The Honorable Miss Matilda Burningham paced the smooth lawns of her family estate on all the perfect glory of an early spring morning and bitterly envied the peace of nature. Blossoms frothed in a sea of pink-and-white waves in the orchard, daffodils blazed gold under the old trees on the lawns, and the sweet, heady exotic smell of hyacinth floated on the slight breeze. A blackbird at her feet cocked its glossy head, looking for worms. All was as it had been—on the outside at least.
King Edward, accompanied by his stupendous retinue, had departed, leaving Jeebles, the rambling ancestral home of the Burninghams, to relapse into its usual rural torpor. But inside, Matilda—Tilly to her few friends—were stirring faint, uncomfortable prick-lings of unease. She was glad to get back into her customary dress of old riding breeches and jersey, she told herself. The royal visit had forced her into fashionable clothes for the first and, she hoped, the last time in her life.
Tilly was only just seventeen years old and still carried around a layer of puppy fat that was slow to melt because of Tilly’s fondness for nursery teas. But she had done her best to please her father, Lord Charles Burningham, who had nearly had an apoplexy over the excitement of the king’s visit.
A lady’s maid had been hired specially to try to turn Tilly into a swan. Tilly’s skin still itched at the memory of the layers of clothes she had had to put on.
To begin with there was a garment known as a “combination,” a kind of vest and pants in one piece, made of fine wool with legs reaching to the knee. Over this had gone a corset made of pink coutil with busks fastening down the front and tight lacing at the back to produce a fashionable swanlike figure. To accentuate the bust and hips, silk pads were attached under the arms and at the hips. Then came a camisole or petticoat-bodice that buttoned down the front and was trimmed with lace around the neck and had diminutive puffed sleeves. Then came the knickers that had lace frills at the knee and buttoned at the waist. Then the steel-gray silk stockings that were clipped to the corset, and then the vast and rustling petticoat.
A blouse and skirt had been deemed suitable day wear for Tilly and proved to be an added torture. The junction of the skirt and blouse was concealed by a stiffened belt that fastened at the front with a clasp and at the back was pinned to the undergarments so that never an unladylike gap would show. Going to the lavatory had been turned into a full-scale military operation, reflected Tilly with a sigh.
She had been placed next to King Edward at the dining table. She had been told that the king liked to listen rather than talk, and Tilly had tried hard. But she was unused to making social conversation, and a cloud of boredom had soon settled over the royal brow. “Old Tum-Tum,” as the gourmand king was called, began to peevishly rattle his cutlery and drum his fingers on the table, a familiar sign that he was displeased with his partner. So poor Tilly had been supplanted by a dazzling charmer who had not even had her first Season, Lady Aileen Dunbar.
Tilly had always been rather scornful of frilly, fussy, and twittery girls like Lady Aileen, but she had to admit that she did envy her during the royal visit. And not only because of the king’s flattering attention to Lady Aileen, but because of the interest shown to the silly girl by none other than the Marquess of Heppleford. The marquess was designed like a Greek god with thick fair hair, sleepy blue eyes, and a classic profile. He was just over six feet tall and was accounted to be the finest shot and huntsman in all of England. Tilly, who was a keen huntswoman herself, longed for the handsome marquess’s notice. But, no. He only had eyes for Lady Aileen. Rats!
Tilly moodily kicked at a piece of manicured turf and turned her mind away from that particular worry to another. How on earth had her father managed to pay for all this magnificence. An extra wing had had to be built to house the royal servants, the library had been wrenched apart and rebuilt as a bowling alley to pander to the current royal fad, and then there was the food—the lobster, the quail—and the rare vintage wines, the champagne!
Since the departure of King Edward, her father had been closeted for long hours with his steward, only emerging from the estates office for meals, and each time he seemed to have grown older and more worried. But to all Tilly’s anxious queries he would only conjure up a thin smile and ruffle her carroty curls and say, “Don’t worry, my son. We shall come about.”
Lord Charles could be forgiven for often forgetting that Tilly was not a boy. She had faithfully dressed and behaved like the son he had always longed for, with the sad result that the marriageable young men of the county referred to her as “a good sport,” and her former girl friends, who had lately blossomed into ribbons and bows and whispers and giggles, now shuddered and said Tilly smelled of the stables.
Tilly set off on her rounds of her tenants, trying to banish the feeling that she had woken up on this spring morning to find that she was, well, somehow odd. She briefly wondered what her mother, who had died when Tilly was a baby, had been like and then pushed that thought aside as she headed for the South Lodge to inquire after the lodge keeper, Mr. Pomfret’s, weak chest.
Mrs. Pomfret looked none too pleased to see Tilly, as she was surrounded by stacks of clothes waiting to be ironed and had three small children clamoring and clutching at her skirts, but nonetheless she dropped Tilly a low curtsy and replied politely that Mr. Pomfret was “coming along remarkable.”
“I told him he shouldn’t have been out in that damp weather we had,” said Tilly. “I shall bring him some of my own medicine from the stillroom.”
“Well, I don’t know but that what the doctor’s given Fred ain’t the best thing—”
“Nonsense!” said Tilly brusquely. “I know what’s best for him. I’ll bring it along tomorrow. Goodness, I’m parched. Any chance of a cup of tea?”
“Of course, miss,” cried Mrs. Pomfret. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Tilly stretched out a booted foot toward the hearth with a sigh of satisfaction. Mrs. Pomfret made very good tea indeed. It never crossed Tilly’s mind that Mrs. Pomfret had more to do with her time than make tea. Tilly had been treated like visiting royalty by the tenants and the servants for as long as she could remember. Like many of her peers, she had fallen into the habit of believing that she alone knew best what to do for them.
She enjoyed living her tenants lives for them and genuinely believed she was bringing a little glamour and excitement into their mundane existences by her frequent visits.
There was the rattle of carriage wheels on the gravel outside the lodge and Mrs. Pomfret turned around with a cluck of dismay, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’d better go open the gates, seeing as how Fred is poorly,” she said.
“I’ll go,” said Tilly, bounding to her feet and surprising both herself and Mrs. Pomfret. “You attend to the tea.”
Thrusting her hands in her breeches pockets, Tilly strolled out to the massive iron gates. Her bright-red hair was shoved up under a boy’s riding hat and she screwed up her eyes to see who was in the carriage, a mannerism she had caught from her father, which dully prevented the world from finding out that the Honorable Matilda had an exceedingly fine pair of large blue eyes.
A brougham was drawn up at the gates, pulled by a spanking pair of glossy chestnuts. A liveried coachman in a spun-glass wig stared down at Tilly from his box.
“Open the gates, lad,” he called to Tilly. Tilly stood staring with her mouth open. Looking out of the window of the carriage was the exquisite and handsome Marquess of Heppleford.
“Come along,” said the coachman. “Damned inbreeding,” he added under his breath, making the footman on the back strap snigger and Tilly turn as red as fire.
Tilly swung open the heavy gates and stood aside as the brougham rolled past. The marquess’s cold gray eyes stared indifferently at her and then, it seemed, through her.
Tilly swung the gates shut again and made her way slowly back to the lodge. Should she have told that cheeky coachman exactly who she was? But for the first time in her life, Tilly began to feel vaguely uncomfortable about her own appearance and a vision of the sparkling and lovely Lady Aileen flashed before her eyes. The coachman would never have mistaken Lady Aileen for a lodge boy. But then Lady Aileen would never have lowered herself to opening the lodge gates!
Worse was in store for the Honorable Tilly. As she walked around to the back of the lodge and into the kitchen, Mrs. Pomfret’s voice from the bedroom above carried down the stairs with fatal clarity. “I dunno that I should have let Miss Tilly open those gates, and that’s a fact, Fred. But then there never was any use in telling her anything nohow. She means well, but she do take up a body’s time, asking for tea, and me with the ironing to do and the kids to feed. Thinks she’s doing us a favor, Fred, and that’s a fact. Bessie Jenkins down by the Five Mile says as how even when the king was here, she had Miss Tilly sprawled around her kitchen for a whole afternoon, telling her how to make seedcake—as if Bessie hadn’t been making it since the day Miss Tilly was born. And why don’t she dress like a lady?” Mrs. Pomfret’s voice dropped to a murmur and Tilly stood on the cold flags of the kitchen floor as if turned to stone.
She had felt she had been doing something worthwhile in visiting the tenants, thinking that they looked forward to her calls as much as she did herself. The kettle began to sing on the hob and Tilly gave it an agonized stare, as if it, too, were going to accuse her of time-wasting. She gave a little gulp and turned and ran from the lodge, up the graveled drive, cutting across the lawns to where the mellow pile of Jeebles lay basking in the morning sun.
There had been Burninghams at Jeebles for as long as anyone could remember. Perhaps in the days before the Norman Conquest there had actually been a Saxon called Jeebles to give the house its name, but if there had, there was not even a tombstone to mark his passing. The huge mansion was a conglomeration of different architecture that time and ivy had blended into a harmonious whole.
Tilly scuttled quickly up the back stairs to her bedroom and then marched up to the long looking glass and stared at her reflection. She had a shapely, if immature, plump figure. Tendrils of carroty hair escaped from under her riding helmet and her wide, brilliant blue eyes, for once uncrinkled, stared back at her in dismay. She was blessed with a creamy English complexion, unusual in a redhead, but it was already unbecomingly and unfashionably tanned.
She slowly pulled off her riding helmet and gazed in disgust at the rioting mass of red curls, unfashionably soft and round, not frizzled like those of the ladies in the fashion plates.
“I don’t like me,” said Tilly miserably. “I look like a freak… I pester the tenants… I wish I were a man. If I were a man, Heppleford wouldn’t look at me. He won’t look at me anyway. Oh, I wish…” But all these new agonies were so bewildering that Tilly did not know exactly what she wished.
It was not as if Tilly had never contemplated marriage. On her eighteenth birthday, she knew she would be “brought out” and have a Season in London, like other girls of her class. She would endure the hell of corsets and skirts until such time as some jolly good sort would propose, whereupon they would agree to give up all this London nonsense and retire to the country, where they would hunt amicably from morning to night. Tilly had been kissed after the hunt only the previous winter. Tommy Bryce-James, one of the local lads, had drunk too much champagne and had staggered with her behind some trees at the edge of the woods and had planted a wet kiss on her mouth. It had not been a particularly enjoyable experience, but Tilly vaguely gathered it was something that women either got used to or, if they could not, they shut their eyes and thought of the Empire.
The Marquess of Heppleford had seen her attired in a bewildering variety of clothes, since, during a royal visit, it was forbidden for any lady to appear in the same ensemble twice. But he hadn’t noticed her. Drat it! Tonight, she would go down to the drawing room exactly as she was. Other fellows considered her a good sort. It was as much as she could hope that the marquess would think the same.
Lord Philip, Marquess of Heppleford, looked rather anxiously at his host from under drooping lids. Lord Charles was not looking very well, although the man was only around fifty. His hair was already gray and the skin of his face was crisscrossed with lines of red, broken veins. His clothes hung loosely on his slight figure and his blue eyes held a lost look like that of a stray dog.
“So I happened to be in the neighborhood,” said the marquess, “and thought I would drop in and see how you were getting along after Kingie’s visit. My father suffered one of his visits, you know, and the old bank balance was bloody well near zero by the time he left. Just as bad as having Henry the Eighth landing in on one.”
Lord Charles leaned forward eagerly. “And how did your father cope? The bank balance, I mean.”
“Oh, he had various stocks and things that came up trumps. You in difficulties, Charles?”
“Well, I am rather,” said Lord Charles gloomily. “I’ve already had to sell off the property in Scotland, and then the hunting box in Yorkshire had to go. Trouble is, I invested in all the wrong things and the worse things got, the worse I invested. The king’s visit was the last straw.”
“You could have refused,” said the marquess lazily. “Told old Tum-Tum you’d turned Methodist or Christian Scientist or something. Freddie Barminster was threatened with the royal presence, so he sent a pile of tracts entitled ‘The End of the World Is at Hand’ and stuff like that to Buck House and informed His Majesty that he, Freddie, had found this splendid new religion and was just waiting for a chance to convert the monarch. Visit was canceled like a shot.”
“When the king of England honors me with a personal visit, I would think it unpatriotic and caddish to refuse,” said Lord Charles stiffly.
“I’m not turning Bolshevist, you know,” said the marquess mildly. “But with my father’s death, I inherited the title and the responsibilities. I’ve got a duty to my servants and tenants and I assure you, if His Majesty showed any signs whatsoever of honoring me with his presence, I would plead leprosy or anything else I could think of.”
“I envy you,” sighed Lord Charles. “But with old buffers like me, the monarch must always come first.” He looked up as the door opened. “Come in, my boy,” he said warmly. “Here’s Lord Philip kindly dropped in to see us.”
Lord Philip turned and tried not to stare. It was the boy from the lodge… no, it must be Charles’s son… no, by God, it was that weird daughter of his. What was her name?… Tilly… that was it.
He rose to his feet and made Tilly a graceful bow. He took her small hand to kiss it and found to his surprise that his own was being wrung in a knuckle-cracking handshake. A pair of large, beautiful eyes looked up into his own and then Tilly’s unfortunate mannerism of crinkling up her eyes took over. The marquess led Tilly over to a sofa and set himself to charm. He prided himself on his social manners and, after all, he was fond of old Charles. He therefore smiled dazzlingly into what he could see of Tilly’s eyes and asked her in his light, lazy voice whether she was looking forward to her Season.
“Oh, I shan’t be out this year,” said Tilly, slumping into the chesterfield as if she wished its down-stuffed depths would hide her. “But I suppose I shall have to go through with all that rot next year.”
“Come, now,” teased the marquess. “Surely you will enjoy all the balls and parties and all the young men paying court to you.”
Tilly gave a loud, embarrassed laugh. “I’d really rather hunt than do anything,” she said, and then her face brightened. “I hear you are a capital huntsman. You must tell me some of your experiences.”
“Perhaps, later,” said the marquess gently. He privately thought women were a nuisance on the hunting field, always getting their long skirts tangled in the branches. Not that this specimen of English womanhood seemed to bother with skirts—and more shame to her! Eccentricity was all very well in the middle-aged. In girls, it was painful. He averted his eyes slightly and wished he had not come. And yet… there was a strange, restless magnetism about this impossible girl. It was a pity… But that was as far as his thoughts about Tilly went, for Lord Charles gently claimed his attention.
Tilly made her escape. She had decided to change the slightly bored look on Lord Philip’s face. She would put on her best shirtwaister for luncheon—for surely the marquess would stay for lunch.
With the help of one of the housemaids, she managed to get into her corset, her skirt and her blouse with its uncomfortable high-boned collar. With great daring, she heated up the curling tongs and frizzled the front of her hair. Then she was liberally doused in something the housemaid referred to as Oh-Dick-Alone, and smelling exotically of cologne and burnt hair and walking gingerly on the unaccustomed height of a pair of French heels, Tilly made her entrance into the dining room. But of the elegant marquess there was no sign. Her father sat at the head of the long mahogany table, the dappled sunlight from the garden outside playing across his face. His face!
It seemed to have slipped oddly to one side. Tilly stopped and stood very still, her heart beating fast. The room was very quiet. Suddenly a thrush bounced up and down on the branch of a rosebush outside the open window and poured his vital, throbbing spring song into the silence.
“Papa,” whispered Tilly. Then louder, “Papa!”
But Lord Charles was dead.
The marquess had declined lunch and had left Lord Charles alone with his debts and his worries. Lord Charles had fretted over the new idea that had he not endured the royal visit, then he would not be in this horrendous financial mess.
He would have to sell Jeebles.
He had looked around the graceful room, at the silk panels on the walls, cleaned and restored in honor of His Majesty’s visit, at the graceful Hepplewhite chairs, and then through the long windows to the calm English vista of lawns and old trees and all the bursting life of spring. The realization of what it would mean to him to lose his family home had struck him like a blow over the heart. He had a massive stroke and died almost instantly, the tired look of pain and loss and bewilderment fading from his eyes.
Tilly stretched out a trembling hand to ring the bell for the butler. After all, one always rang for a servant to sort out one’s troubles. But this was one trouble that no retinue of servants could cure.
The Honorable Matilda was now alone in the world.
And penniless.