Free Plain Jane by MC Beaton

pique that Jane, descending late to the dining room, found Euphemia and the lady’s maid on the best of terms. They had their heads together and were laughing over an illustration in a magazine when Jane entered.
    The clever Felice had met all Euphemia’s recriminations with amazed surprise. How could such a beauty suggest that a few stitches had transformed a little schoolgirl into a rival? The compliments and blandishments went on and on until Euphemia almost purred.
    Then bouquets and poems had begun to arrive, all for Euphemia. The fact was that Mrs Hart’s drunken rout had made her and her elder daughter social successes. A rout was not a fashionable rout unless it left you with something to talk about, and never before had there been such a rout as the Harts’! Two
tonnish
ladies of impeccable breeding, inebriated by Rainbird’s ‘negus’, had tried to scratch each other’s eyes out. The young man who had been dropped from the window had sprained both his ankles, although some thought he must have broken his neck, because from that day forth he went about in a cravat made of yards and yards of the strongest linen in case anyone should try to lower him from a great height and he indeed looked like the victim of a carriage accident.
    Everyone had behaved so wonderfully disgracefully that Euphemia’s bad manners were quite forgotten and only the image of her great beauty remained in the fevered brains of the gentlemen of the
ton
the following day as they struggled to quench their raging thirsts with bumpers of hock and seltzer.
    Society wagged heads, gossiped, and laughed over the dreadful happenings at Mrs Hart’s rout and declared her to be an Original. At one point during the evening, Mrs Hart, a trifle disguised, had broadcast to all and sundry the size of Euphemia’s dowry. The necessary gilt-edge was added to Euphemia’s beauty.
    Now, dizzy with success, Mrs Hart appeared in the dining room, announcing that little Jane must have some new gowns, and disappointed Jane noticed that that pronouncement did not raise even one gleam of jealousy in her sister’s eye. For it transpired that the great and powerful Marquess of Berry was to call to take Euphemia driving. What was a mere lord like Tregarthan compared to a marquess?
    Besides, Mrs Hart, although pleased and surprised at what she termed ‘Jane’s little success’, assumed that Tregarthan was merely amusing himself by entertaining such a young miss. Several ladies had been at great pains to point out to Mrs Hart that Tregarthan was a high stickler and that all his many mistresses had been divine beauties.
    Euphemia, who had had this gossip of her mother, no longer considered Jane a rival and laughed and glowed while Jane sulkily helped herself to toast and tea and felt smaller and plainer by the minute. But her normally sunny disposition soon asserted itself and she slipped off to the kitchens to pump Rainbird about the late Miss Clara and so to have a fund of gossip to pour into the ears of Lord Tregarthan.
    Jane had naively supposed that the servants would be delighted to have a visitor from upstairs, but the servants were irritated by her presence, and Mrs Middleton looked openly shocked that this young member of the gentry should not know her place – which was abovestairs.
    Undaunted, Jane looked curiously at the members of the household staff she had not seen before – at the cook, MacGregor, at Lizzie, the scullery maid, and at Dave, the pot boy.
    She averted her eyes from Lizzie, however, after that first look. There was something about the small scullery maid that reminded Jane painfully of herself. It was so much easier to imagine that one had undiscovered mysterious facets of attraction when one was not being faced with a near mirror-image. Like Jane’s, Lizzie’s hair was dark brown, and she had the same waif-like appearance and short figure. But where Jane’s skin was golden-brown, Lizzie’s was pale, and Lizzie’s eyes were