Picture Perfect (2 page)

‘
Madeline!’ Augusta interrupted. ‘Haven’t you said quite enough! Anyway, how would anyone know Annabel is adopted?’

‘
These things become generally known,’ Madeline said.

‘
Are you intending to spread this around?’ Augusta snapped, and Annabel was cheered to see her younger cousin take her part.

‘
Of course not!’ Surprisingly, Madeline looked genuinely hurt at the accusation. ‘I would never do such a thing. How could you think that?’

Very easily, given your delight in revealing it to me, Annabel thought, and considered saying it, but at that moment her mother and Aunt Delilah returned. ‘Is something wrong?’ Mrs Black said at once and Annabel realised they had all risen in the heat of the argument and the usually peaceable Augusta was looking especially threatening.

‘
Madeline has just told Annabel that she is adopted,’ Augusta said at once. There was a shocked silence, somehow Annabel had not expected either of her cousins to admit this.

‘
Oh, my dear!’ said Mrs Black looking at her daughter with such anguish, that suddenly Annabel knew it was really, really true, and that up to now she had held a shred of doubt. But her mother, her mother who always knew how to make things better, was looking at her with such trepidation and pity, perhaps as she might look at a foundling which had just turned up on her doorstep, that even that last wisp of hope was dispelled. She felt a little sob building up within her chest and the next thing she knew she was enfolded in her mother’s arms and could hear Mrs Black saying fiercely, ‘Madeline, you are a thoughtless and unkind girl. Delilah, I think it would be best if

we did not accompany you to the Lockton House ball. Who knows what more mischief Madeline might cause?’

Safe in her mother’s embrace, Annabel felt her composure start to return and lifting her head, the first thing she saw was Augusta’s expression of deep disappointment and her heart went out to her. ‘Mother, please, that would only punish Augusta,’ Augusta really had tried her best to quell Madeline, and Annabel felt a new warmth for her younger cousin. ‘I would still like to be announced in her company.’

Mrs Black gave her a measuring look, then nodded her head briskly. ‘Very well, you are the injured party here and I shall be guided by your wishes. But now I think it is time we took our leave. Remember, Annabel we have guests this evening.’

‘
Ma’am, Colonel Black asked me to tell you he has gone to view a painting, but he will be back in good time for this evening.’ Mary delivered the message almost as soon as Annabel and her mother stepped through the door. The walk back had been swift and silent, Annabel not knowing what she wished to say, and Mrs Black seeming rather contemplative.

Mrs Black turned ruefully to Annabel. ‘Oh dear, I had hoped we could both speak to you together, will you be content to wait a little longer, or are there questions you must have answered now?’

Annabel found her tongue, ‘I don’t have any questions, but I have a headache. Will you excuse me if I go and lie down in my room?’

‘
But of course,’ Mrs Black pressed her hand, looking worried and Annabel wondered if she knew the headache was a fabrication, but she merely asked if Annabel would like her to send up a tisane. Annabel shook her head and escaped, suddenly desperately wanting to be alone to think.

In the confines of her room she found herself pacing while Madeline’s insinuations came back to haunt her. Her cousin was right, the fact of her adoption was bound to become general

knowledge. She had heard enough from Madeline and from her mother also to know how closely scrutinised were the debutantes and how their backgrounds were discussed in particular by the other mothers eager to launch their daughters upon society with every possible advantage. But that being so, why hadn’t her parents told her of this hindrance under which she must progress? Were they ashamed of the circumstances of her birth? Annabel found her mind fleeing away from where that thought led. She did not want to contemplate her origins in the slightest and found suddenly that she had made good her lie and her head was aching. Irritably she nudged off her shoes and lay down on her bed, trying to think constructively, but it was no use.

She must have fallen asleep and her mother presumably had judged it best not to disturb her for she was awakened by the sound of the front door closing and cheerful male voices in the hall below which signified the evening guests arriving. The guests that night were mostly friends of her father’s and their wives and she didn’t think she could face an evening of playing the dutiful daughter while all the time she doubted her right to the role, but the visitor below, who was now laughing, did not sound like her father’s typical acquaintance. Quietly she opened her door and crept in her stockinged feet to the landing at the top of the stairs and peered down just in time to see Henry ushering a tall man with dark hair into the drawing room before him. She wondered what the face of someone so immediately cheerful looked like and she briefly considered dressing for dinner after all but then Colonel Black appeared in the hall below and she realised that she did not want to see him in so public a situation before she had seen him privately. Hastily she retired to her room once more and rang for Mary and asked her to bring her a light supper. The image of the Henry’s friend stayed with her as she ate her omelette and toast. She had a feeling she should be occupied with fretting over being adopted, but there had been something about the man whom she had glimpsed so briefly which had caught at her in an indefinable way. Perhaps it had been his infectious laugh or his graceful, fluid walk. She wasn’t sure but despite having only seen him so fleetingly, she felt drawn to him. Henry had hinted that he was bringing a friend to dinner whom she would like to meet. If this was the friend then she thought her brother had probably been right. But she had forfeited her chance of making his acquaintance this evening and with Henry sailing again the day after tomorrow, she wondered when that opportunity would next come. Would she ever in fact be introduced to the tall, laughing stranger who had been so effective in helping her forget her troubles?

Chapter 2

Annabel had plaited her hair for the night and was about to change into her night-gown when there was a gentle tap at her door. She had heard the guests leaving shortly before, and thinking it was her mother she swung the door open and was quite taken aback to find Henry standing there.

‘How’s the head?’ he asked kindly. With his warm brown eyes, so similar to her own, surely the adoption story must be merely be Madeline’s fabrication. She stared at Henry blankly for a moment until she remembered the excuse she had given her mother hours before.

‘It doesn’t trouble me anymore, thank you,’ she said, hearing the primness in her words and wondering if Henry knew her secret.

‘It’s a pity you weren’t well,’ Henry went on. ‘A friend of mine was here tonight, I think you’d have liked him.’

She would have, she was sure, but seeing Henry, her brother and not her brother, brought everything tumbling back into her mind. ‘Did you know?’ she blurted out, ‘that I’m not a real Black? I don’t really belong in this family at all. Did they tell you?’

‘What?’ Henry looked at her as if he thought she might have a fever. ‘What are you talking about?’

Suddenly Annabel felt as if she could kick herself. He hadn’t known. If she had kept quiet he would have continued to believe she was truly his sister. She tried to dissemble.

‘Nothing. I was… I was just…’ It was no good. She couldn’t think of anything remotely plausible that would fit with what she had just said. Instead she turned away from him. ‘Madeline told me I’m adopted,’ and then to her own mortification she burst into tears.

‘There, there,’ Henry said after a moment and patted her ineffectually on the shoulder. ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘No I didn’t!’ The inanity of his response turned her tears to fury, which felt much better so she gave her anger a free rein. ‘Did
you
know?’

‘Well, yes.’

The unfairness of it struck her like a blow. ‘Do you mean to say Father and Mother saw fit to tell you, when they kept it from me?’

‘No, no, no,’ Annabel half turned back towards him and saw that Henry looked genuinely distressed. ‘They’ve never discussed it with me, but I remember it well. I always presumed you knew you were adopted. Don’t you remember coming to live with us?’

‘Of course not!’ Annabel turned around fully so that he wouldn’t miss the incredulity on her face at being asked such a patently silly question. But Henry persisted.

‘Really? But you were two, or there abouts.’

‘Two?’ Annabel was quite taken aback, being two did not fit the image she had of herself lying abandoned on the Black’s doorstep, wrapped only in a gossamer fine shawl, secured with a diamond pin in the shape of the letter… Her imagination became a little fuzzy when she tried to picture what letter the diamonds depicted. Obviously the initial letter of her original surname, but what that should be, she was not sure, something unusual, like Z, would better enable her to trace her true family, but all the names she could think of beginning with Z were too outlandish to contemplate.

At that moment Mrs Black bustled in. ‘You seem to be feeling a little better,’ she said briskly. ‘Now Henry, you must not keep your sister up. She’s had a trying day, and Henry, you yourself are sailing tomorrow, or so you told cook, who told Mary, who asked me if she should turn out your room in your absence, and so you should get to bed.’

Henry grinned and kissed his mother on the cheek. ‘You’re right as always. It’s just a little trip down to Bristol and back, so tell Mary to leave my room alone. Goodnight.’

He closed the door cheerfully behind him and Mrs Black seated herself on the chair at Annabel’s dressing table. Annabel felt her mother’s eyes on her for a long moment before she

spoke. ‘You, I imagine, are not tired at all. Our guests have all left. Would you like to come downstairs and have a glass of sherry with your father and myself?’

Mutely, Annabel nodded and followed Mrs Black downstairs. She felt her heart start to beat faster, but she could tell from the sudden lifting of her spirits that it was curious anticipation, not fear that she felt about the revelations which surely must come.

‘Annabel, darling,’ her father stood by the sideboard, two bottles already in his hands. ‘Sherry? Or would you prefer a drop of port? I’m butler for tonight.’ He wouldn’t quite meet her eyes and feeling a sickening lurch in her stomach, she looked to her mother for guidance.

Mrs Black seemed to read her mind, ‘Now, there’s no need for that,’ she said reprovingly to her husband. ‘Annabel and I will each have a small sherry, as well you know.’ Colonel Black slopped a generous amount of sherry into a glass before passing it to Annabel, but as he gave it to her he pressed her hand warmly and she knew everything was going to be all right.

‘Do you remember living in the house in Amersham?’ Mrs Black asked when they were all seated. Annabel shook her head. ‘That is not surprising, you were barely four when we left.’

‘You remember sliding down the banisters, I’ll be bound,’ her father interrupted, giving Annabel a conspiratorial wink.

Annabel didn’t but she suddenly realised that her father was more nervous about this tête-à-tête than she was and she grinned back at him. ‘Oh, yes, I remember that!’

‘I’m surprised,’ her mother said dryly, the doctor told us you were concussed after the last time you tried it and we had to keep you awake for a day and a night. He said you were unlikely to remember the incident or much that had happened in the preceding few months, but that the scar would ensure we would always remember that day!’

‘What, this scar?’ Annabel asked, raising her hand to the fine white mark in the centre of her forehead just below her hairline which she always took pains to cover with a graceful strand when putting her hair up each morning.

‘
Yes,’ her mother said reprovingly as if Annabel had committed such foolishness only yesterday instead of thirteen years earlier, and Annabel felt herself smiling at the absurdity of it. ‘You weren’t so wild when you came to us. You were barely two, possibly a little younger. It was hard to know, you certainly couldn’t tell us. Why, it was quite difficult enough to elicit your name, but we got it out of you eventually.’

‘Then we put it in the papers,’ Colonel Black said helpfully, ‘but no one came forward.’

So they’d tried to get rid of her! Annabel felt for a moment as if she couldn’t breathe and then she managed to gasp out her question before she could think the better of it. ‘And what would you have done if they had?’

‘
We would have had to have given you up, of course,’ Mrs Black said quietly, ‘although it would have broken my heart, but the family you came from must have been heartbroken to lose you.’

‘
How do you know?’ Annabel asked, feeling her heart start to race again as she thought of the diamond pin. Perhaps it wasn’t something conjured up by her imagination, perhaps it did exist. ‘Was there… did I have something…’ she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it out loud.