Gather Ye Rosebuds Page 7

  Chapter Nine

  Lord Weylin’s footman, rigged out in dark green livery with gold trim, was waiting in the lobby. His eyes opened wide as a barn door to see me there with his master. It would not be long until the whole neighborhood at home heard about it. Weylin gave him the note for Brodagan, and he left.

  “You realize that being seen here alone with me puts your reputation in jeopardy,” Weylin said, in a joshing way.

  I replied in the same manner, “So I assumed when your servant’s chin hit the floor. This is too dainty a morsel for him to keep to himself.”

  “I shall expect you to do the right thing by me if I am cast out of polite society,” he said, and we began walking toward the door.

  “Are you referring to a character reference, sir? A sworn affidavit of your unexceptional behavior— or an offer of marriage?”

  After the heedless words were out, I feared Weylin might think I was making a premature leap at the altar, but he laughed lightly and changed the subject.

  “Lovers would have to be naive indeed to think they could get away with clandestine meetings in a public hotel. A love nest is more usual.” He inclined his head toward mine and added, still in that laughing way, “Or so I am told. Naturally a well-behaved gent like myself has no firsthand knowledge of such carrying on.”

  “Of course not. And fish are but inferior swimmers, too, having heard of it only at second hand.”

  The doorman held the door for us, and we went out into the warm evening, along the path to the Pantiles. It was a particularly clear night. The moon shone as brightly as a lantern, and a myriad of stars twinkled all across the heavens.

  “June is a lovely month, is it not?” Lord Weylin said, in a pensive way. “Summer looms before you, always promising more than it delivers.”

  “April is my favorite month. I prefer the coming of spring, after a long, cold winter. If it promises more than it delivers, at least it does deliver summer.”

  “Spring is too uncertain. One never knows whether he will awaken to frost or rain or sunshine. Rather like a visit with Miss Barron,” he added mischievously.

  This was the nature of our conversation as we continued along to the Pantiles. There was a definite whiff of romance in the air. It seemed strange to see the colonnade lit up as brightly as daytime, with some of the shops still open for business, and the streets full of strollers. We continued along to where a band was playing. A crowd of holidayers had gathered around. Ladies—and I do not mean the word satirically—were flirting quite openly with gentlemen.

  I noticed Lord Weylin was looking at them and said, “There is something about being in a strange town that encourages loose behavior.”

  One brow lifted and he replied, “I have not observed our little trip having that effect on you, Miss Barron.”

  “I daresay if those young ladies were accompanied by their mamas, they would not be working their fans so assiduously.”

  “Your mama is not with you now,” he said, while his fingers tightened possessively on my arm.

  If his lordship had some notion of instituting a flirtation while away from home, he was out in his reading of my character. I did not want a clandestine romance, carried on behind society’s back.

  “Shall we continue our walk?” I said coolly. “The reason we came out was to get a little exercise. We are not making much headway standing here.”

  “I noticed the lack of headway,” he murmured, and we continued on toward the church. “How does it come you and I are not better acquainted, Miss Barron, having been neighbors for years?”

  “I blame it on the infrequency of elections,” I replied. “The only time I am at Parham is when an election is called.”

  “But as we are neighbors, surely it does not require a national election to get you to call?”

  “You forget, milord, I called on you twice this very week. There is just a little something in a threat to call the constable that makes one think twice before calling again. The road travels both ways. You have never called on me.”

  “I have apologized about the vase. Can we not forget it?”

  “You are the one who asked why I do not call at Parham.”

  The air of flirtation was noticeably lacking in the remainder of our walk. After a longish pause, Weylin said, in the hearty way of a bored gentleman making conversation, “So you are interested in sketching, Miss Barron.”

  “Yes, I always enjoyed it, since I was a child. A few years ago I began taking lessons from Borsini. He is an Italian conte,” I added, and wished I had not, for it sounded like vulgar boasting.

  Weylin’s lips moved unsteadily. “I have heard of him.”

  “Perhaps you are familiar with his painting of the Prince Regent?”

  “Very familiar. He tried selling one to me. He paints Prinney with monotonous regularity, and it is a pity the prince has never accepted any of the likenesses.”

  “Are you saying Borsini was not commissioned? He just painted the picture for his own amusement?”

  “No, for money. He runs a profitable sideline hawking copies of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s profile of Prinney, but of course, that was not the one he tried to sell to the prince. I do not mean to disparage the man. One has to make a living, after all, and the copies are good enough in their way. There is such a surfeit of art teachers at the moment that he has trouble getting students.”

  I felt quite deflated, and very vexed with Count Borsini. He had certainly given me the idea he was commissioned to do that painting of the prince. He had also claimed it was a great favor that he condescended to take me on as a student. It was only my unique talent, he said, that convinced him to do it. I had always found it odd that he moved to Aldershot, if he was in such high demand in London.

  I twitched my shawl angrily about my shoulders and said, “Shall we go back now? It is becoming rather chilly.”

  “I thought we might stop for a glass of wine at those tables they have set up around the bandstand.”

  “Two bottles of champagne were sufficient for me, thank you.” I set a brisk pace back toward the other end of the Pantiles.

  “Is there some particular reason why we are running?” Weylin asked.

  “It is chilly,” I repeated.

  He made no reply, but he took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow, to show me his idea of the chilly weather.

  We went directly back to the hotel. I kept thinking all the way of how Borsini had duped me. Even now I was having the tower room made into a studio. Vanity, all vanity. Borsini had half convinced me I was a genius, and I had gone along with it, paying him a fortune for his lessons.

  As we entered, Lord Weylin said, “I am sorry if I have offended you in some manner, Miss Barron. If some of my remarks were slightly out of line, can you not blame it on our being tourists, and forgive me?”

  “I am not offended by you, Lord Weylin.”

  “Then I should dislike to see you when you were offended! If you are not, then join me for a nightcap. I have a favor I want to ask of you. I have reserved the parlor for my use while I am here. We need not have wine. I am not trying to get you inebriated, after all. A posset, or cocoa... There can be no mischief in that.”

  Since I was curious to hear what favor he wanted, I agreed. My ire was not directed at him, but at Borsini. He ordered tea, and while waiting for it, I asked what he wanted of me.

  He placed the miniature of his aunt on the table and said, “Would it be possible for you to do a sketch of my aunt as she looked before she died? Perhaps with this to assist your memory, you might fill out the cheeks, add a few chins, change the hairstyle, and so on. Then we would have a recognizable likeness of her to show around—ask at the various hotels if anyone had seen her. If she used an alias, just checking the registers will be of no help.”

  I examined the little ivory. “The jowls had sagged, and the eyelids had drooped somewhat when I knew her,” I said, really talking to myself. “The nose tends to become more prominent with ag
e. Yes, I think I could do it quite easily.” Comparing my mental picture of Lady Margaret with the pretty girl in the miniature, I said, “It is sad, is it not, to think how short a time beauty lasts?”

  “It has long been one of the poets’ main themes.”

  Our tea arrived. I poured. “Just a little milk, no sugar,” Weylin said. I had not planned to fix his tea for him; it seemed intimate somehow, but it seemed foolish to object, so I did it.

  “Herrick wrote in that vein,” I said. “‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may’—is that what his poem was called?”

  “The title was ‘To the Virgins to Make Much of Time,’ I believe. Shakespeare covered the same ground in his sonnets. It is a poetic thought.”

  “Yes, and it is a pity the poets usually debase it by making it a pretext for urging dalliance on the ladies.”

  Weylin did not come to the rescue of his sex, but just smiled at the little picture of his aunt. “I suppose we can rule out any romantic doings between your uncle and my aunt? They were several years past it, I should think.”

  “Barry had a reputation for being a dasher in his youth, but I fear the fires were well banked by the time he returned to England. Mrs. Delancey tried to entice him, but he paid her no heed, and she was attractive, too. Do you think Lady Margaret...”

  He shook his head. “I shouldn’t think so. She was not a romantical sort of lady. She made a marriage of convenience—and that was in her youth, when the blood should have been at the boil if it was ever going to be.”

  “If it were not for my uncle having the copy of the necklace, I would think it impossible the two had a single thing to do with each other. They did not move in the same circles.”

  “The copy, and Steptoe’s leering looks,” Weylin agreed. “It seems to me this mystery is about money, not romance. Had they met twenty-five or thirty years ago...”

  “But your aunt was in England, and my uncle was in Ireland.”

  Weylin sat, frowning at the little ivory. “Did your mama not say she recognized this likeness of Margaret, when I showed it to her? I am sure she did. Yet she came to England after my aunt had left. She could not have seen Margaret at this age.”

  “She must have meant she recognized the features of the older lady in this likeness,” I said, puzzling over what Mama had said. “That must be it, but I shall ask her.”

  “Please do. I don’t know why it is, but this little mystery intrigues me. Perhaps it is just a welcome relief from the tedium of politics.”

  “I expect you should be returning to Whitehall soon.”

  “I will be a better politician for this brush with reality. We sometimes lose track of human emotions, with all our fine rhetoric about the lot of the common man.” He looked at me and smiled. “Perhaps I should invite the neighbors to Parham more often than each election year.”

  “That would be a beginning. The local lord ought to have balls. We do not have enough balls.” As this was perilously close to admitting how limited my romantic doings were, I added, “You seem more... human already.”

  “You seem more human now, too, Miss Barron. I shall take my courage in my hands and ask why you were so out-of-reason cross with me during our walk. I thought we were making some headway, then suddenly you pokered up as though I had done something ill bred—like accusing you of stealing,” he said, with a teasing look.

  I could not like to admit how Borsini had gulled me, and made a bantering reply. “Why, you are very sensitive, milord. I am sure I did not say anything to offend you.”

  “Silence can be offensive, too. You were running too fast to speak. You could not wait to get away from me. Shall I tell you what I thought of the matter?” he asked slyly.

  “Please do.”

  “I thought you had suddenly remembered something to your uncle’s discredit, and wanted to conceal it from me.”

  “It had nothing to do with that! I told you, I was cold.”

  “This business of behaving like a gentleman and pretending to believe a lady, no matter what story she tells, is a great impediment to rational argument. I did not find it cool. The dozen or more ladies sitting at those tables were not shivering. I am left to conclude that you suffer from a unique malady—cold blood.”

  “Surely sangfroid is second nature to us English,” I said.

  “A clever trick, ma’am. One would think you were trained in philosophy—or politics—but the cool blood blamed on us by the French has a quite different meaning, I believe. Whatever we discover about our relatives, it will remain entre nous. There is no reason that either family need suffer for wrongdoing on the part of now dead relatives.”

  “Let us hope Steptoe can be induced to follow that gentlemanly sentiment.”

  “Steptoe would sell his soul—for the right price. I see you gathering up your shawl and reticule. Don’t forget this.” He handed me the ivory miniature, and I put it in my reticule.

  Weylin assisted me with my shawl, and we went together to the bottom of the stairs, arm in arm, as comfortably as an old married couple. He did not accompany me abovestairs. I peered down from the landing and saw that he did not head back to his private parlor, but went outside again, probably back to the band concert to flirt with the ladies there. I did not think Lord Weylin needed any poetical reminding to gather his rosebuds while he may—but perhaps I should heed the lesson.

  Chapter Ten

  Mama was asleep when I returned to our room. I undressed in the dark and went immediately to bed. She was up before me in the morning, after her long night’s rest. When I opened my eyes, she was sitting in the dark, fully dressed, peering out at the road through a crack in the curtains.

  “You are finally awake, Zoie. It is past eight o’clock. I am dying for a cup of tea, but did not like to disturb you by calling for a servant.”

  “You need not have worried about that, Mama. We are to meet Lord Weylin in his parlor for breakfast. Why do you not go down now, if you want your tea?”

  “I would feel uncomfortable alone with him,” she said.

  “I doubt he will be there yet.”

  “Did you stay out late last night?” she asked suspiciously. “Not too late, I hope?”

  “I did not; I expect Lord Weylin had a later night.”

  The desire for tea overcame her native shyness of our host, and she ventured forth without me. When I had dressed and went below, I found her chatting to Lord Weylin as comfortably as if they were old friends.

  “And that is how I came to recognize Lady Margaret in the picture,” she was saying. She turned to me when I entered and said, “Zoie! You did not tell me Lord Weylin was asking about my having seen Lady Margaret when she was young.”

  “Surely you did not know her before she came to Parham?”

  Weylin rose and bowed. I nodded, waiting for Mama’s reply.

  “I did not know her, exactly, but I had seen her. She was visiting the Blessingtons in Ireland one spring. I used to see her driving around in a dashing landau. She went to one or two of our assemblies, but stuck very much to her own set. I was never presented to her, and that is why I did not call on her at Parham, or expect her to call on me. She was just one of the sights people discussed that summer, like Farmer Dooley’s five-legged calf, or a hanging at the crossroads.” Weylin’s brows arched at these lowly comparisons. “We thought her the most glamorous thing we had ever seen,” Mama assured him.

  He drew my chair. When I was seated, he said, “Your uncle Barry was also in Ireland that summer. Your mama does not recall his ever having met Margaret.”

  “It would not much surprise me if he had wangled it,” Mama said, “for he was after the ladies something awful at that time. A regular flirt.”

  “I fail to see how there could have been anything between them,” Weylin said. “My aunt came back to England in the autumn, and married David Macintosh. He carried her off to Scotland. She never returned until David died, ten years ago.”

  Mama said, “Barry set out for India that August, sho
rtly before Lady Margaret left.”

  “Then if they ever did meet,” I said, “it seems it was no more than a brief encounter.”

  We ordered breakfast, and while we ate, Lord Weylin said that his groom had returned with my sketchpad. I told Mama that I was to attempt a sketch of Lady Margaret as she looked when I knew her.

  She nodded and threw in a new twist. “You are assuming, then, that she and Barry did not wear a disguise here at Tunbridge. As they were so hellbent on deceiving everyone, it seems to me they would have taken that elementary precaution.”

  This added a whole new layer of difficulty to the problem. When breakfast was cleared away, Lord Weylin placed my sketchpad on the table and opened it at a drawing of Uncle Barry. “Shall I draw in a mustache and beard?” I suggested. “There are six drawings of him in this pad, so we could try different ways he might have changed his looks. Glasses, perhaps . ..”

  “Why do you not let Lord Weylin do that, while you get on with sketching Lady Margaret, Zoie?” Mama suggested.

  Weylin demurred, but was talked into trying his hand at adding the hirsute decorations while I aged Lady Margaret. First I did an enlargement of the ivory miniature. When I was satisfied with it, I examined Mama’s face, to see the effect of advancing years. Gravity had drawn the skin down into pouches at the corner of her jaws. The lips had lost their fullness, and assumed a querulous downturn. I made these changes, glancing from time to time at Mama as I worked.

  “Why do you keep looking at me, Zoie?” she demanded. “I see what you are up to, using me as a model of old age. I am considerably younger than Lady Margaret was. And I have not fallen into flesh either.”

  Mama can become quite testy when she is annoyed. I let off using her as a model and sketched from memory. Her next complaint was that she felt she ought to be doing something, when we were both so busy. “I shall run up and get my embroidery,” she decided.