Refining Felicity Read Free Page B

Could anyone in the whole wide world reform her daughter, Lady Felicity Vane?
    There were halloos and cheers from outside. She crammed the newspaper back in the drawer and went to the window. A party of young bloods on horseback, headed by the countess’s daughter, Lady Felicity, were riding through the rose garden. A Scottish gardener like an infuriated gnome was jumping up and down and howling at their disappearing backs in a fury.
    Lady Baronsheath sat down again, her legs trembling. What on earth was she to do? Felicity’s first coming-out ball was that very night, and instead of beautifying herself, she was tearing up the rose garden with the noisiest of the male house guests.
    It was all her husband’s fault, thought Lady Baronsheath bitterly. He had wanted a son, he had always wanted a son, and she had not been able to give him anything other than one girl. So he had proceeded to treat the girl as if she were a boy, and he had indulged her every whim. Now he was all set to sail to America for an extended visit, leaving his wife to take Lady Felicity up to London for her first Season.
    And there should be no need to do that at all, thought Lady Baronsheath crossly, with such a marital prize on the doorstep. The Marquess of Ravenswood, their neighbour, had recently returned from the wars. He was handsome, elegant, and rich. He was a trifle old, being in his thirties, and Felicity was nineteen, but surely an older man was what she needed to curb her. All Lady Baronsheath’s dreams of seeing her daughter engaged to the marquess on the night of the ball had long since vanished. The marquess had already met Lady Felicity and appeared to despise her, and his very presence always seemed to make Felicity worse.
    Sometimes the sheer exuberance of her husband and daughter made Lady Baronsheath feel faded and washed out. The house was an elegant one, quite modern, built in the Palladian style, with graceful wings springing out from either side of the classical main building. The rooms were light and beautifully furnished. But the whole place always smelled of damp clothes and horses and dogs. Felicity rode almost every day, always dressed in men’s clothes.
    The ball was to be held in the chain of state saloons that made up the first floor of the central building. Already from above came the faint strains of the orchestra, rehearsing a waltz. Lady Baronsheath tried to console herself with the thought that a Felicity in evening dress and with her hair up would perhaps appear enchanting in the marquess’s eyes and that, with luck, he had not heard of her reputation for being the hoyden of the hunting field.
    She did not think so, but she had to hang on to that hope to give her courage for the evening ahead.

2

    And now the dreaded country first appears;
With sighs unfeign’d, the dying noise she hears
Of distant coaches fainter by degrees,
Then starts and trembles at the sight of trees.
    Soames Jenkins,
The Modern Fine Lady
    Lady Felicity Vane meant to behave well. She had noticed her mother’s anxious face, her worried looks, her nervousness over the success or failure of this ball. So Lady Felicity had made up her mind to look as beautiful as possible and to flirt and simper like the very best of daughters. She would charm this Marquess of Ravenswood and accept his hand in marriage. All young ladies tried to marry well; all good misses owed that much to their fond parents. Besides, if Lady Felicity married Ravenswood, then she would not be taken away from her beloved hunt. Priding herself on her practical mind and never pausing to think that the marquess might have other ideas, Lady Felicity, with unusual and alarming docility, allowed her maid, Wanstead, to prepare her for the ball.
    Wanstead had withstood Lady Felicity’s humours longer than most. She was a tough elderly country-woman with few graces and a hide like leather. In the past, nurses had come and gone, and then a succession of governesses, driven away by Lady