by M C Beaton
“Who are you to tell me what not to do, Miss Prunes and Prisms? I shall pinch you for that.”
Annie tried to escape, but her stronger sister had hurtled out of the armchair and seized her by the arm.
“Let me go!” Annie twisted in Marigold’s grasp.
“I’ll pinch you, and pinch you, and pinch you,” said Marigold, suiting the action to the words.
Annie seized her sister’s golden hair and gave it a hard tug. To her relief, Marigold immediately let go and started to sob.
“How dare you, Lady Annie!” cried Miss Higgins from the doorway. Annie sighed. She should have known that Marigold’s about-face was because she had seen the governess.
“I don’t know why you can’t be more like your sister,” Miss Higgins went on. “Of course, it must be upsetting to know that the family’s hopes are pinned on Lady Marigold making a successful marriage. But you must count your blessings, Lady Annie, and thank God for what he has seen fit to give you. Your turn will come, I am sure.”
“Oh, don’t prose on so, Higgins,” said Marigold, with sudden spite. “Can’t I talk to my sister without having to listen to your moralizing? You won’t be coming with us, anyway. I’ll make sure of that.”
The end of Miss Higgins’s long nose twitched with embarrassment.
“Don’t be nasty, Marigold,” said Annie.
“Lady Marigold was not being nasty,” said Miss Higgins. “Lady Marigold was merely expressing her views.”
“Good-bye,” murmured Marigold, with a lazy smile. Miss Higgins fled.
With one of her mercurial changes of mood, Marigold turned a winning smile on her sister. “Don’t let’s quarrel, Annie. Let’s talk about men.” She seized a copy of a glossy magazine and opened it to a well-thumbed page. “Now there’s a man I would like to meet. The Marquess of Torrance.”
Annie looked at the black-and-white photographs. Blank or startled well-bred faces stared at the camera. In one photograph was the Marquess of Torrance. He was talking to a willowy young lady whose face was almost concealed by the shadow thrown by her enormous cartwheel hat. He was laughing. His face seemed alive with mischief. He had very thick dark hair and a strong, handsome face.
“He might be married,” ventured Annie.
“He’s not. He’s a terrible ladies’ man, very wild, and quite the catch of the Season.”
Annie studied the photograph again, her fine red hair falling in a curtain about her face. “He doesn’t look all that young.”
“I looked him up in the Peerage. He’s thirty.”
“There must be something up with him if he’s not married,” Annie said with a frown.
“He hasn’t had to get married. He’s had lots and lots of lady-loves. The actress, Viola Delaney, is said to have tried to kill herself when he left her. Don’t you ever read the gossip columns? No, of course you don’t. You’re such a prude, Annie. It’s not that you’re precisely plain. It’s just that you’ve always got a disapproving look—like a school-teacher. You would have made a better Higgins than Higgins.”
“You’re very cruel to Miss Higgins—and to Nanny, considering they dote on you.”
“Oh, that’s because I’m beautiful,” said Marigold smugly. “You don’t need to bother being nice when you’re beautiful.”
“But what about getting old?” asked Annie. “Have you thought of that? Have you thought of a husband who’s become all too accustomed to your beauty? Think about it! I can see you now, lying on the chaise longue with your face in a chin-bracer, studying your wrinkles in the glass while your husband pays court to the latest beauty.”
“Cat,” said Marigold. “You’re jealous. There’s time enough to think about being charming and all that when I get a husband.”
Marigold’s beautiful eyes were suddenly bright with malice. “What’s going on inside that carrot top? I know. You’ve been reading romances again, where the plain, little, bluestocking Cinderella attracts the dashing hero with her common sense. Rubbish! If there’s one thing a man can’t stand, it’s an intelligent woman.”
“Then you should have plenty of suitors,” Annie flashed back, humiliated by the ease with which her sister had outlined one of her favorite fantasies.
Marigold stretched lazily. “I shall. Oh, indeed I shall. Now, why don’t you run along to bed as you’ve been dying to do? The only romance you’re going to find, precious little Annie, is between the cover of that book you’ve got hidden under your pillow.”
Annie stood over her sister, her hands clenched. “You’ve been rummaging among my things. You have no…”
“But it’s such fun.” Marigold giggled. “‘Dear Diary, Nothing has happened today. Nothing ever happens. But one day he will come and I will recognize…’ Ow!”
Outraged, Annie was shaking her as hard as she could. Marigold rolled out of the armchair and pulled Annie down to the floor by grabbing her ankles. Both rolled, bit, and scratched until at last Annie, for once, managed to get the upper hand by taking handfuls of her sister’s hair and banging her head against the floor.
Abruptly, she released her and sat back on her heels, laughing. “What would the Marquess of Torrance say if he could see us now?” she gasped. Seeing Marigold was ready to continue the fight, she escaped along the corridor to her own room and locked the door.
Predictably, wild and noisy sobbing started to emanate from the schoolroom, then there was a loud banging on Annie’s door and Nanny Simpkins shouted, “You open the door this minute, my lady. Your jealousy has gone too far. Poor Lady Marigold is quite distraught. Open the door, I say.”
“Shan’t,” said Annie, sitting on her bed and clenching her fists. It was the first time she had ever got the better of Marigold in a fight and she was sure it would be the last.
There was a long silence. Then came Nanny’s grim voice. “I have no other alternative but to tell your mother.”
Annie shuddered. Her mother rarely interfered in the schooling of her daughters, but when she did the punishment was long and severe.
As Nanny’s footsteps retreated, Annie grimly remembered all the humiliations she had suffered at Marigold’s hands.
A sudden, terrible ambition was born in her breast. “Somehow,” Lady Annie said aloud to herself, “I will marry before Marigold—to anyone who’ll have me. Just so long as I get to the altar before her.”
CHAPTER TWO
Miss Agatha Winter was the Countess of Crammarth’s sister, the countess having been a plain Miss Winter of the untitled aristocracy before she married the earl.
Aunt Agatha had never married. She had told so many people that she, Agatha, had been a great beauty in her youth that she had almost begun to believe it herself. She liked to hint at a great romance and a subsequent broken heart. She enameled her face white and painted red circles on her cheeks. Her fair hair was on the brassy side. Her dresses were always of clinging materials, and, given the slightest chance, she would wear the lowest-cut gowns possible, exposing an acreage of painted neck and bosom. Most of the time she looked like a badly stretched canvas.
In a lower circle of society, she would be condemned for dressing and making-up like a tart, but in the ratified heights of the London Season, she merely became one with the other raddled chaperones who lined the walls.
Her instructions from her sister were perfectly clear. Marigold must marry money. She was to be encouraged to smile on any suitor with a large bank balance and a desire to have a titled wife. If worst came to worst, an American would do, although young American males seemed to enjoy the spectacle of the London Season and then promptly went home to marry American girls. But then foreigners are so unaccountable. As Miss Winter’s friend, Miss Shuttleworth-Snyde-Crimp, had said only the other day, “Perhaps not an American. The English names have gone from that country, and they now have such peculiar surnames as Bloomberger or something.”
Miss Winter’s home was as enameled as its owner. She had followed the vogue for painting furniture, and most of it w
as enameled a glaring white. Annie reflected that it was rather like making one’s debut from a hospital ward.
The start of the Season was now barely a week away. According to the calendar, it was late spring. According to the fickle English weather, it was still winter.
Rain beat down on the muddy streets, and a great wind sent the cowls on the chimney stacks spinning. Cab horses shivered under sodden blankets as they waited at the ranks. You awoke to darkness, and by three in the afternoon the gas was already being lit. London seemed doomed to lie forever under a great flying bank of low, black clouds.
Miss Winter lived in a thin-walled house in Manchester Square. Damp permeated every room, and little beads of condensation slid down the chilly white of the furniture. She did not believe in lighting fires after the first of March, and so all of the fireplaces had on their summer dress of crepe paper and pine cones under mantels draped in white lace.
One evening the enterprising Marigold had taken an axe to a chair in her bedroom and had invited Annie along to enjoy the blaze in the fireplace.
Miss Winter had promptly deducted the cost of the chair from Marigold’s pin money and this punishment had drawn the sisters into a temporary friendship, like two warriors resting on their lances before the next battle.
Annie had been furious with Marigold all the way to London. Her punishment, meted out by the countess, had been a week on bread and water. But now she and Marigold were drawn together against the uncomfortable parsimony of their aunt and their mutual disappointment with London.
Annie did not know what Marigold had expected, but she had painted a picture of light, airy streets where ladies in beautiful, colored dresses moved gracefully like swans.
The reality was of scuttling figures dressed in gray and black and brown; damp clothes, damp smells, overflowing drains, and mud, mud, mud.
Annie had even accepted with equanimity that Marigold was to have the finer gown for the opening ball at Lady Trevelyn’s mansion, Lady Trevelyn being one of the social leaders. Miss Winter had chosen Marigold’s ball gown herself, and then she had turned Annie over to the care of the dressmaker, telling her that she could have whatever she wanted as long as she kept it within the stipulated price.
The meals, chez Winter, were abominable: cheap cuts of meat, soggy vegetables, stodgy puddings. Miss Winter instructed both girls to eat as much as possible during the Season—at other people’s houses, of course.
On the day of the ball, Annie turned over in bed and buried her head under the bedclothes. She was tired of sitting up and looking out of the oblong window at that weeping gray sky every morning when the maid entered to draw the curtains.
She heard the maid’s soft step and then the clink of china as her morning cup of tea and a plate with two Osborne biscuits were placed on the table beside her bed. Then the curtains were drawn.
And Annie became aware of a new sound. Birds were squabbling and chattering outside the window. Somewhere down in the square a barrel organ was grinding out a wheezy waltz.
She poked her head above the bedclothes and stared disbelievingly at the shaft of sunlight cutting an oblong across the polished boards.
And then her stomach began to churn with anticipation at the thought of the ball. But she no longer thought of finding a husband just to spite her sister. She had enjoyed their new closeness. It had made the discomforts of the Winter household seem almost worth bearing.
It was a kaleidoscope of a day. One moment it seemed as if the evening would never come, and then all at once it was rushing in upon her.
A lady’s maid, Barton, had been hired to take care of Marigold and Annie, Miss Winter not wishing to pay for her services a day earlier than was necessary.
Both girls were to wear their hair up for the first time. The hairdresser arrived, tut-tutted over Annie’s straight, fine, red hair, and then went to work, heating curling tongs over a spirit stove and filling the house with the scent of hot hair.
The dress, which Annie had chosen at the dressmaker’s urging, was in the new, sweet-pea color. It was made of clinging chiffon and seemed to float about her slim body. The neckline was deep, and the gown was secured at each shoulder by two frivolous bows that looked like wings. The skirt fell in beautifully scalloped layers of delicate chiffon, ending in a short spoon train at the back.
Her only ornament was a gold locket suspended on a thin chain, containing two pictures of her pony, Arnold. Young girls were not supposed to wear much jewelry, anyway. Married ones, however, were allowed to deck themselves out like jewelers’ display trays.
After the hairdresser had finished, Barton appeared to help Annie with her corsets and gown.
At last it was time to look in the looking glass, time to see if she had turned into a woman. Annie had hoped that the lady’s maid would make some comment, but Barton was quick, efficient, and silent.
She cautiously approached the long pier glass and found a stranger looking back at her. Her red hair was set high on her head in intricate swirls and loops and curls, and threaded with pearls. It was burnished like a flame. Her eyes looked enormous in her face, which had been delicately colored with rouge. The gown, padded at the bust and hips, made her tiny waist seem smaller than ever. The gown itself was like a spring symphony with the delicate pastel colors glowing in the light of the oil lamp.
The door opened and Marigold walked in. She was attired in a fussy debutante gown of white lace. Her beautiful golden hair had been fashionably frizzed at the front, rather giving her the look of a French poodle.
“Well, you do look a mess,” she said slowly, surveying Annie with hard, bright eyes.
“Lady Marigold!” exclaimed Barton, startled into speech.
“Every young lady, is going to be wearing white,” Marigold went on, undeterred. “And you’ll look like a freak. Whoever heard of a girl going to her first ball in colors?”
Annie studied her reflection in the glass. “No, Marigold,” she said. “I’m not going to listen to you. I’ve never looked better in my life.”
“That’s not saying much,” sneered Marigold. Then she turned on a charming smile. “Look, I really don’t want you to make a fool of yourself. I’ve got another white ball gown I can let you have.”
“No,” said Annie, mutinously. “This is the first time I’ve looked attractive and I’m going to enjoy it.”
Marigold gave a shrill laugh. “You! Look attractive! Take another look in the mirror. Oh, you’ve changed a little for the better, I’ll admit. But you’re still the insignificant little thing you always were!” She flounced out of the room.
Annie looked miserably at the glass, waiting for Barton to reassure her. But Barton had already grasped the fact that Marigold was the favored one and she did not want to lose her position. She mutely held out Annie’s cloak and helped her into it.
Aunt Agatha was waiting with Marigold in the drawing room. She made no comment about Annie’s appearance but praised Marigold so fulsomely that she quite restored that young lady to good humor.
As the open landau carried them through the streets during the early evening, Annie began to feel a recurring surge of anticipation and excitement. This was the London she had expected! The air was warm and sweet with a gray-and-rose twilight glowing behind the sooty houses. People strolled by, enjoying the soft evening air, and the ladies seemed to have blossomed into all the colors of the rainbow.
As their driver was negotiating the press of traffic at Marble Arch, a cheeky urchin shouted from the curb, “You don’t ’alf look a treat, Red!” Delighted, Annie waved and smiled, bringing an icy reprimand from Aunt Agatha down on her head.
“Probably thought you were a streetwalker.” Across the barrier of Miss Winter’s upholstered bosom, Marigold tittered.
“Well, you can always judge someone by the company she keeps,” Annie flashed back.
“Girls! Girls!” admonished Aunt Agatha. “Mind your manners. Marigold, you are not to refer to such a class of persons again. A true lady do
es not know that such people exist. And, Annie, you are too bold and forward in your ways.”
The rest of the journey toward the Trevelyns’ house in Kensington was accomplished in stony silence.
It was a very large white house, quite modern, and set a little apart from its neighbors. A striped canopy was over the door and a red carpet stretched across the pavement where two constables stood on duty.
Annie had long cherished a dream of descending into a ballroom. But she was to find that most ballrooms were up or through rather than down.
They powdered their noses and left their cloaks in a room off the hall, then mounted the staircase to be greeted by their hosts, Lord and Lady Trevelyn. Aunt Agatha went first, then Marigold, and then Annie behind her sister. They had almost reached the top of the stairs when Marigold jerked her elbow backward and caught Annie full in the middle.
Annie lost her balance and fell backward. She would have toppled down the length of the stairs to the tiled hall below had she not cannoned into the man who was mounting the staircase directly behind her.
He caught her in his arms and steadied her on the stair, then smiled down at her.
She had a bewildering mixture of sensations, sights, and emotions.
There was the feel of a hard, muscled arm around her waist; a masculine smell of cologne and tobacco. A startled glance upward revealed a handsome, tanned face with sleepy blue eyes fringed by long lashes, a mobile, humorous mouth, and a strong chin.
And then he spoke. “Well, it’s my lucky evening after all. Life is stale, flat, and unprofitable, I thought, and this ball is going to fortify my jaded opinion, and then all of a sudden a beautiful redhead is thrown into my arms.”
“I wasn’t thrown,” said Annie, breathlessly disengaging herself. “I was pushed.”
“Really! By whom?”
Annie looked up. People were passing them on the stairs, casting them amused glances. Of Marigold and Aunt Agatha, there was no sign.
“Oh, never mind,” said Annie. “Thank you for saving me.”
