He bowed again.
“And your maternal grandmother.”
“My grandmother?” He betrayed a little surprise at this unusual form of address, but responded readily enough. “Yes, I have heard that from my paternal grandmother, but only in the form of a judgment.”
“Lady St. Tarval was almost as big a fool as old Carlisle,” the duchess stated. “Your maternal grandmother was an exceptional woman, as beautiful as she was witty. She should never have been made to marry a man more than twice her age. But that is not what I wanted to say to you. Have you a tendre for my granddaughter?”
The abrupt address considerably startled St. Tarval. He stood very still, not certain what to say. Politeness would require a lie, and he could not bring himself to utter it.
The duchess said, “That is answer enough. I wanted to see for myself if it was a tendre, or an interest in her dowry.”
St. Tarval flushed. “I am not free to—”
“Tchah,” the duchess stated.
The marquess reddened a little, but resumed steadily. “Even if I were free, as far as I am concerned, anything of that sort would be tied up for future generations.”
“High-and-mighty, sir. High-and-mighty. So you do not know the extent of it?”
“I do not. I never have thought of inquiring.”
“I would have known if you had,” she retorted, patting his hand. “But I will tell you, for she does not actually know the extent of it herself. When she turns five-and-twenty later this year, she will inherit two hundred thousand pounds.”
The shock was like ice through his nerves.
The duchess was watching closely. She saw the impact, and the quick revulsion after, then forestalled him by saying, “Besides what I may leave her. Just so you know. But we will converse again, once you have cleared up your affairs.”
She nodded an unmistakable dismissal, and he walked away very much at random, needing time to reflect, to master himself.
But he was not to get it.
Lucretia and her family had arrived two carriages ahead of the marquess and his brother.
Lucretia’s mirror had flattered her that she looked her best in a gown of pink gauze, decorated with silk roses, with real roses fitted into her headdress. Her guise was Cendrillon, the headdress fitted like a fairy crown.
They made their bows to their hostess, then Lady Bouldeston went in search of a good seat from which to see and be seen, and Sir Henry sought liquid reinforcement.
Lucretia shook off her sister and her swain, and plied her fan as she studied the guests. First to catch Mr. Devereaux’s eye, and then, she simply must use her wits. If nothing else, she could contrive to get him alone, for if they were discovered together... well, gossip could sometimes reward one, if one were sharp. Carlisle could do her a fine turn at last, if he could be got to discover them. But first she had better made certain that her letter had had its intended effect. Why not do that and spark Mr. Devereaux to jealousy both?
Ah. There was St. Tarval, walking away from that ugly old duchess.
Lucretia glided up to him, took his arm and said in languishing accents, “Oh, Carlisle, I trust you are not still angry with me—my poor head—”
St. Tarval looked at her. The speciousness of those downward cast eyes, the little pout, only served to inflame his emotions to recklessness.
He knew what was due Sir Henry, his neighbor. He knew that one must not hold conversations such as these in a ballroom, but as the first dance was ending, and Lucretia had the audacity to tug him in the direction of the ballroom floor, he started abruptly the other way. Perforce she must come after.
The gallery above was supported by marble columns, between which arches disclosed little alcoves. Drawing her into the first of these, he said, “Now we can hear one another speak. You will oblige me, I trust, with an explanation, Lucretia? I refer to the fact that I had to drive out last night in search of my sister, whom I found with her friend alone in the road, very much unprotected.”
Lucretia’s jaw dropped. “It was you who... “ She could not imagine how that had come about. Nor did she care beyond the necessity of retrieving the situation.
But her wits were offering no solution, and so she must take refuge in delicacy. She brought her wrist to her forehead, and swayed, saying, “I fear I am going to swoon.”
Still too irritated to wait, he said, “If that is all you have to say, then I take leave to inform you, before you swoon, that I will be calling upon your father to put an end to an engagement that we never should have made.”
This was a disaster! Wild with desperation, she caught the sound of approaching footsteps, and cast herself onto Carlisle’s bosom. If she were seen thus, he would have to marry her, for she could claim that he could not rule his passions—
Then a familiar voice drawled, “Miss Bouldeston? I had come to offer you a dance, but if I intrude—”
Her eyes flew open. “Mr. Devereaux,” she exclaimed breathlessly, pushing St. Tarval away. To make certain that Mr. Devereaux did not misunderstand, she said to the marquess, “If you must end our betrothal so cruelly, then I cannot stop you.”
And she turned her back on him, and cast upward her most pleading, modest countenance, the one most often practiced before her mirror. “Oh, please take me away from this place. Mr. Devereaux, I scarcely know how to thank you—what you must think—”
“We shall have to hurry,” was all he said. What a relief! No awkward questions! “We do not want to miss the set forming now.”
“Of course,” Lucretia said, to demonstrate how biddable she could be, and obligingly increased her pace. She had just enough time to cast a triumphant look at her mother—and to smirk pityingly at Miss Harlowe, sitting at the wall like the dowd she was, before they joined the set.
St. Tarval stood in the alcove for a minute or two, almost dizzy with relief, and question. Devereaux had appeared out of nowhere, and reacted to what anyone would have taken as a disgraceful scene as if nothing had occurred. St. Tarval was no longer certain of anything except that he had regained his freedom. Lucretia had said it herself, before a witness.
And so his steps carried him toward Miss Harlowe the way the tide carries the ship into home port. He sat down beside her, and said, “I am free.”
Clarissa had seen his arrival—and how Lucretia promptly carried him off, as was her right. The fresh pain of that had barely begun to numb when she saw Lucretia reappear on the arm of Cousin Philip. She had just enough time to wonder how that had happened when here was the marquess himself, his dear face still distraught, but his lips forming into a smile of heartfelt warmth. “I’m free,” he said again. And he held out his hand.
Clarissa did not care who saw, though she doubted anyone had the least interest in them. She slid her fingers into his, and gripped them tight. There would be time and more for all the explanations necessary, the who-saids and who-thoughts and I-nevers and then, oh, and then the will-you, followed by yes-I-will.
For now, she would sit here in this brilliant light, music pouring all around, and hold tight to the man she loved.
She was wrong about no one looking. Kitty noticed her from the ballroom floor, where she was dancing with another new acquaintance, a Lord Buckley, whose adroit comments kept her in smiles. Clarissa and the marquess were also spotted by Edward from the safety of the card room, who gloated to himself and rubbed his hands. Maybe Carlisle’s good luck would bring him good luck!
Kitty got a closer look when the dance brought her near, and this time she glimpsed their clasped hands, which could only mean one thing.
Lucretia saw her pass by, and pitied Catherine being desperate enough to dance with a married man. She was disgusted to see Catherine staring at her brother, and willed her to turn around so that she might be slain by jealousy: See who my partner is!
“I see you are watching Lady Catherine,” Mr. Devereaux observed.
An automatic answer rose to Lucretia’s lips, then she remembered with an
inward smile that she no longer needed to pretend anything for her future sweet sister. “I was looking at her mother’s gown,” she said. “I am certain it was very fine, thirty years ago.”
“Permit me to observe,” he said, “that it is very fine now.”
The dance separated them, relieving her of the necessity of any politenesses on Catherine’s behalf. When they came together, he said, “I desired to dance with you for it is you I have to thank.”
The dance separated them again, vexing Lucretia extremely, but it gave her time to recollect the modest, graceful words she had practiced in assenting to his proposal.
But he had not quite got there yet. “Thank me?” she said, giving him a cue.
“For drawing my notice to Lady Catherine,” he said, as they performed the hands across.
“To Catherine?” she repeated as they reversed, and stepped the other way.
“Lady Kitty, I should say,” he amended. “No, I believe she will shortly give leave to call her Kitty, a name eminently suited to her.”
Coldness flooded through Lucretia.
He went on as they paced down the dance, “If it was not for your notice, I might not have discovered as early as I did how beautiful she is, how kind. How witty, and generous.”
Every word was worse than the last!
“And so I wished to thank you, with all my heart, and to inform you first of all her friends, that I intend this very night to ask her to be my wife.”
First was numbness, then came fury, hot and bright, but then the numbness again. It could not be real—it must be a joke. But when the dance brought them together for the last time, he said, “I trust I have your blessing?”
She forced herself to utter something—she later could not recollect what—and then the nightmare dance ended at last, and she made it across the ballroom to her mother’s side. And for the very first time, she did not watch him to see where he went next.
Kitty thanked Lord Buckley, turned away, and there was Mr. Devereaux. Why did the sight of him instantly fill her with light?
Mr. Devereaux in his guise as a gentleman of their grandfathers’ day made an old-fashioned leg. “My dance?”
“La, sir,” she said, putting out her hand.
They joined the set, each smiling at the other, until they were close enough for him to say, “This is not the time or the place, but I spoke to your brother...”
The dance drew them apart. She gave him such a smile that he had to laugh when they came together again. “Who had bestowed on me his blessing.”
“His blessing for?” she prompted, when they met again. She knew—for she could see it in his countenance, but she wanted to hear the words, and to say her own.
“Shall I call tomorrow, when we are not in the middle of a great crowd, me laboring under this hot wig, and you... ah, there I must end, for you are always beautiful. The more I see of you, the more impatient I am to be alone with you.”
“That you may be any time you like,” she said, her heart beating fast. “And as often as you like! Since my brother has given you his blessing.” And because she saw the curl of smile in his lips, she knew that he had more to say, and she would always want to hear it. “You will call tomorrow for?”
He leaned forward a little as they gripped one another in the hands across, and he whispered in an intimate tone, “Guess.”
Her delighted crow of laughter drifted across the polished marble floor to the marquess and Clarissa, who had joined the dance.
The four smiled at one another as they hopped, twirled, and stepped in the pattern of the quadrille, watched with deep pleasure by the Duchess of Norcaster, who began to contemplate weddings.
LES CHANGEMENTS DE DANSE
Sir Henry threw down the letter in disgust. He supposed he could not blame the marquess, but the marriage would have been so convenient. Better than convenient, for not only he would have got Lucretia off his hands, but he could have driven a hard bargain in settlements with her swain in order to make up his increasing debts.
It was time to send his wife and the girls home. The one it seemed he would never get rid of, and the other was in a fair way to being out the door. There was no necessity to keep them in London wasting money on furbelows and picnic lunches.
Greatly disgruntled, he rose, ready to issue orders to his family, when the butler knocked at his door to say that he had a caller.
While that was going on, the ladies sat in the breakfast room in silence. Lady Bouldeston was disgusted with Lucretia, who, she was convinced, was the reason their reception had been polite but distant at the brilliant affair the night previous. She was quite certain there would be no further invitations from any of those people. Very well. It was time to go home; Lucretia had ruined her chances, and she should not be permitted to somehow ruin Lucasta’s.
The latter sat mumchance over her hot chocolate, fighting yawn after yawn. Masquerade balls were all very fine, except what a crowd! Scarcely anyone had seen her gown, and as for select company, in spite of all the masks, she had danced with precisely the same people she always saw, Mr. Aston foremost. Well, at least she could write to Cassie that she had been to the Duchess of Norcaster’s masquerade. That would look very fine in a letter, and in the future, she could let it fall to anyone she spoke with that she had made up one of the company.
Lucretia sat in stony silence, hating everyone, but that selfish simpleton Catherine Decourcey the most. It was her fault. Everything was her fault. But could Mother see that? No. All the way home from the ball they had quarreled, Mother declaring they would go home to Riverside Abbey by week’s end. Not that Lucretia cared. There was nothing to stay in London for...
The ladies looked up when Sir Henry appeared. Lucretia braced for more quarreling, having recognized Carlisle’s handwriting on the letter that had been waiting by his plate at breakfast.
But Father was smiling as he shut the breakfast room door. “Lucretia,” he said, his voice increasing in irony on each word. “I never thought I should say this, but it seems that a young man of excellent connections and worth has called to ask permission to court you. He appreciates your birth, and appears furthermore to be laboring under the impression that you are a well-bred, modest young lady.”
Crash! Went Lady Bouldeston’s coffee cup to the saucer. “What?”
“Who?” Lucasta asked, hoping only that he did not have a title, that she still might have precedence of her sister, for at least Mr. Aston was an Honorable.
“I gave him permission,” Sir Henry added. “Unless you want to end up a spinster living on your sister’s bounty, you will say ‘Yes sir,’ and ‘When can we be wed?’ Now go in there and make him the happiest of men.”
Lucretia made her way to her father’s book room, where she was considerably startled to recognize Lord Wilburfolde, who rose from his chair, hat in hand. Disappointment was so sharp she sank into a chair, her father’s words echoing in her ears.
As he unfolded his carefully prepared speech, to which she paid no heed, she tried to remember what she had heard about him. Lord? Lands? Hampshire instead of Kent, and therefore far, far from home?
When he finished, she said slowly, “I believe you mentioned that your home is called The Castle, sir?”
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Copyright & Credits
Danse de la Folie
Sherwood Smith
Book View Café Edition August 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61138-193-1
Copyright © 2012 Sherwood Smith
Cover design by Amy Sterling Casil
Production team Patricia Rice, Madeleine Robins
v20120819
www.bookviewcafe.com
About the Author
Sherwood Smith was a teacher for twenty years, working with children from second grade to high school, teaching history, literature, drama, and dance.
She writes science fiction and fantasy for adults and young readers.
Her most popular book, Crown Duel, is cur
rently in its 16th printing. The ebook edition contains extra material not available in the print edition.
Though she is known primarily as a fantasy writer, Sherwood and fellow BVC member Dave Trowbridge have collaborated on Exordium, a five-volume space opera.
Book View Café Ebooks by Sherwood Smith
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A Stranger to Command
Senrid
Fleeing Peace
Remalna’s Children
A Posse of Princesses
CJ’s Notebooks
Over the Sea
Mearsies Heili Bounces Back
Poor World
Hunt across Worlds
The Wren Series
Wren to the Rescue
Wren’s Quest
Wren’s War
Wren Journeymage
Exordium
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The Phoenix in Flight
Ruler of Naught
Short Fiction
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Being Real
Book View Café Anthologies
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Ways to Trash Your Writing Career
Dragon Lords and Warrior Women
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