“What on earth have you put on your face?”
If she had been wearing her own cheaters, Constance, the Dowager Marchioness of Broughton, wouldn’t have to ask such a silly question. All the women in the family were plagued by poor eyesight, but Addie’s father had forbidden them from visibly correcting their vision while he was alive—he liked his women to be pretty, posh, and perfect. If he couldn’t have sons, then his exquisite blond daughters and enchanting blond wife must be the envy of his set. So what if they had the occasional bruise from bumping into things, or an inability to find a valuable dropped earring on the Oriental rug before it was hoovered up?
“My glasses, Mama. I was getting a headache.” A tall one named Rupert, well over six feet, with dark hair and dark eyes and that stupid tickly mustache that made him look like a gigolo. Or Ramon Novarro, if one really reached for comparison. Addie wasn’t much for the cinema, but her maid Beckett kept her abreast of the latest sensations and left her magazines all over the house. Even when the coal strike froze patrons in the theaters three years ago, Beckett borrowed Addie’s second-best fur coat, attended loyally twice a week, and reported reel-by-reel. Addie knew who the current heartthrobs were, not that she’d ever fall in love with a handsome man again.
A plain one either.
“You’ll never catch another husband looking like a frump,” her mama complained.
“I don’t want another husband.” Addie was sure she meant it. If one marriage could make her lose her mind, then what would two do? She took a sip of sherry to calm her nerves.
She had decided that she’d been sleepwalking earlier, kind of in a waking dream state, even if she’d been sitting down. She’d always had a full fantasy life, had she not? Playing fairies in the woods around Broughton Park with little Cee, sure every dragonfly was a sign. Believing in Father Christmas long past his prime. Thinking her pony could talk if she listened hard enough. Keeping Rupert faithful if she anticipated his every need. The latter had proved more difficult than communicating with bugs or horses. French silk knickers couldn’t do it all.
Addie’s inadvertent summoning of Rupert was an indication that she’d overdone in all her planning. Spent too much time in the hot sun chasing a tennis ball, too. Hot weather made people go crazy; everyone knew that. There were riots and uprisings and crimes of passion and murders. Addie didn’t have any idea how a proper English person could survive in India or the Argentine; she had enough trouble right here at Compton-Under-Wood, where the weather was temperate, if a little rainy.
The French doors to the garden were open to let in a pleasant breeze. Now that the sun was setting over the Cotswold Hills, the air was cooler, and her guests looked comfortable, having moved from the impressive Great Hall to the more modest proportions of the drawing room for the second round of drinks. There were squashy sofas to sit on just in case one’s liquor consumption had gone to one’s head, and more substantial nibbles were being passed around while they waited for Forbes to announce dinner.
Rupert wasn’t lurking in any corner of the freshly papered space. Wallpaper had gone out of fashion during the war because of the paper shortage, but the drawing room now had sedate cream and gold stripes on the walls, with a few modern paintings that were just avant-garde enough without being inscrutable. Addie had convinced noted decorator Elsie de Wolfe to help her with the renovations, and was very pleased with the results.
She wondered what Rupert would have thought of the redecoration. More than half the rambling house was still shut up—Addie was not made of money, despite what everyone thought—but on the whole she was glad she was able to bring new life to the old place. It wasn’t too modern; that would have been sacrilege. The house had been in Rupert’s family for generations, hopscotching between uncles and cousins and grandmothers. Rupert’s own granny had left it to him when she died right before the war, and Addie had been brought here as a youngish bride after.
Then it had been cold and cheerless, its furniture rotting, the carpets moth-eaten, the curtains shredding, a definite smell of rheumatism liniment and mouse everywhere. Addie had done what she could at the time, but Rupert was far more interested in collecting motor cars to put in the newly repurposed stables. If he’d purchased a decent period dining table instead of the Hispano-Suiza, he might be sitting at the head of it tonight, she thought somewhat unkindly.
Addie supposed at some point she should try to sell the house back to one of Rupert’s relatives, but for now she was very much enjoying being the lady of the manor. Her spacious flat in London was gathering dust, and her friends there had wondered if she had died right along with Rupert. Thus the reason for the house party.
“Who are these people?” her mother asked myopically. She hadn’t joined them at lunchtime, pleading her own headache.
There would be thirteen at dinner, unlucky, but it couldn’t be helped. Edward Rivers, the young vicar from the village, had bowed out at the last minute, claiming he was sitting with an ailing parishioner. Addie had no reason to disbelieve him, but she remained annoyed at the unknown parishioner’s thoughtlessness in falling ill when she’d gone to all this trouble to get the numbers right.
“You know most of them. Lucas, of course. His cousin, Eloise. The Shipmans—he’s a financial wizard in London and they live next door to me on Mount Street. The man by the fireplace talking to Pansy and George is Colonel Mellard, who was Rupert’s commanding officer. You met him at the funeral. Barbara and her new fiancé.”
Addie couldn’t remember the name of this one. There had been four previous fellows. Two had died in the war and two had discovered their feet were very cold, and no amount of Barbara’s money spent on socks would alleviate the problem. Barbara was not the easiest of fiancées or friends, but Addie was nothing if not loyal.
Her mother sighed. “I wish you hadn’t invited David Grant.”
Addie had deliberately not pointed him out. “Cee likes him.”
“That is the problem, Adelaide. Surely you know my objections.”
Yes, she did. Sir David Grant was divorced, with three young sons. His ex-wife Kathleen was so infamous he’d had no trouble about the custody of the children. And he was almost fifty, far more suited to Lady Broughton than her twenty-five-year-old daughter.
“You know as well as I do, if you forbid her, she’ll think she loves him all the more. She hasn’t met the children yet. That might put her off.” Three boys! Addie shuddered. Not that girls were any better, or at least she and Cee hadn’t been. Addie had done her best to lead her little sister astray from the time Cee could crawl.
Her mother launched into the speech Addie had heard several times already over the past few days. “This house party is all very ill-advised. In my day, one mourned one’s deceased husband for two solid years before one allowed oneself any sort of amusement. I don’t know what the world is coming to. You young people with your cacophonous music and barely-there skirts—smoking and lip rouge! It’s a very good thing your father is dead.”
No, it wasn’t. Addie had a feeling her papa would get right into the swing of things. He’d always enjoyed a glimpse of a lady’s ankle. And after the privations of the war and the misery of all those young men’s deaths, followed by the fatal sweep of influenza, wasn’t it past time for some fun? A whole generation lost. But she said nothing, just took another sip of sherry and watched as one of the maids passed around a silver tray of shrimp toasts and olives.
“Your sister will be the end of me yet. Do you know she’s joined the Vegetarian Society? I ask you, lentil cutlet in tomato sauce! Plum pudding without the suet! She wants me to tear up my flowerbeds at the Dower House and expand the kitchen garden. I won’t do it.”
Addie had heard this story too. “Of course you won’t. Flowers bring you so much pleasure,” she murmured. Her own simple borders were at their peak, the scent of lavender wafting in through the open windows. Since the war, Compton Chase’s gardens had been turned over to vegetables, first for the country, then for the household. Cee would approve. With just one elderly man and a handful of village boys to help, flowers were an indulgence. Addie had spent almost as much time on her knees this spring as her gardener Mr. McGrath.
Sometimes she’d been praying. For what, she wasn’t sure.
“You need to talk to her. It will come better from you.”
Addie raised a plucked eyebrow. “It?”
“You know. Sisterly advice. What she owes the family name. Her appropriate place in the world. She’s going to waste away like those suffragettes who starved themselves in prison and had to be force-fed. People already think she’s peculiar since she reads so much. What she needs is red meat and a good rogering. But not from David Grant.”
Addie nearly spit out her sherry at her mother’s bluntness. Prior to this evening, Lady Broughton had been a staunch proponent of virginity. Addie remembered the endless lectures from her pre-war debutante days, and had mostly heeded them until Rupert came along. “I’m hardly an expert in anything, Mama. How can I advise Cee, or anyone?” An hour ago, she was under the influence of a powerful mania that made her doubt her very sanity.
“You made what looked like an excellent marriage, on paper at any rate. Rupert was perfectly desirable. Charm personified. Eton. Cambridge. A decorated war hero. Related, distantly I admit, to the Duke of Sheringham. The Comptons are one of the oldest families in England. Why, the whole village is named for them. In another era, people wouldn’t have blinked even once at Rupert’s indiscretions.”
“I did a lot of blinking, Mama.” Glasses or not, the evidence of Rupert’s perfidy was strewn across the county.
Her mother patted her bare arm. “A man was meant to have his way in the old days, although if your father had got up to a quarter of Rupert’s hijinks, I would have resorted to a dull kitchen knife. You kept your head and composure and have nothing to be ashamed of.”
And consequently hadn’t been hanged for mariticide. “Well, we’ve moved on, haven’t we? It’s a new age. If you’ll excuse me, I need to move on at the moment and circulate amongst my guests again.”
“Of course, dear. You always do the right thing, except for this party. Now if only your sister could follow in your footsteps.”
Little chance of that. Cee had a mind of her own now, erratic as it sometimes was. Addie wondered if Sir David and his sons would settle her down.
Did the man know he was in Cee’s hunting grounds? He was speaking to Eloise Waring, and looked rather weary, circles under his dark eyes. His light brown hair was fading to white, giving him a bleached-out look, and beneath his summer tan, his skin had a gray cast.
Perhaps he’d been up all night with one of his children—did divorced fathers do that? He had to be both parents now, not that Kathleen had ever been much of a mother. Addie didn’t know her well—well enough to know they had little in common—but Rupert had known her quite well. If she could ask him, he’d probably be able to describe her every mole and freckle.
“A heart-shaped spot right next to her left nipple. It was very intriguing.”
Addie dropped her glass. Rupert yanked her back so that her new frock wouldn’t be splashed with Amontillado, and she nearly screamed.
“Sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I couldn’t help myself. Aside from your blood-thirsty mama’s hair-raising revelations—dull knife, indeed—this party is putting me to sleep, my dear. I’ll leave you to it.”
Addie looked behind her. There was nothing but a table and a lamp on it whose fringe wiggled very slightly.
Lucas rushed across the room and clasped her empty hands. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Ah…silly me. The glass slipped right out of my fingers. I must be getting arthritis at my advanced age.” She waved to one of the maids and pointed to the stain on the new carpet. Fortunately, the heavy Waterford glass had not shattered.
“Nonsense. If you’re ancient, what does that make me? I’m three months older. You’re as fresh as springtime! That dress is awfully, um, becoming. I expect your mama doesn’t like it much.”
“She didn’t say. You don’t think it’s too short, do you?” Rupert was not here. Rupert was not here. Rupert was not here. Rupert was not here. Rupert was nowhere, as it should be.
“I think you may wear anything you want,” Lucas replied, ever the diplomat.
Lucas would always support her decisions. He had a history of it. Whether it was locking Cee up in the family chapel or climbing the tallest tree in Broughton Wood, Lucas was right by her side in her every youthful endeavor. Why hadn’t she married him?
Well, the truth was, he’d never asked.