by M C Beaton
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 were 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 picture 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 stitch.
“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.”
“O
h 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.
Alice watched him over Peregrine’s shoulder. For a moment, her wide eyes held a startled look of hurt, and then she firmly turned her attention back to Sir Peregrine and began to flirt for all she was worth.
Alice decided then and there to fall in love with Sir Peregrine. For deep down at the bottom of her heart, a little flame of anger was beginning to bum. If the Duke wished to philander and kiss and fade away in that silly way, then the sooner she banished him from her thoughts, the better.
And so the young couple circulated gracefully around the floor, each hell-bent on falling in love with the other, the one for money and the other for revenge.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bessant, that worthy servant, chewed his nails in a corner and thought furiously. He was sure he had been mistaken in the identity of Alice. But the appearance of the “ghost” at the same ball was too much for him. The more he thought back to the haunting of Wadham Hall, the more convinced he became that Alice had not committed suicide but had found an accomplice and both had tricked him. There had been a gaping hole found in the northeast corner of the wall in the grounds of Wadham, and rumor had it that someone had found the old Duchess’s jewels and made off with them.
He decided at last to bide his time and to watch every movement the guilty couple made. He accordingly made his way back to the musicians’ gallery and leaned over.
Of Alice’s accomplice, there was no sign, and the girl he had believed to be Alice was pirouetting around the floor, looking so lovely and so aristocratic with a great collar of diamonds blazing on her neck, that Mr. Bessant decided the light had tricked him.
By the end of the ball, Alice had decided that she was definitely in love. She gracefully accepted an invitation to go to the play with Sir Peregrine the next evening and collected her companion and made her way out to her carriage.
She was looking forward to seeing her ghost when she got home—for she assumed that that was where he was, for she had not seen him for the past two hours—and telling him her joyous news.
But as she left the Haversham town house, a gray dawn was pearling the sky in the east and a thin mist was curling around the old trees in Hyde Park.
Alice gave a little sigh which sounded rather like a dry sob. She would need to wait and wait until darkness fell again in order to tell him how happy, how supremely happy, she was.
Chapter 7
The Duke sat in Alice’s pretty drawing room telling himself firmly that he felt very happy for her. He tried to fight down a feeling of pique. She might at least have waited for him instead of going off to the play with Sir Peregrine and Miss Fadden.
The room held two clocks, a sonorous grandfather and a chattering gilt French thing, and their noise appeared to grow louder and louder in the silence of the room.
At last he persuaded himself that it was his duty as “uncle” to attend the play and make sure that Alice was still as happy as she had seemed the night before. He had not hired himself a valet, since a personal servant might have wondered at his master’s odd appearances and disappearances, and so it was a good hour before he let himself quietly out of the house with his hair carefully dressed and his chapeau bras under his arm and his sword stick at his side.
The night was warm and balmy and he decided to walk. As he turned out of the square, he had an uneasy feel
ing that he was being followed. He turned quickly around and just out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow, slightly blacker than the other shadows, slink into a doorway.
The Duke walked on until he came to a point where the road was crossed by a narrow lane. He swerved suddenly into the lane and quickly practiced his latest trick, that of making himself invisible.
He waited.
At the crossing a tall figure came to a stop and turned his head slowly this way and that, his features momentarily lit by the flickering light of a parish lamp.
It was Mr. Bessant. The Duke drew in his breath sharply. He must warn Alice to be on her guard. Bessant must have recognized one or both of them at the ball. He cursed himself for having exposed her to danger.
Mr. Bessant hurried on. He could not understand where his quarry had disappeared to.
