The news of Andrew Harvey’s engagement hit social London like a bombshell.
Lady Angela’s critics who had claimed that she did not show enough animation would have been hard put to recognize her as she marched up and down her bedroom with her face flaming with rage and her hair in a tangle.
One of the Blair sisters she could just about understand. But who on earth was Lucy Balfour-MacGregor? Everyone talked of her beauty and how she had made their Royal Highnesses laugh, but not once had Angela been able to speak to the girl. She always seemed to be on the far side of the ballroom, or, if it were a party, she would leave a few minutes before Angela arrived.
Angela cursed her stolid lady’s maid with incredible fluency and the coals were added to her wrath at the news that the Blair sisters had called and were waiting for her downstairs.
She finally marched into the drawing room of the Marysburgh town residence in Grosvenor Square with not one whit of her temper abated.
Lisbeth and Amy were sitting side by side on a chesterfield, holding identical lace hankies to their eyes and weeping identical tears.
“Oh, dry your tears,” snapped Angela. “I suppose you are upset about the news as well.”
“It’s too tewwible,” sobbed Amy. “If it had been you, dear Angela, we could have borne it.”
“Well, it’s not me. It’s that Balfour-MacGregor girl. Tell me about her.”
“We never got to know her,” said Lisbeth, “but we saw her at the court drawing room. She’s very beautiful,” she added maliciously, peering around her handkerchief at the infuriated Angela. “And we saw her last winter in Monte.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s visiting his parents,” wailed Amy. “All is lost!”
“All is not lost until they get to the altar. Oh, what is it, Mama?”
The countess had ambled in followed by the shadowy figure of Miss Jones.
“I’ve just read the news,” said the countess, lighting a cigarette—her latest fad—and puffing out smoke energetically. She then teetered around the room on her French heels, surrounded by her own private fog. Angela eyed her with distaste. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” said the countess, emitting another great cloud. “And you’ll make yourself look silly, Angela, if you make a fuss. Plenty more young men.”
“Of course,” said Angela, her face once more a beautiful mask. “Who cares anyway?”
In Stanhope Gate the news was received with bitter calm. Jeremy and Hester sat up in bed together, gloomily sharing the newspaper.
“I’d better go and start chasing another heiress,” he said. “And this time I’ll do it on my own.”
“Who will you go after?” asked Hester with a lightness she did not feel.
“One of the Blair girls or Lady Angela. They’ll be ripe for consolation.”
“And what about me?” said Hester quietly. Jeremy moved from the bed and began to get dressed. He looked down at his mistress who lay propped up on one elbow, the lace of her nightgown falling from her shoulder to cruelly show the skeletal outline of aging bones.
“Oh, you’ll find someone,” he said brutally. “But I tell you this. Andrew Harvey is not going quietly to the altar without me trying to put a spoke in his wheel. He should know about the mysterious sister, for example.”
“Aren’t you staying for breakfast?” Hester tried to keep the pleading note out of her voice but it trembled dangerously.
Jeremy pulled on his frock coat and buttoned his waistcoat. A diamond pin winked in his stock, one of Hester’s first presents to him.
“I feel like a breath of fresh air,” he said carelessly. “Bye.”
“Jeremy!” She stretched out a hand like a claw but he had already gone.
Hester sank back and buried her face in the pillows. After a while she finished sobbing and sat up to look around the cluttered bedroom at her various luxuries so soon to go under the hammer unless she could find a source of income. Perhaps Mr. Balfour-MacGregor could be blackmailed? A thin ray of hope began to dawn on her watery horizon. She would attack the minute Lucy and her father returned from the country.
Back in Marysburgh Miss Johnstone put down the copy of The Times of London and firmly wiped her glasses and put them on again. Lucy Balfour-MacGregor! It was too much of a coincidence. Why, that auld rip, MacGregor! What had he talked that wee lassie into? Why couldn’t he just have let her gather a modest dowry and then marry someone of her own class? Lucy should have had more sense. She sat down to write a letter.
Blissfully unaware of all the anguish they had caused, Andrew and Lucy had wandered the countryside around Brammington Chase, his parents’ home, in a happy and selfish state of ecstasy. Andrew’s quiet and retiring parents had taken an immediate liking to Lucy and MacGregor. There had been no cloud on Andrew’s horizon … until one afternoon when he and Lucy had sat down to compile a list of guests for the wedding. Lucy, it appeared, had no relatives to ask except her father. She had explained miserably that they were not on speaking terms with any other members of the distinguished Balfour-MacGregor family, because of some Highland feud. This was told in such a sad, weary voice that Andrew was at first inclined to believe her. But when she had shied away from further questions and had refused to discuss her home and had ended up running from the room, he had begun to suspect—just a very little—that she might be lying to him.
But he wanted her so much that he had run after her and apologized for he knew not what.
His mother had pointed out that Lucy was unusual in that she was honest enough to dislike her relatives and say so. So that little cloud vanished and all was sunshine again.
Then, as his mother had begun to make plans for an engagement ball, Andrew’s little cloud flew back across his sun.
Lucy had absolutely refused to allow the Earl and Countess of Marysburgh or their daughter, Angela, to be included among the guests. When Andrew had protested, Lucy had burst into tears, saying she was jealous. Andrew had reluctantly given in but had privately thought he could have sworn jealousy was an emotion foreign to Lucy’s character.
Pre-wedding nerves, said his mother sensibly. The Marysburghs were no great loss. But something had happened to Lucy’s relationship with Andrew. A coldness had crept in and sometimes when he held his fiancée in his arms, Andrew remembered her former passion and wondered why she now stood in his arms like a wooden doll.
One morning near the end of their visit he had decided to go riding on his own. He glanced in as he passed Mr. Balfour-MacGregor’s room. The door was open and Mr. Balfour-MacGregor was obviously waiting for his beard to be groomed by his valet. Andrew was about to go in when he noticed that Lucy’s father was devoid of toupee. He would probably be embarrassed to be found in his dishabille. Andrew was about to move on when the valet placed a hot towel over Mr. Balfour-MacGregor’s face. Mr. Balfour-MacGregor sat without his toupee and with his beard covered. Andrew found himself staring at a face in the mirror, a face that he had known before. For some odd reason the day on the lake with Lucy flashed back into his mind; the day when he had not recognized his second footman because the man was not wearing his livery. He remembered remarking to Lucy that one could never, ever place servants when one saw them in everyday dress. And he remembered Lucy’s sudden frown. Quite suddenly he realized that he was looking straight at the face of MacGregor, the butler from Inver Castle. MacGregor’s eyes were closed and he did not see Andrew.
The viscount walked quietly away with his thoughts in a turmoil. MacGregor. The butler! Then who was Lucy Balfour-MacGregor? Split the names. Let’s see. Take away Hamish MacGregor and you are left with Lucy Balfour.
Lucy Balfour. Ride carefully and think carefully.
It was another perfect morning, alive with the sights and sounds of summer. He rode deep into the heart of the woods far from the house and finally reined in his horse.
Lucy Balfour.
The sun slanted down through the trees and his horse bent its head to crop a clump of grass at the roots of a silver birch.
Lucy Balfour and Marysburgh.
He could smell the woodsmoke from the house and hear the whir of the lawn mower as the gardener mowed the lawns and then the sharp, sweet smell of cut grass reached him, wafting on the gentlest of summer breezes and mixed with the smells of breakfast—bacon, kidney, and fresh rolls.
Lucy would be descending to the breakfast room. His mother would be sitting at the table where the sunlight fell through the mullioned windows and shone through the paper-thin teacups. Lucy would be laughing and charting. She talked more to his mother than she did to himself.
The countess at that moment was talking to Lucy about how much she loved autumn in Scotland. “The rowan trees are particularly magnificent, my dear. All those clusters of scarlet berries against a background of purple heather.” Lucy smiled, her eyes growing dreamy. Again she saw Andrew standing at the bend of the road looking back at her.
It might have been telepathy—it might have been some malicious society imp who considered that the luck of the Balfour-MacGregors had lasted long enough—but a few moments after Lucy had conjured up her favorite picture, the same picture in reverse entered Andrew’s brain.
He was back on the hill above Marysburgh, among the autumn colors. The faint tinny sound of the band playing in the park rose from the town and he was standing beside his horse looking back at a Highland girl with green eyes and long black hair.
Then he was outside her house in the twilight and she was looking up at him shyly, saying, “Lucy, sir. Lucy Balfour.”
So that was why she did not want anyone from Marysburgh to come to the engagement ball. Lucy Balfour. Then she could not be MacGregor’s daughter and the couple had been living together as father and daughter. That nasty little thought weaved itself along the corridors of his brain until he dismissed it firmly. He was too old a hand to be mistaken about that kind of relationship. MacGregor may not be Lucy’s father but that was certainly the way he behaved.
Marysburgh. He racked his brains. There was something there, just on the edge of his memory. He was dancing with Angela and looking across the ballroom floor to where MacGregor and Lucy were peering into the ballroom. Damn! And wait, here was another. Angela’s lady’s maid. Quiet little thing. But he’d remembered thinking he had met her before and thinking what beautiful green eyes she had.
So the little lady’s maid and the butler had decided to take society by storm. And to take Andrew Harvey to the altar!
And where had they got the money? There was only one answer. Theft. They must have stolen jewelry or something immensely valuable from the Marysburghs in order to live in such a style. He felt sick. He would rather have put down an Indian mutiny single-handed than go back to the house and face that pair. If his heart did not break, then most of his other internal organs certainly did. His lungs could not seem to take in enough air and he had a sick, twisting pain in his stomach.
He led his horse through the woods and back over the lawns toward the house, feeling amazed that the sun was still shining.
He rifled through the mail on the hall table, trying to delay the inevitable confrontation. There was a bill from his tailor, and then one long white envelope addressed in an unfamiliar hand.
He opened it up and turned it over, looking for the signature. It was signed “a friend.” God! A poison pen letter. That was all he needed. But despite himself he began to read.
“Dear Viscount,” he read. Familiar bastard! “It may interest you to know that your bride-to-be amassed her considerable fortune in the casinos of Europe by playing baccarat at which she has almost magical skill and luck. She plays under the guise of her “sister,” disguising her figure by stuffing pillows down her dress and making her face—by some means—swell to twice its size.
“You are a lucky man indeed to be marrying such a gold mine. Ask Mr. Balfour-MacGregor what happened to his mysterious daughter Harriet. It is annoying to know that you are so rich already, my lord, that you will never need to use your wife’s tremendous money-making skills. But does the great and old name of your family wish to ally itself to a pair of liars, adventurers, and professional gamblers?”
Andrew stood clutching the letter as if it were a talisman. What a beautiful day it was! What glorious sunshine! What splendid roses! And God, he was hungry!
Lucy and MacGregor could be anything they damn well cared. But they had not wanted his money. They had not stolen money to gain their place in society. Poor Lucy! How she must have suffered! But what a splendid pair. The maid and the butler setting social London by the ears and the little lady’s maid making a king laugh!
She would have to tell him the truth before they were married. And somehow, he had a happy feeling that she would.
And Jeremy Brent, who had planned to wreck the marriage with his spiteful letter, would never know that he had been instrumental in saving it.
With a mocking gleam in his blue eyes, Andrew breezed in to the breakfast room.
“Morning, Mother! Morning, Lucy! Morning, sir! Gosh, I’m hungry. I never thought to tell you, sir, but some fellow in the club saw you last winter at a casino with your other daughter. What was her name? Harriet! That’s it. Said she had phenomenal luck at cards. I noticed you haven’t suggested inviting her to the wedding.”
He could feel the stillness of shock in the room behind him.
“Poor Harriet went into a convent in Belgium.”
“Oh, dear. Still that needn’t stop her coming to the wedding,” said Andrew blithely. “I’ll get Mater to write to the mother superior.”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” said MacGregor. “Harriet’s determined never to set foot outside the convent again.”
I bet she is, thought Andrew cynically.
Andrew turned around to bait MacGregor further but the sight of Lucy’s white face stopped him. He settled himself down quietly at the table instead and applied himself wholeheartedly to his breakfast.
MacGregor had recovered his poise and was chatting amiably to the countess. He looked every inch the aristocrat, reflected Andrew with wry admiration. And his voice was perfect too.
That evening he suggested a friendly game of cards. MacGregor and Lucy vehemently refused and Lucy rose immediately, saying that she would retire for the night.
He followed her across the great hall and stood at the foot of the great staircase. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, mounted a few steps, and looked around. He was still standing there looking up at her.
“Andrew.” The voice was like a sigh.
“What is it, my love?”
“N—nothing,” she whispered and ran away up the stairs and vanished in the darkness of the upper landing.
She nearly told me, thought Andrew happily. I know she’ll tell me.