A Fraudulent Betrothal Read online

  ‘I wonder what Marianne is really thinking?’ Clarissa sighed, faintly disappointed to find her bubble burst. Perhaps she should settle for the rector after all. She paused to think. No, that would be going too far.

  ‘Of her trousseau, I don’t doubt.’ Aunt Constance thought a moment before she changed the subject. ‘I dare say Eleanor will invite us to stay with her for the ceremony. We must think of refurbishing our own wardrobes. I wonder how long Leighton will want Marianne to himself before she may present you to the ton. Since she has taken so well, it follows that you must too, since you are as alike as two peas in a pod.’

  ‘I doubt if I’ll make such a brilliant marriage, but perhaps a respectable one, Aunt.’ Nor would I want to, Clarissa decided. In her heart and in her dreams she still hoped for a love match. Was that such an impossible dream in the world of fashion? She was usually categorized as the sensible one of the pair, but she’d always held on to her secret dreams of love. ‘Is there no more to read, Aunt?’ She returned to the letter.

  Constance skimmed through the balance of the missive quickly, too excited by the unexpected news to read it verbatim. ‘Most of the remainder is commonplace,’ she complained. ‘Leighton has other commitments to honour and will be gone from Town for most of the month to tour his estates, after which the engagement will be formally announced at a ball the Markhams are throwing in honour of the couple.’ She looked up and spoke directly to her niece. ‘I believe his properties to be vast.’ She scanned the words again. ‘Only think, they are situated in several parts of the country.’ She shrugged. ‘You can read the whole later. There may be more to the point in your own letter.’

  Clarissa broke the seal and held up the close-written missive. ‘It is dated several days following your letter,’ she said.

  ‘Mr Markham is a Member of Parliament, but I believe he generally has his letters franked by his sponsor, the duke. No doubt he is a busy man and his availability may have an adverse effect on their delivery,’ her aunt explained. ‘What does she have to say?’

  Clarissa quickly scanned the document, dismayed to find her sister had penned no more than a short note to update her. There was nothing in it that her aunt could disapprove of.

  ‘Leighton squired Marianne to no more than one party,’ she summarized, ‘before he left to inspect his estates. Otherwise she seems to be caught up in the usual round of gaiety.’ She frowned. ‘Apparently Lord Dalwinton has been pursuing her also. Too hotly for her comfort, she writes.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed her aunt. ‘Is that old roué still on the loose?’

  Clarissa opened her eyes wide. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Of him, at least. He is the most contemptuous of men. An evil lecher, though I never heard of him attaching himself to a lady of virtue before. He ought to know better than chase an innocent young girl like Marianne at his age.’

  Clarissa screwed up her eyes and concentrated on her sister’s letter which had been crossed and re-crossed to reduce the postage. ‘His attentions, though unwelcome, have become very marked,’ she decided, wondering just what had happened. ‘Since the engagement must remain our secret for the present, I have no one to rely on for protection until Leighton returns from his estates. Most fortunately for me a young officer on leave from the Continent intervened when Dalwinton caught me alone and attempted to kiss me. Leighton himself could not have dismissed his pretensions so well, nor struck such a well-chosen blow, all the while bravely dismissing his opponent’s vengeful threats.’ Clarissa frowned again while she attempted to decipher the jumble of words. ‘I have met Stephen on several occasions since and he is the most unexceptionable of young men, well received by all the hostesses of the ton.’ She looked up at her aunt with a grin. ‘It seems Marianne has made another conquest. I hope Leighton will not be jealous.’

  ‘Is that a visitor on the drive?’ Aunt Constance may have complained that her hearing was failing on more than one occasion, but she could still detect the rustle of gravel under the wheels of a carriage. She leaned forward to peer out of the window.

  ‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘I wonder who could be visiting unannounced at this time.’

  Clarissa joined her at the window in time to watch one of the grooms place a wooden step under the carriage door. Aided by its presence, a slim, well-dressed lady of fashion alighted.

  ‘Good gracious,’ Constance exclaimed. ‘It’s Eleanor.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Aunt Eleanor

  ‘Well, I declare.’ Aunt Eleanor strode angrily into the drawing-room in the wake of the housekeeper who’d answered her peremptory knock and straight away confronted her niece. ‘So you are here, madam. A fine way you have of repaying my hospitality after all I’ve done for you. And as for you!’ Eleanor turned to her sister, Constance. ‘How could you allow Marianne to desert me in such a detestable fashion, and with her ball already arranged? I don’t doubt half the town have discovered she’s promised to Leighton and will be sniggering behind my back if she fails to attend her own betrothal.

  ‘And Leighton!’ Eleanor turned quite pale when she considered the successful swain. ‘Let me tell you he is a proud and powerful man, who will undoubtedly set out to ruin us all if we succeed in making him the object of ridicule.’ The lady faced Clarissa again, quite ignoring the amazement plain on the face of both ladies. ‘I won’t have it, and so I tell you, young lady. Go and find your pelisse immediately. How far we can travel when it is already late in the day I don’t know, but I cannot stay another moment in the house of my sister, not when she could condone such a treacherous outrage.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Eleanor?’ Constance had turned quite pale under the indignant barrage, but the flags were beginning to fly in her cheeks. She remembered how Eleanor had always been ready to blame her younger sister for the veriest of trifles, and, for all the world, it seemed as though the leopard had failed to change its spots through the long years of separation.

  ‘What am I talking about?’ There was outrage in Eleanor’s voice. ‘Marianne stands unashamedly in front of us and you have to ask me what I’m talking about. Get yourself ready to leave right now, girl.’

  ‘Please, Aunt Eleanor.’ Clarissa spoke up, realizing her aunt was talking at cross-purposes. ‘I am not Marianne, but her twin sister, Clarissa.’ She paused while the other stared at her. ‘We really are very alike in looks.’

  Eleanor was struck dumb for a moment, but she rallied swiftly. ‘I don’t believe you for a moment,’ she declared, but there was a look of reassessment in her eyes that told the truth. She might not have been completely convinced, but much of the wind had been taken from her sails.

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s true.’ Constance took up the battle, only to be ruthlessly interrupted by her elder sister.

  ‘Then where is Marianne?’ The question started stridently, but wallowed into a wavering acceptance. ‘Is she truly not with you?’ Eleanor seized hold of Constance’s hands, a stricken look upon her face.

  ‘No, Aunt, she is not,’ Clarissa cut in with a worried frown. ‘We should rather ask the question of you. Have you come to inform us she is missing?’

  ‘Marianne missing? No, of course not.’ Eleanor’s face crumpled. ‘Only I don’t know where she can be.’

  ‘Come, Eleanor.’ A concerned-looking Constance took up the challenge. ‘Either you know where she is, or you don’t.’

  ‘I suggest you make yourself comfortable and tell us the story from the beginning.’ Clarissa was as worried as either of her aunts, but she could see that Eleanor was close to dissolving into hysterics. ‘Come, let me help you out of your outdoor clothes and I’ll arrange for a drink to be brought through for you. Brandy would seem appropriate in the circumstances.’

  ‘I believe I’ll have one too.’ Constance collapsed into an easy chair, mopping her brow with a lace handkerchief she’d retrieved from her pocket.

  In any other circumstance Clarissa would have admired the flowing lines of the yellow jean pel
isse matched with half boots in the same material and quite set off by the Russian bonnet perched atop her aunt’s head. As it was she flung the garment loosely across a convenient stool and called for their housekeeper to fetch the reviving brandy immediately.

  ‘Now, Aunt,’ she began, ‘tell us the whole and start from the beginning. What has happened to Marianne? I gather she’s left your protection, but have you any idea where she’s gone? Or why?’

  Eleanor sank back into the chair she had been offered and sighed faintly. ‘Oh my dears,’ she began her account, ‘I don’t know where to begin.’

  ‘Leighton is not involved?’ Clarissa was still wary of that gentleman’s alleged rakish tendencies, and her Aunt Eleanor’s fear of what his proud and imperious nature might induce him to do to the family in order to revenge himself hadn’t abated her trepidation one iota.

  ‘Oh no, my dear. Only think he left to inspect his estates some two or three weeks ago, and hasn’t been seen in Town since. Marianne’s spirits appeared to change after he left, though. At first she was aglow with pride and excitement in securing such a catch, but lately she has been cast down. I didn’t pay it any mind at first, she was missing Leighton perhaps. But, on reflection, that couldn’t have been the reason. Marianne isn’t the kind of girl to mope, and in any case they had met soapologetic very little before she was promised.’

  ‘Were they in love?’

  ‘Of course they were,’ Aunt Eleanor reassured Clarissa brightly. ‘Who could not love Marianne and, as for Leighton, why, he is the biggest prize on the marriage market.’

  ‘He squired her to a party before he left to inspect his estates? Marianne wrote something of it.’

  ‘Yes. I did wonder if he’d crowded his fences with her that evening and made a note to talk to her after the Farthingales’ party.’

  ‘Crowded his fences?’

  A delicate blush tinged Eleanor’s face. ‘I wondered if he might have frightened her.’ She broke off at the look on her niece’s face. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, you are so very young and innocent, but I must be blunt. He may have tried to make love to her.’

  ‘Make love to her?’

  ‘A kiss, a cuddle. The sort of thing any girl with a bit of town bronze to her would make light of, particularly in the case of the man she was betrothed to.’ Eleanor paused to correct herself. ‘Not that any young girl of breeding would allow a man to whom she was not promised to act in such a manner.’ Her voice began to register disapproval. ‘He should have recognized Marianne was only a country maid, however well she’d conducted herself in Town. Damn him, he should have known how to go on with her. She was apprehensive, and that is understandable, but there is not the slightest need. Leighton is, after all, a gentleman.’ She stopped to compose herself again, allowing Clarissa to set her to the right.

  ‘Quite what Leighton’s idea of love-making might be, I can have no notion,’ she declared forthrightly, ‘but Marianne would not have fallen into the mopes over a kiss and cuddle. Very likely she’d have been all the more disappointed if he didn’t try something of the sort.’ Clarissa vividly remembered how she’d found her headstrong sister calmly kissing their dance instructor one afternoon. A mere experiment, or so she’d declared, but Marianne had been neither set down, nor apologetic over that incident!

  ‘So Markham assured me, but that is why I speculated she might have posted back home to you. Only now I am quite out of ideas, and quite out of patience with the chit.’

  ‘Out of patience.’ Clarissa rarely lost her temper, but she came close to slapping the silly woman sitting in front of her. ‘Marianne has disappeared, and you are out of patience with her?’

  ‘That’s what is so strange about the whole affair,’ Eleanor chimed in, feeling calmer now she’d rid herself of her irritation. ‘She is gone and I have to admit I don’t know where, but she hasn’t entirely disappeared. We received a note from her on the following day.’

  ‘Are you sure it was from her?’

  ‘No doubt about it. I’d know her handwriting anywhere. She wrote such pretty letters for me.’ Eleanor spread her hands wide in a gesture of resignation. ‘It was the day after the Farthingales’ party and I was abed until late morning.’

  ‘Did Marianne attend the party too?’

  ‘She was expected to, but I received word she was to travel with a party of her friends.’ Eleanor hung her head. ‘I didn’t know it then, but that was a lie, for those very friends missed her too. All I knew at the time was that I didn’t see her at the Farthingales’, though it was such a squeeze it would be easy to miss one young person in all the throng.’ She paused to explain. ‘I had the most dreadful headache and left the party early in company with Markham. Little did we realize what our ungrateful niece was planning.

  ‘Next morning, later on as I explained, Marianne’s own maid passed me the note. It was most definitely in Marianne’s handwriting, but it gave us no clue to her whereabouts. It said only that we were not to worry for her and that she would return as soon as she was able.’

  ‘Where did the maid find the note?’

  ‘That is what’s so odd about it. Marianne gave the note to her in person. She’d packed herself a portmanteau and left the house early that very morning, yet I’ll swear she hadn’t been in her room the previous evening. I heard from the housekeeper herself that Marianne’s bed hadn’t been slept in. Whatever tipped the scales happened the previous evening, but it can have nothing to do with Lord Leighton.’

  ‘Has the maid been in your employ for long?’

  ‘Three or four years, as I remember,’ Eleanor confirmed. ‘She followed her mother into service.’

  ‘Then she is entirely trustworthy?’

  ‘A servant can never be trusted completely for they will rob you blind if they think they can get away with it.’ Eleanor showed her prejudices. ‘But Sophie was elevated from under-stairs to take on the role of maid to your sister. She was utterly devoted to her mistress, and I don’t doubt her word on this matter. The note, I am sure, was left by Marianne.’

  ‘Have you informed the Runners?’

  ‘Of course not. Only think what a to do that would cause. The girl left of her own free will, even left us a note saying she’d be back. If we had some clod hopper about us playing detective word would soon be all around the ton. Marianne would be the subject of the most scandalous on-dits, and we’d all be ruined. The disgraceful behaviour of her mother would be spread abroad again too. Like mother, like daughter; they’d all be saying it behind her back.’

  ‘She couldn’t have found our mother, could she?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Eleanor stared at her sister and when that woman gave a nod continued with her explanation. ‘Your mother’s long dead, child. Once she’d run off with Robert they were no longer accepted in polite circles and straight away posted off to the more liberal surroundings of Paris. They were never married, never could be whilst your father was alive, and Robert was cut off from his family’s fortune. They borrowed heavily and eventually Robert left her to face their creditors alone. I heard, years later, that she died in abject poverty.’ She sighed heavily. ‘There’s no doubt that this disappearance, if discovered, will ruin your sister’s reputation and yours too, very like.’

  ‘What did you tell her friends?’ Clarissa didn’t care a fig for her reputation, nor for the fate of a mother she’d never known, not when her beloved sister was missing.

  ‘Only that Marianne had contracted a chill and must not venture out for a while. We hoped she’d soon reappear, but when her friends began to call on us, we had to pretend she’d posted to her Aunt Constance’s cottage in the country to recuperate.’ Eleanor nodded in satisfaction. ‘That’s what made it so easy for me to visit without tongues wagging. Mark you, once the gossips have the measure of our discomfort, tongues will begin to wag.’

  Suddenly the woman poked an accusing finger in Clarissa’s direction. ‘Wait,’ she cried, staring at her niece as though she’d had a brain-wave
. ‘You look as alike as two peas in a pod. Your voices are identical too. Even once you introduced yourself I was still half convinced you were Marianne herself.’ She turned to stare at her own sister. ‘Clarissa must take her sister’s place in our household. She can play the girl to perfection. Leighton will return to Town next week and our grand ball is imminent. It is imperative that Marianne is available to greet him.’

  ‘But if Marianne plans to return?’

  ‘It would be inconvenient to have two Mariannes in the game I don’t doubt, but we could spirit you away on the instant. Markham shall arrange that much. He is sadly discomforted, poor man.’

  ‘How can I play such a part when she is betrothed?’

  ‘That is precisely why you must play the part. Marianne will lose her chance at marriage if she is suspected of running off. With the unfortunate example set by her mother, it is not only Leighton who will spurn her, but every other man with any pretension to a place in society. And don’t expect any help from me if that happens. Markham and I will be the butt of every wag in Town if the girl we sponsored walks out, and Leighton will be the first to aid and abet them. The engagement is nothing while it is still an understanding, but Marianne must take her place at his side when we announce their betrothal at our grand ball.’

  ‘Lord Leighton,’ Clarissa issued the name faintly, ‘is planning to marry her and will surely recognize I’m not the same girl to whom he plighted his troth.’

  ‘My dear, you can take my word for it. Leighton doesn’t know the chit so well he could tell you apart. At the best he squired her to parties, always in company, and even if they could have arranged a lover’s tryst, and trust me they couldn’t, they wouldn’t have been left alone for long. Besides, he has been occupied on his estates for most of the month.’