“Yes, Joey Rosenbaum’s certainly the dearest of dears, but so’s his wife really, and then that would mean another case, and how expensive things are getting.… I owe Reville thousands as it is.… Oh, Gav,” she coaxed, “would you mind mon petit du Val? He’s so nice at ordering a dinner—oh, you’d love him.”
Curzon was opening the door.
“Justement comme vous voulez, ma chérie,” said Gav with courtly grace as, arm-in-arm, they went up the steps.
Home again!
The first week of Gaveston’s vacation disappeared in a long whirl of consultations with dressmakers, lawyers, furriers and beauty specialists, on his mother’s behalf, and, on his own, in visits to the photographer and tailor. (There was only one Hugh Cecil and Willy Clarkson, wasn’t there?) Indeed, he hardly found time to have his things packed up (they were leaving Half Moon Street, of course) or even to arrange the flowers of a morning. And then, once again, he found himself at that fateful Paddington, seeing his mother off to Bournemouth, after the successful pronouncement of the decree, her grey eyes shining with a new happiness. And suddenly he felt a terrible loneliness.
“But I shall only be away three or four weeks, Gav dear,” she had said. “And I’m always as happy as a bird with Cousin Adolpha——”
“As a mocking-bird?” Gav had queried laughingly to mask his bitter disappointment at missing for the first time his mother’s companionship at the festive season.
But he had promised to be a good boy, and to treat his dear Uncle Wilkinson with tact.
“You’ve such a lot,” she said wistfully, “and anyway it will be nice for you living in the[6] Albany this cold weather. It was sweet of him to ask you to stay with him for your holidays.”