This afternoon when he had lifted her down from his curricle at the hotel, there had been that tiny second of happiness which her calm and rational self had instantly replaced with practicality, for after ten years of convincing herself of the hopelessness of her heart, she had learned far too well and with far too much difficulty the facts of the matter, which were that Anthony Merrill lumped the five of them together into a sort of nameless and faceless pleasant personage called simply “The Ffawlkes Girls,” and that he would no more take notice of her in a hundred years as turn into a frog.
It was this innate refusal to allow herself even a moment of unwise speculation about Lord Merrill’s intentions that had forced Claudia to keep asking why; and it was with a heady sense of pleasure that she had heard him say this afternoon at the table, “Excellent deduction,” and to allow herself, as she closed her eyes in her bath, this moment of fantasy about Tony Merrill. For even if she was nothing more to him than a pleasant companion whom he had discovered rather by accident, and with whom he meant to enjoy a new-found friendship, it was very much more than she had ever hoped for, and for the present, it was a great deal, after all, to be the recipient of a few hours of light gallantry and good humor from that large and phlegmatic gentleman.
Claudia discovered when she went down to dinner that Claire was still upstairs in bed, and that she had caught a head-cold, or somesuch. She heard it all from her brother-in-law Varian without a flicker of disbelief, smiling in that calm way of hers, and instantly deduced from the look in his eyes that whatever was troubling her sister was more in her heart than in her head.
“Varian,” she said, blinking once after he had told her that it would be just the three of them, since Tony had sent over a note asking if he could accompany their party this evening, “did you write to Claire at all while you were in India?”
It was questions such as this that Varian had learned to expect from his slightly cerebral and rather over-intelligent sister-by-marriage, who very often left off the odd comment or two, the useless amenities that most people needed to conduct a conversation, and that occasionally her mind raced very much ahead of her speech. He viewed her with a certain fondness as she sat across from him.
“No; why do you ask?”
“I only wondered; I recalled that Papa had several letters from you, and once or twice I remember seeing a packet of his addressed to you ready for the post when a ship came through. But you didn’t write to Claire?”
“No.” His handsome face seemed a little older this evening; he had the look about his eyes that she recalled seeing three years ago when he was having so much pain over his foot.
“Why not?”
Drew regarded his sister in astonishment. “I don’t know; what would I have written to her?”
“That you missed her, and what you were involved in, and all that sort of thing; you were married to her, you know,” Claudia said calmly.
“Hardly,” he returned, with a certain crossness that did not seem to offend her in the least.
“Didn’t you care about her at all? For if you must know, she was very much disappointed after four or five months went by and she hadn’t heard from you, except odd bits of news that Papa would give us,” Claudia said frankly. “I thought for a long time that she had rather fallen in love with you, although of course she never discussed it.”
“I understood,” Varian said in an even voice, as the front door opened and they heard Tony come inside, bidding Stiles a good evening, “that she had fallen in love with someone else entirely.”
“Did you?” Claudia blinked at his very expensive waistcoat for a moment, as if considering it all in her mind, and shook her head, and said, “I cannot imagine where you would have got that idea, for she was very much sought after, of course, that last year or so, and she never showed the least interest in any of them. Good evening, Tony,” she said, turning, with Lord Banning’s eyes fixed somewhat sightlessly on her face, and blushed just a little, surely not enough to be considered a third time today, as Lord Merrill took her hand and kissed it, with a silent acknowledgment of her use of his given name in the smile in his eyes.
“Good evening, Claudia,” he said, and, after the slightest pressure on her fingers, released her hand. “Well, Varian; I came for breakfast and you’d left already. Good god, what time do you get up? Half-hour to dawn?”
“I’m worrying over this ship of mine, you know; I go down every morning to see if there’s been word of her,” he said quietly as he stood. “Pour you a sherry?”
The placid gentleman sighed as he bent his large form onto the sofa next to Claudia’s chair. “Sounds wonderful. What ship is this?”
“The Tremaine. Bringing over my household things, papers and so on, that I had to ship separately. And news, of course; I haven’t heard the end of my sale, yet, you know; I’ll be glad when she comes to port. She’s two weeks late already,” he said, pouring out a glass of wine for his friend and bringing it to him.
“I shouldn’t worry if I were you,” Tony told him as he took the glass. “Where’s Claire? I hope she’s not ill?”
“Head-cold,” Claudia announced calmly, regarding the earl with a certain look in her eye that he read very well.
“Her maid’s sent down and said she is too ill to dress for dinner,” said Varian flatly, and in a few moments the bell rang and they went into the dining room, three once again, and then to the theatre, which was As You Like It.
Miss Ffawlkes discovered half-way through the first act that her hand had been taken into a strong, placid, very gentle grasp; she glanced down quickly and did not look at Tony Merrill’s face, or very likely she would have had an even more pleasant dream that night than the one she sat in through the rest of the play.
Claudia breakfasted alone in the morning; her sister was still abed, and Stiles told her that His Lordship and Lord Merrill had had an early breakfast and had gone together down to the wharves. Consequently Claudia and Sully stared at each other silently through her tea and toast, and then she sat down for a half-hour with Consuela and Elena and the slightly intimidating young India-man Rajat. They conjugated irregular verbs and struggled through a few sentences with them, in the instructions that Claire had sent down for her.
Claudia was not a very good teacher, she thought. Her mind tended to skip over large parts of minutiae not readily accessible to others who did not speak her language, and she came away from the lesson feeling rather frustrated that she could not communicate better.
She confessed it to Tony Merrill a little timidly, forgetting to take off her spectacles when he surprised her upstairs again in the Blue Parlor, after he had asked her how her teaching had gone. “Speaking is not one of my talents,” she said, and was astonished when the calm gentleman reached out and plucked her spectacles off her nose.
“There,” Tony said, smiling slightly. “For I like them a great deal on you— it reminds me that you share my delight in books— only I can’t see your eyes, and it is with your eyes, you know, that you do your best speaking.” Claudia took the spectacles carefully from him and folded them up without looking up at him. “Like now; I should have a very good idea of everything you meant to tell me if you would look up at me, and you won’t. I wonder why?” he asked, almost to himself. The faint color on Claudia’s cheeks made her answer, with her eyes or otherwise unnecessary, and with a small smile and out of pity for her, he changed the subject.
In a few moments they went downstairs and drove back to the British Museum, because two hours yesterday had been hardly enough to view the card catalog, much less do any serious perusing. It was obvious when they left there at half-past twelve that he assumed she would lunch with him again today, for he turned down Regent Street instead of continuing down Oxford toward Cavendish Square.
“Lord Merrill,” she began, seeing the street sign as they passed.
“Tony,” he said benignly. “I thought we had that all resolved?”
“Yes; Tony, where,” she asked
calmly, “are we going? Don’t you mean to take me home?”
“No, of course not; not until this afternoon. Why? Did you have other plans?”
“Where are we going?”
“Why, to Brown’s for lunch. I am afraid that libraries tend to famish me. You shan’t mind if I grow a bit fat when I am old, shall you?”
She glanced up at him in surprise. “Of course I shall mind. And so shall your wife, I imagine, if she cares for you at all. And I cannot go with you to luncheon today.”
“Why not? Are you promised to someone else?” he inquired, smiling inexplicably at something she had said.
“No; but of course I cannot go with you two days in a row to a hotel,” she said in perfect calm voice. “Once, I am certain, was frowned upon; I don’t imagine twice will be even forgivable.”
“Perhaps,” Tony began innocently, “my house would be better? I have an excellent Cook, you know.”
“Tony!” Claudia said, her eyes widening slightly. “Certainly not! I cannot imagine that you have asked!”
“Well, then it shall have to be a hotel,” he said emphatically, “for I am not going without my lunch. But I shall think of something for tomorrow, I assure you, if you will endure Brown’s once more today.”
“What about tomorrow?” she asked, with a touch of suspicion.
“You don’t mind that I’m selfish, do you? I have already told you that I am far too interested in my own pleasure and happiness,” he said blandly.
“What are you talking about?”
“Monopolizing you,” Tony said. “It has become rather essential, you know.”
“For what?” Claudia asked, slightly puzzled. In truth he used speech a great deal like she did, leaving out certain things here and there, jumping forward now and again when something obvious didn’t have to be said.
“My happiness,” Tony explained, as if he was surprised that she didn’t already know it. “You won’t grow bored with me if I don’t continually impress you with my valor and strength, shall you?”
Claudia laughed; she had done so several times since yesterday, as if it were growing to be a habit, and it had the oddest effect on his heart. “I shall be much more impressed if you have got anything out of Varian this morning. Have you?”
“Not a bit,” Tony said cheerfully. “Have you got a word out of Claire?”
“She refuses anyone in her room,” Claudia confided, apparently unconcerned. “She always does, you know, when something oversets her. She doesn’t like it to be generally known that she is human. No tears, no mistakes, no anger, no expression— she has been that way since Papa died.”
“Has she?” remarked the placid gentleman, overwhelmed for a moment with this kind and calm lady’s unerring ability to see the truth.
“Yes; I told you that she changed after he died,” Claudia said again.
He nodded; “So you did. But you said you did not know whether it was chiefly your father’s death that caused her to change. I think that you know very well what it was, don’t you, Claudia?”
Her face was instantly unhappy; oh, perhaps he saw it only because he had learned to read her so well in the last pleasant week of this, his final courtship. “It wasn’t only Papa,” she said, after a moment, as they pulled up in Albemarle Street.
He allowed the horses to stand for a moment without throwing over the reins and turned his full attention on her. “What was it?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “But it was then that she would— would grow so silent whenever we spoke of coming home. Whenever we spoke of— ”
“Of what, darling?” It had slipped out, quite without his noticing it, partly because he was so intent on what Claudia was saying, and he was thankful that the conversation had also prevented her from noticing that endearment.
“Of Lord Banning, you know,” Claudia said suddenly, and smiled, a little unhappily, up at Tony. “I asked him last night why he never wrote to her; for it hurt her very much, I think, that he did not. Perhaps she knew then what she would be coming home to, and she was beginning already to dread it. Poor Claire,” she said quietly.
“Claudia, if I tell you something very much in confidence,” Merrill asked, after he had climbed down and come around to her side, “shall you promise not to repeat it?”
“Of course,” she nodded, surprised that he would have felt constrained to ask.
Tony put his arm lightly around her as he guided her up the steps and inside, and waved a careless hand at Mr Frost, and went straight to his table with all of his customary languidness. “Not even to breathe a hint of it to anyone in the household?” he asked quietly as he seated her.
“No, I shan’t,” Claudia said reassuringly.
He sat down. “Claire has barred her husband from her bedchamber; Varian told me so this morning.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, blinking without embarrassment at him.
Tony gave her a quick, rather unnaturally intense look from those gray eyes. “You do?”
“Well, of course; everyone in the household knows it. You don’t imagine you could keep something like that a secret, do you?”
He chuckled. “I suppose not; not that it will ever be a problem in my household. How did you find out?”
“The servants, of course!”
“Do you know the reason for it?”
“No.” Claudia reflected on this for a moment and then said, “Isn’t it that Varian doesn’t wish to be married to Claire?”
Tony chuckled again; as intelligent as she was about some things, she was remarkably dense on others. “No,” he said, shaking his head, his eyebrows raised slightly. “That is not it. Drew is so obviously in love with his wife that he did not even need to say so this morning, which he did. Claire’s told him she’s in love with someone else; someone she met in Portugal.”
“Do you know, he said the same thing to me last night before dinner! I wonder where he can have heard that, for there is not the least truth in it!” Claudia said, blinking once in surprise at her napkin, which she promptly unfolded and spread in her lap, and drew off her gloves.
“You’re certain?”
“Well, not positive; I haven’t any proof, if that is what you mean, but no, I was living in the same house with her, and I would pronounce it quite impossible!” she said, with a certain detached scientific manner. “In fact, I thought for a very long time that Claire had developed a tendre for her absent husband, but I have never been very good at guessing other people’s feelings. I could have mistaken it.”
“I cannot imagine that any two people could entangle a perfectly simple relationship into such a mess,” Tony said blandly, brushing at a speck on the otherwise perfectly pressed arm of his coat. “I have the distinct feeling, you see, that Varian and Claire love each other to distraction, only something has set them apart, and neither of them are showing the least sense in resolving it! It looks very much like it may be up to us, my dear!”
Claudia eyed him cautiously. “There you go again!”
Mystified, Tony blinked at her. “What?”
“You have told me that you do not exert yourself for other people’s happiness, and here you are disproving it yet again,” she said, a trifle sternly.
“But I have told you that I love Drew like a brother!” Tony pointed out, without apparent discomfort. “It very much affects my happiness that he is happy!”
“Then you had ought to amend your original hypothesis,” Claudia said strictly.
“Ought I? What hypothesis is this, my heart?”
Ah; she noticed that one. She dropped her eyes in sudden confusion, and then made it seem only as if she was recalling his exact words, for after a moment, she said, “That you ever go to trouble over anything that has not immediate bearing on your own pleasure and happiness. For you have just said that you do go to trouble over people you love. You will have to tag it on at the end.”
“And make it what?” Tony asked, with the faintest trace of amusement on his bland face.
“Your own pleasure and happiness, and that of the people you love, or something like that,” she said matter-of-factly.
Sudden cognition lit those phlegmatic gray eyes; he smiled and said, “Very well; The only trouble I will go to is over something that has immediate bearing on my own happiness, and that of the people I love,” he said quietly, “of whom there are not a great many, you know.”
“Aren’t there? But you were an only child, weren’t you?” she said sympathetically.
“Yes, unlike your half-mad household; all of you as alike as a litter, and as different as the continents,” he observed. “Of course I lay claim to the most beautiful of them all,” Merrill added.
Claudia’s large eyes opened very wide on his face. “What?”
“And the most generous, the most intelligent, the kindest, and very definitely,” he said, ignoring her, “the quietest.” He smiled at her as their covers arrived and were laid out, and the delicious luncheon beneath swept into place. “Capons! Excellent!” he added, and sampled his wine and nodded to the steward. “Have I spilt something down my cravat, or are you staring at someone behind me?” he asked, at last, allowing his calm gaze to rest on her face.
“No, of course not!” she said, and instantly lowered her eyes, those very pretty blue eyes— the prettiest of the five, in fact— to her plate, and was in the most studied quandary the rest of the hour, perfectly certain that she had misunderstood what she had thought, for a wild, single moment of rapture, that he meant.
The following week on a particularly fine day, the two of them convinced Varian Drew to drive out with them to Richmond Park, where the three stopped for sustenance at the inn. After Drew and Claudia watched Tony consume a magnificent luncheon, Merrill, informing them that he didn’t like to be stared at and that he fully intended to have another piece of pigeon pie whether they liked it or not, ran them off.
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