The Love and Temptation Series

by M. C. Beaton

  “Talk about your grief, Ian,” said Lord Andrew. “I was supposed to dance attendance on my mother’s new lame duck, but she is such a success, I cannot get near her. So I have plenty of time to listen to you.”

  “I’m not talking about my mother,” said Ian Macdonald. “I’m talking about yours.”

  “Mine! There is nothing up with her.”

  “Oh, my dear friend. That I should be the first to tell you! The Duchess of Parkworth has”—his voice sank to a mournful whisper—“the Blasted Wasting.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “A rare disease from the Indies.”

  “Dammit, man, does my mother look as if she’s wasting away? Who is putting about such a farrago of lies?”

  “Not lies. For that gossip Partridge had it direct from the duchess herself. And there is worse.”

  “Can there be?” demanded Lord Andrew cynically.

  “She says she is going to leave her personal fortune to that chit, Penelope Mortimer.”

  The footman appeared with a bottle of wine and two glasses. Lord Andrew ordered him to leave the whole bottle. When he had poured out two glasses, handed one to Ian, drained his own in one gulp, and refilled it, he said, “Ian, the situation is this. My mother is competing with Mrs. Blenkinsop. Mrs. Blenkinsop is bringing out her niece, Miss Tilney. Miss Tilney does not rate highly in the looks department but has a sizable fortune. Miss Mortimer has none. Mrs. Blenkinsop, I know, has already been gossiping to the effect that Miss Mortimer is one of Mother’s lame ducks, of no fortune or breeding. But before that acid began to bite, I assume my mother told all those barefaced lies to Mrs. Partridge. Hence Penelope Mortimer’s success.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Oh, quite.”

  “But Miss Mortimer is divinely beautiful, is she not?”

  “She is very well in her way,” said Lord Andrew repressively. He stood up and peered through the palms. “Strange,” he said over his shoulder. “She is nowhere in sight. You will keep this to yourself, Ian, but it is my belief that Miss Mortimer is a trifle simple. I hope she has not done anything silly. Perhaps I had better go to look for her. But make yourself easy on the matter of my mother’s death. I am sure she will live a great many years longer. In a few weeks, the novelty of Miss Mortimer will have worn off, and that is the last anyone will hear of her.”

  Lord Andrew diligently searched the ballroom, the card room, and the supper room. There was no sign of Penelope. His mother appeared at his elbow looking agitated and whispered that Penelope had said she was going off to refresh her appearance, but servants sent to the dressing room for the ladies had reported she was not there.

  “You had best not rouse an alarm,” said Lord Andrew. “I shall find her, and later we must talk of my mother’s so-called forthcoming death.”

  He went out onto the landing and looked over the banister and searched the hall with his eyes. No Penelope. The dressing rooms for the guests to repair their toilet were on the floor above the ballroom. He made his way up there quite forgetting he was engaged to dance the cotillion with Miss Worthy.

  Penelope was standing in a small, weedy enclosed bit of garden at the back of the house, wondering what on earth to do. She had been reluctant to return to the hot ballroom and had wandered downstairs and through the hall to the back and then along a little passage to an open door at the end. She had walked through it and found herself in the little garden. The air was sweet and warm, and a full moon silvered the tall weeds, making them look like magical plants.

  Then some servant had slammed the door shut, Penelope had found it locked. Above her head, the loud noise of the orchestra drowned out her frantic knockings.

  She raised her skirts and took her precious spectacles out of a pocket in her petticoat and popped them on her nose.

  She was now thoroughly terrified of what the duchess’s rage would be like if she stayed missing for much longer. A long black drainpipe rose up the back of the building, and one of its arms shooting out at right angles was right under an open window on the second floor where Penelope remembered the dressing rooms to be.

  She could easily climb that drainpipe, but her gown would be ruined, that gown which had cost so much money.

  Penelope decided frantically that if she removed her dress and slung it round her neck and climbed up in her petticoat, she could dive into the dressing room, pop on her gown, and run down to the ballroom. Shivering with nerves, she put her spectacles back in her petticoat pocket, untied the tapes of her gown and took it off, and then tied it around her neck.

  Lord Andrew became convinced Penelope was in the ladies’ dressing room, probably hidden behind a screen. This glittering social event had probably been too much for such a country-bred miss. There was surely no other logical place she could be. He sent one of the maids in to search thoroughly, but the maid returned and said there was no one there.

  Lord Andrew handed her a crown and told her to stand guard outside while he looked himself.

  He went in, glad that no ladies seemed to want to make repairs at that moment, and looked everywhere. But it was a fairly small room, and it was obvious there was nowhere Penelope could hide.

  He was about to leave when he heard strange noises coming from outside the window. He leaned out of the open window and looked down, and then clutched the sill hard.

  Pulling herself up the drainpipe, clad in a white petticoat, flesh-colored stockings, and the most frivolous pair of rose-embroidered garters Lord Andrew had ever seen, came Penelope Mortimer.

  He darted to the dressing room door, locked it, ran back to the window, and leaned down to catch Penelope’s arm as she came within reach.

  She let out a cry of terror and lost her hold, but he had her safe. He pulled her up and then helped her in the window.

  “Dress yourself,” he said, turning his back on her.

  Blushing furiously, Penelope slipped the gown over her head and then asked him in a trembling voice to help her tie her tapes.

  He swung about and fastened the tapes and then put his hands on her shoulders. “We must get out of here before anyone comes,” he whispered. “I shall talk to you later.”

  He straightened her headdress, seized a washcloth and roughly scrubbed a smudge of soot from her nose, and then scrubbed her dirty hands.

  He unlocked the door and led her out. “Miss Mortimer had fainted,” he said severely to the startled maid, “but here is a guinea for you, for you did your best.”

  He tucked Penelope’s arm firmly in his own and led her down to the ballroom.

  Miss Worthy saw them arrive. She was furious and frightened. An acid-tongued friend of her mother’s had told Miss Worthy that she looked like a harlot and that if she was not careful, The Perfect Gentleman might decide to ditch her in favor of that Mortimer chit, thereby keeping his mother’s money in the family.

  So to Lord Andrew’s relief, after he had delivered Penelope to his mother, he found a meek and ladylike fiancée who had reduced her feathered headdress by eight plumes and who had allowed her damped muslin to dry. To her questions, he replied tersely that Miss Mortimer had fainted and that he had had to rescue her and that Miss Mortimer was the most tiresome idiot it had ever been his ill luck to come across.

  “Perhaps,” ventured Miss Worthy, “I could set her an example as to manners. She has not had the social training of a member of the ton.”

  “If you could be a friend to her,” said Lord Andrew, “that would indeed be very noble of you. Miss Mortimer needs to be guided by some lady nearer her years.”

  “Then I shall call on her tomorrow,” said Miss Worthy, privately deciding it would be as well to get to know as much about this new enemy as possible.

  “You are very good,” said Lord Andrew. He gave her a sweet smile and led her to the floor.

  Chapter 4

  Lord Andrew meant to tackle his mother again on the subject of Miss Mortimer, but the duchess was so flushed with success over Penelope’s triumph that h
e decided to leave it for the moment.

  Penelope, on the other hand, must be spoken to immediately.

  They settled down over the tea tray in the drawing room before going to bed. The duchess regaled her husband, who had not been present at the ball, with every detail from the sour look on Mrs. Blenkinsop’s face to the name of every gentleman who had danced with Penelope.

  “But why were you absent for so long?” demanded the duchess at last.

  “As I told you, Your Grace,” said Penelope, stifling a yawn, “I fainted.” Penelope had decided the easiest course was to adopt Lord Andrew’s lie.

  “Fainted!” said the duchess awfully. “F-a-i-n-t-e-d,” she added, drawling out the word. “I did not say anything when you told me at the ball, but I am convinced you did nothing of the sort, Penelope. This sensibility business is not the fashion it was, and I trust you have not begun to put on airs. You felt a trifle dizzy and exaggerated it into a faint, did you not?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said Penelope, too tired to argue.

  “Just as I thought,” said the duchess, who had no desire to sponsor a flawed beauty. “Now, you must go to bed and refresh yourself for the morrow, for, if I am not mistaken, we can expect many callers.”

  Lord Andrew cleared his throat. “I have asked Miss Worthy to call. I am sure her example would be beneficial to Miss Mortimer.”

  “Fiddlesticks. I do not want Penelope to learn how to dress like a Cyprian or to start parading about with a head full of feathers.”

  “Mama! Miss Worthy’s dress this evening may have been a trifle unfortunate…”

  “Very unfortunate.”

  “But Miss Mortimer stands in need of social training.”

  “All that will happen,” said the duchess with relish, “is that Miss Worthy will have her nose put out of joint by all my Penelope’s admirers.”

  “As Miss Worthy is engaged to me, she is in no need of admirers or to be jealous of any other woman.”

  “That must be just about the most pompous remark I have ever heard,” said Penelope.

  “Don’t sit there glaring, Andrew,” said his mother. “Penelope, off to your room.”

  Penelope gained her room with a sigh of relief. She had walked over to the toilet table to begin her preparations for bed when there was a knock at the door.

  “Enter,” she called, wondering why Perkins should knock at the door, a thing good servants never did.

  Lord Andrew came in.

  “Now, Miss Mortimer,” he said, “explain what happened this evening.”

  The little French clock on the mantel chimed four in the morning. “Yesterday evening,” corrected Penelope gloomily.

  “Very well. Yesterday evening.”

  Penelope sat down wearily in front of the lace-draped toilet table, raised her arms, and unpinned her headdress.

  “It was a chapter of accidents,” she said. “I did go to the dressing room. Then I went back down past the ballroom to the hall. I wanted to walk about for bit. The ballroom was hot, and I was tired of the effort of dancing.” Penelope meant she was tired of the effort of remembering her place in the sets when she could not see very well. “There was a door open at the back of the hall. I went through and found myself in a neglected bit of garden. The air was pleasant,” she said dreamily. “Then some servant slammed the door and locked it. The orchestra in the ballroom struck up, and no one could hear my bangings and shoutings. I thought if I removed my gown so that it would not be soiled and climbed up the drainpipe to the dressing room, where the window was open, that I might be able to put on my dress and go down to the ballroom, and no one would be any the wiser. But all’s well that ends well. I told your mother I had fainted. I am unhurt.” She yawned and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles.

  “For your own good, and for my mother’s good, you cannot go on making social gaffes,” said Lord Andrew. “I urge you to attend to Miss Worthy’s advice.”

  Penelope had had a very good view of Miss Worthy when that lady had been dancing far enough away from her.

  “I am not used to London ways,” said Penelope primly, “nor can I adopt the extremes of dress. It is all very well for a lady of Miss Worthy’s mature years, but in a young virgin, it would be damned as fast.”

  “Miss Worthy, like most ladies, is sometimes given to odd mistakes in dress,” said Lord Andrew angrily—angry because the more he thought about his fiancée’s gown, the more shocking it seemed. “But she is the epitome of elegance and social deportment most of the time.”

  “What Her Grace needs,” said Penelope half to herself, “is another lame duck.”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “I wish your mother would find another interest,” said Penelope in a stronger voice, “and preferably an interest who takes the same size in gown as I. Were it not for my horror at the amount of money that has already been spent on me, I would run off to the country and risk the duchess’s wrath. What is my behavior to you, in any case, Lord Andrew? I am Her Grace’s protégée, not yours.”

  “Then if you wish me to keep out of your affairs,” said Lord Andrew angrily, “do not embroil me in them by walking into lions’ dens or climbing up drainpipes half naked.”

  “I was not half naked. Believe me, my lord, in my petticoat, I still concealed more than your fiancée did with her ballgown.”

  “You are an impertinent little girl. How dare you speak to me so?”

  “How dare you speak to me so!” retaliated Penelope. “Oh, do run along. I am so very tired.”

  “There is just one thing,” he said, “before I leave you, which needs explanation. In order to compete with Mrs. Blenkinsop, my mother has seen fit to put it about that she had a deathly illness and she is going to leave her money to you. I trust you do not believe such rubbish.”

  “No,” said Penelope. “Of course not. But there is one thing I have to say to you. It could be argued that neither Her Grace nor Miss Worthy appear to have behaved at the ball with ladylike decorum, the one telling rank lies and the other indecorously gowned, so I do not know why you are standing in the middle of my bedroom giving me a jaw-me-dead.”

  There was a scratching at the door, and Perkins walked into the room and stopped short at the sight of Lord Andrew.

  “I am just going,” he said crossly, suiting the action to the words.

  A few minutes later his valet struggled to assist a master who kept muttering and cursing under his breath. His valet, Pomfret, was breathlessly saving up every curse and wild gesture to describe to the upper servants the next day. Pomfret had been hired as a valet to Lord Andrew just before the beginning of the previous Season. Hitherto, he had found the work boring. Lord Andrew’s impeccable manners and impeccable dress gave Pomfret nothing to work on. His correct politeness with equals and servants gave the gossip-starved Pomfret nothing to talk about. Now it looked as if Lord Andrew was either drunk or about to suffer from a nervous breakdown. The valet handed his master his nightcap and his glass of warm wine and water and looked forward to a rosier future.

  That lie, which had been so useful to the duchess the evening before, turned out to be the wreck of her plans for the following day.

  She had quite forgotten about it and was mortified to find that the gentlemen who had danced with Penelope had not called in person. Mute witness to this was in the array of unbent cards in the silver tray in the hall. Gentlemen or ladies who had called in person always turned down one corner. Certainly one had sent a love poem—the duchess considered it her right to open Penelope’s post—and another two, bunches of flowers.

  It was only when Miss Worthy arrived and began to speak to the duchess in a hushed whisper, and occasionally pressing that lady’s hand, that the duchess found out the truth of the matter.

  “No callers at all,” the duchess complained.

  “I am here, dear Mama-in-law,” mourned Miss Worthy.

  “Stop calling me by that stupid name. You aren’t married yet, and if you go about flaunting yoursel
f in damped muslin for much longer, you won’t be.”

  At that Miss Worthy began to cry. “No need to take on so,” said the duchess impatiently. “Andrew’s shackled to you, and there’s an end of it.”

  Miss Worthy raised streaming eyes. Penelope, sitting a little way away from the couple, wrinkled her nose. There was an odd smell of onion in the drawing room.

  “It is your courageous behavior which quite goes to my heart,” said Miss Worthy, who had learned the story of the duchess’s doom from her parents and had not yet had a chance to discuss it with Lord Andrew.

  “Stop crying. I’m the one who should be crying. I have a weak heart,” said the duchess crossly.

  “I know. I know,” wailed Miss Worthy. She flashed a look at Penelope, who was sitting looking out of the bow window at the trees in the park. “I am shocked at you, Miss Mortimer,” said Miss Worthy. “Some show of distress, some sensibility, would be more becoming in you.”

  “I hope Penelope knows better than to cry and bawl because she hasn’t any callers,” said the duchess. “Where’s Andrew? Was ever a woman so plagued.”

  “I am talking about the Blasted Wasting.”

  “The Blasted what? I distinctly heard you snigger, Penelope. Mind your manners.”

  “The Blasted Wasting,” said Miss Worthy. “You know, that disease from the Indies.”

  “Oh, that,” said the duchess. “Oh, fiddle. Oh, damme. So that’s why no one has called! I have not got the blasted anything, Miss Worthy, so you may dry your eyes. It was some malice put about by Maria Blenkinsop because she’s jealous of Penelope, only having a Friday-faced antidote to puff off herself.”

  “I thought Miss Tilney charming,” said Penelope.

  “And who asked your opinion, miss? I must make calls. I must scotch this rumor. Andrew!” she cried as her son’s tall figure entered the room. “Do take Miss Worthy away somewhere… anywhere. I know, take her for a drive in the park, and take Miss Mortimer with you.”