Honoria Or The Safety 0f The Frying Pan Read online

“There!” she exclaimed. “What do you think?” She held the dress up against herself and pranced in front of her cousin as though dancing.

  “I think it will do very well. You have been excessively quick – do you think it will hold?”

  “I do not see why not. It has only to remain in place for a few hours. I will see what I can do with the ribbons now.”

  This took longer because, once she had decided on the length required to tie a small bow with what she hoped were artlessly dangling ends, the entire stock of pink had to be cut to the same length and each bow laboriously tied before it could be fixed to the dress.

  It grew dark while they laboured and Lady Charles returned to urge them to change for dinner.

  “See how well we are getting along!” Helen said. She, too, had now begun on the bows.

  “You would do better to have fewer bunches of ribbons,” her ladyship opined, finding fault in her accustomed manner. “You will look like a doll if you are all hung about with little bows.”

  “Is this too many, do you think?” Honoria asked, holding up her dress, to which she had so far attached bunches of ribbons at the bosom, the sleeves and a few inches above the hem.

  “Yes; take off the ones on the hem if you do not wish to look like a shepherdess. Let me see it on.”

  Her ladyship helped Honoria to remove the dress she was wearing and herself threw the muslin over her head. She was engaged in doing up the rows of small buttons at the back when Frank came in.

  “What are you doing here?” his mother asked, displaying an unusual absence of pleasure at the sight of him.

  “Come to see why no one is in the saloon waiting to be called for dinner. Are you trying on dresses for tomorrow night?”

  “Yes. It was fortunate you did not come in a moment ago for Honoria was in her petticoats.”

  “I dare swear she looked charming in them. Is that the dress you are intending to wear?”

  “Yes. Do you think it will answer?” Honoria asked, fiddling with the lace which she could now see she had sewn on neither evenly nor firmly.

  “I don’t see why not although to my mind it looks more like a nightgown than a ball dress.”

  “In that case it will not answer at all; people will think us not only dowdy but vapid – which is worse.”

  “I think,” he said, putting his head on one side and looking Honoria up and down, “that it would be a pity to make your first appearance in such a limp gown. It not only resembles a nightgown but looks as though you have made it yourself.”

  “I have added the lace and ribbons,” she admitted, her mouth drooping with disappointment.

  “Well, neither enhances the look of the thing, particularly when the lace is falling off.”

  Before either she or Lady Charles could think of an answer, he strode up to Honoria, took hold of the lace and pulled it off.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, outraged. “I have just spent hours sewing that on! How could you?”

  “It was not at all difficult,” he replied, grinning at her. “You look much better without it. There was something disagreeably prim about that lace – as though you were afraid to reveal any skin. In point of fact, you have a rather fine bosom and it is vastly improved without that horrid stuff muffling it.”

  “Oh!” she cried again, both embarrassed and angry. “Why stop there? Why do you not also pull off all the ribbons I have so carefully measured and tied and sewn? It has been the most tedious of jobs trying to make sure they are the right way up.”

  “Most of them are crooked – neither one way up nor the other – and, in any event, you are quite pretty enough without any ornamentation. Will you dance, Miss Ford?”

  He bowed and held out his hand but she snatched hers away and put it behind her back.

  He smiled with what to Honoria seemed a horrid degree of satisfaction and asked his mother, “Do you not think she looks a deal better without all those silly bows and lace?”

  “Yes, but it is a very plain gown and dreadfully old. Are not people wearing something different now?”

  “Probably, but does it matter? It is a classically simple garment and on that account suits a girl as lovely as my cousin has turned out to be. She needs no embellishment. I wouldn’t be surprised if appearing like that amongst all the over-dressed, over-beribboned misses, she will take Tunbridge Wells by storm. Also, it will be the very thing to protect her from fortune-hunters; after all, what heiress would be expected to appear in Society for the first time wearing something so exceedingly plain?”

  “No, that is an excellent point,” Lady Charles agreed, seeing several additional advantages which she was fairly certain Frank had overlooked. “What think you of Helen’s gown?”

  “Do you mean the one she’s wearing or the one she’s stitching?”

  “The muslin.”

  “I should think it, too, would be improved by losing the bows – and the lace.”

  “But I have spent hours working on it!” Helen exclaimed, not at all pleased.

  “That is easily remedied,” Frank told her. “Give it to me and I will remove all the gewgaws immediately.”

  “You will not! You would tear the whole gown if you attempt to pull it off the way you did with Honoria’s. Hers was barely attached so that it was an easy matter to take it off; mine is securely sewn.”

  “Let me see,” Frank ordered in a masterful manner. It seemed that, his action in denuding Honoria’s gown of its ornamentation having met with his mother’s approval as well as a lively response from its wearer, he had grown confident that his would be the deciding opinion.

  “I wish to keep the lace,” Helen said sharply. “I cannot conceive what has given you the belief – entirely mistaken – that you know anything about it, Frank.”

  “As a matter of fact I probably know a good deal more about what females are wearing than you do, Helen,” he replied, not a whit abashed. “And I certainly know immeasurably more about what makes them look pretty - and draping their bosom in quantities of musty old lace is not one of them.”

  “But do they not embellish their gowns with lace?” Lady Charles asked, frowning.

  “Yes, they do – sometimes – but not lace like that. That, an I mistake not, has adorned another dress in its time and, when the gown was thrown away, the lace was saved. Fashionable persons are never seen in such dowdy stuff!”

  “It is not dowdy!” Helen exclaimed, incensed.

  Honoria, observing the siblings, reflected that it had not taken long for them to assume their accustomed positions: he, teasing and superior as befitted the favourite child; she, angry and defensive as the one whose opinion was neither sought nor – when it was given unsought as it frequently was – heeded.

  “Put it on, Helen,” Lady Charles said, refraining, to Honoria’s surprise, from taking either side.

  “I will not take off my dress unless he leaves the room,” Helen declared.

  “No, no one expects you to, my dear. Go away, Frank, for a minute or two.”

  “Where must I go?”

  “Just stand outside the door for a moment. Honoria will tell you when you can come back; and then you shall tell us what you think.”

  “I do not wish to hear his opinion; he is bound to say something uncivil just because I am his sister.”

  “I promise I will not,” Frank said but, as his tone was satirical, this did not mollify his sister.

  Honoria bundled him out of the room, and came back to help Helen change the plain woollen gown she was wearing for the thin muslin one.

  “I like the lace,” Helen repeated, fingering it as her mother did up the buttons.

  “You look very pretty,” Honoria told her, knowing that neither of the other two was likely to pay the girl a compliment.

  It was true: Helen was – or could have been with a little primping - a pretty young woman. She bore little resemblance to Frank although both had fine, regular features and blue eyes but, where his were an almost dazzlingly bright sapphire, hers
were a more subtle shade hovering somewhere between blue and grey. Lacking his energy and charm, she projected a petulant air, exacerbated by the manner in which her pale hair was scraped back uncompromisingly from her face. As Honoria knew, unbound, it fell as far as her waist in strands that were as soft and fine as cobwebs. “Such a pity the boy has all the looks” was a comment which had been said so many times within Helen’s hearing that she was convinced of its truth.

  “There is really no need for you to be kind to me,” Helen snapped ungraciously.

  “You know you could be quite pretty if you made the most of what you’ve got,” Frank said, returning to the room and surveying his sister with his head on one side. “You’re like a shadow to Honoria’s sun but, if you discarded your unfortunate tendency to peevishness and cultivated a gentler demeanour, you could have all the subtle charm of the moon. I believe you would look very well in dark colours. The thing is, Mama, that Helen should wear her hair in a softer style for her expression is quite sharp enough without her features being so exposed.”

  “I suppose you think they would be better hidden altogether,” Helen snapped.

  “No, merely softened,” Frank replied quite gently. He stepped towards his sister and, reaching behind her head, began to remove the pins which held her hair in place.

  Helen stepped back instinctively but came up against a small table and stopped.

  “See,” he said, when the silken tresses had fallen about her shoulders. “We need to see your hair for it is quite pretty but it becomes almost invisible when it is pulled back so tightly.”

  “It is true,” Honoria agreed. “Your hair is beautiful, Helen, and, on a dance floor beneath the chandeliers, it will shine like precious metal. Do you think, Aunt, that Prosser would be able to achieve something like this?”

  She picked up the copy of La Belle Assemblée that she had been looking at earlier and showed it to Lady Charles.

  “Most unlikely, I should think,” her ladyship said, peering at the sketch, “but we can ask her to try.”

  All three women leaned over the page so that Frank was afraid that he had been forgotten.

  “Do you think we could have our dinner now?” he asked.

  “Yes; do you go downstairs and tell Belton that we shall be another half an hour,” his mother said. “The girls must change and Helen will have to put up her hair again.”

  “Half an hour?” Frank exclaimed. “It has been ready this hour or more; it will be quite ruined.”

  “If it is, it will be your fault for you began all this argument about lace and bows and hairstyles and so on,” Honoria pointed out.

  “If Mrs Pope cannot delay dinner by an hour or more without ruining it, I cannot conceive why we employ her,” Lady Charles said unsympathetically. “Go along, Frank, and mollify your father as well while you are about it.”

  “Shall we be able to go tomorrow?” Helen asked.

  “Yes, why not?” Frank asked lightly, going to the door. “But take off that horrid lace and the senseless bows. I would be ashamed to accompany a shepherdess even to Tunbridge Wells.”

  “I wonder ..,” Lady Charles said, turning back to look at her daughter. “If you like the lace, my dear, you shall keep it but I think he is right about the bows. You shall borrow my Norwich shawl and that will give you a little colour. I will inform Prosser of her task after dinner so that she can think about how to effect something approaching this …”

  “It is a very old copy,” Honoria pointed out. “It might be unwise to ask her to follow that design too closely.”

  “And what of you?” Lady Charles asked, turning her attention to her niece.

  “I? Oh, I suppose I had better wear the muslin unadorned as Frank suggests. Or do you mean my hair? I am sure we can contrive something.”

  “Perhaps, but I am by no means convinced that the muslin will answer without some embellishment.”

  Chapter 5

  Cassie and von Krems sat on either side of the fire with their coffee exchanging stilted remarks – it could hardly be described as a conversation - while the little boy, who could barely drag his eyes from his hostess’s face, sat on the floor by his father’s knees and ate cake.

  The Count was a man of about Cassie’s age, well-dressed and evidently of patrician stock. He had pale yellow hair and blue eyes, so light in colour that they were almost translucent. They kept sliding away from Cassie’s damaged countenance until wrenched back by what she guessed to be his determination not to appear uncivil. Seeing this, she was almost amused; as a renowned Beauty, she was accustomed to gentlemen’s eyes only leaving her face to rest on other parts of her person.

  She attempted to enquire whether little Gustav – for that was his name – had any brothers or sisters and was informed that he had not; indeed, he had not even a mother. The von Krems males were alone in the world – that at least was what she understood but it might merely have been that neither the mother nor the siblings were actually present, which of course she could see for herself. She had discovered, during the months she had lived in Vienna, that it was almost easier to misunderstand the meaning of a sentence when she knew a few of the words than when she knew none.

  The news that Lord Waldron and the doctor were at the door was greeted with some relief by both the grown-ups for their exchange was proving excessively taxing.

  “Oh, good; please send them in,” she told the manservant in her inimitable fashion, nodding and gesturing to convey her meaning.

  Waldron came in first, followed by the doctor, who was a serious-looking man wearing spectacles.

  “Can I offer you some refreshment?” Cassie asked, taking advantage of Waldron’s ability to translate her words to abandon, for the time being, her infantile manner.

  “Later perhaps,” Waldron said. “You had better allow the doctor to examine you first in case there is anything which he needs to do as a matter of urgency. Would you like me to remain in the room to help with interpreting? I can turn my back if you prefer.”

  “Perhaps you should give poor Graf von Krems permission to leave,” Cassie suggested. “He has been at his wits’ end endeavouring to converse with a person who either cannot answer at all or who answers seemingly at random.”

  “Of course.” Lord Waldron turned his attention to the Austrian and explained what Cassie had said.

  The Count rose at once and made a deep obeisance to his hostess, accompanied by what she assumed to be further apologies for the accident.

  “He says,” Lord Waldron translated, “that he hopes you will soon feel more the thing; he repeats that he is more sorry that he is able to express for what happened and that he will take the liberty of calling upon you tomorrow.”

  “Please thank him but assure him that, since it was an unfortunate accident and not at all his fault, there is no need for him to apologise any further.”

  When all this had been concluded to the satisfaction of both parties, Cassie’s hand had been kissed, von Krems had bowed so many times that Cassie feared for his back, the child had been smiled upon and invited to eat another cake, the father and son at last left.

  The doctor examined Cassie’s nose, for the most part in silence, while Waldron stood by the window. Eventually he spoke, initially directing his remarks to her until she suggested he address Waldron.

  Lord Waldron said, “He is not certain whether your nose has been broken; he says that, so far as he can tell at present, it looks quite straight although there is considerable swelling, which makes it difficult to assess the true extent of the damage. It was the force of the blow which made it bleed so much. He suggests that your maid should wash the area and put a cold compress on the bridge to soothe the pain as well as reduce the inflammation. You can, he assures me, safely take several drops of laudanum to ease the discomfort.”

  The doctor, as Cassie listened to this, smiled and nodded, evidently glad to have been the bearer of such positive news.

  “Can you ask him if he thinks my nose will b
e just as it was before the accident - in time?” she asked tentatively. She could not help feeling that she was displaying a shameful degree of vanity in caring about such a trivial matter when, really, she should be grateful that it seemed more or less able to perform its proper task.

  Waldron put the question and received an affirmative answer. There not seeming to be anything further that needed to be said or done on either side, the doctor promised to make another visit the following day to check on his patient and was conducted to the door by the Earl himself.

  When he returned, he said, “Would you like me to convey the doctor’s instructions to your maid before I leave?”

  Cassie agreed to this and rang the bell. All having been made plain, his lordship took himself off, also promising to call again in a day or so to see how she did.

  When he had left, she allowed herself to be conducted upstairs where Lisl brought hot water mixed with a little boracic powder and bathed her mistress’s face with gentle movements. Cassie lay upon her bed with a towel under her head during the maid’s ministrations and closed her eyes in order not to see the darkening water in the bowl. When she had finished, the girl withdrew, taking her bowl with her, and Cassie, exhausted by the events of the morning, lay upon her bed and composed herself for sleep.

  Although she was fatigued, she was not in the least sleepy so that she was glad when the maid reappeared, bearing a tray of hot chocolate. Placing this on a small table beside the bed, Lisl fetched the bottle of laudanum drops which she knew her mistress kept in a drawer in her dressing room. Holding up the bottle, she urged Cassie to take some for the pain and shock. She made up the fire and drew the heavy curtains across the window.

  Left alone, Cassie sat up and obediently measured out a few drops of the opiate into her chocolate. Propped against her pillows, she drank the sweet liquid with the sort of pleasure she had rarely felt on eating or drinking anything since she had been a child.

  As a ‘Bird of Paradise’ her looks had been her most valuable asset so that, as the years passed, she had been obliged to fight a natural tendency to put on weight. She had hardly touched anything so decadent as chocolate until she came to Vienna.