Elizabeth Elgin - Daisychain Summer

He opened the dining-room door, jabbing the bell-push as he walked past it, pulling out his mother’s chair.

‘Married? You do? And you are willing to be nice to Lady Anna and the countess – just to please me? It’s all I ask and you know you can charm the birds from the trees when you set your mind to it.’

‘I will be nice to them.’ The worst was over. She had had her say; now she would change to the surely-you-can-do-this-one-little-thing-for-me approach which was better than the dramatic ‘… and-in-my-own-house-too!’ – followed by a fit of sobbing vapours. ‘I promise you I’ll be especially nice to your countess.’

‘And to Lady Anna?’

‘Her too, mother. And now can we eat like civilized people? Breakfast on the sleeper was untouchable. Oh, and father says he’ll keep in touch about Aunt Sutton and that you are not to worry.’

‘Ha! Can’t see why he should go tearing off to France at the drop of a hat! And why does Helen have to be poking her nose in? She’s no more related to your aunt than I am! We are both sisters-in-law, so why was that telegram sent to her in the first place?’

‘Why indeed?’ Elliot comforted, glad they were on a different tack. ‘But you can’t be expected to drop everything, mother. You have a full social calendar …’

‘Yes, I have.’ She held out her coffee cup to be filled. ‘And it’s probably nothing worse than a cut finger! They are soft, those Suttons – not like my side; not like your Grandfather Elliot and the Pendennises …’

She stopped, horrified. This morning, when she was at home to a countess, the last person she must think about was her Cornish ancestress Mary Anne Pendennis!

She gazed across the table at her son; at the only Sutton who was Pendennis dark. All the rest were fair and grey-eyed; all but Elliot whom she loved all the more because of it.

‘You are a great comfort to me,’ she whispered. ‘Only settle down with a respectable girl and you shall have anything you could ever want. That is my promise to you , so think on, Elliot …’

The Countess Petrovska arrived punctually, accompanied by her daughter and the servant in black. The servant pressed the bell-push, curtseyed deeply, then returned to the house next door, hands demurely clasped, eyes on her boots.

Clementina Sutton’s door was opened at once by the footman who had waited there for five minutes, flexing his white-gloved hands. Fuss, fuss, fuss. You’d have thought the Queen and Princess Mary were visiting, not some women the Ruskies had flung out!

The footman bowed; Clementina appeared in the sitting-room doorway.

‘My dear countess.’ She offered a hand, fingers limp. ‘And Lady Anna.’

Anna Petrovska smiled prettily, then bobbed the smallest of curtseys in deference to an elder.

‘Countess – may I present Elliot, my son?’

Elliot bowed low over the offered hand, raised it almost to his lips, his eyes all the time on those of the countess. Then he turned his gaze to Anna, nodding, smiling, claiming her attention for a fleeting, intimate second.

He did it so beautifully, Clementina thought with pride. Money, that’s what! Money paid for education and grand tours. It didn’t buy breeding, but most other things came within its giving. So vast a sum spent on Elliot’s upbringing had returned a good dividend. If only he had been born fair like all the other Suttons he would be perfect, she sighed.

‘Please?’ she gestured with a hand. ‘I have rung for tea and coffee. Do sit down.’

Elliot hovered attentively, moving side tables a fraction nearer, offering a footstool, his eyes appraising Anna.

She was tall and slender. Her brown hair was thick and simply dressed. Remove the combs either side of her face and it would cascade almost to her waist.

Elliot Sutton liked long hair; deplored the newest short cuts women were taking to. Tresses and breasts were fast disappearing and both excited him.

Anna Petrovska had high, rounded breasts he could cup in each hand. Her eyes were demurely downcast, her lashes thick and long on her cheek.

She was undoubtedly a virgin. He liked taking virgins but this one he would first have to marry.

Now the servant in black – the one he had watched this morning from his bedroom window – was altogether another thing. Virginal, too, but servants were available. He had observed her closely, pegging sheets to dry; had never before seen so menial a task so gracefully performed. The servant’s breasts were rounded and high, too; her waist was handspan small and her ankles, when glimpsed, had excited him.

He wondered if she spoke any English, but a kiss was a kiss in any language. Mind, he had promised his best behaviour, and there was the rub. If he was to impress the countess as his mother had so firmly demanded, perhaps it were best to place the servant out of bounds for the time being.

‘My mother tells me,’ he smiled at Anna, ‘that you speak the most beautiful English almost all the time.’

‘Except two days ago, when Igor came home,’ she dimpled. ‘Then we forget and we laugh and cry in Russian. Did you know, Mr Sutton, that it is possible even to weep, in Russian?’

‘Your son is home, countess?’ Clementina knew it already, but she wanted the entire story.

‘He is, thanks be. And the boy did well.’ Her eyes misted briefly, then she lifted her chin. ‘Ah, you tell them, Anna. It still pains me to speak of it!’

‘Igor was hurt?’

‘No. All the time he was in Russia he was in danger, but never hurt,’ Anna spoke slowly, softly. ‘My mother is distressed about our houses – our homes. Igor was much put out, you see, to find so many people living in the Petersburg house. Eighteen –’

‘All those people? They just walked in without a by-your-leave; took your house?’ Clementina was genuinely shocked.

‘They did. But not people – families ! Mama was desolate when Igor told her. Our rooms shared out, two to a family. Igor had great difficulty getting in there – finding what we had left hidden …’

‘Such a beautiful house.’ The countess had recovered her composure. ‘On the Embankment near the Admiralty – close to St Isaac’s Cathedral, you know,’ she confided as if her new-found acquaintance knew St Petersburg as intimately as she.

‘Near the river?’ Clementina faltered, grasping at the word embankment.

‘Ah, yes. The Neva …’ Briefly Anna’s eyes showed sadness. ‘Such a river. It freezes over in winter, then in the spring the ice begins to break. Such a noise it makes – to let us know winter has gone.’

‘You will return, one day,’ Clementina comforted, ‘to take back what is rightfully yours.’

She made a mental picture of Pendenys Place, that monument to her late father’s riches; saw it packed to overflowing with people from the mean streets of Leeds and her butler, her pompous, plodding butler, pouring her best wines down his greedy throat.

‘Tell me, dear lady, about your country house? Surely not there, too …?’

She handed a cup to Elliot who placed it on the table at the countess’s side.

‘Peasants there, too. Families farming our estate as if it were their own. Igor had to work there, merely to find something we had hidden in a barn …

‘There is much still there – I pray it will never be found – but my son returned with the important things – the title deeds to both properties, and our land. We had taken them from our vaults as a precaution and put them in safer places. One day, perhaps, Igor will be able to go back there and claim what is ours – his .’

‘I would like to meet Igor. He did well. You must be very proud of him.’