Kitty (8 page)

“Come forward, my child,” he said, stretching out a gloved hand in welcome.

Kitty sat down primly on a chair facing him.

“Why don’t you begin at the beginning, my child?” he said in a kindly voice. “Things are sometimes easier that way.”

So, in a faltering voice, Kitty began to tell him her story from the beginning, her voice gradually becoming stronger and more confident under his sympathetic attention.

She began to falter again as she described the horror of her wedding night. “My lord Bishop, I had never seen—a—a naked man before. And then he laughed at my picture.”

“What picture, my child?” asked the Bishop in a muffled voice. Kitty tried to read his expression but his hand was in front of his face and his head was bowed.

“Oh, it’s a darling picture. I bought it myself in Hampstead in this little shop next to Carson’s bakery. There are these two children running across a meadow with their dog and there’s a dear little thatched cottage in the distance and—”

Kitty stopped in surprise. Tears were running down the Bishop’s dusky cheeks. He was moved by her story!

Then in the glow from the lamp, she noticed that each salt tear was cutting a clean white line down his face, and he was laughing. Oh, God! He was laughing as if he would never stop. The harsh mocking sound reverberated around the room. There were more sounds of laughter. Then a roar of “Surprise!” as the lights were switched on and the rest of the guests burst out from behind screens in the corners of the room.

“Oh, Cyril, you were magnificent,” they screamed to “the Bishop” who was still laughing and mopping the dark stain from his face with his handkerchief.

It had all been another terrible practical joke.

“What on earth is going on?” demanded an imperious voice from the doorway. One of the most elegant women Kitty had ever seen stood surveying the room with cold contempt. Pastel-colored tulle that could only have come from Paris, swirled about her body in elegant lines. Her hat balanced of top of her golden curls was a frothy confection of the same tulle. She had small eyes and a large patrician nose which seemed to emphasize her general air of
chic
rather than detract from it.

Without waiting for a reply to her question, she walked straight up to Kitty and held out her hand encased in a pink kid glove. “I’ve come especially to meet you, Lady Chesworth,” she said in a light, pleasant voice. “May I introduce myself since no one else seems able to? I’m Emily Mainwaring.”

Kitty had heard of Lady Mainwaring through the medium of the gossip columns. King Edward himself had called her the smartest woman in London.

“I have called to invite you to take a drive with me,” she went on.

Kitty nodded her assent. She would have gone for a drive with Lucifer himself in order to get out of that dreadful room and away from Veronica Jackson’s mocking stare.

Outside, the summer sun was once again shining merrily.

Once in her open carriage, Lady Mainwaring tied a carriage veil over her hat and called to the coachman to “spring ’em.”

Kitty thought that nothing else could surprise her that horrid day. But she was wrong. As the carriage bowled past the lodge gates at a fast clip, Lady Mainwaring said, “I’m kidnaping you, you know.”

Kitty gasped and clutched at the side of the swaying vehicle. Lady Mainwaring laughed. “I’ve got the best intentions,” she shouted above the noise of the rushing wind made by the speed of the carriage. “We’re stopping for lunch at the nearest inn and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Kitty sat in silence watching the summer scenery flashing past. The hot sun was drying up the puddles in the road and sparkling raindrops hung from the wild roses on the hedgerows. She decided she didn’t care if she were being kidnaped. She never wanted to return to Rooks Neuk again.

The horses slowed to a canter, then a trot, and turned into the pleasant courtyard of an old coaching inn.

“We didn’t need to go as fast as that,” explained Emily Mainwaring blithely. “I just like a touch of the dramatic now and then. Very good for restoring the spirits.”

Kitty’s spirits began to soar. She had a sudden feeling that all her nightmares were coming to an end. She followed her companion through the public rooms of the inn and out into a sunny garden at the back.

Lady Mainwaring waited until the landlord’s wife had finished drying the rain-spattered table and then unfurled her parasol and leaned back in her chair.

“I called to visit my old friend Amelia Henley,” she said. “I’m sorry I missed your wedding but I happen to have just got back from Rome.

“Well—Lady Henley—after she had finished eating a whole goose, bones and all, I assure you—told me that she and your mother had made a cruel mess of your marriage arrangements and she begged me to help.

“The whole thing intrigued me so I drove down to Reamington Hall to find your husband up to his neck in the estate books. Where was his wife? I asked. He replied that you were having a high old time with the Thackerays. Now no one—unless they have the hide of a rhinoceros—has a high old time at the Thackerays. So I didn’t say anything to him. I just rode to the rescue.

“Now, tell me all about it.”

Lady Emily’s honesty was patent and so for the second time that day, Kitty told her story.

“Just what I thought,” said Lady Mainwaring when she had finished. “Look, Kitty—I may call you Kitty, may I?—I will send my coachman back to Rooks Neuk—dear God,
what
a name—to collect your baggage. You shall come back to London with me and by the time I’ve finished with you, you will be the smartest matron in town and all the young men will be at your feet.”

“I don’t want all the young men at my feet, Only my husband,” cried Kitty.

“You are not going to get your husband at your feet the way you are now,” said Lady Mainwaring briskly. “You have allowed yourself to be bullied unmercifully by all concerned. Now I am going to bully you, but only to put some stiffening into your backbone.”

She looked at Kitty’s pretty organza dress. “Who chooses your clothes for you?”

“My mama and Lady Henley,” said Kitty.

“Choose your own always,” said her new friend.

“Clothes that someone else has imposed on you always sit on your body as if they don’t belong to you. We will go to the dressmakers in London and you will choose exactly what you want to wear. It is no use wearing something in perfect taste if you don’t
feel
pretty in it.”

Lady Mainwaring twirled her parasol and looked on her new friend with amused kindness.

“The secret of social success is to do and say exactly what you want—within limits. If anyone is teasing you or being witty at your expense and you can’t think of anything witty or clever to say in your defense—don’t Be damned rude. Be extremely honest always. Nothing frightens a social crowd more than honesty. And anyone they are frightened of—they make the current fashion.

“Care to give it a try?”

“Oh, yes,” breathed Kitty. “But my husband. He is coming to meet me at the Thackerays tomorrow.”

“You shall send him a loving little note,” said Lady Mainwaring. “Say you are bored with the country and have gone with me to London for a short stay. Say you will miss him, but that you appreciate that he is too busy at the moment to have any time for you.”

A shadow crossed Kitty’s face. “You are in love with him, aren’t you?” asked her companion. “Most women are. Your husband is a very attractive man who has been spoiled by too much feminine attention.

“You must make him run after
you.
”

“Are you sure you are not mistaken?” asked Kitty timidly.

“Me?” said her ladyship forcefully.

“I, my dear, am
never
wrong.”

Lord Peter Chesworth closed the estate books with a weary sigh. An evening breeze brought in the heavy scent of lime from the old trees bordering the drive.

He had better set out in the morning to see how Kitty was getting along. After all, things were apt to get a bit rumbustious at the Thackerays’. He hoped they hadn’t gone too far. His thin black brows met in a worried frown. Perhaps he should not have left her alone. He remembered the faint look of contempt on Lady Mainwaring’s face when he had explained where Kitty was. With a pang, he suddenly remembered being seventeen himself when everything had seemed to matter so much, a gangling youth standing nervously at his first ball, frightened by the chattering sophistication of the older debutantes.

Well, he would rescue her tomorrow and perhaps take her to the seaside. He frowned again. Why had the word “rescue” entered his mind?

When he arrived at Rooks Neuk at noon on the following day, the guests were just finishing breakfast. Veronica Jackson immediately came fluttering up to him, but of his wife there was no sign.

Mrs. Thackeray handed him a note.

His thin face flushed angrily as he read Kitty’s letter. She had no right to go off without waiting to see him. Then let her have her independence. He would continue to put his affairs in order. He had no intention of rushing up to town. It would teach her a lesson.

He refused offers of breakfast, abruptly made his good-byes and, clutching Kitty’s note in his hand, marched out to his carriage.

Veronica Jackson came fluttering after him. “Why can’t you wait, Peter? It’s not like you not to make the most of an opportunity.”

Peter Chesworth studied the weed in the moat. “I have a lot of work to do, Veronica.”

She pressed closer to him. “But your little shopgirl isn’t waiting for you, is she?”

He turned and looked down at her, an unfathomable expression in his light eyes. “Don’t call my wife by that silly name, Veronica. I must leave. Good-bye.”

He strode off across the drawbridge, leaving an angry Veronica to stare after him. She would have been even angrier, if she could have realized what he was thinking.

Lord Peter Chesworth was thinking of his wife. He was remembering her delicate figure, shy voice, and large gray eyes. By comparison, Veronica seemed… well… somehow overblown.

Kitty was at that moment sitting in the pretty garden of Lady Mainwaring’s Regents Park home and wondering why her husband had not come after her.

At last, she voiced her thought aloud. Lady Mainwaring put down her gardening tools and turned to look at her.

The garden, which was Lady Mainwaring’s pride and joy, sloped gently down to meet the Regents Park canal. It glowed with every kind of English garden flower—stocks, sweet william, pansies, marigolds, lupins, and delphiniums. Rambling roses rioted up the iron trelliswork on the white walls of the house and over by the garden wall, a bed of herbs added its heady scents to the summer air—thyme, marjoram, basil, parsley, and mint. A huge weeping willow trailed its long fingers in the green waters of the canal and its fluttering leaves sent dancing patches of shadow over Kitty’s troubled face.

She was seated at a small cane table by the water’s edge. In her pink-and-white spotted organza dress with the high, boned collar and her broad-brimmed picture hat, she looked as if she had stepped out of a French painting, reflected Lady Mainwaring. Monet—or was it Manet?

“Are you thinking about your husband again?” she teased Kitty. “Well, don’t. He will have received your note and, with any luck, will be furious at you. Any reaction is better than none, my dear. In about two days’ time, in my estimation, he will decide to come and see what we are up to, but you, of course, will not be here.”

“Why not?” asked Kitty faintly. She had done nothing but look forward to her husband’s arrival.

“Because you are not ready yet,” said Lady Mainwaring, picking up a trowel and returning to work. “Your maid, Colette, for example, is boasting that she does no work. I
always
listen to servants’ gossip. It may be vulgar but it is a very valuable source of information. How else would I have known that Lady Jessingham meant to cut me at the opera? She told her personal maid who told her sister who is walking out with one of my footmen who told
my
personal maid who told me. So
I
cut the old bat before she had a chance to cut me first.

“But what were we talking about? Ah, yes, Colette. We are going out to tea at the Barlowe-Smellies’—Percy’s parents. Ring for your maid to help you change and dismiss her if she shows the slightest sign of insolence. That is your first dragon. Secondly, what do you think of Percy Barlowe-Smellie?”

Kitty thought back to her wedding and to the poems and antics of the best man. “I think he’s a horrid young man,” she said.

“Then you must tell him,” said Lady Mainwaring. “But first you must deal with Colette.”

Wishing heartily that she were once again Miss Kitty Harrison of Hampstead instead of the Baroness Reamington, Kitty trailed off slowly indoors.

When she reached her room, she sat looking at the old-fashioned bellpull as if it were some species of venomous snake. But Emily Mainwaring had said she would lose her husband if she continued to be timid. At last, she reached out and gave the bellpull an enormous jerk. She waited ten minutes in fear and trepidation until the door opened.

“You rang, Ma’am?” Colette strolled into the room, the flicker of veiled insolence lurking in her black eyes.

“Please help me dress. I am taking tea with the Barlowe-Smellies,” said Kitty in a firm, clear voice.

“What d’ ye want to wear?” said Colette lazily, looking out of the window at the garden.

There was a long silence. She turned slowly from the window. Her mistress was looking at her with a distinctly imperious glare. Colette was not to know that in taking her time in turning around, she had given Kitty the necessary courage to conjure up that expression.

“If you don’t know your job,” said Kitty in a voice like brittle glass, “you may leave my service this instant.”

Colette ducked her head to hide her surprise and bobbed a curtsy.

“I’ll see to it right away, Ma’am.”

Kitty’s hard, light voice went on. “Must I keep telling you how to do your job? You will address me as ‘my Lady’ in the future—at all times. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma—my Lady.”