The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  Lady Fanny’s opening words were typical. “Oh, dear, dear, dear. Those clothes. Horrid. What can your mama have been thinking of? And what’s that?”

  “Miss Simms. Our…er…companion,” said Molly weakly.

  “Then take it away. It won’t do,” said Lady Fanny, waving her gloved hand.

  Miss Simms pushed past the sisters into the room. “Are you talking about me?”

  “And you poor girls must be so exhausted after your journey,” said Lady Fanny, ignoring Miss Simms completely. She touched the bell. “Wembley,” she said to a stern individual in a striped waistcoat, “send for Miss Betts—the dressmaker, you know—and despatch this back to America.”

  Molly looked around the sitting room, over the tapestried chairs with their curled gilt arms; at her reflection in the old greenish mirror over the fireplace; at the bowls of flowers; but there was no sign of a package for America. Then she realized that Lady Fanny had been referring to Miss Simms.

  So did Miss Simms.

  “You can’t do this,” yelled that unfortunate lady. “You’re worse’n the Bowery gangs.”

  Lady Fanny deigned to notice Miss Simms. “What’s your name, woman?”

  “It’s Euphemia Simms.”

  “Well, Simms, from the smell of you and from your manner, you’d be far better back on the other side of the Atlantic. Good God! I do believe the woman is going to argue. Take her away, Wembley.”

  “Very good, my lady,” said the butler, easing the infuriated companion toward the door. “There is a boat from Southampton tomorrow morning.”

  Miss Simms let out a despairing squawk. “Say something, Molly,” she shrilled. But Molly remembered the isolation of Brooklyn Heights and the insolence of the boat and turned away. So Miss Simms departed from the room and their lives, leaving behind a faint odor of gin and peppermints.

  The girls stood awkwardly while Lady Fanny walked around them, tugging at a crease here and a fold there. Both girls were wearing depressing felt hats: the kind, called by English schoolchildren, “pudding basin.” With one large white muscular hand, Lady Fanny twitched the offending headgear first from Molly’s head and then Mary’s. The springy, black, glossy curls came tumbling in a cascade down the girls’ backs and Lady Fanny caught her breath. Why, the girls were beautiful! Molly had perhaps too much determination in her square chin, but Mary’s little heart-shaped face was perfection itself.

  Molly found her courage and her voice. “If you please,” she said firmly, “we are both very tired and would like to wash and change.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Lady Fanny briskly. Another touch of the bell and the efficient Wembley was sent to fetch the housekeeper, Mrs. Barkins. Mrs. Barkins led the girls up a wide sunny staircase to the bedrooms. The house was quite modern, late Victorian, Molly judged. It was, she had gathered, the Holdens’ summer residence. Lady Fanny had described it to Mrs. Maguire as their “little summer cottage—very rustic.” The little cottage boasted at least thirty bedrooms. It was a vast, sprawling mansion, built like a small castle with mock battlements and even a few fake arrow slits let into the walls.

  But the architect had fortunately not carried his passion for medievalism as far as the windows, which were large and square, affording glimpses of a perfect English garden, complete with tennis courts, rolling lawns, English oaks, and a gazebo.

  Mrs. Barkins pushed open a heavy mahogany door. “This will be your room, miss,” she said to Molly. She then led the way through a bright rose-decorated room that opened onto a little sitting room, on the far side of which was a door that led to Mary’s room.

  Both girls turned dark red with embarrassment when they realized that their small stock of shabby clothes had been neatly hung away and their worn and darned undergarments placed in the drawers.

  “Goodge will be your maid,” said Mrs. Barkins, who was a stout, motherly woman with eyes as hard as pebbles and whose aprons and petticoats crackled with so much starch that she emitted a sharp series of noises like little pistol shots every time she moved. “Goodge is a local girl,” Mrs. Barkins was saying. “I trust you will see that she does her work properly.”

  “That is surely your job,” said Molly sweetly.

  Mrs. Barkins looked at her in amazement. She had been looking forward to a mild spot of bullying. After all, Americans were heathens and didn’t know what was what. But this young American had a steely glint in her eye and a firm set to her jaw. Mrs. Barkins reluctantly dropped a curtsy.

  “I’ll see to it, miss.”

  When the door had closed behind her, Molly found that her hands were trembling. What did one do with a maid? She had never ordered anyone around in all her young life.

  But when Goodge appeared, a shy apple-faced girl not much older than Molly herself, and stood in the doorway with her eyes down, twisting her apron nervously in her hands, Molly recovered her courage.

  “Now, Goodge,” she said, “you will find that we are not used to having a lady’s maid and you, I gather, are new to the work. I guess we’ll manage somehow between us. Okay?”

  “Oh, yes, miss,” said the gratified Goodge, saving up that deliciously foreign “Okay” for use in the kitchen.

  “We have not yet got our new wardrobes,” Molly went on, “so you’ll just need to pick out the best we have.”

  She gave the maid a beautiful smile. Molly had a warm and charming smile that had already broken many hearts in Fulton Street, and the shy and timid Goodge was completely bowled over.

  She, Goodge, would be the best lady’s maid ever. She marched briskly over to the wardrobe and picked out Molly’s Sunday dress, of drab brown taffeta, with a sure hand.

  “This will be just the thing, miss,” said Goodge. “My lady is with the dressmaker now and you are to have ever such lovely clothes.” Goodge set to work.

  Molly found to her surprise that it was a pleasant novelty to be waited on. To have deft little hands to fasten up all those awkward hooks and buttons and to gently brush one’s tangled hair.

  Mary was still very shy. “Come to my room when she does me,” she whispered.

  The next hour went by with bewildering speed as the exhausted girls were turned this way and that and pinned and measured and fitted for new clothes. Then there was tea with Lady Fanny, but both felt too tired and nervous to eat any of the tiny sandwiches or luscious cakes.

  At last they were told that they might take a walk in the garden before dinner. They walked away from the house, sedately arm in arm, and then, as one, began to run as soon as they were out of sight of the house. They ended up, panting and breathless, in a little wood through which they could see the chimneys of the house next door.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to take much of this,” said Molly when they at last found a fallen log to sit on. “What say we write to Ma and ask her to fetch us home?”

  “Oh, Molly,” breathed Mary, “if only we could.”

  “Well, I don’t see why not,” said Molly bracingly. “It’s like living with a sergeant major. I was so hungry at tea but she kept putting me off my food with her ‘No, no! You must hold the teapot so.’ And, ugh, that China tea. I’d have given anything for a really strong cup of coffee. I—”

  She broke off, as a loud masculine voice could be heard from the garden next door. “Damn and blast this dead—alive hole,” it said.

  Both girls giggled nervously. “Let’s go see,” whispered Molly. “Sounds like a fellow spirit.”

  They got up and walked quietly through the trees, over a springy carpeting of moss. A crumbling fern-covered stone wall marked the boundary between the Holdens’ property and next door. A screen of trees blocked the view of the neighboring garden. Mary tugged at Molly’s sleeve in a kind of pleading way but Molly was determined to have a look at this angry neighbor.

  Pulling Mary behind her, she edged her way along the wall until she came to a gap in the trees. She found herself looking along a sort of narrow green tunnel of briars and bushes to a vista
of cool lawns and garden chairs. One of the chairs suddenly went flying and there, in the gap, was the angry neighbor. He was a tall, swarthy, harsh-featured young man. His black slanting eyebrows under hair as thick and black as Molly’s own gave him a Satanic look. He was wearing an old pair of riding breeches and an open-necked white shirt that accentuated his tan.

  He was slashing at the bushes with a riding crop in a moody, vicious way.

  Molly responded this time to Mary’s tugging. Both turned and scampered back through the wood.

  “Isn’t he terrible,” gasped Molly when they felt it safe to speak. “He looks like the devil!”

  “Gels! Gels!” summoned an imperative voice from the house. Feeling as if they were back in school, the two sisters trudged toward the mansion.

  Lady Fanny was dressed in a long velvet dinner gown, showing exactly the correct expanse of bosom in front and the correct amount of vertebrae behind.

  “You are no longer schoolgirls,” was her opening remark. “You are covered in bits of leaves. Retire to your rooms and change for dinner immediately. On second thought, perhaps you have nothing to change into. Get yourselves brushed up and don’t be long. We dine in twenty minutes.”

  In less than the twenty minutes, the Maguires were timidly seated at an expanse of dining table and the nightmare began. “You must learn to take a little wine,” ordered Lady Fanny. “Fill their glasses, James,” she ordered a footman.

  Mary rebelled. “I don’t gotta take wine if’n I don’t wanna.”

  Lady Fanny closed her eyes as if in pain. “This is going to be worse than I thought. You must have elocution lessons as soon as possible. Do not use double negatives, Mary. A little wine will do you no harm. No, Molly, one does not eat asparagus with a knife and fork. With the fingers, girl. The fingers.”

  Both girls occasionally looked toward Lord Toby. Several times he made a few deep rumblings as if indicating that he was about to erupt into speech, but each time Fanny quelled whatever it was he was about to say with one pale, cold eye.

  Molly and Mary labored through exotic course after course, praying that each one might be the last. “Are you enjoying your first English dinner?” queried Lady Fanny.

  “Sure. Swell,” said Mary dreamily. The wine was going to her head.

  “There will be ready-made clothes arriving for you on the morrow,” said Lady Fanny. “These will have to do until your other clothes are ready. You must be prepared to change at least six times a day.”

  Molly choked on her food. “Six times!” she exclaimed in dismay. “That doesn’t leave us time to do anything else.”

  “There will be plenty of time,” retorted Lady Fanny. “You will be busy at first with your lessons. You must have elocution lessons. Not so much you, Molly. There is no harm in an American accent, in fact some gentlemen find it piquant, but Mary’s grammar needs attention. Then you must have dancing lessons and lessons in deportment.”

  Molly made a bid for freedom. “I honestly don’t think we’re going to make it, Lady Fanny,” she pleaded. “Why don’t you just let us catch the next boat to Brooklyn?”

  “Nonsense! You will like it well enough when you start going to balls and parties and see all the handsomest men in England falling at your feet.”

  It may have been the effect of the wine or it may just have been Molly’s very feminine soul, but the thought of handsome Englishmen falling at her feet was suddenly infinitely appealing.

  Anything further, however, that she might have wished to say was cut short by an appalled squawk from Lady Fanny. Mary had been eyeing a bowl of cool water in front of her plate. It looked very tempting, with little slivers of lemon floating in it. She raised it in both hands and took a deep drink.

  “Good Heavens!” shrieked the appalled Lady Fanny. “Toby, do look! She drank from the finger bowl.”

  “So what!” muttered Mary dismally. “What a mazuma.”

  Lord Toby suddenly found his voice. “Leave ’em alone, Fanny. Give ’em time to run about a bit. Not much more than little gels, ain’t they? Plenty of time for lessons.”

  “I don’t know what you’re butting in for,” snapped Lady Fanny, but her husband held her glare without flinching. “Oh, very well. You may have a little holiday for the next few days. Get to know the place. Your parents are allowing you a very generous allowance. You will receive it from me each Monday morning.”

  Things began to look definitely brighter. Molly felt almost happy. Then she remembered the man next door and decided that it would be a useful way of turning the conversation away from themselves.

  That’s a very angry-looking neighbor you have,” she remarked.

  “Which side?” asked Lord Toby, showing a spark of interest.

  “The left.”

  “Oh, that must be poor Lord David Manley,” sighed Fanny. “Nobody has seen him but he is supposed to be a very handsome man. And so rich! He contracted consumption, you know, and everyone thought he would die. But his doctor sent him to a sanatorium in Switzerland and he has been miraculously cured, they say. Poor boy. He bought the villa next door and is said to be convalescing.”

  “I don’t think it could possibly have been Lord David,” said Molly. “This man was very healthy and muscular and too harsh-featured to be called handsome.”

  “I believe his parents presented him with some sort of male nurse,” said Lady Fanny. “That’s probably who it was. Poor Lord David. He must still be very sickly.”

  A gentle snore and a small thump interrupted their conversation. Mary, overcome by the unaccustomed wine and masses of exotic food, had slowly slipped under the table and gone to sleep.

  The following Sunday morning found the Maguire sisters to be the first members of the household awake. Breakfast, they remembered, was not until eleven o’clock. They would stroll down to the town and take a look around. Mary was complaining of a headache and Molly pointed out that fresh air would be just the thing to blow it away.

  It was a pure, clear sunny morning. They walked down the drive, pushed open the great iron gates, and marched out into the road with a feeling of having escaped from prison.

  They hesitated a little and then decided Hadsea must be on their left.

  “Goddamnit, man,” roared the well-remembered voice of the man who must be Lord David’s nurse. “What the hell do you call this filth? I want coffee, good, strong dark coffee. Take this pap away and feed it to the cat.” There was a sound of breaking china.

  “Poor Lord David,” murmured Molly. “Can you imagine how he must be bullied by that dreadful nurse?” She pictured a frail and beautiful aristocrat lying weakly on his sickbed, one blue-veined hand plucking restlessly at the covers, fair hair falling over a marble brow, as that angry voice ranted and raved.

  The road led past the gardens of more enormous villas. All of them looked quite new. The air was heavy with the scent of roses and newly cut grass. Somewhere someone was frying bacon and the smell made the girls’ stomachs rumble.

  They turned a bend in the road and there was Hadsea. The little town was situated at the far end of a beautiful curve of sandy beach. With one accord, they raced along it.

  The whole expanse of sea was the color of blue watered silk. Little pink shells studded the gleaming sand, bordered by golden clumps of broom. Lazy spirals of smoke rose from the chimneys of the town and in the distance they could faintly hear voices singing in the church. Lady Fanny had said nothing about going to church, which struck them as unusual. The fact was that Lady Fanny knew both girls to be Catholic and, being Anglican herself, had not known quite what to do with them. Hadsea did not boast a church that catered to such an unfashionable religion.

  Soon they were walking along the deserted cobbled streets of the little town. All the shops were closed and shuttered.

  “Well, at least we can find out where the post office is,” said Molly. “And then we can post that letter to Mother as soon as we get our allowance, if things look too bad.”

  They wandere
d up one narrow lane and down another until Mary said, “Can that be it?”

  Sure enough the sign above the door said clearly HADSEA GENERAL POST OFFICE. There was a small red stamp machine on a pedestal beside the door and on the pavement outside, a squat red pillar-box for posting letters, but there any resemblance to any sort of post office the girls had ever known ended. The window was full of buckets and spades, black sandshoes, jars of candy, balls of string, can openers, a picture of a lady in a diaphanous gown, who was staring disapprovingly at the Pyramids, a pair of whalebone corsets, and damp postcards showing sepia-tinted views of Hadsea.

  “Do you think they’ll actually get a letter from here to America?” said Molly, giggling. “Maybe they’ll send it by bearer on a cleft stick.”

  Mary was about to reply when both girls suddenly heard the stifled sound of sobbing coming from somewhere at the rear of the building. Now, two well-bred English ladies would have walked on and minded their own business. But not the Maguire sisters.

  They found a little passage at the side of the shop and walked along it toward the sound of the sobbing. It was coming from a small kitchen at the back. The girls stopped and looked at one another awkwardly. This was spying on someone’s private grief. They were about to turn away when a rough voice stopped them in their tracks.

  “Stop sniveling and hand over the money,” it growled.

  Molly threw her scruples to the winds and peered in a small window. A thin, frail, middle-aged woman was sitting at a scrubbed kitchen table with a money box open in front of her.

  “I can’t pay you any more,” she was crying. “I’ve hardly got enough to eat.”

  “You’ll pay me and you know why,” growled her tormentor.

  Molly squeezed her head around to bring him into view. He was a fat, pimply youth about her own age with brown greasy curls pasted to his low forehead. “How would you like the village to know you and your old man wasn’t married? How would you like His Majesty’s post office to know? Throw you out in the street, they would.”

  Still crying, the woman drew some notes and silver from the box and slowly laid them out on the table, where they were immediately snatched up. “This all?” he growled. “See you make it more next time or it’ll be the worse for you.”