“We’ll say what we’ve always said, that Valerie lived with my brother in Ascain, where she perfected her French while he recovered his health. With so many young ladies venturing to France or Germany for a continental polish, I doubt anyone will think twice about it.”
“But what happens if Valerie reveals the true depths of her French polish by forgetting herself?”
Valerie was about to forget her polish by telling Dorothy that her double-breasted coat made her look fat, but she bit her tongue, refusing to prove she couldn’t mind her words in polite company. She also hated to admit, even to herself, that Dorothy’s low opinion wasn’t too far off the mark. It wasn’t her fault. It was Father’s and Mavis’s. The bitch. Why couldn’t her stepmother have stayed under whatever rock she’d crawled beneath after Valerie’s supposed half brother Tristan’s birth? Instead she’d chosen now of all times to flaunt her new marriage, as if the last one hadn’t been a disaster and an endless source of drawing room tittle-tattle. The reporter hadn’t failed to mention Mavis’s connection to the Chamberlains and Valerie. She was surprised people hadn’t brought that up last night along with all their fond memories of Father’s pranks.
“If Vivien Mosley can come out with little more than a sideways glance or two, then we have nothing to fear.” Aunt Anne banged the stack of invitations against the table and handed them to Miss Leaf.
Dorothy flicked drops of coffee off her spoon and laid it in the saucer. “A few old hoaxes do pale in comparison to Vivien’s father and his British Union of Fascists starting a riot in the East End.”
At least Valerie didn’t have to live that down on top of her many other real and imagined sins. “May I be excused?” She’d had enough of her cousin’s fretting for one day.
“Of course. Try and get some rest before the luncheon,” Aunt Anne encouraged.
Valerie slid the Daily Herald off the table and left, but Dorothy’s voice made her pause outside the door.
“Extra etiquette lessons might be in order, especially before the King and Queen come to dine. We don’t want Valerie to embarrass us in front of such esteemed guests.”
“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s doing her best and still has a great deal to learn, far more than you did at her age. She hasn’t enjoyed your advantages.”
Valerie didn’t wait for Dorothy’s response but stormed into the Pillared Drawing Room, pausing in the center to look at the photograph of Mavis. What Father had seen in that scullery maid’s daughter she didn’t know, but if her picture could send Dorothy into a tizzy about Valerie’s past, she could imagine what Lady Ashcombe and Lady Elmswood were mumbling into their teas about it.
Valerie crushed the paper between her palms and tossed it in the wastebasket beside the writing desk, the portrait of Sir Robert Walpole above the fireplace watching her. She stormed into the Blue Drawing Room. On state occasions, it and the adjoining drawing rooms served as a ballroom. This morning it was quiet, the cushions on the gilded chairs and sofas still fluffed from the maid’s diligent work. By the end of the day they’d be flattened by Aunt Anne and Dorothy chatting together before Aunt Anne hosted one of her regular At Homes. Valerie and Mavis had never been so cordial with one another. Valerie’s mother hadn’t been in her life long enough to leave her with such warm memories, vanishing shortly after Valerie’s birth for reasons no one cared to explain. Father used to go red in the face whenever she’d asked him about it, demanding she forget the woman. Aunt Anne had been more polite but vague with her answers and quick to change the subject. What little Valerie knew came from overheard whispers about a new husband, a house in Ireland, and the wild spending of a trust Valerie might one day enjoy a share in. Valerie’s mother was as taboo a subject as Tristan’s true paternity, but it didn’t matter. She hadn’t been there for her when she’d needed her the most. Few people had.
She fingered the porcelain Chelsea shepherdess figurine on the mantel, one of the many from Great-Grandmother’s collection spread throughout No. 10. Cousin Frank had broken the matching shepherd years ago, leaving the shepherdess alone between the carriage clock and a set of bronze candlesticks. Aunt Anne had never matched her with any of the other companionless figurines. Valerie wondered what about this one in her pink-flowered dress and bare feet made her unworthy of a companion.
Like me. Father, Mavis, the girls at the French convent school, the Mother Superior, and Mr. Shoedelin had scorned her, and she’d never done anything to deserve it, except one thing, but that wasn’t her fault. She prayed Aunt Anne would never notice whatever it was about her that had driven everyone who ever should have loved or cared about her away. Aunt Anne’s derision would crush her.
Tears stung her eyes as she walked into the White Drawing Room. She jerked to a halt when Mary rose from where she’d been kneeling to clean the fireplace.
“Good morning, Miss de Vere Cole,” the maid greeted in her thick northern accent. She, like all the upstairs staff, had come with Valerie’s aunt and uncle from their house in Edgbaston near Birmingham. The government paid for everything on the ground floor that involved official business, but the family maintained the upper spaces, including the first-floor drawing and dining rooms and the second-floor bedrooms. Aunt Anne and Uncle Neville could afford the household expected of a prime minister. Father hadn’t been able to afford a house with proper floors in the end, having died of a heart attack in a derelict cottage in Honfleur.
“Good morning, Mary,” Valerie forced through a smile before hurrying out of the room and up the stairs to her bedroom. Usually she’d chat with the woman, keen to hear the society gossip the servants loved to collect. They relished a jolly good scandal more than Madame Freville, the landlady in Ascain, had. It’d turn Dorothy’s hair gray if she ever discovered how much Valerie had learned about English and Parisian society from that old woman and the servants. Valerie didn’t have the stomach for it today, afraid to inadvertently hear something about herself.
The family’s private rooms on the second floor were quiet except for the low rumble of buses driving down Whitehall that made the crystals in the wall sconces rattle. It was a far cry from the hotel in Ascain, where she used to hear the bawdy calls of prostitutes on the street outside. The walls were painted pale blue, and the plush red carpet made visiting the loo in the middle of the night far more pleasant than it’d been at the convent school. Aunt Anne had insisted on the second-floor remodel after Uncle Neville had taken office two years ago. The White Drawing Room had been converted from a boudoir into a public room, Aunt Anne having no desire for Uncle Neville’s secretaries, who thought nothing of interrupting dinners and lunches, catching her in a dressing gown.
In Valerie’s room, a small desk and a stuffed chair were situated in front of the window overlooking the No. 10 garden and the Horse Guards parade grounds over the back wall. A narrow bed stood against the far side of the room and was draped with a fine down comforter in Aunt Anne’s favorite shade of pale pink. The furnishings were simple but the best she’d ever enjoyed, and a far cry from the sagging bed in the Hotel Etchola where she used to read Alice in Wonderland while Father and Mavis screamed at one another in the sitting room.
Valerie opened the scratched and battered dispatch box on the desk. Uncle Neville had given her the cast-off red and brass box to keep her copies of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass in. Both books had been a rare gift from Father during her time in Cambridge, and two of the few items he hadn’t hocked when things had turned dire. She lifted Alice in Wonderland out and traced the fancifully wrought title with one manicured finger before flipping it open to Sir John Tenniel’s fine illustrations. The one of Alice in her sweet dress and clean pinafore having tea with the Mad Hatter and his friends was her favorite. Valerie used to wish for pretty clothes and a fine house like Alice’s. Except Alice wasn’t home in this illustration but sitting at a table and as exhausted by the stupidity around her as Valerie used to be by Father and Mavis’s endless fights.
&nbs
p; We’re all mad here.
She snapped the book closed, about to set it in the box when the stack of letters bound in string at the bottom made her pause. They’d been among Father’s few sad possessions at the time of his death. Mr. Shoedelin had sent them to Valerie at the convent, then forwarded the rest of his effects to Aunt Anne. She laid the book on the leather blotter and lifted out the envelopes, turning the cheap and stiff paper over in her hands. The flaps were wrinkled and curled from having been opened too many times, and Father’s last address in Honfleur had faded, almost illegible, but it didn’t matter. The sheer number of them had committed the address to her memory, along with the pleading and desperation dripping from every word.
Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse, her father used to drunkenly slur through his graying mustache whenever Valerie had begged him to do something to earn money to pay Madame Freville and the other creditors or to buy food and clothes. Nothing lasts, everything breaks, everything fades.
Useless pessimist. She tossed the letters and the book inside the box and slammed the lid closed, itching to knock the red thing off the desk. The entire first floor would come rushing up to see what was wrong if she did. As far as they were concerned everything was fine, nothing had ever been wrong. Even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t tell anyone the full truth about France, not if she expected to stay here.
She opened the desk drawer and pushed aside the fine stationery, embossed with her name, that Great-Aunt Lillian had given her for Christmas. She fished out the Buckingham Palace fork hidden underneath and rubbed her thumb over the cool metal tines, gently warming them. Some footman had polished it to perfection before Dinah had convinced her to pinch it.
No one wants to associate with crass young ladies and they certainly don’t want their daughters or sons befriending them either. You’ll find yourself quite the outcast if you carry on like this. Dorothy’s warning echoed through the quiet room before the calls of the Horse Guards galloping in formation caught her attention. The riders in their red uniforms sitting atop their various-colored mounts were a stark contrast to the packed dirt of the parade grounds just over the Downing Street back wall.
Mavis and Father were why Dorothy and people like Lady Ashcombe looked down on her.
That’s going to change this Season. She’d come to London to put France behind her and to prove to everyone she was a proper young lady worthy of the respect due the Premier’s niece. She wouldn’t allow anyone, not Father’s ghost or her awful stepmother, to ruin this chance to claim the life she would’ve had if Father hadn’t frittered it away. She’d hesitated last night at Buckingham Palace. She refused to do it again and see herself sunk before the Season truly began.
Chapter Three
Valerie crept down the curving Grand Staircase of No. 10, past the portraits of the previous Prime Ministers arranged on the cream wall in order of their terms. The ground floor was a flurry of activity, the clerks and secretaries who normally greeted her with cheerful smiles passing with curt nods, heels banging against the carpet covering the corridor outside the offices and Cabinet Room. Even Mr. Rucker and Mr. Seyer’s usual laughter from the Senior Private Secretaries’ Office was replaced by low murmurs and the tinny ring of phones. The dreadful seriousness was a stark contrast to last night’s pomp and ceremony. Aunt Anne had assured her there was nothing about the German invasion of Czechoslovakia for her to worry about, but the grave faces down here made her wonder.
At least with all this activity, the government staff wasn’t likely to notice her leaving. No one upstairs would miss her either, so long as she was back in time to dress for the luncheon. If Dorothy knew where Valerie was off to, she’d have another panicky fit about Valerie’s behavior. One would think a married woman with two children wouldn’t be so easily shocked, but one would be wrong. Valerie had no desire to discover what Aunt Anne thought of this, and if she were sensible she’d march back upstairs and take her time preparing for the luncheon, but she couldn’t. There was little she could do about people associating her with Father, but she could darn well stop Mavis from besmirching her already fragile reputation or reminding them about France. The last thing she needed was anyone asking too many questions or discovering details about her life in Ascain that were better left buried there.
“Good morning, Miss de Vere Cole,” Miss Marian Holmes, one of the No. 10 typists, greeted. She wore a simple brown dress with buttons on the front and a sensible green sweater that complemented her businesslike manner. “What brings you down here this morning?”
So much for slipping out unnoticed. Valerie should’ve known better, the young woman never missed anything. She was one of the Garden Room Girls who worked under the watchful eye of Mrs. Margaret Stenhouse. When the house was quiet, Valerie could sometimes hear the bells ringing to summon the typists upstairs to take dictation for the Prime Minister and his staff.
“I wanted to see how Uncle Neville is holding up.” It was partly the truth. His gout had been bad enough before the trouble with Germany had forced him into early morning cabinet meetings and late-night question sessions in the Commons. It must be torturing him now.
“He’s as you might imagine, with the state of things in Europe. We were here past eleven last night and will be again before this is settled.” Miss Holmes shifted the stack of files in the crook of her arm and pushed her curled hair behind her ear, revealing the dark circles beneath her eyes. “Mrs. Stenhouse is already preparing beds for us and the secretaries in case we miss the last buses. Even the Premier accepted phone calls well after dinner last night.”
“Are things in Europe really so bad?” Uncle Neville had spent most of his life serving the people of England, first as a Member of Parliament for Birmingham, then as Minister of Health and Chancellor of the Exchequer, but his dedication rarely extended past seven P.M.
Miss Holmes’s eyes went wide in surprise. “Don’t you know?”
Valerie cursed not having slipped out of the house and through the garden. It’d be a great deal less embarrassing to climb the Horse Guards wall than admit she knew so little about world events. “I didn’t have a chance to properly read the newspapers this morning.”
Not exactly the truth. The Times hadn’t been as tempting as the Tatler, and Aunt Anne hardly encouraged her to read beyond the married, birthed, and buried sections.
“I see.” Miss Holmes nodded with the same understanding Madame Freville had shown when Valerie had innocently asked about the women lingering outside the Hotel Etchola in Ascain. The landlady had matter-of-factly broadened Valerie’s education the same way Miss Holmes was about to do. “Herr Hitler invading Czechoslovakia crushed the peace Mr. Chamberlain worked so hard to secure in Munich last September, and Mr. Churchill is blustering on in the Commons about the Premier being naïve enough to trust the Germans and demanding that something be done, as if the Premier is hunting at Chequers instead of working himself to the bone to find a solution, which is more than that old bulldog has done.”
“Good morning, Miss de Vere Cole.” Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer, approached. “Miss Holmes.”
“Good morning, sir.” Miss Holmes’s pale cheeks went red at being caught voicing her opinion. Garden Room Girls took dictation. They didn’t share their thoughts.
“Congratulations on your presentation, Miss de Vere Cole. It’s quite an honor and an achievement,” Sir John offered, his chin stiff above his starched collar and the lapels of his immaculate suit. Valerie imagined his attire would be a great deal more disheveled by the end of the long day. “Everything is open to you, or it soon will be. You must enjoy it while you can.”
“While I can?” What did he know about Germany that Miss Holmes didn’t?
“Before the heavy responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, of course.” He ran his hand over his bald head bounded by white hair and offered a tight smile. “If you’ll excuse me.”
He strode off to the Cabinet Anteroom, sidestepping Mr. Rucker hurrying out of it.
Marriage and motherhood. What a thought. Valerie could barely keep the constant stream of government and society people straight, much less contemplate managing a household and children. Maybe someday, but not this Season. If she ever hoped to attract a man worth his salt, her reputation must be solid, and not undermined by Father’s and Mavis’s pasts, or her own.
“Congratulations on your presentation. What an honor to curtsey before the King and Queen.” Miss Holmes clutched the files to her chest with a dreamy sigh, looking more like a girl Valerie’s age than the talented typist much in demand by the ministers and secretaries. The winsome expression lasted for a second before she faced Valerie with the usual directness the men appreciated, eyeing her yellow dress covered with a fine blue overcoat. “Where are you off to today?”
Valerie adjusted her felt hat and hoped her hair didn’t frizz while she was out. There wouldn’t be time to redo it when she returned. “To visit an old friend.”
My, the lies were piling up this morning.
“Really?” Miss Holmes leaned back to peer down the long central corridor to the black-lacquered front door and the sidelights with a view of the street. “The car and driver aren’t out front.”
The woman didn’t miss anything. “I didn’t call them. I’m going to take the bus.”
Miss Holmes drew back in horror, like Dorothy after Valerie’s candid assessment of Mavis. “The Premier’s niece can’t ride the bus. What will people say?”
That Dorothy was right about my ignorance of social graces.
“I’ll call the car for you.” Miss Holmes set the files on the second secretary’s desk and picked up the black phone, tapping the receiver to alert the switchboard operator. “Please tell Mr. May to bring the car around for Miss de Vere Cole.”
The Last Debutantes Page 3