An Unconventional Duenna. Paula Marshall

in as neutral a voice as she could, “I still think that you should give this whole notion more thought than you are doing. For one thing, if anyone should learn—or suspect—that you are illegitimate you will be ruined.”

      Athene tossed her head. “I’ll think about it again tonight, Mama, and tell you in the morning what my decision is.”

      She had no intention of doing any such thing. Her mind was already made up. Here was her chance. Somehow, however much Mrs Tenison tried to extinguish her, she would make her mark in London society and hook her rich and titled fish. She remembered one of the older girls saying that immediately before she left Mrs Guarding’s school to go to London for the Season. She had certainly managed to hook her fish: a baronet—admittedly not of the first stare—but a fish with a title nonetheless.

      An irreverent Athene had once wondered how much like a fish he had looked. Was he a shark—or a simple-seeming goggle-eyed cod? She hoped that her fish would be handsome, good and kind as well as rich and titled—which might be asking rather a lot, but one ought always to aim for the highest…

      Naturally she would not allow either her mother or Mrs Tenison to guess at her true reason for accepting this somewhat surprising offer: she would be as good and demure and grateful as a poor young lady could be. Consequently, when they were both invited to the Tenisons’ to be informed of the details of her employment, Mrs Tenison thought that Miss Athene Filmer had gained a quite undeserved reputation for being outspoken and downright in her manner.

      Emma, of course, was delighted. Her face shone with pleasure when Athene and her mother were shown into the Tenisons’ drawing-room, and for once she acted impulsively.

      “Oh, Athene!” she exclaimed, running for ward to take her friend’s hand. “You cannot know how pleased I am that you have agreed to come with us! I shall not feel frightened of anything if you are standing by my side!”

      “Come, come, Miss Tenison,” said her mother coldly, “that is no way to behave. Thank your friend quietly and in a proper fashion. Remember also that she is to be your companion, almost a chaperon, not your bosom bow, so you will address her as Miss Filmer. You, and only you, are to be presented to the Prince Regent. I trust that you understand what your proper place will be, Miss Filmer?”

      Athene bowed submissively. “Oh, indeed, Mrs Tenison. I am to accompany Miss Emma as her support, not her equal in any way.”

      “But I shall allow you to call me Emma in private,” exclaimed her daughter eagerly. “After all, we were friends at school, were we not?”

      “True,” said Mrs Tenison, still cold, “but you will not refer to that fact in public. I have called this meeting today in order to inform Miss Filmer of her duties, and to make arrangements for her wardrobe to be made in the village before we leave. You, Emma, will have a small number of dresses run up in Northampton, but your best toilettes will be ordered from a London modiste when we reach there.”

      It was quite plain, thought Athene, that Mrs Tenison intended her to have no illusions about the humble nature of her post in London. This judgement was immediately reinforced when Mrs Tenison added, “If you have any reservations about accepting my offer, Miss Filmer, pray raise them now. We must not start out on a false note.”

      “No, indeed, Mrs Tenison,” agreed Athene, dodging her mother’s rueful glances in her direction, while Mrs Tenison continued to reinforce her subordinate position. “I quite understand the terms of my employment.”

      “I hope you also understand,” said Mrs Tenison, “that other than providing you with suitable clothing and bed and board, I am not offering you any money for your services. Your reward is to visit London in the height of the Season as the companion of a young lady of good family.”

      She did not, thought Athene cynically, refer to her daughter as an heiress. An heiress who was looking for a husband with a fortune and a title. While the Tenisons were not enormously rich, Emma would be inheriting £15,000, enough to attract at least a baronet—or a Viscount if she were lucky. She also had the possibility of inheriting further wealth from a maiden aunt.

      Without waiting for an answer Mrs Tenison turned to Mrs Filmer. “I trust that you, too, mad am, are happy with the splendid opportunity which I am offering your daughter.”

      That gentle lady cast another agonised glance at Athene. She was as charmingly pretty and withdrawn as Mrs Tenison was handsome and forthright. A stranger to the room would have thought that Emma was her daughter and Athene Mrs Tenison’s.

      Of course, she was not happy—but how could she tell Mrs Tenison that? For was not Athene’s patron the leader of local society in the village of Steep Ride, whose word was law, who had the ear of the parson at Abbot Quincey and the assorted nobility and gentry of the district around Steepwood?

      “If that is what Athene wishes…” she began hesitantly.

      “Then that’s settled,” said Mrs Tenison loudly and sweepingly taking poor Mrs Filmer’s reply for granted.

      She rang the bell with great vigour and demanded the tea board of the servant who answered. She had heard that some members of the fashionable world had been drinking tea in the afternoon instead of after dinner and had decided to lead the fashion as well.

      No need to allow her two humble dependants to know how much it pleased her to have gained a companion on the cheap while appearing to be conferring a favour on them!

      

      “Truly remarkable, m’lord!” enthused Hemmings, the valet of Adrian Drummond, Lord Kinloch. “Between us we have achieved a nonpareil!”

      He was referring to his employer’s cravat which, after several perilous minutes, he had managed to tie in one of the latest modes. Adrian, not sure that he was totally satisfied with Hemmings’s masterpiece, swung round to show it off to his cousin, Nick Cameron, who was seated in an armchair, watching the pantomime which Adrian made of preparing himself for the day.

      “What do you think, Nick?” he asked anxiously. “Will it do?”

      If Adrian was tricked out almost beyond current fashion in his desire to be recognised as one of London society’s greatest pinks, Nick showed his contempt for such frivolities by dressing as casually as though he were back at home in the Highlands of Scotland—a country which Adrian had not visited for many years.

      “Who,” Adrian always declaimed theatrically when asked why he had never returned to his family’s place of origin since he had left it when little more than a boy, “would wish to be stranded in such a wilderness?”

      Now Nick put his head on one side and said in a voice as considered as though he were being asked a serious question about the current state of the war in Europe, “Do you really want my honest opinion, Adrian?”

      “Indeed, Nick. I would value it.”

      “Then I wonder why you spend so much of your time worrying about the exact way in which a large piece of cloth is arranged around your neck. Would not a simple bow suffice? And also save you a great deal of heartache.”

      Adrian said stiffly, for once reminding Nick of the difference in their social standing, “It is all very well for you to ignore the dictates of society, but I have a position to keep up. It would not do for me to go around dressed like a game-keeper.”

      “I scarcely look like one,” murmured Nick, examining his perfectly respectable, if somewhat dull, navy-blue breeches, coat, simple cravat and shining boots from Lobbs. “But I do take your point. The Earl of Kinloch must present himself as the very maypole of fashion.”

      There had been a time when the two young men had been boys together when such a set-down from Nick would have had them rolling on the ground in an impromptu battle: Adrian struggling to make Nick take back the implied insult and Nick striving to justify it. Afterwards they would rise, shake hands and remain friends. Nick had a bottom of good sense which Adrian always, if dimly, respected and on many occasions had saved the pair of them from the wrath of their seniors.

      Hemmings