Read Online Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer - Free Book Online Page B

Patches, mounted up to a quite alarming total; while a bill from Warren’s, Perfumiers, and another from a mantua maker, enumerating such interesting items as One Morning Sacque of Paris Mud, Two Heads Soupir d’etouffer , and One Satin Cloak trimmed Opera Brulée Gauze, made her feel quite low. But these were small bills compared with the staggering list of household expenses, which it was evident Lady Bellingham had been trying to calculate. Her ladyship’s sprawling handwriting covered several sheets of hot-pressed paper, whereon Servants’ Wages, Liveries, Candles, Butcher, Wine, and Taxes jostled one another in hopeless confusion. The house in St James’s Square seemed to cost a great deal of money to maintain, and if there were nothing to cavil at in the Wages of Four Women Servants, £60, it did seem that two waiters at twenty pounds apiece, an Upper Man at fifty-five, and the coachman at forty were grossly extortionate.
    Miss Grantham folded these depressing papers, and put them at the bottom of the sheaf.
    ‘I am sure I am ready enough to live a great deal more frugally,’ said Lady Bellingham, ‘but you may see for yourself, Deb, how impossible it is! It is not as though one was spending money on things which are not necessary.’
    ‘I suppose,’ said Deborah, looking unhappily at a bill from the upholsterers, ‘I suppose we need not have covered all the chairs in the front saloon with straw-coloured satin.’
    ‘No,’ conceded Lady Bellingham. ‘I believe that was a mistake. It does not wear at all well, and I have been thinking whether we should not have them done again, in mulberry damask. What do you think, my love?’
    ‘I think we had better not spend any more money on them until the luck changes,’ said Deborah.
    ‘Well, my dear, that will be an economy at all events,’ said her ladyship hopefully. ‘But have you thought that if the luck don’t change-?’
    ‘It must, and shall!’ said Deborah resolutely.
    ‘I am sure I hope it may, but I do not see how we can recover, with peas at such a price, and you playing piquet with Ravenscar for ten shillings a point.’
    Miss Grantham hung her head. ‘Indeed, I am very sorry,’ she apologized. ‘He did say he would come again, to let me have my revenge, but perhaps I had better make an excuse?’
    ‘No, no, that would never do! We must hope that he will presently turn to faro, and make the best of it. Mablethorpe has sent you a basketful of roses this morning, my love.’
    ‘I know,’ replied Deborah. ‘Ormskirk sent a bouquet of carnations in a jewelled holder. I have quite a drawerful of his gifts to me. I would like to throw them in his painted face!’
    ‘And so you could, if only you would take poor young Mablethorpe,’ her aunt pointed out. ‘I am sure he has the sweetest of tempers, and would make anyone a most amiable husband. As for his not being of age yet, that will soon be a thing of the past, and if you are thinking about his mother—not that there is the least need, for though she can be very disagreeable, she is not a bad-hearted creature, Selina Mablethorpe—’
    ‘No, I was not thinking of her,’ said Deborah. ‘And I will not think of Adrian either, if you please, aunt! I may be one of faro’s daughters, but I’ll not entrap any unfortunate young man into marrying me, even if my refusal means a debtors’ prison!’
    ‘You don’t feel that Ormskirk would be better than a debtors’ prison?’ suggested Lady Bellingham, in a desponding voice.
    Deborah broke into laughter. ‘Aunt Lizzie, you are a most shocking creature! How can you talk so?’
    ‘Well, but, my dear, you will be just as surely ruined for ever in prison as under Ormskirk’s protection, and far less agreeably,’ said her ladyship, with strong common sense. ‘Not that I wish for such a connexion, for I don’t, but what else is to be done?’
    ‘Oh, I have the oddest notion that something will happen to set all to rights, ma’am! Indeed I