by Joan Smith
“Oh no, Ellie has no reputation,” Rex replied blandly. “Wanda, now ... you might say she has a reputation, I suppose.”
“I am not interested in Wanda.”
“Twins,” Rex enlightened her.
“I know that much. How did it come Miss Elinor was not presented? Sickly is she?”
“No, no. Never sick in the least. Quite a robust girl.”
“Well, why then?”
“Too young. Not up to snuff.”
“A twin, you say, of the one who was presented.”
“Yes, but . . . well, Wanda was up to snuff, you see. That’s the thing.”
“A gauche, shy creature, you mean?”
“No,” Rex answered severely. “Not a gauche bone in her body. Slips around as light as a dancer, and much better behaved than Wanda, if you want my opinion.”
“Then I don’t see why she wasn’t presented.”
“She was going to be, next spring. A late bloomer, like Lady Siderow. That’s Joan Wanderley, or was.”
“I am acquainted with Lady Siderow. Would you say Miss Elinor takes after Lady Siderow?”
“She’s more like her than she is like Lady Tameson, if you know what I mean.”
“I hope I do. Not fast, you mean?”
“Not fast in the least. A very nice girl is Ellie. Like her tremendously. Better than Wanda.”
“So you have implied, Mr. Homberly. Twice, and still I have no notion what the girl is like.”
“She’s a very nice girl, and quite pretty, too, when she’s dressed up decently.”
“A bad dresser, is she?” The Dowager leapt on this crumb.
“Shouldn’t worry about it. Mrs. Wanderley will get her decked out properly, now.”
Lady Claymore was forming an impression of a shy, countrified girl without a word to say for herself, and not even fashionable. It did not seem possible Giles would have offered for such a person. Especially if she were not even pretty. “She cannot be such a slow top as you are painting her, if she nabbed Giles within a week.”
“As to that, he was the one did the nabbing. Took to her right away. Well, as soon as Wanda got engaged, anyway.”
“It was Miss Wanda he actually preferred, you mean?” she asked astutely.
“He did at first, but he wasn’t long in tumbling to what kind of a girl she is.”
“I trust her reputation is not so black as to ruin the whole family?”
“Oh no, she’s a cagey one. And now that she’s engaged, it will all come to a halt. Hibbard will ride herd on her harder than she thinks. It may be all smiles and kisses now....”
Lady Claymore absorbed this. “This Wanda—would you say she is the prettier of the two?”
“Everyone thinks so, but I prefer Ellie.”
“Yes, you have mentioned it.” Was he actually a mental case, she wondered, or just plain dumb? So, Giles had gone off to Surrey to offer for Wanda, the beauty of the family, but was too late, so he had taken second best to save his face in London. She smiled her approval. There seemed plenty of ammunition here to give him a hard time. She was in quite good charity with the girl who gave her such an advantage, and wrote her off a pretty little note saying she was looking forward to meeting her. If she had any of the Wanderley looks at all, she would make a decent showing and Giles might succeed in passing it off as a love match, as he no doubt intended doing, even to her. She would show the public a satisfied face, but how she would chide him in private—little slurs and insinuations. Yes, the immediate future looked rosy.
She nabbed Giles alone in the study before dinner on the pretext of wanting him to frank her note to Miss Elinor. “I have written off a note, telling her how happy I am for the connection,” she said amiably.
“I should like to have read it, Mama. I feared you might not like it...”
“Oh pooh, I am not so old-fashioned that I expect my only son to bother telling me, only his mother, when he means to marry.” She could not refrain from this taunt, though she had meant to be conciliating.
“The decision was reached very suddenly.”
“It certainly was! She must be an extravagant beauty. But then, if they have nothing else to offer, the Wanderleys are all beautiful. She is a beauty, I suppose? As beautiful as her sister Wanda, who was brought out this spring?”
Clay frowned, not caring for the question. “She is very pretty,” he replied vaguely.
“As pretty as Wanda?” his mother repeated the question.
“They are different types. I prefer Ellie’s style,” Giles stated.
“One can trust your opinion in such matters,” his mother said, smiling inwardly at his discomfiture. “No one would disagree with your assertion in a letter to me not a month ago that Miss Golden was the beauty of the Season, for instance. That would be, of course, because Miss Elinor had not made her bows.”
“Yes,” he said curtly, and turned to the accounts he was working on.
“Troubles?” his mother asked. “An expensive business, marriage, but her parents will have to worry about that. I suppose, being a Wanderley, she would not bring much of a dowry. Not above ten thousand.”
“No, not above ten,” he replied evasively, and buried his nose deeper in his books.
“How much?” the question was rapped out
“Slightly under ten, Mama,” he said, without ever looking up.
“Not a sous above seventy-five hundred you mean.” She nodded sagely, and her deceitful son did nothing to enlighten her. “That will mean she has under four hundred a year pin money, Giles. You will have to give her some small settlement.”
“Yes, I mean to,” he said over his shoulder.
“How much?”
“I am trying to figure out how much I can afford, Mama, if you will leave me alone,” he said angrily.
“Hmph. Give her twenty-five hundred. That will give her ten thousand clear, and five hundred pounds a year pin money. It will be plenty, for Homberly tells me she doesn’t take much interest in her wardrobe.” She looked closely to see how this dart was received. Claymore pretended not to have heard. “I say, Giles...”
“I heard you, Mama.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“Twenty-five was the sum I had in mind,” he said, wondering how long it would be before she discovered it was in thousands he was speaking, not hundreds. “Oh, Mama”—He looked up innocently, the sly wretch—”I must give her a ring for the engagement. She will not want to be going about London without a ring, you know.”
“Yes, you must buy her some little thing.”
“Well, Mama, the Claymore diamond is our family engagement ring, you recall.”
“She won’t care for that. Homberly tells me she is not fashionable at all. That little pearl your papa gave me for my birthday will do well enough for her.”
“It will not do for me. I wish her to have the diamond, as has always been the custom in our family.”
“I’m not dead yet, Giles, so pray do not begin stripping the pennies from my eyes.”
“I have no notion of stripping you of anything that belongs to you. The diamonds are part of the entailment. Anyway, you never wear that ring.”
“I have seldom taken it off this past year,” she lied unblushingly, and determined to put it on that very night for dinner.
“Where do you wear it, for you have been telling me you never see a soul but the vicar and the squire’s wife. You need not impress them with the jewelry.”
“I’ll tell you what, Giles,” she said cheerfully. “There is no need to settle that twenty-five hundred on her. Wanderley is doing pretty well to get a title for her, without you giving her all that money, too. Buy her a diamond of her own—not entailed you know, but for her own—a sort of investment. Then I may keep my ring, that your father gave me.”
“Papa didn’t give you the ring, Mama. However, if you are so particularly attached to it, I can as well give Ellie that emerald with the diamond chips around it. I daresay she won’t care
.”
“Buy her one.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not? You were telling me last time you were home how you’d managed to save up ten thousand. You can buy her the ring, and still give her the twenty-five, if you wish to throw your blunt away. We must take into account your unbounded passion for the girl, I suppose,” she said in an arch tone.
“No, I have ... the money is invested.”
“Consols? I think you ought to sell out then, for they have gone up remarkably well lately, and I have had my man sell out, just last week. They reached an unnatural high after Waterloo, and he says they are bound to settle down at a lower level soon. I made a packet.” She laughed gleefully at her good fortune.
As shrewd as she could hold together, his mama. He wished he had taken her advice and put the money into Consols, but there had been a shipping company that promised greater returns in a shorter time, and not delivered. “No, the money is not in Consols,” he said. “You have been more fortunate than I. About the emerald ring, Mama...”
“NO!”
“Wear it on the other hand?” he asked sardonically.
“She will not like that gothic old emerald. Buy her a diamond.”
“Mama, I am not about to buy an expensive ring when I have half a dozen sitting in the vault. And you don’t wear any of them, so don’t try to gull me you do.”
“So that is how it is to be! Taking every bit of stone or jewel your dear papa gave me, to shower on that Wanderley chit who hasn’t even a decent dress to her name!”
“Mama, where do you get these stories? I must give her a ring. You know I must. Look, keep the emerald and the diamond for the time being: I’ll give Ellie the star sapphire.”
“No, it is my very favorite of them all! I could not bear to part with it.”
“Dammit, Mama, you’re not a magpie! You can’t wear all those rings. You decide which one I am to give her.”
“Give her the pearl I was speaking about.”
“I can’t give her a pearl, it would be too shabby. Wanda has a diamond, and she is only marrying a squire’s son.”
“Oh ho, Wanda, is it? You just want your Ellie to have a bigger stone than Wanda, that you may let her see what a bad bargain she struck in turning you down.”
“I never made Wanda an offer!”
“No, because some squire’s son beat you to it!”
“No, I dislike her excessively.”
“Yes, and you dislike your mother, too, that you will take all my poor bits of jewelry and heap them on that girl.”
“I must give her a ring, Mama. Don’t be so unreasonable.”
“Give her the pearl. I won’t say a word against it, even though it is my own, given as a birthday present, and in no way coming to you. I had meant to give it to your sister....”
“Do so, by all means, for I don’t want it, but I will require one of my other rings for an engagement present.” He turned his back on her and ignored her, till he heard the angry whisking of her gown as she turned to the door, followed shortly by the door rattling on its hinges as she slammed it behind her.
That night the Dowager wore the star sapphire on her right hand, and the diamond on the left, and hid the rest of them under her mattress, along with other necklaces and broaches that rightfully belonged to her son. Giles repeated his request on two other occasions, but both times she ranted and raved and refused to give them up, calling him an unnatural son to want to take away her few reminders of his papa, so in the end he put it off till some time when she was in a good mood.
Perhaps he could buy some sort of a smallish diamond for Ellie, though where he was to get the money he had no idea, and he had wanted to send the ring to London immediately so that Ellie might wear it. He found the damned pearl ring on his dresser one night, and threw it into the drawer in disgust. It would be an insult to offer it to Ellie as an engagement ring.
He worked hard all day with his bailiff, figuring what repairs and renovations on his tenant farms could be delayed so that he might get his hands on as much cash as possible for the settlement. In the evening he usually had a set-to of some sort with his mama. To add to his ill humor, she, who was practically a hermit, invited a motley crew of neighbors into the house for dinner on the pretext of entertaining Rex, who paid not the least heed to any of them.
Night after night they came, and his mother donned her various purloined jewels to show her son how impossible it would be for her to rub along without them. In private, she continued with her barbed comments about Ellie’s being unfashionable, about his former preference for the Rose and Wanda, and anything else she could lay her tongue to annoy him. It was not till he was in bed with the candles extinguished that he had any peace to consider his bride-to-be.
He found the image of her face popping into his head a hundred times a day, but he could only have privacy to cherish it at night. He was coming to believe she really was prettier than Wanda, for she had such a sweet, shy smile, while Wanda’s was bold and cunning. She was young, bashful, not only of him but of all men, he supposed, and he found suddenly that that was the only sort of girl he could really love. The others were fine for flirts, but when a man was getting married, he wanted a modest girl. He remembered her in the garden at the assembly, telling him how she disliked him (all a result of her shyness, of course), then he smiled softly, for that picture was soon followed by the remembrance of the night he left, in the study, when he had held her, rigid with fear, in his arms, and later when he had grabbed her onto his knee and tried to kiss her. A dozen times he imagined that kiss reaching its conclusion, when she would forget her fright and respond to his ardor.
In fact, it was not till he’d been away from her for two weeks that he realized how much he loved her, and how he longed to be with her again. He had thought to be in London at the end of two weeks, but there was so much to do that he feared it would be three before he could be there, with his wedding only one week away by then. He wrote her a few letters—stiff little things that were completely unsatisfactory to both sender and receiver, but then he was no Byron, and there were so many practical items to be discussed that he deferred his lovemaking till he could see her in person. The short missives he received from Ellie were similarly lacking in emotion.
At the end of the second week Clay’s sister, Alice, had a miscarriage at her home in Dorset, and his mama had to go to her, so that she would be unable to attend the wedding. She sent Ellie a note explaining, and Ellie sent back a letter to Dorset expressing her commiseration at the sad event. Claymore made a thorough search of his mother’s room after she had left, and discovered to his chagrin that she had taken every iota of his jewelry with her. He was left with the cheap pearl ring, and not enough money to buy a decent diamond. He didn’t think Ellie would mind so much, but it angered him. He had been looking forward to seeing her face when he gave her the ring—the large family diamond engagement ring he had decided to have, come hell or high water. It rankled that Wanda would be lording it over Ellie, as he made no doubt she was.
Chapter Eleven
Claymore was out in his fear. It was not easy for a young lady engaged to a squire’s son to lord it over one betrothed to a peer of the Realm. What remained in town of Metropolitan society was all agog to see the latest Wanderley beauty. Several departures from town were delayed that a call might be made on Lady Siderow, in hopes of seeing Claymore’s new bride. Ellie’s splendid catch, made so quickly and quietly in the country, lent her an aura of romance, and the fact that she was virtually unknown only added to her cachet.
Her mama, with the help and advice of Joan and Caroline, had taken her to the most expensive modistes for her gowns, had the reigning coiffeuriste called in to style her hair, and Joan had taken upon herself to train her in what was expected of a society hostess. When ladies of fashion called, they bestowed only a fleeting glance on Wanda—oh yes, the one that had made her come-out this Season just past. But at Miss Elinor they looked, ready to be impre
ssed by whatever had impressed Lord Claymore.
It was soon decided that she had great countenance, a nice modest style that so exactly suited a young lady, and, of course, she possessed the Wanderley beauty in full measure. Did not put herself forward in the least, but when spoken to, she responded in a sensible, well-bred manner, with no missish giggling or awkwardness. It was easy enough to see what had attracted Claymore. Not a brash, forthcoming beauty like the Rose to be sure, and what a relief it was for feminine society to have at last someone to take the shine out of Miss Golden, now Duchess of Everleigh, and more insupportable than ever. The Rose had had her Season of glory, had enacted the full fairy story of rise from obscurity to marrying the Duke, and idle minds were now ready for a new divertissement.
Wanda chafed under the attention showered on her sister, and did in private what she dared not do in front of company. The two sisters were never alone that Wanda was not at Ellie, needling her. “Dear me, only two weeks till your wedding, and still no engagement ring. I declare, Ellie, I think he has forgotten all about you.” Her own diamond would be waved under whatever illumination was present, to catch the light and sparkle blue and orange for the owner’s satisfaction.
“I had a letter this morning.”
“Ah, that was that flat little envelope from Clay. I made sure it was a bill, for it was the tiniest thing. Only see the volumes I have had from George. Three crossed pages, full of the most romantical nonsense. Does Clay write such stuff to you? Only hear what my George has to say: ‘Life is empty without you. If you don’t come back to me I shall go into a decline and die. My death will be in your hands, as my heart is too.’ Whoever would have thought George would wax so lyrical? What had Clay to say to you?”
“He is very busy. It is merely a note.”
“A love note?” the soft voice taunted.
“A private note,” Ellie replied dampingly, but her heart sank. Clay never wrote such things to her. Only a brief recital of his activities, signed “Your faithful servant”! Surely he could at least sign it “Love.” She could not feel it becoming for her to express such sentiments herself when her lover was so reticent.