A Place Called Bliss (16 page)

I believe she was about fifteen years old when you were born, Hugh, and she became your nanny and nurse, and you became her life. So you know how old she is now (seventy-five, I believe), and for all of that time you, and eventually little Margaret, have been the center of her life. Now she needs care herself, and we are able to offer it. Her care will be our chief concern; you may count on it.

Kezzie cannot bring herself to write at this time and has a hard time reconciling herself to her present weakness of body. Her heart is as game as ever. She sends her love to all, particularly Margaret for whom she cares a great deal.

Sophia read the letter to her daughter and was uneasy at the girl’s reaction. Other than paling a trifle, there was little or no indication that the news had affected her. Perhaps Margo turned away more abruptly than she might have otherwise, and perhaps she was more quiet than usual from that time on, but Sophia was gay enough and talkative enough to cover any and all such awkward moments.

By fall even Sophia had to admit that Margaret was drooping. “Her blood is thinning,” she told her husband and plied Margo with more of the nostrums she had continued to put her trust in. “She’s on the verge of becoming a . . . becoming . . . well, she’s leaving the girlhood stage, and her—” Sophia, a true Victorian, couldn’t bring herself to say “body.” “Her
system
is, er, maturing. It’s all perfectly natural. You’ll see.”

Nevertheless, Sophia worried. She could establish no warm comradeship with her daughter, being turned aside with politeness, casualness, and silence on Margo’s part.

Finally, with impatience, Sophia suggested boarding school. To her surprise Margo offered no objection and was trundled off to Ontario’s best. Christmases and holidays brought consolation to Sophia’s heart; Margo seemed natural and at ease, though more quiet than she had thought a daughter of hers would be. They had some good times together, Hugh usually occupied elsewhere, but both Sophia and Margo seemed relieved when it was time for school to take up again.’

And so the next blow, when it came, may not have had the impact it would have had if Margo and her mother had developed and maintained the relationship they both needed and longed for but were never to know.

Margo was summoned to the head sister’s sitting room. She went with some trepidation since her decorum and obedience had never made such a bidding necessary before.

“Sit down, my dear,” Sister Grace said kindly. “I’m afraid the news isn’t good. Your mother is very ill, and your father has asked that you come home immediately.”

“What . . . what is wrong?” Margo managed, stunned. One’s mother—so much younger than one’s father—was the vigorous, healthy person upon whose long life one could depend.

“Something to do with the lungs, I believe,” Sister Grace supplied, but she could add no more information. “Someone—your father’s groom, I understand—has come for you.”

More lonely than she had been since Kezzie’s absence, Margo’s only sign of affection had come from her mother. And had not been recognized. And was only dimly recognized now. Margo, in fact, felt hardly more lonely after Sophia was declared dead than she had before. Hardly more lonely but infinitely more alone.

Sophia, who had always been there, a bond between the girl and the man, was gone, and Margo had no inroad to her father’s heart or life.

Heatherstone—1897

I
’ll be bringing several business associates for dinner tonight,” Hugh Galloway informed his daughter over their morning coffee. “Will you take care of it?”

“Of course, Papa. I’ll talk to Dauphine immediately when we’re done here. There shouldn’t be any problem. Will there be women in the group?”

“No, just men. You can count on eight, I believe. It’s a business affair, actually.” Hugh often substituted the dinner table for the conference room.

Margo sighed, half relieved, half disappointed. Hostess to these affairs of her father’s, she found them to be both a trial and a pleasure. She accompanied Hugh on occasional dinner engagements and to various social functions, and these were enjoyable enough but rarely included people her age. As for
entertaining at Heatherstone, she occasionally gleaned—and enjoyed—small glimpses into her father’s business affairs. If only he allowed her to be a part of them! She would find her interest rising, only to be snuffed out by ignorance. For usually, when dinner was over and coffee served, Hugh excused her, and she spent the evening in the library or in her room.

Hugh’s shutting her out of all things connected with his business puzzled her. She understood, though she couldn’t recall how she knew, that he had wanted a son. But all men do, she reasoned, and, not having one, surely they should settle for the daughter the Lord gave them and make the best of it!

Hugh was sixty. Though in fairly good health, time was running out for training someone to be in a place of responsibility with the eventuality of his sickness or death. She, Margo, was the logical person. Moreover, she had reasonably good intelligence, knew how to conduct herself around people of importance and, most of all, had little or nothing to do. Dauphine ran the house very well; cook had been with the family ever since Heatherstone was built; and Hugh’s personal needs were attended to by his attendant, Bailey. Margo felt ready, and frustrated, in all respects.

Now, planning another business dinner, a surge of rebellion at her uselessness and Hugh’s lack of interest in her life caused her to say, daringly, “I’d like to stay in, Papa. I’d like to be in on what goes on. I’d like to—”

Margo’s words faltered. Hugh’s face was not scornful, it was not angry. It was not bored—the reaction she dreaded most. The face her father lifted toward her was simply blank. Blank, as if what she had said was incomprehensible to him.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “After we’ve adjourned to the drawing room, you be prepared to join us. Perhaps you could bring in fresh coffee at that point. A little feminine company would go well about then. There will be,” he added thoughtfully, “several young men present tonight. How does that sound, my dear?”

Hot color surged into Margo’s cheeks. Had her father deliberately misunderstood? Or was he showing a father’s natural
interest in his daughter’s future, which, of course, could only include marriage?

It was neither of those, Margo thought instinctively. After almost twenty years under his roof, she knew her father well. Here again, as across the years from her first memory, she had come face up with supreme indifference. And again, as countless times across the years, she was at a loss to understand why.

Never cruel, never anything but mannerly, Hugh had a reserve that did not allow Margo’s entrance. When she spoke, he listened politely, almost as a stranger might listen. Her every need was cared for. But he lived behind closed doors—where Margo was concerned. As a child she knew him as an idol to be worshipped but from afar. Entering her young womanhood, she realized that to his wife Hugh showed a degree of warmth and an interest that Margo was not privileged to share. The hurt increased, but the understanding did not.

Now, with her mother gone and doing all she could to be not only daughter but companion to him, she failed again, and finally, battled resentment, despair, even anger.

Now, with yet another demonstration of her father’s complete lack of understanding, Margo rose to her feet, her breath ragged and her lips, in spite of everything, trembling so that natural speech was difficult. She spoke from behind her serviette before laying it aside: “As you wish, Papa.”

As it turned out, three of the eight gentlemen were young, unmarried, eligible, and obviously attracted to the young daughter of magnate Hugh Galloway. Myron Dalton, Chester Fleer, and Winfield Craven all made themselves agreeable, even entertaining, and when Margo withdrew from the table, stood and bowed, expressing a desire that she join them later.

It would have taken a very indifferent female, indeed, not to enjoy, even enjoy greatly, the attention. When at last she opened the great double doors to the drawing room and, accompanied by Casper, the butler, with a cart of after-dinner refreshers, carried in the silver service, the three young men were on their feet, quick to take the tray, to assist Margo in serving
and, at last, to settle at her feet and side with warm glances and earnest, sometimes arch, conversation.

Margaret had the good sense to know that, with her dark beauty (though she never thought of it as that) and her vivid coloring, it would be easy to look overblown and gaudy, and so tonight, as always, though dressed expensively, her costume was simple to the point of plainness. Fitting snugly at the waist and flaring above at the shoulders and below over the hips, its chief attraction was its variegated color. Walking through the park and entranced with the autumn hues, she had whimsically gathered a bouquet of leaves touched with the muted fading colors, and had taken them to a French dyeing establishment to be copied. When delivered, the proprietor, Lewando, had cunningly added his personal verse, thus proving again his rare gift for pleasing his customers and bringing a smile to Margo’s lips:

What loveliness! Whose art is this?

It leaves naught to desire!

Lewando’s name upon the box

Proclaims the Champion Dyer.

Her dark hair, so excessively curly that certain hairstyles were out of the question, was pulled back loosely and gathered at the nape of the neck with a large, pomegranate-colored bow. Slippers of the same shade peeped from below her hem line, and their French heel and satin strap buttoning across the instep proclaimed them handsome as well as expensive.

Margo’s natural vivid coloring was enhanced by the attention she was receiving as the men vied for her glance and smile. Before long, the expertise of Winfield Craven became clear. When Chester Fleer turned to direct a comment toward Hugh and the other gentlemen, Winfield skillfully engaged Margo in a conversation that kept her gaze turned his way; only with rudeness could she have interrupted the flow of the account he was telling not only verbally but with flashing hands and expressive
face. Then, when Myron Dalton rose to replenish his drink, Winfield slipped from his position on the hassock at Margo’s feet to the coveted spot at her side, where the fascinating story continued. Nor did he move when Myron returned, to stand, fiddling with his drink, shifting from foot to foot and finally turning to engage someone else in conversation.

When the men rose to take their departure and Casper had brought their hats, canes, and coats—ankle-length, with or without velvet collars but macintoshes without exception, and all, without exception, including a detachable cape and made of the finest wool or cashmere—Winfield Craven managed to insert himself with his back to the men, facing Margo.

“Thank you for a most enjoyable evening,” he said, making it sound her personal accomplishment and taking her hand and holding it.

As Margo was responding to the usual banalities of the others, Casper opened the door. It was clear that the snow, which had begun earlier in the evening, was still falling and falling thickly.

“Miss Galloway,” Winfield Craven said, “it seems too golden an opportunity to miss the first sleigh ride of the year. Unless we have a thaw, would you do me the honor of accompanying me on a sleigh ride this coming Sunday afternoon?”

Seeing no reason not to . . . rather dreading the beginning of the long, quiet winter . . . and rather amused at the persistence of the man, Margo assented.

Parting to go to their separate quarters, Margo turned to her father and mentioned the invitation. “I don’t suppose you mind, Papa,” she added, and would have found her pulse leaping if he had so much as voiced an opinion—approval or disapproval, it mattered not.

But Hugh Galloway turned toward the stairs, to shut himself away until coffee time the next morning, with a murmured “fine, fine” that said, clearly, nothing at all.