Contrary Cousins

by Judith Harkness

  “That,” said Freddy, growing pale, “and some other things.“

  “You won’t tell me?”

  “No, Auntie.”

  “That bad?”

  “Yes, Auntie.”

  “Very well, then! But you must tell me why he broke his engagement to Theonia.”

  “Because,” replied Freddy, clenching his fist, “he discovered she had not above twenty thousand pounds—insufficient funds, apparently, to keep him in cravats.”

  “Then Clarence was right!” exclaimed Lady Pendleton. “He needs money!”

  “Apparently,” muttered Freddy.

  “And he supposes Antonia is very rich!” exclaimed her ladyship, striking her chin with her small gloved hand. “Aggravatin’! I should not have let it get about!”

  “No, Auntie” agreed Freddy, with a sardonic expression, “you oughtn’t to have!”

  “Especially as it isn’t so,” continued her ladyship. “Poor Antonia has nothin’ like twenty thousand pounds! Her papa is quite comfortable, of course—but then, in America, things aren’t done in the same way. Her fortune is not her income, don’t you know—probably it could not keep a mouse in cravats!”

  Freddy was surprised. “Really, Auntie? But I always thought they were all rich as Croesus!”

  “That’s Serena, dear—her papa neglected politics, and made his fortune in somethin’ else—tea or tobacco, I never can remember which. She is excessively well-off, however, now her papa is dead, and having no brothers or sisters. I never saw it, but they say she has a great place in Baltimore—quite a castle, actually.”

  “Really?” asked Freddy again. “Then it should be quite simple! We must give Blandford the idea that he is wasting his time. He ought to be after Serena, instead.”

  Cuffs gave his friend a dark look. “And trade bad for worse? I say, Freddy, thanks awfully!”

  “No, no, Cuffs—don’t you see? Serena would have more sense than to be smitten by him. You said yourself you had convinced her of Blandford’s lack of honor.”

  “I should like,” admitted Cuffs, “to see St. John and Blandford battling for her!”

  “Does rather tickle the funnybone to contemplate, does it not?” agreed Freddy. “What do you say, Aunt Winifred?”

  “What, dear?” Lady Winifred started out of a deep meditative state. She had been lost in thought during most of the preceding conversation. “Oh, yes! I like it exceedin’ly! How clever of you, dear.”

  “Still,” said Freddy, after a moment’s thought, “it does not solve all our problems. After all, even if we call Blandford’s bluff, we cannot assure that Antonia will stop liking him—nor that she’ll like me any better! And what about you, Cuffs? We cannot leave you in the lurch. So whatever is to be done about Miss Serena?”

  “I think,” said Lady Pendleton, just then rousing herself with a little shake, “that I have got it, Frederick!”

  “What, Auntie? What have you got?”

  “Oh, nothin’, my dear! Only leave it to me.” Turning brightly toward Mr. Lytton-Smythe, she gave him a keen stare, and demanded, “Sir, are you only flirtin’ with Serena, or do you actually love her? Is it deep, I mean?”

  “As deep,” replied Cuffs solemnly, “as the very ocean, my lady.”

  “Excellent! Then I suppose it can stand a wee bit of a test, can it not? I thought it might!” Lady Pendleton stood up to go, and the young gentlemen followed suit, gaping at her.

  “I suppose it would be too much to inquire what you intend doing, Auntie?” demanded Freddy.

  “Doin’? Why, nothin’ much—but I must be off, my dear. Pray lend me your arm down the stairs, for they are much steeper than what I am used to!”

  “While you, my lady,” murmured Cuffs to himself, watching the pair recede through the doorway, “are steeper than what I am used to!”

  Chapter XXI

  Belowstairs at Cadogan Place, preparations for Lady Pendleton’s dinner party had been going forward with a vengeance for some days. By Tuesday morning, they were in evidence even in the chief apartments of the mansion, where furniture had been moved to allow for the placement of tables and chairs sufficient to accommodate fifty guests, and the ballroom, shuttered up for a month, was aired and festooned with flowers and potted trees. Not to be intimidated by the prospect of feeding two Royal Dukes (for Clarence and Gloucester had both consented to come), Cook had ordered a mass of the finest hothouse fruits from the gardeners of Edgeworth. These, arriving early in the day in a cart laden down with roses, fern, orchids, and every imaginable variety of palm, collided with the butcher’s wagon, causing a chaotic scene outside the kitchen entrance. From his vantage point in the butler’s pantry, Bentley viewed the ensuing commotion with a disdainful eye. He had far too much to do to worry himself about a pair of bumbling drivers: let Cook attend to her fruits and meats, so long as the flowers were unharmed. With a slight feeling of relief, known to those perfectionists, for whom a bruised flower is as great a calamity as a broken vase, he saw the baskets of flora delivered intact a moment later. Having inspected them briefly, he swept down to the wine cellar to scold a footman for tipping the bottles as he carried them upstairs. In the drawing room, setting a crooked chair to rights, he encountered Lady Pendleton, in walking garb, a moment later.

  “Don’t need me, I suppose, Bentley?” she chirped.

  “Everything appears to be in order, my lady.”

  “Good! I like those orchids in the silver baskets, Bentley—with a bit of fern about the stems. And mind you have plenty of his lordship’s Dom Perignon brought up—His Grace is marvelous fond of it. I shall be back in an hour or two, if the young ladies are lookin’ for me.”

  “Very good, my lady,” replied Bentley, with a hint of reproof in the angle of his gaze.

  Lady Pendleton cocked her head to one side and clucked at him. “Tut, Bentley! It shall come out all right in the end, you’ll see! I’m off to Mr. Freddy in St. James Street, if anyone inquires.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  The butler watched his mistress’s retreating figure without much sign of feeling reassured, and returned to his inspection of the seating arrangements.

  Upstairs, the scent of rose and lilac was beginning to creep under doors and into corners. Languishing in her bath, Antonia wrinkled her nose in pleasure and stretched her limbs. It was a new experience to be able to submerge herself so fully and delightfully in warm water, for the porcelain bowls of home could barely contain one’s feet, much less every inch of limb. Such luxury was made all the more pleasant by the glimpse of cold gray sky to be seen through the window. Antonia glanced at the pile of huge Turkish towels warming before the fire, and yawned happily. Who would have thought the inauspicious beginning of their visit to London, should have turned, almost overnight, into something so wonderfully exciting and romantic? The idea that she might meet a gentleman so entirely everything she wished as Lord Blandford had certainly never dawned upon her when she set sail from New York in the summer. Then, Antonia’s only idea had been to see Europe, to visit the birthplace of her grandfather, and to try to heal the rift which had grown up between the two sides of her family since that gentleman’s renunciation of home and fortune. Now that first priority had dimmed before the more immediate—and far more enjoyable—business of falling in love.

  In love! Before, those words had meant nothing to her—save perhaps the laborious and long-suffering ministrations which she had observed between her parents. Her friends had spoken to her of sensations of weakness in the limbs, of flutterings in the stomach, of sudden warm sensations on the face when the loved one was glimpsed—Antonia had always laughed at such idiotic ideas! She had enjoyed the admiration of a great many young men, had flirted with all the zeal of a sportsman delighting in his sport, but had never, until these last few days, experienced gooseflesh, save on a chilly day. To think that practically the first Englishman she had set eyes upon had been the one to introduce all of these delights to her! Antonia, warmed by the bath and by
her thoughts, sank lower into the porcelain tub and reviewed the events—and the sensations—of the preceding evening.

  How she had loved seeing Blandford’s angry look when she had danced with any other man save he! How possessive he was growing! And how little she minded—nay, how much she delighted in every display of it! Dear Blandford—the phrase rolled across her tongue with a delightful ease. There was a wonderful balance to their intercourse: he, with his polished, gallant address, which hid, she well conceived, a nature as stubborn as her own, and as little given to timidity; she, with her saucy contradictions, which seemed to amuse and surprise him more every day. He had said how little he liked women—‘the common range of females’ as he put it—who could not find tongues in their heads for speech, nor thoughts in their minds. Their meetings were like a constant dueling of well-matched weapons, without either pain or bloodshed, but only the pleasure of the exercise. And yet Blandford held the edge, she knew, and that, above all else, had won her. How unlike he was to the young men she had known in Baltimore, all as eager as puppies, and as predictable. In Blandford there was nothing eager—he was, it seemed, so sure of his powers over her that leisure cost him nothing, and his often astonishing directness was a source of constant amazement—and amusement—to her. Not so long ago she had doubted his fascination for herself. That afternoon she had spent waiting for him before the gates to Hyde Park had rankled a bit; but now, for all his seeming negligence, she was quite sure of him. He never let her out of his sight at a ball or a rout, no matter how numerous the company, and his deft manner of getting through the crowd to her side, without seeming to try at all, was the guarantee of his devotion she had looked for.

  Their courtship had been so brief—less than a week since she had first danced with him at Almack’s—but it was lit from within with fire, and had sped along at breath-taking rate. For all that they had known each other but a few days, she was quite sure that the crescendo had come. Tonight, surely, he would make his offer? She was determined of it, and with a flush, Antonia envisioned the scene.

  Very often before she had been sought in marriage, but never had her reply been formed in advance upon her eager lips. To wait for this evening seemed a torture! And afterward—ah, afterward! She might laze about in baths whenever she pleased! She might do and say anything, a married woman! I shall be a marchioness, like Aunt Winifred, she thought with a little chuckle. Lord, won’t that be fun! And go to balls every evening—or, in any case, as often as I choose, and see my dear Blandford scowling at me, whenever I dance with another man! And Papa shall come to visit me in town, or else in the country—I suppose it is a castle—or else we shall both go home to America, and amaze everyone! And every year or two I shall take Papa upon a tour of the Continent, that he may enjoy his dreary old cathedrals and museums as much as he likes! And Rena shall come to stay as often as possible—Lord, wouldn’t it be fun if she was the Countess Cumberford?

  But this idea brought a crease to her pretty brow, pink with heat. I cannot abide the thought of her wed to that fat old what’s-it! Viscount Rollins, indeed! Rena, Rena—you are grown quite beyond everything! How complex her cousin had got, in truth—Antonia scarce knew her anymore! To think that the poor, plain girl she had pitied so shortly since had grown into such a rare, strange, creature. It was not only her looks, which were certainly vastly improved—but a new deep way of looking, which disturbed Antonia, who had always thought she knew her cousin quite thoroughly.

  “And if you marry Viscount Rollins, you know,” she said aloud, “then Freddy shall hate us both.”

  For some reason, inexplicable to the young woman, that idea stuck in her thoughts. Why should it trouble her? Why should the displeasure of a young man who, in thought, word and deed, displayed nothing graver than a desire to be liked, and to divert himself, give her pause? In truth, Freddy had done nothing to make her hate him, save for that one instance at the Opera, when he had led her into a lie, and laughed at her for it. That it was she, after all, and not Freddy, who had fibbed, did not make her like him any better. And afterward, when he had persisted in showing her the most doting face, and complimented her nearly into extinction, she had known he did it only to regain her favor, which only rankled the more. There was, besides, in his expression, always a trace of laughter, which she could not help suspecting was aimed at her. To be laughed at did not please her much, and to be laughed at for she knew not what pleased her less.

  Altogether her feelings toward her cousin were rather confused, and she could not, for the life of her, have told why pleasing him should even enter her mind. Well, and if it did, then she would push it out again! He was a most provoking fellow, altogether, and she would just ignore him! Turning her thoughts once more to the more pleasurable contemplation of Lord Blandford, who, though he jested her, did it without any insult, and whose admiration, when he was so much admired himself, did much to soothe her vanity, Antonia endeavored to forget the image of Freddy’s face, with its impudent smile.

  Antonia reviewed mentally what she should wear that evening—the lovely cerise silk, ornamented with pearls, which Madame Violet had made for her? Blandford had said he was exceeding fond of cerise. How lucky the dressmaker had been able to produce those new gowns for herself and Serena at such short notice! Antonia half suspected she had had them ready beforehand—as if she knew Serena would be back to change her mind! But she had been quite nasty, nonetheless, and it had taken a good deal of coaxing to get her to take on Serena as a client again. Antonia suspected a fat sum had changed hands—though she had yet to receive a bill for Madame’s labor.

  The cerise it would be, then. Blandford must find her irresistible tonight, for she was determined he should make his offer this evening. She quite liked the idea of being a married woman! And he had promised, what was more, to bring off an introduction to the Earl of Cumberford at once. Although, in truth, that matter seemed more trivial at every moment, since she had fallen in love. So much had changed in the few short days since she had been in England—in truth, it seemed to her almost that she was a changed creature! What a little idiot she had been—naive, ignorant, utterly without knowledge of the world. Now she felt quite a grown woman. No more did she harbor foolish ideas about reconciling her two families—what difference would it make, in any case? As soon as the Earl of Cumberford knew she was a marchioness she was quite sure he would make himself agreeable. One must fight fire, after all, with fire.

  “Celeste!” she called. “I am ready to come out now!”

  “Oui, mam’selle,” said the little maid, running in.

  In her own chamber, Serena was entertaining rather different thoughts. The scent of lilac and roses, no less evident to her, brought with it other reminiscences. A vague recollection of home, and nostalgia for the soft infusion of magnolia blossom, which so permeated the air there at certain times of the year, mingled with a sharper memory of the preceding days. She sat before her writing table, pen poised over paper, for a great while. At last, with a sudden shake of her head, she put it down.

  What on earth could she say to him, in any case? That the Viscount Rollins had so overwhelmed her attention since the evening at Lord Southington’s card party, that she could no more escape his hovering attendance than fly? That she had longed for a moment alone with him—than whom none could be dearer to her heart—so keenly that the loss of it had caused her three nights’ sleeplessness? That she had hoped at every moment to catch a glimpse of him, and when she had once or twice done so, had been made to feel so inconsequential by his cold stares that she dared not seek him out herself? And there, after all, lay the brunt of her present dilemna: for if Mr. Lytton-Smythe had only given her, by look or gesture, the merest hint of his desire to renew their former intimacy, she should have flown to his side, and this letter, so impossible to compose, would have been unnecessary. But he had not, and Serena, ever doubtful of her powers, took the lack to mean his loss of interest in herself.

  Whether it was so or not, she
could not absolutely decide, but then, neither could she find confidence enough to inquire. The dread thought—oh, so terrible!—that he might prove her fears all too reasonable, held her back. And so she had gone from hour to uneasy hour, hoping every moment for the reprieve which did not come. For Mr. Lytton-Smythe, if he did not hate her, was evidently too proud to tell her so.

  Serena rose, and walked about the room, catching a fleeting glimpse of her reflection in the glass as she passed by. What a strange creature looked back at her! One she felt she did not know, but whose unhappy eyes, above the elegant buff-colored bodice, were a certain omen that they were of the same unhappy temperament, though utterly opposed in every other way. How she wished, somehow, that she could be transformed back again to that drab female who had first set foot upon the banks of the Thames, without any greater expectation of diversion, than to view the great monuments of England—and, perhaps, to be friendly to some cousins she had never met! How unhappy she had been, to be sure; but, without any expectation of felicity, she was impossible to disappoint, while now—Every moment seemed to plunge her further into that anxious, miserable frame of mind which she had thought she would never know again.

  And those cousins—those vague, faceless cousins, about whom she had thought but fleetingly—were now becoming all too real in her mind. Poor Mr. Howard, whom she had liked from the first moment of seeing him, was miserable because of Antonia, and she herself was miserable because of his brother! The Earl, whom she had never met, became daily more dreaded, if only because now every mention of him came from Viscount Rollins, who was so eager to have them meet, that he discussed the idea daily, and at great length: ‘How they should get on!’ ‘How his father would be amazed to find his American relation so delightful a contrast to what he had feared!’ But then a dark scowl would come over the Viscount’s face, and he would mutter, “Bah! but what he shall say about your cousin, my dear Miss Powell, I hardly dare contemplate!”