A Certain Magic (12 page)

“No, not again,” she said.

“Again?” He frowned at her. “You mean he has before?”

“The night he proposed to me,” she said, laughing. “I managed to fight him off.”

“The devil!” he said. “I ought to slap a glove in his face. And I would, too, Allie, if half the world would not hear of it and soon know the cause. I shall certainly advise him that he would be safer away from London, if you wish.”

She continued to laugh. “He fancies himself in love,” she said, “and has made me an honorable offer of marriage. That is hardly the occasion for a death threat, Piers.”

“Certainly it is when the lady is you,” he said. “The very thought of anyone’s mauling you around as if you were a milkmaid!”

“Is this the Egyptian Hall?” she asked, looking out through the window again.

“The very place,” he said. “Bullock’s Museum. Let us go and see what is to be seen.”

Alice enjoyed the next couple of hours more than anything else since her arrival in London, first there and then at the Royal Academy in Somerset House. Apart from a few jokes about Emperor Napoleon’s carriage, Piers was serious and quiet. He did not seem to feel the necessity to comment and exclaim upon everything they saw. And so she was able to become absorbed in the beauty of the paintings.

They stood for a whole hour in Somerset House, gazing at walls covered with canvases. And until she thought about it, it did not seem at all unnatural when a party of schoolboys invaded the room to have Piers encircle her waist with one arm and draw her protectively against his side. He appeared to do so quite unconsciously and continued to gaze upward.

She relaxed against him and did not try to pull away even after she had realized that it was not quite proper to stand thus even if he had been her husband. But there was a sweet, seductive feeling of comfort and closeness, with no unease at all. She found that she could even turn her attention back to the paintings and continue to enjoy them.

He smiled down at her after a while, his arm still about her. “Are you still there?” he asked. “I must be an insufferably dull companion, Allie. I don’t think I have uttered a word in the past half hour, have I?”

“But then, neither have I,” she said. “Talking seems superfluous when there is so much to see, does it not?” 

“Ah, Allie,” he said, “you are so peaceful to be with. How do you do it? With everyone else I feel the constant necessity to make noise, however meaningless.”

“Perhaps because I am a friend,” she said, smiling up at him. Finally she was uncomfortably aware of his nearness, of his arm about her waist, his shoulder brushing her cheek. 

“I wish you did not live in Bath,” he said. “I wish you were still at Chandlos or at least in the village. How dare you move away without my permission, Allie,” He was laughing at her.

The party of schoolboys had moved on long ago. There was only a pair of ladies at the other side of the room, examining a painting at very close range.

“I know,” he said. “Your memories were too painful for you to stay there. That was the real reason, was it not? I’m sorry, Allie. I wish more than anything in the world that I could bring him back for you.”

She watched in shock as his head moved the small distance that separated them and he kissed her warmly and lightly on the lips.

“Time to obey that royal summons,” he said, releasing her and offering his arm. “I shall be in Mama’s black book for the next decade if I am five minutes late producing you for tea.”

“That would never do,” she said, taking his arm and smiling at him.

***

Lady Neyland, formerly Mrs. Westhaven, had moved away from Westhaven Park as soon as her son reached his majority, and had remarried very soon after. She and Sir Barry had lived in London or Paris ever since.

However, Alice could remember her from her childhood and knew her from occasional visits into the country since. And she had spent some evenings in company with both her and her husband in Bath the previous year. She liked Piers’ mother.

“Piers,” Lady Neyland said when they were shown into her drawing room, offering her cheek for his kiss, “you are five minutes late. I said four o’clock. Mrs. Penhallow, my dear, do come and sit down. Is the weather not dreadful?”

But Alice found her hand in the large, hearty clasp of Sir Barry before she was able to take her seat. Piers was explaining to his mother that traffic had been slow and heavy on the streets because of the rain.

“Of course,” Lady Neyland said, “and you should have made allowances for that, Piers. You are no green boy. I hope you have an umbrella for Mrs. Penhallow.” 

“Yes, indeed, Mama,” he said. “And chased behind her with it from carriage to house so that not a single drop of moisture was allowed to water her bonnet. You see, I am not such a careless creature as you think.”

“It is a great wonder you remembered it,” she said. “Your valet must have reminded you. Is it still Vaughan? An excellent man, Vaughan. Doubtless he has prevented you a dozen times from leaving your rooms without your head fixed firmly on your shoulders. Do sit down, Piers. One gets a crick in one’s neck from looking up at you.”

“How do you do, sir?” Piers said to his stepfather, exchanging a wink with him over his mother’s head and grinning at Alice.

“I was fine, my boy,” Sir Barry replied mournfully, “until your mama put me on half rations.”

“The very idea!” his wife exclaimed, sealing herself behind the teapot and beginning to pour. “One hates to be vulgar in front of guests, my love, but the truth of the matter is, Mrs. Penhallow, that I have insisted he reduce his rations to double instead of triple what they should be.”

“Sometimes,” Piers said, stretching out his booted feet to the hearth, where a warm fire was crackling, “life seems hardly worth living, does it, sir?”

“If it were not for billiards,” Sir Barry said, “I might consider shooting myself, m’boy. I am waiting for your mama to conceive the notion that stooping over a cue increases one’s girth.”

“I would not say that aloud, if I were you,” Piers said. “You might give her ideas.”

“Mrs. Penhallow,” Lady Neyland said, “you must be a saint to have entertained my son as often as you apparently did when dear Webster was still alive. Make yourself useful, Piers, do, and take Mrs. Penhallow her tea and the plate of cakes.”

“Allie likes them oozing with cream,” he said with a grin, getting to his feet.

“Piers!” she said.

“Now,” Lady Neyland said, “you must tell us how our friends in Bath were going along when you left them, Mrs. Penhallow, if you will. And after tea we will send the men packing for a game of billiards, and you must tell me who your modiste is. That is a very becoming outfit. A lovely color. But then I daresay your sense of style is your own and no modiste’s at all. I wish I shared your eye for what will suit one.”

“How did you leave Mr. and Mrs. Potter?” Sir Barry asked. “Well, I hope?”

Lady Neyland was as good as her word. After a half hour of tea and general conversation, she ordered her husband and son to go and enjoy themselves in the billiard room while she and Mrs. Penhallow had some sensible conversation.

“Men are so like children,” she said fondly when the door had closed behind them. “They have to be told what to do or they will never think of it for themselves. But then I do not need to tell you that when you were married for several years. Though I must say that Webster seemed a great deal more sensible than most other men I have ever known.”

Alice smiled and let her hostess talk.

“Take Piers, for example,” she said. “It is as clear as the nose on your face that he needs a wife. He is restless and bored and lonely, too. And yet he cannot realize it for himself and set about the task of looking about him for a suitable bride. Will you have another cup of tea, my dear? I believe it is still warm.”

Alice declined and watched Lady Neyland fill her own cup.

“I had to tell him,” her hostess said. “One does not like to tell one’s thirty-six-year-old son such a thing, especially when it is quite within his nature to laugh at me and wink at his stepfather over my head as he did earlier, thinking I do not know. He is a horrid, undutiful boy, Mrs. Penhallow, though quite the dearest boy in his fond mama’s eyes, of course.”

She sipped her tea and pulled a face. “Too strong,” she said. “I used the death of those poor unfortunate boys as an excuse, and told Piers that he owed it to his hew position to get himself married and some children into his nursery. I have been amazed to hear that he has been taking me seriously.”

“He has been diligently attending all the entertainments of the Season,” Alice said.

“And eyeing all the new little girls who are half his age, so I hear,” Lady Neyland said. “What a ridiculous boy. Perhaps no one has told him that women are able to breed well past the age of eighteen. How does he expect to find a mate among the little girls?”

Alice did not think a reply was called for. She smiled. 

“Exactly,” her hostess said, as if Alice had given the wisest of replies. “He does not have any idea how to go on, Mrs. Penhallow. He never did. You knew Harriet. The sweetest little creature one could ever wish to meet, and she doted on Piers. But I was horrified when I was first presented to her. I can never quite quell the thoroughly nasty thought that he had a fortunate escape from that marriage. He would have been dreadfully unhappy with her by now. Don’t you agree?”

Alice hesitated. “He was very kind to her,” she said.

‘‘Well, of course he was,” the other said. “And doubtless would have continued to be. It is not in Piers’ nature to be cruel to people who are weaker than he. But he would have been unhappy. Piers is an intelligent boy, though one would not always think so from the foolish way he likes to talk. He needs a woman whose mind can match his own. Someone like you, for example.” She took another sip of the tea and then set it in its saucer with a look of extreme distaste.

“Like me?” Alice said.

Lady Neyland sighed. “He was very fond of you and Webster,” she said. “I can remember thinking even when you were still married that it would have been far better for Piers if he had been the one to marry you. I suppose he had the same chance to woo you as Webster had when you were at the rectory with your papa. He could finally settle down if he would but marry someone like you, I believe.”

Alice licked dry lips. “But I am not in search of a husband, ma’am,” she said.

“No, I know, my dear,” Lady Neyland said. “You have been widowed for only two years, and it is hard to risk a second marriage when the first was a happy one, is it not? I had a happy marriage with Mr. Westhaven. It was all of five years before I could contemplate taking another partner.”

“I value my independence,” Alice said.    .

“ Yes,” her hostess said, “I could see that when we were at Bath. You need not look so aghast, my dear. I am not going to push a match on either you or Piers. While you would undoubtedly be good for him, I am not at all sure he would be good for you. He is a careless boy who would not treat you nearly as worshipfully as Webster did. He would as like try to shock you every day of your life merely for the pleasure of watching you blush.”

“He does that now,” Alice found herself saying with a smile of amusement.

“Then you know what I mean,” the other said. “Well, Mrs. Penhallow, my dear, perhaps I have started something that I ought not to have started at all. For a poor marriage will surely be more disastrous for Piers than no marriage at all. Is there anyone special?”

Alice hesitated. “I do not believe his feelings are engaged with anyone,” she said. “He has paid attentions to Miss Borden, daughter of Lady Margam, but I think more out of an instinct to protect her from shyness than out of any serious intent to woo her.”

“And I suppose she and her mama, as well as every other girl and her mama, know that he is wealthy and landed and in search of a bride?” she said dryly.

“I believe so, ma’am,” Alice said.

Lady Neyland clucked her tongue. “Piers thinks he is awake on every suit,” she said. “But in matters of the heart—or in matters of matrimony, I should say, which is not at all necessarily the same thing—he can he the veriest babe. The chances are that he will end up marrying not the girl he has chosen, but the one who has laid the most careful trap. Am I right, Mrs. Penhallow?” 

“I really could not say, ma’am,” Alice said.

“No, of course you could not,” Lady Neyland said. “It would not be proper for you to comment, would it? I should not have asked you. Now I have to decide what to do. Keep my mouth shut, I suppose. For if I talk to him, he will become stubborn and walk into the trap that much sooner. Well, my dear, I still have not asked you about your modiste. This is a London creation, is it not?”

They talked fashions for the time that remained before they were rejoined by the gentlemen.

Chapter 8

He was just simply not going to do it, Mr. Westhaven decided that evening at the Hendon ball. Allie had been right. There had to be more to marriage than just the breeding of heirs. There was more. There was the living with one’s mate for the rest of one’s life. And if he married a girl half his age, then there was every chance that she would outlive him. He would be taking on a life sentence indeed.

He was finding the evening tedious in the extreme. Dancing with Miss Borden brought no stimulation to the mind, unless one called searching about in one’s brain for some topic of conversation that would draw a word or a smile from her stimulating. It was mildly amusing, of course, to try to coax her into peeping up through her lashes at him or even looking directly at him. But would the amusement pall after a few years?

The word seemed to be out that he was paying serious court to Miss Borden. The other mamas and their daughters laid even more determined siege to his heart than usual. It was all vastly entertaining. But after all, he decided, he did not want the inner privacy of his life permanently invaded.

The whole of the social scene was beginning to pall on him. There was, he was discovering, only a certain range of human foolishness to be observed. He had observed it all during the past several weeks. Things were becoming repetitive.