Scarlett (101 page)

Scarlett half-listened while she thought her own thoughts. Then Rhett’s name captured her full attention. Bart chuckled as he recounted the gossip Sally had included in her letter. Rhett had fallen into the oldest snare in history, it seemed. Some orphanage was having an outing at his country place, and one of the orphans turned up missing when it was time to leave. So what did he do but go off with the schoolteacher to search for it. All ended well, the child was found, but not until after dark. Which meant, of course, that the spinster teacher was compromised, and Rhett had to marry her.

The best part was that he’d been run out of town years before when he refused to make an honest woman out of another girl he’d been indiscreet with.

“You’d think he would have learned to be careful after the first time,” Bart chortled. “He must be a lot more absentminded than he appears. Don’t you find that hilarious, Scarlett? Scarlett?”

She gathered her wits. “Speaking as a female, I’d say it serves Mr. Butler right. He has the look of a man who’s caused a lot of girls a lot of trouble when he wasn’t being absentminded.”

John Morland whooped with laughter. The sound attracted Half Moon, who approached the fence warily. Bart shook the bag of oats.

Scarlett was elated, and yet she felt like crying. So that was why Rhett had been so quick to divorce and remarry. What a sly boots Anne Hampton is. She had me fooled good and proper. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just wretched luck for me that it took so long to find the stray orphan. And that Anne is Miss Eleanor’s special favorite. And that she looks so much like Melly.

Half Moon backed away from the oats. John Morland reached into a pocket of his jacket and found an apple. The horse nickered in anticipation.

“Look here, Scarlett,” Bart said as he broke the apple. “I’ve got something a bit ticklish to talk to you about.” He extended his open palm with one quarter of the apple on it for Half Moon.

“A bit ticklish!” If he only knew how ticklish his conversation had already been. Scarlett laughed. “I don’t mind you spoiling that animal rotten, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

Heavens no! Bart’s gray eyes widened. What could have put such a thought in her head?

It was something truly delicate, he explained. Alice Harrington—she was the stoutish one at the hunt who’d ended up in the ditch—was having a house party at Midsummer Night, and she wanted to invite Scarlett but didn’t have the nerve. He’d been appointed diplomat to sound her out about it.

Scarlett had a hundred questions. Essentially they boiled down to when, where, and what to wear. Colum would be furious, she was sure, but she didn’t care. She wanted to get dressed up and drink champagne and ride like the wind again over streams and fences following the hounds and the fox.

H
arrington House was a huge block of a house made of Portland stone. It wasn’t far from Ballyhara, just past a crossroads village named Pike Corner. The entrance was hard to find; there were no gates and no gatehouse, only a pair of unadorned and unmarked stone columns. The gravel drive skirted a broad lake then turned into a plain gravelled area in front of the stone house.

A footman came out of the front door at the sound of the buggy’s wheels. He handed Scarlett down, then turned her over to a maid who was waiting in the hallway. “My name is Wilson, miss,” she said with a curtsey. “Will you be wanting to rest a bit after your journey or will you be joining the others?” Scarlett chose to join the others, and the footman led her the length of the hall to an open door onto a lawn.

“Mrs. O’Hara!” shouted Alice Harrington. Now Scarlett remembered her vividly. “Ended up in a ditch” hadn’t been much of a description, nor had “stout.” Fat and loud would have identified Alice Harrington for her at once. She moved toward Scarlett with a surprisingly light step and bellowed that she was happy to see her. “I do hope you like croquet, I’m terrible, and my team would adore to lose me.”

“I’ve never played,” Scarlett said.

“All the better! You’ll have beginner’s luck.” She held out her mallet. “Green stripes, it’s perfect for you. You have such unusual eyes. Let me introduce everyone, then you can take my place and give my team a chance.”

Alice’s team—now Scarlett’s—was made up of an elderly man in tweeds introduced as General Smyth-Burns, and a couple in their early twenties who both wore spectacles, Emma and Chizzie Fulwich. The General presented the opponents to her, Charlotte Montague, a tall, thin woman with beautifully dressed gray hair, Alice’s cousin Desmond Grantley, who was as rotund as she, and an elegant pair named Genevieve and Ronald Bennet. “Watch out for Ronald,” said Emma Fulwich, “he cheats.”

The game was fun, Scarlett thought, and the scent of freshly mowed lawn was better than flowers. Her competitive instincts were at their full height before her third turn came around, and she earned a “Well done!” and a pat on the shoulder from the General when she whacked Ronald Bennet’s ball far out onto the lawn.

When the game was over Alice Harrington halloed them an invitation to tea. The table was set up under a tremendous beech tree; its shade was welcome. So was the sight of John Morland. He was listening attentively to the young woman sitting beside him on the bench, but he waggled his fingers at Scarlett in greeting. The rest of the house party was there, too. Scarlett met Sir Francis Kinsman, a handsome rakehell type, and his wife, and she pretended convincingly that she remembered Alice’s husband Henry, from the hunt at Bart’s.

Bart’s companion was clearly not pleased to be interrupted for introductions, but she was icily gracious. “This is Louisa Ferncliff,” said Alice with determined cheerfulness. “She’s an Honourable,” Alice whispered to Scarlett.

Scarlett smiled, said, “How do you do,” and let it go at that. She had a pretty good idea that the frosty young woman wouldn’t take kindly to being called Louisa right off the bat, and surely you didn’t call people Honourable. Especially when they looked like they hoped John Morland would suggest a little dishonorable kissing behind a bush.

Desmond Grantley held a chair for Scarlett and asked if she would permit him to bring her an assortment of sandwiches and cakes. Scarlett generously said she would. She looked at the circle of what Colum scornfully called “gentry” and thought again that he shouldn’t be so pigheaded. These people were really very nice. She was sure she was going to have a good time.

*   *   *

Alice Harrington took Scarlett up to her bedroom after tea. It was a long way, through rather shabby reception rooms, up a wide staircase with a worn runner and along a broad hall with no rug at all. The room was big, but sparsely furnished, Scarlett thought, and the wallpaper was definitely faded. “Sarah has unpacked for you. She’ll be up to do your bath and help you dress at seven, if that’s all right. Dinner’s at eight.”

Scarlett assured Alice that the arrangements were fine.

“There’s writing material in the desk, and some books on that table, but if you’d rather have something different—”

“Heavens no, Alice. Now don’t let me take up your time, when you have guests and all.” She snatched up a book at random. “I can hardly wait to read this. I’ve been wanting to for ages.”

What she’d really been wanting was escape from Alice’s incessant noisy recital of the virtues of her fat cousin Desmond. No wonder she was nervous about inviting me, Scarlett thought; she must know that Desmond’s nothing to make a girl’s heart beat faster. I guess she found out I’m a rich widow and she wants to help him get his licks in first, before anybody else finds out about me. Too bad, Alice, there’s not a chance, not in a million years.

As soon as Alice was gone, the maid assigned to Scarlett tapped on the door and entered. She curtseyed, smiling eagerly. “Me name is Sarah,” she said. “I’m honored to be dressing The O’Hara. When will the trunks be arriving, then?”

“Trunks? What trunks?” Scarlett asked.

The maid covered her mouth with her hand and moaned through her fingers.

“You’d better sit down,” Scarlett said. “I have an idea I need to ask you a bunch of questions.”

The girl was happy to oblige. Scarlett’s heart grew heavier by the minute as she learned how much she didn’t know.

The worst thing was there’d be no hunt. Hunting was for autumn and winter. The only reason Sir John Morland had arranged one was to show off his horses to his rich American guest.

Almost as bad was the news that ladies dressed for breakfast, changed for lunch, changed for afternoon, changed for dinner, never wore the same thing twice. Scarlett had two daytime frocks, one dinner gown, and her riding habit. There was no point in sending to Ballyhara for any more, either. Mrs. Scanlon, the dressmaker, had gone without sleep to finish the things she had with her. All her clothes made new for the trip to America were hopelessly out of fashion.

“I think I’ll leave first thing in the morning,” said Scarlett.

“Oh, no,” Sarah cried, “you mustn’t do that, The O’Hara. What do you care what the others do? They’re only Anglos.”

Scarlett smiled at the girl. “So it’s us against them, Sarah, is that what you’re telling me? How did you know I was The O’Hara?”

“Everyone in County Meath knows about The O’Hara,” said the girl proudly, “everyone Irish.”

Scarlett smiled. She felt better already. “Now, Sarah,” she said, “tell me all about the Anglos who are here.” Scarlett was sure the servants in the house must know everything about everybody. They always did.

Sarah didn’t disappoint her. When Scarlett went downstairs for dinner, she was armored against any snobbishness she might meet. She knew more about the other guests than their own mothers did.

Even so, she felt like a backwoods Cracker. And she was furious at John Morland. All he’d said was “light frocks in the daytime and something rather naked for dinner at night.” The other women were gowned and jewelled like queens, she thought, and she’d left her pearls and her diamond earbobs at home. Also, she was sure that her gown fairly screamed aloud that a village dressmaker had made it.

She gritted her teeth and made up her mind that she was going to have a good time anyhow. Might as well, I’ll never get invited any place else.

In fact there were many things she enjoyed. In addition to croquet, there was boating on the lake, plus contests shooting at targets with bow and arrows and a game called tennis, both of them quite the latest rage, she was told.

After dinner Saturday everyone rummaged through big boxes of costumes that had been brought to the drawing room. There was buffoonery and uninhibited laughter and a lack of self-consciousness that Scarlett envied. Henry Harrington draped Scarlett in a long-trained silk cloak glittering with tinsel and put a crown of fake jewels on her head. “That makes you tonight’s Titania,” he said. Other men and women draped or clothed themselves from the boxes, shouting out who they were and racing through the big room in a free-for-all game of hiding behind chairs and chasing one another.

“I know it’s all very silly,” John Morland said apologetically through a huge papier-mâché lion’s head. “But it is Midsummer Night, we’re all allowed to go a bit mad.”

“I’m mighty put out with you, Bart,” Scarlett told him. “You’re no help to a lady at all. Why didn’t you tell me I needed dozens of dresses?”

“Oh, Lord, do you? I never notice what ladies have on. I don’t understand why they fuss so.”

By the time everyone tired of the game they were playing, the long, long Irish twilight was done.

“It’s dark,” Alice shouted. “Let’s go look at the fires.”

Scarlett felt a wave of guilt. She should be at Ballyhara. Midsummer Night was almost as important as Saint Brigid’s Day in farming tradition. Bonfires marked the turning point in the year, its shortest night, and gave mystical protection for the cattle and the crops.

When the house party went out onto the dark lawn they could see the glow of a distant fire, hear the sound of an Irish reel. Scarlett knew she should be at Ballyhara. The O’Hara should be at the bonfire ceremony. And there, too, when the sun rose and the cattle were run through the dying coals of the fire. Colum had told her she shouldn’t go to an Anglo house party. Whether she believed in them or not, the ancient traditions were important to the Irish. She’d gotten angry with him. Superstitions couldn’t run her life. But now she suspected she was wrong.

“Why aren’t you at the Ballyhara fire?” asked Bart.

“Why aren’t you at yours?” Scarlett snapped angrily.

“Because I’m not wanted there,” said John Morland. His voice in the darkness sounded very sad. “I did go once. I thought there might be one of those folk wisdom things behind running the cattle through the ashes. Good for the hooves or something. I wanted to try it on the horses.”

“Did it work?”

“I never found out. All the joy went out of the celebration when I arrived, so I left.”

“I should have left here,” Scarlett blurted.

“What an absurd thing to say. You’re the only real person here. An American, too. You’re the exotic bloom in the patch of weeds, Scarlett.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way. It made sense, too. People always made much over guests from far away. She felt much better, until she heard The Honourable Louisa say, “Aren’t they entertaining? I do adore the Irish when they go all pagan and primitive like this. If only they weren’t so lazy and stupid, I wouldn’t mind living in Ireland.”