Claire Page 16

  Claire was there, along with two housemaids, Thomas-gardener, and two under-gardeners, putting final touches on the terrace and the garden and the gazebo for Claudia’s wedding on the morrow. It was likely as alone as she would be for the next four-and-twenty hours, with Claudia and her three sisters gone to collect her wedding finery from the dressmakers, and Tony having invited his soon-to-be brothers-in-law, including Varian, over to his house for a glass of wine and a good game of cards while the women fussed. Varian had declined quietly, and as his presence would have made a fifth, it had not been much missed. Tony, after one look at his friend’s face, had not pressed him.

  So Drew strolled outside; Claire was dressed not in blue muslin today, but in the most enchanting creation of pink and white lace, with red ribbons and small red roses catching up the skirt at the hem, and with a flush of excitement bringing roses also to her cheeks.

  “Claire?”

  “Oh, Varian.” She had set the housemaids to cleaning the terrace, and at the moment she was directing an under-gardener in placing a number of potted plants around the gazebo, since her bulb beds dug out at the beginning of the summer were still distressingly bare, and would be so until next spring. “Hallo; I thought you had gone to Tony’s. No, Ben, not there; yes, that’s better. And the other box of ferns— put it in front, there, and try to cover up that bare spot. Did you need to see me, Varian?”

  “You’re very busy,” he said apologetically.

  “Yes, if you must know, I am,” she said frankly, without taking her eyes off the flowers. “The ferns— Ben, surely we’ve got another one of those?”

  “No, mum, wey hain’t.”

  “Can you run up to Lady Swaffingham and see if she’s got another in her hothouse? And while you’re there, ask her if she thinks she will have any roses in the morning, for if she can spare them, I should like to have them,” Claire said, and the young man nodded, pulling his cap, and strode away. “Now, Varian, what is it?”

  “I only meant to let you know that I shall be leaving tomorrow just after the wedding,” he said pleasantly. “It looks lovely, Claire; you’ve done it all very well,” he said, gazing around at the transformation.

  When Claire did not answer, he glanced at her; she was staring at him, her face white, her eyes wide. “Leaving?” she repeated, with those straight brows drawing together suddenly on the word as she spoke it.

  “Yes, just for a month or so; I’ve spoken to Rajat, and he will look after you, and of course Tony and Claudia will be here in Town until September, I imagine. You can call on them if you need anything,” he said quietly.

  “Varian— ”

  Drew met those wide eyes of hers. They had hardly spoken for weeks, even less lately, what with the confusion that had reigned over Banning House the last sennight, with ten of them sitting down to dinner every evening, the breakfast parlor crowded in the morning. The sunny, pleasant terrace of last spring had been almost forgotten in all the recent commotion of outings and excursions, the stables full, the drawing room crowded and noisy, babies upstairs in the nursery, and all sorts of servants in the halls carrying up this and carrying down that.

  Now it all faded away in the quiet shade beneath the oak tree. “I shan’t be gone long, Claire,” Drew said impulsively, and took her hand, unresisting, in his, and raised it to his lips.

  “You’re— you’re leaving me?”

  Claire could no more have concealed her distress from him than she could have kept it from herself; Varian saw longing in her eyes, all covered over with that cool, controlled reserve of hers, and yet threatened suddenly by the thought of losing him. “Only for a few weeks. I’ve promised Canning to go down with the English army to Lisbon and interpret for them, for they’re quite desperate for fluent Portuguese at the moment. It won’t be— ”

  “Fluent Portuguese?” she said abruptly.

  “Well, yes,” he nodded.

  “You don’t speak Portuguese,” she said, frowning still.

  “I speak it very well, in fact,” he smiled, and kissed her hand once again. “My father was a Navy man, too, remember? And I lived in Lisbon for four years while I was a boy.”

  “But Varian— ”

  “Canning’s asked me if I will go, and I’ve put him off until the wedding was over, but they are desperate down there, and I— ”

  “Varian! You are going to interpret for the English army?” she said, her frown suddenly replaced with a stiff, wide-eyed look of consternation.

  Drew hesitated, and then he said earnestly, “My family owes this to England, you see.”

  She stared at him in an agony of horror and hate and love and mistrust all mixed up together; her hand was instantly withdrawn, and she turned away, saying, “Very well; I shall be perfectly all right here. Don’t think of it another moment,” and called to Thomas-gardener, and left Drew standing there, wishing for something he had no right to wish for, and after a moment, he went back into the house.

  Claire waited until she was certain her husband would no longer be in the hallway, and then she half-ran, half-walked to the terrace and, hoping that he would not look up as she passed, went silently past the library to the stairs.

  With trembling fingers she unlocked her jewel box and scrambled for the letter in the bottom and stuffed it hastily into her reticule. Hands shaking, she put on her hat and gloves and rang for Elena to call for the carriage. She waited impatiently upstairs at the window until she saw it draw up outside in the street, and then she came quietly, hurriedly downstairs again.

  With a frozen look on her face, she halted mid-stair as she saw him waiting for her with his hand laid proprietorially over the bannister.

  “Where are you going?”

  It was almost an accusation; Varian Drew stood there, his blue eyes hard, that square, bronzed face as stern as she had ever seen it. Of course; he knew. He knew that Claire had discovered his perfidy; he knew that she had proof of his spying. That foolish, often-regretted moment in the garden, when she had told him— the letters— he knew that she must have something in her possession, and that she would not wish to allow him to spy again.

  What was at stake was Portugal; this was no impersonal gathering of facts for transmittal to the enemy, but a country that she had come to love, a people she had come to respect, a history that she had learned to cherish. She could not allow him to betray Portugal. And of course he had guessed it as soon as he saw her coming downstairs with her hat and gloves and reticule. He knew very well where she was going.

  She continued down the grand staircase. “I have a few things to do,” she said, after she managed to control her voice, and, clutching her reticule tightly in her hand, swept past him.

  “Excellent.” He took his hat from Stiles. “I shall be happy to accompany you.”

  “Varian!”

  “Unless there is something you mean to keep from me?” he asked grimly.

  “I don’t need an escort!”

  “I wish,” Drew said shortly, “to go. Come along. I don’t care to keep my horses standing in the street.” He took her arm and pushed her outside, with a sudden brusqueness that caused her to tremble.

  “Now,” he said, in that low, intense voice that she had heard only once before, one day long ago in his library, “Now, Lady Banning, where shall I direct John-coachman?” He handed her into the carriage with a harsh hand on her elbow that caused sudden tears to come to her eyes, and she sat down, shaking, and closed her hands tightly her reticule in her lap. She stared at him still standing in the street. “Well?”

  “You know,” Claire whispered, hating him, and hating that she could not hate him completely, and hating that she had to do this.

  “I do not,” Banning replied, a muscle tensing in the side of his cheek, that bronzed and handsome face carved in granite, those brilliant blue eyes hard as gemstones, “I do not know.”

  “To George Canning’s house,” Claire said, after a moment, meeting his gaze, and refusing to allow the slightest tremor
into her voice or the tiniest betrayal in her gaze.

  “With,” Drew guessed suddenly, “a letter.” He stared at her for a moment longer with that unyielding grimness on his face, and then called out the direction to the coachman, and jumped inside and closed the door. “Let me have it.”

  “No.”

  “Give it to me,” he ordered, as the carriage began to move.

  “I shall give it to Lord Canning, and no one else!”

  “Claire— ”

  “I shall not give it to you!” she exclaimed shakily. “I shall carry it to Lord Canning, or you shall have to take it from me by force!” she added, in a low voice, holding tightly to her reticule, and staring at her skirt, and concentrating all of her energies that she should not burst into tears.

  “Very well,” her husband said inflexibly, in a voice that seared into her heart.

  The drive was accomplished in an utter and absolute silence. When the carriage halted, Banning jumped down and imperiously extended his hand to his wife, and as soon as she had descended, he released it and went up to the door. A surprised Lord Canning met Lord and Lady Banning in his library; he had just this moment got home from chancery court. As he gave Varian Drew his hand and saw the look on his face, and then the strained, white countenance of the lady standing some ways away staring at his andirons, his congenial manner faded slightly.

  “Is anything amiss?” Canning asked, thinking that very likely Drew’s wife had constrained her husband not to go, and that he should be stuck without an interpreter for good.

  “My wife,” came Varian Drew’s quiet and forbidding voice, “has brought you a letter which I believe she wishes you to read.”

  “Lady Banning?” George Canning asked, mystified.

  She drew in a resolute breath and took a small packet of paper from her reticule and held it out to him wordlessly. Canning took it, puzzled, and saw Varian Drew’s gaze fix itself on that well-worn and innocuous bit of correspondence.

  It was a packet addressed to Varian Drew, Lord Banning, in care of the English office at Madras, India, from Sir Colbert Ffawlkes.

  “Lady Banning, sit down, won’t you?” George Canning offered, and she nodded, without speaking. Varian Drew went across Canning’s library to the fireplace, and stood there silently, grimly, staring at the hearth, behind Lord Canning, as he opened the packet and read the note inside.

  Over a rustle of paper, Canning glanced up at Lady Banning with a slightly puzzled frown. “I’m sorry, my dear; I don’t understand. Is this somehow important?”

  “I believe that my wife thinks I have committed some crime,” came Banning’s voice. He came over and held out his hand. “I have not seen this letter; may I?”

  Canning handed it to him with a nod, and did not see Lady Banning’s eyes close for an instant just before she bent her head to hide her face beneath the rim of her bonnet, as she sat silently, motionlessly, shatteringly tense, in her chair, her gloved hands clasped tightly in her lap. After he had glanced at it, he stared at the direction on the outside for a moment, and said quietly, “Did you find this after your father died, Claire?”

  “Yes,” came an almost inaudible voice, her bonnet all that was visible of her bowed head.

  “And what do you make of it?”

  “Varian, please— ” she pleaded; did he think— could he believe that she wished to do this? Did he not know that she was in pieces, shattered, nothing more than his precious tiger lying bloodied in the dust, and that every word of that inflexible voice was his knife cutting away at her heart?

  “I have my own explanation,” Drew said in a hard voice. “But I should like to hear yours; I think it will explain a great many things to me.”

  “Lady Banning— perhaps you might care for a glass of sherry— some tea, my dear?” inquired Canning, seeing her lack of color.

  “No; I am perfectly all right,” she said, and raised her head. “You have asked my husband to go to Portugal for the English,” she began slowly, without looking at Lord Banning, “and I have just found it out today. It is why I have come here. For there is something that you do not know about my husband— and about my— my father,” she began, her voice breaking. Lord Canning came and knelt beside her chair and took her hand when he saw the distress in her face and heard the agony in her voice. “You do not want Varian in Portugal, Lord Canning, and I must tell you so; I cannot allow this to happen!” she said, her voice fading away.

  “Oh, god, Claire,” came a quiet, feeling voice from behind Canning, and Varian Drew turned away, averting his face, and crumpled the letter in his hand.

  “He and my father were— ” a chasm, and she leapt— “spying for the French— my father from Portugal, and my husband— my husband from India,” she managed, and pressed her lips tightly together.

  “My dear Lady Banning!” said a incredulous Lord Canning.

  “I discovered it by accident; my father was unable to post this last letter before he died, and I discovered it in his desk. All those notes, pages and pages of English gossip, and then that— the instruction,” Lady Banning said, retaining her control with an effort, her voice dying to the barest, broken whisper, “that he should be paid in the usual manner.” She halted, staring at her gloved hands, as a tear ran unchecked down her face; her shoulders were so tense that she could not breathe, except by forcing herself to do so.

  “Lady Banning, I am certain that— ”

  “No, let her go on,” came that expressionless voice from the other side of the room.

  She glanced up at her husband; he was watching her, the letter clenched in his hand. All the pain of dishonor and physical abuse and those years of poverty and hardship, all burned in that instant in his eyes. “There is nothing else,” she said, and tore her eyes away, trembling violently.

  “My dear,” began George Canning, staring up into her face with an anxious frown on his brow. “I see that you have been laboring under this— this presumption for some time, haven’t you?”

  She nodded slightly, without looking up, as tears fell unheeded on her gloves.

  “I am certain you believe you know the truth, but my dear girl, I knew your father, very well, in fact, and I could never believe this of Sir Colbert,” he said, still frowning.

  “Yes, I know,” she said, a little more calmly, and swallowed some of the tightness in her throat. “I could not believe it either.” She shook her head wordlessly, and then said, in a moment, “I could not believe it.”

  “I have the greatest respect for your husband, besides,” he said, patting her arm, and rising, and going over to his young friend, and touching his shoulder briefly. “In fact, I do not even need an explanation, for I am certain that it has been all the greatest misunderstanding. I shall allow the two of you to settle it privately,” he said, showing a great deal of sensitivity, and went out and closed the door.

  For a long span of time there was not a breath of movement in the room; then Varian Drew said, “Come, Claire; let’s go home,” and came over to where she sat, and put out his hand.

  She rose without touching him; she preceded him out the door, and nodded to the butler in Lord Canning’s deserted hallway, and went outside and climbed up unassisted into the carriage, and did not look up when she saw his boots, and heard the door close and his tap on the carriage window as he sat down across from her.

  “Well? Do you wish to know what really happened?”

  Claire closed her eyes in agony at that forbidding voice; she could not say no, although every intuition told her that she could not believe him. She opened her eyes and drew in a small breath, and, staring at the toes of his boots, nodded her head.

  “Your father was sending me money. He swore me to secrecy over it, because he wished to surprise his daughters. I invested twenty thousand pounds for each of you in my diamond mine; even after it was paid for, of course, there was still a good deal of capital needed for reopening it and setting up operations. Your father supplied it— a hundred thousand pounds—
over the first year. I doubled his investment. In fact, that investment that he made is what has enabled Timothy Dickinson to settle down with Chloe; I have bought his interest from him, and given him his forty last month. I am selling the mine; I shall never go back to India, and I want no more part of it. The ship that has not come— this ship that will very likely never be heard from again, was to bring me word of the sale and a copy of the final agreement, at which time I meant to pay off each of the five of you. Your father was so pleased with himself over his little surprise, as he often called it. The twenty thousand pounds of your dowry was not part of it,” he said, with an edge to his voice that cut straight into her soul. “I assume you thought I was taking money from the French; that somehow your father and I were exchanging secrets. Did it not occur to you that I should have little use of a packet full of English gossip in India? What precisely was I to have done with this? Did you never wonder why your father, if indeed he was spying, should have sent it to me, instead of to someone in France?”

  She did not breathe; for an instant she thought she would faint, and then somehow she managed to get control of herself. If only she could not hear the contempt in his voice; if only she had given him the letter before that infinitely embarrassing scene in Canning’s house. Did she believe him? Was it possible that, after all these months of agony, that she could have been wrong?

  She was not wrong; she gripped her empty reticule tightly, staring at his boots. She could not have made such a mistake. “Why did he send it to you, then?” she asked suddenly, intensely wanting to hear him lie to her.

  “He never meant to. You see, my last correspondence from him was very puzzling, in fact; I did not receive it until almost five months after he died. It came at about the same time that Tony Merrill sent me word of his death, when I took passage for home. That letter went first to Lord Barham, in the Admiralty office, by mistake. You see, your father posted the bank draft for his final investment with a short note to his old friend Lord Barham, to London instead of to me in India. Lord Barham sent me the bank draft, and then I learned that your father had died. I see very well what happened; he was writing to us on the same day, some correspondence that he kept up with Barham, and he was sending this draft to me, and he somehow exchanged the contents of the packets. Only he never posted this one. He died before he could do it. And what you found was a note to me which should have accompanied his bank draft, along with the gossip he meant to send to Barham. And you, my dear Claire, have made it into something quite different, haven’t you?”