The Paper Princess (11 page)

“I'm sure you would,” said Dolph gleefully. “But you can't. All of London wants to get through her door.”

“When did you plan to return to London?”

“Well, unless you're going to throw me out, I meant to get back around the eighth to collect a new suit of evening clothes from the tailor.”

“Call on Princess Felicity,” said Lord Arthur, “and tell her your friend, Lord Arthur Bessamy, wishes to meet her, and see what she says. I shall take you back to London myself.”

Dolph looked huffy. It was not often he was invited to a rout from which his rich and elegant friend was excluded. Then his face lightened. “I'll ask,” he said cheerfully. “But she's bound to refuse. Now, when am I to meet your beloved?”

“If you mean Miss Barchester, then say so,” said Lord Arthur curtly. “This afternoon, at four, for tea.”

Dolph could not believe his eyes when he was introduced to Miss Barchester. He thought she looked as if one of the marble statues on the terrace of her home had come to life. She even had thick white eyelids and a small thinlipped curved smile.

Lord Arthur, teacup in hand, was standing by the fireplace talking to Mr. Barchester. Mr. Barchester was a plump, rounded man with a jolly face, and his wife, dressed in chintz, looked like an overstuffed sofa. How two such cheerful individuals could have produced the pale and chilly Martha Barchester was beyond Dolph. He found that lady was eyeing him with a gray, cold look. Her gaze dropped from his face and fastened on the area of shirt that was bulging out from under his waistcoat. Dolph always felt his clothes took on a nasty life of their own the minute they left the hands of his valet. His waistcoats tried to move up to his chin, his shirts separated themselves from his breeches, the strings at the knees of his breeches untied themselves, and the starch left all his cravats a bare half an hour after he had put them on.

His teacup rattled in the saucer as Miss Barchester began to speak. “Our fashions become more extreme, do you not think, Mr. Godolphin?”

“I ... I...” bleated Dolph.

“Yes, it is bad enough when the ladies adopt styles of semi-nudity and wear their waistlines up around their armpits. Now,
I
have my waistline in the right place. I never follow fashion. Fashion follows
me.
”

“Indeed,” said Dolph. “I fear London fashion cannot have had a chance to see you, Miss Barchester, for all the ladies adopt the high waistline.”

“Are you contradicting me by any chance, Mr. Godolphin?”

“No, no. I...”

“Good. Male fashions are every bit as ridiculous. Why do you think so many men aspire to be Beau Brummells when they do not possess either his air or figure?” Her pale eyes fastened again on Dolph's area of shirt.

“Blessed if I know,” said Dolph crossly.

“London fashions,” pursued Miss Barchester, “are distasteful to me.”

“Then, it's as well you ain't in London,” pointed out Dolph. He took a swig of tepid tea and eyed her over the rim of his cup.

“But I shall be. I am thinking of persuading Mama and Papa to take me for a few weeks. I aim to ...

how do the vulgar put it? ...
cut a dash.
”

Dolph looked at her curiously. Could she be funning? Or was her vanity so great that she really thought she could impress society?

But she was his best friend's fiancée. He forced himself to be gallant. “Well, by Jove, Miss Barchester, the ladies of London will be agog to see the fair charmer who has stolen the heart of such a hardened bachelor as Lord Arthur.”

“Exactly,” said Miss Barchester sweetly.

Dolph blinked in amazement. This engagement to one of the most eligible men in the country had quite gone to Miss Barchester's head. What on earth did Arthur see in the creature?

At that moment Lord Arthur strolled over to join them. “You are making me jealous, the pair of you,” he teased. “I saw you, rattling away there like old friends.”

Miss Barchester at his arrival on the scene became quiet and submissive. The wings of her brown hair shone softly in the candlelight, and the smooth drapery of her old-fashioned gown fell in straight lines from her waist to the floor like a medieval garment. She kept her eyes demurely lowered.

“By George!” thought Dolph, alarmed. “Arthur thinks he's got himself a meek, old-fashioned wife.”

At least Lord Arthur could be counted on not to ask his friend's opinion of Miss Barchester or discuss her in any way. And that was a mercy. For Dolph knew he would be hard put to it to think of anything good to say about her.

On the road home, he remembered the princess's rout and at the same time decided to do his uttermost to secure Lord Arthur an invitation. Anyone who saw the fairy-tale princess could never look with any complacency on such an antidote as Martha Barchester.

Mr. Palfrey told his butler, Anderson, to tell the boatmen to be ready to set off at dawn the next day.

The search must go on.

Anderson bowed and then went off to confide in Mrs. Jessop, not for the first time, that they had been mistaken in Mr. Palfrey. He must have loved Miss Felicity very much the way he searched and searched for her poor body.

Once he had gone, Mr. Palfrey darted to the door of the library and turned the key in the lock. Lovingly, he spread the castle blueprints out on the table before him.

In her haste, Miss Chubb had forgotten to shut the door of the priest's hole properly. Some months after Felicity's “death,” Mr. Palfrey, in one of his feverish hunts for the jewels, had noticed the crack in the wall and had discovered the hiding place. And that is how he had found the plans. He had searched the priest's hole thoroughly and had found the high ledge and the clean square in the dust that showed that a large box had recently rested on it.

From there he had deduced Felicity must have had the jewels in hiding and had taken them with her. It stood to reason that she would not have dared run away without any money. So the Channing jewels must have gone to the bottom of the ocean and, at least they, unlike the bodies, could not have been carried out to sea.

That was the reason he had the sea under the part of the cliff where they had gone over, searched each day so thoroughly.

He rolled up the plans and decided there were really no more undiscovered hiding places outside the priest's hole and the hidden staircase.

He would go to sleep early so as to be ready to continue the search early in the morning.

As soon as a red stormy dawn lit the heaving gray sea, Mr. Palfrey was there in an open boat piloted by the yeoman who had shied a piece of turf at him, but who now respected this man who had proved his love for the lost girl. Mr. Palfrey had grappling irons and various contrivances for hooking down into the water. It was the lowest tide they had had for some months, and Mr. Palfrey saw with rising excitement that there was an almost uncovered stretch of sand at the base of the rock. “Over there!” he cried to the yeoman, Mr. Godfrey.

“Better be careful,” shouted Mr. Godfrey as the open boat scraped its keel on the sand. “Won't be much time.”

“The spade! The spade!” shrieked Mr. Palfrey excitedly to one of the other men. “No, no. Give it to me.

I shall dig myself.”

“Look the way he do dig!” exclaimed Mr. Godfrey. “He'll cut any corpse in half, spearing down like that.”

They waited patiently, watching Mr. Palfrey's feverish efforts, half-amused, half-touched.

Then Mr. Palfrey felt his spade clink against something. He threw the spade aside, and, kneeling down on the watery strip of sand, began to scrape at it with his fingers.

With a triumphant cry, he held up a necklace. The fierce red sun shone on it and it burned with all the fire of priceless rubies.

Mr. Palfrey gave a hysterical laugh. “The Channing jewels!” he shouted. “I have found them. Oh, God, at last. After all these weary days of searching.”

The men in the boat watched him, stricken. “You mean,” said Mr. Godfrey at last, “that that's what you was looking for all along? You didn't give a rap for Miss Felicity.”

But Mr. Palfrey, ecstatic with delight, turned the flashing stones this way and that.

Then a cloud covered the red sun. It took all the light out of the day. It took all the fire from the sea.

And the necklace in Mr. Palfrey's hand turned into cheap glass, as if the Cornish pixies had played some hellish trick on him.

He had betrayed himself. The men in the boat looked at him with eyes of stone.

Mr. Godfrey seized the oars and shoved off.

“You can't leave me,” shouted Mr. Palfrey. “The tide has turned.”

“Then, swim, you liddle ferret,” shouted back Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. Palfrey stood there until the boat had disappeared round the point. Then, shivering and whimpering and cursing Felicity under his breath, he began to swim.

It was as well he remembered the secret staircase—for the castle was under siege by angry locals at the front. It would be a long time before he dared poke his nose out of doors again.

* * * *

He was ushered into a stately drawing room by an unnerving sort of butler who fixed Dolph's tubby figure with a haughty look, and said, “Make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof,” before bowing and stalking out.

A terrifyingly massive woman, with a hand outstretched, came down the room toward him. She was dressed from head to foot in black velvet. “I am Madame Chubiski,” she announced.

Dolph bowed. “I am come to see Her Royal Highness.”

“Vot is eet you vish?” said Madame Chubiski.

“I wish to speak to Princess Felicity about it, if I may.”

“What is it?” came a light young voice from behind a carved screen in the corner. Madame Chubiski waved an imperious hand, and Dolph approached the screen cautiously.

“I am come to beg a favor, ma'am,” he said timidly. Then he thought of Martha Barchester, and his voice strengthened. “My friend, Lord Arthur Bessamy, would be deeply honored it you could manage to issue him an invitation to your rout.”

There was a long silence, and Dolph felt almost as if the temperature in the room had dropped by several degrees. He turned about and smiled winningly at Madame Chubiski, who glowered back.

At last, the princess's voice came to him very faintly from behind the screen. “Yes,” it said on a little sigh.

“He may come.”

“Thank you,” said Dolph, bowing to the screen.

“You've got what you want, young man, so take your leave,” growled a robust English accent behind him. Dolph started. But there was still only Madame Chubiski in the room—who had sounded so foreign only a moment before.

But he felt he had better leave quickly before the princess changed her mind.

When he had gone, Miss Chubb said ruefully, “Did you really have to give him an invitation?”

“Yes, this way Lord Arthur will not suspect anything,” said Felicity, emerging from behind the screen.

“Besides, there will be such a crush, the poor man will have difficulty in seeing me at all! And I am supposed to be dead, remember? You know, Miss Chubb, I am so tired of this silly accent I have to affect, and your own is beginning to come and go alarmingly. Why do we not start to speak proper English—and praise our good Mr. Silver for effecting the transformation?”

“Good idea,” sighed Miss Chubb. “Do you know. I live in terror of being confronted by some fool who claims to speak Brasnian!”

“I speak excellent Brasnian, Your Royal Highness,” said Lord Arthur Bessamy.

Felicity carefully concealed all the dismay she felt. Miss Chubb had made a dreadful mistake. There must be a wretched place called Brasnia after all. Around them, the glittering cream of London society ebbed and flowed in the pink and gold saloon at Chesterfield Gardens.

With a thin little smile, Felicity said, “I do not wish to speak Brasnian. It would shame my tutor, who has been at such pains to teach me excellent English.”

“You are a credit to him, ma'am,” said Lord Arthur, smiling down into her eyes. “One would suppose, to listen to you, that you had been speaking English all of your life.”

Felicity glanced nervously sideways, looking for help. But Lord Arthur was a leader of society and so was being allowed a few moments alone with her, a courtesy afforded to very few. Miss Chubb's tall, feathered headdress could be seen at the far end of the room. “She should not have left me alone for a minute,” thought Felicity, irritation now mixing with her fear.

She took a deep breath. “May I congratulate you on your forthcoming marriage, Lord Arthur?”

“Thank you,” he said stiffly. “You are well-informed.”

“I make it my business to be so.”

“Tell me, do you know much of our country?”

“No, not much.”

“You have never been to Cornwall, for example?”

“I believe I have.”

Lord Arthur leaned closer to her and murmured, “Where in Cornwall exactly?”

“Why, I arrived at Falmouth.”

“His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, the Prince Regent,” cried Spinks loudly.

Silence fell on the room. The guests parted to form two lines.

Lord Arthur bowed and moved away. Felicity began to shake. This was flying too high! She had not invited the Prince, would not have dreamed of doing so. But Prinny went anywhere in society he wanted to go, invited or not.

How very fat he is, was Felicity's dazed thought as the corpulent royal figure moved toward her.

Miss Chubb tried to edge around the outside of the room to get to Felicity. Why had the Prince come this evening of all evenings? wondered Miss Chubb frantically. It had all been going so splendidly, and there had been no flash of recognition on Lord Arthur's face when he had first seen Felicity. And she looked so young and regal, standing in a white silk gown embroidered with tiny diamonds and seed pearls and with the Channing diamonds glittering and flashing.

Felicity sank into a deep curtsey before the Prince Regent. “This is a very great honor,” she said.

“On the contrary,” said the Prince, “it is you who do England honor. We have never been to Brasnia.”