274. Good or Bad. Barbara CartlandЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Carolyn moved away from her arms.

      “Tell me your idea,” she pleaded.

      Amalita walked across the room to the window.

      She stood gazing with unseeing eyes at the sunshine flooding the garden.

      Carolyn watched her.

      She was trying not to be too optimistic that her sister had found a good solution to the prospect of their sitting dismally at home alone.

      At the same time Amalita had always been original ever since they were children.

      It was Amalita who thought of the games they would play, Amalita who climbed trees and swam in the lake.

      It was Amalita who made them dress up to look like ghosts and frighten the old servants, Amalita who had got them both up on the roof of the old barn.

      There they had to sit until someone came to rescue them because they could not find a way down.

      Watching her sister now, Carolyn thought how lovely Amalita was in her own way.

      She was indeed so unlike their mother, but there was a distinct look of her father.

      Where he had been outstandingly handsome, she was beautiful.

      Her sister turned round.

      “I will tell you what we are going to do, Carolyn,” she said. “You shall not be robbed of your debut. It was what Mama wanted for you and it is what you will have. We are going to London!”

      Carolyn clasped her hands together.

      “It sounds wonderful. But how can we? How can I be presented to the Queen without Mama? She always said that Papa’s relations were either dead or too old and what was left of her family had always lived in the dark wilds of Northumberland.”

      “I know all that,” Amalita said. “But, if you wish to be presented, so you must have somebody grand to take you to Buckingham Palace.”

      “But – who? Who can do – that?” Carolyn asked.

      The excitement that there had been in her eyes for a moment or two was fading away.

      She felt she knew the end of the story and that what Amalita was planning for her was just fantasy.

      “We will most surely go to London,” Amalita insisted slowly, “and you will be chaperoned both at the balls you will attend and at Buckingham Palace.”

      “By whom?” Carolyn asked. “You yourself know that there is nobody.”

      “I will be your chaperone!” Amalita announced.

      Carolyn stared at her before she countered,

      “You are teasing me, which only makes things worse. I may not be as clever as you, but I am well aware that a chaperone cannot be an unmarried girl. I cannot imagine you have a husband hidden away in one of the outhouses!”

      She spoke with a little sting in her voice as she felt so disappointed.

      Just for a moment she had hoped that because Amalita was so clever, she had solved the problem.

      Then Amalita said,

      “I don’t intend to chaperone you as an unmarried girl but as Lady Maulpin.”

      Carolyn stared at her.

      “Lady Maulpin? But you cannot pretend to be Mama! Even the most stupid man who ever lived – and certainly not the Dowagers who sit round the dance floors – could mistake you for Mama.”

      “I would not pretend to be Mama,” Amalita said, “but your stepmother!”

      Carolyn gasped.

      “You will – pretend – to be – Yvette?”

      Amalita shook her head violently.

      “Certainly not! Yvette was a common and very vulgar Frenchwoman. Although she married Papa, fortunately few people in England will have seen her – and nobody in London.”

      Carolyn’s eyes seemed to fill her whole face.

      “What – are you – saying? I just don’t understand. Explain it to – me.”

      “I am working it out in my mind,” Amalita answered. “Papa was indeed married to Yvette, but they were buried as ‘Monsieur et Madame Maupin’, which, if you look at the letter, the Police have spelt wrongly. That is the name I shall order to be put on the tombstone.”

      She paused and then she went on,

      “There is no reason for anyone to know that Papa and our stepmother have only recently been drowned and they will certainly not go looking for their tombstone.”

      “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