An Affair of the Heart (8 page)

“She is not overcome by the heat, I hope?” Ellie inquired.

“I think not. Merely a little tired.”

“Take her to the inn and get her a glass of something wet,”
Rex recommended.

“It is a shame you do not have a chance to look over the church while you are here,” Ellie said to Claymore. “I could stay with Wanda. The church is very old, you know, and I don’t know whether Wanda pointed it out to you, but there are some rather fine carvings outside at the main doorway.”

“I didn’t notice. I’ll have a look on the way out, but I believe Miss Wanda wants to be alone, so don’t feel you must cut your visit short.”

“Let us go on,” Missie said to her brother, being no more interested in ancient architecture than he was himself.

“Tell you what, Clay,” Rex decided, “you stick around and let Ellie show you the place. Knows all about them old brass plaques and what not, for she’s always taking rubbings of them. I’ll take the ladies along to the inn. You join us there when you’re finished it.”

“Oh no,” Ellie said. As Rex intercepted a surprised glance from his friend, he remembered that he was by no means to separate Clay from his love of life, and he changed his tactics. “Well, there’s nothing here but an old pile of stones anyway. Come along and we’ll all have a bite to eat. Be just the thing to get Wanda’s crest back up.”

It was agreed, and they all four strolled back to the back of the church, where Wanda was sufficiently recovered to go along to the inn. No mention was made of the fine carvings on the doorway as they left, without so much as a glance at them. A private parlor was procured at the inn, but not before Wanda had a fleeting glimpse of Hibbard, accompanied by not only Robert Langdon, but also his hateful sister. Nora was wearing a new bonnet, with darling little roses on it, and a
pink
pelisse that clashed dreadfully with her orange hair. Silly girl, just like her to go thinking she could wear pink, only because she had seen herself in a stunning rose gown at the assembly. If that was the taste George Hibbard had, she was well rid of him.

“I’ll tell you what,”
Rex said, suddenly inspired. “You and Miss Wanda stay here in this stuffy old parlor, Clay, and I’ll take Missie and Ellie into the common room.”

“I wish you would,” Missie replied. “It will be ever so much more amusing than cooped up in here, with no one to see.”

“No!” Clay said in a very loud voice, which startled Rex no end, as he thought he had hit on a very sly plan to throw them alone together, to get on with their courting.

“Why not?” Rex asked.

Claymore was too well bred to admit he was bored to flinders with his lovely companion, and suggested that for propriety’s sake they ought to remain together.

“Didn’t think about that when you asked her in the first place then,”
Rex reminded him. “Didn’t know then I was to bring the other girls along.”

Clay cringed at this loud recital, but Ellie replied to Rex. “Mama would not like Wanda to be alone with Claymore, when we are all here at the same inn. It would look so very odd.”

“Let us all go into the common room,” Wanda suggested. She was by no means sure George had seen her, and certainly he had no way of knowing her escort was a titled gentleman, unless she could call him “my lord” within that other party’s earshot

Clay was not accustomed to dining in a public room when he chaperoned ladies, but he was broad-minded enough to submit to the plan, even though he had no idea why they found it so desirable. In general, ladies desired all the consequence of private parlors and any other nicety that money could procure. He was not long in the dark as to why the common room was preferred.

“Why, there is George Hibbard,” Missie announced in her trumpeting young voice, immediately audible throughout the entire room. “And with the Langdons. I shall drop over and say hello to them.” She dashed off, while Wanda examined the white tablecloth with great interest, and asked whether Ellie did not find the room very pleasant.

“Yes, very pleasant,” Ellie agreed, wondering at her sister’s mood. If she had decided not to have George, she ought to be happy he was leaving her alone. But she was not happy. That wan smile and martyred expression might be indicative of many things, but certainly not of joy.

Secure that Missie would impart the identity of her escort, Wanda became quite lively during the meal. After a glass of wine she even said she was looking forward to the return trip in the curricle. Such fun driving the open carriage, and the sun would be behind them.

This animation from his erstwhile lover, and even more the knowledge that her escort was a marquis, loaded with blunt, as Missie had happily told him, so enraged George Hibbard that he bent over backward to show Wanda how little he cared. This was made very easy by the presence of Nora Langdon, who was more than willing to flirt outrageously, pop morsels from her plate into his mouth, roll her eyes at him, and in general behave in a manner designed to inflame Wanda the Wonderful with a terrible jealousy. Not to be outdone, Wanda turned a beaming face on the Marquis, and playfully proposed a toast to the Golden Rose. In a loud aside to Ellie she added it was a pity they were both dark-haired, for London gentlemen would look at nothing but blondes.

Heated denials of this, and a toast in turn from Lord Claymore to the Wanderley Flowers confirmed Hibbard’s suspicion that he had been jilted for a title, and before long he and his party took themselves off. A strange listlessness fell upon Wanda when they were gone. She asked offhandedly of Missie what the Langdons had had to say.

“They said they were surprised to know a marquis ate in the common room,” Missie replied.

“How did they know who I am?” Clay asked.

“Why, I told them, of course,” Missie replied, nonplussed at his stupidity.

By the time the second party left the inn, it had begun to cloud up slightly, and they decided to return home immediately. Clay didn’t even remember to purchase a trinket for Wanda. “Lord, let us get home before it starts to pour,” Wanda whined. “That’s all it needs to make this day complete.”

Such a leveler as this left Claymore in no doubt that she had enjoyed the outing as little as he had himself. Once home, no offer was extended to remain for dinner, nor would it have been accepted if it had. Claymore’s temper, never calm, was about at its breaking point. Definitely the excursion had been a deplorable idea. A delicate girl like Wanda required a completely different sort of background to show to advantage. The theatre, the opera, a ball—that is where she would shine. He would soon have an opportunity to judge if he were not right, for there was an assembly to be held that coming Saturday. Mrs. Wanderley told them about it, and determined as well that Rex should take Claymore to it. That gave both discomfited parties a whole day—Friday—to recover from the fiasco of the expedition to Needford.

Chapter Six

On Tuesday evening Mrs. Wanderley had written to Lady Siderow regarding the arrival of the Marquis of Claymore at the Abbey, among other less important matters. As Lady Siderow’s usual gay round of activities was curtailed by the closing of the Season, her mama had her answer on Saturday morning. She wrote a good clear hand, and didn’t stoop to crossing her pages as her husband might frank her letters for her, saving the recipient the expense. “C’s arrival,” she wrote, “would be the result of his having been turned down by Miss G. It is one of the
on dits
of London that she had an offer from him. He even tried to get her to dash for the Border. What a hullabaloo that would have been! Well, he is free, Mama, and I wish Wanda luck, if that is what you have in mind. Keep a sharp eye, though, or your little girl might be fleeing off to Gretna Green—a high price to pay, even for the title of marchioness.” The epistle continued for two pages of lesser news, but it was only the part concerning Claymore that was conveyed to Wanda.

“There will be none of this Gretna Green for you, milady,” her mother adjured strictly.

“Pooh. He doesn’t even like me. He is still in love with Miss Golden, and only trying to forget her.”

“That shows a streak of common sense that I find particularly pleasing. You will wear your white spangled gown to the assembly, love. And I think a more demure hair style might be better than that Meduse thing you wore the other night. Pulled back, with ringlets over your shoulder, and perhaps a rosebud entwined around the knot.
If your papa were not such an old skint with his blooms, he might let us have one of his curst orchids for a corsage, but there is no point in asking him.”

Wanda took some interest in this discussion, though it was not Claymore she was hoping to impress with her toilette. George would naturally be there too—with old redhead Langdon, like as not, wearing a pink gown.

Receiving no parental help in the matter, Ellie decided to adopt Wanda’s Meduse hair style, and spent a miserable Saturday afternoon with her hair done up in papers. She selected a pale green Italian crepe gown that had been given her by Lady Tameson on her last visit, and while it fit like a glove, it was of a more daring décolletage than she normally chose. She was in some trepidation when she entered the Green Saloon, for she was not at all sure Mama would approve. But it was no such a thing.

“Why Ellie!” her mother said, looking with pleasure at the fashionable picture her daughter presented. “How charming you look. Doesn’t she look nice, Wanda? The hair style suits you very well. I told you that washerwoman way you wore it was ugly. Only see what an improvement the papers have made. And the gown—Caroline’s old green, is it? Very dashing. Fits to a nicety, love. You ought to have some bit of jewelry with it. I’ll get my little pearls.”

She intercepted the butler in the hall, and sent him to ask a maid to fetch her seed pearls. They were duly fastened around Ellie’s neck, and her outfit was ready. Even Wanda, Mrs. Wanderley thought in surprise, did not look so very much finer than Ellie when she was dolled up a bit. No problem with little Ellie, after all. Next Season she would do very well for herself. Another title—not a doubt of it. How Marie Homberly would
writhe
in envy.

There was no question of Adam leaving his flowers long enough to accompany them. He was in the process of crossing an epidendrum with his cattleya, and must remain on the premises, like a midwife at a cross-birth. Abel, however, was more than happy to oblige them, and at an hour deemed suitably late to make a grande entrance, Mrs. Wanderley shepherded her charges in, and had the exquisite pleasure of seeing every female eye in the room turn green.

A veritable rush of black-coated gentlemen converged on the new arrivals, as the first dance was just over, and the serious business of accepting escorts for their first dance was begun. Unfortunately Claymore was at the punch bowl at the time, so he was not among the first crush. Nor was George Hibbard in the throng, though he was certainly present, and, yes, sitting with Nora Langdon. Wanda’s spine stiffened, as she pinned a glittering smile on her face. She accepted the most persistent of her admirers—it happened to be Elmer Rountree. A dead bore, but Wanda thought it was he who had made George jealous on Sunday, and in any case he would do for the time being. Claymore was around somewhere, for there was
Rex.

Poor Ellie! Now why had she stood up with Rex? He was impossibly short—in her heeled shoes she was a good two inches taller than he was. Why did short gentlemen not realize what a ridiculous figure they cut when they danced with a tall girl? Rex had been dangling after her once, till she hinted him gently away by saying she did not like stooping to her partner, for it ruined her posture. Foolish little runt. He had held her in dislike ever since, not that she cared. Ah, there was Claymore now, with Mrs. Hornberry. Nothing to fear there.

Claymore’s practiced eye soon singled out his prey, and he watched in approval as Miss Wanda wheeled around the floor. Very well got up, in that spangled gown, and with a new hair style.
He didn’t like it quite so well as that tousled do she had worn the other evening. And there was
Rex. Now who the devil was the pretty young lady with him? Why, it couldn’t be Ellie! Looking as stylish as an actress, and nearly as lovely as her sister. Beauties, the whole family. Yessir, one of them would be the very girl to take the shine out of the Rose. Wanda, of course. Really, though, he thought, as his glance swung from one sister to the other, there was little to choose between them. Wanda had perhaps the more perfect face, but Ellie carried herself with more dignity. From this little distance, Ellie made the more distinguished appearance. Mrs. Homberly kindly pointed out a butter-toothed girl who had no partner, and Claymore went to her rescue. Before long, he was at the side of Wanda, claiming her company for the next dance.

“Beautiful, as usual, Miss Wanda,” he pronounced, which won him a smile. He noticed with relief that she made no comment about the Golden Rose tonight. Usually his compliments were met by some playful comparison of their charms, with herself on the bad end, of course, so that he had to contradict her. It was becoming a bit of a bore.

He soon realized he had been overly hasty in congratulating himself on his escape. “I thought you might like the coiffure, for it was one favored in London this past Season, though, of course, it looked more becoming on a
blonde.”

“I am becoming just a trifle tired of that joke. Miss Wanda,” he said, and surprised even himself at the ennui in his voice.

“Well, I didn’t ask you to stand up with me,” she shot back angrily. Poor Claymore. It was not him she was angry with at all, but George Hibbard, who had gone to stand beside Robert Langdon at the end of the first dance, when Nora had been claimed by another buck. He had eyes for no one but that freckle-faced girl.

“I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “That was uncommonly rude of me.”

“Yes, it was. And furthermore you needn’t think we don’t know why you are come to the Abbey, for Mama had a letter of Joan this morning, and she told us about your trying to get Miss Golden to run off with you. That was very bad of you, and you needn’t think I will do anything so stupid.”