Sally by M.C. Beaton Page B

family.
    Carriages were waiting to convey the guests to the palace. Only a few, of which Lady Cecily was one, had been honored with an invitation to stay before and after the ball. Sally had accepted the invitation, saying that the earl and countess were indisposed, but that her companion, Miss Matilda Fleming, would be accompanying her.
    But Sally did not grasp quite how ridiculous, quite how hopeless, her situation was until she saw her traveling companions. For sharing the carriage to the palace with Sally and Miss Fleming were the Guthrie sisters. The Guthrie sisters were not of good family, in fact, their father had begun his career with a small bicycle shop in Cambridge. But he had opened his shop right at the beginning of the heyday of that machine, and his business had grown and prospered until he became very wealthy indeed. To add to his dizzy success, he had launched on society his two beautiful daughters, Daisy and Dolly.
    Although it was still considered “unfortunate” to be blond, no one could find any fault with the Guthrie sisters. Their beauty was of the blond, porcelain type. They had delicate little noses and delicate arched brows over large, well-shaped blue eyes. Their busts were large and their waists tiny, and it was whispered that their exquisite hourglass figures were all their own, neither of them having to resort to horsehair pads to achieve the fashionable silhouette.
    But their crowning beauty was that both were quite brainless, and in a society that viewed intelligence with distrust, this was the final seal of acceptability. The jealous might mutter over the Guthrie sisters’ plebeian origins, but for the most part society adored them both.
    Stupid they might have been in the worlds of books, music, art, and politics, but in the worlds of romance, husbands, and ballrooms, they had native animal cunning. They were natural hunters and had learned at an early age how to kill with a flashing glance, how to wound with a haughty turn of the head, and how to raise wild hopes with a small sigh.
    Daisy and Dolly did not have much time for other women, unless they were the sisters or mothers of eligible men, and so they prattled on as if Sally and Miss Fleming were invisible. Sally wondered why two such diamonds of the first water had managed to come through one Season unwed, but it soon transpired that both sisters hoped to marry the marquess, and both were confident of success.
    Although there was a year between their ages, they looked remarkably alike, except that Daisy’s hair was somewhat darker.
    I am cursed with blondes
, thought Sally gloomily.
I was mad to come. Even poor Miss Wyndham won’t stand a chance with this precious pair around
.
    Dolly and Daisy, unlike Miss Wyndham, were blessed with pussycat naughtiness. Certainly their girlish wriggles, shrieks, and giggles annoyed Sally immensely, but she was clever enough to realize that most gentlemen would interpret it all as innocent charm.
    “We have an ally on our side,” Dolly was saying. “The duchess told Lady Brainwater, and
she
told Mama, that the duchess wants Paul—
duveen
name—to settle for one of us.”
    Daisy wrinkled her pretty brow. “But he’s got ever such a reputation, Doll’. He was keeping that opera singer for ever so long.”
    Dolly shrugged. “Better they have mistresses before they’re married than after.”
    Miss Fleming shot the girls a repressive glance, and the Guthrie sisters stared back at her impertinently and then collapsed into girlish giggles.
    Sally was glad when they arrived, for she had decided what to do.
    She would hide behind the other guests, send Miss Fleming with a message to the duchess, to say that Lady Cecily was indisposed and had to return immediately to town—and escape.
    Her clothes felt shabbier and dowdier and more secondhand by the minute. Now, Sally was a very pretty girl, but even the prettiest women need someone around to tell them so. Emily had always been considered the