A Season for the Heart (11 page)

“I am assisting my young friend to select a few gowns for her sojourn in London,” replied Her Ladyship repressively. But Mrs. Rogart was not to be deterred.

“Of course it is not worth
your
while buying new clothes for yourself when you never come into Society,” she emphasized. “Dear Sally Jersey was just saying, a night or two ago, that she wondered what you could have done with yourself these last years. ‘Probably rusticating in the country growing vegetables!’ she said in her funning way! Of course everyone laughed at the idea of the once-fashionable Lady Masterson grubbing among the hay rows!”

Mrs. Rogart and her companion, Miss Petula Rogart, laughed quite heartily at this jest. “She is such a wit, dear Sally,” sighed the older lady.

“Indeed?” was the rather daunting comment from Lady Masterson “When one has so
much
to say, it is inevitable one should occasionally produce something witty, I suppose.” She turned away toward Pommy, and continued in quite a different tone, “My dear child, do you not like that Pomona-green crepe? I swear it will look charmingly on you!”

Mrs. Rogart would not be dismissed so lightly. She said with an assumption of regret, “It is so sad that you no longer wear colors, Lady Masterson! I can remember how prettily you looked in those violet shades you formerly affected! Black is so hard on older women, do you not agree?” and she smoothed her own cerise silk complacently. “Well, it was pleasant to meet you and your—er—protégée from the country. She will cut quite a swath among the hayfields with her green dress from Lutetie!” Cackling shrilly at her own wit, Mrs. Rogart led her daughter out of the salon.

Pommy hardly dared look at Lady Masterson. She was rather surprised to hear a firm note in the usually lachrymose voice.

“Mlle. Lutetie, please bring me that bolt of violet silk. I wish to look at it again.”

Pommy espoused the material with enthusiasm. “It reflects up into your beautiful silver-gray eyes, Lady Masterson, and makes them look like wet wood violets!”

Her ladyship glanced in a mirror as the Frenchwoman held the lustrous material near her face. “Yes, you may make me a gown from this, mademoiselle. Let us see your pattern cards, if you please!”

When the Earl came for them, his first quick glance was at Pommy. Reassured by the drugged delight on her expressive countenance, he smiled wryly at his sister-in-law.

“You look like two particularly well-satisfied kittens! Let me coax you away from your cream pot with the lure of a pretty toy for each of you.”

He assisted them into his carriage, again taking the seat which placed his back to the driver, the better to survey the two ladies before him. “I must say you seem pleased with your morning’s work! Have you left a single bolt of silk or a shred of lace in the shop?”

Lady Masterson’s chiming laughter rang out. “Scarcely! I promise you, Austell, there was nothing further from my mind than the idea of ordering dresses for myself when I entered that ridiculously tempting place! But then Pommy and Mrs. Rogart between them made me change my intentions.”

The Earl raised questioning eyebrows. “Pommy’s support of my campaign I had dared to hope for, but Mrs. Rogart—?”

“Quite an unconscious ally, I can assure you!” said Her Ladyship crisply. “A more disagreeable female I have never set eyes upon!”

It was clear to Pommy that the woman’s sarcasm still rankled. She said meditatively, “Mrs. Rogart put me very much in mind of a cow my uncle bought from a gypsy. It was forever lowing and waggling its enormously fat hips, and it broke the stableman’s leg with a kick when he tried to milk it. ‘Aaall moo aaand no milk’ was how he characterized it,” Pommy imitated the soft Cornish drawl.

Lady Masterson dissolved into delighted laughter at this characterization of her recent adversary. The Earl watched Pommy’s piquant little face with warm approval as he joined in the healing merriment.

Lady Masterson wiped away tears of mirth with a lace scrap of handkerchief. “Pommy my love,” she gurgled, “you must promise me you will never change!” Then she eyed her brother-in-law. “I am pleased Pommy has put you in such high good humor,” she told him. “You are more like to groan when you see the bill Lutetie will send you!”

“I am?” The Earl glanced defensively at Pommy’s darkening face. “But did I not tell you it is Lady Masterson’s birthday, Pommy, and we must all celebrate with her? No quibbling, now! You would not wish to spoil my simple pleasures, I hope? It would be too shabby of you!”

Without quite understanding what she was at, Pommy found herself asking forgiveness of Lord Austell and then of Lady Masterson. Graciously accepting her apologies, the Earl produced two white velvet boxes from his well-cut coat. The larger he handed to his sister-in-law. “—Er—happy birthday, Aurora!” he said briskly.

“Inaccurate, but acceptable, Derek,” she murmured, her slender white fingers busy with the fastening on the box. It opened to reveal a bracelet of tiny flexible silver links, set with diamonds and amethysts. Her Ladyship uttered a small crow of pleasure at the charming bauble, and accorded the Earl a dazzling smile. “My thanks, Derek darling! I shall wear it—” she paused, and a slightly lost look crossed her lovely face.

“You shall wear it at the
soirée
I am giving in your honor Thursday evening,” he said firmly. “By that time one at least of the new gowns will be finished, and we shall have a quiet, pleasant evening listening to your favorite music and introducing Pommy to our friends.” He turned to the girl before Her Ladyship could have time to rally and state objections. “What, child? Have you not yet opened your gift? This is not at all the thing, you know! Let us have a show of gratitude and interest at once, if you please!” He grinned at her. “I shall expect an appropriate quotation, also, from Augustus Mayo’s grandchild.”

Pommy raised tear-bright green eyes to his smiling face. No one had ever given her a present since her parents died. Her hands shook as she tried to recall an appropriate line. Then one of her favorite sonnets came into her mind. “ ‘The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting . . .’ ” she whispered, and busied herself opening the small velvet box Lord Austell had given her.

“On the contrary,” retorted the Earl, in a voice which had Lady Masterson’s eyes flashing to his face, “How does Shakespeare go on? ‘Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing.’ Open it, Pommy.”

Pommy stared down at the thread-thin silver chain from which hung a small emerald, simple yet beautifully faceted to display its green fires. Her heart in her wide green eyes, the girl looked up at the man so close to her across the carriage.

“Oh, it is lovely, Milord, but I cannot . . . I must not . . . it is too precious—”

Lady Masterson had been observing this scene with interest. Now she addressed her companion with calming good sense. “Nonsense, child! Of course you will not spoil Lord Austell’s charming gesture on my—er—birthday with missish protests! Thank His Lordship nicely and let us enjoy our drive in the Park.”

Confronted with this dauntingly prosaic charge, Pommy controlled her Romantic transports, thanked His Lordship nicely, and sat clutching her first grown-up present in fiercely protective fingers. A delightful half hour was spent bowling along the pleasant roads in the Park, Lady Masterson requesting that the windows be opened so that she might observe the beauties of Nature, as well as the occupants of other carriages and coaches. She even found herself bowing and smiling as she acknowledged the pleased recognition of her person from numerous old friends.

“This has been a triumphant progression for you, my dear Aurora,” the Earl commented after the twentieth such encounter. “It would appear that you should show yourself more frequently to your friends and admirers.”

“Well, at least I am not rusticating in a hayfield,” scoffed the widow. This remark naturally aroused Lord Austell’s curiosity, and nothing would do for it but that he should be told the tale behind her words. Lady Masterson commanded Pommy to tell it, which the girl did with spirit. Soon they were chuckling heartily at the girl’s inspired mimicry. Their acquaintances, beholding the mirthful behavior of the trio in the Earl’s carriage, greeted it with pleasure or envy, according to their natures.

As he was handing the ladies down at the door of Number Three Portman Square, Lord Austell bent toward Pommy and said, soberly but with an unmistakable twinkle in his blue eyes, “I have not yet had my quotation from the classics, little scholar. I shall not accept that self-deprecating line from Shakespeare, you know!”

“At the risk of being too obvious, shall I say I fear the Peer, even when bearing gifts?” paraphrased the girl pertly.

The Earl gave a shout of laughter. “Miss Impudence, I see you are yourself again! You shall pay for that piece of provocation, you know! You had better have a much more flattering citation ready for me by Thursday night, or I shall impose a forfeit!” Doffing his hat with panache, the Earl saw the ladies inside the door before remounting into his carriage, which promptly rolled away down the road.

Pommy sighed. It had been a wonderful, a challenging morning, and she was feeling dazed. Lady Masterson scanned the bemused little face as they started up the grand stairway to their rooms. What was Austell up to? He had never before shown any interest in débutantes! She discovered that she was most unwilling to permit this kind child to be hurt.

“You must not refine too much on what Lord Austell says, you know, my dear Pommy,” she counseled. “Although he is usually quite solemn, he is very much a man of his world, after all.”

“Solemn?” questioned Pommy, more for something to say than because she wanted to explore the subject. She had a sinking feeling that Her Ladyship was warning her off the Earl, and the implications of that were painful. Was Lady Masterson telling her that the Earl was beyond the touch of a country bumpkin like Pommy Rand? Or, more humiliating, was she suggesting that her own claim upon His Lordship was stronger and of longer standing than anything Pommy could put forward?

Lady Masterson was smiling gently. “I must thank you, dear child. I really do not remember when I have spent a pleasanter morning. It seems that you and Derek have committed me, between you, to an evening of music. I must admit I am looking forward to it. It will be delightful. I promise you, for Derek does all things well. I wonder whom he will invite?”

“Not Mrs. Rogart and her offspring, I trust!” quipped Pommy, making a mock-horrified grimace.

Lady Masterson’s laugh chimed out. “Oh, Pommy, you do me nothing but good! I am so pleased that Derek found you for me! He has been at me forever to engage a youthful companion, hoping it would bring me out of the megrims.”

“And has it?” asked Pommy, smiling.

“You know it has, dear child! I feel like a new woman already, and when that violet silk arrives, I shall look like one!”

“And confusion to Mrs. Rogart!” pledged Pommy.

Both women chuckled.

“Now we must retire to our rooms to rest until it is time to dress for dinner. I have decided to come down for it again this evening, thanks to you, child.”

“Have you everything you wish, Lady Masterson?” asked Pommy, remembering her duties as companion.

“Yes, thank you. Gordon cossets me to death,” answered her employer with a deprecating smile. She vanished into her exquisitely feminine suite.

Sighing, Pommy was just turning away to seek the quiet of her own room when she became aware of Mikkle mounting the stairs and peering anxiously in her direction.

“Oh, Miss Pommy! There is a young lady most eager to speak with you. I hope you will indulge her at once. She is—ah—weeping!”

“Isabelle!” guessed Pommy, for surely no other girl knew where she was to be found. Unless, of course, Forte had given the Rands her direction? Turning, she hurried downstairs after the butler. In a moment she was entering the drawing room, where a vision of loveliness stood before the flower-filled hearth, a handkerchief clutched in one hand, and tears streaming down her flawless face. Pommy took one instant to wonder again how any female could cry without causing even the tip of her exquisite nose to develop unbecoming red patches, and the next instant she put her arms around the weeping girl and hugged her.

“Oh, Pommy!” wailed Miss Boggs. “
Disaster!
I am quite undone!”

“Then we shall simply have to do you up again,” said Pommy prosaically. “You are alive, Isabelle, and I will help you with your problem. Can you tell me what the trouble is? Do sit down!” and she led the weeping girl to a love seat and settled her comfortably, offering her own large clean handkerchief as a reinforcement for Miss Boggs’s soaked scrap of linen.

“Oh, Pommy,” gulped the vintner’s heiress, her glorious complexion not at all marred by her excess of grief, “it is Papa! He has concocted such a horrid scheme that I dare not tell you of it!”

“You are going to, however, are you not?” coaxed Pommy gently. “It would be foolish beyond permission if you left me dangling at the edge of Disaster!”

“But it is I who am dangling at the edge, as you phrase it, dear Pommy,” objected Isabelle with her usual lack of imagination. “Papa is threatening me with marriage to the Earl!”

“
What
?” Pommy was betrayed into an incredulous squawk. “Do you mean our Earl? Lord
Austell
?”

“If that is his name, yes,” agreed Isabelle.