“Oh, yes, lots,” said Annabelle, “particularly this evening. But no one has ever called me charming before.”
“You must become accustomed to hearing it,” teased Lord Varleigh. “If the great Brummell says you are charming, then charming will be your label.”
“Then I shall simply remember the original compliment,” replied Annabell, wondering why she felt so at home with this man, feeling as if the sofa were an intimate, floating island surrounded by a feathered and bejewelled sea.
“Are you enjoying London?” asked Lord Varleigh, breaking the companionable silence. His hand was stretched along the back of the sofa, and Annabelle felt as excited and exhilarated as if he had put his arm round her shoulders.
“Oh, yes,” she breathed, trying to fight against the realisation that she was enjoying herself completely for the first time. “I love all the parties and balls and operas. And I loved the City of London.”
“When were you there?” asked her companion idly.
“Captain MacDonald took me for a drive some days ago,” said Annabelle. “And then we went all round London. We even went as far as Highgate Village!”
“I shall be adventuring myself,” said Lord Varleigh. “I am bound for Paris in the morning.” The floating island bumped against the shores of hard reality. Paris and Lady Jane, thought Lord Varleigh, looking down at Annabelle’s bent head. Now why did I let Jane cozen me into taking her along? Habit, I suppose. And I am surely too old to start paying court to virgins like Miss Quennell.
“Paris!” exclaimed Annabelle in a small voice. “For how long, my lord?”
“For several months, I believe.”
“Business affairs?”
“Pleasure.”
“Oh.”
Annabelle sat very still, suddenly intent on the pictures on her Chinese fan.
“With Lady Jane?” she said at last.
“With Lady Jane.”
Never was Annabelle more glad to see the Captain than at that moment. “I hope you enjoy your journey, Lord Varleigh,” said Annabelle and, turning away, laid her hand on the large Captain’s arm and smiled up at him so brilliantly that several of the watchers were convinced the cancellation of the engagement had all been a hum.
Lord Varleigh watched them go. They were both young and very well suited he thought from the great height of his thirty-two years. He was fond of Annabelle, he told himself, and he was glad to see her enjoying her ball.
He suddenly felt very liverish and ill at ease. He would be better off at his club. Paris beckoned, and by the time he returned, Annabelle would probably be married.
DURING the month following Lord Varleigh’s departure to Paris, Annabelle found herself more in Captain MacDonald’s company than ever before.
They rode in the Ring in Hyde Park, they attended the Jubilee celebrations, and they danced and dined with society in that long hot summer of parties. The war was over, the French defeated, and the celebrations and fireworks went on as the troops from Bordeaux—except those lucky enough to be dispatched across the Atlantic to fight the Americans—were returning in the hundreds, hungry and wounded. They had been taken from the gutter and to the gutter they returned. They had done what the nation needed, and the nation didn’t want them anymore.
The officers, such as the Captain, were lucky enough to return to the world of society and to go on as if they had never left it. Who wanted to hear of Salamanca when there were so many delicious court scandals to discuss?
Captain MacDonald was quiet and civil. There were no more drunken episodes, no more amorous overtures, and he made an easy, undemanding companion. Annabelle had not discovered any man to fall in love with but many who were prepared to fall in love with her and found the Captain an effective barrier to their pursuit. Little by little they drifted closer together during the long, lazy summer days, sharing small jokes that only they knew the meaning of, exploring London, attending parties and balls.
Lady Emmeline felt triumphant. The Captain was following her instructions to the letter, and Annabelle was falling neatly into the oldest trap of all—propinquity.
Lady Emmeline was admittedly disappointed that Annabelle had lost a certain zest, a certain spark of independence. She was unfailingly dutiful, pleasant and submissive and, to the old dowager’s way of thinking, appeared to be in danger of becoming a bore.
Then Lady Emmeline fell ill with a high fever. The physician was called and failed to diagnose the cause of the illness, but he recommended that the Dowager Marchioness should be removed to more salubrious surroundings since even the elegant squares of the West End were beginning to smell ripe under the heat of the summer sun.
Annabelle enlisted the aid of Countess Honeyford and rented an attractive villa. The villa proved to be a small palace in Kensington Gore, standing back behind a high wall. It had three acres of garden on the south side, and the large rooms ran the whole length of the house from north to south. There was a library, a long gallery, two studies, and a suite of entertaining rooms. It was the most charming house Annabelle had ever seen. The doors were panelled with mirrors, the sofas and chairs were covered with apple-green damask, the drawing room was crimson and gold, and the long gallery and the library were green. Peacocks strutted on the terrace during the day, and nightingales sang their serenades in the garden after dark.
Annabelle felt sure that her frivolous godmother would be delighted with her bedroom when she recovered from her illness and could see it. It was in blue and gold with blue damask hangings and a large Mal-maison bed.
The library was Annabelle’s favorite, a great sunlit room filled with the scent of woodsmoke, potpourri and calf bindings, brimming with buhl and ormolu, pier glass and statues as well as delightful sofa tables from Gillow’s fashionable warehouse, Sévres china, and singing clocks.
The house belonged to a shady relative of the Count-ess’s who had fled to France after some scandal. Whatever the relative’s wrongdoing, Annabelle had to admit that he had excellent taste.
Society did not journey out to Kensington to visit the old lady or her beautiful goddaughter, and even the Captain only left his floral tributes at the lodge house at the gate. It was feared Lady Emmeline’s fever was contagious.
Annabelle found that she did not mind the long hours of nursing. Horley, the maid, was surprisingly helpful, burying her animosity towards the girl so long as her mistress needed help.
Day after day the Dowager Marchioness tossed and turned and rambled in her delirium, and each day the doctor came and prophesied the worst.
Annabelle had never been so alone in her life. The servants were so well trained they were almost invisible.
When Horley relieved her at the sickbed, she would escape to the calm of the library to sit dreaming over a book or to simply stare out at the peace and quiet of the garden. Although they were very near London, they could have been miles away. Annabelle prayed that some of the peace of their surroundings would penetrate to poor Lady Emmeline’s fevered brain. She had stopped the physician from bleeding the old lady any further, fearing that Lady Emmeline would become too weak to battle the fever.
One evening she returned to the sickroom and found Horley kneeling beside the bed, the tears streaming down her sallow cheeks. “She’s gone, miss,” sobbed Horley. “Just like that!”
Annabelle crossed slowly to the great bed and stood looking down at the waxen figure. She had never seen death before but despite Lady Emmeline’s graveyard pallor, felt sure she was not seeing it now. She seized a looking glass from the dressing table and held it before the Dowager Marchioness’s mouth. Nothing.
And then the glass began to mist. Annabelle felt the old lady’s brow. It was cool and damp.
She took a deep breath. “God be praised, Horley,” she said. “My lady is not dead. The fever has abated and she sleeps.”
Horley got briskly to her feet. Drying her tears with the hem of her apron, she looked at Annabelle with all the old dislike. “Then I shall watch by her bedside until she w
akes,” she said briskly. “There will be no need for your services this night, Miss Annabelle.” Then she bobbed a curtsy and added reluctantly, “Not that I’m not grateful for all your help.”
Annabelle hesitated a minute beside the bedside. But Lady Emmeline did indeed seem to be in the depths of a refreshing sleep. She left Horley to her charge and returned to the library.
The tall figure of a man was standing over by the long windows looking out across the garden. He turned as she entered the room and made a magnificent leg.
Annabelle responded with a deep curtsy. “So you are returned from Paris, my Lord Varleigh,” she said in a carefully calm social tone. “You have no doubt not yet heard that Lady Emmeline has been sick of the fever.”
“I did,” he replied simply, “and that is why I am here. Is she better? Has the fever abated?”
Annabelle told him her good news, trying to keep the surprise from her face. This was one member of society at least who did not: seem to be worried about infection.
“Then that is good news,” he said, smiling down at her in such a way that her heart gave a wrench. “Come and walk with me in the garden and tell me all the latest on-dits.”
“I fear I am sadly out of touch,” said Annabelle, moving out through the windows and onto the mossy terrace. “I would rather hear your news of Paris. Was it very exciting?”
“Depressing, rather,” said Lord Varleigh, tucking her small hand in his arm. “It was like stepping back into the last century.”
He went on to describe the dark streets, ankle-deep in mud and filled with grimacing, posturing blackguards. She was filled with horror as he described the filthy theaters where even the rich spat on the floor and used their knives as toothpicks and were crammed to capacity, their Napoleonic inscriptions painted over with fleurs-de-lis.
Paris, said Lord Varleigh, showed no signs of being a conquered capital or the French of being a conquered race. On the night after the allies’ entry, he was told that the theaters and public gardens were packed as if nothing had happened. The cynical French were impenitent at the suffering they had caused. There indifference to death remained the same. At Montmartre, where the Russians stormed their way into Paris over the bodies of the boys of the Military College, corpses were carefully preserved for sightseers, and houses pitted with bullets bore notices, “Ici on voit la bataille pour deux sous!” “Here one can see the battle for two sous!”
Despite his dislike of the worldy Parisians, Lord Varleigh said he could not help but be impressed by Napoleon’s great public buildings. It was like another world, he told the fascinated Annabelle, to find all this order and splendor in the middle of a dark medieval jungle of twisted streets and filthy houses.
He praised the splendid prospect from the summit of the Elysian fields with the road descending through masses of trees to the Tuileries. Incredible!
“How I should love to see it all!” cried Annabelle, and then sensed a stiffness and reserve in her companion and wondered what she had said to upset him.
Lord Varleigh was thinking how Lady Jane had thrived in Paris among the indolent, pleasure-loving crowd. There were no gentlemen and certainly no ladies. Even Napoleon himself, now exiled on Elba, had observed, “They are all rascals.” Her rapacious demands for money, for clothes and jewels, and gold for gambling, had increased. She had gained a great deal of weight from sampling all the gastronomic delights of Very’s, Hardis, and the Quadron Bleu, even breakfasting greedily with intending duellists at Tortoni’s off pâtés, game, fish, broiled kidneys, iced champagne and liqueurs.
He had finally told her the liaison was at an end, and a horrendous scene: had followed. She had accused him of being in love with Annabelle Quennell. She had torn her hair like a madwoman and uttered threats against Annabelle’s life. Never had he had to extract himself from an affair with such scenes of ranting and raving.
Now all he wanted to do was walk in the English garden in the failing light under the old cedars with this quiet girl on his aim and breath in the peace. He told himself he felt a fatherly affection for Annabelle and put down his feeling of well-being to being safely back home away from foreign scenes and foreign voices.
“It is time I settled down,” he said quietly, and Annabelle’s heart missed a beat. A nightingale sang from the bushes, a clear heartrending melody, and the sky dimmed from pale green to dark blue.
“I feel I have neglected my estates for too long,” he went on, “and I am weary of the social round. But tell me about yourself,” he added in a light voice. “I gather from the gossips that your engagement to Captain MacDonald is shortly to be renewed.”
What a noisy bind that is, thought Annabelle, glaring at the unseen nightingale. “Perhaps I shall marry Captain MacDonald,” she said defiantly. “He is good company.”
“And is that all you feel for him?” persisted the now-mocking voice beside her. They had nearly reached the gates, and she turned and faced him. Her face seemed to swim below his in the evening light.
“My private life is my own affair, my lord,” she said coldly.
He took her hands in his and drew her towards him, his eyes glinting strangely in the dim twilight. A twig snapped near them and both turned and stared towards the gates. A dark figure slid off into the night.
“Who’s there?” called Lord Varleigh. He released Annabelle’s hands and ran to the gates. No one.
“Strange,” he murmured, returning to Annabelle. “Have any more strange things happened to Lady Emme-line while I have been away?”
Annabelle shook her head. “Not one. Godmother is convinced that she was the subject of some mad wager.”
“Possibly,” he said thoughtfully. “What do you think?”
Annabelle suddenly remembered Mad Meg’s strange warning and shivered. “I think it must be as she says,” she replied. “No one has tried to harm her since that party on Mr. Hullock’s boat.”
“And no one has tried to harm you either?” he teased. “No gentlemen kissing you over the champagne glasses?”
Annabelle glared at him like an angry kitten. “No one has had the effrontery, my lord.”
“Strange,” he said, “and you so kissable.”
“As is Lady Jane,” replied Annabelle, walking before him into the house.
“You are impertinent.”
“One impertinence deserves another,” said Annabelle tartly. “We are not chaperoned, my lord, so please leave the library door open.”
“On the contrary,” he said coldly, “I shall close it now—behind me when I leave. Servant, Miss Quennell.”
He made a magnificent leg, turned on his heel, and departed.
Annabelle ran to the window to watch him leave and then stayed for a long time on the terrace, listening to the sound of his horse’s hooves galloping off in the distance until she could hear them no more.
Chapter Eight
After several days Horley pronounced her ladyship fully recovered, and the Dowager Marchioness was moved to a daybed in the drawing room.
But Annabelle found her more eccentric than ever. She lay around in toilettes that would have shocked a demimondaine and sometimes, when she thought no one was watching, flirted and ogled with the shadows in the corners of the long room, vividly conjuring up, with every ancient coquettish gesture, the ghosts of the eighteenth century: the bright brocade dresses of the ladies, the embroidered coats of the gentlemen; the men with their faces polished and the ladies with theirs painted. The ladies wore their hair piled up over their heads, augmented with pads and the whole greased with pomatum and dusted with powder. The elaborate play of the gilded figures, scented handkerchiefs, simpering and giggling; gross brutality mixed with refinement.
The scent of musk and unwashed flesh floated round Lady Emmeline in a large yellow cloud. Annabelle’s tactful suggestion that Lady Emmeline would feel better after a bath was met with horror and upraised hands. All windows were tightly shut, and the early autumn evening blazed with color on the other side of
the glass like some exquisite, unattainable picture.
Captain MacDonald had erupted onto the scene again, walking with Annabelle in the gardens or even sitting reading to Lady Emmeline. The latter was a heavy task for both reader and listener as every sentence of the story seemed to remind the Captain of something old so-and-so had said the other day, and off he would go into a long digression.
When the Captain was nervous or slightly bosky, there was a reckless strung-up quality to him which was very attractive, but when he was relaxed as he seemed to be these days, Annabelle had to confess that she found him a bore.
Before her godmother’s illness Annabelle had been gently drifting into marriage with the Captain. Now she seemed to be drifting gently away.
One day at the end of September Lady Emmeline finally decided herself well enough to hold a party. Cards were sent out, the windows were at last flung open, and all the rooms were aired. Society flowed out from London, for the Dowager Marchioness was noted for her French chef and her lavish hospitality.
Annabelle, Lady Emmeline, and the Captain received the guests, and Annabelle noticed with a twinge of dismay that she was quite clearly marked down as being the Captain’s property.
Then—quite suddenly—before she had time to control her expression, Lord Varleigh strolled elegantly into the room. His face looked very tanned against the dazzling white of his intricate cravat. Annabelle looked across the room at him with her heart in her eyes, but fortunately he had bent his head to say something to Lady Emmeline. By the time he looked in her direction, she had had time to control her feelings and pin a social smile on her face.
Several of the ladies were wearing becoming gowns designed by Annabelle. There was one particular design that Annabelle had put her heart and soul into—a confection of pale green Indian muslin trimmed with lily of the valley in a deep garland around the hem—and with a sinking heart she saw it was beautifying none other than Lady Jane Cherle.
Admittedly Varleigh’s mistress had put on a great deal of weight but her skin was still magnificent, and her lazy, languid air of sensuality drew all the men to her like bees to a honey pot. Even Lord Varleigh fetched her refreshment while she dazzled and sparkled at him with the full force of her personality. In this, Lord Varleigh, that expert of the delicate affair, that tightrope walker of the circus of intrigue, made a dangerous error. The row in Paris had become a lover’s quarrel in Jane’s ever-optimistic mind.
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