Sheer Folly (2 page)

But Daisy couldn't help giggling, too, especially when Miranda tried to copy her brother, with indifferent success.

Perhaps it was just as well that Nurse Gilpin ruled the nursery,
Daisy thought as she stood up half an hour later. Otherwise the children might grow up to be horrid undisciplined brats. Or perhaps, like Daisy herself, they had the best of both worlds: Nurse to make them mind their
p
's and
q
's, and Mummy to indulge and laugh with them. All one could do was love them and hope for the best.

“I'll only be gone a few days,” she assured Oliver, and stooped to tickle his tummy one more time. “I'm going to stay with a plumber,” she said to Miranda, who regarded her solemnly. “It should be interesting, as long as your godmother controls the bees in her bonnet and isn't rude to the poor man.”

 

Lucy braked
her Lea-Francis two-seater in a swirl of gravel, having exceeded the speed limit practically every inch of the drive from town.

“Gates welcomingly closed,” she said sarcastically, glaring at the ornate ironwork two inches beyond the bonnet. On either side, a stone pillar topped with a Triton guarded the gate. She leant on the horn.

“There are deer in the park,” Daisy pointed out as soon as she could hear herself think. “Look, over there. Darling, I do hope you're not going to spend the next four days finding fault. The sun is shining, the lambs are gambolling on the hillside”—she waved at the surrounding chalk hills, their short-cropped grass scattered with sheep busily cropping—“and it's really too kind of Mr. Pritchard to invite complete strangers to stay and to photograph his grotto.”

Lucy was determined to take a gloomy view. “He'll probably expect me to let him use the photos to advertise his beastly bathroom stuff.”

“Keep your hair on till he asks you, which he may very well not. Here comes the gatekeeper.”

A boy of ten or eleven, wearing grey-flannel shorts and a school jersey, came out of the neat stone lodge. “Sorry, miss,” he called, swinging the gates open without difficulty. Well-oiled, Daisy noted. “I were eating me tea.”

“Miss” rather than “ma'am” worked its wonders: Lucy gave him a gracious nod and sixpence. To Daisy's relief, she didn't then shower the lad with gravel but proceeded in a stately manner—as stately as a sports car could attain—up the curving avenue of chestnuts. On the trees, brilliant green leaves were just beginning to unfold from the sticky brown buds. They moved slowly enough to see clumps of primroses and violets blooming on the verge. Fallow deer, including antlered males and a few spotted fawns, lifted their heads to watch the intruders.

They rounded a beech copse, and Appsworth Hall rose before them, spread across the hillside. Built of the local limestone, the northwest front took on a rosy cast in the slanting light of the sinking sun. Though large, in size it was more comparable to Daisy's childhood home, Fairacres, than to Lucy's family's vast nineteenth-century mock-Gothic mansion, Haverhill.

With any luck, Daisy hoped, the comparative modesty of Appsworth Hall would avert another outburst from her friend. In that respect, at least, Mr. Pritchard could not compete with the Earl of Haverhill.

Daisy had a chance to admire the house because Lucy was sufficiently struck by the sight to stop the car. In fact, she jumped out to get her tripod and camera from the dicky. In style, Appsworth Hall was similar to neither Haverhill's fantastic elaboration nor Fairacres, which had grown haphazardly over centuries rather than being planned. The Hall was pure neo-Classical, with symmetrical wings on either side of a central block marked by a portico with a pair of Doric columns on each side. The pediment was adorned with a simple laurel wreath.

In the quiet with the motor turned off, Daisy heard the first cuckoo of spring. The first she had heard, anyway.

“Blast,” said Lucy, “I'll have to walk across the grass to get a good shot. Look at the way those shadows make every feature
stand out! The light's perfect but it's going to change in just a moment. Bring the plates, would you, darling? That satchel there.”

“I'm wearing new shoes, and it rained yesterday!”

Intent on finding exactly the right spot, Lucy ignored Daisy's protest. Somehow she managed to look stylish even while tramping heavily laden across the park.

It had been a beautiful day, though it was chilly now, threatening a frost tonight. Fortunately for Daisy's shoes, the chalky soil had dried quickly. The shoes survived unscathed, a matter of some importance as Lucy's equipment had left little space in the dicky for luggage. True, anticipating this situation, they had each sent ahead a suitcase to the nearest station, Ogbourne St. George. However, one could never be certain that the Great Western Railway would regard the matter with quite one's own degree of urgency.

Daisy was wondering whether their host would mind sending for the bags or if they'd have to go and fetch them themselves, when a large open touring car sped round the spinney. With a blare of the horn, it stopped behind the Lea-Francis, abandoned by Lucy in the middle of the drive. It dwarfed the sports car.

“Darling, be an angel and move it for me?” Lucy begged. “Just a couple more shots.”

“All right, but you can jolly well carry the plates back yourself. They're heavy.”

Daisy waved to let the newcomer know his plea had been noted. He climbed from the Bentley as she approached, and took out a cigarette case that glinted gold in the last of the sun. Fitting a cigarette into an ebony holder, he lit it with a gold pocket lighter.

He looked vaguely familiar. His admirably cut suit of country tweeds could not disguise the bulky figure and heavy shoulders. When he raised his hat to her, she saw that his neck was as thick as his head was wide. He had small eyes set close together on either side of a pedigree nose perfected over centuries by his noble family.

He was unmistakable. She had met him a couple of times, and
remembered hearing about him from her brother, Gervaise, who had attended the same public school. His distinctive appearance had led an unkind schoolfellow to nickname him “Rhino.”

It would have been easier to sympathise had Rhino not been an exceedingly rich earl.

“Hello, Lord Rydal,” she called. “Sorry to be in your way. Half a tick and I'll move it.”

“Please do so . . . er . . .” His voice had a singularly irritating timbre, rather like a well-bred crow.

Or like a rhinoceros, perhaps, Daisy thought, suppressing a giggle. But she had no idea what sort of sound a rhino was likely to produce.

“Mrs. Fletcher,” she prompted him. “Daisy Fletcher. We met quite a long time ago, I can't recall where or when.”

“Fletcher? I haven't the slightest recollection—”

“You were at school with my brother, Gervaise Dalrymple.”

“Oh, Dalrymple, yes, how do you do.” He didn't offer her a cigarette, not that she wanted one. He continued, complaining, “Miss Beaufort seemed to think I was the only person who could be spared to fetch your bags from the station, yours and Lady Gerald's.”

Daisy decided not to enquire as to why, with such reluctance, he should have done Julia Beaufort's bidding. “Did you get them? Splendid. How kind of you. You see, Lucy's—Lady Gerald's—car is too small to carry all our luggage.”

“Just large enough to block the drive.”

“I'll move it!”

“Hold on, darling!” Lucy had approached unseen and unheard across the grass, carrying her camera and bag of plates. “Let me get my stuff in first. Hello, Rhino.”

“Good afternoon, Lady Gerald.”

“What on earth are you doing here?”

“Running other people's errands, it seems. I just picked up your luggage at Ogbourne St. George.”

“How kind. While you're at it, I left my tripod back there. Would you mind frightfully . . . ?”

“I suppose not,” he said grumpily, “as I can't get past till you go on.” He loped off across the grass, the cigarette holder gripped between his teeth.

“The perfect gentleman,” said Lucy sarcastically.

“I'd forgotten.”

“Forgotten what?”

“Gervaise said it wasn't just his looks and money that earned him the nickname. The rhinoceros is also noted for its thick skin.”

Lucy laughed. “He has that all right. But we ought to make allowances for his being disappointed in love.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn't you know? He's crazy for Julia.”

“Oh, so that's why he so demeaned himself as to fetch our bags! She persuaded him to.”

“Probably just trying to get rid of him for a while. Of course Lady Beaufort wants Julia to marry him, but Julia doesn't want anything to do with him. One can't really blame her, however rich and noble he may be. I expect he drove them down here—they haven't a car—and talked the plumber into letting him stay on.”

“I do think you might have warned me, darling. One needs some mental preparation before being plunged into the throes of someone else's unrequited love affair. And you
must
stop calling Pritchard ‘the plumber.' You'll slip up and call him that to his face.”

“No fear. However ghastly he is, now I'm here I'm not leaving till I've got some decent shots of the grotto. I just hope it's all it's cracked up to be.”

“You're not telling me Lady Beaufort has the slightest interest in the grotto. If she's so determined to catch a rich earl for Julia, what do you suppose has brought them to Appsworth Hall?”

“That's easy: a rich plumber's rich nephew.”

“The plot thickens,” Daisy remarked with a sigh. “Intended to make Lord Rydal jealous?”

“Unnecessary. He's absolutely potty—”

“Hush! Here he comes.”

Without missing a beat, Lucy continued in her penetrating soprano: “—about cars. Aren't you, Rhino?”

“Aren't I what?” He bunged the tripod into the Lea-Francis's dicky on top of the camera and satchel, with a carelessness that made Lucy wince.

“Mad about cars,” she said through gritted teeth. “Daisy was admiring your Bentley.”

“Cars?” he said incredulously, lighting another cigarette. “What is there to be mad about? As long as it's comfortable and clean and runs properly. My man sees to all that. I'd have sent him to fetch your stuff, but he had to get a grease spot off the sleeve of my dinner jacket. Should have been done last night, of course, but he claims he couldn't see it till he looked in daylight. Lazy as a lapdog. But aren't they all? It's impossible to get decent servants these days.”

Daisy had been working for a couple of years, in a desultory manner, on an article about various aspects of what middle-class matrons called “the Servant Problem.” She was aware of the complexities of the issue and was quite ready to discuss them, but Lucy muttered in her ear, “Don't waste your breath.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Are you going to move your car out of my way or not?”

Lucy's withering look, a masterpiece of its kind, had absolutely no effect upon the thick-skinned Earl of Rydal. Her stony silence as she got into the Lea-Francis and pressed the self-starter was equally lost on him, Daisy was sure, although she didn't deign to look back. However, their glacial pace as they proceeded up the middle of the avenue irritated him to the point of honking his horn again.

“Rather childish, don't you think?” said Daisy. “You, I mean. It doesn't need saying where he's concerned.”

“I'm admiring the view. It's a splendid building, isn't it?” Lucy slowed still more, and the Lea-Francis stalled.

She got out, folded up one side of the bonnet and peered inside.

Rydal stormed out of his Bentley. “What the deuce is the matter?”

“I'm not sure. How lucky you're on the spot. Perhaps it would start if you crank it for us.”

“Why don't you crank it yourself?”

Lucy sighed. “Gallantry is dead. Never mind, we'll just sit here until your man has cleaned that grease spot, then no doubt he'll be able to repair whatever's wrong, since he takes care of yours.”

“Good lord, he doesn't do the mechanical stuff himself. He takes it to a garage. In town.”

Lucy turned a glittering smile on him. “What a pity. I'll tell you what, why don't you push us up to the house?”

His mouth dropped open. “Push you?
Me
?”

“It's a small car. I don't expect it will be too heavy for a big, strong chap like you. Daisy, you don't mind walking, do you, to lighten the load, while I steer?”

“Not at all. But I have a better idea. Why don't I drive the Bentley, then Lord Rydal won't have to come back for it after pushing you up the hill.”

“What a good idea,” Lucy said approvingly. “You drive almost as well as I do. You probably won't do it too much harm.”

“I'll do my best, and he did say he didn't much care about it. If you'd just show me which pedal is the brake, Lord Rydal, then—”

“No! No, no, no! I won't have you driving my car. I didn't say I don't care about it. I just said I'm not crazy about cars. In general. But I won't let you drive my Bentley. I'll tell you what, I'll drive it and push yours bumper to bumper, Lady Gerald.”

“Not on your life! You'd probably step on the accelerator too hard and run right over me. I'll give it another go.”

The Lea-Francis started at the first try.

“Miraculous,” Daisy commented, as they rolled onwards. “How did you stall it?”

“Simple. I just shifted up to top gear and took my foot off the clutch. Don't tell me you didn't stall a few times while you were learning to drive.”

“Of course, but I'm not sure I ever really worked out what I did wrong, just learnt to do it right. Well, honours even, I should say, but definitely childish.”