The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  “Sleep!” echoed Lucy faintly. She felt as if she could never sleep enough.

  Since she had stepped from the steamer at the Broomielaw in Glasgow two months ago, and found MacGregor waiting on the quay, she had known no rest. They had taken the night train to London, stopping only to change over to the Dover train. Then across the Channel to France and then the long circuitous journey south, taking in several of the less-fashionable casinos on the way.

  She had followed MacGregor’s stage-managing faithfully, looking nervous and flustered at her first win and shyly continuing to play all her winnings until there was a large pack of plaques beside her elbow. The minute her extraordinary success began to draw the notice of the other players, MacGregor would cough discreetly behind her and she would promptly leave.

  MacGregor placed the omelet on the table and opened the champagne and poured it into two tumblers. The bubbles rose and fell hypnotically in front of Lucy’s tired eyes. MacGregor raised his glass in a Scottish toast: “Here’s tae us/ Wha’s like us? / Gey few/ And they’re a’ deid.”

  “Amen,” said Lucy wearily, draining her glass.

  “Hey, hey, now,” said MacGregor. “That is not the lemonade you are drinking.”

  “No, Papa,” said Lucy dully.

  “Och, it’s just a wee bit of sleep you need,” he said, covering her small hand with his large bony one. “Things will look different in the morning.”

  “I can’t help worrying about my mother,” said Lucy, poking her congealing omelet with distaste. The birds began their dawn chorus outside, bringing aching memories of home.

  MacGregor refilled her glass. “Just drink that up and go to bed.”

  “But what will she do?” persisted Lucy.

  “Mrs. Balfour? She’ll have a bit of a cry and a bit of a temper and then she’ll let your room to a lodger.”

  “You’re too cynical for this world, Mr. MacGregor,” said Lucy, displaying a rare burst of temper. “But I’m sure the devil has an extra-warm place ready for you in hell.”

  Mrs. Balfour had in fact cried when she had read Lucy’s letter. She remembered Lucy as a little girl, clinging to her skirts as they walked along beside the loch. This was soon replaced by a picture of the reserved, difficult girl that Lucy had become, and Mrs. Balfour began to feel very ill-used indeed.

  She had been forced to face the countess with the news, but her formidable employer had taken it all very calmly and had laid the blame for Lucy’s departure fair and square on the shoulders of the suffragettes. “Pesky females putting silly ideas into young gel’s heads,” she had declared.

  Mr. Balfour had also taken the news with an irritatingly phlegmatic calm.

  “But what will we do?” wailed Mrs. Balfour, giving way to an unaccustomed bout of emotion.

  Mr. Balfour had removed his pipe from his mouth and said, “Let her room. But no female lodgers, mind. They’re worse than bitches in heat.”

  Mrs. Balfour was then so taken up with wondering when and where her husband had had such experiences of female lodgers to refer to them in such coarse terms, that she almost got over the muddled sorrow engendered by her infuriating daughter’s departure.

  MacGregor’s disappearance had been another matter. His clothes were found untouched in his room along with the rest of his belongings. It was popularly supposed that the butler had been drunk as usual and had fallen into the loch and drowned. The servants were in high excitement as the loch near the castle was dragged in a search for his body. Nothing other than the flotsam and jetsam of the loch was brought to light. A new butler was appointed, a severe, humorless martinet, and life at the Castle settled back into their normal routines, but without the jokes and mimicry of MacGregor to enliven the evenings for the upper servants.

  A middle-aged Frenchwoman was hired as lady’s maid to Lady Angela and she turned out to be as cold and uncommunicative as her mistress.

  Sometimes in the dark evenings when the formidable butler was not around, the cook, the housekeeper, and Miss Jones would talk in whispers about Lucy, the girl with the extraordinary luck at cards, and wonder what on earth she was doing.

  Lucy herself wondered what on earth she was doing as she woke the following morning to find the sun high in the sky. She could hear MacGregor moving around downstairs, singing some unintelligible Scottish song under his breath. She got slowly out of bed and poured water from the ewer on the washstand. A familiar little knot of panic began to form again in her stomach.

  She had been brought up to believe that anyone older than herself knew ‘what was best for her,’ but she could not help wishing that Mr. MacGregor would decide to forget about the whole idea of a Season in London. Lucy was strong-willed enough to oppose her mentor, but every time she opened her mouth to tell the ex-butler that she did not want to go to London and that she could not bear the sight of another casino, the picture of Andrew Harvey standing at the bend of the autumn road came into her mind.

  After all, she had gone along with this mad scheme for one purpose only—to gain enough money to set herself up as a lady and to win the handsome viscount’s love.

  Lucy wondered if MacGregor really meant to give her a few days of rest. The moment she entered the kitchen and saw the slightly guilty look on his face, she knew he had thought of some plan.

  He turned from the sink and stood hesitantly on one leg with his head to one side, looking like an elderly stork spying a particularly large fish. “I’ve been thinking …” he began while Lucy frowned. Any of MacGregor’s plans for her discomfort always started with “I’ve been thinking …

  “Don’t frown like that. I know what’s best for you,” he said, turning back to the sink. “Apart from Lady Angela, you haven’t had much experience of young society ladies … what they talk about and all that sort of thing.”

  “You promised me a few days’ rest and I mean to take them,” said Lucy, pushing out her small chin.

  “Oh, well,” sighed MacGregor, rattling the dishes in a disconsolate manner. “It’s just that I got to chatting with a fellow at the casino last night and he told me the Blair sisters were in Monte.”

  “So?”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now,” said MacGregor sadly. “Though it’s said the Blair girls are always fighting over Andrew Harvey. Said to have a powerful way with the ladies, the viscount….”

  “Mr. MacGregor!”

  “Papa.”

  “Oh, very well, Papa. What have you in mind?”

  “Och, I don’t suppose you will be in the way of fancying the idea. It’s just my nonsense. But I thought that if we were to go into Monte to take tea at the Palace Hotel, you might be able to observe these ladies and hear the sort of thing they talk about.”

  He handed Lucy a bowl of coffee and a plate of croissants with all the dexterity of a conjurer.

  Lucy stirred her coffee slowly. “Would I have to wear that terrible wig and stuff those pillows down my dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the answer is ‘no.’ “

  MacGregor turned back to the sink and rattled the dishes. If a man’s back could be said to think furiously, then MacGregor’s certainly did, thought Lucy.

  The sun shone bravely outside the dingy kitchen, lighting up a whole world of fresh air, light, and freedom.

  The rattling ceased. “I don’t see that it would matter if you went as yourself,” said MacGregor slowly. “It’s curiosity about the girl who wins at cards that we want to check. Yes … if you were simply dressed with one of these large hats"—here he waved his bony hands frantically in the air—"to hide your features, I don’t see why not.”

  A shadow crossed Lucy’s face. “I have no suitable clothes. All my frocks are designed to have great pillows shoved inside them.”

  “No trouble at all,” said MacGregor, unhooking his coat from a peg. “I’ll run down to the town and get you something and be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tale.”

  “But Papa,” called Lucy after him. “You do no
t know my measurements.”

  “I ken them fine,” said MacGregor, pausing at the garden gate and surveying her with a malicious twinkle in his eye. “I am not so old that I have lost my eye for the ladies.”

  With that he fled off down the road to the town, his lean legs taking him at a fantastic pace.

  Lucy wondered gloomily what style of dress MacGregor would buy.

  The temperature soared into the seventies and the Mediterranean landscape swam in the golden light of the winter sun. Back in Marysburgh, reflected Lucy, the loch would be frozen and the houses of the town shrouded under a heavy fall of snow. All this sunshine in the middle of winter seemed … well … somehow indecent.

  She moved about the old villa, opening the shutters, and cleaning the already cleaned rooms to control her nervousness. She suddenly wished she had not agreed to MacGregor’s plan. She felt she carried a glaring sign on her forehead marked “impostor.”

  Just when she had decided that MacGregor had returned to his old habit of finding dreams in the bottom of a whiskey bottle, she saw a little cloud of dust in the distance which slowly resolved itself into a four-wheeler. She ran to the door and waited as MacGregor argued in his impeccable French over the price of the fare.

  At last he burst into the kitchen, his face hidden behind a mountain of boxes and parcels.

  “Run upstairs and get into these,” he panted. “I’ve told the cabby to wait.”

  When Lucy was finally left alone in her bedroom, she began to unwrap the various packages with trembling fingers. The ex-butler had surpassed himself.

  A gown which seemed a miracle of gossamer-pink tulle was hurriedly donned over a sea of frothy petticoats. She deftly piled her hair on top of her head in one of the styles she had used on Lady Angela. Then a huge frivolous tulle hat shaded from lightest pink to deepest rose was perched on top and she drew on a long pair of pink kid gloves.

  Lucy pushed open the kitchen door and stood timidly on the threshold. MacGregor’s eyes misted with tears. “You’re a picture! A daughter any man would be proud of. Now come along before you lose your courage!”

  The terrace of the Palace Hotel was already crowded. White lace tea gowns seemed to be the order of the day for the ladies, and white blazers and flannels for the men. MacGregor gave a sigh of aesthetic pleasure. What a fitting background for his protégée.

  They took their places at a small white cane table and MacGregor leaned forward and whispered, “The Blair girls are at the next table. Now look and listen.”

  The Blair girls—Lisbeth and Amy—were surrounded by a small court of admirers. Their dresses of priceless lace clung to their exquisite hourglass figures. Both were almost identical in appearance with soft brown hair, wide brown eyes and little, straight noses.

  Elaborate hats piled with lace and fruit and flowers and birds balanced on their little heads giving them the precocious appeal of child brides. Both had little babyish voices which they almost always remembered to use, and only rarely did the high, commanding, arrogant tone that was natural to them show through. They were the daughters of a wealthy brewer. Brewers, as Lucy knew, were mysteriously not considered to be “in trade,” whereas whiskey distillers most definitely were.

  The attention of the party was concentrated on a blushing youth, who, it appeared, had been guilty of deserting the Blair circle the evening before to pay court to a French mademoiselle, and who was being heavily baited over his defection.

  “Honestly, Albert,” drawled a thin, pallid young man with a receding chin. “How could you neglect our divine Misses Blair for some froggie?”

  Albert blushed again and looked miserably into his teacup for inspiration.

  “Well, y’know,” said a chubby young man who rejoiced in the nickname of Waffles, “Frenchies is supposed to be hot stuff, what? Bags of ooh la-la, eh, Albert?”

  Lisbeth Blair poured more tea with a graceful, swanlike motion. “Pwease don’t tease poor Albert,” she said, in her childlike speech. “The most correct young men do have these wittle wapses with foreigners. Take my cousin Freddie. Absolutely dottie over our Fräulein, he was.”

  “Don’t know how you tewwible men can look at foreigners,” said Amy with a bewildered air. “After all, I mean, it’s not Bwittish. The Germans are all dumplings and sausages and the French are all frog’s legs.”

  “Hey, what!” roared Waffles. “Did your mam’selle have frog’s legs, Albert? Hey, good that. Frog’s legs.” He laughed so inordinately at his own wit, that he turned purple in the face and had to be slapped on the back by his friends. “Anyway,” he added when he had recovered, “none of us has a look in when Andrew Harvey’s around.”

  An unlovely flush rose up Amy’s slender neck. “You know, Waffles,” she remarked in a high, strident voice, “you really are a common type of boor.”

  There was a sudden silence while everyone else looked uncomfortable and wondered what to say.

  The thin young man’s pale eyes wandered around the room in search of a change of topic. His eyes lighted appreciatively on Lucy who sat demurely beside MacGregor at the next table. “That’s a damned pretty girl,” he remarked in an undertone which rang around the terrace. The pansy-brown eyes of the Blair sisters rested momentarily on Lucy, who returned their stares coolly, and then gracefully turned her head to ask MacGregor if he would like more tea. “Beautifully done,” hissed the butler and then sat back to watch the repercussions. Lucy’s instinctive arrogance of manner had flustered the sisters. Only someone with wealth and power could afford to look at them like that.

  “Oh, very pretty if you wike chocolate-box gowns,” whispered Amy, smoothing her own lace dress. The thin young man who appeared to be called Boo by his friends continued to rake Lucy with his pale eyes.

  “You, sir,” said MacGregor suddenly in an imperious, high-clipped voice, fixing Boo with a cold stare. “I find your looks impertinent, fellow. Kindly restrict your attentions to your own party.” Boo rose to his unlovely feet, for once dithering and unsure.

  “My sincere apologies, sir. But the beauty of your … er … daughter made me forget myself.”

  “Then remember yourself in future,” drawled MacGregor, turning an indifferent shoulder.

  The Blair party were now desperate to be introduced to the newcomers. Arrogance and rudeness, they knew, were only ever directed toward them by members of a higher caste.

  But MacGregor was rising to his feet and holding out his arm to Lucy. “Come, my dear. I find the atmosphere of this place oppressive.”

  They made a magnificent exit followed by the avid stares of the Blair party. “She must be some sort of foweign woyalty,” whispered Lisbeth. “Find out who she is, Boo!”

  But despite a generous tip, the waiter could not supply them with any information and they watched in silence as the mysterious couple made their way along the promenade.

  “Very good for a start,” MacGregor was saying. “Now the one called Boo is Lord David Sythe, and a bad lot. Sort that pinches the housemaids’ bottoms. Young Albert is the Honorable Albert Wemsworth; pots of money, nice lad. Waffles is Jeremy Wafflington; parents in tea, rich, stupid. What did you think?”

  “They’re horrible,” gasped Lucy, clutching her hat as an errant breeze whipped along the promenade, sending the striped awnings and flags cracking merrily. “Do you mean I have to behave like them … sneering and spiteful and cruel?”

  “They’re not all like that,” said MacGregor soothingly. “Think of Andrew Harvey.”

  “He can’t like them much either,” said Lucy, “or he would have been married before this.”

  “Oh, Viscount Harvey’s been too much of a man of action to settle down. Been in the army for a long time. Major when he retired last year. Could have been made colonel had he stayed on.” He looked at her slyly. “Of course it’s said that he plans to settle down now….”

  “He may be married already,” said Lucy, shivering, as a black cloud appeared to materialize out of nowhere and hide the sun.<
br />
  “Not yet. I check the court circular regularly. Perhaps we had better go back. It looks like a storm is coming.”

  They both turned. The increasing wind whipped Lucy’s pink, still-open parasol from her hand and sent it flying.

  “Don’t worry,” said MacGregor with a grin. “There goes your first gallant.”

  A slim blond man in a striped blazer suddenly appeared and was off in full pursuit of the parasol. He finally caught it with one magnificent leap as it was about to commit suicide in the depths of the Mediterranean, and turned toward them, waving his trophy triumphantly.

  Lucy stood still, leaning lightly on MacGregor’s arm and watching him walk toward them. The gaudy colors of Monte Carlo fled before her eyes. For a split second she was back on a Highland road, watching a fair-haired man and his horse standing in a blaze of autumn colors. Then she blinked and the scene fled. She found herself looking up into the gray eyes of a very tall young man. He had a square tanned face and a riot of golden curls. His clothes were simple and elegant and slightly worn. He gave Lucy an enchanting smile as he handed back her parasol.

  “Let me introduce myself,” he said. “Jeremy Brent, at your service.”

  “We are much obliged to you, young man. I am Mr. Balfour-MacGregor and this is my daughter. We both thank you for a very gallant rescue.”

  “Oh, we are acquainted already in a way,” said Mr. Brent cheerfully. “I saw you at the casino last night with … er … another daughter, I presume.”

  The pair in front of him went suddenly very still. The sky above had turned black and a jagged flash of lightning lit up the pallor of Lucy’s face.

  “Just so,” said MacGregor heavily. “Now if you will excuse us, we must be on our way….”