The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  Although they had been very young indeed when Amaryllis had joined the Warburton household, both still remembered her glorious looks and air of breeding, and although they said loudly and often that dear Amaryllis was sadly gone off in looks, they would not admit, even to themselves, that she still had an air of indefinable charm and grace, and this unrecognized but nonetheless sharply felt envy caused them to humiliate her as often as they could.

  They knew they had to hold their fire while shopping, or in any other public place.

  James, the second footman, was also in attendance, standing a discreet distance away. The Warburton girls knew he was told to report their behavior to Lady Warburton. At home in their town house or at their country mansion, baiting Amaryllis was fair game provided no one outside the family and servants was there to see it.

  Lady Warburton was fond of murmuring, “Poor Amaryllis. No one wanted her, you know, and my brother was a wastrel, though I should not speak ill of the dead.

  “I simply had to take her in. Of course, I treat her as I do my own daughters. …Therefore, she did not want the myth of her magnanimity shattered by allowing her daughters to tease Amaryllis in public.

  Amaryllis’s father, Sir James Duvane, had been a fat, cheerful man who doted on his only child. Lady Duvane had died when Amaryllis was ten years old. Sir James lavished fine gowns and presents on Amaryllis and seemed to have a bottomless source of money. But he had left a great many debts on his death, and all Amaryllis’s jewels and the family home had been sold to offset at least some of them.

  She had resented the humiliating treatment handed out to her by the Warburtons and had made a push to stand on her own two feet shortly after she began residing with them.

  Amaryllis had taken a post as governess to a Mrs. Anstruther, a severe matron with five small daughters. After several weeks of a quite horrible existence, Mr. Anstruther had tried to seduce her.

  When his advances were repulsed, he had ordered his wife to turn her out without a character. That experience had quite broken Amaryllis’s spirit, and she had returned to the Warburtons. She found she could endure their behavior by adopting a meek and colorless manner and appearance. Her thick auburn hair was worn scraped back from her face—a once glowing face which had become thin and white. Her large gray eyes looked calmly out at the world, their expression mostly a well-trained blank.

  The company was not fashionable enough to keep the girls in the shop for long, and Amaryllis knew they would soon tire of picking things up and squealing with delight and putting them down again if no marriage prospect was there to admire the performance.

  Suddenly she sensed a ripple of interest running through the crowd about her. Cissie and Agatha were holding clockwork toys. In Cissie’s hand a little wooden ballerina went around and around while she goggled at someone behind Amaryllis.

  Amaryllis half turned her head and stiffened as a familiar lazy voice behind her said, “Why on earth did you bring me here, Chalmers? I feel like a schoolboy on an outing, or some skinflint member of the ton looking for cheap servants’ presents.”

  Although she had not heard that voice for eight years, Amaryllis recognized it as belonging to John, Marquess of Merechester.

  There was a booth piled with a jumble of fans in front of her. In a dazed way, she reached out and picked one up and stared sightlessly down at it.

  She could sense him passing very close to her. She spread the fan and held it up to her face, noticing with a sort of wonder that her hand was steady. She heard his voice again but could not distinguish the words. He had moved on farther into the ’Change.

  Amaryllis cautiously lowered the fan and looked down the busy store. The Marquess towered over the other customers, his profile turned toward her.

  Her heart gave a lurch. He was more handsome than she had remembered. His blue morning coat was stretched without a wrinkle across his broad shoulders. She saw that familiar arrogant nose and humorous curling mouth, the guinea-gold hair beneath his tall hat. He turned to his companion and said something, his lazy blue eyes under their heavy lids giving his face that sensuous look she remembered so well.

  And then he looked full at her. Amaryllis blushed and raised the fan over her face, her heart beating hard.

  “Are you buyin’ that fan, mum?” demanded the stallkeeper. “’And-painted, that is.”

  “Yes,” said Amaryllis, fumbling in her reticule. “How much?”

  “Sixpence, mum.”

  That was about all the money Amaryllis had. She paid for the fan. Cissie and Agatha were shrieking with girlish laughter and rolling their eyes in the direction of the Marquess and his friend.

  Amaryllis recognized his companion as Mr. Joseph Chalmers, the Marquess’s best friend. How strange to see them both after so long.

  How strange that after all the London balls and parties, she should see him again for the first time in the tawdry surroundings of Exeter ’Change.

  Cissie laughed loudly, her voice high and shrill. The Marquess winced slightly and said something to Mr. Chalmers, and then both strolled back toward Amaryllis, who hid her face again.

  When she finally looked up, they had gone.

  Cissie and Agatha were standing beside her, staring and pouting.

  “You do look most odd, Ammy,” tittered Cissie, “hiding your face like that. What a common-looking fan! Did you not see that monstrous fine-looking gentleman? I wonder who he was.”

  “Which gentleman?” asked Amaryllis, hearing her own voice peculiarly muffled by the thumping of her heart.

  “The tall fair one with the blue coat and the Marseilles waistcoat.”

  “I do not know who you mean,” said Amaryllis. “Are you both ready to go home?”

  But the Misses Warburton felt they just had to step across the Strand to Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, plainly hoping to see the fine gentleman in the blue coat again.

  To Amaryllis’s relief, there was no sign of the Marquess. To reveal his identity to the sisters would mean enduring hours of malicious questions. And he hadn’t even recognized her.

  Amaryllis was still smarting under the humiliation of that.

  She would have been content to spend some time looking through the prints, but Cissie and Agatha suddenly declared Ackermann’s to be as flat as a pancake.

  “’Tis a pity you are so out of society, Ammy,” complained Agatha as they walked to the carriage with James, the footman, a step behind carrying their earlier purchases. “If you had been more in then you might have known the name of that gentleman who came into Exeter ’Change.”

  “Begging your pardon, Miss Agatha,” came the voice of James, “would you be talking about the Marquess of Merechester or his friend, Mr. Chalmers?”

  “What?” said the sisters in unison, stopping so suddenly that James nearly bumped into them. Two pairs of china-blue eyes stared at Amaryllis accusingly. “You knew who he was, Ammy,” said Cissie. “Though you have grown sadly plain, he must be still the same, because Mama said he was a handsome creature when he was engaged to you.”

  “He must have changed, if it was he,” said Amaryllis quietly. “I did not recognize any gentleman at the ’Change who resembled the Marquess.”

  “I think you are lying,” said Agatha. “Mama will find out.”

  Amaryllis’s heart sank at the thought of the malice to come. But the Warburtons were to remove to the country tomorrow, so there would be small chance of meeting the Marquess again, and that was some comfort.

  She should not have lied, but the feelings that had assailed her at the sight of him had quite overset her.

  Memory, long kept rigorously at bay, came rushing back. All at once, she was back in the Yellow Saloon of her father’s home in Hanover Square. Everything was shrouded in holland covers and neatly stacked in lots waiting for the sound of the auctioneer’s hammer on the following day.

  The Marquess arrived, answering her urgent summons. At twenty-two, he still retained a lot of the impetuosity and enthusiasm
of his adolescence.

  He was just beginning, however, to acquire some town bronze, and so he had come forward with a humorous look on his face, demanding, “Well, Amaryllis? No chaperon, I see.”

  “I do not want anyone to hear what I have to say to you,” Amaryllis could still hear herself reply. She knew he had recently gained the title and lands belonging to the near-bankrupt estates of Merechester.

  Although she was very much in love with him and knew he was fond of her, she knew he desperately needed the large dowry her late father had promised. Now the dowry was gone. It would be a dreadful thing to keep him to the engagement.

  “I wish to end our engagement,” she said.

  He made to take her hands, but she walked away from him and stood looking down into the empty hearth.

  “May I ask why?” he asked, his voice unaccustomedly serious.

  “I do not love you.”

  The words fell like stones in the dim silence of the shuttered room.

  “No, I am persuaded it can’t be that,” she heard him say. “Your home is going up for sale. You feel obliged to release me. But there is no need.”

  “It is not that,” said Amaryllis. “Not that at all. I have seen the folly of arranged marriages. I do not wish to go on with it.”

  “Amaryllis! Look at me!”

  She turned about, keeping her face blank.

  He searched her eyes intently, his own very blue and piercing. Amaryllis longed to throw herself into his arms. But he needed a rich wife, and he had never claimed to love her.

  Since her father’s death, all she had heard was the importance of money and the ruin that faced any girl who did not have it.

  Her best friend, Jenny Pierce, had pointed out that the Marquess would never forgive her for keeping him to his side of the bargain when she could not fulfill hers. Sometimes, in later years, it crossed Amaryllis’s mind that Jenny had been in love with the Marquess herself. She had certainly proved herself to be a fair-weather friend; she had not once called on Amaryllis after the sale of the house and its effects.

  “What will you do?” he asked, after he had turned a little way away as if what he had seen in her eyes had disappointed him.

  Amaryllis, hurt beyond reason that he had so easily accepted her refusal, gave a brittle laugh and said with a wave of her hand, “Look for a rich husband. What else?”

  He turned on his heel, and a moment later she heard the street door bang.

  “Stop waving that cheap fan in my face,” complained Cissie, waking Amaryllis to the present.

  Amaryllis blushed. Cissie’s eyes narrowed. “Oho, so that was not the Marquess of Merechester and yet you have suddenly learned to blush.”

  Amaryllis said, “Only look, Cissie. There is a young lady with a bonnet exactly like that new one you bought last week.”

  Cissie’s attention was thankfully diverted and Amaryllis was free to return to her thoughts. The Marquess had been richly dressed. Perhaps he was married.

  But he could not be, for Lady Warburton would have read about it in the social columns and would most certainly have baited Amaryllis with the news.

  The carriage jolted to a halt outside the Warburtons’ town house in Hanover Square. The autumn day was growing dark and a lamplighter was lighting the parish lamps, their puny flickering lights feebly dispelling a little of the smoky London gloom.

  A cold wind sighed about the square.

  The girls handed Amaryllis their fans and reticules and shawls, so nearly out of the public eye now that they did not have to mind how they treated her.

  Amaryllis would have escaped to her room, but Agatha pinched her wrist and said in a threatening voice, “Come with me, Ammy. We are going to talk to Mama.”

  Lady Warburton was in the drawing room. She was a hard-faced woman of quite amazing vulgarity, which all went to show that a line dating back to the Norman Conquest did not necessarily mean good breeding.

  Her brother, Sir James Duvane, Amaryllis’s father, had been a bluff, cheerful man but always good ton. He had never been on very good terms with his sister, saying she was as pushing as a Cit.

  She was a thin, fair-haired woman as tall and angular as her daughters were plump and short. Her eyes, once as blue as theirs, were now a faded, washed-out color. Her gown was very rich but made of magenta silk with scarlet stripes. Amaryllis often wondered if her aunt was color-blind.

  “You’ll never guess what happened,” began Cissie, pushing Amaryllis forward. “Ammy here denies that the handsome beau we saw at Exeter ’Change was the Marquess of Merechester, although James said it was, and I think she is lying. Only see how agitated she is.”

  “Had it been the Marquess of Merechester,” said Amaryllis, determined to lie as hard as possible, “then he would have recognized me.”

  “Hardly,” drawled Lady Warburton, raking Amaryllis up and down with a cold, assessing stare. “But I am persuaded it was he, for rumor has it he has restored the Merechester estates and is worth fifty thousand pounds a year and has lately bought a house in town. We are to go to supper at Lady Dunbar’s tonight and I shall find out news of him. He is expected to be among the guests. He is a most desirable beau. Should I manage to invite him on a visit, I would have you know, Amaryllis, that I would not tolerate any effort on your part to reanimate his affections. Not that I think you could, but should you even try, it would be extremely embarrassing. There is nothing more distasteful than the sight of a poor relation who has forgot her place. You will not accompany us to the Dunbars’. There is some fine sewing I wish completed.”

  “It would be insufferable to be under the same roof with him,” said Amaryllis in a low voice.

  “You have no say in the matter,” pointed out Lady Warburton, looking amused.

  “Insufferable,” giggled Cissie. “When you said that, Ammy, you looked just like a sort of dowdy Mrs. Siddons.”

  Amaryllis turned and ran from the room.

  After a hearty bout of crying, Amaryllis felt better. She decided to take stock of the situation.

  The Marquess would surely not accept any invitation from Lady Warburton. He had never liked her in the days when he was engaged to Amaryllis. Tomorrow they would all be back in the country and she need not dread running into him everywhere she went. At Patterns, the Warburton country home, she was not forced to endure so much of Cissie’s and Agatha’s company as she did in town. Lady Warburton entertained a great deal, and on most of those occasions, Amaryllis was expected to make herself scarce. If the guests, however, had known her father, then she was paraded before them as an example of Lady Warburton’s magnanimity. But this did not happen overmuch, since most of her late father’s friends did not like the Warburtons.

  Lord Warburton had made his fortune in iron and steel and, it was believed, had purchased his barony, the profligate Prince of Wales being only too ready to accept any hard cash which came his way. Warburton was a coarse, brutal man who affected all the mannerisms of a Bond Street beau, having his stocky figure lashed into corsets and wearing collars so stiff and so high that they well deserved their nickname of “patricides.”

  Despite his awful manners, he largely ignored Amaryllis and left the baiting of her to his wife and daughters.

  Life stretched in front of Amaryllis in one long, bleak, stony road to the grave. But she felt it would be bearable if only she did not have to see the Marquess of Merechester again: did not have to look upon the love she had lost and was never, ever able to look forward to finding again.

  On the three-day journey to Patterns, Amaryllis waited and listened for the sound of the Marquess’s name.

  She knew he had been at the Dunbars’, for Lady Warburton had told her so. But apart from that brief remark, no further reference had been made to him, and Amaryllis gratefully assumed he had been invited on a visit and had refused.

  Although she had not known much happiness there, she was glad to see the tall, fantastic Tudor chimneys of Patterns rising above the trees. Sometimes she fe
lt this country home was her only friend. Lord Warburton had bought it from an impoverished county family, lock, stock, and barrel. Being of a cheese-paring nature, he had done nothing to modernize it, and so the rooms were still filled with elegant furniture of the last century, reflecting the quiet good taste of the previous owners.

  It was a long, rambling building of rose-colored, ivy-covered brick. Mullioned windows caught the setting sun as the Warburton carriage bowled up the drive.

  Amaryllis made her way to her room, carrying her own trunk. If she had left it in the hall with the others, then one of the servants would have taken it up for her. But on some previous occasions, Cissie and Agatha had given orders that it was to be left there “until that lazy creature fetches it herself,” and so Amaryllis preferred not to give them any excuse for a display of spite.

  The servants were cautiously kind to Amaryllis. Too overt a display of sympathy would result in dismissal, as had happened in the case of Lady Warburton’s last lady’s maid, who had been found guilty of dressing Amaryllis’s hair when she ought to be attending to her mistress.

  Amaryllis was expected to clean her room herself, but busy hands had obviously been at work in her absence. The shabby furniture gleamed with polish, and someone had arranged a jug of wildflowers on the table beside the bed.

  Tugging off her bonnet and unfastening her cloak, Amaryllis sat down in a chair by the window. With luck, she would be expected to take a tray in her room instead of joining the family for dinner.

  This proved to be the case, and it began to seem that she was to be allowed the whole precious evening to herself. Solitude was a luxury after the constant presence of Cissie and Agatha which she had had to endure in London.

  Hidden at the bottom of her trunk was a new novel, purchased out of her carefully hoarded store of pin money. She would stuff a blanket along the bottom of the door so that no telltale beam of light should shine out.

  Lady Warburton did not approve of wasting candles after nine o’clock in the evening.

  Amaryllis carefully put her small stock of shabby clothes away. In her closet were a few of the gowns from her original wardrobe. One of them was a white silk ball gown with a gauze overdress embroidered with silver thread. She had worn it to a ball long ago when the Marquess was her fiancé. She remembered the way his eyes had lit up as he had looked at her as she had descended the stairs wearing just that dress. The material was already turning yellowish.