The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  “I—I—l—love you too,” said Daisy in a choked whisper.

  The Earl, joined them and said a few pleasant commonplaces to Mr. Dufresne and then led Daisy from the theater.

  When Daisy and the Earl arrived at the party the guests were already playing charades and the room was in darkness. The only person to notice Daisy’s shining face and shining jewels was the Duke, who felt suddenly liverish and decided to go home.

  That night Amy listened sympathetically enough to Daisy’s love story, but seemed to be thinking of something else. “I can’t go with you tomorrow, Daisy,” said Amy. “I need another evening off.”

  “Your young man?” asked Daisy.

  Amy nodded, her face shining.

  Daisy hugged her. “Then of course you can have time off, Amy. I’ll manage somehow.”

  But by next morning Daisy was not sure that she would manage. She was relieved and surprised when the Earl again offered his services as an escort. “I’ll give you a little time with him, Daisy, but not alone,” said the Earl firmly and Daisy had to be content with that.

  The Earl and Daisy seemed to be the only two souls in Brinton unaffected by the heat, as they strolled arm in arm into the theater. Everyone else seemed to be wilting. The air was even more suffocating than ever and dark purplish clouds were building up on the twilight horizon and great oily waves were sucking at the pier.

  Again the Earl left unnoticed, but at the first interval Daisy decided to go to the dressing room and powder her nose. She must look her very best and she knew that her face was wet with perspiration from the heat of the theater. She spent a long time in front of the dressing table in the small ladies’ room and as she rose to return to the theater, she realized that there had been no warning bell and no sound of returning feet. Thunder was crashing overhead so perhaps the sound had drowned out any sound of the theatergoers returning from the pub at the end of the pier for the second act.

  She walked into the auditorium and stood still in dismay. Water was pouring in a steady stream through the ceiling of the theater and apart from an old man who was just putting a large bucket under it, the place was deserted.

  “Had to close the show, miss,” he told her. “I warned ’em the roof wasn’t sound, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Ho, no! Not goin’ to rain this summer, they says.”

  “I have an appointment with Mr. Dufresne backstage,” said Daisy. “But if I go round to the stage door, I shall be soaked.”

  “Climb up on the stage then, miss,” said the old man obligingly. “Just follow the sound of their voices.”

  Daisy walked through the small orchestra pit. The noise of the thunder above the theater and the waves pounding beneath was deafening. A gust of wind shook the painted city of Verona so that it rippled and shuddered.

  Under the noise of the thunder she was faintly able to make out the sound of voices and walked behind the scenery toward the noise.

  Then one clear sentence froze her in her tracks. “Well, Bertram, me boy, You ain’t going to get your hands on Miss Chatterton’s sparklers tonight.”

  “Or Miss Chatterton’s anything else.”

  “Don’t worry,” said a slightly cockneyfied voice, “there’s always tomorrow. That’s if this bleedin’ theater doesn’t fall down first.”

  Daisy looked around the corner of a piece of scenery and into the Green Room. The whole cast were sprawled at their ease. Bottles of beer and meat pies were being passed around. But it was Romeo who drew her horrified stare. As she watched, he removed his black curls and balanced them on top of an empty bottle. His own hair was revealed as thinning and dark brown and without the softening effect of his curls, his high-nosed features appeared as belonging more to the Mile End Road than to Verona. His accent too had changed from mildly French to mildly London East End.

  “Gawd,” said Romeo. “I had that little bird in the palm of me hand.” He took a refreshing swig of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Though I tell you, it took all me Thespian efforts to keep me eyes on her face and not on them diamonds. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen of Verona, ten minutes alone with that little dolly and I’ll have them in the palm of me hand.”

  “And what else will you have in the palm of yer hand?” screeched Juliet.

  The cast laughed and cheered and Daisy retreated slowly and very carefully as if from a poisonous snake.

  The whole theater shook and creaked like a clipper riding out an Atlantic storm. She could not—would not—stay in the theater for shelter, just to be discovered by these hideous mocking actors. What a fool she’d been. She thought gratefully of the kindly Earl. She would probably find him at the pub since he had been smelling of port the night before.

  Taking a deep breath she pushed open the door and fled out into the storm. Huge waves were lashing the pier and great buffets of rain were being thrown down from the heavens. Not knowing from one minute to the other whether she was in the sea or on dry land, Daisy made a headlong dash down the pier to where the reassuring light of the George and Dragon twinkled through the storm. Gasping for breath, her green tulle dress plastered to her body and her hair falling about her ears, she pushed open the heavy glass door of the pub and stood on the threshold.

  It was empty except for four of Amy’s mashers from the whelk-buying day, who looked up at her entrance. “A mermaid, by Jove,” cried one. “Come and sit down, my pretty.” He jumped to his feet and came forward, taking Daisy by the arm.

  Mustering all her ragged dignity, Daisy looked him straight in his bloodshot eyes. “Do not touch me, sir. I am here to find my escort, the Earl of Nottenstone, not to waste my time with riffraff such as you.”

  The bloodshot eyes narrowed in drunken dislike. “Want his nibs, do you? Well, we’ll tell you where to find his nibs. Up them stairs.”

  “It’s a trap,” cried Daisy. An elderly taciturn man shuffled out from behind the bar. “You, sir!” cried Daisy. “Where is the Earl of Nottenstone?”

  He gave a laconic jerk of his head in the direction of the stairs. Daisy gave a gasp of relief and ran lightly to the top and stood listening. She had heard that gentlemen sometimes take a private parlor in a pub where they can drink apart from the common crowd. She heard the Earl’s voice indistinctly from behind a door on her right and with a great sigh of relief, threw the door open.

  The small room seemed to be mostly filled with a great double bed. The Earl of Nottenstone’s bare backside was presented to her and looking over his shoulder in alarm were the wide blue eyes of Mrs. Blessop, the vicar’s wife.

  Now Daisy did not fear the storm. She simply wanted to get away… very, very far away. She ran downstairs and through the bar, followed by the mocking catcalls of the mashers and the surprised groan of the old man—“How was I to know. I thought he was a-takin’ on the two of ’em…”—and out into the rage and noise of the storm.

  Uncaring, unseeing, and unhearing, she ran the whole way back to the villa and did not stop until she lay face down on her bed, sobbing with mortification.

  Amy, returning late from her night out, paused by the door listening to the muffled sobs, and then pushed it open and went in. Clucking with sympathy like a mother hen, she got Daisy out of her wet clothes. All Daisy would do was cry that she must leave in the morning. She must get away. The girl seemed nearly frantic and a worried Amy ran to fetch Curzon.

  Together, Amy and Curzon extracted the whole pitiful story from Daisy. She sobbed that the Duke had given her her father’s address and that she wanted to go as soon as possible.

  Curzon managed to persuade Daisy to go only as far as Brown’s Hotel in Albemarle Street, Mayfair.

  “Amy can go with you to France,” said the butler, “since the Duke seems to have no objection to you going. But you really need a man to go with you.”

  “Well,” said Amy suddenly. “Me and my husband will go with her. We need to get out of the country for a bit.”

  Both Curzon and Daisy stared at Amy as if they could not b
elieve their ears.

  Amy’s large eyes began to dance with mischief. “I’m Mrs. Bertie Burke. The vicar married us by special license yesterday.”

  Chapter 14

  The dusty fiacre pulled by its superannuated horse trudged along beside the Mediterranean. Although it was still early morning the heat inside the small vehicle was already suffocating. Amy and Bertie, who seemed to have boundless energy, chattered and exclaimed over the scenery. But Daisy was silent.

  A growing feeling of foreboding assailed her now that her father seemed so close. Her new glittering life had been so full of disappointments and the fact that someone like the Duke of Oxenden would no doubt point out that it was all her own fault, did nothing to make her feel any happier or less apprehensive.

  In all the long trek south—the stormy Channel crossing, the brief stay with friends of Bertie’s on the Avenue Rachel in Paris, the trains and carriages through increasingly foreign countryside—Daisy had had the Duke constantly in her thoughts. If anything bad happened to her, he would not be around any longer to come to her rescue. By the time they had broken their journey in Toulon, Daisy had realized miserably that she had found her true love and that it was utterly hopeless. The Duke of Oxenden was too big a matrimonial prize to trouble himself with mere Daisy Chatterton, Honorable though she might be.

  “Only ten kilometers to go,” cried Amy as they passed a signpost. “I was beginning to think the place didn’t exist.”

  Daisy took out the crumpled piece of paper with her father’s address on it, more to look at the Duke’s handwriting than to remind herself of her destination.

  Gossip evidently traveled extensively through the French countryside just as it did in England. “Yes,” they had said at the hotel in Toulon, “there is an English milord living at Tappalon. A small village, mademoiselle, about fifteen kilometers from Toulon. He lives in a big house on a rise above the village. Anyone will tell you…”

  Daisy, with all her school French, had succeeded quite well in Paris, but the broad vowels and patois of the south seemed nearly incomprehensible.

  She had imagined the French Riviera to be one long promenade anglaise, bedecked with striped umbrellas and bougainvillea—not this stark landscape of the moon where a few stunted pines clung to barren, gray, and pitted crags. But the glimpses of the Mediterranean seen through stands of cypress and pine on the shore side were a constant refreshment to eyes weary of the sun’s glare and seemingly endless travel.

  “Tappalon,” called the elderly driver from the box, and the old horse snorted and wheezed as if it realized it would soon be able to rest its weary hooves in the cool shade outside the Bar Publique.

  The fiacre came to a stop in the middle of the village square. Several ragged children appeared from nowhere and formed a silent semicircle around the alighting passengers. They were soon joined by their mothers who also stood silently, their quick black eyes rapidly pricing every piece of clothing on the English mesdames.

  “Where is the house of Lord Chatterton?” roared Bertie with true English conviction that every foreigner was stone-deaf.

  His audience stared at him solemnly. The driver sat woodenly on his box. A pine-scented breeze blew across the square carrying with it the domestic smells of coffee, wine, garlic, and fresh bread. Bertie suddenly realized that he was very hungry. He stared back at his audience with a baffled expression in his weak eyes and then muttered, “I’ve got it!” He solemnly produced a handful of gold and generously settled the fare and then stood, tossing a gold sovereign up and down in his palm. It glinted in the sharp sunlight and a reflecting gleam showed in the eyes of his audience. “The house of milord Chatterton,” repeated Bertie gently. Immediately there was a babble of incomprehensible French, but Daisy gathered that everyone was now determined to show them the way. Bertie selected a boy of about thirteen as guide and they set off behind him. But the rest of the village had decided to come as well and so they left the square and started up a chalky lane leading directly up the hill at the back.

  Daisy’s heart began to beat fast. She longed to see her father—she dreaded to see her father. But she desperately wanted to belong to someone. Bertie and Amy were a supremely happy honeymoon couple, but their happiness had only made Daisy feel more isolated.

  She unfurled her parasol and picked her way up the path, feeling the sharp stones cutting through the thin soles of her boots, which had been fashioned in Paris only for walking on the thick carpets of a French salon.

  They passed a flower farm on the hillside where the farmer was hard at work, dying great bunches of marguerites every color of the rainbow. The dusty ground around his house was stained with great splashes of color like an impressionistic painting. The peppery smell of the marguerites mingled with the dusty chalk and made Daisy sneeze. When she had finished blowing her nose she realized that their guide had come to a halt beside a heavy pair of tall wrought-iron gates. Everyone chattered and exclaimed proudly. The boy accepted his guinea with a jerky half bow and then tumbled headlong off down the road, pursued by the villagers, all anxious to have a look at a real piece of gold.

  “Well, this is it, Daisy,” said Bertie. “If you don’t want to go through with it, we can turn back now. You’ve always got a home with me and Amy, you know.”

  Daisy smiled at them mistily, but shook her head. Bertie clanged a rusty bell beside the gate and then the three of them waited in silence. A cloud passed over the sun and the crickets sent out a great wave of buzzing and chirping as if disturbed by the loss of warmth.

  “I—I don’t think anyone’s coming,” said Daisy. “Is the gate open, Bertie?” He gave it an exploratory push and with a creak it swung back on its rusty hinges. The drive wound upward, bordered on either side with dusty rhododendrons, pine, spruce, and brambles.

  The driveway itself was uncared for and more like a dry riverbed than the entrance to a mansion. They turned around a bend and suddenly—there was Lord Chatterton’s house.

  It was a large two-storied villa built from brown Provençal stone. There was a long terrace at the front with great arched windows opening onto a large cool room. A scarlet lace parasol lay abandoned on a cane table on the terrace, along with a sixpenny, torn, and tattered copy of Ouida’s Held in Bondage. Daisy hesitated and looked at her companions. She had not envisaged any female in her father’s household.

  “Probably got house guests,” said Bertie breezily, answering Daisy’s unspoken question. “Come along. We can’t stand here all day.”

  They moved slowly into the living room. A long table held the greasy remains of luncheon. Various items of female clothing which should never have been exposed to the public gaze lay in a trail from the terrace, through the room, and to a door at the far corner. The reader of Ouida had obviously undressed in stages as she had left the terrace, ending up by removing a frivolous pair of crepe de chine knickers, which now hung drunkenly from the corner of an overstuffed armchair.

  “Anyone at home?” yelled Bertie.

  The silence was absolute. Even the breeze outside had ceased to blow and the dusty pines and shrubbery shimmered beneath the scorching sun like a mirage.

  “Why, there’s your ma!” cried Amy, making Daisy jump. She was pointing to a portrait over the fireplace. A sweet, serene face, very like Daisy’s, smiled at them pleasantly from a heavy gilt frame. “Cheer up, Daisy. You’re in the right place, anyway,” added Amy as Daisy’s eyes began to fill with tears.

  Daisy felt the loss of her mother as she had never felt it before. If only that gentle figure in the portrait could come to life and step down from its frame and soothe her loneliness and homelessness away with long, cool, maternal hands.

  “What d’ye want?” The voice was a harsh croak and the three spun around from their examination of the portrait.

  Standing on the threshold to the room was a small girl wrapped in a man’s dressing gown. Her hair was dyed an impossible color of red and surmounted a small, sharp white face. Her pale-green eyes we
re snapping with a mixture of suspicion and jealousy as they roamed over the elegant, if dusty, dress of the visitors.

  “I am Daisy Chatterton,” said Daisy, stepping forward. “I have come to see my father.”

  The girl’s eyes flashed from the portrait to Daisy’s face. “Pleased ter meet you, I’m sure,” she said, stepping forward and extending a grubby hand. “Neddie didn’t say nuffink about having a daughter, but then he likes to pretend he’s sweet and twenty ’isself.”

  Daisy found that she was trembling from nerves and disappointment. To judge from the clothes scattered about the room, the girl was obviously not a servant.

  “And are you a friend of my father? Miss…”

  “Miss Wellington-Jones-Smythe,” said the girl, without batting an eyelid. “I’m your Dad’s companion.”

  “Where is he?” demanded Bertie after introducing himself and Amy.

  “Oh, Neddie’s gone off to play the tables as usual. Got a big win, buys ’isself… himself… a motor and beetles off like a rat up a spout and don’t give me nuffink… anything… for the housekeeping.”

  “Do you think we could have some tea?” asked Daisy. She was beginning to feel faint.

  “Okay,” said Miss Wellington-Jones-Smythe cheerfully. “I’ll rouse the old bag.” She disappeared into the nether regions where she could be heard haranguing someone in execrable French.

  “What on earth does ‘okay’ mean?” asked Amy.

  “It’s an American expression,” explained Bertie, anxious to display his transatlantic knowledge. “It means ‘all right.’ It comes from Martin Van Buren’s birthplace, Old Kinderhook, New York State. The Democrats founded the O.K. Club in 1840 and o.k. became a catchword of the party. Hence okay.”

  Miss Wellington-Jones-Smythe reappeared, followed by a sleepy village girl who placed a tray on the table and began to clean up the room, stopping every now and then to stare openmouthed at the guests. “Help yourselves,” said their hostess, “and I’ll go and slip into something tight.” She gave a sudden infectious giggle, winked at Bertie, and hurried off. Then she popped her head around the door and said, “It’s coffee. She can’t make tea,” and disappeared again.