Mistress in the Regency Ballroom: The Rake's Unconventional Mistress / Marrying the Mistress

Her intention to be at church next morning, however, was upset by an incident that shocked the adults involved in the smooth running of Miss Boyce’s select seminary.

Letitia and Miss Gaddestone were preparing to leave the house, waiting for Mrs Quayle and the three girls to join them, when the three arrived with serious faces, without their chaperon.

‘Is she coming?’ said Letitia, drawing on her gloves.

‘Yes,’ said Edina. ‘She asks that you wait for her while we go on ahead. Shall we go?’

‘Yes. We’ll catch you up. Go with Miss Gaddestone.’

Once they were out of the way, Mrs Quayle entered the house through the back door, leading an unkempt Sapphire Melborough, who ought to have been at church in her parents’ pew. Sapphire was sullen and indignant, her pouting mouth reddened as if she’d been eating strawberries. Her long fair hair, which should have been braided, hung down on to one muslin-covered shoulder, the fabric of which was loosened by the undone row of hooks and eyes down the back of her bodice. One hand held the front of her dress in place while the other carried her pink bonnet and reticule, and her prayer book.

If Letitia was lost for words, Mrs Quayle was not. ‘I think,’ she said in her severest tone, ‘that this young lady has some explaining to do. First, she may like to tell us why she prefers to spend her Sunday morning in the potting shed rather than at church with her parents.’

Guessing the answer to that, Letitia started from a more obtuse angle. ‘Where do your parents think you are, Sapphire?’ she said.

‘At church or at home, Miss Boyce,’ the young woman whispered. ‘They’re away visiting for the day, but I pleaded to stay behind.’

‘So you could come down to Paradise Road while we were at church?’

‘Yes.’ The blue eyes had lost their merry twinkle, taking on a heavy-lidded tiredness, guarded against probing personal questions.

‘To meet the gardener’s son?’

‘How…how did you…?’

‘Tell me! Never mind how I know.’

‘Yes.’

Bristling with indignation, Mrs Quayle felt obliged to add details she knew Sapphire would not willingly have offered. ‘The great hulking lout ran off, buckling his belt up, leaving this young madam—’ she cast a jaundiced look at Sapphire’s dishevelled state ‘—to pull herself together as best she may. Down on the bench they were, when I found them, rolling about like a couple of pups, and him with a black eye as big as a cabbage.’

‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Quayle. Sapphire, come here and sit down. Did you walk down Richmond Hill on your own? Without a maid?’

‘Charity came with me, ma’am, to keep watch.’

‘To keep watch? For pity’s sake, what has it come to? Where is She now? Still out there?’

‘I don’t know, ma’am.’

‘Sapphire, how long has this been going on?’ Before the girl could develop her fib, it was snapped off in a sudden burst of anger. ‘Don’t lie to me, young lady. The truth, if you please. How long?’

‘Not long, Miss Boyce. Since I first hurt my ankle.’

Letitia closed her eyes, seeing the occasion in one quick blink. They had left Sapphire behind in Miss Gaddestone’s care to finish off her watercolour in the summerhouse while the rest of them went to the Royal Academy. Gaddy would have dozed off. The gardener’s son would have beckoned, offering Sapphire an irresistible alternative. She was not a girl to refuse that kind of adventure, as she herself had done. She would have pushed aside any reservations and taken whatever experience was waiting for her, and she would emerge at the tender age of seventeen knowing far more about a man than Letitia knew at twenty-four, a novelist who wrote about such relationships as if she knew what she was talking about. Sapphire’s behaviour could not be excused or condoned, but neither could she be condemned out of hand for wanting to know exactly what would be expected of her in marriage, before committing herself to it.

‘With the gardener’s son, Sapphire? Is that the best you could do? Could you not have waited for marriage?’

Sapphire hung her head as if in shame, but there was no trace of shame when she lifted it again to look Letitia full in the face. ‘I could, Miss Boyce,’ she said through swollen lips, ‘but Ted’s not like the men my parents approve of. He’ll keep it to himself, not prattle and boast as others do, swapping details, comparing, laughing about it, giving one a reputation and a silly nickname to match. I wanted to find out what I need to know without everyone hearing about it. He’s had lots of girls. He knows what he’s doing. Not like some of them. And now I know what it’s like. It was not what Mrs Quayle says, rolling about like pups. It was good, or I’d not have returned.’

‘Have you no shame, Miss Melborough?’ Mrs Quayle snapped.

Sapphire did not look her way. ‘My body is my own to do with as I please. Yes, I know about bloodlines and all that, but experience with men has not stopped some women from making good marriages, and it won’t stop me. The difference is that I shall be going into it with my eyes open. As men do.’

‘And have you given any thought to the consequences, young lady?’ said Mrs Quayle, unconvinced by the argument. ‘Do you want to bear the gardener’s brat? Will your own father recognise it, if you do?’

‘There won’t be any consequences of the kind you mean.’

‘How can you be sure, Sapphire?’ said Letitia. ‘You run a very serious risk.’

‘My father tells me one must be prepared to take risks in life.’

‘I don’t doubt he did, but I don’t suppose he had this kind of thing in mind when he said it. Turn round and let me fasten you up.’

As Letitia might have expected, Sapphire’s back was covered by tiny pink scratches that rough sacking would make upon delicate skin. But she was not prepared for the pale grey-blue rows of fingertip marks on the upper arms, shoulders and back as if some violence had been used. Finishing the fastenings, she turned Sapphire to face her. ‘Tell me the truth, if you please. Did the gardener’s son force himself on you?’

The blue eyes opened wider, astonished and innocent, and Letitia knew she did not lie. ‘No, he didn’t, Miss Boyce. Ted’s not like that. I know it might be best for me to say that he did, but that wouldn’t explain why I came down here on a Sunday morning when I told the housekeeper and Mama I’d be going to church, would it? I’d have gone straight there, not to your potting shed. I won’t get Ted into any more trouble than he is already. Someone’s already beaten him up.’

It would have been so easy for Letitia to tell her, but she held her tongue. This was not the time. ‘Do you love him, then?’ she said.

‘No, Miss Boyce, of course I don’t. It’s not love we were after.’

‘What was it, then?’ said Mrs Quayle, sharply.

Letitia thought the question unnecessary, quelling Mrs Quayle’s curiosity with a frown. ‘My concern,’ she said, ‘is for your personal safety, which has been put at risk. And what on earth am I to tell your parents, when you choose to use my property to misbehave on while you were not supposed to be here? I shall have to insist that they find another seminary for you, Sapphire. Just when it was all going so well.’

‘Do you have to tell them?’

Letitia recognised the plea for privacy, and there was a moment of hesitation before she replied, ‘Yes, they must know. Certainly they must. They are responsible for you still, and I cannot pretend not to know what’s been happening. That would make me as irresponsible as you. You must see that. I can only be thankful that it’s been stopped before it gets any worse, though it will be bad enough if that young man has fathered a child on you. I pray it has not happened.’

‘He must be got rid of immediately,’ said Mrs Quayle.

‘He will be. I should have done it sooner.’

‘Why?’

‘Well…er…because it’s his father who’s employed here, not Ted. He only helps out when he’s needed.’ She recalled Rayne’s caustic and rather indelicate words about who else Ted had ‘helped out’. ‘Has he been associating with any of the other girls, Sapphire?’

‘No, Miss Boyce.’

‘Are you quite sure?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Quite sure.’

Letitia sighed with relief. ‘Stand up. I’ll tidy your hair before I take you home. Turn round.’

‘I’d rather stay here with you, ma’am, if I may. My parents won’t be home until this evening.’

‘Very well, but you must stay upstairs out of the way. I’ll have your lunch sent up on a—’ Her words were cut off by the insistent clang of the front doorbell, followed quickly by a loud commanding voice. ‘Oh, no! That’s Mama!’ she whispered to Mrs Quayle. ‘Quick! Take Sapphire upstairs.’