False Pretences by Rosemary Morris - Chapter One

False Pretences


By

Rosemary Morris

Chapter One

1815

“I have good news for you, Annabelle,” said Miss Chalfont, the well-educated head mistress and owner of The Beeches, an exclusive school for young ladies.

Seated on a straight-backed chair opposite Miss Chalfont’s walnut desk, Annabelle clasped her hands tightly on her lap. “Has my guardian told you who my parents are?” she asked in a voice quivering with excitement.

Regret flickered across Miss Chalfont’s face before she shook her head. “No, I am very sorry, he has not. For your sake I wish he had. In fact, I do not know who he is. I receive instructions from a lawyer in Dover. To be honest, for no particular reason, I have always assumed your guardian’s identity is that of a man, but it could be that of a woman.”

Dover! Annabelle thought. The town where she had lived with her nurse before a nameless elegant lady, with a French accent, brought her to The Beeches. Time and time again she had wondered if the lady was her guardian or whether she was a stranger ordered to bring her here. She had no way of knowing, for the lady had not answered any of her questions. Annabelle looked into Miss Chalfont’s eyes. “Who is the lawyer, ma’am?”

“I do not know for he does not identify himself. He merely arranges for your…er…upkeep, and sends me your guardian’s instructions.” No clue to the mystery of my own identity, Annabelle thought and gazed down to conceal

her disappointment. “Has the lawyer given you permission to tell me who my guardian is?” she asked, despite her suspicion that he had not. Miss Chalfont looked down at a letter. “No, your guardian, whom I have no doubt has your welfare at heart, still wishes to remain anonymous. But, my dear child, you are fortunate. Your guardian has arranged for you to marry Monsieur le Baron de Beauchamp.”

Annabelle looked up with a mixture of astonishment, disbelief, and intense indignation at the arrangement that took no heed of her wishes. “I am to marry a man I have never met?”

With restless fingers, Miss Chalfont adjusted her frilled mobcap. “Yes, your guardian has arranged for you to marry Monsieur le Baron tomorrow.”

Annabelle stared at her kind teacher as though she had turned into a monster. “Mon dieu!” she raged, reverting to the French she spoke when she was a small child. “My God! Tomorrow? My guardian expects me to marry a Frenchman tomorrow? Miss Chalfont, surely you do not approve of such haste.”

“Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.” Miss Chalfont tapped her fingers on her desk. “My approval or disapproval is of no consequence. Your guardian wishes you to marry immediately so there is little more to be said. A special licence has been procured and the vicar has been informed.” Miss Chalfont smiled at her. “You have nothing to fear. This letter informs me that Monsieur speaks English and lives in this country.”

Annabelle scowled. Her hands trembled. For the first time, she defied her head mistress. “Nothing to fear? My life is to be put in the hands of a husband with the right to…beat me…or… starve me, and you say I have nothing to fear, Miss Chalfont? Please believe me when I say that nothing will persuade me to marry in such haste.”

Not the least display of emotion crossed the head teacher’s face. “You should not allow your imagination to agitate your sensibilities. For all you know, the monsieur is charming and will be a good, kind husband.”

“On the other hand, he might be a monster,” Annabelle said.

Miss Chalfont ignored the interruption and continued. “At eighteen, you are the oldest girl in the school. It is time for you to leave the nest and establish one of your own.”

“Twaddle,” Annabelle muttered. “My education is almost complete and I suspect you wish to be rid of me.”

Miss Chalfont smoothed the skirt of her steel-grey woollen gown and looked at Annabelle with a cold expression in her eyes. “I beg your pardon? Did I hear you say twaddle? As for wishing to be rid of you child, that is not true. However, I will admit that in recent months I have worried about your guardian’s future plans for you. But I need not have worried. As a happy bride, I daresay you will go to London where those pretty blue eyes and long lashes of yours will be so much admired that Monsieur le Baron will be proud of you.”

At any other time Miss Chalfont’s rare compliment would have pleased her. On this occasion it only served to increase the fury she tried to conceal. Losing her temper would be pointless. Before Annabelle spoke, she took a deep breath to calm herself. “It is unreasonable to order me to marry the man without allowing me time to become acquainted with him.”

“Do not refer to your bridegroom as the man. I have told you his name is de Beauchamp.”

Rebellion flamed in Annabelle’s stomach. “What do you know of my…er...bridegroom-tobe, ma’am?”

Miss Chalfont looked down at the letter. “He is described as a handsome gentleman of mature years.”

“One would think the description is of a piece of mature cheese or a bottle of vintage wine.”

Miss Chalfont frowned. “Do not be impertinent, Annabelle, you are not too old to be punished.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but please tell me how mature he is,” Annabelle said, her eyes wide open and her entire body taut with apprehension.

“Monsieur le Baron is some forty-years-old.”

“How mature?” Annabelle persisted with her usual bluntness.

“He is forty-two-years-old.”

Annabelle stood, bent forward, and drummed her fingers on the edge of the desk. “Please be kind enough to inform my guardian that I will not play Guinevere to an aging Arthur. I would prefer to build my nest with a young Lancelot.”

Miss Chalfont’s shoulders heaved as though she was trying not to laugh. “Regardless of your preference, you must marry according to your guardian’s wish.”

“Dear ma’am, you and your mother have always been kind to me. I cannot believe you approve of—”

“As I have already said, my approval or disapproval is of no importance. Your duty is to obey.” Annabelle’s anger boiled and she felt somewhat sick in the stomach. Now that she was old enough to leave the seminary, it seemed that unless she refused to co-operate, she really would be disposed of without the slightest consideration for her personal wishes. Simultaneously afraid to obey her guardian and furious because not even Miss Chalfont seemed to care about her dilemma, Annabelle straightened up. She looked around the cosy parlour, with its thick oriental rugs, pretty figurines on the mantelpiece, and a number of gilt-framed pictures on the wall, one of which she had painted. “I will consider the marriage.” Annabelle looked down again, in case rebellion revealed itself on her face. But she had not lied. She would consider the marriage proposal, but not in the manner Miss Chalfont expected, for she would find a way to reject the elderly baron.

Miss Chalfont stood, walked round her desk, and patted Annabelle’s shoulder before resting her hand on it. “My dear child, there is little for you to consider. I dread to think of the consequences if you disobey your guardian. You could be cast penniless from here with only the clothes on your back. After all, your guardian does have complete power over you.”

Annabelle wanted to jerk away from her uncaring teacher’s hand but forced herself to remain passive. She did not want the woman to suspect the nature of her rebellious thoughts and have her closely watched. Inwardly, she seethed and decided that whatever the cost, she would escape the fate in store for her. An image of her former nurse, with whom she corresponded, flashed through her mind. With it came a sense of security and purpose.

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Baroness Orczy author of the first blockbuster.

Baroness Orczy


Best remembered for her hero, Percy Blakeney, the elusive scarlet pimpernel, Baroness Orczy was born in Tarna Ors, Hungary, on September twenty-third, eighteen hundred and sixty-five to Countess Emma Wass and her husband Baron Felix Orczy. Her parents frequented the magnificent court of the Austrian Hungarian Empire where the baron was well known as a composer, conductor and friend of famous composers such as Liszt and Wagner.

Until the age of five, when a mob of peasants fired the barn, stables and fields destroying the crops, Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy, enjoyed every luxury in her father’s magnificent, ancestral chateaux, which she later described as a rambling farmhouse on the banks of the River Tarna. The baron and his family lived there in magnificent ‘medieval style’. Throughout her life; the exuberant parties, the dancing and the haunting gypsy music lived on in Emmuska’s memory.

After leaving Tarna Ors forever, the Orczys went to Budapest. Subsequently, in fear of a national uprising, the baron moved his family from Hungary to Belgium. Emmuska attended convent schools in Brussels and Paris until, in 1880, the baron settled his family in Wimpole Street, London.

At fifteen years of age, Emmuska not only learned English within six months, but also won a special prize for doing so. Later, she first attended the West London School of Art and then Heatherby’s School of Art, where she met her future husband, Montague Barstow, an illustrator.

Emmuska fell in love with England and regarded it as her spiritual birthplace, her true home. When people referred to her as a foreigner, and said there was nothing English about her, she replied her love was all English, for she loved the country.

Baron Orczy tried hard to develop his daughter’s musical talent but Emmuska chose art, and had the satisfaction of her work being exhibited at The Royal Academy.

Later, she turned to writing.

In 1894 Emmuska married Montague and, in her own words, the marriage was ‘happy and joyful’.

The newly weds enjoyed opera, art exhibitions, concerts and the theatre. Emmuska’s bridegroom was supportive of her and encouraged her to write. In 1895 her translations of Old Hungarian Fairy Tales: The Enchanted Cat, Fairyland’s Beauty and Uletka and The White Lizard, edited with Montague’s help, were published.

Inspired by thrillers she watched on stage, Emmuska wrote mystery and detective stories. The first featured The Old Man in the Corner. For the generous payment of sixty pounds the Royal Magazine published it in 1901. Her stories were an instant hit. Yet, although the public could not get enough of them, she remained dissatisfied.

In her autobiography Emmuska wrote: ‘I felt inside my heart a kind of stirring that the writing of sensational stuff for magazines would not and should not, be the end and aim of my ambition. I wanted to do something more than that. Something big.’

Montague and Emmuska spent 1900 in Paris that, in her ears, echoed with the violence of the French Revolution. Surely she had found the setting for a magnificent hero to champion the victims of “The Terror”.

Unexpectedly, after she and her husband returned to England, it was while waiting for the train that Emmuska saw her most famous hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, dressed in exquisite clothes. She noted the monocle held up in his slender hand, heard both his lazy drawl and his quaint laugh. Emmuska told her husband about the incident and within five weeks had written The Scarlet Pimpernel. Very often, although the first did not apply to Emmuska and Montague, it is as difficult to find true love as it is to get published. A dozen publishers or more rejected The Scarlet Pimpernel. The publishing houses wanted modern, true-life novels. The Scarlet Pimpernel was rejected. Undeterred Emmuska and Montague turned the novel into a play.

The critics did not care for the play, which opened at the New Theatre, London in 1904, but the audiences loved it and it ran for 2,000 performances. As a result, The Scarlet Pimpernel was published as a novel and became the blockbuster of its era making it possible for Emmuska and Montague to live in an estate in Kent, have a bustling London home and buy a luxurious villa in Monte Carlo.

During the next thirty-five years, Emmuska wrote not only sequels to The Scarlet Pimpernel such as, Lord Tony’s Wife, 1917, The League of The Scarlet Pimpernel 1919, but other historical and crime novels. Her loyal fans repaid her by flocking to the first of several films about her gallant hero. Released in 1935, it was produced by her compatriot, Alexander Korda, starred Lesley Howard as Percy, and Merle Oberon as Marguerite.

Emmuska and Montague moved to Monte Carlo in the late 1910’s where they remained during Nazi occupation in the Second World War.

Montague died in 1943 leaving Emmuska bereft. She lived with her only son and divided her time between London and Monte Carlo. Her last novel Will-O’theWisp and her autobiography, Links in the Chain of Life were both published in 1947 shortly before her death at the age of eight-two on November the twelfth, in the same year.

A lasting tribute to the baroness is the enduring affection the public has for her brave, romantic hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, master of disguise.

First published Spring 2011
Volume 1 Vintage Script

The writing magazine for all things vintage,

historical,

retro.

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