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Chapter 18

Posted on Saturday, 17 April 2004

I woke to the sound of sibilant voices near the doorway to my bedchamber, a quiet whispered rustling noise that went on and on in conversation. Even as I wondered who was in my room, though, I recognized one of the voices. So rolling over onto my side and rubbing my sandy eyes, I asked, “Ally? Is that you?”

The two figures standing in the doorway both turned when they heard my voice. “Oh, so you’re awake now?” Althea said with a smile. She murmured something in an undertone to Flora, who left the room, gently closing the door behind her. Althea mounted the steps to my bedside, where she sat down on the edge beside me. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine, Ally,” I said, not bothering to hide my yawn from her. “I was just tired. What time is it?”

“It’s ten o’clock, Mary,” she replied, brushing back a piece of hair that had fallen across my brow, then continuing to stroke my head tenderly in a very maternal way. “I had come to talk to you earlier before dinner, but you were asleep. You seemed to be...upset. Did you want to talk about it?”

“Not really. Why didn’t you wake me for dinner?”

She smiled. “I thought it better for you to sleep. In any case, I told our hostess that you must have been out playing archery in the sun too long. She sympathized, and all of the other ladies immediately agreed how awful headaches from too much sun could be. They all sent their wishes, and that was the end of that.”

“Thank you, Ally,” I said.

“Of course,” she replied. “Now, are you sure you didn’t want to discuss what’s bothering you?”

I thought about it for a moment. No, not really. Although there was something else...

“How do you know my father?”

Her hand paused for barely a fraction of a moment, then resumed its rhythmic caress. “Ah,” she said softly. “So he did tell you about that. I was wondering.”

The room was silent for a while except for the ticking of the clock on the mantle and the crackle of the flames in the hearth that cast a dim glow over the rest of the room. It stretched on for so long that I began to wonder if she were going to answer me at all, when she sighed and said:

“Did you never wonder, Mary, how I came to live in Hertfordshire?”

I couldn’t say that I had, so I shook my head slightly as she continued to smooth my hair. “Well, think about it this way: if I were going to move out of my parents house, who would I ask to help me? To whom was I closest, to whom would I go when seeking advice?”

“Alceste,” I said after a moment of thought.

Althea nodded. “And to whom would she turn if she didn’t know the answer?”

“Her husband--Roger.”

“Precisely. Roger was a very nice man--I think you would have liked him, had you known him. He was a perfect foil to Alceste, being rather stoic sometimes, but with the most wonderfully droll sense of humor, a bit dry and slightly off-beat. He loved to poke fun at life in general, of the many idiosyncrasies around us. He was very like a good friend of his from Cambridge, back years ago when we were all much younger.”

“His friend was my father, wasn’t he?” I said, beginning to piece things together in my head.

“Yes, it was your father,” she replied with a nod. “Roger and James had not seen each other much since university days, though they had kept in contact by post--though that correspondence was very erratic, as neither was very good at letter-writing. Well, as it happened, when Ceste came to Roger with my problem, he was in the middle of writing to his old friend, so he simply included a brief line about the search for my cottage.

“The reply came back in the positive--that there was a cozy, genteel little cottage not far from Meryton that would probably suit me very well. And, in fact, it did. So I moved to Hertfordshire. Your father was very kind to me, helping to recommend me to the neighbors, telling them that I was the sister of a friend, new to the area. I was generally accepted, and that made my transition much easier, especially given that I was only two-and-twenty and more than a bit heartsore at the time.”

She paused for a moment, her hand arrested in its movement. “I didn’t meet your father until nearly a year after I had been situated in my new home. He hadn’t been much in company--he had recommended me to the neighbors by letter and visits, mind you--as his wife had recently had several children, one just shortly before I arrived and another not six months later. The latter one was you.”

Her hand resumed its stroking motions. “We met on horseback, completely by chance. I, of course, thanked him for all he had done, he replied that it had been no trouble, I replied that of course it must have been, and that should he ever need anything, I was in his debt. We went on to chat about the usual things, and then he told me of his new daughter. He was so proud of you, Mary. You were not even five months at the time, and he already called you the most intelligent, most beautiful of all his children. I remember most clearly him saying that you had gotten his eyes. He seemed so inordinately pleased about the fact.”

I felt a tear roll wetly down my cheek and pool on the pillow. “When did he ask you to be my friend, Ally?”

She sighed. “Over the next few years after my first meeting him, I would see James occasionally while riding or when he took his wife or eldest daughters to the assemblies. We didn’t hold much conversation, he and I. Nor did I converse much with his wife, Beatrice--your mother--who was not overly fond of me for the mere fact that I did not enjoy gossip all that much, or his daughters Jane and Elizabeth, who for the most part were inclined more towards talking with their friends or dancing, as nearly all young ladies that age are, than conversing with older women like me.

“Well, one day in early February of 1811, it was, I received a call from your father. He had ridden over from Longbourn after he had heard you leave the house in tears. He was in need of a favor, he said, and he was hoping he could call in the debt that I owed him. He thought that perhaps I might be able to do something for you, describing what he had heard your mother tell you. He thought that perhaps I, as a woman, would be able to help more than he could.”

“So you only became my friend because my father asked it of you,” I whispered, feeling as though I had just been plowed down by a yoke of oxen. “Or was it because you felt sorry for me?”

She didn’t answer me for a while, and I felt another tear trace its way down the path the other had taken, creating an ever-widening circle of wetness in the fabric under my cheek. At last she sighed quietly and said, “I don’t know if you will believe me, whatever I say, unless you trust me, trust what I am about to tell you. Yes, at the beginning I became your friend because I had been asked by your father, and yes, when I met you it became apparent that you needed a friend, a confidante. So I became that for you. But the truth is, I also saw something in you that I had often felt in myself. It wasn’t pity, but compassion and empathy.

“We were both overshadowed by our siblings, Mary. The only difference is that you had four of them with which to contend while I only had one. I also had a supportive mother and father who knew that their love for their children should always be expressed and shown to all equally, without reserve. I was extremely blessed, and I wanted the same for you. In you, Mary, I saw myself, but a self that was not given the wholehearted love you deserved. And so I tried, to the best of my ability, to do that, to give you that love. You became to me a daughter, a sister--more than just a friend. You became my family because my own was so far away--I had pushed them so far away.

“I didn’t want the same to happen to you,” she said, looking down at me with a small, sad smile. “I knew your father, at least, loved you very much, or he wouldn’t have sought me out like that. But he needed me to help you find yourself, to help you learn to love yourself. He couldn’t do it himself.”

“Why not?” I asked in a whisper choked by the tears that burned at the back of my throat. “I don’t understand why he couldn’t have just told me he cared about me. All these years...”

Althea sighed, brushed my cheek once gently with the pad of her thumb, then clutched her hands together in her lap. “I don’t suppose either of your parents ever told you how they were married?”

Startled by this seeming non sequitur, I merely shook my head dumbly. She sighed, nodding, and turned her gaze to the wall opposite her. “Well, all of what I know has been pieced together from what Roger and Ceste and your father have told me, but I believe it to be a fairly accurate depiction of the courtship.

“Your father, James, came to London during the Little Season the year before my last Season, looking for a wife. Alceste had just come out of confinement with John, so she was quite thrilled to be back in society as only my sister could be, and when she heard that Roger’s old mate from school would be in Town, she absolutely insisted that he stay with them at Woodbridge House, which of course he did. Roger said that it was probably the greatest mistake James could have made, accepting their invitation.”

“Why?”

She half-smiled mirthlessly. “Because it gave James a bad impression of marriage. Not as you’re thinking,” Ally quickly amended, turning to look at me. “Roger and Ceste were incredibly happily married. What I’m saying is that their marriage simply wasn’t typical. By any and all laws of nature, the two of them should have driven each other insane within minutes of their meeting, but somehow it simply had not worked that way. And James saw that marriage, saw it work, and then looked for another Alceste--after all, it worked for Roger, why shouldn’t it work for him?

“He found Beatrice. She was being brought out during the Little Season--less expensive, you know--by a cousin who was doing a favor for Bea’s mother. She wasn’t extremely well dowered, but she was beautiful--very much so--and vivacious and stimulating. James thought he had found his match. And while I know that the phrase is true in magnetism...”

“Animal magnetism?” I asked, confused. “Like Mesmer?”

Althea laughed. “No, no. Magnetism--like in that book I read by William Gilbert; you remember that, right?” I nodded. “As he said--opposites attract. And while that may be true for those magnets of his, I just don’t think it’s so commonly true for people. Not true opposites, really.”

“So why did he marry her?”

She sighed. “He thought that she would suit him as a wife. We are all blind at times, Mary. Love often makes fools of us because we can’t see clearly what is before us--not that we ever see all that well when we aren’t in love, either, but that’s something else entirely. And we go along, believing in this fantasy that we’ve created in our minds, a chimera made of little fact and more fiction. The problem always comes when the veil is stripped away and we suddenly see our choices for the mistakes they truly are. I did it myself, all those years ago, with David.”

“But then why do so many people end up so happily in love?” I asked, propping my head up on an elbow and looking over at her. “What about Alceste and Roger? Or my aunt and Uncle Gardiner? Or three out of four of my sisters?”

Althea nodded slowly, a slight smile playing across her lips. “Those were, indeed, very fortunate matches. But you must remember that all of them went through trials that helped them to see their future spouses for who they truly were, long before they ever plead their troth. They had a chance to base their feelings of love on something more than simple infatuation and interest--rather, on the sturdy foundations of respect and trust.

“That’s not to say, of course, that people don’t sometimes get lucky. Just as sometimes even those marriages that are carefully planned and gone into with the clearest of sights don’t work out as they otherwise should.”

“How long did it take my father to lose respect for my mother?”

“Not even the length of the engagement,” Althea said. “But he went through with it, as honor demanded.” She looked at me with a slight grimace. “I don’t want to make it sound as if all the fault was on your mother, though, and say that James was so incredibly noble about it all. Your father, in some ways, is a very weak man. Instead of facing up to his mistake, he merely created a shell around himself, hardened and a bit bitter, and has lived the past twenty-eight years that way, regretting the choices he made and pining for what might otherwise have been. Instead of making a comfortable life with his wife and daughters, he held himself away from them, abandoning their care, for the most part, to others, only becoming involved in the smallest part with your older sisters, who really didn’t need that much involvement at all.”

She paused and sighed. “He really did love you, Mary. You reminded him so much of himself. And when you began to put on that...act, it just broke his heart. He didn’t want you to end up like him. But he had no way of knowing how to fix it, once it had begun. He blamed himself a lot for your unhappiness. Although, sometimes you really annoyed him, too, when you went above and beyond simply playing your part. The ball at Netherfield, for instance,” she said, looking at me significantly.

I flushed in embarrassment as I remembered that occasion and the set-down my father had given me. I really had been excessively rude, and in public, too. But I had been smarting from before the ball, when Lydia had mocked me and my mother had scolded me for not being pretty enough. For some reason that night it had really struck me more deeply than it otherwise would have, and I had taken my revenge by enacting that little scene at the piano. And then my father had embarrassed me like that...I had cried for hours that night, ashamed of what I had done and, at the same time, bitter over the rebuke.

And now I discover that the whole time he had known what I was about. Suddenly a number of things began to make more sense--certain comments he had made over the years, the expression on his face sometimes, his approval of my friendship with our neighbor. I sighed and lay back against the pillows, gazing up despondently at the curtains above the bed. “Why do you think he decided to tell me now?” I asked.

Althea gave a Gallic shrug. “I don’t know. That is something you would have to ask him. But perhaps it’s his way of telling you that he loved you and cared about you all these years. After all, you’re leaving Longbourn for good. I can imagine he regrets never having the courage to tell you before.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” I murmured. I resolved to write to my father as soon as I could and ask him myself. Perhaps he would like to come to London for a visit.

“So what is between you and Lord Farrington?” I asked, changing the subject. A hot blush pinkened Althea’s cheeks, two flares of color high on her cheekbones. I laughed at her expression: “You look like a schoolgirl with a fancy.”

“I feel like a giddy schoolgirl,” she said quite seriously, her skin slowly resuming its normal hue, though her eyes continued to sparkle. “I can’t remember when last I have been so happy. He said he loves me, Mary.”

I smiled. “I can believe it’s true. He told me what had happened between the two of you.”

She averted her gaze to the bed, picking at the fabric of the coverlet with anxious fingers. “I didn’t realize at the time how I must have seemed to him. I just assumed he knew...” She blew out a breath in exasperation and then threw her hands into the air with a laugh. “But that’s all behind us now. It may have taken us thirty years, but we’ve finally told each other how we felt.”

“Will you marry him?” I asked, my heart in my throat.

Althea nodded, he face glowing. “We were thinking perhaps at the end of the Season, in a small ceremony at his home parish.” Suddenly, she looked over at me, her hand flying to her mouth, which had gone round in surprise. “Oh, Mary! I’ve completely forgotten about you!”

For some reason, tears again burned the back of my eyes. “Don’t worry about it,” I said repressively.

“But I feel so awful. I completely forgot about us going to Landrey together. Now what will you do?”

“It’s all right, Ally,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and hugging myself. “I’ll be fine. You just go and get married and live happily ever after.”

She pursed her lips tightly and didn’t say a word. I felt wretched. But there was nothing I could do. “You know, Ally, I think I’m going to go back to sleep. Are we still going on that picnic tomorrow?” I asked.

Nodding, she stood and tucked the covers to my chin. “I’ll let you get some more rest,” she said. “I’m sure it’s been a trying week.” And after a kiss on my forehead, she moved away to the door. I watched her leave, wishing I had had the words to wipe away the sad and worried wrinkles that had creased her brow, and then turned over onto my side, a wave of sadness rushing through me. While I felt happy for her, I still felt this overwhelming sense of loss for our friendship. What was I going to do when she left me?

I fell asleep with that dismal thought running rampant in my brain, and awoke the next morning from a somewhat random dream involving a giant purple carrot and five dancing mushrooms (I could hardly complain, though--at least it hadn’t featured Lord Peter, for once) to the welcome sight of sunshine pouring through the draperies just opened widely by Flora. The day was already beginning out on a positive note.

After dressing in a riding habit, I went to the stable and selected a horse (Lady Symington had offered me free rein over the stables) to take on my morning ride. I chose a grey speckled mare whose temper reminded me greatly of Lysander and had her saddled. We rode out and returned within an half hour. And after I had delivered Hermia to the stables, I went in search of breakfast.

Several people were in the morning room already when I arrived. John very gentlemanly stood when I entered and helped me select my choices from the sideboard before leading me to a seat beside him. I greeted the other guests as he pulled out the chair.

“I hear we are going on a picnic this afternoon,” I said cheerfully.

Lady Sotheby, an older but very stately lady, nodded. “It shall be quite wonderful, I’m sure. We shall be seeing some ruins a few miles from here. I believe Lady Symington said that the servants will be leaving soon to prepare things there for us.”

“The Castle in Wallingford, which is just across the border in Berkshire,” clarified a portly gentleman on her other side named Lord Fulsome. “But I really don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a bunch of old stone. Everyone who’s been to Berkshire has seen it.”

“I’ve been to Berkshire,” I said, “and I haven’t seen it.”

Lady Sotheby nodded. “That’s right. I have not either, Lord Fulsome. So you may keep your pompous comments to yourself.”

That set the two of them off on a round of bickering that was clearly a commonality between them, for they seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly while everyone else merely continued with their meal as though nothing out of the ordinary was occurring. I shared a brief, amused glance with John and then returned to my meal.

We left for the ruins near noontime, many of the party in carriages and some, especially the gentlemen, on horseback. I had elected to ride Hermia again, rather than be jolted along with a bunch of chattering women, and Althea did the same. We at first stayed together, but soon enough Lord Farrington separated her from me and the two rode ahead, no doubt to get lost for a while and then show up somehow behind us all with no explanation for their absence.

John soon sidled up beside me. “I wanted to speak with you, Mary,” he began.

I kept my gaze focused on Hermia’s ears. “About what, John?”

“I feel I have to apologize for my behavior these past few days.”

I looked over at him in surprise. “Really?”

He pursed his lips, looking at me through narrowed eyes. “Are you going to make this more difficult than it already is?”

“Yes?”

A slow grin spread across his lips and soon he was laughing outright. “Mary, you have the oddest sense of humor. Now I’m really not sure if you would have made such a comfortable wife, after all.”

“I really wouldn’t,” I agreed. “I don’t know what you were thinking.”

He sobered instantly. “Mary, I did truly mean my proposal to you, even if I had chosen a rather inopportune moment.”

“Inopportune!” I echoed with a laugh. “That was about as inopportune as anyone could get, I think.”

“Yes, I realize that,” he said wryly. “But what’s done is done. I would really like to apologize for acting like I have the past few days. I have no right to take my bad humor out on you. You made your choice and I should live by it and not be jealous of anyone you choose to spend your time with. If he has stolen your heart, I will accept that.”

Something in his tone made me look more closely at him. “Stolen my heart? Whatever are you talking about, John?”

He averted his face, a slight blush staining his cheeks underneath his tan. “I happened by the music room yesterday, and happened to see the two of you...I didn’t want to intrude on such a moment. Although I do feel I should caution you--“

“Oh, no!” I cried, shaking my head quickly, reaching out and laying a hand on John’s sleeve. “No, no. You completely misunderstand. That wasn’t what you think; I was crying. He was merely comforting me. Yes, it may have been a bit improper, but the door was open, and it was only a moment. I don’t...I’m not in love with him, John. That would be ludicrous.”

He looked at me askance and I felt my hackles rise. But he shook his head in a placating motion. “No, no, I won’t argue with you. But I would suggest that the next time you be more careful that no one is in the hallway, or you’ll end up married to the man. You’re only lucky it was me and not Lady Ponsonby,” he said, nodding towards a woman in the nearby carriage who was known for being a high stickler.

I acknowledged his point, and we continued our ride on better terms than before, discussing the weather and the sights and his plans for one of his properties up north. I was glad that we had regained our former level of amicability, for I had missed his friendship these past few days. He had definitely become a very important figure in my life, and to have lost that relationship would have been a tragedy, indeed.

Fairly soon we reached the ruins, where we dismounted and made to join the rest of the group that was collecting near the carriages as the ladies were helped out by various gentlemen and footmen.

“It’s rather impressive, isn’t it?” Althea said as she and Lord Farrington came walking towards us from where they had just handed their horses to servants.

I looked up at the old castle, with its decrepit walls and tower, and nodded. “Shall we go to explore it?”

She nodded and took the arm Lord Farrington held out to her. I accepted John’s support, and we entered the castle grounds by a gate through what used to be the outer walls. We traversed the lawns in the bailey, following several paths before climbing the steps of the old tower. When we reached the top, I looked out over the surrounding countryside.

“This must have been the most impregnable castle,” I murmured in awe, gazing out over miles of rolling hills and fields and trees. Small houses and occasional manors dotted the landscape, but otherwise it seemed nearly uninhabited. And down below ran the river Thames, smaller here than in London but still magnificent. It was incredible.

“The castle was quite secure,” John said from his position at my side. “It was built right after William crossed the Thames here and then marched eastward to conquer London. It wasn’t until the middle of the seventeenth century that it was almost completely demolished; Cromwell had it taken apart stone by stone after the Civil War, when this castle was one of the last strongholds left--it remained under siege for sixty days, if I remember correctly.”

“Sixty-five,” said a voice from the stairway. We both turned to see Lord Peter coming towards us. “It held out for sixty-five days.” He smirked at John, who narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything. Lord Peter then came to stand beside me, and we all returned our gaze to the countryside. “Over there,” the newcomer to our midst said finally, pointing towards a large mound that really seemed nothing more than just a mound, “was the old Keep for the castle. There really isn’t much left anymore, other than a few scattered pieces of the walls. This tower was actually part of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas. Cromwell really did his job avenging the embarrassment of not being able to take over this castle with any ease six years before. Although, to be honest, a lot of the stone had already been removed to help in the building of Windsor castle, apparently, so he wasn’t responsible for all of the destruction.”

He glanced over at me. “But it is still rather impressive, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “I cannot even imagine what it might have been like to live in a castle in the medieval times. It must have been rather exciting.”

“It was dirty and drafty and lacked all of the conveniences of our age,” Lord Peter said.

“You probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it,” John said.

Lord Peter glanced at him, then looked again at me. “Oh, I think she would have. Miss Bennet has a rather remarkable ability to adapt. She probably would have been right at home in any century.”

“I never said she couldn’t,” John replied with a curling of his upper lip. “I just said she probably wouldn’t have a rollicking good time.”

“Well, since it’s not even a possibility,” I said, “given that there is no time machine that I can simply step into and fly back to the medieval age to find out, I don’t think there’s any sense arguing about it. Although I must admit it sounds fun--a challenge. But who knows whether it would be in truth.”

I glanced between the two of them, their jaws jutted out like angry bulldogs, and sighed. “I think I would like to return to the others.” And giving the two not even the chance to respond to my statement, I turned to go down the stairs again. They quickly remembered their gentlemanly manners, however, and hurried to descend in front of me. When we reached the bottom, they both turned and held out their hands to help me descend the last step. To be honest, I didn’t know whether to be amused at their seeming competition to gain my attention, or annoyed. But I opted for the latter, ignored both of their assistance, and walked straight past them into the outer bailey, leaving them to glare at each other in my wake.

You know, considering that I had refused the proposal of one and slapped the face of the other, I really was not sure why either of them continued to seek my attention. Granted, it sure did wonders for my ego, but it was still a bit irritating, seeing as I was the particular bone of contention. It was extremely annoying that they saw me as something to fight over, much like the only remaining seat on the mail or the last leg of mutton.

Thinking of which, I had to wonder why Lord Peter had decided that John was his competition, in the first place. After all, the two had been friends at one time and as such definitely should not have been at odds with each other like this, even if they were both interested in me. Which I simply couldn't see. Especially Lord Peter.

Unless he did...and then that night at the Huntington masquerade I had been rather overfriendly with Lord Peter, thinking that he was John, which might have given him the impression that I was interested in John as more than just the son of my good friend. But I didn’t think I had ever said John’s name, so there shouldn’t have been any reason for Lord Peter to assume that it was he I had mistaken him for. And, thinking on it further, I didn’t think that I had given the corsair any indication that I felt any partiality for him, did I? Even later on, I never gave anyone the impression that I felt anything for John more than friendship, so it couldn’t have come from that, could it?

I paused in thought, and the two men behind me nearly ran me over. There was a flurry of apologies and again, the offer of arms, but I ignored them and continued walking. Perhaps it was when we were on our way here, I thought, recalling the amiable conversation I had had with John while on horseback. It would even explain this sudden renewal of interest on Lord Peter’s part--a reaction to seeing John and I together, maybe.

Hmmm...that could easily be it. Not that it helped me in any way solve the problem of what to do with these two. But that was a wholly different problem.

“Ah! Mary!” cried Alceste, catching sight of me and hurrying over. “We had wondered where you were. Althea and her beau came back some minutes ago, and we were worried you had maybe fallen off a wall or something.”

“Yes. Because I climb so many walls,” I said, picking up a plate from the table under the larger tent and beginning to fill it with food.

“Well, it’s quite possible you suddenly took a fancy to doing so,” Alceste replied as Lord Peter removed the plate from my hands and waited for my choices. “There’s always a first time.”

I pointed to the syllabub and Lord Peter took a nicely rounded amount and placed it on the plate. “You are entirely correct, Ceste,” I said, indicating next a finely carved piece of chicken for Lord Peter, “and I do apologize. I am quite touched by your worry for me.”

“We did worry,” she said. “That’s why Lady Symington suggested we send Lord Peter off to find you.”

I glanced at the indicated gentleman, who had the grace to look ashamed. “Well, I did find you, didn’t I?” he said.

“In any case, you are found, and we’ve saved a place at a table over here for you, Mary,” Alceste said, taking my arm in hers and leaving Lord Peter and John to trail behind us. And then when we reached the table Alceste solved what might have become a bit of trouble by making sure I was seated between her and Lord Thornfield, leaving John and Lord Peter to find places elsewhere. The latter, however, did have a chance to whisper “I did find you” in my ear as he set my filled plate before me, sending a shiver down my spine at the feel of his warm breath on my skin.

But I decided to ignore the statement and instead focus on the conversation swirling around me. And I managed the rest of the picnic very well, avoiding John and Lord Peter as much as possible and then taking a spot in one of the carriages on the way back. And if any of the other guests looked at me rather speculatively when Lord Peter and John both rode the whole way back to the Grange flanking the carriage I was in, I completely ignored their glances.

And in the peace and quiet of my room I prayed a heartfelt prayer that the next three days would go very, very quickly, indeed. Because honestly, I was beginning to wonder whether facing my mother might not have been the better choice.

Chapter 19

Posted on Monday, 26 April 2004

I began Monday morning in the music room (this time I made sure that the door was closed--I had no intention of repeating my previous mistake), working on Atalanta for the most part, although I did practice a few of my other pieces and another piece I had found by a current composer named Carl Maria von Weber (so I admit I was in a bit of a “German music” phase, but they were churning out good music by the boatload, so I felt I was justified). And actually, that last piece was a duet, but I hoped I could persuade Maggie to learn it with me and we could play it together. I had never had anyone to duet with before, and thought it might be a nice change. So at present I could only practice one part at a time, but it was pretty, anyway.

After everyone had breakfasted, Lady Symington arranged for us all to travel into a nearby village to patronize the shops and do a bit of sightseeing. I was, again, escorted by both John and Lord Peter as I wandered around the shops and visited the church. In vain did I attempt to lose both of them by attaching myself to various other groups or remaining overlong in shops that neither of them could possibly wish to visit. They stuck to me like barnacles on a boat no matter how long I spent looking at ribands or fashion magazines or--amazingly--a recent copy of Italienische Reise by Goethe at the tiny local bookseller’s, in which--almost as amazingly--Lord Peter also showed some interest.

And actually, there was a brief moment in that same bookseller’s shop when John looked as if he were going to abandon his pursuit of my attention as I lingered over the small selection of untranslated works the shopkeeper was keen on showing me. But I quickly put a stop to his desertion, as I really didn’t want to be left alone with Lord Peter, who oddly enough seemed as though he was as much at home there in that dim and dusty old shop as I felt. I’d much rather be stuck with both of them, I thought, than just Lord Peter.

So the three of us left that shop together and continued our tour of the village. We then had a small luncheon at the local inn before visiting the church and then meeting up with the rest of the guests. We arrived back at Symington Grange in the late afternoon, with about two hours before dinner. Most of the women went to their rooms to begin preparations for dining.

I, however, did not need that much time to primp and ponder my reflection, so instead I went in search of the Symington’s library. I found it in a very short amount of time and entered, finding it devoid of any other guests. The walls were lined with rows upon rows of books, and I breathed in the sweet smell of stale and dusty tomes mingled with the faint aroma of beeswax, smiling at the foolish feeling of excitement that bubbled up inside me.

This was definitely where I felt the most comfortable--here, surrounded by the friends of my youth. It made me feel a little homesick, to be sure, for the small, confined but cozy library at Longbourn where I had spent so many hours hiding from my younger sisters and my mother. Elizabeth and Jane never troubled me there--they rarely troubled me elsewhere, for that matter--and only occasionally did my father disturb my studies. I could, for the most part, be alone in my fantasies.

I wrapped my arms around my middle and looked around at the shelves here in this private den, wondering where to start, wondering if I would have the time to examine all of the treasures that were no doubt contained herein. At long last I selected a promising-looking shelf in one corner and scanned the rows, reading the old and faded bindings. I was somewhat surprised to finally realize that all of the volumes in this corner were on the same subject, in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Stepping over to another shelf, I found the same thing--someone must have gone through this whole library and organized it. I breathed out an envious, “wow,” stroking the binding of a copy of a treatise on field management. To have done it for my father’s library was one thing, but to do it for a library of this size--it must have taken months, at the very least. A year, perhaps, or more. They must have hired someone.

In increasing awe, I continued my way around the room, glancing at the many different subjects of books and at the hundreds of titles and authors. In some surprise (and with a fair amount of pride) I found a copy of each of my books, one in a section with a number of copies of very old Belle Asemblees and several books of fashion, and the other with the etiquette books. I pulled the latter off the shelf.

“Imelda Hutchinson. Good choice,” came a voice from the other side of the room.

I looked up to see Lord Peter just on the inside of the open library door, leaning against the frame. He pushed away immediately upon my looking up and came across the room towards me. “But I should think, as a friend of hers, that you would have already read both of her books,” he said.

“I have,” I replied, shutting the book and replacing it on the shelf. “I read them long before they even were published.”

“Indeed?” he said, bracing one arm against the bookshelf beside me. “Did you serve as her editor, or were you allowed input into the contents? Though I can imagine that you would have been able to help more with her second book than the first.”

I cocked one brow. “Are you insulting my manners, Sirrah?”

“I cannot insult what does not exist,” he said with a teasing smile.

An answering smile found its way onto my lips, as well, despite all of my attempts to restrain it. “I am the very pinnacle of politeness,” I said in as haughty an air as I could manage at the moment.

“You, of course, mean pineapple,” he replied, his voice brimming with laughter.

I chuckled. “I had no intention of borrowing Sheridan’s lines, sir,” I said, turning away and moving to another shelf. “I believe my own words are quite profound enough.”

“Ah, but ‘words are like leaves; and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found,’” he quoted.

I paused as I reached for a copy of Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion. “Who is that? Pope?”

Lord Peter sketched me a bow. “Perfectly correct, Miss Bennet. From his Essay on Criticism.”

“I thought so,” I said, nodding in satisfaction. “As to the possible relevance of your quote, however, I fear I must disagree. I have too high an opinion of myself ever to believe that I speak only nonsense.”

He smiled. “But of course. I only meant that you speak mostly nonsense.” He looked at the book I had in my hands. “Ah; the good Sir Walter. That’s a very good novel. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.’ Particularly apt for you, Miss Bennet, no?”

I froze, one hand caught mid-page-turn. I slowly pivoted to look at him face-on. “What do you want, Lord Peter?”

At first he didn’t answer me--didn’t even look at me--but then he brought his gaze up from where it was resting on his boots and he approached me slowly. “I was thinking about what you said the other day, before I made that completely insensitive remark--for which you justifiably slapped my face for me--about your life with your family. It was a fairly complicated role, wasn’t it?”

I hugged the book to my chest, sagging against the shelves. After a moment’s thought, I nodded. “And it only got more complicated once I came here,” I said in a burst of honesty. “Suddenly I was trying to be myself, while at the same time keeping that hidden from my sisters. And now I don’t even know if this is my real self, or if I’m just playing another role.” I sighed, then looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “I really don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

One corner of his mouth tilted up with sad humor. “Perhaps I exude an aura of confidence--you can unburden yourself to me because I’m so safe.” He shifted his weight, crossing his arms over his chest. “Or perhaps you trust me not to tell anyone.”

I looked away. “You’re probably the least safe person I know,” I whispered, more to myself than him. My gaze sought his again. “But I think I trust you not to tell. Why, you probably could have ruined me in society’s eyes three times over, if not more, with your knowledge of all the secrets I keep. And, heavens, you don’t know the half of them yet.”

“Yet?” he echoed with one brow raised. “Is that an implication that someday I will?”

“That was an unintentional and unintended word,” I replied cuttingly. “I have no intention of letting anyone know all of my secrets, much less you.”

“Why?” Lord Peter asked baldly. “What is so wrong with letting another person get to know you? Why do you keep yourself so hidden from everyone?” He leaned towards me and said in a low voice, “You’re going to be a very sad, very lonely, and very bitter old woman some day if you don’t learn to open yourself up to other people.”

“Just because I don’t tell people all of my secrets,” I retorted, “doesn’t mean that I am without friends.”

“And what friends are those?” he scoffed. “Your family? You said yourself that you were playing a role for them, that they would not accept you. Miss Mulvaney? Well, she’ll be leaving you soon, what with her reunion with her old suitor. Lady Woodbridge or Mrs. Townsend? When did you meet them--at the beginning of the Season? And what with Lady Woodbridge’s flighty record and somewhat distracted behavior, or Mrs. Townsend’s intention of running off to some far-off country as soon as her friend is safely hitched again, do you really believe that they will be of much use to you when you are sequestered in the country, at Landrey Manor or wherever you decide to go?”

“Maggie’s leaving England?” I asked, confused.

He looked at me steadily for a moment, then raised his brows. “What, you mean you haven’t actually talked with her, asked her about herself? It was one of the first things I ever knew about her--in the few times we’ve talked at different balls or routs over the years, I learned that she had an overwhelming desire to travel as soon as Lady Woodbridge didn’t need her anymore.”

I felt shamed, that here Lord Peter knew something about Maggie that I probably should have known myself, considering that I had lived with her for the past month and had been in conversation with her more times than I could count. But most of the time I had been dwelling on my own problems, seeking her advice for my own troubles. A good friend I was.

“Or is it Ryder that you call a friend?” Lord Peter asked quietly, and I looked up to find him standing much closer than he had been, before I was distracted by his words. His eyes were hooded as he looked steadily at me, awaiting my response. I licked my lips nervously.

“My relationship with John Ryder is not your concern, Lord Peter,” I said, stepping back slightly and turning my face to the side, breathing in air free of the scent of him--warm and husky, sandalwood and saddle. That was definitely not helping me think straight.

I heard him sigh. “Miss Bennet, may I give you some advice?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I replied.

“Ryder isn’t the man for you,” he said, completely ignoring my demurral. “He’s an incredible person--a good friend and an admirable soldier--but he wouldn’t be a good husband for you. He shares none of your interests, he’s a farmer at heart, and doesn’t truly want a wife that would run him ragged.”

I wasn’t sure what part of that little speech I should respond to first. After a brief moment’s thought, I decided that starting from the beginning and moving my way towards the end would probably be easiest. I took a steadying breath, looked Lord Peter square in the eye and said: “First of all, I would like to know how you know any of this--what John’s view on marriage are, what his interests are and how they differ from mine, and why his being a farmer should make him a poor husband for me. And then I’d like to know what makes you such a good judge of what I want--how do you know what I would look for in a husband. Maybe I am looking for someone who isn’t exactly like me.” I set my fisted hands on my hips and tilted up my chin, my jaw working angrily. “And then I’d like to know why you think I’d run him ragged. Are you insulting me?”

He stepped towards me once again, one hand on his hip and the other placed on the shelf beside my head, and leaned in so that our faces were almost uncomfortably close together. I kept my position, refusing to give even an inch, and tilted my chin a little higher; my courage always rises at any attempt to intimidate, and I wasn’t about to back down here. I held his gaze.

“I know a lot about John because we used to be very good friends,” he said in a soft, steady voice that was slightly distracting on its own merits. “We talked a lot recently, too, when he first came back, about what he intended to do now that he’s come back to England. So I know what he’s looking for in a wife--and I know that you aren’t it. He thinks you are, I know, but he’s been distracted by all of these lies that you keep spreading around you.”

“And you haven’t been?” I challenged out of pure perversity. Not that I admit to spreading lies...

He stared straight into my eyes, looking for who knows what, then said, “No, I haven’t. I think I know a little more about you than you think I do. You’re a little puffed up about yourself, you know; you think that there’s some great mystery about you that no one else is going to be able to solve. But for someone who lives in something of a labyrinth himself, solving your kind of puzzle isn’t as much of a challenge as you want to believe.”

He paused, and his eyes moved away from mine to a spot just to the side of my head. He reached up his free hand before I knew what he was about and tucked a stray curl slowly behind my ear, his fingers flitting lightly across my skin. His gaze flickered back to mine, and I realized my chin had relaxed back to its normal position; I tilted it back upwards and glared at him.

His lips twitched in amusement and his eyes twinkled as he said, “As to your final statement, Miss Bennet, if you can’t think of a reason why you would run him ragged, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you. And far from it being an insult, I think it’s one of the things I love best about you.”

My breath caught in my throat, and I felt my eyes widen. A million panicked thoughts began to race through my head in rapid succession, mostly centering on that one word--love. Was I being a bit missish? Perhaps, but I was so distracted by that word I nearly missed the odd glint in Lord Peter’s eye that I intuitively knew meant he was about to kiss me, if I gave him any encouragement.

Which I didn’t intend to do--really. After all, I had no interest in Lord Peter, and a kiss from him would be like...kissing a newel post, or something. But at the same time a part of me actually wanted him to kiss me. I’d never been kissed before, and it might be interesting to have the experience under my belt. So really it would just be something of an experiment. And then I would just slap his face afterwards, so he wouldn’t think I was encouraging his intentions. Yes, I had it all planned out.

He slowly leaned in further towards me, tilting his face slightly, and I closed my eyes, awaiting the inevitable. I felt his breath on my lips as he hesitated, and I very nearly closed the gap myself, impatient to have it all over and done with, when all of a sudden the dinner gong was sounded. I turned my head towards the door in surprise, knocking Lord Peter’s nose with my own in the process. He stepped back in surprise.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, turning back to him and placing a hand over my lips to hide my smile. “I didn’t mean...” The expression on his face as he gingerly felt his nose was almost comical; I tried my best not to laugh. “I really have to be going...if dinner is going to be soon, I have to get dressed.” But I continued to stand there, unsure whether I should say anything else.

He waved a hand in the direction of the door. “Go on; I won’t stop you, you know. I’ll see you at dinner.”

I nodded. “Of course. And I really am sorry.” Then before I burst out laughing, I hurried out of the room and up the stairs to where Flora was waiting to dress me. She hurriedly helped me out of the gown I wore and dressed my hair in a stunningly simplistic upsweep that seemed as if it were going to fall out of its pins at any moment but was, in actuality, quite stable. I then stood in the middle of the room and she tossed the gown I had chosen earlier in the day over my head and did up the buttons in the back. And after putting on my jewels and slippers and other accessories, I hurried out the door and down the stairs just in time to hear the second dinner gong.

I entered the drawing room to find all of the guests already assembled, including Lord Peter, who had changed rather quickly into a very handsome-looking jacket, waistcoat, and unmentionables. It really was unfair that men took so little time to look so perfectly coiffed whereas it took almost an hour for me. And I was probably the fastest of the lot.

Crossing the room to where Althea, Lord Farrington, Alceste, Lord Thornfield, Maggie, and John were congregated, I greeted my friends with warm smiles. “I apologize for being nearly tardy,” I said. “I’m afraid I found the library this afternoon and lost track of the time.”

They all laughed at that, and Althea said, “I’m only surprised we didn’t have to send a dozen or so strong footmen to tear you away from the shelves.”

“I’m not all that bad,” I said.

“Oh no?” she retorted. “Who was the one who was accidentally locked in Finster’s bookshop back in Meryton that one time when he closed up shop, not realizing you were still inside, trying to decide between a copy of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and a collection of Thomas Gray’s poetry?”

I blushed. “Well, I had to try each of them out before I decided...”

After a few more rounds of good-natured humor over my repeated distraction when in the vicinity of books of any sort, I finally managed to turn the conversation to the activities for the following day and our plans for our return to London on Thursday. And a few minutes later, the butler entered to announce dinner, and we all proceeded to the dining room.

John took me in to dinner and so I was seated with him on one hand and Lord Haversham on the other. It passed without anything particular occurring--unless you consider the delicious delicious Côtelettes d’Agneau served with Pointes d’Asperges making its way down to my stomach an event worthy of note, of course. All in all, it was a very pleasant dining experience.

When the men joined us ladies in the music room later on, Lady Symington declared it to be a musical evening (as was slightly evident by her having taken us to the music room, I thought). “I shall, of course, open the instrument, so that no one feels obliged to be the first to perform,” she declared with a laugh in which everyone else joined. “But after my piece, I expect we shall be able to find some performers among the ladies here. And then perhaps we shall be able to persuade some of our gentlemen to show their talents as well.”

Everyone tittered and glanced around at each other at that with smirks on their faces. I glanced at Althea and shared a smile with her, knowing that a long, long evening full of horribly played pieces was in store for us.

It didn’t turn out to be so bad, after all. Many of the guests were very talented, and some drew more than a bit of my admiration. I heard several pieces I hadn’t heard before, though the majority were ones I had played or heard played by others previously, and to be quite honest, I enjoyed myself more than I had anticipated.

I was, indeed, asked to perform a piece after many of the guests had already had their turn. It was after the applause following the performance of a young lady named Miss Valentine who had played the second movement of Clementi’s Sonata in F# died down that Lady Symington stood and looked over at me, saying, “Miss Bennet! We cannot forget you, of course, as we’ve heard such high tales of your prowess on the keyboard. Would you care to favor us with a selection? Perhaps something else composed by the delightful Miss Hutchinson?”

Oh, she was the “delightful” Miss Hutchinson now? Interesting. I smiled and accepted the invitation, making my way slowly to the pianoforte, where I sat down and prepared myself to play. At first, I was unsure what I wished to perform, but as soon as my fingers touched the ivories, I knew that this evening called for a little piece I had written some years ago when I was first learning Spanish with Althea--I had called it, quite unoriginally, “El Sueño del Amor”:

El río está tranquilo,
Corriendo.
Y al lado me quedo,
Paciente por el amor.
Debajo del sauce,
Espero
Por el amante
De que he soñado.
Canten, las aves
De este paraíso,
Y tráiganme a mi amante
Aquí a mi lado.*

I finished off the end with a light flourish of the keys and turned to my audience, who immediately applauded and called for an encore. I made to demur and return to my seat, but before I could, Lord Peter stood and made his way to the front of the room. “Would you perhaps be willing to play another if it were a duet?” he asked me loudly, a query that was greeted by the room at large with a number of declared approbations. I looked at him suspiciously, and he went to the stand beside the piano that held a number of pieces of sheet music and pulled out one that looked rather familiar. “Perhaps this one, Miss Bennet?”

“Where did you find that?” I hissed through the clenched teeth that presently formed my social smile.

“You must have left it here after you finished practicing this morning,” he said with a smile as he nodded to our audience and maneuvered me back onto the piano bench. We sat down (I still quite reluctant, but resigned to my fate), and he placed the music for Weber’s Menuetto Op.3, No.3 before us. And then, with a brief smile at me and a nod for tempo, we began.

I was right in thinking that this would be a piece I would enjoy playing with another person. I was only surprised that that other person was Lord Peter. He was surprisingly skilled, and as I watched his fingers fly over the keyboard with mine, I felt a thrill of excitement flutter through me. The intimacy of sitting so closely together, the synchronization of some of our movements, the intensity of the emotion that was wrapped in the music--it was all incredibly intoxicating, and I closed my eyes for a few moments, just feeling the notes flow through me.

But it was over all too soon. As the other guests all began their applause once the pianoforte had fallen silent, I felt a distinct loss, and I glanced over at Lord Peter to find him watching me, a knowing look in his eye. After but a moment, he tore his gaze away from mine and looked up at his mother, who was approaching the pianoforte. He stood and held out his hand to me to help me rise.

“That was wonderful, Miss Bennet,” Lady Symington said with a broad smile. “You ought to do more duets with my son, I think, for your talents complement each other perfectly. I was actually not aware my son had become so proficient, though,” she said as her smile became just a bit tight around the edges. “It left me quite surprised.”

“I always aim to please you with the advancement of my abilities, Mother,” he said with a bow to her before he swept me across the room to my seat through the many guests who offered brief compliments as we passed. As we sat down, though, I leaned over and whispered to him, “What did your mother mean by that?”

He glanced at me and a brief expression of chagrin crossed his face before he smoothed it out into the usual social smile and looked back at the pianoforte, where Lady Sotheby was just sitting down to entertain us. “My parents were not aware that I played the pianoforte,” he said finally in a low voice.

I looked at him in unconcealed surprise. “Not aware? How could they be unaware?”

He didn’t answer at first, but then looked at me and asked, “How could your parents be unaware that you owned an estate in Berkshire?”

I saw his point, despite the fact that, in truth, at least one of my parents actually had been aware that I owned an estate. But this wasn’t the time to bring that up. “Why did you hide it?”

Lord Peter glanced at me, and then looked pointedly across the room. I followed his gaze to where his father sat, stiff-lipped and straight-backed in his chair. “Your father did not approve?” I guessed.

He nodded, then applauded as Lady Sotheby’s piece came to an end. And as she had been then last left who was willing to perform, Lady Symington then offered to begin games of cards in the Red Salon, but so many declared their intentions of retiring for the night that the plan was dismissed soon after it was proposed.

As the other guests began to file out of the room in search of their beds, I held back, lingering by Lord Peter’s side. I did not intend to go to sleep without knowing the rest of his tale. He seemed to sense my curiosity, though, and when all of the guests but two gentlemen who had fallen asleep during the performances had left the room, he drew my arm through his and said, “I will escort you to your rooms, Miss Bennet.”

I let him lead me from the room and we slowly mounted the stairs after claiming our candles from the hall table. “My father held a very common belief: that true gentlemen did not indulge in the arts,” he began in a low voice that still sounded loud to me in the near silence of the hallway. He glanced over at me and caught my surprised expression. “A true gentleman, Miss Bennet, is a sporting man, a gaming man, a learned man, and an idle man. He does not involve himself in business, except what is necessary for running an estate--although most would leave most if not all of those details to the estate manager. A gentleman also never does such womanly things as sew, paint, sketch, or make music. Heaven forbid!”

“But there are many gentlemen who do such things,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Sir Thomas Lawrence and Joseph Turner are famous portraitists and painters; Weston is one of the most exclusive tailors in London; and there are many famous composers through the years who have been very esteemed gentlemen.”

Lord Peter looked at me with a cynical expression. “But those men would not be called gentlemen, to my father’s definition. And even if they were, it was his son he was concerned with, a son who, by no means, would be taught such missish arts. So I practiced playing the piano when no one else could hear but the servants, who were all fond of me and would not betray my secret, and I painted in the woods when no one could see but the trees and birds. And when I went to school, I hid it there, as well. Finally I was able to indulge in my passions when my father gave me the estates to run.”

“Yes; I saw some of your paintings at Landrey Manor, and Mrs. K told me about how you compose your own music,” I said as we reached the door to my bedchamber; I stopped and turned to look back at him.

He stood to the side of my door, the candle in his hand throwing shadows harshly across the planes of his face. His eyes glittered oddly in the light. “You went to Landrey Manor, then? When was this?”

“I visited it this past week. Only for a few days, just to see how it was run.”

“And what did you find?” he asked after a moment of silence.

I contemplated my words. “It is the place of my dreams,” I said finally. “I have loved it since the moment I saw it, years ago, and I never want to lose it again.”

“Miss Bennet, I don’t--“

“I’m not going to sell it back to you,” I said hastily, interrupting him. I turned to the door and opened it slightly, then turned back to the man waiting at my side. “I thank you for escorting me to my room, and I thank you for telling me about your father. I empathize entirely. Good night, Lord Peter.”

At first he didn’t respond, then he bowed slightly and said, “Good night, Miss Bennet.”

And with that, I turned and went into my room, closing the door softly but firmly behind me.

*Translation of "The Dream of Love":
The river is quiet,
Running.
And by its side I remain
Patient for love.
Beneath the willow
I wait
For the lover
Of which I've dreamed.
Sing, birds
Of this paradise,
And bring my lover
To my side.

Chapter 20

Posted on Saturday, 1 May 2004

On Tuesday afternoon, we played cards on tables set up on the patio that lay on the eastern side of the house, an activity Lady Symington had said would “allow us to be out in the beautiful warmth of such a day, while still hiding ourselves from the ill effects of the sun.”

And it was quite a beautiful day, the sun shining brightly on the grassy lawn that stretched to the edge of the woods that surrounded the Grange, not a cloud marring the sky. Several handsome peacocks strutted down by the lake diagonal from the front of the house; their calls could be heard from here, and even their beautiful tails could be seen, fanned out behind them in foppish array as they tried hard to impress the lady peahens that sat by the water’s edge.

I turned away from the patio’s railing where I had stood for some minutes, looking out at the scenery around us, and walked back towards where the rest of the group was seated at tables of two and four, their concentration on the cards before them. And although most of the guests were involved in a game, there were a few who were merely observing, finding themselves in between games or perhaps bored by the activity.

John was standing behind his mother, who was involved in a game of piquet with Lord Winderhaven, and I sidled up beside him, looking over Ceste’s shoulder at her cards. “John, could I talk to you a moment?” I asked in a quiet voice as his mother declared, “Point of six, six, Sixième for sixteen, twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four,” quite triumphantly, laying down several of her cards.

“Of course,” he replied and offered his arm to me. We strolled away from that table, and as we did so, he asked, “Of what did you wish to talk?”

I shook my head, waiting until we were further out of distance of the others. At last, when we were some distance across the patio, standing by a large fern planted in a somewhat distasteful-looking urn, I said, “I wanted to ask you why you made me an offer.”

He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Mary, I don’t really know if this is the place...”

“Then when can I ask you, John?” I asked. “Just humor me and tell me. It is really quite important.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, disordering the curls carefully arranged into the dramatic style “a la Titus” that had become so popular with the poets and then had spread to nearly all gentlemen, whether Fop or Corinthian. And actually, now that I noticed it, John was doing the fancy rather nicely, his overall appearance quite pleasing, as though he had spent more than the usual amount of time on it. He was definitely of the first stare this afternoon. My eyes narrowed slightly, suspicious.

“I asked you to marry me because I thought we’d get on well together,” he said finally.

“Why?” I asked, not quite content with that.

He shifted his weight. “Well, you’re a really nice, very kind young lady, you’re really loyal--I mean, I’ve seen how you are with my mother and my aunt...you like me, I think...and I like you...” He trailed off into uncertainty with an embarrassed smile.

I stared at him. “Is that it? What about common interests, or perhaps common philosophies? Did you think that I wanted to live in the country, maybe, or that I was economical?”

“Well, there is that,” he said with a nod. “You seemed to be out of your depth in London. I thought that you would maybe prefer to live in the country. And with regards to money, your talents with it seemed very impressive, and I thought that it might be a benefit when I began to put my estates back in order.” He paused and broke off a piece of the fern, shredding it with his fingers. At last, he looked back up at me and said, “I’m sorry if this isn’t coming out well, Mary. For some reason, I’m just not smooth and glib around you as I can otherwise be.” He threw the fern pieces to the side in frustration as he paced around me. “Lud! I spent how many years as a spy--what is it about you that makes me so inarticulate, when I’ve been otherwise told I’ve the gift of the golden tongue?”

I pulled at the fingers of my gloves. “Perhaps I make you nervous?”

He looked at me, then scoffed. “Why would you make me nervous?”

“Lord Peter says that I would run you ragged, should I marry you,” I said somewhat unwisely. I glanced over at my companion. His jaw had gone rigid, and he no longer looked at me but out at the vast expanse of lawn. He took several slow breaths before nodding and speaking:

“So this is all about Trelawny, then. What else did he tell you about me?”

“That you had told him what you were looking for in a wife. That you had talked about it, after you had come back to London.”

At first, John didn’t answer, and then his shoulders slumped, as if the fight had suddenly gone out of him. His gaze sought mine again. “He told the truth. I had talked with him about my expectations over some Port at our club on Brook’s, a few days after we had met that day you had gone out for a drive in Hyde Park with him. Did he really say that he didn’t think we’d suit?”

I rubbed my arm with one hand, nodding. “But the two of you seem to be rivals in this,” I said, a bit of hope in my voice. “He might have only been saying that to forward his own suit.”

John shook his head somewhat glumly. “No. That’s not his way. He wouldn’t lie like that, no matter what the gain to himself, unless he’s changed a lot since his salad days.” He looked at me with a curious expression. “But I do have to wonder what he sees in you that I don’t.”

I looked away, embarrassed. “I’m sure it’s nothing, John.”

“Has it come to that, then?” he asked me softly.

“Come to what?” I said, looking sharply at him.

“You love him, don’t you?”

A small laugh bubbled up from deep with in me, slightly hysterical, and I thrust it down again. “Of course not, John; don’t be absurd,” I said in a voice that sounded unconvincing even to my own ears. I cleared my throat and tried again: “There is nothing between Lord Peter and me other than a lot of ill-said words and a rather large estate.”

John shook his head. “You’ll do anything to convince yourself of that, won’t you?”

“I don’t have to convince myself,” I said, “as it’s the utter truth.” I folded my arms across my chest, beginning to feel defensive. “Whatever Lord Peter’s feelings, I am no more interested in him than I am in the economy of Western China. I have absolutely no intention of wedding anyone, and I wish people would simply accept that and stop forcing me to repeat myself.”

I glanced over at the card tables, where one game was just breaking up. “Perhaps we should go and set up a game of speculation. We have dallied here long enough.” And placing my arm through his, I towed him over to the others and roped two other guests into sitting down with us.

I played absolutely horribly, as I always do. I’m really just a terrible card player. But I was a little more horrible than usual, as my mind was definitely elsewhere. I kept thinking about what John had said, and the odd feeling that had swept through me when he had proposed that I loved Lord Peter. It was truly absurd, as I had told him. And there was nothing more to be said.

And yet...a little voice in my head, which I did my utmost to squash, kept whispering that it wasn’t the complete truth. That I, indeed, felt something more for Lord Peter than a wish to clap him over the head with an iron frying pan.

I pondered on that thought even later, as Flora was preparing me for dinner, as I ate the six courses that were served and chatted with my fellow tablemates, and even as I searched for clues in a round-the-house treasure hunt, during which I was partnered with Lord Peter himself. And when I finally retired for the evening, and lay silent and still in my bed, I continued to think about it, questioning how it was that I couldn’t get such a silly, asinine thought out of my head.

My mind went back to the previous day, when Lord Peter and I had reached such an accord in our relationship. I had even contemplated letting him kiss me. And while I had told myself that it was an experiment, that I simply wanted to have the experience of a first kiss, another part of me screamed that I had wanted the kiss because it was to be from Lord Peter.

Was it true? Did I feel some sort of affection for him? No, I couldn’t believe it. It would be so contrary to everything I wanted out of my life. I was going to retire to Landrey Manor, where I would live out the rest of my life in quiet contentment; I would find a new companion, now that Althea could not accompany me, and I would be happy. Utterly, completely happy.

I punched the pillow under my head, angry at myself because the thought didn’t fill me with the same feeling of pride and excitement as it had in the past. I didn’t want things to change; I had made this plan, and I was going to follow through on it. I simply couldn’t change things now.

And perhaps it was merely stubbornness that forced me to maintain my present course, but whatever the cause, it was the way things were. I wasn’t about to compromise my way of thinking because suddenly something else presented itself, something that I didn’t want.

Because that was the truth: I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t want Lord Peter to love me, I didn’t want him to make me an offer of marriage, I didn’t want to have to make a decision that would force me to hurt someone or give up my view of the future.

But he didn’t love me--couldn’t love me. It simply wasn’t possible, I told myself; they were all wrong. And if, by chance, he did love something it couldn’t be me--not plain, uninteresting, unlovable Mary Elaine Bennet.

Curling my legs up beneath the sheets and hugging the pillow tightly to me, I struggled with the overwhelming feeling of loneliness that swept through me. I hadn’t felt this lost since I was seventeen, before I met Althea. Had things not changed at all?

I fell asleep finally on that thought, and woke up fairly groggy only a few hours later as Flora came bustling into the room to start a new day. I almost asked her to let me sleep in a few more hours, but then decided that maybe a ride was all that I needed to clear my head.

And it did help a little. I returned to the house after riding a bit more refreshed, although I still felt rather out of sorts and definitely in no mood to be cheery, and had breakfast in the morning room, where many of the guests had already gathered.

As it was the last day of the house party, with everyone leaving on Thursday, the gentlemen again went out hunting while the ladies sat on the patio again, mostly doing embroidery and chatting, though some of us engaged in a game of lawn bowling. I found it all quite boring, but luckily it did not tax my somewhat tenuous patience all that much. I managed to maintain a polite smile the entire time.

Later in the afternoon, the party on the patio broke up a bit as some of the ladies retired to their rooms to write letters or went to the music room to play duets with each other, and I decided to again go for a ride, hoping that the activity would bring a little more life to my tired mind. Therefore, after having Hermia saddled, I set off down a path directed me by a helpful stable lad that led into the woods around the estate, the opposite direction that the men had taken to go hunting.

The air was cooler under the shade of the many trees, and I slowed Hermia to a walk, reveling in the freshness of the air and the beauty around me, my dismal mood lifting slightly. The leaves above whispered softly on a gentle breeze and little sparkles of light glistened through the gaps in the canopy overhead, dancing playfully on the ground.

There was so little sound; everything was quiet and clear. All that could be heard was just the steady clop, clop, clop of Hermia’s hooves and the occasional rustle of small woodland creatures in the undergrowth. But the silence was comfortable, not oppressive, much like a well-worn, well-loved blanket over one’s shoulders.

At one point we came to a clearing with a dozen or more flowering crape myrtle trees, a small brook running among them and disappearing back into the woods. The heavenly scent of the burgeoning blooms was so persuasive that I pulled Hermia to a halt and dismounted, tying her reins to a nearby branch. She immediately set to defoliating a bush while I strolled over to one of the crape myrtles along the brook.

Knowing I was the only one in the area, I felt no self-consciousness as I lay down under that tree full of red flowers, taking off my riding jacket to roll up and place under my head, leaving my arms mostly bare. I set my hat beside me, removed the pins from the hair so carefully arranged this morning by Flora, and spread out the shining mass behind me.

I closed my eyes as I lay back, just for a moment, listening to the birds chattering in the woods behind me and smelling the warm scent of the crape blooms on the air. The soft hum of the bees and the whisper of the breeze lulled me into a feeling of complete peace and serenity, and I welcomed it with open arms.

The next thing I knew, I had entered the wonderful, fuzzy dream world of my mind; I was dreaming of Lord Peter sitting next to me in that clearing beside the gently rushing brook, under that blooming crape myrtle. The scents around me were all that much sweeter in my dream, the air and the sunlight filtering through the leaves and flowers above me that much more warming, and I greeted his appearance in my dream as not abnormal, considering how often he had intruded these past few weeks. I relaxed my mind once more, wondering where my sleepy imagination would take me this afternoon. I smiled as I recognized the end of the Robert Burns poem Lord Peter was reciting softly to me as he gazed out at the running water, occasionally tossing flower petals into its shallow depth:

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild Ev'ning weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

And as he spoke the last line, he looked over at me, smiling so sweetly when he caught my eye. “I can only hope I wasn’t the one to wake you,” he said somewhat apologetically. “You looked so peaceful.”

I thought that was a fairly odd thing to say in a dream, but then my dreams didn’t often make sense, so I ignored the thought. Answering in kind, the words coming so naturally to my dream counterpart, I said: “I could not be unhappy waking to the sound of your voice.”

He blinked, and then his smile spread wider. He shifted from his sitting position, stretching out to lie on his side beside me, his head propped up by one arm. “Do you really mean that, Miss Bennet?”

“My name is Mary,” I said with what sounded to my ears like a low, lazy giggle.

“Mary, then,” he said softly. “Do you really mean that, Mary?”

I looked into his emerald green eyes and said, “I do.”

We were silent for a moment, and I returned my gaze to the tree above me, where bees flew between the numerous flowers and the clear blue sky peeped between the branches and leaves. Everything, the colors, the scents, the sounds seemed so real in this dream, and I felt as though it were but half of a dream world, somewhere between dream and awake, and that whatever happened in this world was the next best thing to it happening in real life. The next best thing.

And as the thought blossomed in my mind, a new impulse stole through me, sweeping through my bones and under my skin, and my lips opened without volition and whispered, “Kiss me, Peter.”

I turned my face towards his, and caught the expression of confusion on his face. Not, I thought, the most flattering of responses, and I wondered why my subconscious had conjured it up, but I was already this far into it. And in a dream, there’s nothing to lose; the worst that could happen would be to wake. So I reached out my hand and caressed his cheek, slightly rough with stubble but still soft to the touch. He brought his own hand up to cover mine and, turning his head slightly, kissed my palm.

“Peter, kiss me,” I said again, and his eyes flew to mine. Then slowly, his gaze never wavering, he leaned over and gently, tenderly pressed his lips to mine in a butterfly kiss, leaning back slightly afterwards to search my face. I smiled, a sweet rush flowing through my veins, and a mirrored smile appeared on his own face. My eyes closed as he then kissed me again, this time threading his fingers through my hair, his lips still light but now more passionate and coaxing.

And that’s when I knew. I wasn’t dreaming.

My eyes flew open with a start, realizing with a sinking sensation what I had done. To his credit, Lord Peter must have sensed the change in me, because he immediately leaned back, his eyes sweeping my face, trying to read my expression.

I quickly wiggled out from under him, keeping my eyes averted. I edged away a bit as I sat up, out of his reach, drawing my knees to my chest and hugging them, feeling extremely nervous and extremely awkward and inwardly berating myself for being such a gudgeon. Honestly; what did one say in a situation like this? I shot a quick glance at Lord Peter and then returned my gaze towards the brook, unrelieved by the brief sight of his expectant expression.

“Would you mind telling me what that was about, Miss Bennet?” I nearly cringed at hearing the slight harshness in his tone.

“I thought I was dreaming,” I said finally, deciding my best option was to stick to the truth. It seemed more plausible than any of the lies I could come up with. Barely.

There was silence for a while until he asked, “Do you often dream of me, then?”

I felt the heat creep up from my neck to my cheeks, and felt a flare of anger spark in my breast at the thought that he was making fun of me. “Oh, and wouldn’t you like that,” I snapped at him.

“Actually, I would.”

The anger died as suddenly as it had started, and I looked at him in shock. “Why?” I asked, the word coming out breathily, shakily.

He didn’t answer at first, instead concentrating on a blade of grass that he had plucked from the ground, twirling it slowly between his fingers. I waited, my heart in my throat, knowing what he was going to say, hoping I was right yet dreading it still.

“Because it would tell me that perhaps you feel the same way as I do,” he said finally, softly--so softly I almost couldn’t hear him. “I think I’ve fallen in love with you, Miss Bennet.” Then more loudly, meeting my eyes, “No, Mary, I am in love with you.”

My heart stopped. I would swear it stopped. And a panicked thought crossed my mind that maybe I was wrong--maybe I was dreaming, that this was all part of some cruel joke of my imagination. But I thrust the thought brutally aside, knowing that it was merely a desperate attempt to rationalize the overwhelming alarm that had stolen through me.

“No,” I choked out, the emotions beginning to bubble up inside me, tears forming behind my eyes. “No. No, you don’t love me,” I said, despising the desperation I heard in my voice. “You can’t love me.”

And suddenly, I knew I had to get away, before the tears that threatened fell, before I screamed out my frustration, before I said...just before.

I jumped to my feet and raced toward where Hermia stood, still grazing on the fauna around her. I could hear Lord Peter behind me curse, then hurriedly get to his feet, as well, and I untied Hermia’s reins from the branch as quickly as I possibly could, stifling a choked sob when the knot wouldn’t give. After what seemed like five panicked minutes, I finally freed her and quickly vaulted onto her back, straddling her instead of riding proper sidesaddle. I ignored Lord Peter’s shout, begging me to wait, and set off, bringing Hermia quickly to a cantor, then a gallop, racing hell-for-leather through the woods and out into a field, jumping across any obstacle that entered my path. I saw the Grange and immediately set for that, praying I would reach it before Lord Peter, needing the seclusion of my room to try and set my disordered mind to rights.

When I reached the stables I dismounted quickly, throwing the reins to a stable boy and running frantically towards the house as I saw Lord Peter come into the stable yard. “Miss Bennet!” he called, hastily dismounting as he rode in. “Mary!”

Knowing I could never outrace him on foot I stopped, turned, and held up my hand, halting him in his rush to catch up to me. “No, Peter,” I said. “No. Just let me go. I...I have to think about this.”

“I don’t understand, Mary,” he said, his voice betraying his desperation. “I’m trying so hard to understand.”

I brought my hand to my forehead and rubbed it, feeling the headache that was already forming. “I’m trying, too, Peter. I’m trying, too.”

Then, without another word, I turned and walked to the house. He didn’t come after me, he just let me go. And while a part of me was grateful, a part of me wished, as I closed the door to my room and leaned up against the door, that he had taken me in his arms, held me, and told me that we’d figure it all out together. But he didn’t.

And with that, the floodgates opened; hot, streaming tears flowed down my face, and I sank to the ground where I had stood. And I knew then, without a doubt; I knew. The thought scared me half to death, but I knew, all the same. I loved him.

Chapter 21

Posted on Sunday, 9 May 2004

The knocking on my door came only five or six minutes later.

“Mary! Mary, I know you’re in there! Let us in.”

I hesitated, then got to my feet and opened the door to admit a decidedly frazzled Althea and a far-more-sedate Maggie. Althea blew into the room, pacing directly to the window and then back, where she regarded me with her hands on her hips. “What were you doing? Are you out of your mind?”

I looked to Maggie, who had come in, shut the door behind her, and now stood near the hearth, where she fiddled with one of the figurines on the mantle. Her face revealed nothing. “I really do not have the pleasure of understanding you, Ally,” I said, returning my gaze to that lady. “Could you give me some hint, at least, to the general topic?”

She looked at me with an expression of pure astonishment. “You have to ask me? Have you taken a look at yourself?”

At her words, I hurried to the full-length mirror in my dressing room, where I was confronted by a particularly wild-looking version of myself. My hair, out of its pins, was blowsy and terribly ratted. My face was all blotchy, my eyes red from having been crying for the past few minutes. I wore only my long blue habit with its short half-sleeves, having left my jacket under the crape myrtle, where undoubtedly my hat and hairpins remained, as well.

“Oh, good heavens,” I breathed, rushing to my dressing table and grabbing hold of my brush. I pulled it through my tangled locks, trying to make the best of what could only be described as a bad situation. It only served to make my scalp sore and my head hurt abominably.

“Does that give you any idea of what I’m talking, then?” Althea said from the doorway. Then, with a sigh of exasperation, she proceeded to enter the room, take the brush from my hands, push me down into the chair in front of the table, and take over the task of setting my hair to rights.

I met her eyes in the mirror before me. “Ally, what am I to do?”

She pursed her lips. “The first thing we can do is make you look presentable again,” she said with a somewhat vicious jerk of the brush through a rather tough knot. She took a breath and began again in a gentler manner: “The fewer people that see you like this, the less of a scandal we might make of it. I have no idea how many people saw you; perhaps it was only Maggie, and we will be able to stem the flow of gossip from the servants, and this will all turn out to be simply a tempest in a teapot.” At my questioning glance, she said, “When Maggie came to us with news of what she had seen in the stable yard, Ceste and Michael went immediately to the stables to see what they could do about silencing the grooms and other servants, while Maggie and I came up here. David said he was going to find Lord Peter.”

“Oh, good heavens,” I said again, my face becoming as bright as a cherry. I averted my eyes from the mirror.

“Precisely what I said,” Althea said, looking around the top of the dressing table and then pouncing on the tiny dish of hairpins that sat in one corner. “May I ask what happened?”

I sighed. “Not much, Ally. It was all extremely innocent; I fell asleep by some small stream on the Symington’s grounds during my ride on Hermia.”

“I assume you had gotten off of the horse first,” Althea said wryly around the pins she had stuck between her lips.

I met her eyes in the mirror as a small bubble of amusement found its way into my heart, lightening the tension that was thrumming through me. “Yes, of course I did. I had taken off my jacket, unbound my hair, and lay down. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but I did. Lord Peter found me there; we had some words, which caused me to turn tail and run. That’s all there is to it.”

“You had words?” she said in disbelief. “What exactly caused these words to be spoken?”

“Ally, she doesn’t have to tell us if she’s uncomfortable,” Maggie said from the doorway where she had been watching this little drama unfold.

I shook my head, which caused Althea to curse under her breath and hold my head with both of her hands before returning to her task of sticking pins in the coil of hair she had arranged. “It’s all right, Maggie. Thank you for defending me, though. We...I asked him to kiss me.”

There was complete silence in the room. Althea’s jaw dropped, the pins falling unheeded from her lips. Even Maggie seemed a bit shocked. I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “I know, it’s probably against every rule of conduct there is, but I did. I can’t take back what I did.”

“Well, yes, that’s true,” Althea said, bending down to pick up the hairpins on the floor with one hand while holding my hair with the other. “Still, I must say I’m surprised. I thought you and Lord Peter were...not on the best of terms.”

“She’s in love with him, though she hasn’t admitted it to herself until now,” Maggie said quietly from her position by the door. She came to stand beside Althea, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder, and met my eyes in the mirror. “And from what happened, I would venture to guess that Lord Peter told you that he loved you, Mary. Is that why you ran?”

I felt a sad chill sweep through me. “How do you know so much, Maggie?” I asked in a hoarse voice.

A ghost of a smile flittered across her lips. “I observe people, Mary. When one doesn’t speak as much, one has more time to listen and watch. Your...infatuation was there for anyone to see, if they had truly wished it. But you spent so much time denying it, I think, that you never took the time to realize it, yourself.”

“No, I didn’t,” I admitted in a quiet, ashamed voice. “I didn’t want to realize it.” I felt another tear fall onto my cheeks, and I brushed it angrily away. “Maggie, why him? Why did it have to be him?”

Her hand tightened slightly as she said, “You can’t pick and choose the person with whom you will fall in love, Mary. It often just takes you by surprise.” She paused and sighed, a heartfelt sigh I felt to my very bones. “I never thought I would marry someone like my Arthur. I was set for adventure, for traveling around the world and seeing all the exotic things there were to see. I had read too many books, perhaps, but it was a dream of mine--and I haven’t given up hope of it, yet. But when Arthur asked me to marry him, something in me changed--not my dream, but my expectations for my life. I realized then that my plan wasn’t set in stone--who was I, a mere mortal and a fool, at that, to know where my path would take me?”

She smiled. “Besides, with Arthur, I had the world. My life with him was a journey in and of itself. Every day I saw new and wonderful things--perhaps not the bazaars or unusual animals from far-off countries of which I had dreamed, but they were beautiful and exotic to me all the same because I was seeing them with the man I loved.”

I bit my lip. “How did you know you loved him?”

There was a pause, and I looked up and met Maggie’s eyes, sad and compassionate. “You’re not really asking me how I knew I loved Arthur, are you?” she asked. “You’re asking me how you know you love Lord Peter.”

I hesitated, then nodded miserably. “It just doesn’t make sense, Maggie. We’ve done nothing but bite and scratch at each other since the very beginning. I’ve said some awful things to him--and he’s said more than a few in return. I know he didn’t like me at first--how could he have? And then there’s the Manor, looming so large between us, like a mountain in the middle of a ballroom. How do I know that this isn’t just to get Landrey Manor back?”

Maggie and Althea shared a rueful glance, but neither said a word. At last, Maggie looked at me again and said, “Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, tears now flowing freely down my cheeks again. Althea handed me a handkerchief. “I don’t know what I believe anymore. I feel like I’ve been...I don’t know...I just can’t seem to find the floor beneath my feet anymore, like it’s completely dropped away.” I blew my nose. “I don’t want this. I don’t want to be in love with anyone, I don’t want to marry anyone, I don’t want to...I just want to go home.” I looked up into the mirror at Althea, tears making everything wavy and water-drenched. I choked back another sob. “I just want to go home, Ally.”

I stood and turned around, and immediately Althea folded me into her arms, rubbing my back, soothing away the sobs and shivers that seemed to come out of my very soul. And as she held me and comforted me, a part of my tear-soaked and realization-stunned mind reflected that I didn’t even know where home was, where I yearned to be. I just knew that I needed to go there, where it was safe and warm and loving. I needed home.

There was a knock at my bedchamber door, but I hardly noticed as Maggie went to answer it. The brief conversation that followed drifted through the open doorway to my dressing room, the voices of Maggie and Lord Farrington filtering dimly into my brain: “Did you find him?”

“It took me a while, but I did. He was in the library, making serious inroads into a decanter of Brandy.”

Althea led me back into the bedchamber and, after taking out the pins she had so carefully put in, helped me lie down on the bed, and then went back into the dressing room.

“And what did he say?”

“He was willing to appear tonight, after I poured his glass and the rest of the decanter out the window. I don’t think he realized what position he had placed her in. If there’s any scandal, he said, he’s willing to make amends.”

“That’s good, but let us hope it won’t come to that; I’m not sure she’d be quite as willing right now.”

Returning with a cloth soaked in water, Althea laid the cool compress over my eyes, now dry and a bit itchy. “Why don’t you get a bit of rest,” she whispered to me.

“Is there anything else?”

“Yes; could you ask him where they were? It seems Mary left some of her things there. It probably wouldn’t do for someone to find them.”

Althea’s voice intruded into the conversation at the door: “Take a bag with you when you ride out, David, so that no one sees what you’re bringing back. It would look rather odd, I think, and we’d best not take our chances.”

Then the door closed behind them, and I was left alone in the room--alone with my thoughts. Which really wasn’t the best company to have. I would much rather have left them here and gone elsewhere. But I was ordered to rest (for I had no illusions that Althea’s suggestion was anything less), and so remain among them I must.

I lay there, in the dark of my mind, and listened to the slow, monotonous, relentless tick tick tick of the clock on the mantle as it counted the moments until I had to prepare for a dinner that was most assuredly going to be the most difficult I’d ever attended. I didn’t want to face any of them, but most of all I didn’t want to face Lord Peter. I definitely had made a hash of everything.

What was wrong with me? I thought. Everything seemed to be falling apart quite spectacularly ever since I came to London, and what did I do but make a fool of myself and cry about it? Before I had left Longbourn, I had never set a foot awry, had never gotten into any scrapes I couldn’t pull myself out of with poise. And now--now it seemed as though every plan I set in motion had rolled up, bounced back, and come at me with fangs bared. And the best response I could give it was to let it bite me, and then pout because I had been hurt.

But then, again, I had never before gambled on the roll of a dice. I had never before taken any risks, never tried my wings. I had believed I was infallible because I had never been tested--I had never tested myself. I think I was afraid of doing so; because in my heart, I was sure I would fail. Despite all of my bravura, I was as chicken-winged as all the rest.

I was as human as everyone else.

Which was a lowering thought. A very lowering thought, indeed. I was not infallible, invincible--I was merely human, with a human’s flaws and weaknesses. I had tried so hard to be perfect only to find that my foundation of ivory sticks and spider’s webs wasn’t strong enough to hold up the castle, after all.

So what was I supposed to do now? I didn’t know if I had the courage to throw off all of my masks and veils and show the world who I really was. I didn’t know if I really wanted, too, anyway. For what purpose? Who would care?

I must have fallen asleep then, for the next thing I knew, Althea was shaking me gently awake. The cloth had dried and had fallen from my eyes, and she held it now in her hands. “Mary, we have to prepare you for dinner.”

I noticed then that she was already dressed, but far fancier than for a simple dinner. “Ally, is that a ball gown?”

She stared at me, her brows drawn together in a vee of confusion. “Mary, don’t you remember--the Symington’s have planned a ball for our last evening here. All of the guests, and many in the surrounding neighborhoods will be in attendance.”

“Oh,” I said, sitting up now, more fully awake. “I had plum forgotten it,” I said ruefully. “Do you think I will have to dance with him?”

Neither of us bothered to clarify who he was. Althea simply nodded. “Necessary. You cannot appear to drop his acquaintance completely. It would be the equivalent of fox blood for the hounds.”

I nodded reluctantly. “Then it will be done.” And pushing myself from the bed, I descended the short steps and followed Althea into my dressing room. I found it already occupied, Alceste and Flora at the wardrobe shuffling through my gowns, and Maggie at the dressing table sifting through my jewel case. Flora hurried over as they caught sight of me.

“We had best be starting on your hair, Miss,” she said as she helped me out of my riding habit, in which I had slept. “There’s only a bit of time we have.”

I looked to Althea, who nodded. “A little over forty-five minutes. But we all dressed early so we could help you.”

“I think I have found a dress for you to wear,” Alceste said, folding a gown over one arm before closing the wardrobe and coming over to where I sat at the dressing table, Flora brushing my hair behind me. She held up a pale pink dress of gossamer satin with a cross-over bodice lined with dark rose colored ribbon and long, loose sleeves of transparent gauze, a matching pink in color. The skirt was long and flowing and had a train of medium length (I still had not gained the skill to handle long trains--I had an overwhelming fear of landing on my face in the middle of a large crowd; plus, trains, even on ball gowns, were going out of fashion) and was fashioned of a sheer silk organdy embroidered with tiny pink roses over the pink satin underskirt.

Althea nodded and said, “That, I think, will be perfect. Modest, yet modish, and very respectable. And the pink will be a good way to inspire more color in your cheeks,” she said, pinching my skin slightly and rubbing it to spread out the color that blossomed there. “Yes, much better. You no longer look as if death warmed over.”

“I believe these will go very well with that dress,” said Maggie, pulling out a string of pearls and pearl-drop earrings. “We shall have to make sure the hair is enough off of her face and neck to give them a good showing, though.”

Flora nodded, pinning up another curl. “That won’t be a problem, ma’am.”

“Can you use this comb?” she asked, holding up a fancy pearl-edged comb that had been in my jewel-case.

Flora nodded and incorporated it into the waves of hair that were slowly being tamed. And as I sat there, watching the others around me, I felt a strong feeling of pride and happiness well up inside me. Lord Peter had been wrong--these were, indeed true friends. When I needed them most, they were there to help me through the briar patches and back onto the beaten path. And wherever we all ended up, we would still have that friendship. I was not without it.

After another few minutes, Flora declared my coiffure complete, and I was bustled to my feet again and into the gown Alceste had selected. Althea twitched at my hair and gown as Flora did up the buttons in back, frowning at my appearance.

Alceste handed me my white gloves and helped me into my pink satin embroidered slippers. Maggie slipped an ivory-and-silk fan over my wrist. Flora clapped her hands in approval. Althea still frowned at me.

“I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong,” she said at last. She pursed her lips and looked me in the eye. “You look as if you’re on your way to the gallows.”

“I am on my way to the gallows. ‘At every word, a reputation dies.’”

“This is no time to quote Pope,” she said in rebuke. “You need to be alive, sparkling, enjoying yourself--although not with too much enthusiasm. You must still maintain the necessary bored appearance.”

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then, enclosing my heart and clearing my mind, I opened my eyes again and looked at my companions with an expression of bland expectation, my face free of any tension and my lips curved upwards in a slightly contemptuous smile.

“Am I ready?” I asked in a voice that was as rich and cultured as any young debutante’s, as untroubled and relaxed as the most ennui-filled gentleman of the ton.

Althea met my eye, paused a moment, searching whatever was there, and nodded. “Yes. You are ready.” She cleared her throat. “There are several things we must be clear about before you go down, however. First, Lord Peter will be in attendance. He has agreed to keep quiet on all details concerning this afternoon. The story will be, if anyone asks, that you and he met while riding and raced each other back to the Grange. The latter part will only be revealed if speculation has been aroused. After all, it is quite an unladylike thing to do, and we’d rather not cast any aspersion on your character or behavior if possible. But it covers the facts well enough, and will suit in a pinch.”

She looked at me for confirmation of my comprehension, and I nodded. “We have managed to quiet the servants for now. However, I have no doubt that before long, word will spread. Money can never cover anything for long when juicy gossip is at stake. It’s a natural thing.

“As to how many of the guests know, we are not aware. We, no doubt, will find that out as soon as you enter the drawing room this evening. If you are cut, do not react. Simply make your way to a more receptive group.”

I nodded, keeping my expression serene. This was going to be a very long, very trying evening. It would be the performance of a lifetime.

We went down the stairs together at the sound of the second dinner gong and were met in the drawing room immediately upon our entrance by John and Lords Thornfield and Farrington. David smiled at me bracingly as he took Althea on his arm, as did Michael, and as I took John’s proffered arm the seven of us proceeded further into the room.

There were no cuts. Either word had not yet spread among those present, or no one was inclined to cut me, but in any case, I was not the cynosure of all eyes. I felt relief flow through my bones, and my smile grew a little more relaxed.

As more of the guests flowed into the room preparatory for going into dinner, however, I began to become aware of a ripening buzz that had begun to pervade the room, and the growing number of glances that were cast my way. With a sinking sensation that began in my stomach and melted its way to my toes, I realized that someone had seen me. They had found out.

Continued In Next Section