Aurora Read online

  “Fortune, missie?” the old hag asked, advancing from the shrubbery when Marnie beckoned her. “Gypsy tell your fortune, yes?”

  “Yes, please,” Marnie replied, and held her hand out. Aurora flinched to see her sister’s dainty white fingers taken in that disreputable brown hand, and kept looking to Mimi, who had released the kitten and was coming closer, staring in fascination at the woman. While the old lady traced along the palm’s lines and muttered to herself, Aurora regarded her closely. The hair sticking out from the front of her bright kerchief was grizzled, once black, now iron-gray. The face, the colour of café au lait, was lined and the eyes cunning.

  “Tall gentleman friend coming,” the gypsy said, smiling and shaking her head for emphasis. “Coming mighty soon, yes, missie. Good friend coming. Big dark man—handsome. He got troubles too. You got troubles. Big dark man and little gold lady help the troubles go away.” She peered slyly up to Marnie’s gold curls and blue eyes to see how this prophecy went down. As the lady was smiling in girlish delight to hear of a handsome gentleman coming her way, the gypsy went on. “Here’s death going away, and life coming,” she chanted, tracing some lines on the palm. The memory of Bernard seemed to fade into the distant past as she spoke. “Happiness in your future.” She added a few details regarding watching out for dark moons and such obscure mumbo jumbo as left her listeners quite at sea, then she turned to Aurora.

  “Tell the fortune, missie?” she asked. Aurora was re­pelled by the woman, but still some curiosity compelled her forward, and she held out her hand. The old gypsy shook her head doubtfully. One would think there wasn’t a line to be seen from the look of uninterest the hand evoked. “Life is slow coming.” she said at last. “No good here—no bad too. Long time no husband for missie. One day he comes. One long day from now.” Intercepting an angry glance from her client, she added a little good news, hoping to increase her reward. “The dark clouds have gold linings. Yes, missie.”

  “What dark clouds? You saw no bad in my future.”

  “Not bad. Dark clouds—gold linings.”

  “I guess a dark cloud is better than nothing,” Rorie decided after considering the matter a moment. The woman was right about the past, at least. Life had been slow getting started. No real bad in her past—no serious illness or tragedy, but no good either. No romance or adventure. Strange how she felt a tingle of excitement at the old woman’s touch. Almost as though some energy, some exotic adventure, clung to those brown fingers and trans­mitted traces of itself to her.

  “No handsome, dark stranger for me?” she asked, becoming more comfortable with time.

  “She is the one who requires a tall, dark stranger, you know,” Marnie said, laughing lightly.

  “She not the one he comes to,” the gypsy said firmly. “He comes to gold missie. Soon he come. You help, yes?”

  “Yes, I am very particular about helping all tall hand­some strangers who come to my door.” Marnie said, mak­ing a joke of the whole, but the gypsy was not laughing.

  “Yes, missie. You help big man. You help!”

  The smile faded from Marnie’s face. She stared closely at the old woman as she reached in her pocket for a piece of change. “Go now. Run along,” she said. The gypsy bobbed her head, snatched the money and left.

  “What do you make of that?” Aurora asked.

  “I don’t believe it’s the same one who told me about Bernard last year. They all look alike to me, and it was over a year ago. Tall dark strangers and happy futures are their stock in trade. When they start that, you know it is nonsense.”

  “A pity she couldn’t have found one for me, then,” Rorie answered ruefully.

  “I’ll let you have mine, in the unlikely event that he materializes.” In her mind a vision of Mr. Berrigan—no dark stranger but a blond friend—arose and was an ac­ceptable substitute for a faceless phantom.

  Before more could be said, a termagant more terrible than the gypsy hag descended on them from their own doorway. She was Miss Malone, their . . . everything. Her duties were too large to be confined in one title. By a will stronger than steel and a love broader than the ocean she had risen to such a position of dominance over the girls that their own mother took second place, and the woman was only a servant. A junior servant too, according to rights, for she had been their nursemaid when they were small themselves, and had been brought to Raiker Hall to fill the same position for Mimi upon the child’s birth. She had little education, had only learned to read when she was eighteen, though that had been perhaps thirty years ago, and she had ploughed through several cheap romances since then.

  It was Bernard who was responsible for her rise to preeminence at Raiker Hall. Mimi had taken a terrible cold and fever in the first year of her life. The doctor as much as said she was done for, but Malone sat by her side, bathing her face with cold water, urging bits of liquid down her throat, tending her for days and nights on end till the nurse grew to a shadow of her former self. She had also prayed, and made the family do likewise. Mimi recov­ered, and Malone took the cure for her own miracle, as well she might. Bernard declared flatly, “The woman is a saint,” and from that day onward she bowed to no one. Her way with the butler and uppity housekeeper was a sight to behold. With her fractured grammar and atrociously mispronounced vocabulary she bear-led them all. She felt that upon coming into the home of a peer her plain old Irish English was not good enough, and took on a grand new language carelessly adapted from her readings. After the remove to the Dower House she had really no menials worth her talents, but still she was the real mistress of the small establishment. Mimi had now a governess, but Malone would let the poor child be pestered with this creature only for short periods at a stretch. Once an invalid, always an invalid. She was bound to find the girl looking pulled after an hour in the classroom learning those nasty numbers or putting together the map, and would usher her out for a “breath of air”—which was frequently taken in her own room, with the window care­fully closed.

  Wisps of reddish-gray hair flying from under her cap, her white apron flapping, she descended on them, pink-faced, green eyes sparkling. “What are you doing, talking to the likes of that old gypsy? You’ll catch fleas or worse. Get into the house this minute. She’ll have the rings off your fingers and her hands in your pockets rifling them.”

  “You mistake her for Clare,” Marnie replied.

  “Another she-devil! The world is infected with them entirely. But we’ll not be spoiling our appetites with talk of that mallifluous woman, for there’s a dainty tea waiting for you inside. Sides beyond, the wind’s blowing chilly, and I don’t want my Mimi taking another inhalation of the lungs, as she’ll do if I let her sit out here. Come along, then.”

  The lady of the house obediently arose to do as she was told, but Aurora said, “Tyrant!” and ducked to escape having her ear pulled. This little trick had been carried over from nursery days, no longer perpetrated on Lady Raiker, but still used to bring the younger sister into line.

  “What did the old gypsy say?” Malone demanded as she herded them in to their tea.

  “She said Marnie is to get a new beau, and I am not,” Aurora told her.

  “Never mind the likes of her. We’ll find you a very good fellow, an indelible parti as you might say.”

  “I hope so. I wouldn’t want him to fade away on me,” Aurora replied.

  “Aye, they’re good at that. Only let them get a whiff of the minister and they bolt for the hills. But you worry too much about it. You’re only twenty-one, and with the exterminating circumstances of us being in mourning for a year we couldn’t make a proper push at all. There’s young Lord Hanley would give his eyeteeth for a kind word from you I’m sure. If it’s a stranger you want, I’ll read the leaves for you after your tea, and won’t be holding my hand out for pay neither. What did she charge you?”

  “A shilling,” Marnie said, and received a blighting stare. “Well, they have to live, you know.”

  “You’re too soft by a
mile, and so’s the government. With the whole world taking the attitude that everyone deserves to live whether he ever does a stroke of work or not, it’s no wonder the place is full of thieves and gypsies. The cook relieving us of a loaf a day and a half dozen of eggs, the laundress whisking the sheets home as rags before you can see a sign of light through them, and that woman buying muslin for dust cloths, we’ll be lucky we don’t have the bailey down our necks for debts before the year’s out.” That woman, never referred to by name, was Mrs. Higgins, the housekeeper, an insolent person who dared to stand up to Malone upon occasion.

  “Never a body to open the door for a lady, and us with a butler being paid a fat salary,” she grumbled as they entered. She pushed her charges into the saloon and went to jaw at the butler for not having the tea on the table. Had it been there waiting, he would have had his ears burned for putting it out early to get stone cold before the ladies were ready. She was a hard taskmaster, Malone.

  “Here, this came while you were out talking to the gypsy,” Malone told them, chucking a letter into Lady Raiker’s hands and standing at her elbow to read over her shoulder.

  “I have been summoned to Raiker Hall,” Marnie an­nounced.

  “Summoned! I’ll summons her,” Malone said fiercely, taking it for an insult, though she had only a hazy idea what it meant.

  “When?” Aurora asked.

  “Tomorrow morning at ten. It must be urgent to get Clare out of bed before noon.”

  “Does she want me to go too?” Aurora asked.

  “She doesn’t say.”

  “You go if you have a mind to,” Malone ordered, the summons suddenly a thing to be desired. “Don’t let that underbred hussy deprive you of your just deserts.”

  “Speaking of desserts, may I have a slice of that plum cake, Marnie?”

  Marnie was not allowed to lift a finger. Malone cut off a wedge four inches wide and passed it along. She often remained in the room when the ladies were together, and though she refused totally to ever take a seat, she likewise refused to leave. The only way to be rid of her was to hint that Mimi had need of her.

  The hint was dropped by the child’s mother, and Malone was off in an angry rustle of starched aprons, with a Parthian shot tossed over her shoulder. “I’ll be back to read your leaves. A gypsy ain’t the only one can conjure up a beau. There’s more beaux in a teacup than ever came out of one.”

  “That explains why I have had such poor luck in finding one,” Aurora said to her sister. “I never thought to look in my teacup.” She did so now, but to no avail.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  Aurora, Miss Falkner, decided to accompany her sister to Raiker Hall in the morning. It was not home to her as it had been to her sister, since she had not come to stay till after the death of Bernard, but she had visited there during Marnie’s marriage and had often been to call in the year she had been staying at the Dower House. She was familiar with the elegant Blue Saloon into which they were shown, and she had ample time to become familiar again, since Lady Raiker kept them waiting ten minutes. She glanced around at the white-painted walls with embossed designs, the handsome blue velvet drapes, the Persian carpets and polished mahogany furniture, and regretted that her sister had had so soon to part with all this finery. The Dower House was nothing to it, the saloon a panelled room less than a third the size of this one, and the window hangings there were of faded brocade, some­what the worse for wear. Marnie’s eyes were only on the firescreen, worked by her own hands, and a constant source of irritation to her. She felt strongly about keeping what belonged to her. She was nearly as adamant as the elder Lady Raiker in that respect, but was less cunning, and less successful.

  At the end of ten minutes there was the whisper of a silken skirt in the hallway, accompanied by a musky scent, and followed by the dramatic entrance of the dowager Lady Raiker. She was now in her early thirties, but held tena­ciously to the accoutrements of youth. Her hair, blond like Marnie’s, was short and worn in a careful tousle suggest­ing that a brush had been drawn through it, no more. Her audience knew well enough that it took half an hour to achieve this casual effect. Her cheeks were shell-pink and unflawed by day, a shade less pink but still unflawed when she retired to her bed. Her eyes were large and lustrous and her teeth in good repair. Her figure too was still good, not the sylphlike frame that had first attracted old Charles, but not full enough to allow of the term “full-blown.” She carried a trailing wisp of heavily laced handkerchief in one hand, and entered smiling graciously, as became the chatelaine of Raiker Hall.

  “So kind of you to come, my dear,” she said in a failing voice, wafting herself forward to take up a seat beside them. “Dear little Charles is abed with a fever. I was up with him half the night.” Her clear eyes belied this moth­erly statement, but no one argued with it. Polite enquiries elicited the information that there was no real fear— merely Mama’s concern had caused her to exaggerate the danger.

  “I feel it is my own fault. I had him posing for me in the garden yesterday. I am taking his likeness to hang in my own room.” It was a bit of a relief to hear that the latest rendition would be put away from public view. Since Charles had come into his dignities and titles, Mama had executed a score of likenesses, one of which she stared at now across the room, wearing a wistful smile. The visitors’ eyes followed hers, to gaze on a handsome young fellow posed with a dog at his heels. It was well done. Clare was a talented painter.

  “The doctor has been to see him, and assures me there is no danger.” The concerned mother face vanished, and a calculating look took its place. “So I have decided to consult with you about the manner in which we should announce little Charles’s accession. I thought some sort of a quiet do, to introduce him to everyone.”

  “Everyone knows him. He has been declared the baron for nearly a year now. What do you mean, Clare?” Marnie asked.

  “A little fête of some sort—a garden party or tea. It cannot be a ball; he is too young. Now that the year is up since your dear Bernard’s passing, we shall begin to go out a little again. Not that one looks forward to it in the least, but people in our position, you know, are not expected to keep entirely to ourselves.”

  As Lady Raiker had made not the slightest move to keep to herself during the past year, this modest speech was greeted with open derision. “You are going to have a party, in other words?” the other Lady Raiker asked baldly.

  “Some token gesture must be made to honour the occasion. The nisi decree has come down that Charles is now Lord Raiker, and it would be too backward not to acknowledge it. What do you feel—an outdoor party, or a rather more formal tea?”

  “I expect Charles would prefer an outdoor party,” Au­rora suggested, being so naive as to think Charles’s hap­piness was involved in the matter.

  “Just what I thought myself,” the mother took it up. “But then the weather is unreliable. To erect Japanese lanterns and tents and a pavilion for dancing outdoors and have the whole spoiled by rain . . .”

  Marnie’s brows rose to hear the extent of the modest celebration planned. “Very true,” she said, “and people do make such a mess of the lawns at an outdoor party too. The place was always a shambles after public day.”

  “Had I had the foresight to redo the saloon, I would not hesitate a moment to do it inside,” Clare said, casting a condemnatory look at the opulence around her. “Really, the place was allowed to go to rack and ruin while you . . .”

  Then she stopped discreetly. “But then I know you never cared at all for keeping up Raiker Hall, my dear Marnie. I do not say it in a reproving way, I assure you. I know your interests lay elsewhere, with your daughter and your charity work. Quite proper, I’m sure, but then we who are placed by chance in these old stately homes have a duty to keep them in good repair. Now that the court has finally placed some of Charles’s income at my disposal, I shall do what I can to repair the ravages of time. The party, however, I wish to hold immediately, as soon as it can
be arranged. I am inclined to hold it here, despite the looks of the place. It is a great nuisance preparing the outside, and then if we should be rained out . . .”

  “I cannot think the place so tatty you need be ashamed of it in the least,” Marnie said hotly. “I kept it up a good deal better than you did the Dower House.”

  “Oh my dear, I have offended you! It is not at all tatty—it is only that I should like it to be seen at its best, as it used to be. But you are right; it is nothing to be ashamed of, and I’ll have a tea indoors. Now, I wonder if you would be kind enough to help me with this list I am working up. The Dougalls of course must be asked, and the St. Albanses, the Spencers and the Brewsters.” She went on to name off the illustrious of the parish, who were by no means her own set, and to omit all those persons with whom she generally consorted.

  Her intention was soon discovered. As the mother of the baron, she wished to ingratiate herself with the proper people, and felt the likeliest way of achieving it was to show the world she had the support of the younger Lady Raiker. Bernard and Marnie had moved in the first circles; Clare had not. As a young widow at the Dower House, she had been befriended by the raffish, and been very happy, too, but now she was above the rich cits and wished to take her rightful place as the mistress of Raiker Hall. Marnie was under no misapprehension as to the use to which she was being put, but she felt it proper that Clare raise the ton of the callers at Raiker Hall, and was willing to abet her.

  It was decided that Clare would “just scribble off the cards,” and Marnie would drop them off at the designated homes, adding her own personal entreaties that they be accepted. She had no other function except to attend the party herself and show her approval. All the planning and redecorating would be done by Clare; she would not be pestering dear Marnie in the least. As a reward, Clare said at the end, “I have been thinking, why do you not take that lovely little firescreen you made home with you? It would look well by your grate, and I have seen an appliqué one in the village that would suit me better.”