Sheer Folly

by Carola Dunn

  Of course, Lucy’s hope of returning to the grotto without a flock of companions hadn’t a chance. Lady Beaufort expressed a preference for going there after tea rather than waiting until after dinner. Lucy promptly told Armitage that after dinner would suit her best—she had preparations to make, she said vaguely—and he agreed. Then Lady Beaufort said that of course Julia would go with her; she didn’t propose to walk that path in the dark without her daughter’s support. Armitage promptly changed his mind.

  “Lady Beaufort would like to see the hermit, I expect,” he said, while Lucy simmered. “I’ll go ahead and light the lamps, sir, shall I?”

  “Certainly, my boy. I’m sure Lord Rydal will help to carry your equipment, Lady Gerald.”

  “Me? What the deuce d’you think I am, a packhorse?”

  “A gentleman?” Pritchard hazarded, a glint in his eye.

  Rhino had no answer to that.

  “Daisy,” Lucy hissed, “you’ve got to come, too, and please do a better job this time of keeping everyone out of sight.”

  In the end everyone went except Mrs. Howell. Daisy was surprised that Lady Ottaline wanted to venture back to the scene of her accident, especially as Rhino was too laden for her to cling to him. He was too laden even to smoke. Somehow Pritchard seemed to have gained the upper hand.

  While Lady Beaufort was exclaiming in delight at the illuminated cascade, Lucy chivvied Rhino up the steps. Daisy couldn’t decide whether she ought to follow them to keep him out of Lucy’s way or stand guard at the bottom to stop Lady Ottaline chasing after him.

  Then Lady Beaufort asked Lady Ottaline how she had come to fall. “The path is perfectly adequate,” she said magisterially, “whatever shoes you were so ill-advised as to wear.”

  As Lady Ottaline replied, Daisy left them and hurried upwards. The moment Rhino reached the grotto he put down his burdens and lit a cigarette. “Enough is enough,” he snorted. “I can’t see why you don’t use a Brownie.”

  Lucy was speechless with fury. Ruthlessly sacrificing Julia’s comfort for the sake of Lucy’s blood-pressure, Daisy shooed Rhino back down. “Thank you, we’ll manage now. Come on, darling, before they all arrive.”

  The hermit came from the rear, robed but uncowled. “Let me give you a hand. You’ll have to explain exactly what you want me to do, Lady Gerald.”

  “I’m not absolutely certain myself yet. Do call me Lucy, won’t you?”

  “Sure. I’m Chuck back home, but Julia doesn’t like it, so let’s stick to Charles.”

  “And I’m Daisy, Charles. Lucy, I think I’d better go back and try to fend off the others.”

  From the top step, holding tight to the rail, Daisy saw Rhino go straight to Julia. The noise of the waterfall prevented Daisy’s hearing what was said, but it looked to her as if he interrupted whatever Julia was saying to her mother. To Daisy’s astonishment, Lady Beaufort turned to him and said something sharp enough to make him take a step backwards.

  Fortunately he was facing the stream—not that Daisy would have been averse to seeing him topple in again.

  Could it be, she wondered, that a few days in the same house as the rich Lord Rydal had made Lady Beaufort reassess his desirability as a son-in-law? For Julia’s sake, she hoped so.

  Rhino might conceivably be doing some reassessment, too. Lady Beaufort, the widow of a mere knight even if he had been a general, was not the first person at Appsworth to fail to kowtow before his hitherto invincible complacency. Julia persisted in refusing to marry him, yet at her bidding he did such menial tasks as fetching luggage from the station. Lucy ordered him about. Even Pritchard had made him back down.

  On the other hand, Rhino was so conceited, he probably managed to convert these incidents in his mind into further proof of his superiority to the rest of mankind.

  “Daisy!” Lucy called from the back of the grotto.

  Daisy moved away from the waterfall’s roar. “Yes?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? We’re ready to shoot, but I don’t want to start if everyone’s about to barge in. Are you on guard?”

  “Horatio on the bridge was nothing to me, darling,” Daisy said resolutely.

  “Well, don’t go plunging into the Tiber if they do overwhelm you, but do your best.” She disappeared behind Neptune.

  To carry out the parallel to Horatio, Daisy ought to stand at the most defensible point, the bottom of the steps. However, she couldn’t see herself barring Lady Beaufort and Pritchard from his grotto. She glanced around. A couple of basket chairs had been brought in and placed to one side, with a good view of Neptune and the spot where the river emerged from the rock through the gaping mouth of a sea serpent. They were reasonable people and, given a place to rest their bones, would certainly comply with a request not to go through to the second cave to disturb Lucy. So would Julia.

  Neither Rhino nor Lady Ottaline could by any stretch of the imagination be described as reasonable. But Rhino would stay with Julia and Lady Ottaline would cling to Rhino.

  Or so Daisy hoped.

  Julia arrived first, looking harried.

  “Hold up the monster till I have a chance to hide!” she begged.

  “Sorry, no can do. He’d only come looking for you, and Lucy and I are counting on you to keep him out here till she’s finished shooting Charles.”

  “Shooting—! Oh, shooting. But—”

  “A small sacrifice for the sake of Art,” Daisy urged, “with a capital A. Not to mention for my sake. Lucy will never forgive me if he ruins another picture, and I was counting on you to act as my barricade.”

  “Oh, all right. But if it makes him think I’m softening towards him, I may never forgive you.”

  Lady Beaufort reached the top of the steps, panting a little. Pritchard was close behind her.

  “You see, Lady Beaufort,” he said triumphantly, “I had chairs brought up, just as I promised. Do come and sit down.”

  “How kind!” Her ladyship beamed. “Julia, my love, you were quite right to insist on my seeing the grotto at night. It’s like something out of the Arabian Nights. Daisy, I hope you and Lucy will do it justice in your book.”

  “We’ll do our best, though I doubt that it’s possible. People will have to come and see for themselves.”

  “The more the merrier,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  “Well, I’ve seen it before.” Lady Ottaline arrived complaining. “I don’t know why you made me come, Rhino.”

  “Made you come! I tried to persuade you to stay behind. I don’t know why you insisted on tagging along.”

  “I thought I ought to face it,” she said bravely. “Don’t they say one should climb straight back on a horse after falling? But now . . . I’m afraid it’s too much for me. . . .” And she fainted gracefully into Rhino’s unwelcoming arms.

  He didn’t exactly drop her, but he deposited her none too gently on the cold stone floor and stepped away. “Mrs. Fletcher, could you—”

  “I don’t know the first thing about nursing,” Daisy said firmly, giving Julia a nudge. As far as she knew, Julia had no more expertise than she did, but while she was succouring Lady Ottaline, Rhino would be stymied.

  Julia moved forwards hesitantly.

  “I believe it’s a hysterical fit,” Lady Beaufort said in robust tones. “The most efficacious treatment to attempt is a slap on the face.”

  Lady Ottaline made a miraculous recovery. She sat up, saying, “Oh, where am I?”

  “There, just as I suspected,” said Lady Beaufort. “It’s an old-fashioned remedy, but it frequently works even before it’s applied.”

  The light was far from bright, but Daisy thought she saw Pritchard smother a grin. He came over and helped Lady Ottaline up, saying, “I’m so sorry your accident last night has had such a lasting ill-effect. I can’t abandon Lady Beaufort, but I’m sure Lord Rydal will be happy to support you back to the house. Sir Desmond should be back from the works by now. He’ll know what to do to make you comfortable.”

  Her husband’s
name brought a sour-lemon look to Lady Ottaline’s crimson lips. It was momentary, outweighed by the prospect of getting Rhino to herself.

  Rhino had no such counterbalance to his bile. “I don’t see why she can’t go and lie down for a bit on the hermit’s bed till she’s recovered,” he said mutinously.

  “No one may go through the inner cave till Lucy’s finished!” Daisy declared, taking up a militant position in front of Neptune.

  “I can’t believe my ears!” said Julia in a shocked voice. “Rhino, surely you aren’t so ungallant as to make a lady in distress walk alone through the night, especially along that dangerous pathway.”

  Rhino was neither capable of looking abashed, nor of giving in graciously, but he did give in.

  Just as he and Lady Ottaline departed, Lucy came through from the inner grotto. Looking after them, she asked, “Where are they going?”

  “Lord Rydal is escorting Lady Ottaline back to the house,” Pritchard told her.

  “Are you finished, darling?” Daisy asked. “That was quick.”

  “No, Julia! You can’t go through. He’ll move if he sees you and he has to stand absolutely still for another minute and a half. You must be mad to let Rhino take her back alone after she fell in last time. Got to go. If this works, it’s going to be ripping!” And she whisked back round Neptune.

  Pritchard frowned. “What does Lady Gerald mean? Surely she’s not suggesting Lord Rydal was responsible for Lady Ottaline’s fall? I thought they seemed—quite fond of each other.”

  “Say rather, on terms of considerable intimacy!” Lady Beaufort said severely.

  “In the recent past, perhaps.” Daisy was hesitant, Alec having frequently reminded her not to mistake speculation for fact. “We’ve wondered, Lucy and I, whether he hasn’t been trying to convince her it’s over.”

  “Well, I won’t have a guest pushed over,” Pritchard declared, “not into my stream. I’m going to keep an eye on them.”

  “I hardly think he’d do anything drastic when we all know he’s alone with her,” said Daisy, but Pritchard was already on his way to the front of the grotto.

  “Perhaps Lady Ottaline will push Rhino in,” Julia said hopefully, and followed Pritchard.

  “Oh dear,” said Lady Beaufort, “the earl won’t do for Julia, will he? I’m quite disillusioned. He’s not at all the sort of gentleman I wish her to marry.”

  “Gentleman he’s not,” said Daisy, “for all his wealth and rank.”

  “Which doesn’t mean I shall allow her to marry a penniless colonial nobody! So don’t go giving her any ideas, Daisy.”

  Daisy was baffled. Why on earth didn’t Julia tell her mother that while Armitage was not rich and titled, he was perfectly respectable and able to support her in better style than she had managed to survive these past several years? Surely his ridiculous qualms weren’t holding her back. The weather, forsooth!

  He must have told her to keep it secret. Could he be afraid Lady Beaufort might write to the University of Toronto and discover he didn’t exist—so to speak? Or he did exist, and was peacefully going about his business teaching history to a lot of young Canadians while an impostor paraded under his name in England?

  Pure speculation, Daisy reminded herself. All the same, something was rotten in the province of Ontario. She must get Julia alone and ask her what was going on.

  “He hasn’t done anything terrible.” Pritchard returned from the waterfall lookout looking cheerful. He was talking about Rhino, of course, not Armitage. “They’re round the bend,” he went on. “It’s much shallower there, so she couldn’t come to any harm if she did fall in. And I must be round the bend to let Lady Gerald make me think for a moment that the earl would do anything so wicked.”

  FIFTEEN

  In spite of Pritchard’s half-joking words, Daisy noticed that on the way back to the house he kept casting anxious glances at the stream. Nothing untoward was visible. When they reached the house, Barker informed them that the Swindon party had returned and everyone had gone up to dress for dinner.

  “Including Lady Ottaline?” Pritchard asked.

  “Certainly, sir. I myself saw Lady Ottaline go upstairs with Sir Desmond.” The butler addressed his employer in indulgent, slightly condescending, almost fatherly tones, although he looked twenty years younger than Pritchard. Daisy realised she’d heard him speak the same way before.

  “As though he used to work for an irascible duke,” she said later to Lucy, when she went to her room to see if she was ready to go down. “And Pritchard is much pleasanter to work for, besides paying much better, but nonetheless the duke was infinitely superior.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Daisy, of course he was. If he exists outside your imagination. What a lot of rot you talk! What does it matter?”

  “I was thinking I might interview Barker for my Servant Problem article.”

  “You’ve been working on that for three years.”

  “You never know, I might finish it before servants go the way of the dinosaurs. Are you ready at last? Let’s go. That frock is much more suitable than last night’s.”

  “Well, I can’t compete with Julia, whatever I wear, and to try to outshine Lady Ottaline would be pathetic.”

  “The poor thing’s rather pathetic all round, isn’t she?”

  “Darling, if I ever get like that, you will stop me, won’t you?” Lucy studied her face in the looking glass. “I’m not too old and too married to care about fashion, am I? Like all those frightful fat matrons who buy the latest frock from Paris straight off the mannequin, expecting to look like her?”

  “It’ll be a few years yet, darling, and no one could call you fat. I’ll tell you when the moment comes, but I expect you won’t want to hear. Come on. A single dab of powder more would be gilding the lily.”

  Everyone except Lady Ottaline was already in the drawing room. Howell gave Daisy a glass of Cinzano and soda and she glanced around.

  Sir Desmond, bland and sleek as ever, was talking to Pritchard. Lady Beaufort had captured Armitage and Carlin and was listening to the former with an assessing look in her eye. Rhino shared a sofa with Julia—how could she have been so careless as to sit down on an otherwise unoccupied sofa?—and was holding forth. Julia’s expression of polite interest suggested she was enduring excruciating boredom. Mrs. Howell, in a chair on Rhino’s other side, received no share of his attention. She looked disgruntled. She ought, in Daisy’s opinion, to be grateful.

  Howell handed Lucy her gin and It. “I hear you had a successful photography session in the grotto,” he said.

  “I hope so,” Lucy said cautiously. “One can never be sure till the plates are developed.”

  They went on to technical talk. Daisy drifted over to Pritchard and Sir Desmond.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting business,” she said.

  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” Pritchard assured her.

  “Oh dear, I’m afraid it’s work I wanted to talk to you about, but mine, of course, not yours.”

  “How is your ‘work’ going?” Sir Desmond’s eyebrows put jocular quotation marks round work, making an otherwise innocuous question patronising.

  Daisy considered giving him one of her mother’s grande-dame looks, but she decided he wasn’t the sort to be impressed. Or even to notice. “Very well indeed, thank you. Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Armitage have been extremely helpful. Mr. Pritchard, I wondered whether you’d be so kind as to give me a tour of the house tomorrow, if you don’t have to go to Swindon. Mr. Armitage told me you’re a wonderful guide.”

  “I’d be happy to, my dear. Owen will complete your business, Sir Desmond. I have every faith in his abilities. You won’t really need me there. Excuse me, here’s Lady Ottaline. I’ll just make sure she gets her cocktail as Owen’s busy discussing photography with Lady Gerald.”

  Watching him go, Sir Desmond swigged down half a tumbler of whisky. “There goes a happy man.” He sounded more cynical than admiring or envious. “Wealt
h, no wife, no children, no worries.”

  Daisy ignored most of this and said, “Have you children, Sir Desmond?”

  “I do, Mrs. Fletcher. For my sins, I do. A son who believes he’s a poet, and a daughter addicted to good works.”

  Daisy wondered just how much whisky he’d put away. To her relief, Barker came in and announced that dinner was served.

  In the hall, he discreetly beckoned her aside. “A telephone message, madam, from the local exchange. Mr. Fletcher wired to say he and Lord Gerald Bincombe will arrive tomorrow afternoon. About four o’clock, he hopes.”

  “Spiffing! Have you told Lucy—Lady Gerald? Mr. Pritchard? Mrs. Howell?”

  “Since the message was for you, madam, I have not.”

  “I hope Mr. Pritchard informed Mrs. Howell that he’d invited them.”

  “I believe so, madam. The housekeeper was aware that further guests might arrive.”

  “Thank you, Barker.” Daisy was much relieved. She had no faith whatever that Mrs. Howell would welcome unexpected guests, even if one of them came with a title attached. “Please pass the word to Mrs. Howell and the housekeeper that they’re definitely coming.”

  “Certainly, madam.”

  Daisy caught up with Lucy. “A message from Alec, darling. They’re coming.”

  “Gerald’s coming with Alec?” Lucy’s face lit up at Daisy’s nod. “Oh, good.”

  Seated on Pritchard’s left, opposite Lady Beaufort, Daisy told him at once about Alec and Gerald’s proposed arrival. He was delighted.

  So was Lady Beaufort. “I’m looking forward to meeting your husband, Daisy.”

  Blast! Daisy thought. She remembered Lucy saying the Beauforts knew Alec was a copper, and she hadn’t asked Julia to suggest to her mother that the fact was best kept quiet. In her experience people, however honest, tended to act oddly if they knew there was a policeman in the house, however off-duty. She took a spoonful of soup, trying to decide how to carry it off.

  But Lady Beaufort was a woman of discretion. She said to Pritchard, “We met Lord Gerald in London. I know you will like him. He plays rugger, and you Welshmen are all devotees of rugger, aren’t you?”