Holiday House Parties (5 page)

5

Geordie came down to dinner early, in consideration of his aunt. He knew that pre-dinner gatherings were always easier for the hostess if a few of the gentlemen were at hand to greet the ladies as they made their entrance. On this occasion, however, the Scotsman seemed to be the most considerate gentleman in the house, for, apparently, no one else had yet come down. From the threshold, the large drawing-room looked deserted.

But as soon as he stepped over the threshold he saw his aunt. Maud was standing before the drawing room fire, staring thoughtfully into the flames. She turned quickly round at the sound of his footsteps, her face brightening. “How grand you look, dearest!” she greeted effusively. “Your London tailor has fitted your evening clothes to perfection. Do you realize, Geordie, that in those clothes, and with your curls brushed back so neatly, no one would take you for a Scot?”

“I dinna take that as a compliment, ma'am,” Geordie retorted, only half in jest. “I like bein' a Scot. If ye persist in such compliments, I might take it into my head to wear my kilt to dinner.”

“Oh, pish-tush. Your kilt, indeed. You'd not come to my table in that savage dress, and you know it.”

“Aye, I would,” he insisted, thickening his brogue to emphasize the Scottishness in him that she loved to disparage. “And as for my curls, ye ken, they winna be biddable for more than ten minutes. If it's my throughither curls that make me seem a Scotsman, then I shall look a Scot afore we go in to dine.”

“Oh, dear, that's too true. Even as a child your hair was completely unruly. Those curls of yours do make you look like a wild creature sometimes. But never mind, you've a handsome enough face to compensate for it.”

“I thank ye, Aunt, for I
think
there's a compliment lurkin' in there somewhere.”

She laughed and poked him affectionately in his ribs. “Saucy jackanapes! But let's not waste time talking of kilts and curls. I shan't have many opportunities like this to have a private chat with you, Geordie, so come and sit here beside me on the sofa. I have something important to ask of you.”

“Ask away,” he said, perching on the arm of the sofa.

She fiddled with the ruffle of her sleeve in hesitation before speaking. “Now, don't get up on your high ropes over what I'm about to ask,” she began. “I have good reasons for asking. You see, I want you to pay particular attention to Miss Woolcott this week.”

Geordie's eyebrows rose. “Miss
Woolcott
?”

Outside in the corridor, that lady herself had been about to make her entrance. She'd paused at the side of the door to pull up the shoulder of her modish, emerald-green jaconette evening gown (which she feared showed too much decolletage), when she heard her name. Realizing that her entrance at this moment would be interrupting a
tête-à-tête
(and might possibly be embarrassing to the speakers and to herself), she stepped back into the shadows and waited.

“Yes, of course it's Miss Woolcott I wish you to attend,” Lady Maud was saying to Geordie at that moment. “Why do you sound so surprised? She is a charming girl, and so clever and beautiful—”

“Do you really think she's beautiful?” Geordie asked interestedly.

“Of course. Don't you?”

“Nae, not I. Her eyes may be braw, and she has a pretty mouth, but …”

“There are no buts about it,” his aunt declared firmly. “She's the loveliest creature I've ever seen, except perhaps for your mother in her salad days. And I say that with full awareness that I'm placing her above my own adorable Bella. And your good friend, Sir Archibald, must have found her beautiful, or why would he have gotten himself betrothed to her? By the way, Bella tells me it was Caro who broke it off. I'm not sorry, for I don't think she and your friend were suited. But you, I think, would suit her very well.”

“I? I'm the hin'most man in the world who'd suit her!”

But Maud paid him no heed. “She's all alone, you know,” she rambled on. “Hasn't a soul in the world. Lost her dear mother when she was still in leading strings. She was brought up by her father, who was rather famous, they say, in scholarly circles. He almost made a bluestocking of the child, but he was wise enough to send her off to school, so she learned something of the ways of the world. I think she's turned out very well in the circumstances. She has brains and beauty and
savoir-faire
and, in addition, I believe she has an inheritance that will make a considerable dowry. What more, I ask you, can a man want? So, my dear one, you must make your best effort in that direction. I noticed that Douglas Dawlish is already smitten, so you mustn't let him steal a march on you.”

“Dash it, Aunt Maud,” Geordie growled, jumping to his feet and glaring down at her, “are ye playin' matchmaker after all? Dinna ye hear my warnin' on that subject?”

“I paid it no mind. None at all. You young people don't know what's good for you. You need a little guidance from an older, wiser head. Your father wants you to bring home a bride. And Caro Woolcott is prefect for you.”

“Perfect?”
The idea was so ludicrous that Geordie couldn't maintain his angry pose. He broke into a grin. “Ye've o'erslept on this one, Aunt Maud,” he chortled. “Missed the boat entirely. Miss Woolcott and I are already acquainted, ye see. She finds me presumptuous and detestable, and I dislike her just as much.”

“Dislike her? How can you possibly dislike her?” his aunt demanded.

“The girl puts on airs. If there's anythin' that drives me daft, it's a lass with airs.”

Out in the corridor, Caroline Woolcott was seething with fury. Although she was familiar with the saying that eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves, it did not make what she'd overheard easier to bear. Shamed and humiliated, she was not comforted to realize that she shouldn't have eavesdropped in the first place. But a sound on the stairs stopped her ruminations and sent her scurrying across the hall to the library; it was bad enough to eavesdrop, but to be caught at it would be infinitely worse.

Meanwhile, back in the drawing room, Aunt Maud had risen from her seat in disgust. “Airs?” she snapped at her recalcitrant nephew. “I never heard anything so foolish! I've known Caro since she and Bella went off to school together, yet I've
never
seen the girl put on airs.”

“For a' that, Aunt Maud,” Geordie said with a careless shrug, “if ye're set on pairin' yer Caro and me, ye winna have any success. Nary a crumb. And as for the other specimens ye've collected here for the holiday, there's no hope for a pairin' there, either. I'm afraid yer efforts are doomed. Since I promised ye to help entertain them, I'll dance with the pallid one and ride with the horsey one. But as for Miss Woolcott, I won't even—”

But he was interrupted by the sound of voices in the hallway, and in another moment Bella, Lady Jane, and both the Dawlishes entered the drawing room, soon followed by Archie, Lord and Lady Powell, and a rather red-cheeked Caroline. Thus the
tête-à-tête
between aunt and nephew was, of necessity, concluded.

A determined Aunt Maud placed Geordie at the table with Emmaline Dawlish at his right and Caroline Woolcott at his left. On this first night with the full company present, the guests were all dressed in formal elegance. Caroline, in particular, was stylishly accoutered in a gown that was nothing if not dashing. Geordie could not help noticing that although the girl was not ‘sonsy,' the skin of her shoulders and neck glowed enticingly in the candlelight. He noticed, too, that all the gentlemen at the table—even the elderly Lord Powell—eyed her with appreciation. Nevertheless, Geordie refused to admit to himself that she was beautiful. A voice in the back of his mind told him he was a liar, but all he would concede was that there was nothing of the schoolmarm in her appearance tonight.

Caroline, still fuming over what she'd illicitly overheard, completely ignored the Scotsman's presence at the table beside her. Except for giving him a curt nod in greeting at the outset and passing him a plate of steamed brussels sprouts during the second course, she never turned her head in his direction. She spent the entire meal exchanging lines of Greek poetry with Douglas Dawlish, forcing Geordie to confine his conversational banter to Miss Dawlish on his right. This he proceeded to do with good grace. After a while, however, he found the experience trying. Miss Dawlish, who insisted that he call her Emmaline, was not very talkative herself, but she had a tendency to laugh with donkey-like guffaws at the end of every one of Geordie's sentences, as if she was convinced that every remark he made—even a mild comment on the succulence of the lamb roast—was the epitome of wit.

Geordie made one attempt to talk to the standoffish Caroline. During a lull in her conversation with Dawlish, Geordie turned to her and asked pleasantly which of the Greek plays they were discussing. Douglas Dawlish answered for her. “None of them,” he said with a prissy, superior smile. “We were speaking of the poetry of Anacreon.”

“Who's Anacreon?” Archie asked from across the table, innocently wishing to join in what he believed was a bit of town gossip.

“We mustn't talk to these sporting fellows about the Greeks,” Caroline said to Dawlish, throwing Archie a teasing smile. “They don't even know the
Antigone
.”

Poor Archie reddened in embarrassment. “Didn't know you were talking about the Greeks,” he mumbled.

Geordie seethed at their tone of superiority. “Dinna ye underestimate old Archie there,” he said, hiding his irritation behind a broad smile. “He's forgotten that he did a translation of Anacreon at school.
The Grasshopper
, wasn't it, Archie?”

Archie threw him a look of gratitude. “Yes, I do believe it was,” he said, going along with the bluff. Then he sat back and basked in Bella's look of admiration.

But Caroline fumed. She had not missed the byplay. That blasted Scotsman had interpreted her little, teasing remark as a jeer at Archie, which she hadn't at all intended. Why was it that the deuced Dunvegan always made her feel like a contemptuous, condescending prig? He had declared to his aunt that Caroline Woolcott was a “lass who put on airs,” and now he was intent on proving it. Well, this Caroline Woolcott would like nothing better than to scratch his eyes out! Would he say
that
was putting on airs?

As for Geordie, he made no second attempt to converse with Caroline. She had proved once again that she was a toplofty prig, and he wanted no more to do with her. But after an hour of being in the exclusive company of the guffawing Emmaline, Geordie prayed for this endless dinner to come to a close. Only Bella, sitting opposite him, made the meal bearable by occasionally turning away from the eagerly chatting Archie to smile across the table at her cousin. Bella seemed to sense that Geordie was suffering, and her sympathetic smiles were a refreshing breeze in this desert of a dinner.

By the end of the second course, he'd given up trying to converse with Emmaline and was staring ahead of him, stupefied by boredom, when he saw Dawlish's hand reach over for a wine bottle. The scholarly fellow, deep in conversation with Caroline about the rhythmic quality of Sophocles's
stichomythia
, did not notice that Caroline's long-stemmed wineglass stood in his way. The back of his hand brushed against it, tipping its balance. Geordie caught hold of it before it toppled over, but not before a splash of red liquid spurted onto Caroline's bosom. Geordie righted the glass as everyone at the table gasped.

Poor Dawlish paled. “Miss Woolcott, what have I done?” he cried, picking up a serviette and making an awkward motion with it toward her chest.

Caroline stayed his hand, took the cloth from him, and dabbed at the spots. “It's nothing,” she assured him calmly. “Only a few drops.”

“But wine …” the fellow mumbled. “Doesn't it stain?”

“I'm certain it won't,” she said.

“Bella,” said Lady Teale to her daughter, “take Caro upstairs to Dorrie.” Then she turned to Caroline with a reassuring smile. “My abigail, Dorrie, will know just what to do,” she explained. “She'll have it clean in a trice.”

“Thank you, Lady Teale,” Caroline said, getting to her feet.

The gentlemen all rose as Caroline and Bella left the table. But before departing, Bella looked back at her cousin. “That was quick thinking, Geordie, my dear,” she said with a proud smile. “If it weren't for you, Caro's beautiful dress might have been ruined.”

Caroline paused in the doorway, struggling with herself. That deuced Scotsman's words to his aunt still rang in her ears. He'd insulted her in every way possible—from her appearance to her character—but she had to admit that the dastardly fellow
had
prevented an embarrassing catastrophe in keeping the wineglass from toppling over. She would appear churlish if she didn't offer him a word of thanks. Grudgingly, she swallowed her pride and forced herself to turn and face Geordie squarely. “Yes, Lord Dunvegan, Bella is quite right. I must … thank you.”

Geordie grinned. He could hear the reluctance in her voice, and he sensed that somehow, in the unspoken battle between them, he had managed to win a round. He was not at all sure what the battle was about, but he
was
sure that this tiny victory felt good. “'Twas nothin', ma'am,” he said, the merest note of triumph in his voice. “Dinna gi'e it anither thought.”

6

The next three days were enjoyable for almost everyone. Archie and Bella were happily discovering each other, inseparable except when the duties of the household kept her from his side. Douglas Dawlish, too, was eagerly pursing the yearnings of his heart, constantly following Caroline everywhere she went, sitting beside her at the pianoforte when she was asked to play, reading to her when she sat knitting, or chasing after her when she went for a stroll. As for Caroline herself, the Powells were convinced that she thoroughly enjoyed his attentions. And the two other young ladies of the party—Emmaline and Lady Jane—were also following their romantic inclinations; they continued to vie for Geordie's attention, each one pretending to wish the other the success that she wanted for herself. If the passage of the days was less fascinating for Geordie, no one else was aware of it.