The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  “It’s all wrong,” said Lucy miserably. “What if he ever finds out? He’s bound to find out.”

  “I don’t see how … if we play our cards right,” said MacGregor. “Och, you’re just feeling upset over Didi’s death.”

  “Poor Didi,” said Lucy. “If only I had known. But people in society seem to behave so oddly sometimes.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything,” said MacGregor comfortingly.

  But to Lucy, Didi’s death had made the whole of the Season look like some macabre charade. She could only remember Didi as she had first seen her in Dinard, very pretty, very charming, and very much alive.

  They made their farewells at the station and Andrew Harvey promised to call on the following day. Lucy went home to write a letter to her mother and to feel more like a fraud than ever.

  The next day brought sunshine and a revival of Lucy’s spirits. Andrew Harvey had not said at what precise time he would call, so she canceled all her engagements for the day and sat down to prepare an elaborate toilette.

  A shy housemaid answered the imperative summons of the bell and, bobbing a curtsy, said that Sally’s mother had been “took bad again.”

  Lucy frowned and threw down her hairbrush. She was about to call Jobbons, the butler, and tell him that Sally was fired. But what if the girl’s mother were really in distress? Lucy, who felt she had neglected her own mother shamefully, did not want to be too hasty.

  As the day wore on and there was no sign of Andrew, she began to fret for some sort of action. She rang the bell for Jobbons and asked him to supply her with Sally’s address and told him to ask the cook to pack up a hamper of goodies for Sally’s mother. Jobbons returned with the address and begged miss not to go. Sally’s family lived in King’s Cross. Probably a rough area. Better to send a groom.

  But Lucy was tired of waiting. She had convinced herself that Sally’s mother was indeed in need of nourishment and help. She would take the carriage and two footmen and go to King’s Cross.

  If Viscount Harvey called, he was to be told to wait. She would not be long.

  By the time the carriage had reached the dark buildings of King’s Cross, that seemed to squat under a perpetual haze of smoke through which the sun shone with a brassy glare, Lucy had forgotten Sally’s faults and sullen behavior. She remembered only the fresh-faced willing girl that she had employed, who was so eager for a chance in life.

  The carriage finally came to a stop in front of a dark, dilapidated building. Several grubby barefoot children with swollen stomachs and little stick legs were squatting on the worn steps. An old woman sat in a battered armchair at the entrance, wrapped in a dingy shawl and swigging gin from a bottle.

  “Wait here, ma’am,” pleaded one of the footmen. “Let me make the inquiries.” He seemed to be gone a long time. An interested and ragged crowd had begun to press around the carriage. Lucy looked away from their grinning faces and shut her ears to their broad remarks and prayed for the footman’s speedy return.

  At last he came back with the information that neither Sally nor her mother were at home and that they had best make their way back.

  “’Ere! Is you lookin’ for our Sal?” shouted a voice from the crowd. A thin, dirty woman pushed her way forward and peered up at Lucy with her eyes alight with malice. “I’ll tell yer where she is.”

  “Be off!” said the coachman, picking up the reins.

  “Wait!” called Lucy, turning to the woman. “I am worried about Sally. She is my maid, you see.”

  This provoked a great gale of laughter from her audience and mysterious calls that “our Sal wurrent nobody’s maid, nohow.”

  “Stop being so mysterious,” snapped Lucy, “and tell me where she is.”

  “Oh, hoity-toity,” screamed the thin woman. “Well, she’s gone shopping in Piccadilly, my lady.” She swept Lucy a grotesque curtsy and the crowd cheered and laughed.

  “Thank you, my good woman,” said Lucy, feeling uncomfortable. “Piccadilly, John.”

  The coachman gave her a sad look but he was anxious to get his carriage and horses out of the district intact. He saw several members of the crowd bending to pick up stones and bottles. Lucy had noticed them as well. She opened her reticule and threw a handful of pennies on the ground. The mob dropped their stones and scrabbled for the money, and by the time they had raised their heads, the carriage and Lucy had gone.

  “If I lived there,” thought Lucy miserably, “I should behave exactly like them.” The smells of filth and urine began to fade as the carriage picked its way toward the West End.

  Lucy realized that it was mad to search for one young girl in the bustle of Piccadilly, but she was determined to try. Poor Sally! No wonder she often behaved badly—coming from a background like that.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just go home?” pleaded one of the footmen who stood on the step of the open carriage behind her.

  “No,” said Lucy stubbornly. “I am determined to find Sally.”

  “Then … if you must,” said the footman heavily, “she’s over there, ma’am.”

  Lucy followed his white-gloved finger and gave a gasp of astonishment. Sally was standing against a lamppost talking to two other girls. She wore one of Lucy’s garden-party hats incongruously atop a purple silk evening gown. A scraggly feather boa was wound around her neck and her fresh-faced complexion was hidden under a mask of paint. Lucy halted the carriage and climbed down.

  “’Ere. Wot’s all this?” screamed one of Sally’s companions. “’Ere’s the nobs come for to queer our pitch!”

  Sally looked around and saw Lucy. Her face under its paint was set in mulish lines.

  “Well, what did yer expect?” she screamed before Lucy could open her mouth. “You and your twenty-five quid a bleedin’ year. A girl’s got to make a bit of extra money.”

  “But what are you doing?” pleaded Lucy, uncomfortably aware that an interested crowd was gathering.

  “Wot am I doin’ of?” mimicked Sally in a high, shrill voice. “I’m a walkin’ up and down lookin’ in them shops, ain’t I?”

  “You will collect your belongings from Jobbons as soon as possible,” said Lucy with all the dignity she could muster. “I do not wish to see you again.”

  She began to climb into the carriage.

  “Oooh!” screamed Sally. “Kicks me out of the job just like that,” she called to the crowd. “Well, you can take your bleedin’ lady’s maid position and put it right up your—Oh, Lor!”

  A policeman was approaching along Piccadilly. Sally gave Lucy one last vindictive look and vanished into the crowd.

  “Naow, then!” said the policeman, leaning against the carriage. “Is you here one of them suffragettes?”

  “No,” said Lucy faintly. “I was merely trying to talk to my lady’s maid.”

  “Ho! That’s a fine one. You run along home, miss, and stop hanging around prostitutes or I’ll have to report you to your parents.”

  “Prostitutes!” gasped Lucy.

  “Where did you come from?” said the policemen with heavy humor. “Wot did you think they was? The Duchesses of Piccadilly?”

  Lucy went scarlet with mortification. John, the coachman, came to her rescue.

  “Watch your lip, officer,” he said. “This here young lady ain’t got a mind like a sewer like some I could mention. How was she to know as how one of her servants had gone to the bad?”

  “Don’t let me catch you at it again, that’s all,” said the policeman obscurely. John showed every sign of jumping down from the box to carry on the argument but Lucy pleaded with him to drive on.

  When she got home to Regents Park she found she was shaking. Jobbons informed her that Viscount Harvey was waiting for her in the drawing room and Lucy went slowly in with a heavy heart.

  How remote and elegant Andrew looked! It seemed as if a stranger were proposing marriage and Lucy felt like a stranger as she accepted his proposal. He drew her into his arms and before she succumbed to the
passion he always aroused, she thought fleetingly of Sally, the lady’s maid turned prostitute. Was she any better?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The news of Andrew Harvey’s engagement hit social London like a bombshell.

  Lady Angela’s critics who had claimed that she did not show enough animation would have been hard put to recognize her as she marched up and down her bedroom with her face flaming with rage and her hair in a tangle.

  One of the Blair sisters she could just about understand. But who on earth was Lucy Balfour-MacGregor? Everyone talked of her beauty and how she had made their Royal Highnesses laugh, but not once had Angela been able to speak to the girl. She always seemed to be on the far side of the ballroom, or, if it were a party, she would leave a few minutes before Angela arrived.

  Angela cursed her stolid lady’s maid with incredible fluency and the coals were added to her wrath at the news that the Blair sisters had called and were waiting for her downstairs.

  She finally marched into the drawing room of the Marysburgh town residence in Grosvenor Square with not one whit of her temper abated.

  Lisbeth and Amy were sitting side by side on a chesterfield, holding identical lace hankies to their eyes and weeping identical tears.

  “Oh, dry your tears,” snapped Angela. “I suppose you are upset about the news as well.”

  “It’s too tewwible,” sobbed Amy. “If it had been you, dear Angela, we could have borne it.”

  “Well, it’s not me. It’s that Balfour-MacGregor girl. Tell me about her.”

  “We never got to know her,” said Lisbeth, “but we saw her at the court drawing room. She’s very beautiful,” she added maliciously, peering around her handkerchief at the infuriated Angela. “And we saw her last winter in Monte.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She’s visiting his parents,” wailed Amy. “All is lost!”

  “All is not lost until they get to the altar. Oh, what is it, Mama?”

  The countess had ambled in followed by the shadowy figure of Miss Jones.

  “I’ve just read the news,” said the countess, lighting a cigarette—her latest fad—and puffing out smoke energetically. She then teetered around the room on her French heels, surrounded by her own private fog. Angela eyed her with distaste. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing,” said the countess, emitting another great cloud. “And you’ll make yourself look silly, Angela, if you make a fuss. Plenty more young men.”

  “Of course,” said Angela, her face once more a beautiful mask. “Who cares anyway?”

  In Stanhope Gate the news was received with bitter calm. Jeremy and Hester sat up in bed together, gloomily sharing the newspaper.

  “I’d better go and start chasing another heiress,” he said. “And this time I’ll do it on my own.”

  “Who will you go after?” asked Hester with a lightness she did not feel.

  “One of the Blair girls or Lady Angela. They’ll be ripe for consolation.”

  “And what about me?” said Hester quietly. Jeremy moved from the bed and began to get dressed. He looked down at his mistress who lay propped up on one elbow, the lace of her nightgown falling from her shoulder to cruelly show the skeletal outline of aging bones.

  “Oh, you’ll find someone,” he said brutally. “But I tell you this. Andrew Harvey is not going quietly to the altar without me trying to put a spoke in his wheel. He should know about the mysterious sister, for example.”

  “Aren’t you staying for breakfast?” Hester tried to keep the pleading note out of her voice but it trembled dangerously.

  Jeremy pulled on his frock coat and buttoned his waistcoat. A diamond pin winked in his stock, one of Hester’s first presents to him.

  “I feel like a breath of fresh air,” he said carelessly. “Bye.”

  “Jeremy!” She stretched out a hand like a claw but he had already gone.

  Hester sank back and buried her face in the pillows. After a while she finished sobbing and sat up to look around the cluttered bedroom at her various luxuries so soon to go under the hammer unless she could find a source of income. Perhaps Mr. Balfour-MacGregor could be blackmailed? A thin ray of hope began to dawn on her watery horizon. She would attack the minute Lucy and her father returned from the country.

  Back in Marysburgh Miss Johnstone put down the copy of The Times of London and firmly wiped her glasses and put them on again. Lucy Balfour-MacGregor! It was too much of a coincidence. Why, that auld rip, MacGregor! What had he talked that wee lassie into? Why couldn’t he just have let her gather a modest dowry and then marry someone of her own class? Lucy should have had more sense. She sat down to write a letter.

  Blissfully unaware of all the anguish they had caused, Andrew and Lucy had wandered the countryside around Brammington Chase, his parents’ home, in a happy and selfish state of ecstasy. Andrew’s quiet and retiring parents had taken an immediate liking to Lucy and MacGregor. There had been no cloud on Andrew’s horizon … until one afternoon when he and Lucy had sat down to compile a list of guests for the wedding. Lucy, it appeared, had no relatives to ask except her father. She had explained miserably that they were not on speaking terms with any other members of the distinguished Balfour-MacGregor family, because of some Highland feud. This was told in such a sad, weary voice that Andrew was at first inclined to believe her. But when she had shied away from further questions and had refused to discuss her home and had ended up running from the room, he had begun to suspect—just a very little—that she might be lying to him.

  But he wanted her so much that he had run after her and apologized for he knew not what.

  His mother had pointed out that Lucy was unusual in that she was honest enough to dislike her relatives and say so. So that little cloud vanished and all was sunshine again.

  Then, as his mother had begun to make plans for an engagement ball, Andrew’s little cloud flew back across his sun.

  Lucy had absolutely refused to allow the Earl and Countess of Marysburgh or their daughter, Angela, to be included among the guests. When Andrew had protested, Lucy had burst into tears, saying she was jealous. Andrew had reluctantly given in but had privately thought he could have sworn jealousy was an emotion foreign to Lucy’s character.

  Pre-wedding nerves, said his mother sensibly. The Marysburghs were no great loss. But something had happened to Lucy’s relationship with Andrew. A coldness had crept in and sometimes when he held his fiancée in his arms, Andrew remembered her former passion and wondered why she now stood in his arms like a wooden doll.

  One morning near the end of their visit he had decided to go riding on his own. He glanced in as he passed Mr. Balfour-MacGregor’s room. The door was open and Mr. Balfour-MacGregor was obviously waiting for his beard to be groomed by his valet. Andrew was about to go in when he noticed that Lucy’s father was devoid of toupee. He would probably be embarrassed to be found in his dishabille. Andrew was about to move on when the valet placed a hot towel over Mr. Balfour-MacGregor’s face. Mr. Balfour-MacGregor sat without his toupee and with his beard covered. Andrew found himself staring at a face in the mirror, a face that he had known before. For some odd reason the day on the lake with Lucy flashed back into his mind; the day when he had not recognized his second footman because the man was not wearing his livery. He remembered remarking to Lucy that one could never, ever place servants when one saw them in everyday dress. And he remembered Lucy’s sudden frown. Quite suddenly he realized that he was looking straight at the face of MacGregor, the butler from Inver Castle. MacGregor’s eyes were closed and he did not see Andrew.

  The viscount walked quietly away with his thoughts in a turmoil. MacGregor. The butler! Then who was Lucy Balfour-MacGregor? Split the names. Let’s see. Take away Hamish MacGregor and you are left with Lucy Balfour.

  Lucy Balfour. Ride carefully and think carefully.

  It was another perfect morning, alive with the sights and sounds of summer. He rode deep into the heart of the woods far
from the house and finally reined in his horse.

  Lucy Balfour.

  The sun slanted down through the trees and his horse bent its head to crop a clump of grass at the roots of a silver birch.

  Lucy Balfour and Marysburgh.

  He could smell the woodsmoke from the house and hear the whir of the lawn mower as the gardener mowed the lawns and then the sharp, sweet smell of cut grass reached him, wafting on the gentlest of summer breezes and mixed with the smells of breakfast—bacon, kidney, and fresh rolls.

  Lucy would be descending to the breakfast room. His mother would be sitting at the table where the sunlight fell through the mullioned windows and shone through the paper-thin teacups. Lucy would be laughing and charting. She talked more to his mother than she did to himself.

  The countess at that moment was talking to Lucy about how much she loved autumn in Scotland. “The rowan trees are particularly magnificent, my dear. All those clusters of scarlet berries against a background of purple heather.” Lucy smiled, her eyes growing dreamy. Again she saw Andrew standing at the bend of the road looking back at her.

  It might have been telepathy—it might have been some malicious society imp who considered that the luck of the Balfour-MacGregors had lasted long enough—but a few moments after Lucy had conjured up her favorite picture, the same picture in reverse entered Andrew’s brain.

  He was back on the hill above Marysburgh, among the autumn colors. The faint tinny sound of the band playing in the park rose from the town and he was standing beside his horse looking back at a Highland girl with green eyes and long black hair.

  Then he was outside her house in the twilight and she was looking up at him shyly, saying, “Lucy, sir. Lucy Balfour.”

  So that was why she did not want anyone from Marysburgh to come to the engagement ball. Lucy Balfour. Then she could not be MacGregor’s daughter and the couple had been living together as father and daughter. That nasty little thought weaved itself along the corridors of his brain until he dismissed it firmly. He was too old a hand to be mistaken about that kind of relationship. MacGregor may not be Lucy’s father but that was certainly the way he behaved.