“I just got here,” she pointed out defensively.
“Kay has gone whole hog and is serving us champagne. Let me get you a glass.” Looking around, he crooked a finger, and a footman came with his tray. Footmen, waiters and servants came at his glance. It piqued her. Oliver removed a glass of wine and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said, but didn’t immediately take a sip, as she had no idea of letting him think she had been waiting for it.
“How is everything at Easthill? How is Sir Donald going on?” he asked next, carefully turning his shoulder at an angle that pretty well cut Arnold off from the conversation, but in no pointed way. It could be read into thoughtlessness, and Arnold was eager enough to be unthought of that he immediately faded off into the sidelines.
“Everything is fine. We are busy, of course, at this time of the year.”
“How did that new ewe he got work out? Has she been bred yet?” he asked and for five minutes they discussed, to Belle’s amazement, farming.
Oliver was only slightly acquainted with Sir Donald, and not even slightly acquainted with Easthill, so that he soon ran out of questions. To maintain this unemotional subject, Belle asked, “How is everything at Belwood?”
“The lands are fine. The house, of course, needs a woman’s touch. I would like to redo the main saloon, but want your advice on how you would like it.”
This statement she could only assume was said to annoy her. She had told him more than once that she had no notion of returning to hell. “I suggest you suit yourself,” she replied in icy accents.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, Belle, but what suits myself—having my wife back—doesn’t seem to suit
you.”
“Don’t start that,” she said, feeling all her little bits and pieces of courage and sophistication falling away from her.
“We must talk.”
“Not here. Not now,” she said, and had no idea how desperate she sounded.
“After dinner. We’ll find some quiet corner and talk about it.”
“All right.”
“Good, that’s settled then. You aren’t drinking your wine. You like champagne.”
She drank a long gulp to settle her nerves—nearly drained her glass, in fact. “I am not about to make a scene, my dear. There is no need to fortify yourself with false courage,” Oliver commented.
“You just told me to drink!” she replied sharply. How did it come that she always appeared so awkward in front of him?
“I only mentioned you were not drinking. I had no idea my simple word was your command. Certainly in other spheres it is not the case.”
“Stop nagging at me!” she said in a voice rising above the normal. She was more peeved with herself, at her absurd sensitivity to him, than with Oliver, but he was the goad that made her appear childishly ill at ease.
A hot retort rose to his lips. Frustration that all his encounters with Belle turned out so poorly infuriated him, but he reined in his temper to try once more to be polite. “That’s a nice gown. Very stylish,” he complimented, running his experienced eye over it.
Had it been the first thing he said it would have pleased her, but coming in the middle of an altercation, it was taken as being sarcasm. “I shall do better when I get to town. Don’t worry I mean to disgrace you by my countrified get-ups this time.”
“All your gowns are at home. You might as well take them.”
She had no intention of ever putting one of them on her back again, and no intention either of arguing about it at a party. “Oh, there is Mr. Ponsonby. I must ask him how his book goes on,” she said, and dashed off. As Mr. Ponsonby was an unattractive gentleman nudging sixty, Oliver made no move to go after her, but turned aside and fell into conversation with Lord Eldon and a Mr. Higgins, the cabinet minister.
Kay relaxed visibly when no loud torrents of abuse resulted from the tense meeting between Belle and Ollie. She had other problems than the quarreling lovers to worry about. As foreseen, La Travalli had decided to be a guest, and come down to the saloon rigged out in a shocking-pink chiffon tent, to swill champagne as though it were water, and to wander from group to group chattering a mile a minute in Italian. The woman didn’t speak a single word of English. How did one get rid of her? And upon Oliver’s word that a paid entertainer was not a guest, she had laid no place for her at the table. Better send word to have one set, for it would be too
farouche
to have to have her lifted bodily from someone else’s chair and carried away, laughing and babbling Italian. She went to leave the room, and Mr. Higgins nabbed her to ask whether she was related to Anne Hathaway.
“No, it is not the same family. No connection at all. Anne Hathaway was from Warwick, you know. Alfred was not related to the Warwick Hathaways.”
Now, where to seat the singing sorceress?
Not
beside Oliver. She was rolling her big black eyes at all the gentlemen. Eldon—she’d put her next to Lord Eldon, and let’s see how far she gets with that courtly gentleman. Oh dear—and that meant moving Belle. She must not be put near Arnold Henderson or Oliver—give her Ralph Ponsonby, poor soul. She’d know more about Roman ruins than she wanted to before the meal was over. Precedence was never a major consideration with Kay, but it went completely by the boards that evening. A hired entertainer to be Lord Eldon’s dinner guest, and a duchess sitting below the salt with Mr. Ponsonby! She had a good mind to crawl under the table herself till it was over. Let them throw her bones, like a dog, and if Oliver took it into his head to start teasing Belle or making mischief with Henderson, she’d bite his ankle. Why did she bother with these dos? It wasn’t worth it.
The dinner went well enough. Travalli was having a little more luck with Lord Eldon than imagined. At least he hadn’t taken a pique with getting her for a companion. Kay retold her Raffles’ story about the Susanan of Mataram and the forged letters, and from there Eldon went on to amuse them with some cabinet esoterica that set the ladies yawning, till Lady Dempster twisted the conversation around to the private lives of the same gentlemen, which was much more interesting for everyone.
Really she was amusing, the old rascal. Libelous, every word that left her mouth, but to see her imitate old Queen Charlotte and then Castlereagh in turn was as good as a show. The ladies soon left to discuss in the green saloon the approaching marriage of Princess Charlotte to Prince Leopold, and the gentlemen remained behind to try to pump secrets from Lord Eldon for an hour. He would admit nothing, not whether the prince regent was really in danger of dying, nor whether the Duke of Cumberland’s wife was finally
enceinte,
and whether the child, if a son, would put Princess Charlotte’s reign in jeopardy.
The hour passed quickly, and was the sort of harmless interlude in these parties that Belle enjoyed. Gossip about a princess hardly seemed like gossip at all. It couldn’t hurt her, sitting far above them all on her lofty majestic pinnacle. The Signora Travalli too was isolated on a pinnacle, due to her lack of speaking the language of the party. She spoke, and she laughed a good deal, but she did not communicate. She occasionally pointed a finger at Lady Dempster and laughed in delight. She had a very pleasing voice, clear and bell-like. She was marvelously amused at the conversation she did not understand.
“What does she say? What does she mean?” Lady Dempster would inquire at each outburst of merriment from the foreigner. No one could enlighten her. “What has she got to laugh at, hyena? That gown would fall off her body entirely if it weren’t for that prodigious pair of breasts holding it up. Did you ever see such an outfit?”
It was nine-thirty when the gentlemen began entering in groups. With a close eye to the door, Belle watched for Oliver and Henderson, wondering which would enter first, and whether he would come to herself. It was Oliver who came first, and as she feared, he walked directly toward her. She saw Lady Dempster’s black eyes light up, and her lorgnette rise to take in all details. The others too were regarding her less obtrusively, but there was little enough to see, and he spoke in a voice low enough to avoid detection.
“A good time for our chat,” he said.
“Signora Travalli is going to sing for us,” Belle pointed out.
“Good, we’ll kill two birds with one stone—avoid her caterwauling and have our talk.”
“Kay asked her especially for you.”
He actually enjoyed a good soprano very much, but was in no mood for music this evening, and had no intention of waiting an hour before getting on with the chat. “It was a joke,” he said.
Kay began urging her guests toward the music room, and with repeated urgings at her entertainer, and finally singing a few notes herself, conveyed to her that it was time to sing for her supper. The little brunette arose and went with her, talking away, laughing her clear high laugh and patting her mountainous breasts, to get her lungs in order.
Chapter Six
Avondale was instituting a whole campaign behind his wife’s back to regain her affections, and of course it was imperative that his cousin help him. His major strategy was to get himself installed into the empty bedroom adjoining Belle’s. Kay had not told him it was empty, but he had looked into the matter himself to ensure it was not occupied by Mr. Henderson and made the delightful discovery that it was unoccupied, waiting for him.
Claims of wanting to get away from the east wing where the sun would bother him in the morning had availed him nought, but once he slipped into the empty room and saw it had a door adjoining Belle’s, he was determined to get his trunks installed in it, and eventually himself not only installed but with free access to his wife’s chamber.
Kay wished him well in both these hopes, but could not like to pull such a low stunt on Belle, who had approved the scheme of her husband being housed at the opposite end of the hall from herself. When Oliver came and told her Belle approved, she would be only too happy to oblige him, and meanwhile she would see the room remained vacant, but she would not let him have it.
After he got Belle’s consent to a meeting that evening, he went to his ally to instruct her as to what props he would require. “Give us a nice fire,” he said, “and see that no one disturbs us in the study while La Travalli sings.”
“It isn’t cold. It’s May. You’ll be melted with a big fire.”
“We need a fire,” he insisted. In his mind he was recalling the felicitous visit to Crockett, where they had sat before the fire for a few evenings, reading, with very good results afterward. “And books,” he added, remembering the reading.
“Books?” Kay asked, astonished at such unromantic aids to love. “Oliver, I don’t mean to question the tactics of such an accomplished wooer as yourself, but surely wine would be more efficacious.”
“Wine too,” he agreed at once. “Sherry for Belle and—no, give us a bottle of champagne. She can’t hold it so well as sherry.”
“Good God, I feel like a procuress! I won’t do it.”
“She’s my wife. There’s nothing wrong in it. I wouldn’t ask you if there were.”
“She is and she isn’t your wife—you are separated. She is my guest, and I won’t scheme behind her back to do what she would dislike.”
“She
is
my wife, and she’ll like it,” he said grimly.
“If that’s the case, it wouldn’t be necessary for you to get her drunk.”
“I have no intention of letting her get drunk. Just a few glasses of champagne to soften her up.”
“It doesn’t seem
right,
to plan behind her back like this. She’d be furious if she ever found out, and I shouldn’t blame her, either.”
“Dammit, Kay,
I’m
your guest too! When have you taken to refusing your guests a glass of wine? She won’t have to drink it if she doesn’t want to. Just have it there.”
“That’s true. If she doesn’t want it, she can leave it,” Kay assuaged her conscience, for she was really very eager to lend Ollie a hand.
“She’ll drink it. She likes champagne. Now about those books. I’ll need Cowper’s poems and—”
“Cowper! Oh, Oliver, you are surely mad. You couldn’t chose worse. Dull stuff about nature and philosophy. Alfred used to read it. I don’t know how he could bother wasting his eyes on it. I’ll put in Byron’s
Childe Harold.
I have a nice autographed copy he left me when he was here.”
“No.” He waved his hands impatiently. Belle didn’t care for Byron—surely the only lady in London who didn’t. “Cowper for her and—now, what the devil was I reading? Something French. Voltaire I think it was. Yes,
Candide
—the one about the best of all possible worlds,” he told her, with a sudden nostalgic smile. “Do you have them?”
“Why not just make it sermons and farming journals? They’d be no worse than Cowper and Voltaire. My, what an odd pair. An idealist and a cynic. Very telling, that. Really, you two are sadly mismated.”
“We’re not mated at all at the moment, Kay. Just get the books.”
“I don’t know that I have them, and haven’t time to be rooting through all the shelves. Go and get them yourself.” This was her way of adjusting conscience to expediency. He went and found the required standards and set them on the table before the fireplace.
Belle was not really desirous of hearing the Italian soprano, but was reluctant in the extreme to have a private tête-à-tête with her husband, and professed a strong interest in the concert.
“She’s here for the whole visit,” Oliver reminded her. “We must talk, Belle. This is the perfect opportunity, while everyone else is busy. You can hear her tomorrow night. You promised.”
Indeed she had been so foolhardy as to promise, and went like a lamb to the slaughter to the carefully prepared room, whose significance escaped her. She mentioned that Kay must be mad to have such a huge fire blazing in an empty room on a warm night, and sat well back from the inferno, so that the books resting on the table slipped her notice, and to call them to her attention, the same books they had read at Crockett, would be too revealing of the groundwork done. He didn’t want her to feel he was managing things, but did wish to awaken her memory to Crockett, and proceeded to attempt it.