by M C Beaton
A middle-aged woman with a trim figure, she wore her black hair tucked neatly away under a towering cap of starched muslin. Her pale weak eyes of washed-out blue must once have been as vivid a color as Annabelle’s own before long evenings poring over the household accounts had faded them. Her mouth was thin and had a disappointed droop at the corners. She was not at all ill-favored for her years, but her rasping, bullying voice dominated all else. Annabelle looked over at her father and caught the look of hurt and distress on his features. He was essaying to speak—to find some loophole in the barrage of words.
“Father is trying to say something,” interrupted Annabelle loudly in her clear, gentle voice. Never had anyone dared to interrupt Mrs. Quennell before, and she paused in amazement with her mouth open. The rector seized his opportunity.
“My dear,” he said firmly, “let us make one thing quite clear. Annabelle is under no obligation to enter into any marriage contract distasteful to her. We shall contrive, come what may. There will always be a home here for her. I think we would be better employed in praying to God that our beloved daughter has a safe journey.”
He bent his head in prayer, and his seething wife reluctantly followed his example. And while her husband’s gentle words of prayer echoed round the parlor, Mrs. Quennell made an unchristian vow to herself that before her eldest daughter departed on her journey South, Miss Annabelle Quennell would be made to realise that no welcome whatsoever would be offered by her mother an’ she should return unwed. As the rector voiced the “amen,” Mrs. Quennell suddenly thought of the dangers of half-pay captains and other impoverished rattles in scarlet coats and would have reopened her lecture, but she opened her eyes to find that Annabelle had fled.
EARLY in the morning Annabelle slipped from the rectory with a long cloak wrapped round her. She wished to say good-bye to her home at a time of day when her mother’s angry voice and her sisters’ envy were stilled with sleep.
The house looked large and graceful from the outside, more like the home of a country gentleman than what it was—a country rectory with small dark inconvenient rooms, bitterly cold in winter and stuffy and airless in summer. It was a low square building of mellow Georgian brick with a pillared entrance. The straggling, unkempt garden was shining under a white coating of freakish late spring frost, sparkling like rubies and diamonds under the red fire of the early morning sun. Smoke was beginning to rise lazily from the nearby village of Hazeldean which consisted of a row of houses on either side of an undragged byroad to York. The squat majesty of the Squire’s Queen Anne mansion was at one end and the square Norman tower of her father’s church was at the other.
Annabelle had a sudden wish to stay exactly where she was, frozen in place and time, neither going forwards nor backwards.
But London waited for her. London with its glittering Season, its mysterious godmother, and its possible suitor.
Annabelle was not much given to daydreaming, but she could not help hoping that perhaps she might meet some amiable gentleman on the road South from Yorkshire. That way she would not have to endure the terrors of a Season. He would be gentle and kind with a pleasant strong square face and not a terrifying aristocrat but one of the gentry like herself.
She was about to go in when her eye was arrested by what looked like an animated bundle of rags creeping along beside the hedge. She watched fascinated until the rags reared up and appeared to grow a head on top. It was Mad Meg from the gypsy encampment outside the town. She was feared and respected by the people of the village because of the uncanny accuracy of her predictions. But Annabelle knew that Meg’s predictions came from assiduous news gathering rather than any supernatural psychic ability. She shrewdly guessed that Meg had heard of the proposed journey South and had come to go through the motions of reading her palm and telling her what she, Annabelle, and everyone else already knew. But Annabelle would no more have thought of spoiling Meg’s act than she would of booing the village choir.
Meg came bustling up the weedy drive, her filthy features mercifully obliterated by the steam from her breath. She smelled overwhelmingly of woodsmoke, tar, cooked rabbit, and something else that a young lady such as Annabelle did not put a name to. “I have news for you, missie,” cackled Meg, rolling her eyes wildly, every muscle on her face seen to be twitching as she got to very uncomfortable close quarters. Annabelle had once spied Meg in the middle of the gypsy encampment, happily dishing round the stew and behaving in a very normal manner. Her “madness” was all part of her routine.
“What is it, Meg. Tell me quickly!” said Annabelle, kindly feigning an excitement she did not feel and holding out her small work-roughened hand.
“What do I get?” asked Meg, suddenly stopping her twitching and eye rolling.
Annabelle felt in the pocket of her apron, and her fingers closed over a shilling. It was a lot of money to pay the old faker … but still … it was the last day. She held up the coin which Meg grabbed eagerly and stowed away somewhere in her rags. She bent her filthy head over Annabelle’s hand.
“I see,” she began to croon, “a long journey.” She looked up suspiciously as something like a sigh came from Annabelle, but Annabelle stared back at her with a limpid expression.
“I see a long journey and at the end of it I see a rich world full of lords and dukes, and I see a handsome man waiting for you, missie.” Again Meg glanced up. The gypsy was grateful for the shilling and suddenly felt an urge to do the job properly. She bent over the hand, concentrated on all the lore she had ever leaned of palm reading, and was about to describe the tall, dark, and handsome suitor when something very strange happened.
The gypsy’s grip on Annabelle’s hand tightened painfully, and she raised her head again. But this time her eyes seemed to be turned inwards, horribly blind, and her old skin seemed to be stretched over her brittle bones to breaking point.
Her voice was high and thin, unlike her usual robust tones, and seemed to come from very, very far away. “There is terrible danger to your life from someone,” moaned Meg, swaying back and forth. “First someone near to you…then you. Death by air, by fire, by water. All black death. But…”
“Annabelle!”
Mrs. Quennell’s voice cut through the still frosty air. Annabelle pulled her hand away. She felt shaken and terribly cold.
“I must go, Meg,” she whispered, glad to see the gypsy’s eyes properly focused once more.
“Don’t go. What happened? What did I say?” pleaded Meg wildly, but Annabelle was already off and running towards the house.
Chapter Two
By the time the Squire’s coach had rumbled fifty miles on the road to the South, Annabelle had begun to relax. Her family seemed already a long way away, as if viewed mentally through the wrong end of a telescope. The Squire’s maid, Bessie, had never been out of the village before and was happy and excited at the idea of a trip to “Lunnon.” The carriage smelled rather strongly of hens, leading Annabelle to suspect it had recently done service as a temporary poultry coop, but it was comfortable for all that after one became used to the lurching, swaying motion.
Annabelle was still enough of a child to begin to view the visit to her godmother with some complacency. It would simply be a matter of obeying the Dowager Marchioness’s instructions and then everything would be all right. She had been strictly taught to honor her father and mother, to obey her betters implicitly, and that no harm could come of doing one’s duty. If she thought of Meg’s prophecy at all, it was only to wonder what the old woman had been drinking.
But as mile followed weary mile and inexpensive posting house followed inexpensive posting house, Annabelle became increasingly nervous and tired of unaired beds and their attendant bugs. Even Bessie had at last fallen silent.
The weather grew warmer and the countryside increasingly flatter and greener and the turnpikes closer together.
A pale primrose twilight was bathing the grimy streets with gold as the heavy creaking coach rumbled its way down into the north
of London. With eyes gritty with fatigue Annabelle tried to focus on the strange and noisy sights until her eyelids began to droop. The carriage was momentarily halted in traffic; a pieman with a loaded tray bobbed past the window of the coach, the pies steaming in the chill evening air. Then Annabelle fell asleep to wake an hour later and realise that they had finally come to a stop and the journey was at an end.
She climbed stiffly down from the coach and stood on the pavement with trembling legs. Flambeaux placed in brackets on the wall blazed outside an imposing mansion with a glossy white-painted door with a shining brass knocker. The whole house was ablaze with lights, and turning round, Annabelle could see the blackness of the gardens of Berkeley Square.
The door was opened after an energetic rat-tat on the knocker by the Squire’s groom to reveal the tall, imposing figure of a bewigged butler. He eyed Annabelle’s shabby bonnet and worn pelisse and raised his eyebrows. Butlers, Annabelle was to learn, hardly ever trouble themselves to ask unnecessary questions. They simply raise their eyebrows, the level denoting the importance of the question.
This butler’s eyebrows ran up his corrugated forehead and disappeared under his powdered wig. Annabelle found she could not manage to say a word. But the Yorkshire groom was not going to be put down by an uppity London servant.
“Doan’t stand there gawking, man,” he said tersely. “This here is Miss Quennell.”
The eyebrows dropped. The butler inclined his head a bare millimeter to indicate that miss was to enter. With a slightly deepening incline he indicated that she was to wait.
“Oh, miss,” breathed Bessie. “Ain’t it, grand.”
The hallway did seem imposing even to the tired Annabelle. Beeswax candles blazed from sconces in the walls and were reflected in the black and white tiles of the floor. A beautiful marble staircase covered in a thick turkey red carpet rose gracefully to the upper floors. A huge fire crackled briskly on the hearth.
The double doors leading to a room on the left swung open, and the butler appeared again. Again he did not speak but merely stood to one side of the open doors. With her heart in her mouth Annabelle walked forward into the room.
The room was as graceful as the hall with pale green walls, elegant Chippendale furniture, a marble Adam fireplace, and various Eversley ancestors staring down in high-nosed disdain from their gilt frames. But Annabelle only had eyes for the extraordinary figure who was coming to meet her. This could surely not be the Dowager Marchioness of Eversley! She had curls of a wildly improbable shade of gold peeping out from beneath a frivolous lace cap, and her heavy square face was rouged and painted like a mask. She was dressed in a pale pink Indian muslin dress cut very low to expose an acreage of bony bosom and—oh, horrors—she had damped her dress to reveal all the whalebone charms of a tight French corset and the billows of flesh above and below it.
Annabelle looked wildly round, hoping some other, more soberly dressed lady might emerge, but a high girlish giggle emerged from this lady’s painted mouth and she simpered awfully, “I declare, Annabelle Quennell, you do not believe I could be your godmother. You must not mind, my dear. I am accustomed to people finding me ’strordinarily young. Come and kiss me.”
Annabelle nervously complied, noticing as she drew back that her lips had left a barren patch in the mask of powder.
The Dowager Marchioness stretched up her gloved arms and removed Annabell’s hat and then stood back and stared in satisfaction at the wealth of red-gold hair.
“Beautiful,” she murmured. “Just as your mama promised. Well, that’s settled. ’Course, had you been plain, I should have had the terrible bore of posting you back to Yorkshire. Now, off with you and change. We will be late for the opera.”
Annabelle looked at her faintly and then at the little gilt clock on the mantelshelf. “B-but, I had hoped to retire, Godmother. Perhaps a tray in my room…”
“Nonsense! I have the finest beau in all London waiting to meet you. Ha! That makes you stare. Yes, I have picked out a suitor for you, and you shall meet him this very evening! Now, do as you are told, child.” She touched a bell on the wall. “Your rooms are ready, and you will find my lady’s maid, Horley, waiting to help you with your dress. Your beau’s name is Captain Jimmy MacDonald of the Eighteenth Hussars. I know he can hardly wait to meet you!”
“I CAN hardly wait to meet her,” drawled Captain Jimmy MacDonald from the depths of his chair.
“One would think you were uninterested in meeting anything other than another bottle of claret,” replied the light, amused voice of Lord Sylvester Varleigh. “Who is she?”
The Captain looked gloomily round the Great Subscription Room of Brooks’s in St. James’s. “Oh, Emmeline’s dragging some filly to the opera tonight,” he yawned. “Wants me to marry her.”
“She must be very rich,” murmured Lord Varleigh, looking down at the sprawling figure of the Captain. The Captain’s pockets were always notoriously to let.
“Ain’t got a penny,” said the Captain, “but I promised to oblige.” Lord Varleigh raised his thin eyebrows in surprise but was forestalled from further comment by the Captain adding wrathfully, “And stop hovering over me like some great demned horrible bird of prey.”
There was indeed something rather hawklike about the Lord’s thin white face with its hooded lids and high-bridged nose. By contrast the Captain’s tanned and handsome face, under a mop of carefully curled hair gleaming with Macassar oil, was bordered by luxurious side-whiskers and made him look exactly what he was—a soldier in peacetime who loathed every minute of it. With the cessation of hostilities with France, he had launched himself on the London social scene with all the enthusiasm he had applied to a Peninsular campaign and had subsequently found it stale, flat, and infinitely unprofitable.
His face flushed with the amount of claret he had consumed, the Captain looked round the famous club with a jaundiced eye. Apart from four painted panels by Antonio Zucchi, the walls were bare. “Why don’t they brighten up this mausoleum with some pictures?” he said irritably.
“Because,” said Lord Varleigh soothingly, “pictures would distract the gamblers.”
“Oh, well,” grumped the Captain, refilling his glass, “what else can one expect from a club founded by a lot of demned Macaronis?”
The Macaronis were the dandies of the last century, so called because they had made the Grand Tour which had included a visit to Italy. “All they did,” pursued the Captain, “was to bring back a dish that looks like a pile of demned great white worms.”
“They also invented the slang word ‘bore,’” pointed out Lord Varleigh, much amused.
“Meaning I’m one,” retorted the Captain good-naturedly. “Well, I’d better get going or I’ll never hear the end of it from Emmeline. Don’t even know this gel’s background. She’s probably as common as a barber’s chair.”
He half rose from his seat only to be pushed down into it again by a fellow officer, Major Timothy Wilks. “You still as good with your fives?” roared the Major. “Feel like a bout at Jackson’s tomorrow?”
“Wallop you any time you feel like it, dear boy,” said the Captain, the prospect of a boxing match causing him to show enthusiasm for the first time that evening. “Only fair to tell you, though. Was trained by Mendoza.”
“Pooh! That Israelite cannot top Jackson.”
“Mendoza is infinitely superior in regards to dexterity,” said the Captain wrathfully.
“He has a remarkably quick eye. He strikes oftener and stops better than any man in England…”
“He’s weak in the loins,” rejoined the Major.
“But he is finely formed in the breast and arms,” said the Captain enthusiastically. “Why, I remember…”
“Your meeting at Covent Garden,” interrupted Lord Varleigh with a gentle reminder.
“Oh, stuff,” said Captain MacDonald. “Look—I’ll be a trifle late. You’re going anyway, ain’t you, Varleigh? Present my compliments and say I’ll be along directly. Oh,
and if the gel’s Friday-faced, send a messenger to warn me.”
“Very well,” smiled Lord Varleigh, thinking, not for the first time, what an overgrown schoolboy the Captain was. “I shall tell her you can hardly wait to meet her!”
ANNABELLE looked at her reflection in the long pier glass and turned to Horley in dismay.
“I cannot wear this gown,” she said firmly. “It is … it’s indecent.”
The evening gown was admittedly of the finest silk velvet in a delectable shade of pale green and opened down the front to reveal an underdress of gold silk. The neckline, though bordered with a creamy fall of old lace, was more of a waistline! thought Annabelle bitterly. It seemed to leave not only her shoulders but most of her bosom bare.
Annabelle had revived somewhat from the fatigues of her journey at the sight of the splendor of her new quarters. She was to be the proud possessor of a sitting room and a large bedroom with an old-fashioned powder room beyond. Thick oriental rugs covered the floor, and pretty flock wallpaper adorned the walls. Fires burned in both bedroom and sitting room, adding their light to the blaze of beeswax candles on the walls. Her hair had been expertly and becomingly dressed by her godmother’s lady’s maid, Horley, and the dress, spread out innocently over a high-backed chair, had seemed beautiful.
“There is nothing up with it,” said Horley severely. “To think of all the trouble and expense your godmama’s gone to—why, she will think you downright ungrateful!”