Felicity'sFashions 9

 

Chapter 9

 

 

22 Henrietta Street,

7^th  April

 

Well, dear Izzie, I might be losing the companionship of Felicity to marriage.  It is by no means certain, but she has a distinct tendre for the man whose sister and cousin she has so enjoyed dressing, and who is the newly revealed uncle of our imp, Trinity. It seems he is not indifferent to her, but they are, sensibly, taking things slowly. Her business is growing, and she has an entrée into a clientele I could only dream of, and she is hoping to take on more staff. You asked about a position as seamstress for your Nellie, and I spoke to Felicity, who said that there was no good being able to do family good if we did not seize the opportunity to do so. So I am enclosing some money from Felicity for her to take the stage, and not have to put up with the mail coach, and if you let me know which coach she means to take, Ned will meet her.

It’s been finer of late, though it could hardly have been much worse. The army is mustering to go after Napoleon, but of course, they were all paid off, and a lot have gone to South America. I am not sure why they have gone to South America, but it seems to be a place soldiers like to go. It seems they can’t get them back to go and fight in France again, though I do not know why.

I don’t see why we can’t just leave it to the French; it seems they have welcomed him back, so why can’t they have him? It’s nothing to do with us that I can see, unless he tries to invade, and one thing I do know is that we destroyed his fleet. However, I suppose there’s a reason.

Your loving sister-in-law,

Florence.

 

 

Hartley Hall

7^th April

 

My dear Felicity

If I may dare to use your name, and am not firmly rebuked by a reply signed ‘F. Goyder,’ I have secured permission from Mrs. Belvoir to take you on a midnight picnic in the school grounds, overlooked by the staff bedroom windows as chaperonage. I propose to make this the night of the full moon, which is the 23^rd of this month. It is a Sunday, so you will not have the irritation of customers to get rid of. You can give me an answer when I pick you up tomorrow afternoon for a drive. According to a friend of mine in the royal society it is going to rain all day, so we have every good chance that the weather will be fine. 

Victor Hartley.

 

 

Swanley Cort School

7^th April

Dear Felissitty,

I like school very much so far. Sarah is a nice girl, and she ain’t stuck up and she knows sumthing of reel life. I am going to bed at six o’clock for a week and so is Sarah becos we got up in the nite to draw pixyures all over the chalk-bords in cullered chork. But our class mates smuggled us sweets from tea. We did sum luverly pixyures of flowers.

Plees let Uncle Victor read this acoss I cant rite it no more than once.

Your Trinity

 

“Oh, the little monkey,” laughed Felicity. “And at that, less heinous a prank than ours, when we soaped the chalk-board to try to avoid a viva-voce exam on geography.”

“I find it hard to imagine you as a young demon of mischief,” said Florence.

“Oh, imagine it! Philippa and I were dreadfully naughty,” laughed Felicity. “No. Not naughty because we never had any malice or spite to us, but we were... wild.”

“Dear me, well, there is hope then for Trinity,” said Florence.

“Having friends with whom she can work off the wild spirits will help her no end to come to terms with all her anger,” said Felicity.

“Do you think she is angry? She has never shown it to me,” said Florence.

“Oh, she’s angry,” said Felicity. “She’s angry with her mother for dying, with her mother’s man for leaving her at the asylum and for beating her, with the asylum, and with her father for willingly leaving her mother, and never seeking her out to see to her needs. She’s letting some of that anger out at Victor... Hartley, for being a relative of hers. She’s a bit equivocal about him, because he has done his best, but he is also her only link to her father.  I wrote to Libby and told her all about it, and she will help Trinity to release her anger, and learn to move on from it, as she did with my twin and me.”

“What were you angry about?”

“For myself, what was I not angry about!  The loss of our nanny, and then Papa, who had lost everything we might have expected to inherit. I was angry with Philippa for being ready to reach out to another child in need and give her more attention than she gave me, and I was angry with the whole faculty because we had to go to some stupid school because we could not stay at home.”

“You poor child,” said Florence.

“I had some growing up to do,” said Felicity. “Philippa always seemed so confident. Of course we were each important to each other, but I had more of myself to find than Phip. And now, we can go off and get on with our lives separately because we are close enough to be apart.”

“I’m not sure I understand that,” said Florence.

“Why, I needed to cling to Philippa because I was afraid of losing her,” said Felicity. “Now, we have no fear that we will ever become distant, so we can be physically apart. I expect it’s a twin thing,” she added, seeing that Florence was no less confused. “Like finishing each other’s sentences.”

“Oh,” said Florence.

 

22 Henrietta Street

7^th April

 

My dear Hartley,

I enclose a letter from Trinity, which came by hand, and which I pass to you as requested. Her spelling may be atrocious but her writing is at least fairly fluent, and I cannot recall many essays not returned with more red ink than black myself.  She appears to have been taken to the heart of those imps in the middle school if they are willing to save cakes for her and Sarah; Sarah is well-liked without being popular, and breaking out in mischief will do her no harm at all, she is too solemn a child. And here I am speaking like a preceptress; though Phip and I have been helping out with the younger ones.

I would love a moonlight picnic so long as it does not rain, which is not a given at the end of April.  What are your contingency plans, if you have any?  The folly is pleasant enough but the interior is not exactly chaperoned, but it seems tame to picnic on the floor of the ballroom.  The swinghouse is equally not overlooked. Though I suppose if we picnicked in a swing-boat, it would be close to impossible to misbehave.

Felicity.

 

“I appear to be in favour, still,” said Victor, happily. “That practical girl is talking about contingency plans in case of rain.”

“Well, you can scarcely picnic at midnight if it does rain, can you?” said Helen. “She must be positively spoony about you, nobody in their right mind would seriously want to have a moonlight picnic. Far too cold, far too many insects, and not really light enough. Have you considered that if it is overcast it will be dark?”

“You have no faith in me to order the moon to my requirements,” said Victor.

“Cousin, I love you dearly, but if my Arthur started saying things like that to me, I’d advise him to see an apothecary,” said Helen.

“But it has to be moonlight; I have promised to serve her the moon cut in eighths with redcurrant jelly and pickles,” said Victor.

Helen felt his head.

“No fever, but I am not certain you are quite well to discuss such nonsense,” she said.

“Ah, Helen, I suppose it is good that one of us is prosaic,” said Victor.  “But this is why you are betrothed to Arthur, who would no more think of picnicking by moonlight than he would gnawing off his own foot, and why I want to marry Felicity who only disparaged my initial idea of serving the moon in portions with cream since, being green cheese, it should be eaten with appropriate accompaniments.”

“But it’s a planet and it’s made of rock,” said Helen.

“It would only be so if we could visit it and poke at it,” said Victor. “For lovers, it is magical.”

“I prefer prosaic.”

“Of course you do, and you will make Arthur a lovely wife. But I cannot see him ever riding ventre à terre.”

“No, of course not; it would not be safe,” said Helen, bewildered.

 

 

 

 

 

22 Henrietta Street

8^th April

 

Darling Philippa,

Victor took me for a drive today, and it was fine all day, which is always useful when driving. Indeed, the sun came through as we set off.

“I ordered it for you,” he said.

“Oh, I believe you,” I said. “One always humours men when they think themselves capable of organising things.”

“Shrew,” he said, without heat.

“The gospel according to Libby Belvoir, née Freemantle,” I said. “But she caught herself a live one in Lucius Belvoir who is very nearly as efficient as Elinor’s Dr. Mac, and even more so than Daisy’s Julian Nettleby. And he managed to organise a river trip with sailors for a bunch of us little girls to Eel Pie Island.”

“What, are you offering that as a dragon for your knight to slay, that I should arrange an outing for Trinity and friends?”

“I demand no dragons, but if you lay one at my feet, I promise to go along as an extra helper to fish Eva O’Toole out of the river or rescue any dancing bear from her,” I said. “I am not sure Libby would welcome a dancing bear added to the menagerie, but it would be like Eva O’Toole to find one. And Trinity,” I added.

He laughed, and turned to smile at me.

We were tooling down some back street at this point, on our way out into the country, and there was a sudden screech as we were held up in traffic.

Who should it be but Rosabelle deVere, lately mistress to my Victor, and totally vulgar baggage. She was wearing the sort of gown which leaves nothing to the imagination screaming that I had stolen her Victor.

“Goodness, Rosabelle, your cleavage is so low, a doctor could use it to check you for syphilis,” I said.

“Miaow,” murmured Victor.

“Purrr,” I said.

“She’s clean,” said Victor. “I made sure of that.”

“Good, we don’t want our children exploding like Edward the sixth,” I said. “If it was Edward the sixth. It might have been someone else.”

“You are not academic, are you?” he said.

“No,” I replied. “I can do household accounts and I enjoy novels, and I follow current affairs, but I have no interest in which king made which trade laws; it suffices to know what trade laws there are.”

“I’m very glad, when we saw those classes on Latin and Mathematics, I was terrified you would be a blue stocking and would despise me. Children, really, had you thought so far ahead?”

“Well, it follows that if you are filled with the appropriate passions, children do follow at some point, usually, so there is no more point denying that than there is ignoring toothache, because a failure to act appropriately causes more pain and grief in the long term than being ready to plan and see a dentist – or accoucheur – as appropriate,” I said. “And I want Dr. Mac to midwife me. He’s brought a sufficiency of our surrogate nieces and nephews into the world that he’s well practised. And if your intentions are honourable, you will at least require an heir.”

“Good point,” said Victor. “I am sorry children are like toothache.”

“Oh, not all the time,” I said. “When teeth are in good order, they are used for the pleasurable activity of eating, it is when they are out of order that action needs to be taken. I’m not maternal, but I don’t mind my own children, in principal, so long as I don’t have to deal with the messy ends.”

“Well, that seems fair,” said Victor. “I think we have enough in common that we could probably have a most enjoyable marriage, in terms of falling into an easy camaraderie for each other. I find you attractive, too.”

“I find you attractive,” I said, blushing. We had left the screeches of the Décolletage Drab way behind by now, and were heading out past Lincoln’s Inn fields and on into the countryside.

“I like it that you are artistic, and understand that I like to paint for the sake of it,” said Victor.

“I would still design for the shop, with a manager placed in it, and I would design and sew for friends,” I said.

“I am glad, a woman should not just be the extension of her husband,” said Victor. “A concept which would probably shock Helen and her Arthur, who is a stuffed shirt with ambitions in parliament, and more theories on the poverty of nations than any charitable urge to give practical aid. You know some people will say I fathered the babies on your unwed mothers?”

“Let them; we know the truth,” I said.  “I expect that Rosabelle will spread it about that you were sleeping with me all the time. Though to be honest, with a chaperone like Trinity, who has been known to join me in bed when she has nightmares, it wouldn’t be very practical.”

He sniggered, then sighed.

“I can weather it, if you can,” he said.

“I resent that she might ruin my business,” I said. “But I don’t go into society, so the first I would know would be the withdrawal of orders half completed, which could be crippling.”

“Then I will throw a betrothal ball for you,” he said.

“You could ask me to marry you first,” I retorted.

He drove on for a few minutes and pulled off the road into a convenient meadow.

“Felicity Goyder, will you do me the honour to be my wife?” he asked.

“Yes, Victor, I will,” I said. And then he drew me into his arms and kissed me; and I couldn’t have asked for more passion.

We both got rather mussed, and returned to a sense of our situation to find the horses happily cropping grass, and a hayseed regarding us over the hedge.

“Yew tew du hev powerful good lungs,” he remarked.

Victor tossed him a guinea, which he caught with alacrity; then added two more.

“Drink to our happiness, we just became engaged,” he said.

“Ar, thank ‘ee kindly,” said the hayseed, and winked. “May all your troubles be little ones.” With this sally, he dissolved into mirth and moved off.

“My darling, I am sorry,” said Victor. “You’re laughing.”

“It was a well-meant if earthy wish,” I said. “Now drive me home, do, Victor, there is an ominous black cloud over there, and I was vain enough to wear muslin which I do not wish to become transparent from a wetting.”

“Lud, no,” he said.

We got back just before the clouds broke, but I was walking in the sunshine above them.

Your sister, Felicity.