The Indiscretion (24 page)

15

If
thou does ought for nought,

always
do it for thyself

(If
you do anything for nothing,

always
do it for yourself)

Yorkshire
proverb

W
ith shock on her face,
Lydia
's mother, the
Viscountess Wendt, whispered to her daughter and the Marchioness of Motmarche,
"I don't know where to put someone." It was a huge admission, since
the viscountess prided herself on knowing where to put everyone.

Leaning near the marchioness, she continued, "The U.S.
ambassador, Mr. Patterson, would normally go in before the high lord treasurer,
but His Excellency is ill. He didn't come. Rather, he sent someone in his
place. Where do I put him? At the front, where the ambassador might normally go
in? Or at the foot of the table, where an American would go in otherwise?"

The marchioness, a slight but stately older woman, knew most of
the rules of precedence, not for the same reason as her mother, Lydia suspected
– because she cared so much where she herself stood – as because Lady Motmarche
was as sharp as a tack and had attended every state event for the last forty
years. The order of English precedence was as unavoidable to her as who took
which trick in a game of whist.

She asked, "Who is officially the ambassador from the United
States at the moment?" Her voice was gentle.

In a voice as tight as the high string of a violin, the
viscountess told her, "That is the peculiar thing. I don't know. In his
note, Mr. Patterson says he has stepped down from his post."

"Has the queen recognized the new man?"

"I don't know that either," the viscountess said with
disgust.

"It would be highly unlikely for the queen to receive him on
such short notice."

"It is highly unlikely that Mr. Patterson should simply
wander off."

"Ah," the marchioness said. Her mild voice was somehow
reassuring. "Graham" – her husband, the marquess – "said he was
ill. I'm so sorry to hear he's leaving. He must be worse."

The viscountess frowned rather unsympathetically.
"Indeed," she said. "But that still leaves us with the problem
of what to do with this new fellow? Where do we put him?"

"Ask him," Lady Motmarche recommended. "Ask if he's
been accredited by Her Majesty. We can hardly acknowledge him before she
does."

"Oh, I hate that!" the viscountess said. The feathers in
her hair bobbled as she jerked her head. "I hate to have to ask. It's
so—"

Uncertain, Lydia thought. Her mother hated to speak to someone
before she knew if she stood above them or not.

With a rush of taffeta and a clatter of crystal beads, her mother
swooped off, leaving her daughter to think, Oh, I am being mean. Lydia tried to
bring herself into line, but it was a difficult task.

The viscountess had been unbearable for the past two weeks.
Tonight, she was in heaven; she was in hell. Nothing pleased her more than
formal acknowledgment of her place in the British social order. Nothing ruffled
her more than the possibility of getting something wrong, an embarrassment: of
not getting her due.

Her due was connected tonight to the fact that the queen's
grandson, the Prince of Wales's nephew, had three weeks ago serendipitously
proposed to Lydia's cousin Meredith. The viscountess had pounced on the
connection, making available her Yorkshire home for the engagement dinner. In
fact, the Bedford-Brownes' historic country house – Castle Wiles – was a
monument to spaciousness and old English style. Lydia's mother's sister-in-law,
the bride's mother, had delighted in the invitation (one she didn't often receive,
in fact).

Thus, Lydia stood in her childhood home, its urns and niches
filled with enough flowers to put a funeral home to shame, in the drawing room
that would open in fifteen minutes into a formal dining hall they almost never
used, where would begin the most formal dinner she had ever attended: The
Prince and Princess of Wales would enter the drawing room any moment.

Though the queen was missing, even she had sent her good wishes.
The prince's royal yacht had cruised up the coast two days ago, his royal coach
trundling him and his royal wife to their door this morning. He and the
princess were upstairs readying themselves in the state bedchamber, where they
would also sleep tonight. The viscountess was beside herself. It was the first
time in more than two decades that royals had slept under her roof, and a fine
pair of royals they were. The last time had only been the queen's German
cousin. This time, it was her son, the future King of England.

Lydia squirmed. Her hands were sweating in her gloves as she
waited. Dear Meredith and her groom-to-be had come downstairs five minutes ago.
Presently, Lydia's mother was delicately making sure everyone knew their place
in the formal procession into dinner, by order of title and patent. It was an
"intimate" gathering, "family," as her mother kept saying:
sixty or so of England's uppermost crust, gathered to celebrate a royal
marriage – and to celebrate, so far as Constance Bedford-Browne was concerned,
the Bedford-Brownes' connection to it.

"Lydia." Her mother came up behind her daughter this
time, taking a moment for one of her favorite complaints on her way across the
room. She murmured, "You'd look so much better with your hair off your
face." She shoved hair from her daughter's forehead with enough force to
have removed axle grease from it. "Did you take your medicine?"

"I don't need it."

"Where's your father?"

"I don't know."

Her mother grimaced. "He'd best find his way down here. We're
about to go in to dinner, and he's to escort the princess." She pulled a
face. Under her breath she said, "You're paired with Baron
DeBlah
again." That's what she
called him, DeBlah, when his name was DeBleu, very Norman. More brightly, she
asked, "Where's Boddington?"

"I don't know."

Sharply, Lady Wendt met her daughter's eyes. "You don't know
much, do you?"

"I know a great deal," Lydia said boldly, willing to
cross her tonight for no good reason, other than they had been at odds ever
since her return.

"Well," the viscountess said, dismissive, "you can
help. The American I'm looking for is tall with very dark hair. The minister
over there has seen him exactly once." She made an exasperated mew, then
said, "Americans. He should have come straight to me. They never get any
of this right, especially when they first arrive."

Small wonder, Lydia thought. Then sighed as she thought of the
last American she'd spoken to at any length.

Sam. On the moor, she'd spread her wings, and he'd approved. She
hadn't been aware then of how much she'd enjoyed his encouragement of her self-reliance
– what her mother called impudence he had called pluck. She missed his
encouragement now. From three people away, her mother caught her eye again. The
viscountess raised her finger to her own forehead, motioning for her daughter
to arrange her hair to suit her mother.

Lydia turned away instead, opening her fan with a flick of her
wrist,
snap
. With small, short
movements, she whipped the air about her face.

Oh, if her mother ever knew about Sam. Ha, if anyone did—

Lydia reminded herself not to think about him. Again. A good
trick, reminding oneself not to think of someone. She did it anyway, for the
hundredth time in the past two weeks. Why, if Emma Bovary or Tess of the
D'Urbervilles or Anna Karenina, any of them, had simply done what she was doing
– put her passionate attachment aside and kept her own counsel – her story
should certainly have ended happier. A happy ending, that was what Lydia
wanted. She was having none of this business, as in literature at least, where
women who had an adventure – the exact sort that men were allowed to enjoy –
had to be poisoned, hanged, or hit by a train. No, none of that.

Silence. Tell no one. That was the answer. That and forgetfulness.
Intentional – calculated, premeditated – forgetfulness, if necessary. It was a
variation on her father's British stiff upper lip. Bear up. Put it out of your
mind. And soldier on.

*

Meanwhile,
downstairs, a sure reminder entered her house with two other men, all of them
stomping and shaking off rain. Sam handed his hat, longcoat, and umbrella to
the servant who greeted them at the door. "I'm sorry we're late.
Sheep," he explained. "A wagon slid into a flock of sheep. It was a
regular free-for-all on the road from the station."

The servant looked at him blankly. Of course. The man behind Sam,
John Winslow, stifled a silly laugh. Winslow, Patterson's right hand and heir
apparent – so he had thought – was hoping for the interloper here to rip his
britches or something, so Sam's explaining their delay to a servant made him real
happy; he could barely contain himself. The third man, Michael Frazier, was
more helpful, the three of them making up what Sam had thought would be the
entire American contingent at Wendt's county home.

He was mistaken. They were led upstairs through an archway into a
crowded drawing room, where Sam immediately saw the good Senator Pieters, his
wife, his mother-in-law, his sister, and her husband. That is to say, the
jilted bride's principles of the wedding party, including – no mercy – the
bride herself: Gwyn, on the far side of the room, even wore white. She stood in
a cloud of snowy lace with a huge pink rose at her waist. Why there should be
so many Americans at a small, private English affair, he couldn't say, but
there they were.

How cozy, he thought. He stayed at the edge of the room with the
two embassy attachés, making small talk with a chatty grande dame august enough
to attend alone, her husband being in Scotland "readying for the
grouse."

Sam only half listened to her as, unavoidably, his eyes searched
the room. He had to be careful, it turned out, or he'd make eye contact with
Gwyn, who, he realized, was trying to get his attention. He couldn't tell if
she wanted a chance to bash him in public or an opportunity to talk sense.
Neither appealed to him.

He let people interpose and frustrate whatever she had in mind.
With luck, he would sit nowhere near her at dinner. With great good fortune, he
wouldn't talk to her all tonight – since everything he'd said, last time they'd
talked, had been wrong, not a word available that didn't hurt her feelings. He
had no faith that he could say hello right, not to Gwyn's way of thinking.
Which brought Liddy clearly into his mind. No matter what he said to her, no
matter how harebrained, she'd laugh or get angry or get playful. He liked how
she could take care of herself.

He missed her.

He kept looking, knowing with utter certainty, as he scanned face
after face, head after head, that he'd come here first and foremost with the
hope of seeing her. Then, abruptly, his eyes stopped on a smallish, shining,
brown head, curls contained in a silver net interwoven with silk flowers.

Instantly – before he'd fully formed the words inside his head,
It's Liddy
– his body understood her
presence. As if an awareness of her could drop into his blood like a pebble
into a pool: his surface breached, rings of reaction spreading through him.
Nothing he could do. God, it was wonderful to see her. And, doggone, she was
pretty: decked out like a queen. He smiled to himself. There was not a speck of
dirt on her. The top of her dress looked iridescent or something. He couldn't
see why clearly. Mother of pearl. Like her skin: creamy and polished. She
turned, smiling to someone as she talked. Even across a room, her dark lashes
defined her eyes. Her mouth was stained pink, neat, wide, perfect. The woman
purely shone.

A second later – Sam had to lean his head – he saw a man bend
toward her. The fellow was thick-waisted, but young and sturdy and, damn it,
about as elegant a swell as England turned out. As the man angled his body near
Liddy's, his posture was vaguely possessive, or wanted to be. Sam's pebble of
awareness hatched: From his tiny consciousness of her came forth a dragon, a
raging possessiveness – jealousy, fear, yearning. Sam felt competitive with the
man, whoever he was, in a way that made him want to run over, pick the fellow
up by his tailcoat, and sling him out the glass window onto the street two
stories down.

She's mine, he wanted to say. Then had to look away. No, she
wasn't. He was smart enough to stay put, say nothing, but his face felt hot.

And he couldn't keep his eyes away for long. He found himself
staring at Liddy and the man beside her again. Surprisingly, from across the
room, the man's gaze met his. Sam scowled, holding the fellow's attention. He
couldn't help it. When the Englishman looked away, he was noticeably unsettled
– he bent his head to Liddy and stepped back, completely out of the way. Oh,
yes, an unobstructed view of her!

Oh, no: an unobstructed view of her turning sheet-white.

Sam tried to smile, tried to soften what had to be the shock of
seeing him here. Looking right at him, Liddy grabbed the shoulder of the man
beside her as if she was going to fall. Beside her – now there was somewhere
he'd like to be invited: beside Liddy.
Nod,
Lid. Give me a little smile, one of your barely-there ones. Anything. Ask me
over.