Summers, True

by Poppy

  The Viscount snatched his hat and cane. "Gentlemen don't kiss and tell."

  "Gentlemen, no," the dark man agreed scathingly. "So you will not, either. But you will stop by the bank and make a deposit to cover the damage here to those handsome red overcurtains and other things. I'll inquire not later than noon tomorrow to make sure the deposit is suitably large."

  "It will be there," the Viscount mumbled. Then he cried in that thin, odd voice, "You bankers are growing too powerful and arrogant. Someday we'll have the whip hand and you'll come begging."

  As he slammed out the door, Poppy sidled toward the stairs. Daisy jumped up, darted across the room, and caught her wrist.

  "Just a minute, young lady," Daisy said, pulling off her dark green mantelet and throwing it over Poppy's shoulders. "Just a minute. Andy, pick yourself up and go to your room. We want to talk to your sister."

  Andy got up, but he walked straight over to the tall, quiet man and looked up at him confidingly. "Do you go to the Exhibition often? Have you been in the machinery court yet?"

  Then Poppy recognized him, too. This was the man who had saved them in the park the day before Daisy sent them to the country. As if she were not already in enough trouble, Andy had brought that up. Once Daisy heard that story, added to what had happened with the Viscount today, her wrath would know no limits. Poppy could not clap her hands over Andy's mouth or thrust him from the room. She could only stand, horrified.

  "Often," the man said. "The American reaper is especially interesting. We must discuss it another time," and he pushed Andy gently toward the stairs.

  "You know my children?" Daisy cried.

  "I had the pleasure of speaking to them one day in the park," the man said suavely, nodded goodbye as Andy went reluctantly through the stair door, and turned to look at Poppy. "Last spring," he added but said no more.

  Poppy drew the mantelet close around her and glared back at that cold gaze. He had not told Daisy, but his look said he remembered everything and considered her conduct odious. Rage flared in her. Men looked at her fondly or admiringly. Or sometimes, trying to conceal it, hungrily, but never with cold disapproval. She would not have it. She would not.

  With a touch of swagger, she shrugged the mantelet looser around her shoulders and said in her sweetest voice, "I must thank you, sir. My brother goes quite wild when he gets a bit of fire in his hands."

  "He's a child. You seem to light fires of another kind. Your mother was telling me about your summer as we drove back from the park. An incident similar to this. Too similar. Your father would be ashamed of you."

  Poppy felt her face flame red. "We were in love," she choked.

  "Nonsense. You were a couple of children playing at grownup games. Dangerous games for you. You have everything to lose. Your father meant you to marry respectably. I begin to doubt it will be possible."

  "There's no dowry."

  "And Daisy rightly believes the rubies were given to her for other purposes."

  "What's it to you?" Poppy cried. "How do you know?"

  "Knowing is my business."

  He looked beyond her. Following his glance, Poppy saw that both Andy and Daisy were gone. From the kitchen came the sound of Daisy hissing like an angry teakettle, interrupted by Mrs. Peters's dripping whine, a duet of accusations and excuses.

  "I wonder," he said softly.

  He strode over to her, circled her with an arm that seemed as hard and knotted as oak, and pulled her against his chest. Deliberately he prodded her head up with the gold top of his cane and put his mouth to hers. Poppy stiffened and thinned her lips, but he forced her teeth apart, and his tongue explored her mouth while his hand pulled the mantelet and torn bodice aside and teased each breast until Poppy, gasping, could feel the nipples come erect. He pressed her whole body the length of. his. As her hair, already loosened from its pins, tumbled down around her shoulders, she felt her knees give way, and she went limp in his arms. She felt her body softening against him and then tensing again, but softly, as she snuggled closer and deeper into his embrace.

  He put her from him and straightened his waistcoat. "Yes," he said, as if that had settled something. "You must marry soon, or there'll be no saving you." Then he looked over her head and said, "I have just kissed your daughter, Daisy."

  "So I observed." Daisy walked across the room, swaying her full skirt of green rep, and settled in the velvet chair. "I also heard your recommendation."

  "Did you see how he kissed me?" Poppy cried, appalled.

  "He is a most capable gentleman in all respects," Daisy said coolly and smiled at him. Whatever happened, she never allowed herself to remain in a state of agitation for more than half an hour. It made gentlemen ,uncomfortable, and besides she felt it was bad for the complexion. "I asked you to come and have a glass of wine with me when we met in the park. Will you have it now?"

  He shook his head as the clock struck. "I must postpone the pleasure. His Lordship is expecting me to dinner." He strode across to the door. "Good evening, Daisy. Miss Poppy." And he was gone.

  "Who is that man?" Poppy cried.

  "Dexter Tremayne Roack." Daisy rolled out the name with satisfaction. "He told you. He's with my bank."

  "A banker?" Poppy said dazedly. Bankers were stodgy, dull, and old. He had accused her of playing dangerous games, but he was a dangerous man. She had meant to enchant him. Instead he had kissed her in that outrageous, unforgivable way and casually walked out. "What does he do?"

  "Mostly he's heiring."

  "Is he a hunting man?" Poppy asked.

  Daisy laughed, delighted with the success of her pun. "He only hunts two-legged heirs. That's his position with the bank, and they say nobody in the world knows more about heirs, legit and illegit."

  Chapter Five

  Up in her room, Poppy ripped off the ruined bodice and skirt, balled them up into a crumpled bundle, and pushed them back in the farthest comer of her wardrobe. She hurled the bronze slippers after them. Then she put on her blue-sprigged, white-flannel robe, knelt on the rose tiles of the fireplace hearth, and poked the embers into a flame.

  "Let me fix it," Andy said from behind her.

  Poppy sat back on her heels. "Oh, Andy, what's wrong with you? Everything's fire, fire, fire. You lit this, and you know Daisy said we weren't to have fires up here until October."

  "She stopped up my fireplace, and I study better when I can watch a fire, so I came in here."

  "You can't watch a fire and study at the same time."

  "I can."

  "I think we should send you to live on an iceberg out of temptation's way."

  "If Daisy would let me go back to live with Gramps and train to be a blacksmith, I could play with fire all day long and be happy and soon be earning besides."

  Poppy shook her head in exasperation. With his curly tow head and bright blue eyes and alert expression, he could look like an angel at times. But like most eight-year-olds, he was usually grubby, and his clothes were always missing a button or ripped at the knee or elbow. And he could repeat the same wish a dozen times a day for weeks.

  "You know that's impossible," Poppy said patiently, just as if it had not been explained over and over again.

  "You're a gentleman's son, and Daisy thinks she can get you on a Civil Service list."

  "Working at a desk with an old pen," Andy sniffed disdainfully. "Of course a banker like Dexter Roack, traveling all over, finding people, that's different. But then he's one of a kind."

  "I hope so," Poppy said emphatically and went over the old arguments. "You're wiry and strong, but you aren't big enough for a smith. And not with Gramps, anyhow. You know he says he's the worst smith in four counties."

  "I like making things, and I'd be a good smith. I suppose you're blaming me for going for that man with the burning stick. I suppose you think I should have stood there and said, 'Oh, please, sir, don't hurt my sister, or I'll have to slap your hands.' And he'd have stood up politelike and said he was sorry?"

  "Y
ou could have yelled for Mrs. Peters. Or hit him with the poker, but that's dangerous, too."

  "I might have cracked his head," Andy said indignantly. "Think I want to hang for you? I was just going to scorch him a little."

  Poppy sighed. "Anyhow, Daisy's been wanting new overcurtains, cut velvet ones."

  Andy's face lit up. "Isn't Dexter Roack the finest gentleman? I recognized him in a minute today. They were selling a picture with him and Toe Dancer, his horse that won the big race last month. Williams has it pasted in his math book."

  "A banker with race horses?" Poppy said, shocked.

  "Oh, he's a gentleman of gentlemen, I tell you. The boys talk about him all the time. He goes all over the world finding people, and then he tells them they've got millions and millions of pounds coming to them, that he knows about it because his family are the bankers, and he brings them back, and the poor man isn't hungry any more, and the family is happy and-well, he does it all the time."

  "Andy, the stories you do make up."

  "It's true. It's every word true. True and more. Williams has an uncle that ran away and sailed as a common seaman to China or maybe India or Africa, and he was lost for years. All his brothers died, and Dexter Roack found him and gave him tens and tens of thousands of pounds and a castle. It did happen. The uncle came to get Williams one day."

  "Andy's talking about that big Irish estate," Daisy said from the doorway and pushed him aside and came in herself. "The uncle has a little friend in the ballet, and she was telling me about it."

  Daisy might have come up to scold, but she never could resist a good gossip. She heard most of the town talk through her friends in the ballet and their connections with the gentry. She could not have them at Pallminster Lane because their arrangements usually were of a brief and lively kind, and she had to maintain her reputation for being both fastidious and expensive. But she did find frequent excuses to drop in to visit them discreetly and privately.

  "The family was half crazy, with two brothers dying here of the cholera that summer and another killed in the riots in Italy in forty-eight." Daisy shook her head in dismay at the thought and settled down on the end of the narrow bed. "Trust the wild one of the lot to survive, and Dex did find him for them. Now I think he's looking for the Westmorelands. He was walking with Lord Westmoreland in the park when I bowed to him from my carriage, and he joined me to come back here for a glass of wine. Only it wasn't wine he got, thanks to you, young lady, and don't you dare to try to throw that dress away. Where is it? It cost a pretty penny, and we can make a new brown bodice, trimmed with the stripe, and maybe it will remind you to behave when gentlemen come calling on your mother."

  Andy never listened to his mother's lectures. "What is Dexter Roack doing for the Westmorelands? Whatever it is, he can do it. He can do anything."

  "So you've got a new hero," Daisy said fondly. "That's better than those boxer ruffians."

  "I knew he could, the first time I saw him," Andy insisted while Poppy held her breath, but he went on, "The Westmorelands?"

  "Sad," Daisy said with a ladylike sigh. "So sad. Everyone's commiserating about it. Westmoreland had four sons, and he placed them as was proper, the oldest for the estate, the next for the army, then one for the church and one for the navy. Didn't the heir marry into the Prowdy clan because their land ran together?

  Anybody could have told them the Prowdys have been hard put to get one male a generation. They have so many females they can never get them married off, and that's true as far back as you can trace. It's a miracle the name hasn't died out. Oh, how could the Westmorelands not have known? The estate is entailed to the male line, but the heir has five daughters, and they've lost three more, and a boy isn't likely now. The reverend had two sons, but his lady was sickly. The sons and mother have been in Florence coughing their lives away for years now. No, it's worse than that. One boy's gone and the other's not long for this world or the mother, either. And the clergyman's High Church and says he'll convert to Catholic before he'll marry again. The Westmorelands had some Catholic branches once."

  "So that leaves two," Poppy said impatiently.

  "The army man resigned his commission two years ago and went back to learn to manage the estate, but didn't he break his neck out hunting last winter. And the navy one has no proper family feeling. He says it's the navy or nothing for him, so he's gone on half pay and disappeared. Sent word he'd come back when they settled things so he wouldn't have to be landlocked the rest of his life."

  "A missing heir," Andy cried gleefully.

  "I don't know what good it's done him to go missing," Daisy sniffed. "He can't sign on as an officer on a merchant ship because the minute he showed his papers Dex would drop on him like a shot. No Westmoreland could sign on as a common seaman. He'd rare up and talk back and be flogged half to death the first week. I guess the silly boy has sense enough to know that. No, he's hiding out in some hole like a rabbit, him that doesn't want to be land bound, and it's up to Dex to find the carrot to coax him out and get him to take his proper place. Why, there are hardly finer estates or an older name in the country, and we can just hope the Westmorelands haven't bred themselves a dunce who can't see his duty and take it up when his poor old father is breaking his heart every day."

  That reminded Daisy. "You two have given me enough grief for one day, too. Mr. Hammett will be dining, and I haven't started to change. How Mrs. Peters is to get the parlor cleaned and finish the dinner in time, I don't know. I told her to get out a bottle of the best sherry and that will help. She'll bring you two a tray when she gets around to it, and I don't want to hear a squeak out of either of you until morning."

  Poppy waited until Daisy was down the hall and the door of her bedroom closed behind her before she looked at Andy. He pulled a long face.

  "It was all right when we were babies," he said. "The gentlemen thought we were sweet then."

  "It's just Mr. Hammett," Poppy sighed. "He's awfully old, fifty or more, but if he can think of Daisy as a girl, he feels young. With us so big, we spoil it."

  "If only they'd let me go to Gramps."

  "If only I could marry the Prince of Wales," Poppy mocked, then laughed. "No, he's too young, just a little older than you."

  "What if the next gentleman won't have us around at all?" Andy asked, panic in his blue eyes.

  That made Poppy's heart ache. "Daisy loves us dearly," she insisted fiercely. "She never even put us out with a wet nurse, and lots of women do that. Do you remember France and how those dreadful French-women put their children away in places clear out in the country and almost never went to see them, only maybe once or twice a year?"

  "I remember. I remember everything."

  Poppy poked at the dead ashes of the fire. Andy was right, but she was not going to wish worries on a child.

  "Do you even remember your Latin for tomorrow?" she scoffed.

  "I've got my verbs and written out the translation. Do you know, he says he's going to start us on Greek next week? I'll never learn those funny-looking letters."

  "I'll help," Poppy promised and felt so sorry for him, she let a secret slip out. "I'm going to the Exhibition tomorrow. What's the use of a season ticket if I don't use it?"

  "I'll meet you there," Andy cried. "I might as well. If I don't get beaten for that, I'll be beaten for something else. I want to watch the steam engines again. And the Impulsoria."

  What Andy said was true. He might as well have some pleasure for his beating. "I'll be by the Crystal Fountain. Don't let Daisy or Mrs. Peters see you when you get your ticket out of the vase on the mantel."

  Andy nodded. He would take his beating without a word. He knew Poppy hoped to slip back into the house before Daisy returned from her drive in the park, and he would not tell on her.

  "And the reaping machine," Andy murmured happily to himself as he went back to his room.

  Poppy sank down in the sewing chair, put her chin in her hands, and thought. They were an embarrassment to Daisy. This c
ould not go on, and she did not know what could be done about it. No boarding school would take Andy because more proper parents would withdraw their sons instantly from such contamination. Yet a gentleman might tolerate Andy alone here if she could find a place for herself.

  There had to be a place. If only she could think hard enough where and what it was, then find it. This was the wonderful modem world with every kind of excitement, opportunity, and discovery breaking out faster than anyone could follow. In California, they said, you could walk up to any stream of water and pull out a fortune in gold, just waiting there to be picked up. But that was half around the world. Still it must be true about the gold.

  Then there was France. That silly Louis Napoleon was back there now, elected to something, and the French were welcome to him, and he was having a lottery, the Lottery of the Golden Ingots. The prizes were bars of pure gold, worth millions and millions of francs, just for the price of a little ticket. And the money was to be spent to help worthy people resettle in California, where every kind of skilled worker was needed. But that was in France, and she agreed with Daisy that the French were a sleazy, unreliable people, not only because they-had revolutions time after time with blood running in the streets, but they simply were not solid and trustworthy. Still, winning one of those bars of gold would be lovely.