Double wedding, p.11
Double Wedding, page 11
She looked at him with such shining gratitude that he almost told her not to be grateful; he was no hero, but a man out for himself. But he held his tongue.
He sent a man to London with orders to immediately make the high bid for Chalford, before Black Walter’s letter could reach there. The rules at Garroway’s were that without written notice, the house must be sold on the terms agreed to initially.
Drew felt he had finally paid the debt he owed to Black Walter, but a voice in his head nagged at him, pointing out that he was doing everything to bind Diana to him, and not out of the noblest of motives.
Chapter Eleven
Lady Abingdon had been having a perfectly wonderful time at Ardwell until the arrival of Caroline Trelawny. After a few days of watching Caroline dominate the conversations at dinner and demonstrate her superior knowledge of botany, to Edmund’s pride, Lady Abingdon began to see what her daughter said was true: Caroline Trelawny was certainly interested in Mr. Edmund Huntington. Lady Abingdon’s first reaction was to go to her room with a headache whenever it seemed that Caroline was about to lead the way to the greenhouses. Then she began to absent herself from other things as well, until her daughter came to talk to her one afternoon.
“Dear Mariotta … so nice of you to come and see how I am…. My headache is quite shocking….”
“I see … of course you know that everyone is rehearsing for the play today. Caroline has finally chosen her part, the role of Mrs. Sullen.”
Lady Abingdon sat up straighter. “How dare she!”
“I do not understand, mother. Why should she not be Sullen?”
“She understands well enough. Do you not see? I have been persuaded by Edmund to take the role of Lady Bountiful, though I am in principle against play-acting. But he was so insistent…. And Lady Bountiful is Mrs. Sullen’s mother-in-law! She is at least ten years older than I, and I am persuaded looks even older than that. And Edmund allowed this?”
“No, dearest, he had nothing to say to it. Certainly you are right, she did it on purpose. But there are many roles left. I am Dorinda, Gussie is Cherry, the best part, you know. I have an idea of how you may put Caroline in her place, however….”
Lady Abingdon smoothed her fair hair nervously. “I wish no revenge, dear. I am simply appalled that a woman of her station … could behave in such a manner….”
Diana ignored this. She knew her mother’s real feelings.
“Mamma, you must see that Caroline is determined to marry Edmund. And you know she is quite wrong for him, no matter how interested they are in flowers! Marriage is more than wandering through greenhouses together. And it seems clear that he has no suspicion of her intentions. If you will put a little effort into your relations with him, all will be well.”
Lady Abingdon did not quite like to think of herself as a conniving female, but she agreed in general with what her daughter had to say.
“But, my dear, will she not be your sister-in-law? Should we not be nice to her?”
Diana shook her dark curls. “No, my dearest mother, the woman is a viper and we all know it. Such a sweet creature—until you are scratched by her claws. Her brother knows nothing of her true character, and I am certainly not about to inform him of it. But I shall beat her at her own game, you may be sure of it. She talks constantly of how we shall all live together, and I have no plans to do such a thing. But I shall manage it, you will see.”
Lady Abingdon looked at her daughter, mystified. She had never seen this side of Mariotta, and was not sure that she liked it.
“Dear, I do not like to hear you talk in such a hard way. But what is your idea?”
“First, you must not mope. It just gives her more time alone with Edmund. Second, you must dress more youthfully, emphasizing the difference in ages, and I will fix your hair in a new style.”
“This is really necessary?”
“Yes. And when you play Lady Bountiful, you must be sure to look like you are the daughter and she the mother-in-law. Forgive me for my frankness, but you must remember how to be a woman—use fascination, artifice. It is all very well when you are dealing with your Bath friends, but here when you are modest and quiet it makes you seem … well …”
“Dowdy. Quite. Well, I have never cared about external things, but you may have a point.” The chin was raised; the eyes were distant.
Diana judged it best to let her mother think about it for a while, but she was sure she had won her point.
The next day Lady Abingdon arrived on time for the play rehearsals and threw herself into the preparations. She became Edmund’s aide-de-camp, as he told everyone, helping him decide on costumes and props. Diana was pleased.
Gussie and Diana spent the day watching Richard and Jack practice their leading roles, the two gentlemen who were down on their luck. Jack’s character pretended to be the other’s servant so that they could seem well-to-do.
Gussie’s eyes shone with admiration. “Jack makes a wonderful Archer, doesn’t he? So handsome … Oh, Mariotta, if only I could marry someone like that!”
Jack certainly did show to advantage on the stage, with his fine physique and striking looks, not to mention his voice. Of course, Diana reminded herself, Jack had experience in acting, but Richard had never taken part in anything more taxing than a recital. Richard did look very gentlemanly, no matter how hard it was to hear him from the back. Edmund was not satisfied, however.
“Richard, you are supposed to be a dashing gay blade! Show some passion, man!”
Diana rather counted it an advantage that her fiancé was no actor. She remembered a man who had acted too well, both on stage and off.
She thought she was doing well in her role of Mariotta. To be sure, she’d had to make it clear that Richard was responsible for the changes in her behavior. Sometimes she felt that Jack was testing her, suspicious, but then the next moment he would say something that made it clear he believed her to be Mariotta.
The Storbridges came into the rehearsal of the scene between Jack and Gussie, as Archer and the landlord’s daughter, Cherry. Considering the nature of the scene, Diana was a little worried. She hoped Gussie would not put too much feeling into it, in front of her parents.
“I was a-considering in what manner I should make love to you,” said Jack as Archer.
“Love to me, friend!” exclaimed Gussie as Cherry, with none of the required shock on her face, Diana noticed. Her reading of the line was more in the nature of an invitation.
The scene continued and Gussie seemed to be controlling her feelings. But then came the kissing scene.
“Ay, my dear, take it while ’tis warm,” read Jack, and here they were to pretend to kiss, but in front of her horrified parents, Gussie actually pressed her lips to Jack’s. He pulled away and continued the next line.
“Death and fire! her lips are honeycombs,” read Jack, trying bravely to pretend all was as it should be. But Gussie’s face was indication enough that it was not, and her parents stonily removed her from the stage and dragged her out the door.
“Ah,” sighed Jack, “there goes our Cherry, I fear. I’m afraid that you will have to take the role, Mariotta. It appears that our Gussie will be indisposed for a few weeks….”
“Poor child! Could you not stop it?”
“I had no idea the minx would do that! Of course I saw her mooning at me all week, but really, I had no idea of the lengths she would go to. Rather like Nellie at the Sarsfields’ party, remember her?”
“Yes,” said Diana quickly, trying to conceal her alarm. “But this is different.” She dearly hoped it was.
“Yes, true, Gussie was not brought up badly, as Nellie was. That what you mean?”
Blue eyes met gray, and Diana smiled calmly. “Of course. But Gussie really is a beautiful girl.”
“Yes. Too high-spirited, but she’ll settle down in a few years. As you have.” He looked at her speculatively.
“I hope I was never that silly, Jack!” The dimples showed, and she looked so beautiful that Jack experienced a slight shock.
“No, not with me, anyway.”
Edmund made an announcement the next day that he had found some additional actors for them, and that it was time to run through the entire play. Everyone cried that they were not ready, but promptly at three o’clock they assembled in the little theater.
Lady Abingdon reported to her daughter that one of the players was Lady Quennel, Mrs. Storbridge’s sister, and one of Caroline Trelawny’s closest friends.
“Depend upon it, she will help Caroline any way she can!”
Diana was not disturbed. “Mamma, you have been looking so well that ten Bath cats couldn’t stop you.”
It was true. Lady Abingdon had started wearing her new dresses instead of her old ones, pastel creations which were vastly more flattering to her than her favorite grays and browns. Diana did her hair in a less severe style, allowing it to curl a little around her face. The entire effect made Lady Abingdon look much younger, and much prettier, contrasting greatly with Caroline’s colorlessness.
Jack had understood immediately.
“You are responsible for your mother’s transformation?” he asked with a strange look as they were waiting for the run-through to begin.
“No, I was merely the helper. The prime cause lies elsewhere.”
Jack laughed, showing his very white teeth, or perhaps, Diana idly considered, it was just his dark complexion which made them seem so.
“Edmund Huntington for a stepfather. Well, very well indeed. But I think that Caroline creature won’t like it one bit—no, you needn’t go through the formality of protesting that she is lovely, wonderful, and your future sister-in-law. I know you far too well, dear Mariotta. You cannot, and do not, like her. Yes, I imagine that Caroline will do something to impede progress…. What does your fiancé think of this?”
Diana gave him a cool stare. She thought he was rag-mannered and impertinent, even if he and Mariotta were very close friends. She had no intention of letting him get away with his mocking tone.
“Richard does not waste time on things which he considers none of his business.”
Jack looked very innocently surprised, as if she had simply misunderstood him. Really, he was most annoying.
They were sitting in the back of the theater, serving as testers for the sound of those on the stage, and Jack had stretched his long legs out in front of him, quite as if he were in his own parlor.
“But,” he said after a few minutes of discussing acoustics with Edmund by means of shouting, “isn’t his business his sister’s happiness? Or doesn’t he know she has plans…? That’s it, isn’t it? The poor fish doesn’t even suspect.”
“He is not a poor fish,” snapped Diana, an angry flush starting over her face.
“Now, Mariotta, don’t tell me you are taking my teasing seriously? Where is your sense of humor? Of course he is a perfectly nice fellow, I wish you happy and so on, but really, if he hasn’t noticed … I see, he notices only what you wish him to, and does only what you wish him to?”
“One way of putting it, I suppose.” Diana was trying very hard to calm herself. She was furious with herself as well as with Jack: how had she let him irritate her to such a degree?
To make matters worse, Richard chose this moment to arrive in the theater room, and quickly came over to Diana. He was obviously upset about something.
“Mariotta … I wanted to speak to you.” Richard glanced meaningfully at Jack, who turned away. Pretending to watch the stage, but certainly listening to every word, Diana thought bitterly.
“I really think that you should not play Cherry. Miss Coates has agreed to do it if you decide against it—”
“Miss Coates is twenty years too old for the part, Richard.” Diana was amazed at his self-confidence. “And I have learned my lines.”
“I simply do not think it suitable that my fiancée should play opposite—”
“A very old friend? Jack, come, join the conversation, you have heard every word anyway, haven’t you? Richard has the most absurd notion that you and I should not be playing opposite each other! Jack is just like a girlfriend to me Richard—is that not so, Jack?”
Jack stretched himself out further and said that it was certainly true that they had known each other forever, and that there had never been anything but friendship between them.
“I wonder that you worry at all, Trelawny. Even had I wished to express my passion for Mariotta, I would hardly do it in front of countless thousands at a house party.” Jack gave a provoking smile, which palpably irritated Richard.
“If you like such a role, Mariotta, I suppose that your mother understands the implications … but I should much prefer you not to.”
A devil rose up in Diana. She would play Cherry, and she would ask no one’s permission to do so.
“I understand that implications, as you put it, may be involved, but I should like to think that I am respectable enough that no one would have such a low imagination as to think I am anything like the girl I play.”
Richard rose, bowed stiffly, and walked over to his sister and Lady Quennel, who had just come in.
Diana was sure that Jack would make some comment on this scene—which must have given him great gratification. But he merely suggested that they go and practice now, since the others had finished.
Diana enjoyed being on the stage, and Jack was certainly a pleasure to act with, unlike Richard, who always made her nervous. This was simply due to Jack’s greater experience with acting, Diana had to remind herself. And she would certainly not make acting a requirement in a husband.
They ran through the scene, the one which had proved so disastrous to poor Gussie, who even now was observing them sadly from the audience, flanked by a parent on each side. All went smoothly until the last part, when it seemed to Diana that Jack was trying to throw her off balance in some undefined way.
“You may depend upon’t.” said Diana as Cherry.
“Upon what?” Jack was looking intently into her eyes, as Archer was supposed to, but Diana was somehow confused by this look.
“That you’re very impudent.”
“That you’re very handsome.” Jack smiled as he said this, but it was too personal a smile, Diana thought.
“That you’re a footman,” answered Diana-Cherry haughtily, very out of character for Cherry.
“That you’re an angel.” Here Jack caught her hand and, bringing it to his lips, brushed it very lightly, but Diana could still feel that warm imprint after he’d put it up to his cheek.
“I shall be rude,” warned Cherry, turning away.
“So shall I,” shot back Archer.
“Let go my hand.”
“Give me a kiss,” said Jack-Archer, leaning close to Diana, his lips only an inch away from hers, his eyes gazing intently into hers.
They were waiting for Edmund to enter the scene, and in those few seconds Jack murmured that she should think of him as one of her girlfriends. Diana spoke her last lines and left the stage, very disturbed.
Her mother and Richard had been watching the rehearsal together, she saw with slight annoyance.
“There, you see,” Lady Abingdon turned to Richard. “You were quite wrong to worry. They were exceedingly careful and proper.”
“You have been worrying my mother with this, Richard?”
“I knew that if Lady Abingdon felt it was correct, it would be. You are so young; you are still in need of a mother’s opinion, but I confess I need not have worried. I saw nothing on the stage to upset me.”
Diana seethed, but her years of training with her father kept her from showing it. She smiled and said nothing.
Richard felt he had won a victory of some sort. He had been right; a little firmness was required with Mariotta, but sometimes one must defer to the mother, who, of course, knew best.
Lady Abingdon made no mention of Richard’s “consultation” that evening before bed, for her mind was all on Caroline Trelawny. Caroline had countered Lady Abingdon’s new dresses with some of her own, obviously made in great haste in Bath. They, too, were youthful, but on Caroline they looked merely ridiculous. But Lady Quennel was proving an important ally to Caroline, exclaiming to Edmund that she had never seen such a woman for botany, that she had a really miraculous feeling for orchids.
“What ever shall I do? It is really too much,” said Lady Abingdon to her daughter. “I know nothing of these things.”
Diana’s mind was on other things, but she directed her attention to this question.
“Well … you must make your ignorance into an asset. Tell him you wish to learn all about his beastly flowers. You know you are as uninterested in them as I am—but you must realize that this is a good position to be in, that of the student. Men do like to teach, you know; and maybe Caroline will start trying to teach Edmund. We can hope for that. He wouldn’t like it at all. Maybe she’ll start correcting him. She is very proud of her knowledge. Let us see what vanity will lead her into.”
Although she was a little upset by the cool cynicism implicit in what she recognized to be a very intelligent appraisal of the situation, Lady Abingdon thanked her daughter and said she would do precisely what she had recommended.
“But it will have to be done when Lady Quennel is not with Caroline. She is perfectly capable of ruining everything.”
“Yes, she is quite sharp-eyed,” said Diana. “Jack refers to her as the ambulatory sofa, you know, claiming an upholsterer must be her modiste.” Diana giggled, thinking of what Richard would say if he had heard this.
Lady Abingdon started to giggle herself, thinking about Jack’s name for Lady Quennel, even as she protested to Diana that it was most uncharitable to talk that way about anyone.
Diana thought there was hope for her mother yet, if she would but giggle three times daily.
The day of the dress rehearsal dawned, bright and fair, adjectives which were certainly inapplicable to the mood of the actors themselves.
Caroline Trelawny had arrayed herself in a particularly unsuitable gold-colored gown, which was cut quite low over her thin chest. She swept into the rehearsal, a proud smile on her face, and stopped dead when she caught sight of Lady Abingdon, resplendent in a remarkably flattering green muslin, which made her look absurdly young.
