‘Well, I’m ready,’ she rose languidly, to be stopped by a horrified shriek from Alice.
‘You’re never going down without gloves!’
‘Oh, pshaw! I can’t be bothered with them tonight! If Mr. Jay don’t like being treated as family, he needn’t come.’ And with this silencer, she swept out of the room.
She trod soberly down the short flight of steps that led from the bedrooms to the first floor, where, she knew, their less formal entertainments took place. The large party for Mt. Jay, next week, would be held mainly on the ground floor; today she would find her ‘husband’ entertaining his friend in the study he himself had designed. She crossed the hall, aware, as she looked fleetingly down over the balustrade to the lower one, of a little crowd of servants, their chattering suddenly hushed by her appearance. What a mercy she had learned the plan of this house so well. No need to hesitate for an instant as she made for the door at the right front of the upstairs landing. But now, oddly, Mr. Jay had set his doors, flat in the corners, under the sweeping curve of the ceiling.
She pushed it open and paused for a moment, unexpectedly delighted with what she saw. ‘Oh, Hyde’s study,’ Josephine had exclaimed impatiently. ‘Full to the ceiling with books. Two sets, mind you! One at Savannah and one at Winchelsea. You won’t need to bother about that!’ A great book, or even a small one, had always been a great evil to Josephine.
Juliet, on the other hand, had to tear her eyes away from those tantalising shelves to concentrate on the two black-garbed gentlemen who had risen to greet her. If Hyde had been elegant in his day-time grey suiting, in evening black he was superb. But it was Mr. Jay whom she must greet first. He was younger than she had expected and not quite so handsome as Josephine had led her to imagine. His evening dress looked, to her expert eye, as if it had been made for him, in a hurry, here in Savannah. He took her hand and pressed it a little too hard. ‘At last,’ he said.
‘Have I been so long? I cry you a thousand pardons.’ She turned to Hyde. ‘And you, my dear.’ Fantastic to be calling this stranger her dear. And then, her eye caught by the intricate folds of his cravat, ‘My congratulations! A waterfall?’
He looked down at her (how tall he was) quizzically. ‘You are quite out, my love. A trône d’anzour. I try, you see, to live up to my occasions.’ Now his glance was flickering past her to young Mr. Jay. What in the world had Josephine forgotten to tell her about him? Or was ‘forgotten’ the word?
Mercifully another little black boy bounced in at that point to announce that supper was served in the back parlour and she was able once again to demonstrate her schooling in the geography of the house as she led the way to the room at the opposite corner of the hall where a loaded table awaited them. Josephine had told her about her ‘little suppers’ but had hardly led her to expect the lavish variety of cold meats, oysters and various unrecognisable made dishes that were laid out among a profusion of silver, china and deeply cut glass.
The beauty of the ‘little suppers’, Josephine had explained, was that she had them so organised that, except for one change of courses, they could wait upon themselves. ‘I call it a beaufet. It obviates all the misery of half-trained servants.’
It also had, tonight, the signal advantage that they were all busy for a while pressing each other to the various dishes that stood ready on the table. Mr. Jay was so obviously hungry that Juliet thought this must be his first meal of the day and was happy to be occupied in pressing him to more cold turkey and ham, and keeping him well-supplied from the dish of delicious hot corn rolls that stood beside her. It gave her time to appreciate just what an odd trio they made. Mr. Jay took each dish from her hand as if she was giving him the keys of heaven. Hyde, facing him across the table, ate little, poured surprisingly good claret for them all, and kept the conversation going admirably on a variety of topics. Among so many other things she had forgotten, Josephine had failed to warn her of the width of his range. Maybe she had never noticed? Juliet found herself perpetually in a puzzle as to whether she should pretend ignorance of Sir John Sloane and Mr. Adam, or whether she must assume that Mr. Jay had told Josephine about them.
She compromised, said little, smiled a great deal, and ate hardly anything. At last, dessert finished, with the move back to the tea urn in the front parlour, they got down to the business of the evening, and she felt a good deal safer. Josephine had told her a great deal about the plans for the party that was to celebrate the new theatre’s opening on 4th December. The elite of Savannah were to come back here after the performance for a little supper and a great deal of dancing. Mr. Jay’s main anxiety seemed to be about how the guests would get from the theatre to the house.
‘Yes,’ said Hyde thoughtfully. ‘It must be all of three blocks from Chippewa Square. Could you walk that, through our Savannah sand, in your little satin slippers, my love?’
‘In the dark!’ She made it a squeak of dismay.
‘But if they wait for carriages,’ said Jay gloomily, ‘the party will hardly get started before morning.’
‘It’s a barbarous town, is it not?’ Hyde sounded very cheerful about it. ‘General Oglethorpe should have thought of sand, and ladies’ shoes, before he decided to build here. I agree with you about the carriages, Mr. Jay. What with the incompetence of the grooms and the delays of the ladies, we should have a traffic block that would last all night. So, I discussed this very question with my friend Scarbrough at the Exchange today and we agreed that there was nothing for it but to lay a carpet between the theatre and here.’
‘A carpet?’
‘Red, of course. Mr. Scarbrough thinks he has the very thing in his warehouse somewhere. He’s to look it out tomorrow. He says he owes it to you for the trouble you are taking on that house of his.’
‘You mean he’ll lend the carpet?’ Jay suddenly looked very young indeed.
‘I think “give” would be a more appropriate word, don’t you? I hardly imagine there will be much future, except as a souvenir, for a carpet that has lain in our Savannah streets all night. But it will add, will it not, quite a note to the festivities?’
‘It certainly will.’ Juliet thought it was time she joined in. ‘But where will you have it laid, my dear? Down South Broad Street, I suppose?’
‘Yes. With torch-bearers at the corners where they are needed. Scarbrough and I are asking all our friends with houses along the way to see that they are well illuminated. You’ll speak to Mr. Richardson, Jay?’
‘Their house is on the wrong side of the square,’ objected Juliet, pleased with herself. ‘Coming from the theatre, our guests will surely use the other side.’
‘No harm in having the square well-lighted. We considered a bonfire in the middle. Scarbrough and I, but decided against it. The last thing we want is to start a fire.’
‘I should think not indeed,’ said Juliet warmly. ‘And, besides, it might damage the Pride of India trees.’
‘Quite so. But I have more news for you, my love. I know Mr. Jay will be interested too. We have just heard from New York that the Savannah will be ready for her maiden voyage by spring.’
The Savannah? Juliet was lost. What in the world was he talking about? ‘How delightful, my dear,’ she made herself sound casual. After all, this must be the kind of matter of business with which Josephine had declared herself ‘bored to distraction’.
And, mercifully, ‘The steamship?’ interjected Mr. Jay. ‘She’s to be finished at last! Now that is splendid news, sir. And what are your plans for her, pray?’
‘Not mine. I’m but a sleeping partner in the affairs of the Savannah Steamship Company. But I think it is safe to assume they will want her down here for the start of her voyage to Europe. That should be quite a party too, should it not, my dear?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Eagerly. Parties, after all, were supposed to be her main concern. ‘But I suppose that one will be the Countess’s affair.’
‘Mrs. Scarbrough?’ His tone told her that he did not like the nickname Josephine had taught her so care
fully. ‘Yes. I believe she is hoping you will have finished their house by then, Mr. Jay.’ Tactfully, he made it only half a question.
‘Oh, so do I!’ William Jay has had a good deal of wine. ‘But my dear Mr. Purchis, you know as well as I do the difficulties under which I labour. The workmen! If work is the word. And, God bless her, then there is Mrs. Scarbrough herself. If she has changed her mind once, she has done so a hundred times. Now you were the perfect clients. You knew what you wanted. I did it. We are all satisfied.’
‘Indeed.’ Across the table, Hyde caught Juliet’s eye. How in the world was she supposed to know what this matrimonial exchange meant?
‘Yes, indeed,’ she plunged in warmly. ‘I never saw anything in Paris to touch it. Only, do you know, Mr. Jay, I cannot quite get used to these square doorways tucked away under curving cornices.’
‘What!’ Now she had done it. ‘But my dear — Mrs. Purchis —’ Was the ‘Mrs. Purchis’ added as an afterthought? ‘You said they were such a novelty!’
‘Yes,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘That is just exactly what I think them.’
***
‘He left early.’ Hyde had just returned from seeing their guest downstairs. ‘I’m not quite sure that he fancies you as a critic of architecture, my love.’
‘Was it very bad of me?’ Here was her chance to retrieve her blunder. ‘I never meant to speak of it, only, just tonight I found it so particularly awkward to get my skirts through that odd little three-cornered opening. And you can see how difficult the —’ she had almost said ‘slaves’ — ‘the servants find it.’
‘Yes.’ He laughed. ‘Particularly with trays. Poor Mr. Jay, his theory is admirable, but I do think that perhaps he is a little short on the practical side. It will be interesting to see what he makes of Mr. Scarbrough’s house.’
‘Yes.’ She was so tired that it was an effort to keep upright in her chair. What had Josephine said? ‘No need to be troubling yourself about Hyde. The moment your guests leave, he will shut himself up in his study again. He always does.’ But here stood Hyde — Mr. Purchis — her ‘husband’, very much at his ease, leaning against William Jay’s Adam-style chimney-piece and looking down at her thoughtfully.
‘You are sure you won’t mind walking all the way home from Mr. Jay’s theatre?’ he asked now. ‘We can hardly ask our guests to do so if we are not prepared to ourselves.’
‘No, of course not. But — the carpet. It must cost a fortune!’
‘You think us extravagant, Scarbrough and I? What a delightful change, my dear. You will be telling me next that you have forsworn such fashionable gewgaws as jewels. I have been meaning, all evening, to congratulate you on your plain style. It becomes you.’
‘Oh, la!’ She laughed nervously. ‘There’s a story behind that. The most unfortunate thing. I have contrived to lose the key to my jewel boxes somewhere between here and Winchelsea. Mr. Jay must have thought me perfectly squalid.’
‘I doubt that. If ever I saw a man being entertained by an angel, it was poor Mr. Jay. But how comes it that you did not apply to me for the other key? Surely you cannot have forgotten that I have kept it safe for you, ever since I bought you the boxes, with just such a possibility in mind.’
Idiot that she was! Of course there would be two keys. Now she was in the basket and no mistake. She yawned prettily. ‘And disturb you when I knew Mr. Jay had already arrived? That would have been carrying domesticity pretty far, don’t you think? Besides,’ she rose and moved languidly to a gold-framed glass. ‘I rather fancy myself like this. I believe I shall set a new style. Won’t it just infuriate the Countess.’
‘I wish you will not call her that.’ His change of tone was frightening. ‘She is the wife of my good friend and business associate. You have her permission, as I well know, to call her Julia. You will do so, if you please. If our small-minded Savannah ladies choose to mock her as a stranger you should be the first to take her part. After all, you are not exactly a native here yourself.’
‘No, thank God,’ she said pertly. ‘But I am Mrs. Purchis of Winchelsea.’
For an extraordinary, suspended moment she thought he was going to strike her. Then the tension drained out of him, the black rage faded from his face and he leaned back once more against the marble chimney-piece. ‘Why, so you are,’ he said. ‘And all the more reason for behaving like a lady, if you can.’
Chapter Four
Memory of that instant of swift, formidable rage haunted Juliet through the tightrope walk of the next days. Why had Josephine never warned her of her husband’s temper? But then, with every anxious moment, she was realising just how little of real importance Josephine had, in fact, told her. Nothing surprising about that, perhaps. Josephine’s idea of what was important and her own had always been totally different.
Anyway, she had little enough time for brooding as she inched her way, step by cautious step, into her role as Josephine. Inside the house, things were not too bad. She had managed to put names to most of the servants by now, and besides, ‘I forget sometimes myself,’ Josephine had said cheerfully. ‘They breed so fast.’ Josephine had also warned her not to interfere with old Venus’s running of the household: ‘I made a few changes when I first arrived ... My little suppers; a few things like that. But in the main the only thing is to let her carry on in the old way; she’s capable of nothing else.’
This was obviously true enough, but just the same it irked Juliet’s tidy French soul to see the scrambling style of things, with three servants, in a muddled kind of way, trying to achieve together what one alone could have done much better. The food was delicious, but as it was cooked in a sinister shed in the back yard, and then brought laboriously indoors and upstairs, invariably cold.
‘Just as well it’s all going to be cold anyway for the party,’ she told Anne over the late, luxurious breakfast in bed, which at once followed Josephine’s habit and avoided the chance of meeting Hyde before he went out in the morning.
‘Yes.’ Anne looked anxious, as well she might. The party was now only two days off. ‘Do you think you will be able to manage if madame doesn’t get back in time?’
‘I think I shall have to. It will be a miracle if she does, and I don’t much believe in miracles. So come to the window, Anne, and let’s see who is going by.’ She pushed the tray down to the foot of the bed, reached for the swansdown-trimmed negligée that she privately detested, and swung her legs out of bed.
‘It’s a pity Mr. Purchis didn’t build his house in one of the busier squares,’ said Anne, joining her at the boudoir window. ‘Now if we were in Reynolds, with the Planters’ Bank, we’d have everyone by every day, but over here it’s not so easy. Still,’ brightening up, ‘there’s Mrs. Richardson getting into her carriage.’
‘Oh, I know her. But who’s that with her?’
‘In the blue? Why, Mrs. Bolton of course.’
‘Mr. Jay’s sister? Anne, what in the world am I going to do about Mr. Jay?’ On one pretext or another about the party, he had been a daily visitor, his infatuation almost comically obvious.
‘What else can you do but what madame did? Let it go on and pretend to take no notice. It will do him no harm, poor young man. They all go through it, some time or other.’
‘Yes.’ Doubtfully. She had not managed to bring herself to tell Anne about Hyde’s sudden, frightening fit of rage that first night, but thinking it over afterwards, had almost decided it must be due to jealousy. It was an alarming thought. If he was capable of jealousy still, could Hyde really be the passionless husband in name only that Josephine had described? She could hardly help a wry and private smile as she thought to herself how extraordinarily inconvenient it would be if Hyde should choose this particular moment to try and re-establish his relationship with his wife. She stopped smiling soon enough. Inconvenient? It would be disaster.
‘Talking about the Planters’ Bank,’ she plunged into speech to drown her thoughts. ‘What in the world am I to do about money, Anne? I
simply must have gloves that fit for the party! And the pairs I brought the other day for morning wear have exhausted the money Josephine left me. And I won’t borrow your savings, either,’ she anticipated Anne’s next remark. ‘You’re an angel, but I won’t.’
‘You’re sure you couldn’t manage madame’s signature? At the bank?’
‘Quite sure. It’s one thing to write little notes to her friends. Josephine’s and my hands, both being French, are like enough to another, and unlike anything else here, so that I can manage that, but the Bank is something else again. Besides, I don’t know how Josephine behaves there. No, it’s hopeless.’
‘You’ll have to borrow from me,’ said Anne stolidly. ‘It’s only till madame returns, after all. You can fix things better before next time.’
Next time? Would there be a next time? All her instincts warned her that this imposture was infinitely more dangerous than she had ever imagined it could be. ‘Oh, well —’ Once again she spoke to avoid thinking. ‘Time to get dressed, I suppose. Ring for Alice, would you, Anne?’ And then, at a gentle tapping on the door. ‘Who’s that? Oh —’ She pulled the negligée more tightly round her at sight of Hyde, fully dressed to go out. He had never visited her in her room before, and his appearance now came all too alarmingly pat on what she had been thinking. In his surtout, mocked part of her mind, ridiculous. Anyway, thank God, Anne was there.
‘Good morning.’ If Hyde had noticed her look of surprise, he gave no sign of it. Anyway, she comforted herself, he was, by Josephine’s report, a rare enough visitor so she had a right to look surprised. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early,’ he went on, closing the door quietly behind him, ‘but I have been thinking about the party.’
She managed Josephine’s laugh. ‘As if we did anything else!’
‘You don’t find it tedious, I hope?’ Was there a note of surprise in his voice?
‘Good gracious, no! When did I ever find a party tedious? Surely you know me better than that! But, between you and me, and Anne here,’ she smiled at him wickedly, ‘I am beginning to find poor Mr. Jay and his constant visits just a trifle ennuyeux. If you should see him in town this morning, my dear [it was always a curious effort to call him that] and could manage to hint him away, if only for twenty-four hours, I would be your debtor for life.’
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