The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  Augusta bustled into the room and looked sharply at Penelope’s white face and then at the letter in her hands.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  Penelope silently handed her the letter. Augusta read it closely and then gave a harsh laugh. “Pay no attention. His brother is dead, did you know?”

  Penelope nodded.

  “Well then. He’s feeling bitter, that’s all. He’ll come around. There’s something havey-cavey about young Charles’s death, though. My footman had it from Hestleton’s footman that there was the sound of a shot from the study and nobody’s been allowed to see the body.” Her protruding eyes narrowed as she looked at the letter again.

  “He says here he enjoyed your favors. What favors?” she rapped.

  Penelope dropped her eyes. She would never, ever tell anyone what had really happened or her life would indeed be ruined—if it could possibly be ruined more than it was already.

  “As an engaged couple,” she whispered, “we naturally were very affectionate.”

  “How affectionate?” demanded Augusta, coming to stand over her trembling niece.

  “A few kisses, that is all,” whispered Penelope.

  “You fool,” sneered Augusta. “You should have got him into bed and kept him there. Well, we must play his little game. I’ll send a notice, cancelling the engagement. But, harkee, I’m not going to waste all the blunt I laid out on a wardrobe for you, miss. I thought to send you packing if ever you failed to nab the Earl. But I’m not doing so badly on my own with Euphemia Stride to monitor me. Though why a body isn’t allowed to open her own mouth, I can’t say. Euphie says if I just sit still and say nothing, ‘tis better. So, now we come to you.

  “I had hoped, you see, that you would marry the Earl and, who knows, you may yet. In fact, that was why I asked you to London. I would then have used the Earl to get invited to all the best houses.”

  She rattled on, unaware of Penelope’s stricken face. “Don’t worry. I ain’t going to send you packing … yet. It so happens that Lord Barrington was saying to Miss Stride only the other day that you was ‘a demned fine-looking gel’ and it occurs to me, we might go further and fare worse than to have my Lord Barrington as your beau.”

  “But Lord Barrington is married, he’s about sixty, and he has a terrible reputation as a roué,” gasped Penelope.

  “His wife is ailing,” said Augusta cynically, “and Barrington is invited everywhere.”

  Penelope shook her head in bewilderment. She could not quite believe her eyes as she stared at her aunt. It was as if the painted Augusta had stepped down from her picture frame.

  “Let me see if I understand you, Aunt,” said Penelope slowly. “For some reason, you do not seem to find Roger’s rejection of me strange …”

  “Get it into your head that the engagement’s at an end,” said Augusta brutally. “That kind of aristocrat don’t like common blood being injected into their families, God rot ‘em. But as I said, he may come round yet, but I don’t aim to put any money on it. You’ve still got a roof over your head and clothes on your back so what more’s bothering you?”

  “I thought you cared for me,” said Penelope in a low voice. “Now you tell me that you are simply using me to further your social ambitions and want me to consort with an elderly, married roué.”

  “You don’t mince your words, do you?” smiled Augusta. “So I’ll let you have it in plain language. I only care for what your pretty face can get us in the way of a title. I would tell you not to cancel the engagement and sue the Earl for breach of promise but that will get us nowhere. Not with that high and mighty Lord’s connections. And while we’re waiting around to see what he’ll do, Lord Barrington may escape. Be reasonable. You don’t have to work for a living and there’s plenty more fish in the sea. I’ll have you married yet. If you don’t like it, you can get out!”

  Penelope thought desperately, fighting against the waves of shock that engulfed her; first the Earl’s letter, now this. But she was sure Roger had made a mistake about her, had heard some malicious gossip. He could not have murmured all those words of love or have made all those plans for their future life together unless he were sincere. Made cunning by desperation, and determined to stay in London until she could at least see Roger again, Penelope schooled her face as she raised her eyes to her aunt.

  “I will do what you say, Aunt,” she said in a trembling voice. “Only, do not expect me to see Lord Barrington immediately. I am very upset over Roger.”

  “You’ll get over it,” said Augusta cynically. “And who knows, I may be a Countess before you.”

  Penelope stared at her aunt in amazement. “Are you considering marrying, Aunt?”

  Augusta bit her fat lip. How easy it was to let secrets slip. But she could not resist saying, “Just you wait and see, my girl. Just you wait and see.”

  Penelope picked up the letter and her sewing and left the room. She could not stand to be in her aunt’s presence a minute longer. She had forgiven Augusta her many vulgarities and rudenesses, believing that Augusta was underneath kind and generous and had only the welfare of her niece at heart. Had she not been so determined to meet the Earl again, face-to-face, Penelope would have left the house that minute.

  Augusta watched the girl as she left the room and noticed Penelope’s white face and the droop of her shoulders.

  I hope she doesn’t mope too long, thought Augusta. She’ll spoil all those marketable good looks if she goes on pining.

  She turned her mind to the mystery of Charles’s death. The Comte de Chernier had left London as soon as he had heard the news and had gone into hiding in a villa in Barnet where he was known as Mr. Cobbett. He had told Augusta that he did not for one minute believe Charles had had a seizure, but that he had probably taken his own life and left a note. Why, Charles had been threatening just such a thing the day before his death! “The Earl can’t do much to you,” the Comte had said to her, “But I wouldn’t put it past the Earl to come looking for me with a brace of pistols if Charles told him anything about me! Try to find out what you can about Charles’s death.”

  Augusta reflected that it would be just like a snivelling weakling like Charles to commit suicide. He had certainly behaved like a madman at her portrait party. Augusta had found nothing amiss with her portrait and was very proud of it indeed, and a very surprised Mr. Liwoski had received his fee instead of the scene he expected. He had not meant to paint such a monster, but Augusta had not given him any time to lie with paintbrush and so he had portrayed simply what he had seen.

  Augusta looked fondly up at her portrait above the fireplace as she waited for the return of her footman, Snyle. She had given Snyle a quantity of money and instructions to buy Rourke, the Earl’s butler, as many drinks as possible and to find out the secret of Viscount Clairmont’s death. Snyle had informed her that today was the butler’s day off, the Earl having taken only his valet with him to the country and that although Rourke was as closemouthed as an oyster, he had a weakness for drink which he only indulged in his free time.

  It was now late afternoon, and Snyle had been gone since midday.

  At last Augusta saw the powdered head of her footman passing the drawing room window. In a few moments Snyle sidled into the room. He was a thin tall man with a pockmarked face and eyes as cunning as Augusta’s own.

  “I got what you wanted, mum,” he said triumphantly.

  “Out with it!” commanded Augusta.

  Snyle had indeed been successful in lubricating the Earl’s butler to the maudlin point where the butler had drunkenly muttered out the secret of Charles’s death. Augusta listened with her eyes gleaming. It gave her a delicious feeling of power. But her enjoyment fled as her eyes met the malicious eyes of the servant.

  “What are you staring at me like that for?” she snapped.

  “There was a note, mum,” said Snyle running a pale tongue over his lips. “Lord Charles said in it how he was a Bonapartiste spy and how you’d been blackmail
ing him to get the Earl to marry Miss Vesey.”

  “And so?” queried Augusta with sudden amiability, but thinking, So that is why the Earl terminated the engagement!

  “And so, mum, to put it bluntly—it’s going to cost you a packet to get me to keep my mouth shut.”

  Augusta slapped her knee and gave a jolly laugh. “If you ain’t a one, Snyle,” she said with great good humor, and, fumbling for something in her large reticule, she got to her feet. “Well, you’re as bad as me, no doubt of that. We may as well have a drink to seal the bargain.”

  She picked up a decanter from the side table and stood with her back to him. “Not that I suppose you’ll appreciate this. It’s a good vintage.”

  She poured a glass and Snyle took it from her. This was all going easier than he had thought. His fortune was made. He took a great draft of wine, his eyes bulged hideously, and then his feet performed a mad dance on the floor. His back arched and his face turned purple. He clawed at his cravat and then fell lifeless to the floor.

  Lucky I had that poison handy, said Augusta to herself. And to think that Euphie Stride gave it to me to put down rats!

  She dragged the footman over to a corner behind a sofa and then, pulling a holland cover out of a cupboard, she threw it over the servant’s body and then rang the bell.

  When her butler appeared, she told that surprised man that she wanted the house to herself for the evening and that all the servants could go to Hyde Park again to see the peace celebrations which were still going on.

  She then sat, after he had left, watching the pale light deepening to blue on the narrow street outside, listening for the sounds of the servants leaving by the area steps.

  In the little music room across the hallway, Penelope was playing a jaunty song from Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute, but singing the words so sadly that she might as well have been playing a dirge.

  A bustling, a rap of heels, and shouts of laughter moving up the area steps and then diminishing along the street told Augusta that all the servants had finally left. She got to her feet and moved quickly across the dark hallway to the music room. The key was in the door outside and Augusta softly turned it and locked the door.

  Then she returned to the drawing room and, with surprising strength, hefted the body of Snyle up onto her back. She crossed the hallway with her macabre burden. The flickering light from the parish lamp in the street outside threw the shadow of Augusta with the servant on her back dancing up the stairs, like some great humpbacked monster. Augusta paused with her head on one side as Penelope began to sing again.

  “Only friendship’s harmony,” Penelope sang sadly,

  “Softens every sorrow.

  We without this sympathy,

  Ne’er could face tomorrow!”

  “Pretty,” thought Augusta, momentarily diverted. “Very pretty.”

  She made her way to the cellar door and kicked it open. She dropped her bundle at the top of the cellar stairs and went to fetch a branch of candles.

  Still leaving the dead servant at the top of the stairs, Augusta went down into the cellar and looked around until she found what she wanted. She then climbed up the cellar stairs, collected the body, and lumbered back down with it. She dropped her burden again and pried open the top of a cask of canary. With a great heave she got the body of Snyle back on her shoulders and then slowly slid it into the barrel, moving quickly back as a wave of wine slopped over the side. Then she hammered the lid back down and marked the barrel with a red cross.

  Augusta cared little for literature or books but she had to admit that sometimes Shakespeare came in handy. She had recently seen Edmund Kean in Richard III and had much enjoyed seeing “false, fleeting, perjur’d Clarence” ending up in the butt of malmsey.

  She retreated up the stairs, locked the cellar door, unlocked the music room, and then sat down in the drawing room to wait.

  From the music room Penelope’s sad voice, raised in song, echoed plaintively through the dark house.

  “Ah, I know it, all is gone now,

  Gone forever love divine!

  Now no more sweet hours of rapture

  Come to cheer this heart of mine!”

  I wonder how long she’s going to mope, thought Augusta.

  Then she heard the sounds she had been waiting for. The servants were returning home.

  She waited a few minutes and rang the bell. When the butler answered her summons, she told him that there was a cask of canary in the cellar marked with a red cross. “I want you to get two of the strongest footmen,” said Augusta, “to take that particular cask out to Barnet in the morning. They are to deliver it to a Mr. Cobbett at the Willows with my compliments. The cask is made of a special wood so it is very heavy. Tell the men to be careful.”

  After all, reflected Augusta when the butler had left, a French spy should have more knowledge of how to dispose of a body than she herself!

  Chapter Ten

  The weary summer dragged on and still the Earl did not return to town.

  Hyde Park was changed from a green oasis to a sort of crumbling dusty desert set about with temporary taverns. After the peace celebrations, every drinking place in town which had taken up temporary residence in the park had decided, it seemed, to make their stay permanent. Where green grass had grown, now were long rows of dirty, evil-smelling booths. The visits of foreign royalties went on, and people complained they could no longer get their clothes washed as all the washerwomen were working for Kings and Princes, and milk was in short supply because, it was said, the cows in Green Park were being frightened by the perpetual cheering and fireworks.

  Augusta assiduously accepted every invitation she could get and by dint of only opening her mouth to make some quiet flattering comment, and by creeping around the houses of the great and searching in their bureaus, came up with a surprising amount of useful information for the Comte.

  It came as a great surprise to Augusta, however, and a greater surprise to Miss Stride, when an invitation with an imposing crest arrived in Brook Street. Miss Harvey and Miss Vesey were invited to a party to be held by the Prince Regent at Clarence House.

  Augusta’s joy knew no bounds. She began to berate Penelope on that young lady’s dismal looks. It was time Penelope came out of mourning for her lost engagement and performed her duties as Augusta’s niece.

  Both ladies were to be squired to Clarence House by Lord Barrington, and Penelope was warned to be very civil to that gentleman.

  Penelope felt she was past caring about anything and when the great evening arrived, numbly accepted Lord Barrington’s heavy gallantries. Lord Barrington was a tall, thin man with a painted face and powdered hair and eyes like a lizard. When he spoke in his high, mincing voice, he had a habit of curling his long tongue up to the roof of his mouth at the end of each sentence which added to his reptilian appearance.

  Penelope was in court dress, black muslin over a rose silk underskirt. Lord Barrington had presented her with a diamond pendant which she wore at her throat, having no strength of will left to refuse his gift. She had written several pleading little letters to the Earl, but all had been returned to her, unopened.

  The party was held in a special hall at Carlton House, built by Nash for the occasion. The walls were draped with white muslin, and a temple in the middle of the room held two bands, concealed behind banks of artificial flowers. Covered walks led to various supper tents, painted with allegorical subjects such as “The Overthrow of Tyranny by the Allied Military Powers.”

  Penelope hardly noticed any of this splendor. She was introduced to one guest after another by Lord Barrington, some she knew and some she didn’t, and all the while hard eyes stared from her to her elderly escort, judging, speculating, and finding fault.

  She curtsied and murmured replies—and then suddenly stood still. The Earl of Hestleton was disappearing down one of the walks.

  She gave a hasty excuse and slipped away before anyone could stop her, her heart hammering against her rib
s. She went from one supper tent to another, searching among the guests, and at last she found him.

  He was standing with Guy Manton and a group of friends. He looked as austere and elegant as she remembered, with only a hectic gleam in his eye betraying that he had had too much to drink. These eyes suddenly focused on Penelope as she stood shyly at the entrance to the tent, almost as if the Earl were wondering if he had seen a vision.

  Penelope certainly looked ethereal enough with her slight figure trembling as she stared at him with wide, pathetic eyes.

  The Earl turned to his friends and said in a loud voice, “I heard a vastly amusing song. I must sing it to you.” His friends laughed and cheered him on

  To Penelope’s horror, he began to sing “The Harlot’s Progress” in a loud baritone. She swung round and found her way barred by Augusta, Lord Barrington, and Miss Stride who were staring at the Earl. Slowly she turned around again and faced the Earl.

  He spoke, rather than sang, the last two lines. Holding up his glass and bowing low to Penelope, he said slowly, “And now (though sad and wonderful it sounds) I would not touch her for a hundred pounds.”

  Penelope’s eyes filled with tears as the Earl handed his glass to one of his friends and strode towards her and grasped her wrist. “Tell me, my sweet,” he said in a mocking voice, “who is enjoying the pink and white favors of your body now. Barrington? Ah, Barrington, I can recommend her. Extremely warm in bed and quite economical out of it. A bargain, dear boy, I can assure you.”

  Barrington froze and then glanced at Augusta. “What’s this?” he cried. “I thought your niece a virgin. I didn’t know you were trying to unload Haymarket ware onto me!”

  Penelope pulled her wrist from the Earl’s grasp and fled, running, stumbling, and pushing her way through the startled guests. She did not stay to collect her wrap but fled in a demented way through the dark streets. A group of wild bloods tried to block her path, but she eluded their grasping hands and stumbled onwards.