Lady Anne's Deception (4 page)

With a scream of rage, Marigold leaped to her feet, her fingernails ready to rake Annie’s face. Then she saw the look on Aunt Agatha’s face and subsided into noisy sobs, burying her dry eyes in a wisp of a handkerchief.

“Go to your room, Annie,” said Miss Winter, in awful tones. “I will need to think of a way to punish you.

If this behavior continues, I shall have no alternative but to send you home.”

“Mother locks her in her room when she’s bad,” said Marigold.

“Then that is what I shall do,” said Aunt Agatha. “Go, Annie, and I shall come with you and turn the key in the door and take it away. You will not leave your room until you have written, five hundred times, ‘A lady does not betray excess of emotion,’ and you will spend at least the whole of tomorrow locked up.”

“But the Marquess of Torrance is coming to call,” wailed Annie. “It’s not fair. Why am I always the one who’s punished when
she
. . .”

“That’s enough!” Aunt Agatha pushed Annie toward the stairs with surprising strength.

Annie realized that it would be useless to protest. As she mounted the stairs, she could not resist looking back.

Lady Marigold Sinclair stuck out her tongue.

Annie awoke to a feeling of doom. A housemaid was pulling back the curtains to flood the bedroom with sunlight. Then the maid went out quickly and locked the door behind her.

Annie blushed all over with mortification. Being punished at home where the servants were part of the family was one thing. Being punished the very day after you’ve put your hair up for the first time, and in front of strange London servants, too, was quite awful. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and thirsted for revenge.

As the morning wore on, despite the fact that Annie had only had a few hours’ sleep, she found it impossible to rest. At least it appeared that she was not to be subjected to the bread-and-water treatment. A surprisingly tasty luncheon was delivered to her. Annie did not know that by now the servants all detested Marigold, who bullied them in a way she would not have dared to do at home.

Sheets of paper were laid out on a little writing desk so that she could write her “lines.” She wrote that a lady did not betray excess of emotion fifty times and then, with a sigh, put down her pen. The room was becoming uncomfortably hot, so she went to open the window and then leaned out. All those free people strolling about below her! She wondered what Marigold was doing. At least there had been no sign of the marquess.

Her red hair tumbled about her face in a riot of soft curls, all that was left of her elaborate coiffure after she had brushed it out. She was wearing a tailored alpaca skirt and a pin-striped blouse with a stiff little collar.

She was twisting this way and that way in front of the glass, pushing up her hair to see how it would look in a different style, when she heard the rattle of a carriage on the cobblestones outside.

The carriage stopped.

Annie rushed to the window.

The Marquess of Torrance was descending from his chariot—always to be pronounced “char-ot” since no lady ever used all of the syllables. He was carrying his hat in his hand and the sun shone on his crisp black hair. His beautifully tailored, dove-gray coat fell open to reveal an ornately embroidered waistcoat.

He had arrived in an open carriage and that meant that, had Annie been at liberty to go for a drive, she would not have needed a chaperone. But she could not go. There was no way. Her bedroom was three floors above the street and the door was firmly locked.

* * *

Downstairs, the Marquess of Torrance smiled blandly on Aunt Agatha and Lady Marigold. He had not asked for Annie.

Now Marigold was firmly convinced that the way to entrap a man was to drive him mad with rejection.

She knew she was looking extremely pretty in a pale pink, flowered silk skirt and a blond lace blouse with a high, boned collar.

So when the marquess said gently that it was a beautiful day for a drive in the park, Marigold tossed her head, and, with what she hoped was a killing laugh, said, “Is it, my lord? I declare I hadn’t noticed.”

“I thought all ladies enjoyed showing off their fashions in the park,” said the marquess.

“For myself,” said Marigold, who had not, as yet, been for a drive in the park at the fashionable hour, “I cannot see the fascination in simply going around and around in a carriage.”

Aunt Agatha glared at Marigold, but Marigold sat with a serene smile on her face. The marquess, she knew, would promptly beg for her company, and, after a certain amount of pretty hesitation, she would finally allow him that honor.

He was sitting, very much at his ease, in an armchair that faced the window. “In that case,” he said, “I will not press you to do something that you obviously despise, Lady Marigold. I shall try my luck with your sister and hope that she will take pity on me.”

“I am afraid Lady Annie is indisposed,” began Aunt Agatha, “and you must forgive Marigold’s naughty teasing, my lord, for . . .”

“Oh, do not trouble to apologize,” said the marquess. “Unless I am much mistaken, Lady Annie has fully recovered and is shortly about to join us.”

“Why, what do you mean? Annie is . . .”

“Just outside the window,” said the marquess blandly.

Aunt Agatha and Marigold were sitting in chairs facing him, with their backs to the window. They turned slowly around, and Aunt Agatha let out a shrill scream.

A pair of white, glacé kid, button boots were dangling outside the window somewhere at the top of the frame. Inch by inch, the apparition descended. First the boots, then an inch of frilly petticoat, then a white tussore skirt, then a jadegreen silk blouse, and then Annie’s red head topped with a wickedly simple straw hat.

“She’s gone mad,” said Marigold shrilly, as Annie’s gloved hands holding on to a rope of sheets cautiously descended.

Miss Winters closed her mouth and leaped into action. “John!” she shouted to the footman. “Rescue Lady Annie immediately. Dear me! She will be quite killed.”

“I wonder how one gets quite killed?” asked the marquess, but the ladies were not paying any attention.

Annie was now adding insult to injury by placing the soles of her boots against the window so that she could swing out over the area railings in front of the house and land on the pavement.

The footman caught her just as she showed every sign of swinging back like a pendulum through the window glass.

Marigold and Aunt Agatha sat down again, their backs rigid. The door opened and Annie sailed in.

Marigold waited triumphantly for her sister’s humiliation in front of the marquess. Annie looked disgustingly band-box fresh considering her perilous escape from her room. Marigold felt that Annie had come off the best at the hands of the dressmaker by not having her clothes chosen for her by Aunt Agatha.

Annie curtsied to the marquess, who had risen to his feet.

“My apologies, my lord,” she said lightly, bestowing a charming smile on her aunt. “I’m afraid the silly servants locked me in my room by mistake.”

“Then you were most enterprising to escape from it,” he said smoothly, with a smile lurking in his eyes.

He was well aware that Annie had been locked up for some misdemeanor. For if she had been locked in by accident, she had only to shout or ring for the servants.

“I see you are ready to join me for a drive, Lady Annie,” he went on, “and since your sister does not favor the exercise, I fear you will have to put up with my company. With your permission, of course, Miss Winters.”

Annie looked pleadingly at her aunt. Marigold gleefully waited for the storm to break.

Aunt Agatha said mildly, “Of course you are free to go, Annie. I know his lordship to be a fine whip, so you will be in good hands.”

Marigold made a gulping, spluttering noise.

When Annie and the marquess had left the room, Marigold started to scream, “How could you? How dare she? I shall write to Mother . . .
Oh! Oh! Oh!
”

“Shut up!” said Aunt Agatha. “Yes, it might do very well,” she went on slowly. “Torrance may be a rake, but he’s quite a catch. I must telephone Mrs. Burlington and tell her the news. She has been after him for
years
for one of those pasty-faced daughters of hers and she said only the other night that, as an
unmarried
lady, I would find it a disadvantage in getting you girls fixed up. Hah! Wait until she hears
this

!”

She sailed from the room, leaving Marigold to writhe on the floor in quite the worst fit of hysterical rage that that young lady had ever had.

Annie was too unsophisticated to realize that Miss Winter had some grounds for being so triumphant.

The Marquess of Torrance had never at any time in his life shown enough interest in any young debutante to take her driving. He had kept a succession of demimondaine ladies, which was not to be held against him. Such behavior in a marquess was glamorous. In Mr. Joe Bloggs of Clapham, say, it would be considered disgusting and immoral.

Now that she had achieved the beginnings of her ambition, Annie felt quite shy and tongue-tied as she sat beside Torrance in the carriage. He was handling his pair of matched bays himself, and there was only one groom on the backstrap. The open carriage was well-sprung and bowled along with a gentle, swaying motion.

The sun sparkled on varnish and metal. “It’s—it’s a very nice carriage,” said Annie, at last.

“Yes, isn’t it,” he replied equably. “It’s a mobile map of the world in its way. The framework is made of English ash, the panels are Honduras mahogany, the footboards are American ash, the shafts are Jamaican lancewood, the wheels are Canadian hickory, and the spokes are English oak. There! I have furthered your education.”

“Yes,” said Annie, who could not think of anything else to say.

She slid a sideways glance at him under the shadow of her hat. He had a strong face in profile, and his long hands holding the reins seemed strong also, despite their whiteness and manicured nails.

But everything about him was too studied, too mannered. She wondered suddenly if he really cared very strongly about anything except his clothes and his horses.

“Would you like a motorcar?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s just a fad, or so Papa says.”

“I would. I’m thinking of buying one.”

“But what would you do with your horses?”

“Use them as well, for pleasant outings like this. Use the motorcar when I have to go to the country.”

“I can’t imagine anyone loving one of those contraptions the way they love their horses.”

“Oh, but they do, I assure you. In some cases, more so. Take my friend Jeffrey Withers. Now he bought a Lanchester only last year and he’s had endless trouble with it. It always seems to be breaking down. But he loves it. Although he doesn’t think of it as an ‘it,’ if you take my meaning. He thinks of it as

‘she,’ just like boats. He calls his motorcar Bessie and he talks to it day and night.

“I passed him once on the Brighton road and he was cranking the engine like mad and saying, ‘Come along, Bessie, I know you can do it. Jeffrey loves you. Just give a little cough for old Jeffrey to show you’re alive.’ ”

“You either have strange friends or you are teasing me,” said Annie. “First you tell me about someone who shaved his head bald . . .”

“Bertie.”

“Yes, Bertie. And now there’s this Jeffrey who talks to his motorcar.”

“Never mind. Here we are. London at play.”

Annie studied the other carriages and their occupants with great interest as they drove around by the Serpentine.

Some of the women drove themselves. Annie twisted around to admire a pretty little blonde in a plethora of pink ruffles and pink maribou who was handling her whip like an expert. As she watched, the blonde looked fully at the marquess, gave him a saucy smile and the merest flicker of a wink, and then she trotted sedately past, the little parasol on the end of her whip, also pink to match the rest of her outfit.

“That pretty lady winked at you,” said Annie.

“She did? I’m flattered,” said her companion. “Now what is the name of that tree over there? I never can remember it.”

“Ladies don’t wink,” said Annie, beginning to feel cross although she could not understand why. Perhaps it was because the blonde had reminded her of Marigold.

“Elder, surely.”

“Than whom?”

“Not that elder. I mean, the name of the tree.”

“I don’t know,” said Annie, thinking furiously. Good manners meant that she could not pursue any subject that her companion wanted to drop.

Vague social rumors and bits of gossip began to drift through her head. About the Marquess of Torrance being a wild, young man-about-town. Of course he wasn’t young, but it seemed that all bachelors were young until they reached their dotage.

The blonde in the pink dress had been very pretty, very pretty indeed. But not a lady. Ladies did not wink, thought Annie, folding her soft mouth into a prim line.

“Have you indigestion, or have I said something to offend you?”

She realized with a start that her companion had been studying her face. “No,” she said. “No, my lord, I was thinking of something . . . well, something else.”

“And not me? Ah, well . . . there is Lady Trevelyn . . .” Annie bowed. “And there is Mrs. Wayling, a friend of my mother.” Annie bowed again.

“I somehow did not think of you as having a mother,” she said, as a chilly little breeze sprang up and a passing cloud cast its shadow over the waters of the Serpentine.

“You mean you thought I sprang fully armed in a natty gent’s suit from my father’s head, or something like that?”

“No. I mean, one does not think of older people having mothers.”

“Ouch!”

“I mean, not that you are old, just mature,” pleaded Annie.

“Well-seasoned like the English oak?”

“Not quite, my lord. I meant . . . Oh, it’s too hard to explain. Is your mother in town?”

“No, she and my father are in the country.”

“Yes, of course. Your father is the Duke of Dunster. Marigold and I looked you up in Debrett.”

“How thorough of you. Now, tell me how it came about that you were escaping from your room in that dramatic manner?”