All at once she became aware that little Miss Fadden had arisen and was dropping a deep curtsy—so deep that she sank lower and lower onto the carpet.
“Uncle Gervase!” cried Alice, turning instinctively toward the fireplace. And there he was, in full evening dress, his jewels blazing in the candlelight. Did his eyes hold a new warmth as he looked at her?
Alice moved gracefully toward him, the silver gauze of her overdress floating out from her slim body. “I am so glad to see you,” she said, trying to read the expression in his eyes.
He made as if to take her hand and then his blue eyes took on a mocking look. “My child,” he said, “how charmingly you look. But I fear we should assist Miss Fadden.”
Alice looked around and found that Miss Fadden had been unable to rise out of her curtsy and was lying on the carpet. With a sharp feeling of impatience at her companion's ill-timed gaucherie, Alice rushed forward and assisted that lady to her feet.
“Thank you, my lady,” babbled Miss Fadden in great confusion. “What a bad beginning! What you must think of me. I shall try again...”
“No, don't!” cried Alice and the Duke in unison, but Miss Fadden was already sinking down. There was a sharp, embarrassing cracking sound from her knees, but somehow, with many grimaces, she managed to heave her small body upright. “There!” she cried triumphantly.
The Duke looked at her doubtfully and then said, “Miss Fadden. Pray excuse us. I wish to have a word in private with my niece.”
Miss Fadden moved slowly to the door, her shoulders bent.
“Madam!” said the Duke, looking at her drooping figure impatiently. “Had my niece any doubts as to your suitability, I am sure she would not have engaged you. You are being sent from the room so that I may discuss some matters which do not concern you or anything about you.”
Miss Fadden gave him a relieved smile and tiptoed out, closing the double doors behind her.
The Duke waited, his head cocked to one side, listening. At last he turned to Alice.
“What is it you wish to discuss?” she asked nervously.
“Why, your companion, of course. Miss Fadden. I fear she is not at all suitable.”
“Oh, but she is so pleasant and so grateful!” cried Alice. “I simply could not turn her out-of-doors. She has never been a companion before, you see. I am sure she will learn very quickly. Oh, please let me keep her!”
“My child, if that is what you want, you may have it,” replied the Duke, much amused. “Now, to our evening's engagement. We are to attend a ball at the Duke and Duchess of Haversham's.”
Alice blenched. “What if they recognize me?” she cried. “I avoided them during the Season.”
“We do not have to go to Wadham,” he said. “The ball is to be held at their town house. I doubt if either of them ever set eyes on you before.”
“But the servants,” pleaded Alice. “They take some of the upper servants with them when they go to town. Mr. Bessant, for example...”
“He will hardly recognize the scullery maid, Alice, in the fascinating and beautiful young French Countess. Behave yourself! Odd's Life! I swear I can hear your knees knocking.”
“I would rather not go,” said Alice stubbornly.
“Then find a husband on your own,” he snapped. “I shall go back to Wadham and continue my memoirs.” His figure began to shimmer and fade before her eyes.
“No! Don't go!” capitulated Alice. “I will attend the ball.”
“Then let us leave,” he said quietly. “You have nothing to fear. Society is thin of social events in high summer. There is not much to choose from.”
“But he will recognize you!” said Alice suddenly. “The present Duke, that is.”
He shook his head. “I think not. I was not in these modern clothes when I appeared to haunt him.”
“The resemblance is nonetheless there. You look rather like him.”
“He will not notice, my child. No man really knows what he looks like. Let us summon Miss Fadden and be off.”
The Duke had seen to it that Alice had a splendid equipage in which to drive out. It was a yellow carriage with panels emblazoned with a well-executed shield and armorial bearings and drawn by two richly caparisoned horses. The Jehu on the box was dressed in a coat of many capes, a powdered wig and gloves à la Henri Quatre. Two spruce footmen in scarlet and silver livery with long canes in their hands completed the entourage.
Little Miss Fadden sighed with pleasure and gazed out of the carriage windows with the wide-eyed interest of a child.
Alice sat silently at her side, the Duke facing her. She thought miserably that the whole business was a sad farce—being escorted to a ball by a ghost to meet a marriageable young man. Alice decided that she did not really like high society, despite the fact, that with the exception of Webb, she had so far avoided its major pitfalls. She had steered clear of the harpylike dowagers who were only too anxious to befriend a seemingly friendless and attractive girl as bait to lure men to the side of their bony and incoherent daughters. She had avoided the censure of the middle-aged dandies with their large appetites and weak digestions who hated so many and abused so many as they sat together in the bow window of White's Club in St. James's. She had received vouchers for Almack's during the Season—that center of snobbery—and had danced in those famous Assembly Rooms without once having fallen foul of the all-powerful patronesses.
She had no pushing mama to make her life a misery. She had seen so many debutantes, shy, demure, strait-laced and red-elbowed, forced to frisk and talk slang and wear wide-awakes and behave like the veriest Cyprians by their ambitious mothers.
The routs were the worst. There was often not even cards or dancing—only a tedious time crowding up a staircase to be received by the host and hostess, enduring the hard-eyed stares of the haut ton, and then fighting all the way back down again to endure a two-hour wait on the front steps for one's carriage to battle its way through the press.
Alice sighed. Her life seemed fated to be spent either among the highest in the land or the very lowest.
The carriage rattled to a halt in front of an imposing mansion facing Hyde Park. They had arrived.
“Now,” whispered the Duke as he helped her to alight. “Head up! No one will take you for a scullery maid unless you behave like one.”
Alice, head held high, swept in on the arm of the Duke. She was dimly aware of their being announced—"Monsieur Le Comte de Sous-Savaronne and La Comtesse de la Valle-Chenevix—"and of Miss Fadden, trotting behind, her mouth wide open as she stared about her at the flowers and hangings and jewels of the guests.
Then, facing her, were the Duke and Duchess of Haversham, just as she remembered them. Her heart seemed to miss a beat but they bade the Duke and Alice a chilly welcome with their customary indifference.
The ghost murmured something polite and then they were descending the stairs to the ballroom.
Alice forced herself to look at the guests. As far as she could see there was no sign of Lord Webb. Then she turned her attention to the servants. Not one familiar face.
She heaved a sigh of relief and decided to try to enjoy the evening.
“Will you dance with me?” Alice asked the Duke shyly.
“Of course not, you silly goose,” he said. “You are here to dance with much younger men than I. Ah, here come some of your admirers. I will make myself scarce.”
Alice half put out her hand to hold him back and then let it fall helplessly to her side. A fleeting look of lost bewilderment crossed her face and for a split second she looked very young and afraid.
That was when Mr. Bessant saw her. The Groom of the Chambers was looking down into the ballroom to observe the guests. He stiffened and grasped the rail of the banisters tightly, craning his head forward.
For one second he could have sworn that Alice, that scullery maid, had come back to haunt him. But then the young woman had turned to the first of her partners. She was laughing and flirting with her fan, the very p
icture of a fashionable young miss. He slowly relaxed his hold and shaking his head went off about his duties.
Alice promenaded after the first dance with Sir Peregrine Dunster, a merry young man with a mop of artistically windswept fair curls and laughing eyes. Alice listened to his chatter with only half an ear, her eyes scanning the moving throng for her Duke.
“I say,” said Sir Peregrine plaintively, coming to a sudden halt and looking down at her, “you ain't listened to one word I've said. Now, I ask you. Am I such a bore?”
“N-no,” said Alice, all pretty confusion. “I was looking for my uncle.”
“Oh, that's all right,” he said cheerfully. “I thought you was lovelorn. You know, sighing after some chap who ain't turned up.”
“La! How could I search for another when I am with you, monsieur?” laughed Alice, waving her fan.
“'Fore George, if your eyes ain't like pools of violets. I used to write poetry, y'know. Wouldn't think it to look at me now.”
He gave a mock grimace and Alice, who found herself liking him immensely, was about to make another flirtatious retort, when her face suddenly froze in dismay.
“What's the matter?” he asked, following her startled gaze.
Miss Fadden was sitting with the chaperones. Alice had been too preoccupied with her thoughts during the journey to the ball to notice that the companion had taken a small workbasket with her. Unconcerned at the haughty, startled gazes of the dowagers beside her, she had taken out a lumpy pair of half-finished gray socks and was proceeding to knit busily, a pair of very utilitarian steel needles flashing in the candlelight.
“Who's that tremendous little quiz?” asked Sir Peregrine.
“My companion,” said Alice faintly. “I must speak to her. She should not...”
“Too late,” grinned Sir Peregrine. “Here is your next partner.”
Alice was swept off into a hectic English country dance and, for at least the next three quarters of an hour, had no time to worry about Miss Fadden.
Sir Peregrine turned to seek some refreshment since he was not engaged for the next dance and nearly bumped into a tall gentleman whom he recognized as Alice's uncle.
“I was watching you dance with my niece,” said the Duke. “You make a pretty couple.”
“Thank you sir,” mumbled Sir Peregrine, although his mind raced. Was this French uncle trying to marry him off? And after one dance?
“Come! Let us find some refreshment,” said the Duke imperiously and, without waiting to see whether Sir Peregrine was following him, he marched off to the supper room.
Lady Wilkes and Lady Bellamy, formidable dowagers both, bent their turbaned heads together. “Isn't it disgraceful?” hissed Lady Wilkes, the loose folds of flesh at her neck quite taut, for once, with excitement. “Knitting! In the middle of a ball, too!”
Lady Bellamy craned her tortoiselike head around her friend to stare at the offending knitter. The needles flashed hypnotically in the light as Miss Fadden's busy fingers bungled stitch after stich.
“She's not doing it properly,” said Lady Bellamy. “She's about to turn the heel any moment and I don't think she can.”
“Just ignore her, dear,” replied Lady Wilkes. “Tis unwise to encourage eccentrics.”
Lady Bellamy bit her rouged underlip in distress. “But I hate to see such a mess. I declare I cannot bear it a minute longer. Do change places with me.”
Startled, her friend complied.
“Now,” said Lady Bellamy severely to Miss Fadden. “That will not do at all, you know. You are making a sad botch of your stitches.”
“I know,” said Miss Fadden simply. “But I find it very soothing. But you are right. Perhaps since I am knitting, I should learn to do it well. Here!” she thrust the wool and needles into Lady Bellamy's hands. “Do show me.”
Lady Bellamy cast an anguished look around. But the temptation was too much. “Very well,” she said. “Now watch closely.”
When Alice finally escaped from her partner, she headed straight for Miss Fadden, bent on reprimanding that lady.
But Miss Fadden by that time was surrounded by a whole court of elderly ladies. Turbans and feathered headdresses were bent over a piece of lumpy mangled knitting and the air rang with competitive advice. “It's not fair,” remarked one elderly lady sourly, “why Miss Fadden should get away with bringing her work to the ballroom and I have to sit with my hands folded. I could show you all a thing or two. I have a good mind to despatch my John to fetch my workbasket.”
Several startled glances were cast in her direction. “Why not?” asked Lady Bellamy, quite flushed with excitement. In no time at all, servants were being sent out into the night to bring workbaskets.
Alice's next partner claimed her and she wisely decided to leave Miss Fadden alone. It seemed as if the companion had found friends already.
Sir Peregrine meanwhile was warming to the Duke. He had already drunk more claret than was good for him and it had loosened his tongue. “If you don't mind me saying so, sir,” said Sir Peregrine, “you don't talk like a Frenchie, you don't even look like one. Damme, if you don't look a good bit like Haversham.”
“Nonsense,” said the Duke languidly. “I have lived in this country for the past twenty-four years. Left just after the Terror. I have practically forgot my native tongue.”
“Oh well, then, stands to reason,” said Sir Peregrine. “You said you left after the Terror. Weren't they after your head?”
“Of course,” said the Duke simply. “I was ... er ... kept in hiding for some years. My parents did not escape. That is why I have the title,” he added gently.
Sir Peregrine flushed. He felt as if he had just been guilty of some social gaffe. “Your niece is deuced pretty,” he said to cover his confusion.
“She is very beautiful,” corrected the Duke. “Alas! There are so many young men after her hand, I fear I do not know which one to choose.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Sir Peregrine, suddenly sobering. He felt quite piqued. He had thought this handsome uncle had singled him out as a suitor for his niece and was quite prepared to run for cover if that were the case, but now that it appeared there was, so to speak, already a long queue in front of him, he all at once remembered how attractive and charming he had found Alice.
“I have the honor of another dance with your niece, sir,” he said hurriedly. “Perhaps I should go and find her before some other lucky man steals her from me.”
“Yes, so many young men,” went on the Duke as if he had not spoken. “She is a considerable heiress and I fear that is a great deal of the attraction...”
This was too much for Sir Peregrine. He had held an heiress in his arms and if he did not hurry, he might lose her. He got hurriedly to his feet and then remembered his manners and turned back to make his adieux. But of the uncle there was no sign. He had simply disappeared. He blinked and then headed rapidly for the door, nearly colliding with the Duke and Duchess of Haversham. He noticed that the usually glacial pose of the Duchess appeared to have cracked, but he was in too much of a hurry to wonder about it for very long.
“It's a disgrace!” the Duchess was saying. “And I cannot help feeling it is all your fault. First you philander with the guests at Wadham, and then you have turned my ball into a sort of sewing circle for gentlewomen.”
“My dear,” said the Duke of Haversham, very stiffly on his stiffs, “I have no control over the behavior of my guests once they are here, and for you to blame me for the antics of a parcel of elderly chaperones is beyond belief.”
“I shall be a laughingstock,” said the Duchess, clenching and unclenching her hands. “I have always been famous for my ton, for the elegance of my soirées. Look!”
The Duke sighed and looked again. Miss Fadden was surrounded on either side by a long row of chaperones, each with a workbasket. There was knitting and tatting and knotting and sewing and embroidery and tapestry and macrame. Voices were raised in gossip and hands were busy. Meanwhile on the floor
and around the perimeter of the ballroom, their charges flirted outrageously, free from antique supervision.
Sir Peregrine was holding Alice in his arms as he led her through the steps of the waltz. He had fallen in love, he told himself. The fact that his tailor's bills and gambling debts could be settled by an advantageous marriage was pushed firmly to the back of his brain. He prided himself on being a romantic; he prided himself on being unmercenary. Now when a young Englishman plagued by duns sets himself to falling in love with an heiress, he makes a very good job of it and nearly achieves the real thing.
By the end of the waltz, Sir Peregrine's fine eyes were ablaze with love and Alice found her pulses beginning to beat a little harder.
The ghost watched them with an indulgent smile. He had removed himself from the supper room when young Peregrine's back was turned, as he did not want the present Duke to recognize his ancestor. He was conscious of someone staring at him. He turned around quickly but could see no one in particular. Then he looked up. Bessant, the Groom of the Chambers, was staring down at him from the musician's gallery. The Duke raised his quizzing glass and his eyebrows and fixed the Groom of the Chambers with an awful stare. Mr. Bessant flushed and retreated.
It was a mistake to come, thought the Duke. But the oaf, Bessant, cannot possibly recognize Alice as the missing scullery maid.
He watched Alice's happy smile and felt a faint twinge of pain somewhere in his chest. It was good that she could be happy with someone of her own age.
The Duke had investigated young Peregrine's background by talking to several of the guests. He came of good stock, was accounted wild and believed to be in debt. But the Duke had been all those things in his youth, and was, therefore, inclined to forgive wildness in one so young.
But so long as he stood and watched them—there!—Peregrine had definitely pressed Alice's hand—he experienced that strange pain. He decided to remove himself. Then he espied the glamorous blonde he had flirted with some months ago and headed happily in her direction.
The Ghost and Lady Alice Page 9
