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Chapter Twenty-Three
‘The quote he personally gave the columnist from The Times confirms everything we knew and worse.’ The Duchess of Warminster was enjoying today’s great scandal far more than was dignified, probably because Hattie had been included in it. Not directly in The Times, which as the main source was trying to remain above reproach, but in every other gossip column’s interpretation of it.
‘Lord Beaufort fathered a child with that lightskirt he was sleeping with all those years ago, and now that the hussy is dead, he intends to bring up his daughter here in town.’ She lowered her knitting to stare straight at Hattie. ‘His daughter. An unashamed acknowledgement written in black and white for all to read. I cannot imagine what he is thinking to openly flaunt the illegitimate offspring of his harlot to the ton quite so brazenly as a fait accompli.’
Hattie knew Jasper would never deny Izzy was his if he was asked outright, because they had discussed it many times. They had discussed it because that was how he had expected the truth to come out, and so had she. That it had apparently not leaked out at all because Jasper had gone to The Times of his own free will had completely knocked her for six along with the rest of society. But, or so she had read with a slackened jaw over her coddled eggs at breakfast, maybe he was tired of all the speculation and most especially of all the unfair, unfounded and malicious gossip about the nature of his relationship with Lady Harriet Fitzroy.
He was an old friend of the family, that was all, and to suggest that he had any sort of a relationship with either Fitzroy sister was grossly untrue. To that end, now that he had set the record straight and to spare her and her family from further scurrilous defamation, he was removing himself from society for the rest of the Season to concentrate on his business and his daughter.
Never mind the removal of himself felt like abandonment to her!
If this was another one of his idiotic attempts at being noble and selfless, then it had fallen well shy of the mark. Hattie was furious at the wretch for making such a momentous and transformative decision, not only without telling her, but on the back of their first ever argument!
How dare he fail to include her in the decision!
As if her feelings for the wretch were of no consequence!
‘It is as if he expects us to accept his indiscretion without censure and blithely carry on as if nothing has happened, when I know most of the good ton would rather cross the road now than acknowledge the acquaintance.’ The Duchess of Warminster grimaced as if she found it all beyond distasteful. ‘It is a good job he has taken himself out of the rest of the Season as I hear invitations are being rescinded here, there and everywhere. He has burned his bridges with half of Mayfair.’
‘And how do you know that already, Your Grace, when you only read it over breakfast with the rest of us and it is not yet noon?’ Hattie could not keep silent even though she had been warned in no uncertain terms to do just that by both her shocked parents and her overprotective brother over their own breakfast table.
But how exactly was she supposed to keep her mouth shut and her head down while a complete travesty was occurring to someone she held dear, even if she was rightly fuming at the cretin? It made her blood boil to think of people scurrying outside to gossip about things they had no concept of. Berkeley Square had been filled with busybodies all morning, all shaking their heads with appalled expressions on their faces, as if Jasper had committed a murder.
‘Because bad news and scandal travels fast, Lady Harriet.’ That, Hattie did not doubt. Already the story had been printed everywhere and exaggerated and embellished so grossly in certain newspapers it bore no resemblance to any truth whatsoever. ‘It goes without saying that we must all follow suit and give him the cut direct from now on—but you especially would do well to distance yourself from him as soon as possible. Now that he has absolved you from any part in this outrageous scandal, I suggest you do the same with your own public remonstrance and rebuttal, and The Times is as good a place as any. The sooner you do that, the less damage all the other nonsense will do to your good reputation.’
The other nonsense was the persistent and much too close for comfort but widely printed new theory that Jasper had nipped in the bud the rumours about them because he feared she thought of him as more than a friend. And that he, as a future duke, albeit one with an illegitimate daughter in dire need of a mother, did not feel the need to saddle himself with ‘the Limping Lady’ simply to procure Izzy one. Only the dreadful Bugle had used that specific nickname—but even so the implication hurt. Especially as Hattie couldn’t entirely discount it herself.
Jasper had certainly not been in any hurry to investigate under her skirts again since she had wantonly showed him everything that lurked beneath them—including her dratted leg. He had blown hot and cold since that afternoon. All over her under the camouflaging cover of darkness and as prim as a priest during daylight hours no matter how alone they were.
And they were regularly alone during the day when not in the public glare. She had moved heaven and earth to ensure it, and he had deftly spurned every single advance she had made. Even when she threw herself at him as she had on the morning of the Warburton Ball when they had been alone in his carriage, the curtains closed, while on another clandestine shopping trip to Cheapside. Yet that night, he had almost got them caught thanks to his rampant desire on the terrace!
‘Indeed, Hattie.’ Like her sanctimonious mother, Lady Felicity Claremont was acting exceptionally pious this morning. ‘You should make it known that you are insulted by any suggestion that you harboured any affection towards Lord Beaufort, or that the scoundrel had earmarked you to be his by-blow’s new mother, stating that you find such an inexcusable imposition as ridiculous as you do abhorrent. Make it plain that any interest was entirely one-sided and that you never did anything to court his attention.’
She offered a sickly smile to the rest of the ladies in the room. ‘Those of us who know the truth understand that he went out of his way to pursue her in the wallflower chairs, and she was only being polite in indulging his presence because she found it difficult to escape.’
Of course her sanctimonious eyes flicked to Hattie’s dratted leg at that, in case she hadn’t been reminded enough about its unattractiveness this morning. Then in a condescending aside to her recoiling elder sibling and Hattie’s sister-in-law, Dorothea, the little witch Felicity could not resist one final barb thinly disguised as familial concern.
‘As I said to Lady Critchley when Mama and I collided with her on our walk over here, the threat to dear Hattie’s good reputation aside, just because she is no longer what she once was and lacks the droves of suitors that the rest of us debutantes have queuing, does not mean she would ever stoop that low!’
Before either Hattie’s tight-lipped mother or twin sprang forward to scratch the girl’s eyes out on her behalf, she decided to put the stuffy Claremonts in their place herself.
‘While I hardly think an alliance with a future duke could be construed as “stooping low” by anyone’s standards, I personally admire and applaud Lord Beaufort’s decision to raise his daughter at home rather than flagrantly ignore her existence as so many of the gentlemen of the good ton do.’
As it was too difficult to pretend to knit while seething, she dropped her misshapen disaster of a sock in her lap. ‘It is a mystery to me why it is considered more of a crime against decency to love and acknowledge your child, than to abandon them to a life of poverty as that libertine Lord Stevens continues to do with his well-documented indiscretions.’
As Hattie had intended, the ensuing silence from that bombshell was deafening, not least because the well-connected future marquess Lord Stevens was currently the mean-spirited Felicity’s most ardent suitor. As both Annie and Kitty gaped at her boldness, Felicity’s mother looked ready to combust with indignation. Dorothea, for her part, continued to stare at her knitting like a startled deer while Hattie’s own mother looked quietly impressed, so Hattie decided she might as well continue.
‘His family dismissed the housemaid he had impregnated three Christmases ago, didn’t they?’ Words no genteel young lady should ever say in public without the whole two-faced fabric of society crumbling under the weight of its own sordid hypocrisy.
‘We all bore witness to that commotion, didn’t we, as nowhere do curtains twitch with quite as much enthusiasm as they do here in Berkeley Square.’ And that had been quite a commotion because the poor unfortunate maid refused to go quietly and had brought the squalling babe to Lord Stevens’s front door demanding he provide for it.
‘But we are all supposed to turn a blind eye to that because she is a servant and he denies it, and that is the neat and tidy done thing to do. Sweep it all under the carpet where it belongs and never mention it again. Never mind that it is morally reprehensible and downright callous! For heaven forbid an aristocrat should admit to a mistake and make amends for it as Jasper has done. Frankly, if I had droves of suitors like you, Felicity, I know which sort I would prefer.’
In case the opinionated chit was unsure of the answer, Hattie glared directly at her. ‘I would pick only those with the highest moral standards rather than the purveyors of the most atrocious and despicable double standards.’
After several stuttering misstarts, the Duchess of Warminster finally found her voice. ‘You have no right to speak to my daughter like that!’ Typically, she looked to Hattie’s mother to do the chastising. ‘Coarse language like that might be the way all the filthy miscreants she is so fond of speak in the fetid gutters of Covent Garden, but it has no place in a Mayfair drawing room.’
Incensed, Hattie stood before her mother could respond. ‘You are right, Your Grace. Therefore, I shall bid you a good day and take my language and myself to those fetid gutters forthwith.’
‘Hattie...’ She instantly rebelled at the note of caution in her mother’s tone, no matter how well meant it was. ‘We agreed that you are better off staying at home today.’
‘Even if I felt inclined to hide here as if I have committed a crime, which I very much haven’t, there is a lost and lonely little boy expecting me at the infirmary who is struggling to recover from the hideous operation I advised him to have.’ Then she turned to the Duchess of Warminster and briskly wiped the smug smile from the woman’s face. ‘As a filthy miscreant, poor Jim has no one who cares except me, and it will be a cold day in hell before I desert him today just to keep my seemingly good reputation clean!’
While the Duchess of Warminster’s eyes bulged, her own mother sat serenely while she digested Hattie’s words. After a short pause she nodded. ‘Of course you must go, Hattie, because that is the decent thing to do. Make sure the carriage waits for you outside the infirmary dear, for propriety’s sake. But before you go...’
As imperious as Queen Charlotte herself, she skewered Felicity and her mother with her best Duchess of Avondale glare. More fearsome than any glare in society because her charming mother rarely used it. ‘You will stay long enough to listen to the sincere apologies of our guests, who are likely mortified that their criticisms sounded quite so insulting to our entire family when they appreciate that you, among all of us present, are the most genuine, kind of heart and, as Jasper stated in The Times, the one whose behaviour has always been beyond reproach.’
