“I haven’t a thing to wear,” she confessed as Marion stood.
“You needn’t wear a thing,” he answered and then flustered while they all choked on his mistake. “Certainly not that. I mean you needn’t wear anything in particular.” He sighed and his teacup trembled as he replaced it on the coffee table. Mrs. Weller tried to tell him they understood, but Theo says that only made it a hundred times worse. Finally, he bustled her out to his considerably humbler car and tucked her neatly into the warm interior. For a moment the tires groaned against the snow, but once they got onto the road, everything started working right.
“You certainly surprised me,” she told him, silently cursing herself for forgetting her navy floral chiffon she’d stuck on the back of the bathroom door.
“Then we are even,” he replied.
Theo fingered her curls self-consciously. “You mean the duster and the work clothes?”
“Not at all.” Marion pointed the car out of town and merged onto the lane that leads to Feldstone. They have much nicer cafes than Kepsdale. “I mean you looked so smashing at the dance. Like a picture star off the screen. If screens could show how blue your eyes are.”
“And today I disappointed you by appearing so domestic?” she offered, trying to finish off his thought. She thought it would be less painful if she said it first instead of hearing it from him.
Marion laughed. “Hardly! Yes, I was surprised to see you transformed from the goddess back to Cinderella—”
“That’s brash!” she protested. Even if he is dashing enough to kill a person he has no right to insult a girl he’s treating to dinner.
“Let me finish,” he insisted with a smile. “I was surprised I liked you just as well playing a maid as the mysterious lady.”
Theo was still hot with indignation, though she wasn’t sure why. She said she found it insulting he felt so free to compliment her.
“Really, you’ve got me all tongue-tied and blustered,” he said with a smirk, even though he had no shortage of words so far. That was his undoing. If he thought he could patronise my Theodora he had another think coming.
“Unfortunately I, on the other hand, find you much more charming by moonlight,” she shot back. How I wish I could have seen his face! I begged her to describe it but she was staring out her window and refused to look at him. “You play the wise-cracking drunkard to perfection. By daylight you’re a pompous arse.”
“Now that’s too hard. I was only saying—”
“Whatever you like because you have a face like some fallen god. Perhaps others have let you get away with it, but unfortunately for you, England is full of handsome boys who don’t make fun of their dates.”
“You’re wrong there. On all accounts. And I will educate you on each point someday, but I must address the most important one first. Who are you to lecture me on looking like a god when you are built like a siren? Who is casting stones at glass houses?”
“Sirens have fish tails.” At last she turned to him laughing, forgetting her wounded pride because it was quite a compliment.
“I’ve never thought fast on my feet. What’s the right comparison? You know what I meant.” He smiled in relief at the sound of her happiness, their truce hanging in the warm air between them.
“Nevermind what you meant. Let’s be clear on one thing. I will not be falling in love with you,” she teased, “simply because I can tell you are the kind to love a girl and leave her heartbroken. I’d love a monstrously ugly man before I settled for that. Well, relatively ugly, at least.”
“Then I wonder if dinner and dancing is a waste after all…what views you have!” The car had climbed all the way to the top of the road where the hills fall away into the valleys that hold the virgin snow like bowls of flour. But the way he said it and looked at her at the very last moment she wasn’t entirely sure if he meant the scenery or her face or her philosophies of life. She felt suddenly proud of all of them in a new way.
“What views you have,” she replied, deciding to pretend he meant only the scenery. “Your lot owns much of that side of it,” she reminded him as she pointed toward Kepsdale.
“Not an inch. My father manages it and he’ll hand it to my brother to manage it and we are nothing more than glorified landlords, taking care of land that owns us more than we own it.”
“Remind me to feel very sorry for you later. And I can assure you the dinner and dancing will not be a waste. Even though I will not fall in love with you, you will remember a dance with me until your last dying day. What a sweet memory it will be when you are a lame, old pensioner.” While he laughed, she caught a view of my chimney jutting out of the snow like a brown arm waving for help. “That’s Eve’s place,” she said, pointing. “You remember her. Let’s stop in.” She says it was impulse, but I have my doubts. “If you take the road back a mile we can make our way down there.”
“Three’s a bit of a crowd,” Marion pointed out, even as he slowed down. “I thought you were going to give me a night I’d remember to my dying day.” His car crushed slowly into the wet snow of the bank as he turned the long thing around on the narrow road. “And I’ve never found girls giggling together in the loo very memorable.”
“Be a sport,” Theo begged. “Eve is all alone down there and we could save her life. She is teetering on the brink of accepting a proposal from the dullest muck scraper in the district.”
(I was so angry when she told me that part I refused to listen to the rest of the story until she apologised and gave me her purple brooch she never wears anyway.)
“And how will a meal with us save her?” Marion asked. The car veered onto the side road that bumps all the way to our first gate.
“We’ll help her meet someone thrilling. At least as thrilling as they come eating pork roast down at an inn.” They quibbled all the way to my house, which I take as a very good sign. If you can get a man to enjoy fighting with you I think he must be won over.
However surprised Theo was to see Marion on her front stoop, I was doubly surprised to see the two of them on mine. I was fighting the sludge and ashes that covered the kitchen floor with a bristle brush, so of course I was wearing my coveralls, and I hadn’t untied my curls yet. Perhaps that was Theo’s plan all along, to make him see how poor I looked and raise herself by comparison.
“What the dickens?” I exclaimed as they stepped quickly past me into the warm kitchen. “Watch your feet!” I tried to catch the drips with my rag as the brown snow fell off their shoes off onto my floor. Marion did a small jump, trying to balance his large feet on the rag rug.
“I need nylons,” Theo said, out loud, right in front of him. “Mine have a run. And you need to get dressed. We’re going out.” She took my hand and started toward the stairs. “Wait for us here, darling,” she told Marion.
The darling cut off any protests I was trying to conjure up. I didn’t even realise I’d brought the dirty rag upstairs with me until she led me in the middle of my room and threw open my sock drawer. “This is important,” she hissed in a fierce whisper. “I’m wearing my worst dress, I need nylons and I told him he looked like a god.”
“You called him darling?”
We went on whispering back in forth as we scavenged at full speed. Theo came up with a skirt she had given me that I never altered. She slid it on, the floral fabric clinging round her hips. “I need your red cardigan.”
“You’ll burst out of it,” I warned her, still handing it over. But after she fastened it I felt silly for doubting. As if a man could like anything better than Theo busting out of a top. I reached for my blue dress, but she saw at the last moment and whipped it back to my wardrobe.
“You wore that last time. You’ll have to make do so he doesn’t think we have one dress a piece.” She handed me my brown that is ghastly any time of the year.
“I can’t go with you. I’m in the middle of work. And I haven’t spoken to Alan yet. I don’t know how he’d feel about me going out without him.” It did sound haughty,
but it felt so good to be concerned with such things.
Theo snatched my hand and held it up to my face. “No ring, no rights. You can do whatever you like until that fool puts some gold on your hand, though I pray he never does.”
That’s when she knew she’d gone too far. I dropped my brown dress on the floor, in a flat refusal, my narrow eyes every bit as determined as hers.
“Please, Eve, please.” Her voice went all pleading. “I’m sorry. I cannot go out there with Marion Doran by myself. I’ve run out of jokes. I’m so mixed up on who I pretended to be at the dance and who he thinks I am now that I don’t know what part to play.” She picked up my dress and held it out to me, her eyes frightened.
“Must I be the only adult?” I said, which was ridiculous in so many ways I cannot even write them all. I pulled on my green skirt instead and started undoing one side of my hair while she undid the other.
“Theo, dear?” Marion’s strained voice wandered up the stairs. “There is a creature in here.”
“Good heavens!” I gasped, tripping over Theo on my way to the door. “She must be awake.”
“Who?” Theo asked in horror. “Please tell me you don’t…”
“Have a sheep in the living room? So sorry,” I answered, doing up my blouse as I raced down the steps. “At least that means she’s feeling better,” I said with a forced laugh as I reached Marion. He was trying very politely to nudge a hungry sheep away from his tailored jacket. As if you can politely nudge anything with wool. I gave the beast a mighty shove toward the fireplace. “I was supposed to be watching her,” I explained. “Alan is working and she was in here warming up. Her lambs are due any day and she took a tumble into the beck yesterday. My father found her half frozen. Otherwise they never come inside, truly.”
The stupid ewe took that moment to deposit a pile of hard pellets on the hearth. As if I care anything about manure, but Theo turned a yellow shade that must be for humiliation because I’ve never seen it on her. Marion looked torn between offering condolences and pretending he hadn’t seen.
“You changed,” he said politely to Theo, diverting our eyes from the sheep.
“Let me get that.” I rushed for the ash shovel and quickly tossed the mess into the roaring fire. Theo wrinkled her nose, reminding me that burning manure is no improvement over normal manure.
“Why don’t you both wait for me in the kitchen. There are still scones out from tea. I’ll be right there.” I grabbed the ewe by her curved horn and marched her to the back door, pausing one moment to slide into my Wellingtons, before walking her to the barn. She certainly looked warm now and a dry stall ought to be cozy enough. I locked her inside, throwing an old horse blanket over her. “Well, I don’t know why it should bother you,” I responded to her irritated bleating as she tried to rid herself of the blanket. “It’s just a bit more wool.” I slammed the door behind me and kept untying my hair as I raced across the yard. It took me five minutes to get squared away, scrawl a note to Dad and Alan to apologise for only leaving them cold meat and bread for supper and follow Theo to the car.
Marion walked with a wonderful slouch, his jacket draped over one shoulder just like the boys in the pictures. And he was jolly about everything. He teased me about the sheep and Theo about kidnapping me. “Perhaps she didn’t think I’d be a gentlemen if she was alone with me,” he said to me with a wink over his shoulder.
“I”m sure that wasn’t it,” I replied breathlessly, still trying to settle into this new turn of events. I had visions of my mop bucket left on the floor and my father peering around the room in puzzlement.
“I despise getting stuck behind the lorries.” Marion said. He slowed down and tapped his finger on the steering wheel as he tried to see around a tall truck that bounced on its struts as it lumbered down the road. He honked once and then pulled into the other lane to careen past the frowning driver.
“I despise a showoff,” Theo responded, clasping her door handle.
“I’m really not. I’m just in a hurry to see if you told the truth that dancing with you would be unforgettable. I can’t remember if we danced last time.”
“We didn’t. You would know if we had.” Her eyes narrowed.
“What a fool I am. Did I dance with you, Eve?” he asked, catching my eye in his rearview.
It took me a moment to answer because the perfect evenness of all his features tied my tongue. The idea of dancing with him quite cleared my head. “No.”
“Well, who the devil did I dance with?”
“A few giggling imbeciles to pass the time between pints,” Theo said, her voice airy with superiority.
“Surely not. You’re making that up. Your blue dress was the smasher of the night. I couldn’t have resisted.” He smiled at Theo in a way that made me certain he’d given that precise grin to many girls.
“My dress was green. Emerald green,” Theo slid the stiff words out.
“Oh, that’s right, of course. I’ve always been colour blind. It was my brother talking about the blue dress. ”
Theo whipped her head to face me, her red lips making a vibrant O. “That was Eve,” she exclaimed. “He was talking about Eve?”
“I will reveal no secrets until I’ve had a dance,” he declared. And with that he accelerated, the car whining beneath the sharp stakes of sunlight fighting their way through the dusk.
I settled against the soft seat and imagined Jonathon Doran saying kind things about me to his brother. It was thrilling and wonderfully disturbing all at once. That is the last bright memory I have of the adventure. It was all burning sunlight against the towering clouds as we laughed our way for an hour to the nearest decent town. By the time Marion parked the car, night had won the sky and I shivered my way inside the Mercury Inn where the loud music filtered into the lobby.
“The band comes every Saturday,” he told us, waving to some acquaintances across the room as we walked behind a maître d'. “The Stubby Six. Terrible name, but wonderful music. But dinner first, shall we?”
We followed him to the dining room where everything had transformed from a regular inn to white table cloths and waiters in tails. “I wish I’d worn my blue again,” I despaired. Theo tugged uncomfortably at her skirt. We weren’t the plainest dressed girls there, but we certainly didn’t steal the show.
“You are both marvelous,” he promised politely, without so much as glancing at us. After we were seated I opened the menu, trying to keep my face passive, but I felt it burning red. I couldn’t possibly order cutlets that cost more than a week’s meat bill at home. I swallowed, wondering if I could get by on a small plate of chicken, but my stomach rattled with hunger. Marion wagged his finger carelessly and a waiter deposited a bottle of wine on our table. “The veal is delicious,” he told us. “I suggest it.”
I clapped my menu shut, trying not to remember the price I had glanced beside the veal. “Lovely, I’ll try it.” I didn’t look at him, frightened he would see the panic in my face and label me a classless country girl. Once I got over the shame of the money, I did nothing but marvel over my food. I let Theo and Marion take over the conversation while I savoured each bite, discovering the seasonings so I could try to recreate it at home. For a moment I imagined I tasted mustard, but then it turned to nutmeg, so I knew I’d never get it right.
The entire dinner is hazy for me—the candlelight on the tables and Marion’s face so deafeningly handsome I could barely hear what he said. I let myself imagine Theo married and the smashing white-headed cupid children they would have. I told myself I wasn’t at all jealous because Alan had such nice qualities, too. But as I listened to Marion tell stories of boarding school and escaping a gaggle of French dancers when he visited the Sorbonne, I realised he was clever and charming and the best storyteller, no qualities Alan ever displayed. So then I comforted myself thinking of what a hard worker Alan is while Marion did nothing but travel and make people laugh. I held onto the thought so hard I didn’t realise I was grinding my back teeth until they
started to hurt.
I was almost grateful I had no partner when it was time to dance, because I’d stuffed myself so full I could barely stand. I begged to be allowed to sit one out and instead watched Theo and Marion as they got lost among the other dancers. There were older couples, married and obviously not well-to-do, dancing beside the younger ones and I pitied them. How sad to have the most exciting moments of love all behind you and your youth dull and slipping away with each year. How proud it made me to be so young, so fervently in love, with every exciting moment still ahead of me. I thought so much of how young I looked I stopped minding my plain skirt. Compared to the matronly women with tired lines about their mouths I was more than adequate. I was so caught up in the comparison I didn’t notice a man approach me until I looked into the face of Jonathon Doran.
“My brother told me you had no one to dance with,” he told me.
“Oh, goodness, I didn’t know you’d be here. How funny to see you both when I was expecting a long night at home! I am so full of wonderful food I can barely move.” I budged over, making room for him to pull up a chair. I tried to hide as much of my outfit under the table as I could manage.
To Move the World (Power of the Matchmaker) Page 6
