The Penderwicks at Last Read online

  “How about it, Alice?” said Ben. “Should we throw ourselves in her path and pretend to be mortally wounded?”

  Alice fell to the ground, writhing in pain, then abruptly became quite dead. “Like that?”

  “Outstanding. Why can’t you die that well, Lydia?”

  “I’m sure Lydia is good at dying,” said Alice.

  “No, Ben’s right. I’m terrible at dying.”

  Jane clapped her hands for attention. “We need to take this seriously, folks. Mrs. Tifton is due in fifteen minutes, and Lydia and I have to be prepared. Everyone else, go away. Lydia, take off your shoes. No tracking dirt into the apartment. We’ll work on your bridesmaid dress while we wait.”

  Lydia took off her shoes, and also checked the bottom of her feet—earlier she and Alice had dangled their feet in the lily pond. She wouldn’t want to track bits of lily pad into the apartment Jane had worked so hard to whip into shape.

  The place truly had been transformed.

  “I didn’t know you could be so tidy,” she told Jane.

  “Neither did I.” Jane pushed a chair an inch to the left to square it up with the table. “And I doubt I’ll ever be able to do it again. The fear of Mrs. Tifton turned me into a cleaning machine.”

  Most impressive was the gown production area. Jane’s sewing machine was on a table, and an ironing board and iron were close by, as were the carefully stacked boxes used to store and transport the half-finished gowns. In the corner were two dress dummies, headless beings that had frightened Lydia when she was little. Now, though, she was used to them and had often danced with them as unwitting partners. The taller of the two was wearing Skye’s bridesmaid dress, finished but for hemming. The other, rounder dummy was wearing the top of Jane’s dress—the fabric that would become the skirt was still in its box. Jane didn’t need dress dummies for Lydia, Batty, or Rosalind. Lydia could be her own dress dummy, and Batty could be both her own and Rosalind’s—they were the same size and shape, except for the hotly disputed quarter inch each claimed was hers.

  “Let’s pin your dress onto you, and see how it fits so far,” said Jane. “That will make us seem relaxed and blasé when Mrs. Tifton gets here.”

  “I’m never relaxed when I’m being dress dummy.” Lydia had experience—it was like playing statues while someone comes at you with sharp objects.

  “I’ll be careful,” said Jane. “Minimal scratching.”

  Lydia gave in without more fuss. She loved the dress too much to care about a little pain. Like the other three bridesmaids’ dresses, it was a shorter version of Rosalind’s pale ivory bridal gown; all of them had skirts of cascading layers of voile, and silk sashes around the high waists. Rosalind’s sash would be ivory, and her sisters’ would be soft colors—aquamarine for Skye, violet-blue for Jane, dusky rose for Batty, and copper for Lydia. Lydia thought hers the prettiest.

  The first scratch came while Jane was pulling the dress over Lydia’s head.

  “Jane! That didn’t feel minimal.”

  “Sorry. You have to stand really still. No dancing.”

  “I wasn’t dancing. I was only thinking about it.” The dress would be wonderful for dancing, light and swirling, the sash blowing behind her—Lydia could see it all in slow motion. “Ouch! Worse that time.”

  “Are you bleeding? I don’t want to get blood on the dress.”

  “Not yet. Maybe we should stop before that happens.”

  “A short break might be good. But don’t move—the pins in the bodice could scratch you.” Jane sat on her hands to stop them from shaking. “Do you mind if I practice talking to Mrs. Tifton?”

  “Go ahead. I’ll be her.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Tifton, so nice to see you again—it’s certainly been a long time, ha-ha-ha.” Jane stopped. “Does my laughter sound fake?”

  “Are you asking me or Mrs. Tifton?”

  “You!”

  “Then it sounds fake.”

  “I’ll try again. Ha-ha-ha.” Jane looked to Lydia, who assumed she was still supposed to be Lydia, so nodded her encouragement. “Lydia tells me you’d like to know when your first ex-husband, Alec—no, no, I decided not to say ‘first’—when your ex-husband Alec, Jeffrey’s dad—”

  “You should leave out that part, too. She knows Alec is Jeffrey’s dad.”

  “—when your ex-husband Alec is arriving at Arundel, which I’m not completely sure about, but maybe I should tell a lie. I’ll say tomorrow because then maybe you’ll go back to New York City to avoid seeing him.”

  “How dare you!” said Lydia angrily.

  “What?”

  “I was being Mrs. Tifton.”

  Jane put her face in her hands. “I can’t do this, Lyds.”

  “Talk about your book, then.” Talking about writing always made Jane happy.

  “Good idea. My book. You already know it’s about a detective hunting a time-traveling art forger.”

  “Do you know how the time traveling works yet?” When Jane had last talked about the time travel, she hadn’t figured out the rules. Lydia was anxious to hear when she did, hoping to find the tiniest grain of possibility in them. “Didn’t Skye tell you Stephen Hawking could help?”

  “And who would help me with Hawking? No, I’m still working on that. But I have changed the name of my detective. She’s now Philippa Nel. Do you like it?”

  “Philippa! Jane, but that sounds sort of like my name—same number of syllables and with an a at the end. Why can’t you call her Lydia Nel?”

  “Because I’d be thinking about you instead of her.”

  “What’s wrong with thinking about—?” Lydia stopped when she heard a car door slam outside the carriage house. “I think she’s here, Jane.”

  “Stay calm! Be casual!” Jane grabbed another handful of pins. “I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing we’re waiting for her.”

  “OUCH!” Jane’s aim had been way off. The pin went into Lydia’s arm, and was more like a stab than a prick. “I think I am bleeding now.”

  Jane found a scrap of fabric to use for dabbing at Lydia’s blood. But then Mrs. Tifton was knocking on the door, and Lydia was left to tend her own wound while Jane ushered the enemy inside and rolled out her prepared speech.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Tifton, so nice to see you again—it’s certainly been a long time.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Tifton had cut off Jane’s ha-ha-ha before it even began. Lydia thought this was probably a good thing.

  She was learning to read the woman’s moods. On a scale of one to five pickles, Mrs. Tifton was now at about two and a half. Lydia was torn between trying to take her down a pickle or so and trying to dispel the notion that Mrs. Tifton thought her less difficult than the other Penderwicks. She settled for a tone somewhere between polite dignity and cautious friendliness, and also dropped the bloody scrap of fabric on the floor.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Tifton. Isn’t my bridesmaid dress gorgeous? Jane’s making it.”

  “Hmm.” Mrs. Tifton inspected the dress carefully, lingering over the narrow tucks in the bodice, which Lydia knew were perfect.

  “She’s making all the bridesmaids’ dresses, and Rosalind’s gown, too.”

  “Even the veil?”

  “Rosy isn’t wearing a veil.”

  “A veil is so pretty on a bride.” Mrs. Tifton had lost a pickle over the narrow tucks, but her look of disapproval at this etiquette faux pas was almost as unnerving. “Where will the ceremony be held?”

  Lydia remembered her sisters’ having this discussion. Rosalind wanted an outdoor ceremony, and also didn’t want it to be near any spot where Mrs. Tifton had ever gotten married. They’d consulted with Jeffrey, and found that only two of her weddings had been at Arundel, one in the large front hall and one on the veranda.

  “The Greek pavilion
,” said Jane.

  Mrs. Tifton seemed to be trying to find a reason to criticize this decision but came up only with weather. “It could rain that day.”

  Jane had been hovering, waiting for a break in the conversation that would let her give the rest of her speech. But she couldn’t let the threat of rain go unchallenged.

  “The long-range forecast is good,” said Jane.

  “Perhaps.” Mrs. Tifton looked capable of summoning thunderstorms for Rosalind’s wedding.

  And Jane looked capable of bopping their guest on the head. “Can I get you something, Mrs. Tifton? Tea, coffee, water, lemonade?”

  “Don’t bother. I won’t be staying long.” Mrs. Tifton sat gingerly on the edge of the couch. “I suppose your sister has already chosen a caterer. If not, I could recommend—well, one or two of the less expensive ones.”

  “We’re not having a caterer,” said Lydia. “Rosalind, my parents, and the Geigers have been cooking ahead and freezing a lot of the food, and a bunch of Rosy’s friends are making cakes.”

  “It sounds—rustic.” Mrs. Tifton closed her eyes briefly to block out the image of un-catered food.

  “Rustic.” Jane made a rude face at Lydia, who managed not to laugh. At least Jane seemed to be getting over her nerves. “Yes, that sounds right.”

  “Well, Jane,” said Mrs. Tifton. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

  “No, I understand completely. I do.” Here, finally, was Jane’s chance to go on with her speech. “Lydia tells me you’d like to know when your ex-husband Alec is arriving at Arundel. I don’t know the exact day, but it should be sometime next week, because he’s going to help Jeffrey with the wedding band.”

  “And they’re professionals, you know.” Lydia didn’t want Mrs. Tifton to label the band as rustic, too.

  Mrs. Tifton waved away the subject of the wedding band as not worthy of her notice. “It’s distressing to have one’s ex-husband visiting one’s own house for a wedding to which one hasn’t been invited.”

  While Lydia was trying to sort through that sentence, Jane said, “Yes, that’s reasonable.”

  “I’m always reasonable,” replied Mrs. Tifton.

  “On the other hand,” said Jane slowly, working it out as she went. “It is a wedding that one wouldn’t want to attend…oneself.”

  Lydia was now completely lost. “Jane, who is ‘one’?”

  “I believe she thinks I am ‘one,’ ” said Mrs. Tifton.

  “Oh.” Lydia made an attempt at clarity. “So Jane is saying you wouldn’t want to come to Rosy’s wedding even if you were invited. Is that true?”

  Jane was making more rude faces at Lydia—signaling that she should stop talking immediately and possibly forever, but it was Mrs. Tifton who answered.

  “No, Lydia, I do not want to be invited to your sister’s wedding. However, thank you for your kind offer, and now, why don’t you go outside while your sister and I have a grown-up discussion?”

  “I can’t move. I’m pinned into this dress.” It was obvious that Mrs. Tifton was about to explain the real reason for her visit—Lydia didn’t want to miss that.

  “You can change out of the dress. I’ll wait.”

  “Mrs. Tifton,” said Jane. “I don’t want to hear anything you can’t say in front of Lydia.”

  “Even if it’s about Jeffrey’s financial prospects?”

  Lydia would have liked to ask about “financial prospects,” which confused her even more than all those “ones” had. But the look on her sister’s face—a tight smile barely disguising an angry grimace—convinced her that the time for casual questions was past.

  “Mrs. Tifton, I hope you’re joking,” said Jane. “Jeffrey tells us what he wants us to know. Anything else is none of our business.”

  “I never joke about serious matters.”

  Lydia could well believe that. She’d seen no evidence that Mrs. Tifton could joke about anything. She also believed that this conversation was going badly. Mrs. Tifton was quickly closing in on three pickles, and Jane’s grimace had given up any pretense of being a smile.

  Mrs. Tifton went on. “And Jeffrey can’t tell you everything because he doesn’t know everything.”

  “Making it even less of our business. I won’t listen.” Jane picked up her pins again, and Lydia braced herself for more stabbing.

  “Jane, you’ve made this your business by being here at Arundel, as would any young woman who might want to marry Jeffrey.”

  A young woman who wanted to marry Jeffrey! Lydia vaulted out of confusion and into mental pandemonium. She knew that Jeffrey had fallen in love a few times in Germany, but she’d heard no rumors of marriage. There had been Barbara and Anke, and, the most recent one, a French horn player—Sigrid.

  “Does Sigrid want to marry Jeffrey?” She directed her question at both Jane and Mrs. Tifton, hoping one of them would explain what was going on.

  Neither did, or said anything at all, but Jane put her pins back down. Her nervousness had vanished altogether, burnt up by outrage—she was ready for battle. An angry Jane was rare, and Lydia wished more than ever that she hadn’t lost the thread of this conversation.

  “Mrs. Tifton,” said Jane, “it turns out you were right that Lydia shouldn’t hear this. Sweetie, go into the bathroom and shut the door.”

  Lydia thought it unfair to be forced to leave before anything was properly explained. But she never argued with a battle-ready Jane, and the getting-scratched excuse was removed when Jane pulled out the most lethal of the pins.

  “Into the bathroom, Lyds,” said Jane. “I mean it.”

  Lydia went, and shut the door behind her.

  While she was too honorable to eavesdrop on the conversation in the other room, she also made no attempt not to listen. But Jane and Mrs. Tifton were conducting their argument—if that’s what it was—in low tones, and Lydia got none of it. She wandered over to the bathroom window and spotted Ben taking his protection job seriously, standing tall like a sentry awaiting the arrival of the enemy at dawn. Alice was a few feet away, doing exactly the same thing, and now Ben was barking orders at her and they both bent over laughing. If Lydia weren’t still in her bridesmaid dress, she would have crawled out the window to join them.

  When at last Jane opened the bathroom door, it wasn’t to let Lydia exit but to let herself enter, turn on the cold water in the sink, and stick her head under it. Lydia backed away, not willing to have water splashed on her dress, and waited for Jane to come up for air. When she became worried that Jane might be drowning, she turned off the water.

  “A towel, please,” said Jane.

  Lydia handed her a towel. “What happened? What did she want to tell you?”

  Jane wrapped the towel around her hair, but not before water streamed down onto her clothes.

  “Now you’re soaked,” said Lydia.

  “That’s the point, to wash away my anger.” Jane rubbed her hair vigorously. “How can Jeffrey be who he is when his mother is such an arrogant fool?”

  “Please tell me what she said, Jane.”

  “She said she’s aware that Skye and I are plotting to marry Jeffrey for his money, and that we should stop doing so. One, because he was promised years ago to Mrs. Robinette’s daughter Marlene, and two, because she—Mrs. Tifton, not Marlene—will disinherit him if he marries a Penderwick.”

  Lydia sat down on the edge of the tub. This certainly was a day for decoding peculiar statements.

  “She thinks you and Skye both want to marry him? Like, at the same time?”

  “That wasn’t clear, but I got the idea she wouldn’t put it past us.”

  “And if you do, she’ll take away Arundel?”

  “She can’t, but when she gave it to him, she put only enough money in trust to take care of the estate for a while. If she disinherits him
, the money’s gone, and he’d have to sell. And I don’t know if he would care—the point is, she thinks that we care, and only want to marry him for his money.”

  “But none of us wants to marry him for any reason. You told her that, right?”

  Jane applied the towel to her face and mumbled something unintelligible through it.

  “What?” asked Lydia.

  “No, I didn’t tell her that. She wanted me to swear to it, which was beneath me as a woman, and a Penderwick.”

  That made sense to Lydia, but if she’d been there, she would have taken the easier way forward and simply told Mrs. Tifton that no one wanted to marry Jeffrey. Unless Jane had an ultra-secret love for Jeffrey, hidden so deep in her soul that even she barely understood it.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to marry him, right?”

  “Yes, of course I’m sure. A thousand times sure.”

  “And Skye and Dušek are really happy—”

  “Yes, they are,” said Jane firmly.

  “Then why—?”

  “It’s a matter of principle, Lyds. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Lydia knew Jane had lots of principles.

  “Thank you,” said Jane. “Now I need to tell Batty, then everyone else. Any message for Dad and Iantha when I call them?”

  “Tell them I’m not even a little homesick. Can you get me out of this dress?”

  “Yes, and then you go find Alice and forget about this nonsense.”

  LYDIA WAS RAPTUROUS TO be free of pins and back into clothes she could get dirty. “Freedom from pins” would be a good motto, she thought, dancing to the glory of summer sun and fresh air, and making her way to where Ben and Alice were playing sentry.

  “Mrs. Tifton’s gone,” she said. “She thinks Jane and Skye want to marry Jeffrey for his money, and says that if any Penderwicks do, she’ll disinherit him.”

  “She’s always threatening to disinherit Jeffrey, and he always does what he wants anyway,” said Alice. “Did she also say that Jeffrey’s going to marry Marlene Robinette? She loves talking about that as much as about disinheriting him.”