Of course tonight it would be Aunt Livilla on duty, so her book would have to be of the old kind. Yet when Missy opened the glass door and came into the cheery warmth of the book room, there sat Una behind the desk, and of the dreaded Aunt Livilla there was no sign.
More than Una’s undeniable liveliness, understanding and kindness had endeared her to Missy; she was a truly remarkable looking woman as well. Her figure was excellent, her height sufficient to mark her out as a true Hurlingford, and her clothes reminded Missy of her cousin Alicia’s clothes, always in good taste, always in the latest fashion, always verging on the glamorous. Arctically fair of skin and hair and eye, still Una contrived not to appear half bald and wholly washed out, which was the fate of every Hurlingford female except Alicia (who was so ravishingly beautiful that God had given her dark brows and lashes when she grew up) and Missy (who was entirely dark). Even more intriguing than Una’s positive brand of fairness was a curious, luminous quality she owned, a delicious bloom that lay not so much upon her skin as inside it; her nails, oval and long, radiated this light-filled essence, as did her hair, piled in the latest puffs all around her head and culminating in a glittering topknot so blonde it was almost white. The air around her took on a sheen that was there and yet was not there. Fascinating! Lifelong exposure to none save Hurlingfords had left Missy unprepared for the phenomenon of the person with an aura; now within the space of a single little month she had met two of them, Una with her luminescence, and today the stranger in Uncle Maxwell’s with his fizzy blue cloud of energy crackling around him.
“Goody!” cried Una at sight of Missy. “Darling, I have a novel you’re going to adore! All about a young noblewoman of indigent means who is obliged to go governessing in the house of a duke. She falls in love with the duke and he gets her into trouble, then refuses to have anything to do with her because it’s his wife has all the money. So he ships her to India, where her baby dies of cholera just after it’s born. Then this terrifically handsome maharajah sees her and falls in love with her on the spot because her hair is red-gold and her eyes are lime-green where of course all his dozens of wives and concubines are dark. He kidnaps her, intending to make her his plaything, but when he gets her into his clutches he finds out he respects her too much. So instead, he marries her and casts off all his other women because he says she is a jewel of such rarity she must have no rival. She becomes a maharanee, and very powerful. Then the duke arrives in India with his regiment of hussars to quell a native uprising in the hills, which he does, only he’s fatally wounded in the battle. She takes the duke into her alabaster palace, where he finally dies in her arms, but only after she forgives him for so cruelly wronging her. And the maharajah understands at last that she really does love him more than she ever loved the duke. Isn’t that a wonderful story? You’ll just adore it, I promise!”
Being told the entire plot never put Missy off a book, so she accepted Dark Love at once and tucked it down on the bottom of her shopping bag, feeling as she did so for her own little money-purse. But it wasn’t there.
“I’m afraid I’ve left my purse at home,” she said to Una, as mortified as only someone very poor and very proud can be. “Oh, dear! I was sure I put it in! Well, you’d better have the book back until Monday.”
“Lord, darling, it’s not the end of the world to forget your money! Take the book now, otherwise someone else will grab it, and it’s so good it’ll be out for months. You can pay me next time you’re in.”
“Thank you,” said Missy, knowing she ought not embark upon a course of action utterly against the precepts of Missalonghi, but helpless in the face of her lust for books. Smiling awkwardly, she began to back out of the shop as fast as she could.
“Don’t go yet, darling,” pleaded Una. “Stay and talk to me, do!”
“I’m sorry, I really can’t.”
“Go on, just a wee minute! Between now and seven it’s as quiet as the grave, everyone’s home eating tea.”
“Honestly, Una, I can’t,” said Missy wretchedly.
Una looked mulish. “Yes, you can.”
So, discovering that to refuse favours to those who held one in debt was quite impossible, Missy capitulated. “Well, all right then, but only for a minute.”
“What I want to know is if you’ve set eyes on John Smith yet,” said Una, her sparkling nails fluttering about her sparkling topknot, her blue-white eyes glowing.
“John Smith? Who’s John Smith?”
“The chap who bought your valley last week.”
Missy’s valley was not actually her valley, of course, it simply lay along the far side of Gordon Road, but she always thought of it as hers, and had told Una more than once about her longing to walk through it. Her face fell.
“Oh, what a shame!”
“Pooh! It’s a jolly good thing, if you ask me. Time someone got his foot in the Hurlingford door.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of this John Smith, and I’m sure I’ve never seen him,” Missy said, turning to go.
“How do you know you’ve never seen him when you won’t even stay to hear what he looks like?”
A vision of the stranger in Uncle Maxwell’s shop rose in front of Missy’s eyes; she closed them and said, more positively than usual, “He’s very tall and solidly built, he has curly auburn hair, an auburn beard with two streaks of white in it, his clothes are rough and he swears like a trooper. His face is nice, but his eyes are even nicer.”
“That’s him, that’s him!” squeaked Una. “So you have seen him! Where? Tell me all!”
“He came into Uncle Maxwell’s shop a few minutes ago and bought a great many supplies.”
“Really? Then he must be moving into his valley.” Una grinned at Missy wickedly. “I think you liked what you saw, didn’t you, little Missy Sly-Boots?”
“Yes, I did,” said Missy, blushing.
“So did I when I first saw him,” said Una idly.
“When was that?”
“Ages ago. Years ago, in fact, darling. In Sydney.”
“You know him?”
“Very well indeed,” said Una, sighing.
The last month’s spate of novels had vastly expanded Missy’s emotional education; she felt confident enough to ask, “Did you love him?”
But Una laughed. “No, darling. One thing you can be absolutely sure of, I never loved him.”
“Does he come from Sydney?” asked Missy, relieved.
“Among other places.”
“Was he a friend of yours?”
“No. He was a friend of my husband’s.”
This was news indeed to Missy. “Oh, I am sorry, Una! I had no idea you were widowed.”
Una laughed again. “Darling, I am not a widow! The saints preserve me from wearing black! Wallace – my husband – is still very much alive. The best way to describe my late marriage is to say that my husband divorced himself from it – and me.”
In all her life Missy had never before met a divorcée; Hurlingfords did not sunder marriages, be they made in heaven or hell or limbo. “It must have been very difficult for you,” she said quietly, on her mettle not to appear prim or shocked.
“Darling, only I know how difficult it was.” Una’s light disappeared. “It was a marriage of convenience, actually. He found my social standing convenient – or rather his father did – and I found his pots and pots of money convenient.”
“Didn’t you love him?”
“My whole trouble, darling – and it has wound me up in a lot of trouble – is that I have never loved anybody half so well as myself.” She pulled a face and down went her inner light again, having just regained its normal intensity. “Mind you, Wallace was very well schooled in all the proper things, and very presentable to look at. But his father – ugh! His father was a dreadful little man who smelled of cheap pomade and even cheaper tobacco, and didn’t know the first thing about manners. However, he had a burning ambition to see his son sitting right on top of the Australian heap, so he’d poured a great deal of his time and money into producing the kind of son a Hurlingford wouldn’t baulk at. Where the truth was that his son liked the simple life, didn’t want to sit on top of the heap, and only tried because he loved that awful old man quite desperately.”
