Distant Choices (39 page)

‘Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,' chanted the newest fiancé, a wild young man, the son of an earl with an elder brother between him and the title, which would have made him a poor proposition for Dora, had the brother's mode of life not made it extremely unlikely that he would ever marry and produce an heir.

‘Yes.' said Kate. ‘That's right. Liberty and all the rest of it. Let's wear a revolutionary tricolour on our hats and go galloping all over the estate shouting
Vive la France. Vive la Révolution.
That ought to stir them up a bit.'

So much, in fact, that Kate, returning in a high state of elation, due not only to fresh air and frolic but to the brandy the newest fiancé always kept in his pocket, was slapped again, this time by Dora, who – with
this
fiancé – was rather more than usually in love.

‘Tut – tut. Such a fuss,' Kate said, riding off at a gallop to Lydwick, the first place she came to, having remembered that Oriel's husband, as so often, was away. Nor, to her surprise, was she obliged to suffer the irritating presence of Susannah who – Oriel told her calmly – had taken herself off, not long ago, in a considerable state of disarray.

‘You mean you've quarrelled with her, Oriel? I can't believe it.'

‘Well, it wasn't easy. But I have.'

‘And sent her packing?'

Hopefully. Although it was by no means certain, considering Susannah's awkward position at the vicarage where Maud, who had been installed there now for some months, kept insisting, nevertheless, on her right to Susannah's time and services, finding the vicarage family with its burden of sick wife and boisterous children somewhat too much for her, not to mention the vicar himself who, although so endearingly absent-minded, could be more than specific enough where his creature comforts were concerned. Susannah's assistance was clearly needed. A young, single woman in good health and strength who ought to be doing her duty by her own family instead of running around navvy encampments and devoting herself to the stepchildren of a woman who was not even related to her in any way one could decently mention. Evangeline's daughter, in fact, who was only copying her mother by unloading on to other people's far more respectable shoulders the work for which she was accepting the benefit, but did not care to do.

‘Oriel has no need of you, Susannah,' snapped Maud, several times daily. ‘I must insist that you stop running over to Lydwick at the drop of her hat and stay here in your own home to do what is no more, after all, than your duty. Your sister, Constantia, has told you the same, over and over.'

Opposing forces were mustered once again, Oriel, who had been scaling down Susannah's visits lately with great tact but equal firmness, finding herself caught up once more in domestic hysteria, involving not only the Stangways and the Saint-Charles but both her stepdaughters, Morag insisting she should at once invite Susannah to come not just on long visits but to live with them, Elspeth threatening to run away from home if she did, both girls, having said their respective pieces, turning on each other so fiercely that Oriel's apparently endless patience had snapped. And she had barely separated them and sent them off in disgrace to sulk in their bedrooms, when Susannah arrived, demanding Oriel's instant presence at another ‘family conference'at High Grange. Constantia would be there, Maud and Evangeline, and her father, the vicar. Even Quentin had promised to come over which meant – since brother Quentin did not make journeys for nothing – that her fate was to be irrevocably decided. Oriel must hurry, therefore, and make it plain that she could not handle her husband's large house and his rapidly growing children in his frequent absences without the help of her cousin – if only by marriage – Susannah.

‘Which is no more than the truth,' ended Susannah unwisely. ‘You do need me, I know.' And receiving no immediate reassurance, she added sharply, ‘Well, you do, don't you?'

Standing, looking carefully at each other, they both heard a voice from the upstairs landing calling out what, without catching the words, they understood to be ‘Is that Susannah?' But before Susannah could spring forward to confirm her presence, Oriel raised her hand in a gesture which very coolly stated ‘You had better stay where you are', and went herself to send Morag, rather curtly, back to bed.

She had been mother to these children for less than two years and, for most of that time, to oblige her own mother, had allowed Susannah to usurp her place. Or try to. And although her own sentiments towards the children were practical rather than romantic and, unlike Susannah, she felt no urgent need to make them love her, they were nevertheless her responsibility, as much as this was her house, its absent master her husband. The whole adding up to
her
life which not even her mother ought to ask her to share with Susannah.

Yet. although Evangeline had asked, and Oriel still felt unable to refuse her, she could at least make her feelings clear.

Returning to the drawing-room she gave Susannah another cool stare.

‘You asked me just now if I needed you, Susannah. And the answer is no I do not, not in the very least. Although, in view of your awkward situation at home, and to oblige my mother, I am quite prepared to come over and tell your relations that I do …'

Chaos had ensued, tears, reproaches, accusations of ingratitude and jealousy and, as Susannah calmed herself enough to take her leave, a hint of real dislike which warned Oriel she had made – or had perhaps long had – an enemy.

‘What on earth can she do to you?' asked Kate. ‘So let her hate you. If she enjoys it as much as Dora it can only do her good.'

And it was in this mood of mild defiance that she accepted, largely at Kate's insistence, an invitation to dinner at the Mertons, knowing quite well that Garron would not approve of it, although – as Kate was quick to remind her – by the time he found out about it, if ever, it would be far too late for him to forbid her to go.

The invitation had come from Dora, Lord Merton being in London, Lady Merton still in bed quite speechless with anguish at the thought of so many Continental thrones already toppled, the dread of how many more to come, and so the gathering was young and informal; just plain, mousy Adela and her already unfaithful husband. Madcap Dora and her newest fiancé, Oriel herself, a nondescript young man to make up the numbers, Kate, and – taking Oriel by surprise – Francis.

‘It is just to prove that my husband and I do occasionally dine together,' Kate said, her voice hard and bright, her eyes even harder and full of a positive, quite unnerving venom whenever Madcap Dora came into view.

Had they quarrelled again? So it seemed. Yet, in the half hour before dinner, Oriel was too diverted, too enchanted – although she certainly did not call it that – by Francis to take much notice, listening with nothing to spare for anyone else as he told her the unremarkable tales young fathers tell about their probably quite unremarkable daughters.

It was their first real conversation since the day he had not, after all, asked her to marry him, and although that could not and ought not to matter now, the simple pleasure of breaking through the stilted barriers of politeness and truly meeting again continued to fill her mind so that the splendid, impersonal meal surrounded by footmen with the manners of archbishops, was half over before she became aware of the increasing tensions between Dora and Kate; between Dora and her newest fiancé who had worn the tricolour and shouted
Vive la Révolution
with Kate; between Kate and Adela who always supported her sister and had her own axe to grind in any case, preferably in Kate's ebony, beribboned head; between Kate and Francis whose efforts to restrain her, as everyone could see, were merely making her worse; between Francis and Dora whose wish to offer him sympathy and draw him into her fold seemed to give him none of the pleasure to which she rather felt herself entitled.

Only Oriel, sitting on the edge of their conflict, could really see it, so that she – if no one else – remembered – afterwards – that as they had lounged uneasily about the drawing-room after dinner the idea of playing the foolish, dangerous game of Snapdragon had come from Kate.

‘Let's do something, for God's sake, before we all die of despair …'

And because it had seemed better, after all, than listening to Kate and Dora taking verbal pot-shots at one another, the wild young fiancé had gone off to find the ingredients any good Snapdragon required, a large, shallow pewter dish, enough inflammable spirit to fill it, matches to set it alight, several pounds of currants to throw into the flame and then snatch out again bare-handed and swallow, still burning, until he – or she – who swallowed most had won.

It was the popular, very nearly traditional game which Oriel had refused to allow the Keith children to play over Christmas although it seemed to be played at all the other houses they visited, her aversion to it so strong that she had even stood out against Garron when he had grumbled that, with proper supervision, it did no harm. He had never played it himself as a child, he readily admitted, since no one, where he came from, had been able to afford the currants, much less the spirit to burn them in, but could Oriel deny that it was as popular with children everywhere, at Christmas, as Hunt the Slipper and Blind Man's Buff?

‘No Snapdragon here,' she had said.

But now, as the bowl was set down in the centre of what she assumed to be a priceless Persian rug, currants and spirits flung in together and hilariously, carelessly ignited, the matter was beyond her control.

‘Not for me,' said Francis. ‘And not for Oriel, I rather think.'

Not for Adela's husband, either, who thought too highly of his performance on the piano to risk casual damage to his hands. Nor for Adela herself, who, although she had taken part as a young girl when she had felt the need to impress someone or other with her daring, saw no need for that now. Only Kate, then, and Dora's wild, revolutionary fiancé who would be an earl, one day, if he managed to outlive his brother. And Dora herself? That she did not want to play was clear to one and all; that she – Madcap by reputation – was terrified of the sudden lake of blue fire even clearer.

Had Kate known, perhaps, that she would be?

‘What childish nonsense,' she said, shrugging her shoulders, trying to dismiss and belittle it.

‘Oh Dora,' murmured Kate almost caressingly. ‘Are you scared stiff, poor thing …?' And sinking down on her knees, the revolutionary earl-to-be beside her, she thrust quick excited fingers through the flames without even turning back her sleeves, retrieving one currant after another, still burning, and extinguishing their fire in her mouth.

‘Come, Dora, if you're quick enough you'll feel no pain. And brave enough, of course. There
is
that to it. Come and beat me.'

Dora, her face pale, her mouth set, shook her head with a movement she hoped would be read as disdain. But her fiancé, her wild earl, was now taking his turn, squatting on his knees beside Kate, six currants to her eight, ten to her round dozen, fourteen – yes – fourteen … ‘Come on, Kate – beat me …' She did. ‘Sixteen. Come on now, let's try again. Beat
me
this time. You'll enjoy that. Poor Dora – she doesn't know what she's missing.'

And exploding with laughter they fell against each other, heads together, hands together, drunk on sheer recklessness, expecting nothing from Dora but her disapproval, her jealousy, which, in their present mad enjoyment they had ceased to notice, this fiancé already slipping through her grasp, it seemed, like all the others, poor Dora who was afraid of heights and fire and loneliness and who, because she
was
afraid, had won her nickname of ‘Madcap' by climbing tall trees, riding tall horses, falling in and out of love with every change in the season, collecting all those fiancés. Poor Dora, standing now rigid as a maypole, with no intention in the world of joining in, as everyone could see, so that when she suddenly flopped down on the carpet beside that scandalously giddy couple, it was as much a shock to them as to Oriel, who had certainly not expected it, causing them a great deal more giggling and falling about and tomfoolery, a great swishing around of light silk skirts and trailing sleeves, a sudden awareness, stabbing through the onlookers, of danger.

A children's game? Who, in their right minds, thought Oriel …? ‘Be careful,' she called out.

‘I think that's enough,' said Francis.

It was too late. And, in the first sick horror, they could not see who was burning until the fiancé had pulled Kate clear and the bowl, with its tongues of blue fire, had started to make a torch of Dora, fed by her own wide skirts, her dozen petticoats, the voluminous shoulder-to-ankle drapery of her silk shawl.

Oriel heard the room echoing with screams, her own perhaps, certainly Adela's, as clearly as she saw the young fiancé, who had flung his arms around Kate, squeeze his eyes tight shut, while Adela's husband – she could see from the corner of her eye – was wringing his hands and backing away, bent almost double as if someone had crashed a fist into his middle.

She and Adela – she very accurately remembered – moved forward together, not knowing what to do except that it must be something, until Francis leaped before them, his arms going around Dora as she started to run in a panic which would have fanned the flames, falling to the ground with her and then, the sleeves of his own jacket burning, seizing another priceless rug and wrapping her in it, rolling her in it, himself on top of her, holding her down until the fire was out, and Dora …?

Dead? Oriel, for a sick moment, could not look and then, the terrible odours of charred fabric and flesh clogging her nostrils, smoke clawing her eyes, she ran to them – to him, really – and bent over, her hands under his armpits, helping him gently, as a matter of stark necessity, to rise, dismissing as irrelevant, beside his need and Dora's, the plight of Adela's husband who was vomiting now in a corner, of the fiancé who was standing with his face to the wall, of Kate who had not meant to cause this but who would know, nevertheless, by now, that she had.