The Magnificent Masquerade Part 1

The Magnificent Masquerade.

by Elizabeth Mansfield.

Prologue.

One day, without any apparent provocation, Lord Birkinshaw decided to marry off his daughter. This decision was astonishing, for the girl hadn't reached her eighteenth birthday and was not yet "out." However, the idea did not, as his wife later accused, come to him "out of the clear blue sky"-in fact, he'd retorted, the sky hadn't shown a scintilla of blue that whole dank day-but was the result of the confluence of several minor incidents which seemed to him to lead inexorably to that rather major decision. "And if you want the truth," he told his wife roundly, in strong defense of a position which, no matter how insupportable, would not be changed once he'd taken it, "that row we had this morning might well have been the incident that touched off the entire matter."

This was not quite the truth. Although the argument with his wife had been somewhere in the back of his mind, the incident that triggered his astounding decision had occurred later that afternoon, at his club. It started with, of all things, the loud, clear e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of a curse. Someone had shouted "Oh, d.a.m.nation!" and the sound had reverberated shockingly throughout the club's high-ceilinged rooms. It was not that the words themselves were shocking (for many more-salacious epithets had been uttered thousands of times over the gaming tables), but that the rooms had been so remarkably still a moment before.

Afternoons were always rather quiet at the gentlemen's clubs on St. James Street . Although one could find gamesters at their play at any hour of the day or night, their numbers were few in the afternoons, most gentlemen reserving themselves for the headier excitement that filled the gaming rooms during the evening hours. In the afternoons, there were often more gentlemen dozing in easy chairs in the clubs' lounges than could be found at the gaming tables.

This was certainly true that rainy January afternoon at White's, the formidably fashionable club at Number 37. The famous bow windows (which Raggett, the proprietor, had installed five years before, in 1811, and in which the Dandies of London so frequently exhibited themselves while they eyed the female strollers on the street below) were on this day completely deserted. The dining rooms were also empty, and only one table was in use in the gaming rooms. So unpleasant was the weather that only a handful of gentlemen could be found snoozing in the lounges. One of these was Thomas Jessup, Viscount Birkinshaw. He'd folded his hands over his protuberant stomach, stretched his legs out before him, covered his face with a handkerchief to indicate to anyone who wished to converse with him that he was not to be disturbed, and had gone to sleep.

If one is to understand fully the progression of events, one must realize that Lord Birkinshaw was not compelled to venture out in the rain to nap at his club; he had a perfectly satisfactory town house in Curzon Street in which to make himself comfortable. His town house contained a perfectly satisfactory sitting room which in turn contained a perfectly satisfactory armchair in which he could quite comfortably snooze. But his town house also contained his wife, and it was to escape her carping that he'd taken himself out in the rain and made his way to his club.

On this day the subject of his wife's diatribe had been their daughter. The chit was in her fourth year at Miss Marchmont's Academy for Young Ladies and evidently causing as much commotion there as she had when she'd been living at home. Just the other day, he'd received a bill from Berry Brothers for a half case of French wine and several dozen pastries which had been delivered to the school. His wife, puzzled by the bill, had sent a letter of inquiry to the headmistress of the school, a horsey-faced female named Marchmont. The reply had come this morning. His daughter, it seemed, was the culprit who'd ordered the wine and the sweets. The minx had managed to smuggle them into the school in a laundry basket! Then she and her cronies had held a midnight party up in the school's attic and had become quite boisterous. They were, of course, promptly discovered, but by that time they were all tipsy, and even as they were led off to bed they could not be prevented from singing bawdy songs at the tops of their voices.

However, in her letter, the headmistress had a.s.sured the parents that they had no cause to upset themselves over the incident. The matter was not of any serious concern. They should not, she warned, make too much of it, such as deluding themselves that the incident signified in their daughter an incipient addiction to alcohol. There was nothing more significant in the incident than an outbreak of youthful high spirits.

The girls had been appropriately reprimanded, their daughter in particular, and she'd accepted her punishment in a spirit of good sportsmanship. The letter concluded with the statement that their daughter's tendency to youthful prankishness did not in any way keep her from ranking above average in her scholastic standing.

As far as Lord Birkinshaw was concerned, that should have been that. The end of the story. To him, the matter was nothing more than a rather good joke. But his wife did not agree. She'd spent the morning nagging at him about it. "The girl has to be taken in hand," she insisted. "Youthful prankishness, indeed! She's almost eighteen. It's time for her to put by that sort of nonsense! Do you know what will happen when word gets out that Kitty is the sort of creature who tempts her friends to drink and carouse? No bachelor worth a fig will come near her! Do you want your daughter to end her days a dotty old maid?"

But Lord Birkinshaw didn't see what he could do about it. What did his wife expect of him? Did she want him to take a whip to the girl? After more than an hour of such haranguing, he did what any man of sense would do-he banged out of the house.

His wife, he told himself as he walked to his club through an icy rain, had an uncanny knack of cutting up his peace. The disturbing feelings she'd generated remained with him all through his walk and even after his arrival at White's. It took him several minutes to unwind before he was able to sleep. And even then he found no peace-his dreams, too, were affected. He found himself immersed in a nightmare in which he was hosting an enormous wedding feast at which the guests were gorging on unbelievably huge quant.i.ties of Berry Brothers' pastry and the most expensive French champagne, his wife was glaring at him from the far end of a table a half-mile long, his daughter (the bride) was swinging drunkenly from the chandelier, and, worst of all, he himself, having forgotten to put on his britches, was parading around the room in his smalls. It was then that he heard someone say, quite loudly and from very close by, "Oh, d.a.m.nation!" He sat up with a start. That voice had certainly not emanated from his dream. He pulled the handkerchief from his face and found himself staring at Lord Edgerton, seated just opposite him. "What's that?" he asked, the last vestiges of his dream dissipating into the air. "Did you say something, Greg?"

Gregory William Wishart, Earl of Edgerton, was another regular member of White's easy-chair set, although he was much younger than most of them. Only five-and-thirty, Edgerton was the head of a household even more troublesome than Birkinshaw's. With a dithery mother, a brother who was always getting into sc.r.a.pes, and a sister who was convinced she teetered on the brink of serious illness, Edgerton, too, used the club to escape the tensions of his household, at least whenever he came to town from his Suffolk estate. At this moment, he was holding a letter clutched in his right hand, while his left supported his forehead, the fingers buried in a ma.s.s of dark, gray-streaked hair. "I'm sorry for waking you, Birkinshaw," he apologized. "It's just this deuced message I've received from Cambridge. My brother's been sent down again."

"You don't mean it! What's the boy done this time?"

"They don't say. But it must have been deplorable. The last time Toby was sent down, he'd been found running a gambling den in a room right behind the chapel! This must have been worse, for this message informs me that it's for good this time. I'm afraid the Honorable Tobias Wishart's m.u.f.fed his last chance. Dash it all, I'd like to give my deuced brother a good thrashing!"

"I know how you feel, old fellow. My wife was saying the same thing about our daughter. Practically suggested I take a whip to the girl."

"Oh?"

"Yes, a whip! What a wild, trouble-making minx she is, to be sure. Seems the chit bought champagne, had it smuggled into the school somehow, and then she and her cronies all got drunk as lords."

"Good G.o.d! Did they send her down, too?"

"No, they didn't, for which I thank my lucky stars. Don't know what life'd be like if she were sent home. We'd scarcely pa.s.s a day without a crisis. Last time our Kitty was home the to-do she stirred up was unbelievable. First she made eyes at one of the footmen, who promptly lost his head over her and had to be sacked. Then she ran up a bill at Hoby's for nine nine, mind you!-pairs of boots. Then she decided she wanted to prepare a Charlotte Americaine with her own hands and caused such a stir in the kitchen that we almost lost our cook. And, finally, she borrowed her mother's emerald brooch and then sold it to a cent-per-cent and gave the money to help a friend elope to Scotland, which brought the friend's parents to our house in such a state that I feared they would commit murder-and all this, mind you, in a mere three days' time!"

Lord Edgerton grinned, although he shook his head in sympathy. "Amazing, isn't it, the mischief youngsters can concoct these days? I sometimes feel, when I compare myself with my brother, that I and my generation must have lacked imagination. I don't think we were capable of concocting such sc.r.a.pes. Toby, when he was home for his school holiday, ran up a bill at Tattersall's for over a thousand pounds, made some poor young lady fall into hysterics at the dinner table by telling her that the wine she'd just drunk was really a love potion, and scandalized Lady Jersey by appearing at Almack's in his riding clothes. And, I may add, that's the week he believed himself to have been a model of good behavior!"

Birkinshaw snorted. "Young scamp! He needs to be legshackled, that's what he needs. Once a fellow's leg-shackled, you know, he's less likely to carry on. Responsibilities, you know. Marital duties. Having to please someone besides himself. Having someone who'll call him to account-who'll demand to know where he spent his time or his money. Having someone who'll expect him to show his face at dinner and all that. You ought to find him someone, Greg. Someone who . good G.o.d! Oh, I say! Greg, my boy, I think I'm about to give birth to a splendid idea! A really splendid idea!"

"Are you indeed?" Lord Edgerton laughed. "And what idea is that?"

"Marry your brother to my daughter! It'd be the answer for both of them. Each one has enough spirit to tame the other!"

"Come now, Birkinshaw, you can't be serious. Your daughter's just a child! A mere schoolgirl, isn't she?"

"Turning eighteen this week. Her mother's planning a comeout for her next season. We can make it a wedding instead."

Edgerton eyed the other man thoughtfully. "What do you mean? Are you suggesting that we arrange the whole thing ourselves? Without consulting the parties involved?"

"If we consult them, it'll never come to pa.s.s. Youngsters like ours don't ever agree to do what's good for 'em. We elders know best about these things. I've never approved of offspring making their own decisions on the subject of marriage anyway. All they do when one broaches the subject with them is moon on about finding someone who engages their affections. Affections, indeed! As if falling in love is anything more than a temporary fit of insanity! Stuff and nonsense, all of that love rot. When it comes to wedlock, anyone under the age of thirty should be made to follow parental instructions."

Lord Edgerton looked dubious. "I don't know, Birkinshaw. It's something I'd have to think over..."

"Think over? What can you want to think over? I tell you, Greg, it'd be the making of both of them. A perfect solution to our problems. Even my wife would agree that it's an ideal cure for her worries about ..." But at that moment Lord Birkinshaw's expression clouded over, for an important objection suddenly occurred to him. "Hang it all, now I think of it, I don't suppose she would ... ! Oh, well, perhaps the idea is a bit hasty."

"Hasty? Have you thought of some impediment?"

"It suddenly occurred to me that my wife might not see the matter as I do. She has great plans for Kitty, you know. Expects her to make an advantageous match. These women don't think a fellow's even eligible unless he's very well to pa.s.s. Hate to say it, my boy, but I don't think she'd consider your brother-what's his name? Toby?-I don't think she'd think Toby a promising prospect, his being a second son and all that ..."

"As to that, Birkinshaw, I've given the second-son problem a good deal of thought. I don't approve of the practice of settling one's entire fortune on the eldest son and letting the younger ones drift off without a penny. It's a downright crime to ingrain in the younger sons the habits of luxury and then abruptly cut them off from the wherewithall to indulge them. I won't do that to my brother. I intend to deal fairly by him. I plan to settle twenty thousand pounds on him. That would give him a quite satisfactory income, and, in addition, he'll some day come into a very substantial estate from his mother."

"Twenty thousand pounds!" This information brightened Lord Birkinshaw's brow considerably. "That is generous of you, Greg, I must say. My wife couldn't say twenty thousand isn't a bright prospect! In that case, I see no impediment at all to my little plan. None at all. So what say you, my boy? Shall we come to an agreement?"

Lord Edgerton remained hesitant. "Just like that? Settle two people's lives without further ado?"

"Exactly. Without further ado."

"I don't know, Birkinshaw. It's a bit high-handed, isn't it, to conclude a matter of such moment in so cavalier a fashion?"

"And how would you describe your brother's and my daughter's behavior, eh? High-handed and cavalier hardly covers it. The fact remains, my boy, that the two of 'em have been causing us all sorts of difficulty, and my plan will relieve us of a heavy burden. Many 'em off, I say, and give 'em the burden themselves. Let them have the delight of dealing with each other."

Lord Edgerton felt his grin break out again. "Rather like the pair in 'The Taming of the Shrew," eh?"

"Now you mention it, it will be rather like that. Except that in this case each will tame the other. Well? Is it agreed?"

Edgerton, sorely tempted despite the voice of his conscience whispering that there was something morally questionable about meddling in people's lives behind their backs even if it was for their own good, rubbed his chin with the tips of his long fingers while he considered the proposition. He couldn't deny that making such an agreement was reprehensible. But reprehensible as it was, his brother deserved it. The letter still crushed in his hand was tangible proof that the boy was indeed incorrigible. Not having known a father, he'd been too much coddled by a weak mother and too much indulged by an overly fond brother. Toby had never been forced to pay the penalties for his misdeeds. Perhaps marriage was a solution for the fellow. It was time he was forced to face some of life's responsibilities.

Edgerton lifted his eyes to Lord Birkinshaw's face. "Very well," he said with a sigh. "Why not?"

"Oh, splendid!" chortled Lord Birkinshaw. "Absolutely splendid! Then we have a bargain!"

"Yes, it's a bargain."

And the two men, without further ado, took the only step considered necessary to make the bargain utterly binding: they shook hands on it.

Chapter One.

An undersized eight-year-old girl in an oversized white pinafore opened the door of the music room of the MarchmontAcademy for Young Ladies and peered inside. What she saw made her want to laugh, but she stifled the impulse by clapping her hand over her mouth. Even though the sight before her was quite ridiculous, she knew it would go ill for her if she laughed aloud.

The six students of the upper school had formed a queue across the middle of the floor of the music room and were practicing the steps of the gavotte. Dressed in a similar fashion to their observer, in white pinafores and black stockings, they looked like a row of clumsy penguins. Each was standing at arm's length from the next girl, each had a book on her head, each had extended a right hand as if it rested on a partner's arm, and each had pinned up her skirts so that Miss Hemming, the dance instructress, could see if the steps were being properly executed. Miss Hemming herself was pounding out the Gossec "Gavotte in D" on an ancient pianoforte while counting out the beat in a shrill soprano. "STEP and STEP and three and four and TURN, CROSS, seven, eight! STEP and BACK and three and four and TURN ... hold your right arm UP, Clara! ... seven, eight!"

Clara, the plumpest and most penguin like of the five young dancers, while trying to comply with the instruction to lift her arm, unfortunately moved her head. This, of course, caused her book to slide to the floor with a thud. The noise distracted the others, two other heads turned, two more books slid down, and all the dancers' bodily discipline evaporated in a confusion of missteps and giggles.

"Young ladies, really!" Miss Hemming scolded, slamming her hands down on the keys in disgust and rising angrily. "You must move with a LIFT! An inner LIFT! Smoothly! With grace! You must think Up, Up, Up! How will you ever make your marks in a tonnish ballroom if you persist in this giddy-? Good gracious, child, what do you want?" This last was addressed to the little black-stockinged interloper in the doorway. The child's grin died away at once. "Mith Marchmont thent me," she lisped, dropping the dance instructress a quick curtsey. "She wanth to thee Mith Jethup."

"Me?" Miss Katherine (but always called Kitty) Jessup, one of the six young dancers, had knelt down to retrieve the book she'd dropped, but her head came up in instant alarm at the sound of her name. "Miss Marchmont wants to see me?" The girl in question was not the most beautiful of the group-plump Clara had more perfect features and Bella, the tallest, had a more perfect form-but Kitty was the one a stranger would notice first. Her hazel eyes seemed at first glance to be almost green, her upturned nose was covered with a sprinkling of charming freckles, and her hair was not only wildly disheveled but a unique shade of orange-red. If she were not the daughter of the very British Thomas Jessup, Viscount Birkinshaw, and his equally British wife, one might have taken her for a little Irish la.s.s.

"Of course it's you," Miss Hemming sighed, sitting down on the piano bench and shaking her head in a gesture of hopelessness. "Who on earth else?"

"Egad, Kitty, not again!" muttered one of the girls, not quite under her breath.

"Miss Marchmont warned you that there'd be drastic punishment if you got into another sc.r.a.pe," Clara reminded Kitty in a worried whisper. "She warned you! This time it'll be Coventry, and we won't even be able to speak-!"

"It must be a mistake," Kitty declared firmly to the child in the doorway. "I haven't done anything wrong in ... in weeks!"

The child stuck her chin out pugnaciously. "I didn't make no mithtake. The name I wath told wath Kitty Jethup."

"Kitty Jessup, you sly-boots," tall Bella demanded, "have you been up to some mischief that you've kept from us?" Kitty stood erect, her reddish eyebrows drawing together over a pair of offended eyes. "I haven't been up to anything that could remotely be called mischief."

"Oh, that's very likely, isn't it?" Bella sneered. "Listen to Miss Innocence Incarnate!"

"Don't be a clunch," Clara said, putting a protective arm about Kitty's shoulders. "If Kitty says she didn't make any mischief, she didn't."

"Then why is Miss Marchmont summoning-" "That will be enough!" Miss Hemming rose from her bench again with magisterial authority and clapped her hands for order. "Stop this babble at once! Kitty, Miss Marchmont awaits you. You are excused." She was about to turn her attention to her other charges when a final glimpse of Kitty's appearance brought her up short. "Wait a moment, miss! You can't go to our headmistress looking like that. Unpin your skirts, if you please, and put on your half-boots. You can't run through the corridors in those dancing slippers. And good G.o.d, girl, do something about your hair before you go down. You look like a Zulu! As for the rest of you, back to your positions, please. Books in place? Good. Now then, once again: WALK and two and three and four and TURN, CROSS, seven, eight. One and BACK and three and TURN and COME TOGETHER, seven..."

Kitty picked up her half-boots from the row of shoes lined up against the wall, tiptoed across the room, and let herself out. She closed the door behind her carefully, expelled a breath, and leaned against the corridor wall to change her shoes. When this was done, her eye fell on the little messenger who still remained in the corridor watching her with an expression of fiendish delight. "Well, what are you waiting for?" she asked the child coldly.

"I'm thuppothed to ethcort you."

"I don't need an escort, thank you. Besides, I have to straighten my hair. So you may run along. Go back to your spelling cla.s.s, to your geography book, or to whatever was occupying you before you came barging into my life."

"Mith Marchmont'll be livid for keeping her waiting," the child predicted gleefully.

Kitty frowned at her. "You needn't enjoy this quite so much, you little toady," she hissed.

The child felt a twinge of shame. "I'm thorry. I'm really not a toady. I didn't athk to go on thith errand."

"Mmm. Are you willing to help me, then?"

"Yeth, I thuppothe I can. But you ain't going to athk me to tell Mith Marchmont I couldn't find you, are you?"

"No, it's nothing like that. Just find Emily and send her to me. She's the only one who can fix my hair properly. She's probably making the beds in the fourth-floor dormitory."

"I can do that, all right," the child agreed.

"Good. Run along, then, quickly. And then go back to Miss Marchmont and explain that I had to change. Say that I'll be right along."

The child nodded and ran off. It soon became evident that she'd followed the instructions to the letter, for Emily, the school's most valuable maid-of-all-work, appeared in the corridor even before Kitty had finished unpinning her skirts. "Ah, there you are," Kitty greeted the maid in relief. "Sorry to take you from your ch.o.r.es, but Miss Hemming said my hair looked like a Zulu's."

The maid bobbed a curtsey. "I don't mind, Miss Jessup," she said in her soft voice. "I'd rather do hair than beds."

The maid, Emily Pratt, was a fixture at the school. Whenever a youngster needed b.u.t.toning, whenever a girl felt sick, whenever an upper school young lady needed a confidante, Emily was there. Every one of the students felt an attachment to her, though she never crossed over the invisible boundaries that separated maids from their mistresses. She was always una.s.suming, always serious, always eagerly helpful. Her appearance seemed to fit her character: modest, un.o.btrusive, and pleasant. Her face was pale and full-moon round, leading one to expect that her figure, too, would be full and rounded, but it was surprisingly slim. She had a pair of wide, intelligent brown eyes, silky brown hair that (when not pinned up in a knot as it was now) was long and lovely, and a smile that, in its rare appearances, would etch an unexpected pair of vertical dimples in those full cheeks. She was two years older than Kitty, but the round cheeks and wide eyes made her seem two years younger.

It was rumored that Emily had been a pupil of the school many years ago but that her parents had died in a coaching accident and left her without a penny. Miss Marchmont had kept her on, permitting her to continue with her music studies (for she showed outstanding talent at the pianoforte) and letting her earn her way by doing ch.o.r.es and occasionally helping to teach the pupils of the lower school. Kitty not only liked but admired Emily; the maid seemed to handle adversity with a shy, un.o.btrusive courage.

While Emily smoothed Kitty's flyaway tresses with a comb she conveniently kept in a pocket of her ap.r.o.n, Kitty told the maid what had happened. "What do you suppose Miss Marchmont wants with me this time?" she asked, fidgeting nervously. The maid struggled to untangle the hair on the bobbing head. "I'm sure I've no idea, Miss Jessup. Have you been up to some mischief again?"

"No, I haven't done anything wrong. At least ... not anything I can remember."

Emily managed to twist Kitty's locks into a neat braid. "If you can't remember, miss, then it couldn't possibly be some thing as shocking as the last time."

"You mean when I and my friends went up to the attic and were caught having a party? I never heard such a fuss! We were only a little tiddly."

"Weren't you just!" The maid grinned in recollection. "I don't think I've heard such wicked songs in all my life! You can't blame Miss Marchmont for being put out with you."

"'Put out' is hardly an adequate way to describe it," Kitty muttered, the sound of Miss Marchmont's tongue-lashing still ringing in her ears. "I wonder what she'll do to me this time."

"Miss Marchmont always says that a punishment should fit the nature of the infraction," the maid quoted, winding Kitty's braid into a neat coil at the nape of her neck.

"That's just it," Kitty sighed, "I don't know what the nature of the infraction is. "

But Emily couldn't solve the problem. She could only do up the hair. "There, Miss Jessup, that's done," she said, pinning the bun in place with a few hairpins from her well-supplied pocket. "It seems to me that you look quite presentable."

"Oh, thank 'ee," Kitty mocked. "Quite ready for the hanging, eh?"

"Oh, I don't think it will go as badly as all that." Emily was too serious to recognize the other girl's irony. "Miss Marchmont is nothing if not kind."

"Kind! How can you, of all people, call her kind? She's made a veritable slave of you!"

The maid's wide eyes widened even more. "Slave, miss? Oh, no, not at all! You mustn't think such a thing! She doesn't overwork me. And I'm paid a fair wage, you know. I have no complaints. Miss Marchmont's been more than good to me. I don't know what I should have done without her, you see. I've had no one else since I was nine."

"Well, I suppose she likes you. She must, if she's so kind to you. I think she detests me."

"Oh, no, Miss Jessup, I'm sure she doesn't." "We'll find out soon enough," Kitty muttered apprehensively. "Walk me down to the office, will you, Emily? If I go alone, I shall feel as if I'm marching to the guillotine."

They started down the corridor toward the stairs, Kitty trying to remember what transgression she'd committed that Miss Marchmont could have discovered. She was sure she hadn't done anything very terrible lately, mainly because Miss Marchmont's isolated and well-guarded school did not provide even a young lady of her fertile imagination many opportunities for wrongdoing. There were no young men in the vicinity; there were no hours of the day when the pupils were unsupervised (for even when they slept they were subject to bi-hourly bed-check); there were few unguarded doors (and those few were always locked), and even if one could manage to steal out, one could find no means of transportation to convey one to the more exciting sections of London. With such limited opportunities for naughtiness, what else could one be at Miss Marchmont's Academy but a good-well, almost good girl?

So why on earth had she been sent for? Kitty wondered. The dyed hair episode (when she'd persuaded all five uppe rschool girls to wash their hair with henna dye, and all six had appeared at morning prayers with identical red heads) had already been atoned. (She'd been forced to spend the weekend writing the history of the War of the Roses in original blank verse, while the others were made to wash their hair every morning and evening for ten days. And Miss Marchmont couldn't possibly have discovered the little puppy she'd hidden away in the tool shed at the back of the rose garden. Had someone shown the headmistress the ma.n.u.script for the play Kitty had written, which mocked the mannerism of all the teachers-including Miss Marchmont herself-quite unmercifully? It wasn't very likely; it was not yet in rehearsal, and very few people knew of its existence. Besides, there was only one copy, and that, she was sure, was safely locked in her bed-chest. "I can't imagine what I've done that she could've discovered," she said as they approached Miss Marchmont's office door, "but I'm certainly in the suds." She glanced over her shoulder at Emily in unaccustomed humility. "Are you sure I look presentable?"