‘You should be horsewhipped for speaking to your father like that,’ he said in a fierce tone. ‘You’ll do as I say.’
‘But as you just informed me, you are no longer my father. Now, it is my pleasure, my total and utter pleasure, to be able to say to you, I feel well rid.’ Belinda curtsied putting every ounce of contempt she felt into the action before she straightened. She spun on her heel so forcefully her dress flew out and rocked the fire irons nearby as she turned her back on him. His cane missed her by inches as he threw it in her direction. As with his shooting, his aim was out. Without another word she picked up the cane and, with a strength she didn’t know she had, broke it in two and threw it on the fire.
Then she left the room, ran upstairs and ignored his enraged bellow of, ‘Get back here, young lady. You do as I say!’ Not any more.
Within half an hour she had left the house, carrying only the basic necessities. Her sewing kit, sketchbook and a miniature of her mother were packed in an old and patched carpet bag. In truth she had little else worth taking. None of her clothes would survive another wash, and her hairbrush had so few bristles it was better to finger comb her dark straw coloured locks.
Two hours after she had swept out of the house—via the front door, and under the worried gaze of the doorman for she refused to creep out like a thief in the night—she sat in the sitting room of Clarissa’s godmother’s London town house. She knew better than to go to Clarissa’s home. It was the first place her father would make enquiries. Her association with Lady L wasn’t one she had ever spoken about.
Belinda wasn’t sure that the fact Lady Lakenby was also Phillip’s godmother was a good or bad thing.
The room she rested in, tea in hand and a plate of tiny fancy cakes in front of her, was elegant, understated and homely. It was also usually a haven of peace and tranquillity. Not at that moment, however. Her hostess was enraged, and happy to show it. She stomped across the Axminster carpet and fisted one hand into the other, before she hit the mantelpiece with such a thump the cake plate slid several inches over the polished surface of the table, and the ormolu clock on the mantel jumped upward and rattled back down again. The minute hand slid down to indicate the number six and stayed there. Lady Lakenby ignored it and pointed her index finger at Belinda.
‘That apology for a man might be your father but he is rotten to the core, always has been. The males of the Howells family are all either tight as a duck’s arse or addlepated. He is both.’
Belinda saw the first glimmer of hope she’d experienced for several long weeks. Ever since her parent had spoken about how they needed money and fast, and hinted she was the way they would get it. Then told her how he expected her to behave and it had been the last straw. ‘He…’ What could she say? She agreed with the pronouncement. ‘I fear you are correct.’
‘I know I am, and you were right to come to me.’ Lady Lakenby harrumphed, and patted Belinda’s shoulder. ‘Now I’ll wait a while and send a message to Clarissa. Once we’re sure your father has been there and gone. Simms will go and loiter.’
The way she began to help went a long way to lift the heavy lump of fear in Belinda’s stomach. She knew she had been correct to think of Lady Lakenby as the first person she could approach to beg for help.
‘Now, child, we shall plot,’ Lady Lakenby declared, once her footman had been given orders on how to stake out Belinda’s father’s house. She pushed her turban back from her forehead in an impatient gesture. ‘Damn thing, why do I wear it?’
Belinda knew it to be a rhetorical question. Lady Lakenby took ideas into her head, and followed them until, as she said with a twinkle in her eyes, ‘The damn fool idiots think it’s the newest fad.’ Then she moved on.
‘I think we need to get you out of his reach,’ Lady Lakenby said. ‘He’ll immediately think of Clarissa and then it is easy for someone to remember me. You must disappear. It will annoy Cedric, and make him wonder when and where you will pop up like the skeleton at the feast, and it will give us time to decide the best way forward. Now let me see. Would you like to go to live at Sinton?’
‘Yes, who wouldn’t? However, as much as I adore your country house, I will not,’ Belinda said resolutely. ‘Well,’ she tempered her refusal, ‘not permanently. I need to earn my living.’ She stood up and began to pace the room. ‘As I walked away from my father’s house I vowed never again to be at the mercy of a man. I will make my own way in this world.’
‘How?’ Lady Lakenby, always known to her god-daughter Clarissa and therefore to Belinda as Lady L, asked placidly. She seemed much more composed now she had ideas and plans and had decided how best to carry them out. ‘Sit down for heaven’s sake. You’re giving me a crick in my neck looking up at you, to say nothing of making me giddy following you around the room. What are your skills?’ She cackled with laughter. ‘Apart from upsetting your fool of a father.’
‘To do so is not a skill, it seems it was my purpose in life. A very easy one. Apart from that? I can sew. Very well as it happens.’ Belinda gestured towards her shabby gown. ‘Not that this shows my sewing skills, but it does advertise my patching and darning ones. I’d like…’ Belinda hesitated, and then rushed on. ‘Mad though it may seem, I’d like to make apparel for the ton. But not just for anyone, only for a very few. A select and chosen few. To be the one person people yearn to have a garment made by.’ She sat down on the nearest chair with a thump that rattled the cups on a nearby table. ‘Incognito.’
‘Oh yes.’ Clarissa entered the room just to hear the last remark. ‘Incognito. Dressed by Belle.’
‘I expect I’ll need to go somewhere unassuming like Leamington Spa, or Bath where the tabbies are,’ Belinda said, with less enthusiasm than she had for the idea in general.
Lady L looked thoughtful. ‘You could do that,’ she said slowly. ‘But you know if you are going to hide, ’tis best to hide in full sight. Here in London I think. Oh yes indeed, we can manage that with ease. Dressed by Belle is the perfect designation for the way your clothes will be known to all and sundry. A label to aspire to acquire.’ She smiled delightedly. ‘All is coming together now. Clarissa, ring for the Madeira and then please inform the staff we leave for Sinton in the morning. It is time for us to put our heads together and plot. Belinda—no—henceforth you will be called Belle. Belle, how is your French?’
* * *
Six months later, Belinda hummed as she put the last stitches into a frilly and very feminine evening cloak to be used as a teaser to draw ladies’ attention to her work. Clarissa, who had arrived unexpectedly a few hours earlier, looked up from the book of sketches she was studying closely.
‘These are marvellous you know, Bel. Your talent holds no bounds. This chemise? The one with the scalloped hem? It is outstanding. Sexy hinting of all things arousing but demure and innocent. I love it.’
‘Good.’ Belinda snipped off her thread and held the cloak in the air to see it better. ‘I designed it with you in mind.’
Clarissa blinked and went into peals of laugher. ‘To drink my chocolate and talk to the cat in? That’s the only picture I can foresee. And happy I am with it. Men are nothing but trouble.’
‘Hmm.’ Belinda decided that one day soon Clarissa would receive a rude awakening. Her father was too prominent in the ton to be allowed to keep the status quo, surely? ‘I’m sure the cat will appreciate it. But if not, well one day maybe someone else will.’
‘Put it in your portfolio,’ Clarissa advised. ‘That way it will see the light of day. Or should I say light of the candle?’
Belinda laughed and shook her head. ‘Incorrigible.’
‘Oh yes. Oh and I meant to say, Lady L should be here soon.’
‘Lady L is here,’ the lady in question retorted as she erupted—there was no other word for it—through