Annabelle

by Beaton, M. C.

  “I must go, Meg,” she whispered, glad to see the gypsy’s eyes properly focused once more.

  “Don’t go. What happened? What did I say?” pleaded Meg wildly, but Annabelle was already off and running towards the house.

  Chapter Two

  By the time the Squire’s coach had rumbled fifty miles on the road to the South, Annabelle had begun to relax. Her family seemed already a long way away, as if viewed mentally through the wrong end of a telescope. The Squire’s maid, Bessie, had never been out of the village before and was happy and excited at the idea of a trip to “Lunnon.” The carriage smelled rather strongly of hens, leading Annabelle to suspect it had recently done service as a temporary poultry coop, but it was comfortable for all that after one became used to the lurching, swaying motion.

  Annabelle was still enough of a child to begin to view the visit to her godmother with some complacency. It would simply be a matter of obeying the Dowager Marchioness’s instructions and then everything would be all right. She had been strictly taught to honor her father and mother, to obey her betters implicity, and that no harm could come of doing one’s duty. If she thought of Meg’s prophecy at all, it was only to wonder what the old woman had been drinking.

  But as mile followed weary mile and inexpensive posting house followed inexpensive posting house, Annabelle became increasingly nervous and tired of unaired beds and their attendant bugs. Even Bessie had at last fallen silent.

  The weather grew warmer and the countryside increasingly flatter and greener and the turnpikes closer together.

  A pale primrose twilight was bathing the grimy streets with gold as the heavy creaking coach rumbled its way down into the north of London. With eyes gritty with fatigue Annabelle tried to focus on the strange and noisy sights until her eyelids began to droop. The carriage was momentarily halted in traffic; a pieman with a loaded tray bobbed past the window of the coach, the pies steaming in the chill evening air. Then Annabelle fell asleep to wake an hour later and realise that they had finally come to a stop and the journey was at an end.

  She climbed stiffly down from the coach and stood on the pavement with trembling legs. Flambeaux placed in brackets on the wall blazed outside an imposing mansion with a glossy white-painted door with a shining brass knocker. The whole house was ablaze with lights, and turning round, Annabelle could see the blackness of the gardens of Berkeley Square.

  The door was opened after an energetic rat-tat on the knocker by the Squire’s groom to reveal the tall, imposing figure of a bewigged butler. He eyed Annabelle’s shabby bonnet and worn pelisse and raised his eyebrows. Butlers, Annabelle was to learn, hardly ever trouble themselves to ask unnecessary questions. They simply raise their eyebrows, the level denoting the importance of the question.

  This butler’s eyebrows ran up his corrugated forehead and disappeared under his powdered wig. Annabelle found she could not manage to say a word. But the Yorkshire groom was not going to be put down by an uppity London servant.

  “Doan’t stand there gawking, man,” he said tersely. “This here is Miss Quennell.”

  The eyebrows dropped. The butler inclined his head a bare millimeter to indicate that miss was to enter. With a slightly deepening incline he indicated that she was to wait.

  “Oh, miss,” breathed Bessie. “Ain’t it, grand.”

  The hallway did seem imposing even to the tired Annabelle. Beeswax candles blazed from sconces in the walls and were reflected in the black and white tiles of the floor. A beautiful marble staircase covered in a thick turkey red carpet rose gracefully to the upper floors. A huge fire crackled briskly on the hearth.

  The double doors leading to a room on the left swung open, and the butler appeared again. Again he did not speak but merely stood to one side of the open doors. With her heart in her mouth Annabelle walked forward into the room.

  The room was as graceful as the hall with pale green walls, elegant Chippendale furniture, a marble Adam fireplace, and various Eversley ancestors staring down in high-nosed disdain from their gilt frames. But Annabelle only had eyes for the extraordinary figure who was coming to meet her. This could surely not be the Dowager Marchioness of Eversley! She had curls of a wildly improbable shade of gold peeping out from beneath a frivolous lace cap, and her heavy square face was rouged and painted like a mask. She was dressed in a pale pink Indian muslin dress cut very low to expose an acreage of bony bosom and—oh, horrors—she had damped her dress to reveal all the whalebone charms of a tight French corset and the billows of flesh above and below it.

  Annabelle looked wildly round, hoping some other, more soberly dressed lady might emerge, but a high girlish giggle emerged from this lady’s painted mouth and she simpered awfully, “I declare, Annabelle Quennell, you do not believe I could be your godmother. You must not mind, my dear. I am accustomed to people finding me ’strordinarily young. Come and kiss me.”

  Annabelle nervously complied, noticing as she drew back that her lips had left a barren patch in the mask of powder.

  The Dowager Marchioness stretched up her gloved arms and removed Annabell’s hat and then stood back and stared in satisfaction at the wealth of red-gold hair.

  “Beautiful,” she murmured. “Just as your mama promised. Well, that’s settled. ’Course, had you been plain, I should have had the terrible bore of posting you back to Yorkshire. Now, off with you and change. We will be late for the opera.”

  Annabelle looked at her faintly and then at the little gilt clock on the mantelshelf. “B-but, I had hoped to retire, Godmother. Perhaps a tray in my room…”

  “Nonsense! I have the finest beau in all London waiting to meet you. Ha! That makes you stare. Yes, I have picked out a suitor for you, and you shall meet him this very evening! Now, do as you are told, child.” She touched a bell on the wall. “Your rooms are ready, and you will find my lady’s maid, Horley, waiting to help you with your dress. Your beau’s name is Captain Jimmy MacDonald of the Eighteenth Hussars. I know he can hardly wait to meet you!”

  “I CAN hardly wait to meet her,” drawled Captain Jimmy MacDonald from the depths of his chair.

  “One would think you were uninterested in meeting anything other than another bottle of claret,” replied the light, amused voice of Lord Sylvester Varleigh. “Who is she?”

  The Captain looked gloomily round the Great Subscription Room of Brooks’s in St. James’s. “Oh, Emmeline’s dragging some filly to the opera tonight,” he yawned. “Wants me to marry her.”

  “She must be very rich,” murmured Lord Varleigh, looking down at the sprawling figure of the Captain. The Captain’s pockets were always notoriously to let.

  “Ain’t got a penny,” said the Captain, “but I promised to oblige.” Lord Varleigh raised his thin eyebrows in surprise but was forestalled from further comment by the Captain adding wrathfully, “And stop hovering over me like some great demned horrible bird of prey.”

  There was indeed something rather hawklike about the Lord’s thin white face with its hooded lids and high-bridged nose. By contrast the Captain’s tanned and handsome face, under a mop of carefully curled hair gleaming with Macassar oil, was bordered by luxurious side-whiskers and made him look exactly what he was—a soldier in peacetime who loathed every minute of it. With the cessation of hostilities with France, he had launched himself on the London social scene with all the enthusiasm he had applied to a Peninsular campaign and had subsequently found it stale, flat, and infinitely unprofitable.

  His face flushed with the amount of claret he had consumed, the Captain looked round the famous club with a jaundiced eye. Apart from four painted panels by Antonio Zucchi, the walls were bare. “Why don’t they brighten up this mausoleum with some pictures?” he said irritably.

  “Because,” said Lord Varleigh soothingly, “pictures would distract the gamblers.”

  “Oh, well,” grumped the Captain, refilling his glass, “what else can one expect from a club founded by a lot of demned Macaronis?”

  The Macaron
is were the dandies of the last century, so called because they had made the Grand Tour which had included a visit to Italy. “All they did,” pursued the Captain, “was to bring back a dish that looks like a pile of demned great white worms.”

  “They also invented the slang word ‘bore,’” pointed out Lord Varleigh, much amused.

  “Meaning I’m one,” retorted the Captain good-naturedly. “Well, I’d better get going or I’ll never hear the end of it from Emmeline. Don’t even know this gel’s background. She’s probably as common as a barber’s chair.”

  He half rose from his seat only to be pushed down into it again by a fellow officer, Major Timothy Wilks. “You still as good with your fives?” roared the Major. “Feel like a bout at Jackson’s tomorrow?”

  “Wallop you any time you feel like it, dear boy,” said the Captain, the prospect of a boxing match causing him to show enthusiasm for the first time that evening. “Only fair to tell you, though. Was trained by Mendoza.”

  “Pooh! That Israelite cannot top Jackson.”

  “Mendoza is infinitely superior in regards to dexterity,” said the Captain wrathfully.

  “He has a remarkably quick eye. He strikes oftener and stops better than any man in England…”

  “He’s weak in the loins,” rejoined the Major.

  “But he is finely formed in the breast and arms,” said the Captain enthusiastically. “Why, I remember…”

  “Your meeting at Covent Garden,” interrupted Lord Varleigh with a gentle reminder.

  “Oh, stuff,” said Captain MacDonald. “Look—I’ll be a trifle late. You’re going anyway, ain’t you, Varleigh? Present my compliments and say I’ll be along directly. Oh, and if the gel’s Friday-faced, send a messenger to warn me.”

  “Very well,” smiled Lord Varleigh, thinking, not for the first time, what an overgrown schoolboy the Captain was. “I shall tell her you can hardly wait to meet her!”

  ANNABELLE looked at her reflection in the long pier glass and turned to Horley in dismay.

  “I cannot wear this gown,” she said firmly. “It is … it’s indecent.”

  The evening gown was admittedly of the finest silk velvet in a delectable shade of pale green and opened down the front to reveal an underdress of gold silk. The neckline, though bordered with a creamy fall of old lace, was more of a waistline! thought Annabelle bitterly. It seemed to leave not only her shoulders but most of her bosom bare.

  Annabelle had revived somewhat from the fatigues of her journey at the sight of the splendor of her new quarters. She was to be the proud possessor of a sitting room and a large bedroom with an old-fashioned powder room beyond. Thick oriental rugs covered the floor, and pretty flock wallpaper adorned the walls. Fires burned in both bedroom and sitting room, adding their light to the blaze of beeswax candles on the walls. Her hair had been expertly and becomingly dressed by her godmother’s lady’s maid, Horley, and the dress, spread out innocently over a high-backed chair, had seemed beautiful.

  “There is nothing up with it,” said Horley severely. “To think of all the trouble and expense your godmama’s gone to—why, she will think you downright ungrateful!”

  Annabelle felt obscurely that the woman was being impertinent but did not have the courage to protest any longer.

  The Dowager Marchioness, Lady Emmeline, surveyed her goddaughter with pleasure. Those wide innocent blue eyes, combined with the daring sophistication of the dress, were alluring in the extreme, decided the old lady with satisfaction. No, Annabelle may not have a shawl. The lightest of gauze wraps was all that was necessary.

  THE famous opera house was crowded. No one seemed to be paying much attention to the performance on stage as they whispered and shuffled and hopped from box to box. Lady Emmeline stared round the dimness of the house. “Can’t see the rascal,” she whispered to Annabelle. “But he’ll come … never fear.”

  That’s just what I am afraid of, thought poor Annabelle. She dreaded the interval when the lights would be lit. Her entrance to the opera house had been enough. Every male eye had seemed to fasten on her bosom and shoulders, and everyone quite blatantly discussed her.

  “That must be him,” said Lady Emmeline, hearing a sound at the back of the box. She twisted round. “Oh, it’s you, Varleigh. Where’s MacDonald?”

  “He will be here directly,” said a light, amused voice. “He assured me he could hardly wait to meet Miss…”

  “Miss Quennell,” snapped Lady Emmeline, ungraciously making the introductions. Annabelle quickly looked up into Lord Varleigh’s light gray eyes and then dropped her own in confusion. What a terrifying man!

  Lady Emmeline was still attired in the damped pink muslin, but Annabelle’s sharp eyes had already noticed several other ladies just as daringly attired. Certainly they were younger and mostly in the lower boxes. She became aware that Lord Varleigh was speaking to her. “Miss Quennell,” came the light, pleasant voice from somewhere behind her, “when did you arrive in London?”

  “This evening,” said Annabelle without turning her head.

  “And where did you journey from?” pursued the voice.

  “From Yorkshire, my lord.”

  “Yorkshire! You must indeed be fatigued. But then, I gather you are anxious to meet Captain MacDonald.”

  Annabelle was about to reply a dutiful “yes,” but the beginnings of a very tiny spark of rebellion stopped her.

  “I do not know Captain MacDonald,” she said coldly. “He is a friend of my godmother.”

  “Indeed!” mocked the voice as the house lights were lit for the interval. “Then you are in for a pleasant surprise. Here comes the Captain.”

  Annabelle stared round the house and became aware of a terrific commotion in the boxes opposite. A young man in evening dress had jumped onto the ledge of a box and with unerring agility was making his way towards her by walking nimbly along the edges of the boxes. With a final leap he made the parapet of Annabelle’s box and stood looking down at her in open, if somewhat drunken, admiration. Annabelle felt herself engulfed by the blush of all time as the Captain climbed into the box and pulled up a chair beside her.

  Then she became aware that several high-nosed ladies were staring at the Captain in open admiration. Annabelle shook her head slightly in amazement. It was her first lesson in the strange double standards of London society. The noisier and more vulgar the display, the more the man was considered no end of a young blood. Boorishness betokened masculinity and joie de vivre. But pity help any woman who dared to follow suit. She would be labelled “a sad romp,” a country bumpkin, no better than a washerwoman.

  I must be too nice in my ideas—too countrified, thought poor Annabelle.

  “Off with you, Varleigh,” the Captain was saying. “As you can see, I am well suited.”

  Lady Emmeline had noticed the Captain’s admiration and Annabelle’s blush and was purring with contentment. “My lord,” she said, holding up a small plump hand. “We are having supper afterwards to welcome Annabelle to London. Please join us.”

  Lord Varleigh hesitated. The warm charms of his mistress, Lady Jane Cherle, beckoned. But he was intrigued by this milk and water miss in the daring gown and murmured his acceptance. He bent punctiliously over Annabelle’s hand and allowed his hard gray eyes to stray insolently over her neck and bosom. Annabelle drew her gauze shawl tightly round her shoulders and stared back at him, her large eyes wide with shame. Lord Varleigh had a sudden feeling that he was behaving badly but after all, what else did the girl expect, dressed as she was?

  The rest of the opera passed like a nightmare. The Captain had drawn his chair so close to Annabelle that his thigh was uncomfortably pressed against her own. She moved her chair several times, but each time the Captain pursued by moving his own chair.

  Worse was to come when they returned to Lady Emmeline’s house in Berkeley Square. The only sober member of the party of gentlemen appeared to be Lord Varleigh. The Captain, his friend the Major, and a vacuous young gentleman rejoicing
in the name of George Louch were definitely bowzy, thought Annabelle as she sat in her aunt’s drawing room, trembling with cold and fatigue. A cheerful fire was blazing up the chimney, but Annabelle had retreated to the chilly corner of the room in the hope of escaping attention.

  With a sinking feeling she saw Lord Varleigh coming towards her. In the full blaze of candlelight she saw him to be a very tall man in faultless evening clothes who wore his thick fair hair unpowdered but in a longer style than the current fashion. He had a singular charm of manner of which he was aware. He turned the full impact of it on the bewildered Annabelle, extracting information on her home and family with expert ease. But to his surprise he noticed for once that his charm was not having its usual effect. The lady was staring into space, and it was with no little feeling of pique that he realised she was trying to stifle a yawn. He had an impulse to tease her, to rouse the sleeping beauty from her gently bred apathy.

  He waved his quizzing glass towards the group at the fireplace who were surrounding the grotesquely giggling and coquetting Lady Emmeline. “It seems as if your Captain is about to favor us with a tune.”

  Annabelle opened her mouth to protest that the gentleman was not her Captain, but Jimmy MacDonald had launched into song.

  Holding onto the mantel and seemingly oblivious of the roaring fire scorching his knee breeches, he began to sing in a loud, penetrating bass voice:

  Here’s a health to our Monarch and long may he reign,

  The blessing of England, its boast and its pride;

  May his Troops grace the land, and his Fleets rule the main,

  And may Charlotte long sit on the throne at his side.

  This was received with cheers and much clinking of glasses.

  Much flushed with wine and with his powdered hair almost standing on end, Mr. George Louch protested, “I prefer the songs of wit rather than patriotism.” In a surprisingly soprano voice he began to sing:

  ’Tis said that our soldiers so lazy are grown,