The Ashford Affair (21 page)

“Nonsense,” said Bea stoutly. “I simply adore … prosody.”

She rolled her eyes and Frederick laughed softly. He took the ice bucket from the servant and handed it over to Bea. “Your ice.”

“Your drink, you mean,” she said, and handed the shaker to Frederick. “Do the honors?”

Addie stood back, feeling entirely cut out. Not that Bea had done it on purpose, of course; she just had a way of attracting the attention of a room, like iron filings to a magnet. She was always telling Addie that there was no magic to it, that it was just a matter of asserting oneself. Addie watched Frederick shake the drinks, watched Bea taste and make a face and dump it out and start again. She knew she should say something, do something, but what? She hadn’t anything at all interesting to say, just prosody, which, on Bea’s lips, sounded quite as stodgy as it was.

Bea handed her a drink, the sapphire ring on her finger clanking against the side of the glass. Addie took it tentatively. It smelled strongly of gin. Addie set it quietly down on the marble top of a small, gilt table.

Bea took a hearty swig of her own drink. “Do the two of you have something frightfully fabulous planned for tonight? No? Then you must join me. There’s a party going to Claridge’s and then on to the Golden Calf. Haven’t you heard of it, Mr. Desborough? I would have thought you would.”

“I thought they’d closed,” said Frederick.

“This is the
new
Golden Calf,” said Bea blandly. “Isn’t it too utterly biblical? They killed the fatted calf only to have it rise again. Or am I confusing myself? It’s all terribly hush-hush, secret knocks and curtains and all that sort of thing. You must come.”

“I’m not sure…” Addie began, galvanized into speech at last.

“Don’t fuss; you’ll adore it. I have a frock that will fit you perfectly.”

“Only if you chop it off at the knees,” protested Addie.

Bea wafted her objection aside, spattering gin in the process. “I’ve been remiss. As your chaperone, I ought to have seen that you got out more—and not to lectures!”

“You’re hardly my chaperone,” protested Addie, trying to catch Frederick’s eye and failing. “We’re scarcely a year apart.”

“Hush, child,” said Bea, tossing back the rest of her drink. “Don’t you know you’re not meant to speak that way to an elderly matron? It’s past time I took your social education in hand.” She looked at Frederick over the rim of her glass. Her pale lashes had been darkened, making them even more dramatic. “Especially if you insist on taking up with such degenerate characters as these.”

“Isn’t taking your charge to worship at the Cave of the Golden Calf quite the opposite of the usual work of a chaperone?” asked Frederick.

Taking the shaker from the tray, Bea deftly topped up his drink. “Not at all, Mr. Desborough. It’s the work of a good chaperone to make sure her charge is prepared for
all things.
”

She stressed the last two words in a way Addie didn’t entirely understand. There were circles within circles here, going around and over Addie’s head.

Looking up, Addie found Frederick’s eyes on her. “To the pure,” he said quietly, “all things are pure.”

She felt herself flush without quite knowing why. “I’m hardly as unworldly as all that,” she protested, taking up her drink.

“Aren’t you, darling?” said Bea lightly, and touched Frederick on the arm. “Would you be an utter angel and find my cigarette case? I left it on the chaise in the morning room, there’s a dear.”

“Your servant,” drawled Frederick, in a very different voice from the one he used with Addie.

Addie looked to her cousin with confusion. She could see Bea’s cigarette case sitting in plain sight next to the portable gramophone. “Why did you do that?”

Shamelessly Bea clicked the case open, drawing out a Turkish cigarette and tapping it against her palm before inserting it into the long, ebony holder. “Is this what’s been taking up all your time, darling?”

“Not all of it,” hedged Addie. She hadn’t told Bea about
The Bloomsbury Review
either. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her; it was just that Bea tended to be … a bit effusive sometimes. And sometimes there was a sting beneath it, especially when she was unhappy, as she was unhappy now. “But some. Don’t you remember Mr. Desborough? He was the one who rescued Binky.”

For a moment, Bea looked blank. Then she burst into a coughing laugh. “Good heavens, that ridiculous mouse!” For a moment, she sounded much more like her old self. “Will you ever forget the look on Mother’s face?”

“Never,” Addie agreed.

Stripped of her affectations, Bea looked more like her old self. But she also looked painfully tired. Addie was reminded of the way Bea had looked just after Poppy’s death, gutted and trying to hide it.

Cautiously, Addie touched her cousin’s wrist. “Is there something the matter? When you came in, I thought—”

“There’s nothing the matter.” Bea twitched her wrist away, prowling restlessly across the room. “I’m perfectly all right. I’m not the one racing about to lectures with strange men.”

Yes, because lectures were so very compromising. Addie refused to let herself be deterred. “Have you had another fight with Marcus?”

Bea’s lips tightened. “Marcus is Marcus,” she said carelessly, but her hands betrayed her, her fingers digging into her palms. “We’re talking about
you.
You and that Mr. Desborough. You sly old thing, you. When were you going to tell me?”

“There wasn’t anything to tell,” said Addie. “He’s a friend.”

Bea gave her a look. “Darling, you need someone to find out what your Mr. Desborough is about. You can’t take a mouse as a reference.”

Addie felt her chin setting. “He isn’t about anything. He just likes to go to the same sorts of lectures I like to go to.” Bea’s blond brows rose. Addie stumbled over her words. “He’s—he’s a
chum.
”

“Oh, darling. You can tell yourself that all you like. I saw the way you looked at him, all sun and moon and stars. I’m quite jealous, you know,” she said in her bantering tone. “It’s terribly lowering to be eclipsed. But if I must be,” she said, and there was steel beneath her tone, “I intend to make sure it’s someone worthy. If you’re going to abandon me, you can’t go throwing yourself away on just anyone.”

“I don’t think Mr. Desborough thinks about me that way,” said Addie, succumbing to the horrible, overwhelming temptation to confide. She shook her head. “There’s really no need, Bea.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Bea, brisk as only Bea could be once she’d set her mind on something. Those were the moments when Addie was reminded, disconcertingly, of Aunt Vera, all that imperiousness beneath the evanescent overlay of Bea’s beauty. “Wouldn’t you rather make sure he’s not goblin fruit?”

She smiled at Addie and Addie found herself smiling back at the memory of that old poem, of two little girls linking their pinkies and promising devotion. She’d always fancied herself more Lizzie than Laura, the sensible one, not the giddy one. “Are you afraid I’ll go off into a decline?”

“Don’t worry, darling.” Bea’s lips curved in a wolfish smile. “I’ll take the bite on your behalf.”

Addie knew she was only joking, but she couldn’t help it, she had a sudden, horrible image of Bea smiling up at Frederick, the way he had laughed only for her. She had never minded Bea’s beauty or her charm; it had only seemed fair that Bea should have first crack at their toys, at games, at men.

She was happy to cede the first place to her, but not in this, not Frederick, not even if Frederick wasn’t hers to lose.

Bea hastily put down her drink. “Don’t look like that, dearest! I was only joking.” She looked speculatively at the doorway. “I seldom bite.”

London, 1999

“I thought she looked like a slut,” Clemmie said without thinking.

The marquess gave a shocked chuckle. “I thought she looked rather like you. Not like that,” he added quickly. “I mean … That is…”

And he didn’t even know about the hot-pink underwear. “Thank you?” said Clemmie.

The marquess was still trying to recover from his faux pas. “She was a great beauty,” he said quickly. “They called her the Debutante of the Decade. My great-grandfather was quite chuffed to have caught her.”

Something about the way he looked at her as he said it made Clemmie’s cheeks warm. “Men wanted her, women wanted to be her?” she quipped.

“Yes,” the marquess said quite seriously. “That’s it exactly. Before the scandal, that is.”

“Scandal, hmm?” Clemmie wondered whether Paul had gotten his Sancerre yet and, if so, whether he would have arrived at an appropriate stage of mellow before she got back to the table.

“Oh, yes,” said the marquess. “It was all dragged through the courts, divorce for adultery. Headlines in the paper, people lining up outside the courtroom.” He gave a polite little cough. “Or so I understand.”

“Wow,” said Clemmie. And yet they kept her on the wall. Clemmie would never understand the English. “I’ll have to ask my grandmother about it.”

She wondered, vaguely, whom Granny’s cousin had run off with, if they’d been happy together. There was something about that restless woman in the portrait that didn’t go with happy. She looked like the sort who toppled kingdoms and sunk ships, good fodder for poetry, but not necessarily material for a happy life.

Dan had accused her of adultery, too. Only in her case, with the law firm rather than another man. He had said he was tired of never knowing when he was going to see her, of always coming second. “What do you care about more?” he had asked.

It was, thought Clemmie, one of those idiotic questions. If you had to ask, it meant you probably didn’t want to know the answer.

“Where’s the phone?” asked Clemmie.

She must have sounded more brusque than intended, because the marquess gave her a cautious, sideways glance. “Right through here,” he said.

They were back in the lobby where she had registered. It felt like decades ago. And she still had to deal with Scott, the nervous associate, placate Paul, find her room, review a pile of documents … The very thought of it made her want to curl up into a little ball, but it had to be done; there was no way any of it could not be done. But it would all be worth it in the end when she made partner. That was what she kept telling herself. She hadn’t busted her butt like this not to make partner.

Take that, Dan.

“Pamela will take care of you,” said the marquess, indicating the young woman on the other side of the desk. “Line three?”

The woman nodded, her ponytail bouncing, and pressed a button, handing the receiver across to Clemmie.

Clemmie covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “Thank you,” she said to the marquess. “And sorry about the whole cousin thing.”

He smiled fleetingly.

Clemmie put the phone to her ear. Back to real life.

“Clementine Evans,” she said briskly.

“Hello?” said a voice on the other end. It was a male voice, but it didn’t sound like Scott, the nervous fourth year. “Clemmie?”

There was static and honking on the other end. “Hello?” she said. “Who is this?”

For a crazy moment, she wondered if it was Dan, tracking her down to England. Not that it would be a very Dan sort of thing to do.

“It’s Jon.
Jon.
Can you hear me?”

“Just barely,” said Clemmie. What was he doing calling? Clemmie propped an elbow against the side of the desk. “What’s up?”

There was a sound that might have been a deep breath, or just the poor connection. “I’m sorry to call you on a business trip.” The bad phone line made his voice sound much deeper than its natural tenor, the words slurring together. “Granny Addie is at the hospital—Mount Sinai.”

“What?”

In the background, she could hear the sound of sirens. The line was breaking up again; she heard only: “… mother … there … didn’t want … call … yet.”

Clemmie seized on that one word. “What do you mean by ‘yet’?” said Clemmie sharply. “What are they saying? How is she? What happened?”

There was a string of unintelligible gibberish.

Clemmie clutched the phone cord. “Jon. Jon! You’re breaking up. I can’t hear you.”

It sounded like a hurricane blowing in the background, all whistling winds and crackling noises, like trees going over.

“Clemmie?” The static turned his voice to Darth Vader’s electronic crackle and heavy breathing. “Sorry. I’m—”

More static. This was absurd. They could put a man on the moon, but they couldn’t maintain a decent cell-phone connection. She wasn’t sure whether it was Jon’s cell phone or the little gizmos straining to make their way across the Atlantic, but whatever it was, she wanted to punch something.

“Jon,” she shouted into the phone. “Jon! How bad it is?”

“Hang on.” He almost sounded clear. “I’m moving.”

On the other end, Clemmie fumed, wrapping the cord again and again around her hand until it left angry red marks on her fingers. She saw the desk girl looking at her and hastily shook it off, stretching her lips in an unconvincing smile.

Not bad, thought Clemmie. Don’t let it be bad.

“Clemmie?” It was Jon again, still faint, but there. “You still there?”

“Yes!” she snapped. “What’s going on? What happened? How bad is it?”

From very far away she heard his voice. “It’s not good, Clem.” And then, “I think you should come home.”

TWELVE

London, 1920

All Addie wanted was to go home.

Without clocks or watch, she couldn’t tell what time it was, but it might have been any time between midnight and five in the morning, an artificial world of nighttime gaiety that began well past sundown and stretched on until dawn, populated by a revolving crowd of men in white tie and women in jewels, a blur of shrill voices and half-known faces.

The evening had begun with the by now traditional cocktails at the Ritz, then on to a vertiginously high fifth-floor loft, reached via stairs and then ladder, done up in a sort of Arabian Nights theme with a band in turbans and a woman with a grating cockney accent wearing rather unconvincing gauze pants and a veil that kept getting tangled in her lipstick who took their wraps and gave them glasses of a dubious concoction that she called Turkish Delight but that tasted to Addie rather like turpentine mixed with raspberry jam. From there, they had made their way to the crowded, underground confines of Rector’s, where the overwhelming scent of the cheap face powder in the powder room made Addie’s stomach churn and the brass band made her ears ache. The band wore policeman’s helmets—Addie wasn’t quite sure why—but Geordie Pillbrook pinched one, which had led to trumpeting and squawking and the whole group piling hastily out of the club and into taxis, not, alas, to go home, but to go on to this next place, as frigidly cold as Rector’s had been stiflingly hot.