by M. C. Beaton
“Who was that on the telephone?” asked Poppy, her voice cold and flat.
“Er—oh, that telephone call. Sniffy. Good old Sniffy.”
“And how did good old Sniffy know you were going to be here at exactly this time of the day?”
“Look, Poppy,” said Freddie, trying to force his weak face into stern and commanding lines. “There’s no need to take that attitude with a chap if a chap wants to talk to his friends. Not the done thing, y’know. You’re my wife, and anything I do should be all right with you.”
“Let’s go,” said Poppy quietly.
They drove in silence, Freddie pushing the motor as far as it would go. The greening countryside raced and spun, and soon Everton loomed up in all its magnificence, staring down at this puny machine, this little piece of grubbiness of the new century, and waited for that interloper, Poppy Duveen, to climb from the car in her borrowed furs.
The duke witnessed her arrival from his study window, which was over the main entrance. For one split second he did not recognize the girl as Poppy, this woman who held her head so erect, whose white, tight face seemed almost luminous in the setting sun.
He’s hurt her, the clumsy oaf, thought the duke angrily, and then he told himself severely that it was none of his business.
As the dressing gong sounded that evening, Poppy, sitting at the dressing table, saw in the looking glass that her husband was sidling quietly out of the door. She opened her mouth to say something, to stop him from going. She knew he was going to join Sniffy somewhere, no doubt to drink and play cards. But her heart was still too heavy, and so she picked up the hairbrush and began to brush her hair in long, even strokes.
No sooner had Freddie left, however, when he was replaced by Annabelle Cummings, who arrived breathing heavily and carrying a small jewel box.
“It’s just a silly little coral necklace,” she said gruffly, putting the box on Poppy’s dressing table. “I noticed last night that you didn’t have any jewelry.”
Poppy felt her eyes filling with tears at the unexpected kindness and blinked them away, embarrassed. Annabelle was a highly sentimental soul and saw nothing wrong with this show of emotion.
“I thought we might be friends,” said Annabelle, standing on one large foot and then the other.
“Oh, yes,” said Poppy eagerly.
“I think you’re ripping,” said Annabelle with disconcerting intensity. “I wanted to talk to you about something—as friends, you know.”
“Sit down,” offered Poppy, waving toward a chair by the fire.
Annabelle sat down and stared at the floor while Poppy waited curiously to see what she had to say.
“It’s about Ian,” mumbled Annabelle, “and I want to talk about what no lady is supposed to talk about.”
“And since I’m not a lady, you’ve come to talk to me.”
“Oh, no,” wailed Annabelle. “It’s only because I thought you might understand… be sympathetic.”
“I’m sorry,” said Poppy contritely. “I’m feeling thin-skinned.”
“Not surprising with that cat, Freda, around,” retorted Annabelle.
“What is the trouble?” asked Poppy gently.
“Well, it’s Ian,” said Annabelle miserably. “We’re to be married in two months time, and I don’t know if I want any of that.”
“Any of what?”
“Well, all that rot… pawing and slobbering. Maybe I’m not very grown-up. I was so pleased when he asked me to marry him, although Pa said he was after my money. Nobody else had asked me, and one must get married to someone. I thought of marriage as having a home of my own and my horse and dogs, and going hunting together and things like that. I never considered the Other Thing.”
Neither did I, thought Poppy bleakly. “I am just married, Annabelle,” she said slowly, “and not quite qualified to give you any advice.” The wisdom of Cutler’s Fields came back to her, and she added, “Of course, if you’ve got worries, it does help to talk to someone, and maybe that way you find yourself answering your own questions.”
And so Annabelle, needing no more encouragement, talked, and Poppy listened, trying not to be shocked at the amorous play of Ian. Are they all like this? she wondered feverishly. Is romance just a figment of the imagination? Will any man outside Cutler’s Fields ever forgive me for coming from such a background?
She began to feel increasingly depressed. The dinner gong sounded, and Annabelle got to her feet, looking quite flushed and happy with relief.
“I do feel so much better, Poppy,” she said. “I’ll protect you from that tabby, Freda. It’s a good thing she’s only another of the duke’s passing fancies. As his mother says, ‘It’s a mercy they don’t last long and that Hugo never marries any of them.’” Annabelle’s voice dropped. “I hear he’s given her her marching orders, and she’s to leave tomorrow.”
A little glow of happiness started somewhere in the pit of Poppy’s stomach and spread throughout her whole body. I’m happy because I’ve got a friend, she thought naively as she beamed sunnily on Annabelle and fastened the coral necklace around her neck.
Chapter 7
Conversation in the dining room was stilted, and Freddie was conspicuous by his absence. And when dinner was over and they were all seated in the drawing room, the duke strolled immediately to Poppy’s side and said in a low voice, “A word with you in private, if you please, Mrs. Plummett.”
Poppy allowed herself to be escorted out, very conscious of the curious scrutiny of several pairs of eyes. Whenever someone wanted to “have a word with her,” Poppy’s mind cringed, for she was sure she had done something wrong.
No sooner had they reached the duke’s study, when Poppy burst out with “Well, wot issit?” her accent and voice slipping in her alarm.
“Sit down, Mrs. Plummett,” said the duke soothingly, pulling forward her usual chair while he settled himself behind the desk.
“I am alarmed at young Freddie’s absence,” he began, not looking at her but at the gold and green flames of the sea coal fire on the hearth. “He is newly married, after all.”
Poppy took a deep breath. “See, ’ere,” she said. “I am not Freddie’s keeper. Would you let yer wife order you about?”
Her agitation had dislodged a heavy gold curl from its pins, and it lay against her neck. The duke was overcome by an irrational impulse to flirt.
“If I were in love with a splendid lady like yourself, Mrs. Plummett, nothing, I can assure you, would keep me from your arms.”
“’Ere!” exclaimed Poppy, quite outraged. “You didn’t ought to talk like that!”
“Now, what have I said wrong?” he teased. “Most women would be flattered.”
Poppy felt breathless, uneasy, and unable to cope. She resorted to hitting out, as crudely as she knew how. “Fancy yerself, don’t yer, duckie,” she said.
“Don’t be so rude,” he replied. “That was quite unwarranted.”
“Well, I come here—came here—as you asked, and you asked me about Freddie, and I gave you an answer. Now can I go?”
“In a minute,” he said. He crossed to the wall and rang the bell while Poppy waited in great agitation. She tried to remind herself that he was quite old, and accustomed to being head of the family, but he looked disturbingly handsome in his black and white evening dress.
A footman entered, and the duke ordered champagne. “What a lot you are for your drink,” said Poppy.
“Yes,” he replied with an abstract air, seating himself behind the desk again. He suddenly appeared to have forgotten her existence. Poppy waited, slowly beginning to relax. The duke’s study, she decided, was quite the nicest room in the house. It was small enough to be cozy. Firelight flickered across the paneling, and the green-shaded lamp gave off a soft, mellow glow, enclosing the two figures on either side of the desk in a pool of golden light.
“What was your idea of marriage—before you married Freddie?” asked the duke, suddenly raising his head and staring straight at her.
To Poppy’s relief, the footman arrived, bearing an ice bucket, two glasses, and a bottle of champagne, which he uncorked. “Leave it there,” said the duke, with a wave of his hand, and then, to Poppy’s consternation, he repeated his question as soon as the door was closed behind the servant.
“I don’t know that I ever thought of it at all,” said Poppy, fighting down those thoughts she had had of him after that first time she had seen him, standing in Cutler’s Fields in the rain.
“Nonsense. You must have thought something. All girls do.”
“All girls who don’t have to earn a living,” said Poppy sharply, and the duke nodded slowly as if she had made a point.
“But you are very beautiful,” he said simply. “Are the young fellows of Cutler’s Fields so slow off the mark?”
Poppy looked at him for some minutes, and then decided to be honest.
“Marriage for us lot isn’t the same as for the likes of you,” she said slowly. “It’s hard for someone like me to see girls getting married, and ’fore you know it, they’ve got a child tugging at their skirts and a baby at the breast, and not enough money to feed ’em.”
“Then you consider yourself lucky to have married Freddie?”
She lowered her heavy eyelashes and did not reply, gulping down the glass of champagne in front of her instead.
He silently refilled her glass, watching her curiously all the while.
“I think you fascinate me,” he said finally, as if arriving at an important conclusion.
“You shouldn’t ought to be talking like that,” said Poppy, although the happiness in her voice belied the words. “Why don’t we talk about something else? What do you do, for example? Sit around here all day?”
“I am not so lazy as I appear,” he replied with that sudden sweet smile, which made her heart turn over. “I am by way of being a farmer, you know, and I attend most of the agricultural shows in the neighborhood. The revenue from this estate is all from the farms. The estate in Durham produces coal, but here it’s all beef and sheep and grain.”
“Go on,” teased Poppy. “You can’t fool me. You’re just a lazy aristocrat, living off the backs of the poor.”
“Oh, that too,” he replied vaguely, as if he had just suddenly thought of something else.
Far away in the distance came the sound of a motorcar.
“Freddie!” said Poppy.
“Yes, Freddie.” He got to his feet, and she arose automatically as well. He walked around the desk and stood looking down at her as the sound of the automobile, approaching at great speed, rushed upon the silence of the room.
It was unlikely he would see much of her after she had gone to live in town with Freddie, he thought, all in a split second.
He suddenly bent his head and kissed her gently on the mouth, and Poppy stayed, held by the pressure of his lips, deaf now to the roar of approaching Freddie; enchanted, burning, dying… hopelessly and helplessly in love.
Then two things happened simultaneously. The roar of the motor outside ended in a great, sickening crump of tin and a tinkling of glass, and the duchess opened the door to the study and stood aghast at the sight of Poppy in her son’s arms.
“Something’s happened to that silly ass,” said the duke, releasing Poppy and ignoring the duchess’s expression.
Guilt’s black angels swooped down on Poppy, and she turned from the duke and uttered a stammered “I—I m-must go” and fled from the room.
When she ran across the hall everyone else seemed to be running toward the door as well.
Out along the drive ran Poppy, hair flying from its pins, skirts streaming behind her.
“Oh, my Gawd!”
She stopped abruptly as a little circle of servants parted at her coming.
The automobile, Freddie’s pride and joy, seemed to have driven itself halfway up a great elm at the side of the drive. And Freddie! He, poor, lifeless fool, dangled from the open door, head downward, like a discarded puppet.
The funeral was a sad enough affair. Poppy wept bitterly and long, almost happy that her grief was so intense, since she felt she must have loved Freddie after all. She was too young and inexperienced to know that she was crying from guilt, and because the atmosphere at Everton was not precisely friendly.
The duchess was bitterly disappointed in Poppy. She had put down the scene she had witnessed in the study to Poppy’s common philandering. Everyone else, with the exception of the duke, and Annabelle, felt that Freddie’s death was directly related to his marriage to Poppy. Low manners beget low behavior, like drinking, and killing oneself by wrapping oneself around a tree. No one quite remembered how many times dear Freddie had been abysmally drunk before his marriage. All were suffering from shock and the inevitable feelings of guilt caused by sudden death. And all, being only human, needed someone to blame.
The duke examined his conscience, decided coolly that he had behaved abominably in flirting with Poppy, gave himself a mental slap on the wrist, and forgot about her as a woman, concentrating on the problem of Poppy as a new dependent in his books.
His man of business in London, Mr. MacDonald, had found a small villa in St. John’s Wood, in the North of London, which he had bought, complete with furniture, from a retired civil servant. In it he had placed a housemaid, a scullery maid, and a cook-housekeeper, wages to be paid by the duke, a small quarterly allowance to be paid to Mrs. Plummett. All this was very satisfactory to the duke, who was human enough to enjoy playing Father Christmas, and, after all, it was a good way of washing his hands of the now unwanted Mrs. Plummett.
Three days after the funeral he summoned Poppy to his study and told her, crisply, about the arrangements made for her future. Poppy tried to feel grateful, but only succeeded in feeling bitterly humiliated. He was very much the lord dealing with the servants. At one point she almost expected him to ask for her references.
She could only be glad when the interview was over. She was to be conveyed from Everton the next day. The duke’s man of business would dispatch someone to fetch her sisters from Cutler’s Fields and install them in the St. John’s Wood villa in time for Poppy’s arrival. Nothing had been overlooked. Mr. MacDonald had been told by the duke that the children were bound to be dirty and rough-spoken, and to give the servants strict orders to mind their manners.
Poppy had, in part, been protected from hurt by shock at Freddie’s death, but on her last day as she was making her way along the corridor to go downstairs to the carriage, the duchess’s voice suddenly reached her ears, coming from a room at the end of the corridor.
“My dear Hugo,” came Her Grace’s voice with awful clarity, “I think we are well rid of that Poppy girl. I was very much mistaken in her, and now I think she simply married Freddie for what she could get out of him. Well, she’s doing well enough out of it, thanks to you.”
The duke replied something, but his voice was too low to reach Poppy’s ears.
“It’s gentlemanly of you to take the blame, Hugo,” said Her Grace, “but a girl does not receive advances from a gentleman unless she has done something to encourage them. Let us sincerely hope that this will be the last of Poppy Duveen at Everton. Thank goodness she doesn’t need to go on the stage. That’s at least a mercy. She would probably use the Plummett name, and can you imagine it? Something like ‘Lewis’s Lovelies, featuring the Honorable Mrs. Freddie Plummett.’ That’s the trouble with things since the old Queen died. This country is becoming far too democratic for its own good. We shall become like America if things go on the way they’re going, and nothing could be worse than that!”
A voice in Poppy’s mind cried, What are you doing, standing here listening to this garbage? Move! And she did so as best she could, although she discovered that there is a kind of hurt, so deep and so intense, it affects you physically, and the very body becomes stiff and sore as if with rheumatism.
It was still early enough for Annabelle to be in bed, and there were only the servants to see her off. Lost in th
e depths of her deep hurt, Poppy was not aware of the single honor being given her as they lined up on the steps to wave good-bye. Fortunately, they put her sad face and silence down to grief.
Heavy of heart, sick with humiliation, Poppy climbed into the carriage, which was to take her to catch the Brighton train to London. One of the housemaids had been chosen to chaperon her, Poppy having fallen from the high state of deserving a lady’s maid.
The duke had left his mother as Poppy was making her way downstairs, and he returned to his study. He looked down from the window on what he thought was the last of Poppy.
He was startled at the staff turnout. They were not, as far as he could see, saying farewell to a social equal, but to a very respected lady. She seemed very small and frail, her normally robust health dimmed by the widow’s weeds and the background of the slate-gray day.
He felt the beginnings of unease tinged with loss, but his mind immediately closed down like a steel trap on his emotions.
The coachman cracked his whip, and the carriage rumbled off.
Poppy sat very straight, her back rigid with sorrow.
The splendor of Everton glared down on her retreating back. “Good-bye, upstart,” it seemed to be saying. “We have repulsed such as you before, and we will repulse them again.”
A dry, rattling sob shook her body from head to foot. But they would not make her cry. She would never let them make her cry again.
“Damn the bleedin’ lot of them!” said Poppy Duveen.
Chapter 8
The lamplighter was moving slowly down a quiet, tree-lined street in St. John’s Wood when Poppy arrived at her new home.
A thin mist hung in the gathering dusk. The lamplighter raised his brass pole, and another gas flower bloomed in the failing light. Water dripped from the trees. After the bustle and clamor of Cutler’s Fields, and Poppy’s stay at Everton, it all seemed terrifyingly quiet to her.
Poppy and her maid alighted from the carriage that had brought them from the station. She hesitated outside the gate, looking in wonder at the house, some of the pain in her heart melting away.