by M C Beaton
And here was Bond Street at last. Here was the hotel. “I will take you to your room next door first,” said Miss Tonks. “While you change, I shall warn the others of your arrival.”
“But you must rest first,” said Cassandra. “It has been a long and tiring journey.”
“No, no, my dear. See, we are arrived.” Miss Tonks efficiently paid off the post-chaise and tipped the driver. A servant came out of the hotel to carry in their luggage. “Take my trunk into the hotel,” said Miss Tonks, “but take Miss Cassandra’s belongings to the apartment next door and show her to the little room next to mine. No, don’t fuss, my dear. I shall be with you directly. Just follow Bill here and he will show you where to go.”
Bill, the servant, placed Miss Tonks’s trunk in the entrance hall under the glittering chandelier which Sir Philip had managed to obtain from a relative and then went off with Cassandra. Miss Tonks took a deep breath and looked around. See, the conquering heroine comes!
Mrs. Budley came tripping down the stairs. “Oh, you are back, Letitia!” she cried, the two ladies having reached that intimate stage of friendship of calling each other by their first names. “How glad I am to see you! Such troubles. Tupple’s Hotel is luring our servants away, which is easy for them to do, for we have not paid them. But you must not worry about that. We should never have sent you on such a dangerous expedition.”
Miss Tonks espied the hotel porter, who was slouching in the corner with the half-insolent, half-defiant look of the unpaid servant. “Carry my trunk up to our sitting-room,” ordered Miss Tonks. “Are the others up there, Eliza?”
“Yes, just sitting down to the tea-tray. What vile weather it has been.”
They walked up to the little sitting-room at the top of the house. “Put my trunk there … right in the middle of the floor,” ordered Miss Tonks.
She waited until the porter had left, opening the door and peering round it to make sure he had actually gone.
“My stars and garters,” said Sir Philip, “from all this caution it appears to me that Miss Tonks has really taken something. What is it, Miss Tonks? Your own silver christening spoon?”
“We are happy to have you back safe and well,” remarked the colonel with a hard look at Sir Philip. “Anything else is of little consequence.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Lady Fortescue. “We have been having such a tiresome time of it, Miss Tonks, but no doubt we shall pull through.”
“Wait!” Miss Tonks beamed proudly round the small room. “Voila!” She threw back the lid of her trunk.
“What’s Viola got to do with it?” grumbled Sir Philip.
“She’s telling us to look, you nincompoop,” said Lady Fortescue.
“What at? All I can see are a lot of …” Sir Philip’s voice tailed away in amazement. For Miss Tonks had seized the tiara and necklace and was holding both of them up. Diamonds flashed and blazed, casting prisms of light on the circle of astonished faces.
Lady Fortescue groped for the colonel’s hand and, having found it, held it tightly.
“How did you do it?” she asked. “Won’t your sister be after you with the Runners?”
Here was Miss Tonks’s big moment, although she felt a qualm at the lie she was about to tell. But fired by the veiled look of jealousy on Sir Philip’s face, she said boldly, “I dressed as a highwayman and held up my sister’s coach!”
“You are a veritable Amazon,” said the colonel. “Begin at the beginning and tell us the whole story.”
They listened eagerly until Miss Tonks reached the bit about bringing Cassandra with her. “This will not do,” said Lady Fortescue severely. “The girl sounds like a hoyden and you should not have encouraged her in this folly. You must take her back immediately.” Her face softened. “Do not look so distressed. One of us will take her back. You are a brave lady and have done more than enough. But you must surely see that the girl will ruin all her chances of marriage if she stays with us.”
“Harriet James was our cook and she married the Duke of Rowcester,” said Mrs. Budley, leaping to her friend’s defence.
“That was a different matter. My nephew had been enamored of Miss James for some years. Where is Miss Cassandra now?”
“I placed her in the small room next to mine,” said Miss Tonks. “And she is not a hoyden. She is a dear girl. A trifle blunt but …”
“Lady Fortescue has the right of it,” said the colonel heavily. “I myself will accompany this young lady to her home. Miss Tonks, you said you had stayed about two weeks at a posting-house. Did Miss Cassandra pay the shot?”
“No, Lord Eston did that. Cassandra did have money, but only enough for a couple of nights. It was such a dreadfully expensive place. His lordship is such a charming gentleman. He is a neighbour of my sister, and Honoria had high hopes of making a match of it between this Lord Eston and Cassandra, which was why all the trouble arose for Cassandra, poor little thing. She, being tired of being humiliated and pushed around, needs must go and insult Lord Eston at a hunt ball by refusing to dance with him. So Honoria was going to send the child off to one of those dreadful whipping seminaries in Bath.”
“Quite right, too,” said Sir Philip.
“Oh, what have you ever got to say that is other than interfering malice?” flashed Miss Tonks. Then her burst of spirit died and she began to weep. “I tried so hard. I thought you would all be so p-pleased.”
“We are. We are,” said Sir Philip. “Don’t cry, for pity’s sake. Your nose is turning red.”
Miss Tonks threw back her head and faced them all. “Cassandra shall speak for herself,” she said. “I am going to fetch her.”
There was a silence after she had left, finally broken by Lady Fortescue. “Who would have thought our Miss Tonks would produce such a haul? Goodness, Sir Philip will need to turn these gems into money as soon as possible. Of course it is sad about this wretched girl. She is some spoilt brat who has got to work on Miss Tonks’s finer feelings. We’ll soon send her to the right-about. You can sell these baubles, can you not, Sir Philip?”
“Easily,” he said. “First-class gems. Sell ’em separately.”
The colonel got out the account books and he and the others began to discuss what to do with the vast wealth they would get for the diamonds. Sir Philip, while they talked, picked up the tiara and turned it round in his hands, admiring the sparkle. Then he raised it and put it on top of his head.
The door opened and Miss Tonks and Cassandra walked in. Not much out of the common way, thought Lady Fortescue when she saw Cassandra.
But Cassandra looked at Sir Philip, who had risen to his feet and was staring at her, the diamond tiara a little askew on his head, and her face lit up and her eyes sparkled with amusement, causing Lady Fortescue to reverse her first judgement.
Miss Tonks, after winking desperately and grimacing at Sir Philip to try to get him to hide the diamonds, introduced Cassandra all round.
Cassandra sat down on a small sofa next to Mrs. Budley. “Pray be seated, gentlemen,” she said to the colonel and Sir Philip. “Now, I gather you have decided that I am to be sent home. It will not answer. Having come all this way, I have no intention of returning to Mama to be sent on to a seminary in Bath. I am old enough to make my own decisions. I am young and strong and willing to work. Do not give me a jaw-me-dead about ruining my chances of marriage. I am no longer interested in marriage. I have already had one Season where I did not take. You should not frown at the idea of another social outcast in your ranks, particularly a young one. If you persist in having nothing to do with me, you leave me no alternative but to seek employ elsewhere.” She looked at the tiara, which Sir Philip was placing on the trunk next to the diamond necklace and exclaimed, “Why! That is exactly like Mama’s gems which the highwayman stole.” The poor relations looked at each other in alarm. They had assumed Miss Tonks had told her niece how she had come by the jewels.
“Oh, those,” said Mrs. Budley, picking them up. “Amazing how ordinary diamonds are.
Have you not noticed how one diamond tiara and one necklace looks like any other? These are the last of my valuables, Miss Cassandra. Sir Philip is going to sell the gems to raise money we sorely need for the hotel.”
Cassandra promptly dismissed the jewels from her mind and her large eyes began to sparkle with mischief. “I have just had a great idea. I hear that Tupple’s Hotel has been poaching your servants. So why not give me a little money and I will take up residence in Tupple’s Hotel for a week, say, and do my best to ruin their reputation.”
“How can a young miss stay alone at a London hotel, however fashionable?” exclaimed the colonel.
“Miss Tonks could go with me as my companion,” said Cassandra eagerly. “See! I can be of use to you. No one knows me in London.”
“But some of the staff of Tupple’s might recognize Miss Tonks,” Lady Fortescue pointed out.
“I doubt that,” said Sir Philip slowly. “She don’t work downstairs when she does do any work. And we can disguise her. Might be something in this plan. I’ll tell you why. We know that this hotel was deliberately set on fire and Harriet damn’ near killed.”
“Ladies present,” growled the colonel.
“Oh, very well. ’Pologies. Very nearly killed. The more I think of it, the more I think Tupple’s was behind it. All the other hotels are mostly for gentlemen. Ours, until they came on the scene, was the only aristocratic family hotel. It would be interesting to know who runs it …”
“Anyone knows that,” snapped the colonel. “Frenchman by the name of Bonnard.”
“Yes, but what kind of Frenchie, hey? Crook? Get Miss Cassandra to spy out the land.”
“If Tupple’s—however they came by that name—was behind the fire, then you would be sending two gentle ladies into danger.”
“Miss Tonks has proved herself a Trojan,” said Sir Philip, and Miss Tonks blushed with pleasure. “And Miss Cassandra don’t look much good to me for the ballroom or rout but she’s got brains in her cockloft. I say, send her. Anyway, while you are all argufying, I’ll take these pretty trinkets and come back with some of the readies.”
Sir Philip picked up the gems and scuttled off with his odd crabwise walk.
“I beg you to forget this mad idea,” said Colonel Sandhurst.
“Stay a bit.” Lady Fortescue put a mittened hand on the colonel’s sleeve. Her black eyes rested steadily on Cassandra. “You have bottom, my dear. I do not see how you could come to any harm.”
“I think now that Letitia could do anything,” said Mrs. Budley, her large pansy eyes filled with admiration.
Miss Tonks flashed her a warning look. Cassandra must never know about the identity of that highwayman, nor that her aunt had been instrumental in Lord Eston’s robbing her mother. It was just as well that Honoria’s diamonds had not been antique heirlooms but new and set in a pattern quite common in a rich society which often went to balls and parties so overloaded with jewels that one lady brought her footman to follow her around with a chair so that she might frequently rest, so great was the weight of the gems adorning her.
“We will discuss this further when Sir Philip returns. There is one thing that makes me curious,” said Lady Fortescue. “This Lord Eston who is a neighbour of yours, Miss Cassandra. I gather your disgrace was because you cut him at some ball, and yet this lord paid your shot at a posting-house. Could it be that he is interested in you? Has formed a tendre for you?”
“I amuse him,” began Cassandra, but the colonel interrupted with an exclamation. “Eston. That’s it. Thought that name was familiar. In the Post this morning. Got engaged to some female. I have it. Amanda Boyle.”
So that was why he had never called, thought Miss Tonks dismally. And yet he had seemed to like Cassandra. This was surely evidence then of how badly Cassandra had ruined any hopes of marriage. How did Cassandra feel about the engagement?
But the news seemed to have had no effect on Cassandra at all. She immediately began to make plans. “I cannot stay at Tupple’s under my own name,” she said. “I know, I shall be some minor foreign royalty travelling incognito. And Aunt Letitia shall be my companion. Hungarian, I think. Most of the people in England do not even know where Hungary is.”
“Your accent would give you away,” the colonel pointed out.
“Not necessarily,” said Lady Fortescue. “A number of high-bred foreigners speak English very well, for they employ English governesses. Miss Cassandra, it is indeed a good idea. But when you have found out what we require, I beg of you to return home. Your mother by that time will have come to her senses. No, do not grin in that boyish way. Not suitable in any female, either foreign or otherwise. Decorum at all times, and never betray an excess of emotion. It offends, and besides, causes wrinkles.”
“We will see,” said Cassandra demurely, but with a subdued air of triumph. This was the life for her, a life like that of her darling highwayman, a life of adventure.
Lady Fortescue reflected, as they began to discuss plans for Cassandra’s impersonation, that there was something very engaging and likeable about the girl. Such a pity about Lord Eston. Good family, rich by all accounts, and eminently suitable. Who were the Boyles anyway? She racked her long memory. She could remember a Sir Andrew Boyle who had once courted her. Gentry, not aristocracy. Her family had frowned on his attentions and so he had married a … Lady Fortescue’s memory failed her at this point.
Lady Fortescue had quickly gathered that Cassandra had no idea who the highwayman was who held up her mother’s coach. “Were you with your mother when the highwayman took the diamonds from her?” she asked.
“Yes, we were on our way to a ball.”
“How frightful,” exclaimed Mrs. Budley. “But of course he would not be interested in you because all he wanted was your mother’s jewels,” Mrs. Budley said, thinking the highwayman had been Letitia Tonks.
Cassandra turned a trifle pink but her eyes sparkled. “As a matter of fact, the wicked rogue did steal something from me.”
“What was that, my dear?” asked the colonel, giving a sideways look of reproach at Miss Tonks.
“He stole a kiss.”
There was a shocked silence. Everyone except Cassandra looked hard at Miss Tonks, who looked at the floor.
“How nasty for you,” said Lady Fortescue faintly. “Such things are best forgotten.”
“Oh, no, he was very dashing and I rather enjoyed it,” said Cassandra blithely.
Again that shocked silence. Mrs. Budley twisted her handkerchief uneasily in her hands. She had heard there were women who preferred their own sex. And she herself shared a bed with Letitia!
“Why so solemn!” exclaimed Cassandra at last. “Let us forget about highwaymen and get down to business!”
Lord Eston had forgotten all his lectures on love to Miss Cassandra Blessop. He was enchanted with Amanda Boyle and had been from the minute he set eyes on her. He even forgot that the reason he had accepted Sir Andrew’s invitation with alacrity was because he had felt himself in danger of falling in love with Cassandra, and much as he still thought her a splendid sort of girl, he had come to the conclusion that she lacked the necessary characteristics for a good wife. She was too independently minded, too forthright, too blunt—admirable qualities in a man but hardly the stuff that dreams were made of.
But Amanda, on the other hand, ah, there was perfection—from the topknot of her glossy brown hair to her tiny feet. She was a dainty little thing with huge blue eyes like the summer sea, a tiny straight nose, and a perfect little mouth. She was all frills and lace. She sang like an angel. The first evening at the manor when he had been debating whether he should return to the posting-house and apologize for his abrupt departure, she had started to sing, accompanying herself on the harp. From that moment he was lost. He regretted the battles he had fought and the mistresses he had kept. He felt he should have come to her virginal and unsullied. The fact that her father and mother were a rather grasping pair and that her brood of brothers and sisters were spoil
t to a fault did not alter his desire to make her his bride.
When he asked for her hand in marriage, Mr. Boyle had given his permission on the spot. Lord Eston had been allowed to kiss Amanda. Of course that kiss had none of the heady sweetness that he remembered experiencing when Cassandra’s mouth had been under his own, but he felt an almost spiritual happiness.
His thoughts, however, returned to Cassandra again when Mr. and Mrs. Boyle said they had a long-standing engagement to travel to London to visit Mrs. Boyle’s sister, and for that reason had booked a suite of rooms at the new hotel, Tupple’s.
Lord Eston offered them his town house but was told it would not answer until he and Amanda were married. He was surprised that the Boyles were not to stay with Mrs. Boyle’s sister, Mrs. Tabitha Sinclair in Green Street, but Mrs. Boyle said her dear sister was in too poor health to entertain them. The facts, which were not told to Lord Eston, were that Mrs. Sinclair was believed to be on the point of death and Mrs. Boyle wanted to make sure that either she herself or her children should inherit. Mrs. Sinclair detested her sister and brother-in-law, but now that she was dying, Mrs. Boyle had high hopes of a deathbed reconciliation leading to a profitable will. Lord Eston suggested they stay at the Poor Relation but Mrs. Boyle said it was owned by eccentrics and Tupple’s would do very well. He offered them his escort to London, and although he pressed Mr. Boyle to get Amanda to agree to an early wedding by special licence, Mr. Boyle replied that it would be a shameful thing to do his daughter out of a grand wedding with all her friends and relatives present, and that, anyway, a rushed wedding gave society fuel for gossip, which was all pretty much what Amanda had said herself, except in such a delicate and halting way that it made Lord Eston feel like a slavering satyr. He should be able to curb his lusts, he thought ruefully, for a few more months.
