by M C Beaton
Tea gave Tilly a splendid opportunity to watch how the elegant Mr. Bassett was able to roll up and eat tiny cucumber sandwiches without getting any butter on his gloves. She wondered if he were able to do the same drunk, for she realized that perhaps some of the strangeness emanating from Mr. Bassett was because he was stone-cold sober.
“Is Philip home?” asked Toby.
“No,” replied Tilly. “But I had a marconigram from him this morning. He is traveling from Paris to London to see his lawyers and then he will be arriving here. I am sending out invitations to a house party to celebrate his arrival. Perhaps you would—”
“Yes, I will. Love to. Great. Splendid. My bags are out in the carriage. I’ll tell my man to get ’em,” said Toby, roused to rare enthusiasm.
She waited while he left to see to the arrangement of his trunks, and Francine murmured from her corner, “He is escaping from something, that one… perhaps from some one. Congratulate him on his engagement.”
“Commiserate, more likely,” said Tilly. But as Toby reappeared, minus hat, gloves, and cane this time, she duly offered her congratulations on his engagement to Lady Aileen.
Toby visibly paled and his face took on a hunted look. “Very kind of you,” he said, nonetheless, in his usual impeccable drawl.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Francine was making drinking motions, and so Tilly asked him if he would like something stronger.
“I can’t,” said Toby wildly, looking more like the young Byron than ever. “I promised Aileen. And her mother has enrolled me in the Toward the Light and Away from the Bottle Society. She’s on the committee,” he added unnecessarily, for Her Grace appeared to be on the committee of everything.
“And does this society help?” asked Tilly.
“I can’t understand it,” he said, losing his usual lethargic elegance and running his fingers through his curls. “I get served with a cup of tea and one white, hard, iced cake with a brown fern painted on the top in mudcolored icing. Then everyone laughs a lot and is very jolly, and on my first attendance, a large, jolly sort of woman wagged a finger under my nose and asked me if I had found Jesus Christ. I said I hadn’t lost him and she said, ‘Oh, what a wag you rips are!’ which I thought was most ghastly, frightfully rude, you know. And then they show lantern slides all about a man who kicks his children and beats his wife, and when he’s not doing that, he’s in the boozer, kicking his friends and beating them, and then he sees the light, which is a sort of sunbeam with a great scaly angel in a nightgown hanging around it, you know, and he claps his forehead and falls on his knees and smashes up all the bottles in the boozer. And then you see him out in the world, preaching to the drunken sinners and kicking and beating them when they won’t listen, so I ask myself, What’s the difference?” Toby paused for breath and looked hopefully at Tilly.
Tilly tried to hide an enormous grin, particularly when she heard a discreet cough from the lady’s maid. After all, the redoubtable Mrs. Humphry had been very definite about grins:
As to grins, very few of them can be, in the remotest sense of the word, described as pleasing. Pretty teeth may redeem some of them from absolute ignomony, but, as a rule, the exhibition of whole meadows of pale pink gums is inconsonant with one’s ideas of beauty.
“Well, can’t you just stop on your own?” she eventually asked.
Toby shook his head with some pride. “It’s the family failing, you see,” he explained. “I come from a long line of tipplers.”
Francine was making walking movements with her fingers across the top of her work-basket.
“You must excuse me, Mr. Bassett,” said Tilly, rising to her feet and swaying slightly to get her balance on a pair of very high heels. “We shall meet at dinner. Masters will show you to your rooms.”
She curtsied gracefully as Toby stood up and swept from the room, followed by her maid.
But there was no rest for Tilly that afternoon and dressing for dinner was to be a scrambled affair. The guests had to be at Chennington as soon as possible, Francine had said. So invitations were quickly written and dispatched by messenger to various members of the local county. Gaskell was sent up to London to deliver an invitation to the duchess and family. Then with the help of Francine, Tilly scrambled into a dinner gown of sleek black panel velvet trimmed with jet. It was an extremely sophisticated dress for such a young girl, but the new Tilly carried it with an air. A pair of long crimson kid gloves and a crimson ostrich-feather fan with diamond-studded sticks completed the ensemble. Tilly twisted and turned in front of the looking glass. “Don’t you think I look a bit like a French tart?” she asked doubtfully.
“A very well-bred one, my lady,” said Francine, “and infinitely seductive.”
For the first time, the startling combination of Tilly’s bright-red hair, white skin, and blue eyes was shown to advantage.
“I-I don’t want to look seductive for anyone but Philip,” said Tilly, hesitating.
“Nonsense!” said Francine affectionately. “Of course you do. Your sophisticated husband is a man of the world, hein? And he will notice how men look at you now.”
“Oh, well,” sighed Tilly, picking up her train, “I’d better get on with it.”
“No, my lady,” said the maid severely, “you do not leave this room with your train bundled over your arm like a pile of washing. Drop your train. Now begin again. No! No! Here, let me show you. Now like that. So. Walk backward and forward. Good. Now the fan. No! No! You wave it, you do not flap it! Again… again. Good! Now, you may go.”
Toby rose slowly to his feet and gazed at the vision in red and black, framed in the doorway of the drawing room. He felt strangely breathless and excited and began to think that being sober might not be so bad after all.
CHAPTER SIX
The Marquess of Heppleford was an extremely puzzled man. Various strange servants were sorting out mountains of luggage in the hall. Various strange carriages were being led off to the stables.
“What is all this?” he asked Masters as that gentleman welcomed him home.
“The members of the house party arrived this morning, my lord,” murmured Masters, relieving his lordship of his hat and cane.
“Indeed!” The marquess’s lips folded in a thin line. “Tell my lady I wish to see her immediately.”
“I am afraid that is not possible, my lord,” said Masters soothingly. “My lady has taken her guests on a picnic.”
“Where the hell are they, then? Where have they gone?”
“I am afraid I do not know, my lord. My lady did not tell me. But you will see her ladyship at dinner.”
The marquess crashed up to his rooms in a bad mood. He had been looking forward to peace and quiet, not a houseful of guests. Then there was the question of the will. His lawyer had said it would not be a good idea to contest it and, after all, he had added delicately, my lord was already married and would… er… naturally wish an heir.
How can I tell Tilly about this new will with all these bloody people around? he thought crossly. He lay down on the bed, planning only to rest for a few minutes, but he was tired from his travels and fell asleep, to be aroused only some three hours later by the sound of the dressing gong from the hall below.
With the assistance of his man, he dressed himself in white tie and tails and marched along the corridor to his wife’s rooms and rattled the doorknob.
“Who’s there?” called a light, feminine voice he did not recognize.
He stood, frowning, and then called, “Heppleford! Who’s that?”
There was a delicious ripple of laughter from behind the door and then that tantalizing voice said, “It’s I, Tilly, Philip dear. You must not see me until I am dressed. I will see you downstairs. The guests are in the drawing room.”
“I don’t know who you are,” said Heppleford, “but you can tell my wife that I do not like these silly schoolgirlish jokes.”
Silence answered him and he slammed noisily off downstairs. He blinked at the array of
guests in his drawing room. It was a beautiful evening and the long windows were opened. There were about fifteen people, including, he noticed with increasing bad temper, the ducal family Glenstraith. He moved from group to group murmuring his greetings and then seized Toby Bassett by the arm and half dragged him onto the terrace.
“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded. “Has Tilly run mad? What are the horrible Glenstraiths doing here?”
“Steady on!” protested Toby. “I’m engaged to Aileen.”
The marquess took a step back and stared at his friend, who was gazing mournfully into a glass of lemonade. “She trapped you when you were drunk,” said the marquess. “Out with it, Toby.”
After some gentlemanly hesitation, Toby began to talk, and, once having started, he couldn’t seem to stop. Aileen and her mother had indeed trapped him with champagne and moonlight. Before he knew where he was, he had been told by the duchess that he had proposed to Aileen, although he could not remember it. Then he complained at equal length of his enforced temperance, ending up with a cry from the heart. “What am I to do? If it had been some stunning female like Tilly, I could understand it.”
“Stunning!” said the marquess. “Tilly? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, she does rather get on one’s nerves with that laugh of hers. Well, we’d better join the guests.”
They entered the room and the marquess suddenly stopped rigid. The guests had already witnessed the transformation that was Lady Tilly.
She was wearing a scarlet chiffon dress, as scarlet as her impossible-colored hair. Her creamy shoulders rose from a daringly low neckline. Her white kid gloves were smoothed above her elbows without a wrinkle and the feathers of her large osprey fan fluttered slightly in the cool evening breeze from the garden. Her wide blue eyes stared calmly around the guests and her still childish lips were parted in a tremulous smile. The beautiful ghost that had seemed to flutter before Tilly had suddenly come to life. Behind her, carrying her shawl, stood a smart-as-paint French maid, neat and demure in a black silk gown, with her glossy black hair braided into a coronet.
Then Tilly moved slowly and unhurriedly into the room as the marquess strode toward her. There was a little silence. All the guests waited eagerly, the servants anxiously. Would she berate her husband for his infidelity?
But Tilly merely held out her gloved hand and said in her new charming voice, “Philip, my dear! I trust you did not have too exhausting a journey?”
“I was rather fatigued,” said the marquess, staring at her and wondering if he were having a dream. “But I slept well this afternoon. Toby tells me he is staying with us for a while.”
“Ah, yes,” said the new Tilly, smiling languorously at Toby, who had come up to join them.
“It’s most awfully kind of you to have me,” said Toby with a strange note in his voice. The marquess turned slightly in time to catch the look on his friend’s face and frowned. A new set of thoughts tumbled into his brain. What the hell had been happening while he was away? Was this miraculous change in Tilly because of Toby?
He became aware that his wife was addressing him. “I gather you had a most interesting time in Paris,” Tilly was saying. “Been studying the flora and fauna, dear?”
“I was on business, as I told you,” said the marquess testily.
“So you did,” said Tilly lightly and then murmured for his ears alone, “So silly of these newspapers to misinterpret a business trip.”
Aileen, too, had noticed the expression on her fiancé’s face as he had looked at Tilly, and she quickly masked the rather sour and petulant expression on her own. She may have lost Lord Philip, but Toby Bassett was also a catch. All her girl friends envied her and that meant more to Aileen than any feelings of love or romance.
She moved swiftly forward to take his arm possessively. “I’ve been asking Toby why he left London,” she said with a glittering smile, “but he won’t tell poor little me.”
“I needed some country air,” said Toby, still looking at Tilly. Aileen tightened her grip. “Come, dear,” she said in a gentle voice that had, nonetheless, the undertones of pure iron. “Mumsie wants to talk to you.”
Toby was led away like a lamb to the slaughter.
Dinner was announced and, moving into the dining room, the marquess had to be content with his wife’s company for only that short journey, for he had to take his place at the head of the table, while Tilly seemed to be a mile away at the other end. He became convinced that malice alone had prompted Tilly to seat the Duchess of Glenstraith on his right and Mrs. Barchester, one of the ugliest and most boring women of the county, on his left.
As the dinner progressed he noticed that Tilly seemed to be keeping her end of the table very well amused. Even old Sir Giles Barncaster, a fierce and florid Tory M.P. reputed to loathe all young women, was laughing appreciatively at something she said, and then his voice rang out loud and clear: “Gad, Lady Tilly, but you’ve got a remarkably well-informed mind!”
Toby’s handsome face was leaning too near Tilly’s white shoulder.
No one looking at Tilly could even begin to guess at the turmoil of feelings beneath the delectable bosom of her Parisian gown. She had forgotten that her husband was so handsome. Evening dress became him, the stark black and white of its formality setting off his golden head and classic profile. He had acquired a slight tan on his travels, and in a bemused way Tilly noticed, in the blaze of the candelabra, that there was a faint line of gold hair on his cheek.
Aileen was fretting and fuming and wishing she could strangle Toby. She never would have accepted Tilly’s cheeky invitation had not her ladyship penciled a note on the bottom of the gilt-edged card informing the Glenstraith family that Toby Bassett was already in residence at Chennington.
Aileen’s sour eyes took in the beauty of the formal dining room with its high painted ceilings, its cases gleaming with fine china and silver, and its Adam fireplace. She eyed the well-trained footmen in their splendid livery with a jealous eye. The duchess kept a large staff at her town house in London, but Aileen’s newly awakened jealousy saw everything that Tilly had as grander and better. She envied Tilly because Tilly was married and able to wear dashing, bold colors before which she, Aileen, in her palest of pink gowns, faded into insignificance. Aileen, unlike Tilly, had never had to study the art of conversation, for she had considered her beauty enough attraction. Now she had a panicky feeling that all these men around her were actually not listening to her but straining their ears to hear what the fascinating marchioness was saying.
“You know,” she said rather loudly to her dinner partner, a young fresh-faced man called Jeremy Beaton, “you’d never guess the poor Beast used to work for me.”
“Who?” said Jeremy politely.
“I mean Tilly,” said Aileen with that silvery laugh of hers, which eventually grated on the nerves because it always ran up and down exactly the same scale.
“Oh, yes,” said Jeremy. “I heard she was your companion before her marriage. Why did you call her ‘the Beast’?”
“Because she was so ugly,” said Aileen, laughing. “Of course, she’s changed a little, but then money and clothes do make a difference.”
“Indeed they do,” remarked Jeremy in chilling accents. “Lady Tilly is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Why, Toby’s quite smitten with her!”
“Toby Bassett is my fiancé!”
“So he is,” remarked her companion with infuriating calm. “Sorry. Forgot.”
The Duchess of Glenstraith was wishing she had not come. She was wishing she had not let Aileen talk her into organizing the marriage with Bassett. Young Bassett was rich and of good family, but so were a lot of other young men on the London scene. Now she was forced to sit and watch that toad all dressed up in vulgar scarlet queening it from the end of the dinner table. The fact that she, the duchess, took precedence over Tilly in rank was small consolation. Age, as well, went before beauty, so they said. But the only place she would go first would b
e the grave, as far as Her Grace could see anyway. And there was her husband, quite animated, discussing his latest acquisition—some singularity anemic nudes drawn by Ricketts—to this interloper into the top ten thousand. What did Tilly know of Art Nouveau anyway? Quite a lot, it dawned on the duchess with dismay. She noticed Toby stretching a nervous hand toward his wineglass and gave a loud bark. Toby withdrew the hand instantly and flashed her the sort of look that no dutiful man should give to his future mama-in-law.
The ladies at last retired and, under cover of the general conversation over the port and walnuts, the marquess turned his problem over in his mind. After the way he had treated her, he could hardly tell Tilly that she had to hop into bed with him at the earliest opportunity in order to fulfill the terms of his father’s will. Then the thought of hopping into bed with this new and exciting Tilly was infinitely bewitching. The marquess’s prowess with women had never been in doubt. He could not see that his wife would prove any exception. He would have to begin to woo her as quickly as possible.
He was impatient to begin his wooing right away and found, to his irritation, that it was going to be harder than he had imagined. His wife suggested a stroll in the gardens, but that invitation seemed to include all the guests.
A full moon silvered the velvet lawns, which seemed to roll off into vast infinity. Heavy roses tumbled and rioted from ironwork trellises and stone urns. The air was heavy with their scent, but the beautiful scene was not made for romance, reflected the marquess wryly, with all these extra characters dotted about.
At last he decided to move into the attack and, extricating himself from the conversational grasp of Mrs. Barchester, he moved forward to the group around his wife and, smiling politely at everyone, gently slid her arm through his own and smiled down at her. “I have hardly had a chance to exchange a word with you in private since I arrived home,” he murmured.
The other guests tactfully began to move away with the exception of Toby Bassett, who stuck like a limpet.
