all this coming from? Jack asked himself. It was years since he had engaged in social badinage and now it was as though time had rolled back again, or as if he had never been away from town, the season and its functions.
Lacey seemed to be enjoying herself, too. ‘Oh, I don’t think that you need to worry about that. I am that curiosity of nature, a rich American who is not quite a barbarian and is not quite one for whom anything goes. Now, you may take me back to my aunt who, for some reason, is looking most disapproving, but you’re not to forget the Charleston lesson which I am determined to give you even if I have to drag you on to the floor.’
Jack could not stop himself. ‘Are all American women as downright as you are, Lacey? Or is it the Chancellor in you? I seem to remember, years ago, someone saying that all the women of the junior branch of the family were strong-minded beauties.’
There, he had said it, his first compliment to a woman in years.
‘Both,’ she told him. ‘American women are not like yours. On top of that, I believe that a distant ancestress of mine was noted for her looks and her strong mind at a time when women were supposed to boast of the former and not of the latter.’
By this time they had reached Aunt Sue, who greeted them with a frozen face even after Jack had been introduced to her. This was so unlike her that Lacey wondered what was wrong. Had she and Jack perhaps overdone things on the dance floor? Surely not.
She was, of course, perfectly polite, even if cold. Jack did not appear to notice that anything was amiss when Miss Susan Hoyt, Lacey’s mother’s cousin, was introduced to him as Lacey’s companion.
‘Not my duenna,’ Lacey said laughing. ‘Rather a friend to see that I am not lonely and, since Aunt Sue has spent a lot of time in England, to show me the ropes, as it were, and to make sure I don’t say, or do, the wrong thing.’
‘Oh, I’m sure that you’d never do that,’ smiled Jack in a comic tone that suggested that she probably might, ‘so Miss Hoyt’s task must be an easy one.’
Not even that provoked a smile from Aunt Sue and once he’d wandered off, after promising again to be taught the Charleston, she asked her aunt, ‘What’s wrong? Is it something I’ve done?’
Her aunt shook her head. ‘No, not at all. There is something which I have to tell you, but here is not the place for it. When we get home will do. Are you really promising to teach Mr Compton the Charleston on the dance floor? Is it wise?’
Lacey laughed, ‘Perhaps not, but I managed to pierce his icy English reserve several times and I thought that making him dance the Charleston might unfreeze it altogether. Come on, Aunt Sue, you’re not usually a spoilsport.’
‘There are reasons,’ said her aunt ambiguously, shaking her head. ‘But have your own way, dear, you usually do.’
Lacey thought that she was past the age when she could be reprimanded by a companion, even one as kind as Aunt Sue usually was. Bees did not usually buzz in her bonnet but tonight there was a distinct noise of a hive having been disturbed by something. Not to worry, she would concentrate instead on trying to unsettle Fighting Jack even further—perhaps to the point where she made him behave as though the nickname still suited him!
Chapter Two
‘Old Mother Leominster’s dance was even more eventful than hers usually are,’ was Rupert Compton’s somewhat inelegant remark to Darcey Chancellor later. They had spent the evening and the hour after midnight in enjoying themselves with a variety of flappers. Neither of them had any real expectations of inheriting anything and, since Darcey was already pledged to his long-time, if also penniless, love, they were not regarded as either threats or possible husbands.
‘Something between a gigolo and a cavaliere servente,’ was Darcey’s rueful comment to Rupert, who wasn’t sure what he meant by the second half of the sentence but didn’t say so. He assumed, rightly, that it was something more respectable than a gigolo, but both words were damned un English so far as he was concerned.
They had lost sight of Jack, who had come across an old friend from his Army days who had stayed behind in Europe when Jack went to Palestine and had got involved with Allenby’s lot and ‘that bounder, T. E. Lawrence’: the friend’s description, not Jack’s. Jack’s attempt to explain the intricacies of Middle East politics was lost on him and he was thankful when he heard the strains of the Charleston begin to filter into the supper room.
‘Forgive me, lady waiting,’ he offered, and set off at the double. Wouldn’t do to offer Miss Lacey Chancellor the opportunity to stage a conniption fit in Lady Leominster’s august halls.
She was where he had left her, with the dragon aunt. She was looking about the ballroom, a trifle anxiously, he thought, but her face brightened up amazingly when she saw him.
‘I thought that you’d taken the coward’s way out,’ she told him, offering him her hand—which he took with the usual electric effect on both of them.
‘Never,’ said Jack, after taking it and leading her on to the floor, ‘and I promise not to throw a conniption fit if I make a cake of myself in the dance.’
Rupert, together with Darcey and a group of other spectators, watched Jack join the romping Charlestonites, with a look of total disbelief on his face.
Darcey exclaimed, ‘Told you the fur and feathers would fly if those two got together. Who else would tease old Jack into making an exhibition of himself!’
‘Only he isn’t,’ said Rupert gloomily. ‘Just watch him go. Do you believe he’s never danced the damn thing before? And how did she get him to do it with her?’
‘Clever girl that she is,’ said Darcey slowly, ‘she used what we told her about Jack accepting challenges. She challenged him, that’s what. All I have to say is that it’s a damned sight safer than some of the other things he got up to. No breaking his neck in this.’
‘Break his leg more likely,’ grumbled Rupert. ‘You know I suggested that he had a go for her and her fortune before he even saw her. Do you think that’s what it’s about?’
Darcey shook his head. ‘Not Jack, from all I’ve heard of him, he’s not a fortune hunter. Just a chap who can’t refuse a challenge.’
Lacey panted at Jack when she saw him rivalling her in agility, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you had danced this before?’
‘Because I haven’t,’ Jack panted in reply once he had recovered enough breath to answer her. ‘But I watched you and Cousin Darcey enjoying yourselves and it didn’t strike me as particularly difficult. I can only wonder, though, what Queen Victoria would have made of it if it had arrived in England in her reign.’
‘Or most of the other things we do these days,’ gasped out Lacey, after several more hectic minutes, ‘such as women smoking and driving motor cars, to say nothing of short skirts and Eton crops.’
By now they had arrived at the musicians’ corner; when he saw Lacey and Jack’s spirited rendition of the dance, their leader stood up and played his saxophone pointedly in their direction.
She waved back at him, so Jack did too. Who was it who had once said, ‘It’s my night to howl?’ He couldn’t remember, which didn’t matter, because he was too busy enjoying himself after a fashion which he couldn’t
