Aurora (5 page)

The day for the party dawned so fair and warm that it seemed the tents and pavilion might have been erected outdoors without any disastrous results. At the last minute Clare had a striped awning flung up over the rose garden that abutted the morning parlour, and the wicker furniture was washed down and put out beneath it. It proved an excellent idea, a place to shoo the heir and infant guests off to with their ices, so that the guest of honour not get in the way of the hostess. The dowager was immensely pleased with her conquest. Everyone had come. They arrived at four, and by five had thawed sufficiently that nearly every one of them had had a few words with her. Lady Spencer had even made a tentative mention of dinner one evening. She couldn’t be lured into making it a firm date. “Soon” was the best that could be rung out of her.

The younger baroness enjoyed her day too. Mr. Berrigan, as a very rich squire, was not left off the list by any means. He not only came, but he came with Marnie, Aurora and Mimi, as a sort of hint of what the future might hold. As prophesied by her sister, Marnie left off her gray gloves for the occasion and appeared in a very pretty mauve gown that did not at all resemble half mourning. Indeed, as she sat in a corner looking over the guests, Aurora saw her sister did well to encourage Mr. Berrigan. Really there was not another gentleman in the room to equal him for looks or eligibility.

Kent was even thinner than Devonshire for suitable mates. The only prospects open to herself to make a match were the two gentlemen with whom she sat, neither of whom she cared for the least bit. One was a younger son of Lord Dougall, the Honour-able Hanley McBain, and the other a country gentleman of good family and expectations, but very little conversation. She never gave either one a thought unless she should happen to meet him somewhere such as this. Malone was a strong advocate of McBain, but it was only his father’s title that attracted her. She couldn’t like to see both her girls sink utterly from the peerage after their brief noble glory, and it was becoming clear Marnie was going to have John Berrigan.

The only man Rorie had given much thought to the past week was the gypsy. She couldn’t seem to get him out of her mind. He really was excessively handsome. And he had kissed her. One’s first kiss must make some lasting impression, she told herself. Whether it should make as strong an impression as it had was questionable, but then there was a mystery hanging around him, and that was what she thought of mostly. Malone had said one of the kitchen girls was seeing a gypsy in the woods. Aurora had not a doubt in the world that it was
her
gypsy, and very little doubt that there was more than “seeing” involved in the meetings.

“It’ll be a wonder if we haven’t got a black-eyed baby in the basket before the year’s out,” Malone prophesied hopefully, “and to rub salt in the womb, the chit is bringing it on herself. Once she may have met him by accident, but she slips out by choice each night after dinner. She’s bringing her destruction down on her own head.”

Aurora had not gone into the woods again. She stayed clear of the meadow as well. Her destruction would have to come after her. She listened with half an ear to Hanley McBain’s story of some bit of blood he was buying, which called up a memory of the gypsy’s black mount, so sleek and strong. While she sat half listening and thinking, the butler walked to the doorway and announced in unctuous tones, and with a perfectly impassive face, “Lord Raiker.”

Charles had not yet been formally presented, and Aurora assumed it was this dramatic means Clare had chosen to present him officially to society as the new baron. She looked to the doorway, and nearly fell off her chair. Into the still room stepped her gypsy, wearing no dark shirt on this occasion, but a very well-cut dark jacket and sparkling linens. His hair had been cropped to a shorter length, but the black eyes and tan cheeks were the same. He stood a moment at the door, looking around him with bland interest, then, as no one made a move or said a word, he began advancing toward Clare, who sat in a state of rigid fixation, staring at him.

“Forgive my unexpected arrival at your party, Mama,” he said in a silken voice, while some wicked flash lit his eyes, “but as I am the guest of honour, I feel my presence is not totally inappropriate.”

Clare did not faint, but she looked as though she would like to. Her face blanched, and she went on staring at the gypsy, for that he was anything other than a gypsy did not for one moment occur to Aurora.

“You!” the dowager whispered, then her voice deserted her. She could do no more than look.

A wall of men began to close in around the pair, looking questions amongst themselves, wondering what should be done. “Throw this person out!” Clare said, when she had recovered her wits.

There was just a little something about the person, perhaps the width of his shoulders, perhaps the gleam of anticipation in his eyes, or perhaps the aristocratic sneer on his face, that made the men hesitate.

“And
I
am delighted to see
you
again too, Mama,” the gypsy said. He then bowed formally and glanced around the room. Next he advanced to Marnie and bowed to her. “My other relative. I hope you are less distraught to see me. Being mother to a daughter only, your dismay will be less acute than Clare’s. How are you, my dear?”

Marnie bit her lips and examined him. “Kenelm, is it
you?”
she asked.

“Ah, good, you have remembered my name at least. It is indeed I, returned to take my rightful place. Is it proper for me to commiserate with you on the loss of Bernard? I expect that you were even sorrier than I was myself at his passing, but I too was grieved to hear the news.”

Still the men continued looking, wondering, and finally turning to Clare for instructions. “Throw him out! That is not Kenelm!” she stated in a voice becoming not only strong but strident.

“Better make sure,” one of the men said, in a tentative tone.

“By Jove, looks like the old baron,” another suggested.

“I was thought to favour Papa,” the gypsy said boldly, then walked to a vacant chair and sat down. No one made a move to stop him.

“Does the guest of honour not merit a glass of something? Champagne is it we’re drinking? Good.” Someone handed him a glass of champagne. “Where is Charles, Clare?” he asked in a loudish voice, speaking across the room to her. “Odd he hasn’t come to welcome me home. I fancy he is grown into a fair-sized rascal by now. He was only a babe in arms when I left. Does he favour you or Papa?”

“You are not Kenelm! Who are you?” she demanded, but hadn’t enough strength to stand up, so that her charge lacked conviction.

“I am Lord Raiker, madam, at your service, but you may call me darling, Clare, as you used to,” he said, looking at her with some dangerous glitter in his eyes. She ran a tongue over her lips and sank back into her chair. The man looked at her a long moment, then turned back to the crowd.

“Do none of my old friends remember me?” he asked surveying them one by one. “Dear me, I hadn’t thought it was such a forgettable fellow as that. I remember you all very well. Really I should renew acquaintances. That’s what the party is for.” He arose and walked to Lord Dougall and his wife.

“Lord Dougall, and Lady Dougall—charmed to see you again. Did you get that affair of the thieving bailiff settled up? I remember you were worried about it when I left.”

He went on passing through the crowd, shaking hands, recalling not only names and faces but taking pains to mention some fact that pertained to the time of his departure. If it was an act, it was a convincing one. Clare said weakly at intervals, “Throw him out,” and “He is not Kenelm,” but it was rapidly coming to seem that if he was not Kenelm, he was someone wonderfully close to him, not only in appearance but in knowledge. Someone who knew the neighbours and countryside intimately, and who bore a strong resemblance to the Raikers.

While he moved amidst the throng. Aurora turned to her sister. “Is it indeed Kenelm?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just can’t be sure.”

“Clare says it is not.”

“She would. It is like him, but it was so long ago, and I never knew him well
at all. How could he know so much, if it is not really him?”

Aurora remembered meeting him in the woods a week ago, remembered his questions, knew he had been seeing the servant girl, and possibly other servant girls from other homes, finding out things. “That is the gypsy I told you about seeing in the woods,” she said.

“Gypsy? Oh, Aurora, you never mistook this gentleman for a
gypsy,
surely?”

Looking to where he now stood in a very well-cut jacket, smiling politely at a fat matron and occasionally taking a sip of champagne, every inch the debonair gentleman, she was struck with a doubt. Not that he was the same man—he was. But that he could indeed be a gypsy, with such ease of manners and conversation.

The black head suddenly turned toward her. His eyes met hers in a conspiratorial glance. He nodded, took his leave of the matron and advanced toward her, at the same smooth stride that she remembered well.

“Marnie, won’t you introduce me to your charming sister?” he asked in a perfectly cultured voice.

“Is another introduction required, sir? She tells me she has had the pleasure of your acquaintance under other circumstances.”

“So much for a lady’s silence. I should have known better,” he said, cocking a playful eyebrow at her and pulling up a chair to include himself in their circle. “But really, you know, ma’am, I was not the only one who behaved badly that day. You told me you were Lady Raiker. Does she often try to pass herself off as you, Marnie?”

“No, sir, passing ourselves off for what we are not is not a thing usually done in the family, prior to the present circumstance.”

“At least I have been included in the family circle—inadvertently, I fear. Don’t you believe me, Marnie? How can you doubt me? I remember perfectly visiting you and Bernie in London. You wore a
charming
blue striped gown and had your hair done differently—longer. You served us a partridge and some cheese Father had just sent up from the Hall, and we spent an evening listening to you play music—rather badly, as I recall—and Bernard and I sang a duet, also badly. I took you to the Tower next day for a tour. Bernie let on he was too busy to do it, and we had tea at a tearoom where you complained the butter was rancid. There now, I wager I remember more about the occasion than you did.”

“I don’t remember the rancid butter,” she said, her little smile suggesting she was half convinced she was looking at Kenelm.

“Rancid!” he declared firmly.

“But why have you waited so long to come forward?”

“It took a long time to hear of Bernard’s death, and a long time to get here after I did hear. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“No—I mean it was a week ago Aurora first saw you in the woods.”

“Aurora—is that your name? How pretty,” he said, turning to look at her. Then he turned back. “Oh—well, I required a new jacket, you see. I have just returned from abroad, and disliked to make my bows in a coat of Indian cut.”

“Were you in India?”

“Yes, didn’t Papa tell you?”

The Ganges—he had mentioned the Ganges, Aurora remembered. And called his mount Baron—a sort of joke, if he was a baron himself.

“Your father had no idea where you were gone to. That is—Lord Raiker had no idea where Kenelm was,” she modified uncertainly.

“The first thing I did upon arriving was to notify him, but it is possible my letter went amiss,” he said, with a suspicious look to the sofa, where Clare had collapsed, and was having a feather burned under her nose.

“Where are you staying?” Marnie asked next.

“I have been staying with gypsies while awaiting my jackets, but now plan to stay here, at my own home”

“You can’t!
She
is living here.”

“Enough to make a grown man tremble, I agree. I have no intention of sharing Mama’s roof, but will eject her as soon as possible.”

“You can’t do that. She has been to London—got everything settled that Charles is you—I mean the baron.”

“Only a nisi decree. I looked into it.”

“I thought that was the best kind!” Marnie said.

He looked taken aback. “Oh no, it is not a final decree. It will be invalidated when I make my presence known. It was handed down only to facilitate the management of the estate, to free sufficient funds to keep the place running and to keep you and Clare out of the poor house.”

“Well! And here she has been shouting ‘Nisi decree’ at us as though it were something special and irrevocable. I  daresay
I
could have been living here all the while as well as she.”

“No, actually Charles was the heir presumptive, but I am the heir, and the decree is null and void, or will be as soon as I announce myself.”

Lord Dougall, who outranked all other guests in authority, was working his way toward them and soon arrived. “Like a word with you, sir,” he said, not brusquely at all, but quite politely.

The man—gypsy or Kenelm, whoever he was—arose, but did not leave the spot. “Thing to do, I think, come along to Bradhurst Hall with me till you can get this business straightened out,” Lord Dougall suggested. “Can’t very well stay here at the present time. Have to be an investigation. Daresay it won’t take long. Where have you been, eh?”

“In India, working for the East India Company.”

“That so? Thought you was looking very brown. Liked it, did you?”

“Very much.”

“Good. Good. Well, shall we be pushing off? Party is a bit of a shambles. Pity. Very nice little do Lady Raiker put on.”

“I should like to see my brother before I go,” the man answered. “Where is he, does anyone know?”

“Charles is outside in the rose garden,” Marnie told him. The man nodded and walked out the door.

“Follow him! See if he knows where to go!” Dougall said, with a positively delighted expression on his face.

“What a good idea!” Marnie said, and jumped up, with Rorie and Dougall trailing after her. Without a second’s hesitation the man went to the morning parlour.

“Thought so,” Dougall said, sniffing in satisfaction. “Picture of his Papa, bar the brown skin. Wonder why Lady Raiker claims not to know him. You must recognize him, my dear?” he asked Marnie.