Page 13 of A Marriage is Arranged

Louise came downstairs the next morning prepared for the visit to the modiste. She was wearing her pink day dress, the rather ill-fitting grey pelisse, and the only bonnet she had, with the yellow lining.

Her ladyship regarded her with a critical eye. “Hmm… the cut of that pelisse is surely for a lady larger than you, my dear,” she said. “Let me see. You and I are of a size, I believe. Ring the bell for me, please.”

When the butler arrived with his stately tread, the Countess said, “Have Booth meet me and Miss Grey in my rooms.”

Booth was the Countess’s long-time dresser. When Louise and the Countess arrived, their progress being necessarily slow, she was already there. She looked Louise up and down and raised her eyebrows slightly.

“Exactly!” said her ladyship. “Something has to be done. The pelisse is too large and the pink of the gown and the yellow of the bonnet lining are an unfortunate combination. I think that navy pelisse of mine, don’t you? I don’t think I’ve worn it above twice. We’ll make sure it’s buttoned all the way up to cover as much of the pink as possible. And we must have some matching ribbon to trim the bonnet somewhere!”

The dresser was gone for several minutes but returned with the navy pelisse over her arm and a bunch of ribbon in her hand. She helped Louise out of the over-large grey garment and into the blue one.

“Much better!” declared the Countess. “Now, Booth, dear, do something with the bonnet. The shape suits Miss Grey well enough, but that lining doesn’t become her at all.”

The dresser took the bonnet gently from Louise’s head. She sat in a low chair for a few minutes, twisting and wrapping, ending with the ribbon braided around the crown of the bonnet, tied in rosettes on the sides and ending loose for tying under the chin. The navy blue ribbons went a long way to moderating the effect of the yellow-lined poke.

“How clever!” cried Louise, “and so pretty! Thank you both so very much!”

“Yes. I don’t know what I should do without my Booth,” said her ladyship, smiling at that lady. “Do you have a dresser, my dear?”

“Yes, though she’s more just a maid, really. But she… well, she suits me.”

“I see,” said her ladyship, doubtfully. It was clear that whoever she was, the bride-to-be’s girl didn’t know her business.

The girl in question was at that moment blushing at the bold attentions of the young man who delivered the newspaper to her ladyship’s establishment. The Countess rarely looked at it, but it was still ironed smooth and placed in the library every morning. Normally it sat there most of the day until the butler took it to his sitting room. He enjoyed reading it with the glass (or two) of port he allowed himself from his employer’s cellars.

Freddy, the newspaper delivery boy, was a bright, cheeky, and good-looking young man born and bred in the City of London. The world of newspapers fascinated him. Nowadays the printing machines featured cylinders that pressed the words onto both sides of the paper as if by magic. They were run by steam engines and he loved the hot, smoky, incredibly noisy room where they were located. To some it might have seemed like a devil’s playground, but to him it had the sound and smell of money.

One day he had ventured upstairs to where a row of reporters sat at desks, calling to each other, making facetious remarks and sometimes writing. He fell into conversation with one of them and discovered that their job was to find out what was going on and write about it, not only in London and the rest of Great Britain, but in the whole world. His new friend’s specialty was writing what was essentially gossip about those he called The Nobs, or the upper classes.

“Everyone likes to read about them,” he said. “If you haven’t got money they fascinate you, and if you have, you want to see what they’re up to so’s you can do the same, or see how much better off you are.”

Freddy couldn’t write much more than his name, and he’d never been further afield than the Mile End Road, but he was good at finding out things. His good looks belied the fact he was nosy and unscrupulous.

Women liked Freddy. The older ones were inclined to mother him and the younger ones responded to his handsome face and the twinkle in his eye. He found that by engaging the female staff at the kitchen doors where he delivered his papers, he learned a lot. It was he who’d given his friend the story about Lady Southcott’s twins. His friend on the newspaper had paid him ten shillings for that one. He was proud to tell Rose he had sold a story, but luckily she didn’t ask what sort, and he didn’t say.

He was pumping her for whatever she could tell him. It wasn’t a great deal more than everyone already knew. The Earl of Shrewsbury was marrying a nobody.

“What’s she like then, his feeongsay ?”

“Oh, she’s ever so nice. Never a cross word from her lips.”

“No lovers in the past, no baby born on the other side of the blanket, or anything like that?”

Rose was scandalized. “No, of course, not. She’s a lady!”

“That’s what they all say!” He patted her cheek. “An innocent girl like you, you don’t know the ’alf of it! Anyway, when’s yer day off?”

“I’m only here another two days.”

“No!” Freddy was disappointed. This na?ve country girl could be a good source of information.

“When yer comin’ back?”

“At the end of the month for the wedding, and then we’ll be moving to Shrewsbury House, seemingly.”

“Where’s that, then?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know where anything is in London.”

“Well, Rose, I’ll find it and when yer gets back I’ll take yer on a tour. How ’bout that?”

“That’d be lovely!”

She firmly pushed Jimmy back home out of her mind. She was going to live in London, wasn’t she? She didn’t want a bumpkin like him anyway.