Intolerable Civility

Chapter Ten: What Strange Game

David arrived in London a few days later than he had initially intended, having stayed on in Wales to make sure Luke was well again. During his courtship of Catherine and the year of misery that followed after, he had leased a house in Mayfair, but at the end of last season, he had let the lease lapse and now he had arranged to stay with his cousin Sarah at her home in the significantly less fashionable quarter of Finsbury. She had inherited the property from his Uncle Lewis, along with every other scrap of capital he was free to will her, making her a woman of wealth and independence. Sometimes David wondered if knowing what was coming to her one day had cautioned Sarah against entering into marriage and ceding power to a man. Sarah had always been rather like that. As children together, she had always dominated their games, set their rules, and refused to admit defeat. In fact, David recalled as he knocked on her front door, she had been rather a bully.

There was nothing of the bully about the woman who answered the door tonight. She gave him a warm kiss on the cheek and led him straight into her library where a cheerful fire burned and a pot of cocoa waited by the fire.

"I hope you don't mind," she said, sitting down on the hearthrug with her legs under her and warming the cocoa. "I always prefer cocoa to wine in the evenings. Dreadfully unfashionable of me, I know, but I have never pretended to be fashionable."

David looked skeptically at Sarah's gown. It was of a dark greenish blue that reminded him of the sea, very satiny and full in the skirts and sleeves. Her ankles peeped out from a frothy profusion of petticoats, delicately stockinged in champagne silk. About the only unfashionable thing about her was that she was not wearing slippers, which struck him as very odd in such chill weather.

Perhaps Sarah sensed his silent disagreement. "If you would like wine I will send down for some."

"Cocoa will be a nice change," David said. "I haven't had cocoa since I was a child."

"Home comforts." Sarah stirred the cocoa with a smile. "My mother used to make it for us, didn't she? I've improved upon her recipe. I add the whites of two eggs."

"Decadent," David said politely.

"I'm not sure my servants like me tinkering about in the kitchens, but I must occupy myself somehow, and I find society very fatiguing."

"That surprises me. I would have thought you rather lonely, living by yourself. My mother and Laurie are always squabbling, yet neither of them would wish to live alone. Even my wife has kept on her paid companion after her marriage, though I cannot fathom why; the woman is the prickliest most ill-pleased snob I've ever met."

Sarah looked over her shoulder at him, eyebrows raised with interest. "I did not think I would prise it out of you within the hour, and yet you speak of it within the first few minutes. Fancy, there is not even the slightest hint of anger when you say the phrase, 'my wife'. I am very impressed, David. You must be the most forgiving man I know."

"I am not forgiving. I do not forgive her."

"Hm." Sarah took the cocoa off the fire and poured it into two cups waiting on the hearthstone. "Tell me if it's good, will you? I do think the egg makes a difference."

David took his cocoa and sipped carefully. He could not really remember how Aunt Susan's cocoa used to taste, but no doubt Sarah expected a compliment in the comparison. She had always had a rather scornful attitude towards her mother, possibly inherited from Uncle Lewis. It was a pity, David thought, because Aunt Susan had been a sweet-mannered little woman without a malicious bone in her body.

"It's quite nice," he said. "Very suitable on a cold night."

Sarah looked slightly disappointed. She remained on the hearthrug with her feet poking out beneath her skirts, sipping her own cocoa.