Regency Pleasures: A Model Débutante

‘Well, yes, one of them opened the door. But he did not see my face and he was a perfect gentleman. He gave me my drape back and the key, and told the others that the door was locked so they went away.’

The whimper became a moan. ‘You were in a closet, with no clothes on and this man came in?’ Tallie nodded. ‘And he did not say anything, or touch you or …?’

‘He caught his breath,’ Tallie admitted, a frisson running down her spine again at the recollection of that soft sound.

‘As well he might,’ Zenna said grimly. ‘By some miracle you appear to have encountered the only safe man in London.’

‘Well, he saved me,’ Tallie admitted, ‘but he did not make me feel safe.’ Zenna’s rather thick brows rose interrogatively. ‘His voice was so … so cool and sardonic, as though he did not care what anyone else thought. And he is … powerful somehow.’

‘How on earth can you tell?’ Zenna demanded, attempting to pour some cold water over what she felt were becoming dangerously heated imaginings. ‘You did not see him, did you?’

‘No, he just emanated this feeling. I can’t describe it, but I suppose power is the best word. And Mr Harland wanted to ask him to pose as Alexander the Great.’

‘Goodness. Well, if he looks anything like the representations of Alexander that I have seen, he is an impressive man indeed. What a fortunate thing you did not see him,’ she added slyly, ‘or you would be imagining yourself in love with him.’

‘Oh, nonsense.’ Tallie laughed and tossed a cushion at her teasing friend. She was suddenly feeling better. Alexander the Great indeed!

The next morning, refreshed by a good night’s sleep, undisturbed by dreams of hallooing gentlemen and Carthaginian generals, Tallie woke to a sunny day, feeling considerably more optimistic than she had for some time.

‘Better?’ asked Zenna over the breakfast table. They were alone, for Mrs Blackstock was out marketing and Millie was tucked up in bed—as she rightly said, beauty sleep was essential in her profession.

‘Mmm.’ Tallie spread preserve on her toast with a lavish hand and contemplated the advertisements on the front page of the morning paper. ‘How much money would it take to set up in one’s own shop, do you think, Zenna?’

‘As a milliner?’ Zenna bit thoughtfully into a forkful of ham. ‘Rent for the shop—and that would need space for a workroom, redecoration and fitting it out. Girls for the workshop, materials. A lot of money. Not as much as I would need for a school, but a lot. You would need a loan, or,’ she added with a wicked twinkle, ‘a protector.’

‘I suspect that was how Madame D’Aunay got started, by prudently investing a farewell present from such a person,’ Tallie confessed. ‘But I have absolutely no intention of taking a lover so I can borrow money for a hat shop from him!’

Zenna choked back a gasp of laughter. ‘It would certainly be a most original reason for abandoning the path of virtue. What are you doing today? I have the two Hutchinson girls all day and I plan to go for a nice walk in Green Park with them, conversing in Italian throughout.’

‘That does sound pleasant, they seem such an amiable family from what you have told me. I have rather a pleasant day too, for I have hats to deliver to both Lady Parry and Miss Gower and they are quite my favourite clients.’

However, Tallie found it was hard to maintain such a cheerful mood. In the morning sunshine the hairbrown walking dress and pelisse were every bit as unsatisfactory as she had thought the day before. There was nothing for it but to purchase a dress length and make a new gown, for she really could not feel that she looked the part to be calling upon Society ladies. She looked in the windows of Hardin and Howell as she passed them and regretfully decided that the Parthenon Bazaar was likely to prove more suitable for her budget. Some economies were possible: if she did not take a hackney to her clients’ homes but walked instead, that would save a few shillings.

Tallie was soon regretting the decision, for she had three hatboxes to collect at the milliners. Although her first call at Bruton Street was not far and the boxes were light, they were unwieldy, and the sight of a young lady carrying any parcel—let alone three hatboxes—in the street was sufficiently unconventional for her to attract several impertinent stares.

Feeling increasingly flustered, Tallie was tempted to change her plans and call at Miss Gower’s in Albermarle Street first, for it was closer. But Miss Gower was eighty-three and would not be pleased to be disturbed before eleven o’clock. No, it would have to be Lady Parry and her two hats.

Tallie turned cautiously round the corner from New Bond Street, thankful that her destination was almost in sight. Inelegant though it was, she had found that, by balancing two hatboxes on top of each other and then holding the ribbons of the third twined in her fingers, she could just manage. It did nothing for her vision forward, however, and she was already getting a crick in her neck from peering around her pile of gaily striped boxes.

The collision happened just as she reached the entrance to Bruton Mews. For one startled moment she thought she had walked into the wall, for the obstacle she had hit was certainly solid enough and equally unyielding. One hatbox was driven into her diaphragm, making her whoop for breath, the top one fell off and rolled into the road and she managed to drop the other at her feet.

Doubled up, making unseemly gasping noises and with her eyes streaming, Tallie was conscious of an immaculate pair of boots in front of her. Rising out of them were well-muscled legs in buckskin breeches. Her eyes travelled upwards past a plain waistcoat revealed between the flaps of an equally plain riding coat, past a crisp white stock to a firm, well-shaven chin and the enquiring and frankly appreciative gaze of the owner of these altogether admirable attributes.

It was too much. Coming on top of yesterday’s shock and the knowledge that she had made a serious error of judgement in deciding to walk, Tallie found she was swept with an irrational wave of anger. How dare this man stand there, looking cool, calm and assured and openly scrutinising her while she made an exhibition of herself?

‘Look what you have done!’ she gasped indignantly as her breath returned. ‘Just look at that box in the road!’

Before the man could respond to her attack, a carriage clattered out of the mews rather too fast and drove straight for the gaily striped cerise-and-white hatbox lying in its path.

‘Oh, no!’ Tallie took a hasty step forward to try and snatch it up by its trailing ribbons, only to find herself unceremoniously yanked back onto the footway. She struggled against the grip on her arm, but to no avail. The carriage’s nearside front wheel caught the box and rolled it over, flipping the lid off. Lady Parry’s exquisite new promenade hat fell out into the mud of the gutter and came to rest there like a wounded bird of paradise.

‘Ouch!’ Her arm hurt and at her feet the result of hours of work and the product of the finest materials lay, its curling feathers reduced to a sodden mass.

The man released her arm without apology. ‘It appeared to be preferable to have the hat under the wheels of the carriage than to have you in that position. ’ He stepped into the road and picked up the hat, dropping it into its box and handing that to Tallie before removing a large white handkerchief from his sleeve and rubbing the mud off his gloves with it. ‘My valet insists on checking that I have a clean handkerchief before I go out; how gratified he will be that for once it was needed.’

Considering that she had collided with him and harangued him, he sounded politely unconcerned. He also sounded, to Tallie’s incredulous ears, hideously familiar. No, surely not—it couldn’t be! Tallie felt her jaw drop and she covered her confusion by groping in her reticule for her own handkerchief.

‘Yes, of course, you are quite right, I am so sorry, sir,’ she managed to stammer as she pretended to wipe her eyes. ‘I must suppose I walked into you, sir. I do apologise.’ She was blushing, she knew she was, the wave of heat was rising up her throat, try as she could to control it.

‘You did, but it is of no matter. Can all these be yours?’ He gestured at the tumbled boxes, one dark brow raised.

‘I was delivering them.’ Tallie was certain that she was crimson. Her mind hardly seemed to be functioning at all, but somehow she had to end this encounter and remove herself and her hatboxes before something triggered his memory. Because with every word he spoke she was more than ever convinced that this was Nick—Mr Harland’s Alexander the Great—the man who had found her hiding naked in the closet.

He never saw your face, you never spoke, she told herself frantically.

‘Hmm. I hardly imagine your employer will be very happy about that,’ he observed dispassionately, glancing at the boxes that Tallie had gathered up and were now piled beside her feet, each with at least one unpleasant stain on it.

Tallie glared at him, her anger returning as common sense asserted itself. Of course he would never recognise her—as far as he was concerned she was a humble milliner’s assistant, someone of a class so far removed from his as to be virtually invisible. ‘No, she will not be happy,’ she agreed between gritted teeth. ‘Have you any idea how much that hat that just fell out costs?’ She knew she should not be addressing a gentleman in such a way, let alone one who had behaved with such chivalry to her the day before, but instinct screamed at her to keep him at a distance. She picked up the hatbox and held it, an insubstantial barrier between herself and all that maleness.

He lifted the lid of the box she was cradling in her arms and looked in. It brought him very close to her; close enough to see that his lashes were quite ridiculously long and dark for such a masculine-looking man, close enough to smell a peppery cologne with a hint of limes and certainly close enough to see a flash of wicked amusement in his dark grey eyes as he looked at her flustered and indignant face.

‘Madame Phanie’s establishment?’ he enquired.

‘No, Madame d’Aunay’s.’

‘Ah. Five guineas, then.’

This was so accurate that Tallie was betrayed into speech. ‘How on earth do you know that, sir?’

She was answered with another lift of that expressive brow. ‘One receives bills from time to time, my dear,’ he drawled.

‘Oh!’ Tallie was furious with herself for asking and even more so for blushing hectically again. Even if he was merely referring to hats bought by his wife or sisters, her response to the remark showed clearly that she thought he meant he had been buying hats for a mistress. ‘Well, I made it and it took hours and now it is quite ruined—and if you had not stopped me I could have saved it.’

‘So it is all my fault?’ he enquired drily. ‘In that case I had better pay for it.’ Before Tallie could respond he reached into his pocket, drew out a handful of coins and counted five bright guineas into her hand. Then he set the lid back on the ruined bonnet, stooped to pick up the remaining hatboxes and placed them carefully in her arms. ‘Good day, my dear. And next time, ask your employer to send you in a hackney.’

Chapter Three

The man called Nick strode off up the street towards Berkeley Square without a backward glance, leaving Tallie standing staring after him. Then she realised that she was attracting no little attention. A kitchen maid, her head just visible through the area railings, stopped shaking out a rug to stare open-mouthed; a footman in livery raised supercilious eyebrows as he strode past bearing his employer’s messages; a hackney carriage driver called out something that was mercifully unintelligible to Tallie and a very smart matron, her maid at her heels, fixed her with a look of scandalised outrage.

With a gasp Tallie clenched her fingers around the coins and walked on as fast as she could with her unwieldy burden. To be seen on the street taking money from a man! No wonder people stared—she must have appeared no better than a common prostitute. Tallie almost turned tail, then realised she must at least call upon Lady Parry and apologise for her tardiness and for the damaged hat.

Feeling that everyone was staring at her and expecting at any moment to be accosted, either by some buck with a proposition or an outraged householder ordering her from his respectable street, Tallie finally reached Lady Parry’s door. It was opened with merciful promptness by Rainbird the butler. He allowed a faint expression of surprise to cross his thin face at the sight of the flushed and flustered milliner standing before him with her pile of soiled hatboxes.

‘Miss Grey! Have you been in an accident? Please, step inside at once.’ He stood aside to let her in and snapped his fingers imperiously to the footman, who hurried forward. Tallie relinquished her boxes gratefully and regarded the butler with an expression of rueful apology.

‘I am sorry to arrive in such a state, Rainbird, but I dropped the boxes in the street.’

‘I will ring for the housekeeper, Miss Grey. You will want to wash your hands and have your gown brushed before you see her ladyship, I make no doubt.’ Rainbird approved of Miss Grey, and had so far unbent as to remark on one occasion to Henry the footman, ‘A milliner she might be now, my lad, but she’s a lady for all that she has come down in the world. You just observe her manners: always easy and polite to staff. That comes from breeding and consideration and there are many with a hundred times her income who will never manage that naturally.’