Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1

by Bingham, Charlotte

  ‘My family look on me as being too bookish,’ Poppy admitted, with ruthless candour. ‘In fact my father’s forever saying what with my looks and my reading I’m bound to end up living in someone’s attic, a spinster with a parrot. It wouldn’t actually be a parrot – it’d be a dog, actually, in my case. And as long as I had a dog I really don’t think I’d mind.’

  Poppy carefully replaced her glasses, hooking the wire ends securely behind her ears before staring up at the man staring down at her, running out of idle chat and now waiting for him to finish smoking his cigarette. She knew that the only reason he had taken a turn with her on the floor was so that he could quickly steer her on to a balcony in order to smoke a cigarette. It had happened to her several times during the Season, various young men taking her out on to the balcony just so they could have a smoke. She really didn’t mind that much either. At least it made a change from sitting on a gold chair, like some sort of abandoned dolly.

  ‘Isn’t that the last waltz?’ she wondered, barely able to contain her sense of relief.

  ‘I think it is,’ he replied, stubbing his cigarette out underfoot. ‘I do so hope we meet again, and soon. Are you going to be at the Jardines’ masked ball tomorrow night by any chance?’

  ‘Afraid so,’ Poppy nodded. ‘That’s the trouble with the Season, isn’t it? No sort of escaping it. Imagine what fun I’m going to have – in a mask and spectacles.’

  To her surprise this made her escort laugh out loud and genuinely so. He stopped, turned and looked at her, and this time she saw the smile on his face was much broader although not a whole lot warmer.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said, still smiling at her. ‘Wear your spectacles outside your mask, eh? Put them on the outside – that’ll really cause a stir – and keep the first five dances for me.’

  Poppy nodded, the way she normally nodded whenever someone was wishing her a half-hearted goodnight plus the usual litany of excuses, only to frown suddenly when she realised what it was that had just been said to her.

  ‘I don’t know whether I dare,’ she admitted, pulling a shy face.

  ‘Be a sport,’ Basil pressed. ‘Liven things up considerably. And keep the first five dances for me.’

  That was the bit Poppy really remembered as later she clambered wearily into her bed, patting the counterpane on one side in order to encourage her dachshund, George, to jump up – smuggled upstairs as always once she knew her parents were asleep: the fact that this tall, handsome and considerably older stranger had seemingly asked her to save a number of dances just for him. Whether or not he was serious she did not know, but at this moment in time neither did she care. What was enjoyable was the idea that a good-looking man should want to dance with her in the first place. It would be ridiculous not to admit such a thing. And now, of course, it appeared that he wanted to have several of the first dances at the Jardines’ ball with her, and her alone. Fondling the silken ears of her beloved little dog, she sighed, and for once in her young life went happily to sleep, relishing the possibility, although not quite believing in it.

  Yet the odd thing was that no sooner had the band struck up for the first dance at the Jardines’ masked ball the following evening than Poppy did indeed find the tall, elegant figure of Basil Tetherington at her side, requesting the pleasure. He was wearing a Venetian mask, and dressed in the dress coat of the Blues and Royals, a superbly tailored frock coat that made him look as dashing as was perfectly possible. Poppy had waited until she had arrived at the Jardines’ grand house before slipping away as promised to put her spectacles on over her own Columbine mask, and now she popped up, peering up at him behind her double disguise. Basil burst into genuine laughter, and whisked her on to the dance floor and into an immaculately led quickstep.

  His dancing actually took Poppy’s breath away. Oddly enough, given her deep dislike of the social round, Poppy herself was a very good dancer. She had been taught at home in a sketchy fashion by a horse-mad woman who used the money paid to her to subsidise her hunting. But after she had finally given up, Poppy had devoted many long and otherwise dreary winter afternoons to chalking out the steps from a Victor Sylvester dancing manual on the attic floor and learning all the moves from dance records played on her old nanny’s gramophone. She discovered that, having a seemingly natural sense of rhythm, ballroom dancing came naturally to her, and in no time at all she was waltzing, tangoing, two-stepping and foxtrotting happily round the huge attic room with her enormous teddy bear as her partner.

  No one had ever danced with her the way that Basil Tetherington danced with her, not even her teddy bear whom she had once considered to be the absolutely perfect partner. Basil seemed more than happy to dance with Poppy in return, for not only did he have the first five dances with her as promised, he asked for the next five as well, before Poppy’s mother interrupted, and dragged him off to dance with her. In spite of this, Basil promptly returned after only one dance and led Poppy back to the dance floor as if he had not been away for a minute.

  ‘I rather think I’m going to have to marry you, Miss Beaumont,’ he said to her a week later as they were walking in the sunshine in Green Park with their dogs. The day was fine and warm, and for once Poppy felt as light-hearted as the scene in front of them, as well she might, since the Season was at long last over and now she could look forward to returning to the country full time, and forgetting all about the trivia that had been obsessing the rest of London for the past three months.

  But now the man strolling beside her had well and truly thrown a spanner in the works. She glanced round at him quickly and shyly to see if he was smiling that slow, teasing smile he often delighted in tormenting her with, as once again he waited to see if she would rise to his bait. To her supreme consternation she found he was looking at her with perfect seriousness, having now walked in front of her, stopped, and turned as if to bar her way until she answered him.

  ‘You’ve gone very silent, Miss Beaumont,’ he observed. ‘Did you not hear what I said?’

  ‘No – I mean yes!’ Poppy corrected herself hurriedly. ‘I mean yes – yes of course I heard what you said. At least I think I heard what you said. You did say – didn’t you—’

  ‘Either you heard me, Poppy, or you didn’t hear me. Make up your dear little mind. If you heard me, as you say you heard me, then you heard what I said, so there’s no need to remind yourself. Or for me to remind you.’

  ‘Well,’ Poppy returned, taking a deep breath. ‘If you meant it – then I don’t think so, Basil – not really. I don’t think that’s an on idea at all. Do you? Really?’

  Basil just laughed and shook his head, before turning once more and walking on beside her.

  ‘I wonder why it’s not on?’ he remarked. ‘I wonder why you think my idea’s not an on idea at all?’

  ‘Well.’ Poppy began again. ‘Because I don’t, I suppose. We might like dancing, and that sort of thing – and walking our dogs in the Park. But I don’t think that necessarily makes all that good a reason for us to get married. Or even to think about getting married.’

  ‘Most of the married couples I know don’t even have that much in common,’ Basil assured her. ‘And actually, if you ask me, any two people who enjoy dancing as much as we do, and enjoy walking our dogs, have a duty to get married, particularly since there is a war coming.’

  ‘I suppose that might be true. But you see, that’s it, really, with this war about to start, and what with my being American – and we don’t look as if we’re going to be joining it – that sort of – you know – that sort of cancels all that out, because I shall probably go back to the States. At least that’s what my parents seem to think. Not that I’ve ever spent much time in America, my father being in the diplomatic, and all that. You know how it is. What are you laughing at now?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were American!’ he said, stopping once again in front of her to look her full in the face. ‘I had simply no idea! American and an only child,’ he finished, looking thou
ghtful.

  ‘It’s my parents who are American really. I’m just – I mean, I’ve spent just about all my life in Europe, and the last few years here, so I’m really a European-American. Just as one of my friends is a Sino-American, having spent most of her life in the East. It happens in the diplomatic, the children sort of take on the shade of the country where they spend most time.’

  ‘So that makes you—’

  ‘European born, of American parents,’ Poppy interposed. ‘At least that’s what my father always insists on saying. I was actually born in the embassy in Rome.’ She looked at him, trying to read his expression. ‘Has that put you off? I mean has it made you change your mind?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Winston Churchill is half American, isn’t he?’

  ‘Families like the Churchills, they all married American girls for their money!’ Basil teased, but this time with a perfectly straight face, the only indication of his humour being one raised eyebrow.

  ‘There are worse things to marry people for, I suppose,’ Poppy replied candidly, after a short pause. ‘I mean, people who marry people just for their looks – I don’t think those marriages last longer than the looks, do they?’

  Basil said nothing. He just eyed her, put his head on one side, raised his eyebrows again but this time quizzically, nodded to himself then cleared his throat.

  ‘Don’t you want to get married?’

  ‘I have never even thought about such a thing.’

  ‘I take it you’re refusing my offer?’

  ‘No,’ Poppy said evenly. ‘No, I’m not doing anything – one way or the other. But as far as wanting to get married – well no. I suppose the answer’s no. Married people don’t seem to be interested in anything except being married to each other, which I always find rather dull.’

  ‘I’m not like that,’ Basil told her quietly. ‘Not like that at all.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not,’ Poppy returned hastily, thinking she had offended him. ‘I wasn’t thinking of you, really. I was thinking of some of my parents’ friends – who seem to be intent on doing nothing except bore each other to death.’

  ‘So if I got you to understand that when I asked you earlier – I was being perfectly serious?’

  ‘No, no, I realise that,’ Poppy agreed hastily, feeling as if she was already in some sort of emotional cul de sac.

  ‘I don’t want to be turned down, Poppy. I don’t want to be made a fool of. That is not something that a man like me could tolerate.’

  ‘No,’ Poppy agreed quietly, suddenly worried by the change in his tone, but also finding herself oddly excited by it, by the sudden menace in his voice, and the implicit threat of passion and power that went with it. ‘No, I see that, Basil. Of course.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be turned down by you, and then have everyone hear about it.’ He smiled slowly at her. ‘You do see that – Poppy?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think I do, Basil.’

  ‘Good.’

  He took one of her hands. Poppy hoped it was still dry and not hot and damp from the panic she was feeling inside. His eyes held hers determinedly, but she found it hard to maintain the look, despite knowing that if she didn’t he would realise she wasn’t sincere, that she didn’t care about him and was indeed about to turn down his proposal. So in order to try to hide her confusion, she did what she had seen an actress do in a film recently. She tilted her head back and smiled.

  ‘So, Miss Poppy Beaumont, once again, will you marry me?’

  Poppy leaned forward slightly, frowning, anxious to check once more on Basil’s expression.

  ‘Are you really serious? I mean, you are serious, are you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be? I think you’d be ideal for me. You love dogs and you hate the social life, while you appear to quite like me too. Am I not right?’

  Poppy stared at him all the while.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied slowly, adjusting her glasses with the tip of one finger, pushing them back up on to the bridge of her nose yet again. ‘But then I have to say I also quite like London and Paris – and Rome. I have to say I actually like going to art galleries, and looking at people too. If that doesn’t sound too – well – strange. I really don’t think I could take being in the country sort of – you know – full stop. Burying oneself in the country does sound rather like being a bit dead.’

  Once again, Basil simply raised one perfectly formed eyebrow and smiled. Had Poppy later been asked to describe the smile, possibly she would have settled on ‘sardonic’. But at the actual moment, she found she was just happy to see him keep smiling at her. Very few men in her existence had smiled at her even for the shortest of spells, and her father only ever out of sarcasm at his own jokes about her.

  ‘I feel quite the same,’ Basil replied finally. ‘Everyone does – that is everyone who is honest does. So, if you have no further objection?’

  Poppy frowned, wanting to interrupt, to wonder exactly to what she was meant to be objecting.

  ‘I shall call on your father later today at his convenience and address myself to him,’ Basil continued, no longer smiling, and quite failing to add that he had already made an appointment with Spencer Beaumont, having foreseen no possibility of having a proposal from someone like himself turned down by Miss Poppy Beaumont. ‘One more thing, perhaps,’ he added, a smile softening his features once more, only this time the smile was the sort of shy grin young boys often give on their first date. ‘Do you think you could possibly find it in yourself to love me?’

  This disconcerted Poppy, as it was meant to do. She found it faintly ridiculous to be asked by someone as dashing, handsome and socially desirable as Basil Tetherington if someone as plain, awkward and socially undesirable as she could possibly find it in herself to love him. However, she also found herself short of a suitable answer.

  ‘Of course,’ she muttered, aware that she was blushing. ‘I’m quite sure I could – you know. Whatever you said.’

  ‘I have a feeling that you love me a little already,’ Basil added carefully, brushing one of her cheeks with the back of his hand. ‘Am I right? Or am I wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Poppy replied in haste. ‘Sorry – that must sound a little rude – and I didn’t mean it to. It’s just – well. It’s just that everything’s galloping along headfast. I can’t quite keep up. Sorry.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ Basil said, with what Poppy found herself considering a certain smugness, but then he was older. ‘How about if we go and choose a ring? Would that make you feel a little better?’

  Now that she felt she was being patronised, Poppy also felt resentful. One of the few things she had enjoyed during the Season was her private amusement at how the other debutantes seemed only interested in procuring, by fair means or foul, the inevitable engagement ring. If she had a shred of honesty and integrity left, Poppy decided, she should cut and run, which she was in fact just about to do when she remembered her father’s conviction that she would die an old maid, a prediction which, now she came to examine it as compared with living a life of luxury in the fourth Baron Tetherington’s stately home, had all of a sudden lost all its appeal. So, considering life could surely only get better in a marriage to such an apparently eligible and socially enviable man as the one currently holding her hand in his and kissing her fingertips, Poppy smiled, withdrew her hand from his to slip it through one of his arms, and happily agreed to allow herself to be escorted on the proposed shopping trip down Old Bond Street.

  ‘Excellent,’ Basil murmured, walking her slowly out of Green Park. ‘Now shall we buy something very vulgar, or just plain ostentatious?’

  ‘I’d say plain ostentatious will be just fine,’ Poppy agreed, feeling suddenly and ridiculously happy.

  ‘It’s rather large, isn’t it?’ Mary Jane wondered, leaning across the lunch table to take a closer look at the ring.

  ‘He likes emeralds, and diamonds,’ Poppy explained. ‘And he says it will go with his emerald
and diamond cuff links. He says we can be vulgar and flash together. In fact he says those are to be our nicknames.’

  ‘Vulgar and Flash?’ Mary Jane sniffed. ‘But someone like Basil Tetherington can’t be vulgar or flash, surely? He’s the very opposite of flash.’

  ‘It was meant as a joke, Mary Jane. That’s his English sense of humour.’ Poppy laughed as if to show she was well in on the jest, but Mary Jane remained solemn, choosing instead to stare in defiant wonder at the plain, bespectacled girl sitting opposite her who had ended what had been an otherwise disastrous Season for herself not only engaged, but engaged to what Mary Jane’s own mother called an ‘extremely titled gentleman’.

  Like everyone else in her circle, Mary Jane found it utterly unbelievable that the plain little American girl at whom they had secretly laughed behind their fans all summer should have collared one of the catches of the Season. She gave a deep sigh of discontent, returned Poppy her beringed hand, and shook her head in almost open disbelief.

  ‘You can’t have believed it when he proposed,’ Mary Jane said, barely concealing her spite. ‘Surely.’

  ‘I know,’ Poppy agreed. ‘I was taken aback a bit, as you may imagine. You know, me of all people.’

  ‘You must have thought it another of his jokes.’

  ‘Why, Mary Jane? Why would I think that?’

  Poppy smiled innocently at her friend. She knew exactly what she meant, of course, but teasing Mary Jane was a lot easier than falling into self-examination as to why exactly Basil Tetherington had in fact chosen her out of all the debutantes to be the future Lady Tetherington. It was the sort of reflection into which, in actual fact, Poppy had found herself constantly falling since the day of her engagement.

  ‘What I meant was did you really think he was going to propose?’ Mary Jane replied, adjusting her last remark. ‘And when he did, did you think he was serious? Because you said a moment ago—’