The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  He had finally told her the liaison was at an end, and a horrendous scene: had followed. She had accused him of being in love with Annabelle Quennell. She had torn her hair like a madwoman and uttered threats against Annabelle’s life. Never had he had to extract himself from an affair with such scenes of ranting and raving.

  Now all he wanted to do was walk in the English garden in the failing light under the old cedars with this quiet girl on his aim and breath in the peace. He told himself he felt a fatherly affection for Annabelle and put down his feeling of well-being to being safely back home away from foreign scenes and foreign voices.

  “It is time I settled down,” he said quietly, and Annabelle’s heart missed a beat. A nightingale sang from the bushes, a clear heartrending melody, and the sky dimmed from pale green to dark blue.

  “I feel I have neglected my estates for too long,” he went on, “and I am weary of the social round. But tell me about yourself,” he added in a light voice. “I gather from the gossips that your engagement to Captain MacDonald is shortly to be renewed.”

  What a noisy bind that is, thought Annabelle, glaring at the unseen nightingale. “Perhaps I shall marry Captain MacDonald,” she said defiantly. “He is good company.”

  “And is that all you feel for him?” persisted the now-mocking voice beside her. They had nearly reached the gates, and she turned and faced him. Her face seemed to swim below his in the evening light.

  “My private life is my own affair, my lord,” she said coldly.

  He took her hands in his and drew her towards him, his eyes glinting strangely in the dim twilight. A twig snapped near them and both turned and stared towards the gates. A dark figure slid off into the night.

  “Who’s there?” called Lord Varleigh. He released Annabelle’s hands and ran to the gates. No one.

  “Strange,” he murmured, returning to Annabelle. “Have any more strange things happened to Lady Emme-line while I have been away?”

  Annabelle shook her head. “Not one. Godmother is convinced that she was the subject of some mad wager.”

  “Possibly,” he said thoughtfully. “What do you think?”

  Annabelle suddenly remembered Mad Meg’s strange warning and shivered. “I think it must be as she says,” she replied. “No one has tried to harm her since that party on Mr. Hullock’s boat.”

  “And no one has tried to harm you either?” he teased. “No gentlemen kissing you over the champagne glasses?”

  Annabelle glared at him like an angry kitten. “No one has had the effrontery, my lord.”

  “Strange,” he said, “and you so kissable.”

  “As is Lady Jane,” replied Annabelle, walking before him into the house.

  “You are impertinent.”

  “One impertinence deserves another,” said Annabelle tartly. “We are not chaperoned, my lord, so please leave the library door open.”

  “On the contrary,” he said coldly, “I shall close it now—behind me when I leave. Servant, Miss Quennell.”

  He made a magnificent leg, turned on his heel, and departed.

  Annabelle ran to the window to watch him leave and then stayed for a long time on the terrace, listening to the sound of his horse’s hooves galloping off in the distance until she could hear them no more.

  Chapter Eight

  After several days Horley pronounced her ladyship fully recovered, and the Dowager Marchioness was moved to a daybed in the drawing room.

  But Annabelle found her more eccentric than ever. She lay around in toilettes that would have shocked a demimondaine and sometimes, when she thought no one was watching, flirted and ogled with the shadows in the corners of the long room, vividly conjuring up, with every ancient coquettish gesture, the ghosts of the eighteenth century: the bright brocade dresses of the ladies, the embroidered coats of the gentlemen; the men with their faces polished and the ladies with theirs painted. The ladies wore their hair piled up over their heads, augmented with pads and the whole greased with pomatum and dusted with powder. The elaborate play of the gilded figures, scented handkerchiefs, simpering and giggling; gross brutality mixed with refinement.

  The scent of musk and unwashed flesh floated round Lady Emmeline in a large yellow cloud. Annabelle’s tactful suggestion that Lady Emmeline would feel better after a bath was met with horror and upraised hands. All windows were tightly shut, and the early autumn evening blazed with color on the other side of the glass like some exquisite, unattainable picture.

  Captain MacDonald had erupted onto the scene again, walking with Annabelle in the gardens or even sitting reading to Lady Emmeline. The latter was a heavy task for both reader and listener as every sentence of the story seemed to remind the Captain of something old so-and-so had said the other day, and off he would go into a long digression.

  When the Captain was nervous or slightly bosky, there was a reckless strung-up quality to him which was very attractive, but when he was relaxed as he seemed to be these days, Annabelle had to confess that she found him a bore.

  Before her godmother’s illness Annabelle had been gently drifting into marriage with the Captain. Now she seemed to be drifting gently away.

  One day at the end of September Lady Emmeline finally decided herself well enough to hold a party. Cards were sent out, the windows were at last flung open, and all the rooms were aired. Society flowed out from London, for the Dowager Marchioness was noted for her French chef and her lavish hospitality.

  Annabelle, Lady Emmeline, and the Captain received the guests, and Annabelle noticed with a twinge of dismay that she was quite clearly marked down as being the Captain’s property.

  Then—quite suddenly—before she had time to control her expression, Lord Varleigh strolled elegantly into the room. His face looked very tanned against the dazzling white of his intricate cravat. Annabelle looked across the room at him with her heart in her eyes, but fortunately he had bent his head to say something to Lady Emmeline. By the time he looked in her direction, she had had time to control her feelings and pin a social smile on her face.

  Several of the ladies were wearing becoming gowns designed by Annabelle. There was one particular design that Annabelle had put her heart and soul into—a confection of pale green Indian muslin trimmed with lily of the valley in a deep garland around the hem—and with a sinking heart she saw it was beautifying none other than Lady Jane Cherle.

  Admittedly Varleigh’s mistress had put on a great deal of weight but her skin was still magnificent, and her lazy, languid air of sensuality drew all the men to her like bees to a honey pot. Even Lord Varleigh fetched her refreshment while she dazzled and sparkled at him with the full force of her personality. In this, Lord Varleigh, that expert of the delicate affair, that tightrope walker of the circus of intrigue, made a dangerous error. The row in Paris had become a lover’s quarrel in Jane’s ever-optimistic mind.

  Annabelle fell prey to the most terrible pangs of jealousy. She could not help noticing that when Lord Varleigh paused beside her to ask her quietly how she was, Lady Jane did not even seem to mind. Now the evening might have continued quietly had not Annabelle been a very human girl.

  Lord Varleigh was complimenting Annabelle on her appearance with his usual expertise, and she smiled dazzlingly up at him and then, on impulse, flashed a triumphant look across the room full into the eyes of her rival. With feminine satisfaction Annabelle watched Lady Jane’s thin-pencilled brows snap together.

  “It is a trifle warm, my lord,” said Annabelle.

  She looked in ithe direction of the terrace, and he smiled down at her in a way that did something peculiar to her heart. Taking her small gloved hand in his own, he said lightly, “Then shall we promenade outside? You can tell me whether you and the Captain have been taking any more interesting drives.”

  Annabelle did not want to talk about the Captain, but as they walked out onto the terrace, she became aware of Lady Jane’s efforts to catch their attention, and moved closer to Lord Varleigh, smiling up at him in a b
ewitching way from under her long lashes.

  There was a sound of breaking glass from the room behind them as Lady Jane’s glass fell from her trembling fingers.

  She erupted onto the terrace in a flurry of silks and confronted the pair while the society that filled the rooms behind stopped talking and turned to view the drama with avid interest. There hadn’t been a really good scandal in weeks.

  “Has he mounted you yet?” she demanded of Annabelle, her magnificent eyes flashing with fury.

  “No,” replied Annabelle and with what she hoped was the gentle answer which turneth away wrath, “I do not horse ride.”

  “I’m talking about another kind of beast—the one with two backs,” shrilled Lady Jane while the watching guests gasped and exclaimed in fits of delicious horror.

  Annabelle’s puzzled, innocent stare would have driven Lady Jane to further vulgarity, but to the audience’s immense disappointment, just as Lady Jane was opening her mouth wide to let fly the next salvo, Lord Varleigh stuffed his lace handkerchief into it and, clipping the infuriated Lady Jane’s arms behind her back, marched her off into the shrubbery.

  Her cheeks pink with mortification, Annabelle turned with relief to the ever-present Captain and accepted his offer of refreshment. Lady Jane was not seen again that evening, but Lord Varleigh rejoined the party much later. Tables and chairs had been pushed aside as the guests clamored for waltzes. the musicians struck up a lively air, and Annabelle found herself being swept into the steps of the waltz while the Captain, who had been about to ask her himself, looked on with a baffled air.

  “I am sorry you were subjected to such a vulgar scene,” said Lord Varleigh, looking down at Annabelle’s embarrassed face.

  “Your affairs are no concern of mine, my lord,” said Annabelle quietly.

  “Lady Jane has made our late affair your concern. I am sorry for it,” he said simply. “Come, smile at me, Miss Quennell, and let us be friends.”

  Annabelle gave him a reluctant smile and then realised he had referred to his late affair. Her smile grew wider and her little feet seemed to float across the floor.

  Captain MacDonald leaned against a pillar and watched them, one large finger playing with his luxuriant side-whiskers. He did not like the uncharacteristic warmth in Varleigh’s eyes any more than he liked the high color on Annabelle’s cheek or her shining eyes.

  Something would have to be done—and quickly!

  THE following day was warm and misty although the leaves were beginning to change color to red and gold, and the fruit hung heavy in the apple trees in the orchard.

  The Captain appeared in a smart phaeton and pair and cunningly solicited Lady Emmeline’s permission to take Annabelle for a drive before asking that young lady herself. Annabelle was strangely reluctant to go, but Lady Emmeline’s pleasure at seeing her once more in the company of Captain MacDonald was obvious, and Annabelle did not have the heart to disappoint the old lady.

  Annabelle exclaimed in surprise at the trunks corded up behind the phaeton, and the Captain explained he was to visit the mother of one of his fallen comrades in Chiswick and perform the melancholy duty of handing over her son’s effects.

  Annabelle wondered why she felt nervous. She was, after all, used to driving out with the Captain. Perhaps it was because he seemed to be secretly excited about something. The mist coiled through the trees at the edge of Kensington High Road, turning pale yellow as a tiny sun appeared very far above.

  When they stopped at a toll gate, Annabelle had an impulse to ask the Captain to turn back. Then she put her fears down to the strangeness of the weather. The lamps on the toll gate were still lit and shone through the coiling mist. An old and torn recruiting poster flapped against the wall of the toll in a sudden puff of wind. It was urging new recruits to repair “to Mr. Bigg’s Hibernian, jovial, overflowing punch bowl, North-side, Old Dock: where an officer waits with impatience and British guineas to receive those heroes that are emulous of glory. God save great George our King. Huzza! Damn the French!”

  Well, the great King George was now mad and raving, locked behind the walls of his palace while the Prince Regent enjoyed the British public’s contempt.

  The phaeton jerked forward, and Annabelle let down her veil as the dust began to swirl around them as the Captain sprang his horses.

  The countryside seemed to flash past at a great rate. The sun rose higher, burning away the mist, and the fields spread out on either side under a pale blue sky.

  Annabelle forgot her fears and settled back to enjoy the scenery. They flew past the Bath stagecoach which did the London-to-Bath journey in “three days if God permits.” Annabelle was glad that she had never had to endure a journey by stagecoach. On fine days such as this it looked splendid, bowling along with a spanking team with the tootling of the guard on his yard-long horn. But in bad weather Annabelle knew that the passengers inside almost died of the smell while the passengers outside often died of exposure. Coaches often lost the road or capsized or sank into it, and a fine day like today was not even free from peril. If the coachman drove too fast, there was danger of fire, for the wheels created a perilous friction on the axles.

  Soon they had slowed to a trot and were proceeding decorously along Chiswick Mall. The Captain swung off the Mall and then through a bewildering network of small roads, finally coming to a stop outside a pair of fine wrought-iron gates.

  An evil-looking gatekeeper came limping out in answer to their summons.

  “Fine day, Cap’n” he said, tugging his forelock. “Missus ain’t home and sarvents is out, but missus says her’ll be back drecktly and youse is to make yesselfs comfortable.”

  The Captain threw the man a piece of gold, and the gatekeeper caught it as deftly as a monkey and bit it with the stumps of his blackened teeth.

  They moved slowly up a pitted and unkempt driveway past mossy statues, obviously relics of some ancestor’s Grand Tour. The house was Palladian with a great central dome and porticoed entrance.

  It was all very dismal, reflected Annabelle, and somehow sinister, wrapped in its atmosphere of autumnal decay. I am becoming too fanciful, she thought and allowed the Captain to escort her into the house.

  He led the way into a drawing room on the ground floor, and then, muttering something about having to have a word with the gatekeeper, he left Annabelle alone.

  The room smelled musty and damp, and the faded pink and green of its walls showed great stains of damp moisture near the ceiling. Someone had been recently and inexpertly dusting, for great cobwebs still hung from the cornices and there was at least half an inch of dust under the silent clock on the mantelshelf. A tarnished silver tray rested on a low table containing decanters and a plate of biscuits. There was no other sign that they were expected or even that the house was inhabited.

  There came a furtive scurrying sound from behind the walls.

  Rats.

  Annabelle began to feel cold despite the day outside. She wondered if the house was haunted by the dead soldier’s ghost. Out in the garden the statues bordering the drive stared back at her with their blind stone eyes. The day was very still and quiet apart from the sinister rustling in the wainscoating.

  There was no sign of the Captain returning, and Annabelle began to feel increasingly uneasy. She decided to search the house and see if she could find some servant who might tell her where the lady of the house was. One by one she pushed open the doors of the downstairs rooms and stood and stared in amazement. They were thick with dust, their furniture shrouded under holland covers. In a green saloon the dust stretched in an unbroken gray sea on the uncarpeted floor.

  A cold hand of fear clutched at her stomach. She walked slowly upstairs and pushed open door after door; at last she found one room prepared and ready. It was a vast bedroom which had been recently swept and cleaned by an inexpert hand. A fire was made up on the hearth, and clean sheets had been put on the bed. Annabelle breathed a sigh of relief. The lady of the house had obviously fallen on hard
times and could only afford to live in two rooms and probably only had one or two servants.

  Feeling more cheerful, she returned to the drawing room where the Captain was toasting his boots in front of the fire.

  “No sign of anyone yet,” he said cheerfully. “Have some wine, Annabelle, and relax. Her name’s Mrs. Creedy, and the gatekeeper said she should not be too long.”

  They sat for a long time, watching the statues’ shadows lengthening on the uncut lawns and talking in a desultory fashion.

  The sun went down in a blaze of gold and crimson, and the mist uncoiled itself from the dew-soaked lawns, and still Mrs. Creedy did not return.

  LORD Varleigh had called in at White’s in St. James’s Street. The harvests were in on his estates. He had assisted the farmers—hence his healthy tan—and now felt he owed himself an evening’s relaxation.

  But for him the glamour of the famous club had gone. Beau Brummell and his cronies held court at the recently constructed bow window overlooking the street. Bloods and bucks, Corinthians and Dandies crouched over the gambling tables, and an almost religious silence prevailed.

  He wished he had not come to Town and wondered if he should forego an evening of cards for the calm pleasure of a visit to Kensington Gore. What an incalculable, impertinent girl was Annabelle Quennell! At times he was not even sure that he liked her. But he would go after all. The girl was never boring and one never knew what she might say.

  With a sinking heart he saw the club bore, Mr. Garforth, edging towards him. He rose to leave, but it was too late.

  “Thought you knew all the gossip in town,” said Mr. Garforth petulantly, by way of an opening.

  “What don’t I know?” asked Lord Varleigh, resigning himself.