Claire Read online

  “No,” was the muffled answer from the pillows; she had turned away her head.

  But her sister brought it to her anyway. Claudia sat down beside her on the bed and stared at the colorless face on the pillow, the lashes dark against her bloodless skin, and said, “Of course we love you very much, Claire, and you know that you have always been my favorite. And you know quite well that Varian loves you too. Now shan’t you sit up and try a little, my dear? If we promise not to press you too much?” Claudia laid her hand against her youngest sister’s face and smoothed away a strand of hair. “I haven’t a great deal of sensitivity, Claire, but I do love you, you know,” she said, in a moment, and at that, the eyes opened, and she looked up at her sister and then nodded.

  “Yes, I love you, too,” Claire said quietly, but at least it was a beginning, and gradually, in the next two hours, she stumbled through the worst of it, at the quiet and calm bidding of her sister and her husband’s best friend.

  At last, after it was told, and somehow she had not wept at all, but had just lain there against the white of the pillows, bloodless, quiet, emotionless, at last Tony said, “Well, I’ve a bit of good news for you; I don’t suppose Varian told you. The Tremaine arrived last night about midnight. He came over and got me, and we went down to the docks; poor captain was a nervous wreck. They ran up against some French warships off the coast of Gibraltar in June, and somehow managed to outrun them. They hid out in a bay somewhere south of Portugal until they heard of Dupont’s defeat last week, and then they decided to make a run for it. Their luck held, and they met the English expeditionary force somewhere up the coast. Everything Varian shipped home is safe; his mine is sold, for an excellent profit. In fact I— ” he halted, suddenly embarrassed.

  “You what, Tony?” asked Claudia.

  He smiled a little ruefully at his wife. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters now; I lent him a pound or two to get started, you know, only I made him promise he wouldn’t tell.” Merrill gave a rueful chuckle. “Not quite in my style to buy into diamond mines in India, my dear,” he said, and saw Claire half sit up against her pillows.

  “You lent him some money?” she repeated, in an expressionless voice.

  “Oh, nothing astounding; I— ”

  “And you’ve made a handsome profit off his sale, haven’t you, darling?” guessed his wife, smiling up at him with a slight teasing in her eyes.

  “Yes; in fact, I have,” Tony said, faintly surprised at himself.

  “How much did you lend him?” Claire said, in that quiet, flat voice, delving toward what was, for her, the last seal on her own writ of judgment. For she knew already what he would say.

  “Claire, I— ” Tony saw her stricken face. “I— I don’t even know. I told him before he left that my solicitor would make available to him whatever seemed sensible. Does it matter what it was?”

  “Did you . . . just deposit it, in his name— at Bank of England?” she asked quietly.

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact— ”

  “Claire,” said her sister, “don’t cry, dearest; I am certain that now everything is explained that Varian will understand.”

  For Claire had begun to weep, as at last all of it was explained. Shaking his head slightly at his wife, Tony laid his square hand over Claudia’s, and said, “Let her alone,” and the three of them sat there for a while in the first dusk of the unlit chamber, while Claire cried.

  At last she dried her tears and sank once again onto her pillows. She told them she was much better and that they were the kindest family in the world, and that she thought she would sleep for a while.

  She did; in a moment or two, Claire had fallen into an exhausted, dreamless sleep, her face drawn and bloodless in the quiet chamber. Tony took his wife’s hand and drew her to her feet and then they went quietly into the small sitting room adjacent.

  “Well, my dear, not precisely what I had planned for your first evening as my wife,” Tony said placidly, giving in just a little, and taking her into his arms. They stood there in the dusk with her head tucked comfortably beneath his chin. He lifted her hand to his lips and then laid it on his coat over his heart without releasing it. “If I go downstairs and tell the others that Claire is ill and that she doesn’t want any visitors, shall they understand?”

  “Of course,” Claudia nodded, suddenly very content just to stand there within his large and restful embrace.

  “And I suppose,” Tony said, sighing hugely, “that I shall exert myself and post off to Portugal in the morning. I can’t very well not go.”

  “Of course you must go,” Claudia said, smoothing the lapel of his coat beneath her hand. “I shall miss you terribly.”

  “My darling Claudia,” he murmured, and tilted her head up and kissed her, tenderly, gently, without thinking. “You cannot imagine how I shall miss you.”

  “And I think,” she said timidly, not quite certain if she ought to, “that— ”

  “That Claire needs you tonight much more than I? Of course she does; and I am the most selfish creature alive to want you anyway, but there it is: I do. But of course you should stay here; I see straightaway that to even try to explain this mess to Clytie, Cleo, or Chloe will require a great deal of energy which I do not, at the moment, have,” Tony confessed in a low voice on a small sigh.

  Claudia laughed at him softly and gave his large form a quick embrace. “You are the most wonderful man in the world, Tony Merrill, and if you ever allow us to become so entangled as Varian and Claire, I shall very likely tell you why you have made me so wonderfully happy today,” she said, her teasing voice slowing on those last words as a sudden shyness overtook her.

  “You mean that there is a reason other than that you love me?” he asked lightly, holding her away so that he could see her face.

  “Do I?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Claudia blushed in the half-light of the dusk. “Of course I do; only you don’t know the half of it.”

  “Tell me, my dear, how you love me,” Tony said instantly.

  “You shall miss your dinner,” she teased.

  “I shan’t care in the least if I miss breakfast as well, you know,” he said, with a strange look on his face that she had never seen there before.

  “Oh, it is nothing so important,” she said, blinking at his cravat. “Only that I have been hopelessly in love with you for ten years, I suppose, ever since one afternoon when your mama invited us up to tea. I saw you stretched out in your library with a book in your hand— ” Her voice trailed off as she chanced to see his eyes. “Tony?”

  He stared at her for a moment longer, unable to breathe; every muscle in his very large and, at the moment, not so placid, body strained for control in that instant. For he had to find some way to put off his desires a little longer; in fact it would do no good at all to kiss her as he wished to, when he was leaving her in five minutes for very likely a fortnight or more. His inherent rationality struggled for one moment longer with his very uncalm emotions, and, of course his rationality won. “Yes, darling?”

  “You’re not offended?”

  “My dear Claudia! I only wish that you had declared yourself ten years ago, and given me an extra decade with you; let’s see— you were fourteen? Should I have been accused of robbing the cradle?”

  “No, of course not! I had already got through all the comedies and Lear and Henry IV. I— ”

  “Claudia,” Tony said quietly, staring down at her with that very uncalm light burning in his half-closed eyes, “shall you understand if I tell you I had ought to go now, before you quite undo me?”

  “Now? Why?”

  He smiled; she was so very predictable. “Because, my heart, you are tempting me beyond human endurance; have I told you how much I have been wishing all afternoon to kiss you until you forget Lear and Henry IV altogether?”

  She glanced up at him in surprise. “Do you mean that—you are that sort of man?”

  “What sort of man?”

 
“Who ravishes innocent, awkward maidens, you know,” Claire said, those serious blue eyes questioning, open on his face in the dusk.

  Tony smiled slightly. “Not at all; only my wife,” he said, and gave in to a second of temptation and bent and kissed her once more with the greatest self-control, and told her that he adored her, and went downstairs.

  Chloe, having informed her elder sister— with a tact that Claudia had never suspected she possessed— that she could see very well why Claire was ill as much trouble as they had been, and that the children would be much happier when they were once again at Finchingfield, packed up her brood and left early the following morning. She tiptoed upstairs and kissed Claudia just as they were leaving and asked her to give Claire her love when she woke.

  There had been no questions asked last evening upon Tony Merrill’s unperturbed entrance into the drawing room and his phlegmatic explanation that Claire had fallen ill. He had said that Claudia meant to stay with her tonight, and that he was going home to pack, for it looked as if he had some sudden business to take care of in Portugal. In spite of the abrupt silence that followed his announcement, his innate sense of control reassured all of them, and left not a question in their minds that of course they ought to be going home to Essex, now that all the festivities were over. With Chloe and her brood departed after an early breakfast, it seemed perfectly natural that Clytie and Phillip Sanger and their toddler left after lunch, and not far behind them was John Haversham and Cleo, who indeed, did want to go home, for she was all of six months pregnant, wishing very much for the country again after only a week in Town.

  “Claire, shall you sit up and have a bowl of broth? Consuela has made it for you, dearest, just the way you like it,” said Claudia quietly that afternoon, when she came in and saw that her youngest sister was awake.

  “I don’t believe so, Claudia, though you are very kind,” she said quietly and turned her head away.

  “Is there anything else you want?”

  “No, Claudia,” she said, and closed her eyes again.

  In fact Claire slept for the better part of three days. On the third afternoon, a great deal of banging and bustling downstairs woke her, and she sat up to discover Claudia absent; she rang for Consuela and asked about the commotion.

  “They unload many boxes of Drew,” she said carefully in English, using Rajat’s name for the master of the household.

  It was the first time Consuela had ever volunteered the language; it brought forth a sudden smile of pride from her mistress. “Consuela! That was wonderful! You have been practicing!”

  “Oh, yes, Rajat, Elena, we practice the English every day,” she nodded.

  “Now explain again what is going on downstairs,” said Lady Banning.

  “The ship of India brings Drew— His Lord’s house from India,” she said, haltingly.

  “Oh! You mean the crates have arrived?”

  “Yes,” she said doubtfully, nodding.

  Claire took a deep, cleansing breath; “Well, I suppose I ought to go downstairs and see to it, shouldn’t I?”

  “A very good thing,” nodded her servant, and when she had climbed out of bed, dressed her and put up her hair.

  “Claire!” came Claudia’s surprised voice, pleased, from below in the hallway. The front door was standing open, and a wagon was outside, and all sorts of servants were filling the hallway— and the dining room, the drawing room, and the library, in fact— with a great many crates under the taciturn direction of Rajat, who stood, brown and turbaned, beside Stiles. “You’re awake!”

  “It would be very difficult not to be awake with this going on belowstairs,” she pointed out, with an attempt at a smile. “What is all this?”

  “It’s Varian’s boxes; have you ever seen so many things in your life!” exclaimed Claudia, laughing a little.

  “But what are they?”

  “I don’t know,” said her sister. “Ask Rajat!”

  The turbaned man bowed from the doorway. “Many treasures of my master,” he said, in perfectly plain English.

  “Rajat!” exclaimed Lady Banning, a smile transforming her face. “You, too! Speaking English!”

  “We have,” he said, bowing again, “very excellent teaching, many thanks.”

  “You are very welcome,” Claire responded, suddenly happy once again to be alive.

  For hours, past the dinner bell, Claire discovered a whole new side of Varian Drew in the treasures that emerged from the crates. There were delicate ivory and jade carvings, a set of alabaster and mother-of-pearl goblets inlaid with thinly sliced jewels in tiny patterns of flowers and leaves; there were ebony chairs and teak-wood screens, silk cushions, endless lengths of beautifully woven and embroidered fabrics, inlaid cabinets, a box of exquisite pearls, another of sapphires, delicate objects of hammered brass or silver— crate after crate of the most wonderful collection of treasures that a great deal of money could buy. She told Rajat, when he brought to her a length of silk, ice-blue, the color of her eyes, embroidered with silver thread and tiny seed pearls, that she thought India must be a most wondrous place, and that now that she had taught him English, he could teach her of his own country.

  Rajat bowed and proclaimed himself honored.

  All this, she thought suddenly, viewing the treasures spread in disarray all around her and Claudia— Claire allowed her eyes to wander back to Rajat’s stiff figure, thinking that the most valuable of all had been bought . . . for less than a shilling.

  chapter ten

  A Difficult Journey

  The two sisters rose early the next morning to begin to put the house in order; they worked with two housemaids and a footman at placing the furniture— Varian had brought home exquisitely worked cabinets and chairs, and a spectacularly heavy white marble table inlaid with semi-precious stones that took four footmen to move— and all of the other treasures that had been on that long-awaited ship.

  At tea-time Claire and Claudia fell, exhausted, into a heap against the stone wall of the terrace outside. The garden was once again just a garden and no longer a wedding bower, but still very pretty, and pleasantly cool after hours of hard work. They were country girls, after all, and neither of them worried so much over their position, both of them now being peeresses, that they could not kick off their shoes and lean back against the cool stonework and enjoy the tea and scones that Stiles produced from the kitchens.

  “When do you suppose they’ll be home, Claudia?”

  It was a good sign, the elder sister thought; in fact, since Claire’s low, halting explanation upstairs in her bedroom in the last sunlight of Claudia’s wedding day, they had neither of them spoken once of it, except for Claudia’s quiet statement that Tony had gone to Portugal.

  “I don’t know; I imagine it depends on how soon Tony catches up to him,” said Claudia, logically. “If he manages to find him right away, before he leaves ship in Lisbon, it won’t be so much trouble as looking all over the city for him.”

  “Do you think,” inquired her sister, “that he will come back, if Tony asks it of him?

  “Yes,” nodded her sister, flaunting logic, of which she was perfectly aware, only it seemed cruel to say anything else.

  They sat there in the cool of the shade for a while, enjoying their tea. “Claudia?”

  “Yes, Claire?”

  “Do you miss Tony?”

  The new bride was surprised into a small, sudden smile. “Dreadfully,” she replied. “Do you miss Varian?”

  “I don’t know if I have a right to any longer,” the youngest of the Ffawlkes girls replied in a low voice.

  “Nonsense,” said her elder sister. “That has nothing at all to do with what you feel. If you decide you will love him, no matter what, whether he wishes you to or not, then you have every right to miss him.”

  “Claudia, you know, I cannot imagine you have become so wise about love!” said Claire, smiling at her sister over her teacup.

  “But Claire, I have been most hopelessly in love wi
th Tony for a decade without any right to feel so, and of course I have loved him anyway.”

  “Claudia!” exclaimed her sister, turning to stare at her. “You never told me so!”

  “Why should I have said anything at all about it? I never thought anything would come of it, and I had no wish to make myself an object of pity,” Claudia said calmly.

  “Well, I think it is the most romantic thing in the world, and I cannot believe that you have kept it a secret all these years!”

  “I assure you, it did not seem romantic when I was wondering if I ought to buy myself a house in London in order to avoid Tony Merrill in Essex,” Claudia said suddenly, in a burst of confidence.

  The smile faded from Claire’s lips; she nodded and said, “Yes, I understand perfectly what you mean.”

  They sat in companionable silence for a little while longer, and then abruptly Claire said, “Claudia, do you know,” and, setting down her teacup firmly, drew in a deep, resolute breath. “I think I ought to go.”

  “Go? Home to Essex?”

  “No, of course not! To Portugal! I believe that under the circum­stances it would be the very best thing in the world!”

  “Claire!” exclaimed the very calm and pleasant Claudia, in a moment of startled dismay. “We cannot go to Portugal!”

  “Why not? We have just come from Portugal!”

  “Because— because there is a war there, of course! I doubt very seriously that we can even catch ship to Lisbon until Dupont and Junot are taken care of!”

  “Of course we can find a ship! In fact, I have no doubt of it at all!” Claire put out her hand as her older sister opened her mouth in protest. “No! Don’t say another word, for my mind is quite made up. I am going. I miss him; I love him! I have been the worst fool in the world, and surely if I cross an ocean to tell him so he won’t disbelieve me! I’m going!”

  “I shan’t allow it!” said Claudia, without her usual calm. “What if we miss them altogether! Suppose we arrive in Lisbon to discover they’ve just left?”

  “Then we shall follow them home, of course!”