"Do that. I only wish I had something equally useful to give to Lady Arbuthnott. How is she today, Scruggs?"
Scruggs's bushy white brows rose and fell. There was a gleam of sadness in his blue eyes. Augusta was always fascinated by those beautiful aqua-colored eyes. They struck her as surprisingly sharp and disconcertingly youthful in his heavily lined and whiskered face.
"This is turning out to be one of her good days, Miss. I believe you will find she is anticipating your arrival with great enthusiasm."
"Then I shall not keep her waiting." Augusta glanced at her maid. "Go and have a cup of tea with your friends in the kitchen, Betsy. I shall have Scruggs summon you when I am ready to leave."
"Yes, ma'am."
Betsy bobbed a curtsy and hurried off to join the other maids and footmen who had accompanied their mistresses on the afternoon visits. There was never a lack of companionship in the Arbuthnott kitchens.
Scruggs moved toward the entrance of the drawing room with a painfully slow, crablike gait. He opened the door, wincing broadly at the discomfort the action gave him. Augusta went through the doorway and stepped into another world.
It was a world where she could experience, at least for a few hours each day, a sense of belonging. She had longed for that feeling since her brother had been killed.
Augusta knew Sir Thomas and Claudia had tried very hard to make her feel at home and she, in turn, had tried equally hard to make them believe she did feel a part of their family. But the truth was she felt like an outsider. With their serious, intellectual ways and their sober, thoughtful airs, so typical of the Hampshire branch of the family, Sir Thomas and Claudia would never be able to fully understand Augusta.
But here on the other side of Lady Arbuthnott's drawing room door, Augusta felt that, if she had not quite found a true home, she was at least among her own kind.
She was inside Pompeia's, one of the newest, most unusual, most exclusive clubs in all of London. Membership was, of course, by invitation only and nonmembers had no real notion of just what went on in Lady Arbuthnott's drawing room.
Outsiders assumed Lady Arbuthnott amused herself by conducting one of the many fashionable salons that appealed to the ladies of London society. But Pompeia's was much more than that. It was a club, patterned along the lines of a gentlemen's clubV that catered to modern-thinking females of the ton who shared a certain unconventional outlook.
At Augusta's suggestion the club had been named Pompeia's after Caesar's wife, the one he had divorced because she had not been completely above suspicion. The name suited its membership. The ladies of Pompeia's were all well bred and quite socially acceptable, but they were generally considered to be Originals, to say the least.
Pompeia's had been carefully designed to emulate the fashionable gentlemen's clubs in several respects. But the furnishings and decor had been given a decidedly feminine twist.
The warm yellow walls were covered with paintings of famous classical women. There was a nicely done portrait of Panthia, the healer, at one end of the room. Beside it was a beautifully rendered picture of Eurydice, mother of Philip II of Macedon. She was portrayed in the act of dedicating a monument to education.
A depiction of Sappho composing her poems with a lyre hung over the fireplace. Cleopatra on the throne of Egypt graced the opposite end of the long room. Other paintings and statues illustrated the goddesses Artemis, Demeter, and Iris in a variety of graceful poses.
The furniture was all in the classical style and an assortment of judiciously placed pedestals, urns, and columns had been artfully scattered about to give the drawing room the look of an ancient Greek temple.
The club offered its patrons many of the amenities offered in White's, Brooks's, and Watier's. There was a coffee room in one alcove and a card room in another. Late in the evenings club members with a taste for whist or macao could frequently be found at the green baize tables, still elegantly garbed in the gowns they had worn earlier to a ball.
High-stakes playing was strongly discouraged by the management, however. Lady Arbuthnott made it clear she did not want any enraged husbands knocking on her door to make inquiries about their ladies' recent heavy losses in her drawing room.
A variety of daily newspapers and journals including the Times and the Morning Post were always available in the club, as were a cold buffet, tea, sherry, and ratafia.
Augusta swept into the room and was immediately enveloped in the pleasant, relaxed atmosphere. A plump, fair-haired woman seated at the writing desk glanced up and Augusta nodded to her as she went past.
"How is your poetry going, Lucinda?" Augusta inquired. Lately it seemed that every club member's burning ambition was to write. Augusta alone had escaped the call of the muse. She was quite content to read the latest novels.
"Very well, thank you. You are looking in fine form this morning. Can we assume good news?" Lucinda gave her a knowing smile.
"Thank you, Lucinda. Yes, you may assume the best. 'Tis positively amazing what a weekend in the country can do for one's spirits."
"Or one's reputation."
"Precisely."
Augusta sailed on down the length of the room to where two women were enjoying tea in front of the fire.
Lady Arbuthnott, patronness of Pompeia's and known to every member of the club as Sally, was wearing a warm India shawl over her elegant, long-sleeved, rust-colored gown. She was ensconced in the chair closest to the flames. From that vantage point she commanded a view of the entire room. Her posture was, as always, elegantly graceful and her hair was piled high in a fashionable coiffure. Lady Arbuthnott's charms had once been the toast of Society.
A wealthy woman who had been widowed shortly after her marriage to a notorious viscount thirty years earlier, Sally could afford to spend a fortune on her clothes and did so. But all the fine silks and muslins in the world could not disguise the underlying weariness and the painful thinness caused by the wasting disease that was slowly destroying her.
Augusta was finding Sally's illness almost as hard to endure as Sally herself was finding it. Augusta knew that losing Sally was going to be like losing her mother all over again.
The two women had first met at a bookshop where they had both been perusing volumes on historical subjects. They had struck up an immediate friendship which had deepened quickly over the months. Although separated by years, their shared interests, eccentricities, and sense of adventure had drawn them close. For Augusta, Sally became a replacement for the mother she had lost. And for Sally, Augusta was the daughter she had never had.
Sally had assumed the role of mentor in many ways, not the least of which was in opening the doors of the ton's most exclusive drawing rooms. Sally's contacts in the social world were legion. She had enthusiastically whisked Augusta into the whirl of Society. Augusta's natural social abilities had secured her position in that Society.
For months the two women had enjoyed themselves immensely dashing about London. And then Sally had begun to tire easily. In a short while it became evident that she was seriously ill. She had retreated to her own home and Augusta had created Pompeia's to entertain her.
In spite of the ravages of her illness, Sally's sense of humor and acute intelligence were still very much intact. Her eyes sharpened with pleased amusement as she turned her head and saw Augusta.
The young woman seated next to Lady Arbuthnott glanced up also, her pretty dark eyes filled with anxiety. Rosalind Morrissey was not only the heiress to a considerable fortune, she was also enchantingly attractive with her tawny brown hair and full-bosomed figure.
"Ah, my dear Augusta," Sally said with deep satisfaction as Augusta bent down and kissed her affectionately on the cheek. "Something tells me you have met with success, hmmm? Poor Rosalind here has been quite overset for the past few days. You must put her out of her misery."