The Ashford Affair (12 page)

She rounded the side of the maze and skidded to avoid plunging directly into someone coming from the opposite direction.

She had only a vague impression of a tweed jacket and brass buttons as a pair of hands grasped her shoulder, setting her straight. “Steady on, there,” said a friendly male voice.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to barge into you.” Addie hastily extricated herself. “I should have been looking—”

“I think I was the one who bumped into you.”

It was the man from last night. The man who had rescued Binky for her. He was in tweeds today, not evening dress, but she recognized those laughing green eyes.

He recognized her at just about the same time. “I say, you’re the girl with the mouse!”

Addie ducked her head. “To my eternal shame and discredit.”

She heard him chuckle. “I don’t believe we met properly last night,” he said. “So we might as well introduce ourselves improperly now. I go by Frederick Desborough.”

He pressed a hand to his chest and bowed with a mock formality that made Addie giggle despite herself.

“Mr. Desborough.” She knew she ought to match his gesture with one of her own, that she ought to sweep into a mock court curtsy, but instead she stuck her hands into her pockets and jerked her chin in an awkward little bob that was almost a nod, but not quite. “I’m Adeline Gillecote.”

“Miss Adeline.” He looked at her quizzically, taking in her rumpled hair, Dodo’s old coat. “You’re not Miss Gillecote’s sister?”

“Oh, no,” said Addie quickly. There was Dodo, tall and blond like Uncle Charles, and Bea, and Gillecotes going back unto the ends of the earth—or at least the Norman Conquest. And then you had her. Little and brown, Aunt Vera called her. “That’s Bea and Poppy. I’m just the cousin.”

Mr. Desborough raised an eyebrow. “
The
cousin? Is that a title or a position?”

“More the latter.” Addie tried to make a joke of it. “I’m a sort of a feature of the nursery. Like the rocking horse. Every nursery needs a cousin. Just think of
Jane Eyre.
”

“I hope it’s not that kind of nursery,” said Mr. Desborough.

“I’m only locked up in the Red Room once a week now,” Addie said, and was amazed at her own nerve. There was something about Mr. Desborough, though, that made him terribly easy to talk to, not like an adult at all. “Shouldn’t you be out with the others?” she asked shyly.

“You mean the hunting party? I can’t. Doctor’s orders.”

He flapped an elbow and Addie realized, for the first time, that his left arm was in a silk sling, cleverly hidden under the drape of his jacket.

“What happened?’

“I had a disagreement with a fence at Melton. It won.” Addie was duly impressed. Melton. How terribly grown-up and grand. Before she could ask him to elaborate, he smoothly changed the subject. “Speaking of accidents, how is your little friend?”

“My little—oh! You mean Binky.”

He smiled. “That was the name you were calling last night, although it was hard to hear through all the crashing crockery. Have you been raked over the coals?”

Addie shoved her hair back behind her ears, wishing it didn’t always go so woolly in the rain, wishing it were sleek and shiny like Bea’s. “No, but I expect I shall be.”

“Bread and water?” Pebbles crunched beneath their feet as they plodded along the path.

“The very moldiest bread,” she said, getting into the spirit of it. “And the most brackish water. But it’s the flogging that’s the worst.”

He stopped, looking down at her, so she was forced to look at him. “You are joking, Mouse?” he said quietly. “Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “They would never actually beat me—only as often as they lock me in the Red Room, that is. I expect I shall have my pocket money stopped for a week or two. That’s what they usually do. Only this time, they’ll probably stop it till I’m eighty. What do you think the going rate is for a ruined debut?”

She was talking too much, too fast, but there was something about the expression in his face that unnerved her, something serious and intent that made part of her, ignobly, wonder just what he would have done if she had said she were being beaten, something that made her pulse quicken.

He slid his hands into his pockets and strolled forward, setting the pace for both of them. “I’m glad to hear it.” Somewhere nearby, a bird called, loud in the quiet of the garden. “I was afraid I was going to have to charge to the rescue.”

The words were said lightly, but something about the way he said it, the way he glanced over at her, so casually, and yet … Addie could feel her cheeks flushing, despite the morning chill, but her hands were cold and tingling.

“Like Perseus and Andromeda,” she blurted out, just to say something.

He looked at her quizzically. “Don’t tell me you have a pet sea serpent in your menagerie, Mouse?”

“No.” She shook her hair down over her face. “I just meant, it seems to be what heroes do. Rescuing princesses from ghastly predicaments and all that sort of thing.”

Through her hair, she could see that he was smiling and trying not to. “I can’t promise anything princely,” he said gravely, “but if you find yourself in a ghastly predicament, give a holler and I’ll come charging. I make no promises about the sea serpents, though.”

“Thank you,” said Addie shyly. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Except about the sea serpents,” he said with a smile that showed off a dent in one cheek that wasn’t quite a dimple but could have been.

Addie buttoned and unbuttoned the top button of Dodo’s coat, trying to muster up something halfway intelligent to say, or at least something that wouldn’t come out in an awkward squeak. If Bea were here, she would know just what to say; she always did. She would laugh and say something light and charming and not chew her hair like a cow while the silence went on and on and surely he must think she was a half-wit mute, the sort of cousin people kept in attics for a reason.

Oh, dear, she should have made some joke about the sea serpents, shouldn’t she, about not being near water. But now it was too late, too much time had passed, and it would just sound like she’d spent all this time thinking it up, which she had, but—

She snuck a glance sideways. He caught her eye and grinned back. Addie flushed and ducked her head.

She was saved by the crunch of gravel and the sound of her own name.

“Miss Adeline? Miss Ad— Oh, thank the Lord.” Ivy, the upper housemaid, came to an abrupt halt, resting her palms against her knees as she caught her breath. “I thought I’d never find you, miss. I’ve been looking for you for
hours.
”

She spotted Mr. Desborough and broke off in confusion.

“Forgive me, sir,” she said, and dropped a curtsy. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Her Ladyship wants to see Miss Adeline. In His Lordship’s study.”

Addie braced herself for trouble. The study was never good. The morning room was for light reprimands and general inspection, the study for more serious infractions. Aunt Vera would be even angrier at being kept waiting.

Hours? It couldn’t have been that long. Addie snuck a shy glance at Mr. Desborough. Her entire sense of time was in disarray; she felt like they’d been talking for only minutes. She felt like she’d known him for years. She was a mess of contradictions—and in a mess, once Aunt Vera got to her.

“Thank you, Ivy. I’ll be there in a moment.” She turned to Mr. Desborough and wrinkled her nose in exaggerated distress. “It seems I’m for it now.”

“Courage, Mouse,” he said. “And remember—”

“I know,” Addie said. “No sea serpents.”

Astonished at her old boldness, she ducked her head and hurried after Ivy through the hedge, to face whatever penalty awaited her. At the moment, she would have called any well worth it. Mouse, he’d called her. But it was rather sweet, really, like a pet name. She knew Aunt Vera wouldn’t launch her as they would Bea—especially not after Binky—but, perhaps, just perhaps …

She could picture herself grown-up and grown elegant, in a shimmering white gown, and Mr. Desborough stepping towards her, champagne forgotten in his hand, a wicked glint in his green eyes. Why, Mouse, he’d say. You’ve grown up.

And then he’d whisk her away, far away, from Aunt Vera and Ashford and Uncle Charles’ study door.

It was the study door that did it. She wasn’t a debutante anymore; she was a grubby schoolgirl in an elderly shirtwaist and a skirt with a mud splotch on it. Addie took a deep breath and knocked on the door. Servants went right in; poor cousins learned to knock.

“What?” It wasn’t Aunt Vera but Uncle Charles, sounding uncommonly sharp and cross.

Worse than she’d thought! Uncle Charles seldom participated in punishment. When he did—well, she was for it now. She spared a thought for Perseus. Fictional sea serpants were one thing, aunts and uncles quite another.

Addie stuck her head around the door, sidling the rest of her body reluctantly through. Uncle Charles was seated at his desk, Aunt Vera behind him, her face set and white.

Addie gathered all her courage. “Ivy said you wanted to see me—about the mouse?”

“An hour ago,” said Aunt Vera, and stopped, as though she didn’t trust herself to say more.

“A mouse,” said Uncle Charles. There was a telegram in front of him, the ink smudged as though it had been snatched off the press and delivered too soon. He looked at her, but she had the impression he wasn’t seeing her, not at all. “It might as well have been. One mouse to make everything fall.”

It hadn’t quite been everything, but Addie had learned long ago that she mustn’t speak in her own defense. That only made matters worse, generally.

“It’s not as bad as all that,” said Aunt Vera, and Addie looked at her in surprise; she hadn’t thought to hear her aunt speak in her defense. It was on Uncle Charles’ clemency that she had been relying, Uncle Charles who occasionally remembered that she had been her father’s daughter. Aunt Vera looked at Addie and said harshly, “What are you still doing here?”

Nothing made sense this morning. Addie swallowed hard. “The mouse?”

“No one cares about a mouse, you daft girl!” Her aunt’s voice broke. “Go back to the nursery.”

Addie went, but she stopped at the kitchen first. It was Cook who told her, Cook who had given a cup of tea to the postman’s boy and had heard the news: Germany had declared war on France.

Within a day, England was at war.

SEVEN

New York, 1999

Fatigue kicked in in a big way by the time Clemmie let herself back into her apartment.

She dumped her coat on a chair and today’s pile of mail on the bookcase that doubled as a hall table. She didn’t need to open any of it to know what it was. Credit card offer, credit card offer, bill, bill, bill.

Her apartment was what was optimistically referred to as a “junior one bedroom,” which really meant a studio with an alcove, an alcove too far removed from a proper room to justify a door. The people who had lived here before had hung a beaded curtain over the doorway; the hooks were still there on the ceiling, like an outré art installation. Clemmie had never bothered either to remove them or to hang anything on them, although sometimes she used them for drying laundry.

There was room in the alcove for only a twin bed and a narrow chest of drawers. All other life activities took place in the living room, which housed a couch, bookshelves, and a card table that doubled as kitchen/dining room table/desk and general dumping ground for briefs, binders, mail, and whatever else happened to find its way there.

The light on her answering machine was blinking. There were four messages. All of them were from Dan.

Oh, damn. They had told her in the office that he had been calling, but she had been buried with work and—that was what he had complained about when they were together, wasn’t it? That she had never made time for him.

What time? When?

It wasn’t like she was sunning herself on a beach somewhere. Not everyone could earn a living playing competitive foosball with people who communicated in ones and zeroes.

Oh, God. She wouldn’t be this bitchy if she didn’t feel, on some level, that he was right. She hadn’t made time for him. She wondered, tiredly, if that was because she hadn’t wanted to make time for him, if, deep down, it was because she had just never wanted him enough in the first place.

And what kind of horrible human being did
that
make her?

She was dragging her suitcase out from under the bed when the phone rang again. She paused for a moment, then let it go to the answering machine. In the mood she was in she was either going to tear Dan to bits or beg him to take her back, and neither of those was good.

“Hey, Clemmie. This is Jon. I just wanted to let you know I found a place. I’ll be heading back to Greensboro next week, but I’ll be back in New York for good as of—”

Clemmie snatched up the phone. “Hey!”

“Oh, hi.” In the background the answering machine continued to do its thing. “I didn’t realize you were home.”

“I was screening. Dan.”

Bleep.
“End of message,” announced the answering machine.

“Gotcha,” said Jon. “Anyway, as I was saying, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be back in town as of December twentieth.”

Clemmie wedged the phone under her ear and began folding shirts into her suitcase. “Shouldn’t you be teaching somewhere?”

“I’m on sabbatical this term.”

Sabbatical or post-divorce meltdown time? She knew just enough about academia to know that people generally had to apply for these things way in advance.

“Does that make it easier or harder?” she asked.

He didn’t ask her to explain what she meant. “Easier,” he said, “in that I don’t have to be in Greensboro for the rest of the year. But, generally? Harder.”

“When do you start teaching again?” Clemmie wandered over to the dresser. Flying out Wednesday, getting in Thursday. That meant she needed underwear for Thursday through Sunday.

“Next term. But only one class. I’m supposed to be working on a book right now.
Decline and Fall—
question mark.
The English Aristocracy in the Aftermath of the Great War.
”