London Calling (6 page)

“Oh, dear. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Just let me . . .” she fumbled with the balls of wool she’d been working with, contriving to upset the lot and send several rolling onto the floor, unwinding as they went.

She gave a little cry of dismay. “Oh, dear. So careless of me. I’ll just . . .” She dived down and began to scuttle about, picking up balls of wool and murmuring distractedly.

“Never mind all that, Fanny.” Admiral Tremain’s voice held a note of impatience. “Come and meet Mrs. Maryvale and her niece.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. Oh, dear. So sorry.” Still twittering apologies, Miss Fanny came forward to shake hands. She had long, bony fingers, and an unexpectedly hard clasp, though she released Susanna’s hand almost at once.

“Do you think, Charles, dear . . . ‌That is, ought we perhaps to offer some refreshment?” She looked anxiously up at her brother-in-law.

“By all means.” The irritation was gone from Admiral Tremain’s voice, and it now held merely amused tolerance. “Why don’t you ring the bell, Fanny?”

If Miss Fanny resented her brother-in-law’s tone, she gave no sign. In all likelihood she was used to such treatment.

“I? Oh, yes. Yes, right away.”

She fluttered off, and soon a servant appeared, bearing a tray of macaroons and some sort of richly red cordial, carried in a cut-glass decanter. When, with many anxious murmurings and distracted exclamations, Miss Lucy had served them all, she seated herself next to Ruth. Once begun, the words poured forth from her in a steady trickle of complaints, apologies, and grievances: the quality of the wine, the scandalous price of sugar, the difficulties in getting the cook to prepare what was wanted.

Susanna saw her aunt trying to hide a look of amusement, and heard her say, “I’m sorry our visit should have put you to so much trouble.”

Miss Fanny was quite oblivious to the irony in Ruth’s voice.

“Not at all. Not at all,” she said fretfully. “I was speaking of the difficulties in general. Whether or not we have company makes no difference.”

Susanna had seated herself on the sofa, beside Marianne. The girl had retrieved her book, and was studying it intently, with something a little mutinous in the pointed air with which she pored over its pages, ignoring the others around her.

“You are fond of reading, then?” Susanna asked her.

Marianne looked up at the question with a start. “Yes.” Again, there was a touch of defiance in her voice and she lifted her chin. “I suppose you think that’s absurd.”

“Why should I think that?”

A sullen look settled over the girl’s features. “My father does. He doesn’t think women are fit for study. He says I ought to be thinking of dresses and balls and dancing and finding a husband.”

“And you do not care for any of those things?”

“I loathe balls. No one ever asks me to dance‌—‌and I’m rotten at it, anyway. And as for dresses, I couldn’t look nice no matter what I wore, so why bother?” The girl’s face was suddenly bleak, and Susanna felt another pang of pity. On impulse, she leaned forward and touched Marianne’s hand.

“Don’t say that. I am sure you could look very handsome, if you chose.”

But, to her surprise, Marianne jerked away, and her mouth twisted bitterly. “Accentuate my assets, you mean?” She finished scornfully. “That’s what Charlotte‌—‌Mrs. Careme‌—‌is always telling me. ‘Marianne, you must learn to take a little trouble.’”

She spoke in a high, mocking voice. “‘A woman’s looks are her greatest advantage. You must learn to play up what you have.’ And my father says Charlotte is right.” Marianne’s hands clenched, and her voice tightened with venom. “He says it will do me a world of good to have her for a stepmother. And he’s anxious for me to marry‌—‌to get me out of the house so that they can be alone. Well, I won’t be married off. And I won’t be pushed out of my own home. If only I could get some money of my own . . .”

She broke off abruptly, for at that moment, the door swung open, and the object of this diatribe entered the room.

Mrs. Charlotte Careme wore a dress of deep maroon satin, with a little ruff of white lace about the neck and a demi-train that swept the ground. She gave the footman who had opened the door a dazzling smile‌—‌apparently it was not for her to pass up any source of masculine admiration‌—‌and came forward, moving with a graceful, swaying walk.

Marianne, watching, shut her mouth and looked quickly away. But not before Susanna had seen the flash of hostility, and the naked hatred in her blue eyes.

Chapter 6

Mrs. Careme paused a moment, well aware of the effect she was creating, then came forward, lips parted in a smile, hands outstretched.

“Why, Charles. You ought to have sent for me. I didn’t know we had visitors.” Introductions were performed, and Susanna found herself shaking hands with Mrs. Charlotte Careme. Seen up close, she appeared older than Susanna had at first supposed, looking nearer thirty-five than thirty. For the second time Susanna judged her somehow more compelling than a conventional beauty. Her face had the slightly hard look of a woman no longer young, and, though Susanna thought the color in her lips owed more to art than to nature, her face showed both character and determination. Her mouth was wide and purposeful, and her eyes were green and slightly tilted at the edges; cat’s eyes, Susanna thought. Their gaze met Susanna’s in a look that was both hard and shrewd, with a sharp edge of appraisal.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Ward,” was all she said, though, in a low, throaty voice that held the faintest trace of some foreign accent. And then her lashes dropped, and she stepped away to take her place behind the refreshment table.

It was impossible to guess at her thoughts. Her face, for all its sensuous intensity, had a closed, shuttered look that gave nothing away. She had moved serenely into the place of hostess, apparently sparing not a thought for the glance of dislike Miss Fanny shot her at this usurpation of power.

Susanna glanced involuntarily at Admiral Tremain, wondering whether he would notice the sudden tension in the room, or the evident resentment of his sister-in-law and daughter. She found him gazing at Mrs. Careme with a look of naked devotion, half fond pride, half worshipful adoration. No, he was far too much enraptured to spare a thought for his other womenfolk, or wonder how they would feel at this sudden addition to their household.

Marianne was seated a little apart from the rest in sullen silence, while Miss Fanny, after hovering uncertainly for a moment, had seated herself beside Ruth and resumed talking, in slightly too loud a voice, of the difficulties in running a large household.

“I’m sure I don’t know what servants are coming to. I have to watch the girls every moment to be sure they don’t break anything. And half the time they won’t obey my orders at all. The younger footman was quite insolent to me the other day.”

Mrs. Careme gave a low, throaty laugh at that. “My dear Fanny, as I’ve told you before, it’s all in the way you give the order. I’m sure I never have any trouble with the servants obeying me.”

Miss Fanny’s face reddened again and her lips tightened, but she made no reply. Instead, she turned to Ruth. “Perhaps, Mrs. Maryvale, you would care to see the conservatory?”

Both Susanna and her aunt accepted, and Miss Fanny swept off, her shoulders, under her rather shabby lace shawl, rigid, hands clenched at her sides. The conservatory was at the back of the house, a long, high-ceilinged room, walled in with glass, filled with baskets of hanging plants and the moist, warm scent of earth and growing things.

When they all three stood on the flagstone path that wound through the urns and potted palms, Miss Fanny leaned back, still trembling.

“That woman.” The words burst out as though she were powerless to contain them. “That woman is impossible.”

Her voice shook. “What my brother-in-law can have been thinking in taking up with her, I do not know.”

Ruth looked at Susanna helplessly, then made a vague, sympathetic murmur, and Miss Fanny winked the tears away fiercely from her watery blue eyes.

“For nearly twenty years‌—‌ever since his marriage to my poor sister, I’ve lived with Charles. And after my sister died, I stayed and kept house for him. And now he means to push me out for that . . . ‌that common trollop. It’s not fair.”

Miss Fanny’s quavering voice became quite fierce, and Susanna was suddenly sorry for her.

“Surely it’s not as bad as that,” she said gently. “The Admiral wouldn’t turn you out.”

“No‌—‌no, I’m to go on making my home here. But she’ll be in charge. She’ll be the mistress of the house, then.”

Miss Fanny’s voice broke and she fumbled in her reticule for a handkerchief. Susanna felt another pang of pity. After the Admiral’s marriage, Miss Fanny’s position would be an unbearable one. A penniless relation, despised, unwanted, pushed out of her meager position of authority by the arrival of the new mistress.

Susanna and her aunt exchanged another helpless look, and Miss Fanny appeared to take hold of herself. She gave a loud sniff, and scrubbed at the end of her rather prominent nose.

“Well, never mind.” All at once, she spoke briskly, as though regretting her momentary outburst. “I’m sorry to have burdened you with all this. Shall we go back?”

When they returned to the morning room, the Admiral looked up from where he was seated beside Mrs. Careme.

“Ruth . . . ‌and Miss Susanna. Charlotte has just suggested a wonderful idea. She’s asked me to invite both of you to join us for dinner tonight. I hope you’ll agree?”

Ruth looked a little startled by the invitation, but she turned to her niece. “I should be delighted,” she said slowly. “Susanna, we have no other plans, have we?”

Susanna was studying again the hard, handsome face of Mrs. Careme, eyes now wide and innocent, lips stretched in a bland smile.

She had come here hoping to gain information. Which would, of necessity, take time‌—‌since she could hardly march up to Charlotte Careme and demand to be told whether James had made her acquaintance under another name.

Especially since, even on first sight, she instinctively trusted Mrs. Careme approximately as far as she would be able to throw her.

“We have no other dinner engagements at all.” Susanna smiled brightly in Mrs. Careme’s direction. “Thank you so much for inviting us.”

Mrs. Careme nodded slightly in reply. The Admiral rubbed his hands together.

“Capital, capital. We’ll have a regular party. I didn’t mention it before, but I have a surprise for all of you.” He looked round the room. “I’ve invited a pair of guests to stay here with us for a few days. A Major Haliday. Major Haliday and his wife, Helen.”

There was a brief, electric silence. Though why it should have been electric, Susanna could not see. The announcement, on the face of it, had been ordinary enough. But someone in the room‌—‌though she could not even tell who‌—‌had been surprised‌—‌no, more than that, shocked and dismayed by the news.

She looked round at the other three for some sign in one of their faces, but could find none. Marianne looked merely sullen, while Miss Fanny’s face held nothing more than a mild, faintly anxious frown. Mrs. Careme’s look was as smooth and glassily poised as ever, lips faintly curved, lids lowered to veil her eyes.

And yet from someone in the room she had caught the sound of a sharply indrawn breath, and felt the sudden quiver of tension.

Miss Fanny was the first to break the silence. “Two more guests? Staying here? Really, Charles, I do think you might have told me. It makes for a good deal of extra work and . . .”

“Don’t fuss, Fanny,” Admiral Tremain cut in tolerantly. “There’s no need for you to do anything. We’ve extra bedrooms‌—‌may as well use them, that’s what I say.”

“That’s all very well for you to say.” Miss Fanny’s voice was fretful. “But the servants . . .”

“Oh, bother the servants.” All at once, the Admiral was impatient. “The servants will have to lump it, that’s all. What do I pay them for, I’d like to know?”

“When did you say the Halidays will be arriving?” Mrs. Careme’s voice was quiet, but Susanna looked at her sharply. Her eyes were still hidden, but there was something a little rigid about her‌—‌a fixed, frozen quality to her graceful pose that had not been present before‌—‌and the long, slim fingers clenched around the stem of her glass as she waited for Admiral Tremain’s response.

The Admiral, though, noticed nothing amiss. “They should be coming any minute now. I said sometime this morning. Why—” He broke off, as a bell pealed in some distant part of the house. “Why, that must be them, now.”

Again there was that brief, electric silence, charged with a tension Susanna didn’t understand. The next moment, the door opened, and a powdered footman stepped in.

“Major and Mrs. Brooke Haliday.”

A couple entered, and paused in the doorway, the man fair-haired and handsome, with a weak, dissipated face and slightly petulant mouth, the woman dark, statuesque, and intense. They stood there, and, with a jolt of shock, Susanna recognized the couple from the night before whose bitter quarrel behind the pillar she had inadvertently overheard.

Chapter 7

“A handsome couple, wouldn’t you say?” Susanna jumped. She had, without meaning to, been staring across the room at the Halidays, and now Mrs. Careme’s voice at her shoulder made her turn.

It was evening. Susanna and Aunt Ruth had taken their leave of Admiral Tremain’s household soon after the Halidays’ arrival that morning. They had returned to the house and spent one of the most tedious days Susanna had ever endured in unpacking and arranging the rented house. Though she tried not to let Ruth see how tightly her nerves were stretched.

Finally, the hour had come to dress and ready themselves for the Admiral’s dinner invitation. Susanna wore a white muslin gown with a beaded silver overdress, and her aunt a deep russet-orange satin. The coachman had driven them to the Admiral’s house in Berkeley Square. And now they were all assembled in the drawing room, awaiting the gong that would announce dinner.

“A handsome couple, yes,” Susanna said slowly in answer to Mrs. Careme. “But not, I think, a very happy one.”