Love in a Major Key

by Fiona Hill

  Love in a Major Key

  Fiona Hill

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1976 by Ellen Pall

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition November 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-487-5

  More from Fiona Hill

  The Autumn Rose

  The Stanbroke Girls

  The Trellised Lane

  Sweet’s Folly

  The Practical Heart

  The Wedding Portrait

  The Love Child

  The Country Gentleman

  To Harvey Klinger

  Chapter I

  Lady Keyes toyed fretfully with the inkwell on her husband’s desk. “I admit, Latimer,” she said, “I am no more fond of the prospect than you are; but I believe my grandmother may be quite right. In fact, we ought to have done it last year.”

  Sir Latimer inspected his fingernails closely. “Is there no one in the neighbourhood who will answer?”

  “My dear, you know there is not. I will not have my daughter marrying that horrid Reverend Blake. He is fifty if he is a day, and quite hideous as well. Though a very good man,” she added conscientiously. She picked up a pen and stirred the ink with it.

  “You married a neighbourhood fellow,” Sir Latimer reminded his wife. “I trust it did you no harm.”

  “Naturally it did not; but that was because the fellow was you, my dear.” A plaintive note entered her thin voice. “There is simply no possibility of Daphne’s marrying any of our acquaintances, Latimer. To do so, she would be obliged to marry beneath herself—O! and when I think of what Lady Bryde would say to that!”

  “I wish you did not stand so much in dread of your grandmother,” answered her husband, for perhaps the hundredth time since their wedding-day.

  Her manner growing yet more agitated, Lady Keyes stirred the ink vigorously. “But you know how she felt about my mother’s marriage,” she said reproachfully. In a softened tone, she added, “Mine too.”

  Sir Latimer polished his left thumbnail with his right index finger. “I do not recall when Lady Bryde was satisfied with anything,” he said, almost pettishly.

  “But my dear, she is a Countess!” replied his wife, a little scandalised by his lack of respect for the venerable old lady. “She ought to know what is significant, and what is not; and she told me at Christmas that if Daphne married below her station—as Mother and I did—it would be the end of the family’s position altogether. She is already disturbed over the retired life we lead, you know; she always has been.” Lady Keyes peered deeply into the eddy she was making in the inkwell. “She has for ever been begging us to spend a Season in London, and we have never done so. And now with Daphne eighteen years of age, I’m afraid we simply must—O!” she broke off with a little cry. “How clumsy of me! I’ve spilt the ink, all over your papers—were they important, Latimer?” she asked in dismay.

  “No, no,” he reassured her, hurrying to blot up the widening black puddle with a handkerchief. “Margaret,” he went on, when most of the ink had been soaked away, “this is not the sort of decision which can be made in an hour, don’t you agree? I will consult with Clayton,” he said, naming his secretary, “and you must write to Lady Bryde and ask her for particulars. When a girl ought to make her come-out, to whom she must be presented, and so on. Then we shall be able to consider this matter farther.” He rose on these words and went over to the bell-cord.

  “You are not going to ring for Elizabeth!” she cried.

  “Certainly I am, my dear. Someone must clear up this ink or it will stain the desk permanently.”

  “O, but do not ask Elizabeth to do it, I beg,” said she, jumping up from her chair. “I should die of shame if a servant were to see what a mess I’ve created. I shall clean it up myself, Latimer,” she continued, reaching out a hand to stay her husband’s arm. “Really, I should prefer it,” she pleaded.

  “Very well, my dear,” said he, smiling; “though I think you are very silly.” He kissed her forehead and she went off to fetch a basin of water and some rags.

  In a little while she returned and began rubbing diligently at the embarrassing spot. “Latimer,” she said thoughtfully as she worked, “there is one more thing I think I ought to mention.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It is about Clayton, you know. He is—he is…well, the sheeps-eyes he casts at Daphne recently are really too shocking. It would probably be just as well to remove her from his vicinity before she notices his admiration. I do not think she has as yet, but—well, it really would be too vexatious if she were to return his affection.” She dipped her rag into the basin and began mopping at a new place.

  “But if we go to London,” said he a little anxiously, “surely Clayton will go with us? I could not do without him, Margaret; truly, I could not.”

  Startled, she looked up at him, sloshing the water out of her basin at the same time, so that it formed a new puddle on her husband’s papers. “O my, I am sorry!” she exclaimed, applying a dry rag to this fresh disaster.

  “It is nothing, my dear; nothing.”

  “How clumsy I am today! But if that is the case—I mean, if you think to take Clayton with us—then you will have to speak to him about it. About Daphne, I mean. Remind him of his position in the household, how grateful he should be to you—that sort of thing, my dear. Will you speak to him? Promise you will.”

  “I shall do whatever is necessary,” he assured her, after a brief pause. In the event, however, he did nothing at all. Lady Keyes, satisfied that she had undone as much damage as she could, left her husband’s study soon after, and Sir Latimer summoned his secretary. He conferred with the younger man upon the advisability of putting his daughter on the London marriage mart, the cost of taking a town-house for the Season, the difficulties of transport to and from London and within the town itself—but not a word was said regarding Clayton’s admiration for Daphne. Now the reason of this was simple: Sir Latimer Keyes was every bit as timid as his wife, and perhaps a little more so. While he did his best to conceal this fact—particularly by allowing Clayton to deal with all such frightening personages as bailiffs, and lawyers, and even the butler employed at Verchamp Park—it was nonetheless true, and the prospect of discussing with his secretary such an intimate matter as sentiment seemed quite outside the realm of possibility to him. Accordingly, he delayed fulfilling his wife’s request, and in a very short time had succeeded in forgetting it altogether.

  Perhaps an admonishment from him on this topic would have been without purpose anyway. Mr. Clayton might cast a veritable deluge of sheeps-eyes at Miss Daphne Keyes, but it was unlikely she would return them. He was a youngish man—twenty-nine or thirty at the most—but his countenance in no way reflected the beauty often associated with youth. On the contrary, his face was abnormally wide and ruddy, and equipped with a set of greenish eyes which protruded awkwardly therefrom. They were set close together, over a flat nose and an even flatter pair of lips. Nor did his manner reflect youth’s grace. He did, it is true, have the springy step which is some times found in people who tend to be stout—but there was nothing to attract Miss Daphne’s notice in this. No, Mr. Clayton was in
no wise the sort of young man who plays the hero in a young girl’s fancy; the best that could be said of him was that he was extremely competent, and as good-natured as one could desire. These last attributes, however, were quite enough to satisfy Sir Latimer, and he would no more have thought of journeying to London without his secretary than of reprimanding his wife, or his daughter, or—for that matter—his hounds. Sir Latimer was, as we have said, a very timid gentleman.

  He had been his father’s only child, and had inherited his title (Baronet) and his estate (Verchamp Park) in due course. A long line of Sir Latimer Keyes’ had preceded himself and his father, and they had become shyer and more retiring with each succeeding generation. The Latimer who now stood heir to the title was, of course, the present Baronet’s son, and Daphne’s younger brother by a twelvemonth. Though the Baronet was in good health, and did not look to pass on his position for a good many years, both his children had already inherited, in a manner of speaking, at least one of his possessions: an acute fear of the world. Indeed, this was the family trait—as remarkable in all of them as their dark eyes and thick dark hair—and the Keyes family motto might well have been (though it was not) Hide Thy Light under a Bushel Basket, Lest Someone Extinguish It. Sir Latimer had married Margaret Buckwood, daughter of Lady Margaret Buckwood, daughter, in turn, of Lady Margaret Bryde, Countess of Halston. The Buckwoods had been neighbours of the Keyes’ in Herefordshire, but the line had died out shortly after Miss Margaret’s marriage, and all that was left of her once numerous family was Lady Keyes herself and the Countess of Halston, now five-and-seventy years of age at the very least. The Countess of Halston, elderly though she was, vehemently scorned life in the country—which she called a rude theatre, where the entertainment was fit only for groundlings—and had accordingly resided in London all her life. She frequently sneered at her grand-daughter for chusing to live retired, and—when she made her yearly Christmas visit to Verchamp—took her severely to task for imposing that life on Daphne.

  “Poor Daphine” (as her great-grand-mother called her) was a “comely gal.” Lady Bryde often predicted, with her accustomed shrewdness, that she would turn the heads of not a few town-bucks, could they but see her. On no occasion, however, had she offered to sponsor Daphne into Society herself; on the contrary, she freely admitted that she thought it a deadly dull task to chaperone a young girl through a whole Season, “dragging her here and there, in and out of squeezes, gabbing with all those faded dowagers while the gal thought of ways to disgrace herself. No, Margaret,” she had told her grand-daughter this past Christmas, “it must be done, and the sooner the better, but you will have to do it yourself. Don’t look to me, my girl! I brought your mother into Society—and those were days when Society deserved the name, which is more than I can say for these thin-blooded times; that was quite enough for me, thank you.”

  This was the counsel which, on the February day we have seen, moved Lady Keyes to petition her husband as she did. She herself had never even been to London, nor had ever wanted to go; Sir Latimer had made a few brief visits on business, but had hardly stirred outside the rooms of the inn he stopped at. The town-house which once belonged to the Keyes’ had long since been sold, and neither Sir Latimer nor his lady had given any particular thought to the question of their daughter’s marriage until Lady Bryde had become so insistent.

  It may be imagined that Daphne herself lavished considerably greater attention on this question than had either of her parents, but this was not in fact the case. Indeed, she had seen so little of the world, had read so few novels and was so limited in her acquaintance, that the thought that she must some day marry had hardly occurred to her at all. At the very moment when her parents sat earnestly discussing her future, the object of their concern was absorbed with nothing more significant than the antics of her dog. Clover had appeared one day on the grounds of Verchamp Park, and had formed an instant and unshakable passion for Daphne’s company. These sentiments being returned in full, the intruder was soon named and adopted. How he had happened to arrive at the Park was as mysterious a question as his ancestry, which was (as near as any one could guess) part sheep-hound and part some thing else. Anything farther than this it was impossible to determine. Whatever his antecedents, he was a sweet dog, and a very silly one. He and Daphne had walked out into the frozen February afternoon together, where Cover spent a pleasant hour chasing stones. He had just begun to tire of this pastime when he noticed a small, grey squirrel eying him, a few yards from his nose. In a trice, Clover was after him. The squirrel started and raced up an oak. Clover, his mind full of the chase, apparently forgot that dogs could not climb trees, and leapt up to pursue him. As his quarry escaped into the uppermost branches of the oak, Clover found himself perched helplessly some four feet above the earth, his paws crowded uncomfortably into the hollow formed by the trunk of the tree and its lowest branch. From this vantage point he turned doleful eyes upon his mistress, beginning to whine softly. Daphne was overcome with laughter.

  “O my dear Dog,” she exclaimed, “how extremely silly you look! What have you done, you great beast? What an oaf you are—a great, big, furry oaf!” Clover, evidently not finding the situation amusing, barked a single, plaintive bark. “Yes, yes, my dear; we shall get you down some how. But you must remember, another time, not to follow your nose so fast, without looking where it leads you.” So saying, she held her arms out towards the animal and encouraged him to jump. “It’s all right,” she assured him; “you are not so very high up after all.” Persuaded at last, Clover sprang from the tree on to the frozen ground, where he was received with hugs and kisses. All the way back to the house, however, Daphne scolded him gently, assuring him that she had never in her life seen any thing so large and so foolish as he.

  Clearly, Miss Keyes was as little concerned with her future as might be. Her father she deemed capable of any thing necessary to be done; her mother she knew to be as warm and womanly as any daughter could wish; and her brother was the apple of her eye. Indeed, so remarkable seemed his good looks to her, she hardly noticed her own; certainly she was not disposed to dwell on them, nor to look for young men to admire her. She was fonder of her books than of her mirror, and by far more partial to riding than to conversation. She brushed her long, thick hair to keep it healthy—then tucked it away for comfort—and all her daily toilette consisted of was a vigorous scrubbing of hands and face. Accordingly, her fine skin glowed with health, her large eyes with exuberance, and her neat body was as able and energetic as any one could wish. The nearest she came to vanity was admiring her own countenance as her brother’s reflected it, and flirtation was a phenomenon entirely unknown to her.

  If only the same could be said of young Latimer! It can not, however; for although he enjoyed a ride as well as his sister, and frequently raced her on foot across the park, he had been a little spoiled by his sister’s admiration, and was, at the age of seventeen, well on his way to becoming a cox-comb. He had been to London two years before, with his father, and had got a taste of town-life. Though the situation of Verchamp Park successfully prevented him, on his return, from becoming a full-blown fop, it must be reported that he leaned distinctly towards fashion, and yearned after well-cut coats and polished boots. Whenever possible, he procured for himself gentlemen’s magazines, and studied them intently—not as intently, however, as he studied his own face in the glass. It was, perhaps, fortunate that this self-worshipping tendency of his character was countered at every step by the timidity he inherited from his parents: though he would dearly have loved to put himself forward, he was inhibited by dread of failure. Had the business of Daphne’s marriage not come up, Latimer might well have outgrown his incipient dandyism without much awkwardness; but the possibility of another, and extended, visit to London excited him greatly, and he seconded his great-grandmother’s advice with zeal.

  “It is only fair,” he said to his father, on the evening of the interview between his parents, “for Daphne’s sake. A girl or
dinarily makes her come-out at seventeen, you know, or even sixteen! And Daphne will not grow any younger. You ought to consider that, Father.”

  They were seated at the dining-table, the ladies having withdrawn some moments before. Latimer had said as much to his father on every evening since Lady Bryde’s Christmas visit, so it may be imagined with what surprise and delight Sir Latimer heard his son now. On all previous occasions he had met the young man’s importunities with a sage nod of the head and a promise “to take the matter into consideration.” This evening, however, there was a departure from the usual proceedings. Nodding his head with extreme slowness, Sir Latimer said, “So your mother tells me. Well, I consulted with Clayton about it this afternoon, and—I don’t suppose you would like to go to London with us, would you my boy?”

  “Like to go to London with you!” echoed the youth. “I should say so! That is,” he amended, feeling it might be dangerous some how to show too much enthusiasm, “Daphne and I have never been apart more than a week or two, you know. I trust she would want me to go along.”

  “Yes; doubtless she would. But in any case, Clayton tells me—”

  “Clayton’s a clunch, Father,” Latimer broke in impatiently. “I’m sure he found some reason why we ought not to go, but I think you might stop taking his word for Gospel.”

  “But he advised our going,” Keyes contradicted mildly.

  “He did?” said the boy, astonished.

  “Indeed; he said—”

  But Latimer did not wait to hear what he said. With a jubilant huzza in which there was very little that was fashionable, he leapt from his chair and leaned across the table, reaching out his hand to shake his father’s heartily. “Damme if you ain’t a fine fellow!” he exclaimed, and ran out of the dining parlour, straight down the long corridor to the drawing-room. “Daphne!” he shouted, bursting through the large double-doors. “Daphne! Mother! We’re going to town!”