A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [77]
We were greeted by music and a gentleman who could have been a butler of long service or an hotel manager, a figure both subservient and authoritative.
"Good day, Colonel Edwards, it's good to see you again. I'm sorry I was not informed that you were coming, or I should have arranged something for you." There was just the slightest hint of reproach in his voice.
"No, Southern, I didn't know myself until we got into the car an hour ago. We're not here for dinner, just the afternoon, if there are a couple of spare mounts. However, I think Miss Small here would appreciate a crust of bread first and a change of clothing. Do you think the missus could help us?"
"Certainly, sir. I'll take her in now, if you like, and then bring her around to the terrace buffet."
"That's grand. You go with Southern, Mary; his good wife will fix you up with something to ride in."
The riding jacket I ended up wearing had been designed for a woman with less in the way of shoulders and height and considerably more in the way of breast and hip, but the breeches were long enough and the boots fit. Mrs Southern assured me that I need not dress for the terrace luncheon, and when I saw the gathering, I understood why. The guests wore everything from dazzling white linen and twenty-guinea sandals to egg-encrusted waistcoats and boots that Patrick would have scorned for mucking out the cow barn. I stood in the dark shadow of a portico and enjoyed the multicoloured crowd of perhaps sixty people, equally matched between men and women, eating and drinking and talking in the glorious sunshine all along the magnificent flower-blazoned terrace. Halfway down the terrace, stones cast out a triangular shelf into the formal flower beds, and on this platform a string quartet was playing gamely.
The colonel was standing with a group of three other men, a stemmed glass small in one hand and a delicate sandwich in the other. I made to step out into the light, then stopped dead as my eyes lit on the group coming up the terrace behind him. Damnation, just what I had feared all morning, someone who knew me well enough to see through the façade: the sister and cousin of a housemate from my undergraduate days, with whom I had gone to a rather poor ballet and spent a dreary weekend in Surrey. They moved up to the colonel's party and rooted themselves there.
The quartet swirled to an end, which reminded people of its presence, so that everyone turned and applauded politely. The cellist wiped her brow prettily and went to greet the colonel. Mrs Westbury, I decided, and pressed back into the building as the colonel looked vaguely towards the house. I should just have to wait until he came to find me and then insist I was not hungry, though I did not care much for the idea of a long ride on nothing more filling than two pink biscuits. There was no choice, however; I couldn't go out there now. I ducked back into the house, wondering hopefully if I might come across an untended pantry.
My path took me by the drawing room, which I had glimpsed on my previous journey down the hallway, and as I passed, there came a sweet, sharp burst of notes from a clavier. The scales tripped up and down the keyboard for a minute or two before settling competently down into a Scarlatti sonata I'd heard before. I edged my head around the door and saw an unmistakably familiar elegant back, all alone in a vast, ornate hall of mirrors and gilt, seated before a double-keyboard instrument whose rococo intricacy set off the performer's exquisitely simple grey suit and sleek towhead with startling perfection. I sank into a knobbly chair that might have come from the same workshop as the clavier, watching him with the pleasure that comes from witnessing one of nature's rare creatures in its own habitat.
The sonata came to what I remembered as