Chapter 40
FORTY
Everyone was already downstairs, enjoying a pre-dinner cocktail in the drawing room, when Dennison stepped into the room.
He looked deeply uncomfortable, and his eyes darted around until his gaze settled on Geneva.
She nodded at him encouragingly, but he faltered, unable to speak for a moment, especially when Aunt Clarissa nailed him with her imperious stare.
“Well, what is it, man? Speak up.”
“His lordship is not feeling quite himself and won’t be coming down to dinner,” Dennison finally managed. “He sends his apologies.”
“I’ll ask Cook to send up a tray,” Geneva said.
“Just some soup, my lady,” Dennison said. “And maybe a piece of roast fowl. He can’t manage much more.”
“Of course. I’ll see to it,” she promised.
She could have let Dennison speak to the cook, but she wanted to make certain her father was able to eat something, and went to the kitchen herself.
By the time she walked into the dining room, everyone was already seated.
Clarissa was at the head of the table, which infuriated Geneva beyond all measure.
Douglas was still alive, but already everyone was beginning to move on, behaving as if he were gone and they had to snatch whatever they could before someone else could stake their claim.
It was mercenary and crass, and she hated to see this side of the people she’d known all her life.
Geneva didn’t say anything to her aunt but sat as far from her as possible so she wouldn’t have to speak to her all evening.
Honor followed her progress around the table, and Geneva could tell that her sister was annoyed as well but wasn’t about to remark on it.
And what was the point? Regardless of where she sat, Clarissa had no say in anything that happened. None of them did.
Once the first course was served and everyone had sampled the smoked salmon canapés, Rose turned to Jesse.
“Cousin Jesse, did you happen to meet the man who died aboard the Olympic?”
Jesse looked momentarily confused, then seemed to grasp what Rose was asking and nodded. “Yes, I did. I know it’s unkind to speak ill of the dead, but he was an unpleasant fellow.”
“Really?” Rose asked, her eagerness obvious. “Did he insult someone, or take liberties with their wife or daughter?”
“No, nothing like that.” Jesse seemed put off by Rose’s interest in the stranger.
“So, why was he unpleasant?” Honor asked.
Jesse had no choice but to answer the question. “He spent most evenings in the card room. He drank heavily, gambled recklessly, and became rather belligerent when he lost a great deal of money on the night he died. He was asked to leave.”
“Perhaps someone caught him cheating at cards, went to his cabin, and murdered him in his sleep,” Rose suggested. She leaned forward in her eagerness, and her eyes shone with malicious curiosity. “Was anything taken? What happened to his things?”
“I really don’t know, Rose, but I wouldn’t have thought he was murdered,” Jesse said.
“Why not?” Honor asked. “They said it was anaphylactic shock, but perhaps he was intentionally poisoned.”
“Why would you think that?” Jesse looked at Honor in surprise. “And how do you know it was anaphylactic shock?”
“The police said so. Rose brought a newspaper,” Honor said and instantly looked guilty since she realized that she had betrayed Rose to her mother, who was looking angrier by the moment. Her expression was pinched, and her nostrils flared with every intake of breath.
“I doubt the police would have allowed the rest of us to disembark if they thought Heller was murdered,” Jesse said. “I think, at the time, the ship’s doctor was probably more worried about possible contagion.”
“Really? Why?” Rose pressed as Sally silently served the consommé.
“Because of the influenza epidemic, silly,” Honor said. “If the deceased died of a contagious disease, they would have no choice but to quarantine the ship, like in the old days when they were afraid of the plague.”
Rose turned to Jesse. “Did he have pus-filled boils or an angry rash? How could they tell it was anaphylaxis?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jesse replied. “I never saw the body. It was left in his cabin until the rest of the passengers could disembark.”
Aunt Clarissa, who clearly had not wanted to censor Jesse for fear of causing offense, had finally had enough.
“Rose, be quiet this instant,” she barked, then turned to Jesse.
She was breathing heavily, her bosom rising and falling with every labored breath.
“Perhaps this is an appropriate topic of conversation where you come from, Mr. Bellamy, but here in England we have better manners.” She suddenly seemed to regret her outburst, probably because she recalled that Jesse would henceforth hold the purse strings, and smiled apologetically. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
Yes, you did, Geneva wanted to say. You resent him with every fiber of your being and want to remind him that he’s beneath you. And he wasn’t the one to bring up the topic—Rose was.
“Perhaps you can introduce a more worthy topic,” Jesse said, and Geneva could see that, beneath the mask of politeness, he was incandescently angry.
“Well, speculating about a possible murder is a sight more interesting than talking about the London Season and what so-and-so wore to some boring ball,” Rose protested.
“Rose, I’m warning you,” Clarissa hissed. “Murders are not discussed in polite society.”
“On the contrary, Mother,” Rose said. “Everyone is talking about Dorothy L. Sayers’ book, Whose Body? It’s a cracking read. You should try it.”
She seemed to be goading her mother on purpose, but Clarissa wasn’t about to give in to another outburst. “There’s nothing wrong with discussing a work of fiction, but it’s quite vulgar to speculate about a real case, especially when the poor man died of natural causes and deserves your sympathy,” she retorted.
“Why? Cousin Jesse says he was a disagreeable man. Why should I feel any sympathy towards him?”
Clarissa looked like she would have liked to wring Rose’s neck, or at the very least gag her with her own napkin, but she was saved from resorting to an act of violence by the arrival of Sally, who cleared away the soup plates.
“Ah, sole Véronique,” Clarissa exclaimed when the next course was delivered to the table. “I simply adore sole. Are you partial to fish, Mr. Bellamy?”
“Not very, but I enjoy shellfish,” Jesse said.
“What sort of shellfish?”
“Oysters Rockefeller is a favorite,” Jesse said. “And I do love clam chowder.”
“Perhaps you can explain to Cook how to make these American delicacies so that we can sample them,” Clarissa said and smiled at Jesse in a manner Geneva found sickeningly ingratiating.
She was clearly trying to make up for her bad behavior.
“We would so love to learn more about your culture. Wouldn’t we, Rose? ”
Rose nodded solemnly. “Have you ever been out West? Is it full of lawless gunslingers?”
“I don’t know, Rose,” Jesse replied with a chuckle.
“Didn’t you used to live in Montana?” Geneva asked, speaking up for the first time.
Jesse looked blank. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Mr. Lefferts told Father that your mother married a rancher from Montana.”
He nodded then, his expression growing sad. “My mother and I were estranged. I didn’t get on with my stepfather.”
“So you went to New York?” Honor asked.
“Yes.”
“How old were you at the time?”
“Stop interrogating Mr. Bellamy,” Clarissa admonished them. “It’s impolite.”
“We’re just making conversation, Mother,” Rose said. “How else can we get to know him better?”
“Do you have any favorite holiday traditions?” Honor asked. “What did you do at Christmas if you were estranged from your family?”
“Last year I was invited to a coworker’s home for Christmas.” Jesse smiled self-deprecatingly. “He took pity on me because I was alone. And then, on New Year’s Eve, I went to Times Square to see the ball drop.”
“What ball? Who dropped it?” Rose cried.
“It doesn’t actually fall,” Jesse explained.
“It’s a beautiful lighted iron sphere that’s slowly lowered down a flagpole.
The ball reaches the bottom precisely at midnight, and everyone cheers, claps, and sings.
It’s quite a sight. But why don’t you tell me about you?
” he suggested, turning his smile on Aunt Clarissa, who was clearly forgiven. “How do you pass the time in London?”
This was the opening she had been waiting for, and she began to regale Jesse with tales of London society.
Clarissa peppered the conversation with the names of titled, influential people, but Jesse was clearly unimpressed, since he had likely never heard of any of them, though he nodded and asked questions when Clarissa paused for breath.
“Once you’re the Earl of Gosforth, you will move in the highest levels of society,” Clarissa said.
“Unless you decide to bury yourself in the country, like my brother. But you’re young and would benefit from the connections you can make.
I wager if you took a house in London for the Season, you would be on every hostess’s guest list.”
“And that could be more perilous than the missions you flew during the war,” Geneva said, but her attempt at a joke fell flat.
Clarissa had stopped talking rather abruptly, probably because she had realized that if Jesse didn’t marry Geneva, he would be introduced to eligible young women of his own class and might marry elsewhere, which wouldn’t benefit any of them.
“You would, of course, need to observe a period of mourning, and then take your cousins to London with you,” she said when the silence stretched on. “So they can meet eligible young men. It would be up to you to see them advantageously wed and negotiate a marriage settlement.”
“Yes, of course,” Jesse muttered, then fell silent.
For the remainder of the meal, they alternated between awkward silence and banal observations, and Geneva was relieved when dinner finally came to an end and she could escape to her bedroom.