The Secrets of Armstrong House Read online

  “But why should he feel the need to send these? I can’t possibly accept them. I’ll have them returned to him immediately.”

  Charles looked at her in horror. “You most certainly will not! If you won’t accept them, then I will on your behalf! I wonder how much I’d get if I sold these on?”

  “You’re so cheap, Charles!” she snapped at him.

  “Well, I can afford to be cheap when I’ve got such rich and generous friends as Hugh Fitzroy.”

  Arabella was walking through Regent’s Park on a sunny morning with Isabelle by her side pushing Pierce in the perambulator as Prudence tottered along beside them. They met Lady Hollander coming in their direction with a young female companion.

  “Good morning,” said Lady Hollander.

  “How do you do, Lady Hollander,” said Arabella.

  “My, Prudence is getting big, isn’t she?” observed Lady Hollander and then she peered into the pram. “It’s as everyone says – what a really beautiful baby he is!”

  “Thank you,” said Arabella gratefully, but also a little concerned. Pierce seemed to always grab all the attention and poor Prudence never seemed to get a look in.

  No matter how many pretty dresses and ribbons she put on Prudence, it didn’t seem to attract any positive comments. She was worried that Prudence would become jealous of her little brother.

  Lady Hollander took her head out of the pram. “Thank you for a really wonderful night last Saturday. Much enjoyed by us all.”

  “It was lovely to have you,” smiled Arabella.

  Isabelle and Lady Hollander’s companion took the two children over to the boating lake to see the swans.

  “What an extraordinary chap that Mr Fitzroy is – wherever did you find him?” said Lady Hollander.

  “He’s an acquaintance of Charles; I’m not sure how they met,” said Arabella, not wishing to divulge her husband’s card-playing obsession to the conservative Lady Hollander.

  “I have to tell you,” said Lady Hollander as the two women strolled along the pathway, “that a Harrods hamper was delivered to me on Monday. When I read the note it was from Mr Fitzroy thanking me for being such, and I quote, ‘wonderful company’ at your dinner party.”

  “Really?” Arabella was taken aback.

  “Yes, and I hardly spoke two words to him the whole night, so I was quite flabbergasted.”

  “He’s a very generous man,” said Arabella, wondering why on earth Fitzroy would send gifts to the other guests.

  “I mean to say,” Lady Hollander gave a little laugh, “I didn’t say much to him, because I didn’t feel we would have anything in common, and I don’t mean to be cruel, but common is the word I would use to describe him. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from the working class who wasn’t a domestic servant or some such before.”

  “Maybe it’s time you broadened your horizons a little in that case,” said Arabella, not bothering to hide the note of sarcasm in her voice.

  “I would, however, like to send a note to the man to thank him for the hamper – perhaps you could get his address from Charles for me?”

  “Just send it care of Claridge’s, Lady Hollander. I’m sure they’ll deliver it safely to him.”

  “Claridge’s?” Lady Hollander was even more curious.

  “Yes, he lives in a suite of rooms there, I believe.”

  “What – permanently? Well, that would cost a pretty penny! Where on earth did a man like that come into such money?”

  “Charles tells me Mr Fitzroy is successful on the stock market,” said Arabella, becoming tired of Lady Hollander’s new-found obsession with Fitzroy.

  “It’s so extraordinary! I mean we’re just getting used to the middle classes having all this affluence, and now it’s finding its way to the working classes as well!”

  Over the following days, Arabella checked with all their friends who had attended their dinner party the previous Saturday, and all confirmed they had received a Harrods hamper from Fitzroy.

  Charles had no intention of following Arabella’s advice and avoiding Hugh Fitzroy in the future. Who cared if he slurped his lobster bisque and mistook it for tomato soup? He felt he had the measure of Fitzroy. Rich, shrewd but desperate for acceptance in polite society. He could be Hugh’s ticket into polite society, and in exchange Hugh could be his meal ticket.

  The two men were having lunch at Claridge’s.

  “Arabella loved the diamond earrings you sent to her – she said to say thank you,” said Charles.

  Hugh’s face lit up in delight. “Did she really?”

  “Loved them, I tell you.”

  “She’s a very beautiful and nice lady – you’re a lucky man.”

  “Yes – she’s all those things. You’ll have to come to dinner again.”

  “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you . . .”

  “Embarrass me? But how?”

  Hugh said nothing as he scraped his plate with his knife and licked it.

  Charles pulled a face. “You won’t be embarrassing me. But you might embarrass yourself with table manners like that.”

  Charles looked around the restaurant and clicked his fingers. The head waiter came over.

  “Now I want you to bring all your cutlery out and place it in front of Mr Fitzroy and tell him which course each is meant for,” said Charles to the astonished waiter.

  Hugh sat back, mortified and angry.

  “Oh come on, Hugh!” said Charles, standing up and smirking. “If you don’t ask, you’ll never learn. Anyway, better dash – have to get to my club.”

  chapter 34

  Charles opened doors for Hugh and didn’t mind doing it. Through him, Hugh was invited to many events. He took it very slowly at first but then he nominated Hugh to be a member of his club.

  The other members looked on curiously at the outsider who seemed awkward and ill at ease and who nobody had ever heard of. But when Charles went to pay his own annual subscription fee to the club, he found it had already been taken care of by Mr Fitzroy. In fact, when Charles went to pay for anything he found it had already been paid for by a grateful Mr Fitzroy.

  “You really need to do something about that accent,” Charles recommended one day to Hugh.

  Hugh went bright red with embarrassment.

  “I know you try to disguise it, but you don’t do it very well, and people laugh at you behind your back because of it,” said Charles. “My mother knows this woman who gives the best elocution lessons. I’ll set it up for you.”

  The next time Hugh was invited to Hanover Terrace for dinner, Arabella found him more relaxed and self-assured than before.

  As she sat next to him at the dinner table she was preparing herself again for a spectacle of discomfort. She was surprised and relieved to see he suddenly had mastered cutlery etiquette.

  “How are your children, Mrs Armstrong?” asked Hugh.

  “Very well, thank you, Mr Fitzroy. Thank you for the rocking horse you sent to them, they were very pleased with it.” Arabella wasn’t as pleased as the children to receive it. “You’re getting a reputation of being the most generous man in London.”

  He smiled.

  After dinner, Hugh did not rush off like last time but stayed with the men downstairs for port and cigars as the women went up to the drawing room. Later, after the men joined the women Hugh came over to talk to Arabella.

  “I have a friend who runs a fashion shop in Bond Street. Any time you want a dress, let me know, and I can organise it for you,” he told Arabella.

  She managed to smile. “Thank you, Mr Fitzroy, but –”

  “Hugh,” he insisted.

  “Thank you – Hugh – but that’s completely unnecessary,” she said coolly.

  “There would be no charge,” he informed her.

  “Thank you, but no. If you excuse me, I need to see to my other guests.” She nodded and moved to the balcony where the others were gathered.

  Hugh stared after her, feeling angry that he had been rejected.<
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  Charles came over and filled his glass of port. “Enjoying the evening?”

  “Eh, yes.” Hugh was staring at Arabella as she laughed over some anecdote told by one of the guests.

  “Good. My sister, the Duchess of Battington and her husband are having a garden party next month. They’ve invited you along.”

  Hugh looked at Charles, delighted.

  “A garden party!” Arabella raised her voice in alarm after all the guests had gone home and she was alone with Charles in the drawing room. “What on earth would Hugh Fitzroy be doing at a garden party?”

  “Doing what everyone else is doing, I imagine – enjoying himself?”

  “Oh come on, Charles, you’re putting Gwyneth and His Grace in an awkward position bringing Fitzroy. There will be members of the royal family there.”

  “But he’s come on in leaps and bounds, I’m sure you’ll agree?”

  “You can’t polish coal, Charles.”

  “You are being a snob – you’ll be turning into my mother next.”

  “It’s not that . . .”

  “What is it then?”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “He’s using you. He thinks he can get anything he wants with his money.”

  “Sounds good to me!” Charles said flippantly.

  “I’m being serious, Charles. You might think you’re coming off well in this arrangement you have, but I doubt it. You’re introducing him to everyone and getting him into society. He’s clever. He’s not the likes of David Chester and those others you and your friends played for fools.”

  “I never played anyone for a fool.”

  “You play anybody for a fool you think you can! And you think you’re playing Fitzroy for a fool, but he’s playing you!”

  Arabella tried to avoid Hugh Fitzroy at the Battingtons’ garden party. She felt he was taken aback at first by the calibre of guests there. But Charles introduced him around and he happily got acquainted. She wondered how many of these people would be receiving Harrods hampers first thing on Monday, courtesy of him. And even though the others were sniggering and talking about him behind his back, they were really only interested in his money.

  chapter 35

  The seasons came and went in Armstrong House and, though Emily and James were the only children left there, life went on much as it always had.

  The house ran like clockwork. Margaret would meet the housekeeper in the morning and issue the orders for the day. If there were guests coming to lunch or dinner, she would discuss the menu with the cook. She would meet the butler and his staff and go through the order of the day. Lawrence and James would be tied up with the running of the estate.

  And this really left Emily with little or nothing to do. Her education now completed, Margaret felt there was no more to teach her. Now with Daphne left to live in Dublin and already pregnant with her second child, Emily began to feel somewhat isolated and not sure what she could do with the rest of her life. Margaret had almost given up on her and didn’t nag her about going to London to be a debutante any more. She attended all the social events at Armstrong House, but she began to dread them. The guests viewed her as a curiosity. The unmarried daughter who didn’t seem to want to get on with her own life as a young woman would want to.

  There was a dinner party at Armstrong House and she overheard two guests talking about her in the drawing room.

  “She must be such a disappointment for poor Lady Margaret.”

  “Especially after such triumphs as Gwyneth and Daphne.”

  “Why doesn’t she want to get married?”

  “Who knows? It’s quite tragic. She has turned into quite a beauty. It’s a waste.”

  “Well, she only has a couple of years left to be a debutante and then it’s all behind her. Opportunity lost.”

  Occasionally, she would go to a hunt ball in one of the neighbouring gentry’s houses. But it was the same old faces, which bored her.

  Emily longed for the visits from her siblings. When either Gwyneth or Daphne visited she enjoyed the company and they could catch up on the gossip. Of course, she loved it when Charles came back on one of his sporadic visits. She particularly liked it when he came back without Arabella and the children and she could have him all to herself.

  She remembered Charles’ words to her: she could end up a spinster minding Mama and Papa into their old age. She didn’t want to get married but she dreaded this other destiny for herself.

  One night in February she observed herself in the mirror in her bedroom. Maybe she didn’t have her sisters’ easy charm, but she was as beautiful as her sisters, she thought. She envied Harrison in New York, being able to escape everything. She thought of all their siblings living their lives to the full. She thought of what the two guests at the dinner party had said – another couple of years and it would all be behind her. She wanted to live life while she still could. She wanted to experience life while she had an opportunity.

  The next evening she came into the drawing room where Margaret and Lawrence were chatting.

  “I’ve been thinking – I would like to go to London as a debutante when the next season starts,” she announced.

  “What?” shrieked Margaret, nearly falling off her chair.

  “A debutante – next season,” Emily verified.

  “Hallelujah!” Margaret jumped up and embraced her daughter. “I’d nearly given up hope!”

  “Are you sure?” said Lawrence.

  “I’m sure!” said Emily.

  Margaret started rushing around. “Excellent! We must invest in a new wardrobe of clothes for you. And jewellery. I’ll notify all my friends in London that we are available to go to all their breakfasts, lunches, dinners and balls. And that you are – at last – on the market. And start organising the schedule. Now you’re related to the Duke of Battington, they’ll be queuing up for you!” Margaret clasped her hands together in delight.

  Emily nodded happily. She would go to London and be a debutante and go to all the parties and functions and spend time with Charles and at last be able to see life. And at the end of the season, she didn’t have to marry anybody.

  The doctor examined Margaret who was feverish and confined to bed.

  “I’m afraid it’s a case of pneumonia,” he said.

  “Pneumonia!” Margaret was horrified. “I knew I shouldn’t have gone out on that walk at Easter.”

  “How bad is it?” asked Lawrence, full of concern.

  “Well, she will need plenty of rest to recuperate. The fires must be kept at full blast at all times. Plenty more blankets.”

  “But, doctor, I’m going to London with my daughter soon to present her at court.”

  “The court will have to wait, Lady Armstrong, your health will not. I’ll come by tomorrow to see how you are progressing.”

  The doctor packed up his case and, with a bow, left.

  Lawrence reached out and took her hand. “You look very poorly, darling.”

  “But what about Emily doing the season in London? If she doesn’t go this year, she might never go. I simply have to go!” She struggled to sit up.

  Lawrence gently pushed her back against the pillows.

  “It’s out of the question, Margaret, you’re just too weak.”

  “But . . .”

  “Emily can still go to London. Gwyneth can be her patroness. Gwyneth is so connected and respected Emily couldn’t have a better patroness to introduce and show her off, except yourself of course. And then there’s Charles and Arabella – they can look after her and present her as well.”

  “Arabella!” Margaret managed to squawk. “I will not entrust the care of my daughter to that woman. Goodness knows what would happen if Emily was left to her considering how she conducted herself as a single woman!”

  “Relax, darling – Gwyneth will be a magnificent guide for Emily. I’m just saying Charles is at hand to ride through the parks with her and for other outdoor events.”r />
  “Well,” Margaret sighed. “What choice do I have?”

  Arabella and Gwyneth were walking through Regent’s Park together as the nannies walked the children ahead.

  “Mama is very poorly by all accounts,” said Gwyneth. “It’s strange to think of her ill when she’s usually so strong. But Emily will be coming to London to be presented anyway. I’ve already made the application to Buckingham Palace for her.”

  “She’s lucky to have you,” said Arabella.

  “Well, applying for her to be presented is the easy part. It’s the endless rounds of events I’ll have to accompany her to that is concerning me.” Gwyneth gave a weary sigh.

  “Oh – why?” Arabella had never known Gwyneth not to take any social occasion in her stride before.

  Gwyneth turned and smiled at Arabella. “I’m with child.”

  “Oh, but that’s wonderful news!” She hugged Gwyneth.

  “Of course it is. But I found my last pregnancy so difficult, and I’m finding this one the same. In fact His Grace and I were going to go and spend the summer months at Battington Hall and just rest and not attend the season at all this year. But now with Mama being unable to travel, I’ve no option.”

  “But, Gwyneth, you must put your health first.” Arabella was full of concern.

  “But what can I do?” Gwyneth asked.

  “You must rely on me and Charles – we’ll look after Emily. I’ll bring her to the parties, and Charles will ride with her through the parks.”

  Gwyneth looked concerned. “I’d thought of that. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  Gwyneth looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Arabella, but you know Mama’s opinion of you.”

  Arabella nodded. “Lady Margaret is a stubborn woman, and I realise I’ll never change her opinion of me. But I’ll not sit back and let you risk your health and your baby by doing too much. What Margaret doesn’t know won’t harm her. You will be Emily’s official patroness, but I’ll do all the work. By the end of the summer Emily will have made a brilliant match, and Margaret will be none the wiser.”