The Last Debutantes

by Georgie Blalock

  “Singles?” Richard suggested to Valerie.

  “I see I’m to be left out again.” Dinah winked at Valerie and left the court, taking a chair beside Elm, who slouched in the wrought-iron seat, making the front of his white jumper crumple. He appeared as Valerie felt, as if all this joy were a little too much to endure.

  Valerie served, she and Richard racing across their sides to send the ball back and forth over the net. The hard breathing and physical activity calmed her more than the cocktails after last night’s dinner.

  Richard wasn’t as agile as Elm but he was solid, hitting the ball with enough force to make Valerie’s racket rattle in her hand. He wore a long-sleeved jumper with stripes along the collar, the deep V of it showing off the solid chest beneath. White pants accentuated the length of his legs and the slenderness of his waist. Elm looked like a mannequin in his tennis clothes, while Richard was more a sporting man, his breathing matching the quick darting back and forth as he chased the ball, giving Valerie a good run until his final shot sent the ball over the net and past her racket.

  “I win.” He held up his arms in victory. “It must’ve been Elm pulling my game down.”

  Elm raised his half-empty glass to Richard. “I bring down a great many people in a great many situations. You have only to ask my father to know that.”

  “We both must’ve been awful partners, judging by how well they played alone.” Dinah poured Valerie a lemonade as she and Richard joined them at the table.

  “Father been at you again?” Richard gulped down his drink.

  Elm swirled the ice in his glass. “When isn’t he?”

  “Well, he isn’t here to bother you, so cheer up. You don’t want to be a right gloomy specter at the ball tonight. I hear the Churchills spared no expense on this little affair.”

  “A swan song deserves a lofty venue.”

  “Hardly a swan song,” Dinah challenged.

  “Mark my words. There won’t be another evening like tonight again.”

  “You haven’t even seen it yet and you’re already calling the game.”

  “Anyone who’s been paying attention can see it.” Elm pushed up straight in the chair and leaned hard on the table toward Dinah. “You think these families can go on with this pointless frippery when the world is about to come crashing down around us? They can’t spend in this vulgar manner, not in front of the masses.”

  “Elm, a man of the people,” Richard good-naturedly jeered. “What brought that about? You don’t usually bother with the lower orders.”

  “You make me sound like a callous sod.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “A sod, maybe, but far from callous. I care a great deal about my valet and groom. I couldn’t live without either man.”

  “How magnanimous of you.” Richard laughed, but it wasn’t his usual deep and throaty one. “What about you girls? How will you dress yourselves when your lady’s maids are pressed into war work?”

  “I already dress myself most of the time.” That garnered Valerie an impressed cock of the head from Richard.

  “I suppose I’ll have to learn, but I welcome the challenge,” Dinah said. “After all, it can’t be any harder than learning to drive.”

  “It’s tedious as hell,” Elm drawled. “But I suppose it’s the smallest of the sacrifices we’ll have to make when our valets are killed in battle.”

  A bird dipped over the tennis court, the calls of it and others back and forth between the trees loud in the long quiet.

  “Shall we go in? It’s nearly time to dress.” Dinah stood and brushed bits of grass off her skirt. “Perhaps I’ll do it myself simply to show you I can.”

  “No need to preen on my account.” Elm walked with Dinah back to the house, leaving Richard and Valerie to follow.

  “What’s wrong with Elm? Too many martinis last night?”

  “Too much father before we left. He’s always like this after the old man gets at him. I suspect his mother had a word or two with him too.”

  “About what?”

  Richard flicked the racket strings with his finger. “His station and the responsibilities that come with it. She’s been quite keen on the subject lately.”

  “I see.” It was the polite way to tell Valerie that Elm’s mother had warned him off of her. It shouldn’t matter, it was hardly a surprise, but she was tired of yet another person thinking she didn’t measure up even when she was doing everything expected of her.

  “Congratulations on your efforts on behalf of Tientsin. My mother happily contributed.”

  “Thank her for her generosity.” His compliment meant more to her than the personal note of thanks she’d received from Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. “How are things at St. Thomas’s?”

  “Fine for the moment, but I won’t be there for much longer. I’ve joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. I’ll probably be assigned to the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital.”

  “Then you’ll stay in London.” At least he wouldn’t be in danger if fighting began, but eventually he might be, and she’d lose him like she might lose her friends and everything she’d built over the last few months.

  “Until I’m needed elsewhere.”

  “Wherever you go, stay safe.” She laid her hand on his arm, stopping them at the foot of the stairs. “You mean a great deal to me.”

  “Do I?”

  “You do.” In more ways than she could express.

  “No canoodling on the grounds, you two.” Dinah leaned over the stone railing at the top of the stairs. “You can do that at Blenheim. Plenty of dark garden walks for that sort of thing.”

  Valerie wasn’t sure whether to giggle or die of embarrassment. This was no time to lose her heart or her head. She let go of Richard and bounded up the stairs. Elm met her at the top, walking beside her as they ambled toward the house.

  “Aren’t you tired of it all?” Elm shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “The showmanship and trumped-up ideas about what’s important and who everyone is supposed to be, when it’s lies underneath. It makes me sick. I wish war would come and get me away from it.”

  “There’s a cure far worse than the disease, but I understand what you mean.” She was pretending she was fine while suffering from everything her mother had said and all that’d happened in Ascain. “Except we can’t leave. This is where we are and what we’re supposed to do. People expect certain things of us and we can’t disappoint them.”

  “They don’t mind disappointing us.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Then we must find a way out, be more than what they want us to be, marquises or cannon fodder.” He grabbed her by the hands and spun her around, making her dizzy. Then he jerked them to a halt, Valerie stumbling before his hands on her upper arms kept her steady. “Promise we’ll find a way to live on our own terms in our own way.”

  “I can’t promise that because it isn’t possible. The only thing we can do is find something more meaningful than this.”

  “You sound like Richard.”

  “He’s right.”

  “He doesn’t know half as much as he thinks he does.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shuffled off toward the enclosed courtyard with the pool.

  “Where’s he going?” Dinah asked from the doorway.

  “To think things through.”

  “There’s been a lot of that lately,” Richard said. “Give him time. He’ll come around. In the meantime, I believe you ladies must learn to dress without your maids.”

  “I assure you, the results will be shocking,” Dinah teased. The three of them entered the house, winding through it to reach the dark carved-wood main staircase beneath the high ceiling and Renaissance frescoes. They climbed it, passing the medieval figures carved into the banister. At the top of the stairs, Richard turned and headed toward the men’s rooms, leaving Dinah and Valerie alone.

  “Do you have time to chat before you dress?” Valerie was about to burst with the need to speak to her.

&
nbsp; “I’ve been wondering when you’d ask. You look as ghastly as Elm when you think no one’s looking.”

  “I saw my mother yesterday. I don’t have to wonder anymore about why she vanished.” Valerie told her about the meeting and the nasty things her mother had said, relieved to finally share it with someone.

  “My poor dear.” Dinah hugged her tight. “I never should’ve encouraged you to see her.”

  “I’m glad you did, because I finally know the truth.” Valerie screwed her eyes shut tight against the tears, as tired of crying as she was of hurting from the past. “She’s a bitch. I don’t know why I thought she wouldn’t be.”

  “Because you’re an optimist.” She let go of her, holding her at arm’s length. “It’s one of the things I adore about you. Despite everything, you always carry on. It’s more than most do.”

  “I’m tired of it, of struggling and fighting. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  Dinah laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “If you gave up, you’d be no better than your father or mother, and you don’t want to be like them.”

  “No, I don’t. Thank you for the reminder.”

  “I’m simply upholding my part of our pledge. You’d do the same for me.”

  “I would.” No matter how much it beat her down and exhausted her, she had to keep going through all the insults and snubs and the awful defeats, otherwise everyone who’d ever worked against her or thought so little of her would win.

  Aunt Anne came down the long hall dressed in a traveling frock of mauve with a row of brass buttons down the front.

  “You’re here.”

  “I arrived an hour ago.”

  “And you haven’t changed.” It wasn’t like Aunt Anne to be improperly dressed.

  “Do you have a moment? I need to speak with you.”

  If Aunt Anne wanted to have a chat, then Dorothy must have told her about their tiff, making her out to be the most wicked person in the world, or Aunt Anne had found out about the visit to her mother and wanted to know why Valerie had defied her. If Valerie hadn’t, it would’ve saved them both a great deal of grief.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then. No one should bother you in the drawing room. Everyone is too busy upstairs dressing.” Dinah pointed to a room just down the hall before heading off to her bedroom.

  Aunt Anne guided Valerie into the nearby drawing room lined with bookshelves in a much lighter wood than the entrance hall. The higher ceiling and brighter colors made it far less oppressive than the downstairs. Valerie and Aunt Anne sat on a light cream silk sofa near the tall windows overlooking the woods and sprawling lawns. The matching cream silk drapes framing them cascaded down either side before pooling on the hardwood floor.

  “I hate to burden you with this, but you’re far more levelheaded and calm than Dorothy.” Aunt Anne worried one of the brass buttons on the front of her dress, the constant motion of her fingers as out of place as her traveling frock.

  “I don’t mind listening.” It was the least she could do for the woman who’d done so much for her. “What is it?”

  “Probably nothing, and it’s silly of me to fret about it before there’s a real reason to, but I can’t help it.” Aunt Anne laced her hands together in her lap to keep from fidgeting, a measure of her usual calm descending over her, but it didn’t hide the worry in her eyes. “You know Neville’s gout has been troubling him a great deal lately; so has his stomach.”

  “I do.” The few times he’d joined them for dinner he’d hardly eaten anything, and he couldn’t bear to grow much thinner.

  “He spoke with Dr. Tillerson, who thinks it might be something more serious. They must run tests before they can be certain, but Dr. Tillerson suspects it might be cancer.”

  Cliveden could’ve collapsed on top of Valerie and it wouldn’t have crushed her as hard as that bit of news. She wanted to rise and pace the room, wear a tread in the floor to shake off the fear, but she forced herself to sit still. Aunt Anne didn’t need her to fall to pieces. “Are they sure?”

  “I don’t know, and we may not find out for some time.” Tears filled her blue eyes. “What am I going to do without him?”

  “Don’t think like that, you can’t.” Valerie clutched her aunt’s hands, unable to still their trembling. “He’s been working so hard. Maybe it’s only exhaustion. We mustn’t give up hope until we know for certain.” Please let it be something else. She couldn’t lose the one man who’d been more of a father to her than her own, who struggled and strived to keep England out of a war and give the country a fighting chance if war came.

  “You’re such a good girl to listen to me like this.” She slid a hand out from beneath Valerie’s and laid it on her cheek. Valerie wanted to cry in fear but she forced back the tears. This was no time for her worries or wails. She had to be strong for Aunt Anne and help her face whatever was coming. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone about this. The press, society, no one can know. Any show of weakness and the opposition and press will pounce.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “I’m sorry to put this on you, especially before Miss Churchill’s dance, but I needed to speak to someone.”

  “I can manage it.” Even if the news nearly crushed the breath out of her.

  Chapter Twenty

  Valerie stepped out of the car with Dinah, Katherine, Eunice, and Christian, joining the others to gasp at Blenheim Palace, the country seat of the Churchill family. Massive floodlights illuminated the Greek-temple entrance, glinting in the massive windows and lightening the faces of the stone statues perched along the top of the Palladian front. Behind them, car after car filled the Great Court, letting out the massive number of guests coming in from family seats all over the countryside.

  Elm’s red Bentley coupe with the curved and bulging fenders and the bright chrome grille enjoyed a pride of place among the parked cars. The sight of it lightened Valerie’s steps. The chaps were already here, Michael, Jakie, David, and Richard having traveled over with Elm. She wanted to rush into the ballroom and grab the first one she saw and dance until she forgot everything about her mother, Dorothy, and Uncle Neville, but there were receiving lines and greetings to manage before she could think about the dance floor.

  Lady Astor and Aunt Anne walked a few paces behind Their Excellencies, having ridden over in the Chamberlains’ Rolls. Lady Astor’s high voice carried over the constant crush of tires on the gravel, her continuous conversation showing no signs of flagging. How Aunt Anne listened so patiently instead of jumping out of her skin with worry, Valerie didn’t know. If it hadn’t been for the humor and conversation of Their Excellencies on the way here, she might have fretted herself into a fright. Thank heavens for them and the lightness they brought to everything. Her world would be a great deal darker if it weren’t for her friends.

  “No wonder they call it a palace.” Christian whistled as the three of them climbed the front stairs and passed under the high-columned entrance.

  “Are you saying Monymusk House isn’t this grand?” Dinah craned her neck to take in the six massive eyes painted beneath the classical entrance.

  “That old Norman pile is a hovel compared to this.”

  They passed from the chill and floodlit majesty of the outside into the blinding brightness of the Grand Hall.

  “No wonder everyone scrambled for an invitation,” Katherine breathed.

  The marble walls and carved pillars were nearly as white as the floor with its black inlaid marble diamonds. It glowed as if midday under massive lights that left few shadows, even in the darkest reaches beneath the arches and nooks surrounding the room. Large portraits of past dukes and duchesses of Marlborough hung on the far wall above the main staircase hidden behind a line of aqueduct-like arches. Plinths along the sides of the room supported statues of Greek gods and goddesses. Valerie turned, the massive windows above the entrance offering a view of the illuminated statue atop the apex of the front portico. There was no hotel or private house in London to com
pare with this.

  The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough stood at the front of the room with their daughter to greet their guests. Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill hadn’t been a regular fixture of the Season, having spent the past few months in Paris and leaving her presentation to the last court. At six feet tall with blond hair, Sarah would be hard to miss even if she weren’t at the head of the receiving line. A gold lamé Worth dress draped her lithe figure, setting off her blue eyes and blond hair to perfection. Her shorter mother with her dark hair and eyes stood beside her like a queen. Everyone who was anyone, from the highest-ranking peers to every politician of note, was here.

  Their Excellencies, followed by Lady Astor and Aunt Anne, paid their respects to their hosts before filtering in among the people filling the Great Hall. The sheer opulence of it was difficult to take in, and Valerie understood Elm’s dark prediction that this might be the last of the grand manor house parties. The expense of running the estate and then dressing it up to the nines couldn’t last. None of this could.

  “Miss de Vere Cole, it’s a pleasure to have you here,” Mr. Churchill mumbled. He stood with Mr. Eden smoking cigars and discussing who knows what politics, probably plotting their next assault on Uncle Neville. She should snub the old bulldog and the backstabbing Mr. Eden, who’d turned on Uncle Neville after Munich, but, as Aunt Anne had said, one did not mix politics with society. “What do you think of my family’s humble home?”

  “It’s magnificent.” This wasn’t a lie. The marble stretched to the massive ceiling with its elaborate fresco in an oval gilded medallion.

  “Mrs. Chamberlain, you look lovely as always,” Mr. Churchill greeted Aunt Anne, as suave as any courtier. There was no animosity between him, Aunt Anne, and Mr. Eden despite the near-floods that passed under all of their bridges daily. It simply wasn’t done. Despite the drawn lines of Aunt Anne’s face during the long procession through the receiving line, she smiled, conscious of her place as the Premier’s wife. Duty forced her to endure polite conversation even when she needed to be alone to absorb the news that had been foisted on her mere hours ago. Valerie felt the strain; it was the same one dogging her as she made her excuses and left to join Their Excellencies.