Rutherford Park (20 page)

“I admire you for looking after the little girl,” he said. “Truly I do, whatever gossip it might cause. It’s a noble thing.” She glanced at him. “I’m sure your husband will agree.”

She stroked back a stray hair from her face, and squared her shoulders. “I wish I had your confidence,” she replied quietly. “You must excuse all this,” she said. “I don’t cry, generally. It doesn’t achieve a great deal, and in any case, it spoils the complexion.”

It was said with such a pitiful attempt at gaiety that it wrung his heart. “I assure you, I’m not at all embarrassed,” he replied. “And you might like to know that your complexion hasn’t suffered one iota, Lady Cavendish.”

They smiled at each other. It was the first true, natural smile, the first one shared. He would always remember it.

* * *

L
ouisa Cavendish sat in the Palm Court of the Waldorf Hotel, and felt mightily pleased with herself.

It was four o’clock, and the place was full. It was extraordinary, she considered, gazing at the crowds below the palms and the arching glass roof, what kind of people were allowed to come to the tango teas; it seemed that as long as one was able to pay one’s five shillings, one might be let in. Louisa sighed, holding her skirt to one side while an absolutely gargantuan woman in an orange frock edged past her.

Louisa gazed after the fright with something akin to pity. At least she knew how to dress, she thought, in her daring frock with the tulip skirt, and with the feather of her hat upright so that her face was not obscured; just imagine that woman trying to be seductive in the tango while the best part of an ostrich lolled down over her face; it was too funny. Some women had no idea at all.

She sat back in her upholstered chair, but only far enough to show her figure to greater advantage. It had the desired effect; one or two men at nearby tables cast brief, admiring glances in her direction. Louisa had to suppress a deliciously naughty smile. Mrs. de Ray and Florence had no idea that she was here today; she had told them she was going to an exhibition at the Tate. Florence had actually put her in a taxicab, saying that she had had enough of art for a lifetime, and it was only when the cab was out of the square
that Louisa had allowed herself to laugh. It was wicked of her, of course, when they had been such absolute bricks—she would make it all up to them somehow—but she must be allowed at least one adventure. And tea at the new Waldorf wasn’t
such
a scandalous event; it was rather tame, in fact. She rearranged the folds of embroidered pale turquoise silk across her knees and smiled to herself.

The de Rays were terribly good fun, actually. They might even approve of a little dalliance if they knew; Florence for certain would be green with envy that Louisa had managed an afternoon of harmless romance. When the trip to the Continent had been abandoned—all this talk of war by Mr. de Ray, without a thought for how it had ruined their plans, had put a stop to that—they had still been kind enough to chaperone her at all the largest occasions, but there had not been a single improper moment with a man. And Louisa rather thought there ought to be at least
one
before she went back home for the summer.

It was lucky that the de Rays had been able to look after her, because of Mother. Mrs. de Ray had told her with quiet firmness that Octavia had some sort of female exhaustion, and normally, of course, Louisa would have gone back to Rutherford with Mother and supported her; she would have been glad to, really, had not Mother told her to remain.

Mothers were terribly useful, and of course Louisa adored her own, but at the larger occasions they were the equivalent of a stone around one’s neck. They were quite capable of frightening a perfectly good-looking prospect away, tut-tutting on about titles and names. Which sounded mean, because Mother was not a stone at all; she was good fun, if one did not count the expression on her face since the spring: that plastered-on smile. Recently, Mother had been absentminded at best, rather remote from the gaiety of some of the
dances and dinners. Once or twice, Louisa had caught an actual expression of pain on her mother’s face; and she hadn’t indulged, as she usually might have done, in jokes about the chinlessness of one earl against the horrible halitosis of another—which was half the joy of the Season. One divided the aristocracy into droves of the murderous, the appalling, and the faintly bearable while the mothers assessed their incomes or compared their country estates, but Mother had not seemed up to the game.

After a while, Louisa had gone with her mother to the railway station and waved a dutiful good-bye amid the clouds of smoke and steam. Mother had been brittle and bright and chatty; she had said how much she was looking forward to the fresh air of Yorkshire. “When your father comes back from Paris,” she had said, “you must go out with him, Louisa. You must be seen out with him. You are his daughter.” Louisa had thought this rather odd. “I should think Harry ought to be seen with him rather than me,” she had replied. Octavia had given her daughter a very straight look. “Harry will come round in time,” she told her. “I want you to accompany your father should he ask it.”

Louisa had watched the train go with mixed feelings; Father ought to be in London, not on some mysterious mission in Paris. It was something to do with the Foreign Office, Mother had said; but there was more to it than that—though what, Louisa could not imagine. He had gone almost immediately after that awkward time in March when her parents seemed to be silent with each other. They had fallen out; that was obvious; now her mother wanted Louisa to take her place on his arm about London.

Florence said that marriage was always like that eventually—her parents were frosty at best, but her mother had never allowed it to depress her. “A woman must keep her head and heart up,” Mrs. de Ray had advised both girls when the subject of marriage had been
discussed one evening. “And spend as much money as one can on hats. Millinery is an appropriate replacement for misery.”

The letters that had come to Louisa from her mother since were jolly: reams about the house, all the usual things. And Louisa had put her mother’s empty smile to the back of her mind. She would soon be home to be with her, she thought—back to the hunt balls with the chapped and ruddy faces of Yorkshire’s finest bearing down on her; home so that she could hike halfway up the mountains to have lunch with Father on some boggy shoot. One particular ham-handed and gangly unfortunate had already been pointed out to Louisa as a good marriage: his family owned half of Northumberland. Louisa had pointed out to her mother that the man had all the personality of a dead fish, and the subject seemed, fortunately, to have been shelved.

Her father had been rather brutal about it: “One doesn’t need a personality when one has an income of four million pounds a year, Louisa. The Abernethys have had sense enough to keep their fortune.”

“That’s because they’re horrible misers,” Louisa had countered. “Everyone knows it. They’ve only held one dinner, and that was absolute death. They had the most dreadful Hungarian violinists, and the wallpaper was brown. I’m not living with a man who thinks that constitutes culture.”

William had at least laughed at this, which was hopeful. He seemed to have lost the knack of cheerfulness since Christmas.

As she was thinking this, she suddenly saw Maurice, coming back through the tables to their corner seat. He at least never mentioned politics; he was simply fun, always smiling, always…well, rather
personal
. It was so thrilling. Her heart did a little skip of excitement.

She had met him outside Her Majesty’s Theatre in April for the opening of
Pygmalion
; at least, it was where she had first seen him. She and her mother and Florence had been waiting in the crowds,
looking for their cab; they had been standing on the steps. It was just a few days before Mother had gone back to Yorkshire, and the conversation had been screamingly funny—all about the word “bloody,” spoken on the London stage for the very first time that night. The audience had laughed for more than a minute, stopping the play in its tracks. Now, all around them, they heard society women saying how very
bloody
it was to wait for one’s driver. Mother, who once might have been the first to join in the joke, had merely looked irritably away. At first, Louisa had thought that the tall and handsome man in the crowd had been staring at her mother, but, in an instant, the stranger had given Louisa such a raffish and pointedly direct smile that she had felt herself blushing. He had vanished, but when she saw him again at the Derby, she had immediately recognized him.

He had walked straight up to her as she had watched the horses in the paddock; he might almost have been waiting for her to be momentarily alone. “Did you like the play?” he had asked.

It had taken a brief moment to place him; then, “It was fun,” she had replied.

“Mrs. Pat a little past it?” he said, naming the leading actress. His accent and the common way he spoke were at odds; she associated the French with sophistication.

“No,” she replied. “Not when she’s married George Cornwallis-West.”

“He’s dashing, I suppose.”

“A man must be.”

He’d raised an eyebrow, touched his hat, and turned to go. When Florence came back, Louisa had tried to locate him in the crowds, and failed. “You’ve imagined him,” Florence had teased.

Afterwards, he had turned up in the oddest places: in Bond Street once, standing in the rain at the corner of a street as their cab had gone by, and then opposite the house one Sunday morning.
In May, she had seen him when they were out riding, and then again at the mews where they took their horses. In Gamages one day, he had appeared again. “Are you haunting me?” she had asked him outright. “For if you are, I think it very rude.”

He had bowed to her, taken off his hat. “My name is Maurice Frederick,” he said. He stood beside the tiers of pale gloves on display—gloves and feathers and silly little purses—and seemed so at ease. “And you are Louisa Cavendish.”

She’d stared at him. “I’m afraid I don’t know you.”

“I am an acquaintance of your brother’s.”

“My brother?”

“He has not mentioned me?”

“No.”

“But then, you don’t see him very much.”

She’d taken a step back. He was very disconcerting; he talked as if he knew everything about the family—but then perhaps he would, if he was Harry’s friend. “I must be going,” she’d replied.

“Might I walk with you a little way? Just to the door?” He had offered his arm. “I assure you I shall not disgrace you between here and the street.”

She had blushed; it was as if he had read her mind—she had been wondering whether to take a stranger’s arm might be some kind of embarrassment. Or whether to refuse would make her seem gauche. After a moment’s hesitation, she had complied. “Are you French?” she asked.

“From Paris.”

“My father is there at the moment.”

“Indeed?” he said. “But the Balkan situation, of course.”

Louisa knew nothing then about a Balkan situation, so she said nothing. They reached the door to the street; she put on her gloves. Maurice looked at her appreciatively—rather too appreciatively,
perhaps. “I doubt very much that your father would approve of me,” he told her.

“And why is that?”

He had given a very Gallic shrug. “I am nothing. I have no money, you know.”

She had tried to be modern. “I don’t think that matters.”

“Does it not?” He had considered this. “But no influence either. Very sad. And I must work.”

“You do?” she’d asked, intrigued. “What at?”

“I’m a clerk at the French Embassy.”

“Oh, but that sounds rather interesting.”

“Is it?” he said, and laughed in a charming fashion. “I must remember that.”

A few days later, when she had mentioned Maurice Frederick to Harry at breakfast, her brother had frowned. “I don’t know a Maurice.”

“He knows you.”

“I daresay,” Harry drawled. “But have a care, little one. Where have you met him?”

“In all sorts of places.”

“Nice places?”

“I don’t know any other.”

“And he claims to know me?”

“He seems to know all of us. He works at an embassy.”

Harry had raised an eyebrow. “He works? You mean he is in the diplomatic corps?”

“I don’t know,” Louisa admitted. “No, I don’t think so. He’s French.”

“French?” Harry repeated. He’d got up and thrown his napkin on the table. “How wretched for you, dearest. And how perfectly vile for him.”

But as she sat here now and watched Maurice Frederick negotiate his way through the Palm Court, cutting such a very attractive figure, Louisa had to admit that if Maurice was anything at all—and she was not quite sure of herself in the matter, admittedly—he was certainly not, and never could be, vile.

Maurice smiled as he reached the table and sat down. “You look delectable sitting there,” he said. “I am the envy of the room.”

She laughed. “You say the most outrageous things.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of mock alarm. “It is not outrageous. It is true.”

She liked his brazen charm. At least he didn’t beat about the bush; he made no secret that he admired her. There would be no ham-handed fumbling with Maurice, she thought, and immediately blushed at herself, and tried to change the subject. “You were an awfully long time.”

“Was I?” he said. “I apologize. The bar is full of Americans.”

“I suppose that’s no surprise. They claim to have invented the tango.”

Maurice smiled. “The tango came from Marseilles,” he told her. “From places of ill repute.” He raised an eyebrow to signify how shocking this might be. “Places where ladies are not ladies.”

“Places that you have been?”

“I? No, never.”

“But Paris is shocking, isn’t it?”

“If one looks in the right places, I suppose.”

She propped her chin on her hand. “I should love to see it, nevertheless. I think it’s boring that Father has never taken me. He could, you know; he’s over there all the time.”

“Ah, well,” Maurice murmured. “Perhaps it is not a city to see with one’s father. It is a city to see with a lover.”