The Merry Month of May (7 page)

“You shan’t make anyone jealous with him,” Mary informed her sister.

“Jealousy is not the point.”

Mary gazed a moment at her sister. “Don’t you really want to marry Peter, Sara?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t love him.”

Mary looked pensive. “I didn’t know love could die.”

“There’s a great deal you don’t know about love.” And neither do I, Sara added silently to herself. But she knew something about men and was beginning to wonder if she had chosen well in selecting Swithin for her acting partner. What she really wanted was a more or less silent conspirator, and silence was no more a long suit of Idle than was restraint.

* * * *

“We should have left for the Hall fifteen minutes ago,” Mrs. Wood said, glancing at the clock for the third time in as many minutes.

“Idle will be here any moment, Mama,” Sara replied.

“I can’t think why you agreed to go with him. It will look so odd to the Haldimans, especially at this time.”

“His mother will be with us. And our carriage will be right behind yours. Ah, here is Idle now.”

Sir Swithin came bowing in, looking as fetching as a burgundy velvet coat and white lace could make him, which was not so much fetching as silly. His eyes turned at once to Sara. He studied her figure a moment, approving, though with no great enthusiasm, her choice of a Pomona-green silk gown. There was more of lace and rutching than he could quite like, but then in the country this no doubt passed for elegance. He would slip Sara the hint he preferred less clutter on his ladies. At least the figure was good. That contrast of creamy white shoulders and green was just the effect he wanted for his portrait.

“Here at last!” Mrs. Wood exclaimed. “But where is your mama, Idle?”

“At home reading a novel, pretending she has the toothache. She has a marvelous molar that will always oblige her with an ache that leaves as soon as she has avoided her obligations.”

“Pity.” Mrs. Wood rose to get her pelisse. “We are late. Let us be going.”

“How lovely you all look,” Sir Swithin exclaimed. “And how grateful I am that I don’t have to bestow Aphrodite’s apple on one, like poor Paris. May we have just a tiny sip of wine before leaving? My throat is parched. I blame it on you all. You have taken my breath away.”

Mrs. Wood could not like to refuse a guest such a simple request, but her impatience was obvious. She poured a very small glass. Swithin took the decanter and filled it more generously. “Do not fear, madam. The party never really begins till I arrive,” he said, and sat down.

At seven-fifteen he put aside his glass and permitted the impatient company to part. He behaved more like a drama director than a flirt in the carriage alone with Sara. “We shall not use terms of endearment,” he decided. “That has a touch not only of the common but even of insincerity. I have often observed that when a couple ‘dear’ and ‘darling’ each other to death in company, they are at each other’s throats in private. We must, of course, be on a first-name basis. You will be Sara, and I shall be Swithin. One could wish for more authority in the name. It is hard to do anything with Swithin. It has, alas, the insignificant sound of the soft
i,
made worse by the lack of a strong consonant. I wish I had been called Robert or John.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your name.”

He gave a sharp look. “At least you didn’t thay it thuits me!” Sir Swithin had a suggestion of a lisp that only came out when he was upset. “We shall allow ourselves a few languishing looks, and if Peter becomes too particular in his attentions, I shall display a proper degree of uxorious jealousy. You might do the same if the colonial finds herself enchanted by me. One never knows. She will never have seen anything like me in the colonies.”

“That is true,” Sara agreed, biting back a smile.

“Ah, you have claws, I see! Do you know, Sara, I begin to think I never fully appreciated you before. Fancy that, a lady of some merit living beside me all these years, and I never deigned to notice you. Life is strange.” But not so very strange after all. Sara was using him to make Lord Peter jealous. Such a simple ruse would probably work, too, unless the colonial turned out a Helen of Troy. He looked forward to seeing her.

He fell into a reverie and Sara did not disturb him. They arrived at the Hall shortly after seven-thirty, too early to please Idle, and too late to please the hostess.

“Here you are at last! What the devil has kept you?” Lady Haldiman demanded. “The mutton will be cold.”

Sir Swithin waggled a finger at her and placed his other hand on Sara’s elbow. “What are you suggesting, naughty Perdita? We flew like an arrow, straight from Whitehern to your table. No dallying along the way, alas!”

Before his mother could misconstrue this speech into God only knew what, Haldiman advanced to welcome the guests. It did not escape his notice that Swithin held like a leech to Sara’s elbow. His ire, as he cast a darkly questioning glance on her, was on Peter’s behalf. Sara tossed her head boldly.

The next moments were filled with introductions to Miss Harvey and the necessary exclamations of joy at Peter’s return. After Miss Harvey had recovered from shock, she decided that Sir Swithin was the finest gentleman she had met since setting foot in England. Now there was a real gent! And Sir Swithin decided that Helen’s crown remained unchallenged. No ships would be launched on this common little chit’s behalf.

“Let us eat before our mutton is stone cold,” Lady Haldiman decreed, and the group headed for the dining room, where her servants had done her proud. An elegant table sparkled with crystal and silver, and in the center a low bowl of roses spoke of spring.

“The darling buds of May!” Sir Swithin exclaimed, and minced forward to smell them. “The simplicity of rural life is such a relief from London. Ice sculptures are the new rage. I blame Prinny’s chef, Carème. I always think of poor Prinny when I behold an ice sculpture. So cold and transparent, and so obviously destined to short life.” He shivered gently.

Haldiman had been busy arranging seats so that Sara sat beside Peter. Miss Harvey was treated as the guest of honor and sat on Haldiman’s right hand. Sir Swithin was her other partner. Nothing about the arrangement pleased Sara, especially her own place between Peter and Reverend Kane.

Peter sensed that references to Canada were best kept at a minimum, and over the turbot he tried his hand beguiling her with stories of the boys’ delight in England.

“I did the right thing to bring them home,” he told her. “My only regret is that I waited so long.”

“You should have come sooner,” Sara replied. “No doubt your late wife would have enjoyed to see England, too.” Then she turned to Reverend Kane and encouraged him to hold forth on church matters.

Lord Peter was not the only dinner partner who was ignored. Lord Haldiman found himself similarly abandoned, for Miss Harvey found a willing flirt in Sir Swithin.

“I have never before met a colonial lady,” he told her. “You make me realize how deprived I have been. You must tell me all about the Indians.”

She batted her hand. “Lud, you’d think to hear you Brits talk the country was nothing but tepees and wild bush. I’ll have you know at Retford we are very civilized, sir. Ten thousand acres in hard timber. My papa has a forty-room mansion with pillars in front, to say nothing of more servants than you can shake a stick at. We ladies don’t do our own washing and cooking, you know.”

“You disappoint me,” he declared. “I dared to hope for something more savage than mere gentility.”

“Indeed no! All the usual proprieties prevail, at least in my class. In society it is all dowries—my own is twenty-five thousand—and connections. My cousin, the governor, was just saying before we left that I would feel quite at home in England. Mind you my uncle, the judge, disagreed. Papa has one brother, a judge, and a cousin, a governor.”

Sir Swithin turned a lackluster eye on her. “Civil servants. Take care, Miss Harvey, or you will rapidly lose your hearer’s interest. If I were you, I should claim a more interesting past for myself. Kinship to an Indian chieftain certainly and arcane knowledge of native lore. But perhaps I am mistaken in thinking you wish to make yourself stand out from the crowd?”

Miss Harvey listened, trying to figure out whether she had been insulted. “I’ll stand out right enough. I doubt there are many ladies with twenty-five thousand in the neighborhood,” she replied.

Idle smiled vaguely. “I wouldn’t know. The ladies of my acquaintances are less forthcoming about the size of their dowries.”

“Then you may be sure the dot is nothing to brag about,” she said, unfazed.

“You leave me quite speechless, ma’am,” he replied, and immediately began a long dissertation, directed to the table in general, on how the London Season had so bored him that he had left early. “For if I want tedious company and pedestrian conversation, I can find it here. In the provinces at large, I mean. Present company always excepted,
ça va sans dire.”

“What does he say?” Lady Haldiman demanded of her partner.

“Nothing of any account, ma’am. It is only idle chatter.”

“I know it is Idle’s chatter, but what does he
say?”

Her unfortunate partner drew a deep breath and began to tell her.

After a lengthy meal the ladies retired to the salon and left the gentlemen to their port. Miss Harvey took a seat beside Sara. “Who is this Sir Swithin Idle that brought you to dinner, Miss Wood?” she asked.

“He is our neighbor from Heron Hall.”

“That would be the stone mansion overlooking the sea? I had a glimpse of it this morning when I was riding.”

“Yes, a lovely situation.”

“What does the ‘Sir’ stand for, if you understand my meaning?”

“He is a baronet, not a knight.”

“Then his wife would be a baroness?”

“Not at all. A baron’s wife would be a baroness. Baronets are not members of the peerage, you see.”

“You mean they’re not even lords?” Miss Harvey demanded.

“Not exactly, but they are the next best thing to it.”

An angry snort rent the air. “Hmph. He talks pretty grand for a baronet, does he not?” Sir Swithin was mentally struck from Miss Harvey’s list of possible husbands. The only question remaining in her mind was whether to marry Peter and return to Retford, or remain in England and become Lady Haldiman.

“Yes, he is vastly amusing,” Sara said. She disliked being alone with Miss Harvey and cast an imploring eye on Mary. Before long her sister joined her.

“Did Sara tell you Sir Swithin is having a ball?” Mary said.

“Indeed, she did not!” The sharp look accompanying this speech hinted that the news had been purposely suppressed.

“Yes, he will be inviting all his friends from London. It will be a great opportunity for us to meet some new gentlemen,” Mary said.

“He moves in a good circle, does he?” Miss Harvey asked with interest.

“The very best, I believe,” Sara told her.

Miss Harvey and Mary fell into congenial conversation and soon Sara excused herself to speak to .her hostess. “Are you seeing much of Idle these days, Sara?” Lady Haldiman asked.

“He is painting my picture, ma’am.”

“Eh?”

“Painting my portrait in the garden at home.”

“I know you are well guarded at home, my dear. I would not venture abroad with him. A bit of a high flyer, young Idle. I was surprised you came in his carriage. I doubt Peter will like it.”

“It is not really Peter’s affair,” Sara said, hackles rising.

“More than fair,” the dame admitted. “I can quite understand your wishing to pay him back. A nasty trick he served you, and so I told him, but he is back now. Let bygones be bygones.”

Short of shouting and drawing the attention of everyone in the room, Sara saw no way of explaining the matter. She opted for acquiescence, but her blood simmered.

When the gentlemen joined the ladies, Peter strode immediately to Sara’s side. “You two will want to be alone,” Lady Haldiman said coyly, and went to sit with Reverend Kane.

Peter sat down beside Sara. “It was like old times, seeing you at our table again, Sara,” he said. His eyes glowed with meaning.

Sara felt she was being drawn back into the nightmare web of the past. She wanted to let Peter know this dinner was not an augur of things to come. “I expect your mama wanted to fete you before you remove to the Poplars. When will you be leaving?”

“Rufus and I will be taking a run over tomorrow. There will be a few things that want doing before I move permanently. Giving the place a good cleanup, hiring servants, and so on. I can hardly take Betsy with me to a bachelor’s house and cannot like to lumber Rufus and Mama with her. I shall be at the Hall a month or so, I expect.”

Sara felt a stab of disappointment. “A month!” she exclaimed.

His soft smile told her he had misinterpreted the cause of her chagrin. “It is long enough, if we put the time to good use,” he said.

She leveled a quelling stare at him. “I daresay if you put your mind to it, you can have the Poplars running smoothly by then.”

“It will want a lady’s hand to put on the finishing touches.”

“You will be hiring a housekeeper, I collect?”

He gave a knowing little laugh. “Oh, that was not the lady I referred to,” he said.

Unable to endure these loving insinuations, Sara jumped to her feet. “Excuse me, I must speak to Mama.”

Peter watched her go, satisfied that the romance was progressing smoothly. Sara was certainly not indifferent to him. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled with some deep emotion. Absence had certainly made her grow fonder.

Sir Swithin, watching the encounter, dashed forward. Of course he let the lady believe she was pulling the wool over his eyes and spoke of his attentions as a rescue. “Something in this mad dash reminds me of the fox pursued by hounds. You have reached ground safely, my dear. Was Peter being terribly obtrusive?”

“Yes, terribly. I wish we could go home.”

He patted her hand solicitously. “When the fox runs, the hound pursues. What we must do is strengthen the false scent. I was so overcome with sympathy when I saw you cowering in the corner with him that I hinted to Haldiman my ball was in your honor. He immediately leapt to the hinted-at conclusion. Wasn’t that devious of me? We must tread softly, or we shall find ourselves betrothed. He was furious, by the way.”