by M C Beaton
Jean looked at it longingly. “It is too fine for a governess.”
“Not governess, companion, and no one will know who you are, for you will be masked. Turn around and let’s try it on.”
Jean did as she was bid, trembling slightly as his hands brushed against the back of her neck. “Now look in the mirror!”
He turned her toward a long pier glass. Her gown was a modest one of pure white muslin, but the neck was fairly low and the sapphires gleamed like blue fire against the whiteness of her neck.
He was holding her lightly by the shoulders, standing behind her as she faced the glass.
“Why,” he said in a voice tinged with wonder, “you are beautiful!”
And he bent his head and kissed her gently on the side of the neck.
She shivered and took a step forward. “My lord!”
“I am sorry,” he said quickly. “But for a moment I forgot who you were. Do not look so pale and frightened, Miss Morrison. Do I look the kind of man who would seduce a governess?”
Jean dumbly shook her head.
“And will you forgive me and make use of this necklace?”
Jean nodded.
“Then off with you, Miss Morrison, and do forget my lapse from good taste.”
Jean undid the heavy catch of the necklace and then went quickly from the room, clutching it in her hand. She wanted to cry. She wanted to break things. Above all, she wanted to be a rich young lady who could stand a chance with the beautiful viscount.
She firmly reminded herself of her duties and went to the drawing room. The piano had been carried back there and the carpet rolled up. But the dancing master and the twins were sitting by the window, their heads together, whispering fiercely.
“You will never learn to dance at this rate,” Jean exclaimed.
Mr. Perdu immediately leapt to his feet. “Sure, and weren’t we just having a well-earned rest,” he said merrily. “Now, young ladies, let us show Miss Morrison how well you waltz! Miss Morrison, play for us.”
Jean sat down at the piano, mechanically selected a piece of waltz music, and started to play. She had been sure that Mr. Perdu’s first sentence had been spoken in an Irish accent, although when he had asked her to play, his voice had reverted to his usual French one.
She twisted around as she played, saying, “It is very hard to play and see what you are doing.”
“Then stop,” Mr. Perdu said gaily, “and we’ll move the piano.”
Jean stood aside while he manhandled it around to face the room. He was, she noticed, despite his small stature, extremely strong. She began to play again. Amanda and Clarissa danced beautifully, their short, squat bodies actually achieving a certain grace.
When they had finished their demonstration, she said warmly, “Excellent. You have done wonders, sir.”
“Miss Morrison is going to the ball as Queen Elizabeth,” Amanda said.
Jean opened her mouth to tell them about her change of plans and then closed it again. She felt strangely guilty about that necklace. It was not correct that the viscount should lend such precious gems to a mere governess.
The night of the ball rushed upon them. The days leading up to it seem to have moved slowly, but suddenly here it was. Mrs. Moody, the housekeeper, resplendent in a new black silk gown, bustled about, seeing that all the bedchambers were aired and ready for any who wished to change into their costumes after arrival. A little-used anteroom off the hall had been furnished with a dressing table and boxes of powder and pins. Betty was to sit there in attendance, collecting the cloaks of the arriving ladies, and ready to help with torn hems or other disasters.
Jean put on her costume, spreading the blue silk skirts over the wide hoop. She back-combed her hair and arranged it up on her head before powdering it with some scented powder she had found in the attics. She placed a black patch high on one cheekbone and then put the heavy necklace around her neck. A stranger looked back at her from the glass, an elegant, poised stranger. She picked up a blue silk mask she had made and tied it on. Just this one evening she was going to pretend to be a lady. Would he remember to dance with her? There were so many pretty ladies present, marriageable ladies. He should not have kissed her. But, oh, what would it be liked if he kissed her on the mouth? Jean shivered and tried to banish that wicked dream from her head. But it persisted, and she gave herself up to it, finally realizing with a start that the ball had started and that she should collect her charges and take them downstairs.
She went to the twins’ room and found it empty. They had gone downstairs without her. She retreated to her own room, suddenly shy. To go down to the ball with the twins was one thing, but to go down on her own was another. She had never been to a ball before.
The sounds of a waltz filtered upstairs. She should be there, in his arms, dancing the waltz, but she seemed frozen with fright, unable to move.
“But if you don’t move,” said a jeering voice in her head, “you will have nothing to remember when you are a tired old maid.”
She picked up a painted fan and hung it over one wrist, edged her wide skirts through the bedroom door, and made for the stairs.
The waltz had finished and the cotillion was about to begin. The viscount was talking to several costumed guests. He was dressed as a gentleman of the last century; pink silk coat embroidered with gold, white silk kneebreeches, white silk stockings with gold clocks, and a ruffled shirt. His hair was powdered. Someone next to him gave an exclamation and looked up. Then everyone seemed to be staring up at the newcomer descending the staircase.
The viscount let out a low whistle of appreciation. Jean Morrison was walking down the stairs, her head held high and the necklace blazing at her throat. He walked forward, bowed low, and held out his hand. “My dance, princess,” he said.
There was a buzz of speculation. Princess! He had said princess!
Basil Devenham in a Puritan costume sourly watched his rival. “Who is that lady who is partnering Hunterdon in the cotillion?” he asked Lady Pemberton.
Lady Pemberton, dressed as Queen Elizabeth, looked at him in a dazed way and then slid off her rout chair and fell onto the floor. Her red wig toppled from her head. Basil bent over her and then exclaimed, “She is dead drunk, I think!”
Lord Pemberton tried to rouse his wife by gently slapping her wrists, but she slept on. He was still eager to try to secure Hunterdon for one of his daughters and knew they would never forgive him if he took them from the ball. So he solved the situation by having his wife put in his carriage and borne off home with her maid to accompany her while he and his daughters stayed.
Then Lady Conham, also a Queen Elizabeth, collapsed in the middle of the ballroom. The dancing was brought to a halt while the unfortunate lady was carried upstairs to a bedchamber.
The viscount’s eyes ranged over the ballroom. Amanda and Clarissa were both there, a pair of small, squat Turks, but behaving quite prettily.
“Walk with me,” he said to Jean. When they had moved a little way away from the guests, he asked, “Did the girls know of your change of costume?”
“No.”
“And so two Queen Elizabeths in red wigs promptly fall unconscious. We will see what the physician has to say about Lady Conham when he arrives, but it is my belief that the two ladies were drugged, and it is also my belief that the twins were trying to get you out of the way for the evening.”
“But why?”
“I do not know. But keep a close eye on them. They have not yet recognized you with your powdered hair and mask, so introduce yourself to them but do not drink anything at all.”
The twins looked at Jean in a fury when she revealed who she was. “You was supposed to be Queen Elizabeth?” Amanda said hotly.
“And is that why two Queen Elizabeths have been taken ill?” Jean studied them, wishing their faces were not masked.
“Nothing to do with us. Here’s your next partner.”
Jean found a young man at her elbow soliciting her to dance. Amanda a
nd Clarissa were claimed by their partners. Jean made sure she was in the same set for a country dance as the twins. She watched them closely as she danced and knew they were aware of it, for they had lost their grace of movement and their hot, angry little black eyes stared at her resentfully.
When everyone went in at last to supper, Jean made sure she was sitting next to the girls. There was no sign of the dancing master, and she asked them where Mr. Perdu was. “Upstairs,” Amanda said, and added nastily, “He knows his place.”
But then Jean became distracted. She also had a clear view of the viscount, and he was flirting with a very young lady seated near him. He was a born flirt, thought Jean miserably, and kissing governesses on the neck meant as little to him as a casual kiss to a tavern wench. He looked across at her, and she immediately stared down at her plate of untouched food.
After supper her hand was claimed for the waltz, not by the viscount, but by Basil Devenham, who was stiff and formal in his Puritan clothes. He introduced himself and begged to know Jean’s name, but Jean had no intention of letting the viscount’s rival know she was a governess. He might tell the lawyers that Hunterdon’s governess was unseemly gowned and bedecked in the Courtney jewels, and the lawyers might jump to the conclusion that she was the viscount’s mistress. So she laughed and said he would find out when the unmasking took place. But he questioned her closely about the viscount, and Jean said tartly that he was a good influence on the Misses Courtney and a good landlord, which made Basil fall moodily silent, much to Jean’s relief. But dealing with Basil had been a strain. After the dance was over he offered to fetch her a glass of lemonade and went off to get it. She saw with relief that the twins were still in evidence. Basil returned with the glass, stumbled, and spilled most of the contents over her gown.
Jean brushed aside his apologies and decided to go up to her room and sponge the gown. Amanda and Clarissa were involved in a lengthy quadrille. In her room she quickly removed the stain and made her way out. Surely the viscount would dance a waltz with her, just once.
There was an oil lamp burning on the landing. Then Jean noticed that a cabinet had been pushed to one side, revealing a door.
Startled, she hurried back to the ballroom, her eyes scanning the dancers.
Of Amanda and Clarissa there was no sign.
The viscount was talking with his London friends. She crossed to him, drew him aside, and told him about the secret door and the twins’ absence.
“Show me,” he said. “It would be like them to perpetrate some awful mischief while Basil is here.”
They walked up the staircase together, Jean conscious of curious eyes boring into her back.
He looked at the door behind the cabinet and said, “I’d better have a look. And tomorrow I had better get out the blueprints to this place. Too many secret passages for my liking.”
“I’m coming with you,” Jean said. “Please.”
“You’ll never get through that narrow door with that hoop.”
“Wait!”
Jean ran to her room and tugged off the hoop, unfastened the necklace, hid it under her pillow, looped the silk skirts of her gown over her arm, and ran out to join him.
He had found a candle in a flat stick. “I’ll lead the way,” he said softly.
A narrow staircase wound down. Suddenly the noise of the orchestra was very loud. “The long gallery,” he said, indicating a door. “We should have investigated this staircase before. This is how they escaped up to their rooms after playing ghost.”
On down they went, the candle flame suddenly beginning to flicker and bend in a draft of air, and all at once Jean could smell the sea.
Then ahead stood an open door leading out into the wilderness of the gardens at the back of the house. It was clear moonlight outside, so the viscount blew out the candle and stood irresolute.
“The caves,” Jean suggested.
“No,” he said. “Listen, over to the left.”
She listened and then she heard the faint sound of men’s voices and the steady dip and rise of oars.
“That old summerhouse,” she said. “It’s in that direction.”
They hurried along the path Jean had taken when she was struck down. Briars tore at her skirts and she wished she had had the foresight to change into an old gown.
Finally the tangle of woods and bushes ended and there, in a little clearing above the beach, stood a folly, or summerhouse, tangled with ivy. A gleam of light came from inside.
They crept up to the window and looked in. Through the door, men were unloading barrels and boxes under the direction of Mr. Perdu while Amanda and Clarissa looked on.
“We expects good payment for this,” Amanda said clearly.
“You’ll be paid,” Perdu said, if that was his name, for his accent was now pure Irish. “One more shipload tomorrow. Bring the lights down to the beach as usual, girls, and guide them in.”
The viscount took Jean’s arm in a strong grip and drew her away from the window and back into the shrubbery.
“Smugglers,” Jean said, her face white. “They have been aiding and abetting smugglers.”
Smugglers were not romantic figures. Smugglers threw excisemen off cliffs and tortured to death any who betrayed them. “And Perdu is their leader.”
“What a fool I have been,” the viscount said bitterly. “What a naive fool. So they conveniently knew a dancing master! How they must have laughed behind our backs.”
“What shall we do?” Jean asked urgently. “Call out the militia, the excisemen?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Walk back to the house with me. If we are caught, we will be killed. If Amanda and Clarissa are convicted of smuggling, I will lose everything. The lawyers would decide I was not a proper guardian. If I say they had probably been smuggling for some time, they would laugh at me. What! Two little girls! And everything would go to Basil. No, there is another shipment tomorrow night. That is when the excisemen will find them, but without the girls.”
“How do we keep them at home?”
“Do what they did to those Queen Elizabeths. The physician who attended Lady Conham says he is persuaded she was suffering from nothing more than a strong dose of some opiate. Now we shall return to the ball as if nothing has happened.”
“My gown is ruined,” Jean said mournfully.
He laughed. “Only Jean Morrison could fall upon a smuggler’s lair and still worry about her appearance.”
Back in her room Jean changed into the Elizabethan costume and went back downstairs. After half an hour the twins reappeared, looking smug. Jean could have screamed at them.
And then the viscount asked her to waltz and, for a brief spell, she moved in his arms and forgot about the twins, about perils, about smugglers, seeing the faces of the other guests only as a blur, wishing she could dance with him till the end of time. All too soon it was over. At the unmasking she slipped away and went upstairs. If she took her mask off, Lord Pemberton and his daughters would recognize her and create a scandal. The secret door, she noticed, was closed.
She changed into a morning gown and sat by the window for a long time, listening to the sweet music drifting up through the open window, wondering if the viscount was still flirting, hoping he had enjoyed that dance with her just a fraction as much as she had enjoyed it. Then there came sounds of the resident guests mounting the stairs followed by the rumble of departing carriages outside. When the last sound had died away, she rose and went downstairs again. The viscount was preparing to go out. He had changed into riding dress.
“I cannot sleep until I have told the authorities about our smugglers,” he said. “Go to sleep, Miss Morrison. For you will have a deal of work to do tomorrow to keep an eye on that precious pair.”
“They are horrible,” Jean said with a shudder. “Do you not long for the days when you were a free man?”
He looked at her in dawning surprise. “Faith, I must confess I have grown to love my life here. I live now for the day when those brats
will be off my hands. This is a terrible and shocking business, Miss Morrison, and I would dearly love to get that precious pair arrested with the other criminals, but I refuse now to forfeit my inheritance. Well, the ball was a great success, but I am weary of all the company.”
Jean looked up at him anxiously. “How am I going to drug the girls without alerting Perdu?”
“Do you think he will have the gall to show his face tomorrow?”
“Of course. He does not know he has been discovered.”
“I’ll think of something. To bed, Miss Morrison. And sweet dreams.” His blue eyes teased her, and he raised her hand to his lips.
Jean snatched her hand away. “Are you never done flirting, my lord?” she demanded harshly, burst into tears, and stumbled away from him.
He watched her go in amazement and then shrugged. She was not made of iron, and he should have realized the shock of finding out that her charges were smugglers would overset her.
Chapter Six
JEAN SLEPT VERY LITTLE. She told Mrs. Moody and Dredwort to report to her if the twins stepped out of doors. By early afternoon she felt exhausted. She looked in at the girls, but they were both still asleep. The servants reported that Mr. Perdu was in his room, packing.
By four o’clock the viscount returned, his face grim. He called Jean to the library and sank down heavily into a chair, saying, “Well, all is ready for this evening. We should catch the lot of them red-handed. The authorities have been trying to catch them for the past two years. They have committed murder and torture. I must warn you not to betray any knowledge of what you know to Perdu, if that is his name, which I doubt, by any look or action. Now, how are Amanda and Clarissa to be drugged?”
“I am worried about that,” Jean said, “for if they fall into a drugged sleep, Perdu will be alerted. Perhaps I might find something in the stillroom to make them sick, just for the night. They are always stuffing themselves with sweetmeats when they can get them. I suppose those expensive chocolates came from France.”
“Oh, undoubtedly. But we cannot question the girls until all this is over. I would dearly like to know how they started in this evil trade. I have a feeling they knew Perdu well before he even appeared here masquerading as a dancing master. Also, when this is over, there is the question of what to do with them.”
