by M C Beaton
The duke cast Sally a look of bewildered hurt. “I didn’t know Miss Higgins was a friend of yours when I replied to her letter,” said Sally desperately to the duke. “As a matter of fact, I’d never even heard of you!” That sounded rather rude, and Sally tried to put it in a gentler way. She laid a comforting hand on the duke’s arm, but the duke had already settled on his new role of rejected lover and was prepared to enjoy it to the hilt. But Sally was still too young to know this and watched in alarm as a tear slowly rolled down the duke’s cheek.
“Alas! Alas!” he cried to the freezing air.
“What do be the matter, then?” asked Rose, all bucolic concern. She turned to Sally. “Don’t ’e like ’is gin, then? Want me to warm it up, mum?”
“No… I mean, yes,” said Sally, anxious to get rid of Rose. “You must pull yourself together,” she told the duke sternly. “What would your tenants say if they could see you like this?”
“The same as they’ve said all the other times, I suppose,” said the Marquess of Seudenham, strolling into the garden and looking heartlessly at his father. “And what on earth are you thinking of, Father, to keep a lady like Aunt Mabel sitting around in this freezing cold? Come, Aunt Mabel.”
“But…” began Sally helplessly, getting to her feet and looking down at the stricken duke.
“He’s enjoying himself,” said the marquess, taking her elbow. “’Bye, Father.”
“Go!” cried the duke, striking an attitude, “and leave me to my death!”
“You won’t die of a broken heart,” said his son callously, “but chances are you’ll die of pneumonia if you sit around in this cold much longer.” And with that he firmly propelled Sally out of the garden and out of the inn.
Well, Sally had one glorious afternoon, drinking tea in the Pump Room in Bath, gazing into the marquess’s blue eyes, and forgetting completely about the lovesick Miss Wyndham who she was supposed to be helping.
He talked lightly and amusingly of plays and theaters and social gossip, and Sally drank it all in, watching his charming smile and mourning over his gallantry toward this old lady he believed to be in her eighties.
As they were driven back in a well-sprung carriage toward the palace, Sally began to feel a little sad. There must be some way she could manage to meet him without her disguise. But how?
Sally thanked the marquess warmly for her outing and went in search of the library before going to her rooms to change for dinner. She felt sure she would be too excited to sleep much that night, and therefore wanted to find a novel—in English—to pass away the hours.
A thin, colorless man rose to his feet as she entered the library and introduced himself as Mr. Worthing, the ducal secretary.
“And you are Aunt Mabel, of whom I’ve heard so much,” he said with a charming smile, which completely altered his plain features. “I am ready any time to help you with your letters.”
“You seem to be very busy,” commented Sally, looking at the piles of correspondence on his desk.
“I am sending out the invitations to the duchess’s ball,” he said.
“When is it?” asked Sally.
“On Friday the thirteenth.”
“But that’s only a week away!”
“Her Grace specializes in impromptu invitations,” said Mr. Worthing dryly. “But everyone usually accepts. I have nearly finished. Now, this one is a mistake. Lady Cecily Trevelyn.”
“Why a mistake?” asked Sally curiously.
“Because I happen to know that Lady Cecily has left South Africa and will not be arriving in London until two days after the ball.”
“Oh.” Sally sat down suddenly, her brain working feverishly.
“Is Lady Cecily a debutante?” asked Sally suddenly. “And who is she?”
“Lady Cecily is the ward of the Earl and Countess of Hammering, who were visiting their estates in South Africa. Lady Cecily’s parents, the Duke and Duchess of Dervere, died when she was a baby.”
“How sad,” said Sally. “Is she my age?”
Mr. Worthing looked in surprise at the agitated old lady.
“You cannot mean Lady Cecily, since she is nineteen years old,” he said delicately. “I assume you are referring to Lady Hammering, who is about… er… forty.”
“Much younger than I,” said Sally, recovering from her blunder.
Her brain seemed to be working at an enormous rate. “I have it!” said Sally with a bland smile. “I remember hearing that the Earl and Countess of Hammering have, in fact, arrived in London. Yesterday, I believe.”
“Really!” said Mr. Worthing. “I am usually very well informed of the comings and goings of the duchess’s friends, but I take your word for it, of course.”
“In fact,” rushed on Sally, “they are by way of being personal friends of mine, and I have to travel to London… er… tomorrow, and I could take the invitation with me.”
“Well,” he said slowly, “that would be very kind of you.”
A dismal thought suddenly struck Sally.
“I suppose,” she said, looking down and twisting at a loose thread on her mittens, “that the duke and duchess are very well acquainted with Lady Cecily. Known her since childhood.”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Worthing. “As far as I know they’ve never set eyes on her. She’s not come out yet, so to speak, so no one’s really seen her.”
Sally breathed an inward sigh of relief. Lady Cecily would go to the ball, represented by Sally Blane!
Sally thanked Mr. Worthing effusively for the invitation, whereupon he replied with mild surprise that the thanks were all on his side. She made her escape and went in search of the duchess, to explain that it was imperative that Aunt Mabel return to London to see her doctor, that Aunt Mabel would unfortunately not be attending the ball, but that Aunt Mabel would definitely return on the day after in case further counseling was needed.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I can’t possibly do it!” protested Miss Fleming, raising her hands in horror.
“You’ve got to,” said Sally grimly. “I must have a chaperon.”
Both women were sitting in the living room of their Bloomsbury flat, and Miss Frimp was visiting a cousin. On the table between them lay the invitation to the Earl and Countess of Harrington and their ward, Lady Cecily.
“We’ll be found out,” moaned Miss Fleming. “I mean, we’re expected to stay there a day before the ball. Ample time for anyone to discover we’re impostors. Think, Sally. If someone wrote asking you for your advice in this matter, you would tell them very sternly to forget about the whole thing.”
“I’m in love with him,” said Sally flatly, as if this admission answered all protests.
“Aren’t you just in love with the title?” pleaded Miss Fleming. “Then there’s my job to consider. What will I tell Mr. Wingles?”
“You forget,” pointed out Sally ruthlessly, “that you told me Mr. Wingles was going on holiday next week and that you planned to take a few days off.”
“But—”
“No one will find out,” said Sally earnestly. “No one.”
“What has Mr. Barton to say about all this?”
“Nothing,” said Sally blithely, “because I didn’t tell him. He doesn’t care where I work, so long as I work.”
“But the cost—”
“I have money saved,” said Sally. “Enough to pay for two simply ripping ball gowns. Just think! A real live ducal ball!”
Miss Matilda Fleming looked wonderingly at her young friend. Sally looked as pretty and elf-like as she had done on that hot day when she had arrived in Fleet Street. She was, however, Miss Fleming reflected, as tough as old boots under that misleading exterior. Miss Fleming had always prided herself on being a tough businesswoman, but little Sally, she thought with surprise, was by far the stronger personality.
But she took one last stand. “I won’t do it,” she said grimly. “Just wait till Jessie Frimp hears of this!”
But later on, to Miss Fleming’
s dismay, Miss Frimp thought there was no harm in the impersonation of Lady Cecily, not knowing that Miss Frimp was frightened that if Miss Fleming did not go then she, Miss Frimp, would be nagged into it by Sally, already having a better assessment of the force of Sally’s personality than Miss Fleming.
“It’s not a crime, after all,” said Miss Frimp.
“I thought impersonating a peer of the realm was a crime,” said Miss Fleming.
“Well, you’ll only be going as a sort of companion,” urged Miss Frimp. “Anyway, it says peer of the realm, not peeress.”
“Same thing,” said Miss Fleming gloomily.
“And what if they do find out?” demanded Sally, striding up and down the room and waving her arms in her excitement. “The whole focus will be on me, not you. I tell you what, Matilda. I’ll accept the invitation, say my guardians, the earl and countess, are indisposed, but that I shall be arriving with my chaperon, Miss Matilda Fleming. There! That way you won’t be impersonating anyone. And… and… I could always say you didn’t know I wasn’t Lady Cecily.”
“It’s no use,” said Matilda. “I just can’t do it.”
The Bath train rattled through the bleak November landscape. “I just can’t do it,” Miss Fleming was still saying. “My dear, did you see some of the other guests on this train? The clothes, the maids, the footmen.”
“We look very grand,” said Sally stoutly, although privately her heart misgave her. Her savings had not been nearly enough to equip them with an adequate wardrobe, although Miss Fleming had insisted on paying for her own ball gown.
Sally had had to buy most of the other clothes secondhand, and their luggage smelled suspiciously of gasoline and stale bread crumbs—the gasoline to clean the wool frocks, and the stale bread crumbs to clean Sally’s white silk ball gown.
Sally’s only jewelry was a small dog collar of pearls. No one wore diamonds in the country, she told herself firmly. All the etiquette books said so. But she was sure, somehow, that the rest of the guests did not read etiquette books, or if they did, they paid them not the slightest heed.
How fast the train seemed to be going. How it bore them inexorably nearer to their destination.
Smoke billowed out over the ridges of the plowed fields, and flocks of rooks wheeled against the lowering sky.
Sally tried to remember the handsome marquess, and found she could not. Her whole stay at the palace seemed to have been some extraordinary dream. She had told Miss Fleming about Mrs. Stuart threatening to kill her husband and the duke’s infatuation for the barmaid, and Miss Fleming had said forthrightly that they all sounded mad and that there was probably inbreeding somewhere in the duke’s family.
Carriages were waiting to convey the guests to the palace. Only a few, of which Lady Cecily was one, had been honored with an invitation to stay before and after the ball. Sally had accepted the invitation, saying that the earl and countess were indisposed, but that her companion, Miss Matilda Fleming, would be accompanying her.
But Sally did not grasp quite how ridiculous, quite how hopeless, her situation was until she saw her traveling companions. For sharing the carriage to the palace with Sally and Miss Fleming were the Guthrie sisters. The Guthrie sisters were not of good family, in fact, their father had begun his career with a small bicycle shop in Cambridge. But he had opened his shop right at the beginning of the heyday of that machine, and his business had grown and prospered until he became very wealthy indeed. To add to his dizzy success, he had launched on society his two beautiful daughters, Daisy and Dolly.
Although it was still considered “unfortunate” to be blond, no one could find any fault with the Guthrie sisters. Their beauty was of the blond, porcelain type. They had delicate little noses and delicate arched brows over large, well-shaped blue eyes. Their busts were large and their waists tiny, and it was whispered that their exquisite hourglass figures were all their own, neither of them having to resort to horsehair pads to achieve the fashionable silhouette.
But their crowning beauty was that both were quite brainless, and in a society that viewed intelligence with distrust, this was the final seal of acceptability. The jealous might mutter over the Guthrie sisters’ plebeian origins, but for the most part society adored them both.
Stupid they might have been in the worlds of books, music, art, and politics, but in the worlds of romance, husbands, and ballrooms, they had native animal cunning. They were natural hunters and had learned at an early age how to kill with a flashing glance, how to wound with a haughty turn of the head, and how to raise wild hopes with a small sigh.
Daisy and Dolly did not have much time for other women, unless they were the sisters or mothers of eligible men, and so they prattled on as if Sally and Miss Fleming were invisible. Sally wondered why two such diamonds of the first water had managed to come through one Season unwed, but it soon transpired that both sisters hoped to marry the marquess, and both were confident of success.
Although there was a year between their ages, they looked remarkably alike, except that Daisy’s hair was somewhat darker.
I am cursed with blondes, thought Sally gloomily. I was mad to come. Even poor Miss Wyndham won’t stand a chance with this precious pair around.
Dolly and Daisy, unlike Miss Wyndham, were blessed with pussycat naughtiness. Certainly their girlish wriggles, shrieks, and giggles annoyed Sally immensely, but she was clever enough to realize that most gentlemen would interpret it all as innocent charm.
“We have an ally on our side,” Dolly was saying. “The duchess told Lady Brainwater, and she told Mama, that the duchess wants Paul—duveen name—to settle for one of us.”
Daisy wrinkled her pretty brow. “But he’s got ever such a reputation, Doll’. He was keeping that opera singer for ever so long.”
Dolly shrugged. “Better they have mistresses before they’re married than after.”
Miss Fleming shot the girls a repressive glance, and the Guthrie sisters stared back at her impertinently and then collapsed into girlish giggles.
Sally was glad when they arrived, for she had decided what to do.
She would hide behind the other guests, send Miss Fleming with a message to the duchess, to say that Lady Cecily was indisposed and had to return immediately to town—and escape.
Her clothes felt shabbier and dowdier and more secondhand by the minute. Now, Sally was a very pretty girl, but even the prettiest women need someone around to tell them so. Emily had always been considered the beauty of the family, and when Sally had taken her hair out of braids and made her transformation from ugly duckling into swan, there was no fond mother to tell her so. She had become so accustomed to the role of Aunt Mabel that sometimes her mind played tricks on her, and she felt as if she really were a little old lady with specs and wrinkles.
As they shuffled into line behind the other guests who were being greeted by the duke and duchess in the main hall, Sally muttered her plan of escape to Miss Fleming, and that austere lady looked noticeably relieved.
But the duke and duchess were joined suddenly by the marquess just as the Guthrie sisters were tripping forward, little rosebud mouths uttering birdlike cries of welcome, eyes flashing killing glances in the direction of the marquess.
Sally’s heart did several somersaults, and she gazed in open adoration at the marquess until Miss Fleming brought her to her senses by jabbing a bony elbow in her ribs.
Wonder of wonders! The Guthrie sisters were fluttering and charming for all they were worth, and a faint shadow of boredom crossed the marquess’s handsome face.
Gone was Sally’s thought of escape. Hope burst forth anew.
When it was Sally’s turn she introduced herself as Lady Cecily Trevelyn, apologized for the absence of her guardians, and presented with pretty grace Miss Fleming. Miss Fleming noticed sourly that the marquess had taken Sally’s little hand in his and showed no sign of releasing it. Miss Fleming thought Sally a very pretty girl indeed, but she had never told her so, considering that it was rather
vulgar to make personal comments to one’s friends.
“Do you ride, Lady Cecily?” the marquess was asking.
“Of course,” lied Sally. Unusual in a girl of her age and Indian background, but Sally had never learned to ride. The Misses Lelongs had frowned on riding lessons, considering that horses did quite terrible things to the hymen, sidesaddle or not. Not that they would have dreamed of voicing such a coarse idea, for they contented themselves with conveying the dangers by solemn shakes of the head.
So Sally had never ridden. But she was not going to say so, for she was sure it was all terribly easy. All one did was sit on the beast and let it carry one along.
“I thought of going for a canter before tea, Lady Cecily,” said the marquess. “Around four o’clock. Perhaps you might like to join me? I can show you something of the estate.”
“I would love to,” said Sally fervently.
His face became a well-bred blank, and Sally cursed inwardly. She had been too eager.
“I don’t have a riding habit,” said Sally truthfully—and untruthfully. “My maid forgot to pack it.”
“Mother will find you something,” said the marquess.
“Yes, indeed,” said the duchess, coming forward. “But, Paul, is the whole party going out riding, or just you and Lady Cecily?”
Now, the marquess had just been regretting asking Sally, since she seemed overly eager, and had been about to extend his invitation to several of the others. Since his mother showed every sign of putting a spoke in his wheel, he decided that Lady Cecily was as charming as he had initially thought and wished again to see her on her own.
“No, just Lady Cecily,” he said. “You have invited so many attractive young women, Mother, that you can’t expect me to entertain them all at once.”
The duchess looked as if she were about to protest, but fortunately more guests arrived, and Sally promised to meet the marquess at the stables at four and made her escape with Miss Fleming.
The rooms allocated to them were not so grand as the ones given to Aunt Mabel, but they were prettily furnished for all that. Miss Fleming stood looking grimly at their trunks. “I shall tell the maid not to unpack,” she said.