Chapter 28 #2
Watching Devon’s mother lift her arms to the shoulders of some imagined beau to gaze dreamily into his eyes, Merry grinned as she saw from the corner of her eye that Aunt April was surreptitiously wiping soil from the keys with her handkerchief.
Swaying to her aunt’s first experimental notes, Merry waltzed dutifully if stiffly over the grass, her skirts belling as she circled a bed of blue asters, feeling a little ridiculous but not caring, and thinking of Devon’s hands on her waist. Her waist. Her hips.
Her thighs… Rarely had three days seemed so long.
For all her doubts, this was a lovely place, and her days were almost idyllic; but there was no ease from the ache of missing him, of picturing him in London surrounded by fawning companions.
Friends, peers, old lovers… A thousand uncertainties roiled through her mind like spanking wingbeats, and she had ten questions for each of those.
Through cautious inquiry she had learned that Aline had borne another child, Leonie, an engaging tomboy who had fenced and swam and played captain on the estate cricket team; Aline mentioned her from time to time with sad eyes.
She had died eight years ago, Aunt April said, on a voyage to renew a friendship with a schoolmate in Jamaica.
If Michael Granville was connected with her death, no one here seemed to know that.
Aline spoke of him casually as her late husband’s cousin, a favorite of the dowager duchess, and that was enough probably to account for the vague distrust Aline seemed to have for him.
Aline’s animosity toward Rand Morgan went much deeper.
She couldn’t speak his name without her eyes becoming opaque with anger, and her most profound bitterness toward Devon’s grandmother sprang from her conviction that it was Letitia who, Aline said, had engineered Devon’s acquaintance with Morgan.
Fond as Merry was coming to be of Devon’s mother, she had to admit to herself that the accusation seemed a little extreme; unless Devon’s grandmother was a madwoman, she wasn’t likely to have wanted to expose Devon, on whom she clearly doted, to the influence of a man like Morgan.
Having a famous pirate as part of one’s family seemed to be an interesting if explosive circumstance.
Interested, sympathetic, Merry wondered if Aline knew that Morgan was her late husband’s son, and if she didn’t know, how she accounted for Devon’s affection for the man.
The espionage link, perhaps. It was no wonder the Crandalls intrigued people on both sides of the Atlantic; as a family they were fascinating, with their secrets, their abilities.
And now, for better or for worse, Merry was one of them.
A queasy stomach inevitably accompanied that thought.
Glancing down suddenly, Merry saw she was surrounded by ducklings, attracted by her swinging skirts.
She stepped left to avoid one tiny yellow ball; then quickly right to miss another; then she toppled backward.
Ducklings scattered in a golden star burst. Aline swooped laughingly down to pull her upright.
“Aren’t they a nuisance?” Devon’s mother said.
“Most ducal residences have the good fortune to have swans. These are Devon’s ducks, or their descendants, anyway.
Did he tell you? No. I don’t suppose it’s the sort of thing young men are given to confessing to their brides.
” She swept a duckling up and handed it to Merry, demonstrating how it liked to be petted.
“When he was seven, a whole brood of ducklings followed him home from the river one afternoon—orphans, they must have been—and they seemed utterly convinced Devon was their mother, and they followed him everywhere. It was the funniest thing. Such a mess at suppertime. They slept in his bedroom at night, and when I came to wake him in the morning, I’d find his head and shoulders all wreathed in little bits of fluff, hopping up and down on him, trying to wake him to take them to feed.
Poor little things, they got so used to him that they wouldn’t learn to swim; they just struggled and floundered and coughed when he put them in water.
Do you know how he taught them? By taking them to the river and sailing off in his sailboat.
At first they stayed on the bank, crying so pitifully, but soon enough they hopped into the water to swim after him furiously.
And my husband said—he said—” She stopped, nonplussed.
“I don’t recall quite what it was he said, though I suppose it will bother me all afternoon until I think of it.
… Well, never mind. Anyway, it was something clever.
He was a hideously clever man, you know. ”
Merry smiled, stroking the duckling. “Was part of the reason you chose to live here instead of at the historic residence of the St. Cyr family that you wanted your children to have a more normal childhood?”
“Yes.” Aline flopped down cross-legged on the grass, collecting ducklings on the stained pink dimity over her lap.
“Aside from the fact that the St. Cyr manor has ninety bedrooms and two great wings, I still could not live in the same building with Devon’s grandmama.
She’s absolutely ruled there for fifty years, and it always seemed cruel to me for the eldest son to bring home a young wife to outrank his mother.
” Suddenly impish, she rested back on her elbows.
“I hope you won’t have the bother of me living here for too long.
” Ignoring Merry’s protest, she continued, “Tell me, what did you think of Lord Cathcart?”
It was more than a casual question. Merry was glad she was able to answer with sincerity. “I thought he was charming and kind.”
“And chivalrous,” Devon’s mother amended glumly. She folded her arms as a pillow under her head. “I can’t tell you how much he respects me. All these years he’s been the best of friends to me.” Still more glumly, “He has a mistress.”
Taken aback, having no idea what to say, Merry finally asked, “Is she beautiful?”
Aunt April spoke from the pianoforte. “If you like tall, mannish females who stride and brighten their hair with chemicals.”
“Don’t be so loyal.” Aline grinned. “She’s beautiful.
I’ve seen her at the opera. They aren’t in love, people say, but it’s an oh-so-convenient relationship.
” She grimaced. “How I’d like to cause them both a little inconvenience.
I’ve known since June that I love him, but nothing’s worked.
If I sway toward him in the garden, he turns all concern and takes me inside to rest from the heat!
And when we had to take shelter in an abandoned cottage after being caught in the rain, what should he do but make me a long speech about how I mustn’t be afraid, because he placed my honor above all things.
I could have wept. I’m convinced that things would have been much easier if I’d fallen in love with a libertine.
Why, April, are you giggling at me?” Aline propelled herself to a sitting posture.
“How dare you? When I know you’ve a beau-ideal of your own—the way you dream off sometimes. ”
“Humdudgeon,” Aunt April maintained stoutly, though to Merry’s amazement her aunt’s cheeks were reddening.
Smiling with creamy satisfaction, Devon’s lovely, grubby mother flopped backward in the grass. “Humdudgeon nothing. We’re all three of us infected with the same disease. Love.”
The London season had ended some months earlier, but when the senior Dowager Duchess of St. Cyr gave a ball, the upper ranks of the British aristocracy sighed and sent their best jewels to be cleaned.
Postilions brought their full-dress livery out of camphor and prinked their carriage horses, blacking hooves, currying, oiling tack.
Modistes and milliners and hairdressers smiled over their profits.
Walking on Devon’s arm among pillars and statues and grand strangers, Merry had time between the smiles and murmured pleasantries to take stock of her impressive surroundings.
I will not be afraid, I will not be afraid, she had said over and over to herself on the carriage ride to the ball, and now, to her amazement, she discovered that she was not.
Over the months she had become accustomed to the hard talk and tempers of rough men; compared to them these genteel pale ladies and their smooth-tongued escorts were startlingly tame.
She was too much an American to turn meek under the stare of an exalted title; she was too much a product of Morgan’s careful if inconspicuous tutoring to let down her guard in this unexplored environment.
It fascinated her how little Devon seemed to care for all this.
She had thought his mother must be exaggerating his lack of interest in the ton.
Merry found Aline had hardly told her the half of it.
This—the light, superficial interchanges, the flattery, the cunning invitations from painted pouting lips—bored him.
Only when they met his grandmother had Merry felt his interest stir.