His One Woman Page 2

  ‘And your cup needs refilling,’ said Marietta, putting out a hand for it.

  Jack watched her concentrate on pouring out the tea—aware of his gaze on her and that she was a little entertained by him.

  ‘Since you will not engage in froth and fun with me, Jack—you see, I take you at your word—we may be serious. Pray, what is the business which brings you to Washington? That is, if you wish to inform me.’

  He stirred his tea vigorously. ‘No reason why not, Miss Hope—’

  ‘Oh, Marietta, please,’ she said softly.

  ‘Marietta,’ he continued, ‘but ladies are not usually interested in my speciality. I will not say that it is dry, since it concerns the sea, but one might call it heavy. I ran the shipping side of our family firm until recently. Now my situation has changed and I may pursue my engineering bent. Among other things I am interested in such remote matters as the design of metal warships or iron-clads—hardly tea-party entertainment, I fear—but the States is the place to be these days for matters of invention.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she said, her eyes mocking him a little. ‘And screw-propelled ships, too. You are interested in those as well as iron-clads, I presume? I can see that Mr Ericsson is your man.’

  Jack put down his delicate cup with exaggerated care. ‘Lest it, too, explode,’ he offered when he saw her smile. ‘Well, now, Marietta, you do surprise me. Most gentlemen around here do not know of such arcane matters, let alone pretty ladies at tea.’

  ‘Pray do not flatter me, Jack. A gentleman of such profound knowledge about design will know how lacking I am in it, even in a different line,’ she flashed back at him, for daring to describe her as pretty. ‘But there is a simple explanation for my surprising expertise. I am my father’s secretary and he is on a Congressional committee which deals with shipping of all kinds. What shall we discuss, sir? I am ready for you. Explosive shells, not muffins, and their effect on wooden ships?’

  Jack’s laughter was unforced. ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘I warn you, once you start me going, you will not be able to stop me. On these matters I am a very bore.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that, Jack. I doubt it very much. I am sure that Sophie does not think you are a bore.’

  ‘Oh, but I do not discuss iron-clads, and their future peaceful use, with Sophie,’ he said, waving away further proffered cake. ‘I see that you are determined to sink me, Marietta, with your broadsides.’

  ‘Difficult to achieve, I think,’ said Marietta, who had not enjoyed herself so much for years. He undoubtedly knew how attractive he was, but he displayed little conceit. He had a wicked look now and then, and she was subtly flattered that he was favouring her with it. He reminded her, while he talked with great enthusiasm of his passion, of a small boy, excited among his toys.

  Marietta was surprised to find herself disappointed when he suddenly looked at the clock, and said, ‘I am remiss, Marietta, I have talked the afternoon away. I must not strain your patience.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ she told him. ‘You could not do that, Jack. You must come again for tea, and soon. I promise to serve you no exploding muffins next time.’

  He rose. ‘Perhaps we shall meet this evening. Sophie said that you would be attending the White House reception. I am working with Ezra Butler, and he is taking me with him.’

  ‘I shall look forward to that,’ she replied, meaning her words for once, and they parted with more warmth than either could earlier have deemed possible.

  An intelligent and amusing man, was Marietta’s verdict, while Jack thought that Marietta might not be conventionally pretty, but she had a good mind and an engaging manner. Nothing like Sophie, of course, whom he had been sorry to miss, but he had spent a pleasant hour all the same. Miss Hope was not quite the dragon of report.

  Not long after he had gone, Sophie came rushing into the room, her pretty face aglow. ‘Oh, Marietta, was that Jack Dilhorne I saw leaving as we came home?’

  On Marietta nodding assent, she gave a great pout. ‘Oh, how annoying. I knew that it was a mistake to go duty calling with Aunt Percival. And now I have missed him. Did he stay long?’

  ‘We had tea together,’ said Marietta quietly.

  ‘Oh, even more annoying,’ exclaimed Sophie disgustedly. ‘Jack is such fun. What on earth did you find to talk about with him?’

  ‘Explosives and marine engineering,’ said Marietta repressively.

  ‘Explosives and marine engineering! How exquisitely dull for the poor man. I might have guessed that you would bore him stiff.’

  ‘I don’t think that Jack…Mr Dilhorne, that is…found explosives boring,’ said Marietta, remembering the muffins. ‘On the contrary.’

  ‘Oh, he has splendid manners for a backwoods-man,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s only his clothes which are a little odd, but I don’t suppose that you noticed that. All the girls are wild for him,’ she added, and then said proudly, ‘but I am the one that he is interested in.’

  ‘Apart from his passion for marine architecture, that is,’ said Marietta unkindly. She had had enough of Sophie’s open patronage of her lack of attractions.

  ‘Oh, Marietta, you have no sense of humour at all,’ said Sophie, dismissively, ‘you are so solemn. Now Jack has the most enormous sense of the ridiculous.’

  ‘Then he should get along with me, should he not?’ said Marietta savagely. ‘Seeing that you all consider me to be the most ridiculous thing in Washington.’

  She swept out of the room, leaving Sophie behind with her mouth open, since Marietta rarely bit back, however much she was provoked. It was one of her collection of amazing and boring virtues.

  Goodness me, she thought, whatever had caused that? Well, she would tease Jack about his misfortune in being exposed to Marietta’s earnest and learned conversation at tea.

  Explosives and marine engineering at four o’clock in the afternoon. What next?

  Marietta thought that her father looked tired when he came in later. He was overwhelmed, he said, with work and with place-men. His senses, however, were as acute as ever, and while they waited in the hall for Sophie, before leaving for the reception, he said, ‘I shall be glad when my brother and sister-in-law arrive in Washington to take her over, even if I have to endure their presence here. She really is most excessively spoiled. Whatever can have caused her tantrums this evening?’

  Sophie had been making her displeasure at missing Jack quite plain to all and sundry, and so Marietta explained to the Senator.

  ‘Hmm, Dilhorne. An odd name, and the second time that I have encountered it today. An Australian, you said, so they can scarcely be related.’

  This was cryptic, even for the Senator, who frequently left out the connections in his chains of thought, expecting his daughter to pick them up, which she usually did—as today.

  ‘You mean that you have met another Dilhorne?’

  ‘Yes, an English MP and his aide. Alan Dilhorne and Charles Stanton. Dilhorne says that he does not represent the British Government, but you may be sure that he does. A handsome and devious fellow: one must listen carefully to what he says, or be misled.’

  ‘A little like mine,’ said Marietta.

  ‘His friend, though, is quite different,’ pursued her father. ‘A quiet dark man, a marine engineer, but a gentleman, patently.’

  ‘And that is another coincidence,’ said Marietta. ‘For my Dilhorne is a marine engineer.’

  ‘I do not like coincidences,’ said her father peevishly. ‘Coincidences make life difficult to control.’

  ‘But exciting,’ said Marietta, who had lately found this ingredient sadly lacking in her life. ‘Will they be at President Lincoln’s reception tonight?’

  ‘Of course,’ said her father, ‘and yours?’

  ‘Mine, too. Ezra Butler is taking him.’

  ‘That figures,’ said her father. ‘Butler has shipping interests in Australia. It will be stimulating to meet your man, and you must meet mine—although he is happily married, I understand.’

&nb
sp; So her father was determined to matchmake. But she would not be pushed into anything, and, if she married, it must be someone whom she respected. Plain and twenty-seven as she was, love was too much to ask for.

  Chapter Two

  The drive outside the White House was thronged with carriages and bobbing flambeaux there to light the way for Mr Lincoln’s guests. Marietta, who was used to such events to the point that they bored her, was handed down from the Hopes’ carriage, Sophie following her. Sophie was looking particularly charming in young girl’s white. A wealth of gauze rosebuds decorated her hair and her pink sash emphasised her tiny waist. She was carrying a bouquet of crimson and white hothouse carnations from which trailed filmy lace.

  Marietta, for once not in a dark dress, was wearing lavender and was becoming increasingly conscious that it did even less for her than her usual colours, whatever her maid had said when she had helped her into it. She looked extinguished and knew it. The pale mauve gave her creamy complexion, one of her better points, a bilious cast.

  Sophie, coming into the hall just before they had left, and still resentful of Marietta for having entertained Jack that afternoon, had said, sweetly unpleasant, ‘Are you well, Marietta? Your colour is poor tonight.’

  Even the Senator—usually unaware of Sophie’s frequent brutality towards her cousin, whose lack of looks she thought was a good foil for her own delicate beauty—was alert to the insult, so pointed had it been.

  ‘I think that you look very well, my dear,’ he’d said, frowning at Sophie whom he disliked. His praise had done little to comfort Marietta. Her glass had told her only too clearly the truth about her appearance.

  Before her father’s words that morning she would have shrugged off Sophie’s unkind remarks, but the armour which she had worn for the seven years since Avory Grant’s proposal had suddenly disappeared, and she was as vulnerable as she had been as a girl. Yesterday she would have ignored, or even been amused by, Sophie’s spite. Today, though, the words had stung—but she did not allow her distress to be visible.

  Once inside the White House, Sophie was less interested in her short meeting with the President and Mrs Lincoln than in looking around her for Jack Dilhorne. Marietta thought that Mr Lincoln looked tired, which was not surprising in view of his country’s desperate situation: civil war was almost upon them.

  Mary Todd Lincoln was, as usual, overdressed, and Marietta wondered how he had come to marry her: they seemed a most unlikely pair. This thought worried her, for she suddenly seemed to have marriage on the brain, and before tonight such a thing would not have occurred to her.

  Senator Hope’s party walked on through the crowds of eagerly chattering people, most of whom Marietta knew through her father’s work—but she was suddenly aware that none of them knew her because she was Marietta Hope, but only because she was her father’s daughter. This was another new thought, and not a pleasant one.

  A long mirror presented her with her ill-dressed self. I look forty, she thought, I really must take more interest in dress. No wonder Sophie laughs at me. I hope that she finds Jack soon; I cannot bear much more of her tantrums. I shall slap her, or scream, if she complains again.

  Marietta betrayed none of this while bowing and smiling at those around her. The foreign diplomats who filled Washington were all present and she spoke pleasantly to them in her schoolgirl French. The elegant representative from Paris inwardly regretted that Miss Hope’s looks and general appearance were not so good as her brains.

  A subdued scream from Sophie suddenly announced that she had seen Jack Dilhorne, and she began wildly semaphoring in his direction.

  ‘A little more decorum would be fitting, Sophie,’ said Marietta repressively, unable to resist, for once, the temptation to pay her cousin back for her earlier unkind remark, ‘or the world will think you a hoyden.’

  ‘Oh, pooh, we are not all old maids,’ said Sophie spitefully. ‘I particularly wish to speak to Jack, having missed him this afternoon.’ She waved her little bouquet again, narrowly missing a footman who was carrying a tray of drinks.

  Jack had seen her and was threading his way through the packed room to her side. He looked even more handsome in his elegant evening dress, and even more in command of himself, if that were possible, than he had done that afternoon. He bowed to both Marietta and Sophie and was presented to the Senator.

  Before the Senator could speak to him about his unusual name, twice encountered that day, Sophie took command of the situation.

  ‘Oh, Jack, what a bore that I was out this afternoon. I do hope that you were suitably distressed by my absence!’

  What could the poor man say but ‘Oh, yes, indeed, Miss Sophie,’ thought Marietta satirically, as Jack promptly did so, with an apologetic smile at the Senator for their interrupted conversation. Unluckily he then added, ‘But Marietta looked after me most efficiently.’

  ‘Marietta…’ pouted Sophie prettily, ‘…but you call me Miss Sophie.’

  ‘Then that must be remedied immediately, Sophie,’ said Jack, quite the gallant.

  Really, thought Marietta, he is too ready. Such charm is almost offensive. He even wasted it on me. For practice, one supposes. To have her own unkind thoughts immediately rebutted by Jack carrying tactlessly on by saying, ‘You see, Sophie, having the misfortune to miss you, I found another Hope cousin ready to give a poor stranger comfort and cheer.’

  This was not what Sophie wanted at all. He should have been devastated at missing her, not congratulating himself on having his afternoon rescued for him by a plain Jane. She was provoked into being more publicly unkind to Marietta than was wise.

  ‘By discoursing to you of weighty matters, I hear. But then, Marietta is always so solemn. I hope that it did not sink the tea,’ she said, sarcasm plain in her voice.

  Jack was no fool, and the false notes he could hear reverberated in his head. It was flattering that Sophie was jealous, but he did not care for such open spite. It presented a different picture of her from the pretty kitten Sophie usually showed to the world. A slight set-down might be in order.

  ‘On the contrary,’ he said cheerfully, directing his winning smile at Marietta, and noticing while he did so that the Senator disliked his niece, for Jack, like his father, was always keenly aware of such nuances of behaviour, ‘matters were most unusually light. So much so that even our muffins nearly flew away. Was not that so, Marietta?’

  Marietta gratefully returned his smile with one of her own, and Jack wished that she would do it more often. It quite transformed her.

  ‘Indeed, Jack, although I must admit that your muffins were more affected than mine.’

  Such banter from Marietta did not surprise Jack after taking tea with her, but it surprised the Senator and Sophie. Jack did not miss the surprise, either, nor that Sophie was annoyed by Marietta’s response to him. For the first time he thought that she was a little spoiled.

  Sophie, suddenly aware that she was not presenting herself to Jack in a favourable light, first tried to remedy this by being as charming as possible, and then by allowing him to resume his interrupted conversation with the Senator. He had been joined by several of his colleagues and they were busy discussing the latest news from the South, which seemed to indicate that the Confederates, as they were known, were on the verge of attacking Fort Sumter. If they did, it would almost certainly plunge the Union into war.

  Standing by Marietta, Jack listened with interest, and even joined in the lively discussion himself. On the Senator informing his friends that Mr John Dilhorne was something of an expert in the current revolution in shipping, his advice was sought on its implications for naval warfare.

  Marietta saw by the expression on Sophie’s face that this was by no means what she had hoped for from the evening, but the prospect of war occupied everybody’s minds these days and Sophie, like everyone else, must learn to live with it.

  Jack had hardly finished speaking when his attention was drawn by the entry into the room of two men: one wa
s a large fair gentleman, impeccably dressed, and the other was smaller and dark. A look of the utmost surprise crossed his face. He turned towards the Senator, saying, ‘I must beg you to excuse me, sir, but I do believe that…no, no, it cannot be possible…’

  The Senator followed Jack’s gaze and smiled a little.

  ‘I deduce, sir, that you have just seen Mr Alan Dilhorne enter. I deduce, too, that you must be related. You have the distinct look of one another.’

  ‘By all that’s holy,’ said Jack eagerly, ‘it is Alan! What an astonishing thing to meet one’s big brother in another country’s capital city. You will excuse me, sir, if I go to him. We rarely have the opportunity to meet, he being settled in England and I until recently in New South Wales.’

  ‘You have my permission, young man,’ replied the Senator, amused. He had already decided that he liked Mr Jack Dilhorne, not least because he seemed to have a proper appreciation of Marietta. He watched him cross the room and clap the large gentleman on the shoulder before engulfing him in a bear hug. The Dilhorne brothers were reunited. Marietta, watching them from a distance, found their evident affection for one another touching.

  ‘Let me look at you,’ said Alan, standing back. ‘Good God, little brother has grown up! How like the Patriarch you are—you have his look exactly.’

  He turned to his companion. ‘Charles, this is my little brother, Jack, of whom you have heard me speak. Jack, this is Charles Stanton, who is in your line of work. He is a famous engineer back home who has come to see what’s happening here so that we may do it better.’

  Charles smiled and put out his hand. He was a silent man, quite unlike the articulate and jovial Alan, who was indeed very like Jack, only bigger in every direction. Now in his late forties, he looked younger than his age, and was, everyone who met him in Washington agreed, an extraordinarily handsome man.

  ‘And what are you doing here?’ asked Jack when they had both finished exclaiming over the odd coincidence of their meeting and Charles had discreetly retired to leave the brothers together.