Elizabeth Kidd (8 page)

“Well, we shall see how long she is diverted by Worthing. I have also engaged rooms in the largest hotel on the Steyne in Brighton for a fortnight in August—as a precaution, you understand.”

“And what about you? Do you have a preference?”

“My preference is for a happy wife.”

Antonia laughed. “How very obliging a husband you are—I trust Clory is properly appreciative.”

“I believe she is,” he said, and Antonia realized that she still did not know him well enough to know if he was being wry, smug, or sure enough of the truth of his statement that he felt no need to embellish it.

Lady Sefton and her son, Lord Molyneaux, were announced then, and Antonia hastened to greet them. Lady Sefton was one of the patronesses of Almack’s and—more important in Antonia’s eyes—she had been kind to a very shy Isabel in her first season. She hoped Maria would be so obliging as to take Elena under her wing as well, even if only to reassure her that she would be accepted on her own merits by her particular circle. Elena knew well enough that her connection with the Kedringtons was considered one of these merits, but why should that matter?

She kissed Maria Sefton on both cheeks and shook hands with her son.

“Well, Antonia,” Lady Sefton said. “I hear that your latest protégée is a young lady quite out of the ordinary way. May I meet her?”

“She has not yet arrived, but do have a glass of sherry with me, and I will tell you all about her!”

Lady Sefton laughed, said that she supposed Miss Melville was waiting to make a grand entrance, and went along with her hostess to sit in a corner and enjoy a comfortable coze.

Shortly, the last of their guests, Sir William and Lady Overton, who lived in the house across Brook Street from the Kedringtons, arrived to join the convivial party in the drawing room, and it was nearly time for dinner to be announced before Antonia realized that Miss Melville had not yet arrived.

She made her excuses to go in search of Carey and found him with her husband in the billiard room. Kedrington was concentrating on lining up his next shot and her brother, a morose expression on his face, observed his opponent’s skill at the game with the look of a man who knows he will never be as good at something as he hoped.

“Oh, what a good shot, Duncan.”

He looked up, smiling. “My dear, you have never taken the least interest in billiards. How do you know it was a good shot?”

“Well, that ball went into the pocket—isn’t that the object of the game?”

“It wasn’t the ball I
wished
to put into the pocket,” he replied, racking his cue.

“Well, how should I know that?” Antonia asked reasonably.

“Is Elena here?” Carey asked hopefully, apparently as eager to call an end to his losing game as to see his beloved.

“No, and that is why I have come. It is nearly eight o’clock, and neither she nor Mr. Melville has arrived. Could something have delayed them?”

Carey glanced at the clock, frowned, and replaced his cue as well. “I had no idea it was so late. You should have come sooner, Tonia. I’ll go to Gloucester Place at once. Perhaps I shall meet them on the way.”

Suiting the action to the word, he made a hasty exit, leaving the door open behind him. A moment later, the sound of the street door closing broke Antonia from her trance and she turned to find her husband gazing at her, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

“Well, what?”

“I only wondered what sort of punishment you mete out to guests who are late for dinner. Or is it only husbands who must bear your wrath?”

“Oh, don’t be foolish. Anyway, you weren’t late.”

“It was a near-run thing. I suspect only Robin’s presence the other day saved me from a scolding—or worse, a cold dinner.”

“Which reminds me,” Antonia said, disregarding this nonsense, “I must see to tonight’s meal at once.”

After she had taken Trotter aside and told him to hold off announcing dinner for a short time, both Kedringtons returned to their guests, to find them enjoying one another’s company with no apparent restlessness to get to their dinner, for which small favor Antonia felt excessively grateful.

She was continually aware of the clock for the next half hour, however, even if her guests were not, and the effort to maintain her equanimity quickly gave her an ache in her neck and a dryness in her throat that finally propelled her into the library to seek relief in a surreptitious glass of brandy.

She had scarcely crossed the hall on her return, however, when the front door opened and Carey came in, looking so unlike his usual cheerful self that Antonia, alarmed, came to an abrupt halt.

Confirming quickly that all the doors leading off the hall were closed, she whispered urgently, “Carey! Whatever is the matter? Are you quite well?”

“She’s not coming,” her brother informed her in a choked voice. He took a deep, half-choked breath and handed her a letter. Antonia opened it.

Dearest Carey,

I wish I did not have to tell you this in this way, but I cannot continue to deceive you. I cannot let our engagement continue. I do love you—I did not deceive you about that—but I am not the woman you thought me and I cannot involve you further in my sordid affairs. I can say no more now, but I beg you to forgive me and to believe that whatever pain I may cause you at this moment is no greater than mine on having to cause it.

With all my love,

Elena

Antonia stood perfectly still for several moments, attempting to absorb the meaning of this amazing missive. She failed.

“Carey—” Her brother started, as if he had forgotten she was there and had followed his mind’s eye to some other place or time.

“I don’t understand, dearest. How has she deceived you? What sordid affairs could she possibly be involved in?”

Carey shrugged, then spoke so quietly that Antonia could scarcely hear him even over the slight murmur of voices penetrating the closed doors around them.

“I don’t know…. I just don’t know.”

“But-but had you no inkling that something was wrong?”

“No. I can only guess….”

Antonia stepped closer to her brother and put her arm around his shoulder. “What, dearest?”

“I can only suppose that she did not really love me…at least, not as much as I love her, and she has decided that a clean break will spare my feelings. I always knew she was too good for me, but I had hoped that—”

“Do not say that!” Antonia exclaimed, stepping back and addressing him forcefully. “I know that I am your sister and therefore partial, but I have never denied your little foibles. Never say you are not worthy of anyone you choose to bestow your affections on. You
are
worthy, Carey, and any girl would be foolish to deny it. Indeed, Elena does not deny it!”

She handed the letter back to him. “See here—she says she loves you, and why should she not? There is something else wrong, and we must simply find out what it is and fix it.”

“Fix what?” said Kedrington’s voice from behind her. “What’s broken?”

“Carey’s engagement,” Antonia said, handing her husband Elena’s letter. “But it is only a stupid misunderstanding which we will resolve in an instant as soon as we speak to Elena.”

“She wouldn’t see me,” Carey said, only slightly less gloomily.

“Well, she will see
me
,” Antonia said with determination. She looked to her husband as if for confirmation and found him gazing at her in admiration.

“Won’t she?”

“How could she resist?” he asked rhetorically. “Ah—in the meanwhile, my love, what would you like me to tell our guests? Not to mention that their dinner is getting cold.”

Antonia considered this for mere seconds. “Fortunately, no one but ourselves knows that an announcement was to be made—except Hester, I suppose, and I will take her aside to explain. Simply tell them that we have just received word that the guest we were still awaiting has been taken ill suddenly and have Trotter announce dinner at once. Come, Carey, let us go upstairs and compose ourselves for a moment. Then there is no reason why we may not enjoy our dinner. Tomorrow is time enough to think about solving this riddle.”

Antonia knew she continued talking in this manner more to convince herself than her brother, but Carey seemed willing enough to believe her—at least for the time being—and Kedrington obligingly carried out her instructions and returned to their guests, his customary
sangfroid
revealing no hint that anything was amiss.

If Carey was unusually subdued at dinner, this went nearly unnoticed in the general feeling of camaraderie over a repast of such succulence that it was talked about for a week afterward. Antonia subdued the occasional flashes of self-blame—she should not have asked Elena to face so many strangers, she should have limited the guest list after all, she should not have had the dinner party so soon in the first place—which dimmed her usual smile only momentarily. And Kedrington saw to it that the wines served during and after the meal were of a quality that would not only confirm his generosity as a host but cause his guests to forget any slight irregularities that might show between the cracks in his wife’s or brother-in-law’s demeanor so as to around comment. He was confident that there would be no comment but praise about this occasion.

Yet when the party finally drew to a close, all their guests had departed, and Carey had taken himself, dispirited but calmer, to bed, Antonia found herself gazing once again at the flowers in the silver bowl by the library window, wondering that they were still so fresh and untouched by the emotional turmoil that had filled the air around them all evening.

She reached out to stroke the petal of a pink rose, but just then her husband came up beside her and covered her outstretched hand with his. She sighed and looked up at him.

“I have been puzzling about that letter all evening,” she said, “and I can still not imagine any reason for it.”

He was silent for a moment as he stoked her fingers, separating them and running his own up and down the valleys between them. Then he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly.

“Nor can I,” he admitted. “But I do agree with you that there is more behind this than a simple feminine change of mind. Elena is not the kind of woman to play fast and loose with a young man’s affections, and even if she felt she could not make him happy, I do not believe she would not let him down so clumsily.”

“Then what are we going to do about it?”

He smiled. “
We?
My sweet, matters of the heart are scarcely my area of expertise. Call on Miss Melville tomorrow, as you said you would, and tell me what transpires. I will give my advice if I have any, but I suspect your feminine instincts will be a far surer guide in this matter.”

“Pooh. That is only your way of saying you will not involve yourself.”

“Not at all. I am as eager as you to see Carey happily settled. If I can help, I will, but for the moment I can see no way to do so.”

Antonia snapped off the pink rose from its stem and held it to her nose briefly while the eyes she turned up to her husband lighted with some of their old mischief.

“I shall find a way, Duncan, never fear.”

“I would never doubt it.”

Chapter 7

“Carey, dearest, I wish you would tell me a little more about your courtship of Miss Melville—if it is not too painful. Perhaps together we may be able to understand why Elena has acted in the way she has.”

Lady Kedrington gazed at her brother, wishing she could say all she truly felt. It broke her heart to see Carey so despondent, but Duncan had advised her to give him time to absorb what had happened and only then offer to help. “Carey is well able to handle his own affairs,” he had said, “only give him time to think how to do it.”

Time. Antonia looked again at the clock. Although she was eager to call on Miss Melville herself to ask the questions that plagued her, she recognized that even the most socially ambitious of guardians would not open his door to a caller of any rank before noon. She had therefore delayed her brother at the breakfast table long enough to arm herself with as much knowledge as she could gain to pursue her objective.

Carey looked as if it were painful only to be awake this morning, but in fact he had scarcely slept, as he informed his sister in blunt terms on entering the breakfast room. He was properly dressed, thanks to his stubborn valet, but his light brown hair was already tousled from running his hand through it, and his hazel eyes held nothing like their usual sparkle.

Antonia had promptly poured coffee for him, but he had refused her offer to fill his plate. After his third cup of coffee, however, he began eyeing Antonia’s glazed ham and eggs with renewed interest and finally spoke more than two words in sequence.

“I expect Kedrington was up long ago and has gone out by now,” he remarked.

“Yes, I believe he intended to spend the morning at Brooks’s—although what he can find at his clubs to entertain him at this hour defeats my imagining. Would you prefer to confide in Duncan, my dear?”

“Confide—? Oh, no—you tell each other everything anyway, so telling one of you is the same as telling the other in any case….”

His voice drifted away as if carried off by a particularly forceful thought, and Antonia, recognizing its direction, quickly asked, “Is that the sort of—of intimacy you felt with Elena?”

“Well, yes…at least, I thought so. I certainly told her everything
I
felt, and she listened and never criticized in any way, so I was comfortable with her….”

He frowned. Antonia, to give him a moment to collect his thoughts, got up to fetch him some more substantial nourishment from the covered dishes on the sideboard.

“I’ve thought about it and thought about it since last night, Tonia, and I see now that what you mean by intimacy was all on my side. I never gave her a chance to confide in me, even had she wanted to, and now it’s clear to me that she did not. Why should she want to when she never—”

“Carey, if you are going to say again that Elena does not truly love you, I shall—I shall throw this coffee at you, even though it is no longer hot enough to snap you out of this absurd conceit you have fabricated. Why, even Duncan agrees that some outside difficulty we know nothing of must have motivated Elena to call off your engagement. Neither of us has supposed for an instant that her love has cooled, and it is nonsensical for you to think so!”