The Ashford Affair

by Lauren Willig

Now that she looked at him, really looked at him, he looked nearly as tired as she was, with purple circles under a pair of warm, brown eyes. It wasn’t just the voice that was Hugh Grant–ish; he looked a bit like the actor, too, with the same floppy-hair thing going, although there was something about the eyes that was more reminiscent of the goofy friend from Four Weddings, the one with the country estate who wound up marrying the woman dressed like Little Bo Peep.

  “How long ago did you start here?” Clemmie asked.

  “We’ve been open for just over six months now.” He nodded towards the framed Country Life cover. “That helped rather a lot.”

  “Mmm,” said Clemmie.

  He must be just about her age. Or maybe a little younger. She was constantly forgetting how old she actually was. Her mental age was permanently stuck at twenty-seven, just past law school, before she had descended into a never-never land of depositions and doc review. It was like a reverse Rip van Winkle; time had gone by and she had aged without being aware of it.

  The desk clerk tap-tapped on the computer, with the awkward, two-fingered typing of the self-taught. He was rather cute, really. In that slightly inbred English public-school way.

  If this were a novel, she would rediscover her Inner Woman by having a fling with the cute desk clerk.

  If this were a novel, it would be Tuscany in summer rather than London in December and she wouldn’t have a run in her stocking and yesterday’s mascara under her eyes. Besides, weren’t Brits supposed to make lousy lovers?

  God, she was tired. Clemmie suppressed a yawn. The last of her caffeine buzz had worn off, leaving her entirely drained. Their first meeting was supposed to be at noon, which should leave time for a change of clothes and, if she was very lucky, a hot shower. That was if the plumbing had been updated more recently than the décor. The lobby screamed old money. Unfortunately, in Britain, that also often meant old plumbing.

  With any luck, maybe Paul had gotten detained and they’d have to push back the meeting. Screw the shower; she would sell her soul for a nap.

  The clerk looked up from the computer. “Mr. Dietrich did check in last night.”

  Damn. So much for that.

  The lock of hair flopped down over his eyes as he frowned at the keyboard. “Wait a minute. I think he left a note.…”

  He rummaged among a pile of papers behind the desk, a gold ring on one hand catching the light. A wedding ring? No. A signet.

  That was all right, then, thought Clemmie sleepily. Even in purely imaginary flings, she did draw the line at adultery.

  “Miss Evans?” The clerk was holding out a note to her expectantly.

  “Oh! Thanks.” Clemmie’s hand bumped against his as she snatched at the note. She mumbled, “Sorry, jet lag,” and hastily opened the note.

  Paul used only a fountain pen. It didn’t make his chicken-scratch handwriting any more legible, but Clemmie had had lots of practice deciphering it, usually in an effort to decode crucial words in the margins of key documents at three in the morning, long after Paul had gone home to his homestead in Westchester. This note was scrawled on Rivesdale House stationery, RHH with a crest over it.

  Paul hadn’t wasted time on unnecessary amenities. Lunch meeting moved to breakfast. Nine at— The Hill? No, The Grill. The Grill Room at the Dorchester.

  Oh, lovely.

  He did realize her plane hadn’t gotten in until seven, right? Of course not, that would have meant that Paul had actually read the e-mail she’d sent him with her itinerary. It was already eight forty-five now. Clemmie’s knowledge of London geography was hazy, but she was pretty sure the Dorchester wasn’t exactly next door.

  And he couldn’t have e-mailed her because? If she’d gotten the e-mail on her BlackBerry, she could have gone straight from the airport to the Dorchester. What sucked the most was that she couldn’t even complain; like the customer, the partner was always right. She’d have to simper and apologize, even though it was Paul’s own damn fault.

  Clemmie cursed. “Sorry,” she said to the desk clerk.

  “I’ve heard worse,” he said mildly.

  There was no time to go up and change, no time for that shower she’d been fantasizing about since Heathrow. “Do you mind if I leave this with you?” She indicated the suitcase. “I’ve got to run.”

  “It will be waiting for you in your room.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and meant it. “How far is it from here to the Dorchester?”

  “When do you need to be there?”

  Clemmie grimaced. “Five minutes ago?”

  The clerk took in her skirt suit and high-heeled pumps. “You’ll want a cab.”

  He came out from behind the desk, walking briskly past her to the doorman, who was dressed in a dark blue, vaguely military-looking uniform, with gold around the collar and cuffs. In contrast, the clerk looked as though he’d just come down from Oxford, in gray flannels and blue blazer. A few quick words, one sharp blast on the doorman’s whistle, and there was a cab waiting for her. In her fatigued state, it all felt rather like magic.

  “Thank you,” said Clemmie sincerely. “You’ve just saved my ass. I mean—”

  The clerk’s lips quirked in a smile. “All part of the service,” he said, forestalling any other idiotic remarks she might make. “Good luck.”

  He closed the door behind her and Clemmie resisted the urge to bang her head against her knees. No wonder she had been single for years before Dan. Hell, she would have done better with I carried a watermelon. Not that she’d really been planning to hit on the desk clerk. But it would be nice to able to open her mouth without jamming a three-inch heel down her throat.

  “Where to, love?” demanded the cabdriver.

  “Dorchester House,” said Clemmie, and wiggled her BlackBerry out of the side pocket of her bag. She still had a fighting chance of making it on time, but best to e-mail Paul, just in case.

  She typed in D for “Dietrich,” and before she could get to the e Dan’s e-mail popped up instead, still auto-programmed into her BlackBerry. DanG@cosine.com.

  That was “cosine” as in the MIT cheer or the trigonometric principle, pronounced “co-sign.” They’d had a joke about it being chic to refer to Cosine as “Co-zeen,” the same way some people said “Tar-zhay” instead of “Target.”

  How are things at Co-zeen? she would ask during their daily late-night call. Magneefick! he would say, his version of magnifique. Or sometimes, if the day had gone poorly, Tres mal, pronounced “tremmle.” Dan had taken French at school, just as she had, but he was functionally tone deaf. His mispronunciations had trod that uncomfortable line between annoying and endearing. Like so much else about Dan.

  The familiarity of it all—DanG@cosine—hit her with a sharp pang of nostalgia. She couldn’t count the thousands of times she had done this, the thousands of times she had BlackBerried him from curbs and cabs and conference calls with a “hey, late for dinner tonight,” or, “Chinese food good for you?” or just an “Argghh, still in office.”

  On an impulse, Clemmie typed: “Sorry to have missed your calls; work’s been nuts. In Dallas last week, in London now. Any chance you’re free for dinner next week?”

  It seemed weird to sign it “love,” the way she used to, so she didn’t sign it at all. She just clicked “send” quickly, before she could overthink or change her mind. The BlackBerry sent her message spinning off into the electronic aether.

  It wasn’t that she was reconsidering or anything, she told herself. They were friends. They had said they would stay friends. And if she was a little tired … and a little lonely … well, that was beside the point.

  Clemmie settled back against the seat. The cab was round roofed, capacious, with jump seats across from the banquette, the sort of cab they used to have in New York when she was a little girl. There was something pleasantly antiquated about it. Outside the cab window, London zigzagged past, Hyde Park on her left, the dignified buildings of Mayfair on her right, men in dark suits with furled umbrella
s, newspaper sellers on the corners. Only the more modern buildings among the older edifices betokened the ravages of the Blitz.

  The women in their own dark suits, the SUVs doubled-parked at the curb, the ubiquitous white paper coffee cups were the only telltale signs of modernity. Otherwise it might have been eighty years ago, white houses blending to gray in the incipient gloom of a rainy winter day. Even 5th Avenue didn’t have this sense of history, this sense that if one blinked, one would find oneself in the same place at another time, ponytails replaced by cloche hats, bare heads covered by bowlers.

  In the rush-hour traffic, the cab’s motion had slowed to a crawl. It was warm in the cab, the heater working double time, a fine film of condensation frosting the car windows, silvering the scene outside, like an old photographic plate, faded by time to gentle shades of gray. Clemmie could feel her tired eyelids beginning to droop, past blending into present in the mist of the morning.

  Her BlackBerry lurched in her hand, jarring her awake. It buzzed angrily. High priority. Whoever had invented the high-priority message deserved to be condemned to a circle of inferno populated by constantly buzzing BlackBerries. The BlackBerry buzzed again. Groaning, Clemmie hauled herself upright and clicked open the message.

  Paul’s message was succinct and to the point. “Where the fuck are you?”

  Somewhere nearby, a car horn blared. Someone responded with a long stream of profanity.

  So much for once upon a time.

  Shoving her hair back behind her ears, Clemmie bent her head over her BlackBerry. “In traffic. On way.”

  She was so not looking forward to this meeting.

  London, 1920

  Addie hated these meetings.

  She perched awkwardly on the edge of a heavily embroidered Louis XV chair, legs crossed at the ankles, her skirt riding up just enough to make her feel like a schoolgirl again, still in short skirts, being called in for a ticking off.

  There was a lavish tea set out, iced cakes and bread spread with real butter, as if rationing were a thing only imagined, once upon a time. A piece of bread and butter sat on Addie’s plate, the edges beginning to curl. The day was warm for September, warmer in the overcrowded room, with its heavy, brocade drapes. Addie could feel a little bead of sweat inching down her back, just below her shoulder blades.

  Little chats, Aunt Vera called the weekly torture. Just to see how you’re getting on.

  Ever since Addie had moved under Bea’s roof, Aunt Vera had shown a surprisingly un–Aunt Vera–like solicitude. Addie wasn’t fooled. It wasn’t Addie Aunt Vera wanted to know about; it was Bea. She wanted to know where Bea and Marcus dined and with whom, whom they entertained, how they lived, and, most important, whether Bea showed any signs of increasing.

  Not that she asked straight out, of course. It was all done by indirection, by questions that didn’t seem to lead anywhere until they did. There was always something, some nugget of information that seemed entirely innocuous until Aunt Vera leaned forward, piercing Addie with that look, the same look she’d given her years ago when Addie had told her she wanted to be a hedgehog when she grew up.

  Addie was always left feeling obscurely guilty, not quite sure what secrets she was meant to be keeping but sure she had failed Bea all the same.

  Aunt Vera took a cake from the tray, licking icing from her fingers with the complete unconcern of the socially secure. “When do they go to Haddleston?”

  Haddleston was one of Marcus’ family properties. “I don’t know. That is, I don’t think they mean to go,” she amended. “At least, not that I’ve been told.”

  Aunt Vera leaned forward in her chair, both her stays and her chair creaking in protest. “Lady ffoulkes said her girls were going.”

  If Lady ffoulkes had said it, it was probably true. Bea wasn’t going to like that. She wasn’t particularly fond of Lavinia ffoulkes or her younger sister, Bunny. Bea had grown even less fond of them ever since Marcus had taken to inviting them up to Haddleston for house parties, Saturday to Mondays that sometimes became Friday to Tuesdays, or even to Wednesdays.

  Sometimes, Bea motored down to join him. Other times, Addie would hear crashing and stamping from Bea’s sitting room and raised voices when Marcus came back. Aunt Vera didn’t need to know about that, or about the telephoning that happened in hushed voices, the smell of cigarette smoke where there shouldn’t be, gramophone music from the garden long after the rest of the household had gone to bed.

  “Maybe they just haven’t invited me,” said Addie, trying to make a joke of it.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t,” said Aunt Vera with annoyance. “Sit up straight, girl! No one wants a Drooping Dolly.”

  Addie shot up, her teacup rattling in its saucer.

  Aunt Vera sighed.

  “Dodo came to visit last week,” volunteered Addie, as a peace offering. Surely that was neutral enough. “She needed some things from Fortnum’s, so she came down herself.”

  “I know,” said Aunt Vera grumpily. “I saw her. She’s brown as a savage. As for that creature she’s married—”

  She broke off, constrained by her own social code. He was an earl, after all, even if he was an Irish one.

  “They do seem happy,” offered Addie. The earl in question was ten years older and half a head shorter than Dodo, but the difference didn’t show on horseback, and since that was where they spent most of their time, Dodo didn’t seem to mind the discrepancy in the slightest. Dodo was as fond of her husband as Addie had ever seen her of anyone. Best damn seat I’ve ever seen on a woman was his lover-like assessment of his beloved, but it was plain to everyone that he adored her. They spent their year half in Ireland and half in Melton, and, in her own undemonstrative way Dodo was happier than Addie had ever imagined Dodo could be.

  It had been rather a source of awkwardness when she had come to tea last week, her glowing happiness when Bea and her marquess were so very clearly not.

  “Happy,” sniffed Aunt Vera. “What a child you are.”

  At least, thought Addie, sneering seemed to buck her up a bit. Aunt Vera had been the bogeyman of her childhood, able to quell her with a glance, but, these days, the lines on her cheeks were graven a little too deeply, the shadows beneath her eyes too pronounced.

  They never talked about the reason for it, just as they never talked about Uncle Charles’ hours in his study, hours and hours, late into the night, until he looked nearly as insubstantial as the pieces of paper on his desk, a thin sheet of aristocratic ivory parchment. They were very good at carrying on, at pretending that everything was as it had been, but Addie knew what the truth of it was; she could read it in the color of Aunt Vera’s dress, in the empty patch on the wall where a portrait had once hung, in the missing pictures among the clutter of silver frames on the boule table by the door.

  There were Bea and Marcus on their wedding day, Aunt Vera’s tremendous lace veil incongruous with Bea’s skimpy, wartime dress, accompanied by a very satisfied Aunt Vera; Dodo and her husband at Melton, Dodo hanging on to the reins of a large horse and grinning like anything; and Edward in his uniform, posed so that one would never notice the empty sleeve where his left arm used to be. There were pictures of friends and family connections, the closer to royal the better, with minor princelings given pride of place, glittering in all their regalia.

  There were no pictures of Poppy.

  Addie could mark out the empty places where they used to stand, Poppy stiff and posed in her best taffeta dress, Poppy chasing butterflies with her nurse napping nearby, Poppy with a tennis racket in her hand, nearly fifteen and bursting with life. There was a family grouping from Bea’s wedding, Marcus and Bea in the middle, Uncle Charles and Aunt Vera to one side, Edward on the other. Addie could tell where the photo had been bent, as though Poppy had never been.

  But she had; Addie still remembered the photographer’s pleas to look this way, Lady Penelope, just for a moment, as Poppy laughed over her shoulder at Bea or clutched at her hat to k
eep it from blowing away in the breeze or held up a hand to catch an imagined raindrop, never still, always in motion.

  It seemed impossible to think of her eternally still, not racketing down the stairs with a Hullo, Addie!—never again nagging Bea into a game of tennis, or coaxing Edward out for a ride.

  It had happened a little over a month after Bea’s wedding, while Bea and Marcus were still off on their wedding tour. Poppy had come back from a trip to the village complaining of a sore throat and an aching head. Nanny—Nanny was still Nanny—had put her to bed, prescribing a good night’s rest and some lemon and honey. But in the morning Poppy’s temperature had risen, and by evening they knew: It was the influenza.

  Addie could still remember the smell of the sickroom: barley water and vinegar and the cloying smell of the dried lavender sachets Nanny scattered around the room to try to make the other smells go away. Nursing at Guy’s Hospital during the War had been hard, but, somehow, this was harder, because it was Poppy and there was nothing, nothing at all, she could do to save her. The influenza had hit the village hard. The postmistress was taken, and the butcher’s son, and a score of others, some connected to the estate, others not. The doctors hadn’t come for them, but they came for Poppy, and their verdict was the same; everything that could be done had been done. The disease took its course as it would.

  It took Poppy.

  For that, Addie was willing to put up with Aunt Vera’s sniffs and sneers. She was, Addie suspected, lonely. Not that Aunt Vera would ever admit to it. But she had no more daughters for whom to plan or scheme. Bea and Dodo were both married, out of her charge. And Poppy was gone.

  Sometimes, despite the doctors, Addie wondered what would have happened if they had realized just a little bit sooner that Poppy’s sore throat was more than just a sore throat; if she had looked at Poppy that first night instead of leaving her to Nanny; if she had done something, anything, differently. The doctors said no. They cited statistics, so many deaths to the months, so many other people’s daughters, sisters, cousins gone. But those girls weren’t Poppy. They hadn’t been in Addie’s charge.