by M C Beaton
In the drawing room, Sally was extremely alarmed when Miss Fleming pointed out that it was a miracle that none of these ladies turned out to have known the real Lady Cecily. This was a snag that Sally had not even considered, and so she lurked in Miss Fleming’s grim shadow, expecting at any moment to be exposed.
Apart from the Misses Guthrie, there were a number of good-looking girls with their hopeful mamas, and the Duchess was surrounded by quite a court of females trying to ingratiate themselves with Her Grace.
All the ladies were dressed in their best, and very few had learned that diamonds were considered vulgar in the country. Sally felt her dog collar of pearls, which had looked so handsome in the privacy of her bedroom, pale into insignificance beside the blaze of diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires.
At last they were joined by the gentlemen, and it transpired they were going to play charades.
By some sort of unspoken agreement, the ladies had decided to exclude Sally from the festivities, and Sally was too frightened of exposure to put herself forward. Therefore she had the doubtful pleasure of watching the marquess playing Romeo to Dolly Guthrie’s Juliet and thought sourly that these silly, childish games would go on forever. But at last the charades were over, and the guests were urged to give an impromptu concert. Again the Guthrie girls were to the fore, singing selections from Gilbert and Sullivan with weak, little voices and amazing aplomb.
The evening was saved for Sally by the Honorable Freddie. Screwing his monocle in his eye, he announced, despite groans of protest, that he was going to recite.
Undeterred by his wife’s loud and acid comments, he rose to his feet, cleared his throat, and declared, “I am going to recite one of the finest and most moving bits of poetry I’ve ever read. It’s by a Scotch scribe-chappie called William McGonagall, entitled, “The Tay Bridge Disaster.”
“He’s got to go. He’s really got to go,” observed Mrs. Stuart to the world at large, but with the exception of Sally, they thought his wife meant he had simply to leave the room, whereas Sally alone knew that Mrs. Stuart meant leave the planet.
The guests politely listened to the first verse in amazement and then began to talk loudly and rudely among themselves. William McGonagall was, after all, an acquired taste. That Victorian poet never troubled his head with meter or form. As long as each line of verse rhymed somehow with the one before it, he was perfectly happy and expected his readers to feel the same way.
Only Sally and the marquess moved slightly forward to listen in awe to the Honorable Freddie’s rendering.
By the time they converged at the end of the room near the fireplace, which served as the “stage,” Freddie was declaiming the third verse.
“But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remembered for a very long time.”
* * *
Sally suddenly felt the marquess’s eye upon her and was overcome by a desire to giggle. Behind them in the room, the guests chattered on regardless. In front of them, Freddie was giving the “Tay Bridge Disaster” his heart and soul.
At last he reached the final stanza.
“It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly and without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.”
* * *
“Remove me from here,” muttered Sally to the marquess in a stifled voice, her face buried in her handkerchief.
He nodded and piloted her out deftly through the guests and into the great, shadowy hall. “Lady Cecily,” he said severely, “you are incorrigible.”
“I can’t help it,” wailed Sally, laughing till the tears ran down her face. “It was so awfully funny, and there was Mrs. Stuart plotting like mad to poison her husband.”
“Oh, nonsense!” said the marquess. “She may look like that sometimes, but Mrs. Stuart is very fond of Freddie—in her fashion. Oh, do stop laughing, or you’ll start me off. Come here, and I’ll dry your eyes.”
He pulled her gently toward him, and Sally stopped laughing and stared up at him, wide-eyed. The hall was suddenly very quiet as he looked down at her in dawning surprise, dawning awareness, a clean handkerchief forgotten in his hand.
The great hall was only lit by two oil lamps. Outside, the snow whispered against the windows. A voice, louder than the rest, in the drawing room sounded out very near the door.
He is going to kiss me, thought Sally wildly. He only likes girls with a bit of vice in them. I must encourage him….
Closing her eyes, and summoning up all her reserves of courage, she put her arms around his neck.
The blue eyes above hers gleamed with a wicked light, and she closed her own. His lips descended on hers, at first surprisingly warm and boyish and innocent.
Then the very adult emotions behind his lips took over, and in one moment Sally lost her emotional virginity. She had often thought of some man who would hold hands with her and kiss her and then—naturally—marry her; some sort of cosy extension of a school friend. But never had she imagined anything like this sinking, burning, melting feeling. She never wanted to let go. She wanted it to go on forever and ever, his lips burning against her own while the clocks in the hall ticked busily in the background, the enormous log fire crackled on the hearth, and the snow whispered urgently against the windowpanes.
“Oh, I can’t bear it! I just can’t bear it! It should be me. Me and Rose. Oh, Rose.”
“Damn and double bloody damn!” said the marquess, releasing Sally so abruptly that she nearly fell, and swinging around.
Unnoticed by both of them, the duke had been slumped in a high wing chair in the shadows, a little bit away from the fire.
“Oh, go to bed, Father,” snapped the marquess, exasperated.
“It’s all right for you,” mumbled the duke sulkily. “Kissing and canoodling with all and sundry.”
Poor Sally. One bare moment ago she had felt as if all the love songs and all the romance in the world had been centered in her small body. And now it all withered and died before that “canoodling with all and sundry.”
She gave the marquess a shaky little good night and fled up the stairs, only realizing when she was in the safety of her room that she had left the field clear open to the other ladies. Oh, dear! What did he think of her? Did he think her fast? Did he think of her at all?
The evening was made worse by the arrival of Miss Fleming, who reported that the party was now playing children’s games, and that in blind-man’s buff, the marquess had seized Dolly Guthrie around the waist. Furthermore she, Miss Fleming, wondered what the youth of today was coming to.
If he gives me a cold look tomorrow, thought Sally desperately, then I shall leave.
But the next day, the marquess was nowhere to be seen. It transpired that he had gone to Bath to conduct some business having to do with his father’s estates. Sally was immediately cast down. She would not have gone anywhere for any reason. Therefore he didn’t think of her. Therefore what was the use? She was worried, miserable, hurt, and rejected. But she could not leave.
The snow had stopped falling and lay deep and crisp and even over the landscape. The stone tigers on the steps waved their snowy paws ridiculously in the air. More guests began to arrive. Servants bustled backward and forward
throughout the great house. Soon an orchestra could be heard rehearsing the inevitable waltz, and Sally’s misery soon changed to an almost sick feeling of excitement as the hour of the ball drew nearer. In her heart of hearts, she knew that this was to be her one and only night. She could not stay for the meet in the morning. Lady Cecily would need to return to London and change into Sally Blane, who would then need to transform herself into Aunt Mabel and return to the palace, sitting with rubber wrinkled hands folded while the love of her life no doubt got down on one knee and proposed to another female.
Miss Fleming and Sally helped each other dress, and both were ready a full half hour before it was time to descend to the ballroom.
“How do I look?” asked Sally breathlessly.
“Very well,” said Miss Fleming gruffly. “Very well indeed.”
Privately she thought Sally looked very dainty and pretty. Her white silk ball gown had a deep décolletage and was tied with jaunty bows like little wings on the shoulders. It was swept back in a small bustle, and the hem was thickly encrusted with pearls and silver thread.
Her proud little head rose above the collar of pearls. “I bought you something,” said Miss Fleming. “How could I have forgotten! Wait a minute.”
She rummaged in a large portmanteau and came up with a long silver box, which she opened. Out came a delicate spray of white silk roses, and, brushing aside Sally’s stammered thanks, Miss Fleming proceeded to arrange them deftly in the glossy coronet of Sally’s hair.
Miss Fleming herself looked very imposing in purple taffeta edged with sable. “It’s begun to snow again,” she said, looking out of the window. “No hunt tomorrow.”
“Oh, then we could stay another day!” cried Sally.
Miss Fleming shook her feathered head. “Why prolong the agony?” she said with a shrug. “Just think, Sally. I mean, he’s not going to forgive you if you tell him the truth. To think anything else is sheer fantasy.”
A mulish look crossed Sally’s pretty face, and she compressed her lips tightly.
This was to be Sally’s first ball. There was surely nothing else quite so exciting in a young girl’s life as that first descent into the ballroom down the red-carpeted stairs, with the major-domo calling her name like the recording angel from the landing above. As Sally moved sedately down, the mixed smell of hothouse flowers, perfume, powder, macassar oil, cigars, wine, and French cooking rose to meet her like some heady incense burned before the altar of vanity fair.
To Sally’s dismay there was no sign of the marquess. Worse—her little silver dance card with its elegant silver pencil was being filled up quickly. In despair, she dived behind a pillar and wrote the name Mr. Grumpit in the space for the supper dance and in the space for the last dance.
She danced and danced, trying to convince herself that she was having a marvelous time, while all the while her large eyes stared over her partners’ shoulders, hoping to see the marquess arrive.
And then all at once he was there. Sally had just finished a noisy set of the lancers with Peter Firkin when she found the marquess at her elbow, sleek and groomed and elegant in evening dress. She looked up and caught the glow in his eyes, and all her worries melted away.
The marquess had indeed thought about Sally quite a lot, but in a much simpler and less agonized way than Sally had thought about him. As far as he was concerned, he had enjoyed kissing her and meant to do it again, as soon as possible.
He frowned over her card. “Curst snow,” he muttered. “Every single dance taken.”
Sally smiled up at him. “I think I could persuade Mr. Grumpit to let you have his dances.”
His face lit up with laughter, and he wrote his name quickly over the fictitious Mr. Grumpit’s. “I’m sure Mr…. er… Grumpit won’t mind at all,” he said. “In fact, this is the supper dance, and I am going to take you onto the floor right now, just in case such a person actually exists.”
“Now, you don’t think I made him up?” teased Sally, too happy to be embarrassed as she felt his gloved hand at her waist.
He piloted her expertly through the swirling dancers. “No, of course you didn’t make him up,” he said. “I can see Mr. Grumpit now. He has a gray mustache and a monocle…”
“And a red face.” said Sally, laughing.
“And he loves you very much.”
Sally pretended to be shocked. “Mr. Grumpit loves his wife,” she protested.
“Nonsense. He is burning with a secret passion, and having kissed you once, wants to kiss you again.”
“Are we talking about Mr. Grumpit?” asked Sally, suddenly breathless.
He smiled down into her flushed face and held her closer. “Of course,” he murmured. “And you must never kiss anyone but Mr. Grumpit, for he is very jealous.”
Sally swayed in his arms, deaf and blind to everything else. All at once a small hope began to grow in her mind. Perhaps she could tell him the truth after all. While they were at supper.
Now, supper should have been a romantic occasion, seated at one of the many little tables in the candlelight, snow falling outside the long windows, firelight joining the candlelight on the painted walls, but it wasn’t. Perhaps it was because the marquess seemed distracted; perhaps it was because Sally was tense, summoning up courage to tell him the truth; or perhaps simply because the palace food was up to its usual standard. Sally wondered desperately where the delicious smell of French cooking had been coming from. The staff dinner?
Everything on her plate seemed to be a hundred years old, from the stale lobster patties to the tough and athletic quail.
At last the marquess turned his blue gaze on her. “I’m afraid we will have no meet tomorrow, Lady Cecily,” he said. “It’s snowing much too hard.”
Sally looked up at him from under her long eyelashes. “Would you be very shocked if I told you I did not know how to ride?” she asked abruptly.
“Well, it’s a hypothetical question, since I have had ample evidence that you can ride beautifully. But, yes, of course I would be very much shocked. For it would mean you had lied to me. I cannot bear to be lied to. There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than someone who pretends to be other than they are. It’s getting away from the subject of riding a bit, but there was this chap once came to stay here. Father had met him at his club. Said his name was James Harrison, the famous African explorer. Well, he stayed and stayed and stayed. He was always waiting for ‘his man to arrive with funds,’ and Mother ordered Worthing—the secretary, you know—to let him have ready cash when he needed it. He never seemed to want to talk of his adventures.
“’Oh, you don’t want to hear me boring on about Africa,’ he would say. He was very charming and witty, and everyone adored him. The ladies did, anyway, and, as for Mother, she was simply enchanted. But then various little objects began to disappear: a piece of china here and a miniature there. Mother suddenly became suspicious and hired a private detective. It turned out that this chap was actually called Harry Snyder, a well-known confidence trickster. I was all for having him arrested, but Father and Mother—well, typical—they didn’t want anyone to know how they had been tricked, and so he got away with it.
“But I tell you this.” He leaned across the table, gazing into Sally’s wide and startled eyes. “If I ever come across another one, another fake, male or female, I’ll simply call the police, no matter who it is…. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” asked Sally, hurriedly lowering her eyes.
“I don’t know, almost as if you were about to say good-bye to me.” He gave a light laugh. “You make me feel as if I am standing on a liner, watching you on the shore.”
“If you will forgive me for saying so,” said Sally, “I think your cook is a confidence trickster.”
“Pretty awful, isn’t it?” he said, and Sally was glad that her statement about the cook had stopped the marquess from looking at her so intently.
He began to tell her a series of amusing anecdotes about the palace
cook, and Sally hardly heard a word.
She could never tell him her real identity now. All she had was this one evening. She would not even come back as Aunt Mabel. Better to make a clean break.
“You’re not listening to a word I’m saying.”
Sally looked at him in dismay. “I’m—sorry,” she stammered. “I—I w-was th-thinking of something else.”
“You know,” he said, looking at her curiously, “I keep feeling there’s some dark mystery about you. Never mind. Your turn to do the talking. Tell me about Africa.”
Sally blushed red, thinking of the confidence trickster. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “I had a bad time there.”
The strains of the music filtered into the supper room. “My next partner will be waiting for me,” said Sally, getting to her feet. She was all at once glad to escape. She looked glad to escape, and by now the marquess’s interest was definitely caught. Women were not in the habit of fleeing from him.
He found himself becoming more and more intrigued by the minute with Lady Cecily.
Sally wondered whether she should run away before the last dance, but the thought of being held in the marquess’s arms one more time was too much for her. And so at last she was being held by him as they moved to the sugar-sweet strains of The Merry Widow waltz. Sally forced the days ahead out of her mind. Only this moment existed. Nothing was real for her but the tall man who held her closely against him. Faces were a blur, gowns and jewels a swirling colored background to her happiness. She had never felt so elated in her life before. At last the magic dance was over. Faces swam back into focus: Mrs. Stuart with her eyes glittering strangely as she looked at her husband; the duchess, fatigued; Miss Wyndham and Peter Firkin standing shoulder to shoulder and looking radiant; and the duke, morose. And there was Miss Fleming waiting to tell Cinderella that the ball was over and it was time to turn into Aunt Mabel again.
Sally stood next to the marquess as the orchestra played the National Anthem. As the last chord was struck he whispered to her, “Let’s go for a walk in the snow,” and with shining eyes, Sally nodded her head.