Felicity went quickly to her room and put on her male disguise. Then she slipped out of the house and walked rapidly in the direction of Hyde Park. A pale sun was shining, and the air was sweet with the heavy smell of hawthorn blossom. It was the fashionable hour, and carriages flew past round the ring with their elegant occupants, the ladies wearing the thinnest of muslins despite the chill of the spring day.
She stood watching them, thinking she did not really belong anywhere. She would never return to Tregarthan Castle, and yet she felt she did not belong in this world of giggling, overly sensitive ladies who practiced how to faint with as much assiduity as they practiced the pianoforte. And the men, with their flicking handkerchiefs and their fussy mannerisms, their rouged faces and cynical assessing eyes, repelled her.
And then a thought struck Felicity, a thought that seemed to lighten her depression. “I do not need to marry. I can enjoy one Season, go to all the balls and parties, and perhaps even see the Prince Regent. And then I can sell some more jewels, and dear Miss Chubb and I can retire somewhere quiet in the country and settle down.” It was a very comforting thought, and only a little nagging wonder about this Miss Barchester came into her mind to diffuse that comfort. What was she like, this paragon, who had succeeded where so many others had failed?
Miss Martha Barchester was like a Byzantine ivory. She had a long, thin, calm face and a long, thin, flat-chested body. Her thick brown hair was parted at the center and combed back into two wings to frame her white face. She was twenty-nine years old. Even her parents wondered what it was about this rather terrifying daughter of theirs that had attracted Lord Arthur.
It had taken a magic potion to make Titania wake from her sleep and fall in love with an ass. But at a certain stage in their lives, even the most hardened rakes and confirmed bachelors need no magic to make them fall in love with the first woman they see. All at once, they are simply hit with an overwhelming desire to get married. The period is usually brief and violent, and they usually emerge from it to find themselves married to a woman they do not know the first thing about.
And so it was with Lord Arthur. First had come the desire for a home and lands. Those being acquired, it followed that he must have a hostess for his home, and a mother for his heirs.
He had to confess to himself that he thought very often about Felicity Channing. He felt he had escaped from the folly that can often lead gentlemen of mature years to propose to chits barely out of the schoolroom. Perhaps the attraction Miss Barchester held for him was that she was everything Felicity was not. She was cool and poised, and never made a sudden or hurried movement or appeared to be swayed by any vulgar emotion whatsoever.
Farming was Lord Arthur's new interest and consuming passion. He felt it would be wonderful to return in the evenings to such a calm and stately creature as Miss Barchester. Their wedding was to take place the following year in the local church. On the acceptance of his proposal, Lord Arthur had taken Miss Barchester in his arms and kissed her. Her kiss had been cool, and her lips had been tightly compressed. But because his physical outdoors activities had taken care of his more earthy feelings, Lord Arthur saw nothing wrong in her virginal response. Ladies were not expected to be passionate anyway.
Dolph, calling on a visit a week before the Season was due to begin, thought his friend looked remarkably well- healthy, happy, and a trifle pompous. Lord Arthur drove him out round the estates and the village, and everywhere forelocks were tugged by men, and women curtsied.
“Quite feudal down here,” remarked Dolph, privately thinking that all this adulation was not doing his rather arrogant friend one little bit of good. “Don't know but what I don't prefer that independent lot down in Cornwall.”
“Cornwall!” said Lord Arthur sharply. “Have you been there recently?”
“No, never been back,” said Dolph, casting Lord Arthur a sideways glance. “M'uncle wrote to say he was crushed down with that girl, Felicity Channing's death, although I suppose it's only the gout as usual. Seems Mr. Palfrey has restored his reputation. Of late he's had whole fleets of boats dragging all around the coast for a sign of the bodies.”
“Dear me,” said Lord Arthur. “Left it a bit late, hasn't he?”
“Well, he says he won't rest until Felicity has had a Christian burial. The locals say he must have been fond of her after all.”
“I wonder,” said Lord Arthur.
“Talking of Miss Felicity, I had the most awful shock t'other week.”
“See a ghost?”
“Yes, how did you guess! Have you heard of the Princess Felicity of Brasnia?”
“Of where? My dear Dolph, there is no such country.”
“There is. Everyone's heard of it. Somewhere around Russia.” Dolph waved a chubby hand to the east. “As I was saying, all London has been abuzz with talk of this princess. You know, her beauty is said to be rare and her jewels magnificent. She has been in residence all winter, but no one had seen her. But last week, she went out driving for the first time. What a sensation! People fighting and screaming to get a look at her. At first, I didn't see her face, I was so knocked back with the idea of someone wearing a diamond tiara in the middle of Hyde Park during the day. Then I looked at her properly and nearly dropped down in a faint. I could swear I was looking at Miss Felicity Channing.”
Lord Arthur let the reins drop, and the horses slowed to an amble. “And…?” he prompted.
“I rode straight up to her carriage and, like a fool, I cried, ‘Miss Felicity! You are alive!’ She had one of those double glasses, and she raised it at me and looked at me with such hauteur that I nearly sank. ‘You were saying somezink?’ she asked, and of course, I realized all at once it was not Miss Felicity at all. How could it be? I stammered out my apologies, and she bowed her beautiful little head with those fantastic diamonds flashing and burning, and she said, ‘We are giffink a rout on the tenth. You come?’ I gave her my card and swore that nothing would keep me away. I'm the envy of all the fellows. Everyone desperately fighting to see if they can get an invite, sending presents and poems, and lying in wait outside her door. Duffy Gordon-Pomfret even slept on her doorstep, but her butler, a most odd man, came out, shook him awake, read him the parable of the talents, then told him if he had nothing better to do with his time, he might be better employed in finding a job of work. Work!” said Dolph, shaking his head in amazement.
“I would like to attend that rout,” said Lord Arthur slowly.
“I'm sure you would,” said Dolph gleefully. “But you can't. All of London wants to get through her door.”
“When did you plan to return to London?”
“Well, unless you're going to throw me out, I meant to get back around the eighth to collect a new suit of evening clothes from the tailor.”
“Call on Princess Felicity,” said Lord Arthur, “and tell her your friend, Lord Arthur Bessamy, wishes to meet her, and see what she says. I shall take you back to London myself.”
Dolph looked huffy. It was not often he was invited to a rout from which his rich and elegant friend was excluded. Then his face lightened. “I'll ask,” he said cheerfully. “But she's bound to refuse. Now, when am I to meet your beloved?”
“If you mean Miss Barchester, then say so,” said Lord Arthur curtly. “This afternoon, at four, for tea.”
Dolph could not believe his eyes when he was introduced to Miss Barchester. He thought she looked as if one of the marble statues on the terrace of her home had come to life. She even had thick white eyelids and a small thinlipped curved smile.
Lord Arthur, teacup in hand, was standing by the fireplace talking to Mr. Barchester. Mr. Barchester was a plump, rounded man with a jolly face, and his wife, dressed in chintz, looked like an overstuffed sofa. How two such cheerful individuals could have produced the pale and chilly Martha Barchester was beyond Dolph. He found that lady was eyeing him with a gray, cold look. Her gaze dropped from his face and fastened on the area of shirt that was bulging out from under his waistcoat. Dolph always felt his clothes took on a nasty life of their own the minute they left the hands of his valet. His waistcoats tried to move up to his chin, his shirts separated themselves from his breeches, the strings at the knees of his breeches untied themselves, and the starch left all his cravats a bare half an hour after he had put them on.