Harriet Smart: The Romances by Harriet Smart

Author:Harriet Smart [Smart, Harriet]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Anthemion
Published: 2019-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

THE TRUE VALUE OF PEARLS

Chapter Six

At breakfast, Adrian did that maddening thing of scraping the margarine very slowly and carefully across his toast to demonstrate how self-denying and economical he was. Saskia had not slept well and had been violently sick again first thing, so this was enough to set her nerves on edge. Then he said: “You had better go and see Mr Wendover this morning and give him the necessary instructions. The sooner the better.” He sounded like a surgeon ordering the amputation of a gangrenous limb. She did not stop to hear any more. She had to run out of the room to be sick again.

She spent the day feeding sheets of paper into the typewriter, attempting a paragraph or two, then ripping them out again, with a criminal lack of concern for the availability of paper. Eventually she gave up entirely, and dug out the scrapbook of the Seigneurie she had made in the tidal wave of grief that accompanied her exile from the place. It was not a comforting companion. Some of the postcards her father had sent her had come unstuck and she read them with a cracking heart. His handwriting was too large for a postcard, so the messages were necessarily somewhat telegraphed. She always felt cheated by those postcards. She had longed for real letters from her father, long and newsy, just like those the other girls at school received.

At about four o’clock she heard Adrian coming upstairs.

“What are you doing up here?” he said.

By this point she had emptied out half the tea chests and had set herself well and truly adrift amongst the wreckage of her past life. She had soaked her handkerchief with her tears, hoping that a good cry would make her feel better. It did not. She just felt a futile sense of exhaustion.

“Sorting out all of these old things of mine,” she improvised. “It’s about time I got rid of them.”

“Did you see Wendover?”

“Yes,” she lied.

“You are making a clean sweep,” he said approvingly.

“One has to be sensible sometimes,” she said carefully.

“Good girl,” he said, with a smile. Saskia got up from her knees and he offered his hand to help her. Unusually, he continued to hold her hand when she was on her feet again.

“Look,” he went on, “about last night. I’m sorry if I sounded dictatorial. I should have trusted your judgement. You’re an intelligent woman – but you needed to grieve over it, of course you did. I don’t always understand the feminine sensibility, do I?”

She knew he was being rhetorical and did not try to answer. Of course her silence pleased him. He went so far as to kiss her hand.

“I’ll make some tea,” he said.

She found him in the morning room, where he had lit the fire and laid out the tea tray, with all the punctiliousness of an old-fashioned butler.

“I managed to get some Rose Pouchong at Fortnum’s,” he said. “Only an ounce, of course, and not the best quality, but it’s better than nothing.

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