A Future Arrived (18 page)

“Midnight?”

“Sure. You could sneak away from the school and meet me here.” There was a tremulous excitement in his voice. “Be a full moon again tonight … bright as day. Be lots of fun.”

“I … I don't know … sneaking away …” His mouth felt dry.

“I'll go out my window, shinny down the drainpipe. How will you get out of the school?”

Derek swallowed hard. “Same way … I guess.”

“We'll take Flossie into the meadow. Boy oh boy, I bet I teach you to ride in ten minutes flat. Midnight. Right here. Okay?”

“Okay,” he whispered.

“Shake hands and spit on it.”

He could shake hands, but there was no spit in the brass roof of his mouth.

V
ICTORIA
W
OOD-
L
ACY TOOK
her time dressing for dinner, primping in front of the dressing-table mirror, pinching her lips to get a deeper red into them, not daring to use the lipstick she kept hidden in the bottom of a purse.

“Did you notice his eyes when he looked at me?”

“When was that?” Jennifer asked, stifling a yawn.

“When we were introduced, silly. He stared at me … with a fierce intensity. With …
bedroom eyes
.”

“You're such an ass. Bedroom eyes indeed! You got that from one of your trashy novels.”

“I don't read trashy novels. Never!”

“Oh, yes you do. You hide them under your mattress …
Her Flaming Passion
and
The Playboy and the Gold Digger
.”

Victoria turned on the bench and tossed a tortoise-shell comb in the general direction of the window seat where her sister was seated, staring down into the garden below. “Sneak!”

“Those sort of books will rot your mind.”

“They're quite educational in a way.” She looked back in the mirror and ran her fingers across her eyebrows. “Women, that is ultrachic women, are always plucking their eyebrows in books.”

“I wouldn't try it if I were you.”

“Do you think I dare wear the silk stockings I bought at Woolworth's?”

“Mother and Daddy would notice right away. I do not think they would be overjoyed.”

“Oh, dear,” she sighed. “I'm secretly glad they're going off to India.”

“You are a proper fool. Do you honestly believe that the headmistress of Tolmers Park is going to be more tolerant than they are? It's a boarding school, you know … and an
Anglican
boarding school at that, not a Parisian brothel for
jeunes filles
.”

“Don't you think he looks like Ivor Novello? So dark and handsome. What a horrid thing it was to name him Albert. If I were he I'd change it. Roderick would be nice … or how does
Byron
Thaxton strike you?”

“I shall strike
you
in a moment if you don't bloody well get dressed.”

T
HE BRIGADIER POURED
a whisky for Martin and one for himself. The late afternoon sun slanted through the glass of the library windows and made lozenge-shaped patterns on the carpet.

“Here's how,” he said.

“And good luck to you, Fenton.”

“Thanks. Going off to India in September is rather an appalling thought, but at least Winnie will be setting up house in the Kashmir with a view of the cool Himalayan snows.”

“And you'll be where?”

“The staff college in Quetta. Dealing in theory mostly until they ship out the new light tanks from Vickers—that is,
if
they ship them out … or find room in the bloody budget to purchase them. Still, it doesn't matter. We can make do with lorries and armored cars. It's the tactical concepts of the force that're important in the long run. The nuts and bolts of radio communications, infantry, armored vehicles, and aircraft.”

“All the things you did in Iraq eight years ago.”

“Quite so, but on a larger scale and with official sanction this time. It was a stroke of luck getting this assignment … although I sense Jacob's fine hand somewhere along the line.”

“Not taking the girls, I hope?”

“Lord, no … not now. I hope the turmoil will quiet down, but not before Gandhi is released I'm afraid. Well, we shall see. Hate like hell to leave them behind, but Winnie can always fly back and visit them. Thanks to Imperial Airways it's not the far side of the world any longer, is it? Only seven days to Karachi. You could even fly out yourself. Enough happening to satisfy your pen I should think.”

“More than enough.” He swirled the whisky in his glass as he would a fine brandy. “I hope they don't waste your talents in guarding salt works and breaking strikes.”

Fenton grimaced. “I shall try to divorce myself as much as possible from the problems of the raj. The Punjab bureaucrats got themselves into this unholy mess after Amritsar and they can bloody well get themselves out of it without any help from me. My job is to work quietly in Quetta and help modernize the Indian army, not badger the followers of a little man in a loincloth.”

“And if ordered to do so, Fenton?”

He stared at Martin with his unblinking hawk's eyes. “
Ordered?
Heaven forbid, old boy. But if I am, I shall run their bloody nappies off.”

C
HARLES TOOK THE
latch key from a pocket of his dinner jacket and opened the front door. Tartuffe ambled in from the kitchen and sat in the parlor cleaning his paws.

“And where is your mistress?” he called out.

“I don't know about his,” Marian shouted back, “but yours is in the bath.”

She was chin deep in soapy froth, her raised knees jutting above the water like smooth white islands.

“You look comfortable,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb. “Is that what you are, my mistress?”

“Neither yours nor the cat's. It was just too good a remark to pass up. Be a dear and toss me the luffa.”

He took the fibrous sponge from its resting place across the water taps and plopped it in the water. “You're expected for dinner, you know.”

“I shan't be late.” She sat up and scrubbed her back with the sponge. “Every muscle in my body screams with anguish.”

“Mother is more than pleased. She told one and all that you did a magnificent job today.” He glanced at his watch. “We usually sit at eight—sharp.”

“We'll be there by half past seven.”

It was steamy in the bathroom and he removed his jacket, hanging it on the back of the door. How beautiful she looked in the huge iron tub. Dwarfed by it. The cottage had once been owned by a farmer who had weighed as much as a heifer. The tub had been specially cast for him by a firm in Coventry. Thick, blackened metal and the slender softness of her body, soap flecked, the firm breasts draped with a residue as delicate as lace.

He cleared his throat. “I was thinking of the packing. I'm sure Mother would be disappointed if you didn't stay over.”

“We already discussed it. I'm packed and my neighbor will look in on Tartuffe and keep his bowl filled. Persuasive woman, your mother. Not that I needed much persuading to spend the weekend in such a lovely house. She said she was giving me the Amalfi suite—whatever that is.”

“Bedroom, dressing room, and bath; Italianate furnishings and décor, lovely view of the sunken gardens—and a door, normally kept bolted, leading to my rooms.”

“I see,” she said quietly, lying back in the water. “I suppose she ran short of space and had to put me wherever she could.”

“There are forty bedrooms … give or take.”

“A perceptive woman, then. Or did you tell her about us?”

“Only in the most general way.” He moved a wicker stool and sat beside the tub, resting his folded arms on the hard, damp sides. “I wanted her to know that it was pointless to keep inviting the vicar's niece for Sunday tea in expectation of my seeing a great light one afternoon. I told her that I have become fond of someone.”

“Fond. Romeo could hardly have said it better.”

He touched the warm, soapy smoothness of her skin. “I did not tell her that I wish to spend every remaining moment of my life with this person. That I want, terribly, to—”

She sat up, shaking her head. “No. Please don't go on. I can't bear the thought of being proposed to naked.”

He bent and kissed the side of her neck. “Then hurry and dress, my love.”

L
ORD
S
TANMORE TAPPED
a spoon against the wine glass for attention. “May the twins be permitted a small glass of Moselle, Winnie?”

“I don't think it would hurt them. Do you, Fenton?”

“Good heavens, no. I certainly drank a wee bit on occasion when I was thirteen.”

“Nearly
fourteen
, Daddy,” Victoria hissed.

Her father laughed. “Quite so. Nearly sixteen if it comes to that!”

Victoria, blushing, glanced over at Albert Thaxton. The boy was staring intently up the table at the earl. There would be dancing after dinner and she had made up her mind to tell him that she was fifteen. Quite impossible now unless he hadn't heard. Damn Papa and his parade-ground voice!

Jennifer, seated beside her, inclined her head and whispered sweetly, “That put a fly in the old ointment, didn't it?”

The wine was poured around the table and the earl stood up. “There was a moment a few months ago when I … but I shan't dwell on that. I am here tonight after all, by God's grace—”

“Hear, hear,” Charles murmured.

“—facing, as that poet chap wrote, dear friends and gentle hearts.”

“How nicely put, Tony,” Hanna said.

“Yes, well, not to place too fine a point on it, I raise my glass to everyone at this table … dear hearts, dear old friends, and dear new ones … your health.”

Hanna raised her glass. “And, we hope, to new family.”

“New family?” the earl said, frowning. “What on earth do you mean, my dear?”

Charles glanced at Marian and then smiled at his mother. “I'll answer for you, if I may.”

“I would be honored.”

Charles, holding Marian tightly by the hand, stood up. “I asked Mrs. Halliday to be my wife. I'm happy to say she accepted.”

A
LBERT, WHO SEEMED
to know more about wireless than anyone else in the house, managed to fine tune the big set and pick up Radio Paris broadcasting the music of Paul Whiteman's band from the Lido.

“How terribly clever you are,” Victoria said. “Is it really coming from Paris?”

“Transmitting from the Eiffel Tower. Super clarity.”

“Oh, yes, marvelous.” She waited expectantly. “That's a Gershwin song … from
Lady Be Good
. Very easy to dance to.”

“Is it?”

“Don't they teach you how to dance at school?”

“The waltz … with broomsticks.”

“Broomsticks?”

“Yes, as our partners … one-two-three-glide.”

“I can teach you the foxtrot.” She held out her arms. It was unladylike to ask a boy to dance, but she felt reckless, sensing Jennifer's eyes on her from across the ballroom. “Care to give it a whirl?”

“All right,” he said.

V
ICTORIA
'
S ECSTASY COULD
not be contained. She almost swooned across her side of the bed, emitting a long, passionate sigh. “Have you ever known such a night, Jenny?”

Jennifer only grunted, turning her back on her sister, and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. “Go to sleep.”

“Impossible! I will never sleep again.” She switched off the bedside lamp and luxuriated in the moonlight flooding the room. “I think Marian Halliday is so beautiful … and Charles is such a handsome, distinguished man. He could have been our father, do you realize that?”

“Oh,
do
shut up.”

“But he wasn't in love with Mama nor she with him. It was Grandmama who wished them to marry … join the two houses … the Suttons and the Grevilles … so medieval, don't you think? But true love triumphed over all.”

Jennifer made a retching sound and drew the blanket over her head.

“You have no romance in your soul, Jenny. You'll be an old maid, withered and dried like Miss Stackpoole the postmistress at Lulworth … the one with the sharp chin and no breasts at all. You'll see. And they taught him to dance with a broomstick! Can you imagine it? And he held me so stiffly with Daddy watching us, but I know he wanted to foxtrot out to the terrace and crush me in his—”

Jennifer rose from under the covers and in one swift, exasperated movement brought her pillow firmly down on her twin's head.

T
HERE WAS A
light under Albert's door as Martin came down the corridor toward his own room. He opened the door and stepped inside. The boy was sitting in bed writing in his notebook.