He was more than prepared to drop the previous subject, though this was likely to prove even more painful to her. ‘Miss Eunice, that jewellery Lady Sybil alleges she gave to her maid. You do realise what that means, don’t you? I’m sorry, but I must tell you that I’m not inclined to believe your mother gave it to her for the reasons she said. A more likely interpretation seems to be that Edith Huckaby had some hold over her.’ She looked panicky, which told him what he wanted to know. ‘So you did know about it? Then perhaps you’d care to enlighten me.’
‘I’m afraid…I’m sorry, I can’t. Or rather,’ she then added with some spirit, ‘I won’t.’
He said gently, ‘We shall find out, one way or another, you know, and maybe not how or in what way you would wish. Wouldn’t you prefer to tell me now, in your own way?’
‘No!’ She pulled a dying frond from a sorry-looking fern nearby and began to shred it. The powdery brown dust on the back of the leaves stained her slim fingers and she made a great business of using her lace-trimmed handkerchief to rub it off. He sensed, over her bent head, the struggle that was going on.
At last she tucked the handkerchief up her sleeve, and raised her eyes. ‘Well, after all, why not?’ she asked, a little defiantly. ‘You already suspect enough…sooner or later, you’ll discover the truth.’
‘With your help, I hope we might.’
For a long time she said nothing. ‘I could scarcely believe my eyes when you produced that jewellery,’ she said eventually, ‘though my mother was speaking the truth when she said it isn’t really worth so very much. But all the same, for her to have given it away! That little turquoise ring was once my grandmama’s! And you spoke, I believe, about a…a Mizpah brooch Edith was wearing, did you not? Well, in actual fact,’ she said with heightened colour, ‘that belongs to me!’
‘Then how was Lady Sybil able to give it to Edith?’
‘I don’t think she did. The clasp was a little loose, I lost it and Edith must have found it and just kept it without saying anything. Perhaps one should not blame her,’ she went on, less indignantly, ‘no one knew it was mine, after all, it was lost the first time I wore it. I should have waited to get the clasp fixed. It was…it was sent to me by…a friend.’
‘I shall see to it that you have it back.’
‘Oh yes, please, it means a great deal.’ More calmly, she added, ‘Yes, I should be so grateful. As for the rest of the jewellery – well, when I thought about it being given to Edith, a lot of things became clear. You see, she had become very…well, not to sound snobbish, but she was getting above herself, as my old nanny used to say. And my mother was allowing her to get away with it! She is always pretty lenient with any of the servants, but Edith was taking liberties which normally Mother would not have put up with under any circumstances. I couldn’t understand it – until you produced that jewellery box. And then…’ She drew in her breath. ‘Oh, this really is too frightful – it…it was blackmail, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he answered bluntly. ‘I realise that must be painful for you to acknowledge, but that does seem to be what it amounts to. I don’t suppose you have any idea what it was about?’
There was a miserable pause. ‘Yes, I’m afraid I might have. At least—’
‘Was it by any chance over something that happened during the war, when they were working together?’
‘Oh, no!’ She was clearly startled by the suggestion. ‘It had begun before then, I’m sure. Though I think that – I mean my mother finding her a nice easy job that would seem like war work – was all part of it. Mr Gervase Hatherley, our neighbour, who was in overall charge, told me once that he would have sacked her if it hadn’t been that he didn’t wish to upset my mother. It wasn’t true what she told you about Edith’s efficiency: she often got things in a great muddle because she didn’t like what she was doing and was careless, Mr Hatherley said (muddles that apparently my mother used to sort out), though the job didn’t involve much more than answering a few letters, making lists and so on.’ She paused. ‘These last two days I’ve done a lot of thinking, trying to piece things together.’
‘And what conclusions have you come to, Miss Foley?’ No answer. ‘Well, you do know what it was all about, don’t you?’
She could not meet his eyes. She looked down at her pretty little hands fingering the gold expanding bracelet she wore around her left wrist.
‘Was it,’ he asked gently, wanting to help her, ‘to do with the quarrel your brother had with Rupert von Kessel at that party here on the eve of the outbreak of war?’ He heard her indrawn breath. ‘I was talking to Mrs Rafferty, and she happened to mention they’d had a misunderstanding. Will you tell me what happened then?’
‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘I will. It might be more than time it was talked about.’
Sybil, too, lying on the chaise longue in her boudoir with a pounding headache, was thinking of that same party, which was no coincidence, because that was the day which had led up to the situation they all found themselves in now, the day when everything had started to go wrong, the last day she had ever known peace, in every sense of the word. That day which had begun so happily, as a celebration of dear Eleanor Villiers’s seventieth birthday, and ended with heartbreak. However she tried, she couldn’t stop the events of that evening going round and round in her mind, like a record with the needle stuck in a groove…
Chapter Twenty-Six
1914
The party had been planned for weeks, and by the time the date arrived, the possibility of war with Germany was no longer a matter of mere speculation, but expected daily, and an invitation to one of Sybil’s famous suppers was grasped as a welcome, if temporary diversion by all those who’d been invited.
One or two people who had commitments had been forced to cancel, yet there were still twenty-eight at table, friends, relatives and family, young and old. She had done the flowers herself: cream and pink roses, with ivy trailing among the best silver candelabra, placed at intervals down the long expanse of gleaming mahogany, the crisp napkins, each with a rose tucked into them. The food Mrs Cherry and her staff had laboured over was light, delicious and looked simply too ravishing. An airy, golden prawn soufflé cold roast beef and chicken, a gigantic salmon in aspic glistening with cucumber scales, new potatoes, tender vegetables and salads, jewel-coloured jellies, strawberries, and not least, Eleanor’s birthday cake, looking too exquisitely decorated to cut into.
All the Wentworth girls were there, of course, looking sweetly pretty in their light summer dresses. Eunice, too, who had acquired a sort of glow that night which her mother couldn’t account for. William, already in uniform. And Grev, charming Eleanor, next to whom he sat, dark and incredibly handsome, smiling at the old woman with his sideways smile, turning his mother’s heart with love as he always did. There was always a vibrancy, an electric current that ran through the house whenever he was here, despite those brooding, dark moods that came on him occasionally. She put that down to artistic temperament, and lately, perhaps, to the knowledge that the coming war would certainly curtail his music studies, that he would not be able to go back to Paris until it was all over. But a more potent worry to her was what would happen to him if he continued with his refusal to fight, should that be necessary.
Her glance strayed from him to Rupert von Kessel, William’s friend, who was still in England. A very foolish young man, dallying over here with a kind of bravado, storing up trouble for himself, ignoring advice and the repeated telegrams from his irate father commanding him to come home immediately, lingering despite the political situation which was growing more and more critical by the hour. That assassination of their archduke had caused the great Austro-Hungarian Empire to bring its power to bear by declaring war on little Serbia, but Rupert dismissed this with a wave of the hand. The Serbs were never anything else but troublemakers, and the might of the Imperial army would have no difficulty in putting down this rebellion, as they had others. Rather than alarming Rupert, the da
nger seemed to excite him. As if it were a dare to see how long he could remain balanced on the brink. The fact that the Kaiser’s Germany had ordered mobilisation in support of Austria, and that Russia had retaliated by following suit in support of Serbia, worried him not at all. But when Britain too declared war, as she must, it would certainly mean the nation would be involved in a European conflict, and where would Rupert be then? At best, he was at risk of being interned as an alien; at worst…well, at least one German, a butcher, had already been set upon by a yelling mob, beaten up and all his meat thrown out into the street. God knew what else might happen.
Sybil had known he was likely to be an uneasy presence at this supper, but since he was William’s friend and a guest at the rectory, it had been impossible not to include him, and she had prepared herself to smooth over any awkwardness, or as much as she could. She was particularly aware of General Izzard, an old friend of her father’s, a darling, elderly man of great charm but little tact, whom she delighted by calling him Izzie. A veteran of the South African war, he would certainly make a beeline for William, the only man in uniform, as soon as he saw him, to air his opinions and give advice on the current crisis – and what he might say to Rupert did not bear thinking about. He was outspoken to the nth degree and she must keep them apart at all costs. She was determined the evening was not going to be ruined by controversy about Great Britain’s part in this international turmoil. She wanted it to be an evening that would be remembered with pleasure by everyone, with no arguments, especially for Eleanor, and for Arthur, too, who had his own worries about the future of his business, and who did not seem to be looking quite as well as he should this evening. A touch of indigestion, he’d said when she remarked on it, and promised to go easy on all the rich food.
‘I must warn you, Izzie,’ she accosted the general as he came in, ‘that I expressly forbid any war talk tonight.’
‘Oh, really?’ He looked both astonished and disappointed. ‘Can one possibly avoid it? The Belgians are going to refuse the damn Kaiser’s ultimatum tomorrow, you know, and rightly so. They’re neutral in all this, after all, and there’s no question of them granting his troops free passage across their country into France, and then the balloon will go up all over Europe—’
‘Not tonight, Izzie,’ she stopped him firmly. ‘I’ve put you between Eleanor and little Amy, so you must be nice to both. It’s Eleanor’s special day and it’s a great treat for Amy to be invited to a grown-up occasion.’
He brightened. Eleanor Villiers was a delightful old friend with whom he had danced and flirted when they were young, and he liked children, especially one as pretty and enchanting as little Amy. Good God! She was the very image of her mother, who had always outshone Sybil. He wondered how Sybil liked that.
Sybil relaxed as the evening progressed. She lifted her crystal glass, not displeased with her seating arrangements as she looked around the table. Rupert, safe though looking sulky about it between Arthur and old Cousin Martha, Lady Endicott, who was extremely deaf but had brought out all her jewels for the evening, some rather grey diamonds and the magnificent Endicott emeralds, which showed up well in the light of the thirty-six candles. There was nothing Sybil liked so well as a combination of dusk and candlelight to grace a dinner table. The soft light was so kind to the ladies’ faces, the flickering flames caught the prismatic cut of crystal goblets and threw intriguing shadows onto the rest of the richly furnished room. With the growing dusk outside, they seemed to be enclosed in a privileged bubble of magic.
She kept an eye on Izzie, but he was behaving himself, saying something pretty to Eleanor so that her eyes sparkled in a youthful manner that must remind him of times long gone, or perhaps it was the champagne that was doing it. It was an agreeable gathering altogether, the guests seeming to have entered in a complicity not to mention the crisis uppermost in all their minds. Even the Raffertys were mingling well, there in full force as friends of Eleanor: Joel Rafferty, who was inclined to fall into taciturn silences, and awkward young Steven, both of whom managed to look slightly crumpled in their unaccustomed evening clothes. Mrs Rafferty, however, in a curious peacock-coloured crushed-velvet dress hanging loose from the shoulders, after the Rational mode, and wearing a feathered headband which made her look rather like an Indian squaw, made up for both. She was seated next to Francis and had even managed to coax a smile or two from him with her outrageous, clever opinions, he who had once captured the hearts of so many young ladies, with his ready smile and urbane manners. He was still a handsome man in his mid fifties, but his smiles were rarer.
Suddenly, now, in her boudoir, all those years later, alone with her memories, Lady Sybil put her hands over her eyes and wept uncontrollably.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the orangery, Eunice was saying, ‘The party was as much for William, William Wentworth, you know, as for Mrs Villiers, a sort of send-off to his joining the army.’
It had been arranged that one of his friends, a brother officer who owned a motor car, would come to pick him up after they had eaten, when they would drive together to join their unit. William fooled around throughout the supper, drank a lot of champagne and teased Eunice until she blushed, then stopped fooling, looked into her eyes and told her how pretty she looked. She wanted the evening never to end, but it did, too soon after the meal, when Piers Beresford arrived in a noisy, racy-looking motor with a strap around its bonnet. The non-family guests shook hands with William and wished him luck before drifting into the drawing room for their coffee, leaving the family to say their goodbyes in private. Rupert and William stood for several moments with their hands clasped. ‘I have just made my farewells and thanks to your family, since I shall be leaving before breakfast tomorrow, to go home,’ Rupert said at last. ‘Grev has promised to drive me to Birmingham in his mother’s car early in the morning.’
‘The sooner you leave the better. Good luck, Kess.’
‘You too, my friend.’ William clapped him on the shoulder and Rupert walked away.
‘No waterworks, now!’ William warned jokingly, as the rest of them went outside. The girls and his grandmother did their best, though they could not help a tear or two as his things were stowed in the back. He hugged and kissed them all, Eunice as well, who was there because he had gripped her hand and refused to let it go. She just might have imagined, she thought, her eyes bright, that he had held her so tight for a moment when saying his goodbyes – but she had not imagined what she had read in his face, the emotions he had been at such pains to conceal all evening, the feelings every young soldier must have on going to war for the first time: the fear that he might never return, or would not be brave enough in the face of the enemy, the unexpected wrench at leaving his family. The revelation had been gone in an instant, concealed once more beneath a mask of joking. The two young men in their brand-new uniforms seemed more like a couple of excited schoolboys setting out on a larky adventure than officers in the British Army…indeed, Piers Beresford, with his blonde curls and choirboy face, scarcely looked old enough to shave.
At last they were ready to leave, and as William was preparing to crank the motor, Francis stepped forward and uncharacteristically took William’s hand in both of his, then drew his son towards him. ‘God keep you, my boy,’ he said, and went abruptly indoors.
With a tightening in her chest, Eunice watched as the motor started, William threw his long legs over the door and slid into the front seat, and with whoops and a cheerful wave of their hands, he and his friend roared away between the two lines of dark, pointed yews towards the road. The women watched until the motor could no longer be seen and then dried their tears. Eleanor stretched out a hand to Eunice as they went indoors to join the others, but she shook her head. ‘I’ll be in presently, Mrs Villiers,’ she said gently.
She needed to be alone for a while and walked down into the rose garden, where its small centre pool was surrounded by a great circle of roses trained on ropes that swung in swags, one to the next, an
d a stone cherub in the middle perpetually spouted water onto the lily pads almost covering the water’s surface. She sat on the stone rim of the pool, battling to overcome the sense of loss, the feeling of change and impending disaster. It had been another very hot day and the stones were still warm, though a slight breeze had arisen and made a gentle soughing through the trees. In the dusk, the scent of the roses was almost overpowering.
The windows of the drawing room were open to the evening and the sound of Grev playing the piano floated across to her, overlaid with a subdued hum of conversation. The sort of music he played nowadays was not the sort most people stopped their conversation to listen to. Modern music, hard to understand, with no tune, only a series of discordant notes and plangent silences. She wondered if this might be one of his own compositions.
It was time she rejoined the others, she thought as it came to an end. She went through the French windows into the drawing room, just as Grev was beckoning Marianne to join him. Sitting next to each other on the piano stool, they began to play together a tune from The Gondoliers, one that all of the guests recognised, and this time listened and hummed to, smiling as they watched the young couple playing in perfect harmony: the dark, handsome young man and Marianne, looking particularly lovely tonight, in a soft cream shantung dress and a string of seed pearls. Her hair was a nimbus of red-gold round her head in the soft lamplight, and she had a cream rose tucked into it, which Eunice had not noticed when she arrived. She looked across the room and saw Rupert, watching them with a peculiar intensity. He could not play a note of music and claimed to be tone-deaf and quite ignorant on the subject of Mozart, his native city’s most famous son, all of which naturally did not help to endear him to Grev. He was watching both the players intently, a slightly supercilious smile lifting the corner of his mouth.
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