An Affair of the Heart (6 page)

“I am. Interesting what you said—about so few women having written anything at that time, when it seems every woman of my acquaintance is scribbling her memoirs now.”

“The Countess of Winchilsea is the only female writer I have found, and then only the merest little dabs of verse. Now, of course, it is different, since we are educated. In a way that is, though of course we are not well educated, and I don’t know why we must spend hours practicing the harp or pianoforte when we have no aptitude for it, and had much rather be doing something else.”

“What would you rather be doing, Miss Ellie?”

“Nearly anything,” she replied. They sat down at the table, and Ellie closed the book in which she had been writing, then fell silent. Clay did not force conversation;

He was thinking about what she had said, and found a good deal of sense in it

“Is the card game over already?” she asked.

“No, they are still playing. I am taking a turn out.”

“Would you care for a glass of wine?”

“No, I am happy just as I am. That diary you mentioned—it sounds a valuable document, for students of social history.”

“Yes, I have been after Papa to give it to a university, or to see about having it published. Surely many women must feel as I do, that they would like to know something about life in those days, from a woman’s point of view. They cannot all have been greenheads, for Shakespeare portrays very active and vital women in his plays.”

“But not in his sonnets,” Clay mentioned. He was only familiar with these poems from using them as models for his own poetic offerings to Miss Golden.

“Yes, that is true,” she said consideringly. “He is always holding out the lure that if they become his lovers, he will immortalize them, otherwise they will sink into total obscurity. They must have been the silliest things in nature to fall for such a story.”

“This ancestor of yours, Egerton was it?” Clay asked, wishing to divert the topic, since his companion had obviously a more thorough acquaintance than he had himself with the sonnets of the Bard.

“Yes, Mary Egerton. She was in love with her neighbor; his name was Tom. She doesn’t describe him at all, only to say he is very kind. She spells it k-y-n-d-e. I don’t know whether she was a poor speller, or that was the spelling of it in those days. Spelling has changed greatly, of course. I can scarcely make any sense of Chaucer at all
.
”

“You read Chaucer? I thought young ladies of your class contented themselves with Byron and Mrs. Radcliffe.”

“As I have told you, Papa is really shocking in the way he has let the library fall out of date, and we have no lending library in the village. But I daresay when I get to London next year, I shall catch up on all the latest works.”

“You won’t have time for that, Miss Ellie,” he answered with a smile. “Balls and breakfasts and routs and drives in the park—no time at all for reading.”

She looked quite alarmed. “Is it so bad as that?”

“Bad? It is considered good by most ladies, I believe. In fact, the more engagements you can crowd into one day, the more successful the Season is considered to be.”

A flicker of a smile came and went so quickly on her face it was hard to be sure whether it had ever existed. “It is the beauties that you are speaking of, I collect. A plain girl will not be so rushed off her feet.”

“What, fishing for compliments, Miss Ellie? And I am now to assure you that you are by no means a plain girl, I suppose?”

“Save yourself the trouble. I know I am plain compared to my sisters.”

“Well, you are not,” he told her gallantly. “You bear a strong resemblance to Lady Siderow, and when you are fixed up—that is, when you have mastered all the tricks of flirting and what not, you will go on famously.”

“Yes, Joan felt I was not ready to make my debut this year. I daresay she was right, even if I am the elder.”

“A whole ten minutes older! You are not much alike, for twins.”

“No, we are not the sort of twins that are exactly alike. Wanda has more confidence. If
she
were the elder, she would be called Miss Wanderley, as the elder should be, but somehow we are called Miss Ellie and Miss Wanda.
 
It started, I suppose, before the other girls were married.”

“Wanda tells me you are the shy one,” he said, and smiled. She was gratified to see it was his nice, warm smile, not the chilly parting of the lips she had received the other morning.

“I am not
shy,
precisely. I can converse well enough with one or two persons, as now. It is only that I clam up like a lobster in a large crowd. Joan says I have not the gift of small talk, but she thinks it can be acquired.”

“Well, don’t change, Miss Ellie, for shy beauties are all the rage.” He regarded her shy blush, despite her small audience, and considered his blatant lie. Shy beauties were not at all the rage. The Rose set the tone, and a less shy creature than that brazen hussy had never seen the light of day. But even if Miss Ellie were shy, she had countenance, and considerable charm and vivacity. She was not exactly a beauty. Wanda was the beauty of the two—no doubt of that. With a little confidence, however, and town bronze, Ellie would hold her own. At least she was conversable, which Wanda, for all her looks and wiles, was not. He did not much look forward to returning to the Green Saloon, but could not make the selection of a book last forever, so he grabbed any old book from the shelf (it happened to be Guthrie’s
Geography)
and returned, just in time to replace
Rex, who promptly vanished out the door, one of Adam’s cheroots in his pocket

The game did not last much longer, and the gentlemen were soon heading back to the Abbey. “Still set in your decision to have her?”
Rex asked.

“Certainly. She looked very well this evening, did she not?”

“Rigged to the nines. And Hibbard wasn’t there, I noticed. I guess it ain’t as well settled between them as I thought. I asked about him while you was out, and she said, ‘This isn’t the only house Mr. Hibbard calls at. Pray don’t go giving anyone that idea.’ I guess I know what ‘anyone’ she had in mind, eh? You was gone a deuced long time, Clay. What kept you? You ain’t usually one to shove your nose into a book. Not the musty old books you’ll find in Adam’s stacks anyway.”

“I was having a chat with Miss Ellie.”

“That’d be a rare treat,” Rex offered ironically.

“Yes, she is an intelligent girl.”

“Not in your style.”

“Funny,
you said the other day I should do better to offer for Ellie.”

“I wasn’t thinking when I said that. She wouldn’t do for you at all, though she’s
nicer
than Wanda. What you want is a beauty to set the Rose down a notch, and Wanda is the one to do it right enough. Looking very fine this evening.”

“Lovely. I am taking her out in my curricle tomorrow afternoon. Her mama threw no rub in my way. I thought she might find it a trifle fast.”

“No, not in the country. Where you taking her?”

“I don’t know. What do you suggest?”

“There’s Needford, about ten miles away. Got an old church there you might have a look at.”

“That wouldn’t amuse Wanda.”

“It’d be up to
you
to provide the amusement yourself. Stop at some inn for tea. Buy her a trinket, Clay, that’s the thing to do. Then after you go home she has it to look at, and remember you.”

“Yes, a good plan. What will you do?”

“I’ll think of something. Maybe I’ll go with you.”

“Now really. Little romance that will add to the atmosphere.”

“I could take Ellie. A bit off-putting for her, seeing Wanda jaunter off with her beau, while she sits home like Cinderella.”

“If you do that, take her in your own curricle, and don’t be suggesting we all go together in a carriage.
It is privacy with the young lady I require.”

“Don’t worry. I ain’t that fond of Wanda’s company that I’d put myself forward to share your trap. Course I daresay Ellie’d prose my ear off about saints and martyrs and what not—going to a church, you know. Maybe I’ll take Missie instead. That’d please Mama.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea.”

“Or I could take ‘em both, and let ‘em rattle on to each other, and slip off for an ale while they go to church.”

“And they end up trailing after Wanda and me! No, my friend. If you take them, you conduct them to this curst church yourself.”

“Shouldn’t ought to call a church curst, Clay. Not the thing. A shocking loose fish you’re becoming.”

“Shocking.”

Chapter Five

After the gentlemen departed, Mrs. Wanderley called for a fresh pot of tea, and the three ladies commenced to rehash the evening in the time-honored fashion, while Abel slid out the door to indulge in another time-honored custom pertaining to gentlemen. This particular entertainment was named Effie; she was a poacher’s daughter who entertained many young gentlemen in the neighborhood.

“It went well, I think,” Mrs. Wanderley began, addressing her speech to Wanda. Mrs. Wanderley smiled fondly at her beauty as she spoke, and remarked, as she so frequently did, that of all her lovely daughters, it was Wanda who most closely resembled herself at that age. Yes, and she was still a good-looking woman too, even if she had passed that hateful half-century mark on her last birthday.

“You should have had a few more guests, Mama,” Ellie suggested. “You are making it too obvious you mean to nab him for Wanda. Besides, it is very bad to throw poor George over, when he was as well as accepted.”

“And who said anything about throwing him over?” Wanda demanded. “Surely we may entertain another guest if we choose. Besides, he called on Nora Langdon last Sunday. I heard it from her brother.”

“That was only because you were flirting with that ugly old Elmer Rountree after church,” Ellie reminded her sister.

“I was not flirting with him! In fact, I told him I would be busy Sunday evening, and then George didn’t even call, but went slipping off to the Langdons’
.
”

“Children, children! No wrangling, please. Remember you are
ladies.
It is
this
evening’s entertainment we are discussing. I thought the cream cake had an odd flavor. I wonder if cook used cream that was going bad in it.”

“No, Mama,” Ellie explained. “It was Papa’s vanilla beans that lent it that odd taste, though I did not mind it, and Rex said it was very good.”

“It is not
Rex’s
opinion we are interested in, my love. Did Claymore comment on it, Wanda?”

“No, Mama. I wonder where he means to take me tomorrow afternoon.”

“What, are you walking out with him tomorrow?” Ellie asked, as this was the first she had heard of it

“No,
driving
out with him in his curricle. I suppose we might drive over to Langdon’s. How I should love to see Nora’s face—”

“Are you mad?” her mother interposed hotly. “Let that sassy chit of a Nora get her talons into him, when she has already whisked young Hibbard right out from under your nose! Don’t be such a goose, Wanda. Take him over to Needford. There is that old church there you might show him.”

“He won’t care about a church. But they have a rather good inn, and I expect we will be stopping for tea.”

“It sounds very fast to me,” Ellie objected, but in such an obvious pique of jealousy that no one heeded her.

“Invite him for dinner after,” Mrs. Wanderley suggested. “Never mind that he will not be dressed. It will be only a potluck thing, quite
en famille.
We can send word over to the Homberlys’ not to expect him back.”

“You are going a deal too fast, Mama,” Ellie warned again. “Joan always says to play hard to get, especially when it is perfectly clear that the gentleman is smitten.”

“It is not perfectly clear yet, Ellie, for he did not stay in the room when he was odd man out at the card game, but went shabbing off to the library or some such thing. I daresay he slipped out for a cigar, for he was gone a long time.”

Ellie kept quiet, and did not reveal where he had gone. She might not receive a scold for her part in his absence, but she would be given to understand she had erred.

“He was dangling after Gloria Golden all Season. Everyone knows that,” Wanda sniffed. “He is only making up to me to pretend he wasn’t jilted. I am not at all sure I shall oblige him by being his new flirt.”

“Flirt indeed!” Mrs. Wanderley said in a shocked voice. “I should say not. If he is not serious in his intentions, he may take himself off. But Gloria is engaged, my love, so he is quite free, you know. Quite something to be a marchioness. Neither Joan nor Caroline did so well as that. Plain Mrs. Hibbard is nothing in comparison to it.”

“We’ll see,” Wanda replied, with a very smug smile. Pooh for Nora Langdon. George Hibbard would see what happened if he chose to ignore her. Not only had he called on Nora Langdon on Sunday evening, but here it was Wednesday, and she had not heard from him since Saturday. She was not so unnatural as to dislike the idea of becoming a marchioness and outdoing all her sisters, but the thing was, she
loved
George.

She would be plain Mrs. Hibbard—not even a baronetcy or a knighthood. But George was wildly handsome, with the most melting brown eyes—much nicer than Claymore’s. His had a bored, glazed look in them when he spoke to her. She saw very clearly why the Rose preferred Everleigh. Something about Claymore gave the impression that he was insincere. All his compliments and pleasantries had a strained sound to them, as though it were just some dull game he was playing. Without ever for one moment underestimating her own considerable charms, she thought the Marquis of Claymore did not love her. Still, he would be extremely useful in bringing George to heel.

“Wear your yellow gown, Wanda, and that lovely green crocheted shawl that Caroline got you in London, in case it becomes chilly. And don’t dress your hair in that style you are wearing tonight, for in a curricle it will be windy. Wear a close-fitting bonnet, and perhaps you might slip it off in the inn to show off your hair. You will be in a private parlor, and you might say it makes you warm.”