The Dreadful Debutante (The Royal Ambition Series Book 1)

by M C Beaton

  He thanked Mrs. Anderson warmly and then went back upstairs and changed swiftly into his riding clothes. He went straight to the Markhams, who were surprised that the marquess should have chosen to make a call in his riding dress. He fretted while he made social chitchat and then, turning to Mira, said he would like to see her drawings. Mira, who knew herself to be an incompetent artist, looked at him in surprise but went to collect her portfolio. As she bent over it, he dropped a note between the sketches and said, “Read that,” and then, as if recollecting a pressing appointment, he abruptly took his leave.

  Mira left the room immediately afterward, saying she was going to put her portfolio away and ignoring Drusilla’s jeering remark that her bad drawing had sent the marquess flying on his way.

  She scanned the note. “Burn this when you have read it,” the marquess had written. “Some ill-wisher has discovered evidence of our day together, which I am out to destroy. Deny everything.”

  Her hands trembled as she lit a candle, burned his note, and crushed the ashes to powder. What could have happened? Someone must have seen them! And they had shared a bedchamber.

  She went about for the next hour feeling the awful storm was about to break. And it broke at four in the afternoon, which was when Mr. Markham received a sealed packet. He opened it and read the statement of the landlord of the Green Tree, his face darkening with amazement and shock.

  In the garden Mira had buried those riding clothes the marquess had given her. Summoning all her courage, she faced her wrathful father and denied the lot, hoping against hope that Charles would not arrive and be prompted by jealousy into saying he had found her dressed as a boy.

  Mr. Markham sent several messages to the marquess’s town house, but each time his servant returned to say the marquess was not at home.

  Drusilla said she knew Mira was lying. Drusilla was praying Mira was lying. If this scandal was true, then Mira would be sent away and Charles would return to his senses. Drusilla had been becoming increasingly alarmed over the way Charles kept looking at Mira. But Mira remained obdurate. She had been ill, and she could not understand why she was not being believed by her own family. But her heart sank when Mr. Markham said that enough was enough and that he would drive to that inn and take Mira with him.

  As it was, it was the whole Markham family who set out, Mrs. Markham terrified of such a scandal about one of her daughters and Drusilla determined to see the ruin of Mira.

  Mira blindly kept on doing what the marquess had told her to do. But as the Markham carriage began to lurch along the country road leading to the inn, she felt sure all would be discovered. If this landlord had gone to the lengths to make a statement of her behavior, then he was not going to back down.

  She felt a lump in her throat as the inn heaved into view. How happy she had been only the day before!

  They entered the tap, Mr. Markham pushing Mira before him. There were a few locals in the corner. Mr. Markham approached the landlord. “Are you Giles Brand?”

  The landlord bowed. “The same.”

  “Is this yours?” Mr. Markham slammed the statement down in front of him on a scarred table.

  The landlord looked down at it with well-feigned amazement. “Can’t be mine, Your Honor.”

  “Why not?”

  “Reckon as how I can’t write naught but my own name.”

  Mr. Markham gave Mira a little push forward. “Have you seen my daughter before?”

  The landlord, comfortably conscious of the rouleau of guineas residing in his pocket, which the marquess had given him, shook his head. “Pretty miss, but I ain’t seen the likes of her. Don’t get ladies here, Your Honor, only gentlemen.”

  Mrs. Markham began to sob with relief. “But was the Marquess of Grantley here?” demanded Drusilla angrily.

  “Now, miss, look about you. Do I look as if I get lords or ladies here?”

  “It is most odd,” pursued Mr. Markham, “that someone should go to such lengths as to forge a document to damn my daughter and pretend it came from you.”

  “Probably someone is jealous of her, Your Honor.”

  “So that is that,” said Mr. Markham on the road home. “I am sorry, Mira, for having doubted your word. And we were to attend the Dunster’s ball.”

  “We can still go. We will be late and make an entrance,” said Mrs. Markham gaily. She felt almost light-headed with relief.

  Drusilla pinched Mira’s arm viciously when they were back in the carriage and whispered, “There is something in this. You have been up to something.”

  Mira jerked her arm away but then began to worry about Charles. What if he told Drusilla about finding her returning home in boys’ clothes? Mr. Markham might tell him of the landlord’s letter, and then Charles would put two and two together. She did so hope the marquess would be at this ball. She had to speak to him about her worries.

  When they arrived at the Dunsters’ home in Hanover Square, her eyes flew around the ballroom, looking for him. At first she thought with a sinking heart that he was not present, and then with a little sigh of relief, she saw his tall figure at the door to the card room.

  Lady Jansen saw Mira arrive and was unable to believe her eyes. She studied the faces of the Markham family for signs of distress, but there were none.

  Mira danced with one partner and then another, watching all the time for the marquess. At last he came up to her, and she said hurriedly, “I must speak to you, my lord. Wait a moment, and I will tell my next partner that I must retire to mend my gown. Then follow me.”

  Charles watched jealously as Mira left the room and noticed the way the marquess casually strolled out after her. He was about to follow them when he found Drusilla at his elbow. “Our waltz, Charles,” she said.

  He forced himself to smile as he led her onto the floor. “I am fatigued,” said Drusilla. “That wretch Mira!”

  “What has she been up to?” asked Charles sharply.

  “Papa received a most odd statement supposed to have come from the landlord of an inn near Richmond. In it he claimed to have been host to Mira dressed in boys’ clothes and the marquess. They fell in the river and shared a bedchamber while their clothes were drying.”

  He stumbled and said, “And was this true?”

  “Not a word,” said Drusilla regretfully. “But it meant Papa taking us all out to the country to confront this landlord, and that is why we were so late arriving this evening.”

  Charles felt vicious pangs of jealousy. Somehow Grantley had squared that landlord. He remembered how shrunken and creased Mira’s riding clothes had been. He decided to suffer in silence until the dance was over and then go and try to find the guilty pair.

  The marquess joined Mira in the hall, but conscious of all the servants about, he led the way to a small study off the hall. “We will leave the door open and save our reputations. What happened?”

  Mira told him of being found out by Charles but how she had managed to silence him. Then she explained how the landlord of the inn had said he had never sent that document. She ended with, “But I fear Drusilla will tell Charles about going out to the inn. He will now think it to be true, because he is jealous, because he saw me in riding clothes. I fear he might make a scene.”

  “Yes,” said the marquess. “Where was he when you left the ballroom?”

  “Dancing with Drusilla.”

  “She will tell him, prompted by jealousy, and he will come looking for you, prompted by jealousy.” He stood frowning. “It is my intentions toward you that might be brought into question. Very well, we will announce our engagement. You must look as if you adore me.”

  “But you don’t want to marry me!”

  “So you can break the engagement after a decent interval. I am afraid it means you will not find a husband this Season.”

  “I have decided I do not want a husband,” said Mira. “Well, well, Mama will be in alt for the short time in which she believes I am to be a marchioness. How do I look adoring?”

  �
��You like me, do you not?”

  “Very much, my lord.”

  “Rupert, my name is Rupert.”

  “Do I call you Rupert?”

  “When we are alone. Otherwise, you address me as Grantley.”

  An angry voice could be heard raised in the hall outside, demanding the whereabouts of the Marquess of Grantley.

  “Lord Charles,” said the marquess. “Give me your hand, and look up at me with love in your eyes.”

  He took her hand in his. His grasp was strong and comforting.

  Charles came striding into the room. The marquess ignored him and gazed down into Mira’s green eyes with such an expression of love and tenderness that she stared dizzily back at him.

  “What is the meaning of this?” demanded Charles.

  The marquess gave him a sweet smile. “Wish us well, Devere,” he said. “Miss Mira has done me the inestimable honor of accepting my hand in marriage.”

  Charles turned quite white. “Do Mr. and Mrs. Markham know of this?” he demanded harshly.

  “They are about to know of it.” The marquess drew Mira’s hand through his arm and gave it a pat. “I wanted to be sure Mira loved me as much as I love her before approaching her father. Come, my darling.”

  He led her out. Charles stood and watched them go. He felt silly now and rather miserable. It did not matter now if Mira had spent the day with the marquess. He was going to marry her, and Mira would be hailed as the success of the Season.

  Lady Jansen, watching and watching, saw Mira enter on the marquess’s arm. She saw the way he looked down at her, saw the way he led her up to her father and began to speak, saw the look first of bewilderment and then of joy on the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Markham, saw the way Drusilla joined them and how her beautiful face crumpled up with a sour expression.

  She felt quite sick with fury. What had gone amiss? Had that package never reached Mr. Markham? She would call on Diggs in the morning. Something must have gone badly wrong. Beside her, Mrs. Anderson, holding her employer’s fan, smelling salts, and shawl, allowed herself a little smile of triumph.

  Heads were nodding and gossiping. Soon it was all round the ballroom. Little Mira Markham, the dreadful debutante who had been refused vouchers to Almack’s, had not only secured the Marquess of Grantley but it was plain for all to see that the man was madly in love with her.

  Lady Jansen might have been relieved to know that Mira Markham was becoming increasingly worried and unhappy. For when the marquess took her in to supper and flirted with her, pressed her hand warmly, and smiled down into her eyes, Mira began to be terrified that she was losing her heart to a man she had agreed to become engaged to only on the condition she canceled that engagement!

  Chapter Seven

  “Do you know what I think?” demanded Drusilla, sitting on the end of Mira’s bed later that night.

  “No, what?” asked Mira sleepily.

  “I think there was some truth in that letter supposed to have come from that landlord. I think he had to propose to you to allay a scandal.”

  “Go away,” said Mira. “He loves me and I love him.”

  “There was some scandal there, I’ll swear,” continued Drusilla, staring down at Mira. “He can’t be interested in a chit like you. Why, you have been the joke of the Season!”

  “Go away,” repeated Mira, and she turned on her side and blew out the candle beside the bed.

  Drusilla glared at her sulkily and then flounced out.

  Mira was immediately awake. She tried to fight down the longing for the engagement to be real, that she and the marquess were not playacting and their love was real. She reminded herself sternly that she had loved Charles and that had disappeared very quickly. She tried to stop thinking of the marquess, but the bright pictures would not go away—walking in the rain in Covent Garden, riding headlong through the night, playing cards on the floor of the inn, all the shared laughter and adventure.

  But who on earth had been behind that statement from the landlord? She had been so very relieved to get away without her escapade’s being found out that she had not stopped to wonder who had plotted against her. She must ask the marquess. And she must compose herself and enjoy his company until the end of the Season, when she would live up to her reputation and apparently jilt the best catch on the marriage market. At least her supposed engagement might have brought Charles to his senses, and he could now settle down and be happy with Drusilla. The marquess was to take her driving tomorrow. The day after that his lawyers were to meet her father’s lawyers, and the whole matter of dowry and marriage settlements had to be gone into. She felt a stab of guilt. Her father would be very angry with her not only for jilting the marquess but for having caused him unnecessary legal fees. Her mother would feel the family had lost face and be very bitter. But the marquess would think of something. His name was Rupert… Rupert… and murmuring it over and over again like a prayer, she fell asleep.

  Lady Jansen walked up the shallow steps to Mr. Diggs’s door early the next day and hammered on it ferociously with a gold-topped stick. Silence answered her when she stopped knocking. Then a door opened below, and a querulous woman’s voice demanded to know what all the row was about.

  Leaning over the banisters, Lady Jansen glared down at a woman still in her undress, an unsavory nightgown covered by an even more unsavory wrapper. “I am looking for Mr. Diggs,” she called.

  “He’s left, that’s what,” said the woman. “Packed up and gone, that he has. Left no address neither. Said he wouldn’t be coming back for a long time.”

  Paid off by Grantley and taken my money with him as well, thought Lady Jansen savagely. But there was still hope. She remembered the name of that landlord and the inn. She would go there and see if she could get the truth out of him.

  Rain was falling heavily when she arrived at the Green Tree. Perhaps if she had had the wit to try to bribe the landlord, she might have got at the truth, but as it was, his stubborn and oxlike denial that he had ever seen anyone called Mira Markham or the Marquess of Grantley made her call him a liar in front of his customers. He told her roughly to be on her way.

  Her brain churned as she was driven back to London. Diggs must have double-crossed her and told the marquess of her intentions and so gained even more money for himself.

  She thirsted for revenge. There must be some way she could get even with both of them, for they would now know she was behind the plot to ruin Mira. The marquess would not even look at her. He had ignored her completely at the ball the evening before. She imagined them laughing about her. She arrived home in the worst temper she had ever been in and took her venom out on poor Mrs. Anderson.

  But the worm was about to turn. Mrs. Anderson, taking herself shakily out of the room with the excuse that she had some instructions for the cook, suddenly thought of Mira Markham and felt inspired. She, too, should have courage. Such as Mira Markham would not put up with this abuse. There were other ladies in London who might engage her as companion.

  It was then that she thought of the Marquess of Grantley. He owed her a favor. Other people in the past had owed Mrs. Anderson favors, but she had never claimed any of them. But this was one she was going to claim. The dream of handing her resignation to her vindictive employer buoyed her spirits up for the rest of the day.

  Mira felt guilty when both her parents actually escorted her down to the hall to wave goodbye to her when she left to go driving with the marquess. She was suddenly so shy of him that she could not return any of his loverlike glances, although, despite her shyness, she felt a nagging irritation that he should prove to be such a good actor.

  London was sunny and warm. Two young misses with their maids passed on the street, muslin dresses and long, fringed shawls fluttering in the wind. They looked up enviously at Mira as she sat in the high-perch phaeton.

  Mira waved to her parents and then muttered to the marquess, “I feel like a fraud.”

  “Don’t,” he admonished as they drove off. “We are in lo
ve, the day is sunny, and you are the happiest lady in London.”

  “Who was responsible for finding out about us?” asked Mira.

  “Lady Jansen. She hired an ex-Runner called Diggs to follow us. She thought we were having an affair.”

  “That woman again! Why?”

  “I believe she thought that had she proof of this supposed affair, then you would be sent home and I might marry her.”

  “Just wait until I see her again!”

  His voice was severe. “You will ignore her, Mira. Making a scene might make people ask her what it was all about, and then they might begin to believe her story.”

  “So how did you put a stop to it?”

  “I bribed the landlord of the Green Tree heavily to forget he ever saw us. I visited Diggs and told him I would pay him handsomely to leave town for a healthy period. If he did not, I said I would make sure he was never employed again. But your worries are over. My intentions are so obviously honorable that no scandal can stick to us now. When do you plan to jilt me?”