Sally by M.C. Beaton Page A

pleaded Miss Fleming. “Then there’s my job to consider. What will I tell Mr. Wingles?”
    “You forget,” pointed out Sally ruthlessly, “that you told me Mr. Wingles was going on holiday next week and that you planned to take a few days off.”
    “But—”
    “No one will find out,” said Sally earnestly. “No one.”
    “What has Mr. Barton to say about all this?”
    “Nothing,” said Sally blithely, “because I didn’t tell him. He doesn’t care where I work, so long as I work.”
    “But the cost—”
    “I have money saved,” said Sally. “Enough to pay for two simply ripping ball gowns. Just think! A real live ducal ball!”
    Miss Matilda Fleming looked wonderingly at her young friend. Sally looked as pretty and elf-like as she had done on that hot day when she had arrived in Fleet Street. She was, however, Miss Fleming reflected, as tough as old boots under that misleading exterior. Miss Fleming had always prided herself on being a tough businesswoman, but little Sally, she thought with surprise, was by far the stronger personality.
    But she took one last stand. “I won’t do it,” she said grimly. “Just wait till Jessie Frimp hears of this!”
    But later on, to Miss Fleming’s dismay, Miss Frimp thought there was no harm in the impersonation of Lady Cecily, not knowing that Miss Frimp was frightened that if Miss Fleming did not go then she, Miss Frimp, would be nagged into it by Sally, already having a better assessment of the force of Sally’s personality than Miss Fleming.
    “It’s not a crime, after all,” said Miss Frimp.
    “I thought impersonating a peer of the realm was a crime,” said Miss Fleming.
    “Well, you’ll only be going as a sort of
companion
,” urged Miss Frimp. “Anyway, it says peer of the realm, not peeress.”
    “Same thing,” said Miss Fleming gloomily.
    “And what if they do find out?” demanded Sally, striding up and down the room and waving her arms in her excitement. “The whole focus will be on me, not you. I tell you what, Matilda. I’ll accept the invitation, say my guardians, the earl and countess, are indisposed, but that I shall be arriving with my chaperon, Miss Matilda Fleming. There! That way you won’t be impersonating anyone. And… and… I could always say you didn’t know I wasn’t Lady Cecily.”
    “It’s no use,” said Matilda. “I just can’t do it.”
    The Bath train rattled through the bleak November landscape. “I just can’t do it,” Miss Fleming was still saying. “My dear, did you
see
some of the other guests on this train? The clothes, the maids, the footmen.”
    “We look very grand,” said Sally stoutly, although privately her heart misgave her. Her savings had not been nearly enough to equip them with an adequate wardrobe, although Miss Fleming had insisted on paying for her own ball gown.
    Sally had had to buy most of the other clothes secondhand, and their luggage smelled suspiciously of gasoline and stale bread crumbs—the gasoline to clean the wool frocks, and the stale bread crumbs to clean Sally’s white silk ball gown.
    Sally’s only jewelry was a small dog collar of pearls. No one wore diamonds in the country, she told herself firmly. All the etiquette books said so. But she was sure, somehow, that the rest of the guests did not read etiquette books, or if they did, they paid them not the slightest heed.
    How fast the train seemed to be going. How it bore them inexorably nearer to their destination.
    Smoke billowed out over the ridges of the plowed fields, and flocks of rooks wheeled against the lowering sky.
    Sally tried to remember the handsome marquess, and found she could not. Her whole stay at the palace seemed to have been some extraordinary dream. She had told Miss Fleming about Mrs. Stuart threatening to kill her husband and the duke’s infatuation for the barmaid, and Miss Fleming had said forthrightly that they all sounded mad and that there was probably inbreeding somewhere in the duke’s