Free After the Armistice Ball by Catriona McPherson Page B

smoothed into a smile as it had at dinner at Croys, a droop of relief followed by a weightless rising in his shoulders, as though he had put down two heavy bags and straightened again. ‘Not long now,’ he said. Very curious, this beaming happiness at the thought of losing his favourite daughter. Offloading Clemence would be a relief to any parent (although Lena seemed to like her well enough) but fathers are usually more gloomy to see the backs of their darlings and I was puzzled. I looked at him for a moment then, seeing the speculation of my own regard begin to draw a matching look from him, I made my goodbyes and fled.
    I was only minutes away from Abercromby Place but, unable to face the desolation of the ladies’ lounge at the Caledonian Club, I resolved to slog back up the hill to the National Gallery, there to sit and think until I could get myself some luncheon and begin my afternoon’s shopping.
    I had been in a huff (if I am honest) over missing London this year, but I was now beginning to see that I still had to get some clothes for summer. I would give a wide berth to horrid Forsyth’s, sitting there on the corner like a skeletal wedding cake, where I had spent far too many hours of my life kitting out boys for school, and would go instead to dear Jenner’s. I could not quite agree with its besotted architects that it looked just like the Bodleian Library but it had always seemed especially welcoming to ladies, what with the Caryatides and now with the new extension too, where an even larger dress department was to be found. My step quickened, until I remembered: shopping after lunch, thinking and Improving Art first.
    On the way, I set myself to come up with a list of innocent reasons why a bride, her mother and her sister might desert their obligations and remove to a country cottage three weeks before a wedding, but before I had entered anything on my list, I was distracted by the sound of someone saying my name.
    Alec Osborne was standing ahead of me on the pavement, looking very different in grey town-suiting and rather wan despite the freckle. I stopped and was glad of the chance to catch my breath although I resisted the temptation to puff and put my hand to my ribs.
    ‘I’ve just come from where I suspect you’re going,’ I said, managing to make my breath last to the end of the speech with only a little rasping.
    ‘You’ve just seen Cara?’ he asked.
    ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘They seem to have gone off to their cottage. Unaccountably,’ I added, for no reason I could have explained. Alec Osborne nodded and screwed up his face.
    ‘They’re still there?’ he said. ‘I assumed they’d have come home . . . I mean since something seems to have . . . She’s broken it off, you see.’ I blinked once before realizing what he meant.
    ‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘I just spoke to her father and he certainly didn’t seem to think so.’ Alec Osborne fished a rather crumpled letter out of his breast pocket and made as though to unfold it.
    ‘I assumed she’d written from town,’ he said. ‘But I suppose they would have stayed away, wouldn’t they?’
    I could do no more than stare at him uselessly. One would expect a jilted lover to look puzzled and upset but the way he was casting his eyes around and shifting from foot to foot spoke of something else besides.
    ‘Are you busy, just at this minute?’ he said. I shook my head. ‘I wonder then if you would be so kind –’ He broke off. The expression on my face must have revealed the lurch of dismay I felt at the prospect of holding his hand and there-there-ing maternally while he wept for his lost love. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘At least, I think you think something, and I do too.’
    I gaped. What did he know?
    ‘I saw you talking to Lena and to Cara,’ he said. ‘Don’t you feel . . .? I hardly know what to call it, but don’t you have a feeling . . .?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I do.’
    We walked to the