Tilly (7 page)

The former Honorable Miss Matilda Burningham would never have dreamed of allowing a servant to address her so familiarly or for that matter stop her from eating a delicious slab of Congress cake. But the present Tilly was deeply grateful for the maid’s friendship and, besides, Francine never called her anything other than Miss Burningham in public. She put down her cake with a sigh. “I’m getting as fat as a pig,” she groaned.

“You could lose it, oh so easily,” said Francine, “if only—”

She broke off as James, the second footman, appeared with an air of suppressed glee and announced in his stateliest voice, “His lordship, the Most Noble Marquess of Heppleford,
is in the drawing room and requests a few words with the Honorable Miss Burningham.”

Tilly jumped to her feet, nearly oversetting the tea table. “You must be mistaken, James,” she gasped. “Surely he wishes to see Lady Aileen!”

“No, miss,” said James, dropping his stately manner and grinning all over his face. “It’s you he wants, and it couldn’t happen at a better time. There’s no one else in the house.”

Tilly ran to the door.

“Wait!” screamed Francine. “I must do the hair and make the face and change the robe.”

“Can’t wait!” said Tilly, grinning. “He might get away!”

Francine threw up her hands in despair as Tilly, wearing a skirt and blouse that were coming apart at the waist and with her hair coming down and jam and cake crumbs on her face, hurtled down the stairs to the drawing room.

She hesitated outside the door, wishing she had not been so precipitate, but the butler was already moving to open the double doors of the drawing room, so there was no time to change her mind.

She blinked her eyes before the vision that
was the marquess. A stray sunbeam gilded his golden hair. His suit seemed to have been molded to his body and his embroidered waistcoat emphasized his trim, muscular waist.

“Pray be seated, Miss Burningham,” he began. Tilly sat down awkwardly and tried not to slouch. The marquess sat down opposite her with graceful ease, not even looking around to see if the chair was there—a social art Tilly had as yet been unable to accomplish, since she either fell on the floor or hurt her bottom on the edge of the chair.

“It’s awfully decent of you to call,” said Tilly. “Don’t get much callers.” She tried to give a coquettish laugh but it emerged as an embarrassed guffaw.

The marquess eyed her coolly. He did not feel in the least embarrassed. He was about to enter into a business contract, that was all.

“Miss Burningham,” he said, “you have perhaps heard that under the terms of my late father’s will I must marry before the end of the month. That is only a week away and here I am, still unwed.”

Tilly’s heart began to hammer uncomfortably against her stays.

“So,” he went on, “I wondered if you
would do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Tilly put a hand to her heart, a pathetic feminine gesture in one so robust, and her face drained of color.

“You see,” went on the marquess, “I am sure your position in this household is an unhappy one. I am offering you my name and a home of your own—a home rather like Jeebles—and in return I expect a partner who will fulfill the duties of her position and not… er… interfere in my affairs.”

Tilly opened and shut her mouth. “I wouldn’t,” she finally gasped. “I mean… interfere.”

“You do realize it’s a sort of business contract?”

“Oh,
yes!
” breathed Tilly, who really didn’t understand any such thing.

He stood up, and Tilly stood as well. He moved forward to kiss her on the cheek and then reeled slightly as Tilly gave him a resounding slap on the back.

“It’s most awfully ripping of you,” she said shyly. “Things are really ghastly here.”

“I am afraid we shall have to marry in haste,” he said, ignoring the cynical voice in his brain that murmured, “
and repent at leisure.
”

Tilly’s face fell. “I can’t p-pay for the wedding,” she stammered, “and I don’t like to ask Her Grace.”

“There is no need for that,” he smiled. “Send all the bills to my lawyer. Ah, I hear the duchess arriving. I had best break the news to her.”

At first neither the duchess nor Aileen could quite take in the news, but when it finally got through to them, their astonishment and dismay were ludicrous.

“Well, I ain’t paying for the wedding,” grumped the duchess sourly. “And I’ve got too much on my hands to bother with guest lists and all that.”

“And I certainly don’t want to be maid of honor,” said Aileen nastily.

“Nobody asked you,” retorted Tilly with a rare burst of spirit.

“Go and get your hat, Tilly,” said the marquess quietly. “You are coming with me.”

Tilly needed no second bidding and flew from the room.

When she had gone, the marquess turned his icy gaze on the furious duchess. “I am taking Tilly to an old friend of mine,” he said. “She will be married from there. I shall send for her trunks later in the day.”

“Scheming, conniving thing,” said the
duchess, referring to Tilly. “Glad to see the back of her. Never any use anyway. Oh, don’t cry, precious.”

Aileen was sobbing angrily into a pocket handkerchief.

The marquess swung around with relief as Tilly appeared in the doorway, with a straw boater crammed on her carroty hair.

“Tart!” howled the duchess. “Serpent!”

“Serpent yourself!” said Tilly. “You great hairy cow. You can take that backboard of yours and plonk your great bum on it and sail off down the Themes to oblivion, for all I care.”

The marquess winced at the vulgarity and Aileen went into strong hysterics.

“I’ve a good mind to slap you for your impertinence,” said the duchess, lumbering forward threateningly.

“Just you try,” gasped Tilly, putting up her small fists, more like a schoolboy than ever. “Come on, then. Let’s have you!”

The marquess picked up his enraged fiancée and carried her out of the house and bundled her into his carriage. “That’ll larn her,” said Tilly, flushed with success.

“By marrying me, you have revenge enough,” said the marquess severely. “Now,
straighten your hat, sit up straight, and be silent!”

“Yes,” said Tilly meekly. “Where are we going?”

“You are going to stay with an old friend of my mother’s, a Mrs. Plumb. I thought there might be some trouble, so I called on her before I saw you. She is very old but I could not take you anywhere else, since my relatives would certainly not welcome you. They wished me to keep the marriage—and the money—in the family.”

“Were you so sure I would accept?” asked Tilly, suddenly shy.

“Well, yes,” he said slowly. “After all, your position was not a happy one. But nonetheless, Tilly, you must curb these exhibitions of unladylike behavior, no matter how severe the provocation. And your language!”

“Spent too much time on the hunting field,” said Tilly with an unrepentant grin.

Her spirits were bubbling and soaring like champagne. It was just like a novel. They would be married. She, Tilly Burningham, the Beast, was to marry the Beauty. Love must follow. Why, all her novels told her so!

Mrs. Plumb lived in a great mock Swiss chalet in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, just north of Swiss Cottage.

The marquess rang the bell for what seemed an age before the door was opened by an elderly butler.

The butler inclined his head in a stately manner and indicated that they should follow him. He led them through a dark hall to the back of the house and into the garden, where an old lady was snoozing under the shade of a large oak.

“The Honorable Miss Buggering and the Most Nutty Mucker of Heppleford!” announced the butler.

“Don’t worry,” said the marquess soothingly as he noticed the startled expression on Tilly’s face. “He’s dotty. Been like that for years. Old lady can’t fire him; wouldn’t dream of it.”

Mrs. Plumb woke up with a start. She was a very frail old lady, dressed in gray lace, lying on a chaise longue like some insubstantial ghost in the bright sunshine.

“Welcome, Philip,” she said, offering a withered cheek to be kissed. “And this is…?”

The marquess introduced Tilly, who seized Mrs. Plumb’s gloved hand and operated it like a pump handle. “So you are to be Philip’s bride,” said the old lady, shrinking slightly back into the cushions of the chaise
longue, as if to retreat from the boisterous Tilly.

“I’ll leave you two ladies to chat,” said the marquess unfeelingly, not noticing the dismay on the two faces turned toward him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Tilly. It will be a very quiet wedding, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Tilly hurriedly.

“Yes, please,” said Mrs. Plumb faintly. “You may have the conservatory for the reception. So little there to damage.”

She held out her hand to be kissed by the marquess and then lay back against the cushions and closed her eyes.

Left alone, Tilly eyed her nervously. “Jolly ripping of you to have me,” she ventured.

“You must excuse me. I must sleep,” said Mrs. Plumb, opening her faded blue eyes. “Tell Jumbles—the butler, you know—to show you to your rooms. You must be exhausted.”

Tilly reluctantly complied, although she would have liked to stay in the fresh air of the garden with its bright flowers and cool grass.

The butler was nowhere to be seen and she suddenly did not have the courage to poke around strange servants’ quarters looking for him. She finally came across a startled betweenstairs maid who conducted her to a
pleasant suite of rooms on the second floor. The furniture belonged to the eighties of the last century, being of the hot, overstuffed variety. But a great elm tree grew right outside the windows of both sitting room and bedroom, shielding them from the brassy glare outside.

Tilly kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed, clasping her hands behind her neck and staring up at the ceiling.

Bit by bit her excitement began to fade, to be replaced by cold doubt. Already she missed Francine’s reassuring presence. And what would she, Tilly, wear as a wedding gown? There would surely be no time to get one made and even Tilly knew one simply did not wear ready-made clothes, particularly to one’s wedding.

Then she remembered she had her mother’s wedding dress in an old trunk with the rest of her belongings, which were being sent for. It would just have to do.

The marquess returned briefly that evening to tell her the wedding was set for a week ahead. He was pleasant, smiling, and businesslike. Mrs. Plumb appeared to have detached herself from the whole proceedings and Tilly was left to handle much of the arrangements for the wedding herself.

She was sorely in need of another woman to talk to, to advise her, to allay her fears. The marquess’s formidable aunts and their disappointed daughters were to attend, but they were of no help.

One evening during the following week, Tilly carried her mother’s wedding dress downstairs to ask Mrs. Plumb for her advice. But Mrs. Plumb had merely glanced at it through half-closed eyes and murmured, “Very pretty.”

Tilly longed for the courage to consult a dressmaker, but the bills were already heading in the marquess’s direction for food and flowers and wine and extra servants, since the servants in Mrs. Plumb’s mansion were mostly too old to cope with the added work and fuss.

Then there was the cost of the marquee to be erected in the garden and the fashionable orchestra to be paid.

The weather blazed on remorselessly and the letters to
The Times
prophecied drought.

It was a very hot and tired Tilly who finally stood at the altar for the wedding rehearsal. The marquess arrived with Toby, who was to perform the part of best man. Both seemed in high spirits—in more ways than one, to
judge from the strong smell of brandy emanating from them.

Tilly’s maid of honor was a timid, quiet girl, an acquaintance from Tilly’s Jeebles days, called Bessie Cartwright-Smythe. Tilly went through her part of the ceremony, anxious that she should not do anything wrong.

The marquess and Toby left immediately afterward to attend a bachelor party in the marquess’s honor, the silent Bessie went off to stay with an aunt, and Tilly was once more on her own. An old friend of her father’s, Colonel Percy Braithwaite, was to give her away and was spending the evening at his club.

The eve of her wedding!

She lay on the chaise longue in the garden, staring up at the faintly moving leaves of the oak tree, feeling increasingly nervous. She had not yet even tried on her mother’s wedding dress.

She thought of her husband-to-be with a sort of half-formed adolescent longing. If only he would smile at her tenderly—even hold her hand. He surely could not be indifferent to her, thought poor Tilly, unaware that that was the very reason that had prompted the marquess to propose.

I shall probably sleep with him,
thought
Tilly, feeling very warm at the thought.
But what on earth am I supposed to
do?
The duchess always says that only the lower classes feel passion—witness the Fallen Women—but all my romances are about lords and ladies. Perhaps he is distant with me because he feels it would be ill-bred to betray his feelings. And babies! He will want an heir. But how is it achieved? Surely not like the farm animals. Oh, these are dreadful thoughts….

And so Tilly’s mind raced on and on as a cool sliver of moon rose above the baking city.

After awhile she felt her eyelids begin to droop and she reluctantly took herself off to her hot bedroom. As she was dropping off to sleep an anguished thought struck her. She had forgotten to hire the services of a major-domo to announce the guests and she shuddered to think of the muddle old Jumbles would make with their names. And then she fell into a deep nightmare in which the marquess, aided by Aileen and the duchess, was pushing her into a home for Disreputable Women because she had betrayed too strong a passion for her husband.

The day of Tilly’s wedding dawned brassy and hotter than ever. She was awakened at dawn by the energetic hammering of the men erecting the marquee in the garden.

She dressed and went downstairs to find the house abustle with strange servants carrying chairs, potted plants, and silver. Mrs. Plumb appeared early as well, roused at last to a sense of her duties to her young guest. Tilly was bustled back upstairs with Mrs. Plumb’s antique lady’s maid to begin the long and painful preparations for the wedding ceremony.