Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (3 page)

‘I suppose that might be true. But you see, that's it, really, with this war about to start, and what with my being American – and we don't look as if we're going to be joining it – that sort of – you know – that sort of cancels all that out, because I shall probably go back to the States. At least that's what my parents seem to think. Not that I've ever spent much time in America, my father being in the diplomatic, and all that. You know how it is. What are you laughing at now?'

‘I didn't know you were American!' he said, stopping once again in front of her to look her full in the face. ‘I had simply no idea! American and an only child,' he finished, looking thoughtful.

‘It's my parents who are American really. I'm just – I mean, I've spent just about all my life in Europe, and the last few years here, so I'm really a European-American. Just as one of my friends is a Sino-American, having spent most of her life in the East. It happens in the diplomatic, the children sort of take on the shade of the country where they spend most time.'

‘So that makes you—'

‘European born, of American parents,' Poppy interposed. ‘At least that's what my father always insists on saying. I was actually born in the embassy in Rome.' She looked at him, trying to read his expression. ‘Has that put you off? I mean has it made you change your mind?'

‘No, of course not.'

‘Winston Churchill is half American, isn't he?'

‘Families like the Churchills, they all married American girls for their
money
!' Basil teased, but this time with a perfectly straight face, the only indication of his humour being one raised eyebrow.

‘There are worse things to marry people for, I suppose,' Poppy replied candidly, after a short pause. ‘I mean, people who marry people just for their looks – I don't think those marriages last longer than the looks, do they?'

Basil said nothing. He just eyed her, put his head on one side, raised his eyebrows again but this time quizzically, nodded to himself then cleared his throat.

‘Don't you want to get married?'

‘I have never even thought about such a thing.'

‘I take it you're refusing my offer?'

‘No,' Poppy said evenly. ‘No, I'm not doing anything – one way or the other. But as far as
wanting
to get married – well no. I suppose the answer's no. Married people don't seem to be interested in anything except being married to each other, which I always find rather dull.'

‘I'm not like that,' Basil told her quietly. ‘Not like that at all.'

‘I'm sure you're not,' Poppy returned hastily, thinking she had offended him. ‘I wasn't thinking of you, really. I was thinking of some of my parents' friends – who seem to be intent on doing nothing except bore each other to death.'

‘So if I got you to understand that when I asked you earlier – I was being perfectly serious?'

‘No, no, I realise that,' Poppy agreed hastily, feeling as if she was already in some sort of emotional cul de sac.

‘I don't want to be turned down, Poppy. I don't want to be made a fool of. That is not something that a man like me could tolerate.'

‘No,' Poppy agreed quietly, suddenly worried by the change in his tone, but also finding herself oddly excited by it, by the sudden menace in his voice, and the implicit threat of passion and power that went with it. ‘No, I see that, Basil. Of course.'

‘I wouldn't want to be turned down by you, and then have everyone hear about it.' He smiled slowly at her. ‘You do see that – Poppy?'

‘Yes. Yes, I think I do, Basil.'

‘Good.'

He took one of her hands. Poppy hoped it was still dry and not hot and damp from the panic she was feeling inside. His eyes held hers determinedly, but she found it hard to maintain the look, despite knowing that if she didn't he would realise she wasn't sincere, that she didn't care about him and was indeed about to turn down his proposal. So in order to try to hide her confusion, she did what she had seen an actress do in a film recently. She tilted her head back and smiled.

‘So, Miss Poppy Beaumont, once again, will you marry me?'

Poppy leaned forward slightly, frowning, anxious to check once more on Basil's expression.

‘Are you really serious? I mean, you are serious, are you?'

‘Why shouldn't I be? I think you'd be ideal for me. You love dogs and you hate the social life, while you appear to quite like me too. Am I not right?'

Poppy stared at him all the while.

‘Yes,' she replied slowly, adjusting her glasses with the tip of one finger, pushing them back up on to the bridge of her nose yet again. ‘But then I have to say I also quite like London and Paris – and Rome. I have to say I actually like going to art galleries, and looking at people too. If that doesn't sound too – well – strange. I really don't think I could take being in the country sort of – you know – full stop.
Burying oneself
in the country does sound rather like being a bit dead.'

Once again, Basil simply raised one perfectly formed eyebrow and smiled. Had Poppy later been asked to describe the smile, possibly she would
have settled on ‘sardonic'. But at the actual moment, she found she was just happy to see him keep smiling at her. Very few men in her existence had smiled at her even for the shortest of spells, and her father only ever out of sarcasm at his own jokes about her.

‘I feel quite the same,' Basil replied finally. ‘Everyone does – that is everyone who is honest does. So, if you have no further objection?'

Poppy frowned, wanting to interrupt, to wonder exactly to what she was meant to be objecting.

‘I shall call on your father later today at his convenience and address myself to him,' Basil continued, no longer smiling, and quite failing to add that he had already made an appointment with Spencer Beaumont, having foreseen no possibility of having a proposal from someone like himself turned down by Miss Poppy Beaumont. ‘One more thing, perhaps,' he added, a smile softening his features once more, only this time the smile was the sort of shy grin young boys often give on their first date. ‘Do you think you could possibly find it in yourself to love me?'

This disconcerted Poppy, as it was meant to do. She found it faintly ridiculous to be asked by someone as dashing, handsome and socially desirable as Basil Tetherington if someone as plain, awkward and socially undesirable as she could possibly find it in herself to love him. However, she also found herself short of a suitable answer.

‘Of course,' she muttered, aware that she was blushing. ‘I'm quite sure I could – you know. Whatever you said.'

‘I have a feeling that you love me a little already,'
Basil added carefully, brushing one of her cheeks with the back of his hand. ‘Am I right? Or am I wrong?'

‘I don't know,' Poppy replied in haste. ‘Sorry – that must sound a little rude – and I didn't mean it to. It's just – well. It's just that everything's galloping along headfast. I can't quite keep up. Sorry.'

‘I quite understand,' Basil said, with what Poppy found herself considering a certain smugness, but then he was older. ‘How about if we go and choose a ring? Would that make you feel a little better?'

Now that she felt she was being patronised, Poppy also felt resentful. One of the few things she had enjoyed during the Season was her private amusement at how the other debutantes seemed only interested in procuring, by fair means or foul, the inevitable engagement ring. If she had a shred of honesty and integrity left, Poppy decided, she should cut and run, which she was in fact just about to do when she remembered her father's conviction that she would die an old maid, a prediction which, now she came to examine it as compared with living a life of luxury in the fourth Baron Tetherington's stately home, had all of a sudden lost all its appeal. So, considering life could surely only get better in a marriage to such an apparently eligible and socially enviable man as the one currently holding her hand in his and kissing her fingertips, Poppy smiled, withdrew her hand from his to slip it through one of his arms, and happily agreed to allow herself to be escorted on the proposed shopping trip down Old Bond Street.

‘Excellent,' Basil murmured, walking her slowly
out of Green Park. ‘Now shall we buy something very vulgar, or just plain ostentatious?'

‘I'd say plain ostentatious will be just fine,' Poppy agreed, feeling suddenly and ridiculously happy.

‘It's rather large, isn't it?' Mary Jane wondered, leaning across the lunch table to take a closer look at the ring.

‘He likes emeralds, and diamonds,' Poppy explained. ‘And he says it will go with his emerald and diamond cuff links. He says we can be vulgar and flash together. In fact he says those are to be our nicknames.'

‘Vulgar and Flash?' Mary Jane sniffed. ‘But someone like Basil Tetherington can't be vulgar or flash, surely? He's the very opposite of flash.'

‘It was meant as a joke, Mary Jane. That's his English sense of humour.' Poppy laughed as if to show she was well in on the jest, but Mary Jane remained solemn, choosing instead to stare in defiant wonder at the plain, bespectacled girl sitting opposite her who had ended what had been an otherwise disastrous Season for herself not only engaged, but engaged to what Mary Jane's own mother called an
‘extremely
titled gentleman'.

Like everyone else in her circle, Mary Jane found it utterly unbelievable that the plain little American girl at whom they had secretly laughed behind their fans all summer should have collared one of the catches of the Season. She gave a deep sigh of discontent, returned Poppy her beringed hand, and shook her head in almost open disbelief.

‘You can't have believed it when he proposed,'
Mary Jane said, barely concealing her spite. ‘Surely.'

‘I know,' Poppy agreed. ‘I was taken aback a bit, as you may imagine. You know, me of all people.'

‘You must have thought it another of his jokes.'

‘Why, Mary Jane? Why would I think that?'

Poppy smiled innocently at her friend. She knew exactly what she meant, of course, but teasing Mary Jane was a lot easier than falling into self-examination as to why exactly Basil Tetherington had in fact chosen her out of all the debutantes to be the future Lady Tetherington. It was the sort of reflection into which, in actual fact, Poppy had found herself constantly falling since the day of her engagement.

‘What I meant was did you really think he was going to propose?' Mary Jane replied, adjusting her last remark. ‘And when he did, did you think he was serious? Because you said a moment ago—'

‘Never mind what I might or might not have said a moment ago, Mary Jane,' Poppy interrupted, removing her spectacles and putting them beside her on the table. She hated wearing them, but since her mother had been warning her since she was small that without their aid her lazy eye would slip into the corner of its socket, turning her into a sort of comic turn, she clung to them as a drowning person to the side of a boat. ‘I didn't say I thought he was joking when he proposed. I simply wondered whether or not he was really serious.'

‘I can quite see why, too,' Mary Jane replied tightly. ‘It's not as if you've been exactly overwhelmed with attention during the summer. So I
can imagine how you felt when you found the handsome and dashing Basil Hetherington—'

‘Tetherington—'

‘With his famous house in Yorkshire and
fairly
ancient title proposing marriage – yes, I can quite imagine your consternation.'

Mary Jane pulled a small, sarcastic face, lit a cigarette and turned to gaze out of the restaurant window at nothing in particular, unable to carry on any further conversation about Poppy's incredible engagement, an engagement that she had to admit was the talk of the town, an engagement for which she herself would have willingly sacrificed her right hand.

She could not, however, resist making one last unsolicited observation.

‘Actually,' she drawled, tapping her cigarette rhythmically on the edge of the glass ashtray. ‘I have to say that when I was younger I did think one had to be quite head over heels in order to get married.' She glanced quickly but – she hoped – tellingly at her lunching companion. ‘But then Mummy told me that love was for servants, and not for our class. Love – she said – never puts diamond rings on fingers, or tiaras on heads. So it's probably a much better thing that he does at least amuse you, Poppy. Especially moving up to Yorkshire. And particularly with a war coming. You will need to be amused.'

It was Poppy's turn to stare out of the window, wondering to herself, for perhaps the fiftieth time, quite what her reasons were for accepting Basil Tetherington's proposal of marriage. Was she marrying him for herself? Or because she wanted
to please her parents? It seemed she had made her mother overjoyed by agreeing to be the next Lady Tetherington, and her father had been made to eat his words by his jubilant wife. Much to her surprise even Basil had seemed very pleased at the prospect of Poppy's becoming his wife, so much so that Poppy thought she could not possibly be doing the wrong thing, not if she was making so many people so happy.

However, the love quotient did worry her.

She had no idea whether love was for servants, as Mary Jane's mother was apparently convinced, or for anyone else for that matter, but she was finding that she was quite definitely feeling
something
for Basil, although what it was exactly she had no idea. Yet something stirred in her when she thought of her handsome husband-to-be. He was after all an intelligent, urbane, suave mannered gentleman, a man always so beautifully dressed and groomed he could have been a regency buck, a man who it seemed could converse on any subject with anybody, but appeared to also like to laugh, and to tease, and be teased in return, who did not take life too seriously.