by M C Beaton
“Now, listen,” said Lord Andrew quietly. “I am still engaged to Miss Worthy. Nothing happened. Miss Mortimer and I were victims of a cruel practical joke. Do you understand?”
“But where were you? You must have spent the night together.”
“We traveled all night and most of today. We borrowed a gig and a little pony which could not travel fast. Is that not so, Miss Mortimer?”
“Oh, yes,” said Penelope.
“Why did you not say so in the first place?” said the duchess, glaring round the room. Three liveried footmen who had been pretending to be busy about their duties exited sideways with their traditional sliding step like so many gold and scarlet crabs. Perkins, the lady’s maid, who had been crouched in the corner while the scene was at its height, rushed forward to fuss about her mistress.
“So,” went on the duchess brightly, pushing Perkins away, “we must prepare for the evening. Penelope, my love, put on the silver ballgown, I beseech you. There is a turtle supper followed by a masked ball at the Foxtons’.”
“Miss Mortimer is in no fit state to go anywhere,” said Lord Andrew.
But Penelope, relieved the dreadful scene was over, said, “I am quite recovered,” and slipped quietly from the room.
Lord Andrew stayed only to tell his mother the full story of Mr. Jepps’s trickery before going off to change. Pomfret, his valet, took one ecstatic look at the wreck of The Perfect Gentleman and burst into tears of gratitude, much to Lord Andrew’s extreme annoyance.
Once more groomed and elegant, he drove straight to Mr. Jepps’s town house. He was not very surprised to learn that Mr. Jepps had left for an unknown destination. He went on to the Worthys’ house.
Miss Worthy and her parents were just sitting down to dinner. Lord Andrew was asked to join them. He was relieved that no one seemed inclined to shout or rail at him. His vastly edited story of his adventures was heard in attentive silence. Miss Worthys green eyes began to glow with pleasure. Lord Andrew’s tired, bored voice made his adventures, and the company of Penelope Mortimer, appear gratifyingly dull. Added to that, Miss Worthy found it extremely flattering that dear Mr. Jepps should have gone to such lengths to try to break her engagement. Although she outwardly expressed horror at his behavior and said, yes, Mr. Jepps must be found and punished, in her heart she wished the absent Mr. Jepps well. It was a pity he did not have a title.
After sympathizing with Lord Andrew’s hardships, Mr. Worthy said, “You will, alas, be too fatigued to accompany us to the Foxtons’. There is to be a turtle supper, which is why we are dining so frugally at the moment.” Mr. Worthy waved a deprecating hand to apologize for the mere five courses which had been set before them.
Lord Andrew opened his mouth to say that yes, he was too tired to attend. Life felt very stale, flat, and dull. Life was perfect again. He was engaged to a suitable lady, and he must forget he ever lay beside a stream with Penelope Mortimer at his side. But Penelope would be there. She would be so very tired. She would need someone to look after her. He suddenly remembered reaching for her reticule to find her comb and how she had snatched it from him. What had she not wanted him to see? A letter from some country lover?
“The least I can do after my escapade is to escort my long-suffering fiancée,” he said with a charming smile. “You must excuse me. I must return to find a mask. I have certain arrangements to make. I shall see you there.”
When he reached Park Street, he made his way up to his room. He passed Penelope’s bedroom door, then went back and pushed it open. Penelope was sitting in armchair in front of the bedroom fire. She was dressed in a silver net ballgown. A delicate headdress of artificial flowers and silver wire was on her fashionably dressed head. She was fast asleep.
He saw the reticule she had carried on the adventures lying on a table beside the bed. He went over quietly, picked it up, and drew open the strings. It was empty.
He turned about and looked thoughtfully at the still-sleeping Penelope. There was a reticule at her feet, a frivolous little bag decorated with silver threadwork and pearls. He crossed the room and picked it up, and examined the contents. He slowly drew out an ugly pair of steel-framed spectacles.
He held them up to the light. The lenses were strongly magnified. “Longsighted,” he murmured. “Poor little thing. Not much of a guilty secret.” He put them back in the bag and quietly left the room.
He felt wretchedly tired during the turtle supper, and worse after the dancing had commenced. There were seemingly endless energetic country dances. The full force of what she now regarded as her tremendous attraction for the opposite sex had gone to Miss Worthy’s head. Her eyes glittered with excitement through the slits of her mask. Not knowing her initial attraction for Lord Andrew—apart from her birth and bank balance—was that she was quiet and restful, she chattered and flirted every time the movement of the dance brought them together. It was a relief to escape from her but not very pleasurable to stand and watch Penelope besieged by admirers. He noticed with a sinking heart that the middle-aged Duke of Harford—one of the few gentlemen who was not wearing a mask—whose wife had died two years ago, was unable to take his eyes off Penelope. Now, if he proposed, Lord Andrew felt sure his mother would lock Penelope up and keep her on bread and water until she agreed to marry the duke.
He turned and went into the room set aside for refreshments. Ian Macdonald hailed him and demanded to know the full story.
Loyalty to his fiancée stopped Lord Andrew from telling the truth. In a flat voice, he recounted the same story he had told the Worthys, adding that Jepps had fled.
“Well, I am sorry for you,” said Ian. “I had the most prodigious good time. Little Miss Tilney made sweet company.”
“Do not mislead her, my friend,” cautioned Lord Andrew. “She is young and no doubt does not know you are a hardened bachelor.”
“I am not hardened in the least. I had not met any lady before who interested me enough.”
“And Miss Tilney does?”
“Greatly. I only saw her yesterday, and I miss her dreadfully already.” He looked through the door of the refreshment room, and his face lit up. “Why, there she is! And accompanied by her dragon.”
Lord Andrew caught his friend’s arm. “Stay a moment. Never say you mean to propose!”
“Not here and now,” said Ian Macdonald. “I shall call on the Blenkinsop female tomorrow. What is it to you? You are going to be married yourself.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Lord Andrew released his arm and watched Ian Macdonald threading his way through the dancers to Miss Tilney’s side. Miss Tilney was masked, and Lord Andrew would have been hard put to it to identify her. Love obviously sharpened the sight wonderfully. He would not have recognized Miss Worthy had she not accosted him first. If Ian proposed, he thought gloomily, then his mother would make sure Penelope became engaged to someone, anyone, as well. Where was Penelope? His eyes raked the ballroom. Now he knew how dreadfully longsighted she was, he feared she had wandered off into the garden, where there was a small ornamental pool.
He walked through the ballroom to the long windows overlooking the garden. One window was open onto a terrace. He walked out and stood with his hands on the balustrade, his eyes searching the garden.
Then he saw a glint of silver over in the far corner. He walked down the steps leading from the terrace and then round the little lake with its ornamental fountain and into the darkness of the shrubbery.
Penelope, wearing a silver mask to match her gown, sat on a marble bench under the drooping branches of a lilac tree. The sooty air was heavily scented with lilac blossom. She started in alarm as he came up to her, her eyes only seeing vaguely the black velvet of his mask.
He sat down beside her and said, “Do not be afraid.”
“Oh, it’s you,” said Penelope in a flat voice. “You do not know me, ma’am. I am a stranger to you.”
Penelope let out a gurgle of laughter. “We can hardly be strangers. I think we must be two of the
most exhausted people at the ball. Oh, if only I could go to bed and sleep and sleep.”
“And who do you think I am?”
“Lord Andrew Childe.”
“I cannot be Lord Andrew. Lord Andrew is engaged and would not dream of pursuing lovely beauties into the darkness of a town garden. Lord Andrew,” he added bitterly, “never does anything wrong.”
“What a terrible man he must be,” said Penelope, her voice soft with laughter. “There must be so many things he is afraid of doing for fear of being less than perfect.”
“Oh, yes. He could not, as I can, tell you how very beautiful you are and how you bewitch him.”
“No, he could not,” said Penelope sadly, the laughter gone from her voice, “and neither must you.”
He took her gloved hand in his own and raised it to his lips. “And yet,” he murmured, “perhaps the perfect Lord Andrew has a longing to kiss someone like you, just once, before he is leg-shackled for life.”
The strain of a waltz drifted out in the evening air.
“Penelope!” came the duchess’s voice from the terrace. “Are you there?”
Penelope opened her mouth to call back. He seized her roughly in his arms and silenced her with a kiss.
“Penelope!” called the duchess again.
But Penelope was deaf and blind to everything but the feel of hard lips moving sensuously against her own and of a hard-muscled chest pressed against her bosom. He lowered his mouth and kissed her neck, and she buried her fingers in his hair. He lifted her onto his knees and pulled her even more tightly against him. The wine both had drunk at supper combined with their fatigue had deafened them to the proprieties. Penelope felt her body becoming loose and wanton under his caressing hands and caressing mouth.
Their bodies seemed to be fused together with heat and passion. Silver net melted into the hard blackness of evening coat as they strained desperately against each other.
The sound of a twig snapping near them made them break apart, breathing raggedly.
“Miss Mortimer?” came Ian Macdonald’s voice. “Is that you?”
“Are you alone, Ian?” called Lord Andrew.
“Yes.”
“Then leave us a moment and tell no one you have found us.”
“Very well.”
His footsteps retreated.
Lord Andrew set Penelope on the bench beside him. “I am sorry Miss Mortimer,” he said huskily, “and yet I am not sorry. I had to say good-bye to something very precious.”
“There is nothing else you can do,” said Penelope.
“No. She will sue me for breach of promise, and your name would be dragged through the courts. What a fool I am! Jepps was the best friend I ever had, and I did not know it!”
Penelope got to her feet. She was almost on the point of offering to be his mistress. She wondered if she could go on seeing him courting another. But being a mistress would be a dreadful life, a furtive, worrying life, a life of pain.
“We shall need to learn to live without each other,” she said in her usual practical voice. “Stay here. It will look bad if we enter the ballroom together.”
He stood and watched her go. She nearly walked blindly into a statue of Minerva beside the pool, but veered away from it just in time. The glint of her silver gown flashed in the moonlight as she gained the terrace. Then she slipped in through the French windows and was lost to view.
He stood for a long time in the garden, and then he, too, went back to join the laughter and music, looking about him blindly as if he had just come from another land.
When Penelope awoke the next day, it was to learn from Perkins that Lord Andrew had gone to his country home and would not be back for a fortnight. Her heart felt as heavy as lead. She rose and patiently submitted to Perkins’s grooming.
As the maid was on the point of leaving the room, she gave an exclamation and said, “I had quite forgot, Miss Mortimer. Lord Andrew left this for you.” Perkins picked up a flat parcel from a side table and carried it over to Penelope.
Seeing that the curious maid was waiting for her to open it, Penelope said quietly, “That will be all, Perkins,” and waited until the maid had left the room.
With shaking fingers, she tore off the wrapping and looked down at a flat morocco box. Jewelry, thought Penelope sadly. He already thinks of me as a mistress. I shall not accept it. She opened the box and, to her surprise, found lying on a bed of white silk, a dainty lorgnette with a fine gold chain. The lorgnette itself was of solid gold. She raised it to her eyes, and the things on the toilet table sprang into sharp focus. There was a card in the box. She picked it up. “No need to wear such ugly glasses,” Lord Andrew had written. “Carry these, and you will set the fashion. A.”
Penelope’s eyes blurred with tears. He knew about her glasses, and he had gone to the trouble to buy her this pretty and useful gadget. Unlike her glasses, she could carry the lorgnette anywhere.
Later that day the duchess said sharply, “Where did you get that?” and pointed her fan at the lorgnette, which was hanging by its chain round Penelope’s neck.
“From Lord Andrew,” said Penelope. “He knows I am longsighted.”
“How clever of him!” said the duchess. “Take it off and let me have a look. Goodness, I can see very well, and one can wear this sort of toy with an air. I must get one myself. That’s Andrew for you. Always knows the right thing to do.”
Penelope turned her face away to hide her tears.
A week later, Mr. Jepps, staying at a comfortable inn in Sussex, threw down the morning papers in disgust. Still no news of his beloved’s cancelled engagement. Somehow his plan had backfired. He dared not appear in London or Andrew would attack him. What on earth was he to do?
Another week went by. Lord Andrew was expected home. Ian Macdonald had proposed to Amy Tilney and had been accepted. He was possessed of a comfortable fortune and rated a catch. The duchess received the news, brought to her by a triumphant Maria Blenkinsop, with sweet calm. For while Mrs. Blenkinsop was crowing over her charge’s success, the Duke of Harford was closeted with the Duke of Parkworth, and the duchess knew the Duke of Harford was asking permission to propose to Penelope. She said nothing to Mrs. Blenkinsop, however, preferring to wait for her own magnificent triumph to burst upon the polite world later that day.
As soon as Mrs. Blenkinsop had left, the duchess went to Penelope’s bedchamber and told that young lady to be prepared to accept the Duke of Harford’s offer of marriage.
Heavy-eyed, Penelope listened to the news. She knew if she told the duchess she had no intention of accepting the offer, then the duchess would start screaming and shouting. Best to see whether she could frighten the duke away as she had frightened Mr. Barcourt.
The Duke of Harford was standing in front of the fireplace in the drawing room when Penelope was propelled into the room with a sharp shove in the back from the duchess.
The duchess retired, and Penelope was left alone with the duke.
He was a squat, burly man wearing an old-fashioned wig. His coat was covered in snuff stains, and he obviously believed bathing new fangled nonsense, for he smelled very strongly of what Penelope’s mother used to describe as Unmentionable Things.
“Well, Miss Mortimer,” he said, “so we’re to be wed.”
“No, Your Grace,” said Penelope firmly. “I must refuse your proposal.”
“Yes, yes. Knew you’d be gratified.”
“I’m not gratified,” said Penelope. “I mean, I am highly sensible of the honor being paid to me, but I must decline.”
“We’ll rub along tolerably well,” said the duke. “You may shake my hand.” And he held out two fingers.
Penelope walked forward and shook the proferred fingers, saying clearly as she did so, “You misunderstand me, Your Grace. I am not going to marry you.”
“What’s that? A March wedding? If you like. But we ain’t going to be married in a church. Nasty, drafty places.”
“Your Grace!” screamed Pe
nelope. “I AM NOT GOING TO MARRY YOU.”
“Yes, yes. Quite overcome. Your face has gone all red.” The duke rang the bell, and when the duchess promptly came into the room, he said, “That’s all fixed. Got an appointment at m’club.”
“Oh, my darling child,” cried the duchess, pressing Penelope against her stays.
It was only too late that Penelope realized the Duke of Harford was as deaf as a post. And yet she shrank from having a scene with the duchess. Since Lord Andrew had left, all her courage had gone and she felt tired and ill.
It was then that Penelope decided to say nothing and escape. She would go back to the country, buy that cottage, and lock and bar the doors against all comers. With any luck, the duchess would be so disgusted with her, she would put her out of her mind and not go ahead and take revenge. So she smiled weakly and said she was too overcome to honor any social engagements this day.
