell completely silent. It was alternately stirring and irritating, depending on her mood; nor could she prevent herself from wishing to take part in the social mill, though she both dreaded glimpsing Mr. Clayton and hoped for it. A dozen times a day she thought the moment upon her, imagining him in every tall figure which strode by or emerged from a hackney coach.

But more trying when they first arrived had been Miss Hufton's conduct. The young lady obeyed her parents, but only just, her demeanor sulky and speech gruff. Beatrice's timid but friendly overtures met with the minimum of courtesy, and this unaccustomed coldness made her more than once wish herself back in Winchester, even as she grew more used to the noise and hubbub of the capital. Therefore her stepcousin's sudden warming at the rout had been as welcome as it was unexpected, but Beatrice did not dare to hope it had outlasted the night.

"Good morning, Beatrice," Lady Hufton greeted her when she descended for breakfast. "You look rather pale today. Did you not sleep well?"

In fact she had not slept much at all, being too full of excitement from seeing Mr. Clayton again and from revolving plans to save his canal project, but Beatrice assured her hostess she was perfectly well. Accepting a cup of chocolate and several slices of toast, she took her usual seat across from Marjorie, gaze lowered because she had learned the girl was more apt to snarl than to smile in the mornings.

But not this morning.

"Mama proposes we go shopping again," Marjorie accosted her. "What do you think?"

Beatrice lifted her head, lips parting. But her cousin sustained her gaze stolidly, as if she had never scowled a day in her life. "That would be pleasant," Beatrice answered.

"Well, I would rather go for a walk," said Marjorie.

"One might walk to the shops," answered her mother.

"I mean a walk walk. And one with just us girls. That is, if Beatrice is willing."

"I am. Yes." Beatrice said at once. For unknown to anyone, that very moment in her pocket she carried a list of the most promising gentlemen to whom she had been introduced or who had been pointed out to her. If they went walking, who knew whom they might encounter?

However Lady Hufton might have preferred to keep an eye on her charges, Marjorie's improved spirits were too novel to be put to the test. With a glance at her husband Sir John, who merely cleared his throat and frowned over the post, she yielded the point, and within the hour the two young ladies were dressed against the November chill and proceeding up Green Street toward North Audley, Marjorie's arm most unexpectedly wound through Beatrice's.

"How glad I am Mama did not insist," she said, when they paused for a sedan chair to pass. "Because since last night, when you told me of your own heartbreak, I have most particularly wanted to speak to you. To unburden myself. I thought, ‘If she too has suffered, she will understand why I have been so unhappy and, I daresay, unpleasant.' Therefore do tell me how long it took you to feel yourself again?" She asked this with her bonnet brim upraised and such pleading in her beady, deep-set eyes that Beatrice could not help but think of a little shrew peering from its underground nest at a burrowing fox.

"I—hardly know how to answer," said Beatrice, "except to say that my own mama hopes the same as yours: that this interlude in town will…help me to forget. But forgetting does not just happen, Marjorie. We must cooperate with it." Perhaps Beatrice was a hypocrite here, having not made much progress in forgetting Mr. Clayton and having now promised to assist him, but she still did think it good advice. Marjorie's previous sullenness certainly was no remedy for a broken heart, in any case—that much Beatrice knew. Nevertheless she hoped Marjorie would not press her for more details.

To her relief the girl clung more closely to her and whispered, "You're right. I know you are. Beatrice, you must not think badly of me for how I have behaved. If you knew the worth of the man my parents deny me!"

Managing to hide her incredulity, Beatrice answered, "I suppose discovering the best qualities in a person takes study, and perhaps we all are guilty of not taking the trouble, unless it interests us."

"Perhaps. I only know that Sam was attentive and respectful and carried himself with such an air!" She sighed, remembering the drunken groom's charms, while Beatrice wondered how it could be called "respectful" for a man to make up to his master's rich daughter. But then Marjorie prodded, "Do tell, Beatrice—what were the best qualities in your young man?"

"Oh…er..." While she could have named a hundred qualities, she would rather her stepcousin not draw any conclusions, lest they see Mr. Clayton again during their stay. The thought of him, however, spurred her to remember the note in her pocket, and her steps slowed. Could she use this situation, this conversation, to her advantage?

"Er—I would say much the same," Beatrice replied hurriedly. "That is, he was kind and—and respectful."

"How can you say so when he was engaged?" wondered her cousin. "He misled you! I thought you would say he was charming and handsome, which was why you were deceived."

"He was that too. Never mind. I don't want to talk about it, if you understand. In fact, I have made a plan to—distract myself from my—sorrows—and, Marjorie, perhaps it might do the same for you."

"What plan?"

"Well, I was thinking there were many—er—promising gentlemen at the rout last night. I even made a list of them before I went to bed."

Miss Hufton's beady eyes widened. "You made a list of men to fall in love with?"

"I don't know about that," Beatrice bristled. "I just meant men to…consider."

"Have you the list with you? Let me see it!" She thrust out a gloved hand and, after a pause, Beatrice handed it over.

"I don't know where they may be found," she said, "but I thought I might keep an eye open because they're most of them sure to live somewhere nearby. Mayfair isn't terribly large, nor Marylebone, if they live farther afield."

But Marjorie tapped the page. "North Audley Street. Grosvenor Square. Hmm…was it Berkeley Square for Hemings? And Chisholm was somewhere near Piccadilly because Mama said it must be so noisy there."

Beatrice stared. "You know where these gentlemen live? But how?"

Her cousin shrugged. "While you were off seeing to your dress, people chatted with Mama. I wasn't really paying attention, but some things just stick in my head whether I want them to or not. We could walk up and down every last one of these streets if you wanted, just to see if any of your candidates emerged. But what would you do if one did?"

"I hadn't thought that far ahead," admitted Beatrice. "It's far easier to speak to a gentleman when you are dancing with him or sitting beside him at a supper. But at least if I passed by him, he might address me. Or, at the very least, as I grow more familiar, he might address me on another occasion."

"Oh, but that will take forever! I tell you what you should do instead—it worked marvelously well for me with Mr. Hughes. If you see one of these gentlemen, you must require his assistance. Suppose we were to buy something, and then you could pretend to drop your parcel, so that he must pick it up. Or, if we are crossing the street, you could nearly be run down by a carriage, so that he must seize you and drag you out of the way. Or—"

"You mean to tell me you tried one of these methods on your Mr. Hughes?" demanded Beatrice, aghast.

"I don't see what you're so shocked about if I did," Marjorie countered. "But yes. Once I dropped my riding crop for him to pick up, and another time I pretended to fall from my pony, and then once I lost my footing on a bridge. In every instance, he swooped to my rescue!" Here she hugged herself at the blissful memories.

Well! marveled Beatrice. No wonder the groom came to have ideas above his station!

Marjorie thrust the sheet back at her. "Mr. Rotherwood is the nearest of these, for he and Mrs. Rotherwood live somewhere here on North Audley Street. We might march up and down a time or two, but I think it would be a waste of time. He seemed quite captivated by Lady Sylvia last night."

He might have been captivated, but he was also enormously wealthy, too tempting a target for Beatrice to ignore. Thus she replied, "He only just met her, so all is not yet lost. But if he doesn't appear after a turn or two, we'll go on to the next. Who would that be?"

"Probably Lord Romney in Grosvenor Square. He's rather old, Beatrice—are you certain about him?"

"I don't have to marry any of them," insisted Beatrice. "I simply have to be distracted by them. It's part of the forgetting process." But that was a lie, and she felt bad enough that she shut up and pressed her lips together.

Fortunately Marjorie interpreted her expression as stifled anguish, for she folded the note up, returned it, and looped her arm again through her stepcousin's. "Say no more. I will back you in all endeavors. Come. Let's start our Tour of Distraction."

The pair marched up and down North Audley Street twice, but when they admitted defeat and entered the north side of Grosvenor Square, whom should they see approaching but the Marble Millionaire, Mr. St. John Rotherwood himself! The stern man looked sterner than ever, his brow creased in thought and his shoulders hunched in the frigid air. Alarmed, Beatrice and Marjorie exchanged glances. Good gracious! Beatrice thought, her courage deserting her. If I'm not going to try one of Marjorie's ruses, what am I going to do?

Before any decision could be made, much less communicated, fate intervened. For, in looking to her companion, Beatrice's toe caught an unevenness in the pavement. That leg came to a sudden halt, the other still swinging forward. She stumbled—staggered—stepped on the hem of her cloak—and then sprawled face-down at Mr. Rotherwood's feet.

"I say," murmured Miss Hufton. "Admirably done."

Mr. Rotherwood stopped short, hardly able to do otherwise. From his great height, he regarded the prostrate Beatrice as if she were a variety of groundworm before shaking off his preoccupation and extending a hand.

"Good heavens, are you injured?"

Despite her embarrassment and the dirt now daubing her cloak, the greater portion of Beatrice's dismay stemmed from the thought that she had squandered any future opportunity to speak to him sagaciously of canal shares. What opportunity could there be, if he deemed her a clumsy clodhopper?

Had Mr. Clayton's welfare not been at stake she likely would have abandoned her plan and fled as soon as possible, but his welfare was at stake, as was her promise to him. I must make the best of a bad bargain, she told herself firmly. And thoughI begin at a disadvantage, it only means I must work the harder to impress this man.

"I am unharmed," she replied, with a smile her family members would have called pained. "But I thank you, sir, for your concern."

Courtesy satisfied, Rotherwood made her a bow and would have gone on, but instantly Miss Hufton's brows shot up and telegraphed, "What are you thinking, letting him get away so easily? Go to it, girl!"

"You—have something on your shoulder," blurted Beatrice, pointing a finger and stepping to block his escape. It worked! But just as she sprang forward to swipe at the nonexistent something, he glanced down to inspect it, with the unfortunate result that her hand smacked him squarely in the nose.

Both Beatrice and Mr. Rotherwood yelped, Beatrice retracting her fingers in horror and Rotherwood's own hand flying to his face to ensure his nose was still attached.

"Oh, dear me!" cried Beatrice, crimson as a poppy. "Do forgive me, Mr. Rotherwood! That is…er…you are Mr. Rotherwood, I believe? I-I'm afraid I did not have the pleasure of being introduced to you at Lady Aurora's rout."

There was a wretched pause which felt like half an hour to Beatrice, but at last Mr. Rotherwood determined that his nose was neither detached, nor broken, nor about to gush blood, and he carefully lowered his hand.

"You were there, at the rout?" he asked mildly. "Are you certain it wasn't at Gentleman Jackson's?"

Beatrice stared blankly at this, but Miss Hufton smothered a snort.

"Mr. Rotherwood, if I might be so bold—" she declared, striding forward and giving a jerk of a curtsey. "We were indeed at the rout, but in all that crush we did not have the good fortune to be introduced to you. We are acquaintances of many of those whom you did meet, however, including Lady Aurora. I am Miss Hufton, and this is my pugilistic stepcousin Miss Ellsworth."

Rather awed by Marjorie's daring, Beatrice sank into another curtsey, as gracefully as she could manage, her attempt at a smile now reduced to a wince. "Again, I do beg your pardon, sir. I am not usually so…absent or careless and—I hope you will not hold this morning long in memory."

That drew the beginnings of a smile. "You must have much on your mind, Miss Ellsworth. Fortunately, so do I. I do not doubt this will all have grown quite hazy by the next time we meet. Now, if you ladies will excuse me…"

Even if she had any courage left to her, short of clutching him around the ankles Beatrice could not prevent him going, and he was permitted to pass. The girls didn't continue on straight away, however. Instead they lingered to watch Mr. Rotherwood disappear into one of the elegant townhomes of North Audley Street.

"Well," Miss Hufton began, her lips twitching, "that went about as well as might be expected. He may not want to marry you, but you certainly provided us with a distraction. Though I must say, I rather liked him. He didn't seem conceited, as I thought he would be, being so rich and popular. What did you think of him, Beatrice?"

Sighing, she made a helpless gesture. "I may not want to marry him, but could any girl be pleased to have so humiliated herself?"

"What do you mean? You didn't trip on purpose, then?"

"Of course I didn't! It was purely an accident. But now he thinks me a bungling bungler and will keep far away."

Marjorie pulled a face, as if Beatrice's response defied understanding. "Well, all right then. If you would like to redeem yourself in Mr. Rotherwood's eyes, I will do what I can to help you, for I feel somewhat responsible for your mishap. But how was I to guess you were so susceptible of suggestion? I daresay we will meet him again, so you need not reproach yourself. Now come—perhaps you'll have better luck and keep on your feet with old Lord Romney."