Perdita Read online

  “I will not hide!” my charge declared firmly. “I want to meet a duchess. I have never met one.”

  “You never will in my house, brat. Molly, take her above, for God’s sake, and be quiet.”

  “Do you suggest under a bed, or in one of the clothes-presses?” I asked helpfully, taking a sip of coffee. “Pity you had not a firescreen. They are used in all the best French farces this Season.”

  “Very clever, but you must go now!" he said, taking the cup from my hand and slapping it on the table. “I cannot have the likes of you seen by the duchess.

  “Indeed no! What would she think of her prospec­tive son-in-law? Why, she would take the inconceivable idea he is not quite the thing. I wager Lady Dulcinea would not like it, either.”

  “Go!” he said fiercely.

  There was that in his eyes that encouraged us to go, rather quickly. It was not till Mrs. Steddy had sneaked us up the backstairs that the full extent of our shabby treatment was borne in on us. I took Perdita to the Marlborough suite, not that I particu­larly wished her to see it, but I was curious to give all those gowns a closer perusal myself.

  “What did he mean, the likes of us?” Perdita asked, frowning. "John told him who I am.”

  "He did not believe us.”

  “Why was he hinting he would ask us back for a houseparty then, if he thinks that?”

  “Because he is a rake and a libertine,” I answered unhesitatingly, as I lifted an emerald green gown from a hanger, and held it up before me.

  “Would Phoebe and Angela not love to get into all these clothes?” Perdita asked, smiling at the gown. “Really it is a lovely outfit, well-made, and the crepe an excellent quality, only of course the style is so immodest.”

  “Stornaway is generous to his lights o’ love,” I agreed. I was not envious, but—well, I hardly know what I was, except to know I was angry and offended.

  “It is not right for him to marry Dulcinea, when he was only this week wanting to have me for his mistress,” Perdita said in her righteous way. “He cannot love her, do you think?”

  “Love her or not, he is eager to keep her good opinion, the wretch. Look, Perdita, there is a boa of feathers to go with the green gown. Something at least to cover one’s bosom. White marabou, with some stiffer feathers to give it body.”

  She picked the feather snake from the hanger and draped it around her neck, tossing the end over her shoulder in a dramatic gesture Phoebe would have envied. She examined herself in the mirror as she did so.

  I cannot say which of us hit on our revenge first. I rather think it occurred to us simultaneously. For many a long day now, and more strongly since last night, I had been fomenting at Stornaway’s treat­ment. Perdita’s piques did not last long, but she was in a prime one at the moment because he refused to present her to a duchess. She was ripe for mischief. So was I. We had already exchanged a daring, meaningful glance. Each waited for the other to speak first, in order to have someone to blame later.

  "It would serve him right!” she said, looking a challenge at me.

  "I prefer to think of it as a duty.”

  “But of course it is a duty! If he means to offer for Dulcinea, it is only fair she know his true character. And if he does not, then he cannot be so very angry. You take the green, Moira. It suits your eyes. I shall have a red, if I can find one.”

  "You could find any color under the sun in here, but they may not fit. His ladies are larger than you."

  “Why do you suppose the women left them be­hind? Do you think he made them?”

  “It would not surprise me in the least.”

  She found a red creation, too large, but there was a tray of pins on a dresser. My greatest concern was that the callers would have left before we were ready for our grand entrance. The very fact of his enter­taining them so politely, and at such length, while we were asked to hide, added to my scorn. We took time to stir our hair, apply rouge, and practice our Tuck accents before sashaying down the stairs, allow­ing free rein to our giggles and our accents.

  There was no hurry. He had ordered tea and biscuits, He sat between a faded hag of a grand duchess and a younger copy of her, with a teacup balanced on his knee and a pious look on his face when we entered. The pious look was the first thing to go, followed quickly by the cup as it fell to the floor.

  That one moment was worth every horrible thing that followed. Some demon possessed me. I looked at the outraged matron, who raised a lorgnette to ex­amine us, and I looked at the prissy daughter, who would have been pretty had she not practiced her mother’s facial expression. Mostly, I looked at Lord Stornaway, to see a glowering, repressing, furious scowl. His nostrils were dilated with anger, his lips thin. I felt a compelling urge to laugh. He could not do a thing before the duchess.

  I flashed a wide smile on them all. “Ain’t you going to make us known to your friends, Stornie?” I asked. “Lud, if we’re to be stuck in the middle of nowheres alone for the whole entire summer, we want to be on terms with the neighbors. You only plan to come down to see April weekends, you said.”

  “Damme, you’ve spilt tea on my good carpet!” Perdita scolded, in a nice, familiar way. Then she looked boldly at the ladies, made an elaborate curtsey, and said, “I’m April Spring, and this here is my Aunt Molly. She ain’t really, but Storn says to call her Aunt, for the looks of it. Say good day to the neighbors, Molly.”

  “Good day to ye,” I said, imitating her curtsey, while I allowed my feather boa to fall to the floor. I made an awkward business of retrieving it, blowing dust off its feathers, and finally rearranging it, while April castigated me for the awkwardest malkin ever she saw.

  They all sat staring, saying nothing. “Don’t be shy, ladies,” I encouraged the visitors. “Have you naught but tea and a biscuit to serve the company, Storn? That’s poor peck and booze for a genuine lord to be putting on his board. I’ll have my wine, if you please. I can have tea any old time. Give the ladies some of my wine. I don’t begrudge a glass to callers. Remember now, you promised to keep champagne in the house for us. April is used to the best from her patrons.”

  Still they were mute, so I marched to the sofa and sat beside the duchess, who moved over several inches to escape me. “I didn’t catch the name, dear,” I said in a friendly way, “but the servants says you’re a real duchess. It’s never true!” She blinked, opened her mouth, shut it, and looked to Stornaway for an explanation.

  Perdita, not to be outdone, minced to the doorway and bellowed, “Butler, bring us our champagne! The good stuff. We got a duchess here.” Then she smiled benignly on the callers.

  Stornaway was gasping like a fish out of water, trying desperately to concoct a story to account for us. “A—a friend of mine borrowed my cottage . . . I had no idea . . ." He stopped dead, run out of inven­tion.

  Perdita looked to him and giggled. It was for me to refute the story. “Oh if he ain’t the one!” I said, nudging the duchess’s elbow. “He’s been hounding my girl from one end of the country to the other like a fox after a chicken to get her under his protection. We held out till he come down good and heavy. No more working for fiddlers’ pay for us, eh, April lovey? Three thousand a year during pleasure, and one upon disagreement. She’s a good girl, mind. No business on the side. I stay with her every second, except for the nights Stornaway comes to her. She don’t give a straw for none of the fellows but her Storn. She’s a very good girl, and talented! Sing for the ladies, April.”

  “What would you like to hear?” she asked with a curtsey. In fact, she curtsied with great grace any time their eyes traveled in her direction.

  “That ‘Faire, Sweet, Cruel’ you was singing with the traveling theater is a nice, proper song, dear. We don’t want to scandalize a duchess with nothing too saucy.”

  The duchess recovered her breath and her wits. “I trust you have some good explanation for this spec­tacle, Stornaway!” she declared, arising up from the sofa, not without difficulty. “One does not expect to encounter ac
tresses—and worse—when she visits a polite household.”

  “There’s nothing worse!” I told her. “We was tem­porarily with a traveling troupe of actors—nothing but lightskirts and trollops, the lot of them. They’d take up with anything that offered, as long as its pockets was jingling. April was too good for them, which is why we was so glad when Stornaway come along. You don’t have to tarry to come into his parlor. He’s the finest gent I ever met, with ances­tors going back a decade—longer! And generous to a fault. He’s setting up a rattler and prads for April--the latest thing.”

  “For my daily constitewtional,” April confirmed, smiling and curtseying, before going to perch on the arm of his chair, with her white fingers stroking his neck.

  “Come along, Dulcinea,” the duchess said, pinch­ing her lips.

  "Dulcinea! Storn, honey, you never mean this is the gel we’re going to marry!” Perdita squealed. Her next move was inspired. She ran up to Lady Dulcinea, who had said not a single word thus far, and clasped her two gloved hands. “Listen dear,” she confided in a chummy manner, “there’s no need for hard feel­ings betwixt and between us. Share and share alike. I don’t hold no grudge against you, not in the least. A gent must have kids, as well as pleasure. Between the pair of us, we’ll keep this sad rattle in line, see if we don’t.”

  Lady Dulcinea’s lips finally parted. “I would not marry this man if my life depended on it,” she said, pulling away from Perdita’s grip, her face strained with anger. “He is only fit for the likes of you!”

  I looked to read Stornaway’s reaction. He had got over his anger. The ludicrousness of the affair ap­pealed to him. He was biting back his smile, while a glitter shone in his eyes. “It has been overlooked that I have not offered for you, ma’am,” he pointed out. “If you dislike my friends, it is best that we discover it now.”

  “Dislike them? Dislike them? You are beneath contempt, sir, to have subjected me to this.”

  “No invitation was issued. Had you waited to be asked to call, you would not have been subjected to it, and neither would my friends. My apologies, Molly.”

  “Never give it a thought, Storn. I’ve been insulted by better ladies than this pair of . . ."

  “We have never been insulted by a duchess before, Molly,” Perdita pointed out.

  “Oh she is a good girl. Honest as the day is long, even when it shows to her discredit,” I told Stornaway, before rounding on Perdita. “Of course we have been insulted by better, ninnyhammer. Didn’t Lady Olive call you a saucy baggage, and she is ten times as fine as a duchess. She owned her own public house, before she nabbed Sir Giles, and she has a sable cape, too,” I informed the duchess, with a haughty stare at her black bombazine.

  “That is trew!” Perdita confirmed, with a little curtsey.

  It was the last thing any of us got to say. With an angry huffing and a bustle of stiff bombazine, the duchess was off, her daughter two steps behind her. Dulcinea turned at the doorway and directed one last, accusing stare on Stornaway. Perdita lifted her finger to her nose in a bold gesture of contempt, then laughed loudly. Next she ran to the window to observe their departure.

  “Champagne, melord,” Steddy announced, arriv­ing with a silver tray.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  “Thank you, Steddy. Just leave it on the table,” Stornaway said.

  “If there’s nothing else you want, I mean to go and catch that rabbit that is eating up the missus’s garden."

  “That will be all.”

  Steddy put down the tray and left.

  “April, go up and change that ridiculous outfit,” he called to the window.

  “Ridiculous? How can you say so, Storn? Did you not pick it out and pay for it?” she asked, still assuming her dramatic accent.

  “Come along. I must change, too,” I told her, as I edged past Stornaway towards the hall.

  A hand fell on my wrist, tightened painfully. “You have asked to have champagne opened, Molly. I do not begrudge the expense. I am certain you are well worth the price, but I do insist you have a glass of it.”

  “I’ll have some,” Perdita offered.

  “No, brat, you will not. This is private. Out.” He jerked his head towards the hallway.

  "I’ll go then, but first I must find Lou. I’m afraid he might fall into the river. Cats can’t swim, but I don’t know if he knows that yet.”

  Stornaway released my wrist as soon as she was gone. I regarded him closely, wondering that he did not go into a rant at the trick we had played him. His very reasonableness made me fidgety. He poured two glasses of champagne, and handed me one. “Let us drink to the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he suggested, lifting his glass.

  “If you refer to the relationship existing between us, it is hardly new. But the champagne looks lovely.” I accepted my glass and drank.

  “I refer to the new relationship. Now that you have managed to give Dulcinea a deep and well deserved disgust of me, you can no longer refuse to become my mistress. I don’t intend to lose you, Mol. Come now, admit you owe me something,” he said, in a wheedling way, as he set his glass down on the table.

  “On the contrary; I feel the score is settled, at last.”

  “Think again. Our books are not balanced yet.”

  “Let the buyer beware. It is not my fault if you got no value for your money to Daugherty. As to Dulcinea, I cannot believe she would ever be happy with a man who tries to seduce innocent girls.”

  “I have never seduced an innocent girl in my life.”

  “I said try, milord. The motive must count for the act.”

  "You are paddling into treacherous waters there, Molly. There is only the intention between us as yet. If it is to be condemned as the deed . . ." He looked at me, with a significant leer.

  I put down my glass, ready to flee, but he spoke on in a sane way. “I am not angry about Dulcinea. Not at all. A man must marry someone. Some proper, preferably aristocratic and dowered lady, to carry on the family name and fortunes. It is expected, the thing to do, as folks say, but it need not prevent a man’s being happy on the side. Once I had settled on Dulcinea, I knew I would need a real flesh and blood woman, to keep my sanity. I have found her.”

  "Not in me.”

  He looked a long, searching, not entirely happy look. "Why not?”

  "I don’t intend to play second fiddle to your wife.”

  “First fiddle. You will be the love of my life, Molly, my real wife, in all but name.”

  “Let me rephrase that. I don’t plan to be part of any musical ensemble you are mentally orchestrating.”

  “The wife I had in mind was window-dressing, something to satisfy the world. I know social station means little to you. Even when you were playacting, you cast yourself in the role of chaperone, not lead­ing lady. Be my mistress, instead. Forget what I said about a short-term commitment, traveling light. I love you, and I wish I could marry you, but you know it is impossible. We’ll be like York and Mrs. Jordan, a permanent temporary liaison, semi-respectable, fertile I hope . . ."

  “Don’t speak of love in the same breath with an offer like this!” I said angrily. The word had jumped out at me from his speech, affecting me in a way I could not control.

  “Is it my fault you are a—what you are? I have no penchant for calling names, but it is ludicrous your taking high moral ground with me in this affair. We are both human, fallible, imperfect—let it rest at that.”

  There was a dull ache in my heart, and a sense of defeat. I don’t know when it happened. I had no respect for Stornaway; he was all I despised. A rake, unfaithful, opportunist and worse, but I loved him. Like John with his Millicent, I felt right when I was with him. I regretted that the only offer I would ever have from him was this unacceptable one.

  Even if my true situation were known, the offer would be no different. “Some proper, preferably aristocratic and dowered lady” was his requirement for a wife. I was none of them, no longer even decently proper.
A mistress, raising a brood of illegitimate children, and at the mercy of a self-proclaimed scoundrel was the best I could hope for. I could only repay him in kind, hurt him as he had hurt me. My experience with Daugherty and company showed me the way to do it, and end this conversation once for all.

  “If you are sure you love me, Stornaway, but I feel I must tell you everything. The truth is, I am preg­nant,” I said, casting down my eyes in a semblance of maidenly modesty.

  There was utter, total silence from his direction. Curious to see his expression, I looked up at him through my lashes. He was staring, his face cold and hard with anger. For a very long time he stood thus, looking, silent. When he finally spoke, I hardly understood his meaning. “Alton?” he asked. I had to think a moment before realizing he was inquiring for the prospective father. Poor John! This was re­ally too much to saddle him with.

  “No! Oh, no!”

  “Who?”

  “It—I don’t know really . . ." I thought of Daugherty and O’Reilly, but disliked to put myself in such a low category.

  “The possibilities are infinite, are they? Any of the Browns or Joneses who were entertained in the Green Rooms? It seems you have given yourself to everyone but me!”

  I became frightened at the temper that was mount­ing in him. There was an angry flush rising from his collar. I backed away a step. “I am leaving now,” I said.

  “The hell you are!” He grabbed me, in such a fit of passion that I feared he meant to strike or strangle me. I tried to push him off, which only incensed him the more. I was pulled to the sofa, the two of us wrestling like a pair of professional men. I became seriously alarmed, fearful for my very life. I knew Perdita and Steddy were outside, but hoped to bring Mrs. Steddy to my defense. I opened my mouth and hollered as loud as I could.

  "Help! Help!” I screeched. His hand came over my mouth, closing it violently. I wrenched my head aside and screamed again.

  This is how she found us, Perdita. She was on her way back into the house, with Lou in her arms. She looked a fright, in that awful red gown. She looked, made some muffled sound, dropped her kitten and left, ran back outside. I called after her, not able to believe she would desert me, in such dire straits as this. Stornaway had seen her, too. The sight of another person had the marvelous effect of bringing him to his senses. He loosened his grip, but was still dangerously angry. It was less than a minute before Perdita was back. She advanced, very calmly, with her hands behind her back, and a grim, determined look on her face. It occurred to me she had gone for a weapon. I hoped it was a good stout stick or a rock.