The Homecoming by M. C. Beaton, Marion Chesney

not look so downcast, Lizzie. You are not expected to marry the fellow. I merely thought that someone cheerful and closer to your own age might amuse you.”
    “But there is Peter.”
    “Mr. Bond will be so taken up with his duties and gazing on his beloved that he will have no time for you.”
    “Mama will be furious when she finds out.”
    “We will see to it she does not. Do you know, she has asked that creature, Mary Judd, to accompany her to Bath?”
    “But I thought she had never forgiven Mary for marrying Judd.”
    “Well, you know how Mary toadies and Lady Beverley’s spirit is badly bruised these days. Your mother does not know quite how to go on with me and she blames your hoydenish games for disaffecting the duke when I fear it was the very sight of her and the dread of hearing more tales of the Beverleys’s days of greatness which drove him away.”
    Lizzie looked at her governess sharply. “I hope you, my sensible Miss Trumble, do not entertain any hopes of my catching the duke.”
    “You are much too young,” said Miss Trumble dismissively. “I doubt if Gervase is even aware of you as a young lady.”
    Lizzie went to her room and sat down in front of the mirror. She was wearing her hair down. A schoolgirl looked back at her. She swept up her hair on top of her head. She was not interested in the duke. Not she! But the fact that he might be totally unaware of her as a young lady rankled.
    Thanks to the generosity of her elder married sisters, she now had a wardrobe of pretty and fashionable clothes.
    She would make an effort to be as mondaine and charming as possible.
    No one, not even a duke, should be unaware of the presence of such as Lizzie Beverley!

Chapter Three
    The young ladies entered the drawing-room in the full fervour of sisterly animosity
.
    —R. S. S URTEES
    M ISS T RUMBLE HAD sent a reply to the duke, saying that Lady Beverley would be in Bath, but that she and Lizzie accepted his invitation. Perhaps he would be so good as to send a carriage for them?
    “For Barry will be gone,” explained Miss Trumble to Lizzie, “and we can hardly arrive at such a grand affair driving the carriage ourselves.”
    Lady Beverley was waved goodbye, the post-chaise laden down with luggage which included a large trunk full of patent medicines. As the carriage moved off, Mary turned and gave Lizzie a triumphant little smirk which showed Mary thought she was the favoured one, with the daughter being left behind.
    There is going to be the most awful scene when Mama finds out we went to Mannerling without her, thought Lizzie.
    The two maids were busy packing her clothes. Lizzie felt a twinge of apprehension and could not understand it. She had met very grand company in London, her sisters were all married to rich and important men. But she had always been the youngest, a looker-on of her sisters’ love tangles. If she did not find a man to marry, then Miss Trumble could not stay forever and so she would be left in the country with only her mother for company.
    What would this young man be like, this Gerald Parkes? Probably callow and dull and only wanting to talk about himself while he expected her to simper.
    The day they set out for Mannerling was hot and close and still. Dry little leaves rustled down from the trees beside the road, a sort of false autumn.
    Lizzie could not understand why her feelings of apprehension would not go away. She wished they had been able to arrive on the same day as the other guests. Now they would all be established and have got to know each other. As the newcomers, they would be studied and assessed. Her broad-brimmed straw hat held a whole garden of flowers, the latest fashion, sent from London by her sister Abigail. Her morning gown of Brussels lace was all the crack, sent by her sister Rachel. Miss Trumble had dressed her hair up in the latest style. If only she felt elegant inside!
    The carriage bowled smoothly up the long straight drive to the porticoed entrance of