“I am sorry for carrying on,” I say, folding his handkerchief into a neat square and handing it back to him. “Miss Belle would have a conniption if she could see me weeping big old crocodile tears and staining your beautiful handkerchief.”
“Who is Miss Belle?” Miss Isabella asks.
“Miss Belle Watling taught Emma Lee comportment and etiquette at Rutledge Hall Academy”—Knightley doesn’t look at his momma when he speaks, he looks at me, and his forest-green eyes sparkle like a Tyra Banks How to Smize video—“and she did a wonderful job.”
He turns and begins strolling toward the main house, one hand thrust in his coat pocket. I clutch his handkerchief in my fist and watch him, his easy, long-legged stride, the confident tilt of his head, until he disappears around a corner. I look at Miss Isabella. She is grinning at me like I am one of those Sudoku puzzles and she just figured out which digit to put in my last box.
“He forgot his handkerchief,” I say.
“Don’t worry about the handkerchief,” she says, linking her arm through mine. “I see you are wearing your new wellies. Shall we give them a proper workout?”
“Sure,” I say, tucking Knightley’s handkerchief into my pocket. “What do you have in mind?”
“Fancy a hike to the ruins?”
“Lead the way.”
We follow the drive to a gravel path.
“This building”—Miss Isabella gestures to the brick building with the arched doorways—“is the old stables, built in the mid-eighteenth century, when Charlotte Welldon married Archibald Nickerson. Sir Archibald was an enthusiastic equestrian, so Charlotte had the stables rebuilt and expanded as a wedding gift. Their son, Archie, was a brilliant rider, known throughout Europe for his daring exploits. He was close with the Chevalier Saint-Georges.”
“I am not familiar with the chevalier.”
We follow the gravel path around the stables and wend our way through an English flower garden, through clusters of blue delphinium, purple freesia, white roses, and pale pink peonies, until we arrive at a tree-lined stream. We follow the path along the stream, crossing a series of stone footbridges.
“Ah, the Chevalier Saint-Georges.” Miss Isabella sighs. “Now there is a man worth remembering: deadly swordsman, skilled equestrian, gifted musician, and unmatched lover. He was an intimate friend of Marie Antoinette, the Duc d’Orleans, Choderlos de Laclos.”
“Choderlos de Laclos?”
“The author of Dangerous Liaisons,” Miss Isabella says.
“Ooo, I loved that movie,” I say. “Beautiful costumes, romantic intrigue, and young Keanu Reeves brandishing a sword. Sigh.”
Miss Isabella chuckles.
“You should read the book.” She stops to pick a jagged-edged peony petal off the gravel path, gently bruising the pink blossom between her thumb and forefinger. She lifts the petal to her nose, inhaling. “I have a copy I could lend you.”
“I will add it to my list.”
“Your list?”
She hands me the petal and I lift it to my nose, breathing in the perfumed scent.
“It turns out”—I stick the peony blossom in my pocket with Knightley’s handkerchief—“I am not a well-read young woman.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“I swear.” I press my left hand to my heart and raise my right like I am about to swear the Kappa Kappa Gamma oath. “You should see my list, longer than my Amazon and Sephora Wish Lists. Who knew?”
She laughs.
“What are some of the books on your list?”
My brain aches just thinking about all the books I have downloaded to my Kindle in the last few days. Thank God Manderley gave me an Amazon gift card for Christmas last year.
“Hmm, let me see,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “The Scarlet Letter, The Inimitable Jeeves, The Grantchester Mysteries, the novels of the Brontë sisters . . .”
“The Inimitable Jeeves?” There is a smile in Miss Isabella’s voice. “I say, old girl, splendid choice. The adventures of thick-headed Bertie Wooster and his clever valet, Jeeves, are jolly good reads, filled with elegantly turned phrases and hilarious scenes. Knightley adores P. G. Wodehouse.”
“He does?”
I meant to agree with Miss Isabella, but my voice goes up at the end, which makes my statement sound like a question. He does? He does? I hear my voice in my head and inwardly cringe. I should just tell Miss Isabella the truth, that I know Knightley favors P. G. Wodehouse, that I decided to read The Inimitable Jeeves after learning it was one of his favorites, but I am afraid it will make me sound like a Lisa. Lisa was the psychotic temp worker in the movie Obsessed who developed an unnatural crush on her boss, even though he was happily married to a strong, beautiful woman (as played by Beyoncé: yaaas, queen!). You don’t want to be a Lisa. Ever.
“Oh!” I say, changing the subject. “Where are my manners? I plum forgot to thank you for the book. I started reading Emma and I love, love it! I love Emma, with her philanthropic efforts and social swirling. She’s an original SG.”
“SG?”
“Sorority girl.”
Miss Isabella laughs.
“I love her hypochondriac father and all his fretting over puddings. I love poor Harriet Smith, the orphan who is so desperate for affection she believes she is in love with that yawn fest of a farmer, Mr. Martin. I love Mr. Knightley”—I sigh—“do not even get me started on my affections for Mr. Knightley. I even love Mr. Elton.”
“Oh, dear.” Miss Isabella sniffs. “You might want to reserve judgment in that quarter.”
“Seriously.” I laugh. “Thank you for giving me such a lovely gift.”
“You sent me a thank-you text, love. Remember?”
“I know. Some things should be practiced in moderation—like, applying iridescent cosmetics, consuming alcoholic beverages, and practicing self-recrimination—but not gratitude. Gratitude should be practiced in excess and free of expiration dates, especially if you really appreciate the gift.” I smile at Miss Isabella. “Once, I sent Daddy a second thank-you card years after he gave me a particular gift just because I loved it so much.”
“Your mum was the same way.”
“She was?”
“Absolutely.”
I stop walking. Miss Isabella stops walking. I stare at her, wondering how many more tidbits she knows about my momma, and why it took her so long to make an appearance in my life.
“Miss Isabella?”
“Yes, love?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Absolutely.”
“What happened between you and my momma? It sounds as if you were good friends, BFFs.”
“We were BFFs, yes.”
“So, what happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
I get a sense Miss Isabella understands my question but is stalling, as if she needs time to find the words in her brain before speaking them. The story is there, written on the pages of her memory. Miss Isabella just doesn’t know how to translate it.
“You know I love you, Miss Isabella?”
“Yes.”
“So, I swear I mean this with all due respect.” I press my hand to my heart like I am making a solemn promise to one of my KKG sisters. “If Lexi passed away after having a baby, God forbid, I would be so involved in that child’s life she would grow up thinking I was her momma—or, at the very least, a crazy auntie who liked to take her shoe shopping and tell the same tired old stories about how her momma sang the ‘Kappa Kappa Gamma’ song in the sweetest voice and once made a quilt out of Greek shirts for a sister diagnosed with cancer.”
A breeze causes the tree branches over our heads to bend and sway, sends pastel-colored flower petals skittering over the gravel path, over the toes of my rain boots. Miss Isabella takes a deep breath through her nose, looks up at the leaves, and slowly exhales through her mouth.
“I wanted to be a part of your life, but my relationship with Malcolm was complicated.”
; “Daddy? Complicated?”
My daddy was an easygoing man. Easy as a Carolina morning. Easy as a rumpled linen suit, as falling asleep to the sound of cicadas singing in the trees outside your bedroom window, as floating on an inflatable raft in your swimming pool and watching the clouds drift by. He was up at sunrise, biscuits and peach jam for breakfast, haircut and shave once a week at the barber on Broad Street, doze on the veranda listening to Otis Redding. That was Daddy. There wasn’t a complicated bone in his body.
“Your daddy was . . .”
Clever? Generous? Kind? More in love with my momma than a man has a heart to be? The best daddy ever?
“Go on.”
She squares her shoulders, lifts her chin, and looks me in the eyes. I suddenly hear Winston Churchill’s baritone, lisping voice in my head: We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds . . . Miss Isabella, with her upturned nose and steely gaze, is the personification of the saying British stiff upper lip.
“Your father and I were involved before he met and married your mother,” Miss Isabella says, smiling softly, as soft as the peony petal in my pocket. “He was, in fact, my first love.”
“You’re Izzy-B?!”
My father told me his first love was a gangly, knock-kneed brunette named Izzy-B, a brilliant girl who graduated at the top of her class from the finest boarding school in Europe. An exasperating girl who wore a leather bustier under her sensible cashmere cardigan, numerous strands of vintage Chanel pearls, and danced barefoot to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” Looking at the serene Englishwoman standing before me, her silver hair cut in a sensible though stylish, chin-sweeping bob, her magnificent ancestral estate in the background, it is difficult to imagine her as the champagne-guzzling, Material Girl–worshipping Izzy-B.
Two spots of color, as vibrant as the red Burberry scarf tied around her neck, appear on Miss Isabella’s cheeks. She pushes her bangs off her forehead in a girlish gesture practiced by self-conscious women since Eve noticed Adam checking out her strategically placed fig leaves.
“I haven’t heard that name in almost forty years. Izzy-B! How my mum loathed that name.” She giggles, links her arm through mine, and we continue our stroll to the ruins. “I have no wish to give this story more importance than it deserves, because the events occurred without drama. We were young. We fell in love, ran around like a pair of bloody fools. Drank too much, danced too much, spent too much. What can I say? It was the eighties.” She sighs. “We talked about doing something completely mad, like eloping to Gstaad, but then your mother and Aunt Patricia came for a visit and . . . well, Malcolm fell head over Sperry Top-siders in love with your mum.”
“Daddy left you at the altar?”
“Nothing that Harlequin-esque, love.” She chuckles, patting my arm. “Your daddy was a kindhearted, genteel man, the quintessential Southern gentleman, holding doors, pulling chairs, taking other men to task if they used foul language in the presence of a lady. He lived in the 1980s, but he behaved as if he had been born in the 1780s. I always said he was born two centuries too late.”
“Manderley says that, too.”
Lost in the fog of memory, unhearing, unseeing, compelled to find her way through the mist, Miss Isabella continues her story.
“Your daddy was honest. He held my hand, looked me in the eye, and told me he was developing feelings for your mum, one of my best friends. . . .” Her voice trails off and we walk on in silence, arm in arm. “My heart broke a little, but what could I do? The man I loved fancied my best friend. I loved them both and didn’t want to risk losing either of them. So, I wished them well and soldiered on. In the end, your father married the love of his life and I married mine.”
In my head, I let out a whistle. Miss Isabella sure didn’t lie when she described her history with my momma and daddy as complicated. Isabella Nickerson, the chic, worldly woman who befriended me at the Charleston social event of the year, is Izzy-B, my daddy’s first love.
“I am sorry Daddy broke your heart, Miss Isabella.” I squeeze her arm and rest my head on her shoulder for just a second. “Thank you for not holding it against him, for being my momma’s BFF and my fairy godmother.”
“Fairy godmother? I am your real godmother.”
“What?” I stop walking so fast I nearly trip over my wellies. I am still holding Miss Isabella’s arm, so she is forced to stop and look at me. “What do you mean, you’re my godmother?”
“Your mum found out she was sick a few months into her pregnancy, so she planned your baptism for the day after you were born. I flew over and we had a little ceremony in the garden at Black Ash, beneath the branches of a magnificent oak tree dripping in moss.” Tears fall from Miss Isabella’s eyes, slide down her cheeks, but she dashes them away with the flick of her finger. “I made two visits to Black Ash in the year following your mum’s death, to spend time with you and your sisters, but my presence only exacerbated your daddy’s grief. It was as if the fun, easy relationship we had formed died when your mum took her last breath. Eventually . . .”
She takes a deep, jagged breath. I don’t prod her to finish her sentence. What would be the point? Eventually, she stopped visiting, stopped calling, because she knew she reminded my daddy of my momma, and she loved my daddy too much to cause him pain.
“Thank God for Patricia. We were always close, but our friendship deepened in the years after your mum’s death. She became the sister I never had, and I became . . .”
“. . . the sister she lost,” I say, finishing her thought.
“It was a wretched way to gain a sister.”
Another freesia- and peony-scented breeze rustles the leaves, so it sounds as if the trees are murmuring their condolences. I want to say something to express my sympathy, but Miss Isabella starts talking again.
“I kept a diary,” Miss Isabella says. “I wrote in it every year on your birthday and on the anniversary of your mum’s death. I intended to give you the diary the night we met at the polo match, but your grief over the loss of your father was too fresh. Perhaps it is still too fresh.”
In my head, I hear the song from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day—the one about the rain coming down, down, down and rushing over Piglet. I am Piglet, trapped in a honeypot, swirling around and around, as the waters rise, rise, rise, transforming the world around me into an unrecognizable place. Daddy and Miss Isabella were in love? Miss Isabella is my real godmother? Helllooo? Is anybody there? It’s me, Piglet.
“I know this all must come as quite a shock.” Miss Isabella unhooks her arm from mine and gives me a quick, one-armed shoulder hug, as if she fears she might violate my personal boundaries. “I hope what I shared with you, about my relationship with your father, hasn’t upset you terribly. I want to be a part of your life ever so much, but I want to be an honest party of your life. Secrets can so toxic.”
“Are you kidding?” I stop walking and throw my arms around Miss Isabella’s shoulders. “I am not upset! I mean . . . I am not gonna lie, Miss Izzy-B . . . it is going to take a little time for me to wrap my head around the idea of you and my daddy dirty dancing to ‘Like a Virgin’. . .” I break the hug and give her a sassy, mm-hmm, Miss Thang face. She laughs. “I am superhappy and feeling all kinds of blessed.”
“Blessed?”
“Sure,” I say, linking our arms. “Today, I learned that my momma had a loyal, selfless bestie and that my godmother is not a figment of my wishful imagination, but an actually flesh-and-bone person. I would call that blessed.”
“Thank you, love, that was a beautifully worded sentiment.” She squeezes my arm. “I feel blessed to have you here, living in Northam. You are the daughter I never had and the goddaughter I always wanted.”
I swear, my heart is so jam-packed full of love and gratitude, it feels as if it is going to explode out of my chest. We continue following the path, ahead the skeletal remains of the Abbey loom on the top of a hill.
&nbs
p; “Miss Isabella?”
“Yes, love?”
“What happened to Archie, the dashing horseman who was besties with the chevalier?”
“Poor, miserable Archie,” Miss Isabella says, shaking her head. “Sir Archibald forced him to marry Lady Henrietta Swinbrook, the daughter of an impoverished nobleman.”
“Would it have been less tragic if Lady Henrietta had been the daughter of a wealthy nobleman?”
“Henrietta could have been the daughter of King Midas and it would not have mattered to Archie, because he was in love with Sophie DeMille, his former governess, a sweet-natured woman reputed for her beauty, who also happened to be fifteen years his senior. Archie wanted to marry her, but Sir Archibald threatened to cut him off and ruin Sophie’s reputation.”
“So, he married Lady Henrietta?”
“He married Lady Henrietta, a loathsome creature with deeply pitted skin, a pug-like underbite, and squinty eyes. Her portrait hangs in the gallery. Nightmarish, really. Used to make Bingley cry. Contemporary accounts describe Lady Henrietta as cruel, condemning, and utterly obsessed with morality.”
“Poor Archie.”
“Yes, poor Archie.”
“Whatever happened to the governess?”
“Now that is a romantic story,” Miss Isabella says, pulling the edges of her scarf closer. “Archie and Sophie maintained a secret correspondence for over twenty years. The archive at Welldon contains hundreds of letters: beautiful, heartfelt prose that spoke of their undying passion for each other. Archie, it would seem, was a gifted poet.”
“How romantic!”
“Quite,” Miss Isabella agrees. “Many of the letters detail fervid trysts in the ruins.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“I can’t even.” I sigh. “That is so romantic.”
“In one letter, Archie promises to meet her where the earth touches the sky and to make love to her with such ardor even the moon will turn his silvery face in modesty.”
“Yes, please!”
Miss Isabella laughs.
“So that’s it?” I ask. “Archie and Sophie spent the rest of their days writing sexy letters to each other about their stolen moments in the ruins?”
Badly Done, Emma Lee Page 17
