but I suspect they saw us getting away, and Mr. Hammond has a beauty of a Lagonda. I glimpsed it a few times on the road behind us.”
I threw Sebastian a horrified glance, and he stepped in front of me as if to act as my shield. From his seat, Father gave us a curious glance and was watching us still when George appeared.
“Shall I answer that, sir, or send them to Coventry?”
“By all means, answer it,” Father said, waving an airy hand. “Might as well get it done with now. I have too much experience of Araminta’s temper to think it will sweeten by morning.”
I rose to my feet, my hand sliding neatly into Sebastian’s. At the warm touch of his skin, I jumped, pulling free and thrusting both of my hands behind my back. All proper behaviour seemed to have flown out of my head, and I found myself wishing I could faint or fall into a fit, anything to avoid the next few minutes.
“She’ll be frightfully angry,” I warned Sebastian. “This is far worse than the time I kept a pet frog in the bidet at the Ritz.”
“Courage,” Sebastian murmured.
I nodded and took a deep breath as George returned. “Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, sir. And I didn’t get the names of all the rest of them. There were too many,” he added nastily. He stepped aside to let Mother and Reginald into the room, and behind them came an avalanche of people.
“Good God,” Father pronounced. “Am I to be invaded by a whole tribe of Americans?”
“It’s just the family,” I assured him. “That’s my stepfather, Mr. Hammond, and of course, you know Mother, and those are the twins, Petunia and Pansy, and I think those must be the boys back there, Reginald Junior and Stephen. There’s my maid, Masterman—she’s the one looking disapproving. And oh, yes, there’s Gerald. Hello, Gerald,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “You haven’t met my father, Eglamour March. Father, Gerald Madderley.”
Father took a deep breath and rose slowly from his chair. He greeted Gerald, then put out his hand to my stepfather. “How do you do, Mr. Hammond. I believe we have something in common,” he said, his voice acid on the last word as he glanced at Mother.
She was not pleased. Her tone was just as cold as his as she watched her two husbands shake hands. “Yes, let’s all be marvelously polite about this, shall we? In the meanwhile—”
“In the meanwhile, Araminta, you’ve had entirely too many children for my sitting room to accommodate,” Father said firmly. “Now, those boys will have to go as well as the girls with the appalling flower names. Madderley, I suppose you have a dog in this fight, so you may stay. Hammond, since you paid for the affair, you are welcome to stay, as well. And let’s have the maid in case anyone decides to succumb to the vapours. Araminta, you will stay only so long as you can keep a civil tongue in your head.”
Mother opened her mouth to reply then snapped it closed. “Very well,” she said through gritted teeth. “Children, out to the car. And mind you don’t get out and go walking about. These English villages are full of typhoid. They have very bad drains.”
Father gave a short laugh. “Good God, how could I have forgot your obsession with drains?”
“I think we have more important matters to discuss,” she told him, her voice icy. She turned to me. “Poppy, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
I looked from my enraged mother to Gerald’s mild face and back again. “Only that I am very sorry for behaving quite so badly. I ought to have said something sooner—”
“Sooner!” Mother’s voice rose on a shriek. “You mean, you knew? You knew you had no intention of marrying Gerald and you let this all play out like some sort of Elizabethan tragedy—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Araminta, a pair of people who probably weren’t terribly suited didn’t get married. I would hardly call that a tragedy,” Father put in.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” she replied. “You are the very last person who would understand about keeping one’s sacred promises.”
He raised a silver brow. “A hit. A palpable hit,” he said, his tone amused. “I was waiting for that, and I’m so glad you didn’t disappoint.” He turned to Reginald with an appraising gaze. “You must have the patience of Job, good sir. I salute you.” He raised a glass of whisky in Reginald’s direction.
“I play a good bit of golf,” my stepfather told him. “It teaches patience like nothing else.”
Mother opened her mouth, no doubt to blast Father again, but she suddenly seemed to catch sight of Sebastian. “Who are you? I recognise you. You were at the church today. Do you mean to say—” She broke off, her expression one of mounting horror. “Oh, my dear God. I cannot believe it. Not even you, Penelope, would be heartless enough to elope on your wedding day with another man.”
Sebastian opened his mouth, but before he could get out a word, Gerald stepped up and clipped him under the chin with one good punch, snapping his head back smartly. Sebastian kept his feet for a moment, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he slid slowly to the floor.
Gerald stood over him, shaking out his hand while Father called for George to bring cold cloths, and the children, hearing the uproar, dashed in from outside. As they crowded into the sitting room, Reginald attempted to calm Mother as she hysterically berated me while I stared in horror at Sebastian’s closed eyes.
Father threw up his hands. “It seems we must surrender to pandemonium,” he said to no one.
George brought the cloths as I shoved Gerald out of the way to kneel over Sebastian. Father guided Gerald to the fire and gave him a glass of whisky while I held a cold, wet cloth to Sebastian’s jaw. His eyes fluttered open, wide and very dark. I leaned over him, one hand on his chest, and he reached up to clasp my hand as my face hovered inches from his.
“Can you hear me?” I pleaded. “Are you all right?”
His mouth curved into a smile.
“Lovely,” he murmured. “Just a bit closer.”
I gasped. “You fraud!” I muttered just loudly enough for him to hear. “He didn’t knock you out at all.”
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “No, but I wasn’t about to give him the chance to try again. This way he keeps his pride, and I don’t make a mess of your father’s sitting room carpet by shedding Madderley blood all over it.”
I pushed off his chest, sitting upright and handing him the cloth. “You can hold your own compress,” I told him tartly. I didn’t even bother to explain to him that Gerald had been the boxing champion of his year at Harrow. There was something rather endearing about Sebastian’s faith that he could trounce Gerald, and I had learned enough about men to let him keep his illusions, although I had to admit the chest under my palm had been very firmly muscled.
A quarter of an hour later, order had been restored. Sebastian was sitting upright in one of the chairs, nursing a large whisky and making a show of holding a cold compress to his jaw. Mother had ordered the younger children to return to the motorcar, which they did under violent protest, and Father had opened a bottle of his best single malt to share with Reginald—a sort of reward for the job he had done soothing Mother’s hysteria. Masterman the maid simply stood out of the fray, her expression
