Dragonwyck by Anya Seton Page B

as it always did when he reproved her, but she saw with startled joy that this reproof was different, for there was no censure in his tone, rather an unexpected lightness as though he teased her, and there was warmth in his piercingly blue gaze as he looked down at her.
    'Tompkins announced supper, Nicholas.' Johanna, panting a little from the effort of having searched throughout the lower floor, stood in the conservatory archway.
    As though the flat and breathy voice had been a rock thrown into a still pool, the warmth and the shared instant of subtle expectancy shattered.
    'I'm extremely sorry to have kept you waiting, my love,' said Nicholas, in a tone conveying nothing but courteous apology. 'Miranda and I were discussing literature. Her new dress becomes her, doesn't it? Madame Duclos has done well.'
    Johanna turned and looked at the girl in the green silk dress. The fingers on which a half-dozen magnificent rings made deep channels through the fat twined themselves tight together. The pale eyes slid back to Nicholas. 'The gown seems to suit her very well,' said Johanna.
     
    During the first weeks of Miranda's stay at Dragonwyck there had been an occasional guest—Mr. and Mrs. Newbold en route from New York to Saratoga, the portly Mr. Solomon Bronck, who looked after Nicholas' valuable real estate holdings on Manhattan. But these had stayed only for a night or a meal and Miranda had scarcely seen them.
    Now there was to be a Fourth of July celebration at Dragonwyck, festivities of dazzling magnitude, a banquet and ball on the night of the Fourth and a garden party the following day. All of the guest rooms were to be occupied by people whose names meant nothing to Miranda, but she speculated about them with excited interest, particularly the guests of honor, the de Greniers, a real French count and countess for whom the Florentine suite in the north wing was being prepared.
    Despite the inevitable extra work and the days of preparation, no confusion or signs of bustle were in evidence. Tompkins and Magda directed their underlings, a few extra servants were hired from the village, there was a subdued hum from the basement kitchens where labor continued far into each night; but that was all that anyone could have detected. And yet it was Nicholas who by means of an occasional order or a brief tour of inspection coordinated all the elaborate machinery which would produce the dreamily gracious atmosphere, the lavishness, that imbued Dragonwyck. He was entirely guiltless of the vulgarity of wishing to impress his guests. It was simply his desire for perfection for creating from the raw stuff of life, rather than on canvas or on paper, a finished artistic effect.
    On the afternoon of the third of July the dayboat stopped at Dragonwyck and landed the de Greniers. They were a disappointment to Miranda. A French nobleman, fresh from the court of Louis-Philippe, would be tall and languid and haughty like Nicholas perhaps, only more so. And the Countess—here Miranda's imagination had run wild, and she endowed the lady with a white wig, satin panniers, and a mournful high-born beauty which were patterned on a dimly remembered picture of Marie-Antoinette.
    The reality was a shock. The Count was plump and nearly bald. He was shorter than Miranda herself, and though he had fierce little black mustachios, they were the only impressive thing about him. His round face wore a perpetual expression of amusement. Life was to him a diverting panorama which he richly enjoyed. His speech—and he spoke good English, having spent five years in London—bubbled with wit and, to Miranda's mind, an astounding frankness. This frankness she would have considered shocking vulgarity in anyone but a count.
    'But then, you see,' remarked die little Frenchman while they sat at supper,
'mes chers amis,
I am not an aristocrat
de l'ancien régime.
We are
parvenus!
The good Louis-Philippe has rewarded my family for some little services rendered. Our only