Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (36 page)

As if in a dream, she helped Jenkins serve at table, wondering whether one could die from an excess of humiliation.

“Tell me, dear Marquess,” said Mrs. Carter, with a roguish twinkle, “why are you not married?”

“What a simply excellent chef you have,” said Roddy politely. But Mrs. Carter had been snubbed by coarser ways than the marquess had ever dreamt of and charged on regardless.

She gave the frozen-faced Roddy a naughty wink and poked him in the ribs with her fan. “We’re all waiting, my lord. Why haven’t you made some nice girl happy?”

“You must tell me more about the business world here, Mister Carter,” said Roddy pleasantly. “It sounds fascinating.”

Mr. Carter cast his wife an anguished look and chewed the ends of his mustache. The other guests shifted restlessly and began to wish—marquess or no marquess—that they had not come. Bessie Carter was the
end
!

Mrs. Carter’s small eyes narrowed as Roddy was besieged with Wall Street information and everyone began to talk at once, very loudly and quickly. She was not used to having her will crossed. She quickly toted up in her cash-register mind the exact cost of the evening. Her aristocratic guest
would
sing for his supper. She was paying for it, after all. Her loud voice flattened over the conversations like a steamroller.

“Don’t be coy with me, Marquess. I insist on knowing why a handsome young lord like you is not married.”

The other guests held their breath. They prayed for Bessie Carter’s downfall and at the same time they dreaded it. Roddy put down his fork and stared at his plate. Then he raised his eyes and looked to where Mary was standing in the shadows of the room; her white face and frilly cap seemed to float, disembodied in the corner. The wind howled down the river outside with a great moaning yell and then died away, leaving the room in utter silence except for the crackling of the fire.

“I’ll tell you,” said Roddy quietly, keeping his eyes fixed on Mary’s face.

“I had always fancied myself in love but I always got over it very quickly. Then a friend of mine invited me down to an English seaside resort. There were two American heiresses who needed taking down a peg, he said. It looked like good sport. Well, I fell in love with the younger. But I did not trust my own feelings. You see, I had been in love before.

“She left. I found I missed her frightfully. I heard she had lost her money and was working in New York. I came to find her…just to see her again.

“Now, by all the canons of good taste, I could not visit a house and propose to one of the servants. I felt that just to be near her would be enough. But it is not. Neither do the strict rules of good form seem to apply in this house, Mrs. Carter. I am saying in front of you all that I love her and want to marry her, and I want her to take off that ridiculous cap and take my arm and walk out of the house with me.”

Mrs. Haagen gave a nervous titter. Mr. Carter looked nervously at Roddy’s empty glass and decided it should not be refilled. Mrs. Carter looked disappointed.

“Oh, a
fairy
story,” she cried.

Everyone plunged into conversation to cover the embarrassment engendered by the young lord’s eccentricity and only Mary, standing in the shadows, heard the soft whisper, “Will you, Mary?”

She gave a funny, jerky little bob of her head. He rose slowly from the table and laid his napkin carefully beside his plate. He was unaware of the faces of the guests turned upward to him. He moved around the table and crossed the room to where Mary was standing.

He looked down at her, noticing the taut lines of strain on her face and the shadows of weariness under her large eyes.

“Will you?” he said again very softly, watching the warmth and love suddenly transforming her face. He gently unfastened the little lacy cap from her head. He put his arms around her and held her very close.

“This is madness!” spluttered Mrs. Carter III.

Unheeding, the couple were moving dreamily to the door. Hatless and coatless, they wandered out into the snowy streets of Brooklyn Heights.

The guests were bunched on the doorstep, staring after them openmouthed. Mary was laughing at something the marquess was saying and little feathers of snow sparkled in her hair.

Then the marquess bent his head and kissed her while Mrs. Carter trembled with cold, rage, and astonishment on her front doorstep.

One by one the guests began to leave.

They had never liked Bessie Carter anyway.

Miss Molly Maguire bent her head over her account books and sighed, and the wind whipping along Fulton Street sighed in answer. The shop was doing well. She had already been able to engage two assistants and soon she would be able to pay Bernie back. She kept one set of accounts for Bernie and another for her father. Joseph Maguire haunted the stock exchange, dreaming of making a killing. “I shall invest your money for you, Molly,” he had promised, and Molly had promptly worked on a false set of books to show that Maguire Modes was running at a perpetual loss.

Only that afternoon, Molly had tried for the hundredth time to persuade Mary to give up her job and move in. But Mary had remained adamant. Furthermore, she refused to discuss Hadsea, and Molly was suffering too much pain of her own to insist as heartily as she normally did that her sister was throwing her young life away, for Molly had received a letter from Jennifer Strange.

Dear Miss Maguire
, she had written.
So Lord David is to be married to Lady Cynthia after all! And after having paid court to
both
of us. I swear I was never more deceived
…

The rest of the letter went over and over the same subject. Molly was shrewd enough to realize that the writer was motivated by spite but she also thought Jennifer had written out of rage and disappointment. So Lord David was a cad after all!

Angry tears began to form in Molly’s eyes. Mary’s ever knew how much her stronger sister clung to the dream of returning to England in triumph. Molly had worked and slaved day and night at her business with that one end in mind. Once again she would be rich and expensively dressed. She would have her Season in London and Lord David would turn and stare as she floated into the ballroom. Now her dream was spoiled by the vision of Lord David turning and staring with Lady Cynthia hanging possessively on his arm.

For the very first time she felt worn out. She climbed down from her high desk and straightened her spine and walked wearily to the shop door. She snapped up the blind and stared out into the darkness of Fulton Street. A train roared over the elevated overhead, sending small flurries of snow falling onto the street and setting the dresses swaying on their hangers.

Lady Fanny had written a kind letter, offering both girls a home in England, but both were too proud to accept charity. The only good thing out of all this mess, reflected Molly, was that Mrs. Maguire had at least returned to her normal self, putting on some much needed weight and helping busily about the shop. She stared unseeingly out of the door into the dancing snow, picturing Hadsea, wondering if Mrs. Pomfret was still at the post office and whether she had married Billy, wondering if Lord David had sold his villa.
Why
,
I can almost see him standing on the other side of Fulton Street
, Molly thought.
The snow must be playing tricks on my eyes
.

Another train rattled overhead, and in the flickering lights of the passing train, which cast their brief illumination down into the snowy street, she did see Lord David Manley.

“He’s probably on his honeymoon,” said Molly to herself, bitterly. The tall figure walked across the street and stood looking at her through the glass, his face very remote and stern. At last he said, “Aren’t you going to let me in, Miss Maguire?”

She drew back the bolts and opened the door. He removed his tall silk hat and placed it on a small table and then sat down in a chair, crossing his legs and smiling at her pleasantly. “Well, this is quite like old times,” said the infuriating man.

“There is a difference now, buster,” said Molly. “I’ve gotta work for a living, see. So why don’t you—”

“Make a noise like a hoop and roll away,” he finished. “No I will not. I’ve had a damned uncomfortable journey and a damned hideous evening trying to find you.”

“Why?” said Molly coldly. “Cynthia want some frocks wholesale?”

“Don’t be cheeky,” he said pleasantly. “I haven’t seen Cynthia since that cursed ball. I really don’t know why I bother with you, Molly. It’s very damaging to the ego to keep laying one’s heart at a girl’s feet just for her to trample over.”

“She rejected you,” said Molly. “Well, if that doesn’t beat the band!”

“Oh, don’t be so dashed stupid. Trust a woman to pick up the wrong thing. If you aren’t the most irritating, infuriating girl I ever came across…”

“Then why don’t you just
leave
,” screamed Molly. “Go on, vamoose, beat it, scram.”

“Then I will. I damned well will just do that very thing. You are a stupid, stubborn, thoughtless girl. Good day to you!”

The shop door slammed behind him and the little bell above the door tinkled and swayed wildly on its wire.

Gone.

Silence.

“Oh,” whispered Molly to herself, “he meant he was laying his heart at
my
feet. Oh…!”

She flew to the shop door and crashed it open. She flew down Fulton Street under the stark black shadows cast by the King’s County Elevated Railroad to where a thinner, blacker shadow was moving off into the night.

“David!” she cried, but another passing train drowned the sound of her voice.

Thank God he had stopped walking. He was standing quite still under a lamplight, staring at the snow swirling around his feet.

He turned around abruptly and started to run back when he collided full into Molly Maguire. They both slipped and fell onto the sidewalk, hanging on to each other, Molly stammering incoherent apologies and Lord David trying to kiss her mouth and shut her up. He kissed her shoulder, then her ear, then her nose, and then his mouth found its target as the elegant lord lay flat in the middle of a Fulton Street sidewalk, kissing Molly Maguire until she was breathless and then kissing her again as soon as she got her breath back.

“Whassis?” demanded the deep voice of Officer Brady, the very hairs of his gray wool uniform seeming to stand on end with shock.

“You will marry me as soon as possible,” his lordship was saying.

“Oh,
yes
,” sighed Miss Maguire.

Lord David took her face in his long fingers and bent his head to kiss her, oblivious of the fact that Officer Brady was prodding him in the back with his nightstick.

“Dat’s Miss Maguire,” exclaimed the outraged officer of the law. “Dere’s no need t’ take t’ the streets, girl!” A taxicab came bumping over the snowy ruts, illuminating the shameless couple. Lord David got to his feet and hailed the cab and then became aware that the strong arm of the law was trying to pull him back.

Lord David stuck his hand in his pocket and withdrew several notes. “Here, Officer, drink to our health. We are to be married,” he said.

“Ho, that’s different,” said Officer Brady, clutching the pile of notes, but the couple had already climbed into the taxicab, which had driven off. He looked down at the notes in his hand and then examined them under the street-lamp. The unmistakable features of King Edward stared up at him from the notes.

“British money,” said Officer Brady in disgust. Then the cheering thought that he could change the filthy English money at the bank in the morning occurred to him. It further struck him that someone on his beat had once mentioned that the English pound was worth five good American dollars. Tonight, however, he would drink to Molly Maguire’s health—and put it on the slate.

M. C. Beaton

For Joe and Ann Carroll

The long drawing room at Courtney was silent except for the sound of muffled sobbing from the two ladies present and yawns and groans from the two gentlemen.

Miss Barbara Briggs, called the Perpetual Debutante by her friends and enemies alike, raised the wisp of a handkerchief to one faded-blue eye.

“Poor, poor Uncle Giles. On his deathbed at last. Well, everyone knows how I’ve taken care of him and always remembered his birthdays and Christmases. I am sure he shall call for me soon.” Her bandeau, which was slipping over her pepper-and-salt hair, gave her faded features a slightly drunken look, and the other female present looked at her in derision.

Miss Tansy Bloomington was the epitome of the modern Edwardian woman. She wore a sulphur-yellow tea gown embellished with designs of angry-looking little blue Chinese. Her twelve-inch cigarette holder was firmly clenched in one strong tanned muscular hand and her bright-red hair was screwed up on top of her head. Her prominent nose and heavy-lidded eyes gave her the appearance of a bird of prey. Like her cousin, Miss Briggs, Miss Bloomington had discovered a hitherto hidden affection for her dying uncle and was closing in on his bedside with the intention of persuading Mr. Frayne that a modern woman like herself would be the safest one to inherit his great fortune. Like Miss Briggs, she was in her thirties and unwed.

Mr. Frayne’s two nephews made up the other members of the party: Jeffrey Beardington-Smythe, square and choleric and middle-aged; and Cyril Booth, willowy and handsome and twenty.

Mr. Frayne was a noted miser, although he did spend money on the upkeep of Courtney, his stately home. It was what was known as a desirable residence, having everything that an English country house should have, from its stately Georgian rooms and long windows to a handsome stone terrace decorated with peacocks and urns and a formal garden originally laid out by Capability Brown, now maintained by a large outdoor staff. He was a nasty old man and had lived in seclusion for most of his life. Now that he was dying, he was, however, not in the least surprised to find that he had so many affectionate relatives. He was only surprised that they were stupid enough to demonstrate their affections at the last minute.