Elizabeth Mansfield (31 page)

But she wasn’t a street urchin either, he decided, for her dress was well-cut and her spencer was lined with a satin of excellent quality. She seemed a respectable type … not the sort who would perpetrate a fraud. Still, one could never be sure of a person’s honesty by appearance. “Mr. Dorking has been with Hollings and Chast for twenty years, my girl,” he said to the frightened creature before him. “I have never known him to lie. If he said you didn’t give him the coin, then I must believe him.”

“He may n-not be lying, s-sir,” the girl managed, struggling to hold back her tears, “but he is s-surely m-mistaken.”

“I certainly am not,” the clerk insisted. “If I were, we would see the coin somewhere about, wouldn’t we? And we’d see thirteen shillings fourpence entered here in my sales ledger, wouldn’t we? But there’s no such figure in the ledger. See for yourself, Mr. Chast!—and no such coin on the premises, either.”

“Mr. Dorking does seem to be in the right of it, miss,” Mr. Chast said to the girl in a voice that was firm though not unkind. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see what else we can do but ask you to leave.”

The beleaguered girl burst into tears. “But I
c-can’t
. I live n-north of King’s Cross. The ch-change from the g-guinea was to p-pay for a h-hack to t-take me
home
!”

“Enough of this,” muttered the cavalry officer who’d been watching the scene with mounting disgust. “Stop torturing the young lady. Anyone can see she’s telling the truth.”

Only one who knows the horror of being utterly alone in a sea of antagonists can guess the emotion that swept over Cassie Chivers at the sound of those trusting words.
Someone believed in her
! It was like rain to a dying bloom, a lifeline to a drowning swimmer, a gush of air to someone gasping for breath. Her heart leaped into her throat, and her eyes turned instinctively to see who it was who’d stepped forward to offer her aid. Whatever he looked like—old, ugly, scrawny, wizened or gross—she was quite prepared to find him beautiful. But she was not prepared for what she saw: a tall magnificence in a red coat blazoned with gold braid, tight-fitting white breeches and knee-high black boots, with a sword dangling at his side and a plumed shako held under his arm. He seemed quite literally to be a knight-in-arms. It was as if he’d ridden out of a medieval romance to enter the battle in her behalf. She could not believe her eyes. Perhaps she was not seeing clearly, she thought. After all, everything did look fuzzy through the tears that still clouded her eyes.

Meanwhile, the “knight,” taking no notice of the astonishment in her face, strode past Mr. Chast and threw a guinea onto the counter. “Give the chit her goods and the change,” he ordered, “and let her go.”

Cassie Chivers blinked her eyes to clear her vision. But what she now saw—and with perfect clarity—made her rescuer seem even more unreal. This couldn’t be happening to her, she thought. Not to Cassie Chivers. Cassie Chivers was not accustomed to miracles, yet here she was being championed by the handsomest man she’d ever in her life beheld.

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A VERY DUTIFUL DAUGHTER

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“I think Mama is going to faint again,” remarked Augusta from her position at the keyhole.

“Oh, Gussie, not again!” responded her older sister Prudence in tones of deep disgust. “Get away from the door and let me see.”

“It’s
my
turn,” whined Clara, the youngest by several years. “I haven’t had
one chance
to peek. You both have been positively piggish about that keyhole ever since Letty and Aunt Millicent came home and locked themselves up in there with Mama!”

The accusation, though totally ignored by the two older girls, was quite true. Gussie and Prue had taken alternate turns at the keyhole for the past half hour, pushing aside the fourteen-year-old Clara heartlessly and ignoring her persistent questions as if she did not exist. Indeed, the entire morning had not been a good one for Clara. The day had begun with a message from their governess, Miss Dorrimore, to the effect that she intended to remain in bed to nurse her cold and that the girls were to spend the morning working on their French declensions. The older girls, ignoring these instructions, had spent most of the morning poring over the fashion plates in a treasured copy of
La Belle Assemblée.
Clara, not yet old enough to be concerned with modish gowns and the art of hairdressing, had threatened to report her sisters’ transgressions to the indisposed Miss Dorrimore. Her sisters had responded with threats and jibes of such malignity that Clara had been reduced to tears. In the midst of this contretemps, they’d heard the sound of a carriage pulling up at their front door. They’d rushed to the window in time to see the door of their aunt Millicent’s impressively ancient equipage open to discharge their eldest sister, Letitia. Letty looked woebegone and red-eyed, and Gussie and Prue had exchanged looks of surprise. The surprise soon turned to consternation, for Letty had been followed out of the carriage by their aunt Millicent whose customary cold, forbidding features were so distorted with suppressed anger as to make her ordinarily stern expression seem positively beneficent in comparison.

“Something’s gone wrong,” Prue had remarked, in sepulchral tones. “She must have botched it somehow.”

“Oh, no!” Gussie had moaned. “It can’t be! Prue, didn’t you tell me that Lord Denham was
certain
to make an offer?”

“Yes, it
was
certain. I overheard Aunt Millicent telling Mama all about it. Lady Denham assured her that her son Roger was ready to take a wife, and Letty was the girl they wanted.”

“You
overheard
all that? Ha!” sneered the put-upon Clara. “
Eavesdropped,
more likely.”

“And who’s eavesdropping now, may I ask?” Gussie had asked quellingly. “This conversation is not meant for the ears of
children,
if you please. So take yourself off to your bedroom or the nursery or somewhere out-of-the-way.”

“Listen to you, Miss Augusta High-and-mighty Glendenning! Just because you’re sixteen, don’t think you can queen it over me!” Clara had declared bravely, sticking out her chin in defiance.

“Stop squabbling,” Prue had demanded with all the authority of her seventeen years in her voice. “Letty is in some sort of fix, and we ought to find a way to help her, not stand here brangling.” With a toss of her red-gold curls, she’d turned quickly to the door and run to the landing. The two younger girls had followed hastily behind, and the three had peered over the banister to the floor below. They were barely in time to see Mama, the epitome of confused alarm, following Letty and Aunt Millicent into the small sitting room and shutting the door behind her.

Prue had lost no time in getting to the door and kneeling down with her eye at the keyhole. Gussie had cupped her hand to her ear and pressed it against the door. And thus it had been ever since, the two of them changing places periodically and pushing poor Clara aside whenever she attempted to come close to the door.

Gussie now surrendered her place at the keyhole to Prue, who reported promptly that Aunt Millicent was holding a bottle of vinaigrette to Mama’s nose. “Can you hear anything?” Gussie asked impatiently.

“No,” Prue muttered, “but they’ve not permitted Letty even to take off her bonnet and pelisse. She’s just sitting there, staring at the floor. Aunt Millicent appears to be furious with her. But I don’t see
why!
Is it
her
fault that Lord Denham didn’t come up to scratch?”

Gussie looked down at her sister questioningly. “Do you think that’s what happened? That Denham didn’t offer after all?”

Prue, without taking her eye from the keyhole, shrugged. “What else could it be?”

Further speculation was interrupted by the opening of the front door. Their brother, Edward, strode in, his riding boots clattering loudly on the worn marble of the entryway as he hurried to the stairs. But he stopped short at the sight of the three girls grouped before the sitting room door.

“What on earth are you doing?” he demanded suspiciously.

Two pairs of eyes looked at him guiltily. “Oh, Ned, it’s Letty!” Gussie said breathlessly. “Aunt Millicent is furious with her, and Mama has fainted twice, and—”

“They’re eavesdropping; that’s what they’re doing, Neddie,” Clara declared self-righteously. “You ought to make them stop.”

“That’s just what I intend to do, infant,” Ned said, looking down at his youngest sister with distaste, “though you needn’t think I’m doing it as a result of your tattling.”

Prue had returned to the keyhole and now made her report. “Aunt Millicent is pacing again. And Letty is biting her lip. That means she’s about to cry, the poor thing.”

Ned pretended a disinterest he was far from feeling. “Get up, Prue, before someone catches you! Hang it, it ain’t the thing for a girl your age to behave like a parlormaid!” he scolded.

Prue rose calmly and brushed off her skirt. “And what do
you
know of parlormaids? Was
that
why you were sent down from Oxford? For shame, Ned!”

Ned took a threatening step toward her. “Mind your tongue, goosecap! Get back to the schoolroom at once, and take your sisters with you, or you’ll have to deal with me!”

Prue regarded him speculatively. He was only one year her senior and barely an inch taller than she, but although he had not yet reached his full height, his shoulders were broad and the muscles in his arms fully developed. Previous experience had taught her that he was not easily bested in a fight. Besides, now that she was seventeen, it was no longer seemly to engage in a tussle with her brother. She shrugged and marched in brave retreat to the stairs. Gussie, meeting his glare, took Clara’s hand and ran quickly after Prue. Ned waited until they had disappeared around the bend in the stairs. Then he listened for the closing of the schoolroom door; after which he promptly knelt down and peered into the keyhole to see for himself what was going on.

Inside the room the tension was palpable. Letty, seated in the far corner of the room, seemed immobile, her back straight, the hands in her lap hidden inside her fur-trimmed muff, her head lowered, her face shaded by the brim of her plumed bonnet, her eyes fixed on a worn patch of carpet at her feet. Only the sharpest of observers could have detected the movement of her fingers inside the muff as they clenched and unclenched in distress and the frequent flicker of her eyelids as she battled valiantly to keep the tears from flowing over.

Her aunt paced the room with an angry stride, the stiff silk of her rather old-fashioned skirts whispering with matching anger every time she turned about. Letty began to count her aunt’s paces . . . eight steps to the window, swish . . . eight steps back to the sofa, swish . . . eight steps to the window, swish . . .

A groan from the sofa caused Letty and Aunt Millicent to turn their heads. Lady Glendenning, stretched out full-length, sighed and raised her hand from her eyes. Her arm made a tremblingly nervous arc through the air and fell to her side where it dangled over the edge of the sofa in listless despair. “Whatever are we to do now, Millicent?” she asked in a quavering voice. “Whatever are we to do?”

“Ask your daughter!” Millicent said with asperity. “
She’s
the one who whistled a fortune down the wind!”

“Letty, my love,” her mama asked tearfully, “
how
could you have done it? How could you have
refused
him?”

Letty, her lovely hazel eyes filling with tears, merely shook her head. Her aunt looked at her closely. Aunt Millicent, the formidable Lady Upsham, was no fool. No girl in possession of her senses could turn down a man like Lord Denham without a very good reason. “There
must
be someone else,” she said for the third time. “You’ve fixed your heart on some ineligible wastrel, no doubt, and hope to make a match of it, in spite of your mother’s wishes and your family’s need, isn’t that it?”

Letty looked up, blinking, as two tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’ve told you and told you. There’s no one else. N-no one. I j-just c-could not . . .”

“You could not accept an offer from the most eligible bachelor in England? I fail to understand you, Letitia. It is not as if we were marrying you to an ogre. Or even to an old dodderer with nothing to recommend him but his purse. Denham is
more
than a wealthy peer. He is nothing if not charming and witty. His address is excellent, his mind is superior to most of the young men of your flibberty-gibberty generation, and God knows he’s as handsome a man as I’ve ever seen, even if his complexion is darker than I like and his eyebrows somewhat heavy . . .”

“Was
that
it, Letty dear?” her mother asked in concern. “Did you take an aversion to his eyebrows?”

Letty had to smile, even if somewhat tremulously. “Oh, Mama, of course not!”

“His complexion, then?”

Letty’s smile faded, and she returned her eyes to the patch in the carpet. “There’s nothing at all amiss in Lord Denham’s appearance,” she said in a flat voice.

Lady Glendenning pulled herself up on one arm and peered closely at her daughter. She had never seen Letty in such distress. The poor girl looked positively hagged, although Lady Glendenning had to admit that even her excessive pallor failed to detract appreciably from the loveliness of Letty’s face. Letty was blessed with thick auburn hair, high cheekbones, a clear complexion, and a full, expressive mouth. And her eyes, even when red-rimmed and tearful, were large and lustrous and showed clearly the gentleness and intelligence that were her nature. Lady Glendenning had waited for two years, ever since Letty’s come-out at eighteen under the auspices of her sister-in-law, Lady Millicent Upsham, for Letty to choose one of her rich suitors to marry. It was Letty who would save the family from sinking into a mire of debt. But Millicent had urged Lady Glendenning to curb her impatience. Millicent had a match in mind for Letty that would solve all their problems. Letty would marry the man most girls in London only
dreamed
of attaching. Millicent was saving Letty for Roger Denham, the Earl of Arneau.