Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind (16 page)

“Ill humor? I, in an ill humor?” Sir Anthony favored her with a grimace. “Why, I am the happiest of men. Let me prove it to you. I will now go down on my knees to allow you to catch my stickpin in your gown, interrupting the engagement of Lord Avery to Lucinda so you may win him for yourself.”

Ginny frowned. “Lord Avery and me? No, that’s not it at all.” But Sir Anthony was already on the floor, out of hearing distance of her frantic whispers. Apparently he did not hear her warning cries either, else he might have had time to move out of the path of Lord Avery and Lucinda who were once again gazing at the ceiling.

There was a screech and a cry and a quantity of muffled oaths before the tangle of arms, legs, and frothy skirts came to rest in a heap on the ground. To Ginny’s immense surprise Lucinda was the first to jump to her feet, entirely unaided. “You buffoon!” she cried. “I shall never marry you.” Then she burst into tears and ran from the room.

The house party had come to an end. The quarantine, however, was still in effect. Since the night of her great humiliation, Lucinda had once again barricaded herself in her room while Squire and Mrs. Barrington attempted to keep their male guests from bolting. Ginny had also retreated, spending most of the last four days in either Nan’s room or her own, where she whiled away the time reading.

For the fiftieth time she picked up a copy of The Taming of the Shrew. She was determined to find some evidence that Katherine had been misjudged. The poor thing was simply young and … impetuous. She drew a deep breath and had the lowering feeling she was reading more into the character of Katherine than Shakespeare intended.

Suddenly the words began to swim along the page in the most alarming fashion. She must have strained her eyes with all the reading, there could be no other explanation; shrews didn’t cry. Ginny shut the book with a snap and paced the room.

It had been somewhere between Petruchio’s words of “Kiss me, Kate” and “We will marry o’Sunday,” that she stumbled upon the truth: Sir Anthony was much like Katherine’s tolerant and long-suffering suitor. Gradually it had occurred to her that Sir Anthony didn’t feign a politeness he did not feel only because it was fashionable, but because he did not care to wound her. On the other side of the coin, he hid behind his alter ego as a means of protecting himself from hurt.

Oh, how she had misjudged him! She knew now that he was everything she thought he could never be, a man who felt passion, pain, humiliation, and injured pride. And she had caused him to feel every one of them! She knew he must also be a man capable of deep love, tenderness, joy, and happiness and yearned to be the cause of those emotions, but it was too late.

Twice he had asked if she would marry him. Not for one second did she believe he was serious on either occasion, but she was sure to never hear him propose to her again. She had rejected him, whether intentionally or not; she had accused him, scolded him-in short, she had been a shrew. No wonder he protected himself behind his infernal code of etiquette!

The knowledge that she had hurt him, that he could not possibly want her, caused a pain much deeper than one she had ever known. There could be only one explanation: she loved him.

Finally, she concluded that time spent alone in her room, though enlightening, solved nothing. Opening her door, she checked to make sure Sir Anthony was nowhere about, as she could not bear to face him just yet. She paused to consider if it were a safe time of day to make her way to Nan’s room without being spotted when she heard what sounded like muffled weeping.

Having followed the sound to the upper floor, she decided it must be coming from even higher. Finding the stairs to the attic, she took them up to the door, which sprang open to her touch. The sobbing was very loud now. Sure enough, the light from a beveled glass window revealed a pale and drawn Lucinda curled up at the foot of a trunk.

“Why, Lucinda, dear, whatever is the matter?” Ginny, heedless of the the danger to her skirts, sat on the dusty ground and brushed the hair from Lucinda’s eyes.

“N-n-nothing,” Lucinda replied in great gasping sobs.

“My dear, you can hardly expect me to believe that! Here” She offered Lucinda her handkerchief. “Is it Lord Avery?”

Nodding, Lucinda took the scrap of linen and blotted her eyes. “He-he-he does not love me,” she gasped and dissolved into another bout of tears.

“You know that is not true. Lord Avery is forever going on about your lovely eyes and rosy complexion, but if you don’t stop weeping you will soon look quite haggard”

“Oh!” Lucinda sucked in her breath and sat bolt upright. “I daresay you are right,” she stammered, twisting the handkerchief in her hands. “I can become quite splotchy when I cry, and it hasn’t been so very long since my complexion has cleared from the pox.”

“It would be well if you kept that in mind,” Ginny warned. Somehow, seeing Lucinda suffer only made her own heart ache all the more. “You mustn’t go down to dinner looking as if you were sickening with a fever.”

“Oh no, I shouldn’t want that. Only I daresay I shall have dinner brought up on a tray as I have ever since, since ……

Ginny anticipated a fresh bout of tears, an event that could prove disastrous to her already soaking handkerchief. She jumped to her feet, hands on her hips. “Come now, Lucinda. Red, puffy eyes do not look well with pink-spotted silk. Not only that, but your behavior is most unbecoming in a young lady of your years”

Wide-eyed, Lucinda swallowed her sobs and rose to her feet. “I must admit, I have been a bit peevish, but do you blame me? I missed my own coming-out, there hasn’t been a single morning after a ball when I awake to find the parlor full of flowers from my admirers, I am engaged without having had a single London season, and not one rich young man has come to call to ask my papa for my hand in marriage! You must see how monstrously unfair life has been to me!”

Ginny felt a good shake was called for but feared it would only bring on another fit of weeping. “Well then, we shall have to see how we can change things.”

“Yes, but how? It all seems so impossible!”

Ginny felt Lucinda’s troubles were nothing compared to hers. At least Lucinda was actually engaged to Lord Avery. Still, Ginny felt determined not to allow two people in love to marry under such a cloud of doubt and unhappiness.

Ginny looked Lucinda square in the eye. “You do love Lord Avery?”

Lucinda, struck dumb with the intensity of her emotions, nodded, her lower lip trembling.

“And I am convinced he loves you! Only, you have been locked in your room for so long he may have forgotten why. Never fear, you must remind him.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Ginny glanced at Lucinda’s woebegone face and groaned. It was Lucinda’s lively vivaciousness Lord Avery was missing. How to bring the color back into her cheeks? “I know! Let’s have a ball!”

“A ball? With only the four of us? It wouldn’t be much different than the other night.”

Lucinda’s lip was once again trembling. Ginny glanced around the room for inspiration, her gaze falling on a trunk full of old gowns. She pulled a gold brocade dress from a long-gone era off the top of the pile. “Yes, this is exactly what we need. A masquerade ball! Wouldn’t that be lovely, Lucinda?”

“Yes…” She hesitated. “But won’t it be a trifle odd? Even if I wear a mask, everyone shall know right off who I am.”

Ginny was encouraged by the selfindulgent tone creeping back into Lucinda’s voice. “It would take some of the fun out of it, I suppose. Oh, but Lucinda, look! This blue velvet would look stunning on you. What a quantity of lace there is at the sleeves !”

“It is beautiful,” Lucinda breathed. “And just the color of my eyes.”

Actually, the shade of blue was closer to Sir Anthony’s brilliant orbs. No doubt he would notice how lovely Lucinda would look in that gown, and she wouldn’t blame him. Still, Lucinda needed to be seen in it and admired. It was just the thing to bring her back to herself.

“I have had the most famous idea, Lucinda! The quarantine is over on the fifteenth. Let’s have our ball on the sixteenth and invite the county!”

Life sprang into Lucinda’s slight form. “Oh, yes!” she cried and clapped her hands. “I should love that above all things.”

Ginny felt almost giddy with success. “We shall have so much to do to get ready. Invitations, menus, our costumes, oh, and we must ask your parents for their permission.”

“They never say no,” Lucinda said, skipping about the room. “Oh, won’t it be glorious? I shall dance with all the men, even the fat ones, and Eustace will be so jealous!”

“If you can only be so joyous until then, I think you will have your Eustace in the palm of your hand long before the ball.”

Lucinda turned up her perfect nose. “We shall see. Perhaps I shan’t want him.”

Ginny stifled a gasp of annoyance. Really! The girl should be horsewhipped! Hoping to distract her, she asked, “Where did these gowns come from?”

“I don’t know, exactly” Lucinda tripped over to the trunk and sunk her hands into the sumptuous silks and satins. “Some ancestor, I suppose. They have been here forever. I used them to play dress-up when I was a little girl. Ooh! I know just the one for you!” Lucinda held up a board-chested gown with panniers in a most alarming shade of orange.

Ginny wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think so”

“Oh, I am convinced it would look famous on you. You have the coloring to carry it off.”

Ginny rather doubted anyone had the coloring to carry off such a gown and pitied the poor woman for whom it was made. “Let us see if there is something else. I would rather not look like a squash”

“Well, why not this one, then? It should fit you”

Ginny eyed the black bombazine with distaste. It was the sort of gown still favored by maiden aunts and elderly widows. “Really, I could almost think you wish me to look a dowd”

“No, of course not,” Lucinda said in a faint voice, delving once again into the depths. She emerged with another panniered gown, this one in rose and silver.

“This one might do,” Ginny murmured, holding the heavily embroidered taffeta gown against her. It was a lovely shade of rose with embroidered leaves forming the panniers and accenting the low, square-necked bodice. The whole was frosted with a fine web of silver net that shimmered in the light.

“It will look beautiful on you,” Lucinda said in a wistful voice. “I am sure all the men will find you irresistible.”

Ginny felt a pang of remorse. “If you like, I shan’t wear it.”

“Oh, no. With your gray-green eyes and pink complexion this gown was made for you. You will look exactly like a rose. I know! You shall go as the spirit of Rose Arbor. They all might admire you, but they won’t know who you are. Mama has a wig that will go perfectly with that dress, and if you were to wear a mask I should be quite content”

“But won’t the others be looking for me? I mean, it is only a matter of time before they realize it is I”

“Pshaw,” Lucinda said with a shrug. “You look just like any number of girls in the village, dark hair, medium height, average figure. Any one of them could be mistaken for you.”

Ginny felt a hot retort spring to her lips but held back. The restored Lucinda was certainly a trial but a sight better than the downcast, unhappy girl she had found sometime before. Now if only nothing happened to mar Lucinda’s newfound glow, all would be well between her and Lord Avery.

When Ginny left the attic, Sir Anthony was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She was nearly in his arms before she realized he was there. She sprang back, startled, her eyes wary, but Sir Anthony thought her smile seemed purely spontaneous. The last time they had spoken, she had wounded him deeply, more than he cared to admit. That notwithstanding, he wanted to see her more with each passing hour. What he felt had no language known to him, and he needed her to supply the words.

Taking a deep breath, he willed himself to speak. “Miss Delacourt, it is good to see that you are feeling more the thing.” She had already started moving away but glanced up at him from the corner of her eye. Encouraged, he followed her down the hall while casting about for a reason to prolong the encounter. “Er, having been away from things, so to speak, for so long, I daresay you haven’t heard” His breath froze in his lungs with anticipation.

“Oh?” she asked. “Nothing dreadful, I hope.”

He felt the knot in his chest relax a bit. “Ah, yes, well it seems that someone found the kitchen door unlocked again.”

Ginny stopped and turned to look at him. “And you think it was I who let out your secret?”

“No!” He had made her defensive and he cursed himself for a fool. “I merely thought you would find it amusing. Mrs. Barrington is persuaded that someone has been sneaking out. So last night she set someone to lie in wait.”

“Oh, dear! You weren’t caught out, were you?”

Sir Anthony felt the constriction in his chest disappear in spite of his anxiety about being discovered as the culprit. “No, the lad was asleep when I chanced upon him and knew nothing of my coming and going.”

“You really shouldn’t risk it!” Ginny exclaimed, her lip catching adorably between her teeth. “Mrs. Barrington takes the quarantine very seriously. Not only that, but she is very strict with the servants. She allows no fraternizing between the kitchen maids and the stable hands. Or perhaps it is the squire she fears is slipping out,” she said, laughing.