The Substitute Guest
Lady Florence Carver set the letter down beside her plate and frowned at the toast rack, which was standing inoffensively in the middle of the breakfast table. If she could just get her hands about Hetty’s neck at this precise moment, she thought, she would happily squeeze. Drat the woman! Though she herself was most to blame, she supposed. She might have guessed that Hetty would develop one of her frequent ailments at the last moment and cry off from the house party she had agreed to attend.
Hetty’s defection meant that only ten guests would arrive on the morrow, six gentlemen and four ladies, five counting Lady Florence—a disgusting and quite impossible imbalance of numbers.
Tomorrow! There was no point in frantically scouring her mind for another lady to invite, Lady Florence thought, though she found herself doing just that. It was far too late. Everyone was arriving the next day. St. Valentine’s Day was only four days off. Even if someone could be invited in a hurry and could arrive in time for the day of the festival, it would be too late. For St. Valentine’s Day was to be merely the culmination of the events she had planned.
Lady Florence picked up the letter and crumpled it viciously in her right hand, winning for herself a nervous glance from her butler. Damn Hetty! She hoped the woman really had the migraines this time and was not merely imagining them as she usually did.
What could she do? Lady Florence drew a deep breath and forced her mind to calmness. This was no time to give in to the vapors. Stop one of the gentlemen from coming? Tell him that she had been forced to cancel the party for some reason? Percy Mullins lived only twelve miles away. But of course he would find out soon enough that she had lied to him. And Percy had a nasty gossiping tongue and would spread the word far and wide. No, she could not do that.
What about ladies within ten or twelve miles? Were there any worthy of the rest of the company she had invited? Any that would accept an invitation from her on such short notice? Any of suitable age and character? She immediately thought of Susan Dover, elder daughter of Sir Hector Dover. But Sir Hector and his wife would never allow it. Besides, the girl was probably no more than twenty.
There was Claire Ward, of course. She was the right age—she must be very much closer to thirty than to twenty, and her eldest brother, though a commoner, had a considerable estate and fortune. She lived with him and his family no more than eight miles away. But Miss Ward was a confirmed spinster and a prude. She would not do at all.
And then there was . . . There had to be someone, Lady Florence thought, her mind a blank. Ah, there was Edna Johnson, a widow like herself and amiable enough. But Mrs. Johnson, she remembered now as she thought about it, was in the north of England visiting relatives of her late husband.
Well, she thought ten minutes later, having wandered through to the morning room from the breakfast room and stared out on a damp and gloomy morning, there was no one. No one at all. And everything was going to be ruined. Everything that she had so carefully planned in order to bring herself some amusement after a winter of nothing but dullness. London had been dull without the crowds that the spring Season would bring, and Christmas at the Byngs had been insipid.
It was going to be worse than ruined, in fact. It was going to be a total disaster. How did one entertain six gentlemen and five ladies—including oneself—for a Valentine’s party? Assign two gentlemen to one of the ladies? The idea had interesting possibilities, but would probably be far more appealing to the fortunate lady than to either of the two gentlemen.
She rapped her fingernails impatiently on the windowsill. She was going to have to try Miss Ward. The woman would stick out in the company rather like a sore thumb, and some poor gentleman would doubtless return home less than satisfied after the party was over. And the chances were strong that Miss Ward would refuse the invitation. Very strong. But there really was no alternative. She must be tried.
Lady Florence crossed the room to the escritoire and looked down at the blank sheets of paper and the quill pen and inkwell set out there fresh that morning as they were each day. It was going to have to be a very carefully worded invitation if it was to be accepted. How did one persuade a prudish spinster to attend a house party at the home of a wealthy widow who had acquired something of a reputation for wildness since the demise of her husband two years before?
She seated herself and tested the nib of the pen with one finger. Well, the words would have to be found somehow. She dipped the pen in the inkwell with more confidence than she felt.
She might have decided differently, Claire Ward thought later that evening as she puzzled over what clothes and other belongings should be packed inside the empty trunk open on the floor of her dressing room, if only the Reverend Clarkwell had not been visiting when the invitation arrived. In fact, without a doubt she would have decided differently. But he had been and she had not and there was an end of the matter.
Should she pack any of her lace caps? she wondered, and she glanced into the looking glass at the one she wore on her smooth brown hair. She looked like a plain and placid spinster—which was exactly what she was. No, she thought, caps would doubtless be inappropriate at a house party. She would leave them at home. Truth to tell, she did not know what was appropriate for a house party, the only ones she had attended having been family affairs, for Christmas or birthdays or christenings. This was to be a party of strangers—“a select group of the most prominent and respected members of society,” as Lady Florence Carver had phrased it in her letter.
Why had she been invited? Claire wondered as she had wondered when the invitation arrived soon after luncheon. But the answer was as obvious now as it had been then. Someone had let Lady Florence down and she had had to make up numbers at a moment’s notice. There could be no other possible reason.
She really ought not to have accepted the invitation. She had had no inclination to do so even at the start. Had she been alone when it had arrived, there would have been no decision to make. She would simply have penned a polite refusal and sent Lady Florence’s messenger on his way. But she had not been alone. And when Myrtle, her sister-in-law, had asked her what the unexpected letter was all about, she had answered truthfully.
“Lady Florence Carver?” Myrtle had said, her usual breathless little-girl voice sounding shocked. “Oh, Claire, love, she is very fast.” And she had colored up as if she had just used one of the worst obscenities one of the stablehands might have uttered.
“Her guests are to be a select group,” Claire had said. “The most prominent and respected members of society.” But neither Myrtle nor the Reverend Clarkwell had recognized the gleam of amusement in her eyes as Roderick, her brother, would have done.
“I do believe, my dear Miss Ward,” the vicar had said, “if you will excuse me for voicing my opinion, which I make bold to do only because I am your pastor and you one of my flock, my dear ma’am. I do believe that for the sake of propriety and your reputation you should return the most formal of refusals. I only lament the fact that Lady Florence is one of the lost sheep of my flock and that any kindly words to point out the error of her ways would only fall on dry ground.”
“They cannot be respectable, Claire, if they are to be Lady Florence’s guests,” Myrtle had said. “Indeed, I do believe it is an insult that she has invited you, and I am sure that Roderick will agree. I wonder why she did so. But of course, you will take the Reverend Clarkwell’s advice. Indeed, love, we will excuse you now so that you may write your reply immediately. I believe you may mention that Roderick disapproves of such country parties.”
“May I?” Claire had asked. “Without his permission, Myrtle?”
“It is quite seemly, my dear Miss Ward,” the vicar had said, “for a dutiful sister and wife to use the name of the gentleman of the house in his absence under such circumstances, especially when they have the advice of a sincere man of the cloth such as myself, if I may so call myself without losing my humility.”
“It is settled, then,” Myrtle had said, looking and sounding relieved.
“Is it?” Claire had tapped the invitation against one palm. “I am rather inclined to accept. I am curious to know what such a party will be like and who the select and respected members of society are.”
Myrtle had had to ask the Reverend Clarkwell to ring for her maid so that her vinaigrette might be brought to revive her. And that gentleman had launched into a speech that almost rivaled one of his Sunday sermons for length and moral rectitude and dullness.
And so she had accepted her invitation, Claire thought with a sigh, drawing her best blue silk out of the wardrobe and trying to remember when was the last time she had worn it. How could she have resisted? And if the truth were known, she had really felt that twinge of curiosity she had pretended to. Whatdidhappen at such parties? What were such people like? What sort of people associated with the widow of a baron and daughter of an earl, a woman who was known as “fast”?
Her life had been so bounded by respectability and duty, Claire thought. And it was not an exciting life, she had to admit. Those people who had assured her during the years she had devoted to her ailing father when she might have been getting married and starting a family that she would one day receive her reward had been merely mouthing platitudes. The truth was that she had been left on the shelf and that being forced to live with a brother and sister-in-law and their two children, however kind and affectionate they were to her, was nothing like any reward she might have imagined.
She was twenty-eight years old and had never done anything remotely out of the ordinary or exciting. Perhaps after all it was a good thing that the pomposity of the vicar and the timidity of her sister-in-law had tempted her into being rash for once in her life.
