Rich Girl, Poor Girl Read online

  Lucy ignored everyone but her father. She was hardly aware of Maximilian du Pay leaving the room.

  ‘It’s bleeding badly. He should see a doctor. I just don’t know what to do.’ She turned to her father, the soldier. ‘You must have dealt with wounds?’

  ‘I got a ointment for bleeding, Miss Lucille,’ said Amos before the colonel could answer. ‘You’ll see, I’ll be fine tomorrow. Female’ll go get her mother when she’s done sewed me up and Abra will look to everything here.’

  The young American came back, his indolence gone. ‘I’ve arranged the carriage, Father. I’ll take him to Freedmen’s myself, with your permission, of course, colonel. It’s 13th and V Street, I think? I’ve never been before.’

  Was that a glance of admiration he gave Lucy? She could not be sure. More likely it was surprise, distaste even. Hadn’t he heard Female say her behaviour was indelicate? Well, she didn’t care. Look at them, look at them just taking over, putting the little woman back in her place. She followed the men out of the kitchen and wearily made her way up to her bedroom to await the tirade that was sure to come. She felt certain that she could write the script herself.

  *

  In the end, it was not her mother who came to her room but her father.

  ‘Mother must be furious,’ said Lucy lightly when she saw his set face.

  ‘You amazed us both this afternoon, Lucy, and we’ve talked. Mamma loves you and she wants for you the things she enjoyed – a coming-out, new dresses, parties, dancing. But she is broad-minded enough to see that those treats don’t interest you . . .’

  ‘They do, Father, of course they do, but . . . not so much as . . . as doing something really special with my life.’

  ‘I can think of nothing more splendid for a woman, Lucy, than being a good wife and mother,’ said Sir John seriously, ‘but we’ve decided – to use a horsey term – to give you your head for a while, till it’s out of your system . . .’

  *

  A few weeks later, Lucy found herself a very young student at the very young Smith College for women in Northampton, Massachusetts. She decided not to think of Maximilian du Pay and the extraordinary effect he had had on her, and after a few months she forgot all about him and everything else that kept her from learning, learning.

  She loved Smith; she loved New England. She both loved and hated being surrounded by so many people. Lucy had never been to school; her largest class had had one classmate. Here there were dozens of bright, articulate, young women. Classes of five, ten, twenty girls were uncharted waters for Lucy and she set sail eagerly. Often, though, she had to steal away from the laughing, loving companionship and seek solace and a kind of inner rebirth. For this she would wander in the grounds among the age-old trees. At all times of the year, the college was lovely. In the autumn – the Fall as her American classmates called it – the grounds were breathtaking. How was it possible for leaves to turn those colours, and all with an intensity that she had seen nowhere before? Yellow, red, brown . . . but yellow, red and brown that had been ignited by a fire that was only to be found in these New England states. The trees burned their way into winter. The leaves crackled on the branches as they struggled to free themselves from their tenuous hold on life and they crackled under Lucy’s soft leather boots as she wandered among them. She wrote long letters, weekly to her parents and monthly to Kier Anderson-Howard. She told him of her delight in the formal education for which Herr Colner had so ably prepared her. She told him of her pleasure in joining five, ten, fifteen alert brains in healthy argument and discussion.

  I loved being educated with you, Kier, but I have just realized that because of that education, I have knowledge but no friends besides yourself and I did not know what I missed. I would not have it different, but now I am happy to catch up with my own sex. Already I have been invited to spend an exeat weekend with a classmate who lives in New York City and I have invited another, who lives in Oregon – which, as you know, is about as far from Massachusetts as it is possible to go without falling into the Pacific Ocean – to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with us in the capital. What fun to introduce an American to her own historic buildings. Mirabelle, from New York, is to take me to the Opera and to dine in a restaurant with her huge family of brothers. How decadent I am become – exactly what Mother feared!

  In a later letter she asked him what on earth she could do with the degree she would soon earn. Even to Kier, she could not mention the only real idea she had had, which was growing so strongly that it threatened to blot out everyone and everything. She felt that she was two different people: Miss Graham who lived in Massachusetts, and little Lucy who lived in Washington, D.C. Little Lucy went home at the holidays and did the things her mother wanted her to do, although the trip to Scotland and the presentation at court had had to be sacrificed on the voracious altar of further education. On her last Thanksgiving holiday from Smith, Lucy returned home like every other student but, unlike most students, she found herself heading for a recital at the Russian embassy.

  They had almost been late. Female, Amos’s daughter, had been announced to be in a delicate condition. Female was unmarried and Lucy found herself fascinated and wanted to know the whys and the wherefores. Her unseemly interest in something that had caused friction between her parents – Lady Graham wishing to dismiss the girl and Sir John more interested in keeping excellent servants like Amos and Abra happy – had caused Lady Graham to remember Lucy’s own wayward and unfeminine behaviour several years earlier; she had never really mentioned this, no matter how hard it was, but it had gnawed at her occasionally. Now she lapsed from self-imposed virtue a little.

  ‘A girl in your position, with your advantages, should have nothing to do with such things, Lucille. I still can’t bear to think what the du Pays thought when they found you alone in the kitchen with a black male servant . . . I’m quite sure their friendship cooled a little.’

  ‘Mother, how can you ignore Amos’s very presence one minute and the next be so conscious of it?’ Lucy had teased.

  ‘They found you doing what no well-brought-up young woman should even contemplate doing.’

  ‘Florence Nightingale is a lady, Mother, and she did a great deal more than bind up a bleeding wound.’

  ‘One admires Miss Nightingale. One does not necessarily wish one’s only child to emulate her. Besides, she did it for our soldiers.’

  ‘Oh, and of course none of them was black. I wonder if it would have made a difference to her.’

  The colonel stirred on his seat. The quarrel between his wife and his daughter was becoming a little too heated. ‘Lucille, your mother is right to concern herself with the opinion the world has of you.’ He laid his hand gently on Lucy’s satin-covered knee and she decided to argue no more.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother, but I’m sure you didn’t want poor Amos to bleed to death. He is, after all, an invaluable servant.’

  ‘And could have been looked after by other servants: that hysterical daughter of his, for instance, with the ridiculous name.’

  ‘Feh-ma-lay,’ smiled Lucy, drawing out the syllables the way their servants did. ‘It’s rather sad, actually, that they couldn’t pronounce Female, couldn’t read . . .’

  ‘And where, by the by, was Abra during that incident?’ Lady Graham interrupted, a sense of injustice gnawing at her. She had been quiet for too long; she would have a little satisfaction now, and Lucy had brought it on herself. ‘Now that I think about it, I don’t remember giving her time off mid-week.’

  ‘We did discuss all this, Elizabeth,’ the colonel put in. ‘Remember, my dear, Amos had asked me when you were with your dressmaker. It seemed only fair; they do work such very long hours.’

  Lady Graham sighed. Her husband would never learn how to treat servants properly; they would do exactly as they liked if she didn’t keep a firm hand on the reins.

  The carriage drew up at the embassy and Lady Graham was considerably cheered when she saw that her
daughter was to be partnered with the very handsome and very wealthy Russian Count Fyodorov. She smiled complacently. Lucy could make a beautiful countess, if she so chose.

  Lucy well knew what was going through her mother’s mind, and because she loved her she decided to be good and to charm the count as best she could. There was another more compelling reason to shine with the Russian. Almost the first voice she heard as she entered the embassy was the low drawl of Maximilian du Pay and, what was worse, she found that he was to be seated very near her but, thankfully, on the other side of the table; she need not speak to him at all. She nodded stiffly, as if she vaguely remembered him but could not quite place him though would never for a moment be rude . . . and then decided to ignore him as best she could.

  ‘I wish we were to have dancing after dinner, Miss Graham, instead of that dreadfully boring, and even more dreadfully fat, mezzo-soprano. I should insist that you dance every dance with me but, perhaps, while they prepare the salon for the entertainment, we could walk a little on the terrace. It is mild for November, no?’

  ‘It is mild for November, yes,’ agreed Lucy. ‘If others are strolling on the terrace, count, then I am sure we may join them.’

  ‘Not a good idea, Miss Lucy. I may claim the privilege of old friendship, may I not?’

  Lucy was amazed. She had turned, as custom demanded, to the guest on her right, and had caught Max du Pay’s eye. Obviously the odious man had been listening to her conversation. It is one thing to flirt with a handsome Russian, it is quite another to be observed doing it by someone one loathes, and especially when flirting is completely against one’s principles. She blushed rosily.

  ‘Charming,’ he said. ‘I had no idea that empty-headed, rich young women could blush any more.’

  Lucy was furious and she forgot all her mother’s rules for good behaviour. ‘How dare you! You know perfectly well that I am neither wealthy nor empty-headed.’

  He laughed. ‘And being called empty-headed rankles more, I’ll be bound. But as I was saying, Miss Smith College, don’t stroll in the moonlight with the count. He is a most notorious philanderer.’

  ‘I think I’m capable of taking care of myself, Mr du Pay. No one would be invited here who was . . .’

  ‘Not comme il faut?’

  ‘Not empty-headed . . . I mean who was empty – oh, stuff!’ She heard the ridiculous words as she was speaking them and would have drawn them back if she could. He saw her predicament and laughed.

  ‘You need have no fear to speak your mind around me, Miss Graham, although usually we Southerners prefer our women meek and mild.’

  ‘How nauseating.’ Again that unruly tongue.

  ‘I do believe you are right, Miss Graham.’ He laughed and turned away from her.

  Since Count Fyodorov was still engaged in conversation, Lucy studied the American, safe in the knowledge that, since he was giving an inordinate amount of attention to the very sophisticated but married woman on his right, he could not see her. What had he been doing for the past year? He must be finished at Harvard. She had been to balls at that prestigious college twice during this heady year and had never seen him – had tried, oh, yes, she had, not to look for him. She had forgotten how tall he was and how fair. His hair, which was too long for fashion, was almost bleached by the sun, and his face and hands showed that he spent rather too much time outside in all weathers. She was so busy watching the man she had resolved to ignore that she almost missed the next move in the conversational game of bat and ball.

  ‘I detest Maximilian du Pay and I adore charming Russians,’ she said to herself and turned with a glorious smile to her dinner partner.

  After dinner she found herself walking with him and several other people towards the glass doors that led to the terrace. Count Fyodorov solicitously wrapped her light voile scarf around her bare shoulders.

  ‘You should wear ermine,’ he said.

  Lucy smiled. She could just imagine her father’s face if she were to ask for an ermine cape. His diplomatic salary made up the sum total of the Graham fortune, and a military attaché’s income did not stretch to ermine stoles for his daughter.

  To her surprise, she found herself whisked behind an enormous urn and held tightly in a man’s embrace.

  ‘Miss Graham, Lucy, that smile. It tantalizes; how you are adorable,’ he said and, to her amusement, kissed her ruthlessly.

  This was not the first time that Miss Lucy Graham had been kissed and, really, she chided herself, ‘You ought to be able to handle men better by this time.’ She pushed the count away and laughed. It worked; it always did. Nothing deflated an enormous ego more than laughter. At least, it had always worked with the college men who haunted the grounds at Smith.

  Count Fyodorov visibly controlled his annoyance. He bowed. ‘Your servant, Miss Graham. May I escort you back to her ladyship?’

  ‘I’ll take her, count.’

  ‘Not nice, Miss Graham,’ said Maximilian du Pay in an amused voice as they watched the discomfited Russian walk away.

  ‘You had no business spying on me, Mr du Pay.’

  ‘Max, please, and I wasn’t spying. You’re lucky the entire diplomatic party did not witness your petty triumph.’

  Petty triumph! Lucy could not believe it. She had been assaulted – well, not quite – and a second arrogant male called it a petty triumph.

  ‘Don’t bristle, for I won’t say you look charming when you pout . . .’

  ‘I never pout,’ Lucy broke in.

  ‘You led that poor man by the nose all through dinner, and then you act surprised when he accepts your invitation.’

  Lucy flushed to the roots of her hair. Was there some honesty in what he said? A gentleman, however, would never have said it.

  ‘I think we have nothing further to say to one another, Mr du Pay.’ She would refuse his invitation to make free of his Christian name.

  ‘Au contraire, Miss Lucy,’ he smiled, ‘but not yet. I decided, and I never go back on my decisions, that when you have grown up a little . . .’

  He did not say what he had decided, but he bowed courteously and turned away and Lucy watched him, her mind in a turmoil. He was the rudest, most arrogant man she had ever met. She must make a real effort never to meet him again. She hurried back to the magnificent salon where seats had been arranged for the recital. Her parents had saved a chair for her and if they were surprised to see her unescorted they were unable to say anything.

  In the carriage, on the way back to Georgetown, there were no such restrictions and, while her husband sat quietly in a corner, Lady Graham was able to allow a flood of recriminations to fall upon Lucy.

  ‘Two of the most eligible men in Washington beside you at dinner, Lucille, and you throw away the opportunity.’

  ‘Then you would have preferred that I submit to Count Fyodorov, Mother, pretend that I enjoyed his kiss.’ She would not ask about Mr du Pay.

  ‘Of course not, girl, but if you had not wanted it then it should never have happened.’ Lady Graham sat back in anger and then relaxed. ‘Oh, Lucy, you are very young. You know we have nothing but Father’s salary. Count Fyodorov is related to the Tsar; his family is extraordinarily wealthy . . .’

  ‘Then they should have spent a little more on his education,’ said Lucy quietly.

  Lady Graham pretended not to have heard. ‘And he specifically asked for you at the dinner.’

  ‘Definitely not a butterfly collector, Lucy,’ said Sir John, and then when he felt rather than saw his wife’s growing anger he turned to her and added, ‘But you must admit, my dear, that Max du Pay seemed taken with our daughter. We have all been invited to join the Thanksgiving Hunt this year.’

  The Thanksgiving Hunt! Lucy had not expected an invitation to one of the social season’s most prestigious events. She conveniently forgot how much she detested the Southerner.

  ‘Oh, how wonderful!’ She clapped her hands together in excitement like a small child. ‘Can we go, Father?�
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  ‘You will hill-top with me, Lucy,’ Lady Graham answered for her husband.

  Hill-topping: following the horses by carriage and watching their progress from the tops of hills. Great fun, but not so much fun as sweeping across the Virginia countryside on the back of a strong, spirited horse.

  Lady Graham saw the disappointment in her daughter’s face. ‘Mrs du Pay has generously invited us to join her in her own carriage, Lucy. Every girl in Washington will be green with envy.’

  ‘Except the ones on horseback,’ Lucy mumbled.

  Lady Graham sighed and ignored the mumble. ‘The du Pays are one of the most important families in the South, and it is a great honour to be asked. And there is the ball, Lucy. She will have to have a new gown, John; it will do for London too.’

  ‘What did you think of Max this time, Lucy?’ asked her father. ‘Your first meeting had a rather unfortunate ending.’ To his surprise Sir John saw his daughter blush.

  ‘I didn’t have too much conversation with him, Father.’ Lucy was annoyed with herself. Senator du Pay was a personal friend of the ambassador and a good ally for Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, and here was she crossing verbal swords with his son. ‘He doesn’t look like a . . . a . . . socialite,’ finished Lucy for want of a better word.

  ‘Rather unconventional: he’s studying animal husbandry, but I think he’s interested in art. I thought you would have liked him,’ said Sir John. ‘Never mind. You can adjust your thinking when you see him in his own setting.’

  The rest of the journey passed in silence. Amos, as usual, was at the gates to meet them.

  ‘Nice party, Miss Lucille?’ he asked as he handed her down.

  Lucy kept his hand in hers. ‘Delightful, thank you, Amos, and how are you?’

  ‘Lucille,’ scolded Lady Graham when they had gone upstairs to prepare for bed, ‘you really must not be so familiar with black servants. You treat Amos just the way you treated Annie at home, and she’s been with us since before you were born.’