Summers, True

by Poppy

  "Our family excels in producing females. But we consider the males we produce to be exceptional."

  Poppy groaned. "The British and their breeding."

  "Are you then so much an American now?"

  "I can decide that later," Poppy said hastily. "But surely you cannot consider you have bred a winner in Andy?"

  "Our tutor assures us he shows unusual talent," Jack said, stiff again. "We agreed his background, while broad, of course did not prepare him to go into the usual educational channels."

  Poppy stared at him. "Jack, I believe you are going to make a prime heir. You could not sound more in the proper mode if you had never left England. What is this talent you mention?"

  A slight smile flickered on Jack's face. "This has been. too much for your delicate condition. I will call again another day."

  "You will tell me right now," Poppy said and stamped her foot. "What is Andy up to now?"

  "He is with his tutor at our place in Scotland working with the stones that have been displaced from the battlements."

  "What?"

  "You remember he always wanted to construct things of iron. He enjoyed the heaviest labor if it involved casting. He carved in wood, too, if he could find nothing else. You do not recall, but I do, his interest in the artists during our stay in Paris. His tutor reports he has a fine feeling for shaping stone. It is possible that in Andy we have produced a talented sculptor. At the proper time we will see he is sent to Paris and Rome to ascertain if he has such a talent."

  "I can't believe it, but you may be right," Poppy said.

  "If not, he still will be most useful in overseeing practical work around our properties," Jack said. "We care for our own, Poppy, and Andy is one of ours."

  "I believe he is one of the luckiest boys in the world," Poppy cried with a gush of her old warm feeling for Jack.

  He saw the look on her face, leaned forward, and caught both her hands in his. "This is not the moment to speak to you, but I have never changed in my regard for you."

  "The widow of a man who died violently. A widow with a child."

  "A woman who can produce healthy children is held in high regard by my parents," Jack said drily. "Now that your mother is our near neighbor, believe me, you need have no fears. My parents would regard us as well suited and wish us happy."

  After Jack left, Poppy sat a long time in front of the fire. She would never know a finer man than Jack or one she liked better. He could give her everything she had ever dreamed of and more. Except she did not love him.

  Alone here, all the old musings from her girlhood came back to her, the old wondering what would become of her, what shape her life would assume. Now far away in San Francisco, she had a dowry of sorts. She had arranged that Maurice and Jeremiah's lawyer should pay funds to the English bank, and the bank should manage everything for her. When she could see a little farther ahead, if she wished, she could write the bank to sell her holdings and send her the funds. Or she could let the bank manage everything and leave the whole to accumulate as an inheritance for her child. She had a shrewd idea that, in time, it would represent real wealth.

  Once the baby was born, she could return to San Francisco. If she juggled the dates a little, people would think no more than that the child was small for its age. But her heart and mind cried out against such a move. Even if she could face all the memories of the violent and unhappy past, life for a widow with a child and too little money would be hard .

  Life in London for a poor widow with a child would be no easier. She had seen women striving to maintain their gentility in conditions of near-poverty, and she shuddered from the memory. Daisy would be helpful, possibly even let her stay at Pallminster Lane, but then she would be a poor dependent. That was not a happy role, and the child would suffer a hundred small deprivations.

  Poppy sighed. Jack loved her, and Jack could give her everything. He did not expect her to love him as he well might suspect she had loved Dex. He would be happy and ask nothing more, if she only married him. But she did not think she could be happy with herself. She would always feel she was cheating a fine and deserving man.

  Mrs. Peters bustled in. ''I've fixed you a fine, strengthening meal, aired your bed for you, and put in the warming pan."

  Poppy frowned rebelliously and then remembered. "Do we still have the carriage?"

  "Yes, and the horse growing fat," Mrs. Peters sniffed. "There's naught Peters can do about that with no daily driving, only hauling them trollops from station to here or there or wherever."

  "Mmm," Poppy said, with a pang of sympathy for the women who were trained under Mrs. Peters. They would be trained well but not gently. "That's easily mended. Tell Peters I'll be driving at the usual hour every day."

  Mrs. Peters looked scandalized. "In your condition, miss?"

  "Mrs. Dunbar, if you please." She had deliberately left the newspapers, folded back to the account of Jeremiah's death, with her appearance and name recounted prominently, where Mrs. Peters must see them.

  "Excuse me, Mrs. Dunbar, ma'am," Mrs. Peters said, with a glint in her eyes that told clearly she believed only half of what she read. "It's old habit, Miss Poppy, ma'am. But you know very well that ladies in your condition don't go driving, don't even step outside the house, you know that."

  "Who's to know if I stay in the carriage with the robe over my lap?"

  "You could be seen," Mrs. Peters protested, horrified. "On the doorstep here. By anyone. It's not done, ma'am."

  Poppy got slowly to her feet. "Tell Peters I'll expect the carriage in front of the house at the usual hour."

  Chapter Forty-eight

  When a summer day in England was perfect, nothing could be more perfect, Poppy thought happily as she settled herself in the carriage and let Peters tuck the lap robe around her. She sniffed the city smell of the air, caught faint echoes of street cries from around the corner and church bells in the distance, felt the familiar soft jolting of wheels rolling over stone, not planks or dirt, and laughed aloud. This was London. Until now, she had not known how homesick she had been.

  She craned forward for her first glimpse of the park and gave an involuntary cry of satisfaction when they entered it. The green of the English grass was like no other green. The beds of flowers, the trees, the whole aspect was so completely England, not the wild, untrammeled beauty of California, nor yet the too-mannered perfection of the landscaping of France, but beautifully and naturally England, a land long loved and cared for and kept at its loveliest.

  She leaned forward, hands clenched, greedily eyeing everything, trying to imprint on her mind all the things she had not seen for so long and had missed so bitterly without knowing it. The horses were so handsome, and the gentlemen rode so beautifully, not for travel, but for pleasure and style. The ladies in their light carriages were so beautiful, gracious, composed. And, oh, the clothes the women on the promenade were wearing!

  She plucked resentfully at her black gloves and shoved her black bonnet farther back. For the child's sake, for custom, she must endure this hated mourning that was a mockery. Jeremiah's death had meant nothing to her except escape from degradation and terror. Still, she was his widow and his child would be legitimate. She pushed the thought from her.

  Leaning forward again, she studied every walking costume. After the new year, she would have new clothes, beautiful clothes, whatever else she went scant on. Nobody here would question by a matter of a few weeks whether her year of mourning was up or not. That blue, the tailoring was severe, but it only made the lady appear more delicate and fragile in contrast. She must try something like that but perhaps in green.

  When they returned to Pallminster Lane, Poppy almost danced up the steps for all her weight and ran into the house. Jack jumped up from a chair beside the fire-place.

  "Dear Poppy, this is not California."

  "So I have been observing, most happily."

  "If you must go out, perhaps a closed carriage?"

  Poppy pulled off her black b
onnet, shook out her curls, and nodded to Mrs. Peters, who was hovering nearby for propriety's sake. "I enjoy the air and sunshine. I am neither an invalid nor a monster. Wrapped in the robe, nobody sees anything to shock them. So where's the harm?"

  "It simply is not done."

  "I'm doing it. You will stay for tea?"

  "If you would care to come down to the country with me, the house is large, and you would be welcome."

  "I have never met any of your family."

  "I came today to ask if you would receive my sister-in-law if she calls?"

  To meet his family was serious. To stay at their country place under the circumstances was almost a commitment. "I must wait on everything until I have talked to Daisy," Poppy reminded him.

  She was thoughtful after Jack left. If Jack, who knew so well the freer ways of life outside England and seldom faulted anything she did, if Jack disapproved of her drives, Daisy would be outraged. Poppy knew she would writhe in the position of a child and a dependent in another woman's house. More than ever now, it would be intolerable.

  Still, she had tomorrow and perhaps the day after, and she had had the barest taste of all a return to London meant. The park was too delicious to abandon after one drive, but the following day she would tell Peters to bring the carriage around early. They would drive through the streets, she would have at least one glimpse of the fashionable shops before they went to the park.

  Mrs. Peters sniffed when she gave the order, and Poppy knew she was hoping Daisy would arrive to put an end to this brazen behavior. The day proved fine, and Poppy. only smiled when Peters glowered as he helped her into the carriage. In minutes, she forgot him completely. She relished every sight, every familiar street comer and shop sign, every beer dray and grocer's cart, all the things she had missed so bitterly, though secretly. She knew now she had grieved she would never see or hear any of this again. Yet here she was, once more a part of London. Then she realized the carriage had stopped.

  "Yes, Peters?"

  "It's Her Ladyship's bank, miss. Since you're so independent these days, I thought as maybe you'd be stopping in to take care of some of your independent business."

  Poppy's eyes narrowed. His tone was just this side of insolence. Still he might honestly think that, newly returned to England, she had urgent business she must transact. She glanced at the bank, Dex's bank, and went white. She was imagining things. She was fanciful, pregnant fanciful. That could not be Dex peering out the window straight at the carriage.

  "Thank you, Peters," she said. "I have no business here. The park now. Quickly. We'll be late."

  She forced herself to lean back and clasped her hands together to keep them from trembling. That could not have been Dex. He was still in Mexico or California. Even if it had been, he could not have recognized her or the carriage or known that Daisy still held the cottage at Pallminster Lane. He could not guess she might be here. He probably had heard of Jeremiah's death, and he might know she had left San Francisco, but London was the last place he would expect her to be. He knew she would refuse to become a dependent child again. He could not guess the special, urgent reason for her return.

  That glimpse had left her feeling faint. "The park, quickly, I need fresh air."

  "That's all we need for a real scandal," Peters said dolorously. "A baby born in the park."

  "Worse 'than a coachman dismissed without a character?" Poppy threatened, but her heart was not in it.

  Daisy might be at the cottage when they returned. If she was, she might listen to an urgent plea of the need for country air. Poppy shuddered at 'the thought of staying in London and accidentally seeing Dex when she looked like this. When she was lithe and slim again, when she felt beautiful and seductive, then she would face him. And somehow she would tell him she was a respectable widow with family responsibilities and not a lost, lonely, frightened child any more. Oh, the things she would say, that things had changed, that now she had a mother married to a fine gentleman and a brother with the best family connections. And if Dex said he knew all that, she would tell him she had an offer for herself from one of the finest families in the country, one of the very finest as he well knew. He could not take advantage of her again and pay her off with a few shreds of clothing and promises that were worse than nothing. She would spurn him and leave him groveling, apologizing, but in vain, for all the wrongs he had worked on her.

  Absolutely rosy with anticipation, as more and more words poured through her mind, things she could hardly wait to say to the man, Poppy let Peters drive quickly through the park and head back to the cottage. As he handed her down, she shook her head impatiently when he tried to point out something up the road. She had no time for flower girls or peddlers.

  She opened the cottage door, burst into the living room, and realized too late, as she saw Dex standing in front of the fireplace, that Peters had been trying to point out a groom walking two horses, Dex's horse and his own.

  Dex advanced two steps and growled, "What have you been doing to my child, madame?"

  Dazed with shock, Poppy stared at him. "What child?" .

  "My child, my baby, my little girl," Daisy's voice called from the stairs. She ran into the room, gathered Poppy close in her arms, and kissed her fondly. "My little girl and in mourning weeds. Oh, my poor darling."

  "I want to know what she has been doing to my child," Dex stormed.

  Poppy drew back and looked at him over Daisy's shoulder. "As you see, I am a bereaved widow, sir, come to beg my mother's protection."

  "I see that somehow, in a delicate condition, you have made a dangerous ocean crossing and endangered my child. What was your ship?"

  "I am not a Vanderbilt, sir, to build my own steam-ship for a single crossing," Poppy said with dignity. "I am a poor but respectable widow. As you can see."

  "I see that following a political shooting affray in which your husband was killed-" Dex began.

  "Oh, no," Daisy shrieked. "Oh, that terrible California. Was it Indians? Was he scalped?"

  "Only killed, Lady Redford," Dex said but his eyes never left Poppy. "Shot within minutes of your rejoining him in public, my courier reported. So I can see why his widow did not find it wise to remain in a town where it was well known she had not lived with her husband for some months."

  Poppy bent her head over her clasped hands. "Daisy, I have come to you in deepest affliction. Can you not protect me?"

  "Do you wish to retire to your room while I deal with this?" Daisy asked.

  Poppy peeked up at Dex's blazing eyes. He was capable of saying anything. He probably would. And Daisy was capable of believing him. "I am no longer an infant," she said bravely. "I assure you, Daisy, I was honorably married to a man well regarded in the community. He was shot down, at a banquet given in his honor, while I was sitting at his side. Upstairs I have newspapers which will give you all the details."

  "Came provided with proof, did you?" Dex asked. "Did they mention my ship the Golden Dolphin had docked only a few hours before?"

  "Daisy, will you permit this man to make such accusations?" Poppy demanded.

  "As the owner of the Golden Dolphin, I have copies of the log and manifests of the ship. They show clearly we were both aboard and give the exact dates."

  "Together, and you have the dates," Daisy said thoughtfully and looked at Poppy with narrowed eyes. "Exactly when do you expect your baby, dear child?"

  "Later," Poppy said. "Later."

  "I assumed you did not know of the child when you embarked on this long trip, but I see that could not be so," Daisy insisted.

  Poppy let an appealing tear drop. "I wished her to be British born."

  "My son," Dex thundered. "I, too, wish him to be British born. And legitimate, with my name. We do not have illegits in my family."

  "My daughter," Poppy repeated pathetically.

  "It's a good marriage," Daisy said, with a nod of her head, her sweet voice at its most practical. "Of course in your condition, no, not a large wedding."


  "All my life," Poppy cried, "I've known sooner or later you would attempt to force me into a marriage of your choosing. Time and again, it has driven me into a state of despondency, a marriage for the sake of marriage."

  "My son will not be born with the slightest cloud on his name," Dex roared. "A small private wedding here at the house. It can be arranged before the week is out."

  Poppy sank into a chair and burst into tears. "My baby, my daughter, my little girl!"

  Daisy put a hand on her shoulder. "She wrote her husband was a man of substance, and nobody here is likely to question a small discrepancy in dates, Dex, There is no need for Poppy to make a marriage that will reduce her to a state of despondency."

  "I assure you I have yet to see her in such a state in my company," Dex said, biting off his words. "I suggest you ask her, Lady Redford, if she was ever forced into my bed."