Chapter 2
“That woman’s a liar,” said Gervaise thoughtfully, blowing out a plume of smoke.
“What woman?” Emmeline asked in surprise.
“The Needham woman,” he answered, extending his arm to flick the ash from his cigarette out of the carriage window.
“Our hostess for the evening. You think so?” Jeremy asked, though he did not sound terribly interested. His hand rubbed his wife’s back in lazy circles, and he was wholly occupied watching her face. “What makes you say so?” he asked without shifting his gaze from her profile.
“I can tell. I’m one myself but I only tell casual, convenient sort of lies. She’s another matter altogether.”
Jeremy’s viscountess stirred in her seat. “Are you being sincere in this?” she asked. “Or just amusing yourself as per usual?”
Gervaise gave an appreciative grin. “A bit of both, I suspect,” he answered with a shrug.
“I must confess I’ve never warmed to her,” Emmeline admitted. “And Teddy positively dislikes her.”
“She always seemed pleasant enough to me,” Jeremy admitted, “but I will admit the events of last week have given me pause.”
“You only thought her pleasant because you have no discernment whatsoever,” Gervaise retorted scornfully.
“You simply thought that because she is pretty,” his wife agreed. “She reminds me of one of Pinky’s friends in Bath. A Mrs. Spensor-Higgins. A faded sort of woman, always gently complaining and occasionally stating a rather viperish thought.”
“Ugh, she sounds awful,” Gervaise pronounced. “I never could stand whiners. I’d rather a woman was an all-out bitch than that.”
Emmeline stiffened slightly at his language. Her husband’s hand on her back stilled.
“Mrs. Needham is generally considered to be a charming woman in these parts,” Jeremy said sternly. “Kindly stop maligning my neighbors.”
Gervaise shrugged, his eyes on Emmeline’s face. “Have I offended you, Emmeline?” he asked forthrightly. “This is how I speak among my friends and intimates.”
She seemed to relax at his words. “Then naturally I cannot take offence. By all means, malign away.” Gervaise bowed his head in smiling acquiescence but made no reply. “What do you make of her daughter?” she asked curiously.
He paused, seemingly to consider. “I don’t,” he said at last, exhaling another puff of smoke. “More importantly, what do you think of her?”
Emmeline screwed up her eyes. “I think she is deeply unhappy, and who can blame her? Her mother cares only for her brother and never has a kind word to say about her.” She glanced at her husband for confirmation, and he nodded in agreement.
“True enough,” he concurred.
“Yet locally it is believed she is selfish, standoffish, and an undutiful daughter. She is far from popular, and I have a strong suspicion her reputation is wholly undeserved.”
“She has a reserve about her that perhaps has done her no favors,” Jeremy said slowly.
“That awful business with the shawl…” Emmeline said with frustration.
Gervaise made a noise of agreement in his throat. “Even if she had taken the shears to it, the way her mother reacted…” He pulled a face.
Emmeline nodded. “Quite. Surely a fond parent would try to hide their child’s faults, not broadcast them to all and sundry.”
“I don’t know about that,” Jeremy said critically. “My own reaction to Teddy’s destructive streak is far from magnanimous. He once took my malacca walking cane and scuffed it to high heaven using it as an alpine climbing stock.” He shook his head with disgust.
“I’m sure you beat him soundly,” Gervaise said sarcastically.
Jeremy ignored him. “Besides, Miss Halperston must be five and twenty, if she’s a day. She’s not some schoolroom miss to be shielded by her mama from the consequences of her own actions.”
“I doubt that woman ever shielded her a day in her life,” Gervaise answered, gazing at the tip of his cigarillo.
“To be upbraided in front of us all as a grown woman did not seem right either,” Emmeline observed. “It was most uncomfortable. I hardly knew where to look.”
“Quite the little mystery, was it not?” Gervaise agreed. “If Teddy was not the culprit, then what conclusion can we draw? ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. That one may smile and smile and be a villain,’” he quoted from Shakespeare.
“I don’t know about Denmark, but I do not believe the society here in Penarth is any worse than anywhere else,” Jeremy objected.
“Your grandfather’s seat in Norfolk, for instance.
” He set about rearranging the fur cape around his wife’s shoulders.
“Cold, my lovely one?” he murmured. She shook her head, quick to reassure him on that score.
“I would hardly know,” Gervaise sighed. “It’s been years since dear Grandfather sold the family pile and moved permanently to the London townhouse. Which, incidentally, Uncle has not invited me to stay at once since he disinherited me last April. I am quite de trop.”
“Well, it should prove an interesting last evening for you at any rate,” Jeremy said. “Before you leave us on the morrow.”
“One last Cornish hurrah,” Gervaise agreed. “Before my return to the Metropolis.”
“Must you really return so soon?” Emmeline asked.
Gervaise smiled. “I’ve been with you now some two months. Some hosts would think I have long outstayed my welcome,” he pointed out.
“You will never do that at Vance Park,” Jeremy said swiftly. “We thought you would surely stay another month.”
“So did I, originally.”
“What changed your mind? That letter you received last week?” Jeremy guessed. Gervaise nodded. “You never did tell me what it was about. It was from Stoddart, wasn’t it?” he asked, referring to their mutual friend Giles Stoddart Best.
“Yes, but it was the note he enclosed from my uncle George that decided me. The old man sent it care of his place in Hampshire. Presumably he heard I spent last autumn there as a houseguest.”
“And what did the old boy have to say?” Jeremy asked irreverently. He was circling the small of Emmeline’s back again.
“Well, it was hard to make out. Uncle George’s epistolary style is somewhat involved.
He seemed to be in some kind of panic to reach me.
Lots of exclamation marks and crossings out.
Something’s rattled the old boy rather badly.
I expect marriage to that frightful girl has not proved to be the boon he once thought it would,” Gervaise mused.
“Which frightful girl?” asked Emmeline with interest.
“Miss Beryl Blessing, the bottled fruit heiress. Last April, Uncle told me if I did not marry her, he would cut me off without a penny. When I turned my nose up, he vowed he would marry her himself and beget a new heir.”
“Good gracious! And pray, how old is Uncle George?” she enquired.
“Sixty-five if he’s a day.”
“And Miss Blessing?”
“A vivacious twenty-one.”
“Poor girl!”
“Poor Uncle,” Gervaise corrected her. “You have not met Miss Blessing. She means to cut a dash about town and will make a far from comfortable wife.” He shuddered. “Still, at the end of the day, I would rather his snowy white head lay on the chopping block than my glossy black one.”
“And he actually married her?”
“I believe so. I saw their engagement announced in the Times last summer. He cannot wriggle out of it now, not without being sued for breach of promise.”
“So, you mean to head for Melbury Square on your return?” Jeremy asked, mentioning the honorable George Langdon’s address.
“I do,” Gervaise agreed affably. “I expect a prodigal son’s welcome. Or that of a prodigal nephew at the very least.”
The coach swerved as it turned up the driveway toward the solid respectability of Benham Hall. Gervaise twitched the curtain aside to take in the view of the expansive Georgian brick facade. He admired the perfect symmetry of its portico and its array of handsome windows.
“One rather dreads to think what entertainment Mrs. Needham might have lined up for us tonight,” Jeremy observed direly.
“Edgar is home at least,” Emmeline commented. “So, she will be all gushing smiles for her beloved son. Maybe that will save Caroline from her claws.”
“Have I met Edgar?” Gervaise asked with a frown, releasing the curtain. “If so, I’ve forgotten him.”
“You did, at our Christmas party,” she responded. “He’s not particularly memorable, though perfectly nice.”
“The most irritating thing about him is his mother’s insistence that he’s the pinnacle of perfection,” Jeremy agreed. “He’s an amiable, modest young man of about three and twenty.”
“He sounds a crushing bore.”
“Well, he’ll never set a room alight with his wit, put it like that,” his friend agreed.
“And what does Master Halperston do?”
“He’s a Needham,” Emmeline corrected him. “He was the son of the second husband.”
“Ah, I see. So, then Edgar Needham is Miss Halperston’s younger half brother.”
“Yes,” Jeremy agreed. “He’s, er, studying something or other in Exeter, I believe.” He turned to his wife expectantly.
“Law. He’s studying law,” she clarified, “but with no particular career in mind. He studies for the pursuit of knowledge alone. His mother is always keen to stress he is a young man of both means and leisure.”
“I wonder that he does not go to London, then,” Gervaise ruminated.
“Oh, he would never move so far away from his dear mother,” Jeremy said flippantly. “They are a devoted pair.”
“Good lord, he sounds quite distressingly worthy,” Gervaise answered, looking appalled. “Unless of course beneath it all, he takes after his maternal side.”
“You suggest that vice lurks under his mask of virtue?” Jeremy said with a laugh. “I’ll never believe it. That boy blushes every time Squire Pebmarsh tells a bawdy joke!”
“But we have already decided you are no fit judge of character,” Gervaise reminded him. “Emmeline, what say you?”
She tipped her head to one side. “I just couldn’t believe it of him,” she said regretfully at last. “I would almost swear under oath there is not an ounce of vice in the boy.”
“Just dull, then,” Gervaise decided, promptly losing all interest in Edgar Needham. “We will concentrate on the Machiavellian mother and the poor persecuted daughter instead. They will be our entertainment tonight.”
“Poor Caroline,” Emmeline sighed. “The thought of her own mother treating her thus, why it…it revolts every proper feeling!”
“Careful,” Gervaise cautioned her. “Now you are starting to sound like the heroine in a novel, and we can’t have two. No, Miss Halperston is the wronged damsel of this piece and her mama the wicked, plotting villain. You, Emmeline, are a side character at best, though a very charming one at that.”
“Why, thank you kindly,” she said, inclining her head, a reluctant smile curving her lips.
“Never to me,” Jeremy objected. “To me, Emmeline will always be my darling Ballentine.” He carried her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“Of course I am to you,” she responded. “But it is only right that Gervaise should seek out his own leading lady of life.”
Gervaise frowned. “That is not what I am doing,” he objected at once. “You, Lady Faris, are willfully misunderstanding me.”
“Is it not?” she asked innocently.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Caroline Halperston possesses even less of the qualities I would consider essential in a wife than Beryl Blessing.”
“Oh, come now! Caroline would never have aspirations to cut a swathe through fashionable London! She would not even know how to cut a dash, poor thing.”
Jeremy cleared his throat. “He means, my love, that Caroline Halperston possesses no fortune with which to tempt him.”
Emmeline’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “No,” she conceded after a heavy pause. “Everyone knows her father died without a penny to his name. Apparently, her second husband rescued Angela Needham from penury.”
“I am afraid that Lady Atherton will need to be pretty plump in the pocket to support an extravagant creature like myself,” Gervaise admitted, stifling a yawn.
“No, no, my interest in Miss Halperston is purely academic. Her fascination lies in her predicament, not her person. I daresay aside from that she is as dull and worthy as her brother.”
“Now there I cannot agree with you,” Emmeline said stoutly. “And neither does Teddy. He maintains that Caroline Halperston is thoroughly charming company, and he would marry her himself if he was of age.”