The Dreadful Debutante (17 page)

When they had left, Mr. Markham turned to his wife, who was quietly weeping. “Dry your tears,” he said harshly. “There is no time for tears. There must be a way to save that wretched girl from ruin.” He rang the bell and told the footman who answered it to take a note to the Marquess of Grantley, summoning him urgently.

“We must speak to Mira,” whispered Mrs. Markham.

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Markham. “I do not want to listen to her lies and evasions. I now believe that story about her going with Grantley as his tiger on a curricle race.”

They waited and waited. Mrs. Markham was silently praying that it would all turn out to be lies on the part of Lady Jansen. Only one little ray of comfort lightened her darkness. Dear Drusilla was engaged again. Drusilla always behaved just as she ought.

And then the marquess was announced. He stood in the doorway, and one look at their faces told them that somehow his escapade with Mira had been discovered.

“Sit down, Grantley,” said Mr. Markham quietly, for he was now beyond rage.

The marquess listened with a grim face while Mr. Markham told him of Lady Jansen’s visit. “You have ruined our daughter,” ended Mr. Markham wearily. “I cannot understand how a gentleman of your rank and breeding should have behaved so badly, so cruelly.”

“Well, there is only one solution,” said the marquess.

“I see no solution.”

“Mira will just need to marry me after all. The whole idea of the engagement was initially to scotch any gossip. Love and marriage make the escapade romantic. I suggest you inform everyone, as I shall, that it was probably the malicious Lady Jansen who sent the notice of the cancellation of the engagement to the newspapers.”

A glimmer of hope began to light up Mr. Markham’s eyes. He rang the bell and ordered the footman to bring Mira down to them.

Mira appeared, already dressed in an opera gown of gold damask. Her eyes flew from the marquess to her parents.

She sat down on the edge of a chair and listened in increasing horror to the tale of the scandal about her day with the marquess. The only comfort she could hang on to was that she would be banished to the country and leave wicked London and one heartbreaker behind.

“You have both behaved disgracefully,” said Mr. Markham sternly, “but there is one solution to this.”

“I am to leave London?”

“No, Grantley is to do the honorable thing. You will marry him. We will tell everyone that the cancellation of the engagement—it is too late to get the notice removed—was actually probably another evil trick of Lady Jansen’s.”

Mira went quite white. “I cannot marry Grantley.”

“You have no say in the matter. You will come with us to the opera, and both of you will present a united and happy front to the world.”

Mira’s green eyes looked pleadingly at the marquess. “Don’t you see, they are
forcing
you to marry me!”

“Exactly,” said the marquess maliciously. In a perverse way he was beginning to enjoy himself. He did not stop to wonder why he was not in the slightest dismayed at the prospect of marriage to Mira. She had sorely dented his pride, and he felt he was getting even.

Courage, thought Mira. I must have courage. She turned to her father. “May I have a few words in private with Grantley?”

Mr. Markham rose and held out his hand to his wife. “Come, Mrs. Markham, we shall allow them ten minutes.”

Mr. and Mrs. Markham left, leaving the door punctiliously open.

“You don’t want to marry me,” said Mira fiercely as soon as they were alone.

“May I remind you, my sweeting, that it was you who canceled the engagement? I
have
to marry you.” He added piously, “It is my duty.”

“Why should you, who could marry any female in society, want to marry me? Be sensible. If you refuse, I will be sent to the country, out of this horrible world of malice and gossip, and I can be free with my horse and dogs.”

He shook his head. “I contributed to your downfall by encouraging you to behave badly. You must take the consequences.”

She looked at him with a little hope in her eyes. “It could be a marriage of convenience, I mean, a marriage in name only.”

“Oh, no, I want children, lots and lots of them, Mira.”

She twisted a handkerchief in her hands. “What am I to do?”

“May I point out that you have made your bed, and you are just going to have to lie on it and try to enjoy it.”

“You are being crude and vulgar!”

“You have no idea how crude and vulgar I mean to be. So we must return to our role as a supremely happy couple. You could start by kissing me.”

“Never!”

He crossed the room to where she sat and knelt down in front of her. He took her face firmly between his hands. “What’s in a kiss, Mira? You kiss most delightfully.”

“I d-don’t w-want to kiss you.”

“Then
I
will kiss you.”

He closed his lips over hers. She primmed her lips in a firm line, but his mouth worked seductively on her own until he felt her bosom rise and fall and her lips finally soften. He was just beginning to feel her response when Mr. Markham’s voice sounded in his ears. “I shall return in a few moments, which should give you enough time to compose yourselves and behave in a more seemly manner.”

The marquess stood up and held out his hand. “Come, Mira, you are tied to me for life, and so you will need to start to accept that fact. We have caused your parents great distress. Make them happy by at least pretending to be in love with me. It is no use sulking and raging. You are trapped.”

When Mr. and Mrs. Markham entered, they were standing hand in hand. Mira’s face was pink where it had been white only such a short time ago.

“You may go abovestairs and tell Drusilla we will be ready to leave in an hour,” said Mr. Markham. “Mrs. Markham and I still have to change and dress. Charles is already waiting in the drawing room for us.”

The marquess indicated his own dress clothes. “I will stay and accompany you as well,” he said.

“As you will,” said Mr. Markham frostily. “Mira—go!”

Glad to escape, Mira ran up the stairs to find Drusilla waiting for her. “What is this?” cried Drusilla, all round-eyed with wonder. “Mama told me some garbled story about how you were ruined because all that tale of your sharing a bedroom with Grantley was true. Did you actually do… well…
that?
What was it like?”

“No, I didn’t do
that
,” said Mira. “We only played cards as we waited for our clothes to dry, and now I’ve got to marry him.”

“I do not understand you, Mira. At first it looked as if you were delighted at the prospect of marrying him, and the next minute you are breaking off the engagement, and now you look as if you are attending your own funeral because it is on again. Grantley is rich, handsome, and titled. You will be a marchioness. Think on that!”

“He will break my heart,” said Mira wearily. “I am in love with him.”

Drusilla stared at her sister with a puzzled frown on her forehead. “And he appears to be in love with you, so what’s the rub?”

“He is only pretending to love me so as to make it all look so respectable. I can imagine nothing more hellish—”

“Mira! Your
language
!”

“… hellish,” continued Mira firmly, “than being married to a man who does not love me.”

“But you will not need to see much of him. Gentlemen, or so I have observed, spend much of their lives in sports or in their clubs.”

“I will need to give him children!”

Drusilla turned her face away and said in a low voice, “How does one do that, Mira?”

“I do not know,” said Mira, “but I only know it involves a lot of kissing, and when he kisses me, he takes my soul away.”

“Oh, that’s vastly pretty,” said Drusilla appreciatively. “I read a line like that in a romance once. But you are living in a dream world, Mira. You are fantasizing.”

“Impossible! Impossible to talk to you,” said Mira. “Come, we must join the gentlemen in the drawing room.” She put her arm around Drusilla’s waist. “You mean well, dear sis, but it is like trying to play a piece of sweet music to the tone-deaf.”

Charles and the marquess rose to greet them as they entered the drawing room. The marquess went straight to Mira, took her hand, and kissed it.

“This is a shameful business,” said Charles heavily.

The marquess turned and looked him up and down, then said evenly, “Any more impertinent observations like that and I shall feel obliged to call you out.”

“Play something for us, Drusilla,” said Mira hurriedly.

Drusilla sat down at the harp, and her fingers rippled expertly over the strings. Charles stood near her to admire the pretty picture she made.

The marquess sat down on the sofa, and Mira sat primly beside him. “You do not look adoring enough,” he commented.

“How can I look adoring when I am forcing a man to marry me?”

“If I can accept it with good grace, then so can you.”

For one brief little moment Mira had had the mad hope that he might say, “I love you,” but all he had done was to underline the fact that he was entering a marriage he didn’t want.

At the opera Mira was conscious of all the staring eyes and whispering voices. She felt naked. The marquess pressed her hand and whispered. “Courage,” and she did her best to look happy when all she wanted was to escape and put as much distance as possible between herself and him. But on the whole she behaved very well—until the ball after the opera.

The first dance with her was claimed by young Mr. Danby, who wished her well and hoped she would be happy. Mira was aware of the marquess watching them, and some imp prompted her to flirt with Mr. Danby. The marquess turned away from the scene with seeming indifference but promptly took a pretty young lady onto the floor and began to pay her a great deal of attention. Mira, wondering whether it was possible to die from sheer jealousy, continued to flirt outrageously with partner after partner, while the marquess, for his part, appeared to be trying to outdo her. She had promised him the supper dance, and so they finally went into the refreshment room together, both with angry eyes as hard as diamonds.

“Just what the deuce do you think you are playing at?” demanded the marquess.

“I do not know what you mean,” said Mira huffily.

“You are behaving like the veriest trollop.”

“How dare you!”

“I dare. And when we are married, miss, you will behave just as you ought.”

“You were the one who encouraged me in this folly.”

“And I am graciously getting you out of the consequences of a folly in which you were a willing partner.”

Mira glared at him. “And what is so gracious about flirting vulgarly with every woman in the room?”

“I have not yet got around to every woman in the room. But I shall. Be assured of that, my sweeting.”

“I wish I had never met you,” muttered Mira.

“Oh, I do wish you would stop whining and try to behave like a lady.” The marquess’s tone was glacial.

Almost beside herself with rage, jealousy, and hurt, Mira slapped his face, and the marquess promptly slapped her back. People stopped eating; people stopped talking. For one long moment the silence in the supper room was absolute.

Then Drusilla, prompted for about the first time in her life by the thought of helping someone else, said in a loud, carrying voice, “I think this meat is bad, Charles. It has a peculiar taste.”

Voices rose all around discussing the meat.

“You struck me,” said Mira. “Gentlemen do not strike ladies.”

“The provocation was great. You hit me first. Was I to allow myself to be humiliated in public and take it with a smile?”

“Well, I am sorry I forgot myself,” said Mira. She looked so lost and miserable that he said in a gentle voice, “Do eat something. It is not like you to pick at your food. Now we will get a roasting from your father. Perhaps we are well suited after all, Mira. I have never known two people to behave so badly in public. The only way we will now save face is to look so madly in love that people will put it down to a lovers’ quarrel. Come, Mira, if you will not do it for me or yourself, do it for your shattered parents.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

Mira saw the wisdom of his words and forced herself to play the part of a happy girl again, delighted with her partner.

But although they both behaved admirably for the rest of the evening, the marquess was not at all surprised when Mr. Markham, on their arrival back at St. James’s Square, told him to step indoors with them.

“I will see you and Mira alone,” he said, opening the door of the Yellow Saloon.

“Can you both explain the meaning of your disgraceful behavior this evening?” began Mr. Markham.