“Do you feel as I do?” Jeremy’s moustache brushed against my ear.
“Oh, yes,” I said.
“Every day I wake with renewed vigor,” he said, “an ever increasing optimism. Every day I feel closer to that moment when —”
“I feel that too,” I said.
“It will happen,” he said, and his arms tightened around me. “It’s happening even now.”
My heart was too full to speak of it. I turned the subject as we waltzed past eyes fixed on us, mouths twisted with scandalized delight. “Where did this music come from?”
“Five hundred pounds to commission the arrangement,” Jeremy said, “and fifty pounds every time I signal the conductor.”
“Good God, Jeremy,” I gasped as we whirled about.
“You know, I’m beginning to agree with your opinion.”
“But how could you know I’d be here?”
“A late tip from Lord Plaice’s majordomo. Half of London’s upper staff is in my pay.”
I laughed with unrestrained delight. “You love me,” I said.
“And you love me.”
Chapter Fifty-One
The music ended, but the magic continued. Even Daisy’s murmured “Be careful, Clarry” did not stop my happiness.
“Society’s good for you,” Rutherford shouted over the strains of an exuberant polka. “Roses in your cheeks.” I hardly felt the pain of my instep crushed beneath his big foot.
My uncle took me in to supper, and I found a table while he and Daisy filled plates at the buffet.
Caroline came to sit next to me, a bright smile on her painted mouth, venom in her eyes. “Stay away from my husband.”
“Why not let him go, let him be happy?” I’d had enough of the pretense, the sacrifice, the endless wrongness of our complicated relationships. Richard Marchmont was dead. Let his machinations die too.
“I’ve never been happy. Why should he?”
“Let him go and you’ll find happiness elsewhere.”
“Did you?” I had no answer.
“I know about your assignations.” Her smile had frozen into a kind of mad rictus.
“There haven’t been any.”
“That lewd portrait, your ancestors as shameless as you.”
I stared at her. She knew I wasn’t Richard Marchmont’s daughter. She saw the barriers between me and Jeremy falling away. She was very much afraid.
“You won’t have him.” Her breath was hot on my face.
“I’ll always have him.”
*
After dinner Jeremy nodded again and fifty pounds melted away as we circled the dance floor in blissful silence, my head against his chest, his cheek a warm weight on my coiled hair. The major domo in his pay dimmed the chandeliers and our happiness made us incandescent.
“We’re a scandal,” Jem whispered.
“I couldn’t care less.” I was where I belonged.
Rutherford came to claim me at the music’s end. “Your cousin’s wife is on the warpath, as our American friends say. Daisy’s holding her back, best make a run for it. Valor being discretion and all that.”
His loud voice obliterated discretion, but I was content to leave the field, for once the victor.
*****
Daisy came to tea two days later.
“How are you, Clarry,” her eyes brimmed with sympathy.
“I’m just fine.” Jeremy’s white roses, the flowers of new beginnings, bloomed in a cut crystal vase on my piano. He sent no other message, and I waited for his call.
“You haven’t seen the notice?”
“What do you mean?”
She took up my newspaper and rattled the pages until she found what she wanted: Mr. Jeremy Marchmont is appointed special envoy to the British Embassy in Washington D.C. Mr. Marchmont and his family sail Wednesday for New York City aboard the H.M.S. Berengaria.
“The entire affair is Caroline’s doing,” Daisy said. “Dr. Redstone’s brother is a United States Senator. He made it happen. He’ll do anything to please Caroline.”
I set down my teacup with precise movements. I wiped my mouth with my linen napkin, discreetly spitting shortbread that threatened to choke me into its snowy folds.
“Yes, I know,” I lied with icy calm, suppressing my inner fury and turmoil with a savage intake of breath. “I’ll be traveling as well. It’s so broadening, don’t you think?”
“You’d follow him to Washington?” Daisy was both shocked and thrilled.
“Australia,” I said between gritted teeth. “For at least six months. Such a coincidence. I, too, leave on Wednesday.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Willow’s cottage was tidy and ready to sleep, enchanted, for another indefinite spread of years. I locked the door and thrust the key into my pocket. Paper folders crackled beneath it: a round trip passage to Australia and a one way ticket to America.
I hadn’t made my decision. The sensible choice was a lengthy visit with Laura, then a return to my solitary life. The other decision, rash, impulsive, was to hare after Jeremy and demand his love. Rutherford’s advice echoed in my head. Two sleepless nights made me seek him out.
“You’re a strong woman, Clarissa,” he’d boomed. “Far worse than losing your heart’s desire is to know you surrendered without a fight. That rankles more than ridicule or rejection. Take my example: I leave debris, but I do what I want. I won’t die a coward.”
I’d walked past the four follies on a meandering route to Willow’s cottage. A last look at all of Hethering might help me make the final choice between Sydney and New York. I climbed the cleared path, my mind fixed on alternating scenes: wooly sheep or Washington monuments?
Mad Madison’s folly was as lovely as it had ever been. No unruly foliage blocked its view of Hethering, my birthplace and my paradise on earth. If there was a chance, a slim one, a dream chance that I could live there again with Jeremy, it was worth any effort, any humiliation, any demands.
“I’ll do it,” I said in Rutherford’s ringing tones. “I’ll go to Washington and drag him back. I will shape my life, I won’t let it shape me.”
My words echoed around the marble circle of columns. They were loud enough to travel across the valley.
*
“There’s really no need to shout.” Jeremy stepped from behind a pillar.
I had little faith in what my eyes reported. “You’re not here,” I said, as joy spread from cell to cell in my body like a wild fire. “You’re on board ship to New York.”
“Caroline is on board ship to New York,” he said. “Arthur is with her. The estimable Dr. Redstone is on that very same ship. I saw them off in Southampton, then returned to London to ‘drag you’, as you so nicely put it, back to Hethering with me.”
“But I’d already left —”
“I feared you departed for Sydney,” he said. “You see, I met Daisy on the return train. She alarmed me with your plans, but Miss Godbold’s reassurances saved me. Dear Miss G. said you’d only left to close a family cottage.”
“Daisy showed me the newspaper article about your appointment to Washington.”
“Silly woman. I never signed on for that piece of mischief. I never would. I think we should discount Daisy’s information from now on, don’t you?”
We stood three feet apart as if our shoes were glued to the folly’s cold stone floor.
“We will marry, Clarissa,” he said. “As soon as we can.”
“You think you can order me —”
“And your plan for me was —”
I was in his arms the next moment, sagging against his shaking frame. We sat down before we collapsed.
“We’ll have a wonderful life here,” he said, one arm holding me close.
“What about the Foreign Office?”
“You should know, Clarry, I could never bear to live at Hethering without you. Diplomacy was always a poor substitute.”
“I can finish writing Willow’s story,” I said. “And paint, and embroide
r.”
“It’s reassuring to hear you’ll keep busy,” he mocked me gently. “I do hope Miss Godbold will stay on. My kiss may have frightened her away.”
“You kissed her?” I couldn’t imagine it.
“Like this,” he gave me an enthusiastic salute. “Not like this.” A passionate interlude followed.
My head was on his shoulder when he sighed and spoke again. “I have such plans for this dear old place, Clarry. With you beside me — why, I can build any number of follies.”
“Haven’t we had enough of folly?”
“You’re quite right. I’ll leave them to our children.” I knew he wouldn’t.
We retraced our steps, hand in hand, across Willow’s meadow, back through the Marchgate Wood and home to Hethering.
“Two for dinner, Henry,” Jem announced. “From now on.”
“Very good, Sir.” Henry’s beaming smile began my happy life with my cousin Jeremy.
Epilogue
Jeremy and I lived quietly at Hethering until we could marry. The scandal faded away before we were delighted by the birth of our daughter, Belle. Three years later we welcomed her brother, Dickon.
Chase Gordon’s first symphony, the Léonora, debuted in the United States to critical acclaim. He is a respected classical composer.
Caroline married Dr. Redstone. They raised Arthur in the western state of Arizona. Arthur went to school in America, but spent his summer holidays at Hethering, where he formed a strong attachment to Dickon’s playmate, Diana Pickety.
Daisy married my dear uncle, Rutherford. She thought to lead him a merry dance, but it was he, in fact, who led her. They are a devoted couple.
In the fullness of time, before the next great war began, Arthur returned to Hethering, to court Diana and claim his inheritance. But that, as they say, is another story.
Susan Speers Page 26
