Endure My Heart (12 page)

It solved my immediate problem. I could flirt with him to my heart’s content without a fear of bruising his feelings. Lead him down any primrose path I chose, without a single qualm of conscience, as he was doing the same to me. Lord Hadley’s “good offices,” his efforts on Wicklow’s behalf—how clear it all was now. Naturally he would want his daughter’s husband to do him credit. My fingers shook with anger as I quickly finished up the letter. The Hadleys were going to London for Christmas, to remain till mid-January. Collecting a trousseau, very likely.

I wondered that Mr. Williams-Wicklow should remain behind for the concert, with his fiancée so close by. Never mind, I would keep him entertained with the flirtation of his life, if that was his game, to wile away the country hours with the local belles. Some prize Lady Lucy was catching for herself. One could almost pity her. Almost.

I wasted no time in getting on with the game. I stopped in at Owens’ on Tuesday after school and spent a coquettish half hour selecting ribbons for my recital party, outstaying even Meggie Turner, the most determined shopper ever to have appeared anywhere.

“It is a pretty shade of blue I want, Mr. Williams,” I told him, running a look over his wares.

“Cornflower blue, to match your eyes, Mab?” he asked. I need not say we had got rid of Meggie Turner by this stage. Williams, while a villain of the worst sort, had some residual instincts of a gentleman, and would not compromise me by such a speech before one of the Turners.

I batted my lashes at him like a common trollop and smiled hard enough to bring out my dimple, which is a stubborn thing that does not show except when I indulge in laughter. Actually a smile does not do it. He was adept enough at appreciation of a lady’s appearance that he noticed it at once. “When did you grow that charming dimple?” he asked.

“I sleep on an acorn every night, Mr. Williams. You must recall I am bent on finding myself a wealthy parti, and wish to be in best form when I meet him. A lady without a dimple must settle for a solicitor. I am after a magistrate, like my papa.”

“From using my eyes in business the past months, I have become a good assessor of value, I calculate that dimple to be worthy of better than a magistrate.” He touched the spot, and looked at me with the eyes of a lover. We were behind the drapery racks, so that the street was denied a view of this dalliance. We were neither of us so lost to appearance as to be doing all this in the full glare of Tommie Barr, who had his nose flattened against the pane out front.

“Now isn’t it a shame I hadn’t a pair of them, and I might aspire even to a baronet,” I answered mischievously. The “Sir” that precedes his name indicates a baronetcy, if I failed to mention it earlier. He was not just a knight.

I understood very well that little secret smile that crept into his eyes, but must show no understanding. I proceeded to business. “Well now, are these faded sky-blue ribbons the best you have to offer? Mr. Owens was used to do better. He kept special ribbons for me, a little deeper shade of blue.”

“What color is your gown to be?” he asked.

I rather wished my new gown to be a surprise for him. You must realize without being told it was my intention to make him really fall in love with me, to show him a lesson. The gown was one step in my conquest. I had picked up the material in London on my visit and had made it up myself. It was grand beyond anything I normally wore—blue velvet in fact, and with it I had a white lace collar, whose price nearly equaled the velvet’s. The ribbons were no more than an excuse into the shop. I had no notion of wearing them. “Blue,” I answered.

“You want blue ribbons with a blue gown?” he asked.

Angry at my mistake, I took it out on him. “You are turning modiste, Mr. Williams! If your career is to take a downward trend, would it not be more proper for your talents to be directed at tailoring?”

“Not modiste, connoisseur,” he replied unfazed.

“The ribbons are for my coiffure,” I retaliated, giving back French for French.

“Ah, the hair! I have something much prettier. Let me show you the new combs I ordered last week. I had you in mind when I bought them. They are above the touch of most of the women in the village. Cost three shillings a pair, I’m afraid.”

“Bring them on. I begrudge no expense in garnishing myself, Mr. Williams. By all means let us see these extravagant combs.”

I did not go to the counter with him, but made him return behind the racks for more teasing, which he did at a lively pace, I might add. “Here we are,” he said, opening a box that held a pair of very pretty combs, with little rows of pearls along the tops.

“They would look lovely on a brunette. I cannot believe a connoisseur selected these with my hair in mind. Come now, confess it was Lucy you were thinking of when you bought them.” It was no coincidence that I managed to pull a Lucy out of the air to roast him with. There was a Lucy in our town, a very common girl, Lucy Henderson, who was not one of his flirts at all, nor a brunette either actually, though her hair was a shade darker than my own.

He looked at me, startled into silence for a moment, while a guilty pink rose from his collar. “Lucy?” he asked.

I let him stew a minute, while I gave him a bold, knowing smile. “Lucy Henderson, of course! Who did you think I meant? Why, I think I have caught you out in a new affaire, Mr. Williams. For shame.”

“No! No, I—I didn’t recognize the name at all. I don’t believe I know Lucy Henderson.” He fumbled with the combs, pulling one out to set it in my hair, then stepped back to regard the effect judiciously. “You’re right. The pearls were a poor choice. I suppose I only bought them because I like to see pearls on a lady.”

A vision of my pearl necklace from Mama hopped into my head. I had not planned to wear it with the lace collar, but I would do so now. “No doubt you will have the pleasure of seeing the combs on a lady ere long. Stick them in the window, sir. Your salesmanship is sadly lacking.”

“Yes, that is apt to happen, when one becomes diverted from business,” he answered, turning it into a compliment by his tone and the admiring glance he bestowed on me.

“With the Christmas season coming on, there will be someone willing to pay three shillings to primp herself up.”

I began pulling on my gloves preparatory to leaving. He reached out and took my right hand, which was still bare, and held it a moment. He did not say anything, or do anything more than look at me in a way an engaged man should not have looked at any woman other than his fiancée. Something more might have happened had the door not opened at just that moment to admit Mrs. Dustan, in quest of a packet of pins.

Chapter Nine

Our deliveries were usually on a Friday, but with our revenuemen both to be accounted for so handily on the Thursday with the organ recital, I arranged through Jemmie to have the brandy landed on Thursday, and very nearly came a cropper. The first part of our evening was a great success. Andrew got through his six Christmas tunes without many errors, and Mr. Williams performed beautifully. For an hour the strains of Bach and Haydn swelled through the church.

The reason we heard Haydn being performed on the organ, not the instrument for which he composed, was a direct compliment to myself. Williams had arranged a piece of his
Creation
oratorio especially for the organ, as I had once expressed admiration for it. It seemed odd not to be up in the gallery.

Afterward the select of the parish came to us at the rectory. There were no Turners or Slacks or Hendersons in this exalted gathering. We had decided, in the interest of providing a good number of young girls, to call Miss Trebar a lady for the evening, but she was as low as we went. I would have left her out had I been sure Miss Simpson planned to attend from Felixstone, but that latter young lady did not trouble her head to reply to my invitation. She did come, however. She was the daughter of a wealthy independent farmer from that area, a pretty girl with reddish curls, famous for her tiny waist, which any gentleman could span with his two hands. I believe most of the local fellows had confirmed this fact for themselves. A flirt, in other words.

It was not to be supposed she would pass up Mr. Williams. She may have been misled into thinking him better than a merchant when she saw him at the rectory, but even after his secret was made known to her by a solicitous Miss Trebar, she did not lessen her pursuit in the least. He sat on the sofa, pinned between them, and not looking too unhappy either, till Squire Porson entered the door.

Had I bothered to think of it, I suppose I must have known he could not well do otherwise. In any case, Porson stepped in, wearing a hideous brown jacket with a shiny yellow waistcoat and canary-yellow inexpressibles. With that crest of red hair, he looked very much like a bloated bird of some sort, whose name eludes me, but I have often seen the bird perched in the apple tree in spring, before the leaves are fully out. Some kind of an oriole I think it is. His brown eyes toured the room. As soon as he spotted me, he was off in hot pursuit. Never did I put in such a night. He made it clear to the whole assembly that he was dangling after me. “Ye’ve done a grand job of fixing up the little rectory, lass,” he praised in a booming voice.

“Thank you, sir,” I answered frigidly.

“Aye, a grand job. Any time ye want to try your hand at a bigger place ye know the offer’s still open. Ye know where I mean,” he added waggishly, while every old cat in the room craned her neck forward to watch us. I realized by his speech that he was three sheets over. In the normal way, he would not have revealed having been turned off.

“I am quite content here, Squire,” I replied, with a little tact as I came to realize his condition A drunken lecher was all we needed!

“A fine lot of blunt ye’ve spent fixing up. That velvet settle didn’t come with the place, nor them rich window hangings. No sir, there’s been money spent here, plenty of it.” His sharp eyes looked around, picking out every new item I had added with my dishonest earnings.

All this was said in a carrying voice, and it was all news to the villagers. With the rectory having stood vacant for so long, no one had any memory of its exact condition. “I can’t think Andrew’s three hundred gave ye so much class. And a new gown ye’re wearing too—very fancy,” he added with a meaningful look. More than meaningful—menacing. He knew! Knew or at least suspected. Ganner must have told him.

My eyes flew to Elwood Ganner, Bart. He looked quickly away, indicating guilt. This was a complication unseen by me. Jemmie I knew I could trust, but for Porson to know! I was at his mercy, and I would sooner have been at the mercy of a fanged tiger.

“You forget I work as well, Squire,” I answered, with a smile intended to conciliate.

“I don’t forget it, lass. It fair breaks my heart to see ye trudging home from that demmed school. What ye want is a good man.” He patted his yellow vest as he spoke. Here is the man you need, he implied.

There was more of the same, but I kept away from him as much as I could. Never was a hostess so solicitous of her guests. I whirled dizzily from chair to chair, pressing drinks and hors d’oeuvres on everyone. As soon as Porson took a step toward me, I was off on a new tack. All this with Williams observing me from between his jailers on the sofa, and the local women wrinkling their brows and discussing behind their fingers whether Andrew and I had not got a little more out of Papa’s estate than we had claimed.

As I shoved the nuts and olives to Miss Simpson, Mrs. Everett came up to me, hinting ever so broadly that the chair beneath the window had used to stand beneath the window at Fern Bank, from which spot it had been illegally removed after the sale. Such was my state of agitation that I could think of no good setdown for her, and only denied it flatly.

“How odd. I wonder what can have happened to the one that used to be there then, for there is not a sign of it in the whole house.”

I was goaded to suggest that the termites must have consumed it. This sent her back to her seat in a high state of dudgeon. “What a pretty Wedgwood plate, Mab. You never mean this came with the rectory?” Mrs. Trebar asked with a suspicious eye.

Lady Ann, Ganner’s spouse, exhibited her breeding by asking not a single horrid question, but only complimenting me on a delightful evening. It was a perfectly ghastly evening for me. At one point Porson followed me right out of the room as I dashed to the kitchen to refill the nut dishes, and to see if Cook had culinary matters under control, a thing by no means certain.

“Eh, I hope I didn’t offend ye, lass,” he said, slipping an arm around my waist. Both hands full, I could not well evade him, but wriggled free, only to be grabbed by his left arm coming at me from the other direction. Williams came bolting up from behind us. That must have looked mighty odd to the company too, for
him
to be on such terms that he felt free to visit the kitchen.

“Let me do that for you, Mab,” he said, taking the two empty dishes. Porson let his hands fall away, and I darted down the stairs as though the hounds of hell were after me, without the dishes, while Williams, bearing the empty dishes, led Porson back to the saloon.

When I returned, Williams had got him in a corner and was keeping him entertained. By salacious stories, I am sure, for the air was rent with the most lecherous laughter ever heard to echo in a minister’s house. I noticed Mrs. Everett raise her brows and whisper to her companion, with a “what can you expect when you entertain merchants” look on her merchant’s face, till Sir Elwood strolled over and joined them. He likes a joke as well as anyone, and is not too particular as to the color of it, I hear. When the majority of the gentlemen, even including Andrew, had drifted off to the joke corner, and the ladies were reduced to discussing their ailments and gowns with each other, I decided it was time to serve the meal.

What a relief, for the end of this ghastly night to be at last in sight. I dashed to the kitchen to see all was in order, and heard a tap at the backhouse door. The girls I had hired for the occasion were chattering so loudly among themselves that the sound was not overheard, but it filled me with apprehension.