Delsie (6 page)

“Just for a moment,” deVigne said. “I doubt he will even be conscious. It is nearly over, Mrs. Grayshott.”

“Oh!” she gasped. It was the first time she had been called by her new name. She found it singularly unpleasant.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lady Jane suggested. “Enough to give anyone the blue devils, looking at this dust-laden room.”

They all arose, with no argument. DeVigne took Delsie’s arm and led her to his carriage, and the others followed in Sir Harold’s, the two making a brisk trot to the Hall. Seeing the Hall at such close range, actually entering its twin portals, would have been a matter of great interest on any other occasion. Today, Delsie entered in such a state of distraction, she spared not a glance at the surroundings. She was vaguely aware of approaching a large stone home, with leaded windows gleaming in the pale autumnal sunshine, and the vines just turning to fall colors along the windows’ edges. She was similarly insensible to aged oaken woodwork within, the curving great staircase with intricately carved ornaments on posts and ceilings. The size and furnishings of the large saloon into which she was shown were also ignored. She walked to the fireplace and stood looking into the leaping flames, with her hands stretched out to them. Her hands were cold as ice.

Her three companions exchanged a look, wondering what to do about her. DeVigne poured a healthy portion of brandy, Jane added a dash of water to it, and handed it to her. “Try this,” she said.

Delsie sipped obediently and choked, being unaccustomed to the strong drink. But in small sips she finished the glass, and felt a little restored. It took the cold chill from her bones as the fire had not done. It was more an emotional numbness than a physical chill.

“We’d better get on with luncheon if we are to go back to the cottage,” deVigne suggested.

“Must she go, Max?” Lady Jane asked, with a condoling look at the bride. “She doesn’t look up to it.”

“I promised him,” Delsie said. “I’ll go.” Then she set down her empty glass, lifted her chin, and accepted deVigne’s arm to enter the dining room.

Chapter Five

With such a small company, just the four of them, luncheon was served in the breakfast room, where no effort had been made to treat the occasion as a wedding feast. The silverware and china were finer than Miss Sommers was used to. A large bowl of late roses, in shades of pink, decorated the center of the table. There was an abundance of meats she could not relish in her state, but with gratitude she accepted a glass of wine. One glass a day was more than she usually took; this morning she had had three drinks in fairly quick succession. Her head began spinning, and she changed to water. That was her luncheon—a glass of wine and a glass of water. The others scarcely ate more.

“Well, it is done!” Lady Jane said, with a note of satisfaction.

“Leave it to Max,” Sir Harold added by way of a compliment, and lifted his glass.

They then abandoned the subject, and began to speak of other things. What did Max think of Sir Harold’s paper on Goethe? Hearing only one word in ten, Delsie was struck with the odd fact that Sir Harold had no small talk—he discussed only philosophy and weighty matters of eternal interest, while his wife was just the opposite. She rattled away about the flowers or a gown or a servant, but hadn’t a word to say on her husband’s conversation. What an odd pair, she smiled inwardly—but not so odd as Mr. Grayshott and myself.

After luncheon, she was again led to deVigne’s carriage, and the short drive down the hill to the Cottage was executed. She sat silent, thinking her own wandering thoughts, while her finger played with the wedding ring. It fit perfectly. As they turned in at the gateway he said, “This is the worst of it. It will soon be over with,” in a bracing way.

It was over sooner than either of them thought. They were met inside the door by the doctor, who told them Mr. Grayshott had passed quietly away in his sleep half an hour before. It was as though a great weight slipped from her back. She felt light, giddy with relief. Perhaps she had been harboring the dread that he might recover, that she would actually have to live with that shell of a man.

"I'll take Mrs. Grayshott home, then,” deVigne said. He too sounded relieved.

“This is my home now,” she pointed out, with a downcast look at the Cottage.

“There will be no need to spend the night here. It is not fit to live in yet. Lady Jane had your bag taken to her place. You and Roberta will spend the night there, and come here tomorrow or the next day. You won’t want to be alone tonight.”

She didn’t want particularly to be with a stranger either. “Couldn’t I go back to the village?” she asked.

“This business is already irregular enough that we shouldn’t add unnecessarily to it,” he pointed out, kindly but firmly. “You are leaving that life behind you. Don’t look back.”

The advice, she supposed, was good. She had often enough wished she were out of it. Back into the carriage, which already seemed to be second nature to her. There was no feeling of grandeur attaching to it now, but only a welcome haven from the brisk winds of November. They went at once to Lady Jane.

The Dower House was a stone building like the Hall. It was three stories high, done in a Gothic style, lancet windows, pointed roof, and even miniature flying buttresses, ornamental very likely, as it was not huge enough to actually require that support. There was a fine wrought-iron fence around the place, shoulder high, through which it was necessary to pass by foot as the gates were rusted shut at an angle too narrow to allow the carriage to pass. This seemed to be the only feature of the house that was not in first repair, however. All was neatly trimmed, windows shining, a pleasant change from the cottage. DeVigne left his carriage standing at the gate and took her to the door, indicating that he did not mean to enter. He left her in the hallway with Lady Jane. Sir Harold was in his study, reading some Latin manuscript he had on loan from the Bodleian Library.

“Come into the saloon,” Lady Jane said kindly, examining her new relative minutely for lingering signs of shock.

Delsie was sufficiently recovered to appreciate this room. Cozy—there was not that feeling of being in a cathedral she had experienced at the Hall, but perhaps that had been due to her emotional state. It was done in gold tones—velvet settees, the wooden pieces large and substantial, from an older period. A bowl of mums was nicely arranged with ferns on a mahogany table. Delsie’s gaze settled on this.

“What does one say at such a time?” Lady Jane asked frankly, then laughed. Looking into those dancing blue eyes, Delsie had a smile coaxed out of her. “Not condolences, I shouldn’t think,” the dame rattled on. “It must be a great relief to you he passed on so quickly. Good riddance say I, and may the Lord forgive me if it’s wrong.”

Mrs. Grayshott was relieved there was to be no charade of her being a grieving widow. “What a dreadful thing to say, but I am not the least sorry,” she admitted.

“No more you should be! There’s no point in our whispering and wearing long faces, as though you were a real widow, is there, my dear? Of course not. Such nonsense. Let us just sit down by the fire and have a nice coze, and become acquainted, as we are connections now. It’s nice to have a new family member to chat with, and a female too. I have missed the luxury. You must be happy to be out of the parish school. A
killing job
for a lady.”

“Yes, like the death of Mr. Grayshott, I cannot pretend to any sorrow over it. It was horrid.”

“Leave it for the men. They get all the good things in life, let them take the bad along with it. I’ll call for a cup of tea,” Lady Jane said, nodding in approval of her own sensible sentiments. “I noticed you didn’t take a bite of lunch. Pity, the asparagus looked very good. I’ll have Max send some over for our dinner. He has excellent succession houses. We never want for fresh fruit—oranges and pineapples. So, Miss Sommers—oh, dear!
That
will never do—Mrs. Grayshott. I daresay you like that even less. May I call you Delsie? That is your name, I believe?”

“That will do very well, milady.”

“Well then, Delsie, we have a few things to discuss. Though
entre nous
we are not to pretend to any sort of mourning, the proprieties must be observed in public. Do you have mourning clothes?”

“Yes, I have my things from my mother’s death. I shall need a few more gowns now that I am—here.” She hardly knew what words to use to indicate her awareness of the superior surroundings in which she now found herself.

“A few gowns for evening wear, I think. We dress for dinner, though I shouldn’t think you and Bobbie will bother when you dine at the Cottage together. But we don’t mean to abandon you there in the least. We are all one big happy family here. Usually Max dines with us, or we with him. I should be quite talking to myself otherwise, for my husband is not at all sociable, nor can we leave Max rolling around all alone in that big castle, you must know. It would be too cruel. Andrew took no part in our get-togethers, but we hope you mean to do so.”

This pleasant method of taking meals and probably passing an evening sounded delightful, and, with a thought to her narrow wardrobe, Delsie realized she would indeed require additions to it. “I should be happy to join you,” she said.

“After you have got the Cottage set to rights—a shambles, is it not?—you shall take your turn of entertaining us as well. Now, about other matters than mourning clothes, there will be callers coming for the next few days. They ought not to do so till after the burial, by rights, but every person one knows
will
do it, thinking he is the only one, and that company will help. So what we must decide is where to greet them. Or do you want to meet them at all? Max feels the proper time to reveal the wedding—I should have said announce, but with such a hole-in-the-wall affair, reveal sounds the proper term—anyway, Max thinks it should be done at once. Let the village get over the shock of it as soon as possible, and while there is the death to help take their minds off it. It will be less uncomfortable for you to meet people as Andrew’s widow at the funeral calls, when they must maintain a decent decorum. Can’t be asking too many prying questions of a widow, and if they get too far out of line, you can always draw out a handkerchief and start dabbing at your eyes. Max and I will give a good snub to the first one who tries it. Are
you
any good at a snub yourself, Delsie?”

This drew forth a light laugh. “I snub students very well, but I confess I haven’t much experience of snubbing anyone else.”

“Ah—that surprises me. I took the notion from Max that you might have given him a good set-down when first he went to you.”

“Not intentionally. How do you go about it, milady?” she asked, quite at her ease. She would never have foreseen getting along so well with Lady Jane, who had looked the toploftiest of deVigne’s relatives, next to himself.

“Max has it down to an art. Raises those black brows of his, pinches in his nostrils, and says ‘Indeed?’ in a certain tone. He has the face to pull it off, that one. Lacking his elegance, I look the culprit dead in the eye and think of a rat. I loathe rats. Then I say ‘Really?’— drawing it out a little, or ‘Do you think so?’ or something of the sort, depending on what has preceded. But I shan’t have too much setting-down to do.
I
have come up with a plan, you see. You saw the first step of it this morning, with the vicar. It is not entirely unknown in the village that Andrew has had this passion to marry you the past two or three years, for the gudgeon told everyone he spoke to about you. Frankly, my dear Delsie, there has been more than one nosy Parker asking why you didn’t take him. So I mean to imply that the marriage had been planned some time ago for the Christmas holidays, which will explain your not having given any notice yet at the school, and then it was rushed forward when Andrew took ill. All a taradiddle of course, but I have only to imply to Mrs. Gardiner and a few of my cronies that you hadn’t planned to marry quite so soon, and it will be set about in no time. I daresay vicar has already told half a dozen. Not even a lie, really, for you had no idea of ever marrying him at all, till Max made you do it.”

“That sounds feasible,” Delsie admitted, with an admiring look at her astute friend.

“I enjoy scheming and conniving,” the lady admitted. “It helps to get in the days. There will be the suspecting few who think you only did it to insinuate yourself into a soft position when you knew Andrew was dying, but they won’t dare to say so. Not to
you
at any rate, and we need not care what is said over the teacups in Questnow.”

What a wonderful way of life! Not to care what was said over the teacups in the village. For the village teacher, what was uttered there was of vital importance. The wrong utterance could spell the end of the job.

“The next thing to decide is the where of it,” Lady Jane went on. “On such an occasion, I expect it is to the Hall that folks will go first, to offer their sympathy to Max. Might be best if we are all there
en masse.
The Cottage cannot be got ready in time, so it is there, the Hall, or here.”

“What will Lord deVigne expect?” she asked. She could not accuse herself of opting out of this decision. Surely it was for the family, the real family, to decide this matter, and not a stranger like herself.

“He always prefers the Hall for everything,” was the unhesitating answer. “Max has a paternal streak a mile wide. He would like to think he is
my
father, considers himself very much Bobbie’s, and will be trying to lead you as well if you give him half a chance. On this occasion, however, it would be as well to let everyone see the marriage has his approval, not to say connivance.”

“It was all his doing,” Delsie said at once. “I didn’t even know I meant for sure to go through with it, till I got there and saw the preacher waiting.”

“I’m sure you hadn’t a word to say about it. I nearly fell over when I saw he had even got a ring, and it isn’t Louise’s either. He would have the sense not to buy it in the village. He found time to dart over to another town to pick it up. He is thorough, you must allow. Once Max has made up his mind to a thing, it is as well as done. It was not
all
his doing, however.
I
thought of it, and Max only carried it through. He is open to suggestion. I’ll say that much for him. He is
reasonably
domineering. His papa, who was my cousin Pierre, was
unreasonably
domineering. He married my sister.”