Felicity's Fashions 10

 

Chapter 10

 

Hartley House

Grosvenor Square

 

8^th April

 

My dear Dempsey,

I need you to draw up a betrothal agreement for my bride-to-be, Miss Felicity Goyder. I want the agreement to include her business as a modiste to remain in her control after our marriage  as well as an allowance commensurate with her position. I’ll be having a betrothal ball on  the 14^th inst, to which you are, of course, invited. I also want adoption papers for my niece, Trinity known as Smith, and a change to my will to cover her dowry, and an allowance for her, and a trust, and all that sort of thing. Clauses which will need to be reiterated in my post marital will. You know the sort of thing.

Hartley.

 

Hartley House

Grosvenor Square

 

9^th April

 

My dear Felicity,

What a felicity it is to thus address Felicity!  But to be serious, I have Helen arranging a betrothal ball for us on the 14^th of this month, I hope that is not too soon? I would like you to come early, and have an early dinner, so that we may go over the details boring but necessary with my lawyer, to separate your earnings from my estate. Dear me, should I also have asked Mrs. Belvoir and her husband [I do sometimes get the impression that this is the way of things for your school preceptresses] for permission to marry you? You are not twenty-one for some while, I think?

I will trot off to Richmond and let them know, and Trinity too. Do you want to come?  If so, be ready in half an hour.

Victor.

 

“You are outrageous, Victor,” laughed Felicity as she jumped into his phaeton.

“It’s one of my charms?” he said.

“If there had not been a question in your voice, that would have been insufferable,” said Felicity. “I expect Trinity will squeal with delight.”

“I am glad we shall both have her as a niece; I suspect she would go with you, even if it meant falling into poverty over Rosabelle’s lies, if she had to choose,” said Victor. “Which, to be honest, is quite right; she gave you her loyalty when you rescued her. I am glad to be added to the family she considers hers, I’ve become fond of her.”

“Remember that during the holidays when she has been tiresome all day and caught several different people in pranks and booby traps,” said Felicity. “I try to think of my twin and me, and do not give in to my first impulse to shake the child.  Usually she has very good reasons – from her point of view.”

“I will bear that in mind,” said Victor.

“I will have to wear the rose gown again,” said Felicity. “Still, if I put it over a white petticoat, and add two pink roses, it will be different enough.”

 

 

22 Henrietta Street

10^th April

 

My dear Lady B----,

I am sorry that you have been so gullible as to have been misled by the lies of a demimondaine and wish to cancel your order. By this total negation of it, without any payment for work, I take this to mean that I own utterly the gown on which I have been working, and its design, and if you take the design to another modiste, I will sue.

Do not think that I will accept you back as a customer when you have realised that you are being foolish; I do not want to be known as a dresser of those with no manners or integrity. How you think I could have had a child at the age of six years old is quite ridiculous; the child in question is, and provably so, the child of the former Viscount, and your slandering of Viscount Hartley for having improper relations with a little girl of six [and I can prove my age too] will doubtless occasion a law suit from his solicitors as well as mine if you spread such nonsense. I hope for your sake that you have not passed on a blatant lie.

Yours sincerely,

F. Goyder

 

“That’s the third, Florence,” said Felicity. “Well, I know who the sensible ones are. And Lady B is a similar size to me, and the apple green and apple-blossom pink suit me very well indeed, so this is now my gown for my betrothal party; and Lady H’s gown will do for yours. That severe dark blue is very becoming on you, and the silver-shot gauze overskirt lifts it very nicely.”

“Oh, my dear, but you could sell it to someone else....”

“Or I could choose to give it to my friend,” said Felicity. “We may have more clients pulling out, for the spite of Rosabelle, but it’s too laughable that she claims Trinity to be my daughter.”

“Rosabelle did not think it through,” said Florence.

 

22 Henrietta Street

9^th April

 

Victor;

It has started. However, one of the lies is most certainly actionable and I suggest that you set your solicitor on to it; I will ask Mr. Embury to call on you to consult with your own solicitor.  The rumour abroad is that I have been your secret mistress long enough for us to rear a daughter between us, which is to say, Trinity. I would have been six when she was born, which I can demonstrate, and I suggest you have that quashed as soon as possible for Trinity’s sake.  Will you ask Libby if Trinity can come to the betrothal ball, and have it as a joint acknowledgement of her as your niece.

Your Felicity has the felicity to love you.

 

“Oh, that besom!” declared Victor. “Dempsey, a Mr. Embury is on his way, to consult on behalf of Miss Goyder about gossip concerning our supposed mutual child, Trinity.”

“Surely Miss Goyder is not old enough? And you would have been quite a prodigy yourself,” said Dempsey.

“Quite,” said Victor.

 

 

Dempsey, Cagney & Lacey

Solicitors at Law

Gray’s Inn Road

London

In conjunction with

Embury & Embury

Solicitors at Law

111 Strand

 

10^th April 1815

 

To: Miss Rose Green, alias Rosabelle deVere

 

Dear Miss Green,

It has come to our notice that you have made public accusations that our senior client, Viscount Victor Hartley, hereafter referred to as the first party of the first part, and our junior client, Miss Felicity Goyder, hereafter referred to as the second party of the first part, had carnal relations at the ages of eleven [11] years old and six [6] years old respectively, thus accusing the first party of the first part, being of the age of mens rea, guilty of child spoiling.

The supposed offspring of this fictitious union, being the daughter of the former viscount, Viscount Vincent Hartley, being the first party of the second part being slandered by this miscalling of her parentage is also represented jointly by Dempsey, Cagney, & Lacey and Embury & Embury.

You are hereby served notice that unless you make a full retraction of your slander in public and before the same audience to which you spread the initial lies, the joint firms will prosecute your slander with the full rigour of the law.

Chas. Dempsey

And^w. Embery

 

“I don’t understand a word of this,” complained Rosabelle.

“Tear it up, then, that’s what I always does wiv legal dokkiments,” said her house-mate, one Jane Brown, alias Jenny LeBrun.

“I’m going to go and complain to Victor about that hussy putting the law on me,” said Rosabelle.

 

oOoOo

 

“My dear Miss Green, if you wish to apologise to the Viscount and explain how you plan to make reparations, I will permit you to see him, but otherwise, he is not at home to you,” said Charles Dempsey.

“What for would I want to apologise? I haven’t done nothing to apologise for,” said Rosabelle. Her voice was beautifully modulated but the grammar made Dempsey wince.

“Well, if you don’t think calling Viscount Hartley a child spoiler is nothing for which to apologise, I have to say I find your understanding to be severely limited,” said Dempsey.

“Oh, you liar! I never did!” cried Rosabelle.

“Indeed? You contradict several witnesses who declare that you said, and I believe I quote, ‘He’s been keeping that trollop Felicity in Henrietta street for years, and that girl with her is his get on the bitch.’”

“Well, yes, stands to reason, don’t it? The girl is the dead spit of him.”

“And so you accuse him of child spoiling.”

“Huh? I didn’t say he slept with his own brat, that would be peculiar,” said Rosabelle.

“You said she was Miss Goyder’s  and the Viscount’s daughter.”

“Stand to reason, don’t it?”

“Hardly,” said Dempsey. “As Miss Goyder is eighteen years old, which can be proven by her parish entrance of birth and by her school records, where she was a border for the past six years, she would have had to have been six years old at the time Trinity Hartley, daughter of the former Viscount, was born.  And as the current Viscount was over the age of criminal understanding, you have therefore accused him of carnal knowledge with a little girl of five years old. And accusing a man of position of such a filthy and loathsome crime is disgusting. Can you wonder he does not want to see you?”

“But I... well, he’s been carrying on with her, anyway,” said Rosabelle. “You can’t do nothing to me, anyway.”

“My dear young woman, unless you retract your slander and in public, and in front of the same audience to which you made such accusations in the first place, you will be summonsed. And the trial could take place in the House of Lords, because he is a peer of the realm. I imagine that the fines will be swingeing, and you will fetch up in debtor’s prison.”

“I don’t believes you, you’re tryin’ to put the frighteners on me.”

“Well, if you choose to disregard this warning, it is your problem,” said Charles Dempsey. “I advise you to invest in an advertisement in the Morning Post retracting all comments regarding the viscount and his betrothed wife. He will accept that as your public retraction.”

“Betrothed? That bitch has managed to entrap him into marriage when he never even hinted of it to me? The HELL will he have any kind of retraction!”

Rosabelle stormed out.

Charles Dempsey shrugged.

She had made her bed. He had tried to explain it to her. He might have thrown in the betrothal in the expectation of such a tantrum.

 

 

Morning Post

12^th April 1815

Private Advertisement

To whom it may concern

The slander uttered concerning my betrothed wife, Miss Felicity Goyder and of myself, in accusing me of sleeping with her when I was ten or eleven and she was six, giving rise to the birth of the child who is, in fact, my dead brother’s child, is hereby refuted, and the full rigour of the law will be enacted on anyone who spreads such filthy calumnies.

Victor, Viscount Hartley

 

“You’ve been served, Miss,” said the messenger, when Rosabelle took the legal letter from him. “Court for you termorra.”

“Garn,” said Rosabelle, and tore it in half.

The messenger shrugged.

“Your problem,” he said.

 

22 Henrietta Street

12^th April

 

Oh, Libby!

That awful woman is determined to drag things through court; she should have been summonsed by now. It is absolutely horrid. I have lost five customers over her slander; honestly, how can anyone think that I have a daughter Trinity’s age? And if you look at that as a blatant falsehood then the rest scarcely stands up as well.  I’ve only been renting the shop for a couple of months, after all, so the idea that Victor set it up as a love-nest for me years ago is risible. As Florence can testify, and moreover there is the bill of sale to Daisy. Oh! I must write to Daisy.

Felicity.

 

22 Henrietta Street

12^th April

 

Dear Daisy,

I am in a bit of a pickle, and we might need your testimony in court tomorrow....

A long and rambling letter explained the whole to Daisy, who read it out to her husband. She had happily paid for a second page, hating to read letters crossed and re-crossed and making it a standing instruction to just send more paper.

“What a piece of ridiculous spite,” said Julian Nettleby.

“I did wonder, when I saw the piece in the Morning Post, and started reading, if Felicity had made a mull of things,” said Daisy. “She’s been known to do so. But she seems to have acted properly enough. What a wicked and spiteful woman; I will have to be in court, you know, my dear, we Swanley girls close ranks.”

“Absolutely,” said Mr. Nettleby. “I will be there to support you, and to watch the faces of those you verbally excoriate. Far too entertaining to miss, wot!”

“I love you, Julian,” said Daisy.

 

 

 

Grillon’s Hotel

London

Thirteenth April.

Dear Mr. Embury,

That was a very nice job you did today. I especially liked the way you touched on the reflection on anyone who worked for Felicity, including her partner from whom she had bought the majority share of the business and any apprentice.  Mr. Dempsey did a nice job as well in demonstrating how this piece of spite might impinge on the betrothal of a peer of the realm, threatening the betrothal itself through potential recriminations, and threatening the marriage chances, and therefore ability to procreate of a young man of impeccable reputation, whose need for an heir is imperative.  I liked too your touch about whether the defendant was aware that she further accused a school of good reputation, sponsored by no less than the Bishop of Norchester, of pimping out its pupils; bringing the good Bishop’s name into disrepute as well. [poor Uncle George, he would have conniptions!]. Poor Felicity, how wild she looked when Mrs. Marguerite Nettleby was called, and her relief to find it was just me, Daisy.

I am glad, too, that awful Lady B, named as secondary defendant, will be forced to cough up as much as Rosybelowa [oh, Mr. Embury, I heard you wince, when will you remember that I was raised by a vicar and therefore understand coarseness on a level no poor naive solicitor can hope to do] because Lady B has gone out of her way to make trouble for Felicity, the moment she realised she was not going to get a gown for free out of it. I had a go at her myself at Lady H’s dinner party [now that lady is a total fool and believes the last thing she heard, but at least is not malicious] and pointed out that as I was at school with Felicity, I would have noticed if she had been abnormally precocious.  Those fool ladies had not even made a guess at Felicity’s age; all they saw was ‘the Modiste.’ They make me sick. I am going to order a gown from Fee tomorrow, and tonight, I am going to go to Almack’s and point fingers.

So far I have reduced seven society ladies to tears, and another three will have to work hard to pacify their husbands who take a dim view of a fellow peer being slandered, so it has been quite a successful few days on my part so far. I believe Almack’s should prove very amusing tonight, and I plan to attend Felicity’s betrothal ball as well, so I shall be in London until Monday as it would be improper to travel on a Sunday, and I do have the mores of my vicar well instilled  in me.

Yours,

Marguerite Nettleby