Claire Read online

  “Oh! Only that I had thought of putting in a hedge there, between those two trees,” she said, pointing with her toast. He glanced behind her. “And perhaps a bulb bed in front of it. The garden is so very long, and if you had a marble fountain, or somesuch there in the middle,” and her brows came together slightly in concentration as she stared out musingly at the garden, “and perhaps a bench or two— Oh!” she exclaimed, and waved her toast. “I’ve got it! A gazebo! Precisely the thing!”

  It was fortunate that all her attention was on the garden at the moment, for Varian’s eyes were fixed on her face in the most intimate fashion; he said quietly, “Anything you want, darling, I don’t care,” and put up his paper again, partly out of self-defense, and then said, as he stared at it vaguely, without the least comprehension, “Shall you want some help? I’m not particularly busy today. I’ll put on my work-clothes if you like.”

  “Oh, would you, Varian? For as dear as Thomas-gardener is, he is very old, you know, and I have the worst compunction about making him work too long! And those boys that have come up from Banningwood are used to the stables and haven’t the least idea about how to hold a spade!” she said, and drained off her tea and refilled her cup.

  “If there is one thing I know,” Varian Drew said, a trifle ruefully, “it is how to hold a spade. I hope you’re planning all this for this morning?

  “Well, yes, I was going straight upstairs and change as soon as I had got rid of you,” she said frankly.

  For an instant, Drew was in the tulip bed at Merrill Park, listening to a frank, pig-tailed eighteen-year-old child; he smiled faintly at the newsprint, and said, “It’ll be devilish hot by noon. It think it would be best to forego your language lesson this morning.”

  She paused. “Did you know that Rajat is doing very well at his studies?”

  “Rajat?” The paper was folded up and put away, as if in a final capitulation. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “He’s been conjugating irregular verbs with remarkable progress the last few days. I thought you knew!”

  “Good god, how many have you got in this class of yours?”

  “Only the three of them! Don’t stare at me so! I think it’s an excellent idea!”

  “Claire, I vow, do you eat another piece of toast I shall send you up to your room for luncheon!”

  She laughed again with some irrepressible amusement. “You are a beast! Very well! I’m quite done! And I’ll be downstairs in fifteen minutes in my very oldest gown. You won’t disappoint me, will you?”

  “No, of course not!” he said, and chuckled as his beautiful wife gazed once more at the plate of toast, then sighed and got up and abjured him once again that he had better not make her wait. After she had left, he took his plate and set it down on the terrace, and instantly Sully had leapt off the wall and was eyeing him in the most aggressive fashion. “There, you greedy beast, I hope you enjoy it,” he said, laughing suddenly, and went upstairs.

  Varian?” came an unsure voice full of questioning; he turned around from where he had been leaning against the last parapet of the terrace at the top of the broad stone steps.

  “Well, I see who’s made who wait,” he said, and chuckled at the look on Claire’s face. “Do you mind it? It’s what I was used to wear in India. Do I look so very different?”

  Her face was doubtful. She had put on an old blue muslin gown that he rather thought he had seen before, a very long time ago, except that then she had stretched it out tightly, and now it hung loosely around that tiny waist of hers. He turned his eyes away immediately, back to his spade. “To be perfectly truthful, you look rather like a— a ring-fighter,” she said, and he managed not to laugh.

  His clothing in India had been brown trousers and a white shirt, of which he had rolled up the sleeves so many times that they were permanently creased, which was why, after consideration of his very untidy appearance in the looking glass a few moments ago, he had rolled them up again. It was the first time he had ever seen himself in the glass in this remarkably un-English set of garments, and he had been surprised at how very heathen he looked.

  “No, just a miner,” Varian said, and then Thomas-gardener appeared in the garden gate toward the stables behind the house, and behind him was Rajat. “I’ve got us plenty of help; you don’t mind Rajat, do you?”

  “Oh, no! He’s teaching me Urdu.” Claire called out a very credible good morning in the language, which brought another quickly hidden smile to his face. “And I think he knows a great deal about gardening. He told me he helped you in your mines.”

  “You’ve been spying on me,” Drew said, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  “Of course not! I only wanted to know how you’ve made all this money, you know, and I asked him. He told me only that you bought a mine. What sort of mine?”

  “I bought a gold mine; a burned-out gold mine,” Varian said pleasantly. “Where precisely are we to put in this flower bed? Straight across?”

  “No, never! It will have to circle around the gazebo!”

  “Claire!”

  “Yes?”

  “What gazebo?”

  “You weren’t listening!”

  “Obviously!”

  “We shall have an ornamental pond here, and a gazebo!”

  “I’m not,” Drew said firmly, “digging an ornamental pond! I will dig out your beds and that is it!”

  Claire viewed the two oak trees spaced rather evenly on either side of the garden. “Oh, very well! We shan’t have the pond; I rather imagine that the oak roots are too close to the surface, anyway! Just dig here,” she said, an waved her arm in a circle from one tree to the other. “And on the other side, opposite, of course! Shall you build me my gazebo, too?”

  “No, I shall not!”

  “Then I shall have to hire a carpenter!”

  “Exactly!”

  “You will have to give me a bank account!” she said, and turned away from him suddenly, toward Rajat, and told him in Portuguese what she wanted him to do.

  “Good god, will the one you’ve got not cover it?”

  There was silence a moment as Claire watched Rajat, his face very brown and exotic against his spotless white turban, pick up a spade with an accustomed expertise and begin to dig. Then came her light, careless voice, as she put on her gloves and tied her hat around her chin. “I don’t have one! You should know that!”

  “Claire!” He struck a rock, almost instantly, and swore ruefully; he had it uncovered in a second and pried out with the spade in another five. He tossed it aside with the careless, effortless grace of an athlete. “Of course you’ve got your dowry; though I didn’t mean that you should use it for this. I am teasing you. I shall pay for it, happily, and when it is finished, we’ll crack open a bottle of smuggled French champagne and have luncheon out here. Agreed?”

  She had sunk to the ground and bent her head over the newly-turned earth, where she was breaking up clods with her gloved hands. “Varian, you withdrew that money several years ago, you know. The bank sent me a notice.”

  “A what?”

  “A notice! Mr— Haverty, or Hallerby, or somesuch, sent me a very polite letter saying I could no longer draw on the account! I— It was a surprise; but I understood perfectly, of course. I— ”

  “What,” he said vaguely, battling the spade, “are you talking about?”

  Her hatted head was bent over the ground so that he could not see her face. “You know; when you withdrew my dowry, a few weeks after I went to Portugal,” she said, without inflection.

  “Claire.” Abruptly Varian laid down the spade, dropped to one knee, and laid his hand on her shoulder. “You’ve mistaken it; I didn’t take your money. I couldn’t have. Your father— ”

  Her blue eyes, expressionless, stared up at him from beneath that very plain and functional hat. “What did my father do?”

  “He sent me a start, you know; it’s a little difficult to explain.”

  “I suppose my inte
lligence is deficient,” she said, without smiling.

  “Perhaps you will allow me an explanation after we’ve finished this, when we can sit down in the library together, without— without the world?” he said, glancing at Thomas-gardener and the two young servants who had come to help him. They were busy at the moment in the back bed, transplanting a number of flats of bedding plants in the dark earth.

  Claire nodded. “Very well,” she said, and stood and went to direct Thomas-gardener and his helpers.

  When she returned in half an hour or so most of the flower-bed was already turned up. “You’re very efficient, Varian,” she said, eyeing that neat row of soil behind him.

  “No, just damned angry, at the moment,” he said quietly, and the spade was thrust into the earth just before his brown-booted foot gave it a quick, expert kick. The muscles beneath his shirt thickened as he pulled the spade out of the ground.

  “At me?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sweating like a heathen,” she observed frankly.

  Drew’s blue eyes raked over her. “I am,” he said bluntly, “a heathen. Call Stiles and get me a drink, will you?”

  Claire nodded and walked up to the terrace and inside, and a moment later she emerged with a tall pitcher of water, which was emptied immediately. Claire watched her husband drain his glass in a gulp, and cast her eyes once more, a little hesitantly, over the dusty, well-worn boots and those rough trousers, admitting, a little ruefully, that she rather liked him in that loose sleeved shirt with no points at all and hardly any buttons, and his brown skin gleaming beneath it.

  “You’re staring, Claire,” he said. “Rajat is embarrassed. You needn’t tell him the truth.”

  “What?”

  There was a demon inside of him the last half hour since she had imparted that simple revelation; you know; when you withdrew my dowry— and he had almost lost himself in that instant that he had seen her assessing, honest blue gaze on him. That you will not allow me your bed, wife, he had almost said, and somehow he had kept himself from it.

  “Nothing,” Varian muttered, and went back to his digging. The circle between the trees was dug, three feet across, within an hour, between him and Rajat; by the time they had finished, there was a neat line of small flowers along the back garden wall.

  “Lavender and balsam, perhaps a stand of peonies there, and of course, I shall plant salvia and snapdragons and perhaps some vinca there in the corner, where there is so much sun,” she said to herself, one gloved thumbnail tapping lightly on her lips as she spoke, her eyes assessing the space.

  “What shall go here?” he asked, pointing to the freshly-turned soil, and wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

  She began pounding at some clod with a hefty rock, and when it broke and scattered she looked up. “Oh, bulbs, of course. I have always dreamed of it, you know. Having my own bulb beds; I used to steal Merrill’s tulips and lilies shamelessly.”

  His anger dissipated instantly, watching her brush dirt off her elbow. He smiled. “Susie, wasn’t it?”

  “Go away!” Claire called out, laughing, and threw a clod of dirt at him; Varian was so astonished that he stood there, staring at her, after it hit him squarely in the chest and thoroughly dusted him.

  “Damnation, Claire! I look like an urchin!” Drew could not help it; he laughed, brushed off his shirt, and went and stood his spade against the tree.

  “No, a heathen! It fits you very well!”

  “Here, let me help you. What, precisely,” he inquired, after he bent one knee beside her, “are you doing?”

  “Well, you can’t expect anything to grow in this, clothead! You’ve got to break it up into fine soil, and then mulch it, and then turn it up again, and then let it— ”

  “Mulch it?” he asked uncertainly.

  “You know!” Claire gazed at him with that acutely exasperated look that she had worn so well at eighteen. “Mix in leaves and loam with it and wet it down, and allow it to sit for a while! It’s not an instant proposition at all!”

  “No, I see that! I— ”

  “Good god!” came a quavering, aged voice from the terrace. Both of them looked up, the dark head bent just below the light, and both pair of blue eyes rested in astonishment on an ancient lady of small stature and imposing stance, peering at them over the wall, with a white kitten in her arms.

  “Grandmama?” exclaimed Varian uncertainly.

  She picked up her very elegant skirts and came down the terrace steps. “Stiles has told me you weren’t at home, Varian, and I see that I ought to have believed him! Good god! What the devil are you doing? I thought you hired people for that sort of thing!”

  The lady beside him had risen hastily and was brushing off her plain gown in acute discomfort. “Good morning! I’m so sorry! We weren’t expecting anyone this morning!”

  “Varian! Introduce us!” said the small, sprightly lady. The cat sat benignly within her lavender sleeved arm, viewing the spectacle with interest.

  “Well, I see you’ve already met Sully!” said Lady Banning, with a delighted smile. “You should be honored! He is very discriminating!”

  “Cats like me!” said the small lady, nodding.

  “This is Claire, Grandmama; Claire, meet my grandmother Lady Swaffingham,” Banning said, with a rueful grin and a sideways glance at his wife’s flushed face beneath her hat, and then he brushed off his trousers and went over and kissed the old woman’s withered cheek. “I’m sorry we haven’t called. I— ”

  “No, you’re not; you needn’t try and pull the wool over my eyes! I can see very well that you’ve been devilish busy!” the elderly woman said, eyeing first her grandson, and then casting a measuring glance over his wife. “Well, girl, I’m your husband’s only living relative, I hear! You ought to give me a kiss!”

  Claire laughed and did so, saying, “If you don’t think you’ll mind my dirt,” and then Sully jumped into her arms and she put him down instantly and told him to go inside before he got dirty, or she thought very strongly that he would require a bath. The cat picked his way in a dainty fashion over the grass and disappeared instantly through the open work in the terrace wall.

  Lady Swaffingham laughed again. “Well! I shall never let Varian forget this!” She cast a sideways gaze over her grandson. “You’ve been hiding me; were you afraid I should say something impolitic?”

  “No; only the truth!” he said, half in earnest.

  “Which is that you’ve turned out very well, in spite of your father,” the old lady said, patting her grandson’s arm. Lady Swaffingham’s only daughter Elizabeth had married a young sea captain almost forty years ago against the wishes of her parents, and although they had not prevented the marriage, the chill between the daughter’s new household and her parents had not thawed until Varian’s birth. “Although I suspect Elizabeth, God rest her soul, would not have approved of your . . . very odd attire, my boy.”

  “A well-cut coat makes this sort of work difficult, Grandmama,” her grandson said gently.

  “Varian kindly consented to help me with my gardening this morning,” Claire explained.

  “Well, I haven’t the least interest in gardening!” declared the old lady, holding her lavender skirts well out of reach of the grass. “But do go on! I shall order tea in the salon; as soon as you’ve finished, you may attend me! Don’t hurry; I am never in a hurry, you know!”

  “I shall be in as soon as I’ve changed!” assured Lady Banning, and the elderly Lady Swaffingham repeated once again that they shouldn’t hurry, and went slowly, in that assured fashion of hers, back inside. “Varian!” uttered Lady Banning in a forceful whisper, turning on her husband. “You should have told me! I didn’t know you had a grandmother!””

  “Oh, I know! And it’s a devilish long story! Just be nice to her, and when she goes away I’ll tell you all of it! And— and all the rest, too!” he said, in a frustrated, decidedly ill-humored voice, and walked off into the house without excusing himself
.

  As he disappeared, striding off across the lawn with that faint limp still somehow at odds with his muscular litheness and golden-brown skin, Claire stood staring at the terrace for a moment longer, and then she told Rajat in her excellent Portuguese that they would resume their lessons in the morning. Finally she inspected Thomas-gardener’s progress, and made a suggestion or two, and followed her husband inside and upstairs.

  Lady Swaffingham joined Lord and Lady Banning for luncheon at Banning House, and before she had left, Claire’s elder sister Claudia, still dressed in her plain lavender gown that she had worn since she put off her mourning for her father, drove up in a hired hack. In the midst of greetings and introductions, no explanations were made, and that vaguely unhappy set to Varian’s square mouth remained through dinner and a very boring musical evening at the Princess Lieven’s, at which they were compelled to attend because she had only yesterday sent Lady Banning vouchers to Almack’s, that hallowed hall of holies, and consequently could not be offended.

  Claudia went with them, still in her rather worn lavender, although it mattered not a whit to the Princess. After having been distinctly impressed that Claudia Ffawlkes should know where Kiev was, and that there was a university there, she insisted that she would send over a voucher first thing in the morning for Claire’s sister. So the Bannings and Claudia came home a little late; the women went upstairs to bed immediately, chatting amiably about patterns and parties and Chloe’s infant daughter, and taking no notice at all of the rather silent Varian Drew.

  The sisters came down together at breakfast, too; the table on the terrace was laid again, and Varian glanced up and gave Claire his usual good morning, and then sat silently through the rest of breakfast. Finally, after he had exchanged blue stares with Sully, he put his plate on the terrace in acquiescence, and listened to the sisters discussing Godoy and Queen Maria Luisa, who, along with the queen’s husband King Charles IV and her son Ferdinand, had just accepted exile from Madrid to Bayonne, and were now living under Napoleon’s protection while he decided the fate of Spain. They argued over whether England ought to get involved; Claudia was of the opinion that they ought to stay out European affairs as much as possible, and Claire was of the very outspoken belief that England was Europe, as far as Napoleon was concerned, and that to let Spain go would be the first letter of their own signature of doom.