Never Laugh at Love Read online

  ‘Perhaps nobody will notice me,’ she told herself and then realised that was in fact the last thing she wanted.

  It was important that she should be noticed and even more important that she should be admired by at least one eligible bachelor.

  She wondered what sort of gentlemen her Godmother would invite to the house to meet her and she was to find the answer to this the very night she arrived.

  *

  It was late in the afternoon when the travelling carriage reached Sheldon House in Curzon Street.

  It was an impressive mansion despite the fact that it did not stand, as Anthea had somehow expected, in a garden of its own.

  The porticoed front door opened directly onto the street, but, as soon as Anthea saw the fine hall with its marble floor and curving staircase, she knew that it was grander than any house she had previously visited.

  She was shown into a salon, which struck her as extremely elegant and luxurious beyond her imagined idea of the house where her Godmother would live.

  She gazed around the room at the inlaid furniture, the exquisite objets d’art of gold and enamel, the Sevres china and the fine portraits on the walls of previous Earls and Countesses of Sheldon.

  Then the butler announced from the door that her Ladyship was resting, but requested Miss Forthingdale to go upstairs to her boudoir.

  By this time Anthea was feeling overawed and nervous – a feeling that was not assuaged when she entered the boudoir and saw her Godmother.

  She had known that the Countess of Sheldon was younger than her mother, but not by very many years. So she had expected her to be getting on into middle age, in fact someone well past the lissomness of youth.

  Her first glance at the Countess told her how mistaken she had been.

  Lying on a chaise longue and, wearing a diaphanous and very revealing negligee of emerald green gauze, she appeared to Anthea to be little older than she was herself.

  Never had she imagined that any woman could be so alluring!

  Then, as she drew nearer to her Godmother, she felt embarrassed at the transparency of her negligee revealing a slim, exquisitely curved body, which it seemed impossible could belong to anyone over the age of twenty.

  “Anthea, my dear child!” Delphine Sheldon said holding out both her hands. “It is delightful to see you! I hope you have not had too exhausting a journey?”

  Anthea curtsied and then advanced to take the soft white hands in hers.

  “It is so kind of you to have me, Godmama,” she said.

  “I am pleased – I really am,” the Countess said. “But it is very remiss of your mother not to have written to me before and I am afraid I had forgotten that you would now be grown up. So you must forgive me!”

  Two green eyes looked up in the most charming manner into Anthea’s face. At the same time she felt they were taking in every detail of her appearance.

  “You are very pretty, Anthea,” the Countess said after a moment, “but not as lovely as your mother was at your age.

  “I take after my Papa,” Anthea said, “but Thais and Phebe look exactly like Mama and they have her fair hair and blue eyes.”

  “I thought, when I was fifteen, that your mother was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen,” the Countess sighed.

  There was no doubt, Anthea thought to herself that her Godmother was the most beautiful woman she could have imagined.

  Never had she thought any woman could have such vivid red hair, such attractive green eyes, slanting at the corners and such a provocative red mouth.

  “You must tell me all about your family,” the Countess suggested, “but later after you have rested and changed for dinner. I have arranged a party tonight in your honour and afterwards I will take you to Almack’s.”

  “Tonight?” Anthea asked breathlessly.

  “Why not?” the Countess enquired. “The sooner you are launched into the Social world the better! I have managed to obtain a voucher for you from my dear friend the Princess Esterhazy. I assure you, Anthea, it is very exceptional for a girl to receive one of these much coveted vouchers the moment she arrives in London.”

  “I am very grateful, Godmama.”

  She thought that the Countess stiffened before saying,

  “I have been thinking, Anthea, what you should call me. ‘Godmama’ sounds quite old, almost like ‘Grandmama’, and ‘Aunt’ is nearly as bad!”

  Anthea waited and the Countess continued,

  “I think therefore it would be best if you called me ‘Cousin Delphine’. Cousins can be any age, can they not?”

  “Yes, of course,” Anthea agreed.

  “Your Mama and I might easily have been related. We were so close to each other and our parents’ houses were adjacent. So that is the solution.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then Cousin Delphine it is and don’t forget”

  “I will remember,” Anthea promised.

  The Countess rang a little gold bell that stood beside her chaise longue.

  Her lady’s maid opened the door almost immediately.

  “This is Miss Forthingdale, Maria,” the Countess said. “Take her to her room. I expect the maids will have unpacked for her by now.”

  “Yes, my Lady,” Maria answered.

  “Then goodbye, Anthea. We will meet before dinner in the salon. Wear your prettiest gown and remember, first impressions are always important.”

  Anthea was to remember her Godmother’s words later in the evening when she was at Almack’s and realised that she was without question the worst dressed girl in the room.

  At dinner her appearance had not seemed to matter as nobody paid any attention to her. But she was well aware that on the dance floor her plain white muslin with one frill was conspicuously inadequate as a ball gown.

  The gauzes, satins, silks, lawns, batistes and tulles were all embroidered with gold and silver tinsel and bestrewn with lace, motifs, flowers and ruches.

  Each gown was a work of art, and the tiny puff-sleeves were as elaborate as the skirts.

  It was little wonder that Anthea felt like a charity child from an institution.

  ‘I am a country mouse,’ she told herself, ‘and no one could mistake me for anything else.”

  The dinner party had consisted of twenty exquisitely bejewelled and expensively garbed ladies and gentlemen, all of whom obviously knew one another well and, Anthea gathered, were close friends of her Godmother.

  She was introduced to them all, but the Countess omitted to mention their names, while she was presented as a cousin who had come to London for what was left of the Season.

  The gentlemen bowed, the ladies gave her a condescending nod before resuming the conversation they were having before being interrupted.

  At dinner Anthea had a good-looking youngish man on one side of her who from the moment they sat down was deep in conversation with the lady on his left.

  As she frequently called him ʽdarling’ in a soft purring tone, Anthea gathered they were closely acquainted. On her other side was a red faced, jovial Peer who talked throughout the meal with a man two places away from him about racing.

  Apparently both had horses in training and were rivals for the Gold Cup at Ascot, although Anthea gathered there were several other competitors to challenge them.

  As neither of her partners spoke more than two or three words to her, she was able to observe the rest of the company with interest.

  She was in fact memorising everything that she heard and saw so that she could relate it to her sisters.

  “Don’t forget a single thing that happens!” Chloe had admonished before she left. “You know we want to hear every detail, who the people were, what they looked like, how they dressed and of course what they said.”

  “If I write it all down it will be as long as a book,” Anthea responded.

  “Write as much as you can,” Thais begged, “and store the rest in your mind.”

  “I will try,” Anthea promised.

&nbs
p; She had already rehearsed to herself as she travelled in the stagecoach how she would make her sisters laugh when she impersonated the passengers – the querulous invalid, the woman with the baby and the farmer’s wife who had inadvertently let loose the ducklings.

  Looking round the dining table she began to see that it would be easy for her to portray some of her Godmother’s guests.

  She thought that she would also make little sketches of some of them on the letters she was determined to write home at every opportunity.

  Never had she seen such silver ornaments, so many flunkeys, so much glitter and expensive jewellery – or such low-cut gowns.

  At the balls she had attended in the country the gowns worn by the lady guests had been neither transparent nor had their décolletages been anything but discreet.

  It seemed to Anthea that her Godmother was wearing a gown that was just as revealing as the negligee in which she had rested in her boudoir, and when some of the other ladies bent forward she felt herself blushing to see how much their ample charms were disclosed.

  But it was really the gentlemen who intrigued her most.

  They were so much smarter, so very much more impressive than any men she had ever met before. There was no doubt that black knee-length breeches and high meticulously-tied cravats were exceedingly becoming.

  She was well aware that her Godmother was ‘doing her proud’, as her father would have said.

  Almack’s was the most severely exclusive and most despotically controlled Club in the whole of London. As she had read,

  “Many diplomatic arts, much finesse and a host of intrigues are set in motion to obtain an invitation to Almack’s. Persons engaged in commerce have no hope of ever setting foot inside the strongly guarded door.”

  ‘I will see everyone of importance,’ Anthea told herself when after dinner the party set off from Curzon Street.

  A procession of carriages conveyed the Countess’s guests, drawn by thoroughbred horses, which made Anthea long to have a closer look at them.

  She found herself seated beside her Godmother in a carriage, which struck her as being smarter and more luxurious than any of the others.

  She was also quite certain after only a quick glimpse that the two horses which drew it could not be excelled by any other animals in the street.

  It was only as they drove along that she learnt that the carriage did not belong to her Godmother, but to the gentleman who accompanied them.

  “It is a long time since I have been to Almack’s,” he remarked. “I had hoped that I should never have to be bored again by the autocratic pretensions of its hostesses.”

  “Now, Garth, don’t be difficult!” the Countess begged. “You know that I have to take Anthea there so that she can meet the Social whirl and, if we don’t attend tonight’s ball, we shall have to wait a week for the next.”

  She turned to Anthea.

  “Everything depends, my dear, on your making a good impression on Lady Castlereagh, Lady Jersey, Lady Cowper, the Princess de Lieven and, of course, my dear friend, the Princess Esterhazy.”

  “I hope I shall do so,” Anthea replied a little nervously.

  “As the Duke has said, they are very autocratic.”

  Anthea started.

  She had not realised that the gentleman sitting opposite her was a Duke and she thought how thrilled the girls would be to know that she had actually met one.

  She looked at him in the lights that shone through the carriage windows as they drove up Berkeley Street. He was, she decided, the best looking man she had ever seen and yet there was something about him that she felt was rather repressive.

  She had not noticed him before dinner among the number of other gentlemen to whom her Godmother had introduced her.

  Now she realised that he had a great distinction and an air of consequence that was unmistakable.

  ‘He certainly looks like a Duke,’ she thought to herself.

  “Perhaps you will meet the Duke of Wellington,” Chloe had said before she left home. “If you do, ask him if he remembers Papa.”

  “I shall never meet anyone half so important or so grand,” Anthea replied, “and if I do, I shall be far too nervous to ask questions.”

  This was not the Duke of Wellington, but probably, Anthea thought, his was an older title, which would explain his aloofness and a pride that was very obvious even when he was not speaking.

  “How long shall we have to stay?” the Duke enquired.

  “No longer than I can help,” the Countess replied, “and I hope, Garth, you will ask me to dance. I am wearing a new gown especially so that I can show it off in a ballroom that is not as crowded as the one we were in last night.”

  The Duke did not answer and after a moment the Countess added,

  “You must not fail me tonight – and remember we owe so much to Anthea.”

  Anthea turned her head to look wide-eyed at her Godmother.

  She could not understand and, when she was about to ask a question, she saw the Countess hold out one hand towards the Duke.

  He raised it to his lips.

  “Have I ever failed you?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Never!” she replied.

  It was quite obvious to Anthea that for the moment they had forgotten her very existence and she kept silent. But she was listening with intense curiosity.

  Almack’s was all that she had expected.

  The large ballroom lit by huge crystal chandeliers, the long windows draped with elegant pelmets, the gilt framed mirrors, the band playing high above the dancers on a special balcony, were all just as she had imagined them.

  There were also the dowagers and their charges seated on gilt chairs around the room, and the hostesses introducing prospective partners to the girls who, immediately the dance was over, were returned to their chaperones.

  Princess Esterhazy greeted Anthea charmingly and having found her two dance partners obviously felt she had done her duty.

  After dancing with a dull and unresponsive young man who was obviously not interested in her, Anthea found herself seated beside her Godmother who was conversing with the Duke.

  She watched the dancers and realised that while some of them were proficient and graceful, others were clumsy and almost grotesque in their movements.

  She was so busy observing all she saw that it was with a start of surprise that she heard a voice say beside her,

  “Who are you? Why have I not seen you before?”

  She turned her head to see an elderly gentleman with white hair and a deeply lined face. But his dark eyes were shrewd and there was the suspicion of a twist to his thin lips.

  “Because I have not been here before,” Anthea replied.

  “This is your first time?”

  “I arrived in London only this afternoon.”

  The old gentleman had an ivory-handled stick on which he rested a blue-veined hand.

  One leg was stuck out in front of him and Anthea thought that he must be lame.

  He was, however, most elegantly dressed, although perhaps he was slightly old-fashioned in that he was wearing a fob and there was a large diamond ring on one of his fingers.

  Anthea had read somewhere that Beau Brummell, when he was an arbiter of fashion, had declared that for a man jewellery was in bad taste and that therefore none of the Bucks and Dandies surrounding the Regent wore any jewellery.

  “So you are congratulating yourself,” the old gentleman said, “that you have entered the holy of holies.”

  “I am thinking how lucky I am,” Anthea answered him.

  “I don’t know that there is much luck about it,” her companion growled, “unless you are referring to the fortunes of birth. The colour of your blood gets you in here – talents are not considered an asset.”

  Anthea laughed.

  “I am glad about that.”

  “Are you telling me you have no talents?”

  “Not many,” Anthea confessed, remembering her conversation with her sis
ters.

  “A good thing too!” the old gentleman said positively. “Far too many women today are trying to push themselves forward. All I ask is that a woman should be a woman. I have always liked them that way.”

  He glanced at Anthea in what she thought was a mischievous manner.

  Because she liked him, she said impulsively,

  “Would it be very rude, sir, if I asked you to tell me who some of these people are? You see I want to know about them, so that I can tell my sisters when I go home.”

  The old gentleman chuckled.

  “If you keep your ears open while you are in London, you will have plenty to repeat,” he said. “What is your name, young lady?”

  “Anthea Forthingdale, sir.”

  “I am the Marquis of Chale.”

  Anthea gave a little gasp.

  “I think I have heard of you, sir.”

  “And nothing to my advantage, I’ll be bound!” the Marquis said. “If you want to know who these creatures are there is one that will amuse you!”

  He pointed out a rather heavily built man who was dancing energetically with a very pretty woman wearing an egret in her hair.

  “That is Alvanley,” he said. “He has plenty of wit and enjoys two things.”

  “What are they?” Anthea asked.

  “Gambling and cold apricot tart!”

  Anthea looked at him to see if he was joking.

  “It is true!” the Marquis protested. “He once found an apricot tart so delectable that he ordered his chef to have one on the sideboard every day throughout the year.”

  “How extraordinary!” Anthea exclaimed.

  “A popular fellow, but a nuisance to his hosts and hostesses when he stays with them.”

  “Why is that?”

  “They always have to order one of their servants to sit up all night outside his bedroom.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “After reading late, he extinguishes his candle either by throwing it on the floor, aiming a pillow at it or pushing it, still alight, under the bolster!”

  Anthea laughed.

  “Is that really true?”

  “It is indeed!” the Marquis said. “If you intend to observe Society, you might as well learn of their eccentricities.”