Miss Bridget Jane's Diary Part 5

(You might want to read Parts 1 to 4 - links on sidebar to your left - before reading this installment.)

‘Not Lord Rotherwell?’ I gasped.
‘No.’
‘But . . . the flunky spoke to you.’
He took his foot from the fender.
‘He asked if I was Rotherwell, because he had a message to deliver, but as soon as I told him I wasn’t, he left me and went to look elsewhere.’
I Saw It All.
The whole thing was a humiliating experience, but matters were about to get worse.
‘If you don’t mind, I’m having an important meeting in here in less than five minutes, and I’d like you to leave,’ he said
‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ I replied haughtily.

I turned on my heel and walked out of the door. Unfortunately, it was the wrong door, and I walked straight into the broom cupboard, whereupon a deluge of buckets and brushes landed on my head.
‘As I thought, the cupboards in this house are far too small,’ I said. I mustered what dignity I could and pretended I’d walked into the cupboard on purpose to inspect it. ‘I will inform the mistress of the house at once. She needs to know that her cupboards should be enlarged by about fifty per cent.’
Then leaving the whole ghastly mess behind me I walked out of the door and went back to the ballroom.

‘Oh, Charlotte, there you are, I’ve been looking all over for you,’ said Mama. She did a double take as she saw the state of my dress. ‘Charlotte! What have you been doing to your dress? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Now look, there’s Lord Rotherwell, and he’s coming this way. Throw back your shoulders and stick out your chest, and we’ll just have to hope he’s too distracted to notice the state of your dress.’

I didn’t do it, of course. I am not a floozy and I don’t mean to behave like one, no matter what Mama might say. Besides, Lord Rotherwell was short and fat. He was also at least forty, or possibly fifty. In fact, he could well have been sixty.
‘I’ve decided not to marry,’ I said.

Amanda Grange