Alex sighed, having heard this lecture countless times, along with disapproving ones on her modeling, which she ignored as well. "I'm sure you're right, Mother."
"Of course I'm right," Mrs. Ionides decreed, hanging up the blouse. "A little mystery in a woman is alluring."
"I'll think about it, Mother." At the same time she thought about becoming a monk…
"Don't you have any couturier gowns in here?"
Her mother was brushing through her array of garments, her mouth pursed in distaste. "Surely you can afford to dress a bit more stylishly, darling."
"I like my clothes. They're comfortable."
"If a lady wishes to appear to best advantage, comfort is not necessarily a first priority."
"Many ladies of the first rank wear the same styles I do." Alex preferred what was deemed "aesthetic dress." The gowns were natural-waisted, the sleeves comfortable and loose, the fabrics flowing with the rhythm of the body. They were worn without corsets or crinolines.
"Bluestocking women." Her mother pronounced the phrase like an epithet.
"Women who prefer not strangling their bodies in tightly laced corsets." Another ongoing argument with her mother.
"Hmpf," Euterpe muttered unsympathetically.
"I don't need a nineteen-inch waist because fashion dictates it."
Her mother turned away from the closet and gazed at her daughter. "You have a perfectly fine waist."
"I know, Mother."
"But I still don't like Ranelagh."
"You don't have to like him."
"And I disapprove of you seeing him."
"You made that clear." Alex smiled. "And who knows, Mama, you may be right after all. He may be long gone, in which case perhaps I shall be more inclined to listen to your advice in the future."
Euterpe didn't indulge her daughter's humor enough to actually smile, but she said, "You know, your papa and I want only the best for you."
"I know."
"And we dearly hope you don't marry another man old enough to be your father."
Alex's eyes gleamed with amusement. "Ranelagh's only thirty-three."
"But not the marrying kind," her mother pointed out, her lips pursed in contempt.
"Are you coming with me to the Camden Street School?" Alex asked, because there was no rejoinder to such unalloyed truth.
"If you don't wear that awful crumpled white muslin."
Alex lay down the gown she held. "You pick one out, Mother."
Ten minutes later Alex and her mother set out for the meeting with the superintendent. The immigrant schools she supported were an undertaking on which she and her mother could always agree.
Sam's meeting with his brother and the golf course designers took place in his offices in the Adelphi, and before lunch they'd agreed on the exacting dimensions of each fairway on their five-hundred-acre estate. There was the pretty tree-girdled third and the scary blind drive over yawning cross-bunkers fifth. The first and fourth would be manicured around two natural pond sites. A dauntingly narrow driving corridor over a large fairway bunker confronted them on the second hole, while the remainder of the front nine was a succession of lovely holes along the western stone wall of the property and through the remnants of a mature forest. The tight, leafy back nine would meander around a series of small ponds and natural trout streams, which should prove a technical challenge, particularly on the gorgeous downhill par-five twelfth and the hazardous, short fourteenth. [5]
By early afternoon, consensus had been reached on combining the best of classic golf with the most brilliant of technical subtlety. The two young designers left with the plans under their arms and the approval necessary to begin excavating.
Sam and his brother, Marcus, enjoyed another drink from the bottle of brandy they'd opened to toast their new endeavor.
"You seem in good humor today. But you've been wanting to build this course for a long time and now, finally-" Marcus raised his glass in salute.
Sam smiled. "We'll have some championship golf in our own backyard."
"The boys are beginning to learn how to play with the clubs you had made for them."
"I'll come over tomorrow and give them some pointers," Sam offered. His nephews were a source of great pleasure to him.
"Evelina is having her reading group over tomorrow. You might prefer meeting us at the Blackheath course. Hedy Alworth will be at the house."
Sam dipped his head. "Thanks for the warning."
"She still thinks you're going to marry her someday."
"For no plausible reason."
"Her mother keeps telling her the Lennoxes and Alworths have always made marriage alliances."
Sam's brows rose. "Not in recent memory."
"Reason has nothing to do with female notions of romance and marriage."
Sam's gaze narrowed. "You and Evie are still getting along, aren't you?"
"Oh, perfectly. You know I adore her, and she's the sweetest of wives. Not to mention the best of mothers."
"Thinking of having more children, are we?"
His brother turned red. "Actually…"
"Congratulations!" Beaming, Sam rose from his chair and shook his brother's hand. "I'm pleased for you."
"I'm damned lucky. Especially after… well-"
Dropping back into his chair, Sam laughed. "You can say it. After my fiasco."
Marcus looked uncomfortable, but then, he always did when there was any mention of Sam's marriage. "Mother and Father shouldn't have insisted."
"And I shouldn't have married for no good reason. Or at least," Sam said with a fleeting smile, "I should have taken a better look at my fiancee."
"I'm not sure a closer look would have mattered. She was-"
"Deceitful… and manipulative?"
"So Evelina has always maintained."
"But Mother was looking at all those Sutherland acres with great longing, and Father, I believe, particularly liked Penelope's blond hair."
"Well, that's over with," Marcus said with feeling, the years of Penelope's presence in the family still a highly explosive subject.
"And now I'm depending on you and your boys to keep the title in the family."
"Surely you'll marry again someday."
Sam shrugged. "I doubt it. Although…"
Marcus smiled. "Does your 'although' pertain to Miss Ionides? Everyone saw you at Ascot and then not again last night."
Sam grimaced. "My Lord, this town is small."
"And you have a high profile for your-dare I say-profligacies? "
"They're no secret." The viscount's mouth curved faintly. "But Alex is very nice-very nice indeed."
"When will you be seeing her again?"
Sam shrugged. "Who knows?"
His brother scrutinized him for a moment. "Do I detect a female who isn't in hot pursuit?"
"We just politely said good-bye."
"For which you're no doubt grateful."
"Mostly."
"But not completely."
"Apparently, she's as casual as I about friendships."
"No, she isn't. No one's as casual about 'friendships,' as you so euphemistically put it, save you. Evelina knows Miss Ionides and likes her. In fact"-he pursed his mouth-"I think she's a member of Evelina's reading group."
"You don't say?" Sam slid up from his lounging sprawl. "Perhaps I'll come to the house to play golf with the boys after all."
"Don't forget Hedy will be there."
"But more important, so might Miss Ionides."
"How important?" Marcus asked, enjoying the spectacle of his prodigal brother intrigued enough by a woman to brave an afternoon of female readings. Sam grinned. "Tell Evie to set another place for lunch."
Chapter Sixteen
"Look what Sam brought us, Mama!" Six-year-old Jeremy Lennox waved his new golf club in a wide arc over his head, narrowly missing the Meissen shepherdess group on the drawing room table.
"And me too, Mama!" his four-year-old brother screamed, running in behind Jeremy, his club held high. "We been shooting golfs all morning."
[5] Regardless of the origins of golf, it was the Scots who gave the game its unique character. It was already known as a national pastime before King James IPs abortive efforts to ban it by Act of Parliament in 1457. By 1552, January 15 precisely, the citizens of the town of St. Andrews were given, by charter right, the use of the links for "golf, futball, shuteing at all times with all other manners of pastime." The game of golf as we know it today didn't emerge from its crude beginnings on the east coast of Scotland until it began to become organized about the middle of the eighteenth century. The first golf club for which there is definite proof of origin is the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith, instituted in 1744.
There have been claims from other clubs that they are older than the Leith club, for example the Royal Burgess in Edinburgh and the Royal Blackheath in England, but no evidence to substantiate their claims has been found.
Among those instrumental in drawing up the first set of rules was John Rattray, an Edinburgh surgeon who won the first Silver Club in 1744. His golf was interrupted when he was called from his bed to act as surgeon to Bonnie Prince Charlie's troops at the Battle of Prestonpans.
He followed the prince, some say reluctantly, on his march to Derby and thereafter to the defeat at Culloden, where he was taken prisoner. It was only the intervention of his fellow Leith member, Duncan Forbes, that saved him from the gallows and allowed him to resume his duties as captain of the club in 1747.
The game witnessed some early movement out of Scotland to other golfing outposts. It was taken by royalty to England as far back as 1608, by Scottish merchants to India, where the Royal Calcutta Golf Club dates back to 1829, and by the armed forces to South Carolina, where golf was played long before the Apple Tree Gang founded the first American golf club at Yonkers in 1888.
However, by the middle of the nineteenth century, professional golf was still very much in its infancy. Money matches became the forerunners of the tournaments of the present day, and it was as a result of these matches that professional players came into being. The oldest championship in the world is the Open, first played at Prestwick, Scotland, in 1860. For the first thirty years of the Open, none but a Scot took the title. Not until the great English amateur John Ball from Hoylake won the Open in 1890 did the Scottish stranglehold on the famous claret jug loosen.
The rise of the gentleman amateur and the golf boom of the 1880s was a result of the same emerging, wealthy middle class that was so drastically altering the fabric of society. More people had more money and leisure time, and a measure of the demand for new courses is indicated by the number built in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. In 1864 there were about thirty golf clubs in Scotland, while England had only three. By 1880 it is estimated that there were sixty clubs in Britain. The British Amateur Championship was inaugurated at Hoylake in 1885 by the Royal Liverpool Golf Club and the number of golf clubs continued to increase. By 1890 there were 387 and by 1900, Britain had 2,330 golf clubs.
Perhaps the biggest appeal about golf is that when brought right down to its basics, it's between you and your golf ball. Courses have changed over the centuries, as have innovations in equipment, but the skill of the player still matters most. The story of the devout Catholic golfer who crossed himself before he putted and holed his putts every time is a case in point. His opponent asked him, "Does it help?" and the Catholic replied, "No. Not if you can't putt."