Danse de la Folie (7 page)

The other two saw her pose, her fingers touching her chin in
a gesture of sudden inspiration. “Where are my wits? I was just put in mind of
a question. My father would think me shamefully remiss if I did not ask how
does your cousin Mr. Devereaux? We were introduced at the Castlereaghs’ ball,
and I have heard Papa say time out of mind that they belong to the same club.”

Clarissa said, “I believe he is quite well, thank you.”

Lucretia gave Clarissa a dimpled smile. “Pray convey my
mother’s compliments, of course. That would be only proper. It has been most
diverting to meet you
here
, Miss
Harlowe.” Lucretia turned to Kitty. “My dear, I know I may rely on you to
convey my best to your brothers.” Miss Bouldeston curtseyed and departed,
leaving a trace of pleasant French scent, and a sense of general constraint.

“How many duels are fought in a year?”

During luncheon, the weather cleared, giving the young
ladies a desire to take an airing in the garden. Both were well wrapped up,
Clarissa wearing a bonnet that had probably belonged to Kitty’s mother,.

The question came as such a surprise that Clarissa almost
laughed. She recollected the novel that Kitty was writing, and turned her head
to hide any trace of smile before saying, “None, I am afraid. That is, if there
are, news of such things would not reach my ears.”

“But if there
had
been, I suppose your brother must have told you?” Kitty sighed. “I am afraid
that modern times are dull. How exciting it must have been in our grandmothers’
day!”

“Exciting, perhaps. Uncomfortable, if half the stories are
true,” Clarissa said. “I for one should have hated wearing a wig quite as large
as a chair upon my head, and a skirt wider than a doorway. And as for duels,
how very distressing to see one’s brother carried home with a sword-wound,
following a foolish quarrel over cards or some such trifle.”

Kitty’s enthusiastic expression showed how thoroughly she
disagreed. “How affecting it would have been, your lover brought to your door
dead from the dueling field. You would swear to seek vengeance, even if it took
twenty years, and you would die an old maid, brokenhearted.”

“I do not think that young men were brought anywhere but to
their homes.”

This caveat was dismissed with a wave of Kitty’s hand. “One’s
husband, then. Or better, a cold and loathsome duke whom your family forced you
to marry.” Kitty gazed across the snow-stippled, truncated rose bushes, to the
white-rimmed low slate wall bordering the far side of the garden. Her
expression was rapt. “Cruel... Sinister... Though, of course, impeccable in
taste and quite handsome in appearance...” She tipped her head, the old-fashioned
bonnet framing her lovely face. “So his death would set one free. Only one
might not wish to avenge him, if he was so cruel and cold. And here’s another
thing. Seeking vengeance might be very well in its way, but I think upon
reflection it would be better to forgo it then to be honor-bound to spend the
rest of one’s days as an old maid. No, as a widow.”

Clarissa made a polite noise, not quite agreement, which
Kitty—wrapped in romantic imaginings—took as enthusiastic corroboration.

She heaved a great sigh. “But unless the Squire’s son alters
a great deal, or some wealthy and mysterious nobleman chooses this area to rusticate
in total anonymity, while looking for a bride, I am not likely to meet with
much in the way of romance. But
you
cannot escape it, in London.” She turned to Clarissa. “The balls, parties,
everything one needs to aid one falling violently,
hopelessly
, in love.”

“I do not see the appeal in hopelessness.” Clarissa said
apologetically. “I am afraid one sees more of vanity and ambition and
calculation, and boredom, than love.”

“Is that true? How horrid!”

“Perhaps I may be mistaken,” Clarissa hastened to say.
“Perhaps one only hears more of those things. Gossip, I have discovered, is seldom
spread about people who find happiness or contentment.”

“Then I shall imagine romance for my book,” Kitty said. “One
wants a story full of love, if it is difficult to find in the way of life.
Which I can corroborate,” she added in a low voice, almost under her breath.
“In my circumstances.”

Clarissa looked away, over the bare tree tops beyond the
wall. “Laying aside the disagreeable topic of fortune hunters of either sex, as
far as I am able to determine, a hopeless passion would make one miserable. As well
as every creature around one. And a violent attachment must be doubly tiresome
to everyone else.”

“Tiresome!” Kitty exclaimed, aghast. “Forgive me, Clarissa,
but you sound as if you are an enemy to romance. Is this true?”

Clarissa had, from her first introduction into society,
observed the feminine wiles cast out to attach her cousin, and last year the
desperate ruses young gentlemen employed to catch the eye of her eldest
half-sister, Hetty. She had also been the sympathetic auditor of her half-sister
uttering threadbare phrases about eternal passions and tragical despair, but until
now nobody had ever asked what she thought.

She had a horror of sounding impertinent, or snubbing, which
would be worse. “That is not precisely what I meant. But if one has
expectations, or scruples, and the gentlemen to whom one is introduced do not
meet those expectations, for whatever good reasons they might have, one might
slowly come to believe that the single life is not so very bad a thing.”

“Then you are not an enemy to romance?” Kitty swung around
to face her.

“Seeking romance appears to me to be another term for
hankering after the impossible. For example, in my situation, the offers—and
there were only three—that I have turned down were not because the gentlemen did
not resemble the hero of a novel
,
but
because upon consideration I thought I might be happier at home.”

Kitty nibbled on the tip of her gloved finger.

Remembering Hetty’s episodes of high drama the year
previous, before she was at last successfully married, Clarissa could not help
but add, “Would you wish to share a parlor with one of those heroines when she
is prating and prosing forever about love, fainting over every couch in sight,
and exclaiming in loud accents that she is about to expire?”

“There is but one answer to be made to that. One
must
be the heroine,” Kitty stated
triumphantly.

“Then you must tell me about your heroine,” Clarissa said,
smiling.

Kitty’s eyelids flashed up with pleasure, her eyes glowing an
arresting greenish shade in the weak wintry sunlight. “It is difficult to know
how to begin. It is about a beautiful orphan named Andromeda, who it turns out
in the end, is quite high-born. In the beginning, when she is but an infant,
she is deposited in a basket by a mysterious woman veiled in black, but with
fragile hands and a great diamond on her ring finger, and when an orphan meets
a mysterious Duke—”

To Clarissa’s consternation, Kitty went on to describe a
plot that sounded very like
Evelina
,
mixed up a little with
Sir Charles
Grandison
.

Before they’d proceeded to volume two, there came a welcome
interruption. “Kit!” Edward hailed across the garden.

“Bother,” Kitty whispered, without heat. “Ned? We are here.”

Edward pushed impatiently through the shrubbery, his round
face beaming with a broad smile. “Mrs. Finn said I should find you here.”

He crossed the garden at a lope, marring the clean white
snow with footprints. The marquess appeared a few steps behind his brother, and
joined the group in motion toward the house.

“Ned, Carl, how did you do? Anything?” Kitty clapped her
hands.

“Ah,” Edward exclaimed. “Found ourselves run aground.” And
at his sister’s start, “Ah, so to speak. Talkerton was out nosing about the
cutter, and clap me up for a fool if we didn’t have to lie up in a dashed snowdrift
for an hour until he finally stopped poking about. I thought I would catch my
death for certain.”

Kitty turned wonderingly from one brother to the other as
they approached the doors. The marquess’s eyes narrowed, his mouth pressed in a
line. “If that fellow had not had the happy thought of seeking employment as a
tidesman, he would have done well to go to London and work in Bow Street. I am
come to the conclusion that we would be wise to put an end to our careers in
free trading.”

Edward crowed with laughter. “Listen to old sobersides. That
isn’t what you said when we left this morning.”

The marquess looked away as he gave a soft, embarrassed
laugh. “I was angry then. I must admit I would gain an inordinate amount of
satisfaction were we to land a thumping great cargo. But the man should not be
faulted for doing a better job at catching smugglers then we are doing at being
smugglers.” He opened the door to let the ladies passed inside.

Edward stripped off his muffler and roquelaure, then flung
his cumbersome load of winter gear onto a chair. “I still think, if we both
confront that rascally Dobbs...”

“I think we had better give it up.” The marquess laid his
greatcoat over the back of a chair and stretched his hands out to the fire.

“But Carl—”

At this point the marquess glanced significantly at their
guest, who had moved to the window to stare silently out, as if she heard no
part of a conversation she knew did not include her.

The marquess dropped his voice. “We will come about, Ned,
but there is no need to bore our guest with our affairs.”

Kitty danced forward. “Oh, Clarissa is discreet,” she said
blithely. “Besides, my novel may take, you know.”

“I have it,” Edward cried. “I will go to London with Kit,
and look out an heiress. Miss Harlowe, you know Town, are you acquainted with
any beautiful heiresses?”

“Pray do not be absurd, Ned,” Kitty declared in disgust. “As
if any papa would permit his daughter to marry a nineteen-year-old boy who did
not also come with a fortune. And how should
I
come to London anyway? Sooner the moon.”

Edward turned in surprise to face his brother. “You didn’t
tell her?”

“When, pray, have I had time?” St. Tarval demanded in
exasperation. “Kit, we were coming up the River Road just past the Abbey, when
we encountered Lucretia. She said she had called. But she did not speak to you?”

Kitty said somewhat stiffly, “She told us about her plans
for the Season, and also said she was to leave soon.”

The marquess said, “I do not claim to understand the ins and
outs of female etiquette, so perhaps Lady Bouldeston required her to speak the
invitation through me. The long and the short of it is that Sir Henry and Lady
Bouldeston have kindly invited you to ride to town with them, to spend the two
weeks before Easter with Lucretia in Mount Street.”

Kitty’s cheeks reddened, and not from approbation, Clarissa
saw.

Clarissa gazed in consternation. No doubt Miss Bouldeston
had meant her gesture kindly; from the expectation in the St. Tarval brothers’
countenances, it was clear that they regarded the invitation as a generous one.
But Lord Edward had clearly never been to London during the Season, and
Clarissa suspected that if the marquess had, it was not for very long. Being invited
for the two weeks before the Season would be very like being invited to watch a
family get ready to host a dinner. There would be the bustle of getting
dressed, and looking at the finely set dinner table... and then? Just as the
door was to be opened to the first guest, one would be expected to return home.

But
Kitty
knew it.

Clarissa heard her own voice before she was aware of
speaking. “Alas, as it happens, your sister has already accepted my invitation
to accompany me to London as my guest.”

The brilliant look of gratitude Kitty cast Clarissa must be
her reward, for as soon as the words were out, Clarissa felt the inevitable
reaction of dismay engendered by a reflection on what her family might say.

St. Tarval did not miss Kitty’s look, Clarissa was certain,
but he only bowed and said politely, “Then no more must be said, beyond you should
send an answer to the Bouldestons, and thank them for their kindness.”

Kitty exclaimed, “So I shall, and you may be certain that I’ll
say everything that is proper.” She bit her lip, then turned to Clarissa. “Perhaps
we should leave my brothers to their luncheon. Should you like to step up to my
bedchamber with me?”

Clarissa bowed slightly to the gentleman, and passed through
the door, wondering at her own motivation. She, who so rarely gave in to
impulse! And this was no small thing. For a short time she wished she could
take the words back, as she considered what her aunt would say, but then Kitty
shut the door, and turned to Clarissa, gripping her fingers tightly.

“I thank you for speaking up as you did,” she began in a low
voice, for she’d seen the contraction of Clarissa’s brows, the flicker of
dismay hard on the astonishing invitation. “They did not understand how horrid
it would be... well, it’s of no consequence. But of course you did not mean it,
and we can forget it. I can tell my brother something—”

Clarissa understood a part of her motivation. She had wished
to see surprise, even gratification in the marquess’s face. But instead, she’d
seen it in Kitty’s.

She must not fail Kitty now.

“I should have liked to invite you anyway,” Clarissa spoke
as soon as Kitty paused to draw breath. She smiled. “It is little enough return
for your kind rescue. My father loves order, and I should have wished to write
home first. But truly, after a small bustle, there will be no difficulty. My
step-mother is kindness herself, and you will adore my sisters. Everybody does.”

“Oh!” Kitty clapped in excitement, and her eyes filled with
tears. “Oh, thank you.” She dashed her hand impatiently at the tears. “I have
never been anywhere, other than a single disastrous visit to Tunbridge Wells.
This
time, I intend to be properly
prepared. If you would be so good as to come up with me, and help me go through
my mother’s gowns, and choose out what is suitable to be made over?”