In Distant Fields (8 page)

Browne, who was busy sorting through Her Grace's gowns, looked vague, as she always did when the Duchess confided in her. Only Circe knew that the vaguer Browne looked, the more truly interested she was.

Circe was not alone in wondering why Maude had married Cecil Milborne, who was neither
titled, handsome, rich nor amusing. Maude also wondered – not all day, but certainly every day. In her heart of hearts she blamed her father, who had been frightened that she would become a spinster.

‘You'll end up a spiky-faced woman with a moustache, never seen out of her gardening shoes,' was how he liked to put it.

Her father's anxiety over her marital status would have been touching had not Maude known that it was less concern for her happiness than fear that she would die without giving birth, and would, Maude being his only daughter, therefore prove to be the last in the line for, most unusually, the Earl's title could be passed through the female line. So marry Maude had, the first man who asked her, and it happened to be Cecil.

Cecil, who changed his name to accommodate her family pride, brought nothing except himself to their marriage, a union that became increasingly uncomfortable as his sense of inadequacy increased, but as with so many people who are unpopular, Cecil was quite sure that it was all the fault of the rest of the world, while Maude was equally sure that having made her bed, she would jolly well have to lie in it.

‘Maude?'

Cecil was standing in front of her.

‘Yes, Cecil?'

‘I want a word with you, please. I have a bone to pick.'

How Maude hated that phrase of his, ‘a bone
to pick'. So ghastly, as if they were both dogs in a courtyard.

‘Some new complaint, have you, Cecil?'

Cecil always managed to look both cruel and petulant at the same time, which Maude thought quite a feat.

‘The flower arrangements in the dining room are vulgar, Maude.'

‘They are modish, Cecil.'

‘I have had them removed. The servants have thrown them out.'

Maude rose from her chair and as she did so she cursed the fact that she knew she had lost colour. She hated to show Cecil that she had any feelings at all, at least as far as he was concerned.

‘The servants are to do no such thing, Cecil.'

Every year it was the same – some new disruption, some new complaint, and always stored up for the day of the ball, something that he had probably planned for days.

He caught at her arm. ‘Where are you going, Maude?'

‘I am going to have the flowers replaced, Cecil. There are no more to be had anywhere on New Year's Eve, and you know it. The hot-houses are quite bare.'

‘Too late, Maude. I had them burned, earlier.'

Maude stared at him, and fell to silence. The phrase ‘murder in her heart' would be too mild for what she was feeling. She shook off Cecil's grip, and left the room.

*    *    *

Snow was making the countryside surrounding Bauders look enchanting. Darkness had long fallen when everyone inside was to be found preparing themselves for yet another ball.

‘Myself, I find I have not the energy I used to have,' the Duke confided to Wavell. ‘
Autres temps, autres moeurs
, if you know what I mean, Wavell.'

‘Yes, Your Grace,' Wavell nodded. He had no idea what His Grace was on about with his French, but cared less, since they were both enjoying what His Grace always alluded to as ‘a jolly good snifter' in the snug near the servants' hall – a particularly good Highland snifter it was too.

However, if His Grace was feeling weary at the idea of facing another ball, the young were still very much on their toes, and showing no signs of flagging. Partita particularly seemed to be imbued with an endless amount of energy, dancing in and out of the rooms, Tinker following with an increasingly hopeless expression.

‘You are a jumping bean, that is what you are, Lady Tita,' Tinker grumbled. ‘Gunpowder is it, that you swallowed at luncheon today?'

‘I love New Year's Eve,' Partita confided to no one at all, staring at herself in the dressing mirror. ‘It is almost shuddersome, don't you think? Wondering what is going to happen to one next year? Wondering if by next year
one will be married with five children? Or still wandering the world in search of a beau?'

Kitty stared at her fleetingly. She herself felt really quite tired, and would not mind at all if she spent the rest of the evening on a wobbly gilt chair, watching everyone else enjoying themselves.

Yet once Kitty and Bridie had begun her
toilette
, accompanied by still more nonstop nonsensical chatter from Partita, Kitty seemed to forget all about her fatigue, especially since Bridie's method of brushing her hair was strongly reminiscent of the method she must use when beating Violet's rugs on the washing line in the back garden.

‘Lady Maude is quite interesting, actually,' Partita said, lifting her arms up and not bothering to pause while Tinker, deftly balancing the dress between two sticks, lowered yet another ball gown over her newly coiffed hair. ‘Interesting and fun, but her husband is horrid.'

‘Now, now, Lady Tita,' Tinker clucked. ‘If you don't take care, there'll be soap instead of paste on that toothbrush of yours tonight.'

‘She and the
awful
Cecil live in what was her father's house. Lady Maude's family are Keepers of the Keys, do you see – of our keys, of the keys to Bauders. That has been their position for goodness knows how long,' Partita sighed, emerging from her now fully lowered gown. ‘When a monarch visits, there's this elaborate ceremony with the Keys. It drives Papa to
distraction because whenever King George and Queen Mary visit, he has to wait for boring old
Cecil
, who has now taken on the role of Keeper of the Keys for himself, to be done with all his bowing and scraping and special speech-making. It really is enough to drive the King, and Papa, to distraction.'

‘Tut tut,' Tinker clucked again, frowning at Bridie. ‘All this criticism of His Grace's friends, Lady Tita. It ain't fitting. It really ain't fitting.'

‘Oh, never mind fitting, Tinker,' Partita replied, regarding herself in the dressing glass. ‘I am quite sure that anything I say is as nothing compared with what you have to say in the servants' hall.'

‘At least
we
waits till your backs are turned, Lady Tita,' Tinker said, giving her mistress's sumptuous gown one last adjustment.

‘You would blush if you knew what I said about you, Tinker,' Partita said, pulling a face at Kitty. ‘It would turn that curly hair of yours quite, quite straight. The fact is, Kitty – Cecil Milborne is to be avoided. Mamma says poor Hugh's asthma is entirely accountable to his father's beastliness.'

‘Folk gets asthma from damp, Lady Tita—'

‘Sure you should try the place where I was raised,' Bridie offered. ‘There was so much damp Mam never had to draw water for washing, she just ran the flannel across the walls …' She left the sentence unfinished, shaking her head.

‘Horrid for you …'

Partita made commiserating noises, while not really listening. She turned to Tinker.

‘You've been an angel as always, Tinks, you know that, don't you?'

Tinker looked up momentarily from her tidying-up. ‘I do know that, Lady Tita, and you have been a little devil as always.'

Partita blew her a kiss. ‘You are my own dear Tinker, and you know it,' she said, smiling with satisfaction.

‘Thank you, Bridie,' Kitty called back in her turn from the door, despite the fact that her head was still aching from the maid's attentions to her hair, but that was not something she could now do much about.

The carriages circled in front of Milborne House, the flares lighting up the grand parade of horses and harnesses, of coachmen and grooms, of doors painted with ancient coats of arms. The old, eighteenth-century stone house, with its long windows and flights of shallow stone steps leading up to central doors, seemed to be smiling down at the scene below. This, after all, was what the country house was for – entertaining friends, greeting neighbours and cementing friendships based on mutual interests.

Tonight the great rooms of the house were decorated with swags of holly, and thousands of candles, with great branches of ivy interlaced with gold and silver ornaments, so that not even Cecil could find fault with its proud displays.

The moment Kitty entered the Milbornes'
ballroom, Peregrine Catesby went straight to her side.

‘Seeing how beautiful you look tonight, Miss Rolfe, I think I should quickly write my name in your card – before it is filled with the names of every eligible bachelor present.'

The moment Peregrine left her side to fetch refreshment, Almeric appeared from nowhere, leaning over her shoulder to read her dance card.

‘Perry is being greedy, Miss Rolfe,' he said, scribbling his own name over that of Perry's. ‘That will never do.'

Before Kitty could demur he took her hand and led her onto the dance floor.

‘Of all the nerve,' Peregrine murmured, watching Kitty being danced away from him. ‘You shall regret that, Lord Almeric. That is the last time I help you translate Euripides.'

He had replaced the two glasses he had fetched on a passing footman's tray, before he noticed Partita sitting on a gilt chair nearby.

‘What, Lady Tita a wallflower? This will never do,' he said, and immediately led her onto the floor.

‘I'm fast becoming bored of waltzes,' Partita sighed as they began to dance. ‘Next time ask me for a two-step, will you, Perry? Or a bunny hug, anything rather than the dull old waltz.'

‘Have you begun reading from the list I sent to you in London?' Peregrine enquired as he spun her expertly around the crowded floor.

‘I read the list, Perry,' Partita stated in a bored voice.

‘And have you become enthused by it?'

‘Too many Latin poets, Perry, truly far too many.'

‘Good poets. Don't be impatient. You'll get to love them, if you allow yourself.'

‘Oh, very well,' Partita agreed, mock bravely. ‘For you I shall endeavour to understand and appreciate them.'

‘Allow your friend Miss Rolfe to help you. She was telling me how much she enjoyed Virgil's
Aeneid
—'

‘Kitty enjoys everything that is good for her,' Partita interrupted. ‘Sometimes I swear she is too good to be true, just as her father is said to be too bad to be true.'

‘I don't think Miss Rolfe's virtue can be the result of her father's vices. Or her father the fault of her virtues.'

‘That is a little too clever for me, Perry. All I know is that I feel sorry for Kitty.'

‘Nonsense, Tita, one only feels sorry for someone one doesn't really like. I see there are some very long faces over there, Tita. Very long indeed. Do you think they know something we do not?'

Partita glanced in the direction her partner was looking.

‘Papa has a bee in his hat about this Balkans business,' Partita moaned. ‘The Balkans really are not my subject. I don't even know where they
begin or where they end, and I'm not awfully sure that I care.'

‘Still afraid of being taken for a blue stocking, are we, Partita?'

‘No, not at all, just afraid of being found to be a bore. This is meant to be New Year's Eve, for goodness' sake!'

‘It most certainly is,' Peregrine agreed. ‘And we shall all put away our cares and dance this last night of the old year away, without a thought of tomorrow.'

After which Peregrine reversed expertly, whirling Partita well away from the party of older guests, who were still all standing together.

‘I cannot for the life of me see why you gentlemen imagine we could get involved in some trivial border dispute in some place few of us have ever even heard of,' their host was saying.

‘Hardly trivial, and hardly a border dispute, Milborne,' the Duke replied.

‘Greedy bunch, the Habsburgs. They'd have annexed all of Europe, had they had the chance.'

‘To my mind, the French are to blame,' someone else put in. ‘They should have been curbed ages ago. The current situation is a direct result of years of their wretched promotion of liberalism, not to mention nationalism. They're going to reap the reward now, you mark my words.'

‘Myself, I say it's a storm in a teacup,' the tall and distinguished Lord Rawley opined, and since he had spent most of his life in the diplomatic service, everyone noted his stance. ‘Although
these problems are certainly vexing the Kaiser and Franz Ferdinand, they are not Germany's problem, they are Austria-Hungary's – and if Vienna does initiate a war they will contain it to the Balkans, because that is where it belongs. Nowhere else. In the Balkans.'

‘Romania has little affection for Austria-Hungary,' the Duke argued. ‘It's all to do with the Magyars, apparently. They're a real thorn in Franz Ferdinand's side, so they tell me. There you are. Kettle's on the hob, or certainly Kitchener is, and we must see it doesn't boil over.'

‘I think we have little real need for concern, Duke,' Rawley concluded. ‘The smoke from any trouble brewing is not coming in our direction.'

‘Precisely,' Cecil agreed, determined as always to have the last word. ‘Besides, the Kaiser is hardly going to pick a fight with his cousin now, is he?'

‘Do not be too sure,' the Duke sighed. ‘Do not be too sure,' he finished, quietly to himself.

As it happened the Duke was not having a particularly good evening. He disliked Cecil Milborne, who had insinuated his way into the Duchess's inner circle for no better reason than that the Duchess had become very fond of Maude, the women sharing many confidences since their children were young and boisterous. Their husbands, however, shared no such confidences, and no matter how intimate his wife
was with the Duchess, Cecil still found himself kept at arm's length by the social diplomacy of the Duchess, who managed always to include Maude whenever the social occasion was suitable, while whenever possible
not
including Cecil – except, of course, when they had to attend the Milbornes' annual New Year's Eve ball.