Chapter 3 #2
“And did you?” Gervaise asked, leaning back in his chair.
She turned toward him. “Did I what?”
“See someone, or something at the pergola.”
A frown marred her face. “Only myself,” she said vaguely.
Mrs. Ryland leaned forward. “Is she…intoxicated?” she asked in hushed, horrified tones.
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” Emmeline said quickly.
“She is more likely feverish.” She touched Caroline’s brow, then frowned.
From her reaction Gervaise guessed she was not feverish but in fact, clammy.
Emmeline reached across the table to pour her a glass of water.
She pressed it into Caroline’s hands. “Here, my dear, drink this.”
Mrs. Ryland drew herself up, her expression grim. “Well, we all know what a… What a sad trial she is to her poor mother,” she said stiffly.
“A sad trial?” Gervaise repeated thoughtfully as Emmeline cast an irritated look at the vicar’s wife.
“She means me,” Caroline said confidingly. She leaned forward in her seat. “Didn’t you know? I’m the biggest bitch in all the county. Just ask the vicar’s wife. She’ll soon tell you.”
Gervaise lowered the wineglass he had just lifted to his lips as Emmeline went off in a coughing fit. What the hell?
Mrs. Ryland let out a horrified squawk. “Why, I have never said such a thing!” she protested hotly. “How dare you?”
Caroline swung around to peer at Mrs. Ryland in surprise. “But of course you have, Mrs. Ryland. On every occasion I’ve seen you since I was eleven. You barely wait for me to leave the room before you start commiserating with Mama on my wickedness.”
The vicar’s wife turned an unbecoming shade of puce. “I… I—” Words seemed to fail her, and she turned to her husband, who appeared to be feigning deafness. “Charles,” she uttered feebly. “Make her stop!”
Reverend Ryland cleared his throat. “My dear Miss Halperston,” he started censoriously. “You should not malign your friends and neighbors so.”
“Malign? Me?” Caroline repeated and went off into a peal of delighted laughter.
She fell back against the back of her chair, and if Gervaise was not mistaken, actually kicked her feet.
He had never seen anyone do that before in real life.
“Oh, that’s funny,” she gasped. “That really is too funny, I can’t even think how to make reply.
” She wiped her eyes which appeared to be streaming tears of mirth.
She gave a happy sigh and lapsed into silence before appearing to notice everyone’s stares.
“What was I saying?” she asked in sudden confusion, turning toward him. “I do beg your pardon; I seem to have lost the thread of our conversation.”
“What a colossal bitch you are,” he supplied helpfully. Appalled gasps rang out all around the table.
“Gervaise!” Emmeline objected hotly.
Mrs. Ryland gave a gurgle and slumped in her seat in an apparent faint. Toppling over to one side, she fell off her seat with a heavy thud.
The vicar scrambled to his feet, a look of alarm spreading over his face. “Er… Help!” he cried feebly.
“Not another one,” Gervaise heard Jeremy groan from the other side of the room. “Come on, squire! You take the head this time, I’ll grab the feet.”
“I had better go and make sure they don’t pile them one on top of the other,” Emmeline murmured, hurrying over to rearrange the sofa.
“Oh yes, that,” Caroline said, nodding and apparently unnoticing of the turmoil all around her.
“Thank you.” She beamed at him. “Do you know,” she said chattily, “you’re not as appalling as you appear on first acquaintance.
At Lord Faris’s Christmas party I got the impression you were an awful swine,” she confided.
“Then, at afternoon tea last week, I thought you were a bit of a cad.”
A smile tugged at Gervaise’s lips. “Did you really, Miss Halperston?”
“Mmmm,” she agreed, nodding her head.
“And what about tonight?”
“Oh, you seem perfectly affable tonight. Though it’s hard to believe that anyone is wholly bad at this precise moment.” She stretched her arms above her head in a surprisingly sinuous manner. “The world is such a beautiful place, is it not?” she murmured dreamily.
Caroline Halperston should not really have it in her to make him sit up and pay attention to her like that, he reflected, watching her arch her back like a cat.
He reached for his cigarette case. Etiquette seemed to have gone out of the window, so why should he not indulge himself in a crafty cigarette.
Glancing over to his right, he saw Jeremy and the squire dragging the vicar’s wife toward the sofa where Mrs. Needham still lay apparently insensible. Mrs. Ryland was a good deal more substantial than Caroline’s waiflike mama and the squire was puffing and wheezing.
Emmeline was busily employed moving cushions aside to make way for Caroline’s second victim of the night. “If we lie them side by side, there should just be enough room,” she said optimistically.
Edgar reentered the room at this point leading a grim-faced lady’s maid who looked as though she would like to shove everyone aside and take charge of her mistress. She came stock-still on catching sight of Caroline, her eyes widening considerably.
“She’s over here, Goring,” Edgar said, gesturing to the sofa. “Fainted clean away. Oh, I say,” he exclaimed. “Whatever’s happened to Mrs. Ryland? Don’t tell me, she too—?”
Goring pushed past him. “Let me tend to her,” she said fiercely, dropping to her knees at her mistress’s side.
Gervaise took a puff of his cigarette. “Did you take any medicine this evening, Miss Halperston?” he asked in a conversational tone. “To take the edge off, as it were.”
“Medicine?” Caroline looked surprised by his question.
“Yes, or perhaps merely a tonic.”
“A tonic,” she repeated blankly.
“Such as Kendal Black Drop…or Godfrey’s Cordial,” he suggested.
She laughed. “What funny names!”
“Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup?” he dredged up, trying to think of other opium-based tinctures widely available.
Her confusion seemed to lift. “Oh, do you mean one of those ones for women’s ailments,” she asked, lowering her tone dramatically.
“Mother takes one sometimes, but I forget the name of it.” She screwed up her eyes.
“Unless it’s Dalby’s something. Dalby’s Carminative, perhaps?
” she hazarded. “But in any case, you can’t take a powder for what I’ve got. ”
Gervaise regarded her thoughtfully. “And just what do you have, Miss Halperston?”
“A rotten core,” she answered promptly. “Just ask Mother. It rotted right through when I was ever so young, on account of my father being a…” She frowned as her vocabulary apparently failed her.
Gervaise blew out a plume of smoke. “A bad apple?” he ventured.
She looked impressed. “Well, yes, precisely. My apple did not fall far from his tree, and if she had not plucked me out of the barrel, I might have tainted my saintly brother by association.”
He could not forbear from smiling at that. “I’d rather have a bad apple then a dead bore,” he admitted.
“Really?” She looked so absurdly hopeful that Gervaise felt a surprising pang in the vicinity of his chest. Curious. She leaned forward. “Do you really like me better than Edgar?” she asked.
“Christ, yes,” he answered with perfect truth.
She clasped her hands together. “You must be the first person in the whole wide world who ever did,” she admitted wistfully and regarded him with a fond smile.
“I do believe I like you after all.” She jabbed a finger in the direction of his chest. “Better than anyone. Better than Diana Hipworth,” she asserted. “Better even than Cynthia Jarrow.”
“Who the hell is Cynthia Jarrow?” Though now he came to think of it, was Diana not a name mentioned earlier at table?
“Oh, she was head girl at the school I boarded at. She won all the prizes and yet she chose me for her particular friend,” she said proudly. “Can you believe that? They both did. Well,” she amended conscientiously. “For one whole term anyway, before they found out—”
“What a nasty piece of work you really are,” he supplied.
“Yes, that,” she agreed without rancor.
“How did they find out incidentally?” he asked.
“Oh, Mama told them. Mama tells everyone sooner or later. I thought she was going to tell dear Lady Faris the other day,” she said, her happiness dimming at the recollection.
“Do not tell her that I think of her in those terms. I only do that in private, you understand, I would never dare to presume to call her that to her face. And I was so devastated but then, you will never believe what happened!” She opened her eyes wide.
Her eyes did not look quite right, Gervaise thought, lifting his cigarette back to his lips. “What happened?” he asked.
They promptly filled with tears. “You will never guess, not in a month of Sundays!” Horrible expression. “That dear little boy”—she sniffed—“who has the purest soul in all the world—”
He closed his eyes. “Do not say it, I beg of you.”
“That sweet angel, Master Teddy Vance—”
“I am acquainted with him and let me tell you, his soul is neither pure nor blameless.”
“I will hear no slander against him!” Caroline asserted, slamming her hand down on the table.
“He saved my life!” she declared dramatically.
“He did not even hesitate, just…just reached down into the trenches and dragged me out by the scruff of my neck! I have never witnessed anything so heroic in my life. I will forever remember it as the…the dearest recollection of my heart.”
“Good lord, you have been deprived in life, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “Terribly, horribly deprived. Speaking of which, would you care to dance with me, Lord Atherton?” She extended her hand to him palm up. “You did not dance with me at the Christmas party, and I secretly wanted you to.”
His eyebrows rose. “Even though you thought me a terrible cad.”
“A terrible swine,” she corrected him. “I did not think you were a cad until last week.”
“Ah, yes, it is important to get these things right.” He paused. “But there’s no music, my dear Miss Halperston.”
“Really? I could have sworn I can hear some.”
“I rather suspect you can,” he agreed dryly.
She flapped her hand in front of him insistently. “You will not refuse me in this request, surely? Not after I have been so…so…deprived as you say.”
“Well really, Miss Halperston, you quite put me to the blush.”
“Do I?” If anything, she looked rather pleased by this. “Don’t be shy. I shan’t eat you.”
It was Gervaise’s turn to cough.