Shining Threads

by Audrey Howard

  ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be sent an invitation,’ Charlie answered her absently, ‘though whether he accepts is an entirely different matter.’

  ‘Drew, Pearce and Tessa are frequent guests at the Hall so do you not think he might be persuaded to allow us to repay his hospitality? It would be only good manners on our part after all.’

  ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained, sweetheart.’

  ‘We might even make it into a fancy-dress affair, everyone masked until midnight. That might tempt him,’ she continued, for she was desperate to get into what she called ‘good’ society. If she did she was convinced she would be more . . . well, more . . . assured and less prone to this foolish – she knew it – belief that she was going to be, that they were all going to be, flung back to the old days when the Greenwoods had been nothing but lowly weavers. If she could just claim the patronage of the Squire and his lady, if she could drop it casually into the conversation of her afternoon callers that she had more than a second-hand acquaintance with the leading family of the Penfold Valley, how grand it would be and how special she, Laurel Greenwood, would feel.

  ‘It sounds delightful, Laurel,’ Drew yawned, then turned to look at his brother for he was well aware of his sister’s longing for social recognition in the gentrified class of Crossfold. He raised an enquiring eyebrow at Pearce asking if it might be possible for the two of them to slip away to some more congenial surroundings but Laurel intercepted the look which passed between them and her face became thoughtful.

  ‘Why don’t you put it to Nicky Longworth?’ she said after a moment. ‘The three of you have been thick as thieves for years.’

  ‘You mean ask Nick to ask his father and mother if they would kindly agree to attend my sister’s party?’

  ‘Oh, Drew, you know what I mean.’ She sighed tremulously. ‘Naturally you and Pearce will be there . . .’

  ‘Are you certain, my pet?’ Pearce grinned amiably.

  ‘I am positive, Pearce Greenwood, am I not, Charlie?’ The dreadfulness of their father’s collapse, though he had recovered now, still remained vivid to both young men and they became instantly restrained.

  Her husband laid down his newspaper and turned politely to her. He was always polite to his wife.

  ‘I beg your pardon, dear?’

  ‘I am begging your support, Charlie, in the matter of my Christmas party and I must insist that you compel Drew and Pearce to be there. Aunt Jenny . . . ’ She twisted anxiously in the direction of her aunt who glanced up reluctantly from some papers she was studying. Tessa watched her mother’s eyes turn from warm interest to cool appraisal of her brother’s wife. Her mother always looked like that when she was brought face to face with Laurel’s hunger for social advancement: cool, expressionless, disinterested as though the trivia with which Laurel concerned herself was mindlessly tedious.

  ‘. . . you do agree with me, don’t you?’ Laurel was saying, apparently unaware of her aunt’s slightly jaded opinion of her, and Tessa wondered at Laurel’s absorption with her children, her husband, her position in the society of Crossfold and the Penfold Valley to the complete exclusion of anything else.

  ‘Agree with what?’

  ‘That Drew and Pearce must be made to attend my party and to use their influence and advantage as friends of Nicky Longworth in persuading the Squire to accept my invitation to it.’

  ‘What party is that?’ Tessa felt a surge of interest for was there to be an argument to alleviate the boredom of the hours between dinner and bedtime?

  ‘Oh, Aunt Jenny, please listen. And you, Charlie. It will be Christmas in four weeks’ time and I would love to give you a Christmas party – something entirely different from the usual family affair, particularly as Father and Mother will be unable to attend. Mother tells me Father is settling down nicely in Italy but the journey back for Christmas so soon after arriving there is completely out of the question.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Laurel, but what is wrong with just having family for Christmas dinner?’ Jenny said suspiciously. ‘It is what we have done for the past twenty years and I see no reason to change. The children enjoy it and it would be a shame to have a party which excluded them.’

  ‘They could still have their party on Christmas Day but we could have ours on Christmas Eve. A Christmas Eve fancy-dress ball with masks . . . a champagne supper . . . decorate the salon. Heavens, it must be years since it was used. It would be when Father was re-elected in . . . when was it? Ten years ago. Oh, please, Charlie, you must say yes.’ She turned to him, her white skin flushed with a lovely rosy glow, her green eyes sparkling up into his, her whole body surging enchantingly towards him. Tessa saw him soften and lean somehow towards her, the movement at once conveying something which made her look away awkwardly and her cousins exchange knowing glances. A promise between them, from her to him, something she pledged to give him if he would back her up on this against Jenny who was bound to be awkward on general principle. Not that Charlie ever denied his wife anything. She had a way with her sometimes that was hard to resist, so soft and pretty and gentle, and Charlie viewed it fondly. Or did he just do it for the sake of peace? A peaceful man was Charlie, who hated discord and loved his wife.

  Tessa grimaced in embarrassment and turned away from them and at that moment both Drew and Pearce looked at her. To her amazed bewilderment, instead of grinning and pulling a face as they would normally do when confronted with one of Laurel’s little play-acting performances, they continued to stare at her as though they were hypnotised. Two pairs of vivid eyes held some strange expression in them, unreadable in the soft glow of the lamplight and she felt the discomfort rise up in her until it reached her heart which began to thump against her breastbone. What was the matter with the pair of them? Had she grown another head, or was it her hair which Emma had arranged with a complicated array of pins and a knot of bright ribbon in an attempt to disguise its short and springing growth? It had increased by an inch or so in the last month and could now be pushed behind her ears but it was still difficult to contrive a style which could in any way be called normal. She knew her mother sighed when she looked at her but then she had never been a young lady concerned with fashion, had she? She was too tall for one thing, where small and dainty was the vogue, with a long-limbed grace which was quite delightful had she but known it. She had broad shoulders, a bosom which had continued to bloom until it was quite splendid. She was dark with what she knew was a big mouth, when fair hair and rosebud lips were considered the thing. Tall, dark and well-rounded, then, with a comical hair style, but that did not give her cousins the right to stare at her as she had seen them stare at many a pretty girl. She was not a pretty girl: she was their cousin and companion of many years. To show her disapproval, first making sure no one was watching but them, she pulled a face and poked her tongue out at them.

  At once they folded into silent laughter, both of them spluttering into their after-dinner port and a great wave of relief washed over her as Pearce winked and inclined his head in Laurel’s direction, sighing dramatically.

  Drew, however, turned courteously to Laurel.

  ‘I think it is a splendid idea, big sister, and I for one am all in favour of it.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Drew. There you are, you see.’ She turned in triumph to Jenny. ‘Someone else is on my side.’

  Pearce, knowing instinctively that Drew had some reason, which no doubt would be revealed in a moment, for this turnabout, spoke up in his support.

  ‘I am with you, too, Laurel. It would make a splendid change to have a party to which one could invite one’s friends.’

  ‘Really! You mean it?’ Laurel was enchanted. ‘And you would sound out Nicky Longworth?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. I dare say all our acquaintances’ – meaning, of course, in the fox-hunting society of the Penfold Valley, which he knew quite well was what Laurel referred to – ‘would be delighted.’

  ‘It sounds daft to me,’ Jenny muttered irritably, turning b
ack to the report she was reading, ‘and if you think I’m going to dress up as Good Queen Bess or Mary Stuart, you can think again.’

  It was plain from Laurel’s face she cared not a jot or tittle what Jenny Harrison did, nor even if she attended her Christmas party at all. Important people would be there, people with whom she longed to mix, people of fashion and good breeding, considered to be gentry in the Penfold Valley. For most of her life she had been on the same footing as the local towers of trade and commerce, rich and powerful men, many of them, but it was the ‘ancient’ families of south Lancashire on whom she had her sights, those who were not merchants, shopkeepers, industrialists; whose money had come to them not by way of anything which could be bought and sold, but was inherited wealth. And the head of the local society, of course, was the high Tory Squire Longworth, the greatest landowner in the district. The only way the new railway route to Crossfold could effectively proceed was across the Squire’s vast estate and by allowing it he had become almost as wealthy as the Greenwoods themselves. The Squire had never accepted an invitation to any of the homes of the local millocracy but if Laurel Greenwood, through her younger brother’s connections with them, could coax him and his lady wife to hers, what a feather in her cap that would be. A triumph indeed for would she herself not have a foot in the door of Longworth Hall, and where, her excited thoughts wanted to know, might that lead her?

  ‘So it’s settled then?’ she asked breathlessly, her hand gripping Charlie’s arm in a passion of joy.

  ‘Indeed it is, if Aunt Jenny agrees.’ Drew sipped his port peaceably.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me, lad.’

  ‘Well, then, all we have to do now is to decide what we are to go as. I must admit I can quite see myself as a Regency buck: I would look well with a powdered wig. As for Tessa, what would suit her more than one of those delectable, high-waisted draperies of shimmering fabric I am told the Empress Josephine used to wear? I can quite see her . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, how splendid.’ Laurel was not really listening though both Jenny Harrison and Pearce Greenwood turned to look at Drew with narrowed, uncertain eyes. ‘What will you wear, Charlie?’

  Laurel’s delight was very appealing and Tessa saw Charlie’s hand go out to touch the back of her neck, resting there in a warm caress, and again, when she looked away, her eyes met those of both her cousins who had also seen it. Their expressions, so similar it was quite uncanny, were speaking of something which caused a strange but not unpleasant fluttering in her throat.

  ‘And what will you go as, Pearce?’ she heard herself say, surprised at the ordinary sound of her own voice.

  ‘I had not thought . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on, Pearce,’ Laurel was laughing now, animated and lovely, looking no more than nineteen again in her excitement. ‘How about Henry the Eighth?’

  ‘Please, Laurel . . .’ He tore his eyes away, reluctantly Tessa thought, from her own, his face a warm brown, his mouth beginning to curl in a familiar, whimsical smile, ‘I have hardly the figure to play Henry the Eighth. But we shall see, shall we not, brother, what the evening will bring?’ There was something in his voice which seemed to say he was not referring to costumes.

  She wore a dress of incredibly light chiffon, high-waisted with satin ribbons tied beneath her breasts, as Drew had described so accurately. The narrow skirt fell in straight folds to her sandalled feet and she floated all in white like a wisp of swansdown, the hem of the dress drifting and fluting about her naked ankles. Her arms and shoulders were bare though her mother insisted that the deep plunge of the neckline be draped to hide the swell of her smooth white breasts. Her hair was brushed up on her head, arranged with false pads and curls into a reasonable copy of a Grecian hairstyle, an intricate arrangement of glossy swathes and ringlets threaded through with white satin ribbon.

  ‘Who are you supposed to be then?’ her mother asked, quite amused now that she had ensured her daughter was as decorous as propriety demanded, though what Crossfold would make of it she could not imagine.

  ‘I am a Grecian lady of great renown.’

  ‘Dear Lord, who’s that then?’

  ‘Diana the huntress.’

  ‘Didn’t she have some kind of an animal?’

  Tessa’s face fell. ‘Yes, she did. Do you think I could take one of the dogs?’

  ‘Now Laurel would have something to say about that.’

  Tessa laughed, then turning abruptly, leaned down to kiss her mother’s cheek hurriedly. They were not given to demonstrations of affection, but she felt a great flow of it well up in her for this woman who, she was fully aware, had always gone against the code of her society in allowing her daughter so much freedom.

  ‘Thank you, Mother.’

  ‘For what, child?’

  ‘I don’t know, really, I just want you to know . . .’

  ‘I do know, Tessa. Now come on, lass, we don’t want Laurel to steal all the limelight. Not that she’s likely to, the minute those downstairs clap eyes on you.’

  Even now it was uncertain whether the Squire would attend. He had answered Laurel’s invitation with a brief note to say he had a prior commitment on that date but if he could manage it he and his family and Christmas guests might look in for half an hour to wish the Greenwood family seasonal greetings. It was almost in the style of a manorial lord bestowing a visit on a deserving tenant.

  Laurel was delirious with joy, almost insufferable in her pride. She was unaware that had it not been for Nicky Longworth who had reminded his father of the charm, the wit, the good looks and good manners of the three Greenwood youngsters who were often included in the Squire’s hunt, he would have thrown the invitation to the back of the fire where it belonged.

  They went downstairs together, mother and daughter. Jenny, who vowed she was far too old for dressing up, appeared serene and elegant in stark black velvet, relieved only by a magnificent diamond choker about her smooth neck and long earrings to match. She made the perfect contrast for her exquisitely, simply dressed daughter and the two young men who watched for her at the foot of the stairs were bound in her spell, caught in the shimmering magic of her.

  ‘Drew, Pearce, good evening,’ their aunt said to them, offering a cheek to each in turn, which they kissed without once taking their eyes from Tessa. ‘You both look very dashing. And what a cold evening it is. I do believe it might snow before morning. A white Christmas would be lovely for the children.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Where are Laurel and Charlie?’

  ‘In the drawing-room. The first guests are due to arrive any moment.’

  ‘Well . . .’ She glanced from one entranced face to the other and a small pang of misgiving struck her. She had seen that look on a man’s face many, many times, directed not only at her daughter as now, but at other women, including herself. It came in different guises from pure lust to the deep and endless love, strong, steadfast and beautiful to see, that her older brother felt for his wife, the mother of these two young men. And if it transpired that one or the other of her brother’s boys should make up with her girl she would have no objection. They were wild and reckless, hot tempered and arrogant, but good-natured withal. And her girl was strong, stronger than both of them, though that was not yet immediately apparent; she would tame and control, shape into a steady man, the one who would be her husband. It would be a good match, but with which one, for God’s sake? They were both looking at Tessa as though she was the Christmas fairy come to life.

  Jenny shook her head, smiling at her own absurdity, for they blew hot and cold, the pair of them, changing their minds as often as they changed their splendid jackets. Tessa looked superb tonight, older than her years and eternally feminine, and would not any man with a drop of red blood in his veins stare as these two were doing?

  ‘I’ll join them for a sherry, then,’ she said, wondering why she bothered, and left the three of them knowing that none had even noticed she had gone.

  The young men were dress
ed identically in tight black riding breeches and a white frilled shirt open at the neck. Their tall boots reached their knees and they wore gold earrings looped on thread about their ears and a red bandana most rakishly tilted over one eye. Their brown skin and white teeth added to their startlingly effective appearance, as did the mock cutlass they each wore at their belts. Laurel had decided against masks as she wanted none of the company to be in any doubt of the identity of the peerless guests she hoped to entertain this night.

  ‘Pirates or gypsies?’ Tessa asked impishly.

  ‘He’s a pirate and I’m a gypsy.’

  ‘How clever.’

  ‘We thought so, but not half as clever as you, little cousin,’ Drew stepped away from Pearce to stand in front of her as she moved down from the bottom tread of the stairs. Pearce frowned and fingered his cutlass, ready to plunge it into his brother’s back, but she stepped lightly between them, moving towards the towering Christmas tree which stood at the foot of the stairs, adjusting a strand of tinsel on its bough, allowing them to study her whilst she stood gracefully on tip-toe to reach the branch.

  ‘You have grown up since we saw you an hour ago,’ Pearce murmured, his eyes narrowed, ‘and in a most delightful way. Mind you, we have noticed for the past week or two that you have become quite the young lady, have we not, Drew?’

  ‘Indeed we have.’

  ‘And in what way is that, Pearce?’ she asked innocently, immensely pleased with her own womanhood which had come on her so suddenly and so splendidly. She smiled over her shoulder, scarcely troubled, as she had been on the night the party had been discussed, by their speculative glances, for did she not know what scamps they were? Charming scamps who would flatter any pretty woman, and she knew now, and was pleased with it, that she was pretty. And she was almost in her eighteenth year so why should she not try out this amusing pastime of mild flirtation, even if it was only with her cousins? They were exceedingly handsome, both of them, and quite willing, it appeared, to go along with the game.