Lord Robert’s face had gone from white back to its usual brick red, and suddenly he ginned at me. ‘A nightmare. Well, ’course, it was a nightmare. ’Course it was. Hah hah. Nothing to be ashamed of. Happens to the best of us, eh? Don’t give it another thought.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Riding, that’s the ticket. Best thing in the world for you. Good fresh air. Healthy exercise. You take Cecily’s horse, like she says. Damn good idea, Cecily.’
He turned to the Allardyce. ‘Best thing in the world for her, Marjorie, trust me.’
Coming from her host, this was for the Allardyce less a suggestion than a command. Blinking her eyelids, she smiled sweetly. ‘Well, of course, Robert. If you really think so.’
Is it possible, do you think, that she is secretly a creature from some other world, Mars or Venus, obliged to disguise her true feelings in order to masquerade as a creature of this one?
Said Cecily, ‘She could take Storm for a run while we all go into the village.’
And Mrs Corneille, bless her, said, ‘But perhaps Jane would enjoy a trip into the village. Wouldn’t you like to come with us, Jane?’
‘I would, yes,’ I said. ‘But some other time? If I could? If you don’t mind, I’d really love to go riding.’
She smiled beneath those finely arched eyebrows of hers. ‘As you like.’
‘Best thing for you,’ said Lord Robert. ‘Cecily, take Miss Turner upstairs, why don’t you, and fit her out, eh?’
I glanced around the table. Sir David was still smiling knowingly. Dr Auerbach was still eyeing me with professional curiosity.
As I left with Cecily, enormously relieved to be going, another thought occurred to me: it is quite rude not to remove one’s back from the room when people are about to discuss one behind it.
Cecily has her own suite in the West Wing of the manor, a small sitting room and a boudoir with an attached dressing room. Everything everywhere was perfect, of course, and French-the mahogany armoire, the elegant Empire bed, the Louis XIV chairs in crimson velvet. And the clothes crowding her cupboards, the silk and satin and velvet and lace and… etc. Envy is so tiresome, don’t you think?
Cecily lay on an upholstered camelback sofa in the sitting room, leafing through a Vogue magazine, while her maid, Constance, helped me locate the cousin’s clothes. They smelled faintly of Chanel (of course) and they fitted me really rather well, I must say. When I looked into the tall looking glass in the dressing room, I was surprised and absurdly pleased. The cut of the jacket with its trimly tucked sides was immensely flattering, minimizing that awful chest of mine and emphasizing my waist, which is, no matter how currently unfashionable, one of the few decent features I possess. (And please don’t tell me otherwise.) I spent, I confess, a moment or two swirling like a dervish before the glass, admiring my fatuous smiling self over my shoulder.
When I returned to the sitting room, carrying the riding crop in one hand and the bowler in my other, Cecily closed the magazine and languidly laid it on the coffee table. She looked me over and frowned, as though for some reason displeased.
I stopped walking. ‘Is something wrong?’ I asked her.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’ Lightly, athletically, she swung her long legs off the sofa and stood. She was wearing a dress of cream-coloured linen, simple but elegant, with short sleeves and a low waist and a hem that fell to just beneath her pert perfect knees. Opalescent silk stockings, also, and beige leather pumps. She looked smashing, as always.
She removed a cigarette from a black lacquered Chinese box on the coffee table and put it between her lips. She looked over at me again. ‘It suits you,’ she said. ‘The jacket.’ With a small gold lighter she lighted her cigarette.
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Yes,’ she said, exhaling smoke. ‘You’re quite the dark horse, aren’t you.’
‘Excuse me?’ I said.
She merely smiled her superior smile and shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘It’s only that you seem so much… I don’t know, really… healthier in that outfit.’
Fatter, I assumed she meant; and perhaps I frowned.
But she smiled again, less rigidly. ‘I mean to say, she said, that you do look really quite lovely.’
I thought that was very sweet of her, and I thanked her: flushing, of course, like a schoolgirl.
Together we marched from her room through several corridors and down several stairways and through several more corridors until we arrived, rather breathless, at the Great Hall, where the going-to-town contingent had assembled: Lady Purleigh, Mrs Corneille, Dr Auerbach, and Sir David. Lady Purleigh said something gracious about me and my plundered finery, and again I blushed and gushed; very becomingly, I’m sure. And then, as the others began to trickle out into the sunshine, the Allardyce towed me aside and growled, under her minty breath, ‘Time for your apologies, young lady.’
She wheeled her bulk around and whinnied, ‘Oh, Sir David? May we speak with you for just a moment, please?’
Sir David turned and then strolled over to us, smiling that odious ironic smile.
‘Sir David,’ mooed the Allardyce, ‘Jane has something most important she wishes to say to you.’ She smiled at me sweetly: once again attempting, and with the same crashing lack of success, to impersonate a human being. ‘Now don’t overtire yourself today, dear,’ she said. And then she waddled off, leaving me alone with my bowler and my riding crop and Sir David. I felt rather as a sacrificial goat must feel when it has been staked out amidst the brambles, beneath the roaring sun.
‘I must say, Jane,’ said Sir David, ‘you look ravishing in that outfit.’ He smiled, as though ravishing, word and deed, had been much on his mind of late.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘A fine riding crop,’ he said, stroking his moustache. ‘May I see it?’
I gave it to him. He thwacked it very lightly against the palm of his left hand, then looked up at me knowingly. ‘Nice spring to it. Stiff and yet supple.’
I felt the skin of my face begin to stiffen and singe. ‘I am sure it will prove adequate,’ I said.
He smiled at my blush; my blush deepened; his smile widened. ‘Oh, I’m quite sure it will,’ he said, tapping the crop rhythmically against his palm. ‘You had something to say to me?’
‘Yes. I wanted to apologize for my behaviour of last night. I was rude.’
There. It was done. In a year’s time, the Allardyce would be richer by half a pint of spittle.
Still smiling, still tapping the crop, he said, ‘You’ve ridden before, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d have thought so. You’ve a splendid seat, I fancy.’
And then, his glance holding mine, his eyebrow raised speculatively, he lowered the crop to my side and moved it, in a lickerish, leathery caress, up along my hip.
I was so startled that I merely stood there.
He took that as acceptance: he stepped forward, his lips still smiling, but parting now. I slapped him full across the face, as hard as I could.
I suspect that I was as surprised by this as he was. And he was stunned. His head snapped up and his face went white. And it went wicked, Evy: his eyes narrowed to dark shining slits and his thick lips snapped back from his teeth. And then, backhanded, so swiftly I could hear it hiss, he raised the riding crop.
(to be continued)
Chapter Eleven
"Let me see,” said Lord Bob, “If I understand you.”
We were in his study, a large room on the ground floor. It smelled of new flowers and old money. It had probably always smelled of old money, but the smell of flowers came from a tall vase of red roses on Lord Bob’s desk. The desk was big enough to make the vase look like a tiny skiff floating on a lake of cherry-wood.
The Great Man and I were sitting in red padded leather chairs studded with brass tacks. On the dark paneled walls hung framed etchings of elegant hunting dogs. Beyond the casement window hung a postcard view of green grass and distant trees.