by Peggy Gaddis
Before Bix could manage an answer to that, Beth spoke smoothly. “If you’ll take your guests into the drawing room, Bix, I’ll have tea sent in.”
“Tea? Ugh!” The girl cut in swiftly. “Make it cocktails. Or, considering the ante-bellum scenery, maybe it should be mint juleps.”
“Whatever you wish,” Beth said quietly.
“Come right along, Marise.” There was color in Bix’s face and a false heartiness in his voice as he greeted the others and swept them into the house, while Beth summoned some of the house servants to remove the luggage from the two cars.
Before she had finished, Judy came riding up, and stared at the cars and the small sea of luggage which was being removed from them, and looked at her mother in astonishment.
“We’ve been invaded?” she asked.
“We’ve been invaded,” Beth told her grimly. “Scoot back to the kitchen and see whom you can round up to get guest rooms ready for them. There will be four rooms needed; maybe six. I don’t know. Nobody bothered to tell me.”
“Why, that good-for-nothing skunk!” Judy burst out, and Beth looked at her, wryly amused.
“You’re speaking of Bix, I take it?”
“Who else? How dared he bring a swarm of house guests, when he knows how ill the Old Gentleman is, and not give you any warning!”
“According to the gal in the red sports car, in any well-managed household, a well-trained housekeeper is supposed to see to it that there are always rooms available for unexpected house guests,” Beth quoted Marise.
Judy’s eyes flashed fire. But before she could manage an answer, one of the guests came back to the drive beside the cars. She was a tall, good-looking, very attractive young woman in her late twenties, and her smile was warmly apologetic as she addressed Beth.
“I’m Alison Parker, Marise’s cousin,” she said quickly. “I came to apologize for her shocking behavior and to tell you who we are and that we will try not to be too much trouble.”
She glanced at Judy, essaying a friendly smile. But Judy did not respond, so Alison turned back to Beth.
“Marise will want the best room,” she said lightly. “She always does. The two boys will be glad to share a room; and Tony and Mimi, being a married couple who are ostensibly chaperones, will occupy one room. As for me, I’ll be glad to bed down anywhere that is convenient.”
“Well, thanks, Miss Parker, for the information,” said Beth gratefully. “I’m glad to know that only four rooms will be required. Everything would have been ready if we had had any knowledge that you were expected. Bix should have told me.”
Alison said cheerfully, “Oh, I’m sure he would have in time. But Marise acts on impulse. We weren’t supposed to come for several days, but suddenly she felt she couldn’t endure being away from Bix another moment, so here we are. May I help?”
“Thanks, that won’t be necessary.” Beth smiled at her. “You already have by letting me know how many rooms will be required. Scoot, Judy!”
Alison glanced at Judy, with a tentatively friendly smile, to which Judy still failed to respond. And as Judy walked away, leading the horse, Alison watched her go and suddenly laughed.
“If Marise had had the faintest idea there was anybody as lovely as Judy, she wouldn’t have allowed Bix to come in the first place,” she drawled.
“Not even when his grandfather is so ill?” asked Beth, as she shepherded the house servants with their burden of luggage into the house.
“Oh, she might have let him come if she had known his grandfather was so ill, but if she had known a lovely creature like Judy was here, she would have come with him!” Alison said firmly. She added, “Who is she, by the way?”
“My daughter,” answered Beth briefly, and said quietly, “Suppose you go on into the drawing room and see that Bix takes proper care of his guests. Since tea is not required, I’m sure he can handle the cocktails. Or mint juleps, if the guests prefer them.”
“Sure I can’t help?” asked Alison.
From the foot of the stairs, Beth smiled and shook her head.
“Thanks, no, the girls are coping,” she answered. There was the sound of scurrying footsteps upstairs, smothered giggles and voices, and Alison exchanged a smiling glance with Beth and turned toward the drawing room as Beth went quickly up the stairs.
Judy came to meet her at the head of the stairs and said softly, “Stay out of the kitchen. Mam’ Chloe is in an uproar! Six guests for dinner without a moment’s warning!”
Beth winced. “Maybe I’d better go quiet her down. You see to the rooms, honey. The Marise girl wants the best one, her cousin says.”
Judy’s brows went up. “Well, natch. I guessed as much the minute I saw that car. I’m sure it belongs to her and not the tired-appearing young man with straw-colored hair who looked as if he’d like to have somebody lift him out of the car.”
“Judy, darling,” said Beth quietly, “they are friends of Bix. And this is his home. He has a perfect right to invite his friends here if he wants to.”
“Well, sure! But shouldn’t he have warned you they were coming so you could be prepared for them?”
“I’m certain he would have, but they arrived earlier than he expected them,” Beth answered. She added gently, “The Marise girl seems to have quite a claim on him.”
Judy’s head went up in a little gesture that reminded Beth of Starlight’s haughty fling of her head when something displeased her.
“So?” was all she said as she turned and went back to the front of the house, where the two giggling maids in neat fresh uniforms were busily getting a room ready for its guest.
Beth watched her, then went down the back stairs to the kitchen. Even before she reached the baize door that closed it off from the rest of the house, she heard Mam’ Chloe’s voice lifted in stern orders. Beth pushed the door open and stepped into what seemed to her at the moment bedlam, but that eased off as the three maids and the cook saw and recognized Beth.
“This is a fine howdee-doo, Miz’ Beth,” announced Mam’ Chloe, hands on ample hips, bandanna-bound head held high. “Six people comin’ for dinner this time of the afternoon, with no warning. What’s that Mr. Bix think I’m going to feed these people?”
“He doesn’t know you as well as I do, Mam’ Chloe. I’m sure you can whip them up a dinner that will make them very happy. Is the dining room ready?”
“Jethro and Ezra are fixin’ it now,” Mam’ Chloe answered, slightly mollified by Beth’s expressed faith in her.
“Good!” said Beth, and turned to go.
“Miz’ Beth, you knew these people was coming, with the Old Gentleman so sick?” Mam’ Chloe’s voice caught her at the door. Beth looked back at her and shook her head.
“I’m as surprised as you are, Mam’ Chloe,” she admitted helplessly.
Mam’ Chloe nodded.
“I got some fine rat poison, Miz’ Beth,” she offered. “You think maybe they like their vittles well-flavored?”
Beth broke into a laugh and shook her head.
“Behave yourself, Mam’ Chloe,” she ordered, eyes twinkling. “Give them the very best dinner you can manage, and I know Bix will be very happy.”
Mam’ Chloe gave her a stern, steady-eyed regard.
“Don’t seem to me like I care a whole heap if he’s happy or not,” she said frankly.
“Well, after all, Mam’ Chloe, Oakhill is his home,” Beth pointed out gently. “Some day he will be master here. We have to keep that in mind, remember?”
Mam’ Chloe’s eyes dropped, and she heaved a vast sigh as she turned away.
“Yessum, I’ll remember,” she said heavily.
Beth went quietly up the stairs and carefully checked the rooms that had been made ready for the guests. As she was finishing with the room assigned to Marise, the door of the Old Gentleman’s room opened and the nurse appeared, looking puzzled.
“What is all that noise, Miz’ Beth?” she asked curiously.
Beth explained swiftly and bri
efly, and added anxiously, “Is it disturbing the Old Gentleman?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think he’s conscious of it, the poor dear,” the nurse assured her. “It’s just that I was surprised to know that there was a party when he is so ill. But I suppose his grandson did get a bit bored here where everything is so quiet. I suppose he calls it dull, though I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than to live in a lovely old place like Oakhill. But then I’m not a young man accustomed to the excitement and clamor of a large city.”
“I suppose it has been dull for him,” Beth agreed. “And I do hope his guests won’t create any disturbance for the patient.”
“Oh, I’m sure if they know how ill he is, they will curb their noise. I’m certain Bix has told them about his grandfather,” the nurse answered, and went back to her patient.
Beth went down the stairs and to the door of the drawing room. The laughter and gay voices ceased as she stood there waiting for their attention. Bix rose and came to meet her, looking mildly ashamed.
“Were we disturbing Grandfather?” he asked awkwardly.
“The nurse says you are not,” Beth answered. “I came to say that the guest rooms are ready, and I’ll be glad to show your guests to their quarters.”
“Good! I’m dying for a shower and some clean clothes!” Marise stood up. “I suppose the maid has unpacked for me?” she addressed Beth.
“I’m afraid not,” she answered the girl’s insolence politely but coolly. “The maids are housemaids. I’m afraid they are not trained to be ladies’ maids or to be trusted with unpacking such luggage as yours.”
“Well, really! Bix, you have gone primitive, haven’t you?” Marise scolded him.
Alison said good-temperedly, “Stow it, Marise. I’ll unpack for you while you shower. Now come along like a good girl.”
Marise turned on her sharply.
“Don’t talk to me as though I were five years old and feebleminded,” she snapped.
“Then stop behaving as if you were,” Alison said, still in that firm but quite pleasant voice. She drew Marise with her out of the room, the others trailing along.
When Beth had shown them all to their rooms and was starting back toward the stairs, Bix overtook her and said in awkward apology, “Miz’ Beth, I’m sorry about all this. I didn’t expect them until the end of the week and wasn’t even sure they would come then. That’s the reason I hadn’t warned you.”
Beth said quietly, “This is your home, Bix. You have every right to invite anyone you choose, and there is no reason you should have warned me.”
Bix gave her a small-boy abashed grin and answered, “It would have saved you a lot of bother if you had known in advance, Miz’ Beth, and I’m sorry you didn’t.”
She smiled forgivingly at him as she answered, “Well, there was no real inconvenience, except that they had to wait for their rooms to be made ready. Mam’ Chloe has plenty of food on hand; I have no idea what she will give you to eat, but I’m sure it will be good. I do hope your guests will like it.”
“Oh, I’m sure they will,” Bix answered hastily, as though it didn’t matter whether they did or not.
He walked with her toward the stairs, where he paused to say, his tone awkward, unhappy, “Alison says Marise was nasty when they first arrived. I do hope she wasn’t unbearably offensive.”
Beth said politely, “Not at all! She was disturbed that you were not here and that their rooms were not ready.”
“Well, I guess maybe she’s just a little bit spoiled and a bit arrogant,” Bix went on with his shame-faced apology. “She really is beautiful, you see, and she has so much money she practically has to hire people to count it for her, and I suppose it’s given her—well, a sense of importance and power. Sometimes she just doesn’t bother to think, or stop to be even casually courteous. But the ‘gang’ as she calls us, understands her and overlooks her bad manners.”
“I must say that’s big of you.” Beth could not keep back the words.
Bix flushed beneath his tan, and his eyes would not quite meet hers.
“She’s so used to having her own way that when you try to argue with her, she really stages a scene. So we usually just ride along with whatever she wants to do,” he admitted with an honesty that Beth, to her surprise, found oddly touching. “And we do have a lot of fun in New York. She’s always the ringleader, of course, but we’re used to that, so we don’t even mind any more.”
Beth asked curiously, “Did you ever?”
His color deepened and his eyes did not quite meet her own.
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did, very much! When I was first introduced to her, I felt the one thing she needed more than anything in the world was a good sound larruping! But then I found out that if she gets her own way, she can be the most alluring, the most fascinating girl ever born!”
“She’ll be a handful if she ever marries, unless the man she marries can stand up against her iron whims.” Beth would have checked the words before they were spoken, but they slipped out in spite of her.
Bix grinned ruefully, but there was no mirth in the grin.
“Somehow I don’t believe she will marry!” he replied. “And if she does, it will be somebody like Mayson, the blond guy who drove down here with her. They have been running around together for years. Sometimes she is very decent and sweet to him; then she rips into him like a bear with a sore head, and Mayson takes himself off out of her sight. Then when she is in a good humor again, he shows up, and they’re off to the races once more.”
“Sounds like a wonderful basis for a marriage.”
Bix grinned.
“Doesn’t it?” he agreed. “But if she marries anybody, it won’t last six months. That’s for sure.”
Beth eyed him curiously.
“She seems very fond of you,” she pointed out. “Doesn’t that make you a little unhappy to be talking about her so frankly? I’m sure she wouldn’t like knowing you see through her so completely.”
Bix shook his head. “Oh, she’s just using me to worry Mayson, and he and I both know it. So we just play a little game with her and let her think she’s calling the shots.”
He looked down at her, and before she could speak he added, “I suppose I sound like a first-class heel, talking about her like this. But I wanted you to understand that her bad manners are so ingrained that it never occurs to her to be civil unless she has something to gain by it.”
“You don’t have to explain her to me, Bix,” Beth took pity on his embarrassment. “She is your guest, and this is your home, and we’ll do everything we can to see that she enjoys her visit.”
“Thanks,” said Bix gratefully. “I know you will, and I’m really very grateful.”
Beth’s smile was faint. “You needn’t be. It’s our job. I’m just sorry we didn’t know they were coming in time to have had things in order for them.”
She nodded and turned away, hurrying toward the service stairs to check affairs in the kitchen. Bix watched her go and then went on to his own room, scowling a little, trying to deny that he was upset by the unexpected arrival of Marise and the entourage without which she never traveled.
In the kitchen, Beth was relieved to discover that all was going well. Judy came out of the big dining room to announce that she had checked the arrangements for the table and seen to it that Jethro, Mam’ Chloe’s husband, was supervising the two waitresses.
“All’s serene,” she announced to Beth, and added, “That is, until Her Imperial Highness takes a look at the table and decides that it’s all wrong. But then how could backwoods folks like us know what she would consider proper?”
“I’m sure it’s very nice, honey, and Mam’ Chloe’s food will make her purr like a cream-fed kitten.”
“That,” announced Judy grimly, “I’d have to see to believe. But I’m not half as furious with her as I am with Bix. How dare he invite house guests down when the Old Gentleman is so ill? And worst of all, how dare he do it without warning you?”
“It seems,” said Beth softly as she and Judy crossed the corridor to their own quarters, “that the lady has a habit of making sudden decisions and not bothering to account for anything she happens to do. She was supposed to arrive for the week-end.”
“She had no business arriving at all, especially with that crew!”
“Well, darling, we have to remember one very important thing,” Beth reminded her. “Oakhill is his home, so Bix has a right to invite anybody he likes to visit.”
Judy’s chin set stubbornly.
“It’s not his home as long as the Old Gentleman lives,” she protested. “And afterwards, Bix will sell the place. You heard him say so.”
Beth nodded soberly.
“And when that time comes, you and I will have a home of our own somewhere. I promise you that,” she said gently.
Judy stared at her, shocked.
“A home? Away from Oakhill?” she protested. “But no place else could ever feel like home to me.”
And all Beth could say as she put an arm about the girl and drew her close was, “Oh, Judy, my dearest!”
“Well, it wouldn’t,” Judy insisted, and her voice was shaken. “I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else. And he hates the place and can’t wait to get his filthy paws on it so he can sell and throw us all out into the snow.”
Beth said wryly, “It almost never snows here at Oakhill.”
“Well, don’t be technical. A driving rainstorm then,” Judy snapped, and caught her breath on a small gulped sob.
Beth sighed and made no attempt to comfort her, since at the moment she could offer no word of comfort.
Chapter Five
It was the following morning. After an all but sleepless night, Judy was on her way to the stables for her morning ride with Starlight when she heard voices. A moment later two horses galloped past her, heading for the entrance to the bridle path that cut sharply away from the drive near the house.
Judy stood still, startled as she recognized Starlight and the girl, in a very smart riding gear, who was riding her. Bix, similarly attired in riding clothes, was galloping along beside her on Big Duke, the horse that was the hardest of the six in the stables to handle. But Bix seemed completely at home in the saddle, and so was Marise aboard Starlight.