An Affair of the Heart (27 page)

Clay considered this. “Very true. I can see I must go, too.”

“There’s no ‘too’ about it. No point my going if you’re going.”

“Just to make the actual knock at the door, you know. I could wait half a mile down the road, and you could come back and let me know what’s up.”

“Dash it if you ain’t a chicken-hearted fellow. Afraid to go to your own mother’s—in fact,
your own
house—and knock at the door, to see, your own wife. I’m surprised at you, Clay. Thought you had more gumption. Though I ought to have known after your wedding....”

“Rex, you know I would be there in a flash if I thought there were any chance that she
is
there. But I fear she’s not, and I don’t see any point in giving Mama the satisfaction of ragging at me.”

“Seems a perfectly bird-witted way to go about it, if you want
my
opinion.”

“But I don’t, Rex. I only want your help. Will you come?”

“Supposed to be taking Missie and Mama to the Lower Rooms tonight. Cotillion Ball. Daresay Miss Simpson will be there.”

“Rex, if you will help me, I’ll
buy
Miss Simpson for you.”

“No, dash it, keep your damn purse in your pocket. It’s your buying Ellie that has got us into this pickle. Besides, Miss Simpson ain’t for sale. Ain’t a bit like that. Thing is, Clay, she’s got this guardsman trailing after her everywhere she goes. Tall as a lamppost, way up past her head. Handsome, too. He’ll be at the Cotillion Ball.”

“There is nothing like absence to whet the appetite,” Clay began persuasively, and added many suggestions having to do with Miss Simpson keeping an eager eye on the door the whole night long, waiting for him to enter. Rex was half convinced, being very gullible, that she would be his for the asking by morning, if only he could drum up the fortitude to stay away for one night. From this state it was easy to coerce him into going to Somerset, for he knew himself too well to think he could stay away from the ball if he were in town.

Then after all this had been gone through, it was decided that they would leave in the morning, it being already dark out, and Rex decided he might as well go to the ball after all. Might hear something about Ellie.

True enough, he heard many rumors, of so strange and varied a nature that he was quite at a loss to explain them to his friend the next morning, when he presented himself at nine o’clock at the Pelican to go with Clay to the Hall. “Did my best to squash ‘em,” he said, which hit his friend’s ear with an ominous note.

“What did you say?”

“Told that Banbury tale about your mama being sick, and said you came from London by way of Bath to pick her up some medicine from her apothecary here. Anyway, there’s such a batch of different stories going around, no one knows what to think. If you could just get Ellie back and show up here with her a few times, the world would conclude it was all a tempest in a teapot, and forget all about it.”

“Yes, that is what I must do. Let’s go.”

Chapter Seventeen

The bride’s dilatory flight to the Hall was prolonged with as many stops for tea and even sightseeing as she dared to suggest, or could cajole her companion into accepting. While she dallied along, Rex arrived at Claymore Hall, where he was informed in a very civil manner that Claymore and his bride had not yet arrived, but were expected that very day. They were already a day late. He was even invited to attend their arrival, for the Dowager was bored and restless with the waiting, and thought this booby entertaining enough in his way. Having received no orders from his general as to how to proceed under this circumstance, Rex accepted the offer and sat down with the Dowager to a cold luncheon, while Clay walked his horses for over an hour, fuming with frustration and impatience.

The Dowager queried in vain as to how the wedding had gone off, but could discover only that it was “a pretty good do.”

“I expected they would be here by now,” she said. “Clay thought they would arrive last night, and he is usually a few hours earlier than he says, but perhaps his wife does not like to travel at his speed.”

“You’re out there. Ellie likes a good hot pace.”

“Does she indeed? They are well suited then in that area. I wonder if they did not decide to come by way of Bath. The road is better, and they might have stopped to have the servants get the house ready for my remove.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Ah, you have been to Laura Place then?” she asked, rather curious.

“No. No, that is, uh, sent a note around, you see.”

Now why was he coloring up like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the cookie jar? “And they are not there?”

“No, she—they ain’t there. Already told you,” he added in a surly tone.

The Dowager’s sharp eyes narrowed, and her heart quickened with the thrill of the scent. She considered her strategy carefully, but when she spoke, it was in a nonchalant manner. “I wonder where she can be,” she said. With her eye on her plate, she still discerned the rapid movement of his head, jerking to sharp attention. So that was it—
she
wasn’t at Bath.

“Eh?” he asked suspiciously. Deuce take it, did the woman know already?

“I said, if she is not at Bath, and she is not here, I wonder where she can be.”

“They ain’t at Bath you mean,” he challenged.

She regretted that she had flushed her quarry too soon, but smiled agreeably.
“They,
of course, is what I meant.”

He breathed a perfectly audible sigh of relief. “Thought that was what you meant.”

“To be sure. What else could I mean?”

“Heh, heh. What else indeed? As though she would have gone into a snit and left him, when they are only married a few days.”

“It is surprising, though. Sometimes trouble develops the very first day,” she suggested in a leading fashion...

“Or night,” he agreed with feeling, and bit his lip in a cunning effort to stop from laughing aloud. His shaking shoulders told the secret, and from then on this uneven match between a bantling and a game cock was over.

“Oh, naughty Mr. Homberly,” she chided gaily. So that was it!

“Only funning,” he assured her. “No trouble between them two anyway. Nothing of the sort... Daresay if he’d given her a diamond ring as he ought—not that Ellie is a
grasping
sort, but it looked odd, you know, with Wanda sporting a diamond as big as a hen’s egg.”

“He ought certainly to have given her the Claymore diamond,” she agreed, with shameless calm.

“Told him so. Dam—dashed silly to go buying another diamond when he has a boxful of them already. You can grow too attached to
things.”

This home truth glanced off her. “So he
did
buy a ring for her. And was she pleased with it?”

“She hasn’t seen it...
hadn’t
seen it, till—er—till after the wedding.” He grabbed his glass and drank deeply. The woman was worse than a dashed Spanish Inquisitor.

“I daresay she will like it. Women always do like diamonds. Is it a good stone?”

“Oh yes. Pretty big, you know. Bigger than Wanda’s. Ought to do the trick.”

“Yes, that should patch things up,” she said offhandedly, and looked out of the corner of her eye as his head slewed around to regard her.

“Do you know, I’ve just remembered something,” he said, rising to his feet halfway through his omelette and cold cuts. “I’m late for a very important appointment. Just remembered it this very minute. Pray, don’t interrupt your meal. I can see myself out.”

The Dowager said, “Give Claymore my regards.”

“Yes, I’ll tell him. That is, when I see him, though
you
will likely see him before I do. They ain’t at Bath, so you’ll see them first.”

“Do you think so?” she asked innocently. He glared at her, gave a stiff bow, and wobbled from the room.

The account he gave his waiting friend was garbled at best, but the one fact of real importance was clear enough: “Ellie ain’t there.”

“I knew she wouldn’t be,” Clay said, crestfallen.

“Well, it seems dashed odd to me, and why was your mother making sly remarks about trouble developing the first day after being married, and where could ‘she’ be, if she don’t know something?”

“Someone has been running to her with stories, I suppose. She is not so far from Bath, and the tale is rampant there.”

“Anyway, Ellie ain’t there, for I took a good look about your stables, and there were none of your London bloods, and nor the traveling carriage. Your loose boxes are in a terrible state, Clay. Boards falling off them and what not. Ought to get ‘em attended to. If some stupid groom goes shoving your grays into them they’ll tear their sides off.”

“I mean to attend to it this summer. Did you see my Barb?”

“Yes, and they’ve been overfeeding him, and not giving him enough exercise. Didn’t like the looks of him at all. Fat as a flawn.”

“I paid five hundred pounds for him,” Clay said wearily. With these two minor worries added to his load, Clay turned his curricle back to Bath, for lack of any more reasonable plan occurring to him.

Forewarned by Homberly’s visit that all was not well with the newlyweds, the Dowager was not so surprised as she would otherwise have been when her daughter-in-law came trailing in alone, except for her servants, late that same afternoon. The terror of this, her first meeting with the dragon, lent a sparkle to her eyes, and a flush to her cheeks, that might have been taken for good health, or perhaps a raging fever. Certainly it added something in the way of beauty. The Dowager traced a learned eye over the nicely-tailored blue traveling suit, the neat bonnet with enough trim for fashion, and not too much for a young lady, and was satisfied that Mrs. Wanderley had got the girl rigged up in style. The face was good, especially the gray eyes, and what could be seen of the raven hair. Always liked those pitch black curls, perhaps because she had had an unsightly ginger colored mop herself, now turned to an equally unsightly buttery yellow. Not nice bluish-white, as some lucky dames acquired in old age. These few advantages of appearance would have been outweighed by malice had the bride come waltzing in, simpering and smiling on the arm of a doting husband, but to have to face the ignominy of coming alone on her honeymoon, deserted by that clod of a Clay, was something to endear her to her new mama.

Scared stiff, and on the verge of tears, poor thing. “Welcome home, Daughter,” the Dowager said, wearing the merriest smile imaginable. She even came forward and pecked Daughter’s cheek. “I have been waiting this
age
for you to come.”

“I had to make a slight delay in my journey, ma’am, for I was feeling rather poorly this morning.”

“Ah, travel is a curse. I have given it up entirely, but for my yearly jaunt to Bath. Come over and let us be comfortable on the sofa. Why has Rigmore not taken your things? Rigmore! Rigmore, I say. Come here and remove my daughter’s hat and, oh, you are not wearing a pelisse. July, of course. How quickly it has come round.” She chattered on, making her guest feel at home till tea was brought in.

For quite ten minutes they discussed the roads, the weather, even the wedding, without either of them mentioning the rather prominent fact that the groom was absent from this meeting. At length, it was Ellie who broached the ticklish subject, thinking her hostess believed him to be delayed at the stables.

“Claymore did not come with me,” she said, and licked her bottom lip in a nervous gesture, waiting for the boom to fall.

“No, I thought as much,” was the perfectly civil reply, as though it were the natural thing. “Had a call from Homberly this morning, seeing what he could find out. Sent by my son, I have not the least doubt. They are cooped up in Bath, I believe.”

“Bath! But why should he be there? I told him I was coming straight to you.”

“Did you indeed? I rather supposed you had dashed off without letting him know where you’d gone.” This threw the Dowager off her stride, though she tried her best not to show it. She assumed the nervous bride had bolted after her first encounter with her conjugal duties, and not solely because she had not received a diamond ring. She noticed Ellie wasn’t wearing the pearl, nor the new diamond either—hadn’t even
seen
it no doubt, but a cheap little band of diamonds that you’d need a microscope to see.

“Oh no, I told him—that is, I left word with the servants where I was headed, and thought he would overtake me long before this.”

“Never thought you’d have to tackle me alone, eh?” the Dowager said bluntly, and with a delighted cackle.

Ellie opened her mouth to contradict this bald statement, but a nervous laugh escaped her, and as it did not appear to offend her new mama, she confessed shyly that she had been a little nervous of the encounter.

“Well, there’s no need to be nervous, my dear, for I won’t eat you. I wasn’t half sure how I would like you, to tell the truth, for that fool of a Homberly as well as said you was not elegant, but I see he got it all wrong, as I might have expected. You’ll do very well for Clay, and what we must do now is
find
him. I won’t be pestering you with questions as to why you left. Private is private, though I would just hint that you oughtn’t to make a habit of it, for it would only set tongues wagging, and that I am not fond of.”

“Joan, my sister—Lady Siderow, you know—has already told me so, only I never thought he would not come after me. I had no thought of making a scandal.”

“You haven’t taken him in dislike then?”

“Oh no! No indeed. It was merely a lovers’ quarrel.”

This set the Dowager’s mind at rest considerably. Her earlier suspicions that Claymore did in fact love the girl had been bolstered at seeing her. He was always soft on those big-eyed dark-haired girls. If the whole thing were only a plain lovers’ quarrel, it might be settled in two minutes by throwing them together in private. But why had Clay not followed her? Here was something odd. Her suspicions flew to Homberly. If Clay had used
him
for a confidant—and God help them, mentor!—anything might have happened.

“I’ll have to get a message to him,” she decided.