“Listen, girls, I'm not sure I should admit this, but my ancestors go back to Cromwell. And I know you people don’t think he was a very nice person, after all the things he did over here, the massacres and everything, but he was pretty good to my folks.”
“I am so pleased to hear that, I'd hate to think the man was a total jerk,” Eileen said, and we all laughed. I was just beginning to really enjoy my new friends when Mairead began her urgent beckoning again, this time from over near the drinks table. Making my excuses, I went off to see what she wanted.
As I approached, Mairead produced a tall handsome, well-dressed young man from behind her back, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
Only this kind of trick lacked magic. The man was Joshua, the blonde I’d seen tightly entwined with Sally earlier in the conservatory.
Mairead announced: “Lord Overwater, I'd like you to meet my cousin, Lady Diana Ashburnham.” She made little waving signs with her hands, shooing him towards me. She leaned and whispered in my ear: “This might be the only one in Ireland that fills all your criteria, a title, stinking rich and pretty hot as well. The rest have titles or are stinking rich, or are octogenarians and look like the back end of a bus. You'd better snap this one up.”
Oh my goodness. So the blond was a blueblood, and rich by the look of the cut of his dinner jacket. In fact, he had that sleekly casual long-term grooming gloss that distinguishes the rich from the nouveau rich and other peasants. Yep, I’d be willing to guess his ancestry went back quite a ways, and the pedigree was good.
Josh smiled at me, a heart stopping grin that certainly made my toes
curl ever so slightly. “You’ve obviously gotten over your claustrophobia and tendency to go berserk in crowds,” he said, handing me a drink from a tray served by a waiter in a white coat. Mairead looked questioningly from him to me, then shrugged and walked discreetly away.
I grimaced. “Oh, that was my friend Sally's idea of a joke. She has a quirky sense of humour.” Yes, that was good. Telling him your friends said weird things about you for laughs was a great way to snag the last of the titled millionaires. Great start, Diana.
I knew there was a very real obstacle to this relationship. I'd seen the way his eyes lit up at the mention of Sally's name.
Just then Richard, Mairead's husband, clapped to get the crowd's attention, pulling a blushingly reluctant Sally towards him. He proposed a toast to the winner of the Galway Races Ladies' Day. “And beautiful she is, too,” Richard announced as he raised his glass high.
“Well, I wonder how she’s coping with Richard’s wandering palms,” I muttered. As I turned to my companion, I caught the look on his face. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
The man who was absolutely perfect for me had the hots for my best friend.
Ain't life grand?
CHAPTER EIGHT
“So, it looked like you were getting very cosy with Joshua,” Sally said casually as we got ready for bed that evening, or should I say morning. Mairead's had party heated up as the night wore on and the cream of Irish hobnobs let their hair down.
We'd danced and drank and even played charades. I didn't know anyone played that any more, but Sally reckoned Mairead had read about it in one of those detective fiction novels set in a country house.
“And I bet Mairead knows where the bodies are buried, too,” Sally muttered.
“ Yeah, but that's because she put most of them there,” I replied, scrubbing all manner of make-up from my face with a pre-moistened towel that smelled good and promised not only to clean my face but to give me a sexy glow and make me look ten years younger. Thank goodness for Richard's company's products.
Looking at my reflection closely in Mairead's brightly lit mirrors, I thought I could see the laughter lines around my eyes actually turning into crow's feet. And was that a real wrinkle at the corner of my mouth?
I looked at my reflection a little longer and then shrugged. Ashburnham women were all better looking and sexier as they got older, so why should I be the exception?
Cleansed, toned and moisturized, there was no way I could put off answering Sally's question about Josh any longer. Still, I stalled for time.
“You mean Lord Joshua?” I asked, innocently pointing out his title.
“Lord Joshua?” Sally squeaked. Poor kid, she hadn't known.
“Yes, he's Lord Overwater, heir to a big estate and oodles of cash, and he's unmarried.”
Silence filled our room, thick and heavy like syrup but not nearly as sweet. I could almost hear Sally's brain computing. And her heart crying.
“So you and he hit it off well, did you?”
“Yeah, well, he asked me out to lunch tomorrow; should be a nice chance to get to know him.”
“Oh.”
Obviously he hadn't invited Sally to lunch, or anywhere else.
“I suppose he'd be perfect for you, both of you having titles and everything. You'd have a lot in common. And he'd know how to behave in public and everything…” Sally's voice was tiny with sorrow. I felt a pain in the place where my heart ought to be.
“He’s perfect. More than I had hoped, rich, educated, intelligent, funny, young, and titled and did I say very, very rich? He's what I came to Ireland to find. And the part about begetting an heir shouldn't be too great a hardship with something as yummy as him, either.” I hated myself. I could see my best friend crumbling before my eyes, and I still couldn’t stop.
What was I to do? Joshua was perfect for me, in every way except two.
One: I didn't really fancy him. And two: my best friend since kindergarten fancied him like mad and was falling in love with the guy she'd only met twice.
I tried to harden my heart. She barely knew him. How could she be in love with him? Sally was an attractive girl. She would find some other guy to love. She'd be like a fish out of water living in Lord Joshua's circle, being the lady of the manor. A job I’d been born and raised into and could do with my eyes shut.
Joshua, Lord Overwater, was perfect for Alexandria House and Lady Diana Ashburnham.
Sally would be perfect for Bill the Builder.
Why did I feel this awful pain under my ribs?
Must have been something I ate.
We were sharing a room because all the other rooms were filled with overnight guests, most of them too drunk to drive home and too tired, too late or too broke to hire cars. Not everyone had an attentive chauffeur like James.
Sally stayed quiet as we climbed into bed. Not sulky, but quiet. I wished she'd quit it, because it was making the pain in my heart feel worse.
“I haven't shared a bed with another girl since that awful time I was sent to boarding school.”
“Ah, so it's true what they say about those boarding school types then, is it?” Sally teased, but her heart wasn't in it.
“No, dummy. I had to share a boarding house room with Karen Fisher-Blye for one night because we were the only two who didn't have chicken pox, so we were sent out to a boarding house so we could go home the next day.”
“They sent the well kids home, and made the sick kids stay in school?”
“I’ll never forget it. I hated that boarding school so much, and I wanted to be with you and the others at the secondary school.”
“Yeah, but your parents thought you were picking up common behaviour from hanging around with us lot.”
“Nah. Well, maybe. But the real reason they sent me to boarding school was because they were fighting all the time. It had nothing to do with…Well, I don’t think they ever knew I was smoking behind the bike shed with the rest of you. Grandmamma would really have thought that was common. But Mum and Dad were fighting. I think one of them had an affair. It was nasty at home.” My voice had gone thin and high. A lot of years had passed, I was a big girl now, but those few weeks when I was twelve still had the power to make me weep. “I thought they were going to split up. I thought they hated each other. But then they seemed to get over it.”
�
�I didn't know you knew about that,” Sally said.
“You knew?”
“Pick your jaw up off the floor, dummy. Of course I knew. Everyone knew. It was the talk of the village, even down to Lower Ingersoll and Little Brownlow. “
I should have known. Suddenly, Bill's face came to mind, and the sadness and bitterness in his voice when he talked about how small a world it was. He didn't know the half of it.
“All right, clever Sally, if you know so much, why don’t you tell me?”
“Are you sure you want to hear?”
Dammit, she'd guessed I didn't really know.
“Yes,” I said, in a voice sounding very much like a child's.
“Well, your dad had been meeting up with Mrs Metcalfe-Jones, you know, the American lady who was renting Stafford Manse? But he kept leaving his bike parked outside the front gate, and your Mum got suspicious and one day she walked right in on them.”
Oh, it was more embarrassing than I thought. I wanted to hide my face in the pillow, but I was an Ashburnham, and Ashburnham's didn't hide their faces. Not for anything.
“ But the best part...well, after she'd hit the pair of them a few whacks with the broom handle, my Mum heard from Mrs Peters, who cleaned for Mrs Metcalfe-Jones, your mum told your dad to get himself home, and she told that floozy if she ever went near your dad again, she'd tell everyone about her.
“Mrs Metcalfe-Jones packed up and left the next day. Good riddance to bad rubbish, Mrs Peters said.”
“Well, I admit, I didn't know the details,” I muttered, trying to save face. I don’t know why I even bothered with the all-knowing, all-seeing Sally around.
“Yeah, well, the next part is the best.”
“I know what happened next, my mum and dad fought like mad things, and when they weren't fighting they weren't speaking, and I got sent to Boarding School Hell.”
“No, that's not it at all. Your mum had her own affair with that nice Colonel Jackson. She said it was only once. Although my mum never reckoned it was fair to Colonel Jackson, who apparently really loved your mum and was very hurt when he realized that she was just using him. He went off on a cruise to India and came back married to a showgirl he'd met on the boat. Everybody said it was rebound from your mum, but I think he just got himself a toy girl and a better deal.”
I didn't know what to say. The idea of my staid and very correct mother having revenge sex was beyond my comprehension. I couldn’t even fight in her corner about whether she was a better deal for the colonel than a showgirl. I swallowed back the tears.
“You are different, you aristocrats. There's no getting around it.”
“Different to what?” I demanded.
“Just different.”
“Aren’t we best friends? How can I be so different?”
“ Well, for one thing you wear ugly green wellies a lot, even down to the pub.” It was a weak attempt, but more like the Sally I knew and loved. The pain in my chest eased for a second, and returned when I had another thought, one that sent the aching right through my rib cage.
“Sally….can I ask you a question.”
“You would, whether I say yes or not.” She was getting sleepy, and she always got grumpy when she got sleepy.
“Well, I was just wondering... you know the necklace I lent you, the Ashburnham Emerald? Do you remember what you did with it, you know, at the races?”
I felt Sally stiffen. The burning in my chest turned into full-fledged inferno as I waited out the silence for her answer.
CHAPTER NINE
The police came out in full force early the next morning; barely two hours after Mairead's husband took the telephone out of my trembling hands and took over the conversation with a sleepy-sounding desk sergeant.
A couple of detectives, both looking world-weary, perched on Mairead's baby-blue leather sofa and tried to look as if they were always alert at 6:00 A.M.
They did not arrive so promptly because of my croaked message about a lost necklace. No, it had been Richard's firm, man-of-the-world, I-make-political-party-contributions-and-a-little-something-to-the-police-ball, request for an officer to come to their home right away, that did it, and the announcement that the victim of this possibly heinous crime was a titled lady from the UK.
“So, the last place you saw this emerald necklace was around your friend, Miss Sally's neck?”
“Her last name is Barnes and that is correct, Detective. Sally was wearing the necklace because it went well with her red hair and she'd chosen this lovely, emerald green, silk gown – from this little shop on Grafton Street, and she'd added the cutest…”
His eyes were glazing over. His sergeant's fingers slowly stopped moving over the page. Both men were going into a 'women's chatter' trance.
“I’m sorry, I'm tired and very stressed and I tend to talk too much when that happens,” I said, trying to graciously prod their consciences. After all, I'm the injured party in all this.
“I do understand, Miss…Lady Diana.”
“You’re very good,” I said. Actually, the guy was gorgeous; lots of raven's wing black hair and melting brown eyes, like chocolate… that reminds me, I'm starving. Where was Sally with the tea tray?
“So what happened then?”
“Sally won the Ladies’ Day prize at the races, a totally gorgeous diamond and red-gold necklace designed by that well-known designer…what's his name? Anyway, they insisted she wear it straightaway, and of course, she was pretty keen to, who wouldn’t be? So she whipped off the Ashburnham emeralds and they fastened this new necklace around her neck. Very nice looking, but not as classy as the antique emeralds and didn't go with her dress as well.”
I could see his eyes starting to roll back into his head. He seemed like one of those guys who would snap irritably if his wife asked him how she looks.
“What happened after that?”
“That’s the whole point, isn't it?” I pulled myself up and beamed five hundred years of breeding at the man. “If we knew what happened next, we would hardly need your services. The necklace was taken off, and Sally hasn't a clue what happened to it.”
Silence but for the manic scribbling in the notebook. I think I saw a slight smile flickering around the sergeant's lips as I berated his superior, but I could be wrong.
“So, what is this necklace worth? The boss cop sniffed. “I assume it has been recently appraised.”
Assume away, chump, obviously you don’t have to pay English taxes and death duties.
“Well, most of the Ashburnham jewellery has been appraised at various times. It's difficult to get insurance on such items as they have a value far beyond that of the stones and precious metals. They have historic provenance.”
There, chew on that, Mr Policeman.
“So this particular piece, when was it last appraised?”
“About 1965.”
“1965?” His lovely black eyebrows disappeared under that curly lock of hair.
“Yes, well – appraisals are usually done for death duties—”
“And no one has died in your family since l965?” The poor man was trying to make sense of a world he would never understand,
“Not at all, there aren't many of us but what there are, usually have the good grace to pass away at an appropriate time. But not all items are appraised for each Ashburnham's death, because not all Ashburnhams own each item.” I said. I was glossing, really. The reason most things weren't appraised was that, if they were, the death duties would be so high that we wouldn't have so much as a glass bead left now.
“Okay, so what would you expect its worth to be, based on the appraisal?” Detective Liam's voice was taking on a pained sound. I bet he'd sound a whole lot more pained if he'd just lost his family jewels, so to speak.
“Well, the price must have gone up a fair bit since l965. It appraised then at £200,000, pounds sterling, that is. I imagine its worth about £300,000 or more by now.”
There was a crash and a scream from the doorway. The thre
e of us swivelled around just in time to see Sally follow the tray of tea things to the floor. Brown tea, sugar, milk, lemon slices and biscuits all mixed with Sally in a dead faint on Mairead's white shag.
“Shit! I didn't mean for her to hear that, poor Sally had no idea what that necklace was worth!” I raced towards my friend, dropping down on my knees to cradle her head. “This was my entire fault. I didn't tell her, because she'd never have been able to relax and enjoy herself. She's such a responsible person she'd have been worrying about the damned necklace the whole day. And she looked so pretty with it on, at the races”
“Yeah, it did seem to come as a bit of a shock, seeing her react like this,” Detective Liam stated.
Wow, the powers of deduction. Citizens of Wicklow, sleep soundly in your beds, Detective Liam is on the case!
“Come on, Sally! Wake up!” I cried, slapping her on the face as I'd been taught in boarding school first aid classes. ‘Ladies with the vapours, if there are no smelling salts handy, slap 'em.’ I could still hear the gym teacher, who taught the first aid training, tell us. It had the desired effect, not one of her charges fainted or even pretended to faint throughout the school year.
“Oh, Sally, come on!” I wailed, slapping her again.
“Diana...” The voice was weak, but Sally was rallying.
“Sally, the money doesn't mean a thing! You're my best friend!” And I meant it, too.
“Diana!” The croak was stronger now. The poor thing was obviously moved by my distress.
“Diana!”
“Yes?”
“If you don’t stop slapping me, so help me I'll put your lights out!”
I looked at my hand, raised for another slap. I'd been thumping her in the face in time with my bleating.
“Ooops!” I dropped the hand self-consciously and managed a glare at the detective sergeant, who whispered, “ Oh, bitch fight!” to his boss. Their smirks quickly disappeared under my murderous glance.
I helped Sally up. It seemed the least I could do.
“Diana!” Mairead's voice scratched my nerves.
Marrying Money: Lady Diana's Story Page 6