Aurora

by Joan Smith

  “Oh no,” Rorie agreed.

  “She’s driving down the road to see who is going. She is out spying,” Marnie decided. This seemed very Clare-like, but when the brougham turned up the curved sweep to Bradhurst Hall, the explanation seemed inadequate. Even Clare would not be so brazen and ill-mannered as to drive her carriage to the door of a party to which she had not been invited, to spy out the guests.

  “She’s got Kenelm to get her invited,” was Marnie’s next opinion.

  “Would Lady Alice be so gullible?” Rorie wondered. It was beginning to seem the credulity of other ladies ex­ceeded even her own where Kenelm was concerned.

  “He’d talk her into it. Lady Alice is very eager to see his claim settled so that she might get on with marrying him. Much chance she has if Clare has got her talons into him. I have a good mind to turn the carriage around and go home. What do you say?”

  “An excellent idea,” Rorie agreed at once. She really didn’t feel up to a party as overendowed with intrigue as this one promised to be, yet she would be sorry to miss it.

  But still the carriage advanced along the drive toward the front door without any command being given to the driver. With a curiosity so rampant as to be consuming her, Marnie had no real thought of missing the party. The reception accorded Lord Raiker had been canvassed a dozen times. Both ladies had their cool “Good evening, Lord Raiker” at their finger tips, but they had never foreseen the necessity of preparing a strategy vis-à-vis Clare. “Shall we speak to her?” Marnie asked as they dismounted from the carriage.

  “I must,” Rorie decided. How could she suddenly cease speaking after having spent two nights under her roof so very recently?

  “See if you can get anything out of her,” Marnie warned. “I’ll speak, but coolly.”

  Clare was no real problem. She was no more interested in pursuing any friendship with the ladies than were they with her. The dowager’s reception of them could hardly have been cooler had she rehearsed it as they had Kenelm’s. She nodded her head a slight fraction of an inch and parted her lips in a vestige of a smile. Lady Alice received Clare with every polite attention. She showed her a seat beside Lady Spencer, who disliked her less intensely than most, and sat on her other side herself, giving confirma­tion to the suspicion that she was working in harness with Kenelm. Certainly he had put her up to this, and though she resented being used by him herself, Rorie found she resented even more that he chose to use Lady Alice. The other neighbours looked surprised in the extreme to find themselves under Lord Dougall’s roof with the dowager Lady Raiker, but were too polite to do more than stare. No one cut her.

  When Lord Raiker was announced, he showed not the least surprise and no chagrin to find his stepmama sitting in state in the Rococo Saloon. He bowed formally to her, and did it before bowing to Marnie and Rorie. They didn’t even say, “Good evening, Lord Raiker,” but only looked and tried to refrain from glaring. Marnie did not quite succeed, but Rorie felt she simulated polite uninterest rather successfully.

  Lord Raiker was soon into conversation with some neu­tral parties on the far side of the room, and did no more than glance occasionally at all his female relations and connections. None of them exhibited any interest in him, including Clare. The sisters were nearly bursting with curiosity wondering if Clare and Ken had had a falling­ out. At length, Marnie could contain her curiosity no longer. “Lady Spencer has just left her seat. Go and sit by Clare, Rorie, and see what you can discover.”

  Rorie proved disobedient, so Marnie went herself. “Well, Clare, what a surprise to find you here,” she said icily.

  “I decided to come,” Clare replied. “One cannot isolate herself forever.” She wished to give the idea that her not being present would have no other explanation than declining the invitation.

  “We quite forced her into it,” Lady Alice said brightly. “Lady Raiker has kept to herself long enough. It is time she came out of hibernation.”

  She just glanced at Marnie at this speech, managing to convey a little of her distress at the haste with which the other widow had doffed her crape.

  “I hear you have had a call from Lord Raiker,” Marnie said, ignoring Lady Alice completely and turning full toward Clare.

  “Lord Raiker? Ah, you mean the man who calls himself Kenelm,” Clare replied, and laughed lightly. “What a bold rascal he is, but très amusant. I decided to let him call to see what he has to say for himself, to confirm my belief that he is not Lord Raiker, as some of you feel I acted too hastily. An impostor, of course. I become every day more sure of it, but he has at least the manners of a gentleman. He has been telling me some interesting tales of India. Whoever he is, he has certainly been in India.”

  “Of course Kenelm has been in India,” Alice said at once. “He gave me the loveliest shawl, and a book. I saw all the things he brought back.”

  “He also gave Rorie and myself a shawl,” Marnie said, not to be outdone.

  “Perhaps he is a shawl merchant!” Clare laughed. “He gave me one too.”

  “Odd you let him call, if that’s the way you feel,” Marnie charged.

  “What would seem sane at such a bizarre time?” Clare asked. “You let him call, and I had certain questions I wished to test him with.”

  Across the room, Kenelm saw the chair beside Rorie vacant, and advanced toward it. “I trust your headache is gone,” he said, bowing and taking up the chair, unaware of the plans for his reception.

  The rehearsed speech was inappropriate to the question, so Rorie altered it, but still used the cool tone. “Quite gone,” she said, then looked away.

  “This affair will be enough to bring on another. I feel twinges myself,” he remarked. “I had strong doubts she’d come. She has let me call twice, and once rode out with me, using Charlie as a chaperon, but I am not having much luck getting her to acknowledge me. I think I might as well give it up.”

  “Pity,” Rorie said. He was beginning to look at her with the dawning of realization that she was in the sulks.

  “I have to see you,” he said next. “I found out something of interest. Can I take you home tonight?”

  “No. I came with Marnie. We must return together.”

  “Berrigan is here. He’ll take her home.”

  “Then I shall go with them.”

  “I’ll call tomorrow,” he said. Not a question—a state­ment.

  “I’m busy tomorrow,” she said hastily.

  “Aurora, I want to tell you something important,” he said urgently, a little angrily, and glanced around to see if the present circumstance allowed him enough privacy to tell her now. “I spoke to Ghizlaine.”

  Spoke to her! Is that what he called it? “How nice for you.”

  Lady Alice felt she had wasted enough time on Clare and went to join Kenelm, whom she did not like to see alone with Rorie. Their privacy ruined, they ceased talk­ing to each other altogether, and Lady Alice soon had Raiker’s ear. Rorie suddenly found a dozen things to say to a country squire on her other side. She became quite lively on the subject of rain and weather, and the likelihood of a good harvest. There was no danger of the conversation’s flagging when she got him started on sheep. She sat through a lecture on the care and breeding of a proper flock till dinner was served, and went away not a whit more informed than when she had begun, for while she nodded at Squire Norman, her ears had been cocked to try to hear Alice rattle on to Ken.

  At dinner, Raiker was placed between Lady Alice and Clare, so that the other two ladies didn’t have to worry about speaking to him, but they worried considerably to see him in animated conversation with his stepmother. Despite her reputation as a man-killer, she appeared to be only toying with Kenelm. The advances were all on his side. She only smiled sardonically half the time, in a condescending way. Marnie and Rorie were seated across the table from one another. A good discussion would have to wait till they got home, but they more than once exchanged a furious glance, full of impatience to put into words all their frustration.
A trio of fiddlers and a pianoforte player had been called in to provide music for an informal dance after dinner, and with this entertainment to hasten their port taking, the gentlemen sat for less than an hour at the table before joining the ladies.

  Marnie would not dance. Daring enough to take off her last remnant of crape and become engaged only a year after her husband’s death, she would not dance yet, but before going to the card room with John, she urged her sister to keep a watch in the dancing parlour. As Clare, too, chose to play cards, it was unlikely there would be anything to report other than that Kenelm opened the dance with Lady Alice—unexceptionable behaviour to all but Miss Falkner.

  He came next to Aurora, who said in an arctic accent that she was already taken for the dance, and by judicious advancing to a new group the minute a dance was fin­ished, she contrived to have a partner before he got to her for the next two dances as well. On to her tactic, Raiker stood out the next dance, and as its end approached, he walked onto the floor and took her arm. “The early bird gets the worm,” he said unceremoniously, and led her off.

  Before he got to the edge of the floor he was demanding an explanation. “May I know why I am being treated like the lowliest untouchable? It looks so very odd for my own family to be treating me disdainfully. Have you been seized again by the notion I am Horace Rutley? Search your mind for another question to try me.”

  “No, I know who you are,” she replied, and refrained from adding, “and what you are.”

  “Is it my public venture into town with Mama that has you in the boughs? I thought it an excellent thing. I talked it over with Lord Dougall, and he saw no harm in it. I never dreamed she’d go on pretending she thinks I’m Horace after that. She knows I’m not, of course. In private she as well as admits it, and I think if I keep after her I’ll get at the truth. I must, Aurora.”

  “No one’s trying to stop you.”

  “What’s the matter? Why are you acting this way?” he asked. They had reached the side of the room, and stood off a little from the crowd. He looked at her, frowning, regard­ing her intensely with his black eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”

  She no more trusted him than she’d trust an assassin. Hadn’t she seen him with her own eyes in the meadow with Ghizlaine only yesterday? “I trust you to use anyone you think can help you, but you no longer require my help. You’ve got a direct line to Clare now. You don’t have to bother buttering me up, Lord Raiker. We don’t intend to challenge your claim, Marnie and I. We know you’re who you say you are. We just don’t approve of you.”

  “I see,” he said stiffly. “In that case I shan’t pester you again. You make yourself perfectly clear, ma’am.”

  “I trust I do,” she replied, more stiffly still.

  He turned to leave, then turned back, his eyes flashing with anger. “But I will say before I go, I think it extremely petty-minded of you. Others who are less to me than you and your sister haven’t stuck at my behaviour. If Lord Dougall and his family can support me, I find it hard that Bernard’s wife and her sister cannot. I won’t forget this.”

  “Neither will we! Don’t think to threaten us with with­holding your largesse. We don’t want anything from you. We never asked for anything.”

  “You implied you loved me! What sort of love is this?” he asked in a voice becoming loud, a voice that betrayed anger.

  “The sort you will understand very well, I think. Incon­stant,” she snapped back, and turned to flee before she should lose the last vestige of composure. As she left, she bumped into Clare, come to the parlour to observe the dancing. Her curiosity could not let her leave the room without seeing how Raiker and Clare acted in this meet­ing. She stopped at the door and looked around. Kenelm was looking after her, but when their eyes met he turned quickly away and turned to Clare. “Mama,” he said in a voice of delight. “Shall we dance?”

  “I do not dance, sir, but if you can behave you may get me a glass of punch,” Clare replied.

  “I shall behave exactly as is expected of me, ma’am. Very badly,” he cautioned playfully, then offered her his arm. The two walked away toward the refreshment table. Rorie went off to a private parlour to compose herself before going to the card room. She would return no more to the dancing room. The parlour had a French door leading to the garden, and to cool her heated brow, she slipped out and looked about for a bench. Her legs were trembling from her encounter. She sat down in a dark corner and hated the world.

  Had she done rightly? It was surely wrong of Kenelm to accept Clare publicly. He ought not to be seen with her when she had declared herself against him. Even more, Clare ought not to be seen with him. But that wily woman always had an explanation for every­thing. She was testing him, confirming he was Horace Rutley. Lord Dougall did not disapprove of Raiker, so perhaps she was wrong to, but she did hate it. It made her so angry her breath became short to see it. To see Clare smiling at him with an invitation in her eyes, and to see him return the smile. It caused severe doubts as to what had gone on between them before Raiker left.

  Kenelm was young then, might not have known better than to be led astray by an older, scheming woman, but he was no child now. He shouldn’t do it. For five minutes she sat, then arose to return inside. Before she got to the French door, she saw someone enter the room and decided to return inside the house by a different way. She stepped quickly away from the door to avoid being seen, but from the shadows she took a peep inside, and saw the newcomers to be Kenelm and Clare. Each held a glass of punch, and after they had entered, Kenelm reached behind him and closed the door, bestowing a meaningful smile on his partner as he did so.

  She had seen that smile before. Rorie wished with all her heart she could hear them, but to see was really more than enough. They were talking with the greatest animation and familiarity. They did not touch, but every smile, every gesture bespoke the nature of their conversation. Clare’s eyes were used in a manner that required no literal translation. There was coquetry in each flash from them, and it was returned by her partner. It was all soft smiles, teasing and playfulness, and it was disgusting when one considered all the circumstances.

  Squaring her shoulders, Miss Falkner took the decision to enter the way she had come out, to let them know they had been observed, in spite of the carefully closed door.

  She walked in, looked from one to the other and said, “Sorry to disturb you. I shall be sure to close the door after me, as I see you wish privacy.”

  “Thank you,” Kenelm said, regarding her with satisfac­tion.

  “Too kind,” Clare flung after her departing back.

  She was in no mood for a party after this, and went at once to ask Marnie to return home. They went together for their wraps, but a swift colloquy between them deter­mined a course of action that would send Rorie home alone in their carriage, while Marnie remained behind to see what transpired, and to return later with John.

  Malone heard with unrestrained joy that Clare had been there, and had been singled out for attention from Raiker. “What did I tell you? A regular sneak in the grass, that one,” she adjured. “And don’t think he limits hisself to you ladies neither. Millie saw him in the forest with a gypsy girl, making up to her a mile a minute. Upon my word, I come to think the fellow’s unbalanced. He ought to be restrained.”

  “He’s not mad. He knows exactly what he is doing. He has kept poor Lady Alice dancing on his string, but I trust we are not so gullible.”

  “And to think you let the heathen sully your lips. You want to rinse them off with carbolic acid, missie. You’ll take an affection.”

  “Oh no, Malone. I am cured of my affection.”

  “That’s the spirit. Never fear a thing. I’ll say a decade of my beads to St. Anne and we’ll find you a new beau in jig time. Did you make any headway with young Hanley at all?”

  “Yes, I had a dance with him.”

  “Good for you. You’re not so besodden as I feared for there’s no denying the Hindustani does have a tempting eye in h
is head. Still, Lord Dougall’s son ain’t to be sneezed at, even if he is only a younger son, and as dull as ditchwater.”

  “I am not tempted by Raiker’s eyes.”

  “Well, I am,” Malone said baldly. “Or would be if I was twenty-five years younger, which I ain’t, thank the good Lord. He’ll worm the truth out of that she-devil, see if he doesn’t.”

  “She is not tempted either,” Rorie was forced to confess.

  There had been no sign of weakening in Clare. Flirtation definitely, but no capitulation. She was as cool as a cu­cumber, to judge from the scene watched through the window.

  “How about Lady Alice? He still has her in line, you say, after running right out her door and putting up at the inn. She’s easily cozened.”

  “No doubt she trusts her soulmate,” Rorie said.

  “St. Anthony could save us a deal of time if he’d get busy and find the emeralds. I’ve said a decade a day to him without a bit of results. Maybe I ought to make a novena.”

  Miss Falkner was familiar with the roster of saints called on in Malone’s emergencies, and accepted this means of help. She sipped her cocoa till Marnie arrived some time after twelve to give them the end of the story.

  Clare and Kenelm had both stayed till the party’s end, had been seen talking together in a perfectly friendly manner, but had left in their individual carriages. “Kenelm had the nerve to hint if he might call on me tomorrow,” she said. “Didn’t come right out and ask, you know, but said he would like to see Mimi. I told him I always take her to church on Sunday, and he was welcome to look as much as he liked. He’s quite shameless, but I think we gave society a fair idea what we think of him,” Marnie declared, satisfied with her behaviour.

  “You both did good. I’m proud of you,” Malone compli­mented, in a rare mood of approval, and to reward them she had fresh cocoa made up, and let Aurora stay up for another cup.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  Lord Raiker did not come to the Dower House after his Turkish treatment by the ladies, and from what they could discover, he had also ceased going to Raiker Hall. He was deprived of even a glimpse of his little niece on the Sunday, as she had a sore throat, and her mama kept her home from church. In the afternoon, John Berrigan came to call, as he did every day now, and Rorie had not even the child for company, as Malone had chucked her up into her bed to cosset her and tell her she wouldn’t let her die.