The Ashford Affair

by Lauren Willig

  There was something so giddy making, so intimate, about that knowledge, that she knew his musical tastes as he knew hers. She could imagine herself saying it to someone: Frederick has more patience for atonality than I, don’t you, darling? It implied a sort of ownership.

  Today they had been to a talk on poetry and politics. Addie had had to poke him in the arm to make him stop snorting. That, too, had made her thrill.

  Oh, heavens, she was being a ninny, wasn’t she? Miracle enough that her hero had become her friend; she shouldn’t go spoil it by going all infatuated.

  Even if she was.

  “I didn’t think it was as bad as that,” she said, struggling with her hat. The footman blandly looked the other way. Addie suspected she was the source of a certain amount of merriment in the servants’ hall. Better not to know, really. “I thought there was something to it.”

  Frederick handed his hat and gloves to the footman standing by the door. “Music soothes the savage beast?”

  “You can mock all you like,” said Addie, exerting her will on the blasted pin, “but isn’t there a truth to it? Music does soothe us, and poetry is just music by another name.”

  “Yes,” said Frederick, “but this notion of fostering world peace by sending anthologies of verse to world leaders—how would one know if Mr. Lenin likes Keats? He might be a blank-verse sort of man. It seems a shame to precipitate another war all for the wrong sort of poetry.”

  “Now you’re just making fun,” protested Addie, craning towards the mirror to try to get a better view of the offending pin. “That wasn’t what they were saying at all. Not really.”

  “If I didn’t make fun,” said Frederick flatly, “I might be offended by it. As it is, I can write it off as good-natured idiocy. Here, let me help you with that. No, stay still.”

  His hands pressed briefly on her shoulders, indicating that she should stay where she was. It was no more intimate a caress, Addie told herself, than stroking the neck of a horse to make it stay. Even so, she could feel the tingle of it straight down her spine.

  He was poking at her hat now, doing something with the brim. Her eyes sought his in the mirror, but he was blocked now by the absurd feather on her hat.

  “It’s the pin,” she said as he examined the back of the hat, resisting the urge to wiggle. “It seems to have got caught on—ouch!”

  “I think I’ve found the problem,” said Frederick.

  “I think I felt the problem,” said Addie, managing to sound quite credibly insouciant and only the slightest bit breathless.

  “There,” he said, and stepped back, away from her. He held up a tapered metal pin. “There’s a nick. That was the culprit. Your hair must have caught on it.”

  Addie turned it over, glad to have something to do with her hands. “Where?”

  Bea had given her a pretty hat pin for her birthday, with a bezel shaped like a flower and leaves, all inlaid with tiny, sparkling gemstones. Addie had kept it to admire and gone on using her old ones.

  “There.” Frederick’s ungloved hand settled on hers, inching her hand down on the pin. “Can you feel it?”

  “Mmm?” Addie kept her eyes glued on their joined hands.

  “The nick,” said Frederick. “It’s right there, towards the bottom.”

  Addie cleared her throat. “Yes, yes, that’s it. I can feel it.” There was a practically infinitesimal gouge at the bottom of the pin, scarcely visible, but just enough to snag her hair, which tended to snag at the least opportunity. “I should have noticed before.”

  She started to retrieve it, but Frederick neatly snagged it from her. “I’ll take that, or you’ll forget and use it again,” he said.

  “Most likely,” she admitted, turning away to remove her hat, which hadn’t been the least bit improved by the struggle with the pin. “Did you see the notice about Mr. Hardy’s appearance next week? He’ll be reading from his Collected Poems.”

  Frederick looked down at her, his lips turning up at the corners in a rueful sort of smile. “You should go to university and read Literature,” he said, tweaking a lock of her hair as though she were a little girl. “I can just see you as a female don in a black gown with your hair all tucked away beneath a cap.”

  She hated it when he did that, treated her like an adult one moment, like a woman, worthy of admiration, and then the next like someone’s little sister, chucking her under the chin and tugging her hair. It was maddening.

  “I should have liked to go to university,” she said, “but Aunt Vera wouldn’t countenance it.”

  Bea had needed her, too. She could remember how Bea had looked after Poppy’s funeral, so thin and pale.

  “And must you always listen to what your aunt Vera says?”

  “She pays my allowance,” said Addie pragmatically. “Or, at least, Uncle Charles does, which is really the same thing.”

  “You still haven’t told them about The Bloomsbury Review yet, have you?”

  “Noooo,” admitted Addie. “It hasn’t come up.” The only periodicals Aunt Vera read were the Tatler and the Court Circular. And thank goodness for that.

  “If you liked,” said Frederick thoughtfully, “I still have a few chums at Oxford. One of them could have a natter with the Dean of Somerville, drop a word in her ear.”

  Addie chewed on her lower lip. Frederick might think she was an attractive candidate, but she knew the truth, that she had almost no education other than that provided by making free of the Ashford library. Their governess had been primarily concerned, per Aunt Vera’s strictures, with such niceties as matters of precedence when seating a party for three hundred at a vice-regal palace.

  Addie couldn’t admit that, though, not to Frederick, not when she so particularly wanted him to think well of her. He had been a Balliol man and, although he hadn’t told her so himself, had taken a first in History. How could she confess the inadequacies of her education to him?

  “Maybe later,” Addie said, and was aware of how weak it sounded. “I don’t want to leave the magazine just when it’s all going so well! Besides, it would be a shame to leave London just when I’m beginning to enjoy it.”

  “All right,” he said. “As long as it’s your decision, and not Aunt Vera’s.”

  “It is,” she assured him. “I really do mean it about the Review. I’m beginning to feel like I might be useful to them.” She looked earnestly up at him. “Frederick, it’s the most harum-scarum sort of place, I can’t even begin to describe.”

  His lips twitched. “I think I can imagine.”

  “Nothing is ever ever where it’s meant to be. They have tradesmen’s bills all muddled up with proofs of poetry. We’re supposed to be a monthly, but the last edition came out seven weeks ago!”

  “Not terribly surprising,” said Frederick, following her into one of the smaller, less baronial drawing rooms. “I’ve seen a number of these periodicals come and go.”

  “Not this one,” said Addie determinedly. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  She had, she had been told by the rest of the staff, quite appallingly outmoded ideas about literature, but she had discovered in herself an unexpected talent for organization. She might make the faux pas of preferring Tennyson to Brooke, but when she had had the revolutionary idea of putting printers’ bills into one pigeonhole and incoming receipts—should there ever be such a thing—into another, she had been treated as a bringer of wonders and toasted with champagne in a chipped ceramic mug. She had begun, tentatively, putting forward ideas about how things might be done, advertising secured to fund their efforts, universities canvassed to increase their circulation. For the most part, these suggestions were cheerfully ignored, philosophy being preferable to practicality, but she was beginning to work out her own plans as to how to get them done.

  “You sound very fierce,” said Frederick with amusement.

  “Do I? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. It’s just that I do so want to make this work—the magazine, I mean.”

&nb
sp; He crooked a finger beneath her chin, tilting her face up towards his. “Don’t apologize,” he said, his green eyes intent on hers. “Not to me.”

  She stared up at him, voiceless, not wanting to breathe, to blink, to do anything to upset their precarious balance. The room felt suddenly charged with electricity; she could feel it crackling between them. She hung suspended, waiting breathlessly, for him to lean forward, to—

  “You didn’t tell me we had visitors.” A voice sliced through the silence, shattering it like glass.

  Addie jumped back. Frederick dropped his hand and stepped away, as remote as if he had been on the moon. It was as if she had imagined it all, the way he was looking at her, how closely he had been standing, all something out of the pages of a book or a particularly vivid waking dream.

  It was Bea in the doorway, looking cool and poised, one eyebrow raised, cigarette holder propped in one hand. The thin stream of smoke seemed to trace a question mark in the air.

  Addie could feel herself flushing. “Oh, Bea, this is—I mean—”

  It was absurd to feel as though she had been caught out in something when there was nothing at all to have been caught out in.

  “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” Strolling into the room, Bea gave Frederick a frank once-over. She paused, cigarette holder aloft. “At Oggie’s.”

  Frederick’s eyes shifted. “I’m sure I would have remembered.…”

  Bea gave a husky laugh. “You were with Dora Palliser. I’d be surprised if you remembered anything at all.”

  Addie looked anxiously from Bea to Fredrick, wondering what they were talking about. She knew of Dora Palliser, vaguely. Her picture was constantly in the papers, usually paired with slightly lewd headlines. She was notorious for both her support of the more avant-garde arts and her very well-publicized affairs with several of the artists.

  The jangle of Bea’s bracelets interrupted Addie’s train of thought. Bea flicked her wrist imperiously. “Darling, aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  Addie belatedly did her duty. “Mr. Desborough, may I present you to my cousin, Lady Rivesdale?” It still felt odd referring to Bea as Lady Rivesdale, as though she were someone’s mother. Turning to Bea, she added, “We were just at a lecture on prosody and politics.”

  “How frightfully interesting,” murmured Bea. She held out a hand to Addie’s companion. “Mr. Desborough.”

  He bowed over it. “Lady Rivesdale.”

  Bea twined her fingers through his before releasing them again. “Why so formal? Any friend of Dora’s is a friend of mine.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Drink?”

  Frederick glanced towards Addie. She felt, as always, that little spark of recognition, as if it were just them, cut off from all the world. But then he looked back at Bea again, and the moment was lost. “Yes, thank you.”

  Bea meandered towards the drinks cart, originally Marcus’ toy, now hers, equipped with a complicated mess of bottles and shakers and strange implements that looked, to Addie, like something out of the Inquisition’s midnight imagination.

  “Ring for more ice, will you, darling?” Addie obediently rang as Bea began expertly assembling ingredients in a shaker. “You must tell me all about this fascinating lecture.”

  “You’d have been bored stiff,” said Addie frankly. “It wasn’t really your sort of entertainment.”

  “Nonsense,” said Bea stoutly. “I simply adore … prosody.”

  She rolled her eyes and Frederick laughed softly. He took the ice bucket from the servant and handed it over to Bea. “Your ice.”

  “Your drink, you mean,” she said, and handed the shaker to Frederick. “Do the honors?”

  Addie stood back, feeling entirely cut out. Not that Bea had done it on purpose, of course; she just had a way of attracting the attention of a room, like iron filings to a magnet. She was always telling Addie that there was no magic to it, that it was just a matter of asserting oneself. Addie watched Frederick shake the drinks, watched Bea taste and make a face and dump it out and start again. She knew she should say something, do something, but what? She hadn’t anything at all interesting to say, just prosody, which, on Bea’s lips, sounded quite as stodgy as it was.

  Bea handed her a drink, the sapphire ring on her finger clanking against the side of the glass. Addie took it tentatively. It smelled strongly of gin. Addie set it quietly down on the marble top of a small, gilt table.

  Bea took a hearty swig of her own drink. “Do the two of you have something frightfully fabulous planned for tonight? No? Then you must join me. There’s a party going to Claridge’s and then on to the Golden Calf. Haven’t you heard of it, Mr. Desborough? I would have thought you would.”

  “I thought they’d closed,” said Frederick.

  “This is the new Golden Calf,” said Bea blandly. “Isn’t it too utterly biblical? They killed the fatted calf only to have it rise again. Or am I confusing myself? It’s all terribly hush-hush, secret knocks and curtains and all that sort of thing. You must come.”

  “I’m not sure…” Addie began, galvanized into speech at last.

  “Don’t fuss; you’ll adore it. I have a frock that will fit you perfectly.”

  “Only if you chop it off at the knees,” protested Addie.

  Bea wafted her objection aside, spattering gin in the process. “I’ve been remiss. As your chaperone, I ought to have seen that you got out more—and not to lectures!”

  “You’re hardly my chaperone,” protested Addie, trying to catch Frederick’s eye and failing. “We’re scarcely a year apart.”

  “Hush, child,” said Bea, tossing back the rest of her drink. “Don’t you know you’re not meant to speak that way to an elderly matron? It’s past time I took your social education in hand.” She looked at Frederick over the rim of her glass. Her pale lashes had been darkened, making them even more dramatic. “Especially if you insist on taking up with such degenerate characters as these.”

  “Isn’t taking your charge to worship at the Cave of the Golden Calf quite the opposite of the usual work of a chaperone?” asked Frederick.

  Taking the shaker from the tray, Bea deftly topped up his drink. “Not at all, Mr. Desborough. It’s the work of a good chaperone to make sure her charge is prepared for all things.”

  She stressed the last two words in a way Addie didn’t entirely understand. There were circles within circles here, going around and over Addie’s head.

  Looking up, Addie found Frederick’s eyes on her. “To the pure,” he said quietly, “all things are pure.”

  She felt herself flush without quite knowing why. “I’m hardly as unworldly as all that,” she protested, taking up her drink.

  “Aren’t you, darling?” said Bea lightly, and touched Frederick on the arm. “Would you be an utter angel and find my cigarette case? I left it on the chaise in the morning room, there’s a dear.”

  “Your servant,” drawled Frederick, in a very different voice from the one he used with Addie.

  Addie looked to her cousin with confusion. She could see Bea’s cigarette case sitting in plain sight next to the portable gramophone. “Why did you do that?”

  Shamelessly Bea clicked the case open, drawing out a Turkish cigarette and tapping it against her palm before inserting it into the long, ebony holder. “Is this what’s been taking up all your time, darling?”

  “Not all of it,” hedged Addie. She hadn’t told Bea about The Bloomsbury Review either. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her; it was just that Bea tended to be … a bit effusive sometimes. And sometimes there was a sting beneath it, especially when she was unhappy, as she was unhappy now. “But some. Don’t you remember Mr. Desborough? He was the one who rescued Binky.”

  For a moment, Bea looked blank. Then she burst into a coughing laugh. “Good heavens, that ridiculous mouse!” For a moment, she sounded much more like her old self. “Will you ever forget the look on Mother’s face?”

  “Never,” Addie agreed.

  Strippe
d of her affectations, Bea looked more like her old self. But she also looked painfully tired. Addie was reminded of the way Bea had looked just after Poppy’s death, gutted and trying to hide it.

  Cautiously, Addie touched her cousin’s wrist. “Is there something the matter? When you came in, I thought—”

  “There’s nothing the matter.” Bea twitched her wrist away, prowling restlessly across the room. “I’m perfectly all right. I’m not the one racing about to lectures with strange men.”

  Yes, because lectures were so very compromising. Addie refused to let herself be deterred. “Have you had another fight with Marcus?”

  Bea’s lips tightened. “Marcus is Marcus,” she said carelessly, but her hands betrayed her, her fingers digging into her palms. “We’re talking about you. You and that Mr. Desborough. You sly old thing, you. When were you going to tell me?”

  “There wasn’t anything to tell,” said Addie. “He’s a friend.”

  Bea gave her a look. “Darling, you need someone to find out what your Mr. Desborough is about. You can’t take a mouse as a reference.”

  Addie felt her chin setting. “He isn’t about anything. He just likes to go to the same sorts of lectures I like to go to.” Bea’s blond brows rose. Addie stumbled over her words. “He’s—he’s a chum.”

  “Oh, darling. You can tell yourself that all you like. I saw the way you looked at him, all sun and moon and stars. I’m quite jealous, you know,” she said in her bantering tone. “It’s terribly lowering to be eclipsed. But if I must be,” she said, and there was steel beneath her tone, “I intend to make sure it’s someone worthy. If you’re going to abandon me, you can’t go throwing yourself away on just anyone.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Desborough thinks about me that way,” said Addie, succumbing to the horrible, overwhelming temptation to confide. She shook her head. “There’s really no need, Bea.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Bea, brisk as only Bea could be once she’d set her mind on something. Those were the moments when Addie was reminded, disconcertingly, of Aunt Vera, all that imperiousness beneath the evanescent overlay of Bea’s beauty. “Wouldn’t you rather make sure he’s not goblin fruit?”