The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  The marquess opened his mouth to explain about the fake Lady Cecily and closed it again. “I don’t know,” he said, and before either ward or countess could reply, he strode away across the polished ballroom floor.

  He refused to think. His mind was a numb blank. He ordered his carriage and stood impatiently on the red-carpeted steps under the striped awning, waiting for it to be brought around. It had started to snow again, great white flakes drifting past the globes of gaslight from the streetlamps. “She should have come on the hunt,” he thought suddenly. “It didn’t snow on Saturday.” And then his mind went blank again.

  It was only when he walked into his town house and into his small sitting room and looked around at the bright flowers and new curtains and crackling fire that he realized that in some mad way he had dreamed of bringing her back with him. If she had been there, which she had not.

  For whoever she was, she was not Lady Cecily Trevelyn. She was a liar and an imposter, and he had told her he could abide neither. So he would never see her again.

  Which was just as well.

  Wasn’t it?…

  Sally sat in a first-class compartment, waiting for the train to Bath to leave the station. She was dressed as Aunt Mabel once more. Mr. Barton’s instructions had been short and precise after he had read the letter from the duchess, threatening to visit Aunt Mabel’s sickbed. Sally was to return to Banjahar and rid herself of the duchess once and for all, and Mr. Barton did not care how she did it.

  At first Sally had protested, but Mr. Barton had held firm. She was by now too valuable an asset to risk exposure. Sally had thought of little else but the marquess since she had returned to London, but with new maturity she felt sure that so long as she did not see him again, she would manage to get over him, or rather not suffer the longing and hurt with such intensity. Time, it is said, cures all, and Sally was prepared to grit her teeth and give it a lot of time. But now she would shortly be seeing him again.

  She had the compartment to herself. The train was about to leave any minute. Sally decided to indulge in her latest terrible vice. She opened her reticule cautiously and extracted a box of Turkish cigarettes. She had just lit one and was relaxing in her corner when the guard outside on the platform blew his whistle, and at the same time the compartment door was wrenched open and the Marquess of Seudenham tumbled in.

  He threw his portmanteau on the rack and turned and smiled down at the old lady in the corner, who was staring up at him through a cloud of smoke.

  “Aunt Mabel!” he exclaimed in surprise.

  Sally nervously stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray, burning her gloves in the process, and smiled weakly back. “My nerves, my lord,” she said, much flustered. Sally felt sure that little old ladies did not smoke cigarettes.

  He stood looking down at her thoughtfully for what seemed a very long time, and Sally dropped her eyes. Then he sank into the corner seat opposite. Sally became aware that the train had left the station.

  “So you are going to Banjahar,” he said lightly. “Good. We all need your advice.”

  “I am going for the last time, my lord,” said Sally. “It is really most inconvenient.”

  “Especially when you have been ill,” he said with warm sympathy. “You should not let Mother bully you. She doesn’t really need you for anything now. By the way, Miss Wyndham and Peter are engaged.”

  “Splendid!” said Sally without much enthusiasm. What was Hecuba to her or she to Hecuba? How could she share in Miss Wyndham’s joy when her own heart was breaking? “And what about you, my lord?” she could not resist asking.

  “Ah! That is a painful story. I am in love with an adventuress.”

  “Oh!”

  “Is that all you have to say, wise Aunt Mabel? Oh? Yes, I met a young lady at the ball who pretended to be Lady Cecily Trevelyn. I was quite enchanted. I proposed marriage. She refused. I pursued her to London and found the real Lady Cecily was someone entirely different. I shall probably never see her again, and I’m better off without her. I don’t like liars.”

  “Oh,” said Sally again in a dismal voice. After a silence punctuated by the rattling of the train wheels across the points, Sally said, “Perhaps this adventuress was not really so bad. I mean, did she steal anything?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then…”

  “Really, Aunt Mabel, one can carry understanding too far. Perhaps she meant to steal the family jewels. What other reason could she have for impersonating Lady Cecily?”

  “Perhaps she simply wanted to gate-crash the ball,” said Sally reasonably, although she did not feel at all reasonable.

  Fireworks seemed to be bursting all over her brain, and for the first time in her life she wondered if she were going to faint from excess of emotion, from warring feelings of hopelessness and elation.

  “She’s probably not worth bothering about,” said the marquess in a flat voice. “I must have been mad.”

  He took out a copy of the Times, shook out its crisp pages, and began to read.

  Sally stared sightlessly out at the white winter landscape. Damn and blast Aunt Mabel! She hated her. She hated the marquess for having taken all that precious love and for having thrown it so callously out of his mind.

  The newspaper rattled, and one blue eye peered at her around the edge of it.

  “I say, Aunt Mabel, I’m being awfully rude. Do you mind if I read the paper?”

  “Not at all,” said Sally in a dull voice. “It will take your mind off kissing and canoodling.”

  “Exactly.” He laughed, retreating behind the newspaper again.

  He was soon engrossed in a letter from a Colonel Henry Mapleson, who was complaining about the practice in the courts of kissing the Bible and cited the case of an eminent prima donna.

  “The Book, which was handed to her to kiss, was dirty and ill-smelling. Some days after, the lady in question was troubled with a rash on her mouth and chin, which finally affected her throat. The doctor pronounced it a malignant itch, and he felt no hesitancy in declaring it to have been transmitted to his patient through the foul Testament she had been compelled to kiss at the Court.”

  The Marquess read on, but somewhere in a corner of his brain a little voice nagged, “Kissing and canoodling.” That’s what Father said when he saw me kissing that impostor.

  He gave his head a slight shake and read the colonel’s summing up.

  “Witnesses in English Courts should take the law in their own hands and refuse to kiss filthy and unclean books, rather than run the risk of catching a cutaneous disease, or something worse.

  Your obedient servant,

  Henry Mapleson.”

  But it was strange that Aunt Mabel had used the same words. Perhaps… just perhaps… his mysterious lady had written to Aunt Mabel for advice.

  He lowered the paper slowly and stared curiously at Aunt Mabel. With a great roar and whoop the train plunged into a tunnel. It was a short one, and they were soon clattering out into the blinding white of the snowy countryside, which lit up Aunt Mabel’s face in sharp relief. How young her eyes were! And how remarkably like that girl’s! He was going mad. He was being haunted. He had a feeling that the love of his life was staring at him from behind a wrinkled mask. Then the embankment reared up outside the window, casting the compartment into shadow, and Aunt Mabel was once again very much Aunt Mabel.

  She lowered her eyes before his scrutiny and, opening her capacious reticule, took out a magenta-colored piece of knitting and proceeded to mangle away at it in a surprisingly inexpert manner.

  “What are you knitting?” asked the marquess.

  “A scarf,” said Sally, looking down hopefully at the wool in her hands and hoping that that was what it was supposed to be. Miss Frimp had insisted she take knitting with her. Just the right touch, Miss Frimp had said.

  “You’re not very good at it,” observed the marquess, watching her fumbling fingers dropping stitches. “Here, let me.”

  He held out his ha
nds, and Sally stared at him, aghast. “You can’t mean it!” she said. “You surely don’t know how to knit!”

  “Of course I do,” he said cheerfully. “My governess taught me when I was four, and I’ve never forgotten.” He took the mess of wool and needles from her nerveless fingers and studied it with interest.

  “I sometimes wonder if you are the sweet old lady you pretend to be,” he said, unaware of Sally’s start of alarm. “All ladies are supposed to be able to knit.”

  “I wish you would stop calling me old,” said Sally with some asperity. “I am not yet in my grave, and you are not exactly a spring lamb yourself.”

  “Tut-tut. Temper, temper. Look. I have to pull out these rows. It’s plain knitting. Very simple. Now, if you watch me…”

  “I don’t want to watch you,” said Sally pettishly. “You look stupid. Men don’t knit.”

  “Yes, they do. You should be grateful to me for enlarging your experience. And it’s no use glaring at me. I find this very therapeutic.”

  He proceeded to knit away expertly, the steel knitting needles flying in his long fingers.

  Sally gave a little gasp. The white, vacant face of the Honorable Freddie Stuart was staring in the door from the corridor. He screwed his monocle more firmly in his eye and opened the door.

  The marquess looked up with irritation. He found to his surprise that he did not want to be interrupted. He wanted to be alone with Aunt Mabel. He was about to analyze this strange feeling when he became aware at the same time that Freddie was goggling at him.

  “’Lo, Freddie,” said the marquess. “Still staying with us?”

  “Yes,” said Freddie, glaring openly at the knitting. “Been to see my doctor. Got pains in the tum-tum.”

  “Wife poisoning you again?” asked the marquess, deftly beginning another row.

  “No. Your father’s cook. Food’s a disgrace.”

  “Then, why don’t you take yourself off?” demanded the marquess crossly. “You’ve been with us for weeks and weeks.”

  Now, Freddie and his wife had made an art of living on anyone they could. Mostly they were moved on after a couple of weeks, but the duke and duchess had shown no sign of giving them their marching orders, and Freddie was prepared to put up with the worst cooking in the world just so long as it was free.

  “Never mind that,” said Freddie crossly. “What you knitting for?”

  “Because I like it,” said the marquess placidly.

  “It’s effeminate.”

  “Rubbish. I’m helping the war effort.”

  “What war?”

  “What a lot of stupid questions you do ask. Haven’t you got a compartment of your own? There’s a terrible draft and it’s either coming from that door, which you so stupidly left open, or it’s coming from your mouth, which is hanging open. So why don’t you be a good chap and shut both.”

  “It’s no use trying to insult me,” said Freddie.

  The marquess stopped his knitting and smiled nicely. “Oh, I found that out long ago. I shall put it in simple English. Go away. I want to be alone with Aunt Mabel. I love her madly.”

  Freddie turned his astonished gaze on Sally. “But she’s old enough to be your mother.”

  “Age is no barrier,” said the marquess placidly. He began to knit again.

  I have fallen in love with a madman, thought Sally wildly. He will turn out just like his father.

  Freddie backed out of the compartment. “Wait till I tell the fellows at the club,” he jeered.

  “Tell them,” said the marquess, “and I’ll tell them about you and Flossie Jenkins on Boat Race night. The things you can get up to in a punt. Dear me!”

  Freddie fled, slamming the compartment door.

  “Thank goodness,” said the marquess. “It’s snowing again. I don’t mean ‘thank goodness it’s snowing again.’ I mean ‘thank goodness I got rid of that idiot’.”

  “You were very rude,” said Sally severely. “What about my reputation?”

  “My dear Aunt Mabel! A Bible-bashing lady like yourself is above the petty sneers of the common man.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that you are eccentric?” asked Sally curiously.

  His fingers flew over the wool. “Eccentric? No. I’m a very ordinary chap. Oh, you mean the knitting? Well, it keeps my mind off that wretched girl I’m in love with, and I never really care what people think of me anyway.”

  He blinked before Sally’s sudden dazzling smile.

  As far as Sally was concerned, he could knit until doomsday. He had said he loved her.

  “The train’s slowing,” she said, rubbing at the window with her hand. “Oh, dear!”

  “Oh, dear what?”

  “I can’t seem to see a thing.”

  He put down his knitting and leaned across her to look out through the cleared space she had made in the condensation on the glass.

  “It’s snowing a blizzard. What odd weather! It’s only the beginning of December. We don’t usually get weather like this until February. And this is one of the worst blizzards I can remember. Why don’t you join me in the dining car? It’s about time for lunch.”

  Sally gladly agreed, for his proximity as he leaned over her was doing strange things to her senses.

  They made their way along the corridor of the train, which was only creeping along through the roaring, blinding snowstorm.

  Sally felt suddenly shy as she faced the marquess across the small table, with its snowy napkin and little lace-covered table lamp, in the dining compartment. “I thought you would have your own carriage and dining room,” she said.

  “No. I don’t bother with that unless I’m taking a lot of guests down for the weekend. Now, we’re going to have a lot to drink and go back to the compartment and sleep like logs, because it’s going to take us absolutely hours to get to Bath.”

  So he ordered sherries for them before the meal, a good bottle of hock with the fish, a surprisingly excellent Château Lafite with the braised filet of mutton, a bottle of sauterne with the Nesselrode pudding, and port with the Stilton and he entertained Sally throughout the meal by inventing mad letters from fictitious readers and demanding her replies.

  The dining car gradually emptied, other passengers staring curiously at the giggling old lady and the handsome young man.

  When they finally went back to their compartment, the train gave a great protesting lurch, a high dismal whistle, and came to a stop.

  The marquess took out his handkerchief and rubbed the window. The train had stopped between the shelter of two high embankments.

  “Wait here,” said the marquess, “and I’ll find out what has happened.”

  After a short time he was back. “I’m afraid we can’t go any further. On the other side—out of the shelter of these embankments—the line’s completely blocked. There is no heating. We are stranded here until the storm stops and someone digs us out.”

  “What shall we do?” asked Sally.

  “Sleep,” he said curtly. He sat down beside her after lifting his heavy fur coat down from the rack. “We’ll put this over us and be snug as bugs.”

  He suited the action to the words and slid an arm around Sally with easy familiarity, feeling the little old lady’s body begin to tremble slightly.

  “You’re cold,” he said, rubbing her shoulders sympathetically while Sally bit back a moan. “There! Just lean back on my shoulder and you’ll soon be as warm as anything.”

  It was fortunate for Sally that she had drunk so much at lunchtime. Despite all the tumultuous and disturbing emotions his proximity aroused in her, Sally soon fell into a heavy sleep.

  The marquess held Aunt Mabel’s slim body against his own, feeling a surge of affection for this strange old lady who did not behave like an old lady at all, and who had an enchanting, infectious laugh, just like a young girl’s.

  He awoke briefly as a railway official came in to light the oil lamp, and then drifted off to sleep again, lulled by the noise of the storm.<
br />
  When he at last awoke completely it was to find that the storm had apparently ceased and that the train was slowly moving forward again.

  Faint smells of food were drifting in from the nearby dining car, and the marquess found to his amazement that he was feeling hungry again. His mouth felt dry and sour after all he had drunk at luncheon. He gave Aunt Mabel a little shake, and she came awake immediately, looking up at him through her spectacles with those large, youthful gray eyes, which were so like the eyes of the mysterious girl who had gate-crashed his mother’s home and had stolen nothing valuable except his heart.

  Dinner was a silent affair. The marquess’s senses seemed to be picking up a strange feeling of unease from Aunt Mabel, and he remembered that the old dear had had quite a crush on him on her visit and probably still had. Amazing! He wondered how old she was. She was so very, very wrinkled, and her skin had a dead and lifeless look. Only her eyes seemed young.

  By silent consent they drank very little at dinner. Neither felt like talking, and it was a very subdued pair who eventually returned to the compartment.

  The marquess resumed his knitting, and Sally asked him to lift down her suitcase for her, and, extracting a bundle of letters and a notebook, she proceeded to work on her correspondence.

  The train did not lurch into Bath station until one in the morning. The roads to the palace were blocked, and the inns and hotels were full. In despair, the marquess at last found a room for them at the Pelican, an old coaching inn on the outskirts of town, and returned to the station, where he had left Aunt Mabel in front of the fire in the ladies’ waiting room, to tell her the good news.

  “One room,” exclaimed Sally faintly.

  “I had to say you were my mother,” explained the marquess. “For Heaven’s Sake, behave like a sensible woman. We must have somewhere to sleep. I am tired and stiff, and I am damned if I am spending the night in this station.”

  “But surely they know your mother?”

  “No. New management. Hurry up and stop staring at me. We’ve got to walk, and it’s quite a way. I’ll help you as much as I can.”