Elisabeth Fairchild (3 page)

“Do you think you could still manage it?”

Was it skepticism that glittered in his eyes? It was difficult to tell behind the mask.

She drew the domino demurely about her and dipped a formal curtsy. “Now that I am the hoyden no more?”

His brows rose. His mouth took a displeased downward turn. “Surely hoyden is too strong a term? I would have said now that you are so much the lady.”

She laughed, unwilling to be serious this evening, this wonderful, forbidden evening. “Fooled you, have I? I shall tell Mama you said as much. She values your opinion.” She slid a mischievous glance his way. “As for the tree, I am sure I could scramble into it, given a boost.”

He laughed aloud, a true laugh, not the anemic chuckle he had given before. This heartfelt noise made her laugh as well. It was not often she could make Richard laugh. He had always been harder to amuse than Pip, who laughed at everything. The whole world seemed made for no more reason than to amuse Pip.

“I should be happy to oblige,” Richard said as he handed several shillings to the gatekeeper and pocketed their tickets. She might have thought he was flirting with her most outrageously had he been any other young man, but this was Richard—staid, reliable Richard. He would never say anything the least bit suggestive or off-color.

They stepped through the portal into a vista of broad walkways and trees, the walkways crowded with gaily dressed visitors. And along the walkway, through the tree branches, ran strings of lamps that, even as she watched, sprang to glowing life all at once, twinkling like a thousand fairies, wings aflutter, illuminating a curving row of painted dinner boxes to their left, a stilted pavilion to their right further illuminated by oil lamps on posts.

An orchestra sat in staggered rows above the mill of the crowd, white wigged and black coated, tricornered hats perched amidst carefully powdered curls. Brass horns caught the light, sounding a fanfare. Chins were propped upon gleaming wood; dark elbows took pointed position, jerking in unison as the violinists drew plaintive wails by dip and saw of the bow.

Music swept toward them, sweet and lively. It made her long to dance, and as she was not one to deny herself, especially standing in a place she ought not to have come to, wearing a mask that hid her identity from all who might disapprove, she caught up both Richard’s hands and whirled him about in time with the music, the red domino belling about both of them.

“Patience,” he chided gently. “You make a spectacle of yourself.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But as I am masked, no one knows except you.” She pinched his cheek, hoping to provoke a smile, and when he did not soften threw her head back to take it all in, mouth falling open on a sigh. “This is splendid!”

Richard took her hand and pulled her out of the way of a loud group of revelers who followed them through the gate. “Actually, it is rather tawdry, but I am glad if it makes you happy.” He gave her fingers a brotherly squeeze.

“Deliriously so.” She beamed at him, and knew this night was to be all and more than she had imagined.

Someone bumped her elbow as they passed. She clutched Richard’s fingers a little tighter and leaned into his arm, remembering his warning of pickpockets.

“I am pleased to hear you say so,” he said earnestly, and gave the corner of her mask a tweak. “You have seemed a trifle despondent these past few weeks.”

She could not tell him it was all Pip’s fault, that she had fallen into a bit of a pet because he made no effort to call on her. Pip, whom she had been most curious of all to see again, especially after his name was mentioned by several of their guests, and always in such interesting terms, and always in connection with the name of Sophie Defoe, beautiful, wealthy, well-liked Sophie Defoe.

Her nemesis. The woman who had stolen her future.

Dear Richard gazed down at her, rather striking, even a little mysterious in black domino and tall, black beaver hat. His eyes were too dark behind his mask to read, but she heard concern in the question: “Are you melancholy, Patience?”

“Me? Melancholy? Don’t be silly.” She flapped her hand at him and made every effort not to let her true feelings show in response to such a delving question. Was she still as transparent as a child? How did he read her so accurately, even in the midst of a public display of giddy glee? No one else did. She had become quite artful at hiding her feelings and schooling her features.

“Now”—she lifted her chin as she drew her domino about her like a satin shield—“however shall we find him in such a crush?”

Richard’s mouth pulled down a little at the corners as he turned to scan the dinner boxes, dozens of them, one after another, fronted by white columns, the crenellated roofline sweeping ahead of them through a low grove of trees. Each box was painted with allegorical figures or striking scenes from well-known plays, each contained a linen-draped table. Richard’s mouth always quirked in just such a fashion when he was tired or disappointed.

She wondered if such a look had anything to do with Chase. She had overheard her mother complain to father, “Poor Richard will soon go begging, if that brother of his continues to throw good money after bad.”

Surely things were not as bad as all that! Richard dressed well, and his brother’s coach, while not of the latest fashion, was richly appointed, and drawn by a fine pair of horses.

“Never fear,” Richard said, and indeed, Patience could see no sign of fear in her friend’s steady gaze. “I know exactly where Pip will be. But have you no wish to see the beauties of the park first before we chase down the scamp? There is a transparency of a mill, and the tin cascade, and a gilded Aurora, and two Apollos. The light is just right to enjoy all of it.”

She shook her head and tucked her hand more completely into the crook of his arm, then adjusted her mask that she might see better. “No, no. If you please, dearest Richard, take me straight to our Pip,” she said. “It is too many years since we have said a word to one another, and I would see how he has changed. You did tell him we were in London?”

“I did.”

She looked down at her shoes, very special red-heeled shoes. She had chosen them especially to go with the domino. They had been dear, those shoes. She felt very daring in them, like the night, and the chance to see Pip. “I must own I am disappointed that he made no effort to call upon us, as you did.”

“Yes. Well . . .” Richard never seemed comfortable with compliments. “Social niceties are not Pip’s strong suit. I cannot say when he last saw fit to call upon anyone formally.”

“Has he become a mannerless brute, then?”

Richard tugged at his mask. “Not at all. It is only that his company is in such demand. Come. You shall see firsthand.”

He set off at once, as if he knew the gardens well. It was a pretty walk along the wide promenade toward the curve in the gallery of empty dinner boxes toward something that peeped above the trees, a false sun, and three false stars shining above the aged copper of the roofline, promising greater beauties. Glass-globed lamps strung through the trees underlit the leafy bowers. Music swelled from the trees to their left, strings and horns and reedy flutes.

“There is a leaden statue of Handel,” Richard said, “in the opposite direction.”

She was in no mood to turn around, to delay her first sight of Pip.

She asked him about the empty dinner boxes.

“No one eats much until after the cascade at nine,” Richard explained.

They passed a kiosk where chickens roasted on spits, and an enormous ham sliced paper-thin gleamed pinkly. The smells stirred Patience’s stomach to a most unladylike growl.

Richard tilted his head to look at her, amused. “We can, of course, make an exception. Would you care for something?”

She laughed and shook her head. “You were not supposed to hear that.”

“Hear what?” he inquired with mock innocence.

She gave her tummy a pat. “The hoyden. Now and again she tries to speak.”

“You will not say no to a Shrewsbury cake, a glass of wine or champagne?” He pulled a worn leather purse that bore his initials from his pocket. It had once been dyed bright red, his initials picked out in yellow, and yet so many times had it been shoved in and out of his pockets that almost all of the dye was worn away from the raised grape-leaf pattern that circled the initials. He jingled the purse merrily.

So enthusiastic his offer. She could not tell him she hungered for sight of Pip far more than for Shrewsbury cake. It would be impolite to refuse, however, and Richard had taught her nothing so much as the importance of manners.

She chuckled and reached for her reticule. “Sounds lovely.”

He led her to the kiosk, where a chalkboard listed available wines, port, and arrack, and bottles were stacked in great wooden cases. He refused the coins she held out to him, and would not listen to her protests that Father had given her money for just such occasions, but counted out the necessary amount with care from his sad leather purse, then tucked it away again in his pocket.

“You cosset me,” she said as they carried away their glasses, sipping and nibbling as they strolled. “It is very good of you, Richard.”

“It is nothing.” He brushed away her praise, and asked after her family, as he always did, though it had been but two days since he had seen them in person, and she would much rather speak of other topics, other persons—like Pip, whom Richard saw frequently, and yet he never seemed anxious to speak of him.

“Mother suffers occasional megrims,” she said. “I do not think she cares much for London. Too noisy, too smelly, she claims. Too much to see and do. She is ever so appreciative that you make time to show me about.” She watched him as she said it, searching for some sign that what her mother had said about Richard’s financial situation might be just as true. “Care for half of the cake?” She broke off a large bite and held the rest out to him. He had not bought a piece for himself, which she thought odd, for Richard had always loved cake.

“You do not want it?”

She nodded. “I am too excited to eat. Unlike Mama, I love London, and I am delighted there is so much to do and see.”

He polished off the confection in short order, and asked as he brushed away crumbs, “Did you finish the painting?”

The painting? He wished to speak of her paltry painting, when she would paint her eyes with sight of Pip?

“No,” she had to admit. “I am not at all happy with the water in the Serpentine.”

“Very difficult, water,” he sympathized. “For it is never just water.”

“Exactly. One must take into account all that it reflects. But beyond that, I do not think I am gifted when it comes to artistic endeavors.”

“You have only to apply yourself, and you can do anything, Patience.”

Anything but insist we go see Pip now, no more waiting, no more chitchat.

“You sound like Father,” she complained. “But I am right. You must trust me. I am very good with numbers and geography and stitching and cards, but the true arts of a lady—music, poetry, and painting—I cannot seem to conquer.”
Any more than I can close the distance between Pip and myself.

“Must you?”

Trust Richard to question the obvious. “Mama seems to think I shall never win a husband without such talents,” she said with a sad little laugh. “Or at the very least, some deep appreciation of them.”

Lord knew she would never win Pip now that he was promised.

Richard’s masked face seemed cast in even more serious lines than usual.

“Is that why you have come to London?”

“Husband hunting,” she said with a nod. “Mama hates it when I put it so bluntly, but”—she patted her tummy—“I was never one to mince words.”

The green of his eyes caught the light of an overhead lamp. “I rather like that in you. I think you will not mind too much if I am equally blunt.”

She adjusted the mask, peering at him over the rim of her glass through the eyeholes. The bubbles from the champagne tickled her nose, which made her long to laugh again, but Richard did not sound in the least amused.

“Sounds like a lecture coming.” She lifted her glass and made every effort to look back at him as seriously as he regarded her. “I would warn you, if it starts with the words, ‘You are too young for marriage,’ I will thank you to hold your tongue, my friend.”

He tugged uneasily at his neckcloth, unblinking. “You think yourself ready for marriage, then?”

Patience sighed, not at all patient with such a remark, or their dawdling pace. She wanted to see Pip. “
Some
people think I am.”

He said nothing.

“I have had offers, you know.”

He snorted his disbelief. “Who?”

Not at all flattering, his response. She sipped the last of her champagne, considering her answer, and then she lifted her chin and regarded him coyly from the corner of her eyes. “Did I not tell you?”

“No, you did not.” He frowned and took the empty glass from her hand and, shaking the dregs from it, demanded, “Who?”

“Such a worried look, Richard,” she scolded playfully, wishing to tease him. “It does not matter who, for neither of them was suitable.”

“There were two? And you only now mention it to me?”

“I did not think it would interest you terribly. They were, as I said, unsuitable.”

“No prospects?”

“One of them is quite well-to-do.”

“A rogue, then?”

She laughed. “No. That would have been far more interesting.”

His frown deepened. “What then?”

“No prospect of my ever feeling affection for them.”

“Ah. A very good reason, that.”

She expected the pucker between his brows to ease. To the contrary, it deepened.

She tugged at his arm and teased, as she had always teased away his dark looks: “I thought so, though Papa grumbled, and Mama says I throw away opportunity, that good men do not grow on trees.”

“No, but neither would they see you miserable.”

“Of course not. They wish me happiness, as they have known happiness.”

“I wish it, too,” he murmured.

“Most kind of you, Richard. I promise not to turn down any other suitors without informing you, and not to marry anyone without your wholehearted approval.”