The Dreadful Debutante (The Royal Ambition Series Book 1)

by M C Beaton

  He leapt over the edge of the box and walked away into the night.

  Before the Markhams could berate Mira, Charles and Drusilla walked up to the box.

  “We are still engaged,” said Drusilla sunnily.

  “You cannot be,” said the outraged Mr. Markham. “There will be a notice in the newspapers tomorrow canceling your engagement!”

  “Then I suggest we put one in the day after to say it is still on,” said Charles with a laugh.

  That was when Mrs. Markham fainted.

  The following day Lady Jansen listened in grim silence as Mrs. Anderson handed in her notice and made the most of it, telling Lady Jansen in her prim voice exactly what she had always thought of her.

  “And just where are you going?” demanded Lady Jansen when she could get a word in edgewise.

  “I am to be companion to the Dowager Duchess of Grantley.”

  It was only when her companion had left and her amazement at the turning of the worm, which had kept her nearly speechless, had begun to ebb that Lady Jansen’s brain began to work at a great rate. Grantley! Now she was sure she knew how the marquess had found out about Diggs, about herself, and about the Green Tree, and had managed to spike her guns.

  Her thoughts returned to the landlord, and she struck her fist on the table beside her, sending a Dresden ornament flying. What a fool she had been. If the man had taken a bribe for his silence, all she had to do was offer him a heavier bribe to speak up.

  She called for her carriage and then went to change her clothes. She then called at her bank and drew out a sum of money in gold guineas before setting out once more for the Green Tree.

  At first the landlord stood by his story. But when she looked round and saw the tap was empty, Lady Jansen opened a wash leather bag of gold and spilled the contents onto the table. “I know Grantley paid you to keep your mouth shut, but I am prepared to pay you handsomely to tell what really happened.”

  His eyes gleamed at the sight of the gold. “You would only be telling the truth,” urged Lady Jansen.

  “Reckon it depends on what I would have to do.”

  “All you would have to do is come with me to a Mr. and Mrs. Markham and tell your story. Then my carriage will return you here. You would not have to write anything or appear in court. Simply tell your story. Wait a bit. You must tell it twice. First to a Mrs. Gardener and then to the Markhams. Look at the gold, man. It is enough to keep such as you for the rest of your life.”

  “But even if there’s no court business, what if this Grantley comes after me with a horsewhip or a gun?”

  “After all this is in the open, he would not dare.”

  “Reckon I’ll earn my money then,” said the landlord, taking off his baize apron. “I’ll just tell the wife to take over here.”

  Chapter Eight

  For some reason he could not quite explain, the angry marquess decided to delay his journey home to the country until the end of the week. Like any other aristocrat he was never much given to introspection, and so he did not know that his new anger at and dislike of Mira were prompted by nothing more than wounded pride. He, the catch of the Season, had been jilted by a hoyden. The fact that the engagement was meant to end anyway did not occur to his angry brain.

  He would go to the opera that night and to the ball afterward, flirt with all the pretty girls, and get the world to think that it was really he who had decided the engagement was wrong. That his kiss had been returned with the sort of passion that had been entirely new to him was something he refused to think about. All he knew was that he was very unhappy and very angry and that it was all Mira’s fault.

  He did not consider for a moment that Mira might feel devastated, but that was what she did feel. Only the idea of the hell it might be to continue with a pretend engagement to a man with whom she had fallen suddenly and deeply in love made her endure the present hell of her parents’ disapproval and disappointment. Drusilla, grateful for Mira’s help and advice, and comfortably happy now that her own engagement was a reality again, tried to comfort her young sister, but not being in love herself or having any conception of the turbulent emotions that gripped Mira, she could only offer platitudes such as “By your next Season everyone will have forgotten about it.” This was no comfort to Mira, who did not really care whether society forgot about it or not and realized only that she herself never could and never would.

  But to her relief Drusilla did suggest something practical: that Mira accompany her and Charles on a drive. Neither referred to the broken engagement, and Mira was only too glad to escape the house and the tremendous weight of disapproval of her that seemed to permeate every room like a thick fog. By the time they returned, Mira was beginning to feel more courageous. The marquess would not be angry with her. He could not be. All she had done was end the engagement sooner than she had said she would end it. And so she avoided contemplating the fact that in society’s eyes, the cancellation of an engagement by a young miss after one day—which is what it would appear between the announcement in the newspapers and the subsequent announcement of the cancellation—would cause a furor of gossip.

  Had she had any inkling of what was about to break over her head, she would have fled to the country.

  * * *

  Mira had not seen her father or mother when she had returned from the drive with Charles and Drusilla. The butler said they were receiving visitors in the Yellow Saloon. Had Mira not been so preoccupied with her troubles, she would have stopped to wonder why her parents considered the damp and little-used Yellow Saloon suitable for visitors.

  In the Yellow Saloon Mrs. Markham looked like a rabbit confronted by a snake and reached blindly for the comfort of her husband’s hand. Twisting his hat between his fingers and standing behind Lady Jansen’s chair, the landlord, Giles Brand, described in the tones of a good child repeating a well-learned lesson that afternoon at the inn when Mira and the marquess had fallen into the river, booked his best bedchamber to remove their clothes, and had spent the time wrapped in blankets, playing cards.

  Mr. Markham found his voice. “Look here, fellow, you don’t know my daughter. How did you know it was my daughter? You told me you had never seen her before!”

  Lady Jansen had been too stupid to see what might come out of it and was too late to stop Mr. Brand from saying guilelessly, “Well, you see, my lady here, she hired an ex-Runner, Diggs, to find out about them, but that-there Marquess of Grantley, he called and told me to keep my mouth shut, but then Lady Jansen told me as how I ought to tell the truth.”

  “So,” said Mr. Markham bitterly, “you were probably paid by this Diggs, then paid by Grantley, and probably paid again by this dreadful person here.”

  “Remember to whom you speak,” said Lady Jansen haughtily.

  “People like you, madam, are scum, are as dirt beneath my boots,” raged Mr. Markham. “Get out of here, and take your paid creature with you.”

  Lady Jansen swept out with the landlord, her head held high, but her stomach was churning as she suddenly realized that she was about to be more socially damned than Mira Markham. Such as Mrs. Gardener might gossip, but the ton would be shocked rigid by a lady who had gone to such lengths as to hire an ex-Runner to ruin a debutante. What might she find out about them if she put her mind to it!

  When they had left, Mr. Markham turned to his wife, who was quietly weeping. “Dry your tears,” he said harshly. “There is no time for tears. There must be a way to save that wretched girl from ruin.” He rang the bell and told the footman who answered it to take a note to the Marquess of Grantley, summoning him urgently.

  “We must speak to Mira,” whispered Mrs. Markham.

  “Oh, no,” said Mr. Markham. “I do not want to listen to her lies and evasions. I now believe that story about her going with Grantley as his tiger on a curricle race.”

  They waited and waited. Mrs. Markham was silently praying that it would all turn out to be lies on the part of Lady Jansen. Only one little ray of comfort lig
htened her darkness. Dear Drusilla was engaged again. Drusilla always behaved just as she ought.

  And then the marquess was announced. He stood in the doorway, and one look at their faces told them that somehow his escapade with Mira had been discovered.

  “Sit down, Grantley,” said Mr. Markham quietly, for he was now beyond rage.

  The marquess listened with a grim face while Mr. Markham told him of Lady Jansen’s visit. “You have ruined our daughter,” ended Mr. Markham wearily. “I cannot understand how a gentleman of your rank and breeding should have behaved so badly, so cruelly.”

  “Well, there is only one solution,” said the marquess.

  “I see no solution.”

  “Mira will just need to marry me after all. The whole idea of the engagement was initially to scotch any gossip. Love and marriage make the escapade romantic. I suggest you inform everyone, as I shall, that it was probably the malicious Lady Jansen who sent the notice of the cancellation of the engagement to the newspapers.”

  A glimmer of hope began to light up Mr. Markham’s eyes. He rang the bell and ordered the footman to bring Mira down to them.

  Mira appeared, already dressed in an opera gown of gold damask. Her eyes flew from the marquess to her parents.

  She sat down on the edge of a chair and listened in increasing horror to the tale of the scandal about her day with the marquess. The only comfort she could hang on to was that she would be banished to the country and leave wicked London and one heartbreaker behind.

  “You have both behaved disgracefully,” said Mr. Markham sternly, “but there is one solution to this.”

  “I am to leave London?”

  “No, Grantley is to do the honorable thing. You will marry him. We will tell everyone that the cancellation of the engagement—it is too late to get the notice removed—was actually probably another evil trick of Lady Jansen’s.”

  Mira went quite white. “I cannot marry Grantley.”

  “You have no say in the matter. You will come with us to the opera, and both of you will present a united and happy front to the world.”

  Mira’s green eyes looked pleadingly at the marquess. “Don’t you see, they are forcing you to marry me!”

  “Exactly,” said the marquess maliciously. In a perverse way he was beginning to enjoy himself. He did not stop to wonder why he was not in the slightest dismayed at the prospect of marriage to Mira. She had sorely dented his pride, and he felt he was getting even.

  Courage, thought Mira. I must have courage. She turned to her father. “May I have a few words in private with Grantley?”

  Mr. Markham rose and held out his hand to his wife. “Come, Mrs. Markham, we shall allow them ten minutes.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Markham left, leaving the door punctiliously open.

  “You don’t want to marry me,” said Mira fiercely as soon as they were alone.

  “May I remind you, my sweeting, that it was you who canceled the engagement? I have to marry you.” He added piously, “It is my duty.”

  “Why should you, who could marry any female in society, want to marry me? Be sensible. If you refuse, I will be sent to the country, out of this horrible world of malice and gossip, and I can be free with my horse and dogs.”

  He shook his head. “I contributed to your downfall by encouraging you to behave badly. You must take the consequences.”

  She looked at him with a little hope in her eyes. “It could be a marriage of convenience, I mean, a marriage in name only.”

  “Oh, no, I want children, lots and lots of them, Mira.”

  She twisted a handkerchief in her hands. “What am I to do?”

  “May I point out that you have made your bed, and you are just going to have to lie on it and try to enjoy it.”

  “You are being crude and vulgar!”

  “You have no idea how crude and vulgar I mean to be. So we must return to our role as a supremely happy couple. You could start by kissing me.”

  “Never!”

  He crossed the room to where she sat and knelt down in front of her. He took her face firmly between his hands. “What’s in a kiss, Mira? You kiss most delightfully.”

  “I d-don’t w-want to kiss you.”

  “Then I will kiss you.”

  He closed his lips over hers. She primmed her lips in a firm line, but his mouth worked seductively on her own until he felt her bosom rise and fall and her lips finally soften. He was just beginning to feel her response when Mr. Markham’s voice sounded in his ears. “I shall return in a few moments, which should give you enough time to compose yourselves and behave in a more seemly manner.”

  The marquess stood up and held out his hand. “Come, Mira, you are tied to me for life, and so you will need to start to accept that fact. We have caused your parents great distress. Make them happy by at least pretending to be in love with me. It is no use sulking and raging. You are trapped.”

  When Mr. and Mrs. Markham entered, they were standing hand in hand. Mira’s face was pink where it had been white only such a short time ago.

  “You may go abovestairs and tell Drusilla we will be ready to leave in an hour,” said Mr. Markham. “Mrs. Markham and I still have to change and dress. Charles is already waiting in the drawing room for us.”

  The marquess indicated his own dress clothes. “I will stay and accompany you as well,” he said.

  “As you will,” said Mr. Markham frostily. “Mira—go!”

  Glad to escape, Mira ran up the stairs to find Drusilla waiting for her. “What is this?” cried Drusilla, all round-eyed with wonder. “Mama told me some garbled story about how you were ruined because all that tale of your sharing a bedroom with Grantley was true. Did you actually do… well… that? What was it like?”

  “No, I didn’t do that,” said Mira. “We only played cards as we waited for our clothes to dry, and now I’ve got to marry him.”

  “I do not understand you, Mira. At first it looked as if you were delighted at the prospect of marrying him, and the next minute you are breaking off the engagement, and now you look as if you are attending your own funeral because it is on again. Grantley is rich, handsome, and titled. You will be a marchioness. Think on that!”

  “He will break my heart,” said Mira wearily. “I am in love with him.”

  Drusilla stared at her sister with a puzzled frown on her forehead. “And he appears to be in love with you, so what’s the rub?”

  “He is only pretending to love me so as to make it all look so respectable. I can imagine nothing more hellish—”

  “Mira! Your language!”

  “… hellish,” continued Mira firmly, “than being married to a man who does not love me.”

  “But you will not need to see much of him. Gentlemen, or so I have observed, spend much of their lives in sports or in their clubs.”

  “I will need to give him children!”

  Drusilla turned her face away and said in a low voice, “How does one do that, Mira?”

  “I do not know,” said Mira, “but I only know it involves a lot of kissing, and when he kisses me, he takes my soul away.”

  “Oh, that’s vastly pretty,” said Drusilla appreciatively. “I read a line like that in a romance once. But you are living in a dream world, Mira. You are fantasizing.”

  “Impossible! Impossible to talk to you,” said Mira. “Come, we must join the gentlemen in the drawing room.” She put her arm around Drusilla’s waist. “You mean well, dear sis, but it is like trying to play a piece of sweet music to the tone-deaf.”

  Charles and the marquess rose to greet them as they entered the drawing room. The marquess went straight to Mira, took her hand, and kissed it.

  “This is a shameful business,” said Charles heavily.

  The marquess turned and looked him up and down, then said evenly, “Any more impertinent observations like that and I shall feel obliged to call you out.”

  “Play something for us, Drusilla,” said Mira hurriedly.

  Drusilla sat d
own at the harp, and her fingers rippled expertly over the strings. Charles stood near her to admire the pretty picture she made.

  The marquess sat down on the sofa, and Mira sat primly beside him. “You do not look adoring enough,” he commented.

  “How can I look adoring when I am forcing a man to marry me?”

  “If I can accept it with good grace, then so can you.”

  For one brief little moment Mira had had the mad hope that he might say, “I love you,” but all he had done was to underline the fact that he was entering a marriage he didn’t want.

  At the opera Mira was conscious of all the staring eyes and whispering voices. She felt naked. The marquess pressed her hand and whispered. “Courage,” and she did her best to look happy when all she wanted was to escape and put as much distance as possible between herself and him. But on the whole she behaved very well—until the ball after the opera.