A scatter of rain flung itself against the windows, causing him to glance out over the drenched garden, and without warning the eerie feeling that had made such an impression on him when he had seen – and then not seen – that female figure in the woods, came back sharply. What had she been doing there – and why had her vanishing affected him in that way? Very likely she had simply been up to the house to leave a message for one of the servants and was hurrying away out of the rain. Yet the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and it needed a conscious effort of will to walk across the room and deliberately choose a seat with its back to the window.
As he made to sit down, he almost tripped over some worthy-looking knitting in a repellent shade of dark green, destined for the poor, no doubt, which had fallen on to the floor by the side of this, the most uncomfortable chair in the room – right next to the French window, where there was a draught. “Where are the Cashmores?” he asked, looking around as if he might find them lurking behind a potted palm, and very glad indeed that he did not.
“I let them have Dombey and the Daimler to pay a visit to that aged aunt of theirs at Much Wenlock. She really can’t last much longer and Dora’s mother is desperate that she shouldn’t leave her money to the missionaries. They had to go and see her – never mind that poor Dora has another of her colds.”
“She’s left her knitting on the floor.” He put the unlovely work aside, revealing a gout of dried mud which a careless housemaid had missed, defiling the white carpet. “It couldn’t have been her I saw, then, in the park as I drove through,” he remarked, crumbling the mud into a nearby pot plant. “I fancied I saw a woman there, wearing the same sort of hat Dora wears.”
“My dear, no one wears hats like Dora!” She added quickly, in the very British clipped delivery she’d cultivated to perfection to cover her American drawl, “Besides, she won’t put a toe outside if there’s the slightest chance of a shower.”
Dora Cashmore and her aged mother were poor relations, who spent long periods staying with one or other of their extensive family connections in order to save on their household expenses. One would not have minded this so much had they not been so very dreary, mother and daughter alike. Nevertheless, Adele was always carelessly charming to them. Even to Dora, who was a tiresome little creature, very nearly the wrong side of thirty, wearing a permanent look of martyrdom and forever snuffling and mopping her eyes. “Oh dear, I’m afraid such quantities of flowers do have this effect on her sinuses,” her mother would apologise, above the sneezing. “If we might just sit over there, or perhaps, dear Adele, have this vase moved to one side?”
The misery inflicted on Dora by all those flowers massed in every room at Belmonde always made Sebastian wonder how she and her mother ever endured to stay here. Perhaps he knew why, but he had become adept at being unaware of the languishing looks Dora cast upon him.
Tea was brought in, tiny sandwiches and hot scones under silver covers, all of which Sebastian demolished with speed, wishing they were more substantial. “I missed lunch.”
“Then let me give you some of this cake, darling,” his mother suggested. “It looks quite delicious and they’ll be too upset if we send it back uncut.” She took no heed of the raised eyebrows of her mother-in-law, which said that she’d never namby-pambied her boys that way. But Harry, now dead, was proof that one should follow the dictates of one’s own heart; there was but one bite at the cherry. It was fast becoming a philosophy with Adele.
As soon as Sebastian had finished the last of the sandwiches and had eaten two slices of the airy lemon sponge, iced and decorated with sugared violets, drunk another cup of tea and sat back, satisfied at last, she rose and went to the piano. “What would you like me to play? Schubert – or Chopin?” When down here at Belmonde, restlessness devoured her; she always needed to be occupied with something. Outdoors it was tennis and sometimes croquet; she enjoyed fly-fishing, had a splendid seat on a horse, and rode to hounds with flair and courage; she was also an excellent shot and could walk for miles over the hills. Indoors, when it was not cards, or conversation, Adele was usually found at the piano. Now, without waiting for answer, she chose a melancholy Chopin étude …she had none of the domestic arts, had never been known to pick up a needle and thread, but she played the piano beautifully, with almost professional skill, and as her fingers strayed over the keys, her tense shoulders seemed to relax. When the last notes had died away, she twirled the piano stool around. “Come, sit over here, Sebastian, where I can talk to you,” she commanded, waving to an ivory brocaded sofa. “Tell me the latest gossip.”
“My dear Mama, London’s so empty at the moment, there’s no chance of even the smallest titbit.”
“Have you seen Monty lately? I haven’t seen him in an age.” She reached out and took a black Russian cigarette from an enamel box, fitted it into a jade and gold holder. “I wonder how he is?”
“Oh, much as usual, I suppose.” Sebastian struck a match and lit the cigarette for her. “Haven’t seen him since I lunched with him at his club – but that was weeks ago.”
“Have you not? He was to have come down this weekend, you know, but he telephoned to excuse himself. The Irish question again, I suppose, or something equally tiresome.”
Adele finished her cigarette. She should not have been smoking. It hurt her chest, but her nerves needed soothing more. She turned back to the piano, striving to regain the rigid control over herself which she could almost always summon at will, but it was impossible to rid her mind of Monty. A well liked man, personable, cool and debonair, with smooth, sandy hair, light eyelashes and brows, his skin didn’t tan easily, but had a summer sun-flush from riding every morning in the Row; by means of regular visits to the gymnasium and the Turkish baths, games of tennis in the Members’ courts, he kept himself fit and trim. He liked the good things in life, collected fine porcelain and works of art, and never raised his voice, but had an air of good humoured authority that engendered respect. In almost every way, the antithesis of his brother. She forced a tight smile and played a nervous little arpeggio, echoing the frisson which tingled its way all the length of her spine.
A couple of hours later Montague Chetwynd, MP, the honourable member for East Lyndon, drew up his motorcar outside the house. Upon entering and being helped to divest himself of his waterproof (despite which, like Sebastian and Louisa, he was exceedingly wet) he waved aside the information that he had of course missed tea in Lady Chetwynd’s drawing room, but if he wished, some would be brought to him. He had driven himself down through the rain, he said, and declared himself in need of something stronger than Adèle’s Lapsang Souchong. “Thanks, Mr Blythe, but I’ll go and see my brother. Where is he?”
“In the business room, Mr Montague. Er-will you be staying, sir?”
“I daresay you have a room ready, since you were expecting me until yesterday? Good. Changed my mind about not coming down after all.”
“Indeed sir. I’ll have your bags taken up to your usual room.”
“Well, Henry,” said Monty, entering the business room and managing to avoid wafting away the fug of tobacco that hung there like a miasma. “A pretty kettle of fish, this, and no mistake, hmm?”
Chapter Four
“The trouble with Sebastian,” remarked Adele, preparing for bed, being helped out of the black and white striped satin she had worn that evening and feeling some comment from her was expected in answer to her husband’s rather sour remark on their son’s unscheduled arrival, “is that he doesn’t know what he wants at the moment, poor boy.”
Her maid took the pins out of her hair and began brushing it. It crackled with electricity under the long, rhythmic strokes, and the maid tutted and poured a drop or two of bergamot-scented oil into her palms, which she proceeded to smooth into the thick, dark waves.
“At twenty-four, that’s an indulgence he can’t afford,” replied his father sourly. “You’ve spoilt him, allowed him to get away with too much.”
Whereas you ha
ve never spoiled Sylvia? Or, come to that, showed Sebastian how much you really care for him? thought Adele, who knew her husband better than to voice such thoughts, however.
She sighed and went behind the screen, followed by her maid. Her stays loosened, she let herself sigh with relief. “Thank you, Lily, that’ll do nicely, you can get off to bed now.” She went back to her dressing table and looked at her reflection, dissatisfied. She must get rid of this peignoir – give it to Lily, who admired the fashionable but rather washed out pink colour known as ashes of roses. It took away what little colour she had in her face today.
The maid left the room and Henry went on, “What’s he doing down here, I’d like to know.”
“Sebastian? My dear, it is his home.”
“Pity he doesn’t remember that more often.”
Adele wisely ignored this. “He behaved very well at dinner, I thought – so kind to Dora Cashmore, poor dear. She’s really upset at having to leave us for the Falconfields, but since you feel we’re being eaten out of house and home – I can’t think why, Dora simply pecks at her food, though her mother makes up for it, I suppose – perhaps it’s just as well.”
She wasn’t sure whether Henry had heard her or not. He was wandering in and out through the door to the bathroom that connected their rooms, as was his habit while undressing and preparing for bed, while interjecting sporadic remarks.
“What’s been the matter with you tonight?” he asked suddenly. “Like a cat on hot bricks all evening. I’m surprised at you not having more control. Everyone must have noticed.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Here it came, what had been resolutely avoided all evening. She rose and went to the window, stretching out a slim hand to draw aside the edge of the plum-coloured velvet curtains which contained her bedroom so safely within their thick, deep folds, and stood looking out over the not quite dark garden. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” he repeated, coming up behind her and placing his dark, hairy paw on her soft, rounded shoulder, spinning her around. “Dammit, Adele, I don’t want you to be sorry. Not to me, anyway. Monty upset you or something, coming unannounced like that? That – and everything else,” he added sombrely.
His hand fell as she moved away from him slightly, still feeling the heat of his body through the thin satin. “Upset? Oh no, why should a little thing like that upset me?” She laughed bitterly.
Unsettling was not the word for Monty’s unscheduled arrival at Belmonde. Although, since Lady Emily had arranged to partake of a meal in her own rooms, he had dined with her in order not to upset either the arrangements or his mother, only afterwards joining the rest of them in the drawing room. He’d offered no general explanation for his change of plan about spending the weekend here, other than that of finding himself suddenly free and deciding that London was intolerable without congenial company. It was a pity he hadn’t joined them for dinner, she thought. Had he done so, Henry would have had to find some topic of conversation, rather than sit there brooding. His mother would probably have joined them. Sebastian would have responded to his godfather’s quick wit and urbane presence and would not have been left alone to charm the Cashmores. And she would not have had to struggle to suppress everything that was churning around inside her.
As it was, she had found it an intolerable effort to keep the conversation moving at all, wondering if there was ever going to be an end to a day which had become interminable. She’d looked across her dining table, where a benign light from the lamps fell on to the crystal and silver, the gleaming mahogany, where all was pleasant and civilised, and wondered if she were the only one to discern the undercurrents that felt to be drawing her down into unknown depths. She thought not: an almost tangible tension had twanged between them all: Henry especially was on edge; only Monty, joining them later, was as much in control as he normally was. Even Sebastian, for his own unexplained reasons, had been distrait: she played down his restlessness to Henry but she was acutely aware of it. Occasionally, especially tonight, she felt him hovering on the brink of some decision he might later regret. Once it had been Harry, of her two boys, Harry whom she had loved to distraction, who had worried her. Now there was just Sebastian …
And Sylvia, of course. But Adele really preferred not to think about Sylvia, who was a disappointment to her. So quick and amusing, so popular and attractive, that no one ever thought of her as much more than a social butterfly, which was a mistake. She was sharp and critical of her mother, she knew too much about her and when they were in society together, she outshone Adele with her sparkling conversation. She had married that fool, Algy. Above all, she was twenty-eight and had not yet done her duty by Algy and given him a son. One who might, failing all else, continue the Chetwynd line.
It had been borne upon Adele more and more lately that it was up to her to keep a steady hand on the tiller or the family might founder. They were Chetwynds, they must stand together, come what may. She felt, deep down, perhaps even more than Henry and his mother, the importance of family: to her it was not only tradition, it was blood. Her quick, American blood mingled with the thicker, slower blood of old England. She had succeeded, without eschewing any long-held traditions, in moulding her life as wife of the fifth baronet to exactly the shape she felt it ought to be – and nothing, if she could help it, was going to interfere with that.
The rain outside seemed to have finally stopped. Moonlight was pouring in a silver wash over the garden, lighting up those absurd statues of Henry’s under the Wellingtonia. An oblong of golden light fell on to the lawn from the smoking room window, where Monty and Sebastian had adjourned to smoke a cigar. Henry had declined to join them, and escaped by saying he had things to see to before bed and besides, had to be up betimes tomorrow. She had, in fact, been relieved to see the back of him, his brooding presence was so unnerving, although it meant she’d been left alone to play bezique with Dora Cashmore, until at long last Dora declared she must go and get her beauty sleep, and Adèle almost fell on her knees with gratitude. Her nerves had reached screaming point. She could bear no more of what had happened between them all today. All she wanted was oblivion.
She felt Henry’s eyes on her back now as she gazed out into the darkness, but he wandered disconsolately away from her before she could turn and see his expression. Even now, they avoided bigger issues, as they always did. “What’s this?” he asked suddenly from behind her.
She turned round. He had picked up the ornament Lily had just removed from her hair, which she’d been wearing all night but which he typically hadn’t noticed until now, a somewhat decadent-looking thing with a woman’s naked body in the sinuous shape of a mermaid with butterfly wings, made from gold, iridescent green-and-blue enamel and black opals.
“Oh, just some trifle I fell in love with when I saw it in Liberty’s,” she lied. “You’ve seen it before, many times.”
“Have I?” He never noticed what she wore, or forgot if he did. “How much did it cost?”
“I don’t remember,” she answered lightly, looking away, and not because she was inclined to laugh, as she usually was when he stood there looking ridiculous in nothing but his shirt and his dark socks pulled up over his long underwear, and with his gloomy face, fussing over nothing, as usual. She had better be careful: Henry was not nearly so obtuse as people thought him. He adopted a blinkered approach to anything outside Belmonde, apparently uninterested in whatever was happening around him; and then suddenly he would come up with some astute comment, which showed he had been listening after all, and was all the more disconcerting because quite often it was very much to the point. It never did to push Henry too far. No one had more reason than she to fear the dark, deep moods that could come upon him, like this one which had hung over him all day.
Henry tossed the ornament back on to the dressing table with a disapproving frown. Dammit, money meant nothing to her, undoubtedly because she had never known the lack of it. She had attracted him and he’d begun to court her immediately she’d been la
unched into London society, though the fact that she was heiress to a reasonable fortune, at a time when the affairs of Belmonde were in a parlous state, was not entirely absent from the equation: she had captured a title and a historic family background which meant a great deal to her, and he had gained the wherewithal to put Belmonde back into shape which, as far as he was concerned, was a fair bargain. He hadn’t known then that it was a temporary respite – or that money ran through her fingers like water. She’d no idea of its value, and spent a fortune on clothes and trifles, on long white kid evening gloves, for instance, which could only be worn once. She would give handfuls of coins, florins, half-crowns or even a sovereign if she felt like it, to a beggar. Anything which took her fancy she bought without a moment’s hesitation, like this jewelled gee-gaw. And would tire of it in a moment, too – or more likely, for she was generous to a fault, give it away to anyone who admired it. Probably to Dora Cashmore.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked, looking at her shadowed reflection in the looking glass.
Shadows & Lies Page 4