The Phantom Lover (26 page)

Roddy lowered his eyes and said nothing.

“Of course it was! I might have known. Who else would take it upon himself to maneuver other people's lives like this? As if we were pieces on a chessboard! How
dared he
? How
dared
he meddle in our lives this way?”

“He dared because he is troubled. You
must
realize that he only wants to see you happy.”

“That's not true. Not
at all
true!”

“I tell you it is. You may take my word on it,” Roddy declared loyally.

“If it were true, he would be here
himself
to offer for me—not taking advantage of his friend!” she said wrathfully.

Roddy regarded her reproachfully. “You know he couldn't do that … in his position.”

“Of course he couldn't,” she said, pacing up and down resentfully. “He's safely rivetted to his so-perfect Edwina!”

“Yes, the poor fellow …” Roddy ventured carefully.

“Poor fellow? Why ‘poor fellow'?” she demanded, turning on him. “He's won the lady he's always dreamed of winning, hasn't he?
I
would call him a very
lucky
fellow!”

“Come now, Nell, don't play coy. You surely have noticed that he's long since awakened from that dream.”

Nell stiffened, her breath caught in her throat. “I do not
play coy,
” she managed. “What is it that you're suggesting?”

Roddy shifted in his chair guiltily. “Nothing, nothing. I've gone too far. I'm quite out of my depth.”

But Nell could not be stopped. “You're suggesting, are you not, that Harry's feelings for Edwina have changed? That, my friend, is utter nonsense.”

Roddy glanced up at her. “Are you sure of that?”

“Quite sure.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“Because he is still betrothed to her. If his feelings were no longer engaged, he would have severed the connection. Just as I have done on more than one occasion.”

“But … what are you saying?” Roddy asked in sincere confusion. “No gentleman may cry off as ladies do. You must be aware that it just isn't done.”

“What a simpleton you are,” Nell mocked, turning her back on him and striding across the room to the fireplace. “It's done all the time.”

Roddy was shocked. “Surely you're mistaken! I've never heard—”

“Of course you've never heard. It must always
seem
as if the lady had done it.”

Fascinated, he followed her across the room. “But … but how is it contrived?”

Nell, suddenly noting the intense interest on his face, was struck with guilt and misgivings. What was she
doing
? It was almost as if she were plotting to encourage Harry to break with Miss Manning. What a horrible, scheming wretch she was becoming. She turned away from Roddy in shame. “Never mind, Roddy. This entire subject is quite unseemly. I apologize for having entered into it. Neither Harry nor I has the right to interfere in each other's life. Nor have we the right to involve you.”

Sensing that she was dismissing him, Roddy reluctantly retreated. “But … what am I to say to him?” he asked plaintively, half to himself.

“To Harry?” She spoke with a new and adamant authority. “You are to say
nothing
, Roddy, do you hear? Nothing at all!”

“But I must tell him
something!
He's completely
beside
himself!”

“You exaggerate the extent of his concern.”

“You are quite wrong, Nell,” Roddy said on a sudden impulse. “He loves you.”

Her eyes rested on his face for a moment, but then she shook her head. “I have sometimes thought … It has sometimes seemed … But it is not so,” she said with a tremulous inflexibility. “He is fond of me, I think, but love is made of … of stronger stuff.”

“You are mistaken, my girl,” Roddy said sadly. “You underestimate the strength of his feelings and his sense of honor.” He followed her to the door. “It will go hard with him when he learns that you intend to proceed with your wedding plans,” he added in a last, hopeless attempt to save the situation.

“He will learn to accept it, as we
all
must,” Nell said in a tone of mature womanliness he had not heard in her voice before.

He stared at her with new respect. “You're a surprising young lady, Nell. I had no idea you had such … such
steel
in you.”

A reluctant laugh escaped her. “Steel? Does it indeed seem so to you? To me, my innards seem completely composed of quivering, cowardly, quaking
mush
!”

Roddy's innards felt a bit like mush when he faced Harry on his return. Harry turned ashen when he reported that Nell had refused him. “I don't understand it,” Harry said wretchedly. “She
cannot
prefer that cur to you!”

“She says that I deserve a wife who loves me,” Roddy explained briefly. “
She
does not.”

And that was all Harry could extract from him.

Chapter Eighteen

N
ELL'S “INNARDS” PROVED
less and less like steel as the day of her wedding approached. She had long ago had the measure of Nigel's character, and she therefore had little expectation that she would find contentment as his wife. The most she could hope for was that his interest in her companionship would dwindle with time and that he would “go his own way,” as Sybil had suggested so long ago. Perhaps Sybil had been right about married life (it was certainly true of Sybil's own—she and Charles often passed entire days without coming face to face with each other), but Nell was not finding it to be true during the courtship. Nigel was everlastingly under foot, and his omnipresence set Nell's insides quivering more and more as the days went by.

With Nell's nuptials scheduled for late May and Harry's for mid-June, the Thorne household buzzed with wedding plans. Sybil dreamed excitedly of arranging an elaborate reception for her ward, and she decided to approach Henry to discuss financing the affair. With great trepidation, she told him her plans. He responded in a tone so brusque that she would have considered it positively churlish except that he actually agreed to all her suggestions. He gave her permission to spend whatever she deemed necessary and to send the bills to him. To her, this signified that she had free reign, and she embarked on a program of spending that filled her ostentatious soul with delight.

Soon the deliveries began. Tradesmen knocked at the back door several times a day delivering cases of champagne, polished wooden boxes filled with gold plate, barrels of monogramed Worcester Royal porcelain, crystal glasses, table linens, candles by the hundreds and the candlesticks to hold them, engraved invitations, rolls of red carpet, potted palms and dozens of other articles and accoutrements Sybil considered “necessary” for the occasion.

In addition, Nell was forced to endure a number of fittings for a wedding gown and headdress worthy of a royal princess. Sybil hoped that these grandiose preparations would dispel the look of misery which (Aunt Amelia pointed out to her worriedly) lurked deep in Nell's eyes. She and Charles had much to gain from the alliance between Nell and Nigel, and Sybil didn't want anything to interfere again. She therefore tried to coax Nell into a bridal glow by urging her to take part in the preparations, but her attempts met with no success. In fact, they had the opposite effect. Nell's inner quakings and tremblings were rapidly degenerating into a sick terror.

Another person who viewed the wedding preparations with disapproval was Edwina Manning. As the news spread about the size and magnificence of the reception Sybil was planning, Edwina sensed that the interest in her
own
reception was declining. Her mother had planned a modest celebration to follow the wedding ceremony, with only the family and one hundred carefully selected guests in attendance. Edwina's gown was being made by the family dressmaker, not a French modiste, as Nell's was. The wedding cake was to be only three tiers high and baked by the family's cook instead of the six-tiered tower that Sybil had ordered for Nell, to be baked by a French chef whose icing designs were internationally renowned.

Edwina was quite aware of the gossips making whispered comparisons behind their fans, all derogatory to her, but she ignored the whispers and went about her business with the appearance of complete composure. It was only to Henry that she revealed her conviction that Lady Sybil was passing the bounds of good taste and moving into the area of vulgar ostentation. But the only response she was able to elicit from his lordship was a stony silence.

There was, however, one benificent result of Sybil's wedding plans—the effect they had on Lady Imogen. Nigel's mother, impressed by the grandeur of the elaborate preparations in progress, determined to forget Nell's former transgressions and take Nigel's affianced bride to her bosom. To indicate to society that she had changed her mind and now looked upon the match with approbation, she sent out cards to one hundred persons inviting them to a lavish dinner party in honor of her future daughter-in-law.

If Lady Imogen's past dinner parties had been a trial to Nell, this one was far worse an ordeal. The guests had been selected from among the most pompous, insipid and irritating of London society. Every one of them seemed to her to be overweening and overdressed. They minced through the rooms with magisterial self-consciousness and spoke to her with condescending self-importance. Yet Nigel escorted her into the enormous dining room beaming with satisfaction and pride. He seemed truly to be enjoying himself. It didn't take long for her to realize why—
he was one of them!

The dinner seemed interminable. She was seated at Nigel's right, but he spent most of the evening conversing with the bejeweled dowager on his left. The gentleman on
her
left was an absent-minded octogenarian whose movements were so slow and stiff that she was convinced he feared his bones would crack if he tried to turn or bend. When she spoke to him, he leaned toward her without turning his head. Sometimes, in his efforts to speak to her, he leaned so far over that she expected momentarily he would topple over into her lap.

After dinner, the guests were ushered into a large music room where seats had been placed in neat rows. Lady Imogen had engaged for the evening's entertainment an Italian soprano whom she had secured at great expense. Although Nell was grateful for the improvement of the entertainment over the amateurishness of the last dinner party she'd attended here, the singing was not of a quality to soothe either a savage breast or Nell's rapidly developing headache. The soprano was short, stout and shrill, and instead of singing some of the beautiful songs of her own country, she chose to entertain the guests with ballads and folk-songs of England. Her command of the language was very limited, and Nell found herself hard-pressed to keep from laughing at her rendition of “The Cuckoo Song,” (“Well-a sings-a da cuccu,” she warbled) and a little ditty Nell had never heard before about a “leetla feench.” She cast an amused glance Nigel during the “little finch” song, but his response was a quelling frown.

By the time the evening had ended, Nell's smile had become strained and false, and her head ached with the fatigue brought on by the excess of formality which she'd had to endure. When she could at last take her leave of her hostess, Lady Imogen thrust a huge floral arrangement (one of several which had decorated the music room earlier in the evening) into her arms as a sign of her approval of Nell's behavior during the party and offered her cheek for Nell to kiss. It was with a weary sigh of relief that Nell climbed into the carriage and deposited the enormous floral offering on her lap.

But her ordeal had not yet ended. Nigel climbed in after her and took his place beside her simply oozing with self-satisfied complacency. “It was a splendid evening Mama gave for you, was it not?” he asked smugly.

“Didn't you find it just the least bit stiff?” Nell asked in a mild attempt at honesty.

“Stiff? Not at all. Mama's galas are never stiff. It is acknowledged throughout London that she is the most gracious of hostesses.”

Nell made no answer. She did not wish to be churlish, and she was quite sensible of the fact that Lady Imogen had put herself to great effort on her behalf.

“It was most condescending of Lord Pickersleigh to attend, I think,” Nigel continued proudly. “Mama says he almost never leaves his rooms these days, and she was quite overcome when he agreed to attend.”

Nell had no inkling of who Lord Pickersleigh was, and, not wishing to put Nigel to the task of describing him, she merely murmured, “Indeed?”

“And of course Mr. Leslie and the Milbankes—one doesn't see
their
like at ordinary dinners, you know.”

Since Mr. Leslie had been the elderly gentleman on Nell's left, she could not refrain from muttering, “Let us hope not!”

Nigel stiffened. “What was that?” he asked. “Are you suggesting that you were not pleased with Mama's guests?”

“It is not my place to be pleased or displeased. Your mother has the right to ask whomever she likes to dine with her.”

“Indeed she does, but I hoped you would show a proper regard for the honor conferred upon you this evening.”

“Oh, but I
do
feel honored,” Nell declared irrepressibly. “Especially by Mr. Leslie. Mr. Leslie conferred upon me the honor of almost toppling into my lap!”

Nigel was not amused. “It's well that Mama did not hear you say that. She disapproves of levity in females, and I heartily agree. As my wife, I sincerely hope, my dear, that you will refrain from indulging in your unfortunate proclivity to flippancy.”

“May I sometimes dare to
giggle
? It would be very softly, of course, and only in the privacy of my dressing-room.”

He glared at her and then turned away in pique. “I daresay I should be grateful,” he said grudgingly, “that you had the good sense to refrain from ridiculing Mama's guests while you were in her house.”