Lucy (15 page)

“I declare, Lucy, dear, if you don’t
know
croquet, why attempt to
play
it?” said Didi waspishly.

“All the best families know how to play croquet,” said Elinor inevitably.

Didi laughed shrilly and Boodles added his inane vulgar counterpoint.

“It’s all right,” laughed Andrew gaily. “Lucy is doing very well under my tuition. Now, Lucy, you take the mallet—”

“Ooooh! I’ve twisted my ankle,” said Didi, throwing herself into Andrew’s arms. “Ooooh! It
hurts.
“

Andrew extricated himself and handed Didi over to the compte. Didi threw her arms around her husband’s neck and began kissing him passionately on the chin, the same spot over and over again, and he only managed to hold her off with a great effort. The compte finally led his wife off in the direction of the house.

“It’s the sun,” said Hester. “And all that drink you said you had at luncheon. Come, Andrew. Your aunt tells me your rose garden is magnificent. I must see it.”

There was nothing else Andrew could do but offer to escort her. He glanced back to see that Jeremy had taken his place. David Whitshire and John Hannaway were playing billiards, Boodles and his fiancée had wandered off. Andrew hoped that Lucy would not be left alone with Jeremy. With relief, he saw the tall figure of MacGregor approaching the croquet game.

By the time the company was assembled for drinks in the drawing room, Andrew was beginning to wish he had never thought of the house party. It would have given him some comfort to know that Lucy was thinking exactly the same thing.

Didi had called on her during the afternoon, wandering around Lucy’s little sitting room, picking things up and putting them down with long nervous fingers. “You mustn’t mind me,” Didi had said. “I’m very nervous. You do
like
me, don’t you?”

Lucy had felt obliged to say “yes,” although Didi was making her feel awkward in the extreme. Didi had then thrown her arms around the embarrassed Lucy, hugging and kissing her. Then she had suddenly become very calm and had begun to talk quite sensibly about her plans for living in France and how much she had always wanted children. And just when Lucy was beginning to relax and enjoy Didi’s company, Didi had suddenly become spiteful. Lucy lacked sophistication. Had any one ever told her that? Then it was high time someone did. She had topped off a long speech of criticism by calling Lucy mean and sly and had then swept from the room, leaving poor Lucy feeling exhausted and bewildered.

Lucy now stood in the drawing room as close to MacGregor as possible and watched the approach of Elinor Belling with a nervous eye.

“And how do you like country life?” began Elinor. “Of course Belling Court is much larger than this. Is your home as large as this?”

“Quite,” said Lucy.

“Oh! And do you have many servants?”

“We are not overly preoccupied with the servants, are we, Lucy?” put in MacGregor. “Too much interest in the servants can be dangerous for a young girl. Don’t you agree, Miss Belling?”

Elinor turned an unlovely shade of red and almost ran away. Lucy looked inquiringly at MacGregor. “Sent abroad because she was making sheep’s eyes at the footman,” whispered MacGregor. “I tell you, Lucy, servants’ gossip is a marvelous thing!”

Hester came over to join them with the object of detaching MacGregor from Lucy, thereby leaving the field open for Jeremy Brent. But no sooner had she begun to talk to them than Didi flung her arms around the startled Jeremy and, to the embarrassment of the whole company, began to profess her undying love.

The compte spoke clearly and slowly in English. “My apologies, my lord, but I must take my immediate leave. I should have married a French girl. I cannot stand any more of my wife’s behavior.” He turned to face Didi, his eyes as wide and lost as a spaniel’s. “I shall return to my parents and set the affairs in motion for a divorce. Our marriage is not recognized by the Catholic church in any case.” He threw up his hands. “English women are—are—
immoral.
“

“I’m not English,” wailed Didi. “I’m
American.
” But she spoke to the empty air. Her husband had gone. Didi rushed from the room after him.

“That girl’s going insane,” said Elinor with an amused chuckle.

Hester decided to make good use of the scene. “I think her reaction to Jeremy was a normal one. The ladies simply cast themselves at your feet. Don’t they, my pet.”

Hester caught a strangely shrewd look in Lucy’s eyes and immediately knew she had gone too far. Andrew’s two army friends were making inarticulate sounds of embarrassment in the best English manner. Boodles and his fiancée, Miss Annie Pyeford, sat silently in a corner holding hands, and from the lugubrious looks on their faces, appeared to be reconsidering the whole idea of marriage.

Aunt Emily bustled in, bright and inquisitive as a bird. “What is going on, Andrew? There are frantic yells and crashes from the de la Valles’ bedroom. House parties are
not
what they were in my day, you know. You young things eat too much, drink too much, and think of nothing but sex.”

Andrew closed his eyes.

“Furthermore,” went on the dowager marchioness, “in my day, if a young man was interested in a young lady, he saw her parents and received permission to pay his addresses. So much easier, my dears, than a house party full of nutty people.”

Andrew winced.

“She is a very pretty girl,” went on Aunt Emily, oblivious of her nephew’s distress, “but go out and slay dragons or something. So much easier than all this fuss.”

Elinor cast Andrew an awful glance of coquetry and smoothed down her gown. “Heh! What’s this?” said the large guardee John Hannaway, his mustache bristling with excitement. “Never say you’re going to get married, Andrew?”

“Dinner,” said the butler from the door, “is served.”

Andrew looked at him as if he were an angel descended from on high. But he half expected the table arrangements to have gone awry, and it was with a further feeling of relief that he found that they had not and that Lucy was seated on his right, his aunt on his left with MacGregor next to her.

MacGregor gave Andrew and Lucy one quick look, took an enormous swallow of his sherry, and launched forth into conversation with the dowager marchioness. He sparkled, he mimicked, he told scandalous story after scandalous story while the company roared with laughter and begged him for more. It was a heroic effort and was to place MacGregor as the foremost wit of society. The ex-butler was paying Lucy back for her long hours and agonies in the casinos. He held everyone’s attention and prayed under his breath that Andrew Harvey would make the most of it.

Under cover of MacGregor’s chatter, Andrew turned to Lucy.

“Well, Auntie let the cat out of the bag,” he said. “I’d have done much better slaying dragons. I’ve wanted to talk to you ever since Dinard. I thought this house party would be a splendid idea … walks with you in the rose garden and all that. It’s turned into a nightmare. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“Yes,” whispered Lucy, wishing for the hundredth time that she could say something light and flirtatious. Andrew exuded a strong air of masculinity and that intense blue gaze so fixed on her own made her legs tremble and took away her appetite.

“Look, Lucy, why don’t we escape tomorrow? Pack up a picnic and go on the lake and leave the others to look after themselves. Will you come?”

“Yes,” said Lucy.

“Good-oh. Look, I’m not overwhelming you or anything. I’m not in the way of doing this sort of thing in earnest, you know. Pursuing young girls, I mean.”

“Do you mind if I wear old clothes?” asked Lucy unexpectedly.

“Why? Do you think I’ll shove you in the lake?”

“No,” laughed Lucy. “It’s just … oh, how can I explain.”

“Try.”

“I feel sometimes as if I’m imprisoned in a clothespress,” said Lucy slowly. “I’m hemmed in from morning to night in tight clothes and boots and gloves, and my hair is so elaborately arranged that it makes my head ache.”

“I feel the same, believe me,” said Andrew. “You don’t think I can relax at the moment in this boiled shirt, do you? We shall cast convention to the winds.”

Lucy looked at him nervously from under her lashes.

“Not
all
the conventions,” he assured her. “My intentions are desperately honorable.”

There! He had almost said it. MacGregor caught Lucy’s eye with a pleading look. She gave a slight nod of her head and with great relief, MacGregor at long last fell silent.

Andrew had caught the exchange and a frown creased his forehead. Sometimes he thought that Lucy and her father were like two actors, each one waiting for a cue from the other. They were so elegant and well-bred and charming, but the whole thing had the flavor of the Green Room. And why did he always have the nagging feeling that he had met both of them before?

Before they retired for the night he caught another exchange of glances. Tables had been set up for the evening baccarat and Lucy had remarked very firmly that she
never
played cards. Andrew noticed that Lady Hester had looked at Jeremy and raised her thin penciled eyebrows and that Jeremy had definitely winked.

But he was not going to let any of these misgivings sway him from his objective. In a hurried whisper he told Lucy that he would meet her in the entrance hall at eight o’clock.

Lucy went happily to bed despite a feeling of irritation that Sally, her maid, had not waited up for her. She would really have to do something about Sally. But the more she tried, the more sullen the girl and the more frequent her mother’s illnesses became.

Lucy lay on the bed with the firm conviction that she would never, ever sleep. She awoke to find the sun blazing into the room and the birds merrily twittering in the wisteria outside her window. She sprang from bed in a panic and then found to her relief that it was only seven-thirty. She brushed out her long black hair and rolled it into a careless knot at the back of her neck and hurriedly dressed in an old skirt and a soft cool silk blouse. Her stays were left abandoned in the chest of drawers. Free of their constriction, Lucy felt like a schoolgirl again and ran out of the bedroom and lightly down the stairs. Andrew was already there and waiting with a picnic basket slung over his arm. He was dressed in an old pair of riding breeches and a black polo sweater which had seen better days.

Andrew surveyed her with pleased approval. “If that’s the way you dress when you are being informal, then I hope you’ll be informal
all
the time. You do look jolly pretty. I suppose you society girls have to go through hell with all your frippery bits. I always think that the women at Ascot, don’t you know, look a bit like ships under full sail. All white and stately and full-rigged. I’m talking nonsense, you know. You’re going to wish you’d stayed in your stays and not cast them off for this babbling idiot. Oh, dear! I shouldn’t have said that. Gosh! What a heavenly morning.”

They walked slowly across the lawns, their feet leaving prints in the dew-wet grass. A thrush perched on the very edge of a rose bush obligingly sang his heart out for them with such energy that the heavy red roses shook, sending glittering sprays of moisture onto the ground.

“Do you go boating much in your part of the world?” said Andrew.

Lucy thought frantically about her fictitious home and decided against boating and water. If she said there was a loch nearby, he might ask which loch. “No,” she lied. “The Channel crossing was my first experience of boats.”

“Well, we’re taking a punt out and what could be more English than that. I’m quite good at punting in an inept kind of way. Much better at rowing, you know, but the ladies don’t like that because you can’t help splashing their frocks no matter how much you feather the oars. Here we are.”

An ornamental lake stretched out before them like glass. The willow trees surrounding it hung their long leafy branches straight down into their reflections and the sun blazed down from a sky of pure cerulean.

He held out a strong white hand to help Lucy into the punt. She put her hand into his and again the electric current ran between them. They stood motionless, Andrew looking down at Lucy’s bent head and Lucy staring as if hypnotized at their joined hands.

“Can I push you out, sir?” Both turned. A young man in a Norfolk jacket and breeches was standing behind them.

“Yes, thank you,” said Andrew, settling Lucy against the cushions in the punt and taking up the pole. “Who are you, by the way?”

“Name’s Hefford, my lord. I’m the second footman.”

“Of course. Didn’t recognize you in your civvies. It’s a funny thing,” he went on as the footman pushed them off and the boat glided silently across the mirror of the lake, “how one never recognizes even very old servants when one sees them out of their livery.” He looked down at Lucy and frowned. Now what had he said to upset her?

Lucy realized miserably that she was going to have to begin to lie to this man she adored, and, should they marry, keep on lying for the rest of her life.

She could not talk about gambling. She could not talk about Marysburgh. She
had
to talk about
something.

She took the plunge. What on earth was the name of that fictitious village she was supposed to hail from? Auchterherder. That was it.

“At home,” she said carefully, “it’s also very beautiful at this time of year. Except not so tame and groomed.”

“The savage highlands, eh. Is your mother still alive?”

“No,” said Lucy miserably. “She died a long time ago.” She bit her lip, wondering how her mother was getting on and whether she was receiving her letters, postmarked Glasgow.

“Obviously it distresses you,” said Andrew kindly. “I’m sorry. I’ve bought some splendid food along. Cold grouse
and
champagne. Have you ever had champagne for breakfast?”

“No,” said Lucy, “and what a lot of questions you do ask.” She felt suddenly carefree. The punt was now in the middle of the lake and she and Andrew Harvey were enclosed in a summer world far from the biting remarks and the formal social dance of society.