But all Sophie’s attention was on the group in the middle of the room and after a few moments it was Mademoiselle Blanche Salinas who looked across and broke away to come running prettily on her tiptoes and with her hands outstretched towards her. She was wearing a sadly over-fussy confection in no fewer than three colours – green and blue and yellow – with a large number of rainbow beads sewn on to the bodice, all of which accentuated her plainness. When she was standing beside Sophie the comparison was almost pathetic, and Tilly forbore to look at Mademoiselle Salinas’s parents, who were the only people not standing beside Duff, but sitting together on the far side of the room.
‘Ma chère amie!’ Mademoiselle Salinas cried. ‘Je suis enchantée – I am ‘appy zat you are ‘ere. It ‘as been so exciting, I cannot say ‘ow much. ‘Ere is Monsieur qui est – ‘oo ‘as returned from a visit to Monsieur le Duc and it ‘as been of ze most exciting to ‘ear –’
Duff had turned at the sound of Blanche Salinas’s high little voice, and the unusual sound of her accent, and the sentence he had been halfway through died on his lips. He stood and stared, and then slowly moved away from the group with a murmured apology and came across the room towards Sophie.
‘I don’t think –’ he began and then stopped. He looked at Sophie closely, and then glanced over his shoulder at Tilly who got to her feet and came to help him.
‘Well, now,’ she said wanting to sound as light as possible. ‘I did say you might be surprised. You recall who this is, Duff?’
‘Unless I am quite mad, I do indeed,’ Duff said and held out both hands. ‘Is it you? I mean are you the person I suspect you are?’
Sophie laughed, and her eyes crinkled and her short upper lip lifted to display her perfect teeth. The effect was almost overwhelming and, Tilly thought with a moment’s acuity, she is well aware of it. I pray I have done the right thing, bringing this girl back into Duff’s life. I am sure he needs a nice girl to help him find his way as a man, but is this the right girl? Watching her now sparkle up at Duff, her eyes wide and amused and her smile confiding and sweet, Tilly had, again, a moment’s qualm.
‘Indeed I am,’ Sophie was saying. ‘I am precisely who you think I might be, I hope. I will be most put out if you imagine I am anyone but myself, for that would mean you had quite forgotten me! You look very fine and exactly as I remember you. So eager and excited – just like a dear little puppy. Only not so little now. Rather large in fact!’ And she let her eyes slide across the width of his shoulders in their approval and then looked up at him again.
‘Sophie,’ said Duff and took a deep breath and exhaled noisily. ‘Sophie! I can’t believe it. When I remember how –’ He caught his breath again, becoming suddenly aware of the people in the room who were silently watching him. Sophie had clearly been aware of them all the time, and paid them no attention, but Duff now looked over his shoulder and blushed and returned his attention to Sophie.
‘Well, we have much to talk about,’ he said to the room at large, sounding more than a little stilted and uncomfortable. ‘Old recollections, you know and so forth.’
‘Indeed we have.’ She turned on her heel, and sweeping her skirt aside with a little kick that displayed embroidered cream silk evening shoes and clocked stockings in cream and gold, tucked one gloved hand into his elbow. ‘Do take me in to dinner, dear boy, and we shall gossip to our hearts’ content. I am sure we will be forgiven by everyone if we don’t join in general conversation tonight. After all we haven’t seen each other for so many years and we were babies together!’
She looked over her shoulder at the rest of the company, who were now surging to their feet as the gong in the hall below began its loud call to the table. ‘You won’t mind, will you?’ she called and then turned her radiant face up to Duff and led the way out of the room.
Chapter Sixteen
‘I RIDE WITH you?’ Tilly said blankly. ‘But why? Don’t you usually ride with Miss Oliver?’
‘Hardly usually,’ Silas said. ‘We have ridden on a few mornings, but only a few. She has hardly been in the house long enough for any of us to use the term “usually” about any of her activities.’
‘Every day since she arrived is sufficiently usual for me,’ Tilly said in as neutral a tone as she could conjure up. ‘And anyway, I had particular cause to assume you were riding with her this morning, for I passed her on the stairs in riding habit on her way out.’
‘Oh,’ he said easily, ‘she has gone with Duff,’ and turned away to the window to look out into the street. The weather had changed, with the late summer they had enjoyed for the past weeks being replaced by a cooler, cloud-blowing windiness. The first of the autumn leaves were skittering along the gutters and he watched them as Tilly sat back in her chair and looked at him.
‘Ah,’ she said, amused. ‘So you are feeling spurned by the charming Sophie?’
He looked at her now and laughed, a comfortable easy sound. ‘Spurned? Not in the least. She has the company of someone far more to her taste – her young playmate. They are of an age and have so much to share, of course she prefers him to someone who is twice her age, as I am! I suggested we ride together when she first came here to provide a charming child with the opportunity to take some healthy exercise under a safe and watchful eye. She told me she intended to ride, and I could not in all conscience, imagine allowing her to go alone. It would not have been right.’
‘I think Sophie Oliver would be able to take care of herself in most circumstances,’ Tilly said dryly. ‘She has contrived very well so far, living without a parent’s watchful eye as she does.’
‘I think, having talked with her in these last few mornings, that I have discovered as much for myself,’ he said and smiled. ‘She made me feel positively antique in my notions of protection. She lectured me on the way the modern young woman is her own person and far less in need of chaperonage than stuffy elders think, and quoted John Stuart Mill at me on the rights of women! I found that most disconcerting, considering the radical nature of my own views and the way I have been reprimanded for them in the past. To be regarded as a stuffy elder by a miss of just eighteen was the outside of enough! I told her so, too, but she merely laughed indulgently at me and begged me not to worry myself on such matters. I must say it was a most humbling experience.’
She looked at him, her lower lip caught between her teeth, thinking hard. Had he really only taken Sophie under his wing out of some sort of avuncular concern for her well-being? Or had he done so because she was so charming and alluring and had aroused in him feelings that were far from those he professed? She could not be sure; even though he stood there smiling at her in his usual easy fashion. And, she thought, I want to be sure, for he really is a most interesting man.
‘Well,’ she said briskly now, to cover her thoughts from herself as much as from him. ‘Whatever the reason for your invitation this morning, I really feel I cannot –’
‘Oh, please, don’t be put out!’ He came to lean on her desk so that he could look down on her from close quarters. ‘I am not, I do assure you, treating you as an alternative to Miss Oliver’s company. Far from it. I have been chafing a little at the way she has – well – not precisely clung to me, but obviously regarded me as the person she would most like to be with here, which is a dubious compliment, I fear, when I look at Mr Gee and Mr Grayling. Mr Cumming and Mr Hancock who would, I know, give their eye teeth for the opportunity to dance attendance on her, are occupied with their work during the day, so the duty fell to me. But now Duff is here, and able to take over the burden, why, I can relinquish that burden and be free to do as I wish. And I wish to spend time with you. You’re a most interesting person, one with a mind to which I can respond, and with a response to the matters which fill my mind that is most refreshing. So, please, will you ride with me? I think it will be healthy for you too, for you’re looking a little peaky, you know, and I feel sure you are overworked. Eliza can deal with your affairs well enough during any short absence in the pa
rk.’
She blinked at the length and intensity of his speech and held up one hand to stop the tide of words.
‘Dear Mr Geddes, you really must –’
‘Oh, I beg you not to be so formal! We are friends, you and I, surely? Please to call me by my given name. I insist on the right to address you as Tilly, after all!’ He smiled at her and his face was now so close to hers that it made her absurdly breathless.
‘Oh, names –’ she said. ‘That is a matter of small importance.’
‘I agree. But your health is not. So let me beguile you out into the air. Riding will be very good for you.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I have no riding habit, and anyway have not ridden for years. I did when I was a girl, a little, but I am far from being a horsewoman. I am a town person in every way, Mr – oh, very well, Silas – and one who works for her living, to boot. You really cannot drag me away from work at a whim like this. I must beg you to leave me to get on with my bookkeeping now.’
‘Oh, pooh,’ he said and straightened up. ‘You know you can do it later! If you don’t wish to take a saddle horse, then we can take one of those fast little phaetons and I will drive you – that will be great fun, I think, and carriage exercise can be excellent. Now, please do fetch your bonnet and be ready for my return. I shall go and fetch a phaeton from the livery stables. What do you say? I can see you are nearly finished here –’ and he indicated her desk with his head. ‘We wouldn’t stay out too long – we would be back in ample time for you to preside over luncheon in your usual agreeable way and you will have a much improved appetite for it too. Do be persuaded!’
She couldn’t help it. She wavered. He was quite right; her paperwork was indeed almost done, for she had been hard at work since before nine, not wishing to join her guests at breakfast. She had asked Rosie to fetch her some coffee and a sweet roll to take on her desk and now had almost completed the month’s figures and it was only just half past ten o’clock.
He seemed to be aware of her wavering thoughts and pounced. ‘That’s decided then. Splendid! I shan’t be above a quarter of an hour, I promise,’ and he was at the door and out of it before she could protest. By the time she had jumped to her feet to follow him, she heard the front door slam and saw him through the window as he emerged into the street outside to set off at a fast lope in the direction of the livery stables.
She knew when to give up, sighed and set to work to put in the last two or three minutes of tidying her desk which were all that was necessary, setting aside a couple of minor tasks that could safely be left for the next day and closed and locked the desk and went down to the kitchen.
Eliza was sitting at the table, her newest cookery book open in front of her as she pored over it, while the new maid, Susan, peeled potatoes under her eagle eye. Dora, now banished to the upper parts of the house to work, would be leaving to take up a new situation in Knightsbridge at a doctor’s house at the end of the week, to Eliza’s rather grim satisfaction.
‘I am to go for a ride in the park with Mr Geddes, Eliza,’ Tilly said. ‘I can’t pretend I want to, but he can be so insistent.’
‘I’m glad to hear that, Mum. You need some exercise and a bit of air. You look right peaky, you do.’
Without thinking Tilly reached up and pinched both her cheeks in an attempt to bring some colour to them. ‘He said that –’
‘Well, he was right. You go and enjoy it, Mum. I’ll have luncheon ready directly you get back. Half past one sharp.’
She lifted her head to look at Tilly and Tilly was alarmed by what she saw and frowned even more deeply. Eliza’s cheeks had a higher flush than usual and her eyes were heavy. She looked weary and Tilly said, with a swift glance at the girl peeling potatoes, ‘Susan, would you be so good as to go up to my room and fetch me the bonnet you will see on my dressing table? A chip bonnet, very light – and the small shawl you will see hanging at the foot of the bed.’
The girl bobbed and dried her hands on her apron and went, and as she disappeared Tilly sat down in her place and leaned across the table to Eliza.
‘Never mind how I look,’ she said bluntly. ‘You look far worse than I possibly could. Are you ailing?’
‘Worryin’,’ Eliza said. ‘It’s enough to make anyone look poorly.’
‘Hmm,’ Tilly took Eliza’s hand in hers. ‘Let me look at you. I remember how it was you first told me that Duff was to be – you saw my hands and said I had blue veins.’
Eliza’s hand was red and strong and capable and there were no signs of enlarged blue veins that Tilly could see, and Eliza laughed and pulled her hand away.
‘Oh, do give over, Mum! It was different then. I was still a country piece, didn’t know when to hold my tongue.’
‘You still don’t,’ Tilly said and took the hand back. ‘Are you showing any – is there anything to tell me, Eliza?’
Eliza shook her head gloomily. ‘Not that you could call definite, Mum. I ain’t ‘ad my usual course this month I don’t deny, but it’s only out by three days and that don’t signify, on account I been much more all over the place than that in my time. I don’t usually notice anyway, not having cause, and this time I’m worrying myself fit to be sick, so if I sets the whole business awry, it wouldn’t be surprising, would it?’
There was a hopeful sound in her voice as she looked at Tilly and it was as though she had said aloud, ‘Tell me it’s all right – tell me I’m imagining it – tell me it’s not true.’
Tilly shook her head. ‘I dare say it can be so. I recall times when I too – when I have been particularly anxious, I have found my system behaving in different ways, but you cannot deceive yourself so, Eliza. You know that. You have cause to doubt.’
Eliza again withdrew her hand and nodded heavily. ‘I suppose so,’ she said and bent her head again to her cookery book.
There was a short silence and then Tilly said, ‘Have you been sick, Eliza?’
Eliza sat silent and then looked up miserably. ‘I thought it was all the worrying, you see,’ she said and Tilly grimaced and shook her head.
‘Oh, Eliza, how can it be so? When you know that – no, my dear, I fear that matters are as you suspected they might be. How long is it now since he went away? And how long since – since you started with him and –’ She stopped again, delicacy forbidding her to go further, but Eliza had no such qualms.
‘We lived as man and wife near on a month, Mum,’ she said baldly. ‘It don’t matter when he last was ‘ere so much as when we started, don’t it? And that was a full six gettin’ on for seven weeks ago, I think.’
‘And you say your normal courses are stopped.’
‘Three days or so late, Mum, no more,’ Eliza said with a slightly desperate air, but again Tilly shook her head, and got to her feet as Susan appeared at the top of the kitchen stairs with her shawl and bonnet.
‘I think we must stop conjecturing and think sensibly, Eliza,’ she said, not attempting to lower her voice, for she made sure her words would mean nothing to Susan. ‘We must talk again.’
‘There ain’t a lot to talk about, Mum.’ Eliza too got to her feet. ‘I’ll see you to the door then, Mum. Susan, you get on with those potatoes and cut ‘em proper, mind. I don’t want half the meat of them left on the parings, and don’t you forget it. Make sure you get all the eyes out too – we can’t have anything but the best of everything sent to table here.’
‘Yes’m,’ said Susan nervously and Tilly smiled at her reassuringly and patted one shoulder.
‘It’s all right, my dear,’ she said. ‘Eliza hasn’t bitten anyone yet, so you need not look so fearful. But she teaches everyone very well, so listen to her.’ The girl glanced at Eliza and then smiled gratefully and went back to her laborious work with the potato knife, as Eliza led the way up the stairs to hold the door open for Tilly.
They went to the front door and stood on the step as Tilly tied her bonnet strings and set her shawl about her shoulders, glad she had chosen to wear her green
merino today, for it blended well with the Indian shawl and its many colours and offered a necessary warmth, for the air was brisk and quite chilling, though agreeable after the sultry weather of the past weeks.
‘I suppose I’ve got to think the same as you, Mum,’ Eliza said quietly. ‘And reckon I’ve been caught. There’s not a lot I can do to change that, bitterly though I regret it. Now the only chance there is, is if you –’
‘I know,’ Tilly said. ‘You needn’t repeat it, my dear Eliza.’ She looked down the street at the few hackney carriages that were clopping past and the delivery vans with their dispirited horses, watching for Silas and the phaeton. ‘I have thought a great deal about what you told me last week, even though I have been busy with Duff and so forth. Never think I haven’t been concerned, for I have. But it is a difficult idea you have and one that I am not sure –’
‘I tell you this much, Mum,’ Eliza said, and stood there with the wind lifting the strands of hair that had escaped her cap, and her hands folded neatly on her black housekeeper’s gown. ‘It’s the only way. I’ll not stay here under any other circumstances. I’ll have to be away and hidden somewhere when I starts to show, though I think I can do well enough for a good six months or longer. I can get more commodious gowns and use a small crinoline. No one’ll care when someone like me goes about in outdated fashions, and it’ll suit me well enough to have full round skirts. But if you can’t do as I ask, Mum, then there it is. I’ll have to be on my way. I couldn’t hold my head up otherwise.’
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