The Christmas Caper 5

 Sorry all! I sat up late finishing formatting Simon's book of thoughts and poems on the cold war 

V A Hunting Lodge Meeting

 

“I have a confession to make,” said Jeremy to Cecily.  “My cousins and I had all found that the ladies we were courting were false in one way or another. And we determined to seek out poor but honest ladies who have not learned to be greedy and selfish, and kidnap them a little bit, and see if we wanted to marry them.”

“Oh!” said Cecily. “I quite understand; you have been given a disgust of me by my wearing breeches, and by having some idea of what Lord Ashdowne intended; but please, do not feel you have to let me down gently. It has been a splendid adventure, and perhaps I can work for your aunt, and if not, find some other gainful employment...”

She broke off as Jeremy took her into his arms.

“But I don’t have any disgust of you, my precious darling,” he said. “I want to marry you very much indeed, and I have a special licence to that end. I hope Nicky and Simon are even half as lucky as I have been to find you.”

“Oh! J... Jeremy, you really want to marry me? I... I was a bit spoilt before my brother died – it’s his clothes I’m wearing, and he died of being tipped into a ditch on his way back from school, so I am so glad you punished that horrid man. Only... only, may I put on a gown to meet your aunt?”

“Nip up into the hay loft,” said Jeremy.  “There won’t be anyone there at the moment.”

Cecily ran up the ladder to change, and came down perforce more sedately. Jeremy lifted her down from the ladder, and kissed her tenderly.

“And if I can, I will do Ashdowne an ill turn,” he said.

“He is a powerful man...”

“So am I, my dear, so am I,” said Jeremy. “Certainly powerful enough to deal with the likes of Ashdowne. I have a grandsire I can ask to handle him. Frid’s brother has all his faculties.”

 

oOoOo

 

Nicholas and Beatrice had arrived first at the hunting lodge, and received the scrutiny of Lady Frideswide, who was having a lucid day, which scared Nicholas more than when she was rambling. She fixed them with a glare through an ornate quizzing-glass, the outrageously magnified eye boring into Beatrice, who tried not to quail.

“You’ll do, girl,” said Lady Frid. “You’ve got bottom, and you show with gaiety.”

“Here, I say, Aunt Frid, those are canting boxing terms,” protested Nicholas.

“And what if they are? I’ve attended a few matches with whatever protector I had at the time,” said Frid. “Burn that child’s clothes, though, if they are all as terrible as that; Moffatt will alter a couple of my chemises a la reine to fit the modern idea of decent clothing, though I’d call it indecent clothing myself, nothing much left to the imagination, and how can you entice a man if he doesn’t have to work at finding out what’s underneath? But I can’t talk, for I once took a bet from... well, let’s just say it was a royal duke and leave it at that... to ride through St. James’s Park in my chemise and nothing else. He paid up, though I had to wait until he could raise a loan. Always out of pocket, royal dukes, but then, they gamble too much and are very susceptible to the female company. I did well out of them, so my stuffy old brother can say what he likes. You three boys will find out, when I stick my spoon in the wall, because you come and visit me and entertain me. And now you’re all getting married, I hear?”

“It’s the general idea,” said Nicholas.

“You’re much wiser to pick girls who aren’t after what you can do for them,” said Frid. “I know; I was frankly totally mercenary. Our father was a rake, a gamester, and a profligate fool, and when he shot himself, Gherkin and I knew we had to make our own way in the world.”

“Gherkin, ma’am?” asked Beatrice.

“My brother, also Jeremy,” said Frid. “His friends called him Jer, so I called him Jerkin, and it became Gherkin. I expect I’m the only person left to call him that; so few people of our generation left, my lovers have all succumbed to obesity or the clap, and my closest personal enemies have died of an excess of prurient hypocrisy. And I’m losing my wits a few at a time. I’m glad to meet you, my dear, when I’m being myself. Moffatt! Find something suitable for the child.”

“Yes, my lady,” said the faithful Moffatt, an iron grey lady of indeterminate age.

Frid smiled on her with affection.

“Margaret Moffat is named in my will, too, and I know you boys won’t throw her out into the cold,” she said.

“I trust you are not expecting your demise to be imminent?” asked Nicholas, alarmed.

“No, my dear boy, I want to see you all respectably established. I might even hang on for children; but I’m not well. And I don’t want to become a complete gager and drag it out. You wouldn’t want that for me, would you?”

“Er, no,” said Nicholas.

“I understand,” said Beatrice. “I hope you can hold on long enough to get to know you; I’m sure you have a wonderful fund of stories.”

“Young people help to keep me lucid,” said Frid. Beatrice ran to her and embraced her; she had seen the fear in the old woman’s eyes as she spoke of losing her mind in such light terms.

“Thank you for receiving me so warmly,” said Beatrice, and burst into tears. For the second time that day she poured out her story, and found herself being sat down next to the ample figure of Lady Frid, who eschewed stays, and given a cup of tea and sundry exotic biscuits.

“Moffatt,  write a letter for me,” said Frid.  “My knuckles have arthritis these days, my dear, so Margaret Moffatt is my fingers. “Do all the proper terms of address for my brother, the old fool feels better for having his ego stroked. And I need to let him know in case I forget who you are, my dear. Which is what I hate.”

“We will keep reminding you,” said Nicholas.

“Yes, that does help,” said Frid. “Write this: Gherkin! There is a deplorable man trying to force himself on the ton whose name is Spottiswode, who has a daughter called Amelia, who is not above putting a frame on those she dislikes for theft of her tawdry geegaws. Ruin him. Then bring it over here so I can sign it.”

“Just like that?” gasped Beatrice.

“Gherkin made his way in the world with clever dealing; Simon has inherited that talent, though Jeremy is no slouch. My Nicky is a dreamer and enriches the world with pretty thoughts,” she smiled fondly on Nicholas, who felt ashamed of his fear of her declining faculties, remembering how she had encouraged his poetry when he was younger. “Gherkin is quite aggressive in dealing in shares; I took the route of cynically using my beauty rather than making an advantageous marriage. I would not marry a rich industrialist. Though I came close, once, but keeping him as a lover meant I kept my freedom. And now I’m paying for those wild days; one pays for one’s pleasure, and one’s profit. Gherkin has gout; I... well, I contracted a disease which is eating my mind. It’s life. There, I like being hugged by young things, it makes me feel wanted.”

 

oOoOo

 

Frideswide welcomed Cecily so warmly that Cecily found herself explaining her escape in her brother’s clothes.

“It don’t signify,” said Frid. “Jeremy will tell you, I dressed as a highwayman and held up a swain of mine on Hampstead Heath for getting married without telling me, and I demanded three kisses before I let him and his lady go on, and I hope she bent his ear well about it. No manners.”

“That does seem impolite,” said Cecily.

“It was! And as for cross-dressing the other way, why, I was entertaining a colonel who was set to wipe out Jacobites, who had no idea that the maid who served him wine was a Jacobite on the way to France, and such a clever tongue that man had!”

“He was very persuasive?” asked Jeremy.

“That, too,” said Frid, with a gurgle of mirth. Jeremy stared, then blushed, deeply.

“I don’t perfectly understand,” said Cecily.

“Oh, I’m sure Jeremy will explain when you are married,” said Frid. “I never had any sympathy for the cause; the Stuarts never were any good, for all that I’ve a Royalist name, but it attracted romantics, and I’ve always been susceptible to a man with romance in his soul.”

 

oOoOo

 

“You’ve blood coming through your gloves, Simon, my boy, who have you been fighting?” asked Frid severely when Simon introduced Lily to her.

“Oh, it seems this jackadandy tried to hunt the squirrel with Jeremy, who forced him off the road; and we stopped to see what had occurred and discovered that the jackadandy had a foul mouth, so I damaged it for him,” said Simon. “His teeth cut my knuckles up a bit, but it seemed a good place to hit him. Nasty fellow. How was it you described his excessive moustaches, my Tiger-Lily?”

Lily giggled.

“As if he had a Pekinese up each nostril.”

“Men with moustaches are sometimes very silly about them,” said Frid. “Though a good pair can be fun at times, even if kissing is not as good.”

“Er, yes,” said Simon. “Anyway, this is Elizabeth, known as Lily, whose family want her to give her legacy to her sister as she’s of no account to them.”

“It was the last straw,” said Lily. “And I just left, and Mr. Havershall was the first person to be kind to me besides Ella, the maid; but I would not take her with me as she’d lose her post and I did not know I would be so lucky.” She looked adoringly at Simon, blushing.

“Well, well, Simon will drive back tomorrow and fetch her,” said Frid.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Simon. He took a pot of salve from the silent Moffat, and smiled thanks as he spread it on his cut knuckles.

“Well, you and Beatrice are of age,” said Frid. “You can marry as soon as Christmas is over. Cecily, you’re another matter.”

“Jeremy offered to pay my parents’ debts off in exchange for permission, but I wouldn’t let him, because they would only demand more,” said Cecily. “And I don’t want that.”

Jeremy smiled.

“If you will excuse me for a few days, I will go and see Ashdowne,” he said. “I fancy I can induce him to give up all your father’s vowels.”

“Ashdowne, Ashdowne... St. John, Baron Ashdowne?” asked Frid.

“Yes,” said Cecily. “He likes to be called ‘Sin,’ because he revels in his debauchery.”

Frid sniffed.

“Moffatt! My book!”

The grey-haired companion handed over a black-bound notebook, and Frid shuffled through it.

“Here we are,” said Frid. “St. John Ashdowne, reneged on a debt of honour, but before he was disgraced, the man he lost it to supposedly shot himself, but his valet knew that Ashdowne had killed him. He fled, before Ashdowne could shoot him, too. His master was the son of an old lover of mine, and he came to me. I paid him enough to go abroad. But you can use it.”

“I will,” said Jeremy.  “Simon and I might as well drive into Bath together and share the drive.”

“I never ever dreamed of finding such a practical husband,” said Cecily.

“We’re all of us practical,” said Nicholas. “Why don’t we all go, and back each other up?”

“Jolly good idea,” said Jeremy. “We’ll take the landaulet.”