Eva Ibbotson

She herself was dressed like a dancer—that is to say, like the image of a dancer that the world delights in: a three-quarter-length white dress, satin slippers, a wreath of rosebuds in the loose and curling golden hair.

“I’ll stand at the back and hold my glass; no one will notice me,” said Harriet, whose ideas of party-going were conditioned by the dread occasions with which the Master of St. Philip’s celebrated events of academic importance.

“You will do nothing of the kind, ‘ariette,” said Marie-Claude, slipping Vincent’s engagement ring firmly onto her finger. “This man is not only an Englishman but the most important—”

“An Englishman? The chairman of the Opera House trustees? Goodness!” Harriet was amazed. “I’d imagined a kind old Brazilian with a paunch and a huge waxed mustache.”

“Whether he has a mustache or not, I cannot say,” said Marie-Claude, a little offended. “Vincent’s mustache is very big and personally I do not find a man attractive without mustaches. But Mr. Verney is spoken of as formidably intelligent and since you are the daughter of a professor—”

“Mr. Verney?” said Harriet, and there was something in her voice which made both girls look at her hard. “Is that what he is called? Are you sure?”

“Certainly I am sure,” said Marie-Claude, exasperated by the unworldliness of her friend. Harriet had pestered everyone ceaselessly for the names of the flowers, the birds, even the insects they had encountered ever since they left England, yet she had not even troubled to find out the name of the most influential man in Manaus.

But Harriet was lost in remembrance, her hairbrush dangling from her hand.

“I’m Henry St. John Verney Brandon,” Henry had said to her, turning his small face upward, trusting her with that all-important thing: his name. And another image… the unpleasant Mr. Grunthome with his liver-spotted pate and rapacious hands, droning on beside the Van Dyck portrait of Henrietta Verney who had brought her beauty and her fortune to the house of Brandon.

It didn’t have to mean anything—the name was not uncommon. Yet if Henry’s “secret boy” was some distant connection of the family brought up for some reason at Stavely… ? If against all odds she had found him and could plead Henry’s case, what happiness that would be!

No, I’m being absurd, thought Harriet; it’s merely coincidence. But she found herself suddenly looking forward to the evening ahead and—relinquishing the hairbrush to Marie-Claude—submitted with docility to having two side plaits swept onto the crown of her head and wearing the rest loose down her back to reveal what both the other girls regarded as tolerable: her ears.

Though she knew her host was rich, the first sight of the Amethyst waiting at the docks in the afternoon sunshine to take the cast to Follina, took her aback—not on account of the schooner’s size, but because of her beauty. She was surprised too to find that a second boat was waiting to convey to the party not only the members of the orchestra but also the technical staff, who were so often forgotten.

“Very nice,” said Simonova condescendingly, walking up the gangway in trailing orange chiffon and accepting as her due the attentions of Verney’s staff, for had she not spent many summers on the Black Sea in a similar yacht owned by the Grand Duke Michael? She exclaimed ecstatically at the beauty of the river scene and firmly went below, followed by the other principals and most of the corps, to recline in the luxurious cabins with their bowls of fruit, boxes of chocolates and magazines.

“You of course will stay on deck and completely disarrange your toilette while we travel?” suggested Marie-Claude and Harriet, grinning at her friend, admitted that this was so. So she hung over the rails, watching the changing patterns of the islands which lay like jagged ribbons across the smooth, leaf-stained water, until they turned from the dark Negro into her tributary, the Maura.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “it is so light!” And the boatman standing near her with a rope coiled ready in, his hand nodded and smiled, understanding not her words but her tone.

The sails were furled now. Under engine, the Antethyst came in quietly beside the jetty—and Harriet, drawing in breath, saw what Rom had seen only in his mind’s eye the day he first glimpsed Follina: a low pink-washed, colonnaded house at the end of an avenue of blossoming blue trees—and a garden whose scents and sense of sanctuary reached out like a benison to those who came.

“The place has style,” admitted Marie-Claude, emerging immaculate and ravishing from below. “But I hope we are not expected to walk to the house.”

They were not. Three cars and a number of carriages waited to take them the half-mile to Verney’s front door. Simonova, Maximov and Dubrov swept into the first of these; Kaufmann, the choleric conductor of the orchestra, got into the second; the others followed.

“I shall walk,” said Harriet.

“In this heat?” Even the easygoing Kirstin was shocked.