The Arrangement (21 page)

I was glad to see that Nicky’s bedroom was not very different from his bedroom at home—in fact, it might even have been a trifle smaller. He would have been very uncomfortable if he had been put into an elegant room like mine.

As I listened to my son chattering away, I admitted for the first time that Savile had been right when he said that Nicky would be better off in the nursery with the other children.

Mr. Wilson was in the playroom by the time we returned, and I was relieved to find that he did indeed seem a sensible, trustworthy young man. His hazel eyes met mine directly and his smile was full of natural good humor. I managed to get him aside for a few minutes to inform him that Nicky did not know how to swim, and he assured me that he would be particularly vigilant whenever the boys were in the vicinity of the lake.

Then it was the nursery dinner hour, and Miss Elleridge, in the nicest possible way, made it plain that Savile and I were de trop. Three nurserymaids were clearing the large table in the middle of the room and setting out china and silver plate when the earl and I went back down the staircase that led to the passageway next to my bedroom.

The earl did not stop to chat. “Our dinner will be served in an hour,” he said briefly. “We’ll gather in the drawing room as usual.”

“Yes, my lord,” I said formally, and turned aside to open my bedroom door. When I turned back to close it, he had disappeared, his feet perfectly silent on those conveniently carpeted stairs.

* * * *

I wore my old yellow muslin evening dress to dinner. There was nothing I could do to improve its looks; it would have to serve as a regular alternative to my blue. I simply had nothing else.

The maid whom Lady Regina had sent to help me dress looked at it with an incredulity she tried without success to disguise.

“I know,” I said gloomily. “I actually do have one very nice evening dress, but as I can hardly wear it every night, this one is going to have to be put back into service.” I stood in front of the cheval glass and smoothed the muslin over my hips. The plain scoop neck and puffed sleeves looked pitifully out of date.

“You could tie a velvet ribbon around your neck, ma’am,” the maid, whose name was Mary, suggested. “That has become very fashionable lately, particularly if you have a pin to attach to the ribbon.”

I gave her a pleased look. “I do have a pin,” I said. “It’s a small cameo brooch that once belonged to my mother.”

“Let me go and get some ribbon, ma’am, and we’ll see how it looks,” Mary suggested.

Mary’s arrangement actually looked quite nice, and consequently I went down to the drawing room with a little more confidence than I might otherwise have felt.

All the Melvilles with the exception of Savile were gathered in front of the bronze statue of King James. The first person who saw me when I walked in the door was Roger Melville. He smiled at me, his blue eyes celestial.

“Mrs. Saunders, how wonderful to see your lovely face. We have all grown extremely tired of what is a relentlessly family party and are thrilled to have a non-Devane amongst us.” He paused, then added guilelessly, “Oh dear, perhaps I should not have said that.”

I felt myself grow rigid at the implication that I might be a family member through my relationship with George.

“Roger,” John Melville said warningly. He turned to me. “How did you enjoy your tour of the estate today, Mrs. Saunders?”

I drew a deep, steadying breath. “I was very impressed, Mr. Melville,” I said. “His lordship started off by explaining that the Savile park is not as extensive as the parks of other, newer country homes, but that certainly did not seem to be the case to me.”

“You have, of course, visited at so many country homes,” Harriet said sullenly.

Everyone ignored her.

“Dear Raoul,” Lady Regina said with a chuckle. “In his heart he thinks that everything about Savile Castle and its environs is perfect. I have seen him look down his nose at utterly magnificent vistas while he muttered to me under his breath, ‘And they call that a lake?’ ”

I laughed, and at that moment Savile walked into the room. Our eyes met across the gathered company and I wondered that everyone present did not feel the sparks that instantly leaped between us.

Powell appeared in the doorway almost immediately after the earl. “Dinner is served, my lady,” he announced correctly to Regina, and we began to line up for the nightly procession into the dining room.

The earl escorted Harriet, whose waistline was noticeably larger when she heaved herself out of her chair; Roger escorted Lady Regina, who appeared much more mobile than Harriet even though her waistline was almost as large; and the ever-pleasant John Melville got me.

“Any news from your father, Harriet?” Lady Regina asked courteously when we were all sitting around the table in the family dining room and the soup course was being served.

“Yes, I received a letter from him today,” Harriet said. She peered eagerly into her soup plate to see what it contained, then picked up her soup spoon. “His business is taking longer than he thought and he is going to be delayed a few more days.”

“Thanks be to God,” John Melville murmured softly, and I could see his sentiment reflected upon every Melville face at the table, Savile’s included.

Harriet began purposefully to eat her soup, and Lady Regina turned to make conversation with me. “How is your son getting on with my boys, Mrs. Saunders?”

“Very well, thank you.”

From the one sip of soup I had taken I knew it was mulligatawny and too heavily seasoned with curry for my taste. I put down my spoon.

I said to Lady Regina, “I spent almost an hour in the nursery this afternoon and was very surprised to discover that what appears to have impressed Nicky most is Theodore’s battle arrangement.”

Lady Regina cast her eyes upward. “Theo and his soldiers,” she said with resignation. “I don’t know where he gets his bloodthirsty tendencies—not from my husband, certainly.”

“He gets them from his Melville blood, Ginny. How can you even ask?” Roger had finished his soup and now he put down his spoon. “We’ve always been a violent lot. How do you think this castle got built in the first place? As an abbey?”

Lady Regina frowned.

“All small boys like to play with soldiers, Ginny,” Savile said soothingly. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that Theo will be wanting Gervase to buy him a cavalry commission.”

“I must tell you that I was deeply surprised to see how interested Nicky was in the soldiers,” I confessed to Lady Regina. “I think it was the battle formation that fascinated him. It was really quite detailed.”

“Theo insisted that it had to be exact,” Savile said. “I had to look up every single regiment so that he could place them exactly where they were on the fateful day. It is that interest in the details of the real world that is so interesting about Theo. And
that
reminds me of Gervase, Ginny. All mathematicians must be interested in exact details.”

Lady Regina bit her lip. “Do you think so, Raoul?”

He nodded. “Now, when I play soldiers with Charlie, we make up our own battles. Charlie is interested only in what he can generate from his own imagination.”

Lady Regina must have read my feelings on my face because she suddenly smiled at me and said, “You didn’t know that my brother still plays with toy soldiers, Mrs. Saunders?”

“No,” I said, “I did not.”

“It is one of my most closely guarded secrets,” Savile said. “I rely on you, ma’am, not to give me away.”

I could not look at him. “Never,” I said lightly.

The too-spicy soup went out and the fish, a boiled carp, came in. The wineglasses were refilled.

“And do you cut out paper dolls too, Raoul?” Roger asked sweetly as he took an overlong drink of his wine.

“Not as frequently,” Savile replied. “Caroline still likes the active toys her brothers use, and until this summer I had no other little girls to play with.”

Harriet shot him a suspicious look.

“My girls should not be playing,” she said. “They should be studying their letters and their numbers. They should be learning to draw and to play an instrument.”

I said, unwisely, “All children need to play.”

Harriet glared at me. “Yes, you’re such an expert on children, aren’t you? You’re an expert on how to get them, at any rate!”

Savile started to say something, but suddenly I had had quite enough of Harriet.

“Lady Devane,” I said, “I do not know what unfortunate circumstances in your own marriage have left you so embittered, but I can assure you that I am not connected with them. If you suspect your husband of having had an affair with me, then allow me to assure you that that did not happen. My own marriage was an exceedingly happy one, and my son is well loved by me and was well loved by my husband. I have no idea why Lord Devane left a sum of money to Nicky, but I suspect it had to do with things farther back in the past than relate to either you or me.”

I pushed my fish plate out of my way and leaned forward. My voice deepened as I said with crystal clarity, “And if I find that you have disturbed my son’s peace of mind by suggesting that he might be connected to Lord Devane—in any way at all—I will see to it that something extremely unpleasant happens to you.”

My voice sounded so menacing that I actually frightened myself.

Absolute silence reigned in the room. I happened to glance at one of the footmen standing by the sideboard and saw a surprised little smile on his face. It was quickly gone, however, as his expression returned to one of gravity and disinterest.

“Bravo,” John Melville said to me under his breath.

Roger’s eyes were large and bright. “What do you have to say to that, Harriet?”

Harriet’s slanted brown eyes were burning into mine.

“I hope you understand me, because I mean it,” I said.

Her eyes shifted, I could imagine her thinking of all of Aunt Margaret’s deadly herbs. “I understand you,” she muttered at last.

I leaned back. “Good,” I said.

The earl said coolly, “I believe we are ready for the next course, Powell.”

After dinner the ladies withdrew to the drawing room and the men remained in the dining room with their port. I did not excuse myself tonight but instead talked to Lady Regina; we shared stories of what it was like to be a mother. Harriet sat in brooding silence, staring into the empty grate of the fireplace.

Somewhat to my surprise, I found myself feeling quite comfortable with Savile’s sister. She was truly involved in the upbringing of her children, not the kind of woman who shuffled them off to the convenient care of nursemaids and tutors and then forgot about them. That involvement gave us a common ground.

“It is true that I was brought up here at Savile,” she told me, “but the house I presently live in is nothing more than a simple gentleman’s residence. My husband is not a poor man, but neither is he vastly wealthy. It is only when they come to Savile that my boys get a taste of what it is like to live this sort of life.”

Lady Regina might not be wealthy, I thought, but I was quite certain that she was rich as Croesus compared to me.

“Devane Hall is not as imposing as Savile Castle either,” Harriet said, making her first contribution to the conversation, “but Papa has poured a great deal of money into improving it.” She set her jaw in a way that gave her an unfortunate resemblance to a bulldog. “It isn’t fair that Roger should get the benefit of all of Papa’s money.”

I had noticed before that Harriet’s speech was much more genteel than her father’s and had wondered how that came to be. It was only later that I discovered that she had been sent away to school in Bath when she was a child so that she could learn to be a lady. The first thing they had corrected was her speech. Unfortunately, the one thing they had not been able to correct was her soul.

It did not take the gentlemen very long to rejoin us and it did not take Savile very long after that to propose showing me the rose garden.

“I would like to say good night to Nicky first,” I said, glancing toward the doorway as if it were an escape route from deadly danger. Perhaps after I made my good nights in the nursery I could decently retire to my own bedroom, I thought.

“We’ll have the children brought down to us, shall we?” Lady Regina asked, effectively scotching my scheme. She wrinkled her nose. “I am not precisely in the condition to favor climbing all those stairs more than twice in one evening.”

I felt immediate contrition. “Of course you are not, my lady.” I took a deep breath and added heroically, “Nor is Lady Devane.”

So the children were fetched, and the Nicky who bade me a buoyant good night did not seem the same boy who had huddled next to me on the seat of Savile’s phaeton that morning.

He’s beginning to grow up,
I thought.

Once the children were out of the room, Savile turned once more to me and again proposed showing me the rose garden. Everyone else in the room began ostentatiously to talk at once as I accepted, trying not to betray by a quiver in my voice the sudden loud beating of my heart.

“Aside from the kitchen garden, the rose garden is the only garden that lies within the castle walls,” Savile informed me genially as he escorted me toward the French doors that led off the drawing room onto the wide stone terrace. “There are more extensive gardens, of course, beyond the eastern wall, but we’ll save those for another day.”

Behind me I heard Lady Regina ask John Melville what he thought of the new brewer’s building.

We walked across the terrace to steps that led down to a stone-paved path that followed the perimeter of the entire house. The sides of the path were planted with lady’s mantle, lavender, and achillea, which also grew in pockets between the stones of the pathway, giving the whole picture a lovely look of relaxed abundance. We turned the corner of the house in silence, passed under high hedges topped with a rose arch, and entered into the rose garden.

It was quite gloriously beautiful, so artfully managed that it looked utterly natural even though I knew that this could not possibly be the case. Climbing roses grew everywhere, even up the old medieval castle walls. There were white roses with glossy dark foliage, roses of a pale, delicate pink, and brilliantly colored yellow roses, brighter than butter. There were magnificent plantings of beautiful shrub roses, the colors a deep red, pink-red, and white, and sprinkled in among all these displays of the queen of flowers were poppies, geraniums, and lady’s mantle.