The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  “Very well,” he said.

  “I say … thanks awfully, old man,” said the Captain boyishly. “I can’t…”

  “You must not see Miss Quennell again,” said Lord Varleigh, “or communicate with her in any way.”

  “Of course. Of course!” cried Captain MacDonald, jumping up and wringing Lord Varleigh’s hand enthusiastically.

  “Come, my boy,” said the Colonel. “We have work to do!”

  Lady Emmeline clung to the Captain, crying and sobbing and had to be pried loose.

  For the hundredth time the old lady wondered if Annabelle realised the prize she had let slip through her hands.

  What a man!

  Chapter Thirteen

  The brave soldiers marched to war, and one of them at least went away with a light heart.

  Captain Jimmy MacDonald could not believe his luck. The lawyers had obviously not reported the break-in to Lady Emmeline. Now the prospect of a glorious battle and possible promotion lay in front of him. And when it was all over, there would be plenty of time to seek out Miss Quennell and put a period to her irritating existence.

  Lord Varleigh sat in his town house and listened to the fifes and drums and trumpets of the soldiers. He himself had seen enough of the horrors of war and had fought bravely in the Peninsular Campaign. But it was not the sound of the marching armies which depressed him so. It was MacDonald’s remarks to the effect that Annabelle had only been teasing when she had let him kiss her so warmly.

  Women were the devil! Heartless, fickle, and avaricious. At least Lady Jane had only wanted his money to play with. Annabelle Quennell had wanted his heart, and she had very nearly managed to secure it. Damn her! He would never see her again.

  And, Annabelle, weak and listless after her fever, tossed and turned on her bed and wondered why Lord Varleigh had not called or even left a message.

  For the first time Lady Emmeline was beginning to find Annabelle a bore. With her splendid looks faded with her illness and her listless air, Annabelle no longer fed Lady Emmeline’s aging spirits with her air of ebullient youth. Lady Emmeline dreamed frequently of the handsome Captain and sighed pleasurably over his outrageous behavior. If she had been the one who had been kidnapped and taken to Chiswick … ah, then, what a different story! As Lady Emmeline entered into another bout of prolonged eccentricity, she once again dressed herself in debutante clothes and greedily studied all the cases she could where an older woman had married a younger man.

  By the time Annabelle was well enough to venture downstairs, she was met with a chilly reception. In Lady Emmeline’s mad mind Annabelle was now a rival for the Captain’s affections.

  That’s why I wasted all this time and money on the chit! thought Lady Emmeline with a rare burst of sane honesty. I’m in love with Jimmy myself!

  Annabelle’s quiet request that she should be allowed to go home was met with enthusiasm by her hostess. Arrangements were made for Annabelle to use Lady Emmeline’s travelling chariot but no mention was made of any money to be given to her for her journey. Annabelle could only be glad that she had had the foresight to furnish Madame Croke with a whole folio of spring designs.

  Annabelle quickly recovered her glowing looks and good health but that only sufficed to add fuel to Lady Emmeline’s growing dislike and jealousy.

  One day shortly before Annabelle was due to journey North, Lady Emmeline had abruptly ordered her to go to Bond Street and had furnished her with a shopping list and the reluctant Horley as escort.

  Lady Emmeline watched until Annabelle’s sickeningly jaunty bonnet had turned the corner of Berkeley Square and then ordered her town carriage to be brought round. The Dowager Marchioness was going to pay a visit to her solicitors, Messrs. Crindle and Bridge. Annabelle Quennell with her missish airs should not have her money. It should go to Captain Jimmy one way or the other. If the Captain married her—oh, blissful thought! —then he would have her money anyway. And if she died … Lady Emmeline looked round the sunny streets from the darkness of her carriage and shuddered. Impossible thought! She felt as if she would live forever.

  Mr. Robert Crindle, the senior partner, did not look as honored and delighted to see the Dowager Marchioness as he usually did. In fact, thought Lady Emmeline in surprise, he looked furtive and guilty.

  No matter. “I want to see my will,” said Lady Emmeline.

  Mr. Crindle put his chalky nails together and sighed. “Then you have heard,” he said. “A most regrettable incident. I did not report it because I thought it was some felon searching for jewels. Some of these uneducated criminals seem to think we keep our clients’ jewels in our deed boxes.”

  “What on earth are you drivelling on about?” snapped Lady Emmeline.

  Mr. Crindle gave an even deeper sigh. “So you did not know after all. But I had better tell you just the same. Someone broke into this office on Wednesday night and cracked open the box containing your documents. Whoever it was left the copies of your ladyship’s will lying crumpled on the floor, but mark my words, the fellow was looking for jewels. Of course I reported the matter to the Runners and I…”

  His voice faded in Lady Emmeline’s ears as her old mind worked furiously. One thought piled on top of the other. Annabelle’s insistence that Jimmy had been trying to kill her so he could inherit. Annabelle’s fevered babblings about the death of Caroline Dempsey. Annabelle’s horror of learning that the Captain had been forgiven. Annabelle’s scream that they had all gone mad. All put down to the feverish ramblings of a sick girl. And now this! That Wednesday had been the night of the skating party. What she was thinking was dreadful. It could not be true!

  “… left no clues,” went on Mr. Crindle’s voice, suddenly breaking into Lady Emmeline’s tortured thoughts, “except this. It shows the felon must have been robbing other places earlier in the evening.”

  He held out something which winked and glittered in the dim light of the musty office. Lady Emmeline stared at it and bit back an exclamation.

  It was the diamond stickpin she had given Jimmy as an engagement present.

  “Enough of this matter,” Mr. Crindle was saying. “Did you wish to alter your will, my lady?”

  “Yes,” said Lady Emmeline hoarsely, getting unsteadily to her feet. “Leave the lot to m’parrot. See you about it another time. Not well. Not well at all.”

  Lady Emmeline sat helplessly in her carriage, bitter tears cutting through the paint and powder on her cheeks. If only she were a man! She wanted revenge. She thought of the way the Captain had led her along and fooled her and groaned aloud. She prayed for a quick and merciful death for herself and a long and painful one for the Captain.

  Varleigh! That was it. He should revenge her. He would see justice done. Lady Emmeline directed her carriage to Lord Varleigh’s town house and then leaned her head back against the squabs, feeling as if she would die from humiliation.

  She was to receive another blow. Lord Varleigh had left for Varleigh Court only that morning. She gave a groan and the footman looked at her anxiously and asked her if she would care to leave a message.

  “Message, that’s it,” said Lady Emmeline faintly. “Show me to a room; bring me brandy and writing marterials—in that order.”

  The footman went off to fetch them, shaking his powdered head. He was new to service which was why he had been left in London with a skeleton staff while his more important colleagues journeyed to Varleigh Court. His name was John Ferguson, a Scot of almost ridiculously handsome looks. He returned with the brandy decanter and paper and ink to find Lady Emmeline standing over at the fireplace of Lord Varleigh’s study, looking at herself in the looking glass and scrubbing the paint from her withered features with a dirty pocket handkerchief.

  “I look an old fright,” sobbed Lady Emmeline.

  John Ferguson stood on one foot and then the other. He did not know what to say.

  He had already been warned several times about his free and easy speech. But the old girl seemed to be in such distress t
hat she looked ill. Also she looked more approachable with the muck off her face. But he stood silent, waiting for his orders.

  Lady Emmeline sat down at a desk and began to write. “I want you to see that this is sent express to Lord Varleigh,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Yes, my lady,” said John Ferguson dutifully.

  Lady Emmeline finished at last and sanded the parchment and sealed it. She turned to hand it to the footman and once again the tears poured from her eyes.

  John looked at her helplessly. “Oh, don’t take on so,” he said at last. “A charming and elegant lady like yourself should not cry.”

  Lady Emmeline blinked and brought him into focus for the first time. Brilliant blue eyes fringed with thick, almost feminine black lashes looked down into her own. “Thank you,” she said faintly. “May I have some of that brandy? I have had the most terrible shock.”

  She admired the footman’s tall figure as he deftly poured the spirits into a goblet. Lady Emmeline drained it at one gulp. “A terrible shock,” she repealed, looking at him more hopefully this time.

  John carefully took his cue. “It is not my place to question my betters, my lady,” he said cautiously. “But sometimes it makes the heart easier if you talk about it— even if the listener is only a servant like myself.”

  Lady Emmeline needed no further encouragement. She burst out into a long garbled tale of the Captain’s iniquities while the footman tut-tutted and refilled her glass in a most reassuring manner.

  She finally paused and looked coyly up at the footman from under the meager spikes of her wet eyelashes. “You must think me an incredible old fool,” she said.

  It was then that John Ferguson, with one bold stroke of Gaelic genius, secured his own future.

  “It seems to me,” he said, “as if Captain MacDonald was secretly in love with you himself, my lady, and your trying to marry him off to someone else fair turned his mind.”

  What an intelligent young man! How acute—how sharp of him to have hit upon the truth.

  An hour of delicious conversation later and John Ferguson had agreed to move to Lady Emmeline’s employ. Lady Emmeline gave a fleeting thought to her parrot, but what could a bird do with money anyway. Of Annabelle Quennell she thought not at all.

  * * *

  ANNABELLE was promenading her grieving heart past the elegant shop windows of Bond Street. Her life had taken on the unreal quality of a nightmare. It slowly dawned on her that Lord Varleigh was not going to call and that he had actually forgiven Captain Jimmy MacDonald for outright murder. Perhaps he hadn’t understood. Did he not realise that Jimmy would try again? Annabelle remembered what the Captain had said about Lady Emmeline’s will. She would have a quiet talk with her godmother when she returned and beg the old lady to cut her out of her will or she, Annabelle, would never know a day’s rest again. Annabelle shuddered despite the warmth of the spring day as she recalled several on-dits of the previous Season. Lord Jarston’s wife had been unfaithful to him, and he had taken her off to his country estate where she had mysteriously died. The pretty heiress, Belinda Thompson, who had appeared to have a tremendous love of life, had inexplicably thrown herself to her death from her bedroom window leaving an impoverished distant cousin of questionable morals to inherit her wealth. Of course society said and believed the worst, but nothing was ever done about it. Every time Annabelle saw a figure in uniform, she shied nervously.

  She bought presents for her family, silks and ribbons for the girls, a jar of fine snuff for her father, and a silver vinaigrette and a box of Indian muslin handkerchiefs for her mother.

  Then she walked slowly back to Berkeley Square, bracing herself for the interview with her godmother.

  But Lady Emmeline had dismissed Captain Jimmy MacDonald entirely from her mind. The old lady felt she had been fooled and that had hurt more than the Captain’s criminal behavior. She remarked rather testily that she had no longer any intention of leaving Annabelle any money since the girl had shown herself unwilling to be wed and added blithely that she hoped Annabelle would have a safe and speedy journey North.

  Her indifference and uncaring cruelty hurt the gentle and sensitive Annabelle who had begun to grow fond of the old lady.

  With the fine spring weather it was now safe to travel. There was nothing left for Annabelle to do but to start on her long journey home. She would never wed. She would remain a spinster until the end of her days, mourning over her foolish misplaced sense of duty which had made her tolerate the Captain’s attentions and her inexperience which had made her encourage the amorous uncaring advances of a heartless rake.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Spring came late to the Yorkshire moors. April had been a cold and stormy month with great gray clouds trailing across the hills and icy winds blasting through every crack and cranny of the rectory.

  Once Annabelle’s welcome home—if it could be called a welcome—had passed, life had almost gone back to its old familiar pattern of housework and calls on her father’s parishioners.

  Annabelle’s tale of the iniquities of Captain MacDonald and the eccentricity of Lady Emmeline had been met by sullen jealous silence on the part of her sisters who felt sure they would not have made a mess of such opportunities and by unconcealed impatience on the part of Mrs. Quennell who felt that Annabelle had imagined the whole thing and said so in no uncertain terms. Only her gentle father had been horrified in the extreme, and despite his wife’s acid tongue, he had written a very severe letter to Lady Emmeline.

  Annabelle’s fine new wardrobe had been turned over to her sisters. Mary and Susan would soon be making their come-out at the Harrogate assemblies and such finery was wasted on Annabelle who had proved to be such a disappointment.

  * * *

  ONE day when the scrubby grass of the meadows round the rectory was blooming with purple clover and the wild garlic was just beginning to break through its green sheaths, Annabelle found that the warm air of spring had brought memory flooding back.

  She suddenly began to think of Sylvester Varleigh and once her treacherous mind had started on that dangerous course, it could not seem to stop. One side of her brain cried reason and the other languished at the thought of his kisses until she felt that her mind was split in two.

  She was returning to the rectory along the winding country road, only half aware of the chattering of the fledglings in the hedgerows and the large fleecy clouds scudding across the sky above. She was wearing an old blue wool dress and thought ruefully of her sisters who had pounced on her finery, squabbling and quarrelling over it like jackdaws, never once stopping to wonder if their elder sister would wish to retain any of it.

  A horse rounded a distant bend of the road; on its back was a figure in a scarlet and blue uniform. Annabelle stood stock still in the middle of the road, white with terror, her heart beating fast. The clip-clop of the horse’s hooves came nearer—and stopped.

  “Is this the road to York?” asked a light, masculine voice.

  Annabelle had closed her eyes tight with fear. She looked up.

  A complete stranger stared down at her, looking curiously at the frightened girl. Annabelle babbled and stammered as she gave him the right directions. When he had ridden off, she had to sink into the hedgerow and sit down on the grassy bank until her legs had stopped trembling.

  When the shock had subsided and she had risen rather shakily to her feet and walked towards the rectory, that wretched Lord Varleigh was once again in her thoughts.

  What would he have thought of her home had he wished to marry her, thought Annabelle, trying to see the rectory through a stranger’s eyes. All looked trim and prosperous enough from the outside, but its small dark rooms bore all the marks of straightened circumstances—the shabby furniture, the carefully darned and mended curtains, the bare scrubbed and sanded floors, and the pianoforte with a third of its tinny keys jammed with the damp. And the smell! No matter how much Annabelle decorated the dark rooms with wild flowers, there was always a pre
vailing smell of stewed mutton and cabbage water.

  What a fright that strange soldier had given her. She wondered with a shudder what Captain Jimmy MacDonald was doing at that moment. Probably enjoying himself immensely, she thought bitterly. Justice had indeed fled to brutish beasts, and men like Lord Varleigh had certainly lost their reason.

  THE Captain was, in fact, having a simply marvellous time. Flushed with wine and the thought of the battles to come, he was leaping through a waltz at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels.

  The principal officers of the British and Allied armies were present, including the Duke of Wellington and the leader of the Netherland forces, the Prince of Orange. Several times Wellington was interrupted with messages, and the atmosphere grew tense, but the Captain was sure that battle was still far away. There was not, after all, a state of war. That upstart Napoleon had been declared an outlaw, and the combined might of the Allied forces would invade France in July and put an end to his pretensions. Meanwhile the wine flowed as if it would never stop, and the women were deuced pretty—particularly the one in his arms.

  Colonel Ward-Price had married a dashing and pretty lady much younger than himself the previous year. She had saucy red-gold curls and large melting eyes and a curvaceous figure. She reminded the Captain in a vague way of Annabelle, and that and the fact that he was flirting with the Colonel’s wife made him feel heady with excitement. He had several times held her much closer than the proprieties allowed, and she had dimpled up at him very prettily indeed.

  The Captain felt a touch on his arm and turned with some impatience which changed into alarm when he saw the worried features of Colonel Ward-Price. He was afraid the Colonel had noticed his overwarm attentions to his wife.

  But the Colonel had greater things to worry about. Napoleon had crossed the Sambre, said the Colonel. The incredible had happened. With 124,000 men Napoleon had driven a wedge between Blucher’s 113,000 Prussians and Wellington’s 83,000, his object being to defeat one or the other before they had time to concentrate. They must prepare to march. Jimmy was to take care of his wife and escort her to their lodgings and then join his regiment. The Colonel himself would be away most of the night.