The General's Granddaughter Read online

  THE GENERAL’S GRANDDAUGHTER

  Dorothy Mack

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  EPILOGUE

  ALSO BY DOROTHY MACK

  CHAPTER 1

  Not one but three curled ostrich plumes adorned the extravagantly high crown of the bonnet reposing in splendid isolation in the shop window. Considering the luxuriant nature of the fabrics employed in the construction of this masterpiece, such prodigality seemed no more than fitting, however, as was the decision not to display it in company with lesser examples of the hatmaker’s art, which would certainly suffer from comparisons. True, there was a charming little posy in a pierced gilt holder and an exquisite ivory fan carelessly disposed on the drapery at the base of the domed pedestal holding the bonnet, but these elegant trifles merely served to enhance the beauty of the pièce de résistance. A three-panelled screen behind the display area concealed the interior of the shop from the casual glances of those passing by. A discreet sign above the door to the left of the window bore the scant information that Sarah of Boston was located within.

  The younger of the two females peering into the shop window removed her hand from the arm of the elder, whom she appeared to have been towing along the street, and clasped it in its mate in an attitude of triumphant supplication. “There, Mama, did I not promise you it was the most beautiful bonnet in all of London? I must have it. Say I may have it, please, Mama. That stuck-up Jane Farraday has nothing to equal it.”

  “Now, now, do compose yourself, Amelia, and let me catch my breath. Dragging me away from my tea like that to come look at a hat! I declare I don’t know what your Aunt Margaret must be thinking of you, dashing into her parlour like a hoyden and interrupting our visit without so much as a by-your-leave.”

  “Oh, bother what Aunt Margaret thinks! You know she is nothing but a tiresome scold, and in any case, you may see her any day of the week, but a bonnet like this one will be snapped up in a trice. Do let us go inside, darling Mama.”

  This last plea was uttered in a cajoling voice that brought a fond smile to the older woman’s lips that lasted until her eyes lighted on the sign above the door, whereupon her mouth firmed and she dug in her heels. “I don’t like the proprietress of this shop, with her absurd pretensions to gentility, Amelia, and I’m not at all certain that bronze-green colour is suitable for a young girl.”

  “Of course it is suitable, Mama!” Amelia’s naturally high colour was intensified by her passion, but she swallowed hard and lowered her voice once more. “I know Miss Sarah is rather … formal, but she does have the prettiest hats in town. We don’t have to like her.”

  “Calling herself Miss Sarah as if her last name was too high to be spoken by her customers, and her no better than any other shopkeeper when all’s said, despite those airs of hers. I’ll go bail she’s no more from Boston than I am.”

  And indeed, the quiet voice of the woman who came forward to greet her clients a moment later gave no hints of an origin across the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Merryman, Miss Merryman. What may I show you today?”

  “I want the bonnet in the window,” blurted Amelia, her eagerness earning her a quelling look from her parent, whose manner had stiffened considerably since entering the shop.

  A faint, not unsympathetic smile appeared briefly on the shopkeeper’s lips. “Yes, of course,” she replied, glancing to the still-silent matron for guidance before continuing in a persuasive tone, “though the hat in the window is perhaps a trifle old for a girl in her first season. We have several exceptionally pretty bonnets more suitable to a jeune fille —”

  “Oh, no,” protested Amelia. “That’s the one I want. Please, Mama!”

  “Well, you may try it on at least, my dear, and then we shall see.” Mrs. Merryman directed a haughty stare at the proprietress, who lowered her eyes in acquiescence and went to remove the bronze-green velvet bonnet from the display stand while the eager girl hastened to plop herself on the spindly chair in front of a dressing table containing a good-sized mirror.

  By the time Miss Sarah returned with the coveted prize, Amelia had tossed her own bonnet on the dressing table and was running a smoothing hand through her crimped straw-coloured locks. Her slightly protuberant blue eyes avidly followed the other’s movements in the mirror, and she appeared to have the utmost difficulty in sitting still while the bonnet was placed on her head.

  “I’ll do the bow,” she declared, taking the sherry-coloured satin ribbons from the saleswoman’s hands and tying them in a large bow beneath her wide square chin. “There, Mama, isn’t it simply beautiful?”

  Mrs. Merryman, fond parent though she was, did not immediately comply with her daughter’s request to confirm her own opinion. Uncertainty rather than admiration was the dominant emotion expressed by dark shoe-button eyes and pursed lips as she flashed a covert look at the curiously blank visage of the proprietress, who was staring into the mirror at the preening girl turning her head this way and that.

  “Well, I won’t say it isn’t a pretty hat, my love, because it is, but I’m not sure but what Miss Sarah might not be right in thinking it too old for you.” Her voice dwindled in the wake of the storm gathering on her daughter’s face.

  The shopkeeper said gently, “I fear this particular bonnet is not for everyone: the high poke is too narrow to flatter any but the most pointed-chinned female, and that odd colour is not easy to wear.” She smiled coaxingly at the increasingly red-faced girl and added, “We have a really lovely wide-brimmed hat in a deep-blue velvet that would emphasize the colour of your eyes.”

  “But I don’t want blue, blue is too common. No one I know has a hat like this one, and this is the one I want.”

  She might be young in years, but Miss Merryman was a girl who knew her own mind, and she now proceeded to make up her mother’s as well. When a parental suggestion to try on the blue hat at least was rejected summarily, it became obvious that youthful determination would prevail. Miss Sarah assumed a professional smile as she awaited the inevitable.

  “Very well, we’ll take it,” Mrs. Merryman became equally businesslike. “What is the price?”

  “Five pounds six, ma’am.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” blustered the would-be purchaser, sending a glance of hostility at the owner of the shop. “Much too dear.”

  The slim young woman in black regarded the overdressed matron before her and said with a placatory smile, “I fear ostrich feathers and satin are much too dear these days, ma’am. We are compelled to raise our prices accordingly.” Her glance did not falter before her customer’s accusing stare, and after an awkward pause, during which an anxious Miss Merryman tugged at her mother’s sleeve and whispered urgently, the latter capitulated with an ungracious sniff.

  “Very well, you may put it on my account.”

  There was another short pause while the proprietress seemed to gather her forces together. At the end of it she said, “In view of the fact that we have sent you two so-far-unavailing requests for payment of your outstanding account in the last three months, Mrs. Merryman, I regret that I shall have to ask for payment in cash for this purchase.”

  The outraged matron drew herself up to her full height, her formidable bosom swelling with indignation. “Are you daring to question my integrity, young
woman?”

  “Not at all, madam. I am simply stating that I cannot afford to advance you any additional credit at this moment. If it is inconvenient for you to pay for the bonnet today, I will gladly put it aside for you until tomorrow.”

  “That will not be necessary, Miss Sarah Whatever-your-name is. I have no intention of setting foot in this establishment again, and you may be sure that I shall warn all my friends against patronizing someone of your sort also. Come, Amelia.”

  “But, Mama, my hat,” wailed Miss Merryman, refusing to budge. “You promised to buy me this bonnet. Miss Sarah will hold it for us, she said she would.”

  “And I said I have no intention of doing business with this person again,” repeated Mrs. Merryman, sending the silent object of her scorn a withering glance that failed in its object. “Come along, Amelia. We’ll find you another hat tomorrow.”

  “But I don’t want another hat, Mama, I want this one.” The sound of Amelia’s shrill protests drifted back to the young woman, who quietly closed the door Mrs. Merryman had wrenched open and flung back in her haste to leave the shop. After a glance at the wall clock, she locked the door and walked back through the curtains hanging in the archway leading out of the front room with the disputed bonnet still in her hands.

  “You heard?”

  The middle-aged woman addressed looked up briefly from the riding hat she was trimming with red braid. “I heard, all right. That harpy has a voice that could penetrate steel. Never mind, Sarah, we can do without her custom.”

  “And that of all her friends? For, mark my words, Lottie, Mrs. Merryman is the kind to enjoy making good her threat to ruin us. Heaven knows it won’t take much intervention. We’ll probably manage it all on our own before long.”

  “Are matters that serious?” This time, the seamstress put down her work and gave all her attention to Sarah, who had slumped into the other chair in the workroom, a look of weary defeat on her face. “I was under the impression that our hats had achieved some recognition beyond this unfashionable section of town. This special order, for instance,” indicating the riding hat with a movement of her head.

  “Oh, yes, our hats have caught the eyes of some discerning persons this past year, but I could wish gentlemen bought them for their wives and daughters rather than their mistresses. The ladies of the haut ton are unlikely to venture this far from the fashionable shopping districts that we cannot afford. The real problem is that, although we sell our hats, we have the greatest difficulty in getting people to pay their accounts.” She sighed and raised a troubled gaze to the woman regarding her with affectionate concern. Her fingers continued to smooth a couple of small creases from the ribbons of the bonnet in her lap. “Do you think perhaps I should have permitted Mrs. Merryman to take this?”

  “No, I do not,” Lottie replied firmly, addressing the other’s self-doubt. “She is the type who won’t pay until pushed to the wall by a solicitor, which we cannot afford. You would have had to take a stand at some point or other. At least this way we still have the bonnet.”

  “Yes. It’s the loveliest hat we’ve ever created, and was quite wasted on that objectionable child.” A gleam of pure mischief momentarily lighted large eyes of an indeterminate colour in the gathering dusk. “How I wish you could have seen her primping in the mirror with a huge bow tied squarely under her chin, looking for all the world like a squirrel with its cheeks stuffed full of acorns, though if you had been there, Lottie, I could never have kept my countenance. Even such a doting mama as Mrs. Merryman was unable to bring herself to admire her chick. I realize now that I spoke no more than the truth when I said the bonnet was not for every woman.”

  “No, it takes a beauty to wear it; after all, it was designed for you,” the older woman said matter-of-factly. She had taken up her task again but noted with satisfaction the hint of rose that crept into Sarah’s pale cheeks, though she objected laughingly.

  “Oh, Lottie, I vow you are as blindly partial as Mrs. Merryman. Any pretensions I ever had to beauty — doubtful at best — are so far in the past as to be ancient history. I feel as faded as those flowers in the window will be tomorrow. Which reminds me that I must put them in some water to try to get another day out of them.” And, placing the bonnet tenderly on the long worktable, she rose with an effort she could not quite conceal and went out of the room.

  “Nonsense.” Lottie’s raised voice followed her. “Who has decreed that a woman of six-and-twenty is at her last prayers? You are feeling low at present because you have not yet recovered from the effects of as nasty a bout of influenza as I ever hope to see. Like those flowers, all you need is a little water to revive you,” she added as Sarah returned with the posy and removed the holder and the wet cloth she had wrapped around the stem. “You want plenty of sunshine and good food to build up your strength again and put the roses back in your cheeks.”

  “I daresay your prescription would be a universal panacea if it were not beyond the grasp of a great proportion of the people, Lottie,” Sarah said with a return of her sombre manner. “You are no doubt correct in attributing my low spirits to that wretched influenza, but at least the enforced stay in my bed provided the opportunity for some serious consideration of our future. It was more than just confronting one’s own mortality. I realized for the first time how little we two women can do for Richard. My annuity is barely adequate to keep us housed and fed. Even if this venture into trade were to become a resounding success, we could not afford the fees for a decent school. We have almost no acquaintance in England to advise us, so how is Richard to prepare himself for a career?”

  “Perhaps we might consider returning to America when this war is over. It is easier for an enterprising young man to make his fortune there, and you have friends there too.”

  “We did before this latest trouble blew up, but Father’s affairs were somewhat tangled when we left. I … I am not entirely certain that he settled all his debts when we returned to England.”

  The older woman clamped her lips against anything she might wish to say about Gerald Ridgemont. No one knew better what it had cost Sarah to make this admission. She had loved her charming, improvident father devotedly as a child, and the gradual discovery of his weaknesses had been painful knowledge that she guarded even from the one person she had known closely all her life. Through all the vicissitudes of fortune into which Gerald’s hare-brained schemes for enriching the family had dragged them, Sarah had held her head high and preserved the image of a dutiful loving daughter, following in her mother’s difficult path. Lottie could understand that; after all, her own loyalty and devotion to her mistress had been of the same order and had been transferred to Alice’s children on her death. But her own loyalty had come easily, for Alice Ridgemont had been a saint on earth, and her children, though endearingly fallible, were full worthy of devotion.

  So Lottie held her peace on the subject of Gerald Ridgemont, asking merely when Sarah’s embarrassed glance met hers, “Does all this heartburning mean you have decided to apply to your grandfather after all?”

  “I think for Richard’s sake I must swallow my pride. It is grossly unfair that he should have to be flung into the working world without any patronage behind him when his grandfather is one of the wealthiest men in the country. We shall never be able to afford the hundreds of pounds it would take to apprentice him to a successful banker or merchant. Somehow I must make my grandfather accept some responsibility for Richard’s education. I know I have been most boringly vociferous in the past about never asking him for a penny-piece after the shameful way he treated my father, but lying there in my bed, knowing that I was all that stood between Richard and the workhouse, was a frightening and humbling experience, and —”

  “You forgot to mention me. Do you suppose I should simply stand by and see Richard hauled off to the workhouse?”

  Lottie’s dry interjection served to arrest Sarah in full flight. She blinked long lashes, and her quiet features broke into laughter with somewhat the sam
e effect as the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “Dear Lottie, you always know how to depress my tendency toward dramatization. Very well, then, Richard is doubly fortunate to have two fierce guardians, but what he will need most in the future is a good education that will give him a start in life. And that, I fear, is and will remain beyond our ability to provide. Therefore, it must be Grandfather.”

  “All this noble resolution to swallow your pride is very fine talking, but what gives you to suppose that General Ridgemont will undergo a sudden revulsion of feeling when applied to for assistance? He never acknowledged your birth twenty-six years ago, or Richard’s eleven years ago. He refused to see your father when he went to bid him goodbye before we went to America, and he has not written so much as a line to express his condolences in the months since your father’s death. It is nearly a year now. If he was not moved at that time to a sense of remorse for his treatment of his son or even curiosity as to how his orphaned grandchildren were faring, how can you hope another letter, and this one a begging letter, will do the trick?”

  Strangely, Lottie’s severe practicality failed to daunt her former nurseling. “I do not plan to write my grandfather another letter,” Sarah replied calmly. “I intend to go and see him myself. It is one thing to ignore a petition written by some totally unknown person and quite another to stand in front of one’s own flesh and blood and deny that same petition.”

  “Somehow, I can still envision that response being well within your grandfather’s capabilities,” retorted Lottie, “and Beech Hill must be all of one hundred miles away. Are you certain you wish to gamble the cost of a ticket on the mail coach on the chance that he’ll even receive you?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t travel by mail.” Sarah was horrified. “I’ll go by stagecoach, of course, and I shall see to it that my grandfather receives me.” Her delicate chin firmed quite discernibly, but Lottie ignored this sign and harked back to the first part of the statement.