Mandie Collection, The: 8 (40 page)

“I don’t believe anyone would recognize me if they knew me,” Mandie said. “And I don’t know any of the guests coming for the party.”

“Even I would doubt you are Mandie Shaw,” Celia said with a laugh as she adjusted her mask.

“Before I put on my mask I need to tie the bow on Snowball’s collar,” Mandie said. She turned to the cat on the bed and said, “Come here, Snowball. We are going a-partying, and you need some kind of costume. I’m going to put a nice big white bow on your collar.” As she talked she picked up the bow from the table nearby and began looping ribbons around the cat’s collar. Snowball squirmed and meowed, plainly not liking what she was doing.

“I’ll hold him for you, Mandie,” Celia offered as she grasped the cat to hold him still.

Mandie got the bow tied on, but the minute the girls let go of him, Snowball began rolling and trying to rub off the decoration.

“Snowball, you are ruining the bow. Quit that,” Mandie demanded as she picked him up and stood him upright to fasten on his leash.

Snowball growled angrily and managed to escape. He ran across the room, trying to shake off the bow, and then rolled on the floor.

Mandie sighed as she watched him and said, “All right, Snowball, you can’t go to the party if that’s the way you’re going to behave. Come here. I’ll take the bow off.” She captured him and removed the bow. He immediately ran under the bed, meowing furiously.

“I wouldn’t bother with him anymore, Mandie,” Celia told her. “Leave him here. You don’t really need him to support your act.”

“I’ll have to bring him something to eat later, since we are having supper served during the party,” Mandie said. She hurried to put on her mask and then said, “Come on. Let’s go downstairs before any of the servants come up here to get us. If we mingle with the guests, maybe Lolly and the others won’t recognize us.”

“Good idea,” Celia agreed, fluffing out the gathers in her long black skirt as she followed Mandie to the door.

When they got down to the last landing, Mandie could hear voices in the parlor down the hall. “Come on. Let’s go out the side door and come in the front so everyone will think we are guests, too. Hurry!” She ran to the outside door, which opened out onto a patio. Celia followed.

Several carriages stood in the driveway, and people in costume were walking toward the front door.

Mandie put her hand out to stop Celia and said, “Wait. Let’s go in right behind that couple with the walking canes. We can probably slip past them without anyone noticing us.”

The girls stayed near the bushes until the couple entered the front door, then they quickly stepped inside without being noticed by Senator Morton or Mrs. Taft, who were greeting the guests. They walked on across the large parlor to a corner where no one was standing at the moment.

Mandie felt her heartbeat quicken as she closely watched the guests arriving in a steady stream. Evidently everyone believed in
being prompt to the minute. And her grandmother had said this would be a small party. Why, a hundred guests must have entered the parlor since she and Celia had come down. She was keeping an eye out for the girl in the park. She didn’t think she would recognize her because it had been so dark in the graveyard and everyone at the party was in costume and masked. But she believed if she listened closely to the bits of conversation around her she would be able to identify the girl’s voice.

“What are you going to do if you see that girl?” Celia asked in a whisper behind her hand.

“I’m not sure yet,” Mandie murmured back with a frown as she thought about it. Should she walk up to the girl and announce, “I’m that mountaineer from North Carolina who doesn’t know how to use silverware”? No, she was sure the girl had planned her speech last night knowing that Mandie was nearby. She could just turn her nose up and ignore the girl. Then again, she might put on a foreign accent as she remembered the speeches of the various countries she had visited with her grandmother and Celia during the previous summer.

After a while it seemed that all the guests had arrived, and Mandie was suddenly aware of her grandmother coming in her direction. She whispered to Celia, “Can we fool Grandmother?”

“I don’t think so,” Celia mumbled back.

Mrs. Taft walked right up to Mandie and said, “Amanda, you and Celia should mingle with the guests.”

“Oh, Grandmother, we didn’t fool you for a minute, did we?” Mandie replied with a sigh. “Everyone else is masked, so how can we mingle with the guests when we don’t know who is who?”

“That’s the fun of a masked party,” Mrs. Taft said. “You talk to everyone, and then when the masks come off later, you are usually surprised at whom you were talking with. Now move on around the room instead of just standing there.” She turned to go back toward the guests she had been talking with.

Mandie looked at Celia and said, “I suppose we have to. But tell me how Grandmother knew who we were, with all this getup. Do you suppose everyone else will figure it out, too?”

“Mandie, your grandmother gave us all these scarves and masks we’ve got on. Of course she would know who we are,” Celia reminded her.

“You’re right,” Mandie agreed, looking at the costumed people moving about. “Come on. We might as well get this over with. Help me look for that boy and girl in the park last night, and if you recognize them, start coughing to alert me.”

“All right, but you do the same thing so I’ll know, too, if you spot them first,” Celia agreed.

Mandie straightened the scarf around her head and led the way into the crowd. The parlor was full, the library was full, and the huge dining room was overflowing with people. Mandie tried to avoid looking directly at anyone in order to keep from having to enter into a conversation, and no one seemed to pay any attention to Mandie and Celia as they slowly walked through the rooms.

“Mandie, let’s find someplace to sit down and just watch for a little while,” Celia suggested as they entered the library.

“But, Celia, Grandmother told us to mingle with the guests, remember?” Mandie said as they passed an elderly couple who were not dressed in costumes but were wearing masks. After they walked by the couple, Mandie glanced back at them and was surprised to see the woman also turning to look at her and Celia. The woman had probably figured out who the girls were. Mandie quickened her pace. “Come on. Let’s go on into the dining room and then circle back to the parlor,” she told Celia.

Just as they got to the door of the dining room, a couple dressed like turtles stopped them.

“I say, there,” a male voice said in an improvised British accent from behind a dark mask, “would it be that you two are the guests of our host?”

“Yes, I do believe they are,” a young female voice added from the second turtle.

Mandie looked at the padded costumes the two had on and wondered how they could stand such stuff in the hot weather. Their outfits were designed to look as though the turtles were walking on their hind legs, and she doubted that real turtles could do that. Why didn’t the people just wear some kind of normal costume? She decided they were not the couple in the park last night.

“Yes, my name is Mandie Shaw, and this is my friend Celia Hamilton,” Mandie told them.

“How do you do?” Celia said to the strangers.

“I am Rickard Bernadine, and this is Eleanor Morton,” the male voice replied.

“Morton? Related to Senator Morton?” Mandie asked, smiling at the girl.

“Yes, he is my uncle, my father’s brother,” Eleanor explained. “I am glad to make your acquaintances. I have heard lots about you two from my uncle.”

Mandie grinned and asked, “And was it partly bad things?”

“Oh no, quite the contrary,” Eleanor said. “He speaks highly of you and Celia and of your families, especially your grandmother, Mandie.” She also grinned.

Mandie and Celia looked at each other and smiled.

“So other people notice besides us,” Mandie said.

“That my uncle is quite smitten with your grandmother?” Eleanor asked. “Yes, he is, and most everyone knows it.”

“Do you think that one day your grandmother will become Mrs. Morton?” Rickard asked.

“That’s what Celia and I talk about sometimes. I don’t know,” Mandie told her new friends. “I do know that she was deeply in love with my grandfather, according to everyone who knows her. He died before I was born, so I didn’t know him, but Grandmother has told me that my grandparents and Senator Morton and his wife were close friends for years and years.”

“Do y’all live here in St. Augustine?” Celia asked.

“No, Rickard is from Savannah, where I live, but his family moved to Jacksonville last year,” Eleanor explained.

“Where do y’all go to school?” Celia asked.

The two turtles looked at each other and smiled.

“We have been out of school for quite a while now,” Eleanor explained. “You see, we are both twenty-two years old.”

Mandie gasped in surprise. “I can’t tell with all the makeup and costumes y’all have on, but I thought y’all were probably around our ages. I will be fourteen in June, and Celia was fourteen in March. We go to school in Asheville, North Carolina, at the Misses Heathwood’s School for Girls.”

“Yes, I know,” Eleanor replied. “My uncle mentioned it.”

“I understand food will be served shortly, and yes, there are the
servants bringing in the food right now,” Rickard said, motioning inside the dining room, where they had stopped near the doorway.

“Some of these people are going to have trouble eating with those masks covering their faces,” Mandie said, grinning. “Let’s watch and see how they do it.”

“We aren’t supposed to take off our masks until midnight, so maybe those in that shape will wait until midnight to eat,” Eleanor said.

Mandie looked back into the room they were leaving and caught her grandmother’s eye. Mrs. Taft motioned for them to move on and circulate among the guests, and Mandie understood what she was signaling to them.

“Your grandmother is telling us to move on again, Mandie,” Celia said as she, too, saw the motions.

“Right,” Mandie agreed. She turned to the two turtles and said, “I’m glad to have met y’all, and I’ll catch back up with you later, but my grandmother keeps watching us and insists we circulate among everybody.”

“She’s right,” Eleanor agreed. “Everyone wants to meet y’all. We’ll see y’all later.”

“And when you two get tired of circulating, just find us in the crowd and we’ll go take a break in a corner somewhere,” Rickard told the girls.

“Thanks,” Mandie and Celia both said as they moved on into the dining room, heading for the door to the hallway as the servants began placing large bowls of food on the long table.

As Mandie and Celia hurried out into the hallway from the dining room, they almost collided with Juan, who was walking in their direction.

Mandie stopped short, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and looked directly at the man. “I’m sorry, we got in too big a hurry,” she apologized as Juan stepped aside to avoid a collision.

Juan looked at her, smiled, and continued on his way down the hall. Mandie turned to Celia and said, “He was coming from the direction of the staircase. I wonder if he’s been up in our room again?”

“Well, it’s too late now to catch him in the act. After we eat, we can take food to Snowball and look around our room,” Celia told her.

“Yes, and for right now, let’s see if we can find the girl and the
boy from the park last night,” Mandie replied, leading the way back down to the parlor.

Mandie could feel the people in the parlor turning to look at her and Celia. Evidently they were aware now of their identifications in spite of the costumes and masks. But she and Celia did not know these people and that put them at a disadvantage. As she and Celia continued across the room, she noticed a beautiful young girl about her age with long curly dark hair and no disguise except a small shiny mask over her eyes. She was wearing a long, full-skirted dress of red taffeta and had a thin black silk scarf around her shoulders. The boy with her wore the latest fashion in clothes and had donned only a small mask for the party. His hair was also black and curly.

When Mandie and Celia started to walk past the two, the girl immediately looked at them and asked, “Are you having fun in our town? St. Augustine must be quite different from the place you live.”

Mandie immediately turned to look closely at the two. Celia started coughing suddenly. The alarm sounded in Mandie’s head. That was their signal if they found the couple from the park. And yes, these two could be the culprits.

Mandie quickly decided on her strategy. Stopping and looking directly at the girl, she replied in what she would have called her most highfalutin voice. “I do beg your pardon. Were you addressing us?” She watched for the girl’s reaction, which was one of surprise and puzzlement.

Celia, who was at Mandie’s side, gave a little tug to Mandie’s sleeve and whispered, “Let’s go.”

Mandie ignored Celia and continued with her conversation. “I do believe I asked you a question,” Mandie insisted, staring at the girl.

The girl seemed to be unable to speak as Mandie continued. “We did see you two in the park last night, you know.”

The girl quickly drew a deep breath, looked at the boy with her, and finally replied, “If we were in the park and you saw us, then you were also in the park.”

The boy with her said, “That’s right. You can’t deny that.”

“Oh, you two are the most impossible people I have ever met!” Mandie exclaimed, keeping her put-on accent.

“And I say the same for you two,” the girl told her. Turning to the boy with her, she said, “Let’s go get our food, Ted.” She took the
boy’s arm, and they quickly walked off into the room on their way to the dining room.

Celia stomped her foot and looked at Mandie as they watched the two disappear in the crowd. “Mandie, I was not coughing to let you know that those two looked like the two in the park last night. I coughed because a man passed by who was smoking a cigar.”

Mandie looked at her friend and exclaimed, “Oh no! What have I done! There’s no telling who those two people are. They may be good friends of Senator Morton, or my grandmother even. This is going to cause a catastrophe, Celia. If this gets back to Grandmother, I know very well what will happen. She will be furious. I’ll never hear the end of it. Oh, what can I do?”