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‘She and the Patriarch got on famously together. Mother said that she dealt firmly with him just before the funeral. She reverted to type—you know what a fine lady she became. “You can just behave yourself, Fred Waring,” she shouted at him. “You’re not going to put us through all that again. We’re not having stupid Thomas Dilhorne back, I can tell you. And if you haven’t the wit to see that it was the way your pa wanted to go, you aren’t fit to be his son.” That did the trick, Mother said. It brought him to his senses immediately.’
Alan laughed heartily. ‘She’s been so good for him. She washed out his starch and God knows where that came from. None of the rest of us have it. The girls don’t—lively pieces all.’ He paused. ‘I’ve learned what I wanted to, and I respect the Patriarch more than ever now I’ve learned exactly how he died.’
‘He set me free, too,’ said Jack confidentially. ‘He left it so that I could go my own way or stay with Dilhorne’s as a roving representative. He said that I needed a holiday—I’d never had one. So, here I am. I’m working for the firm with Ezra Butler and looking out for what’s new in my line.’
‘American know-how.’ Alan grinned. ‘They keep talking to me of it. Now let us go to pay our respects to the Senator. I hear that the daughter is plain, but that his niece is pretty and reasonably rich. I suppose you’re after her, you dog. Going to settle down with the one woman soon, are you?’
Alan was referring to the joke about the Dilhorne men, beginning with the Patriarch: however rowdy each one’s early life, once he was married to the one woman he settled down and was faithful to her. It had certainly been true of their father and the twins, Thomas and Alan, thought Jack. He wondered whether it would be true of himself.
He and Alan made their way back to the Hopes, to find that Sophie had temporarily departed with another admirer, and so Alan had to be presented to the Senator’s strong-minded, if witty, daughter. Sophie would have to wait for another time.
Alan Dilhorne fascinated Marietta. He was so undoubtedly Jack’s brother, and there was so much of him, all of it overpoweringly handsome. He was, as her father had told her, devious, and the four of them engaged in a lively conversation about all the matters which were engrossing Congress at the moment.
He was tactful, too, over such issues as slavery, but showed plainly that he thought that it was the main cause of the coming war— ‘After the economic divisions between North and South,’ he said, ‘although old English gentlemen such as myself aren’t supposed to know about such things.’
Later, it was plain that Senator Hope had been greatly impressed by him. ‘Those fools on the Hill,’ he said, ‘are taken in by his manner and think him another effete English gentleman. My colleagues think that I am wrong about him. Time will show which of us is right.’
He asked both the brothers and Charles Stanton to dinner before they left Washington.
‘But before then,’ said Marietta who was enjoying herself hugely, and who had seen approval of her in Alan Dilhorne’s bright blue eyes, so like Jack’s, ‘you must come to tea. I believe that Jack here is in a position to recommend it.’
Jack looked solemnly at his brother. ‘Most certainly—and I promise you that the conversation is better than the food, good though that is. Muffins again, Marietta, and pound cake, I trust.’
‘Yes, indeed, and I promise you Sophie as well. She will be sorry to have missed your brother and Charles.’
The entire party were now on Christian name terms and the Senator was delighted to see his daughter sparkle and blossom in the company of three attractive and handsome men who appeared to have no female appurtenances to get in the way.
After they had paid their respects to Marietta and the Senator, the Dilhorne party left to spend the rest of the evening at Willard’s Hotel. Alan was staying with the British Envoy and Charles with a cousin who worked in the Envoy’s office and had a small villa outside the capital.
Predictably Sophie was furious when she discovered that she had missed Jack’s return. ‘But I have invited them all to tea,’ said Marietta. ‘His brother and his friend as well as Jack.’
‘Oh, I don’t care about them,’ said Sophie inelegantly. ‘It’s Jack I mind missing. I trust that you won’t monopolise him when he next visits us.’
Marietta’s hand itched to slap her, and she was greatly relieved when Sophie’s wounded feelings were soothed by the arrival of yet another beau, a naval officer this time. Indeed, on looking around the room Marietta saw that more uniformed men were present than ever before, and she hoped that they would assuage Sophie’s greed for attention and admiration.
Unfortunately, the Senator soon tired and decided to leave early. Sophie complained all the way home at her evening being cut short, until even his courtesy was frayed to the point where he was ready to reprimand her.
Marietta put a gentle hand on his arm to restrain him and said to her cousin, ‘Sophie, if you say one more word I promise you that I shall not escort you to another function, never mind give tea parties for your admirers. Your uncle is tired and needs to rest.’
This silenced Sophie, but added another to the long list of wrongs which Marietta had committed against her, and for which one day, Sophie promised herself, she would be paid back in full.
Two days later Jack, his brother and Charles Stanton came for afternoon tea at the Hopes’. Sophie had thought that she would enjoy herself in the company of three attractive men, but she didn’t. They appeared to direct their conversation almost exclusively at Marietta.
This wasn’t true, but appeared so to Sophie. They spoke first of what occupied the minds of all Washington—except Sophie’s, of course: the coming war. They were all quite certain that it was coming—only the question of when it would arrive remained. In other circumstances Sophie would have found Alan Dilhorne attractive, but not when he droned on about such boring subjects. Marietta was hanging on his every word—but then she would, wouldn’t she? Goodness, politics was all she had to talk about, poor thing, but did she need to monopolise three…well, two attractive men so determinedly?
Charles Stanton seemed to be irreparably dull. He was even more solemn than Marietta, if that were possible. He was only interested in subjects of such profound boredom that Sophie found it difficult not to yawn in his face.
For once, even Jack was dull. He certainly cracked his usual quota of jokes, but, most uncharacteristically, they were incomprehensible. What in the world was amusing about muffins and iron-clad ships? Iron-clad ships? What drearier topic of conversation could be found than that? But they all pounded away about them as though they were men-of-war themselves. Marietta even had the face to be amused by Jack’s silly jokes, and to look enthralled when the conversation moved on to screw-propellers and Charles’s and Jack’s interest in them.
Give the large and handsome Mr Alan Dilhorne his due—he did come to Sophie’s rescue. He talked about more interesting things, such as the nature of Washington’s social life, but, after all, he was in his forties, already married to some Englishwoman across the Atlantic—horse-faced, no doubt—so there was little point in talking to him. Even then, in the middle of it, he broke in on Jack and Charles, who were talking to Marietta about walking and riding.
Walking and riding! They were two things which Sophie particularly hated. Horses were such tricky creatures and she was too frightened when on them to be able to look alluring. As for walking! Sophie never walked when she could ride in a carriage, and one of the reasons for her intense dislike of Marietta was all the exercise that she was compelled to take with her.
‘You’ll get fat if you sit about so much and eat so many sweet things,’ Marietta had had the gall to say to her severely at least once a week. Fat! Well, she would rather risk that than be a beanpole like Marietta.
To make matters worse, Alan Dilhorne now began to talk of the difficulty he had found in obtaining enough exercise in Washington.
‘We must go riding together,’ he said to Marietta. ‘I am sure that Miss Sophie and yourself can advise me on how to go about finding suitable stables and some useful mounts. I shall get fat if I sit about all day on the Hill, eating and drinking,’ and he made a comical face.
The Dilhorne brothers were good at comical faces, thought Sophie resentfully, unlike Charles Stanton who seemed to possess a permanently glum one. Not that she found either of them very comical on this particular afternoon.
‘Are you missing your sparring, Alan?’ Jack asked his brother, adding to Sophie and Marietta, ‘Big Brother here was quite a bruiser in his time. He could have made a name for himself in the ring.’
Could he, indeed? thought Sophie nastily. I thought that he was supposed to be a fine gentleman with a big house in Yorkshire. Some fine gentleman he must be if he were almost a bruiser once!
Charles Stanton, who, for all his quietness, was no fool, read Sophie’s slightly shrugging manner correctly.
‘Gentlemen box in England, you know,’ he said, trying to be helpful.
‘No, I don’t,’ said Sophie off-puttingly. She thought nothing of Charles. He was apparently only some secretary dragged along by Big Brother in order to prose about dull matters and take Jack’s attention away from her.
Jack was now engaged in discussing railway lines with Marietta, and their importance in the coming war. Railway lines! Who cared about them?
She gave poor Charles her shoulder, ignorant of the fact that he had felt sorry for the pretty young girl who was so patently bored by the conversation of her elders and had tried to include her in it.
Marietta was well aware that, for once, she was not considering Sophie before herself by bringing her out and turning the conversation towards matters that would interest her. She was finding her male guests both interesting and amusing—and was enjoying herself for a change, rather than always thinking of others. Sophie was the third of her cousins whom she had introduced to Washington life.
She decided that Jack and Alan were more alike than she had originally thought, both in looks and intellect. Alan might, at first, give off the impression of being a bluff and open Englishman, but her father’s appreciation of him as a devious and clever man was an accurate one. Jack resembled him in that for, when first met, he gave off the impression of being a charming idler, and this was what had caused Sophie to be attracted to him. But this impression was not a correct one. He was both knowledgeable and shrewd, reminding her of some of the men she had met on Capitol Hill who concealed their ability beneath charm and good manners.
She liked Charles, too, and was sorry that Sophie was being so openly rude to him in her disappointment at the turn which the tea party had taken, which was giving her little opportunity to display her kittenish charm.
Fearful that Sophie might be provoked into displaying even more bad manners, she steered Jack’s and Alan’s interest adroitly towards her and began to talk to Charles herself. She found him as interesting a man as Jack and his brother. Unlike them, his manner was diffident, but he was well informed, and even a little surprised to discover how knowledgeable Marietta was. It was also evident that he hero-worshipped the large Mr Dilhorne, who was plainly fond of him.
Everyone enjoyed the promised tea and Jack’s jokes while they ate it. Everyone that was, but Sophie, who, seeing Marietta’s eye on her, ungraciously refused a third muffin. ‘Marietta will threaten me with growing fat if I eat another.’
‘Quite right, too,’ said Alan cheerfully. ‘I have to watch my weight, alas,’ and he, too, waved a muffin away. ‘We are fellow sufferers, Miss Sophie, and must comfort one another.’
Despite this offered sympathy, Alan had decided that he did not like Miss Sophie, and wondered a little at Jack for pursuing her. The cousin, though not the prettiest of women, was a much better bet. She had a good mind and possessed an excellent body beneath all the clothing which women were forced to wear. Must be the exercise she takes, he decided. It would pay Miss Sophie to take more.
Sophie would have been horrified if she had been privy to Alan’s thoughts, but, devious man that he was, he gave her the false impression that he found her as charming as Jack did and had quite won her over before the visit ended.
‘We shall certainly abuse your hospitality by coming again soon,’ Alan told Marietta before they left. ‘Where else should we find two such charming ladies, such an excellent tea and such entertaining conversation? Pray pay our respects to the Senator when he returns.’
Marietta and Sophie watched them go.
‘I’m sorry that I couldn’t return all the large gentleman’s compliments,’ said Sophie harshly once they were safely away. ‘And why in the world did he bring such a dull stick as his office boy along with him? Surely Charles Stanton has enough pen-pushing to do at the British Envoy’s office without inflicting his boring opinions on us.’
Marietta looked at Sophie. She had learned something during her conversation with Alan which was going to upset her cousin more than a little.
‘I’m sorry that you disliked Charles,’ she said quietly. ‘But Alan could hardly leave him behind when he came to visit us. Besides, I doubt whether he does much pen-pushing. Charles does not use his title in private life, but he is here as the representative of the British House of Lords, and is properly Viscount Stanton. He is also an expert in his line of engineering and is a cousin of Alan Dilhorne’s wife.’
Sophie blushed an unbecoming red. A real live lord! A viscount, no less! Sophie over-estimated this—her knowledge of the British peerage, her knowledge of everything, was small—and she thought that a viscount was even grander than he was. Alas, she had snubbed him so mercilessly that, however kind Charles was, there could be no chance of her ever retrieving her position with him.
‘How dare you keep that from me?’ she burst out. ‘I suppose that you wanted me to make a fool of myself. How was I to know that such an inconsequential little man was even grander than Jack’s brother?’
‘Since I only found out who he was a few moments ago, and purely by accident,’ returned Marietta quietly, ‘I could hardly have informed you before their arrival. May I remind you that your own good manners required you to be civil to him, and from what I saw you were sadly lacking in them.’
‘I will not be prosed at by a plain old maid,’ said Sophie, disgusted by the whole wretched business, what with hardly speaking to Jack, and being bored witless. ‘If you’re so all-fired clever, Miss Marietta Hope, how come you’re on the shelf, and like to remain there for all your fine conversation about ships and submersibles?’
Marietta looked steadily at her cousin. She had always known that Sophie disliked and despised her—the first of her cousins whom she had helped through their début in Washington society to do so. She thought that she knew what had brought this outburst on, but she had as much right to enjoy herself as Sophie did. She had found their guests to be out of the common run, and their patent admiration of her knowledge and her intellect had been most flattering. Englishmen were not supposed to like clever women, so they must be exceptions.
Of course, Jack was not English, and his brother little more so, and it was plain that Charles was also a remarkable man behind his quiet exterior, so she could not take them as true representatives of the English tribe. She could only hope that they would visit her again. She could not resist indulging in a small smile at the sight of Sophie flouncing upstairs in disgust.
A real live English lord and she had been rude to him!
Marietta, on the other hand, had not enjoyed herself so much in years. She refused to admit to herself that it was Mr Jack Dilhorne whom she particularly wished to see again.
The brothers and Charles walked back to the British Envoy’s office along Washington’s filthy and unpaved streets. There had been a fall of rain earlier in the day and the three of them were amused to see the heavy wagons, drawn by mules, struggling in the thick mud. However magnificent Washington was going to be in the future, when its buildings and boulevards were finally completed, at the moment it was a ramshackle and sketchy town. The Capitol, high upon the Hill, dominated everything, as it dominated Washington’s social and political life.
The dirty streets were crowded with people. Alan had been told that all the Southerners and Southern sympathisers had earlier left in droves once war seemed to be imminent. They had been replaced by a mass of office seekers and entrepreneurs determined to make a good thing out of the coming conflict.
‘To say nothing of the military and naval presence,’ Charles said. ‘I like the plain Miss Hope,’ he added reflectively, ‘but I think little of the pretty cousin. She has no regard for others’ feelings.’
Jack had been thinking this himself, and was saddened by it. He had met Sophie on a number of occasions without Marietta being present, and had been greatly attracted by her looks and charm. She had spoken often and dismissively of Marietta, so he had assumed that she must be an unpleasant, middle-aged harridan, there to guard a high-spirited girl and carrying out her duties with a heavy hand.
On meeting Marietta, however, he had been surprised to find that the older Miss Hope was comparatively young, and had proved to be a lively and amusing companion. He thought that Sophie’s manner to her verged on the unpleasant, particularly since it seemed to be quite unjustified. He felt, however, duty-bound to defend Sophie, of whom he had previously spoken warmly, when Alan supported Charles in deploring Sophie’s conduct.
‘I thought that you liked her,’ he told Alan. ‘She’s usually a charming little thing, and one cannot expect her to be interested in the weighty topics which engage her elders.’
‘No, indeed,’ said his brother. ‘But one might expect her not to show her displeasure quite so plainly. She was openly rude to Charles, and to Marietta, more than once. My regard for Miss Marietta led me to try to placate the young miss, even at the expense of losing some good conversation. It is not for me to advise you, Jack, but I should go easy in that direction if I were you. Spoilt young beauties are likely to turn into shrewish women when their looks begin to fade.’
Charles nodded at this in his thoughtful way, while Jack said easily, ‘I think that you’re both making heavy weather of the poor little thing,’ but when they mounted the steps to the Envoy’s office, he was thoughtful himself.
It was a good thing for Sophie, he decided, that Marietta was so patient with her. It might encourage her to improve her company manners if she were to follow the sterling example her cousin set.
He looked forward to seeing them again in the near future. He had promised to support the stall which they were running at the coming Bazaar to raise money for an orphans’ home. He would try to persuade Charles and Alan to accompany him. Hardworking Marietta deserved all the support she could get, what with being the Senator’s right hand and Sophie’s duenna as well.
He would make sure that he provoked that attractive smile again: when offering it to him, she no longer seemed to be at all plain.
Chapter Three
‘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?’
