by Edith Layton
“What a capital scheme,” he crowed at last, rocking back on his heels as he rose from kneeling beside her. “I have only to cozen the old chap and I inherit the title. Then beard the lions in their own dens,” he went on jubilantly. “I’d have the power, and the position. You’re right, Elizabeth. And then see how I’d change the world!”
“But mind,” Elizabeth croaked as she began to gather up their picnic things, “if the old Earl knew what you were about, he would likely leave the whole to some idle ornament of society. You’d have to be very, very careful not to divulge your true intent. It would take some…I hesitate to say this, Anthony,” she said, packing up the last napkin from their luncheon. “Subterfuge.”
“I could do that,” Anthony cried, “knowing what a chance I’d have in future. I could, Elizabeth,” he said, watching her struggle to her feet with the basket. “I know I could.”
“Still,” she said through dry lips as they went down the hill together, “the old gentleman likely lost a son to Bonaparte, and if you so much as breathed one word of praise about him in front of the Earl, all would be lost. It would take forbearance. You did say that wasn’t your long suit, and excessive tact,” she warned, glancing at him sidewise through her long lashes.
“I don’t like to do it,” Anthony said thoughtfully, “but knowing what has to come, I could. I would, Elizabeth,” he promised, tagging after her like a hesitant puppy. “I know I would. Truly.”
“Well, then,” Elizabeth said, thinking of how her throat would need a nice draught of honey and tea after this afternoon’s exertions, and refusing to think of the depth and consequences of her own deception just then, “we’ll begin.”
And begin it did, with a rapidity and thoroughness that startled Elizabeth, for once Uncle had gotten the word of Anthony’s compliance, he had begun, joyously, to set his scheme in motion.
Orders for the latest in fashions for herself and Anthony had gone out at once to the one fashionable store Tuxford boasted. Elizabeth’s aunt and mother bent their heads over fashion plates for days, deciding on what exactly a young woman of means should have in her traveling case. Uncle had taken a secretly smiling, strangly acquiescent Anthony in tow to all the fittings to assemble a wardrobe suitable to a young gent of leisure. Every step of their itinerary was planned as if it were a day of invasion. And in a sense, Elizabeth thought, it was. An invasion of a poor young man and his equally impoverished female cousin, upon the sacred territory of the privileged.
Only Elizabeth knew how her uncle had schemed and sold family treasures to finance their mission. In a way, she thought one day, seeing, by not seeing, the Dresden shepherdess in her accustomed spot in the china cabinet, Uncle is making this his final gamble. But, she worried, as she tossed at night unable to sleep, in the past it was his own judgment that lost his small fortune in bad investments. This time it is I who will have to do the gambling. And Anthony will be a poor unknowing pawn. For if Anthony thinks by going along with the scheme he is hoodwinking the privileged, Uncle believes he will become one of the privileged again by this ploy. On such nights, Elizabeth had to close her eyes and forcibly shut out her thoughts in order to sleep.
Only a scant two weeks had passed since Elizabeth had gotten Anthony’s approval, and now she stood in the parlor as her mother took the pins from the last dress that had been deemed necessary for her new wardrobe. Elizabeth stood and gazed at herself in the mirror.
“No,” she said at length, in horror, “absolutely not. Never!”
Her reflection glittered back at her. She seemed as out of place in the cramped little parlor as a Duchess taking tea in their work-worn kitchen might have been. The new gown was the exact shade of coffee shot with cream. Its bodice was low and the little puffed sleeves exposed her creamy shoulders to her audience’s rapt gaze. The frock was sashed beneath her rounded breasts, showing her slender figure to advantage. Her tresses had been done up with a ribbon of the same shot silk, only a shade darker than her own gleaming tresses and light brown eyes. She shimmered and glistened as she took a step to crane her neck to see the soft folds of drapery at her back. And the sibilant silk sighed almost as softly as her mother did as she saw it.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” her mother said in an uncharacteristically trembling tone, “I had no idea you had grown so lovely. All these years, hiding your light ’neath a bushel.”
“Never too late.” Her uncle coughed with embarrassment from where he sat in his armchair. “Twirl about for us, Elizabeth, that’s the girl.”
But Elizabeth did not exactly twirl, she spun about and said in her soft sad voice, “Oh, no, Uncle, it is too much. I have five new frocks now. Five! Just think. And this would make it six. Which I do not need, indeed not. Why,” she went on indignantly, willing herself not to gaze into the mirror to see herself again, lest she lose her resolve, “with the three good ones I already own, that would make nine! I’ll take this back to Miss Cook, for I don’t need such fine feathers.”
“Indeed you do,” her uncle answered. “In those circles, you’ll need four a day at least. I know, for I lived life in such style once.”
“And your other three dresses, Elizabeth,” her mother chided, “are not so fine.”
“But it seems so extravagant, Uncle,” Elizabeth protested, at last allowing herself another glance in the mirror at this elegant stranger in the shining silks, so unlike the everyday vision of herself in plain, serviceable stuff gowns.
“You can’t look like a beggar girl,” her uncle said promptly. “You must look as though you belonged. No point in sending you off dressed up for defeat. You must dress the part to make the point.” Her uncle put his hand in his pocket to withdraw his watch to check the time, as was his habit, only remembering once his fingers had touched the empty fob pocket that he had sold it to help defray the expenses of this and the other frocks. He coughed and pretended to be patting his stomach, but Elizabeth’s quick eye caught the motion. She knew the reason for it and mourned the loss of his timepiece, even as she found herself hating her fine raiment because of it. But she smiled and dipped into a low curtsy.
“Delighted, your lordship,” she breathed, and the look of gratification on her uncle’s face absolved her and the dress.
Elizabeth gave herself one long, last measuring look in the glass.
“Uncle,” she tried again, “I am only Anthony’s cousin. Is it truly necessary for me to be gotten up in such style?”
“It will never do for them to guess at our present financial status,” her uncle said again. “If you look in need, you will remain in need. Money goes to money,” he said sagely. “It’s the way of the world. Look like a thousand pounds and you shall receive a thousand pounds. Such is life,” he sighed.
Elizabeth dropped a light kiss upon her uncle’s brow, and was about to go upstairs to her room when Anthony sauntered by the door of the sitting room where Elizabeth had been showing off her new dress. Both she and her uncle gaped when they saw him. It was hard to believe it was their Anthony resplendent before them. He wore a tight-fitting jacket of blue with padded shoulders and an immaculate cravat in an intricate fold. His waistcoat was white with red trim and his legs were encased in tight knit buff pantaloons. A pair of shining hessian boots completed his outfit.
“Only look at you, Coz.” He grinned. “Done up to the nines. Very nice,” he commented before he sauntered away.
Elizabeth was as shocked by his comment as by his appearance. For he never noticed what she looked like, only occasionally stirring himself to comment if she had a smudge on her cheek or had thrown a spot on her brow. But he had looked and sounded so unexceptional that Elizabeth and her uncle exchanged one long conspiratorial look before they both laughed aloud with relief.
“We’ll pull it off, b’God!” her uncle exclaimed.
But late that night when all the household slept, Elizabeth sat up in her narrow bed and worried. She had packed and done with counting and recounting her possessions hours ago. Now, at last, she w
orried about the task before her.
The entire responsibility of the venture was upon her shoulders. Uncle had reassured her that no more was required of her than to see Anthony minded his manners and kept his mouth shut about his ideologies. But Elizabeth worried least about that part of her duties. She wondered whether she herself might prove an embarrassment. For she was all of three-and-twenty and had never mixed in such exalted company as she believed awaited her at Lyonshall. Even if it was to be only the old Earl, his servants, and the other aspirants for the honor of being chosen heir, it would be enough to keep her awake this night.
Three-and-twenty, she thought, roaming her room, almost blindly finding her way about in the dark, and nervous as a schoolchild of going out into the world alone. But wasn’t that just what she had been secretly praying for all these years?
She had never complained about her lot. How could she when Uncle had been kind enough to take her and her widowed mother in after Father had been lost in the wars? For though an officer gave his life for King and Country, his country seldom gave his family more than a lovely written commendation to be taken out and wept over by his survivors on the anniversary of his death. Uncle had unhesitatingly taken in his other widowed sister and her infant son as well. Elizabeth often wondered if the burden of living with his widowed sisters prevented Uncle from marriage, even though he always laughed and declared that with three females at his beck and call he had little need of another as wife. She often consoled herself with the thought that he had been a case-hardened bachelor long before tragedy had befallen his family.
But by then he had also lost what remained of his funds, all but this meager holding of the house and enough to keep their bodies and souls together. So how could an ungrateful chit of a girl quibble about her lost opportunities for a social life?
Nor had she complained about being unable to join the other girls at their play. She had been told often enough that she was a lady born, and as such could not mix with common village girls. But all these common, laughing girls of her youth were wed now, and most with babes of their own. And only she, Elizabeth DeLisle, lady born, had no more to show for her years than a tenuous position in a millinery shop—of the better sort, of course.
How many nights had she sat by her window, hugging herself against the night wind, wondering if life would ever touch her? How many nights when a roving gypsy moon would cause panic to well in her as she wondered how many more years would go by as she sat by a window and waited. Twenty-three, thirty-three, forty-three… On those nights she would think in despair how long it would be till she became exactly as her mother and her aunt, waiting on Uncle and Anthony, watching the years creep by.
For there was no money for a come-out at eighteen, no funds for a dowry at twenty, and no hope for anything at twenty-three. There had been young men—the world is filled with young men—but none for her. The smith’s son, Edmond Priestly, had eyed her when she was nineteen and then quite properly proposed to young Elsie Fairchild when he was twenty, as both their families expected. Robert Mason, the hard-drinking squire’s son, had walked out with her when she was twenty and stolen hasty whiskey-scented kisses. But then he, too, had turned with many a backward sigh to wed the young Litchfield heiress as his family had ordained. Elizabeth too had sighed, but with relief. Even for Uncle’s sake, she could not have made a match with Robert. Now James Wattle, owner of the only apothecary shop in town, was casting glances her way, but when she thought of her reaction to his perennial sniff and condescending manner, she knew he would soon turn away and make a match with some other, more obliging lady.
Now her wish had been unwittingly granted by some ancient, ailing member of the aristocracy. She was to have an adventure. She was, at last, to leave Tuxford, if only for a space. But as in all fairy tales, there was a condition attached. She must pretend to be wealthy. She must help to convince a poor old man that Anthony was an upstanding young fellow, well able to shoulder the burdens of title and fortune. And she, she who had never spoken to a more exalted personality than the squire, was to pretend that she was used to hobnobbing with the Quality.
It would be a grand adventure, she told herself, as she tucked herself up into her own bed for the last time in the knowable future. Uncle had said she could hold her head high, for her own birth and bearing were of the finest. And she had a case of new clothes and a mission to carry out. Why, then, she thought sleepily, with all those riches and all that opportunity, did she feel so very frightened and so very guilt-stricken?
4
Elizabeth examined Anthony covertly in the available lurching light that shone through the travel-stained windows of the coach. Yes, she thought finally, he’ll do. His hair, his jacket, even his boots were correct to the last and least degree. There was no fault, she sighed, at least none that could be seen by the eye. Aye, that’s the problem, she sighed again, leaning her weary head back and closing her own eyes. But then, that was in the hands of fate fully as much as in her own two neatly gloved members.
Anthony had been in excellent spirits throughout the long journey. While Elizabeth was nominally his keeper, in charge of both his baggage and his behavior, oddly enough it was Anthony who had taken charge at the White Hart in Derby and demanded more commodious rooms, and Anthony who had grown angry with the innkeeper at Stourbridge when he had discovered an overcharge on their luncheon bill. While Elizabeth knew more of the world than he did, by dint of her reading and her six years’ majority, she had never traveled a mile farther than her junior cousin. She was by far the more reticent of the pair as well, for Anthony, having been absently indulged by three females since birth, was never one to let a slight go by. That prickliness of his served them well on their trip. All who encountered the impatient young gentleman and his attractive companion thought the pair Quality. Uncle’s every shilling had been spent to create just that illusion.
Uncle’s pocketbook had stretched to provide them clothes, but even a magician could not have ferreted out one more coin after the cost of wayside accommodations for both the going and return journey had been calculated. Their fare cost nothing, as the local squire, with visions of Anthony as Earl of Auden, and with the omnipresent vision of his own unmarried daughter fixed firmly in his mind, gladly gave them the use of his coach and his cattle for the trip.
But for supposed scions of a fashionable family there was still a great deal they did not have. Thus what they did not have they were fully armed with excuses for. Elizabeth’s fictitious maid was to be explained away as suffering from both coachsickness and homesickness to such a degree that she never made the journey past the town limits of Tuxford. Anthony’s valet, that sentimental and imaginary fellow, had, of course, to be back in London seeing to his aunt’s decent interment. Elizabeth, it was decided after a long night’s conference, had never made her come-out in London, as her mother had been ailing and she had feared to leave her delicate mama for so long a time. And when Aunt Emily had protested that it was an unlucky sort of excuse, Elizabeth’s mother had shushed her firmly by stating that if Anthony let a fortune slip through his fingers for superstition’s sake they would all be a great deal unhealthier in future.
Elizabeth’s head was so filled with admonitions, excuses, and outright lies that she feared to open her mouth lest the whole budget spill out unbidden. Anthony, although equally primed by Uncle, had an unusually devil-may-care attitude about him from the very moment of agreeing to the scheme. In fact, Elizabeth noted with dismay, he seemed to be wearing a perpetual smirk of self-satisfaction. It was that very sunny air of compliance that disturbed her even more. For she knew Anthony well, and it was not at all in his style.
But now she had no further time to worry, for the coach was at last turning in through a pair of iron gates and even Anthony sat up straighter as they proceeded down the long and stately drive toward Lyonshall. Elizabeth gave not one more thought to Anthony as her gaze took in the full splendor of the Earl’s principal seat. There was a wide and well-man
icured greensward where not one blade of grass dared presume to lift its head higher than its fellows at one turn; masses of purple rhododendrons that were so riotously profuse in their spring flowering that they colored the very air about them with an aura of lavender at another; and then finally, after passing what appeared to be a detachment of gardeners engaged in drilling a display of tulips and lilies to stand properly and not slouch as inferior blooms might tend to do, they caught sight of the great house itself.
Seeing its vast outline, its tall white form dominating the landscape, Elizabeth caught in her breath and frankly goggled. It was as well that she did not catch a glimpse of her cousin’s face as he took his first look at the stately pile that might, if the fates were kind, someday be his. For she would have seen his lips form the words “disgraceful” and “parasite.”
By the time Anthony had aided her in descending from the coach and Elizabeth’s legs were used again to firm unmoving ground beneath her, they had to ascend the marble steps. Before they could pause, they were shown into the great house itself. Breathless from the climb, and struck speechless by the vault of a front hall, scarcely able to register the beauty of her surroundings in the light flooding in through high stained-glass windows, Elizabeth could only mutely follow the butler who led them farther into what seemed to her to be the Earl’s treasure cave of a mansion.
So it was that by the time she had given her bonnet and wrap to a footman and the polished oaken doors to the withdrawing room had swung open, Elizabeth was reduced to merely attempting to keep her composure so as not to present a picture of a gawking peasant to whoever awaited her within. Thus when the butler stentorianly announced “Mr. Anthony Courtney and Miss Elizabeth DeLisle,” the assembled company saw an unremarkable young man saunter in followed by a very attractive but very dazed-looking young woman. Indeed, the first feature of hers that anyone noticed was a pair of remarkable hazel eyes, as wide, but unfortunately also as blank, as saucers.