The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

“Didn’t know the Creedys were in residence?” said Mr. Garforth. “In fact, after old Creedy’s cheating at cards and unpaid debts over half of London, I never thought he would dare to show his face this side of the Channel again.”

  “He obviously has,” yawned Lord Varleigh, “if that is what you are trying to tell me.”

  “Well, I didn’t see the Creedy fellow,” said Mr. Garforth, “but they’re receiving callers. Drove past Chiswick—you know that deserted barn of a place they’ve got—and who should I see driving in to call but Captain Jimmy MacDonald and that girl, Miss Quennell. Know her, don’t you? Well, you might drop a word in her ear that it ain’t quite the thing to know the Creedys. Surprised at Jimmy MacDonald. He’s wild, that one, but he’s up to snuff when it comes to who one ought to know and who one oughtn’t.”

  Lord Varleigh sat very still. “Are you sure the Creedys are back in residence?” he asked. “I saw them in Paris surrounded by a lot of fellow wastrels a month ago.”

  “Stands to reason they must be,” said Mr. Garforth, pleased with the rare interest he was eliciting. “People don’t go calling on empty houses. I say, I haven’t finished yet.”

  But Lord Varleigh had gone.

  ALL Annabelle’s nervousness had returned. The Captain had nearly finished the contents of the decanters and resolutely and stubbornly turned aside all suggestions they should leave.

  Annabelle at last came to a decision.

  “I cannot remain under this roof with you for much longer, sir,” she said severely. “I feel I am being sadly compromised as it is.”

  The Captain surveyed her from heavy-lidded eyes. “What a stubborn girl you are,” he remarked. “We ain’t going anywhere, so make up your mind to that.”

  “What!” cried Annabelle, outraged. “Take me home this instant, sir!”

  “No,” said the Captain, refilling his glass.

  Annabelle got to her feet. “Then I shall have to walk,” she said, resolutely turning towards the door.

  A large hand pulled her back. “Unhand me, sir!” cried Annabelle while a corner of her brain marvelled that she had actually used those words, so beloved of fairy-tale heroines.

  The Captain pushed her into a chair. “Don’t ask me to use force,” he said quietly, and Annabelle realised with a start of surprise that he was not drunk at all although his eyes glittered strangely.

  “I have no taste for rape,” went on the Captain calmly as if he were discussing some new dish. “But yes, my dear, you are going to be compromised. I am going to keep you here for as long as it takes London to find we have gone off together. That prime bore, Garforth, saw us entering here and saw you going with me willingly.”

  “But Mrs. Creedy…” began Annabelle.

  “Mrs. Creedy,” interrupted the Captain with great good humor, “is, I believe, in Paris with her card-sharping husband.”

  “And the son”

  “Haven’t got one, Those trunks are full of any clothes we may find necessary, although if you behave like a sensible girl, we should not find clothes necessary at all.”

  Annabelle went as red as a beetroot. A vivid picture of the cleaned and prepared bedroom upstairs sprang into her mind. And even if the should escape the Captain, the gatekeeper must be in his pay and would stop her before she reached the road.

  “How could you bear to be married to someone who has to be forced to go to the altar with you?”

  “Easily,” said Captain MacDonald, getting to his feet. “If she’s as pretty as you.”

  He jerked her out of the chair and pulled her to him and forced his mouth down on hers. Annabelle felt her senses reeling from lack of oxygen rather than passion.

  To the Captain’s surprise she went limp in his arms and, feeling that the battle was won, he relaxed his hold before bending to her mouth again.

  She leaned round him, and her fingers groped for the Captain’s snuffbox. With a dexterity which would have drawn praise from Petersham himself, she flicked up the enameled lid and then freed her mouth from the Captain’s embrace.

  “Darling,” she said huskily.

  The Captain drew back and looked down at her in surprise and triumph.

  She whipped round the snuffbox and threw the entire contents straight into his face. While the Captain clawed his face and coughed and spluttered, Annabelle picked up one of the decanters and, closing her eyes tightly, brought it down with a crrump on the Captain’s head. He sank to the floor and lay motionless.

  With trembling fingers Annabelle felt for his pulse but, as always happens on these nerveracking occasions, could feel or hear nothing but the tumultuous beating of her heart. She drew a small steel mirror from her reticule and tried to keep her hands from shaking as she held it over his mouth, bringing a sharp memory of doing the same thing to her godmother. The glass misted, and the Captain let out a stentorian snore.

  Annabelle fled out into the grounds and stood irresolute. A loud voice hailing the gatekeeper made her nearly jump from her skin. Friend or enemy? Probably enemy.

  She looked wildly round for a place to hide, and then as she heard the sound of shouts and blows from the gatehouse, plunged headlong into the tangled shrubbery and lay still.

  Carriage wheels rattled up the drive and swept past her hiding place, but Annabelle was too frightened to look out.

  Resplendent in a many-caped driving coat and with his long riding whip clutched in his hand, Lord Varleigh sprang lightly down from his carriage and, tilting back his curly brimmed beaver, stared up at the house which seemed to stare back at him with a sad and deserted air. Then he noticed a light burning in one of the downstairs windows.

  With an oath he strode into the dark hallway and with a great crash swung open the double doors of the drawing room.

  One look at the villainous gatekeeper had been enough to convince Lord Sylvester Varleigh that Captain MacDonald was up to no good. The wretched little man had tried to bar his entry and had gone down under Lord Varleigh’s punishing left. What he expected to find, he did not know, but the last thing he expected was the scene that met his eyes.

  Of Annabelle there was not the slightest sign. But Captain MacDonald was sitting up in the middle of a large pool of Burgundy, nursing his head and groaning.

  Lord Varleigh seized him by the lapels and dragged him to his feet. “Where is she?” he demanded, giving the groaning Captain a shake.

  “Gone,” moaned the Captain. “Hell cat! Threw snuff in my face and crashed me on the head with the Burgundy decanter. Gone!”

  “What did you do it for? Why?” said Lord Varleigh, shaking him again.

  “Don’t do that!” said the large Captain crossly, jerking himself free. “I’m in love with her, that’s why.”

  “It’s a funny way of showing love,” said Lord Varleigh. “You must have terrified her out of her wits.”

  “What do you know of love?” said the Captain, slumping down in an armchair and holding his aching head in his hands. “Don’t like to get personal, Varleigh, but all you know is what you pay for. I’m crazy out of my head with love for Annabelle. She’s everything a woman should be—feminine and kind and good—except,” he added wryly, “when she’s hitting me on the head.”

  Lord Varleigh looked at him in silence, two spots of color burning on his thin cheeks under his tan. The Captain’s remarks had struck home—“all you know is what you pay for.” He compared Lady Jane’s vulgar, sensuous, rapacious greed with Annabelle’s delicate virginity and was overcome with a wave of fear for her welfare.

  “We must not stay here bandying words,” said Lord Varleigh. “She may be wandering through Chiswick, and God knows what evils could happen to her this time of night.”

  “You’re right, egad!” cried the Captain, staggering to his feet. The room swung round, and he sank back in his chair again with a groan. “You’ll need to go, Varleigh,” he said. “But I put you on your honor as a gentleman. Swear you will present my case to Miss Quennell fairly. Tell her I did it because I love he
r. Swear!”

  “You have my word,” said Lord Varleigh quietly. “If I should not return, you will know that I have found her.”

  He swung himself into his carriage outside the Creedy mansion. Frost was rimming the grass, glittering like diamonds under the pale light of a thin, new moon. He was about to set off when his eye was caught by what seemed to be a scrap of material lying under the shrubbery.

  He got down and walked towards the bushes. There was a flash of white and the material disappeared. Must be a rabbit, he thought and was about to turn away when his sharp ear caught the faint sounds of quick, frightened breathing. He pushed back the bushes and bent down. The chalk-white, tearstained face of Annabelle Quennell stared up at him.

  “Come out,” he said gently. “It’s all over now. I will take you home.”

  He helped Annabelle to her feet. She was shivering with cold, and her thin muslin dress was plastered to her body in a way that would have delighted the eye of her rakish godmother.

  “Let us go in first and tell Captain MacDonald you are safe.”

  “No!” squeaked Annabelle. “I won’t. I won’t go back there!”

  “Very well,” said Lord Varleigh. “I shall go myself and tell Captain…”

  “No!” cried Annabelle again, clutching his arm. “Don’t go! Please don’t leave me. Take me away from here!”

  Lord Varleigh saw that she was nearly hysterical. Best to get her away.

  He helped her up into the carriage, wrapped her tenderly in a large bearskin rug, and apologised for the fact that she had to travel in a high-perched phaeton on such a cold evening.

  “Oh, cease the gallantries,” snapped the ungrateful Miss Quennell. “I don’t care if I have to go home in a wheelbarrow.”

  Lord Varleigh looked at her in some amusement. She had lost her bonnet in the bushes, and her masses of redgold hair were cascading down on her shoulders. As she sat huddled in the bearskin, she looked to Lord Varleigh like a cavewoman whose husband has just failed to kill a saber-toothed tiger for the cooking pot. He told her so and received a small snort of disgust in reply.

  After several attempts to engage his companion in conversation, Lord Varleigh gave up the effort and sprang his horses instead, leaving Chiswick behind in a cloud of dust.

  When he turned in at the villa in Kensington Gore, it was to find the house in darkness. No worried Lady Emmeline was waiting up. Horley, roused from her slumbers, said acidly that her ladyship had to watch her health and not sit up waiting for inconsiderate folk to come home with the milk. She got severely reprimanded by Lord Varleigh for her insolence.

  A sleepy footman lighted the fire in the library and produced a tray of tea things. Lord Varleigh had stated he had something of importance to say to Miss Annabelle Quennell on the matter of love, and Miss Quennell found herself suddenly wide awake and rather breathless.

  Annabelle, still wrapped in the bearskin rug, warmed her damp slippers by the fire and turned a glowing face up to Lord Varleigh. He leaned his arm along the mantelshelf and looked down at her thoughtfully.

  “My dear Miss Quennell,” he said, suddenly feeling very old and pompous, “it is sometimes hard to recognise real love. So much nonsense is talked about love and so much nonsense is written about it that it is sometimes hard to recognise the real thing.”

  But I recognise it, thought Annabelle with a start of surprise. She watched his handsome, high-nosed face as he looked down into the blazing fire. I’m in love with him, she thought. I’ve been in love with him since that dreadful night at the opera.

  “Now, the Captain is really very much in love with you,” said Lord Varleigh. “I would have punished him for his mad behavior today otherwise.”

  He stopped and looked down in surprise at Annabelle. One minute her face had been glowing and tender and the next it was almost contorted with fury.

  “Captain MacDonald … loves me. Don’t be so naïve, my lord. The Captain wishes to force me into marriage because my godmother has promised him money an’ he marries me. And you drivel on about love. You know nothing of the matter yourself, sirrah!”

  It was the second time that evening that Lord Varleigh had been accused of knowing nothing of love, and he was beginning to become irritated.

  “I am convinced the Captain’s motives were not mercenary,” he said stiffly.

  “If you are in love with someone,” said Annabelle with a maddening air of weary patience, “then you neither frighten them or hurt them. I am tired of sitting here talking nonsense, my lord, and I wish to go to bed.”

  He gave her a cold bow and walked towards the door.

  Moved by a sudden impulse, Annabelle called after him. “Forgive me, my lord. I did not mean to sound so harsh. I am shaken and upset. I have endured the most horrible evening of my life. I am in no mood to hear of love from anyone.” Except you, muttered a treacherous voice in her brain.

  He smiled at her and came back and took her small hand in his long fingers and turning it over pressed a light kiss on the palm.

  “I understand and accept your apology, Annabelle Quennell,” he said lightly and bowed his way out.

  Annabelle sat for a long time with the hand he had kissed clenched, curled up into a fist. She felt very, very homesick for the rectory and for her father’s kind face.

  Chapter Nine

  Lord Sylvester Varleigh could now persuade himself that he had thoroughly attended to his duties as a landlord. Since the evening of Annabelle’s rescue, he had retired to his estates and had overseen extensive repairs to his house, his forms, and his tenants’ cottages. Now, he had to admit to himself, he was frankly bored with his own company.

  His boots left a line of black footprints across the frost-rimed grass. A red sun was shining low on the horizon. Piles of hay put down for the deer lay about under the trees of the park, and blackbirds crossed and crisscrossed the frosty grass in their search for worms, leaving long lines of black arrows.

  His home, Varleigh Court, was spread out behind him with its square turrets and gray walls, and the thin lines of smoke from its many chimneys rose straight into the metallic blue of the early morning sky.

  He had to remind himself he had not been completely alone. There had been some good hunting days and duty calls on the local county. But he had known them all since he was a hoy, and he now wondered why he should feel so alone and set apart from their well-ordered lives and families.

  He suddenly stopped. That was it. Families!

  All the country houses he had visited had echoed with the yells and cries of children, and the rooms had been filled with groups of relatives from close cousins to aunts twice removed.

  He, himself, had few relatives, and most of them were elderly and lived far away in other counties.

  Lord Varleigh was suddenly beset with that malaise which attacks even the most sophisticated Englishman in his prime—the sudden and awful desire to get married. Not to anyone in particular, but to some well-bred faceless girl who would fill his nursery with healthy sons.

  He would give a house party, he decided, and invite at least three suitable girls. He turned abruptly and walked back to the Court. Cards must be sent out and bedrooms aired. He sent for the housekeeper, butler, and groom of the chambers and issued rapid instructions as if he were preparing for a military campaign. And flowers. He must have flowers. In all the rooms.

  His ancient housekeeper, Mrs. Meany, shook her head afterwards and confided to the butler that my lord showed all the signs of a man about to be leg-shackled. “They always asks for flowers,” she said, “and then ‘fore you know it, you’re preparing the wedding breakfast.”

  He then went into his study and started to compose a list of names. The guest list must be carefully worked out so that the girls he planned to look over would not guess they had been invited for that purpose. He would invite Lady Amelia Bunbury, a dashing redhead of impeccable lineage, along with her parents. Then there was pretty little Mrs. O’Harold, an entrancing widow, and the Ho
norable Caroline Dempsey, a buxom blonde with rather protruding teeth. An excellent horsewoman, she in fact looked rather like a horse. He went on scribbling busily while the frost melted from the grass and the red sun changed to gold.

  Annabelle Quennell? Why not? And the Captain, of course. Captain MacDonald would see that he had kept his word and was doing his best to further the course of true love. And that old wretch, Lady Emmeline. He began to look forward to his house party immensely. He would propose to the lucky girl, get married after a decent interval, and then after another decent interval would have a noisy, healthy son to scamper along the stately corridors and bring some life to the old house.

  “AN invitation to Varleigh Court,” cried Lady Emmeline. “Marvellous. We shall go of course.”

  “Yes, Emmeline,” said Annabelle, bending over her sewing to hide the look of pleasure on her face.

  “I am bored with rusticating here,” went on Lady Emmeline, “and Varleigh Court is vastly comfortable. He has invited Captain MacDonald as well, he says. How kind!”

  How could he? thought Annabelle bitterly. After that night of fear and violence at Chiswick, she could hardly bear to look at the Captain. Lady Emmeline had dismissed the whole episode. It was, she said, exactly what she would have expected a red-blooded man like the Captain to do. As it was, Varleigh’s meddling interference had saved Annabelle’s virtue, so now they could all be comfortable again.

  Annabelle tried to be pleasant to the Captain to please her eccentric godmother. She had hopefully expected the doors of the villa at Kensington Gore to be barred to him after his behavior at Chiswick. But Lady Emmeline seemed more pleased to see him than ever.

  Lady Emmeline had grown increasingly eccentric. She had taken to wearing fur eyebrows and only seemed to remember to put one on at a time so that it looked as if she were carrying a hairy caterpillar around on her forehead. She had taken to wearing patches and a powdered wig to remind her of her youth, and she often talked and chatted to long-dead acquaintances with such vivacity that Annabelle feared for her reason.

  Distressed by the Captain’s frequent visits, worried and embarrassed by her godmother’s eccentricity, and saddened because she no longer saw Lord Varleigh, Annabelle had written to her mother, begging to be allowed to return home, but her plea had only promoted a long letter from Mrs. Quennell. The rector’s wife exclaimed over Annabelle’s ingratitude and reminded her eldest daughter that it was her Christian duty to marry well and provide her younger sisters with husbands.