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  “And – what does that – mean?” Carolyn asked in bewilderment.

  “It means that as far as we are both concerned, Papa married her nine months ago. He died almost immediately after the Wedding was over and Lady Maulpin has been in mourning. She is doing her duty in bringing to London Sir Frederick’s daughter, Carolyn, who has just reached the age of eighteen.”

  Carolyn was listening as if she could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  Then she said almost in a whisper,

  “Do – you think – anyone will – believe that?”

  “Why should they question it?” Amalita asked. “We have been buried alive here. No one has been interested in us since Mama died and Papa has been away. When he did come back, no one except the servants will recall having seen him.”

  “Don’t you – think that they might – talk?” Carolyn questioned.

  “In London?”

  “I see – what you – mean, but, Amalita, you don’t look old enough.”

  “Nor did Yvette! She admitted to being twenty-six, although I thought her older but I could not prove it.”

  She walked across the room and back again as if it was impossible to keep still.

  “I will find some clothes that will make me look like a married woman and I will do my hair the way Mama used to do hers. I will also use just a little of the cosmetics that Yvette left behind.”

  “You never told me she had left anything behind,” Carolyn exclaimed.

  “Well, she did,” Amalita replied, “but I did not think it of any importance. And there are the two gowns Papa bought for her that she always hated. She said they were too severe, but Papa bought them from a very expensive shop.”

  She gave a wry smile as she added,

  “I think that he was trying to tone her down a little. Perhaps he even thought that if she wore them he could introduce her to some of his friends. But, when the gowns arrived, she put them on one side and said to me. ‘I have no intention of wearing those dingy ladylike clothes that will make me look like a middle-aged frump’.”

  “You did not tell me she said that,” Carolyn replied somewhat accusingly.

  “Why should I? I thought at the time how vulgar her behaviour was.”

  “I just cannot think what Papa saw in her,” Carolyn murmured.

  Amalita was recalling how her father had come into the room at that moment.

  Yvette had sprung up and run from the dressing table into his arms.

  “Merci, chéri! Je t’adore!” she cooed. “I am thrilled with the presents you have given me!”

  She had been wearing very little.

  Only her topless stays that were tightly laced to keep in her waist and a transparent petticoat trimmed with real lace.

  She put her arms around Sir Frederick and pulled his head down to hers. She kissed him and went on kissing him as Amalita slipped from the room.

  She had known then that it would be just impossible for her father ever to escape from Yvette.

  Now, as she remembered these two gowns, she knew that they were exactly what she wanted at least until she could buy some in London.

  “I-I just don’t think we can do it – ” Carolyn was saying. “I am – sure we – will be discovered.”

  “You are going to have your Season in London if we die in the attempt,” Amalita declared. “And if we are very lucky, you will find a husband who will love you and you will love him.”

  She could see her sister looking at her wide-eyed and she explained,

  “That is the whole idea of the Season. You will have a lot of competition in finding the right man, but I will back you one hundred percent as a winner in the Matrimonial Stakes!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Carolyn went up to change her clothes, Amalita sat down at her father’s desk.

  She found the address book in which he had kept the names and addresses of all his old friends, the people with whom he had associated with before his first marriage.

  Among them she found the name of the Marquis of Garlestone whom he had always stayed with on the few occasions when he visited London.

  They had been great friends and Amalita remembered him saying so often.

  Now in her elegant handwriting she wrote,

  “My Lord,

  My late husband, Sir Frederick Maulpin, often used to speak of you and your kindness to him when he was a young man and later when he stayed with you sometimes after he was married.

  Now that I am out of mourning, I feel it is my duty to bring my stepdaughter to London for the Season.

  She will be eighteen in a month’s time and is as beautiful as her mother was.

  Could your Lordship be exceedingly kind and allow us to stay with you for two or three days while we look for a suitable house in which to entertain? I know it will not be easy to find one, but I am eager to do the best I can for Carolyn.

  She must be presented at Buckingham Palace and as well attend the balls that her father and mother always wished her to enjoy.

  Please, please, help me and allow us to stay with you or else perhaps your Lordship could recommend a respectable hotel.

  I remain,

  Yours most sincerely,

  Anna Maulpin.”

  She hated having to change her Christian name. But it was too unusual for it not to be remembered.

  Carolyn had called her “Am-am” when she was a baby so it was easy for her to remember that she was now called “Anna”.

  She remembered her father telling her once that good agents in disguise “thought” themselves into the character and personality of whoever they were pretending to be.

  “It is not only what you say and do when you are in disguise,” Sir Frederick had advised. “It is also what you think. That is what I am told by a friend of mine, who has undertaken many dangerous missions in enemy territory.”

  The great City of London was “enemy territory” as far as she was concerned, Amalita decided.

  She knew that she would have to be very careful not to be discovered and denounced as an imposter.

  It would most certainly be a disaster not only for her but even more for Carolyn.

  She loved her younger sister and she thought rather pathetically that Carolyn was the only one now left of her family.

  Once they had been so complete, just the four of them, father, mother and the two girls.

  Now, as she was the elder, she had to take command.

  She could only pray and pray that she would not make a mess of it.

  When she had finished the letter, she then put it into an envelope and addressed it to the Marquis of Garlestone.

  She then looked through her father’s address book to see who else she might be able to contact.

  Fortunately her mother had been most methodical in everything that she undertook.

  She had put a red spot next to the people Sir Frederick intended to contact

  His friends all had distinguished names and important titles and Amalita felt a little shiver go through her in case they refused to help, thinking that she would be a person like Yvette.

  Then she told herself proudly that she was her father’s daughter.

  From all that her mother had told her, he had been a most welcome guest in every house he had visited.

  “When I first married your father,” Elizabeth Maulpin said, “he had so many invitations that I used to tease him about them.”

  “And did you go to the parties too, Mama?” Amalita asked.

  “I went to them when we were engaged and just after we were married,” her mother replied, “but your father then decided that they bored him.”

  “Bored him, Mama?” Amalita exclaimed.

  Her mother laughed.

  “I think, my dearest, if I am honest, it was not because your father disliked the people and the parties that he had enjoyed so much as a bachelor but because I received too many compliments.”

  “I am not surprised, Mama. You must have been very beautiful.�
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  “People were very kind with the flattering things they said,” Elizabeth Maulpin replied, “but your father wanted me to himself.”

  It was what Sir Frederick had wanted right up until the day his wife died.

  Amalita thought that it very romantic. They meant so much to each other that nothing and nobody else was of any importance.

  But it was going to make it difficult now for Carolyn and herself.

  She was not even certain if her father’s friends were still alive. And, if they were, whether they still had the warm affection for him that they had felt in the past.

  She looked at their names on the pages.

  Then she told herself that the sensible thing to do was to wait until she reached London.

  Then she would ask the Marquis about those whose names were marked in the address book.

  ‘First things first,’ she told herself firmly.

  Then she wondered frantically what she would do if the Marquis was no longer alive.

  Or if he wrote back to say that it was not convenient to have them to stay with him.

  Having raised Carolyn’s hopes, she knew it would be sheer cruelty to dash them now.

  She sent up a fervent prayer that things would work out as she hoped.

  ‘Help me, Papa, you must help me now,’ she said in her heart.

  A wave of misery swept over her, knowing that she would never see him again.

  They had been very close.

  Although he had adored his lovely wife to distraction, Amalita knew that she held a very significant place in his affections.

  That was, of course, until Yvette came along.

  He had been so besotted with her that he did not want to remember his life as it had been before her mother died.

  Because Amalita was intelligent and innocent though she was of the world outside of Worcestershire, she could understand why her father had re-married.

  She had read enough books to know that when men were in despair or bereaved, they drank too much to forget their sorrow.

  Her father had always been abstemious and had drunk very little.

  So instead, crazy though it did seem, he had married Yvette.

  She had kept him from feeling so alone and bereft and with her he had been able to forget his overwhelming love for his wife. It had filled his life so completely that he had had no interests apart from her.

  The thought of Yvette made Amalita shudder.

  She could see her so clearly in the flamboyant clothes that she wore, which her mother would have considered vulgar.

  She could now see her painted face and the way that she enticed her father with every word that she said and every movement she made.

  Amalita sighed.

  She decided that it was best not to dwell too much on the past.

  She had to concentrate on Carolyn and her future.

  She very much hoped that her sister would meet with someone of high standing who would fall in love with her.

  She would not then have to return, when the Season was over, to the loneliness of their empty house.

  ‘I don’t know if we will have enough money to stay in London for very long,’ she admitted to herself, ‘especially if we have to rent a house.’

  After her mother’s death, when her beloved father had first gone abroad, he had said to her,

  “You are old enough now, my dearest, for me to give you Power of Attorney while I am away.”

  Amalita looked puzzled and her father explained,

  That means that you can sign cheques at the Bank as well as any legal document appertaining to the estate that would normally require my signature.”

  “I hope I can manage it for you, Papa,”Amalita said.

  “Of course you can,” her father replied. “It is not very difficult. There is enough money in the Bank and you will both be comfortable and have whatever you want while I am away.”

  He had not discussed the matter any further.

  Amalita had indeed not found it difficult to draw out what was required for the wages and housekeeping.

  At the end of the third month of her father’s absence, she had to sign a lease for a new farm tenant.

  Now it struck her that the Bank would not be aware that her father was dead unless she told them.

  She could therefore go on drawing what money she required without there being any difficulty about it.

  She thought about writing to the Bank and asking how much there was left in her father’s account.

  Then she recalled that by the time they had replied, she and Carolyn might have left for London.

  ‘I will leave it for the moment,’ she thought. ‘I don’t want them asking questions as to when I think Papa will be returning.’

  Later that evening she went to the room that Yvette had occupied during her stay in the house.

  It was on her father’s insistence that she had not been given the room that had always been his wife’s.

  It had pleased Amalita greatly to realise that, while he was infatuated with Yvette, her mother still had a special place in his heart that he would not despoil.

  Instead, Yvette had used the bedroom that was across the corridor.

  It was not next to his as her mother’s had been.

  Being the best spare room, it was most attractively decorated as indeed were all the rooms in the house.

  It had been cleaned and tidied after Yvette had left.

  Even so, as Amalita went into the room she could at once smell the strong exotic French perfume that Yvette had always used. It was so overpowering that she opened the window.

  Then she went to the wardrobe to see what Yvette had left behind.

  She knew that there would be the two gowns that Sir Frederick had bought for her in London but she had then refused to wear them.

  As Amalita looked at them she thought that they were exactly what she needed at the moment.

  One was dark blue and smart with an elegant bustle and the other was the colour of Parma violets and had a bustle made of little frills of a deeper purple.

  ‘I will certainly look older in these two,’ Amalita told herself.

  Then she saw there were two or three other gowns hanging up.

  They were very different and she shrank away from them as if they were unclean.

  They were in bright brilliant colours and cut very low over the breast and their bustles were exaggeratedly large.

  Amalita took out from the wardrobe the two gowns that her father had bought and laid them on the bed.

  She then went to the dressing table.

  Opening one of the drawers she found the cosmetics that she knew Yvette had left behind.

  When the housemaid had gone to clean the room, she had enquired,

  “Should I throw these things away, Miss Amalita?”

  She was clearly shocked at the thought of any woman painting her face.

  “No, of course not,” Amalita replied. “I am sure that her Ladyship will expect to find them where she left them when she comes back to Worcestershire.”

  The housemaid, who had been with them for several years, sniffed her disapproval. But she did not say what was in her thoughts.

  Now Amalita looked at the powder and a small pot of rouge and another box that contained mascara.

  She had thought Yvette’s eyelashes were unnaturally dark and at least that was something she would not need.

  She had inherited her father’s dark hair and as well his long dark eyelashes.

  When she looked at herself in the mirror, she thought that they framed her green eyes very effectively.

  Because she was dark, whilst Carolyn was very fair, she automatically looked older than she was.

  What she did not realise was that there was something not exactly young but spiritual about her face and eyes.

  It was something that no one could have found about Yvette.

  Carrying the cosmetics and the gowns, Amalita went to her own bedroom.

  Once there
, she inspected her own wardrobe.

  She thought that there was little she could wear that did not make her look her right age and certainly not five years older.

  Then, with what was a real effort, she went into her mother’s room.

  No one had slept in it.

  Because it was too painful to do, neither Amalita nor Carolyn had gone into the bedroom since her mother had passed away

  It was cleaned every week and the door would be left open while the housemaids were working there.

  But the two girls hurried past, knowing it made them want to cry to think that Elizabeth Maulpin was not in the big canopied bed.

  She had looked so lovely even when she was ill.

  She would smile and hold out her arms as soon as she saw them.

  Now in the room, Amalita closed the door and then she said in a low voice,

  “You will – have to – help me, Mama. I am doing – this for Carolyn and I am – sure you will – understand that I must – not make any mistakes.”

  As she spoke, the tears came into her eyes.

  Then, as she wiped them away, the last dying glimmer of the sun came through the windows.

  It glittered on the mirrors, the pictures and the large collection of ornaments that her mother had collected and loved.

  For a few moments Amalita could see nothing but the golden glory of it.

  Then she told herself that it was the answer that she had sought.

  She was doing the right thing and her mother would most certainly help her.

  Quite suddenly her apprehension and her fear left her.

  She was not alone and, as her mother had believed, there was no such thing as death.

  She went to the wardrobe, feeling that it was foolish that she had not come into the room before.

  Instead of feeling unhappy, as she thought that she would be, she had felt that her mother was there with her.

  It was almost as if she could hear her talking to her in her soft gentle voice.

  Amalita looked through her mother’s gowns.

  Some of them, she realised, were now completely out of fashion.

  The crinoline had been replaced by the bustle, which had been acclaimed in Paris and then quickly adopted in London.