Sally

by M C Beaton

  “I had better go and tell her,” said Sally, decidedly. “I thought she was talking about Paul. And Peter Firkin is in love with her, for he told me so.”

  “You’ll need to wait until you’re Aunt Mabel again,” pointed out her friend.

  Sally sighed and resigned herself to tea. She thought over her behavior of the afternoon and decided after much hard thought that she had been too bold, too independent. Everyone knew—for hadn’t Aunt Mabel counseled her readers so?—that gentlemen liked soft, feminine, helpless women. She should not have put up such a brave front. She should have told him she felt weak and shaky. She must change her strategy. She still felt sore all over. She would tell him prettily that very fact this evening.

  And she had every opportunity to do so. For Lady Cecily had been given that much-coveted place next to the marquess at the dinner table.

  The Guthrie sisters tittered behind their fans and wondered what Paul could see in such an insignificant creature. The duchess looked at Sally speculatively and rather liked what she saw. Sally was looking her very best, courtesy of the Annual Sale on Behalf of the Society for Indigent Gentlewomen. She was wearing a blond lace blouse that had a pretty neckline. Her masses of fine hair had been prettily dressed over her forehead in the very latest fashion by Miss Fleming, who showed unexpected expertise with the curling iron. The dog collar of pearls clasped around her neck emphasized the creaminess of her skin. Her new pink corset created that necessary effect of the monobosom, since it was downright indecent to betray the fact that a woman possessed two breasts.

  Sally was prepared for the awful food and had the advantage in that respect of the other guests. She had eaten a great deal of cakes and sandwiches at tea, remembering that tea was excellent, while dinner was foul. She was therefore at leisure to pick at her food and start her campaign of persuading the marquess that she was a frail and helpless female.

  Sally prettily, and with many deprecatory giggles, complained of her aches and pains and received nothing more than a blank look of disinterest from the marquess, who, after listening politely to her complaints, nodded in a rather bored way and then turned his attention to a ravishing redhead on his left, leaving Sally to the dull conversation of Sir Sydney Chelmsford, on her other side.

  Sally bit her lip, wondering what she had done wrong. Now, Sally had acquired quite a fund of wisdom through her job as Aunt Mabel, but it was all in the abstract, so to speak, and there was nothing quite like firsthand experience. She was too young to have realized the sad fact that the most attractive and charming men were unfortunately the kind who, after the first fine, careless rapture was over, were the very ones to go into a sulk if one was sick, crashing the breakfast tray on one’s knees with a contemptuous look. But God help one if they were ill themselves. A slight cold would be interpreted as influenza, and acute indigestion as cancer. And unless one was resigned to that hard fact and stopped being weak and clinging and expecting the strong man to give one sympathy, then the man would be apt to up and off with some female with a face like a boot and a soul like whipcord.

  But Sally did realize that the marquess had smiled on her when she was being bold and brave, and so she lent an ear to his conversation with the dashing redhead, seeking for an opportunity to recapture his attention.

  When he at last turned to her again Sally said brightly, “Tell me, do you think a modern woman should have a career?”

  “Indeed, yes,” said the marquess, showing interest again. “I think every woman should have some sort of job before she is married.”

  “What do you do for a living?” asked Sally in a mocking voice.

  He looked at her in surprise. “Why, the same as your brothers,” he said. “How is John, by the way?”

  Sally gulped. “Very well. I have not had an opportunity to speak to him since my return.”

  “Hardly surprising,” said the marquess, “since he is in the West Indies.”

  “Yes,” said Sally, deciding not to elaborate any further.

  “You know,” went on the marquess, “it’s those eyes of yours. They remind me of something.”

  “What?” breathed Sally, agog for a compliment.

  He studied her for some moments. “Aunt Mabel,” he said.

  Sally hurriedly lowered her eyes to her plate.

  “Yes,” he went on. “Now, there’s a career woman for you.”

  “Who on earth is Aunt Mabel?” asked Sally, following the question with what she hoped would be a rippling laugh, but it came out more as a croak.

  “You have been out of touch,” he mocked. “Aunt Mabel is the lady from Home Chats who answers all our problems.”

  “Oh, I don’t understand how people can demean themselves by writing to a complete stranger for advice,” said Sally, anxious to disassociate herself from Aunt Mabel.

  “You surprise me. I would have thought you had more understanding,” he said lightly. “There are an awful lot of people who would rather ask a complete stranger for advice than their immediate family. And don’t let my mother hear you say so. She invited Aunt Mabel down here to ask her advice.”

  “What about?”

  “About me. Mother thought I was going to marry Miss Wyndham, and she thought the young lady was too good for me.”

  “Quite right,” said Sally, and then realized her mistake, as he raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  “I mean,” she rushed on, anxious to cover her gaffe, “I am sure your mother knew what was best for you.”

  “I am not a child, Lady Cecily,” he said, and turned his attention back to the redhead.

  Blast! thought Sally. But then she remembered the duchess saying that the marquess liked his women to have a bit of vice in them. She must be bolder.

  To her extreme irritation Sir Sydney Chelmsford turned out to have heard of her pigsticking exploits and was prepared to cap them with several very long and boring stories of his own.

  Sally could only be relieved when the duchess rose to her feet, indicating that the ladies should leave the gentlemen to their port.

  In the drawing room, Sally was extremely alarmed when Miss Fleming pointed out that it was a miracle that none of these ladies turned out to have known the real Lady Cecily. This was a snag that Sally had not even considered, and so she lurked in Miss Fleming’s grim shadow, expecting at any moment to be exposed.

  Apart from the Misses Guthrie, there were a number of good-looking girls with their hopeful mamas, and the Duchess was surrounded by quite a court of females trying to ingratiate themselves with Her Grace.

  All the ladies were dressed in their best, and very few had learned that diamonds were considered vulgar in the country. Sally felt her dog collar of pearls, which had looked so handsome in the privacy of her bedroom, pale into insignificance beside the blaze of diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires.

  At last they were joined by the gentlemen, and it transpired they were going to play charades.

  By some sort of unspoken agreement, the ladies had decided to exclude Sally from the festivities, and Sally was too frightened of exposure to put herself forward. Therefore she had the doubtful pleasure of watching the marquess playing Romeo to Dolly Guthrie’s Juliet and thought sourly that these silly, childish games would go on forever. But at last the charades were over, and the guests were urged to give an impromptu concert. Again the Guthrie girls were to the fore, singing selections from Gilbert and Sullivan with weak, little voices and amazing aplomb.

  The evening was saved for Sally by the Honorable Freddie. Screwing his monocle in his eye, he announced, despite groans of protest, that he was going to recite.

  Undeterred by his wife’s loud and acid comments, he rose to his feet, cleared his throat, and declared, “I am going to recite one of the finest and most moving bits of poetry I’ve ever read. It’s by a Scotch scribe-chappie called William McGonagall, entitled, “The Tay Bridge Disaster.”

  “He’s got to go. He’s really got to go,” observed Mrs. Stuart to the world at l
arge, but with the exception of Sally, they thought his wife meant he had simply to leave the room, whereas Sally alone knew that Mrs. Stuart meant leave the planet.

  The guests politely listened to the first verse in amazement and then began to talk loudly and rudely among themselves. William McGonagall was, after all, an acquired taste. That Victorian poet never troubled his head with meter or form. As long as each line of verse rhymed somehow with the one before it, he was perfectly happy and expected his readers to feel the same way.

  Only Sally and the marquess moved slightly forward to listen in awe to the Honorable Freddie’s rendering.

  By the time they converged at the end of the room near the fireplace, which served as the “stage,” Freddie was declaiming the third verse.

  “But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,

  Boreas he did loud and angry bray,

  And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay

  On the last Sabbath day of 1879,

  Which will be remembered for a very long time.”

  * * *

  Sally suddenly felt the marquess’s eye upon her and was overcome by a desire to giggle. Behind them in the room, the guests chattered on regardless. In front of them, Freddie was giving the “Tay Bridge Disaster” his heart and soul.

  At last he reached the final stanza.

  “It must have been an awful sight,

  To witness in the dusky moonlight,

  While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,

  Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,

  Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,

  I must now conclude my lay

  By telling the world fearlessly and without the least dismay,

  That your central girders would not have given way,

  At least many sensible men do say,

  Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,

  At least many sensible men confesses,

  For the stronger we our houses do build,

  The less chance we have of being killed.”

  * * *

  “Remove me from here,” muttered Sally to the marquess in a stifled voice, her face buried in her handkerchief.

  He nodded and piloted her out deftly through the guests and into the great, shadowy hall. “Lady Cecily,” he said severely, “you are incorrigible.”

  “I can’t help it,” wailed Sally, laughing till the tears ran down her face. “It was so awfully funny, and there was Mrs. Stuart plotting like mad to poison her husband.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” said the marquess. “She may look like that sometimes, but Mrs. Stuart is very fond of Freddie—in her fashion. Oh, do stop laughing, or you’ll start me off. Come here, and I’ll dry your eyes.”

  He pulled her gently toward him, and Sally stopped laughing and stared up at him, wide-eyed. The hall was suddenly very quiet as he looked down at her in dawning surprise, dawning awareness, a clean handkerchief forgotten in his hand.

  The great hall was only lit by two oil lamps. Outside, the snow whispered against the windows. A voice, louder than the rest, in the drawing room sounded out very near the door.

  He is going to kiss me, thought Sally wildly. He only likes girls with a bit of vice in them. I must encourage him….

  Closing her eyes, and summoning up all her reserves of courage, she put her arms around his neck.

  The blue eyes above hers gleamed with a wicked light, and she closed her own. His lips descended on hers, at first surprisingly warm and boyish and innocent.

  Then the very adult emotions behind his lips took over, and in one moment Sally lost her emotional virginity. She had often thought of some man who would hold hands with her and kiss her and then—naturally—marry her; some sort of cosy extension of a school friend. But never had she imagined anything like this sinking, burning, melting feeling. She never wanted to let go. She wanted it to go on forever and ever, his lips burning against her own while the clocks in the hall ticked busily in the background, the enormous log fire crackled on the hearth, and the snow whispered urgently against the windowpanes.

  “Oh, I can’t bear it! I just can’t bear it! It should be me. Me and Rose. Oh, Rose.”

  “Damn and double bloody damn!” said the marquess, releasing Sally so abruptly that she nearly fell, and swinging around.

  Unnoticed by both of them, the duke had been slumped in a high wing chair in the shadows, a little bit away from the fire.

  “Oh, go to bed, Father,” snapped the marquess, exasperated.

  “It’s all right for you,” mumbled the duke sulkily. “Kissing and canoodling with all and sundry.”

  Poor Sally. One bare moment ago she had felt as if all the love songs and all the romance in the world had been centered in her small body. And now it all withered and died before that “canoodling with all and sundry.”

  She gave the marquess a shaky little good night and fled up the stairs, only realizing when she was in the safety of her room that she had left the field clear open to the other ladies. Oh, dear! What did he think of her? Did he think her fast? Did he think of her at all?

  The evening was made worse by the arrival of Miss Fleming, who reported that the party was now playing children’s games, and that in blind-man’s buff, the marquess had seized Dolly Guthrie around the waist. Furthermore she, Miss Fleming, wondered what the youth of today was coming to.

  If he gives me a cold look tomorrow, thought Sally desperately, then I shall leave.

  But the next day, the marquess was nowhere to be seen. It transpired that he had gone to Bath to conduct some business having to do with his father’s estates. Sally was immediately cast down. She would not have gone anywhere for any reason. Therefore he didn’t think of her. Therefore what was the use? She was worried, miserable, hurt, and rejected. But she could not leave.

  The snow had stopped falling and lay deep and crisp and even over the landscape. The stone tigers on the steps waved their snowy paws ridiculously in the air. More guests began to arrive. Servants bustled backward and forward throughout the great house. Soon an orchestra could be heard rehearsing the inevitable waltz, and Sally’s misery soon changed to an almost sick feeling of excitement as the hour of the ball drew nearer. In her heart of hearts, she knew that this was to be her one and only night. She could not stay for the meet in the morning. Lady Cecily would need to return to London and change into Sally Blane, who would then need to transform herself into Aunt Mabel and return to the palace, sitting with rubber wrinkled hands folded while the love of her life no doubt got down on one knee and proposed to another female.

  Miss Fleming and Sally helped each other dress, and both were ready a full half hour before it was time to descend to the ballroom.

  “How do I look?” asked Sally breathlessly.

  “Very well,” said Miss Fleming gruffly. “Very well indeed.”

  Privately she thought Sally looked very dainty and pretty. Her white silk ball gown had a deep décolletage and was tied with jaunty bows like little wings on the shoulders. It was swept back in a small bustle, and the hem was thickly encrusted with pearls and silver thread.

  Her proud little head rose above the collar of pearls. “I bought you something,” said Miss Fleming. “How could I have forgotten! Wait a minute.”

  She rummaged in a large portmanteau and came up with a long silver box, which she opened. Out came a delicate spray of white silk roses, and, brushing aside Sally’s stammered thanks, Miss Fleming proceeded to arrange them deftly in the glossy coronet of Sally’s hair.

  Miss Fleming herself looked very imposing in purple taffeta edged with sable. “It’s begun to snow again,” she said, looking out of the window. “No hunt tomorrow.”

  “Oh, then we could stay another day!” cried Sally.

  Miss Fleming shook her feathered head. “Why prolong the agony?” she said with a shrug. “Just think, Sally. I mean, he’s not going to forgive you if you tell him the truth. To think anything else is sheer fantasy.”
/>   A mulish look crossed Sally’s pretty face, and she compressed her lips tightly.

  This was to be Sally’s first ball. There was surely nothing else quite so exciting in a young girl’s life as that first descent into the ballroom down the red-carpeted stairs, with the major-domo calling her name like the recording angel from the landing above. As Sally moved sedately down, the mixed smell of hothouse flowers, perfume, powder, macassar oil, cigars, wine, and French cooking rose to meet her like some heady incense burned before the altar of vanity fair.

  To Sally’s dismay there was no sign of the marquess. Worse—her little silver dance card with its elegant silver pencil was being filled up quickly. In despair, she dived behind a pillar and wrote the name Mr. Grumpit in the space for the supper dance and in the space for the last dance.

  She danced and danced, trying to convince herself that she was having a marvelous time, while all the while her large eyes stared over her partners’ shoulders, hoping to see the marquess arrive.

  And then all at once he was there. Sally had just finished a noisy set of the lancers with Peter Firkin when she found the marquess at her elbow, sleek and groomed and elegant in evening dress. She looked up and caught the glow in his eyes, and all her worries melted away.

  The marquess had indeed thought about Sally quite a lot, but in a much simpler and less agonized way than Sally had thought about him. As far as he was concerned, he had enjoyed kissing her and meant to do it again, as soon as possible.

  He frowned over her card. “Curst snow,” he muttered. “Every single dance taken.”

  Sally smiled up at him. “I think I could persuade Mr. Grumpit to let you have his dances.”

  His face lit up with laughter, and he wrote his name quickly over the fictitious Mr. Grumpit’s. “I’m sure Mr…. er… Grumpit won’t mind at all,” he said. “In fact, this is the supper dance, and I am going to take you onto the floor right now, just in case such a person actually exists.”

  “Now, you don’t think I made him up?” teased Sally, too happy to be embarrassed as she felt his gloved hand at her waist.