106. Love's Dream in Peril (6 page)

As the carriage drew away, Jane stood on the front step to wave.

‘Adella is utterly miserable,’ she thought, seeing her white strained face through the carriage window. ‘I have never seen her like this before.’

Could it have something to do with that fair-haired man who had walked with her in the Gardens yesterday?

Was it a message from him that she had waited for so eagerly?

Perhaps Digby was not to be trusted. Lord Ranulph had told her that he had only taken Adella to the Botanical Gardens to win a wager!

It was just as well that her best friend was going to London, far away from the thoughtless young man.

If he had promised to send a message and then not done so, he clearly did not care for Adella.

Jane watched the carriage until it turned a corner and disappeared and then she went back inside the school to begin her new duties, as she supervised the table where the young boarders were gathering for their afternoon tea and plates of dry crumbly seedcake.

“Mr. May will be with you shortly,” the grey-haired butler told Adella.

“Thank you,” she replied, unsure of whether to sit down or not. She decided to stay where she was, standing on the hearthrug.

The old butler seemed to have forgotten about her already and clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“This sunshine will bleach the colour from velvet chair covers,” he said to himself, looking at the bright rays streaming in through the windows of 82 Dorset Square. He drew the green silk curtains half across, so that the summer sun was blocked out and most of the drawing room was plunged into shadow.

Then he ambled slowly out of the room, leaving Adella alone in her new home.

The drawing room was well appointed with deep comfortable chairs and a sofa upholstered in dark green. A beautiful Persian rug was spread across the floor.

There were engravings of strange-looking buildings with domes and towers that Adella could hardly make out, now that the drawing room was so gloomy.

Over the fireplace hung a large oil painting of an Indian gentleman in a turban standing under a palm tree and holding a spotted cat on a leash.

The oil painting was lovely, Adella thought, but she was not sure if she liked the row of large clocks underneath it, which were crowded together all along the mantelpiece.

The room was filled with the sound of their ticking. Why did Uncle Edgar have so many? Strangest of all was a wooden clock in the shape of a little log cabin.

Adella was just peering at this and thinking that it was rather ugly when she heard someone coming in.

Uncle Edgar had finally come to greet her.

He looked just as she remembered from his visits to the school, tall and thin with straggly white hair.

His lined cheeks were threaded with little red veins and the whites of his eyes had a yellowish tinge, as if they, like his skin, had suffered from too long under a hot sun.

“Good afternoon, Uncle Edgar,” she said politely. “How are you? I was just admiring your clocks.”

“Did you touch them? They are not to be touched,” he said in a peevish voice. “It’s a rule of the house. Only I may touch the clocks. I wind them once a week.”

“Yes, of course, Uncle Edgar.”

Why had he not greeted her? Surely he should have done that before talking about his clocks?

“I had some difficulty recognising you, when I saw you standing there on the hearthrug,” Uncle Edgar said in the same irritable tone. “You have transformed yourself into a young woman. I suppose I should not be surprised.”

“It’s a long time since your last visit to Oxford,” Adella replied, trying to ignore how hurt she was feeling at the way he spoke to her.

Before retiring to Dorset Square, Uncle Edgar had spent most of his time abroad working in India.

He came to England on leave every few years and that was when he had visited Adella at the school.

She had only ever seen him for a hour or so when he came to visit and, although he had always been most generous in providing money for her needs, Adella realised now that, although he was the only family she had, she did not know him at all.

“I suppose I should offer you some refreshment,” Uncle Edgar said with a little sigh, as he tugged the bell-pull. “I really am not used to entertaining ladies. Tea? Is that what you will have?”

Adella nodded. She was feeling very thirsty indeed.

She expected a parlourmaid or the housekeeper to come and take Uncle Edgar’s instructions, but it was the old butler who turned up.

“Tea, sir? For the young lady? Of course,” he said. “And for yourself, sir?”

“Bring me a tonic water. I shall not be taking tea.”

The butler shuffled out and a heavy silence fell over the drawing room, for Uncle Edgar seemed to have nothing further to say.

Adella perched herself on the edge of the green sofa and tried to keep a pleasant happy expression on her face, but it was hard work, as she felt tired and her head ached from the long journey from Oxford.

The discomfort of it would not have bothered her at all if Digby had kept his promise and sent her a message.

She sat in the semi-darkness of the drawing room, listening to the frenzied ticking of her uncle’s clocks and felt unhappiness pressing down her usual buoyant spirits.

If only, right now, she could slip her hand into the pocket of her silk blouse and feel, next to her heart, the note that Digby had written to her.

But there was no note. Digby had forgotten all about her.

“Oh, whatever is that?” Adella started and almost leapt up from the sofa, as she heard a loud whirring noise from above the fireplace.

A carved bird with a wide-open beak and spiky wooden feathers shot out from the front door of the clock that looked like a little house.

“Cuckoo!” it squeaked over and over again, six times, Adella counted.

“Aha! Marvellous!” Uncle Edgar’s face erupted in an unexpected smile. “Wonderful little chap, isn’t he?”

Adella nodded, although she did not like either the clock or the sound it had just made.

“It took me two years to build that clock, but I never fail to be delighted with the results of my labour,” Uncle Edgar boasted.

He stood up and went over to the fireplace, patting the cuckoo with a proud forefinger.

“Marvellous!” he exclaimed. Then he peered at the clock face. “Six o’clock already. Dinner will be upon us before we know it.”

He shook his head and blinked in an absent-minded way and then wandered out of the room, passing the butler with the tea tray in the doorway.

“There you are, miss,” he wheezed, “and when you are ready, I will show you up to your room.”

“Uncle Edgar has left his tonic water,” Adella said.

“I shall take it up to his study directly, miss. He is very preoccupied with his latest project at the moment.”

“What is he working on?” she now asked, a little surprised, as she knew that her uncle had retired.

The butler smiled.

“He is building a model of the Red Fort. A most impressive building, miss, which he saw in India. He is creating it entirely from spent matchsticks.”

Adella drank her cup of tea and thought about this. It sounded like a very odd hobby for an elderly gentleman.

He was certainly not quite as she had expected.

When she had finished her tea, she told the butler that she would like to go to her room.

“Of course, miss. Your uncle has arranged that you should have one of the front rooms overlooking the Square. Beth, your maid, is waiting there for you. Mr. May does not normally like to have female servants in the house, but he has made a special exception for you.”

How odd, Adella thought. But now she understood why the old butler served tea and not the housekeeper, as perhaps there was not such a person at 82 Dorset Square, if Uncle Edgar did not like female servants.

The bedroom seemed vast and at least three times the size of her old room at Mrs. Mottram’s.

A slight figure stood by the bed, dressed in a neat white apron and cap.

“Good evenin’, miss,” a little voice piped up with a strong Cockney accent. “I’ve took the liberty, miss, of unpackin’ your trunks for you.”

Adella stared at the girl. She seemed very young with fair hair escaping in fine wisps under her lace cap.

“You must be Beth,” she said, thinking, with a pang of sadness, of Jane. She suddenly missed her friend very much indeed.

“Yes, miss. Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”

Beth had certainly been quick and efficient with the unpacking as there was not a single garment of Adella’s to be seen anywhere. Everything had been neatly put away.

The bedroom was decorated in blue and white and the long curtains were embroidered with a dainty pattern of cornflowers.

“Miss,” Beth looked anxious. “I was just wonderin’ what you would be wearin’ for dinner? I couldn’t find no evenin’ gowns.”

“I don’t have any, Beth. I suppose I shall have to wear one of the Sunday dresses I had at school.”

“Yes, miss.”

Beth went over to the large wardrobe on one wall and took one of the white dresses from its hanger.

Then she brought a blue-flowered jug and a deep bowl, so that Adella could refresh herself after her long dusty journey.

Adella allowed the little maid to hook her into one of her Sunday best silk dresses and then she sat down on the padded stool in front of the dressing table.

It was a most odd feeling to have the maid’s nimble fingers working on her hair, twisting and turning it into a tight knot with just a few curls falling over her neck.

Adella watched her reflection in the mirror and it seemed as if the girl she had been yesterday, whose hair had been simply caught up in a pink ribbon, was vanishing in front of her eyes.

In her place a young woman sat, slim and elegant. A young woman who lived in the big City and who would never run swiftly along a pavement again as a carefree schoolgirl with the breeze ruffling her curls.

If only Jane were here to share Adella’s thoughts.

But her friend would be standing at the head of the table in the dining room at Mottram’s now, watching the young boarders sip their bowls of broth. It might be a very long time before they saw each other again.

“You don’t seem very ’appy, miss.” Beth remarked. “Don’t you like the way I’ve done your ’air?”

“It’s lovely. Everything is very new to me, Beth. That’s all.”

“Of course, miss.”

From the hall downstairs came the hollow boom of the big brass gong that Uncle Edgar had brought back with him from India.

“Time to go down, miss.”

Adella stood up. Her head felt strange and light now that her hair was all tied up.

She took a deep breath and walked to her bedroom door, which Beth held open for her.

This was the first night of her new life and she must make the best of it and forget for the next few hours all her thoughts of Oxford and of Digby.

*

Two days after his friend Digby had left Oxford, Lord Ranulph Fowles was staring aimlessly down into the Quadrangle from the window of his rooms in the College.

It was a huge tragedy that Digby’s father had died so suddenly, but it was very thoughtless of his best friend to leave Oxford with no explanation, not even a note.

If old Batcup had not told him when they met on the stairs, he would not have known what had happened.

It struck him that he had spent time with his friend almost every day for the last three years. They had ridden their thoroughbred horses through the meadows and had kept each other company through long and dull lectures.

In the evenings, when they were not bent over their desks, catching up on their studies or dining in Hall with the dignitaries and academics of the College, they had frequented the many excellent taverns and inns to be found in Oxford.

They had planned to enjoy all sorts of extravagant entertainments and madcap escapades to celebrate the end of their student days, but now none of these appealed to Lord Ranulph at all.

Without Digby, there was no point to any of it.

At the same time he missed the rogue more than he cared to say, especially since he had had no opportunity to pay Digby for winning their wager and stealing Adella from under his nose.

Adella, such a divinely pretty girl with her glorious golden curls and those warm brown eyes, such a contrast to her bright hair.

And the graceful Miss Hartley with her dark eyes and soft gentle voice. She was utterly lovely as well.

If he was honest, he could not remember having been in the company of two such enchanting girls before.

Below him in the Quadrangle, a scout was trundling a wheelbarrow full of luggage towards the archway that let out onto the street.

The squeaking of the wheels and the hollow sound of the man’s footsteps over the flagstones sounded very melancholy to Ranulph.

Soon there would be no one but himself left in the College, if he did not get a move on.

His rooms were all packed up and he could leave for his family’s country estate at Manningham or for their London residence, Fowles Place in Belgravia, whenever he chose.

But he did not want to leave. He wanted to see the two girls again.

He jumped up from the window seat and hurried down the stone staircase, heading out of the Quadrangle and aiming for the street where he knew that the School for Young Ladies was located.

*

“Miss May has left us,” a cross-looking woman in a maid’s cap and apron told Lord Ranulph, when she came to answer his knock at the door of the school.

She looked at him rather suspiciously.

“Are you perhaps a relative, sir?” she asked.

Of course, Ranulph thought, she must look this way at any and every young man who came calling.

“Apologies. I did not realise that she had left.”

He recalled now that Adella had said something about going to London the next day when they had been at the teashop.

It was a shame that he would not now have the opportunity to invite her to take a walk with him and get even with Digby.

“Perhaps Miss Hartley is here?” he asked, thinking how pleasant it would be to see her again.