Ravish Me with Rubies

by Jane Feather

  “I don’t get the impression he takes such matters seriously,” Petra said, getting to her feet. “Never mind. He did say he wouldn’t stand in your way, at least.” She bent to kiss his brow. “His loss is my gain. I’m delighted to have your escort. We should leave by seven thirty.”

  “I’ll be ready.” He raised a hand in farewell as his sister threaded her way through the tables.

  Petra was more than happy to have her brother’s company that evening. Although she was as close as ever to her two dearest friends, they’d known each other since they were schoolgirls, these days she sometimes felt a bit like an outsider when Fenella and Diana were with their husbands. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Rupert or Edward, quite the opposite, in fact, and they were clearly just right for Diana and Fenella, but once in a while she wondered if perhaps they felt she was a bit de trop. Not that any of them ever gave her that impression.

  But still it would be good to have a partner of her own at dinner, even if it was her brother. She stepped out onto St. Stephen’s Porch and hailed a cab coming around Parliament Square.

  Chapter Two

  “Are you ready, Joth?” Petra entered the drawing room of the Rutherford town house on Brook Street just after seven o’clock that evening.

  “Ready to go whenever you are. Sherry, first?” Her brother lifted the cut glass decanter in invitation.

  “Oh, yes, please. We have plenty of time.” She took the glass and said with a smile, “You look very elegant, brother. Evening dress suits you.”

  “Why, thank you.” Her brother swept her a flourishing bow. “And may I return the compliment. That green silk . . . what do they call it? Apple? . . . well, whatever they call it, it’s a wonderful color for you.”

  Petra laughed and curtsied. “Flattery has never been your forte, Joth, so I’ll accept the compliment with gratitude.” She sipped her sherry, wandering to the windows looking over the street below. “It’s a lovely evening. D’you think it’s too far to walk?”

  Jonathan ran a speculative glance over her. “Definitely in those shoes.”

  She lifted a foot clad in cream satin embroidered with glass beads. “I have to have the heel, otherwise I’m so short people don’t even know I’m here.”

  Jonathan laughed. “My dear girl, no one could ever miss you. You may be small but you’re completely unignorable. You always wear something distinctive. That tangerine shawl, for instance. I don’t know why it goes with that apple green but it does. And it draws the eye. People can’t help noticing you.”

  “I think you will make some lucky woman a very satisfactory husband,” Petra declared with a chuckle. “You always know exactly what to say.”

  Jonathan shook his head and refilled his whisky glass. “Talking of knowing what to say, what was going on between you and Granville this afternoon? I didn’t think you knew each other beyond a passing acquaintance but you both gave the impression that you had some history between you. I was hoping you’d be all sweetness and light but you were as scratchy as a cross cat.”

  Petra hesitated. She’d never talked of that summer with anyone, but it was far enough in the past now, surely, for the memory to be no longer so painful.

  “I’m sorry. I was taken by surprise,” she said. “It was one summer, ten years ago. I was fourteen and had just put up my hair and started to go out into county society. Ma thought it would be good practice for when I had my come-out.” She looked into her glass for a moment as if conjuring her past self in its pale gold depths. “You weren’t around . . . I think you’d gone to Italy with a school friend’s family. Anyway, Guy Granville was at Ashton Court with some of his London friends, having a summer house party, and we met.” She looked up with a half smile. “To cut a long story short, he decided to cultivate me, escorting me at parties, dancing, playing croquet, making me feel so grown-up with all the attention. I was so young, Joth. Utterly naïve. I couldn’t see then that he was just amusing himself.”

  Jonathan looked outraged. “He didn’t try to seduce you, or anything like that, did he?”

  Petra shook her head. “Not really . . . he kissed me once or twice.” She turned back to the window, remembering how those kisses had made her feel. The memory was still painful and she put it from her. “He left Somerset without a word. One evening he was dancing with me, walking in the moonlight around the lake . . . all very romantic, and the next morning he’d gone . . . to the Riviera apparently where the company would be more stimulating.” She turned back to him with a rueful smile.

  “My pride was hurt, as you might imagine, so I really didn’t want to see him again.”

  “But you said he could call upon you here.”

  “Yes . . . I don’t know what I was thinking. I had some idea of . . . Oh, never mind. It was foolish.” She set down her empty glass. “We should go.”

  Her brother inclined his head in acknowledgment. He knew better than to press his sister when she made it clear she didn’t want to talk anymore. He was intrigued, however. He draped her light evening cloak around her shoulders and held the door for her, following her down the stairs to the hall.

  “Do you think Ma and Pa are enjoying themselves in Baden-Baden?” Petra asked as they stepped out into the warm evening. “I can’t see Pa taking the waters, can you?”

  “Only if it’s liberally diluted with whisky,” her brother returned with a chuckle. He waved down a passing hackney. “But you know our mother, she’ll be perfectly happy gossiping with her friends and complaining about how foul the water tastes.”

  “And making up for it with lavish dinners,” Petra said with an affectionate smile. Sir Percy Rutherford and his wife, Lady Cecilia, were fond but benignly neglectful parents, happy to leave the upbringing of their children to nannies, governesses and boarding schools. Once they no longer required that supervision, their offspring were encouraged to pursue their own lives as they wished, never deprived of anything except timely advice. It had occurred to Petra with hindsight that her mother could probably have saved her from the dreadful mortification of her girlish infatuation with Lord Ashton if she’d troubled to take an interest in what her daughter was doing during that summer in the country.

  The hackney turned onto Piccadilly, the pavements crowded with people from all walks of life taking the early summer air on a beautiful evening: shopgirls, maids on their evening off, barrow boys and street vendors, all jostling for space. The strains of a harmonica from a busker on the pavement filled the air as Jonathan and Petra stepped down from the cab outside the grand entrance to the Criterion. Jonathan dropped a coin into the musician’s upturned cloth cap before ushering his sister through the Criterion’s ornate doors into the marble entrance hall. Voices rose and fell from the Long Bar at the rear of the hall.

  They climbed the wide staircase to the first-floor dining room where they were greeted by a frock-coated majordomo. “Colonel Lacy’s party is already here, sir. May I take your cloak, Miss Rutherford?” He gestured to a liveried attendant, who immediately took Petra’s cloak and her brother’s hat, evening gloves and white scarf.

  The majordomo led them across the marbled dining room to a table beside one of the long windows overlooking the bustle of Piccadilly.

  “Forgive the gate-crasher intruder?” Jonathan said in smiling greeting as he brushed a kiss on the cheeks of the two women sitting at the table. “Rupert . . . Edward . . .” He held out his hand in greeting to the two men who had risen at the Rutherfords’ approach.

  “Delighted you could join us, Jonathan,” Colonel Rupert Lacey said, before turning to greet Petra, who was embracing her friends. He kissed her and pulled out her chair for her.

  “Champagne, Petra?” Edward Tremayne gestured to a waiter to fill her glass.

  “Yes, lovely, Edward, thank you.” Petra looked around the table. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

  “Only two weeks, dearest,” Diana corrected. “Rupert and I were in Hampshire talking with Kimberley Diamond’s trainer.” Her eyes s
hone as she looked around the table. “He thinks she’s ready for a big race. He’s been trying her out on some local courses at very minor events, keeping her out of the public eye while she trained. He thinks we should spring her on the public at Ascot. Isn’t that exciting?”

  “Which race?” Fenella inquired, taking a sip of her champagne.

  “The Queen Anne Stakes,” Rupert replied.

  “Yes, and we’re going to have a big party in the Royal Enclosure,” Diana said eagerly. “You’ll all be there, of course.”

  “Of course we will,” Petra and Fenella assured her almost in unison.

  Fenella picked up her menu. “What do we usually eat here?”

  Her husband glanced at his menu before regarding his wife with a half smile. “If I tell you what you usually eat you’ll accuse me of telling you what to order,” he said.

  Fenella laughed. “He’s only saying that because once I said how nice it was to dine with a man who didn’t tell me what I wanted to eat.”

  “Oh, Rupert does that all the time,” Diana declared. “I’m quite used to it now.”

  “In that case,” her husband said, “You’ll be having the foie gras and coq au vin.”

  “Impossible man,” Diana said. “As it happens it’s exactly what I’d like.”

  Petra joined in the general amusement but once again she felt that stab of aloneness, of being an outsider in this circle. It was different when it was just herself and Diana and Fenella, then it was like the old days. But was it? Even as she asked herself the question she knew the answer. It wasn’t quite the same. Marriage had added another dimension to her friends’ lives, a different prism through which they viewed life. And Petra didn’t have that dimension, or that prism.

  Diana said suddenly, “I have to visit the ladies’ room.”

  “Me too.” Fenella pushed back her chair. “They’re so splendidly luxurious here. Coming, Petra?”

  Petra pushed back her own chair. “Yes, I’m coming.”

  Rupert watched the three of them weave their way through the tables. “Why do they always do that?” he asked.

  “It’s almost tribal,” Edward said. “A kind of pack response.”

  “All for one and one for all.” Jonathan added his pennyworth. “But I think Diana had something on her mind that she wanted to talk about with the other two.”

  “It was a rather sudden departure,” Rupert agreed.

  Edward shrugged. “Individually I understand them, but collectively . . .” He shook his head. “A very different matter.”

  The men had not seen what Diana had, attuned as she was to both her friends’ moods. She had noticed the flash of sadness in Petra’s hazel eyes, the sudden loss of vivacity on her mobile countenance. And she had responded automatically. If something was upsetting her friend, then something had to be done about it.

  The opulence of the Criterion itself was carried into the ladies’ room, where jugs of iris perfumed the air, and plush couches, gleaming vanities and gilded mirrors offered a cushioned sanctuary for its clients. An attendant in a black dress and crisply starched apron stood ready to repair a torn flounce, sew a loose button, hand out softly scented towels.

  Diana cast a quick glance around and said, “Good, we’re alone for a moment.” She sat down on one of the deeply cushioned couches and gestured to her friends to join her. “What’s troubling you, Petra? You looked stricken suddenly.”

  “Yes, I noticed it too,” Fenella said. “Has something happened, darling?” She put a comforting hand over Petra’s.

  Petra had always been cursed with a too expressive countenance. She had never been able to keep her emotions from showing on her face, or in her eyes. But she had no intention of telling her friends the real reason for that moment of sadness. However, she had an alternative account on offer.

  “Have you come across Guy Granville?”

  “Lord Ashton . . . only by repute,” Fenella said with a slight frown. “He’s something of a philanderer, isn’t he?”

  “According to the scandal sheets,” Diana said. “I’ve seen him around, but he’s not a regular on the society circuit. According to Rupert, he has his own exclusive circle who consider themselves too important to enjoy society’s frivolity.”

  “He doesn’t make any secret of his opposition to women’s suffrage,” Fenella said, still frowning. “He’s always writing about it, and sending letters to the Times.”

  “All true,” Petra responded. “Once upon a time I thought I was in love with him.”

  “What?” her friends demanded in unison.

  She gave them a lighthearted account of the summer of Guy Granville, giving little indication of the depth of her hurt and mortification, before saying, “Anyway, I met him again this afternoon at Westminster. Joth invited him to tea because he wants his help with some legislation about draining the Levels, and he wanted me to turn on the charm, soften him up, as it were. Of course, he didn’t know that I was probably the last person willing to do that.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I wasn’t very friendly,” Petra told them with a laugh. She was already feeling much better. “But then I had a vague idea that I might lead him on a little. Get him interested and then . . .”

  “Drop him,” Diana finished for her. “Sauce for the gander, as it were.”

  “Precisely,” Petra declared. She stood up. “We really should go back to the table, the men will be wondering what we’re doing.”

  “They’ll probably have ordered for us,” Fenella said with a laugh. “And perfectly entitled to do so in the circumstances.”

  She went to the mirror to adjust a hairpin in the thick chignon on her neck. Petra examined her complexion for flaws, dusting a little powder on her small nose, lamenting, “I wish I could get rid of those freckles.”

  “Nonsense,” Diana said. “They’re part of you. It’s just a scattering on your nose. They go with your hair.”

  Petra was actually rather proud of her hair. It was thick, straight and a rich chestnut brown with streaks of a darker red. She wore it this evening in two plaits looped around her ears, beautifully set off by emerald eardrops and a necklace of the same.

  “Come on, we must get back,” Fenella urged, dropping a coin into a saucer for the attendant on her way to the door.

  “Yes, we’ll talk about revenge on the baron when we have time to discuss it properly,” Diana stated, hurrying after her. “Shall we have coffee tomorrow?”

  “Come to Brook Street,” Petra invited, now totally restored to her usual lively humor. “We’ll plan a strategy.”

  They returned to the table, where their escorts were visibly impatient and, having finished the champagne, most of the way through a bottle of Bordeaux. “We’d about given you up,” Rupert said, standing up to pull back his wife’s chair.

  “Apologies,” Fenella said, offering Edward a guilty smile as she took the chair he held for her. “We started talking about something and the time just ran away with us.”

  “Nothing new about that,” Rupert said dryly. “If you’re now here to stay perhaps we could order?”

  “I really am sorry. It was my fault,” Petra said without offering any further explanation. She picked up her menu again, glancing up at the attentive waiter. “I think I’d like the asparagus soup and then the rack of lamb, please.”

  Chapter Three

  Guy Granville walked into the marble hall on the ground floor of the Criterion, handing his hat and silver-knobbed cane to an attendant as he scrutinized the drinkers at the Long Bar at the rear of the hall. He raised a hand, acknowledging the greeting waves from a group of people sitting at a table, brandy goblets in front of them.

  He was about to make his way across the hall when a familiar voice made him pause. He turned to look toward the grand staircase, where a small group was descending from the restaurant above. Petra Rutherford was in front, her head turned to the woman just behind her. She radiated vivacity and he remembered how that had been th
e first thing he’d noticed about her ten years ago, when she had caught his eye flinging herself into the steps of the Eightsome Reel in the ballroom of the Assembly Rooms in Bath, her sparkling hazel eyes laughing up at her partner, strands of that richly hued copper hair escaping its pins with the liveliness of the dance. She hadn’t grown any taller since then, he thought with a half smile. She was still small but vivid, impossible to ignore or completely forget.

  He stepped to the bottom of the staircase, one hand resting on the domed newel post as he waited for the party to reach him.

  “Miss Petra Rutherford,” he said, with a bow. “What a delightful surprise . . . twice in one day.” Before she could gather her wits to respond, he had raised her hand, brought it to his lips, and then held it as she stepped off the stair and into the hall. “Gentlemen, ladies.” He inclined his head in greeting to Petra’s companions. “A good dinner, I hope.”

  “Excellent, thank you, Granville,” Jonathan said. “Are you dining here yourself?”

  “No, just meeting some friends in the bar,” Guy answered, gesturing to the group across the hall. “I heard your voice, Petra, and had to say hello.”

  “Hello, Guy,” Petra responded as coolly as she could. She still felt the residual pressure of his hand as he’d held on to hers a little too firmly and for just a moment longer than necessary, and she was for a moment unable to think of what to say next.

  When it seemed she had nothing further to say, Guy offered a general good night and turned to make his way over to his friends.

  “That wasn’t very friendly, my dear,” Rupert said with a slight raised eyebrow. “Has Lord Ashton offended you?”

  Petra shrugged and laughed lightly. “Oh, years ago he did, and I haven’t seen him to talk to since then, except this afternoon and just now.” She shook her head. “I haven’t decided whether I still dislike him as intensely as I used to.” She watched Guy’s arrival at his friends’ table. A strikingly tall, elegant woman offered a languid hand in greeting and he raised it to his lips before bending to kiss her cheek. There was something about the seemingly ordinary salutation that sent prickles along Petra’s spine.