The Stanbroke Girls

by Fiona Hill

  It will be thought, perhaps, that Sir Jeffery was foolish for supposing that merely because he prevented the earl from marrying one woman he would gain materially. But Sir Jeffery knew his man: very few indeed were the women Marchmont admired. Nor did de Guere believe his cousin would marry merely for the sake of securing an heir. If he could contrive to eliminate Lady Elizabeth from the earl’s life, it would be years before his lordship thought of marriage again. And during those years—who knew? Perhaps this rash passion of Marchmont’s for a duel would result in an untimely death. Life was, as he had just pointed out to his cousin, full of mysteries. The same circumstances that made Lady Emilia desire her brother’s marriage so urgently made Sir Jeffery hope to gain from preventing it. It was not an altogether unreasonable point of view.

  Lord Weld and Lady Emilia sat in the drawing-room at number 21 Cavendish Square waiting for the Earl of Marchmont to come downstairs. It was Thursday. Evening had claimed London for her own: the long shadows cast by the setting sun had stretched themselves to exhaustion and expired, leaving the drawing-room washed in weak moonlight. Lady Emilia wished it were not too late in the year for a fire: the room could do with some cheering up. “What an age he takes,” she remarked, for the second time, to Weld. “I feel as if we’ve been waiting for him this hour.”

  “Perhaps we ought to play a hand at cards,” suggested Weld. “If he is dressing, as we suppose, to please Lady Elizabeth Stanbroke, then he may keep us waiting here till midnight.”

  “If we wait till midnight Lady Elizabeth will have no dances free to give him,” she replied moodily, then added with more animation, “Do you really think he is looking forward to seeing her? I have waited so long for him to take a fancy to someone, it almost seems too wonderful to be true.”

  “Naturally your judgement is superior to mine, for you have known him longer, but in my humble opinion we have lately had the pleasure of knowing an earl head over ears in love.”

  “Truly? You think it is love?” Lady Emilia sat up straighter in the wine-red arm-chair she occupied and addressed him earnestly. “He has not taken you into his confidence, by any chance?”

  Sorrowfully, Warrington shook his head No.

  “He has not confided in me either,” said she, leaning back again. “But I am pretty sure of it anyhow. The trouble is, now that I seem finally to be getting what I wanted, I am not so certain I want it.”

  “You do not care for Lady Elizabeth after all? But she is so particularly likeable. You know, I had an intuition about her weeks ago, as soon as we’d met her. I thought she was the girl for Marchmont. Told him so, too.”

  “You did? And he listened?”

  “No. Wouldn’t hear of it, in fact. Insisted she was my Lady Elizabeth. But I thought you approved of her!”

  “Oh, I do,” she assured him. “I think she is charming. It’s only that…I feel as if I have twisted Jemmy’s arm.”

  “Well, you have certainly done that,” he observed cheerfully.

  “Do you think so? I am so troubled by it. Suppose he is really pursuing her only to please me? I should feel so odious and low.”

  “In my inexpert opinion,” said Weld, standing and crossing the room to her, “that is the very last thing you need to worry about.” He stood by her arm-chair and looked down upon her. She was wearing a gown of French gauze, bleu celeste over white satin, and her thick dark hair was arranged in dozens of curls. “You know,” Weld said, his hands thrust into his pockets, “in the last few days Marchmont has said—well a number of things regarding…I don’t know how to put this. Perhaps I ought not to say anything at all.”

  Emilia looked up. “I beg you will be frank,” she answered simply.

  “Very well, then.” He sat down on a sofa only a few inches from her and watched her face intently as he spoke. “Lord Marchmont has intimated a number of times that you might…well, in short, that as my esteem for you is profound, and since the affection I feel for you has grown daily more—”

  “Oh dear,” said Emmy abruptly. “Marchmont’s been playing at Cupid with you too. Excuse me. I don’t think you ought to go on.”

  Lord Weld expelled a breath that sounded curiously like a sigh of relief. “My lady, I take you at your word—”

  “Since we have agreed to be frank, you may safely do that. I don’t know why Jemmy insists on match-making! It is so vexatious.”

  Warrington sat back on the sofa. “I am sure he only does it out of love for you. He is very much afraid that your…ah, your singlehood weighs heavily on you.”

  “And so he solicits offers for my hand from among his friends?” she answered. “Very pretty.”

  “Oh no, you must not think— Your brother knows how much I admire you. Without labouring the point, what he suggested was…was not far from my mind in any case. Only, if I understand you correctly, I did not expect you would welcome my suit. Please, it is not a painful issue to me,” he rushed on, as she seemed about to speak. “To say truth, in spite of my real satisfaction in your company, I did not think we ought to…I mean, that we belonged…oh dear. If my impression of your feelings towards me has been accurate, then we are not of very different minds on the matter at all,” he finally concluded. “I do not take it as a slight.”

  “Nor should you,” she said gratefully. She had refused offers before, but never had she felt so comfortable doing so. Through the moonlight she looked curiously at Warrington Weld’s pale, freckled face. “You know, I have often wished to thank you for your being so good a friend to my brother. Of your saving his life, I say nothing; it is too large a debt. But you must understand, my brother does not fall into intimacies easily. You are a remarkable person to have gained his trust so completely.”

  The poor man turned bright pink under this stream of praise. He was obviously much more discomfited by this than by her gentle rebuff and was on the point of asking her to turn the conversation when Lord Marchmont at last came in. Marchmont, naturally thinking he had interrupted a tender scene, very nearly offered to go out again, but he felt this would be too awkward (a few things were still beyond him, despite the romantic fog in which he passed most of his days of late) and instead suggested they depart for the Trevors’ if they were ready. Emilia bit back a rejoinder to this intimation that he might be ready though they were not and preceded the gentlemen out the door. Half an hour later (the crush of traffic was abominable) they arrived at the doors of Haddon House.

  The evening had begun, in that elegant abode, with an argument. At least among the children it had begun with an argument; the servants were too much occupied preparing for the arrival of more than a hundred guests to have time for any highly developed quarrels, while Lord and Lady Trevor made it a point never to become embroiled in debates unless it was absolutely necessary. Not that their children were really at liberty either to indulge in controversy, for each had a special reason for wishing to appear well at the ball—but they made time to argue, as busy people all over the world have done before them and continue to do.

  Elizabeth, Isabella, and Amy shared a large, pleasant sitting-room on the third floor of the house, and it was in this apartment that the quarrel took place. Lizzie and Bella had finished dressing first, and had come into the room to consult with one another on some small matters of fashion. Preparations were going forward downstairs with such accompaniment of noise and confusion that both girls chose to take advantage of the quiet afforded them by the sitting-room, and curled up (in so far as gowns and slippers would allow) in its luxurious sofas for a comfortable cose.

  “Do you think that ghastly Middleford Lemon will come?” Elizabeth asked, when certain questions regarding Alençon lace had been dispensed with. “I was hoping he might be struck with—oh, say a crippling disease or some such, that would prevent him.”

  “Oh, he is sure to be here, since he knows you will be. He admires you very much, Lizzie. I noticed it at Lady Hassall’s pic-nic.”

  “If he admires me, you would think he would take care n
ot to talk me to death, with his porcelain boxes and figures. I just loathe the way he says the word figures, don’t you? ‘Figaws,’ is what he says, is it not? Pawcelain figaws! What odious lisps these town bucks affect. Did you notice Charlie has begun to adopt one, too? He is really too repulsive.”

  Lady Isabella nodded vigorously. “I can’t imagine how he got through school,” she said. “Not that he did so very well, of course, but it surprises me that he did it at all. He is certainly the slowest man living, don’t you think?”

  “If not the very slowest, then distinctly among the top competitors. What really astonishes me,” Elizabeth went on, “is that he expects us to be just as cork-brained as he is. He is so perfectly transparent, with his idiotish airs and fooleries, and yet we are supposed to pretend we have no idea what he is about. ‘I am not entirely dead to the finer things in life,’ he says. ‘Porcelain-work is extremely artful.’ That is just what he told me, if you can believe it, not three days ago. Then he went off to visit those numbing Lemon girls.”

  “Did he say that to you?” asked Bella. “Those are exactly the words he used the first night he met them—or so near as makes no difference. I was simply furious. Amy was right there in the room. I believe you’d gone to sleep.”

  “He really is a clunch.”

  “I was so angry when Mamma insisted on inviting all those Lemon people tonight. What are Sir Arthur and Lady Lemon to us? Nobody. But Mamma maintained they must be asked, and their whole crop with them. I know it is for Charlie’s sake,” she added with a frown. “Mamma always thinks of Charlie. And it isn’t even as if Susannah Lemon likes him. Have you seen them together? She positively laughs in his face. Naturally he is too shatter-brained to notice.”

  “I wonder where he gets it,” Elizabeth agreed, marvelling. “I mean, neither Papa nor Mamma is dull-witted, and no more are you or I. Charlie must study it,” she pronounced finally. “It’s an achievement.”

  “And when I think of Amy squandering all her attention on him, I could just scream.”

  “Well, that’s Amy’s own fault,” Elizabeth observed, with a glance at the door that separated them from the chamber where Miss Lewis was still being dressed. She lowered her voice and continued, “She doesn’t show any more sense than he does, if you want my opinion.”

  “I suppose you think she could simply stop caring about him, if she chose to?”

  “Certainly.”

  Isabella, who had nevertheless supposed the very same thing any number of times, now hotly refused to hear it. “It is just like you to say such a thing, Elizabeth.”

  Lizzie remained unruffled. “Hardly surprising when we consider that I am myself.”

  “You know what I mean. You think everybody can regulate his mind the way you do. Well, it isn’t so. Some people’s feelings run deeper than others. They can’t turn away at will. Amy’s feelings run very deep.”

  “And mine do not?”

  “Certainly not, or you would realize love is not a matter of directing one’s attention toward a correct object. You and your Marchmont! ‘I will marry Lord Marchmont,’ you said. On the first night, too! I expect you will do it, just to show us your affections are all orderly and biddable.”

  “You misunderstood me that night,” said Lizzie, tight-lipped.

  “Did I? Then you would not accept him, if he were to ask?”

  “That is neither here nor there.”

  “It is. You suggest that Amy could—”

  “Amy’s feelings and mine are very different matters,” Elizabeth broke in. “I am older. I have more experience. I have seen more of the world. Amy is too young; she knows no one but Charlie—so naturally she imagines he is wonderful. She ought to have sense enough to realize a judgement like that should not be made in ignorance. She ought to acknowledge her youth and open up her heart to other possibilities. Sometimes I think I shall tell her so, in fact, but I keep hoping she will come to it herself.”

  “She would not listen to you in any case. Life is not all sense, Elizabeth,” exclaimed her sister, hissing the word sense as if it were something particularly odious.

  “Well, it is certainly not all nonsense,” cried Lizzie, finally firing up. “Isabella, I hope you are not intending to repeat that ridiculous scene you enacted at Lady Emilia’s the other night! Whoever your mystery gentleman is, for God’s sake, keep away from the empty rooms with him.”

  “There was no gentleman!”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  Charlie strolled into the room, elegant in superfine and silk. “You girls having a bit of a wrangle?” he inquired. “What fun!”

  “Keep out of this, Charles,” Isabella warned him.

  “No, I think he ought to be here,” countered Lizzie. “He’s just as idiotish as you are. This family simply staggers me. Halcot, what on earth do you mean by running after those Lemon girls? You’re six-and-twenty years old now. You’re not a child!”

  “I’m obliged to you for noticing. What the devil is your point?”

  “My point is, you ought to know when someone is laughing at you.”

  “Oh, and Susan—er, the Lemon girls are laughing at me?”

  “Certainly. Everybody is laughing at you.”

  “Oh, indeed? I daresay you must think yourself very clever to have observed it.”

  “It’s nothing to do with clever,” muttered Lizzie, while at the same moment Isabella interjected, “Oh, indeed, she does! Lizzie thinks she is terribly clever—staggeringly clever. She knows how to run everybody’s life. You should hear her on the subject of Amy.”

  “Bella—” cautioned Lady Elizabeth.

  “Oh, and what has she to say about Amy?” asked Halcot. “Is everybody laughing at her, too, or is that only me?”

  “Oh, she says Amy can turn off her feelings if she likes. She says everybody can regulate his feelings. Elizabeth knows these things, Charlie,” she added with heavy sarcasm. “She hasn’t got any feelings, you see, so she can be objective about them.”

  “What an advantage! And what feelings, pray tell,” he went on, addressing Lizzie now, “should Miss Lewis forget?”

  “I don’t wish to discuss it,” Elizabeth answered, suddenly subdued.

  “That’s fine! You make me feel a prime fool, and then you don’t choose to discuss it.”

  “It’s only a feeling, Charlie,” Isabella put in. “Just forget it, why don’t you?”

  “Tell me, Lizzie—what should Miss Lewis forget? Is she running after someone, someone who laughs at her?”

  “Worse than that,” Bella said, turning on him abruptly. “Someone who doesn’t even notice.”

  Halcot raised an eyebrow. “And who might that be?”

  “Well, it might be—”

  “Isabella!” hissed Lizzie.

  “Yes, it might be someone in this room—”

  “Isabella!”

  “What the devil—?”

  “Charlie, you are such a dolt!”

  “Isabella, think of what you are doing,” begged Elizabeth, jumping to her feet. “For the love of—”

  The door opened suddenly behind her. In the threshold stood Amy, a smile rapidly fading from her lips. The room fell silent at once, while Miss Lewis advanced a step. No one else moved. “Whatever is the matter?” she finally asked, for she was confronted with the spectacle of three siblings, all standing, and all apparently ready to strangle one another. “I thought I heard shouting.”

  “Oh, my dear, it was nothing,” cried Lady Isabella, moving to her side. She took her friend’s hand and drew her further into the sitting-room.

  “I really think we had better go downstairs,” Amy protested. “I have been forever dressing, I thought. Isn’t it late?”

  “I am sure it must be,” Lizzie said, relieved.

  As she reached the door she heard Amy ask mildly, “Lord Halcot, are you quite well? You look very odd, indeed.”

  Lizzie turned to see what prompted this question and saw her brother, still as he was w
hen Amy had entered, staring at the girl. As she watched, Isabella put an arm protectively round her friend and led her again to the door. “It is nothing,” said Bella to her. “Charlie and I have been bickering again. That is all.” With these words she swept out the door after Elizabeth and followed that lady down the great front staircase. Lord Halcot remained where he was for quite some moments after the girls had gone, however. It was not something he was in the habit of doing, and it took him some little while: but he was putting two and two together, and making four.

  9

  Is there anything so pleasant as a ball? What stirs up the imagination so agreeably in anticipation, and what hours, in retrospect, shine so endearingly as those passed dancing on a parqueted floor? If the joys of looking forward and the charms of looking back upon a ball are (as I think they may be) perhaps a little greater than the pleasures of the ball itself—well, then, there are many occasions of which that same complaint may be made, are there not? If the crush of bodies grows sometimes a little tedious; if the six partners one does not care to dance with wear one out before the sweetness of that seventh can be tasted; if the heat and noise and confusion make one’s temples throb ever so slightly—well, after all, is not such a rare satisfaction purchased cheaply at the cost of a little chagrin? For Miss Pye, Miss Hassall (now thankfully recovered), for Sir John Firebrace and Lord Weld, the ball at the Earl of Trevor’s that warm May evening was well worth any little inconvenience it occasioned.

  Lord Marchmont enjoyed the evening heartily for as much as half an hour. De Guere had not yet come. His lordship danced with Lady Emilia and reserved the hand of Elizabeth for the two fourth. He began to hope his cousin had changed his mind. Of course this same half hour was misery to Isabella: one man’s joy was ever another man’s sorrow.