Chapter 57 London
Chapter fifty-seven
London
Penny dressed with great care and arrived strategically late at the fundraising concert for the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage, during the opening address by a hefty peeress who appeared to be in the process of being strangled by a mink.
Penny found a spot near the front, leaving an aisle seat vacant beside her. She dropped her bag and fumbled with it, making little apologies to those around her, to be sure she was noticed.
Then she settled to examine the programme, shrinking behind it and looking as miserable as she could. Misery became less hard to play-act as she was forced to listen as all that was unhealthy about the modern age was laid at the feet of militant womanhood.
“Indeed, it is not taking things too far to speculate that the governing powers of the state itself would be weakened by this proposed flooding of the voting booths with feckless females.”
The program in Penny’s hands quivered.
One can only hope, she thought fervently.
A moment later, and the seat beside her was cast into shadow.
“Excuse me, is this seat empty?” a familiar-looking girl—fair and hearty, the sort who knew about hounds and horses—whispered.
Penny nodded gratefully and the girl sat, smoothing her skirts and glancing sideways at her.
The lady left the stage. Penny joined the applause in relief.
“I say, you’re Penny Fairweather, aren’t you?” the fair girl said, over the din as the peeress left the stage, loosening the vengeful mink. “We were in that class together, at the university. We both dropped out. Funny, isn’t it?”
Penny scrutinised the girl. Miraculously, she remembered her name. “Diana! How lovely to see you here. And how lovely of you to come over, when I was feeling so terribly alone.”
“Oh, that was my brother, Nigel—he said I should come over.”
Penny tried not to sit up as if the hunting horn had sounded. Diana darted a glance back at her party.
“Wouldn’t you like to come sit with us, after the interval?” she suggested kindly.
Penny followed her gaze to a big young man, very fresh and scrubbed, who waved a programme at them and beamed. He seemed to be with a group.
Oh, this was getting better by the moment.
“They wouldn’t mind?” Penny asked meekly.
“Not at all!”
“What a dear you are!” Penny said, giving Diana’s hand a squeeze as a quivery soprano began to sing ‘Jerusalem’ in mournful tones. “I’d almost given up hope.”
As Diana’s brother took her into the supper room, Penny reminded herself that she mustn’t expect to fall in with the Athelney group itself at once. She would get as many useful introductions tonight as she could, and pursue the most promising ones later.
Diana’s brother was a garrulous type and seemed to enjoy introducing her to his male friends.
She had them wrapped around her finger in no time.
The only one of this family circle who hadn’t crumbled like a biscuit before Penny’s onslaught was a big brute of a cousin—dismissively introduced—who used the supper time to get progressively sozzled.
As she sipped punch, Penny noted attention from another quarter: a slight, sparsely moustached individual with very sharp eyes who stood at the margins, smoking and watching her in a crawly sort of way.
It was the type of gaze Penny understood only too well. It made her long for her umbrella with its lovely little point, now somewhere at the bottom of the Thames Estuary. Never mind—she had a set of lovely steel claws in her mackintosh pocket for emergencies.
“Yes, our race has never been in a worse corner you know,” a male relative of Diana’s was telling her earnestly.
“But surely the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna,” someone else in the party murmured.
“No, old chap,” the other retorted, “because you see, Britain may have conquered half the world, but it’s a pyrrhic victory at best when we simply throw open the gates for a Trojan horse jammed full of the lesser races.
And that’s why it’s frightfully important—well—for you ladies to do your part, don’t you know. ”
Self-conscious laughter from the ladies of the party.
“Of course I think you’d all make perfectly charming prime ministers and postmasters,“ he went on, smiling, “especially you, Miss Fairweather!—but where would the race be then? After all, we chaps can’t do your part!”
“I never thought about it in that light,” Penny said solemnly, somehow managing to keep her countenance. “How terribly interesting and intellectual you all are—not like my usual friends at all. How I love to hear you all talk.”
When Diana’s brother went to get her a glass of punch, the brutish cousin appeared without warning.
“I’ve seen you,“ he said, red-faced, waving his finger at her.
“Yes,” said Penny demurely. “Your aunt introduced us a moment ago. I’ve been here all evening.”
“I don’t mean that,” he snarled.
Nigel was back, looking in confusion between Penny and his cousin.
The cousin didn’t take his eyes off Penny. She had the idea that if she moved, it would be more than his eyes on her—and not in a friendly way.
“You’re one of those women,“ he said, splashing punch from his cup. “You go to protests—smash windows. I’ve seen you! Why are you here? Are you a spy?”
“See here, Gordon, this isn’t—“ Nigel objected, holding him back.
Well, there was nothing for it now but to make a spectacle of herself.
“He’s quite right,” Penny said, with a little sob.
The whole circle went quiet. “I am one of those women. Or I was. Oh! I oughtn’t to have come!
Only, you were all so kind to me…I thought, for a moment—“ She raised a handkerchief to her eyes. “I’m so lonely, you see, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
I thought I might turn over a new leaf. Oh! How silly I was!”
And she hid her face and threaded her way through the crowd and out the door, thinking what a good thing it was that she’d done so many Shakespeare monologues. Granted, her soliloquy just now hadn’t been quite at the level of the Bard himself, but then she’d had to make it up on the spot.
She could hear footsteps behind her all the way, but she did not allow them to catch her up until she was on the street.
It would not do to make it too easy for him. She was a stag, not a rabbit.
A hand touched her sleeve.
“Miss Fairweather, one moment—“
She whirled about, preparing a look of astonishment.
It turned genuine, for the person who had followed her was not safe Nigel, but the marginal little man who had been watching her from a distance. To her surprise, he spoke with a faultless Oxbridge accent, and carried himself with a feline grace.
“Were you sincere back there, Miss Fairweather?”
Penny took a step back, blotting at her eyes with her hankie. Had this odd man seen through her charade? “Sincere? Do I know you, sir?”
“Yes, quite. I do apologise for approaching you thus, when we haven’t been introduced. But I couldn’t help hearing your admirable speech back there. I was rather touched by it. I wonder—have you heard of Athelney?”
Penny was glad the handkerchief was in front of her face.
“You mean…the place where King Alfred hid when the heathen tried to murder him?” she asked innocently.
The man’s eyes lit.
“Precisely.” He took out his card. “May I call on you? With my wife? No one who wishes to turn over a new leaf, as you put it, should have to do it alone.”
Penny looked at the man and sniffed. “But of course. Only” —and she bit her lip— “my parents. It would be hard to talk openly. They see the world as they want it to be.”
“Then call on me,” he said, placing the card in her hand and wrapping her gloved fingers round it in a way that made Penny feel as if a wasp were crawling up her corset. And as his odd mouth twisted in an asymmetrical smile, Penny realised he smelled of civet.
“I’m in London at the moment, but my wife and I would be most happy to see you at our little refuge in the country.
There, we can show you the world as it truly is.
” His voice was reedy, sing-song. She hated to admit there was something almost interesting about him, in a repellent sort of way.
He stepped back with a slight bow that implied value. “Good evening, Miss Fairweather.”
When she was alone on the rain-washed pavement, glinting with lamplight, she looked at the card.
Although she hardly needed to look at it, for she could feel the primitive shape of the embossed symbol even through her gloves.
The Cross of Saint George.
“Athelney, here I come,” Penny whispered.
The hunt was on.