by M. C. Beaton
He was just about to leave the library and go to his room and change into his riding dress when his father came in.
The duke was small, burly, and undistinguished. He was wearing a banyan wrapped round his thick body and a turban on his head. The banyan was of peacock silk and the oriental turban was of cloth-of-gold, but he still looked more like a bad-tempered farmer than a duke.
“How do?” he grunted. “See the Gentleman’s Magazine anywhere?”
“Yes, over on the table.”
“Good, good,” said the duke, shuffling forward to pick it up.
“I proposed to Miss Worthy, Father, and she accepted.”
“Well, of course she would,” said the duke, picking up the magazine and fishing in his bosom for his quizzing glass.
Lord Andrew smiled. “You think me a great catch, then?”
“Oh, no,” said the duke, riffling through the pages. “The Worthys have been hanging out for a title this age. She’s got a good dowry, Miss Worthy, and she could have married Mr. Benjamin Jepps this age, but they’d all set their hearts on a title.”
“You did not tell me that,” said Lord Andrew stiffly.
“Didn’t I? Didn’t seem important. She’s good family, and you ain’t exactly in the first blush of youth.”
“Yet I am not in my dotage.”
“Grrmph,” said his father, settling himself down in a wing chair and studying an article in the magazine.
“When does Mother come to town?” “Hey, what’s that?”
“I asked when Mother was coming to town,” said Lord Andrew patiently.
“Next week,” said the duke, “with this Miss Whatsit she’s bringing out.”
“Mother sponsoring another debutante? Why was I not told of this?”
“Why should you be? Not your home. Got enough blunt of your own to buy your own house. Why don’t you?”
“I would have thought my dear mother and father would have been glad of my company,” said Lord Andrew acidly.
“That’s common!” said the duke, much shocked. “You’ve been seeing too many plays. You’ll be sitting on my knee next.”
“Hardly,” said the six-foot-tall Sir Andrew caustically. “Anyway, who is Miss Whatsit, and why is Mama bringing her out?”
“I don’t know,” said the duke tetchily. “Some parish waif. You know what your mother’s like. Lame ducks underfoot the whole time. Poor relations, plain Janes who can’t get a husband. Whoever this Miss Whatsit is, you can take it from me she’ll be as ugly as sin and won’t own a penny. Your mother will have her all puffed up with consequence and vanity, she won’t take, and she’ll be sent back to the country with a lot of useless airs and graces and marry the curate. Now, run along, do,” he added, as if Lord Andrew were still in shortcoats.
Lord Andrew went off to exercise the blue devils out of his system. He rode hard that day, he fenced, he boxed, and then, feeling tired and slightly better, he made his way home again. But as he walked past a row of shops in South Molton Street just as the light was fading, he saw an interesting tableau in the upstairs window of an apartment above a butcher’s shop.
The little shopkeeper’s parlor was ablaze with candles. The butcher and his wife, dressed in their best, were facing a young couple, a pretty girl and a tall, honest-looking young man. The young man said something and took the girl’s hand in his. The girl blushed and lowered her eyes. The young man put his hand on his heart. The butcher’s wife began to cry happy tears, and the butcher raised his burly arms in a blessing.
Lord Andrew felt a queer little tug at his heart. Had he not been the son of a duke, had he been, say, the son of a shopkeeper, he would have been brought up close to his parents. His engagement would have been a celebration, thanks would have been given to God, and he would have received his father’s blessing.
A cold wind blew an old newspaper against his legs, and he angrily kicked it away.
Among their many properties, the Duke and Duchess of Parkworth owned the Sussex village of Lower Bexham. The squire, Sir Hector Mortimer, had recently died, leaving a pile of debt to his one surviving child, Penelope.
The vicar of St. Magnus the Martyr, the church in Lower Bexham, had written to the duchess about young Penelope’s plight.
The duchess wrote back immediately, promising to call on this Miss Mortimer. The Duchess of Parkworth had a soft heart, easily touched, but unfortunately, although she started off with enthusiasm to help her lame ducks, she could not sustain any interest in them for long. She was lame duckless for the moment. The previous charge had been a young footman who had confessed to a longing to be an army captain. The duchess had arranged everything and then had promptly forgotten about the footman. Even when she got a sad little letter from the footman saying he would have to resign his commission, for without any private income, he could not pay his mess bills, she had pettishly thrown it away, saying, “It is of no use to go on helping people who cannot help themselves.”
Fortunately for him, the footman had the wit to then write to Lord Andrew, who investigated his capabilities as a soldier, sorted out his debts, and arranged an allowance for him. When the duchess learned that the ex-footman was still a captain, and when she had not heard further from him, she had gone about saying, “There you are! People must stand on their own two feet.”
She descended on Penelope Mortimer suffused with all the warm glow of a Lady Bountiful.
Penelope Mortimer’s appearance came as rather a shock. The duchess was used to forwarding the careers of plain girls. Penelope had blond, almost silver hair, with a natural curl. Her blue eyes were wide and well spaced and fringed with sooty lashes. Her figure was dainty. She was a trifle small in stature.
Miss Mortimer’s one remaining servant introduced the duchess, who sailed in like a galleon. The duchess was almost as tall as Lord Andrew, but a liking for food had given her a massive figure, which she tried to reduce by wearing sturdy whalebone corsets. She had a small head and small hands and feet. Her massive figure did not seem to belong to her. It was as if she had poked her head through the cardboard cutout of a fat lady at the fairground.
The duchess was enchanted by Penelope’s appearance and manner. She had not been in the house for ten minutes before she was already weaving dreams about what a sensation Penelope would be at the Season.
Penelope, bewildered by plans for her social debut, tried to explain where matters stood. Her mother had died some years previously, her father the year before. Penelope had sold up everything that could be sold, and most of the debts had been paid. She had put her home on the market and had already selected a comfortable little cottage in the village. She had not once considered coming out. In order to explain to this overwhelming duchess about the exact state of her financial straits, Penelope excused herself and then returned with a pile of accounts’ ledgers, all written out in her neat hand. She popped a pair of steel spectacles on her nose and began to explain the figures to the duchess.
But the duchess was staring in horror at those spectacles. Penelope’s dreaming expression had disappeared the minute she put those spectacles on, and her eyes gleamed with a most unbecomingly sharp intelligence.
“No, no, no!” said her grace, snatching the spectacles from Penelope’s little nose. “You must never wear these dreadful things again!”
“But I must, Your Grace,” said Penelope. “I am quite blind without them. How will I be able to read?”
“Books!” said the duchess with loathing. “Young ladies are better off without them, and although I am sure your accounts are correct, it is most unladylike of you to be able to do such things.”
“Through lack of money,” said Penelope firmly, “I am become used to doing quite a lot of things that young ladies are not supposed to do. I garden and I cook. I find useful occupation most entertaining.”
“Horrors!” said the duchess, raising her little hands in the air.
“In fact, Your Grace, you must not concern yourself with my future. Onc
e I sell this house, I shall have enough to live on for quite some time. I have already put up a sign as a music teacher and have five pupils.”
The duchess’s mouth sagged in a disappointed droop. This gorgeous creature simply must come to London.
She pulled herself up to her full height. “You have no choice in the matter, Miss Mortimer. I command you to pack your things and come with me!”
There was nothing else Penelope could do. The duke and duchess owned the village. Ever practical, Penelope complied. She would try to enjoy herself at the Season and then return to the village.
A week later, she set out for London, a week during which she had asked and asked for her spectacles only to be told that the duchess “had them safe” but that they were too unbecoming. She presented Penelope with a tiny gold quizzing glass and told her to make the best of that.
At first Penelope tried to accept the loss of her spectacles philosophically. She knew that ladies did not wear them in public and that officers’ wives were actually forbidden to wear them. The poor Duchess of Wellington dreaded going out in her carriage, for she was very shortsighted and could not recognize anyone, but even she had to abide by the social laws and leave her spectacles at home. But on the road to London, Penelope began to think of ways to get them back, hoping the duchess had kept them by her. To this end, she passed most of the journey making friends with the duchess’s lady’s maid, Perkins, and finally discovering that Perkins herself had the spectacles in safekeeping.
By the time the carriage rolled along Park Street, Penelope had those spectacles back in her own reticule after many promises to Perkins that she would never let the duchess know she had them.
Their arrival was late at night, and so Penelope did not see any of the other occupants of the house. She drank a glass of hot wine and water given to her by Perkins, popped her glasses on her nose, fished a novel out of her luggage, and began to read, putting all this nonsense about the Season firmly out of her mind. On the journey to London, Penelope had become even firmer in her resolve to endure it all as best she could and then return to freedom.
She awoke early despite the fact she had been reading a good part of the night. The bedroom that had been assigned to her was much grander than any room Penelope had slept in before. The bed was luxuriously soft and had a canopy of white lace. There was white lace everywhere—bed hangings, curtains, laundry bag, and even the doilies on the toilet table.
Feeling rather gritty and dirty, Penelope rang the bell and shyly asked the chambermaid who answered it if she might have a bath. But no, that was not possible, was the reply. Water was pumped to the London houses three days a week, and today was not a water day.
Penelope stripped off and did the best she could with the cans of water on the toilet table.
She put on a pretty white muslin with a blue spot and then ventured downstairs. The great house was hushed and quiet. Penelope knew from reading the social news in the papers that the great of London often did not rise until two in the afternoon. But she was very hungry.
A footman was crossing the hall as she came down the stairs, and to her request, he replied that it would be served in the morning room as Lord Andrew liked an early breakfast.
The morning room, he said, was on the first floor on the left. Penelope retreated up the stairs and pushed open the door.
A pleasant smell of coffee and hot toast greeted her. There was a tall man already seated at a table by the window. Penelope could not see him very clearly, but she gained an impression he was black-haired and handsome.
He rose to his feet at her entrance, bowed, and pulled out a chair for her. “You must be Miss Mortimer,” he said in a pleasant voice. “I am Childe.”
Penelope blinked and then stifled a giggle. It was rather like meeting one of those savages portrayed in the romances she liked to read where a savage would say to the bewildered heroine stranded on some foreign shore, “Me man.” Then she remembered Lord Andrew Childe was the duchess’s younger son.
“What is amusing you?” asked Lord Andrew.
“It was a nervous giggle,” said Penelope primly. “This is a ducal mansion. I am not used to such grandeur. It unnerves me.”
“Indeed!” Lord Andrew thought little Miss Mortimer looked very composed. She was not his mama’s usual choice of protégée, for there was no denying that Miss Mortimer was remarkably pretty. But there was a vacant, unseeing look in those beautiful eyes of hers which marked a lack of intelligence, thought Lord Andrew. Therefore, after he had helped her to toast and coffee, he was not at all surprised when Penelope asked him, “Do you read novels, Lord Andrew?”
“No,” he said with the kind of indulgent smile he reserved for the weaker-brained. “I consider them a great waste of time.”
“Life would be very boring without imagination and romance,” said Penelope. “Reality can be fatiguing.”
“Nonsense. Retreating into novels shows a sad lack of courage. What do you find in the real world so distressing, Miss Mortimer?”
Penelope held up one little hand, rough and reddened from her gardening and cooking, and ticked off the items on her fingers. “My father died last year. One. He left a monstrous pile of debt. Two. I thought I had solved my future and my financial problems when the Duchess of Parkworth arrived and told me I must have a Season. Three,” she ended with a final flick of the third finger.
“I see. I am sorry to hear of your father’s death and of your troubles. I agree with the first two items, but surely a Season is to be enjoyed!”
“But I didn’t want a Season,” said Penelope reasonably. “I wanted to be left alone.”
“Then you have only to tell my mother that,” he said stiffly.
“Oh, but I did!” said Penelope. “And she commanded me to come with her, and as your family owns our village, I could not very well refuse.”
“Of course you could have refused. This is not the Middle Ages. Did you expect my mama to take some sort of revenge had you not complied with her wishes?”
“Something like that.”
“Now, there we have a good example of the pernicious effect of novels,” said Lord Andrew. “You have been imagining all sorts of Gothic nonsense.”
“I have?” Penelope tried to bring his face into focus, but it remained a vaguely handsome blur. She had been warned that screwing up your eyes gave you premature wrinkles, and although she was not vain, she had no desire to look old before her time. So to Lord Andrew, her expression appeared vacant and rather stupid.
“Do not trouble yourself further,” he said. “I shall speak to my mother today. You will find yourself returned to the country as quickly as possible.”
“Thank you,” said this irritating beauty meekly. “But you will find it will not serve.”
Chapter 2
Knowing his mother would sleep late, Lord Andrew walked round to the Worthys’ home in Cavendish Square. Miss Ann Worthy had often assured him she was up with the lark.
But although it was nearly ten in the morning, he was told that the whole family was still in bed. Unable to believe his love could be other than truthful, he commanded the butler to take up a message requesting Miss Worthy to come riding with him that afternoon at two.
Ann Worthy was not amused at being awoken at dawn, as she put it. She was further annoyed by Lord Andrew’s invitation. She and her parents were to go that afternoon to visit relatives in Primrose Hill. The relatives included four unmarried misses in their teens. Ann was looking forward to putting their noses out of joint with the announcement of her engagement.
Besides, what was the point of going driving at two in the afternoon? Five was the fashionable hour. There was no one in London at two, thought Miss Worthy, carelessly dismissing the other ninety-eight percent of the town’s population from her mind.
She was to see Lord Andrew at the opera that evening. It would do him no harm to learn early that she was not prepared to be at his beck and call. With a novel feeling of power, Miss Worthy sent back
a note with the intelligence that she was not free that afternoon. She did not trouble to give any explanation.
Lord Andrew found himself becoming highly irritated. He did not believe Miss Worthy was in bed, for surely since she was not given to extravagances of speech and would not make claims to be an early riser were it not true, he felt she might at least have had the courtesy to receive him.
He did not know that a great deal of his irritation sprang from an unrealized desire to see her again as soon as possible to allay that nagging doubt at the back of his mind.
That he had any doubts about his engagement, he would not admit to himself. Miss Worthy was of good family, she was a lady, and he had made a careful choice. He had done the right thing—as usual—but unusually, doing the right thing had not brought its usual mild glow of satisfaction.
He went for a solitary ride in the park, where he remembered the plight of Miss Mortimer. He smiled indulgently as he recalled the silly little thing’s fears about his mother taking revenge.
He rode home and strode up to the morning room. His mother was reading a newspaper, squinting horribly at the print.
“You need spectacles, Mama,” he said.
“Nonsense! The light is bad here. Those trees quite take away the sun.”
Lord Andrew glanced about the bright room, at the sunlight sparkling on the silver of the coffeepot, but decided argument would be useless.
“Put down that paper, Mama,” he said. “I wish to talk about Miss Mortimer.”
“Penelope,” said the duchess with a fond smile. “Such a dear little thing, and so exquisitely pretty. I declare she will turn all heads.”
“But it appears that Miss Mortimer does not wish a Season. She assures me she would be perfectly happy to return to the country. Although she is lacking in intelligence, she does appear to have a certain decided opinion of what she does want. I pointed out to her that she had only to tell you, and you would be happy to let her go.”
The duchess’s face took on a rather sulky look. “Fiddle. Girls of that age do not know their own minds. And what, pray, is a more pleasant way of occupying a girl’s mind than parties and balls?”
