Читать книгу His One Woman - Paula Marshall - Страница 9

‘J ack says he’s bound and determined to support me at the Bazaar this afternoon,’ Sophie told Marietta in as patronising a manner as she could. ‘I don’t suppose that you will want to come, will you? Not your sort of thing at all. Aunt Percival and I are perfectly capable of running the stall without you.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Marietta coolly. ‘Seeing that I have done the lion’s share of the work needed to gather together enough bric à brac, needlework, bibelots and trinkets to make a good show, I have no intention of being deprived of the pleasure of selling them. Besides, I should like to meet Jack again— I found him a most interesting companion.’

Sophie’s pout was a minor masterpiece of displeasure.

‘Oh, I’m sure that he would like an afternoon when he didn’t have to waste time discussing boring topics with you,’ she said sharply. ‘Besides, if you do come, you will have so much work cut out making change for our customers to spend much time talking to anyone. You know that Aunt Percival and I aren’t very good at sums.’

‘In that case, you really will wish me to accompany you—seeing that I will be useful after all.’ Marietta smiled.

She was beginning to enjoy wrong-footing Sophie, whose spite was becoming unendurable. Aunt Percival had berated her the other evening for ‘allowing Sophie to walk all over you’ and had advised her to stand up for herself a little more. ‘You are doing her no favour by letting her use you as a doormat,’ she had ended, trenchantly for her.

Well, I wasn’t a doormat this morning, far from it, thought Marietta, looking around the crowded church hall to see whether Jack was present. He had apparently told Sophie that he would arrive early, but it was already four o’clock and there was no sign of him.

Nor was there any sign of Sophie, either. After two hours of waiting for Jack, she had flounced off to take tea in a back room, telling Aunt Percival to be sure to fetch her if he should suddenly arrive. Aunt Percival’s answer to that, once she had gone, was to remember a sudden necessary errand which she needed to run, leaving Marietta alone in blessed peace at the stall.

She had just sold an embroidered pocket book to Mrs Senator Clay when she saw Sophie returning with a man in tow. She was chattering animatedly to him, even though he was not the missing Jack. He was someone whom Marietta had once known very well and whom she was surprised to see at this unassuming event.

‘Guess who I found?’ bubbled Sophie at Marietta. ‘He says that he knew you long ago when you were young.’

Marietta looked at the handsome blond man who was bowing to her before offering her a faint smile. ‘I don’t need to guess,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s Avory Grant, isn’t it? I would have known you anywhere.’

Marietta had not seen him for seven years and those years had changed them both. There were grey streaks in his fair curls and lines on his classically handsome face, even though he was still only in his early thirties. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her.

‘You haven’t forgotten me, I see,’ he said quietly, bowing to her.

‘No, of course not,’ she told him, smiling at him. He might once have proposed to her and been refused, but that was no reason for them to be uneasy with one another.

He smiled. ‘And I would have known you, even though you have become handsome after a fashion which must cause heads to turn in your direction these days.’

‘Now, Avory, you must not flatter me. You know as well as I that I am past my first youth.’

He shook his head. ‘I meant what I said. I am delighted to see you again, and to find you looking so well.’

She did not tell him that he had not changed, for he had, even though he was essentially still the young man who had asked to marry her—something which Sophie did not know.

‘I arrived in Washington yesterday and my aunt told me that I would find you here this afternoon—and so Miss Sophie confirmed when I encountered her.’

Sophie slipped a proprietorial arm through Avory’s, and her smile for Marietta was that of a crocodile hanging on to its prey. ‘Avory and I first met when Pa invited him to dinner this time last year,’ she announced sweetly.

Avory nodded agreement, adding, ‘I am having a short holiday in Washington, renewing old friendships, before I join the Army of the Potomac—’

He was not allowed to finish. Sophie exclaimed, ‘Oh, no—do not say so. It is not even certain that there will be a war.’

‘Would that that were so,’ he told her indulgently, ‘but I am afraid that war is now inevitable.’ He turned to Marietta. ‘I am sure that the Senator would agree with me. May I compliment you again on your appearance, Marietta—it is as though no years at all have passed since we last had the good fortune to meet.’

Marietta’s thanks for this compliment were coolly polite but genuine. For the first time in months, nettled by Sophie’s constant criticism of her, and a little on her high ropes because of the Dilhorne party’s open admiration of her, she had dressed herself with some care.

She was wearing a fashionable green velvet gown decorated with gold buttons and a certain quantity of discreetly placed gilt lace which showed off her glossy chestnut hair to advantage. More to the point, she had abandoned her normally severe coiffure in favour of one which allowed her glorious locks to hang loose a little before they were confined by a black velvet bandeau round her forehead. In the centre of it she had pinned a small topaz brooch. Her mirror had told her how much this unwonted care had improved her appearance.

Sophie tossed her head a little. Plain Jane had no business to be receiving praise—that was for her. ‘Oh, Marietta always looks the same,’ she said, as though that were some major fault. ‘I suppose that your wife is still recovering from your journey from Grantsville and would find a visit to a Bazaar too exhausting.’

Marietta threw Sophie a glance so withering that even that careless kitten quailed before it, while Avory, his face shuttered, said in a low voice, ‘My wife died suddenly six months ago—the news has possibly not yet reached you.’

To save her cousin at least a little face for having forgotten what she must have been told, Marietta said, ‘Sophie has been living in the country until she came to Washington early this spring and consequently would not have been informed of your sad loss.’

‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ stammered Sophie. ‘May I offer you my belated condolences, Avory?’

Despite Marietta’s kind intervention, she shot her a look which was poisonous—but which Avory did not see. He inclined his head towards her and said, ‘You may, indeed. I thank you.’

He addressed his next remark to Marietta. ‘I should wish to pay you a more formal visit before I leave Washington. I take it that you are still at your old address.’

‘Yes, we shall be pleased to see you.’

Sophie announced in a distracted voice, ‘Oh, look—Charles Stanton has just come in, but Jack isn’t with him. Wherever can he be?’

Her brief moment of remorse for her thoughtlessness was over, and she was ready to resume her exciting social life. As on the night of the reception at the White House, she waved her hand above her head to attract attention, only this time it was holding her fan, not a bouquet.

She had already forgiven Charles for having caused her to insult him by not using his proper name, and when he arrived at the stall her pleasure at seeing him was unfeigned because it allowed her to forget her recent gaffe and repair a previous one.

‘Oh, m’lord,’ she exclaimed, startling Avory who was about to leave them. ‘How delightful to see you again. But where are your companions? I trust that they have not deserted us.’

‘Not at all,’ said Charles gravely, including Avory in his bow to her and Marietta. ‘Alan was summoned at short notice to a committee on the Hill and took Jack with him. Since my specialist knowledge was not wanted today, Jack suggested that I come along and assure you that he and his brother would join us before the afternoon is over.’

‘We are being remiss,’ said Marietta, trying not to sound as though she were reproaching Sophie, even though she would have liked to. ‘I ought to introduce our new guest to our old one. Mr Stanton, may I present Mr Avory Grant of Grantsville to you? He is one of our most prominent landowners and a strong supporter of the Union cause.’

‘Oh, pooh, Marietta,’ said Sophie when the courtesies were over. ‘You might as well explain to Avory that Charles is really Viscount Stanton, or else he will think that my calling him m’lord was a silly mistake.’

Marietta thought furiously that the only silly mistake was to insist on calling Charles Stanton m’lord when he expressly did not wish to use his title in either his public or private life! Her eyes met Charles’s and she signalled him a rueful apology for Sophie’s bêtise. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

What Avory made of this by-play was unknown, especially since in order to impress Charles with her image as a universal charmer, Sophie had re-engaged Avory in animated conversation about his home and was assuring him how much she was looking forward to seeing it again.

Aunt Percival’s arrival back from her errand, and a sudden influx of would-be buyers, ended this ploy. She took one brisk look at the situation, said hail and farewell to Avory, and sent Marietta and Charles to the tea-room, all while bidding an annoyed Sophie to stay behind and do some work for a change.

Charles’s perfect manners prevented him from making any comment on Sophie’s less-than-perfect ones to Marietta, other than by saying, ‘One has to hope that Jack will have Alan with him if they arrive at the Bazaar while you are busy taking tea with me.’

This cryptic remark amused Marietta more than a little. She said, as casually as she could, ‘I gather from Jack that you are something of a protégé of his brother.’

Charles picked up a large muffin and said before attacking it, ‘Yes, indeed. He rescued me from being a backwoods country nobleman, or a soldier, when I wanted to be that odd creature a working engineer. I had a passion for all things mechanical and Alan’s charm and power, working together, were such that he persuaded my father to allow me to indulge that passion.

‘Alan Dilhorne is a most remarkable man. How remarkable I did not completely understand until I began to work for him a few years ago. His brother Jack is very like him, but not, I suspect, so severe. Alan can be ruthless—should he so wish—which is not very often. I suspect Jack does not share that with him.’

Marietta could well believe that Alan was ruthless as well as severe. He had chosen to deceive Mr Lincoln and the officials he had met by presenting them with a picture of an idle and somewhat stupid English gentleman and she was sure that that had been done with a purpose.

It was pleasant to forget her duty for once and delay returning to the stall in order to talk to a clever and attractive man who seemed to like her company. He was not Jack, but she had to admit that if she had met Charles first… But that was to flatter herself.

‘How long do you propose to stay in Washington? I take it that you will be returning to London with Alan.’

Charles shook his head. ‘No, indeed. I shall send my report on our talks back with him when he leaves, and then I shall travel South to see what new inventions in the shipping line the Confederates are developing. I trust you will not take offence at my visiting your enemy. Great Britain is, I believe, unlikely to become an ally of either side in the coming war, so I shall have carte blanche to travel where I please.’

Marietta shivered. ‘I have always hoped that civil war would never come, particularly since our family has relatives in the Deep South. It is dreadful to face the fact that friends, brothers and cousins might find themselves on opposite sides—perhaps to meet in battle.’

‘Civil wars are the worst of wars,’ said Charles. He pulled out his watch. ‘My patron should be arriving any time now. Do you wish to remain here, or return to the stall?’

‘If we all had our druthers—which is Deep South dialect for what we would rather do than what we ought to do—then I would prefer to stay here. But duty says that I ought to be helping Aunt Percival and Sophie to raise as much money as possible for poor children by selling baubles to rich women—an odd thought, that.’

‘Ah, yes, duty,’ murmured Charles. ‘I can see why Alan likes you. He’s great on duty.’

‘So, I suspect, is Jack. Is it an Australian trait, I wonder?’

‘Perhaps. Many Yankees seem to share it, too. I must do mine and return you to your worthy Aunt Percival.’

Marietta noticed that he did not mention Sophie although, once they were with her again, Charles’s manners to her were those of the perfect gentleman—which he obviously was, even though Sophie greeted Marietta with, ‘Whatever have you been doing to be away for so long? I have had a wretched time of it. Aunt Percival has left me to sell things and make change while she gossiped with all her old friends—and Jack still hasn’t turned up. If he doesn’t come, it will have been a totally wasted afternoon—I shouldn’t have allowed you and Aunt to persuade me to attend.’

‘Now, Sophie, that’s no way to speak to Marietta—even if you are disappointed,’ said Aunt Percival. ‘Console yourself by knowing you have been doing your duty.’

‘Oh, that!’ exclaimed Sophie, shrugging her shoulders and rolling her eyes at Charles. ‘Who cares about that? That’s for servants.’

‘And English viscounts apparently, by what he said to me in the tea-room,’ Marietta was to tell Aunt Percival later that evening. ‘It’s a good thing that Sophie hasn’t set her sights on Charles—he thoroughly approves of people who do their duty.’

Now she said nothing, other than, ‘Well, we can all console ourselves with the thought of duty well done, and have our immediate reward for, if I do not mistake matters, Jack and Alan have just arrived.’

Sophie responded by jumping up and down again and beginning to semaphore in their direction—this time laughing and waving Aunt Percival’s tolled-up sunshade to be sure of attracting them to her side immediately.

Both men responded by smiling at them before making their careful way through the crowd of women—few men were present—to Marietta’s now three-quarters-empty stall.

‘I warned Alan,’ remarked Jack when the formalities were over, ‘that by the time we arrived we should find all the best bargains will have gone—and so they have. But that stern goddess Duty called us. Even if I might have frivolously declined to obey her on the grounds that I had a previous engagement, Alan, who is made of sterner stuff, would never have allowed such a consideration to move him.’

Duty again—and from Jack this time! Sophie pouted at him, and it was left to Marietta to say to him, ‘I see that you think of duty as a woman, Jack. Do you have any authority for assuming any such thing?’

Jack put on a puzzled face, and it was left to Aunt Percival to inform them, ‘Mr Jack, even if he does not know it, has the best authority for what he said—was it not Wordsworth who called duty, “stern daughter of the voice of God”?’

‘Bravo!’ said the three men together, while Sophie stared at Aunt Percival. One might have guessed that she would remember such a useless piece of knowledge—and by boring old Wordsworth, too. She had unhappy memories of being asked to learn his Lucy poems by heart.

She was about to say something when Alan leaned forward, looked into her eyes, and half-whispered to her, ‘I’m sure that Miss Sophie likes poetry which has a softer touch. For example…’ And he began to quote Byron to her in a voice which was so soulfully melodious that even Jack stared at him.

She walks in beauty like the night;

Of cloudless climes and starry skies

And all that’s best of dark and light

Meets in her aspect and her eyes…

The admiring look which he sent her on ending gave Sophie the notion—totally unfounded—that, smitten by her charms, he had been left with no alternative but to celebrate them.

‘Oh, Mr Dilhorne,’ she simpered at him. ‘You flatter me.’

‘Oh, no,’ he returned. ‘Most apt, wouldn’t you agree, Charles?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said that gentleman, trying to keep his face straight.

Jack said nothing, but smiled a lot. Aunt Percival looked bemused. She detected a false note somewhere but, since no one said anything, she thought that she must be mistaken. Unlike Charles Stanton, she was not aware of how ruthless the handsome Mr Dilhorne could be.

‘When we have all finished showing off our learning,’ Jack said, ‘I should like to enjoy some bodily, rather than mental, sustenance—it must be hours since I last ate or drank. Miss Percival spoke a moment ago of a tea-room. I wonder if you would like to accompany me there, Marietta?’

‘Oh, no,’ wailed Sophie. ‘Why can’t I take you? Marietta has only just returned from it.’

‘Splendid,’ said Jack. ‘Then she’ll be sure to know how to find it, won’t she?’

He had decided earlier on that day that he wanted to see more of Marietta Hope without having to share her with either Alan and Charles or with Sophie and Aunt Percival. This seemed an ideal occasion to discover whether she was quite as remarkable as he was beginning to suspect she was.

So far he had no sexual interest in her, or so he told himself. In the past his taste in women had always run in the direction of either pretty young blondes who looked adoringly at him and talked of nothing, or their more experienced sisters with whom he could have a jolly good time with no fear of any unwanted consequences.

His father, the Patriarch, as all his descendants called him, had despaired of Jack ever finding anyone sensible with whom he could settle down for life. ‘Feather-headed and feather-brained, the lot of them,’ he had once grumbled to Jack’s mother, Hester, about the women Jack fancied. ‘Will he never take up with anyone I might like to have for a daughter-in-law? Someone like Eleanor or Kirsteen?’

‘You’re not in a position to complain about him, Tom Dilhorne,’ Hester had said. ‘It took you long enough to sow your wild oats and settle down.’

Now what could a man say to that? Other than, resignedly, ‘I might have hoped he’d be more sensible than his old father—although perhaps I ought to remember that if I’d settled down earlier we should never have married!’

On hearing Marietta’s immediate offer to stand down in Sophie’s favour, Alan, who was well aware of his brother’s wish to be alone with the plain Miss Hope rather than the pretty one, answered for him.

‘Now, Miss Sophie,’ he said. ‘Later on you may have the honour of taking tea with me—but only after you have sold me that pretty brooch whose price seems to have been above most buyers’ touch. I should like to take it home to give to my wife as a memory of a happy afternoon. I should be sure not to tell her of the charming young thing whose stall I bought it from.’

Since this came out in Alan’s most seductive voice, Sophie tossed her head, saying, ‘Very well,’ although she jealously watched Marietta take Jack away, leaving her with a middle-aged married man and Charles Stanton, whose manner to her was cool in the extreme—and Aunt Percival, who didn’t count.

‘I should really have let Sophie take over,’ Marietta told Jack in a worried voice. ‘I’ve just had a cup of tea with Charles.’

‘Ah, but did you have anything to eat?’ asked Jack, who could be as cunning as his brother. ‘I really can’t be expected to partake of a solitary meal. Besides, after the waitress has taken our order, you can enlighten me on the current situation in the States vis-à-vis the proper conduct for a young unmarried gentleman who wishes to get to know an unmarried lady better.’

So all this gallant attention to her, Marietta thought glumly, was simply to discover how best to approach Sophie! How could she have expected that Jack might be any different from all the other young men who had fluttered around the beautiful Hope cousins while ignoring the plain one—or using her to get to know the prettier ones better?

‘It’s very much as I expect it is in England. You may not be alone with an eligible young woman—other than in the kind of situation we find ourselves in at the moment—in an acceptable semi-public place. You may go anywhere with her so long as a chaperon accompanies you—although I believe that we allow a freer life for our young gentlewomen than is allowed to yours.’

‘As I thought,’ said Jack. ‘In a ballroom at home I am allowed to escort the favoured fair one to a table where refreshments are laid out—which I suppose equates to this. So, I suppose that if I asked you and Sophie to go riding with me—I ought, perhaps, to say us, for Alan and Charles would be sure to wish to accompany me—I might safely invite you?’

So that I can act as chaperon for Sophie, I suppose, and that was another dismal thought.

‘Yes, or, on occasions where riding is not required, then Aunt Percival can act as chaperon.’

‘And having got that out of the way,’ said Jack, ‘we can now talk of graver things. We in England think that Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, has been a great cause of friction between North and South. It has even been suggested that if there is a war it will have been a major cause of it. What, I wonder, is your opinion?’

One good thing, perhaps, thought Marietta, while giving him a reasoned answer, was that Jack would not have been likely to ask Sophie such a serious question. On the other hand, did she, Marietta, secretly wish him to talk to her in the same flighty way in which all the men who met her talked to Sophie? After all, wasn’t he behaving with her in exactly the same way in which young men conducted themselves with the duennas of pretty young things, hoping to get them to favour their suit over everyone else’s. Another dismal thought.

The only surprising thing was that Jack appeared to be genuinely interested in what she was saying to him. They went on to discuss Mr John Brown’s failed insurrection at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 and all the other incidents which had brought the United States to the verge of war. She couldn’t believe he would have wished to discuss any of that with Sophie, either.

In return she asked him about his interests, and learned that he was shortly to visit New York with a letter from Ezra Butler to John Ericsson, who was busily engaged in trying to build an effective iron man-of-war.

Tea and cake over, Marietta pulled out her little fob watch and insisted that it was time that they returned to the stall.

‘I am sure that your brother would wish to take tea with Sophie and Aunt Percival. You could assist me in selling whatever remains there—if anything does.’

‘Surely,’ said Jack enthusiastically. ‘I should have informed you that my late father was a great man for selling things as well as buying them and we all seem to have inherited those talents—in varying degrees, of course.’

If Sophie resented losing Jack again by having to do the pretty to Alan and Aunt Percival in the tearoom she did not let it show, but went off with them meekly enough. Charles had found a clerical gentleman with whom to converse about the coming war, so Marietta had Jack to herself again.

She was coming to know him so well: to know that a certain quirk of his mouth and a sparkle in his bright blue eyes always preceded some comic aside; that he possessed a good and shrewd mind, and that he had great respect for his parents and his elder brother. She had to be honest, though, and admit that merely to be with him was enough to set her all pulses throbbing.

His tall and muscular body and his face which, unlike his brother’s, was not orthodoxly handsome, but a little irregular, though full of character, attracted her as no other man’s physical attributes had ever done before. More than that, when with him she was full of a strange excitement even while they were discussing the most banal topics.

Did he feel the same about her? Marietta very much doubted it. He was plainly a man who attracted women and could have his pick of them, so why should he be drawn to her? Except that this afternoon he could easily have arranged matters so that he spent it with Sophie, but instead he had whisked her away and left Sophie behind.

That might simply mean, however, that for some reason he felt a need to discuss serious matters for once and so he had monopolised her. When it came to a ballroom or a rendezvous, it would most likely be Sophie whom he would choose for a companion—and perhaps for a wife.

Marietta shook herself. What in the world was she doing to be thinking of Jack marrying, and after a fashion that meant that she was thinking of him as a husband? She returned for a moment to being sensible Miss Hope again and, with Jack’s help, sold most of the few remaining trinkets on the stall, after watching him charm and cajole passers-by into buying them. He had a nice line in patter and so she told him.

‘You are wasted as an engineer, Jack. You should have been a barker at a fair. You would have made a fortune.’

He was not offended, but instead rolled his eyes and said solemnly, ‘You flatter me, Marietta. My father was a master of the art, and Alan also. I am not of their calibre, believe me.’

He offered her a conspiratorial wink before hailing a passing matron with the words, ‘Madam, I have to tell you that you are missing some of the greatest bargains in Washington today if you do not stay a moment at our stall.’

Marietta laughed up at him after he had successfully wheedled one of society’s most miserly women into buying a vase which she didn’t want.

‘You are a rogue, Jack Dilhorne, a very rogue.’

He leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially to her, ‘You should do that more often, Marietta, it becomes you.’

She was so unused to such compliments that she said abruptly, ‘What…what did I do?’

‘Laugh,’ he told her, solemn now. ‘You should laugh more often. I must think up some jokes.’

‘Oh, Jack,’ she riposted, ‘you are a living joke.’

‘In that case,’ he shot back, ‘you should be favouring me with a laugh all the time instead of rationing me so severely.’

Marietta did something which she had seen Sophie do quite often, but had never done herself. She slapped him gently on the wrist in playful reproof. ‘Come, Jack, you must not tease me.’ Which was another favourite phrase of Sophie’s when she was flirting with an admirer.

Goodness, that’s what I’m doing, flirting! How did he make me flirt? I ought to stop, I’m too old, too solemn, too plain, too serious… The litany unrolled itself in Marietta’s head, but it didn’t stop her from laughing again, or Jack from admiring her and trying to provoke her a little more.

He put out a gentle hand and loosened a strand of her glossy chestnut hair which had escaped its imprisoning bandeau. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘It goes with the laugh.’

Well, Jack Dilhorne knew how to flirt and no mistake! Which was perhaps why she was suddenly doing all those flighty things which she had never done as a young girl. It was all his fault, of course. How does it happen that he’s making me think, behave and talk like a green girl of fourteen with her first beau?

Marietta tucked the errant lock of hair back. He promptly loosened it again.

‘No,’ she murmured at him. ‘No, you will make a spectacle of me if you carry on like this. What will people think?’

‘Nothing,’ he told her. ‘They’re too busy with their own affairs to trouble about yours. Besides, why should you not be entertained by your gentleman companion? They think nothing when Sophie is.’

‘Is that what you are, Mr Jack Dilhorne? My gentleman companion? How much of a gentleman are you?’ But she was smiling when she teased him, and there was no sting in her words.

‘As much as any other man whom you allow to help you at a charity bazaar.’ He smiled at old Mrs Nuttall who had come up to the stall, her busy, curious eyes on Miss Marietta Hope, who was dallying with that handsome young stranger in a manner quite unlike her usual dignified restraint.

‘Ah, madam,’ he asked her cheerfully, ‘what may I sell you this afternoon? I regret that Miss Hope has been so successful that there is little left for you to choose from.’

‘Not Miss Hope,’ cackled Mrs Nuttall. ‘She’s not been selling much this fine afternoon. You’ve been far too busy chaffering with each other for her to find time to sell anything to outsiders. Not that I blame you for showing an interest in her, young man—she’s worth ten of that cousin of hers. She’d always have your dinner on the table when you came home after a hard day’s work, which is more than I could say for Miss Flighty Hope if you were silly enough to settle for her—but then, you young men always go for show rather than quality!’

Marietta’s face was one vast blush, but Jack, as befitted the true son of his father, was quite unruffled.

‘Dear lady, I can see that, were I considering marriage, you would have much useful advice to offer me. But since, this afternoon, my life is dedicated to selling each last bibelot on Miss Hope’s stall before the day is over, then I must beg you to turn your undoubted talents to inspecting what is left—and choosing the best.’

Mrs Nuttall’s answering cackle was so loud it had every head in the room turning and staring at them, including those of Alan, Sophie and Miss Percival, who had just finished their tea and were returning.

‘Land sakes, young man, with that silver tongue you should be a preacher, like Mrs Beecher Stowe’s rascally brother. Why should I want any of this trumpery rubbish?’

Jack’s smile was a masterpiece. ‘The poor children, madam: it is for their sake that you should buy something and offer up a tribute to charity.’

‘Don’t madam me, young man. I’m Ida Nuttall, Mrs Ida Nuttall, and rather than take home something I don’t want, I’ll gladly give you a few dollars for the young ’uns.’

She pulled out a battered leather purse and extracted several dollars from it before pouring them into Jack’s extended hand.

‘Thank you, Mrs Nuttall,’ he told her gravely. ‘Great will be your reward in heaven.’

‘Oh, pish,’ she threw at him. ‘I’d rather have my reward on earth by seeing Miss Marietta here married to a good man. Are you a good man, sir? By the look of you, I beg leave to doubt it.’

She gave another murderous cackle and strolled away.

Jack’s answering laugh was rueful. He looked at Marietta and shook his head at her. Alan, who had arrived in time to hear Mrs Nuttall’s last remark, said, with a grin, ‘And that’s you pinned down, little brother. How did she come to that conclusion so rapidly?’

‘His silver tongue,’ said Marietta, before Jack could speak. ‘She compared it to that of Mrs Beecher Stowe’s brother, whom she thinks to be a rogue.’

‘Since I know nothing of the gentleman,’ said Jack, as grave as a judge, or someone trying to solve a problem in logic, ‘you might tell me something of him so that I may know how apt the comparison is.’

‘That,’ Marietta told him, ‘is easy. He’s a reverend gentleman who has made a name for himself as a great preacher, full of morality and pious advice. But, and I hate to report this, there have been suggestions that the good reverend is one of those who preach Do as I say, not do as I do.’

‘Exactly like Jack, then,’ offered Alan, at which the whole party burst out laughing, not least Jack himself.

‘It’s a good thing I’m not a conceited fellow,’ he volunteered at last, ‘or else I should be thoroughly downcast after all this criticism, but since I’m not—’

He was not allowed to finish. Even Sophie, who had found all this banter difficult to follow and was furious that Marietta was once again the subject of interest and not herself, joined in the laughter.

Marietta had not enjoyed herself so much in years—for that matter, neither had Jack. The States—or rather their lively women—were providing him with more entertainment than he could have expected.

So he told his brother and Charles on the way back to their various lodgings. Alan took this somewhat unexpected news gravely.

‘In which of the two Hope cousins are you more interested, Jack?’ he asked. ‘Either, both or neither? I should like to think that you were aware that although Miss Sophie Hope does not possess a heart to break, her cousin is quite another case. She could most easily be hurt by someone who ignored how vulnerable she is behind her collected exterior.’

‘Now, Alan,’ said Jack, his easy smile moderating the sting of his reply. ‘You are only my big brother, not my father confessor. I’m only trying to bring a little gaiety into what seems to me to be Miss Marietta’s rather arduous life—and I am well aware of the different nature of the two cousins.’

‘Excellent,’ said Alan. ‘I am glad to hear it—big brothers are traditionally allowed to act as advisers to little brothers, you know.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jack, ‘so long as they don’t overdo it. Now, let us tell Charles that he has a busy day ahead of him tomorrow. In the morning you are compelling us both to accompany you to the gymnasium you have discovered not too far from your lodgings, and in the afternoon we have all been invited to attend a Congressional committee which is meeting in the Capitol itself. That should make for an interesting day, should it not? Physical work in the morning and mental in the afternoon. It will be our duty to see that Her Majesty’s unofficial envoy to the United States government doesn’t arrive at the Capitol too heavily marked after his morning’s exertions.’

Charles laughed. One of the pleasures of meeting his patron’s brother had been to discover that what Lord Knaresborough, who was Alan’s mentor, had once said was true: that, judging by what Alan had told him, all the Dilhorne family were as remarkable as he was. Charles could not help wondering what the other members of it were like, particularly Thomas, who had become Fred. Was it because the Patriarch had been transported, and had spent his life away from England and its formal society, that they had turned out so strikingly original?

Like Alan, Charles was beginning to wonder which of the Hope cousins was engaging Jack’s attention. He had thought at first that it was Sophie, which would have left the field open for him to pay court to Marietta, to whom he was becoming increasingly drawn. Lately, however, it seemed to be Marietta on whom Jack was fixed and that, sadly for his own wishes, she was attracted to Jack—indeed, had eyes for no one else.

Marietta herself, once the Dilhorne party had left, was confessing the same thing to herself. Her feelings for Jack had become such that in his presence every other man he was with seemed extinguished by him. Jealous Sophie, watching them, seethed inwardly.

It wasn’t fair! She had met Jack first and she could have sworn that he had instantly been powerfully attracted to her; and then he had met Marietta on the afternoon she had been wasting her time on silly duty calls, and everything had changed.

How in the world could such a plain elderly stick as Marietta charm someone so lively and amusing as Jack? Was it his nasty brother—for Sophie had begun to suspect that Alan was not as charmed by her as he appeared to be—who had turned him against her? Yes, that was it—and Charles Stanton was no better: he had eyes only for Marietta and treated her, Sophie, as though she were his troublesome little sister.