Poppy (25 page)

“It was Freda. Freda all the time,” he said intensely. “She said that if I did not marry her, then she would kill you, that she had you hidden away. My darling, I’ve been going mad searching.”

“Oh,” said Poppy faintly, suddenly feeling drained of all emotion. “Why did I never think of Freda? Emily?” she abruptly asked. “Emily and Josie?”

“Safe,” he said. “Safe and well-looked-after. But worried about you. Terribly worried. Don’t worry, we’ll be home soon.”

“Home…” echoed Poppy, thinking longingly of the peace of the villa.

“I can’t go on and on asking,” he said with a faint attempt at humor. “Will you marry me?”

Poppy looked at him. She could not quite take it all in. He was dressed in a hacking jacket and jodhpurs, reminding her of how he had looked at Everton. Everton. Herself as the Duchess of Guildham. Impossible.

“It’s impossible,” she said. “I can’t be a duchess. You’ll always think the worst of me. Cutler’s Fields will always be between us.”

“Only if you let it,” he said.

“Well, I don’t want to marry you,” said Poppy harshly. “I just want to get home and go to bed.”

“Very well,” he said, so hurt that he could have struck her.

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. The train pulled into a small country station and stood puffing and panting like an overheated dog.

The duke looked drearily out at the platform, at the name of the station spelled out in flowers on a flower bed on the platform:
CRUMM
. Impossible. There couldn’t be such a place. He had a longing to open the carriage door and climb out and watch the train depart, taking with it all the cause of his hurt and anguish.

Was this what all the loving and longing and waiting came to—sitting silently in a dusty carriage in a station called Crumm?

He looked across angrily at Poppy, and in the light from the station lamps saw a tear gather in her eye and roll slowly down her cheek. He moved across to sit next to her and took her in his arms and kissed her long and hard. She tried to protest, tried to speak, but he kept on kissing her, until she went limp and pliant in his arms.

He raised his mouth at last, a fraction from her own. “I should never have
asked
you to marry me, Poppy,” he said. “You’re
going
to marry me, and that’s that, and you have absolutely no say in the matter.”

With that he rose to his feet and jerked down all the blinds over the sooty railway-compartment windows.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he drew her back into his arms and covered her mouth with his own. After several minutes he raised his head cautiously. “You’re not going to be allowed to say anything, Poppy, except ‘I love you, Hugo.’”

“I love you, Hugo,” said Poppy with a faint gurgle of laughter.

“Now that,” said the Duke of Guildham, “is more like it.” He got to his feet and turned down the lamp, which swung in a crazy arc as the train lurched forward.

It was two weeks since Poppy Plummett’s return to London, where she had been photographed and interviewed and besieged.

Freda had fled the country, and no one knew of her whereabouts. The Duchess of Guildham removed herself once again to the South of France, to escape from all the publicity surrounding the family name.

Poppy, with Emily and Josie and her staff, including Miss Villiers, had moved to the seclusion of Everton, where the press was kept firmly beyond the gates.

Which was just as well. For no sooner was Poppy safely behind the gates of Everton, when another bombshell hit the press. The engagement of Mrs. Poppy Plummett and the Duke of Guildham was announced.

Once again the newspapers raked up all the old stories, chewed them up, and spat them back out again. Steamers laden with the papers chugged off to far-flung points of the British Empire to comfort the English exiles.

There were many English residents in the South of France who sympathized with the poor Dowager Duchess of Guildham. This last shock would kill her, they said. But shock can work in peculiar ways, and it affected the duchess strangely. She had all her teeth fixed for the first time in her life, lost fifty pounds in weight, and thereafter could be seen strolling along the Promenade des Anglais with a quite delightful young man. It was believed she would not return to England.

Brazil was not part of the British Empire, although this sad fact still startled many a traveling Englishman. In Manaus, that rubber boom town far up the Amazon River, where the residents swore the mosquitoes had a class system, the older and tougher members being reserved for the opera house, Freda von Dierksen enlivened the torpor of the stultifying midday heat by screaming out loud in the center of the Plaza and ripping the London
Times
to shreds with her long nails.

Cyril Mundy was perhaps the only one who was not terribly surprised. He had grown rather fat and rather pompous, but nonetheless, as he told his wife Annabelle, he had seen it coming all along.

“Dear Poppy,” sighed Annabelle romantically. “I hope she will be as happy as I am.” And Annabelle was indeed happy, she reflected, looking fondly across the breakfast table at her husband of only a few weeks. She had not had to endure any of that pawing and clutching that had distressed her so. She had bought a very pretty country house, where she and Cyril could entertain their friends.

“More tea?” asked Annabelle in a wifely manner. “Is dear Jeremy coming to stay with us?”

“Oh, yes, I think so,” said Cyril, lowering his long eyelashes. “For quite a long time, I expect.”

“Oh, goody!” cried Mrs. Annabelle Mundy.

As for Hetty, she had almost forgotten about Poppy, and hardly ever thought of Cyril. She had a nice little part in a touring company that was playing the end of the pier at Hadsea. There was a delightful young male dancer in the show, who was as fair as Cyril had been dark, and she loved him madly, although he never seemed to notice her. His name was Brian Fern.

“Ooooh!” cried Hetty as she leaned on the rehearsal piano. “Me old friend Poppy’s going to be a duchess!”

And then, miracle of miracles, Brian was beside her and gazing down into her eyes. “Hetty dear,” he cooed. “Do you think she’ll invite you? And if she does, can you take me along?”

“Of course,” said Hetty, her eyes like stars. How could she have been such a fool to break her heart over Cyril Mundy?

For once Lord Archibald felt that he ought to have paid more attention to his wife. “I told you!” said Lady Mary, triumphantly rustling a newspaper. “I told you that girl was a low, cunning wretch. Now you won’t be Guildham’s heir, for mark my words that low type of female breeds like a rabbit!”

“Quite, my dear,” said Lord Archibald gloomily, helping himself to a huge plateful of pudding.

Poppy was already a legend in Cutler’s Fields, and they toasted her health at a large street party given in her honor. Poppy had sent her friends money for the celebration, and better than that, Ma Barker had been invited to the wedding.

Mr. Lewis and Mr. Pettifor sent Poppy a handsome engagement present, started rehearsals for the next show, and promptly forgot about her.

Ian Barchester was too worried about himself to feel angry over Poppy’s leap into the aristocracy. He had married a wealthy girl who was built like a coal heaver and fanatically addicted to hunting. And she never seemed to sleep at nights either. She loved him with a blind passion, which was exhausting and frightening, and he felt he was being forced to earn every penny of her vast fortune.

Boofie Posthwaite-Hans-Bellamy, Sniffy Vere-Smythe, and Boodles Hunter cleared the club in St. James’s Street on the day of Poppy’s engagement. No one could bear to hear that story about the singing and what Boofie had said to Boodles and what Boodles had said to Sniffy, one more time.

And so at last Poppy and her duke were married, not quietly as everyone had expected them to, but with great pomp and circumstance and the strangest assortment of wedding guests fashionable London had ever seen.

Poppy floated on a sea of happiness. They were to spend their wedding night at the villa in St. John’s Wood, while Emily and Josie were to travel on to Everton to await them.

Since the night in the railway carriage, they had never seemed to be alone for a minute, and it was bliss for Poppy to drive off with her new husband and leave all the friends and relatives.

And there at last was the villa, and there was Mrs. Abberley, flushed with excitement, bobbing a low curtsy on the doorstep as she had done so many times before when Poppy used to come home from the theater.

“Welcome home, Your Grace,” said Mrs. Abberley.

“She means you, you know,” said the duke, looking at his bride with love and affection. “You’re a duchess now.”

“Blimey!” said the Duchess of Guildham. “So I am!”