Anne Barbour (4 page)

Flambeaux on either side of the entrance cast a warm glow into the advancing twilight as the coach, creaking in leathery protest, pressed against one side of the narrow street. The door of the town house flew open, and a tall, slender figure stood poised for moment, silhouetted against the light streaming from within, before hurling herself upon Tally as she emerged from the vehicle.

“Tally! We had given you up for lost! We’ve been envisioning highwaymen on the heath, and vile kidnappers in the hills!”

The young woman enveloped Tally in a warm hug and scattered directions at various functionaries, causing them to scurry like obedient mice to assist in the disembarkation.

Tally laughed unaffectedly.

“Well, I hardly think kidnappers, however vile, would be likely to bother with Henry’s old coach. Oh, Cat,” she breathed, “it is so good to see you!”

Drawing her friend into the warmth of the house, Cat led the way to a small, exquisitely furnished salon.

“Now!” she exclaimed. “You must tell me what it is that has brought you to London. You were very mysterious in your correspondence. Yes, I know what you said, but I do not believe in your ‘sudden craving for a space of town life.’ ”

Tally shrugged herself out of her pelisse and turned to Cat, her eyes wide and disingenuous.

“But, dearest, I simply must change my ensemble.” She gestured to the kerseymere carriage dress, smoothing its wrinkled olive skirts. “I cannot sit down to dinner in all my dirt.”

“Mm, yes, the sooner you get out of that outfit the better,” replied Cat cryptically. “We’ve having your favorite, buttered crab, but remember, not one bite shall you get until you explain all.”

In her room Tally made a hasty toilette and donned a gown more suitable for evening wear, this time a robe of puce satin, with rows of ruffles churning furiously about neckline and hem. When she returned to the small salon, she found that Cat had been joined by her husband, the Honourable Richard Thurston. Observing them together, Tally decided that Richard was precisely the sort of mate one would choose for one’s best friend. He was of medium height and compactly built. A shock of brown hair fell in a curve over a pair of smiling brown eyes, and his mouth was spread, as it almost always was, in a friendly grin.

Richard was the youngest son of the Earl of Trumpington, but had fared much better than most young men in his position. He had inherited a comfortable living from a wealthy uncle and was thus able to support his bride in a more than tolerable lifestyle. He had also discovered in himself a talent for what he called “bringing people together,” and when he entered the Foreign Office, under the auspices of yet another well-placed relative, his rise had been swift. He was at present a senior aide for Lord Whittaker and privy to the sensitive machinations of the department.

As Tally entered the room, Richard advanced and wrapped her in a vigorous hug. He planted a noisy kiss on her cheek.

“Tally! By all that’s wonderful! You’ve finally decided to make a return trip to the metropolis. I hope you’ll be with us for a long while?”

“Yes, she will,” Cat answered for her friend. “Now that I finally have her in my clutches, she shan’t see her precious Summerhill for some time to come.

“But,” continued Richard, “Cat tells me you’re being very mysterious as to the reason for your visit. Come now, you must divulge to your two best friends whatever plot it is you’re hatching.”

Tally, comfortably ensconced in an armchair of cherry-striped silk, waved an airy hand.

“Oh, it’s nothing, really. Simply that I come to you as London’s newest, soon-to-be-the-rage caricaturist!”

To a most satisfactory accompaniment of gasps and widened eyes, Tally related the events of the afternoon, carefully omitting any reference to my Lord Chelmsford. At the end of her discourse, she swore her host and hostess to secrecy, to which they agreed in hushed voices.

“Oh, Tally,” breathed Cat. “I always knew you had the talent, but to walk into a publisher’s office and—and simply ask for work!”

“That’s the part I don’t understand,” interjected Richard. “I mean, yes you draw very well, but, well—you’re a female.”

Cat moved to lay her hand on her husband’s sleeve.

“My dear”—she laughed—“if I were you, I should retract those words immediately before you earn the finest trimming of your life.”

“Not at all,” replied Tally stiffly, her straight brows pulled together in an awful frown. “This is the second time today I have heard them. I am inured.”

“But—but, I only meant....”

“That intellectual or artistic creativity cannot be found in any person wearing skirts,” Tally finished through gritted teeth. Then, noting the dismay in Richard’s face, she relented.

“There now. I have just presented you with yet another feminine stereotype, the sharp-tongued shrew. But,” she continued thoughtfully, “there is a precedent, you know. Late in the last century, a lady — whose name escapes me — became quite famous for her caricatures. Of course, she was not paid for her work.”

“Well,” interposed Cat with a giggle, “if anyone can crash such a masculine bastion, it’s you, Tally. After all, you’ve done it before.”

Tally shot her a questioning glance. Cat, in turn, slid her gaze mischievously toward Richard.

“Did you know that when Tally was just a slip of a girl, it was her habit to don her Cousin Andrew’s shirt and breeches?”

Ignoring Tally’s gasp of indignation, she continued.  “At daybreak, she would shinny down the tree outside her window, creep to the stables and ride for an hour—astride, if you please—and hurry back to her room before her family was any the wiser. I only found out about it when we were at Miss Waterford’s School. One morning I spied her sneaking off in her boys’ clothes toward the school stables and followed her. The next thing I knew, she was galloping off over the hills into the mist. I was never so shocked in my life!” she finished primly, the impish sparkle in her eyes belying her words. “And then there was the time....”

“Cat Thurston,” hissed Tally, “if you say one more word, I shall be forced to reveal the infamous Affair of Miss Pinfold’s Parrot!”

“Tally! You wouldn’t!”

At this point Richard intervened, his eyes alight.

“But I must hear this! I fear my wife has been concealing details of a sordid past.”

“Nothing of the sort.” His unrepentant helpmeet laughed. Tally refers to a slight, er, contretemps that occurred one afternoon during our annual Visitors” Day.”

She pointedly ignored the muffled snort that escaped from her friend.

“You see,” continued Cat, “Miss Pinfold was Miss Waterford’s assistant, and she owned a parrot, brought to her by her brother, who was a sea captain. His name was Ezekiel — the parrot, not the sea captain — and he had in his youth, acquired an extremely, er, salty vocabulary. Miss Pinfold, the very picture of rectitude, had devoted many hours to eradicating this unfortunate flaw in an otherwise blameless character by teaching him instructive verses from the Bible.

“Ezekiel’s cage stood in the school parlor, but when visitors were entertained, his cage was kept covered—to avoid any lapses on his part. I discovered that while Ezekiel had dutifully learned his verses, he had by no means forgotten his wicked life on the bounding main.”

“Much as it distresses me to tell you this, Richard,” interrupted Tally, “Cat encouraged the poor bird to slide back into his old, sinful ways. On Visitors’ Day, when all the students’ nearest and dearest were gathered in the parlor for tea, Cat crept over to Ezekiel’s cage and whisked off the paisley shawl that covered it. She whispered a few words to him—just enough to set him off, whereupon he regaled the assemblage with several very bawdy sea shanties and concluded his program with an extremely indecent suggestion to the Duke of Barstoph, Susie Wither’s grandfather.”

“So, you see” — Cat laughed — “it was nothing at all, really.”

“Nothing!” cried Tally with some indignation. “I would hardly call it nothing that Miss Winterford blamed me for the whole ugly episode, for of course ‘sweet Catherine Wenderby would never be involved any such impropriety.’ The upshot was that I spent the next two weeks copying instructive verses from the Bible!”

The burst of merriment that ensued was interrupted by the entrance of Bates, the butler, who informed them in disapproving tones that dinner was served.

Tally sighed with satisfaction at the sight that greeted her in the dining room. The table gleamed with snow white napery and shining silver, and it was burdened with a staggering array of dishes, among them, she was pleased to note, a large platter of the promised buttered crab. She applied herself enthusiastically to each dish in its turn, until finally, as the last covers were being removed, she sighed again.

“Cat, this is wonderful,” she mumbled through a mouthful of Gateau Mellifleur. “I haven’t had a meal like this in donkey’s years. The menu at Henry’s board, you know, runs more to stewed mutton and potted hare.”

“Ah,” responded Richard, “then perhaps we can fatten you up while you’re here. Not,” he added hastily, “that you’re too, er....”

He broke off, blushing at his rare social lapse.

“Thin,” finished Tally with a chuckle. “Oh, Richard, I don’t mind. It’s perfectly true—I’m thin and I have no countenance, and I don’t give two whoops for it. Papa always told me that it doesn’t matter that I’m plain—that it’s what’s inside that counts—and he said I have perfectly lovely insides, whatever that means. At any rate, I’ve always felt...” she cast a twinkling glance at her friend, “that being beautiful is a dreadful nuisance. Just look at poor Cat. During her Season, she was positively awash in flowers and bad verse, and she couldn’t step outside the house without squads of swains springing out of the sidewalk, offering to carry her parcels, or take her driving, or to Günter’s for an ice. I believe that’s why she chose you, Richard, simply because you never wrote odes to her left ear, or any such drivel.”

Richard turned to Cat, his expression hurt.

“And here I thought it was my masculine beauty that won you, my precious. And my wit. And, of course, there was my compelling charm.”

“It was all of those, my darling.”

Cat’s words were uttered in an airy tone, and her fingers brushed his cheek with the lightest of touches, but the glance that flashed between them conveyed such intimacy that Tally turned her head away from its message.

It was not, she assured herself, that she begrudged Cat and Richard the happiness that fairly shimmered about them. Indeed, she was truly pleased for her friend. But somewhere deep in her heart stirred the thought that it must be wonderful to have someone for one’s very own. Someone with whom to share all of life’s pleasures and griefs—someone to complete one’s self like two halves of the same whole.

Without volition, her thoughts flew to Lord Chelmsford, and once more she felt the strength of his arms about her as he had pressed her to him after their collision. She reddened, experiencing again the thud of his heart against her own, and the scratch of his starched shirt linen against her cheek. And the wonderful soap and leather scent of him.

Coming to herself, she realized that Cat had risen to lead the way from the dining room, leaving Richard in lordly solitude with the brandy decanter. Before they had proceeded very far along the corridor, however, they heard his stride in pursuit.

“I fail to see why I should be burdened with my own company while you two gossip over your embroidery.” He smiled and offered an arm to each lady as he escorted them to the music room.

The rest of the evening passed in companionable conversation interspersed with songs played by Cat on the pianoforte, to which Tally and Richard added their voices in reasonable harmony. Later, after the tea tray had made its appearance, Tally yawned and declared herself ready for her bed.

“Well, of course,” exclaimed Cat in sympathy. “You must be worn to ribbons, with your journey and your interview with Mr. Mapes and all. You’ll need a good night’s sleep, for tomorrow we shall be out till all hours.

“Sally Jersey is holding her soiree. She has prevailed upon Madame Catalani to sing, and all the world will be there. You will come with us, of course.” Noting Tally’s hesitation, she continued swiftly. “Remember what Mr. Mapes told you about getting out and about. Lady Jersey’s social event will be your perfect opportunity to make mental notes, or whatever it is London’s newest and most talented and soon-to-be most famous caricaturist does for inspiration.”

“Y-yes,” began Tally, “but…”

“I forgot to tell you, love,” interposed Richard, tapping Cat’s wrist for her attention. “I ran into Chelmsford this afternoon, and he sent his regards. I asked him to dine with us next week.”

Tally’s heart gave a sudden lurch, but she managed a casual tone as she asked, “Chelmsford?”

“Yes,” replied Richard. “Lord Chelmsford. Do you know him?”

“We—we’ve met. That is, he came—he came to my come-out ball.” Tally felt that her heart had come loose from its mooring to lodge in her throat. “I--I really don’t know him.”

“Been acquainted with him for years, of course, but we became friends last year when I assisted him with a small commission he undertook for the Foreign Office.”

“I suppose,” said Cat in a brittle tone, “he will be attending the soirée with Clea?”

“Clea?” murmured Tally thickly, beginning to feel like Ezekiel, the parrot, on a particularly dull day.

“Chelmsford became betrothed to Clea Forrest, the Countess of Bellewood, that is, earlier this spring,” replied Richard in a flat voice.

At these words Tally experienced an odd chill that seemed to settle in the pit of her stomach.

They are to be married in June,” added Cat in an equally expressionless tone, “in St George’s in Hanover Square, of course.”

“Why ‘of course’ ”?”

Tally asked the question only because Cat seemed to expect it. She had, she told herself, no interest in whom Lord Chelmsford planned to marry, or where he planned to do it.

“Because St George’s in Hanover Square is the most fashionable church in London, and Lady Belle would rather be nibbled to death by ducks than be wed in any other.”