Grace Gibson (14 page)

The much anticipated day eventually dawned, and Mary, rising early with her belly full of anticipation, felt also strangely agitated in her chest. Her white gown of pearl-beaded satin with a full lace overdress gleamed richly in the daylight. Never in her life had she seen, much less owned such a garment. The modiste in Hampton had made it from a fashion plate selected by the Marquis, who said, with a wrinkle of his nose, that it was tolerably modish and would suit a
country
assembly.

“Good gracious!” Mary cried. “Do not tell me there is anything
more
elegant in all the world!”

He only laughed at her, suggesting by his failure to reply that she was a turnip aspiring to be a rose. This affront struck home, and so she punished him during the curricle ride home with a dignified silence that lasted perhaps the length of fifteen minutes, before her tongue overtook her wounded dignity and took him to task.

“If you would oblige me, sir, you would refrain from continuing to point out that I am nothing but a daughter of the shabby-genteel. I am quite aware of who I am
not
, and I will live happily ever after without
your
continual reminders.”

He lifted one eyebrow and regarded her in a calculating way. “Mr. Fanley is a gentleman you know, and you are a gentleman’s daughter, which makes you a member of the quality, much like any other privileged girl. If you have your heart set on sinking into the mushroom class, I hate to disappoint you.” Readdressing himself to the reins, he then said, “Yes, do go ahead and sulk. I have a great deal of thinking to do myself, girl, so let us be quiet for a change.”

Recollecting this unsatisfactory exchange while making her toilette, Mary was startled by a soft knock on the door, which announced Jim. He awkwardly presented his Mistress with a small package. “From the young master.”

She was disbelieving but accepted it. When she opened the paper she found a bundle of dark red satin ribbons. Her abigail was delighted, exclaiming the shade a perfect complement to Mary’s colouring. Later, Will, looking slightly self-conscious, bore her gratitude and praise with mild annoyance.

His pleasing attention she knew had been executed at the direction of the worldly Marquis, and the effort delighted her hurt feelings. He was apologizing in the beautifully indirect manner of the very polished, and she felt if he had done it more forthrightly, bestowing a gift of his own
,
she would have utterly sunk.

With this observation, realization came. She owned rather dismally that she had fallen fatally in love with him.

Of course, he would never marry her. She was of such little consequence as to make the idea shameful to her and laughable to the world. His affection for her was that of a friend or of a brother, and she determined to take her heartache with her to bed at night, so that neither he, nor anyone else for that matter, would ever see her romantic sufferings.

This, she concluded soberly, must be the source of her unshakable foreboding. The charade would end, and with it, his lover-like interest.

Mary fortified herself by dressing for breakfast in a lovely figured muslin, banding her curls with ribbons and braids, and dabbing on a hint of perfume she had hoarded from her mother’s things.

In the breakfast parlour, her father, looking somewhat more harried than usual, was in understandable agitation at the thought of having to wear evening clothes. Will, in such high spirits as to make him impossible, was obnoxious in his teasing of her about her frippery.

One look at the Marquis of Denley told her he had fallen into one of his fatal moods.

Mary ate a little, but she did not relish it and sat mostly silent.

At last Lord Robert rallied himself with a kind of resolve. “I wonder, sir, if you would be so good as to ride to Treehill this morning?” This he addressed to Mr. Fanley. “We will want to be as far away from the to-do as possible, until the inevitable business is upon us.”

“Decidedly,” proclaimed her father. “I am obliged you have thought of it. Will you come along?” he asked his son.

“What? Ride out on
another
land survey? I would rather be bled by the physician!”

“Oh, suit yourself, then, but do not blame me when I’m long dead and these fields have all stopped paying for your amusement!” snapped Mr. Fanley in what sounded much like a distempered freak.

Mary was thus called to reluctant action. The lack of spirit in her voice made her sound utterly rational and thus, her speech was all the more effective.

“Come, Papa, we are all of us in a stew over this ball, so let us make the best of the time we have before we are thrown into it.”

Denley engaged her with a long, considering look, while Will exclaimed, with a vehemence that would suggest otherwise, “Well
I
am not in a stew! And I will take your leave, Mary. You are unbearably severe this morning. I am off to the Himmel’s, for I’ve a trifle to deliver to Miss Clara.”

Mary’s face betrayed surprise. “That is very gentlemanlike of you. I’m sure she will honour it. I trust we will all of us be better company when next we gather?” She stood and curtsied in a very general way before she sought refuge above stairs.

They did eventually gather over tea. Mary had spent a listless day addressing small concerns, having her hair washed and dried by the fire, and visiting the bureau in her mama’s room for a scrap of comfort. Her father and Lord Robert seemed on pleasant terms, no doubt finding the time had passed agreeably in the beautiful old woods and fern-covered copses of Treehill. Will, having enlisted Clara for the first dance of the evening, seemed to have fallen into a rare state of calm, manly detachment.

“I cannot believe Mr. Neville did not first ask Clara,” he commented to his sister as she poured out his cup.

“He never would. The honour is yours, since your sister is to offer her support to Miss Clara in the role of the
second
debutante.”

He smiled, amiably. “Well, it is fitting. You are a little old for such a fuss, but I have always wanted you to have a come out. I would never want it said that my sister was shabbily left to moulder for want of the attention.”

Mary stiffened, but she withheld the acid reply that formed on her tongue. A single ball was enough to reconcile the lot of them to her fate! Yes, she would dance the night away and
then
she could moulder away into spinsterhood for all they cared. Lord Robert had saluted her grace in the acceptance of this undistinguished fate, while in her heart, she raged against it. But, she was made of stern material, and she then and there determined that so long as she had command of herself, Denley would never see how she bitterly regretted the confines of her life.

When the tea things were cleared away, Will suggested a walk through the shrubbery. Mr. Fanley predictably declined on the grounds that it was a thorough waste of effort. He much preferred to visit with Mr. Grantley and see to the rents. This freed the conspirators to group themselves before their final assault on Mr. Neville, though, a touch of fighting spirit had somehow gone out of them.

“Say again, sir, how we shall go on,” prompted Will. “I would not want Mary to stumble over her part for want of a proper understanding.”

“Which is to say,” Mary retorted, “that you want to again hear
your
part, lest you ruin everything.”

“If I am called to stand between the two of you for yet another passage of arms,” Lord Robert said awfully, “then you may go on by yourselves.” This prompted the siblings to mumble their readiness to be civil, and the order of events was run through.

“Will?” the Marquis asked, in the tone of a general.

“I am ready.”

Lord Robert looked piercingly at Mary.

“I can only hope I will make the scene believable,” she said quietly.

“Well, you never will if you do not come out of your low spirits,” he warned. “When the moment comes, I assure you, you will have little difficulty in showing your disgust of me.”

This struck Mary forcibly. He was asking her to be gay and merry, while at the same time threatening her affection for him. The challenge stiffened her spine. She lifted her chin, threw him a winning smile and exclaimed, “Indeed, sir, you will find me a new creature by nightfall, with Mr. Neville quite caught up in my coils.”

He cast her one of his jaunty looks of old. “Good girl, Rabbit. Now, Will, be off to see to the coach and stop by the Assembly Hall to offer your assistance as a matter of good breeding.”

Will leapt to the task, while Denley and Mary turned and slowly walked on in companionable silence. Soon he stopped her, saying casually, “I nearly forgot.” He pulled a small packet from his pocket. “This is a trifling gift for this evening. You may think it a salute to your hospitality, since you have borne with me overlong, I think.”

Her heart fluttered and her fingers fumbled with the simple string. What she found inside the wrapper, a silver necklace hung with an astonishing array of garnets, caused her to gasp.

“Robert! You cannot mean this…I could never accept it. It is too much!”

“It is the least I could do for you. And I will hear no more rubbish of propriety: you
will
wear it.”

Mary stood still, closely admiring the beauty of the piece. “Oh, I think I should not,” she said wavering. “It looks to be very fine and…” examining the clasp, “surely it is not a family heirloom?”

“I would never call a trinket an heirloom. It belonged to my mother, who was a papist, you know, making it altogether shocking and unsuitable as one of the
family
jewels.”

She protested. “Your mother? But you will want it for…” she hesitated awkwardly.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are as loud as a pie seller?” He closed her hand firmly around the offending necklace. “Now, hush and be still, woman. Have I not instructed you on how a lady should go on?”

She swallowed hard, for she could not help feeling that his rough and commanding treatment hid affection that was as a balm to her soul. Above compliments and kind words, she held these moments like treasures in her heart.

“Lofty now,” he directed.

Mary lifted her chin and looked pleasantly down the bridge of her nose to a point near his right temple.

“La!” she said lightly. “It is a comely frippery, my lord. I will certainly wear it if it looks well enough with my gown.” She curtsied with a hint of insolence and he bowed over her hand with a look of unbridled chagrin.

“Like a lady,” he growled. “You are not yet the Queen of England, my girl.”

They were on good terms again! Mary felt sure she would carry the ball, feeling as if she
were
the Queen of England. The Marquis of Denley would squire her and cajole her, and she would laugh and dance. There would be no tomorrow.

She hummed merrily as all three of the upstairs maids worked on her like she was the queen bee in the hive. There was so much to don: her silken small clothes with infinitely small buttons, stays and ties; stockings from Paris, satin shoes with silver studded heels; and oceans of lace and satin. Her garnet-coloured ribbons set off the velvety lustre of the garnets in her necklace. She looked the perfect lady. Twice Will shouted up the stairs for her to be done with her ablutions and leave off her primping, and twice she sent word that if he continued to disturb her, she would
never
be ready.

When she came down, her brother, who was prepared to lambast her upon her eventual arrival in the parlour, stood arrested by the mantelpiece in a dead gape, uttering, “Mary?” in the dazzled tone of an unbeliever.

“Well, who else would it be?” Mr. Fanley clucked. “You look very fine, Mary. Come though, let us go. I am anxious to leave, the sooner to be home again. You have kept us disagreeably on our heels.”

The well-worn Greenly carriage lumbered on to the assembly rooms in Hampton, with the Fanleys comfortably arranged inside and the Marquis of Denley on Caesar as they had agreed. Upon hearing that Denley planned to arrive at a formal party in silk trousers on horseback, Will expressed his opinion decidedly against it. He thought it abominably countrified. But Lord Robert laughed openly at him. “Egad, Will, you are too nice. We are not taking Mary to the Palace, you know. It is a
country
assembly.”

But the Himmels had taken great pains to make the affair as elegant as possible, and with Mr. Fanley demanding to pay for the dinner and the musicians as his part on his daughter’s behalf in the business, they had gone their length to see a shocking number of candles lit, a forest of ferns and flowers, and a high polish on the largest room in the East Riding. This unaccustomed opulence cast Clara Himmel into a kind of despair. She greeted Mary with a faint cry of relief. “Oh, Mary, I fear I may collapse from the embarrassment.” She pressed her small white hands against, her pale, porcelain cheeks. “Whatever would I do if you were not with me?”

Mary’s own cheeks were aflame with excitement, but she was used to reassuring everyone. She took Clara under her older, more worldly wing. “This is no time to be a shrinking violet,” she laughed. “I think you are the prettiest girl ever born.” When she applied to the Marquis of Denley to settle the matter, he declared Miss Himmel was born to break hearts, adding that she should suffer no qualms by outshining Mary, who was becoming unbearably conceited.

This speech shocked Miss Clara into momentarily forgetting her nerves. Mary settled the matter by taking her arm, saying archly, “Come, let us tell your mama that a famous aristocrat has pronounced
you
a breaker-of-hearts.”

Jack Himmel and Miss Fanley then led out the first dance. Mary launched into the ball with unrestrained joy. Seeing the look of calf love on her brother’s face as he went down the line with Clara Himmel sealed her delight. Next, she danced with Will and then young Roger Himmel.

When briefly stopping for a glass of lemonade supplied to her a little absently by Lord Robert, she allowed Oscar Neville to find her alone. Resplendent in his finery and perfect in his manners, he petitioned her for the next set.

She looked around hesitantly, suggesting by her manner that she would much rather dance with someone else. Catching sight of the Marquis, who stood within her hearing, she said, “I…I believe I had already promised this set to Lord Robert.”

Denley looked at her in his languid, bored way, and deliberately turned away to speak with Mr. Himmel. Mary blushed angrily, and Mr. Neville, seeing his chance, took her hand with assurance. “
He
is no dancer, Miss Fanley, and I cannot let you deny me the pleasure.”

She danced with him then, never going beyond the bounds of propriety, but certainly brushing its edges in a display of gaiety and abandon that is the hallmark of a heart-wounded female. When he tried his luck for a second set, she accepted with unbecoming alacrity, and on being escorted from the floor, glanced icily at the Marquis, setting her nose high and arching her brows even higher. “I wonder if you would take me in to dinner, Mr. Neville? I believe I have promised it to someone else, but,” she let slip a small yawn from behind her fan, “I cannot think who it would be. Never mind. It could not have been anyone of consequence.”

During dinner she enjoyed the gayest of conversations with Clara, Will, Jack and Oscar Neville. They made a lovely grouping, and Mary inwardly congratulated herself, vaguely triumphant that she could play a lady’s part. She brushed aside occasional sensations of dismay and despair to be felt another day. After dinner and the required displays of playing and singing from the unfortunate girls whose parents felt obliged to push their offspring to the forefront, the orchestra began to tune for the next set.

Lord Robert then hunted her down, though she saw him coming and managed to slip away from him three times altogether.

“You are an abominable girl,” he drawled, hawk eyes ablaze. He took her hand in an uncompromising grip and led her peremptorily on to the floor.

“Without so much as a by-your-leave!” She executed a perfectly arctic curtsey.

He smiled down at her. “Never. It would give you too much satisfaction to deny me.”

They played like this for two full sets. Coming together, she would say something arch…

“You are the last man in the room to compliment me on my looks tonight.”

They would take the turn and he would return to her with a languid air of detachment, saying, dryly, “You are overhasty. I have yet to compliment you, my dear.”

“La! I forget that I can hardly expect civility from the noble class.”

“La! is an affectation of elegance that, when used by
some
, is unbecomingly vulgar.”

“You are in the country, and we are contemptible in our tastes.”

“I hold you in contempt, then,” he said in a low voice when the set finally closed and he led her from the floor.

“Whatever for?”

“For being so beautiful, Rabbit,” he said close to her ear. She looked up into his face and saw his eyes glinting and serious and she felt an inward tremble.

“Is it time?”

He only nodded and took her to a corner. They stood by a grouping of ferns and watched the set form without them, giving Neville time to mark and observe them. Denley placed himself so that his face could not be seen, but hers could.

He spoke seriously. “By tomorrow, all will be restored to you that was rightfully your mother’s, and Will, though not richer, will be righted and revenged.”

She smiled trustingly up at him, causing him to pause.

“There is more to this plan than I have yet said, Mary. I leave soon, and I will be gone for a lengthy period, if ever I do return.” He took both her hands in his, preventing an agitated display.

“But why?” she asked in an urgent whisper. “Why would you leave us? Neville will be gone, and good riddance! Treehill will be ready for you in spring. We will go on as always, but at peace and at our leisure.”

“Were it possible, I would will it so. But it is not possible. I have matters that must go forward and can no longer be shirked.”

Her face clouded and her look implored him to unsay his words.

“There now,” he said, releasing her hands, “you are playing your part, and doing it justice, I will add.”

“I do not care for my part,” she said petulantly. “I cannot abide your going and I will not believe you will not return erelong. You will miss us abominably!” This last she threw at him angrily.

“Were I to pine my heart out, it would not change my disappearance, Rabbit.”

She turned instantly imploring again. “But why? Where will you go? I do not understand! You have invested in Treehill and led us all to believe you would settle here. My father…Oh, good God, Robert! He will suffer it so…he dotes upon you!” Tears sprang to her eyes at the thought of it.

He leaned over her and said, “I told you that you would do this very well, child. Now, be off through the veranda and out to the little garden and Oscar will come to you in a flash. Be the rabbit and take him on a merry chase, my sweet.” He took her hand, pressed it warmly, and, with an instant turn of expression, stalked away in cold dislike.