The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (56 page)

She threw herself onto the bed, feeling hot and disgruntled and angry with herself. She and Maddy never fought. And they never, ever had these arms’-length silences, these evasions and coverings-up.

In the looking-glass, her reflection glared back at her. An untidy cloud of light brown hair – the colour of dust, she thought in disgust – and dust-coloured eyes, and mannish dark brows, and a too-wide mouth that was prone to turn sulky when she was tired.

And now, to add insult to injury, this wretched, wretched dress. It had been a mistake not to have ordered a new gown in England while she had the chance. This pale green foulard would not, as she had blithely told herself, do for another year. It wouldn’t do at all. It made her look sallow and bony, and the bodice pulled at the neck.

‘G
od!
’ she cried, giving it another tug.

There was a knock at the door, and Maddy put her head round. ‘May I come in?’

Sophie stood up and turned to face her, and flapped her arms at her sides. ‘It’s awful, isn’t it?’

Madeleine tilted her head and looked her up and down. ‘You always exaggerate.’

‘Not this time,’ said Sophie.

‘Yes, this time. You’ve buttoned it wrong at the back. That’s why it’s pulling.’

Sophie blew out a long breath.

Madeleine turned her round and started adjusting the buttons. ‘You’re missing one, too.’

‘I know. It went under the wardrobe.’

‘Ah. Well, in a minute you can fetch it and I’ll sew it back on.’

As Sophie stood waiting for her to finish, she thought of all the times in the past when her sister had fixed things for her. The broken reins for the beloved toy donkey. The ripped cover of the birthday journal. The over-large noseband which she’d knitted with scowling incompetence for her pony, and Maddy had somehow made to fit. Years and years of making things better.

What did it matter if she’d lied about Montpelier? What did it matter?

Chapter Three

‘If I know Rebecca Traherne,’ whispered Madeleine as they followed the butler across the echoing marble ballroom, ‘it’ll be irreproachably English. You’ll see. We could be at a tea party in Kent.’

‘Except for the servants,’ murmured Sophie, as they passed a tall black footman in the house livery of azure and silver.

To her surprise, she found herself battling nerves. She’d forgotten how grand the great house at Parnassus actually was. An enormous three-storeyed pile of golden cut-stone, it dominated the Coast Road into Falmouth, staring down from acres of Italian gardens and French parterres. The contrast with Eden couldn’t have been starker. But if Madeleine or Cameron was aware of that, they gave no sign.

Just before they reached the gallery, Madeleine stopped and gave Sophie a quick, searching glance. ‘I know you hate these sorts of things. Are you going to be all right?’

Sophie was touched. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Just remember that everyone’s in awe of you because you’re so clever, and went to school in England.’

Sophie glanced at her in surprise. It had come out so readily that she wondered if Madeleine herself felt something of the same. ‘Well I’m in awe of them too,’ she replied, ‘because they’re all so beautiful and well-dressed.’

Madeleine gave a wry snort.

It was too hot for tea in the grounds, so the little gilt tables had been set out in the great south gallery, which had been transformed into an artificial garden of potted orange trees and ferns. It was cool, civilized and, as Madeleine had predicted, quintessentially English. Rebecca Traherne had a horror of appearing vulgar, and eschewed anything Jamaican in favour of importations from ‘home’.

Thus the china was Wedgwood, the tea had been shipped out from Fortnum’s, and the shortbread had been made to a traditional receipt belonging to Mrs Herapath’s Scottish cousins – and so was doubly sanctioned, by time and Mrs Herapath’s aristocratic connections. Only the lobster salad carried a taint of Jamaica, but it was rendered respectable by being the tea-time favourite of His Majesty the King.

None of it, thought Sophie with a pang, would have fooled her grandfather for a second. Jocelyn Monroe had detested the Trahernes – whom, with the exception of his daughter-in-law Clemency, he’d always regarded as insufferable
parvenus
. And so they were; at least, to a Monroe who could trace his ancestry back seven hundred years.

Owen Traherne had been a blacksmith, who’d come out from Cardiff in 1704, bought a swath of cheap land west of Falmouth, and set about becoming a gentleman. Successive Trahernes had made fortunes in sugar, while working their way through tens of thousands of slaves. And when the government freed the slaves in 1834, Addison Traherne had swiftly perceived that the old plantocracy was going to the wall and had become a money-lender instead. He’d prospered, and risen to the top of Northside society through a succession of strategic marriages.

His son Cornelius had done the same, and was now the richest man in Trelawny: an astute financier and a gentleman planter, who still maintained vast stretches of cane at Millfield and Waytes Valley, and an extensive cattle farm at Fletcher Pen.

He also kept a string of very young mistresses, which Society discreetly ignored – just as it chose not to mention (at least, not out loud) the fact that Cornelius’s wealthy third wife, Rebecca, had had a grandfather who’d changed his name to Sammond – from Salomon.

‘Remember what Jocelyn used to say?’ Madeleine murmured as they paused at the entrance to the gallery and surveyed the throng.

Sophie leaned towards her, and together they mimicked their grandfather under their breath: ‘
Parnassus? Ridiculous name! Why not just call it Olympus, and have done with it?
’

They laughed – a little self-consciously, perhaps, but Sophie felt happier than she’d done since Montpelier.

Everyone who was anyone was attending the tea party, and she knew them all. And because she was a Monroe, albeit an illegitimate one, they accepted her with open arms. She found that hugely reassuring.

She talked to Rebecca’s beautiful house guest, a Mrs Dampiere from Spanish Town, and exchanged polite nods with Amelia Mordenner, her childhood foe. She sat with Olivia Herapath (née the Honourable Olivia Fortescue of Fortescue Hall), and fielded a flood of scurrilous gossip and a barrage of loud, well-meaning questions about ‘that dratted knee’. ‘What, no tennis? Why ever not? You ain’t a cripple, I suppose?’

She took refuge with old Mrs Pitcaithley and plied her with scones, for the gentle old lady’s income shrank yearly, and she had strict notions of
noblesse oblige
, choosing to go hungry herself rather than see her staff less than amply fed. ‘So many changes,’ she moaned, when Sophie told her about London. ‘And do stay away from those horrid underground railways! Nasty, airless things. And quite improper for a young lady.’

Finally, Madeleine introduced her to a succession of eligible young men. Sophie was relieved when they lost interest after she politely declined the pleasure of watching them play billiards.

‘Don’t be such a
blue
,’ whispered Sibella as she descended on her in a flurry of primrose spotted muslin.

‘I’m not,’ protested Sophie, ‘I just—’

‘Come along, I’ve got something to show you.’ And she dragged her into an ante-room where they could hear themselves speak. ‘That’s better,’ she said, fanning herself with her hand. ‘I’ve been dying to get you on your own.’

‘How was finishing school?’ said Sophie.

‘A bore,’ said Sibella.

‘You’re looking awfully pretty. Being engaged agrees with you. Congratulations.’

Sibella rolled her eyes. ‘If I’d known how much work it was going to be I’d never have done it.’ But she accepted the compliment as a matter of course.

And she did look enchanting. Plump and fair-haired, she had her father’s slightly protuberant blue eyes, and a pert little nose of which she was extremely proud, since it bore no resemblance to her mother’s. Rebecca Traherne was sallow and dark, and her nose betrayed her Salomon origins. Sibella made no secret of the fact that she despised her.

Now she fixed Sophie with her blue eyes and squeezed her hand. ‘You will be my bridesmaid, won’t you?’

‘Of course, if you want—’

‘But first I must ask. You didn’t become a suffragist, did you?’

‘What?’ said Sophie, startled.

‘A suffragist! You know, votes for women. You didn’t join them, did you?’

‘I didn’t join anything,’ said Sophie with perfect truth. In fact she’d attended several suffragist meetings, but it seemed pointless to mention that now.

Sibella breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank heavens! I hate them. Nasty, ugly women who can’t get husbands. And Mrs Palairet would never have stood for it.’ Mrs Palairet was her future mother-in-law, and the matriarch of one of the oldest families in Trelawny.

Sophie was nettled. ‘Why should it matter to Mrs Palairet what I do?’

‘Oh, Sophie, what a question! You’re going to be my bridesmaid. Think how it would reflect upon me.’

Then Sophie knew that she had not been chosen as a bridesmaid out of friendship, but because she was a Monroe, and would add
cachet
to the wedding, while not being pretty enough to outshine the bride. Oddly, she didn’t resent that. Sibella probably wasn’t even aware of it herself, for she never stopped to examine her own feelings. And it was hardly her fault if she’d grown up in a family which saw other people in terms of how they could be used.

Now she pulled Sophie over to a side table on which lay two large gilt-edged volumes sumptuously bound in pale blue morocco. ‘Look, this one’s my Gift Book. Isn’t it heavenly?’

‘What’s a Gift Book?’ said Sophie.

‘For the
wedding
! It has columns for Sender, Description and Category of Gift, and Date of Thank-you Note. And that’, she indicated the companion volume, ‘is the Trousseau Register.’

Idly, Sophie opened the Register and scanned the first page. She blinked. ‘Good heavens, Sib, twelve dozen pocket handkerchiefs? What are you going to do with those?’

‘Oh, Sophie, where have you been? Any fewer would be impossible! And Mrs Palairet quite approves. She—’

‘Ah, then it must be correct.’

Two spots of colour appeared on Sibella’s plump cheeks. ‘Presumably laughing at one’s friends is the newest style of London wit. But I confess I don’t find it the least bit amusing.’

‘I wasn’t laughing at you,’ Sophie said insincerely.

Sibella stroked the Register and frowned. ‘It’s just that I want everything to be perfect,’ she muttered. ‘It’s such a lot to live up to, marrying a Palairet. You can’t imagine what a worry.’ And for a moment Sophie caught a glimpse of the fat, frightened little schoolgirl who’d clung to her in their first term together at Cheltenham.

‘Well just remember,’ she said, ‘that you’re not marrying Mrs Palairet, you’re marrying Eugene.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Sibella irritably.

Sophie looked at her. ‘But Sib – you do love him, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ she snapped. ‘But I don’t see the use in going on about it.’

Sophie did not reply.

‘You’re such a romantic,’ said Sibella. ‘This is real life, Sophie, not some novel. And it’s jolly hard work.’

Sophie thought about that. On the drive over, she had asked Madeleine about Sibella’s fiancé. ‘Fat, self-satisfied, and a little too fond of the tote,’ her sister had said with her usual shrewdness, ‘but he’ll probably run the right side of the post in the end.’

Out loud Sophie said, ‘Where
is
Eugene? I haven’t had a chance to congratulate him yet.’

‘Over there,’ said Sibella without noticeable affection, ‘talking to your brother-in-law.’

Sophie followed her glance and saw a fat, self-satisfied young man in a white linen suit – Madeleine’s description was cruelly accurate – expounding something to Cameron, who was swallowing a yawn. ‘He looks very agreeable,’ she said weakly.

Sibella fingered the Register and nodded.

Just then, Cameron turned his head and searched discreetly for his wife. At the same moment Madeleine, on the other side of the gallery, raised her head and looked for him, too. Their eyes met, and for an instant they exchanged slight smiles. It was clear that for both of them, the other guests had ceased to exist.

Oh, thank God, thought Sophie in a wave of relief. It’s all right between them.

Beside her, Sibella shut the Trousseau Register with a thud. Her face was stony. Perhaps she too had witnessed that look.

‘Sib, what’s the matter?’ said Sophie.

‘Nothing,’ said Sibella, opening her eyes very wide. ‘Go back to the others, and leave me to put these away.’

Sophie looked at her in exasperation. Sibella was the same age as herself, and an heiress at the top of the social tree. She had no need to marry anyone she didn’t love, not even a Palairet. So why on earth was she doing it?

But I
do
love him
, she would doubtless snap if Sophie was fool enough to raise it again.
This isn’t the novels, Sophie. It’s real life, and jolly hard work.

Can that be true? wondered Sophie. Does one really have to leave it all behind in novels?

Thinking about that, she went out into the gallery, and found a cup of tea, and turned to look for a seat, and came face to face with the delicate-featured young gentleman from Montpelier.

The sounds of the tea party fell away, and she nearly dropped her cup and saucer.

He was startlingly good-looking, with pale blue eyes and chiselled features and fine, silky golden curls. And he was looking down at her with a slight smile, as if he knew her. ‘I’m afraid you don’t know who I am, do you?’ he said gently.

She opened her mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

He held out his hand. ‘Alexander Traherne.’

Awkwardly fielding cup and saucer, she took it. ‘Not – Sibella’s older brother?’

He bowed. ‘Guilty as charged.’

She swallowed. ‘You’ve been away, I suppose?’

‘Eton. Oxford. The usual round. What about you?’