Susan Speers (32 page)

“
Come and stay with us
,” she continued. “
Plan on at least six months to justify the journey. It will give you a new perspective for your writing and I have those promised stitches to teach you. You were a good pupil, no one else knitted so many scarves…
”

Mr. Mosely sent a distant connection, Miss Godbold, to assist me as I recovered and to type up revisions to my novel. Part nurse, part companion, part secretary, she, too, eased my difficult days. Her company was so congenial, I asked if she would like to live in.

“No, I like my independence,” she said. Her rimless spectacles gleamed. “I do appreciate this position. I admire the creative process.”

She was younger than forty, but looked careworn.

“Did you have a sweetheart in the war?” I asked. Perhaps she was one of the many women whose dreams had ended with a German bullet.

“No, no, none of that complication for me,” she said. “I prefer the simple life.”

I reflected for some time on how her philosophy would have improved my experience, but that afternoon a little bouquet of violets was delivered, tied with my tattered blue hair ribbon. The card only read “
…and I want the ribbon back
”. I had to smile in spite of myself.

Rutherford came for tea at least once a fortnight. “Well, that effort came a cropper,” he said in reference to Chase. “No stamina for the long haul. P’raps you should retire from the field for a time.”

“Exactly,” I said.

One afternoon, I had tea at the Ritz with Daisy, for I still enjoyed her lively gossip, most of it. I’d never admit I longed for word of Jeremy, I always pretended a vague indifference.

She knew better though, and made me wait until she’d demolished the cream scones and strawberries.

“Everyone knows Jeremy and Caroline are separated, but she pretends not,” Daisy said. “He’s installed at his club and only visits the child. Caroline drags him to society functions. I wonder if that’s the bargain they’ve struck.”

I was spared the need to comment by Rutherford’s arrival at our table. “I came by your digs and that plain creature gave up your direction,” he said in his usual decibels. Daisy was either transfixed or deafened.

“Please join us,” I said and they were off. Even the legendary kitchens of the Ritz must have been challenged by two such unrestrained appetites. All was trilling laughter, cream spraying ‘harrumphs’ and such a display of gnashing teeth I hesitated to put forth my hand.

“I must go,” I said, prepared to plead another engagement, but they never heard me. I escaped the Palm Court, slightly nauseated, for I’d eaten well more than I usually did, and ran smack into Caroline and Arthur.

“Hallo,” he said. “I’m happy to see you again.” I couldn’t help but smile at his increasing resemblance to his father.

Caroline didn’t acknowledge me with so much as a blink. “Come along, Arthur, we’ll be late.”

“But, that’s Cousin Clarissa,” he protested. “Papa said so. We must remember our manners.”

She hustled him away without a backward glance.

A stocky, mustachioed gentleman followed after them, and then stopped to speak to me. He was so obviously an American, I was prepared to be mistaken as to his identity.

“You must be Dr. Redstone,” I said. “Thank you for keeping Arthur well.”

“You must not be ‘
Cousin
’ Clarissa,” he said with the distinctive speech of the southern states. “You’ll do more harm than good.”

He left me staring and shaking my head. I went home to Miss Godbold’s good sense and excellent advice.

*****

I thought hard about Laura’s invitation to the Antipodes. The sea voyage would be good for me. Six months abroad would give Jeremy time and space to make some necessary decisions without the complication of my presence.

“Mr. Dane is shouting on the telephone,” Miss Godbold interrupted.

“Got a good looking evening frock?”

“Several.” I held the receiver a foot from my face.

“Time you went out again. I’ll come by at eight o’clock.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Private party. Foreign riff-raff. You’ll add to my consequence.”

“Thank you for your gracious —” He put down his receiver.

Thank God we had a driver that night. I was able to quiz Rutherford on the occasion, but he’d only admit to the venue, which was close by the American Embassy.

“And how do you —”

“I have my ways. Americans appreciate my derring-do.”

The private home covered an entire block. Light streamed out over the street and while Rutherford sputtered words of praise for my blue silk gown I gave up my cloak to a liveried servant. Anticipation heated my blood. This was my first party in months and it looked an amazing affair. Anyone might be there.

I was just outside the ballroom when I saw Jeremy at the far end of its chandelier lit expanse. He was in serious conversation with a man whose medallions bespoke diplomatic credentials, whose old fashioned pince-nez hinted at middle European origins.

Beside him, Caroline in acid green chiffon had her head cocked to one side, pretending to listen while her eyes darted circles around the room. I left Rutherford behind to step into the arena, my skirts belling around me. Jeremy looked up at the very moment Caroline espied me, but I could only see his dark eyes, I could only drown in their depths.

Jeremy excused himself from his companion and walked across the empty floor to take my hands. He nodded to the orchestra leader and the strains of Chopin’s Waltz in C# Minor filled the room.

We weren’t the only couple dancing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Daisy with Rutherford and a host of other couples. I was grateful for their whirling camouflage as pure happiness buoyed me.

“Do you feel as I do?” Jeremy’s moustache brushed against my ear.

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“Every day I wake with renewed vigor,” he said, “an ever increasing optimism. Every day I feel closer to that moment when —”

“I feel that too,” I said.

“It will happen,” he said, and his arms tightened around me. “It’s happening even now.”

My heart was too full to speak of it. I turned the subject as we waltzed past eyes fixed on us, mouths twisted with scandalized delight. “Where did this music come from?”

“Five hundred pounds to commission the arrangement,” Jeremy said, “and fifty pounds every time I signal the conductor.”

“Good God, Jeremy,” I gasped as we whirled about.

“You know, I’m beginning to agree with your opinion.”

“But how could you know I’d be here?”

“A late tip from Lord Plaice’s majordomo. Half of London’s upper staff is in my pay.”

I laughed with unrestrained delight. “You love me,” I said.

“And you love me.”

The music ended, but the magic continued. Even Daisy’s murmured “Be careful, Clarry” did not stop my happiness.

“Society’s good for you,” Rutherford shouted over the strains of an exuberant polka. “Roses in your cheeks.” I hardly felt the pain of my instep crushed beneath his big foot.

My uncle took me in to supper, and I found a table while he and Daisy filled plates at the buffet.

Caroline came to sit next to me, a bright smile on her painted mouth, venom in her eyes. “Stay away from my husband.”

“Why not let him go, let him be happy?” I’d had enough of the pretense, the sacrifice, the endless wrongness of our complicated relationships. Richard Marchmont was dead. Let his machinations die too.

“I’ve never been happy. Why should he?”

“Let him go and you’ll find happiness elsewhere.”

“Did you?” I had no answer.

“I know about your assignations.” Her smile had frozen into a kind of mad rictus.

“There haven’t been any.”

“That lewd portrait, your ancestors as shameless as you.”

I stared at her. She knew I wasn’t Richard Marchmont’s daughter. She saw the barriers between me and Jeremy falling away. She was very much afraid.

“You won’t have him.” Her breath was hot on my face.

“I’ll always have him.”

*

After dinner Jeremy nodded again and fifty pounds melted away as we circled the dance floor in blissful silence, my head against his chest, his cheek a warm weight on my coiled hair. The major domo in his pay dimmed the chandeliers and our happiness made us incandescent.

“We’re a scandal,” Jem whispered.

“I couldn’t care less.” I was where I belonged.

Rutherford came to claim me at the music’s end. “Your cousin’s wife is on the warpath, as our American friends say. Daisy’s holding her back, best make a run for it. Valor being discretion and all that.”

His loud voice obliterated discretion, but I was content to leave the field, for once the victor.

*****

Daisy came to tea two days later.

“How are you, Clarry,” her eyes brimmed with sympathy.

“I’m just fine.” Jeremy’s white roses, the flowers of new beginnings, bloomed in a cut crystal vase on my piano. He sent no other message, and I waited for his call.

“You haven’t seen the notice?”

“What do you mean?”

She took up my newspaper and rattled the pages until she found what she wanted:
Mr. Jeremy Marchmont is appointed special envoy to the British Embassy in Washington D.C. Mr. Marchmont and his family sail Wednesday for New York City aboard the H.M.S. Berengaria.

“The entire affair is Caroline’s doing,” Daisy said. “Dr. Redstone’s brother is a United States Senator. He made it happen. He’ll do anything to please Caroline.”

I set down my teacup with precise movements. I wiped my mouth with my linen napkin, discreetly spitting shortbread that threatened to choke me into its snowy folds.

“Yes, I know,” I lied with icy calm, suppressing my inner fury and turmoil with a savage intake of breath. “I’ll be traveling as well. It’s so broadening, don’t you think?”

“You’d follow him to Washington?” Daisy was both shocked and thrilled.

“Australia,” I said between gritted teeth. “For at least six months. Such a coincidence. I, too, leave on Wednesday.”

Willow’s cottage was tidy and ready to sleep, enchanted, for another indefinite spread of years. I locked the door and thrust the key into my pocket. Paper folders crackled beneath it: a round trip passage to Australia and a one way ticket to America.

I hadn’t made my decision. The sensible choice was a lengthy visit with Laura, then a return to my solitary life. The other decision, rash, impulsive, was to hare after Jeremy and demand his love. Rutherford’s advice echoed in my head. Two sleepless nights made me seek him out.

“You’re a strong woman, Clarissa,” he’d boomed. “Far worse than losing your heart’s desire is to know you surrendered without a fight. That rankles more than ridicule or rejection. Take my example: I leave debris, but I do what I want. I won’t die a coward.”

I’d walked past the four follies on a meandering route to Willow’s cottage. A last look at all of Hethering might help me make the final choice between Sydney and New York. I climbed the cleared path, my mind fixed on alternating scenes: wooly sheep or Washington monuments?

Mad Madison’s folly was as lovely as it had ever been. No unruly foliage blocked its view of Hethering, my birthplace and my paradise on earth. If there was a chance, a slim one, a dream chance that I could live there again with Jeremy, it was worth any effort, any humiliation, any demands.

“I’ll do it,” I said in Rutherford’s ringing tones. “I’ll go to Washington and drag him back. I will shape my life, I won’t let it shape me.”

My words echoed around the marble circle of columns. They were loud enough to travel across the valley.

*

“There’s really no need to shout.” Jeremy stepped from behind a pillar.

I had little faith in what my eyes reported. “You’re not here,” I said, as joy spread from cell to cell in my body like a wild fire. “You’re on board ship to New York.”

“Caroline is on board ship to New York,” he said. “Arthur is with her. The estimable Dr. Redstone is on that very same ship. I saw them off in Southampton, then returned to London to ‘drag you’, as you so nicely put it, back to Hethering with me.”

“But I’d already left —”

“I feared you departed for Sydney,” he said. “You see, I met Daisy on the return train. She alarmed me with your plans, but Miss Godbold’s reassurances saved me. Dear Miss G. said you’d only left to close a family cottage.”

“Daisy showed me the newspaper article about your appointment to Washington.”

“Silly woman. I never signed on for that piece of mischief. I never would. I think we should discount Daisy’s information from now on, don’t you?”

We stood three feet apart as if our shoes were glued to the folly’s cold stone floor.

“We will marry, Clarissa,” he said. “As soon as we can.”

“You think you can order me —”

“And your plan for me was —”

I was in his arms the next moment, sagging against his shaking frame. We sat down before we collapsed.

“We’ll have a wonderful life here,” he said, one arm holding me close.

“What about the Foreign Office?”

“You should know, Clarry, I could never bear to live at Hethering without you. Diplomacy was always a poor substitute.”

“I can finish writing Willow’s story,” I said. “And paint, and embroider.”

“It’s reassuring to hear you’ll keep busy,” he mocked me gently. “I do hope Miss Godbold will stay on. My kiss may have frightened her away.”

“You kissed her?” I couldn’t imagine it.

“Like this,” he gave me an enthusiastic salute. “Not like this.” A passionate interlude followed.

My head was on his shoulder when he sighed and spoke again. “I have such plans for this dear old place, Clarry. With you beside me — why, I can build any number of follies.”

“Haven’t we had enough of folly?”

“You’re quite right. I’ll leave them to our children.” I knew he wouldn’t.