Sharon Sobel (26 page)

“I suspect that this seating arrangement may be a bad idea,” Camille said, “if you are to make fun of my suggestions.”

Max put his arm around Claire’s waist and pulled her nearly into his lap. “No,” he said again. “It is an excellent idea.”

***

James Cosgrove arrived as planned, in time for dinner, and seemed surprised there were to be no additional guests to their party. Max was relieved to see him, both for the purpose of restoring Camille’s good humor, and also for the opportunity to speak in private to Claire. He wanted to know more about her errand and why it required she do her business veiled in black. The opportunity came sooner than expected, for Camille and Cosgrove walked off to explore Claire’s small garden and undoubtedly advise her gardener what to do about his roses.

“I am delighted that she wishes to travel, Max. It is the natural consequence of all that you have shared with her through the years, the descriptions of the sites of classical antiquity, and places where you have been,” Claire said.

“But the courage to act upon her inclinations has come from you,” he conceded. “I suppose I am grateful for that.”

“And so you should be. But Camille has not lacked for courage; she has only needed a friend.”

“Like James Cosgrove?” Max asked, looking out the window to the garden. He quickly turned away.

“I hope he will always remain her truest friend, but she will have my affection as well. And yours, of course, though I am not quite sure I can put into words what you must mean to her.”

He laughed, a little ruefully. “Right now, she sees me as a hindrance to her happiness, a gatekeeper.”

“She knows very well that you only wish to protect her from hurt and harm.” Claire looked troubled. “And yet, for all the many challenges she has faced, and through which you have guided her, your task must have been made easier by the fact she is unable to set out on her own. She has been a captive of her own limitations.”

Max looked down at the floor and his toe trifled with the fringe on a rug. “You are right, of course. But I think I would take anything—even mischievous behavior—if my sister could lead a life like other young ladies.”

“In most ways she does, Max. We all pay some price for the experience of living, and she seems to be quite satisfied with her lot. She will soon forget about this business of traveling with her in our preparations for her own ball.”

“Oh, yes. I do my best to forget about that, but Camille mentions it in every other sentence. Just this morning, she asked for my opinion on the color dress she should wear.”

“And what did you tell her? I do hope you said she should wear the blue,” Claire said. “I intend to wear green, and it would not do for us to appear in the same color.”

“I think you should wear green, as I understand it is your most complementary color.” Max paused, and then seized the moment. “Therefore, I wonder why you should decide a black gown might suddenly be useful, and where you intend to wear it.”

She did not want to answer; that much was obvious. She looked to the door, perhaps hopeful that Camille and Cosgrove would return, and backed away from him when they did not.

“Do you think you will be a widow again, and soon?” he asked, matching her step for step. “I would not do that to you. I would never leave you.”

“I suspect no husband intends to die and leave his wife with his fortune and as the object of desire of every eligible gentleman in town, Max, and yet it happens all the same. I know this much from sad experience, and will hear no promises that cannot be kept.” She looked solemn enough to make some promises herself, but suddenly brightened. “Enough with all that. I have an excellent plan. I am going to call on Mr. Dailey, in his shop, and make some enquiries.”

“You are not.”

“We have tripped along this path before, Max, and you cannot forbid or dissuade me. I will disguise myself as a lady still in mourning, and wear a black veil, and call myself by another name. I will ask to see certain paintings, and ask how they are acquired. You see, I have reasoned it all out.”

Max took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself. This, then, was the bargain he would make for all the rest of his life: He would promise to never leave his beloved, and his beloved would drive him to distraction with her clever, willful schemes. In this case, however, there was just the slightest part of merit in what she proposed.

“You have forgotten one important thing,” he said. “I believe it is your husband who will accompany you to Dailey’s shop, and it is your father’s property you seek to unload. The poor fellow died of consumption only weeks ago, leaving you with his great collection of paintings and his even greater collection of bills. You must sell them all, and have come to Dailey to see how one goes about it.”

“You have forgotten one important thing,” Claire echoed, her voice rising. “I do not care how the man chooses to sell his canvases, I only wish to know where he acquired one particular one.”

Leeds came through the door just then, delivering a very full tray of tea and sandwiches.

“And you forget another thing,” Claire said softly. “What will you do for a costume? You cannot appear in broad daylight in a domino you might wear to a masquerade, or dressed as a gypsy. If you are my husband, you must look very respectable and nothing at all like Lord Wentworth.”

He looked down and trifled with the rug fringe again, so she would not see his smile.

“Only weeks ago, I believe you could come and go in London without anyone recognizing you, but that is quite impossible now,” she continued. “You have been too much about.”

He looked up, entirely justified in his smile. “Was that not your intent? I recall you saying that I was to meet everyone and go everywhere. I have been your obedient servant in this, and other things.”

Claire was not amused. “I did not intend to have you mobbed by flirtatious young ladies at every event. I am sure they have asked you to sample whatever it is they are prepared to offer you.”

She was right, and yet so wrong about his tastes.

“They offer me sweet naïveté and innocence. They offer me the possibility of long evenings during which we will have nothing to say to each other. And they present me with the fear that I will repel them if they ever should have the chance to know the things that you already know about me.”

“Max, please. I do not trifle with you when I say your burns and scars are nothing to me, truly.”

“That is precisely the point, dear lady. You do not see things as do other people; your eyes find grace where none exists and redemption where none is deserved. In short, I believe you are the only lady who would have me.”

“As to that, I cannot say. But I know I am a lady who wants you.”

“There are other gentlemen who want you. You surely are not unaware of their intentions,” Max said, though the very words gave him pain.

“Here you must grant me more experience than is yours. While you were busy reading in your secluded library in Yorkshire, I was dodging gentlemen with the confidence of a Penelope,” she said. “I am entirely aware of their intentions and have managed to put them off all these years. Of course, I knew what Odysseus’ wife did not; my husband was never returning. Thank goodness.”

Max ought to respond to her, and tell her that she had been waiting for him all these years, for he faced at least as many trials as the much belated Odysseus. But all he could think about was how this lady could toss off references to Shakespeare, and now Homer, with as much ease as she discussed Madame Lamartine’s fashions. All his instincts were right about her, for in all the long evenings ahead they would have many, many things to say to each other.

“What is the matter, Max? Do you consider me too ungenerous to a man who died too young? Am I a most impenitent widow, as some have said?”

“But you are not a wife, which is more to the point, and have not been one for many years. You have not fended off suitors because of doubts about a husband’s return.” He took a step closer. “Did you not say you were waiting for me?”

Claire lifted her face and closed her eyes. “I did not say it quite like that, but I suppose it does not matter very much.”

“What does not matter?” Camille asked.

Max reluctantly turned away from the gift offered to him, and looked at his sister. Cosgrove, standing close to her side, had the grace to look embarrassed, but Camille was nonplussed.

“Are you still talking about travel? I assure you, it does indeed matter to me. I have told Jamie how unfair it is that you will not even consider a short journey to Edinburgh and he is most sympathetic.”

Max was coming to believe he ought to get his sister back to Yorkshire, and married to Cosgrove before she became even more emboldened by her London experience. Let Cosgrove deal with the new Lady Camille; he would have his own hands full minding Lady Claire.

“Is not a journey to London greater, and not merely in distance traveled?” Max asked, looking to Cosgrove for help. He reflected that all the things Claire observed about his own experience in London could be said for the younger man, whose attachment to Camille would scarcely be noted as neither of them were very forthcoming about their relationship.

“I travel to Edinburgh fairly often, Lady Camille,” Cosgrove said, with his usual equanimity.

“Might I go with you on your next journey there?” Camille asked Cosgrove. “I understand there are great pleasures to be had once one crosses the border.”

Max glanced at Claire, wondering how much his sister had heard of their earlier conversation, in which Claire speculated that his blind sister was less likely to cause serious mischief than other young headstrong ladies. And now, it was not so much what Camille said as the way she said it that made Max think about elopements and the easy distance to Gretna Green.

“I shall take you myself, after we return to Brookside Cottage,” Max said quickly.

“How generous of you, Lord Wentworth,” Claire murmured. “But do not forget to pack a good stock of Walter Scott’s books, so your sister can appreciate the pleasures all the more.”

***

Claire planned their story with detail usually reserved for a novelist or habitual liar. They would be husband and wife who, on the recent death of his uncle, inherited a large but simply furnished estate in Cornwall.

“Why would you be dressed in mourning if the deceased was my uncle?” Max asked one evening over dinner, as Claire set out the plan.

“Out of respect, of course. Once I knew the dear man intended to make us very wealthy, I became as a daughter to him, caring for him in his illness. Thus, on his death, I felt obliged to wear deep mourning.”

“I see,” Max said. “Do you not think I ought to be somewhat jealous? After all, if you dress as you would at my own passing, I might suspect you were engaged in some sort of affair with him.”

“Really, Max. The man had consumption. He was coughing up blood. I am prepared to overlook a good many things, but that is not one of them.”

“Very well. Do go on.” He reached for the bottle of port, waving off her servants.

“We shall move to the estate, of course,” Claire began.

“What do we call it? Dailey might like to know, and it must be an invented name so he does not show up at the door one day with wrapped paintings and a bill in hand.”

“Our estate is called ‘Gulls’ Nest.’ Is that not lovely? There are trees all about the house, and the gulls inhabit them, much as the pigeons do in London,” Claire said.

“Very picturesque, my dear. But gulls lay their eggs on the sand, amongst the seaweed.”

“Sometimes, I think you are too clever by half,” Claire said. “What does it matter? Mr. Dailey knows paintings, not the natural history of seabirds.”

“If he is a wise businessman, he will know a charade when he sees one. I do not think we need to give him any more provocation than we will already provide.”

Claire wished Max would not complicate everything so. “Then let us call the estate ‘Pigeons’ Nest,’ and have that be an end to it.”

“Very lovely. Our servants can shoot our dinner right out of the trees,” he said.

Claire looked down at the little hen on her plate, lightly browned and served with brandied sauce. “We want to pull down the old Belgian tapestries dear Uncle Brewster had hanging on the walls for years, but never cleaned. We must somehow get rid of the dust, the moths, the darkened rectangles on the walls.”

“I am not altogether sure Dailey is interested in matters of housekeeping.”

“But why not? If he is as good a businessman as you say, he will only allow his acquisitions to be purchased by people who will have the care of them. We must make it clear that the frames will not be nibbled away by rats or scratched by misbehaving cats,” Claire said, beginning to be frustrated.

“We can have one or the other. Even so lazy a cat as Lady Whitepaws would not tolerate a rat in her territory.”

“Lady Whitepaws is not at all lazy, Max. She simply enjoys watching the comings and goings in Eton Square from the comfort of a window seat.” Claire gestured that the wine be taken away. “And so we wish to purchase landscape paintings to remind us of my childhood home in Yorkshire. They must be a certain age, and done by a master. If Mr. Dailey does not have any such paintings about, we shall ask him where and when he might acquire them. And then we will discover the provenance of the Longreaves’ painting.”

“We already know the provenance,” Max pointed out. “It belonged to my parents, and rightly now belongs to me. The only question is how did it come to be in the Longreaves’ dining room? This scheme seems to be unnecessarily complicated.”

“One never knows, Max. I think we had best be prepared for every possibility.”

“It appears you already are. What are our names, by the by? We shall have to introduce ourselves in some way.”

Claire sat back in her chair, glad she saved this tidbit for last. “That is the best part, Max. We are Mr. and Mrs. Ithaca. I considered our conversation the other day and thought how clever it would be. Ithaca is . . .”

“Yes, I know. Mr. Dailey might know it as well, however.” He strummed his fingers on the table. “I imagine you are Penelope?”