by Joan Smith
“Do you not mean to present me to your little girl, Marcia?” he asked.
“To be sure, Claudia, this is Sir Hillary Thoreau—your aunt Sophie’s husband’s . . . Well, it is quite confusing, but Hillary’s cousin married Mr. Tewksbury’s brother.”
“Let us say I am Gabriel’s guardian; it is the easiest way,” Hillary added.
“He ain’t really nothing to Sophie,” the captain inserted.
“You cut me to the quick,” Hillary replied, “I was her closest neighbor, and as close to a friend as she had, poor old girl. Our mutual interest in Gabriel brought us closer together.”
“Fact remains,” the captain pointed out, “you ain’t nothing but a connection to her.”
“I claim no closer kinship, I promise you. But, of course, it is not the kinship or lack of it that disturbs you. Do you fear I have insinuated myself into her heart, and worse, will? Perish the thought. She promised me her chess set. I doubt she remembered to give it to me, but that is the sole possession of hers I ever coveted.”
“You won’t get Swallowcourt anyway,” Jonathon said.
“I am suitably thankful for small mercies.” Thoreau answered.
“Well, and is Luane to get it all then?” Mrs. Milmont asked.
“That only takes us to the end of February,” Hillary continued, settling back comfortably, “What was it you did, brat, to turn the tide against you?” he asked Miss Beresford.
“It was the dog,” Luane reminded him.
“To be sure, it was. Because of a dog a fortune was lost, if I may paraphrase an old saw. A small spaniel, quite adorable, but with an unfortunate lack of manners which we shall not go into in mixed company. Suffice it to say, he was caught wet-handed, and in this very room, too.”
“No, it was in her room, on the new carpet,” Luane corrected.
“I told you how to train him, Loo,” Gabriel said to her and proceeded to tell her once again what she should have done.
“Who does get it all then?” Marcia demanded, becoming impatient with this dallying manner of explaining things.
Again Sir Hillary’s hands went up, and he hunched his shoulders to indicate he was at a loss.
“You mean to say you have no idea, and have been wasting our time with this farradiddle?” the captain demanded.
“I was under the misapprehension I was helping you pass this evening of mourning rather agreeably,” Thoreau answered, offended.
“Does Luane get the diamonds, that’s what I want to know,” Mrs. Milmont asked him.
“It was one of many versions of the will,” Sir Hillary told her. “They were to go to Luane, Jonathon, Gabriel—turn upon turn. Round and round and round they go, but where they stopped nobody knows, as the fortune wheel man at Bartholomew Fair says.”
“I don’t see why they ought to go to Luane any more than to Claudia,” Mrs. Milmont insisted.
“Did your little girl really want the garish things?” Hillary asked. “Have you been pining all these years for a vulgar set of stones in the worst possible taste, little Claudia? I never suspected you of such rapacious leanings for a moment.”
“Of course, she wanted them!” her mother replied. “Fifty thousand pounds, and Claudia a poor fatherless child.” The monogrammed handkerchief, somewhat rumpled from its many outings, was out once more.
“And virtually motherless,” Hillary added, with a quizzing look at Marcia. “But Claudia has not answered.” Nor did she, but only sat staring at him with a mesmerized look in her eyes. In her sheltered life in the country, she had never encountered anyone like this sleek person. She felt as though he were a snake charmer, and she a snake, rising up out of a basket. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Naturally, anyone would,” the captain added.
“And still little Claudia has not answered,” Thoreau remarked sadly. Then he appeared to forget it and turned to Miss Bliss. “I expect the tea is quite tepid by now. Odd you didn’t offer me a cup, ma'am.”
“You aren’t the only uncivil one in the room,” she said sharply. She then put her hand to the pot. “It’s still warm,” she said. “Would you like some?”
“I wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself, but there is a bitter wind outside.”
He arose to get his own cup to save Lavinia Bliss the exertion, and when he had it filled, he did not return to his former seat but went to an empty chair beside Claudia.
“You did not answer my question, darling,” he said. “Did you truly want the diamonds?”
Claudia had never been called darling by anyone since her papa had died. The smooth-spoken, elegant gentleman bending towards her now, an ironic smile on his face, did not remind her of her papa. Nor of anyone she had ever met in real life. He had stepped straight out of the pages of the lurid marble-covered novels of her young years, and she knew him at once for the villain, hiding his shame beneath a fashionable facade.
“I didn’t know there were diamonds in the case,” she said simply.
“Less and less can I credit you to be your mama’s daughter,” he said, his eyes widening a shade. He regarded the quaint creature before him. Utterly unlike the common, encroaching mama in appearance. Less bright, less brittle—a soft-edged water color, set against a hard-edged painting.
“I am thought to resemble my papa,” she replied.
“I was slightly acquainted with Henry Milmont. I was only a young fellow when he died—it must have been a decade ago, n’est-ce pas?”
“Nine years, actually.”
“And in all those years no one told you you had a rich aunt with whom you ought to be on terms? You have been badly treated, my dear.”
“Certainly I knew I had an Aunt Sophie. Mama often spoke of her.”
“And never of the diamonds? Strange, in my conversations with your mama, they were an inseparable pair—Sophie and the diamonds.”
“Do you know my mother well?” Claudia asked. Strange that he seemed to, yet mama had said they were not friends.
“I believe I know her fairly well,” he said, with a speculative glance at Marcia, who was observing them eagerly. She was uneasy to see Hillary in close conversation with Claudia—an artless girl who might go giving away her age or say something indiscreet. She arose and went to join them.
“Now you have met my daughter, Sir Hillary, you must congratulate me on her.”
“It is Henry who wants congratulating, darling. She doesn’t take after you in the least.”
“No, she is a Milmont through and through.”
“She has been telling me what a naughty mother you are, you know, and I think you have some explaining to do.”
“What nonsense has she been telling you?” she snapped, throwing a suspicious look at her daughter.
“No, mama, Sir Hillary is fooling. I didn’t say anything . . .”
He looked and wondered at the expression on their faces.
“Now what have I inadvertently stumbled into?” he asked aloud. “Marcia, my dear, have you taken a lover, after all these years of celibacy?”
“How dare you, sir! And in front of my daughter, too.”
“But you assured me she is pure Milmont. She won’t have a notion what we’re talking about. Henry never had. Not a lover then. Well, in that case, I admit the whole affair is beginning to bore me. What I meant, by the by, is only that you forgot to tell Claudia about the diamonds. She tells me she hadn’t realized there were diamonds in the case.”
“I hope I have not raised Claudia to be a grasping sort of girl.”
“Whoever raised her for you seems to have led her away from that path. Henry’s folks, wasn’t it?”
Her bosom swelled with frustration. “Because of her health, it was necessary for Claudia to stay in the country.”
“It proves to have effected a miraculous cure,” he said, smiling. “Quite a remarkable bloom on those cheeks. No rouge either,” he said, peering a little more closely at Claudia, then comparing with a glance at her mother. “Do you know,
Marcia darling, I think you ought to try a sojourn in the country.”
“When I want your advice, I will be sure to ask for it, Sir Hillary.”
“And I will be sure to give it, to the best of my poor ability. But what must your daughter think of us, squabbling as though we were husband and wife—and in a house of death, too. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let us have Luane and Gabriel take your little daughter to see the diamonds and other jewels—the case of reproductions, that is to say, and you and I can get down to fighting in good earnest. I mean to pull a crow with you over the shameful manner in which you have neglected Claudia’s education. I mean the diamonds you forgot to tell her about, darling. Don’t blanch so—it highlights the rouge dreadfully. Have you neglected her education in other areas as well, you appalling woman? Don’t tell me she doesn’t waltz and speak French and do those ugly little embroideries the ladies are all crazy for.”
“Of course, she does!”
Claudia chuckled and her mother withered her with a stare. “Sorry, mama.”
“I’ll speak to you later, young lady.”
“Stand up to her,” Hillary advised in an audible aside. “It is the only way with these old tartars.”
“Well!” from Mrs. Milmont.
“Not speaking chronologically, you understand. ‘Old’ in the sense of ‘damned’ you know—or let us say ‘cursed,’ or even ‘blasted.’ Come along!” He held a hand out to Claudia. To her mother he said before leaving, “That will give you a few moments to get your temper under control and think up a sharp answer for me.”
Claudia arose till her eyes were not so far below the level of Sir Hillary’s own, and he looked at her in surprise. “You’re a big little Claudia, aren’t you, darling?” he said, taking her arm in his and leading her across the room.
“You’ll never guess the way this young lady has been maltreated,” he said to Gabriel. “While we have been plotting and scheming how to get the diamonds all these years, Miss Milmont has not even been aware of their existence. Really she has been treated abominably, and I for one would have written her about them had I known of her ignorance. Well, it’s too late to do any good now, but you and Luane can show her the case of reproductions in the armaments room, to prepare her for the shock of the genuine article when she sees it.”
“Oh, yes, cousin. You will die laughing to see how ugly they are,” Luane replied. “Come along, Gab,” she said.
Hillary stood a moment looking at the trio and continued to stare after them as they left the room together. There was a certain maturity about both the face and figure of Miss Milmont, when she stood side by side with young Luane, that argued her being a little older then her mama implied. His mind ran back over the history of her family, and it occurred to him that he had been hearing about ‘little Claudia’ ever since he was a sprig himself. He looked at Mrs. Milmont, frowning in concentration, then to her great dismay, he turned and followed Gabriel and the girls from the room.
Chapter Four
Sophronia Tewksbury, when alive, had had made a very good copy of each piece of jewelry as she acquired it. This was not done for the usual purpose of wearing the copy to public parties to prevent the original from being lost or stolen. She rarely went out to parties and, when she did, she wore the originals which were heavily insured. It was her pleasure to have the copies mounted on blue velvet and displayed in a locked glass case in the armaments room, between two suits of rusty armor which stood guard over them. Visitors to Swallowcourt could then be allowed to admire her possessions without the bother of her getting them out of hiding. They were kept in a carefully bolted box in the wine cellar, behind a couple of empty hogsheads that had once contained Chambertin. Only herself, Miss Bliss, and the butler knew the secret hiding-place. Since Sophie had been bedridden, it was the unenviable task of Miss Bliss to descend to the cave and procure whichever piece Sophie required for the week. She had to go down only once a week.
It was to this glass case, standing between the suits of armor, that Luane now led Miss Milmont to show her the reproductions. “There they are,” she said dispassionately, holding a branched candelabra high to give a view of the ersatz treasures. In the shadowed light, against the dark velvet, they looked magnificent. The diamond necklace was the star of the show—great rock-sized chunks of sparkling stone fashioned into a necklace long enough to lie on the chest. Suspended from it at the very center was a pear-shaped stone as big as a plover’s egg.
“It looks for the world like a chandelier,” Miss Milmont pronounced, and a throaty laugh escaped her. “Are there candles to go with it?”
“You have an unerring eye in your head, Miss Milmont,” Hillary said, coming up behind her.
She jumped, for she had not heard him approach.
“Yes, it is gross,” Luane agreed, hardly glancing at it. “But I still hope it’s mine.”
“It must surely be going to you, don’t you think, Uncle Hil?” Gabriel asked. Hillary was not his uncle, but the termination had been agreed upon early in their relation ship.
“It is wisest not to count your chickens before they’re hatched. According to kinship, Miss Milmont has as much right to it.”
“I shall now answer a question you asked me previously, Sir Hillary,” Claudia said. “After seeing them, I have no hesitation in proclaiming a total disinterest in Aunt Sophie’s diamonds. That red ring is nice though—a ruby I suppose. How oddly it is cut; it looks like a cherry.”
“It is called a cabochon—polished rather than faceted,” Sir Hillary explained.
“Oh, and that huge rope must be the pearls I have heard mama mention. How very well they look.”
“Mama did mention the pearls, did she? She was not quite so negligent as I accused her of being. Yes, the glass beads with fish-scale coating give a good likeness of real pearls in the half-darkness.”
“Of them all, I prefer the emerald ring,” Gabriel said, looking into the case.
“She was wearing it today,” Claudia told him. “It is the only one of her jewels I have actually seen.”
“I like the little diadem of diamonds,” Luane said. “She let me wear it once, and it was very uncomfortable.”
“That would be because she screwed it to your head,” Hillary suggested. “No borrowing of the jewels was ever taken lightly.”
“I wasn’t even leaving the house. Don’t you remember—it was on my sixteenth birthday. I thought she meant to give it to me, only she gave me a netting box instead.”
Claudia gave her a commiserating smile. “You would not have liked it if it was uncomfortable.”
“Pooh, I don’t care for a little discomfort.”
“I do,” Sir Hillary said. “And if Miss Milmont has gazed her fill at these pieces of glass, I suggest we leave this drafty room and return to the Saloon, where we might be comfortable with a cup of lukewarm, now almost certainly cold, tea.”
“I’ll get you a glass of wine instead,” Luane told him.
“Thank you, no, brat. I value my health even more than my comfort, and vinegar doesn’t agree with me.”
They returned to the Saloon and the cold tea, and Sir Hillary went to Miss Bliss. “Have arrangements been set in progress for the funeral?”
“We notified the vicar, and Jonathon wrote notes to several neighbors. As tomorrow happens to be Sunday, the vicar can announce the death and date of the funeral for anyone who wants to come.”
“Is Jonathon putting the hatchment up, and doing the knocker in crape? Sophie would have wanted the whole works.”
“The butler is seeing to it.”
“It’s a macabre enough thing to mention at this time, but you must be inured to oddities after ten years’ internment in this mausoleum. What I’m talking about is the barbaric necessity for a sort of feast, after the funeral. I suspect, knowing the dear late Sophronia, the cupboards are bare. Tomorrow being Sunday, and the funeral on Monday, shall I bring some things from Chanely?”
“There’s a plum cake I was
planning to serve Sunday—we could save it.”
“Mmm—but I do feel, you know, that you ought to feed the guests something tomorrow, Sunday or no. I shall risk losing my cook by setting him to bake up the funeral feast on the Sabbath. It will be a nuisance to haul everything over. You’ll need some decent wine, too, and very likely some extra glasses and dishes. Do you know, Miss Blissful, I begin to think the easier way is to hold the after-service party chez moi. Will it look too very odd?”
Miss Bliss considered it, and though it would certainly appear odd, it would be such a blessed relief that she did not reject the offer out of hand.
“Is it the proprieties that deter you? I can see it is. Never mind, it will be taken for only one more instance of my encroaching ways by the mourning relatives. I have the excuse of Gab’s being her nephew.”
“It would be no odder than the sort of spread that would be put on here,” she allowed reluctantly.
He smiled at her, not the sneering smile recently seen, but quite a warm, engaging expression. “What has kept you here so long, Blissful? You know I have been trying to lure you over to Chanely this age.”
“No, you haven’t,” she said bluntly. “And if this is your roundabout way of offering me asylum now that she’s gone, thank you, but no. I have other plans.”
“I remember the chicken farm, and what a haven it will seem after this, but I confess my motives were not so philanthropic. I may have need of you, darling.”
“Then you’d better stop slumming me with your ‘darlings’,” she answered curtly, not without a twinkle in her eyes, “What possible need could you have of me? Your housekeeper is unexceptionable, and you have more flirts than you know what to do with.”
“You underestimate me. I know what to do with everyone of them, but I am always on the lookout for another unattached Incomparable. Yes, and I fear I am about to inherit one.” He glanced to Miss Beresford.
“I’ve been wondering what is to be done about Luane. I suppose there’s no hope of Mrs. Milmont’s offering to take her. If the girl inherits something, I mean.”