by KJ Charles
“For heaven’s sake, are you mute?” Lady Anna said, with contempt that sounded to Pat more than just sisterly. “We saw it, didn’t we, Jack? A ridiculous noisy farrago only fit for the feeble-minded.”
Pat heard Fen’s intake of breath; saw the tiny smile curve Haworth’s thin lips. The Countess said, “Anna.”
“I saw it as well,” Bill said loudly. “Marvellous stuff. Enjoyed every minute. In fact, I want to see it again. Pat, old thing, would you care to come with me when we’re back down south? My treat.”
“I’d love to,” Pat said. “It sounds precisely my sort of thing.” She caught Miss Singh’s tiny approving nod, and added, “Would you care to join us, Miss Singh?”
“Oh, surely—” Maurice Haworth began.
Miss Singh said over him, “I would be delighted. Thank you. I am sure I shall find it entertaining.”
Lady Anna’s cheeks were heavily powdered for Pat’s taste; it didn’t hide the flare of red over her cheeks. Mr. Haworth drawled, “Such unity. And what did you think, Jack? Do you share my wife’s opinion, or will you side with the majority?”
“I found it absurd yet greatly enjoyable,” Mr. Bouvier-Lynes said with a smile. “So I agree with all parties.”
“Of course you do.” Lady Anna sounded icy but her nostrils were flared. Apparently she hadn’t expected to be slapped down quite so comprehensively. “How strange. I had thought you said something completely different to me. A man for all seasons, aren’t you, Jack?”
“Mr. Bouvier-Lynes is behaving with decorum at the dinner-table,” the Countess said. “Something that I should not have to tell my daughter to emulate.”
Lady Anna inhaled sharply. “My dear,” the Earl mumbled.
“This is my table,” the Countess said. Her voice was edged with something like defiance. “I think I may speak to my daughter as I choose. Now, let—”
“But she isn’t your daughter,” Haworth said silkily. “She’s my wife. I think some of you around this table are in danger of forgetting that, aren’t you? Anna certainly does, and I think it slips Jack’s mind too.”
The Countess’s mouth was a rigid line. She was looking ahead, not at Haworth. Jimmy stared at his plate. Pat tried to catch Bill’s eye. She couldn’t tell what was happening, but the atmosphere was thick as stew.
“Granted she is your wife,” the Earl said, with audible reluctance. “But she was our daughter first and my wife is entitled to speak to her—”
“No, she is not,” Haworth said. His tone was light, even pleasant, except for a coil of malice that hung around the words like cigarette smoke. “I don’t choose to have my wife insulted. Do I, Anna?”
“For God’s sake,” Jimmy said through his teeth, as though the words were forced out. “A few words in the heat of the moment. Let’s just forget it, shall we? We’re starting at seven tomorrow, gentlemen—which includes you, Pat; does everyone have things ready?”
Pat thought for a moment that Haworth was going to take umbrage. He stared at Jimmy with an unpleasant smile, then sat back and returned his attention to his food as Preston Keynes, conversational martyr, launched into a description of his shooting gear which had the sole merit of papering over everyone else’s silence.
PAT DIDN’T THINK SHE could bear retiring with the ladies. It took a strong moral effort and a mental reminder that she’d otherwise be leaving Fen with her future sister-in-law to force her to the drawing room, where she was rewarded with the announcement that Lady Anna had gone to bed with a headache.
“What a shame,” said Miss Singh, in a tone so flat that Pat had to turn away and examine a vase to recover her composure. “Are you all right, Aunt Mattie?”
“Of course,” the Countess said, and then, “No, not really. Perhaps you will all excuse me. I have the headache too. Victoria, please order tea.”
“I’ll come up with you,” Miss Singh said. “Miss Carruth can do the honours, I’m sure.”
Fen assured her she could, gave the Countess good wishes, rang the bell once they had gone, turned to Pat, and said, “Do you need something other than tea?”
“Definitely.”
“So do I. What does one drink after dinner that isn’t champagne? Or should we just have that?”
“It must be marvellous to be rich,” Pat said. “I don’t know if the Wittons keep champagne on ice at all times. To be honest, I usually have brandy with my brothers. Sherry?”
“Brandy sounds like a good idea. It’s medicinal, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s hardly—”
A footman entered. Fen said, “Oh, thank you,” with her usual smile: she was, Pat had noticed, always warmly polite to staff. “Could we have the brandy decanter and two glasses, please?”
“The...brandy, miss?”
“The brandy, yes.”
The man opened his mouth. Fen gave him a sparkling smile. He blinked, bowed, departed, and returned shortly with a tray.
“Thank you so much. That will be all, please shut the door,” Fen said, with decision, and sloshed brandy into a balloon glass as he left. “Here you are.”
Pat took the half-full glass she was handed, with some trepidation. “Good heavens, this is enough to stun a horse. Have you ever drunk this before?”
“No.” Fen took a sip, and made a gargoyle face. “Gah. I can see why not. Ack. Do you like this?”
“Yes, but one does have to get used to it. It is definitely medicinal, though.”
“Like chloroform.” Fen flopped onto the settle, very much to one side, despite her skirts. Pat took up the unspoken invitation and seated herself, a little self-consciously, by her. “My goodness. What an evening.”
“Wasn’t it just.”
“That might have been the worst meal since...the previous one. Good heavens.”
“What is going on here?” Pat demanded. “You must have some idea. I could swear Haworth was threatening the Countess. Why on earth is everyone tolerating him?”
“I have no idea. How could Jimmy let him speak to his mother like that?”
“How could he let Lady Anna speak to you like that?” Pat returned.
“Oh, but Mr. Merton was awfully nice,” Fen said with a glimmer of a smile. “I felt quite rescued.”
“He’s all right, but he oughtn’t have had to do it. For heaven’s sake. If this is how Haworth behaves with guests there, what on earth is he like en famille?”
“Actually, it would probably be better, or at least no worse,” Fen said. “He seems to like humiliating people, and I dare say that’s even jollier done in front of witnesses.”
“Good Lord. That is an observation.” Pat thought it through, with a decided and growing revulsion. “Yes, I think you’re right. No wonder Jimmy can’t stick the idea of him moving in for good. I still don’t understand why the Wittons put up with it.”
“I wonder if they know something will get worse if they argue with him.”
“That he’d take it out on Lady Anna, you mean?”
“Or their child.”
They both contemplated that for a moment, then Fen took a very deliberate sip of brandy, hardly wincing at all. “Do you think Miss Singh knows what’s going on?”
“She may. Let’s ask.” Fen snorted; Pat grinned. “Well, be dam—that is, let’s not bother with subtlety. This is the family you’re meant to be marrying into. Which—”
“Oh, don’t.”
“I’m sorry, but I think I have to.” No, you don’t! friendship shouted. She ignored it. “There’s something badly wrong here, and Jimmy isn’t dealing with it, and nor is the Earl. It seems to me Haworth has licence to be as malevolent as he chooses to his extended family. I think at the very least you ought to know why before you sign up to be his sister-in-law.”
“I know,” Fen said. “Only, I did try to catch Jimmy earlier and he said he was busy and tomorrow the shooting starts—”
“You can’t just drift into marriage because your fiancé doesn’t have time to talk to you.”
/> “I know.” Fen spoke more sharply than was her habit. “I have no intention of ignoring this. And whatever sort of brute Haworth is, tonight started because of Lady Anna being appallingly rude to me, if you recall, so even if there was nothing wrong with him, I’d want to know what on earth is wrong with her—”
Her eyes were glistening wet. “Don’t cry,” Pat said hopelessly.
“I’m not.” Fen pressed her lips together. A single tear overspilled her eye and slid down her cheek; she batted it away. “But the fact is when someone is so rude and hateful— I have never done anything to her! I’ve always tried to be polite even though nobody would receive her if she wasn’t an earl’s daughter. Why do they both hate me so much?”
It was a cry of real pain, and Pat grasped her hand without even thinking. “Oh, Fen, don’t let them worry you. He hates everyone. Like Iago, you know, who hates Othello because He hath a daily beauty in his life That makes me ugly. That’s Haworth all over, if you ask me. And as for Lady Anna—”
“Don’t tell me she’s jealous. I hate it when people say that about bullies, especially when it’s clearly not true.”
“I was going to say she’s probably very unhappy and taking it out on other people. I have no idea if she’s jealous of you, but if she isn’t, she ought to be. You’re ten times prettier, a hundred times nicer, and not married to that dreadful man.”
“I am not at all prettier,” Fen said, perking up. “She has a wonderful figure.”
“That’s in the eye of the beholder. And if the beholder likes good eyes and a lovely smile and the spirit of a delightful, happy person infusing them, not to mention a quite outstanding bosom—”
Pat stopped herself there, suddenly aware that the strong spirits on top of two glasses of wine had led her into indiscretion. Hard on the heels of that came the realisation that Fen had almost certainly thought of her words as a purely aesthetic compliment, the sort of thing ladies always said to one another, and wouldn’t have seen anything in it if Pat hadn’t cut herself off like that...
Fen was looking at her, eyes wide, lips quivering on the verge of a smile. Pat very much did not want her to laugh.
“Outstanding?” Fen shifted round, facing Pat, and moved her hands to cup the sides of her spectacular décolletage, giving it all a gentle, slightly jiggly boost upwards. “Would you say so?”
Pat couldn’t look away. Nobody could, from that expanse of creamy skin. “I... well, it’s certainly standing out. In that dress, I mean. Yes. Not—it’s not just the dress,” she added hastily. “It’s definitely the bosom.”
She tore her gaze away and up. Fen’s eyes were brimming with mischief and glee and something else, which looked almost like excitement, and Pat thought, I could kiss her. I could lean forward and—
She’s engaged to Jimmy. Your friend.
He doesn’t deserve her.
That’s not up to you.
No, it’s up to her.
The thoughts arrived in Pat’s head on one another’s heels. She wanted to kiss Fen more than anything in the world and couldn’t make herself do it. An engaged woman; a new friend she might repel, which would be worse than anything; and even if Fen wasn’t repelled in principle, why would someone like her even think about angular, mannish Pat with her straight figure in a plain dress?
Fen’s brows angled in a little frown. “Pat?”
“Yes?” Her voice sounded rather feeble.
“You say such awfully lovely things to me.” Fen’s eyes were on hers, searching her face. “And I don’t think I’ve ever said anything complimentary to you.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’m not fishing.” Were they, after all, merely engaging in girlish chatter of the sort Pat had never mastered but other women seemed to do by instinct?
“Of course you’re not,” Fen said. “You’ve never fished in your life except for trout, I expect. And I don’t think you think much of yourself, do you?”
Pat felt her face heat, with embarrassment or disappointment, she wasn’t sure which. “There’s not much to think of,” she muttered, gruffly.
Fen leaned forward, studying her face, then raised a brow. “Eye of the beholder,” she said, and kissed her.
It was a swift brush of lips on lips, which could conceivably have been a kiss between friends, because Fen didn’t repeat it, but she didn’t move her face back either. Pat froze, hopelessly wanting and locked in uncertainty, and then Fen kissed her again, still lightly but with much more deliberation, and Pat thought, with overwhelming relief, Right. Yes. This.
She lifted a hand, touching her fingertips to the soft, powdered skin of Fen’s rounded cheek. Fen gave a little whimpering noise that tingled through all sorts of places, and then they were kissing again, both of them this time, Pat’s lips moving by instinct, Fen’s warm and soft and tasting of brandy. Pat slid her hand down, meaning only to drop it to Fen’s hip, and discovered she’d miscalculated Fen’s bosom when she felt bare skin and a hard frill of lace under her fingers. Fen squeaked; Pat froze, ready to begin an apology, but Fen pressed her own hand over Pat’s, keeping it there, and she might in fact be dead now, or hallucinating, because this was heaven. She, plain Pat Merton, kissing the loveliest girl in the world, hand on her breast—
There were footsteps and male voices, outside the door.
Pat jerked away, too violently. Fen’s eyes widened in distress; then the footsteps approached, the door handle rattled, and within a fraction of a second her face slid into the mask of Delightful Young Lady, even as she swiped at Pat’s mouth with a firm thumb to remove powder or paint. She turned smoothly as the door opened, reaching for her brandy glass. “Oh, Mr. Merton, how nice! And Mr. Keynes. We were wondering if we’d be alone all evening.”
“Is Miss Singh not with you?” Mr. Keynes asked.
“She went upstairs with the Countess, who has the headache, as does Lady Anna.”
“I’m sure,” Bill said. “Are you drinking brandy?”
“Yes,” Pat said. She couldn’t recover with anything like Fen’s lightning speed—her lips still felt swollen, her body oddly sensitive considering Fen hadn’t even touched her—but she had her self-control more or less in place, plus a faith born of experience in her brother’s lack of observational skills. “Aren’t you?”
“I already had a post-prandial glass with the gentlemen.” Bill didn’t sound as though that had been the most enjoyable of evenings. “I’d ask what has brought on this debauchery, but...”
“Indeed. Where are our fellow guests?”
“Jack volunteered for a game of billiards with Haworth,” said Mr. Keynes. “Good fellow. Jimmy is with the Earl, I believe. Something to discuss.”
“I imagine he’ll be some time,” Bill said, with a bite in his voice. “Miss Carruth, I hope you’re all right?”
“I’m very well indeed,” Fen assured him. “Did you really go to see Ben-Hur?”
“I did, yes. The first week of June. When did you see it?” He fired the question at her like a prosecutor.
“Er...the week after that, I suppose?” Fen said, sounding not unreasonably startled. “It was early June, I—”
“And that was when you got engaged?”
“Jimmy proposed a few days later. That weekend. Why do you ask, Mr. Merton?”
“Oh, nothing. Wondering if Ben-Hur is the route to a woman’s heart, I suppose. I’d have thought he might have picked something a bit more romantic.”
“You’d have to ask Jimmy about his thought processes, I’m afraid.” Fen spoke with a smile, and Pat couldn’t hear any tension in her voice, but she was positive it was there. She wished Bill would shut up, or pick any other topic. She didn’t want to talk about Jimmy herself, so she couldn’t imagine what Fen felt, and the nerve-scraping atmosphere that seemed to attend every gathering in this atrocious party was back again.
Or perhaps that was just her. Perhaps that was how one felt, and deserved to feel, when one kissed a good friend’s fiancée.
“We
ll, it’s the first tomorrow,” Mr. Keynes said into the silence. “Start of the season, eh? I might turn in, get a good night’s sleep.”
“Good idea,” Bill said. “I imagine we’ll make a long day of it, if the weather holds. Best to take advantage, if there are storms coming.”
“Storms?” Fen repeated. “You mean, you might not be able to go out shooting?”
“Yes, we might all be confined to the house together,” Pat said. “That will be jolly.”
“Won’t it,” Fen said faintly. “Mr. Keynes is right: I shall go to bed. I need to gather my strength.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The day started magnificently, in large part because Maurice Haworth wasn’t there.
Pat had lain awake for a couple of very uncomfortable hours the previous night, torn between guilt and desire, with the memory of Fen a palpable presence on her lips and a tempting ache between her legs.
It wasn’t the first time she’d kissed, or been kissed. She and Louisa Maitland had been inseparable at school, a passionate friendship that had meant significantly more to Pat than to Louisa, because the latter had married her Hugo eighteen months ago. It was the way of things, she knew. Schoolgirl passions happened and were forgotten, everyone said so. Perhaps Pat should have grown out of them by now.
But she hadn’t, because Fen was taking up a very large space in her thoughts. It was desperately sweet, badly tempting, and wrong. Fen was engaged, for heaven’s sake, and Pat ought to keep her admiration to herself. Girls crushed on other girls; grown women left that sort of thing behind in favour of men. Or, at least, that was what she’d been told at school, though the headmistress’s speech had been so vague and allusive as to be near-incomprehensible. The gist of it all had seemed to be that she would discover an interest in men along with interests in all the other adult things that seemed so tedious, like painting, or playing the piano, or embroidery.
The throb at her core was a reminder that she hadn’t. She wondered uncomfortably if Maurice Haworth had somehow sensed that, in that comment about not being like other women; she wondered again why Fen had kissed her. If she’d had passionate friendships at school too; if she’d outgrown them; if she would soon marry, just like Louisa. If, if, if.
