Lady Hathaway's House Party (12 page)

“Yes, milady,” Marie said, and ducked through the door, wondering what was amiss.

Belle stood before the mirror looking at her image. She was white, with two red spots burning on her cheeks. She had made a fool of herself. “You lack polish, my dear,” she said to the image, and laughed a mirthless, hollow laugh.
Oh yes, you really
do
lack polish, widegeon! You haven’t got on to the run of things at all,
she went on, but no longer speaking aloud.
You mustn’t go taking the notion that just because your husband loves you, or
says
he does, that he doesn’t also love half a dozen others on the side. He is too loving to confine himself to one woman. I wonder who he has lined up at Belwood that he is so eager to go there. It won’t be a simple dairymaid or innkeeper’s daughter. It will be some local lord’s wife—nothing but ladies for his grace. Or possibly actresses that can pass for ladies due to their high gloss of polish.

She went on staring into the mirror. She looked sophisticated enough, but she was still the green Belle Anderson beneath. She hadn’t learned a thing. She knew how these people carried on, in her mind she knew, but she couldn’t cope with it. When it happened to herself, she went to pieces—in public. Right under the nose of that damned Lady Dempster. What a story she would make of it.

They had beat her. She had set out to show them she could play their game, but she couldn’t. It would be back to Easthill and Arnold Henderson for her. She looked at her elegant gown, light-green chiffon tonight. The right color, green, but not the right shade. It should be green as grass, like herself. She continued on immobile, still examining the girl in the mirror.

She was prettier than Mrs. Traveller. Prettier and a good ten years younger. Why should she let that woman walk off with her husband? Why not go down and make a fight for him? But she knew she wouldn’t do it. She’d sit back and watch her run after him, flirt and carry on, while Lady Dempster clucked and gabbled. Her only defense would be a hollow show of indifference. That was how she told the world she didn’t mind if her husband carried on. She was indifferent.

Well, maybe tonight she’d do a little carrying on of her own, if she could get Arnold to come near her. With Avondale amusing Mrs. Traveller, perhaps Arnold would dare to come wagging his tail and sitting by her side. She wouldn’t stay up here sulking, anyway. She’d go down and hear Signora Travalli sing, and try to think of a good setdown for Lady Dempster.

In less than ten minutes she was going back downstairs, to ask Kay in quite a normal voice if there was to be any singing that evening. Kay was heartily relieved to see Belle behaving so reasonably, and the concert was rushed forth in all haste, as soon as they could find Signora Travalli.

The woman had vanished. Always there when you didn’t want her, sitting at your table and laughing at your guests, but when it was time for her to earn her money, where was she? Servants were sent upstairs to take a quick look about the bedrooms, but there was no sign of her. Not in any of the parlors or study or library. Kay was just about to turn to leave the library when she saw her through the window, out on a bench in the garden with Arnold, of all people.

She called her in, and the singer handed Arnold back his cigar before entering the house. She had been smoking! “Arnold, why the deuce did you—” Kay began.

“She took it!” he said. “Just reached out and took it from my fingers, and there’s no talking to her, you know.”

“Here, you old fool, get in here and
sing!”
Kay told the woman. “
Cantare
—dash
it, Arnold, how do you say it in Italian?”

“I don’t speak Italian,” he said, but the signora grasped what was expected of her and began singing. She was still trilling out her clear notes when the harried hostess led her to the music room. Arnold thought this his chance to get into the house, hiding behind his cousin’s skirts, and took up a seat well to the rear of the room.

Belle could discover no sign of either Mrs. Traveller or her husband when she went below, and was escorted to the concert by Mr. Ralph Ponsonby. She sat as though entranced by the music. One would have taken her for the greatest connoisseur of music, but she didn’t hear a note. Between songs Lady Dempster came over and chatted to her. She had sat on the edge of a row, which she realized too late was an error.

“You are behaving very properly, my dear. I had a bet on with the Traywards that you wouldn’t come down. You have cost me a guinea, but I’m glad for it. He is with her this minute, you must know, Avondale. But it was all her doing. She sent for him to join her where she is having her dinner. I think it is disgraceful the way she runs after him. We’ll see how they behave when they come.”

La Travalli began singing again, and Lady Dempster bounced back to her seat, her eyes swiveling between the door, Belle and the stage. She could not find Mr. Henderson, so well had he concealed himself behind the broad bulk of Lord Eldon.

No one could get through to La Travalli that there had been sufficient music, and she kept on singing long after everyone had had enough. People began slipping out, and when the room had thinned to half its initial audience, Belle too left with Mr. Ponsonby. She saw Avondale and Mrs. Traveller coming from the morning parlor, and he immediately stepped up to her.

 
“Did I miss the concert?” he asked.

“No, she’s still at it. You can catch her if you hurry,” Belle answered indifferently, and walked on with Mr. Ponsonby.

Mrs. Traveller, upon learning who was singing, went to the music room, but Avondale walked along with his wife. Belle was in improved spirits, he thought, and he set about charming her. In a sort of daze, she sat listening while he told her how it had come that Mrs. Traveller was with them. The same story the woman had told herself, with a few additions. She was only staying the one night; he had

had no idea she was coming. “She is married to my cousin, you know,” he finished up, and of course Belle did know this. “Actually what she wanted to speak to me about was borrowing a little money, for she has spent the afternoon at the inn waiting for George, and owes them something.”

She sat weighing his story, finding it pretty implausible. But when Mrs. Traveller came into the saloon later, she didn’t glance at Oliver at all, and he made no move to go near her. “I suppose that old bitch of a Dempster put some foolish idea into your head,” Oliver pressed on. “She’s a trouble maker, Belle. She lives on it. Don’t pay any attention to her gossip-mongering. I don’t see how you can hold it against me that she
happened
to drop in here, when you
came
with Henderson.”

For an hour he talked persuasively, paying her every attention and ignoring Mrs. Traveller completely. If the hyenas had thought to have a good laugh at her tonight, it was Mrs. Traveller who turned out to be the butt. For once, she, Belle Anderson, had come out on top. Avondale was showing them in no uncertain manner which he preferred. If Mrs. Traveller had come scrambling from London to be with him, she had had her trip for nothing. Avondale couldn’t, and certainly wouldn’t, have been more attentive had there been no estrangement between them. She was uncertain in her mind. She wanted to believe him, and wanted too to go to Belwood and try again to make something of her marriage. It was foolish to let an innocent incident spoil everything. Mrs. Traveller would be gone tomorrow, and it would be forgotten.

When it was time to retire, she half thought she had misjudged the woman. She seemed very jolly and good-natured, rattling along to a dozen others in the same frank and merry way she had spoken to Oliver. No one was quite daring enough to perform an introduction between them, so when Belle went up to bed, she had still not officially met Mrs. Traveller, who had retired a quarter of an hour before her.

Oliver remained behind, talking to Lord Eldon and having a glass of wine. But he didn’t intend to remain there long. With his gear now put into the room beside Belle’s, and with her talked around to some semblance of humor again, he meant to go up shortly.

Chapter Nine

Walking past the room next to her own, Belle noticed lights within, and thought with a grimace that Kay had put Mrs. Traveller there. She disliked it, but supposed that with guests there was no other room vacant. She went into her own room and called Marie, who came and helped her get ready for bed. A white lawn nightgown and matching peignoir with rosebuds worked around the yoke. After Marie left, she went to the door of the adjoining room and heard the unmistakable sound of movement in the room. The Traveller making her preparations for the night. She went to her dressing table and began brushing out her hair. There was suddenly a light tap at the door, and she paused, brush in midair.

What could the woman want? It darted into her head that she was about to become involved in a scene, a confrontation with “the other woman.” Every atom of her body recoiled against such vulgar melodrama. She made no reply, hoping the tap wouldn’t be repeated, and even as she sat hoping, it came again, a little more loudly. She’d let on she was asleep—the door was locked, and the woman couldn’t enter.

But Mrs. Traveller had come up before her— she would know she couldn’t be asleep yet, and would take the idea she was afraid of her if she didn’t answer. Again it came, quite loudly now. She might want only to borrow something, Belle equivocated, and went, still holding her brush, to open the door.

I’m not afraid of her,
she thought to herself, and undid the bolt, pulling the door wide with a pugnacious set to her jaw, to see Oliver standing there, looking uncertain. “Oliver, what are you doing in there?” she asked, peering over his shoulder to ascertain with whom he was doing the unspecified what.

“Kay has shifted a few rooms around to make space for Mrs. Traveller,” he said.

“I suppose she thought
I
wouldn’t want her next to me!”

“I don’t know why she should think that,” he answered, seeing it had been an ill-chosen excuse, giving some credence to Belle’s unfounded suspicions.

“What is it you want?” she inquired, pushing the door closed a very little.

“I want to talk to you."

“Can’t it wait till morning?”

“It’s not late. It isn’t even midnight,” he said, pushing the door back open and wedging a foot into the opening.

“We’ve just been talking for an hour. I don’t see why you couldn’t tell me then. Well, what is it?”

He eased his way through the door, meeting no great opposition, and left the door hanging open behind him, as he did not wish to arouse her suspicions to too high a pitch.

“It’s private,” he told her, to explain this nocturnal call, and he advanced into the room itself from the sort of little hallway that separated the two chambers.

She was more curious than suspicious, and waited expectantly to hear what he had to say, but soon discovered that he had no real matter of the least importance to discuss at all, and had come in to urge on her again a reconciliation.

She was tired, and unhappy still with Mrs. Traveller’s coming, but most of all she was vexed that he should presume to come barging into her bedroom when they were legally separated. She had been at considerable pains and expense to obtain that separation, and if she changed her mind and went back to him, it would be her own doing. She hadn’t changed it yet, and wouldn’t be bludgeoned into it. “I can’t say much for your timing, Oliver. You were not used to be so inept.”

“I used to have more opportunities. What time do I have to see you alone here but at night? It’s not late at all.”

“We’ve been through all this once. I’ve said I’ll reconsider, and I shall, but I can’t do it in two minutes.”

“You’ve had all evening, Belle.”

“I had other things to think about,” she reminded him significantly.

“If you’ve wasted any part of the evening thinking that I am involved with my cousin’s wife, I want to state positively and categorically that I have nothing to do with her. Nothing at all.”

“Except to pay her bills.”

He waved his hand in a dismissing gesture. “A couple of shillings at the inn, because she
is
connected to me.”

“You used to be a little closer to her in London, I believe.”

He looked at her from beneath lowered brows, as though weighing how much she knew, or at least it was the way his wife interpreted the look. “A little more. George, you know, her husband, is a rackety old soul, and I once had some thoughts of trying to reclaim him, but gave it up as a bad job.”

But George’s hat had not been in the hall the day he was with Mrs. Traveller. The two of them had been alone, not to be disturbed. “How did you think to reform him? Was it a case of lectures, moral support, that sort of thing?”

“Lord no! I got him a job at the Foreign Office, but he botched it.”

There seemed no possibility that long conversations in private with Mrs. Traveller should have been necessary for this simple effort at reformation.

“How about Mrs. Traveller? Did you try to reform her too?”

“Honey is past reforming,” he answered, and laughed airily. He was happy to see the talk progressing satisfactorily, and he even began looking about for a chair. But he soon realized he had made a slip to use Mrs. Traveller’s first name.

“Honey?” she asked, stiffening.

“That is her name,” he explained hastily.

“Nobody is named
Honey!”

“It is a pet name—
nickname!
Her name is actually Elvira.”

“I see. And she is just called Honey by her very good friends.”

“Is it possible you’re jealous?” he asked. “Here is an improvement. You didn’t use to care who I was seeing.”

Belle felt it was not so much an improvement as a great folly that she was allowing her indifference to slip. “I’m not jealous. Haven’t you just told me you have nothing to do with her?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t have told you so if I’d ever thought you would be jealous. I would have claimed her as a secret lover.”

“Told the truth, you mean?” she asked, trying to make it sound light, teasing.