Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (57 page)

Her heart began to beat uncomfortably against her ribs and something seemed to have happened to her breathing. His hair shone like polished gold in the gaslight of the ballroom and his evening dress was tailored to swooning point.

She suffered her first pangs of envy as she watched him walk quickly to Aileen’s side and begin to scribble his name in her little dance card.

Tilly watched the marquess and Aileen performing the lancers and tried to imagine herself in Aileen’s place. After the dance finished, the gentlemen were allowed to walk with their partners until the next one was announced. It was a marvelous opportunity, as even Tilly knew, for unchaperoned flirtation, and the marquess walked with Lady Aileen straight through the long windows and out onto the terrace and down the marble steps into the gardens. Tilly’s heart sank. Her heroes of the comics had no answer to this situation. What would Deadwood Dick or Jack Harkaway do in a situation like this?

The marquess, who had planned to further his acquaintance with the enchanting Lady Aileen, was annoyed to find that the garden was already full of groups of young people enjoying the warm night air. He was just about to compliment Aileen neatly on her appearance when the couple were accosted by a noisy group of young men and women. “How’s your Beast?” cried one. “She looks a regular guy tonight and oh, my stars, that dress!”

“Dragonish as ever,” said Aileen, smiling. “I am sure she will pursue me any minute to find out what I am doing in the moonlight. I am sure my Beast thinks that moonlight is such a lot of
rot
.”

Her audience laughed appreciatively with the exception of the marquess. “Who is this Beast?” he asked.

Aileen waved her long ostrich-feather fan languidly back and forth. “Oh, it’s my companion, poor Tilly Burningham. She’s called the Beast because she’s too frightful-looking for words. She follows me around like a dog, and if I’m not too terribly careful, she’s apt to slap me on the back and call me
a jolly good fellow
.”

“You’re wicked!” shrieked a girl with an admiring look. “Hasn’t the Beast got any feelings?”

“I suppose so,” said Aileen, enjoying her audience. “Who knows what passions lurk in the Beast’s bosom. Do you know she actually reads all those penny dreadfuls? If you look under the sofa cushions in our house, it’s simply
stuffed
with them. Oh, my dear Lord Philip, how you scowl! You must think me very cruel to my poor Beast.”

“Yes,” said the marquess. “Isn’t Tilly Lord Charles’s girl? Is she a guest of yours?”

“No, no!” cried Aileen, all mock horror. “Tilly is my
paid
companion. And very well paid she is too.”

“Your next partner will be waiting for you,” said the marquess, listening to the opening chords of a quadrille.

Lady Aileen moved very close to him. She was wearing a perfume called Jordan Water, bought at ten guineas a flask at Madame Rachel’s beauty salon in Bond Street, and she wanted to make sure he received the full benefit of it. Visions of being married and a marchioness, and all at the beginning of her first Season, danced before Aileen’s eyes. “I shall look forward to our next dance then… Philip,” she breathed in the husky accents of her favorite actress and then, with what she believed was a
killing
, seductive movement, she drew the feathers of her ostrich fan across the marquess’s face.

He looked down at her with a slightly stunned expression on his face at her effrontery, but Aileen thought Cupid’s arrow had pierced his heart and went off with her next partner, well-satisfied.

Having no partner for the next dance himself, the marquess went off in search of the bar and found his friend, Toby, drinking champagne with single-minded absorption.

“Found a wife yet?” asked Toby, his heavy-lidded eyes looking sleepier than ever. “Saw you mooning off with the Glenstraith chit.”

“Little tart,” said the marquess succinctly, helping himself to champagne. “Spends all her time mocking that lumpy companion of hers.”

“Doesn’t make her a tart,” commented Toby, fairly.

“No, but she called me Philip and wiped that bloody fan of hers across my face.”

“Oh, I say, that’s going a bit far,” said Toby, showing rare animation. “Well, there’s lots of other girls.”

“I’m tired of the whole thing,” said the marquess. “I think I’ll go and give the Beast a dance.”

“Which beast?”

“Tilly Burningham. Aileen’s companion.”

Tilly had reached that hypersensitive wallflower state where she felt the eye of everyone in the room was on her. She ached to be allowed to go home, to scrub the makeup from her face, and to indulge in a hearty cry. Tilly had not cried for a long time, not even after the death of her father. There had been too much to do, what with the funeral to arrange and then the exhausting months of winding up her father’s convoluted and bankrupt affairs.

To her horror, she felt the treacherous prick of tears behind her eyelids and was concentrating so much on pulling herself together that it was a few minutes before she realized that the marquess was standing in front of her and that he had said something.

“May I have this dance, Miss Burningham?” he said again. Tilly rose awkwardly to her feet. She did not offer him her dance card, since it was empty of names. Feeling as if she had been raised from the depths of misery into some warm and delicious dream, Tilly mutely allowed herself to be borne off into the steps of a waltz, gloved hand holding gloved hand. Tilly was an awkward dancer, moving clumsily on her high heels, and the marquess found he had to be extra nimble on his feet to avoid being trodden on. He did not bother to talk, feeling he had done enough in asking her to dance and, as for Tilly, she was too overcome by the thrill of being held in this magnificent man’s arms to open her mouth.

“Beauty and the Beast!” said Aileen, giggling, as she floated past in the arms of her partner. Tilly did not hear her but the marquess did and he steered Tilly as far away from Aileen as possible.

Somewhat to his annoyance he found it was the supper dance and led the bemused Tilly toward the long room where refreshments were being served. Tilly felt as if she were being led into some magic palace. Each table had its lamp with a canopy of tight red silk, its pale, plump quail, its mountain of strawberries, and its bowl of gardenias floating in their own private arctic of ice.

“Are you enjoying the dance, Miss Burningham?” asked the marquess politely.

“Oh, yes, awfully… awfully jolly, I mean,” said Tilly. “I mean ripping people and all that.”

“Quite,” said the marquess, privately wondering how soon he could make his escape. “I was distressed to learn of your father’s death.”

“Well, it
was
rather awful,” said Tilly, suddenly and embarrassingly conscious of the interested stares being directed at their table. “I mean, having to sell up as well. But I’m lucky to have a job.”

“It’s an unusual job for so young a girl,” said the marquess.

“I s’pose so,” said Tilly. “But Aileen’s a jolly sort of girl. Absolutely ripping,” said Tilly, resolutely banishing other nastier thoughts of Aileen to the back of her mind. After all, if it weren’t for Aileen, then she wouldn’t be sitting here talking away to the catch of the London Season!

“So,” went on the marquess, neatly dissecting a quail with the precision of a surgeon, “you must be enjoying your life in London. All the balls and parties.”

“I miss Jeebles, you know,” began Tilly. “Oh… rats!”

She had been trying to copy the marquess’s dexterity with her knife and fork but the treacherous quail skidded wildly and landed on the floor.

“Leave it,” said the marquess, trying to block out the delighted giggles of Aileen and her court. A liveried footman appeared suddenly and deftly slid another bird under Tilly’s blushing face. She looked at it miserably.

“Go on,” said the marquess gently. He was suddenly reminded of a time when he had had to entertain a friend’s schoolboy son to dinner. “Jeebles. You were saying how much you missed it.”

“Yes, I suppose I’m a country girl at heart. Jolly ripping in the country,” said poor Tilly, suddenly amazed at her own lack of vocabulary, her inability to find the right words to conjure up a picture of all her beloved home had meant to her.
Any minute now
, thought the marquess,
she’s going to say
, “
Yes, sir, please sir
,”
just like a schoolboy
.

“Doesn’t the duchess find it odd that her daughter should want such a young companion?” he asked. “And you are not eating anything.”

“I shall in a minute,” said Tilly. “No, Aileen—I mean, Lady Aileen—told her parents she was doing it as a sort of favor cos I didn’t have any money.”

“Has the duchess given you any duties?”

Tilly looked at him in innocent surprise. “No, I mean, why should she? I’m Lady Aileen’s companion.”

“She will,” said the marquess dryly and then could have bitten off his tongue, because Tilly was looking at him in bewildered amazement. Aileen would soon tire of her Beast, he thought, and the duchess would take Tilly over and then this odd, awkward girl would find that her life consisted of trotting around after the formidable duchess to endless committee meetings.

“I have troubles of my own,” he said lightly to change the subject. “My father’s will has just been found, and under the terms of it, I find I must marry in a month’s time.”

“Oh, how simply
awful!
” said Tilly, suddenly breathless and nervous. “I mean, what if, because you’re in such a rush, you end up married to someone you don’t like?”

“It could happen,” said the marquess, thinking of Aileen. Had she not revealed herself to be such a shallow miss, he could have well proposed!

“What type of man would you like to get married to, Miss Burningham?” he asked in a light, teasing voice that sent delicious shivers down Tilly’s well-corseted spine.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, staring at her still untouched food. “Someone to hunt with, be friends with, well… some good sort, you know.” She gave an awkward laugh and drank a glass of wine as if it were lemonade.

“But then, you would become just another kind of companion,” said the marquess, gently taking Tilly’s plate and beginning to dissect the quail in the way a mother cuts food up into small pieces for her child.

“No,
really
,” said Tilly desperately. He didn’t know who to marry! Could he be considering her? “I would have my own home, maybe somewhere like Jeebles and… and… I wouldn’t bother him much.”

“I have a place like Jeebles,” said the marquess slowly.

Tilly looked across the little table at him, wide-eyed, and the marquess stared back.

He wondered if it were a trick of the light, but he suddenly seemed to be seeing two girls: one the awkward, badly dressed schoolgirl, and superimposed over it, for the minute, a wide-blue-eyed, innocent, very feminine girl. Then Tilly crinkled up her eyes and gave a jolly laugh to hide her embarrassment and the illusion was gone.

“It doesn’t
look
like Jeebles,” he went on. “It’s all medieval battlements outside and Eighteenth Century rococo inside. But I’ve got a one thousand-acre estate with all the sorts of things you had at Jeebles—park and farms and that sort of thing.”

“Your wife would have to know how to get on with the tenants,” said Tilly, forgetting her awkwardness. “I mean, it’s very important to visit them and look after them and all that.” She suddenly blushed as she remembered the overheard conversation of Mrs. Pomfret, the lodge keeper’s wife.

“Oh, I don’t know that that side of it’s all that important,” said the marquess. “I have a damn good manager and, believe me, tenants would rather have someone who looked after the
practical
side of things, like repairing roofs and fences and so on, than some nosy Lady Bountiful dropping in at awkward times with chicken soup.”

They would indeed, thought Tilly sadly, but there was no one to tell her. She applied herself to her food and the marquess leaned back in his chair, watching her from under half-closed eyelids and wondering what he had said to upset her. And why on earth had he told this odd girl about his marriage plans? Imagine if he were to be wed to
her
. How shocked and disappointed his aunts would be! The thought of how shocked and disappointed they would be suddenly appealed immensely to him and he studied Tilly with new eyes.

She hadn’t looked that bad, he reflected, in her riding clothes. It was all that paint on her face and that dreadful dress that made her look such a fright. Now, just suppose he
did
marry this girl, he would be supplying her with a home, he would gain an undemanding wife who knew how to run a mansion, and he would infuriate his relatives into the bargain.

“Where’s my Beast?” cried a light, tinkling voice. Aileen was bending over Tilly’s shoulder, pressing her glowing, beautiful face next to Tilly’s own, showing the marquess what a contrast they made.

The marquess found he was actually beginning to dislike Aileen immensely. He would love to see Aileen’s face if he wed Tilly. But, oh, Tilly! She was looking nervous and miserable and guilty, as if she sensed that under Aileen’s laughter her mistress was not pleased that dowdy Tilly had kept this handsome lord away from the ballroom for so long.

“Have you forgotten,
dear
Lord Philip,” said Aileen, smiling, “that we have a dance?” She waved her little program in front of his nose.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” said the marquess, knowing he was being rude but enjoying the look of stunned surprise on Aileen’s pretty face. “Are you ready Miss Burningham? Come, Lady Aileen, we shall escort Miss Burningham back to the ballroom and then we shall dance.”

Relegated again to the row of chaperons, Tilly watched the marquess and Aileen dance past. She gave a little sigh. All she could do was treasure this evening up against the dreary, humiliating days to come; this evening when he had talked to her and looked at her and danced with her.

Tilly no longer wanted the marquess as a friend. She wanted him as a lover. But she did not yet know it and could only wonder why the sight of Aileen in the marquess’s well-tailored arms should distress her so much.