By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda (16 page)

"So," she said with a sharp intake of
breath. "Good-bye? It's been—" She laughed softly, scanning for the
word. "Swell?"

"Peculiar," he answered without
thinking.

"Gee," she said, grimacing. "You sure know
how to leave a girl feeling good all over."

Lotsy again? He tried to meet the innuendo
head on. "It's my specialty," he said with a kind of grim strength.
"Good-bye, Amanda."

She compressed her lips—brave, defiant,
twisted into a smile—and stepped into her limited edition,
Reading-made Daniels Speedster.

The last thing he noticed as the car slipped
away into the night was that the fender was still crumpled.

The rain fell softly at first, and Geoff was
grateful for that. But before long the quiet, reassuring hush
turned to a steady hiss, and then a tiresome drumming. The
September sky lowered. The wind picked up, the rain slanted in;
Geoff got up from his desk to pull the paned door tight. The first
thunderclap caught him by surprise. He jumped, then let out a soft
curse, despising himself for acting like a schoolboy. Since the war
he'd had no tolerance for loud noises: a recent fireworks display
had left him in a shaking depression that lasted for hours
afterward.

He stared through the glass doors at the
tree-lined grounds. In a couple of months, when the leaves were
down, he'd be able to see the ongoing construction clearly: an
insufferably quaint country house being built for a London brewer
to his own design. The owner knew as much about architecture as
Geoff knew about brewing lager. Even worse, the brewer would soon
own a hundred picturesque acres—the Setons' last hundred acres—to
the south and east of Seton Place. If Sir Walter agreed to the
offer—he'd be a fool to refuse it—the last buffer zone between
Seton Hall and the hoi polloi would have fallen. No more stream, no
more trout, no more cattails for his mother to carry home. The
brewer would have acquired his very own tenant farmer and could
strut about like a feudal lord. Meanwhile the tenant, faced with an
inevitable rent increase, would slide even more deeply into the
farming depression that pervaded Britain.

And it was all Geoff's fault.

"Geoff, darling, I can count on you for
dinner tonight, can't I?"

He turned his back to the rain. His mother
was standing in the doorway, guest list in hand.

"Only if you need me to round up; otherwise
I'd prefer to take something in my room." He gave her a waifish
smile to soften the rejection.

But his mother wasn't buying it. "Listen to
me, my little poppet. I expect you not only to be there, but to be
there in your best bib and tucker. Enough really is enough. Miss
Marylsworth is just back from the Continent, and I don't want you
staring at her as if she's a spoonful of cod liver oil."

"Mother, I can't possibly marry her in time
to save the farm, and has Pop ever told you how beautiful you are
when you're angry?"

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. "Your 'Pop'
never makes me angry, Geoffrey. That particular talent of yours is
not inherited."

"Hoo-ray for that, at least. I was beginning
to think I had no skills whatever."

"Geoffrey—dear—this won't do. Since you've
got back from the United States you've become less, well,
functional than ever. It used to be that you moped and slept all
the time. Now you mope and pace. You're getting on your father's
nerves and, quite frankly, on mine as well. What, specifically, is
bothering you? Is it the war?"

"The war is over, mother."

"Oh,
I
know that, darling. What,
then? The sale of the farm?"

Geoff thought about it, sighed, then nodded
his head pensively. "I hate to see it go."

"It's virtually a
fait accompli.
Accept it."

That was Lady Julia all over: change what
you can; otherwise, bow with grace. Good advice. He'd followed it
all his life. Why was he resisting it now?
Because it wasn't
right, damn it to hell.
God. He was thinking like Amanda.

Besides, he was being crushed by guilt. "I'm
going into London to see Henry tomorrow, Mother. To throw myself on
my knees and plead for a job."

"Well, wear your plus-fours if you do; I
won't have you ruining a perfectly good pair of trousers." Her soft
blue eyes flickered the way they had a habit of doing when she was
being impertinent.

He ambled up to her, put one hand on her
shoulder, and dropped a kiss on her cheek. "I've been a bloody sod,
haven't I, Mum."

"Geoffrey, please!" protested Lady Julia
with a wry grimace. "Your language since you've got back—"

"Ha! That isn't what they'd say over there.
She'd say, 'I've been a stupid assho—' Or whatever," he said
quickly, embarrassed by his burst of candor.

In a polite but rather deadly tone his
mother said,
"Who
would say
what,
darling?"

"Well, Amanda might say … whatever."

"Amanda. She's the daughter of the
shipbuilder whom you've mentioned once or twice?"

His mother didn't miss much. Geoff, never
one to spill his soul, had decided soon after his return to bury
all mention of Amanda in a lead-lined chest and sink it off the
southwest coast of England. Even Anna got mentioned at the dinner
table more than Amanda. There was no easy or even polite way to
explain Amanda.

"I think I may have dropped her name," he
said vaguely. "An American to the core. You wouldn't care for
her."

"Probably not," Lady Julia agreed with more
seriousness than she had used in the conversation so far. She
turned to leave. "What sort of position are you looking for in
Henry's bank, by the way?" she asked, about-facing.

"Oh, anything that will exploit my
background in literature: a chimneysweep, preferably. Not right
away, of course. I may have to work up to it." He allowed himself
the merest hint of a smile.

"That's where Henry can be quite useful, you
know. He has all sorts of influence at the bank. You can depend on
him." Lady Julia held her son's look for a second and a half, then
swept out of the smoking room.

Exit stage right,
he thought. She was
really quite good at it. Geoff had long ago decided that an actor's
mask was put on one part at a time: the first piece to be donned
was the stiff upper lip.

He went back to his desk, closed his ledger
book, and poured himself a brandy. The rain had lost its anger by
now; it was falling more from habit than conviction. Odd, how it
had never seemed to rain in the States. His recollection was of
sunbeams bouncing off dark bobbed hair. Odd. He sat a long while,
thoughtful, not quite depressed, sipping at memories. He filled his
snifter again, and then possibly one more time; he wasn't sure.

Much later his mother, beautifully dressed
in palest lemon crepe de Chine, wafted into the smoking room and
fixed him with a look of absolute horror. The mask, possibly for
the first time in her life as his mother, had slipped. It gave him
inordinate joy.

"Geoffrey!
You're not dressed!
They'll be here in two minutes and you're—tipsy!"

He smiled angelically. "Actually, mother, I
think I'm pretty thoroughly pissed," he said, gently correcting
her.

She adjusted her expression immediately.
"Well, then, we'll have to do without you, won't we."

He stood up. "Wouldn't think of it. Be down
in a sec." And he made his way, with the same deliberation he had
once used to cross a mined field, upstairs to his room.

Tying his white tie into a decent bow was a
bit more difficult. His head had cleared, more or less, but his
fingers, being at some distance from the command center, seemed to
have gone awol on him. He might have had the decency to be upset
with himself, but no. He was humming. He was exhilarated. He was
ready for anything.
Combat adrenaline,
he told himself on
his way downstairs to mingle with his mother's guests.

Of all people, he bumped—literally—into Miss
Marylsworth in the hall as she was giving up her wrap to the
butler. She was very pretty and faultlessly dressed. He'd never
noticed how pert her nose was before, and he wondered why he'd
given his mother such a hard time about inviting her.

"Miss Marylsworth, Miss Marylsworth, Miss
Marylsworth—how nice to see you again after all these—" Here he
stopped. Had he seen her weeks ago? Months? Days?

"—time," he finished.

She looked at him carefully. "Why, thank
you, Mr. Seton." She turned to the young man beside her. "You
remember my brother Anthony."

"Of course, of course, of course. Good to
see you again, Tony. "

Tony knew a drunk when he saw one and said,
"Right."

Miss Marylsworth took up the slack. "I
understand that you've been abroad, taking in the Cup races."

"Yes. I understand that
you've
been
abroad, taking the cure."

"Yes." She glanced upstairs, then said, "You
will excuse me a moment, won't you?" and added, "I'm looking
forward to hearing all about how Sir Tom nearly vanquished the
Americans. And she gently withdrew her hand from between his two,
which were holding on to hers for balance as much as for anything
else, and left him.

She's about as exciting as peas
pudding,
he decided as he watched her graceful ascent to the
dressing room. For some reason the thought exhilarated him. Her
brother indicated that he would take Miss Marylsworth into the
drawing room, so Geoff continued on his way without him. His
parents and several guests were gathered there around the usual
topics: properties, Parliament, and parklands. It was all very
nice, he thought, automatically stiffening his somewhat rubbery
gait. About as exciting as peas pudding. Again he felt a little
surge of happiness.

His father, unaware of his son's blighted
condition, drew Geoff into a conversation about defense spending.
Geoff considered himself—compliments of Amanda and her father—a
sometime expert on the subject. With a face flushed with what his
mother would have called untoward excitement, he dove in happily.
He talked too long, too fast, too enthusiastically. His father's
guests stared.

When it was time for dinner, Sir Walter
offered his arm to the guest of honor, Lady Chandling (widow,
viscountess, and distant cousin to Lady Seton). Men had ceased to
lead women in to dinner except in London, but in Seton Place they
clung to the old ways, so Geoff trotted up to Mrs. Watchett, the
minister's wife. Jane Marylsworth was taken in by the Reverend
Watchett, and Lady Seton brought up the rear on the arm of Anthony
Marylsworth, a favorite of hers. The company was excruciatingly
correct and, with the exception of Geoff, excruciatingly sober.

As he was hoping, Geoff was placed next to
Jane Marylsworth. He resisted an urge to slap his knees with glee.
The evening was going so right; he didn't know how much more of it
he could stand. Over asparagus soup he turned to his dinner partner
and said, "Have you been to the United States, Miss
Marylsworth?"

"No, I haven't," the young woman replied.
"It's on my list, but I never seem to get there. Am I missing
much?"

How blue her eyes were; how serene. She was
quite
certain that she wasn't missing much. "You're missing
it all," he blurted, not at all annoyed by her complacency. "The
energy, the optimism—your youth in the bargain!"

"Oh dear. And I thought I was only missing
the mountains, the geysers, and the Great Lakes," she answered
lightly.

"Yes, yes, that too," he said impatiently.
"Tell me, do you like to drive?"

"Well, yes. I like a tour in the country as
well as anyone." Her voice was becoming more and more cautious.

"Not touring, Jane—driving. Leaping into a
car and driving for hours at a whack just to say hello, or for some
silly errand—bailing someone out of jail, for instance. Driving
until your neck is in agony and your fingers are curled back into
their fetal position. That kind of driving. And what about
shipbuilding? We take that for granted over here. Over there it's
new, exciting; it's a kick. And what about guns? Do you like
guns?"

"What kind of question is that?" she asked
faintly, glancing around the table.

"I'm not expressing myself well," he agreed.
But he was in a desperate hurry; he wanted to finish the meal and
get back to his room. "I think I meant, do you know how to handle a
pistol?"

"Why would I learn?" She was resorting to
the age-old feminine defense: answering a question with a
question.

"Let me rephrase that." He took a deep
breath and tried to get himself under control. "If someone were
threatening me, and a gun were available, would you take it up and
come to my defense without knowing how to use it? In other words,
would you take an insane risk for me?"

"Not unless I were insane
about
you,"
she replied with a smile that suggested the question was purely
academic.

"Somehow I knew that!" He turned to the maid
who was removing the soup bowls and murmured, "Sancha, will you
hurry along the next course? We're fainting with hunger here." He
didn't like to do that to old Sancha, but it seemed less
ill-mannered than jumping up and fleeing the table for his room. He
wanted to pack! Now!

He turned his attention back to Miss
Marylsworth, who was doing her best to become absorbed into a
discussion between Reverend Watchett and Lady Chandling about the
autumn fund-raiser for the ongoing restoration of the village
church. Geoff began to speak, but the young lady seemed not to hear
him. At last he said in a much louder voice, "I say, Miss
Marylsworth—Jane—"

Two or three genteel conversations rolled
gently to a halt. Geoff's mother, who had been doing her best to
keep the company's attention focused away from her inebriated son,
gave up completely. "Geoffrey, is it so urgent as all that?" she
asked in sharp rebuke.