When Cinderella Met the Duke
Автор
Sophia Williams
Прочтений
18,0K
Глав
16
Chapter One
Miss Anna Blake
‘I am really not certain that this is a good idea,’ Miss Anna Blake said, surveying herself in the looking glass in front of her. She wanted it to be a good idea, because she didn’t know whether she’d ever again have the opportunity to wear a dress as wonderful as this or be able to go to another Society ball, but...
‘Nonsense. You deserve to have one last evening of enjoyment.’ Anna’s godmother, Lady Derwent, tweaked the gauze overdress of Anna’s ball gown into place and gave the tiniest of ladylike sniffs before wiping very delicately under her eyes with her beringed fingers. ‘I declare, you look like something out of a fairy tale, my dear: so beautiful. Your mother would have been so proud.’
‘Thank you, but...’ Anna began again. She was quite sure that her mother would not have recommended quite such an audacious deception. She had practised a deception of her own, when she’d eloped with Anna’s father, and had then had to spend Anna’s entire childhood attempting—with little success—to repair the damage done by the elopement. She had therefore been particularly desirous of Anna’s living as respectably as possible. The plan for this evening was not respectable.
‘You’re being far too cautious,’ Anna’s best friend, Lady Maria Swanley, told her. ‘If anyone should ever find out—which they won’t—it will be I whom they accuse of wrongdoing.’
‘Hmm,’ said Anna.
Nearly ten years of close friendship with Lady Maria, since they had entered Bath’s strictest seminary together, had taught her that Maria’s plots gave rise to much enjoyment but usually ended badly, for Anna, at least.
As the daughter of a rich earl, Lady Maria was usually protected from reprimand. Anna, by contrast, was the daughter of a groom. She was also the granddaughter of an earl, and sponsored by Lady Derwent, one of Society’s most redoubtable matrons and a great friend of her late mother’s, but in the eyes of Miss Courthope, the seminary headmistress, she was her father’s daughter and someone who could be punished much more thoroughly than could Maria, so whenever Anna had engaged in any mischief—usually with Maria—she had afterwards felt the full force of Miss Courthope’s ire.
That was one thing, and Anna had considered Miss Courthope’s punishments a small price to pay for how much she’d enjoyed misbehaving, but hoodwinking most of the ton was another. Surely that could give rise to any number of consequences considerably greater than having to write out one’s catechism three times or pen a letter of apology to the dance master.
‘What if Lady Puntney finds out? What if I oversleep tomorrow?’ Anna was starting work as a governess for the Puntney family in the morning. ‘And what if your parents find out?’ How had she allowed herself to be talked into this? Well, she knew how: both Lady Maria and Lady Derwent could be extremely persuasive and, if she was honest, Anna had been very happy to allow herself to be persuaded, and it was only now that the deception was almost under way that she was beginning to acknowledge her doubts.
‘If my parents find out, it is likely that they will also have found out about my engagement to my darling Clarence, and they will be interested only in that,’ Maria said.
Anna nodded; that much was true. Lady Maria’s beloved Clarence was a curate of very uncertain means, and her parents had their sights set on the Duke of Amscott, no less, as their only daughter’s future husband.
Anna was not convinced that her friend was making a sensible choice; Clarence might seem perfect now to Maria, but what if things became difficult in due course? He was of course a man of the cloth, so would—one would hope—hold himself to higher standards than did other men, but if he was anything like Anna’s father and grandfather, his love would not endure in the face of life’s obstacles.
When Anna’s mother had fallen in love at the age of eighteen with one of her father’s grooms, and then become with child and eloped with him, her father—Anna’s grandfather—had disowned her and refused ever to see her again. He had died a few years later. And after the money raised from the sale of Anna’s mother’s jewels ran out, Anna’s father had left to make a new life for himself in America, with no apparent further thought for his wife and daughter. When Anna had lost her mother, she had written to her father, and had received his—very short and not particularly heartfelt—reply over six months later. She knew that he had written it himself—her mother had taught him to read and write in the early days of their marriage and she recognised his handwriting—so had to assume that it did express his own sentiments. He had not suggested that she join him in Canada or that he attempt to support her in any way whatsoever.
Anna had been rescued from penury by the women in her life—her mother’s maid and then Lady Derwent—and she did not believe that men were to be relied upon. Lady Derwent had confirmed this belief; she had told Anna on more than one occasion that she was extremely happy to be a widow.
‘And in the meantime,’ Maria interrupted her thoughts, ‘I cannot go to the ball.’
The Dowager Duchess of Amscott was holding the first grand ball of the Season this evening, and, according to Lady Derwent, everyone expected the duke to be there, searching for a wife. Lady Maria’s birth, beauty and large dowry made her an obvious candidate for the position. When her parents had been called away and she had been entrusted to Lady Derwent to chaperone her this evening, Maria had suggested, most persuasively, as was her wont, that Anna attend in her place.
She had waxed lyrical about the dress that Anna would wear, the people she would see, the dancing, the food, the enjoyment of participating in such an excellent but entirely harmless deception. Lady Derwent had immediately echoed her suggestions, and Anna had found herself agreeing most thoroughly with everything they said. Now, though...
‘Lady Puntney will not find out,’ Lady Derwent stated, with great certainty. ‘Dressed as you are now, you look like one of Shakespeare’s fairy queens. Lord Byron himself would write quite lyrically about you, I’m sure. When attired in the garments—’ she scrunched her face disapprovingly ‘—you will wear as governess, you will still look beautiful, of course, but you will look quite different. I do not believe that anyone will make the connection. And we will leave at midnight so that you will not be too tired on the morrow.’
‘The timing is quite serendipitous,’ Maria mused. ‘Had this ball not been my first, had I not been incarcerated in the country in mourning for so many years so that I know no one in London—’ Maria’s family had suffered a series of bereavements ‘—and had my parents not been forced to leave town and entrust me to the care of dear Lady Derwent—’ Lady Maria’s grandmother was ill and her mother had left post-haste, accompanied by her husband, to visit her in her hour of need ‘—this would not have been possible. And by the time my parents return, Clarence and I shall be formally affianced, and no one will make me attend any more balls as a rich-husband-seeking young lady. So it will all be perfect.’
She smiled at Anna.
‘You look beautiful. That dress becomes you wonderfully. Perhaps you will find a beau of your own this evening, and marry rather than take up your position.’
Anna rolled her eyes at her friend. ‘I shall be very happy as a governess.’ She wasn’t entirely convinced that that was true, but it would be better than relying on a man to protect her, only to be abandoned when he lost interest in her; and she was certainly very lucky to have obtained her position with the Puntneys.
‘Harumph.’ Lady Derwent did not approve of Anna’s desire to be independent; she had asked her more than once to live with her as a companion, despite her obvious lack of need for one. ‘Let us go. You will not wish to miss any part of the ball, Anna.’
‘What if you change your mind in future, Maria?’ Anna worried. ‘How will you take your place in Society after I have attended this ball as you?’
‘No one would ever dare to question me,’ Lady Derwent said. ‘Should you in the future change your mind, Maria, and decide that you do not after all wish to marry an impecunious curate with few prospects, and that you wish to take your place at balls as yourself, I shall inform anyone who questions me that their eyesight is perhaps failing them and that the Lady Maria they met at the Amscott ball was of course you, and no one will contradict me.’
Certainly, very few people, including Anna, chose to disagree very often with Lady Derwent.
Anna turned to look again at her image in the glass. She loved this dress. It would be such a shame not to show it off at the ball. She loved parties—the small number that she had been to. She loved dancing. And everyone who was anyone amongst London’s glittering haut ton would be there, and she would love to see them all, and witness and take part in such an event.
She straightened her shoulders and beamed at the reflection of her two companions before turning back round.
‘You are both right,’ she said. She was going to take this wonderful opportunity and enjoy it to the full before starting her new, possibly quite dull life on the morrow.
‘It will be so diverting to know that you are practising such a masquerade,’ Maria said. ‘A huge secret that no one else knows. And you will enjoy the dancing very much, I am sure.’
‘Thank you, Maria,’ Anna said.
‘No, no.’ Maria hugged her. ‘I must thank you. Just make sure you enjoy yourself.’
‘I just want to check one final time that you are absolutely certain?’ Anna asked again.
‘We are certain.’ Lady Derwent was already standing and moving towards the door. ‘Nothing can possibly go wrong.’
