Page 3 of A Lady's Guide to Scandal

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It is not uncommon to encounter persons who are in the habit of making outlandish claims. It is rarer to meet persons who are also in the habit of fulfilling them, and it was to this second group that Miss Kitty Talbot belonged.

Not three weeks after that gloomy morning in the parlour of Netley Cottage, she and Cecily were rattling in a stagecoach on their way to London. It was an uncomfortable journey of three days spent jiggling in their seats, accompanied by an assortment of persons and poultry, the Dorsetshire countryside fading slowly from view as they passed through county after county. Kitty spent much of the time staring out of the window – by the end of the first day, she was the furthest she had ever travelled from home.

Kitty had known for a long time that she would have to marry rich, but she had quite counted upon being able to do so whilst remaining close to Biddington, and to her family, with the Linfield match plotted and executed with her mother. In the weeks and months following her mother’s death, she had been all the more grateful to have already wrapped up her future so neatly with Mr Linfield, who lived nearby. In the darkest of times, to know that she did not need to leave her family’s side for a single moment was a gift indeed, and yet now she had left most of her sisters far behind. With every mile the stagecoach put between them and Biddington, the anxious knot in her chest grew larger. This was the right decision – the only decision – Kitty could make for her family, but it felt so very wrong to be without them.

What a fool she had been, to trust in Mr Linfield’s honour – and yet she still could not understand how he had so quickly fallen out of love with her. Miss Spencer was pretty, yes, but dull as a fish; it did not make sense for it to have happened so quickly. Besides, she had thought that the rest of the Linfields had not been overly fond of Miss Spencer. What was Kitty missing?

‘What a fool,’ she said again, out loud this time. Beside Kitty, Cecily shot her an affronted look, and she added, ‘Not you, me. Or rather, Mr Linfield.’

Cecily returned to her book with a huff. Once the heavy tome given to her by the vicar had been found, she had insisted on bringing it with her, despite Kitty pointing out that a book of its size and heft might not be the choicest companion on a hundred-mile journey.

‘Do you want me to be miserable in every way, Kitty?’ Cecily had asked her dramatically. The honest answer at that moment – standing hot-faced over her sister’s hulking case – was yes, but Kitty had capitulated and was resigned to lugging the absurd cargo all the way to London. She cursed again her father’s ridiculous and expensive decision to send Cecily to be educated at the Bath Seminary for Young Ladies for two years. It had been entirely motivated by a desire to keep up with the local gentry – the Linfields in particular – and all Cecily seemed to have gained in her time there was an inflated sense of her own intellectual superiority. Yet despite her passionate defence of the book, Cecily had not been paying it much attention; instead she bothered Kitty with the same questions that had obsessed her the whole trip.

‘Are you quite sure that you understood Aunt Dorothy’s letter correctly?’ she whispered now, finally taking heed of Kitty’s repeated rebuke not to share their private business with the entire carriage.

‘How else could it be understood?’ Kitty hissed back, not a little irately. She sighed, calmed her voice, and explained again with a passable imitation of patience. ‘Aunt Dorothy knew Mama when they both worked at the Lyceum Theatre. They were very close – Mama used to read her letters aloud to us, do you remember? I wrote asking for her help, and Aunt Dorothy has offered to introduce us to London society.’

Cecily harrumphed.

‘And how can you be sure that Aunt Dorothy is a respectable woman, with good Christian morals? We might be walking into a den of iniquity for all you know!’

‘I must say, I do not think the time you have been spending with the vicar has done you any good at all,’ Kitty told her severely. Privately, though, she too harboured a few fears about Aunt Dorothy, though Mama had always insisted she was very respectable. But it would do no good to confide in Cecily, when Aunt Dorothy truly was their only option. ‘Aunt Dorothy is the only person of our acquaintance with a residence in London. Papa’s family are all on the Continent now – not that they would have helped us anyway – and she was kind enough to pay for our travel, too. We cannot turn up our noses at her aid.’

Cecily still looked unconvinced, and Kitty leant back into the seat with a sigh. Both of them would have preferred Beatrice to accompany Kitty on this mission, but at the end of Aunt Dorothy’s letter had been a clear instruction: Bring your prettiest sister. And as Beatrice was currently – by her own admission – half girl, half forehead, and Cecily was the possessor of a sweet prettiness very much contrary to her sulky nature, she was the obvious choice. That she was also a complete bore, Kitty hoped would not matter. Kitty comforted herself with the thought that Beatrice was a far better person with whom to leave the management of the house and the younger girls, under the watchful eye of the vicar’s wife. If it had been Cecy in her stead, by the time they returned there would be no house left to save.

‘I still think our efforts would be better spent finding honest, gainful employment,’ Cecily was now saying. ‘With my education, I would make a very fine governess.’

There was a pause while Kitty considered the horror of placing the responsibility of the family’s finances in Cecily’s hands.

‘Be that as it may,’ Kitty said in a low, careful voice, ‘the going rate for a governess is not more than five and thirty pounds a year. Not nearly enough, I’m afraid. My marrying someone rich really is the quickest way out of our mess.’

Cecily opened her mouth – presumably about to utter another judgemental but entirely useless comment – but before she could they were interrupted by a small boy in the forward seat telling his mother loudly, ‘Mama, we’re here!’

And sure enough, peering out of the window, they could see London’s great sprawl on the horizon, long plumes of smoke trailing into the sky above it like beacons. Kitty had heard so many tales of London, which had been spoken of wistfully by her parents like a great friend they had lost. They had told her of its height and breadth, of its beauty and regality, of its bustle and opportunity – the queen of cities, they had called it. Kitty had long desired to see it for herself, this alien country that seemed to be the first love – and real home – of both her parents. And as they began to trundle through the city in earnest, her first impression of it was … dirty. With soot everywhere, smoke billowing from chimneys high above, horse droppings left in the street. Dirty and – and messy, with streets crashing into each other rudely, before zigzagging off in another direction. Buildings teetering at bizarre angles – buildings that were not always square, or rectangular, but haphazardly drawn, as if by a child. And it was bustling, yes, but loudly – so loudly! With the incessant sound of wheels and hooves clacking over pavements, yells from street peddlers, and a sense of hurry hurry hurry all around them. It was loud, and messy, and dirty, demanding of attention and respect and so very—

‘Magnificent,’ she breathed. ‘Cecily, we’re here at last.’

At Piccadilly, they swapped the stagecoach for a hackney cab, which took them to Aunt Dorothy’s residence on Wimpole Street. Kitty could not yet tell the difference between fashionable and unfashionable boroughs in London, but was pleased that, though Aunt Dorothy’s street was not nearly as grand as some of the lofty mansions they had passed, it seemed sufficiently well-to-do to spare her any blushes. The cab halted in front of a narrow town house, squashed in between two others, and after Kitty had parted with a precious coin, they walked up the steep steps, and knocked. The door was answered by a housemaid with bright red hair – how thrilling to see that Aunt Dorothy had actual servants – and they were taken up to a small parlour containing their honorary aunt.

Despite Kitty’s careless dismissal of Cecily’s doubts on the journey, she had harboured a secret fear that they might be greeted by a heavily made-up female, complete with a comical wig, a bawdy laugh and damp petticoats, which would not at all do for what Kitty had in mind. She was relieved, then, to see a striking woman of fashion within, her generous figure encased neatly in a morning dress of dove grey. Her brown locks were uncovered, but the informal style suited her – there was a cunning glint to her eye which woul ill-suit a sedate bonnet or widow’s cap. Aunt Dorothy rose from her chair. She stood still, surveying them for a moment from under dramatically dark brows. Kitty and Cecily held their breath, both quite uncharacteristically nervous. Then – a smile. She held out two bejewelled hands.

‘My darlings, you look so much like your mother,’ she said. And they fell into her arms.

Aunt Dorothy had squeezed many lives and roles into her one and fifty years. As an actress, she had enjoyed a varied and glittering career onstage, while offstage, she had spent her hours entertaining a selection of London’s most generous gentlemen. Having accumulated a not inconsiderable sum of money in this manner, upon her forty-first birthday she had dyed her fiery red hair a dark brown and rechristened herself, in both name and conduct, as affluent widow Mrs Kendall. As Mrs Kendall she began to enjoy a different lifestyle on the fringes of polite society, spending her days in houses that – as a young lady – she had only spent evenings. Though Kitty had worried Aunt Dorothy’s storied past could very well be more hindrance than help – after all, actresses were hardly considered respectable – from her deportment it was clear that her transformation to a lady of quality was unerring. Seeing her, Kitty felt surer that Aunt Dorothy would be able to guide them through their next steps in London, to lend wisdom to Kitty’s pursuit of a fortune. But though Kitty had a thousand questions to ask her aunt, for their first few hours together, all they spoke of was their mother.

‘I should have liked to come to her funeral,’ Mrs Kendall told them fervently. ‘You must know that I would have come, but your father thought … it might not be wise.’

Kitty understood this vague explanation perfectly. In a better world, it would have meant everything to have Aunt Dorothy there with them – to share stories of Mama’s life before, so they might still learn new things of her even as she was gone. But Mr Talbot had acted in the family’s best interests by keeping Aunt Dorothy away. Her presence might have raised questions … and some things were best left in the past.

‘It was a beautiful day,’ Kitty said instead, clearing her throat. ‘Crisp and cool. She would have loved it.’

‘You never could keep her inside if the sky was bright,’ Aunt Dorothy said, her smile pained but sincere. ‘No matter the day.’

‘I did a reading,’ Cecily piped up. ‘From The Book of the Duchess – her favourite.’ No one had understood a word of it, of course, Kitty reflected privately, but Cecily had read clearly and well.

They spent many more hours exchanging memories, their chairs inching together, their hands clasping at points, growing closer in that sure, inexorable way people do when they have shared in such a loss together. By the time conversation turned at last to Kitty’s broken engagement, the sky outside was dark.