by Valerie King
Mrs. Rockingham glared at him, but did not offer a single word in greeting or conversation. He felt obligated by every sense of self-respect to remain equally silent.
Finally, the lady opened her mouth. “And this is how you would repay Mrs. Crawley, by taunting her in her own home? Is this how you were taught to behave the gentleman?”
“I swooned at the sight of him,” Mrs. Crawley added helpfully, once more drawing near.
Mrs. Rockingham raised her hand again, and Mrs. Crawley begged pardon for having dared to interrupt her superior. “I gave you more credit, Sir Roger. I had thought you would know better than to have accepted Mrs. Crawley’s invitation. You would have been better served to have refused and so avoided my necessary and quite public opinions on the subject. You have crossed every boundary of decency this evening in having polluted the halls of Wistfield with your presence here.”
He could not resist. “Not every boundary, surely?” he inquired innocently.
“Do not dare to defy me,” she said. “You may have been able to somehow persuade Miss Piper, who is of a hopelessly compassionate and tender nature, to have granted you an entrée into our society, but she does not have the power to grant your continuance here.”
“And you do?” he asked, still feigning innocence.
“Of course I do. There are others, but you will not get far without my blessing, I assure you. I had been willing to allow you some entrance into the less exalted homes in our neighborhood. Farmer Quince, for one, has an occasional party you could attend without giving offense, and I would have been content to guide you in such matters, but the moment I saw your horrid costume, I knew that I would never offer you even this portion of my consequence. No, Sir Roger, you have proven yourself unworthy this evening and I intend to make certain that tonight is the last any of us will see of you. What, then, do you have to say to that?”
He sipped his champagne, intending to give the appearance that he was actually contemplating her tirade. Finally, he smiled and said, “Not a great deal, I fear.”
Her bosom began to swell. He wondered just how frequently she employed the puffing of her chest in her attempts to intimidate the weaker of her acquaintance. Seeing the widening of Mrs. Crawley’s eyes, followed by several frightened gulps, he knew his hostess had more than once felt the full effects of Mrs. Rockingham’s self-bloating.
For himself, he found her ridiculous in the extreme.
“You would speak to me thus?” she said.
“I wish only to make it perfectly clear that I resent your insults and I think it excessively rude that you have kept your hostess waiting these many hours and more before presenting yourself in what you must have known would have been a most trying situation for her.”
“Do not think to turn me aside by accusing me of not knowing how to go on in society. You are the contemptuous one—wearing a kilt, no doubt to overset us all.”
At that, a smile glimmered on his lips. “Only one,” he murmured.
“I do not take your meaning, but if you are referring to me, I promise you, you have chosen the wrong object upon which to play such a prank.”
“I was not referring to you, Madame.”
“I should think not.”
He turned to Mrs. Crawley. “Nor you, Madame, and I do beg pardon if I have offered you any insult. I do take a great deal of pride in my Scottish roots, something my mother encouraged me to do. I hope Mrs. Rockingham’s obvious displeasure will not affect your willingness to help me in making arrangements for the Christmas ball.”
“What?” Mrs. Rockingham thundered, turning to glare at her friend. “Have I heard correctly? Have you indeed agreed to be of use to this man?”
Sir Roger watched as Mrs. Crawley’s color receded dangerously. He felt it necessary to intervene. “She took pity on me, ma’am,” he said. “I hope you will take pity on the entire assemblage and for the moment forget my presence here. There are many guests ready and anxious to greet you.”
He then bowed and began to move away, but she would not permit it. “I am not finished with you yet, Sir Roger.”
“But I am,” he responded, once more bowing. His temper had begun to mount. His initial amusement at her demeanor had worn thin quite rapidly in the face of her cutting remarks, and he knew himself well enough that if he did not make good his escape, he was likely to give an unhappy answer to her diatribe. He added in a quieter tone, “You would do well, I think, to let the matter drop for the moment. If you wish, I would be happy to call upon you and discuss anything that would give you pleasure or at least a portion of relief.”
“You will never see the portals of Dallings, if that is what you are suggesting. I had heard you were nothing short of an encroaching mushroom, but heretofore I had not thought so badly of you. I saw nothing of the mushroom in you until tonight. Again, I say, you ought to have stayed home. Better still, you ought never to have purchased Pelworthy. When I think of that lovely ancient dwelling having fallen into your hands, every feeling is offended.”
Once more, his ire tickled the inside of his skull. “You have quite said enough,” he responded politely and again tried to move away.
“Not so fast, Sir Roger. Let me ask you this: Have you no sense of obligation or decency? Did your mother not teach you the essentials of breeding and manners? Did she not instill within you a basic sense of right and wrong? Would she not in this moment be ashamed of her spawn? But what, then, I suppose could be expected of her, when she had married a Scotsman and forsaken every principle of good breeding herself.”
At that, Sir Roger felt his temper soar into the highest reaches of his spirit and his mind. He turned stiffly back to her. “You may insult me as much as you choose, for I understand to perfection that you cannot help the narrowness of your thinking, but the moment you offer even the smallest slur on my good mother’s name, you go beyond the pale. You may take every sour remark you have just uttered to me and stuff it up your creaking corset for all I care. Good night, ma’am,” he bowed to Mrs. Crawley, “Good night. You have shown me a great deal of kindness, and for that I shall always be grateful.”
He glanced at Madeline and, seeing the stony expression on her face, offered her an ironic bow. He thought in this moment that she resembled Mrs. Rockingham in nearly every particular.
He gestured to Lord Anthony, who immediately offered hurried farewells to his host and hostess.
Madeline watched him go, her mind feeling so stunned that she soon realized she had simply stopped breathing as, she believed, had much of the assemblage about her. His words, the fire of his demeanor as he had confronted one of Chilchester’s worst dragons, had shocked everyone into a state of severe silence.
“I believe I shall faint,” Mrs. Rockingham suddenly said, releasing the chamber from its suspense.
Everyone began chattering at once as Mrs. Crawley led Mrs. Rockingham to a chair near the refreshments. She fanned the offended lady and offered her a cup of punch.
Then a curious thing happened. Madeline began to hear snickering and giggling from nearly every quarter. Even one or two gentlemen released loud guffaws.
“Stuff it up her corset, indeed.” Randolph Crawley snorted from somewhere behind her. “Wish I had thought to say such a thing to the old bat the last time she gave me a dressing down in public.”
Madeline felt the horror of the situation descend on her in a sudden sweep of mortification. She was the one who had taken the awful pains to invite Sir Roger to Wistfield, and she would be the one to suffer every imaginable difficulty because of it.
“And you see nothing wrong with such rudeness?” her father whispered beside her.
“Nothing wrong?” she said, also keeping her voice low. “I was never more shocked to hear such words roll from Sir Roger’s tongue. How can you even—”
“I was not speaking of Sir Roger, my dear. Believe me, as much as your grandmother and I brangle about nearly everything, I would never tolerate so many public insults from her or any lad
y, not even from the queen herself. So I ask you, Madeline, is this what you admire in our society? This sort of cruel attempt at domination that would use a gentleman so harshly?”
She wanted to answer him, but he turned away from her. She was left to stare at Mrs. Rockingham, who was weeping into her kerchief and allowing at least five ladies to minister to her wounded sensibilities. Mrs. Crawley had moved away from her, however. Squire Crawley had taken up a place beside his wife and was speaking into her ear. She could not imagine what he was saying to her, but she had never seen so arrested an expression on Mrs. Crawley’s face before.
Madeline felt a strange panic course through her suddenly. Everything was changing. She could feel it in her bones. Tears stung her eyes, and her heart began to race. She did not want anything to change, not again, but so it would seem it had. How? Why?
If only Sir Roger had been able to maintain his temper. He had managed the first portion of Mrs. Rockingham’s dressing down quite beautifully. Indeed, Madeline had been struck by his composure, even his indifference to her remarks. In that moment, she had felt rather dizzy watch- ing him square his shoulders and meet the dragon without even the smallest flinching or squirming as so many others had before him. He had even seemed amused and had had the presence of mind to make a subtle reference to her in the midst of everything. If only he had continued and not permitted his sensibilities to be overset. A true gentleman would not have allowed his temper to be touched, even if the memory of his mother had been insulted.
She felt very confused and tired of a sudden. Searching out her father, who had moved to converse with Evan Hambledon, she tugged gently on his sleeve. When he turned toward her, she queried in a low voice, “Might we go home, Papa? This has been a very long day.”
“Of course,” he responded, but there was little sympathy in his tone. She still could not credit that he had championed Sir Roger over Mrs. Rockingham. Was it possible he saw Sir Roger as more than merely a mode of salvation for his own gaming recklessness?
As her sisters gathered near and as a family they began to depart the soiree, Madeline once more lifted her gaze to her father. His cold expression still surprised her. She glanced back at the assemblage, many of whom were also beginning their departures, and she could not help but think of her own mother, who would have been absolutely horrified at what had just occurred.
Her next eldest sister, Charity, drew close. “I am still so very stunned, Maddy. What do you think Mama would have had to say to such an event?”
“A great deal,” Madeline responded on a whisper.
“A great deal, indeed,” Charity returned.
Just before she passed from the chamber, she noticed that Harris Rockingham, Captain Bladen, and John Calvert were grouped together talking in an animated fashion. She felt her heart sink further. She knew their thoughts well, that each was in complete agreement with much, if not all, that Mrs. Rockingham had said to her betrothed. She could only hope that their heads would cool and that whatever mischief might be brewing would be squelched with a more proper consideration of events on the morrow.
A few moments later, as her family was quitting Wistfield, Squire Crawley caught her elbow and held her back a trifle. In a low voice, he said, “Do not permit these absurdities to affect your course, Madeline. You are doing a very good thing here.”
To say she was shocked was hardly to give an accurate name to the feeling of astonishment which possessed her in that moment.
“But his incivility was beyond bearing,” she countered.
“As was hers, though I believe he had the greater claim to feeling wounded. Forgive him my dear. He is worth a hundred of her, trust me in that.”
She did not know what to say, and began to feel as though she was a very small boat in the midst of tall waves which pushed her about from every direction.
“Good night, Mr. Crawley.”
“And for God’s sake, smile more, my dear. You look like heaven when you do.”
~ ~ ~
Later, as the coach bowled along the highway in the direction of Fairlight Manor, Madeline wished that her sisters would cease speaking of the evening altogether, of Sir Roger’s kilt, of Mrs. Crawley’s turnabout in favor of helping him with his Christmas ball, of Mrs. Rockingham’s meanness of spirit, and mostly of Sir Roger’s horrendous response.
“I still cannot believe he would say such a thing to Mrs. Rockingham,” Charity said, appalled. “Stuff it up your corset? It was so crude.”
Hope, however, began to laugh heartily. “I have never heard anything so horrible yet so amusing in my entire existence. I do so hope this does not mean the end of his going about in society for I have never been so well entertained.”
“Hope, please,” Prudence intruded gently. “You forget yourself, and most certainly you forget what Maddy must be suffering, since it was she who saw to his invitation in the first place.”
At that, Hope tempered her laughter and offered an apology. “I am sorry, Madeline, if I have overset you.” She pursed her lips, averted her gaze, contorted her face, then finally burst out laughing anew.
Madeline sighed heavily. Perhaps had the entire circumstance happened to anyone else, say to Pamela Spight for instance, she could certainly have shared in a little of Hope’s amusement. For the present, however, all she could see was disaster looming on the horizon. She would no longer be able to persuade any of the hostesses to invite Sir Roger to an event, let alone either Mrs. Rockingham or Lady Cottingford. No, it seemed to her that her campaign had been as short-lived as it had been disastrous.
She glanced at her father and shrugged hopelessly. He surprised her by smiling. “All is not lost,” he responded, “Trust me in this. Mrs. Crawley will not quickly relinquish her chance to be a guiding force for a ball at which Lord Selsfield is to attend. And I, for one, will do all I can to see that he continues to receive a proper amount of invitations, although I am afraid I will not be able to persuade Farmer Quince to receive him.”
Madeline’s lips twitched. This reminder of Mrs. Rockingham’s speech, in which she made his worth in her eyes so clear to the entire assemblage, brought some of the amusement of the situation home to her. Farmer Quince was a very good man, indeed, but he never offered invitations to the gentry and certainly would never impose on a knight. Mrs. Rockingham had seemed a little addled in having even brought forward the ridiculous notion.
“Notwithstanding your lack of position with Mr. Quince,” she said, “I am not so sanguine as you.”
“You never were,” he responded.
Madeline was surprised. “What do you mean?”
“You tend to take a dark view of everything, m’dear, and I wish you would not. I loved your mother very much, but she was of a similar disposition, and it was not her happiest quality. Sir Roger erred, there can be no two opinions on that score, but if you think half that room has not wished to say something of just that sort to Mrs. Rockingham, then you know nothing of the matter.”
“But the point, the entire point, Papa, is that he spoke the words. In this, he proved himself to be ill bred.”
“Ill bred,” her father shouted, causing all four of his daughters to stiffen in their seats. “The man was sorely provoked. Truth is, I should have said something to stop her. If you must blame someone, blame me for not having had the courage to tell her to go to the devil the moment she began her absurd speech.”
The Piper sisters gasped as one.
“Papa,” Charity murmured, aghast.
Prudence shook her head. “I wish that Mrs. Rockingham had not spoken so unkindly.”
Hope, who was seated beside her father, slipped her arm about his and smiled up into his face. “Randolph called her an old bat.”
At that, Madeline bit her lip as her father burst into loud laughter.
Madeline watched her father for a long time. She thought that for a man who had lost his fortune so recently, he was more relaxed and happier than he had been in many, many years. She realized she k
new very little about him, after all, and that she could hardly in this moment comprehend why he was not more distressed over his circumstances, particularly since the evening’s events, regardless of his opinion, had all but obliterated his present chances to see his fortunes restored. No, she did not understand him at all.
She turned her gaze out the window, and watched the hedgerows light up, then fade from view as the coach lamps moved by. She could not imagine just what was to be done now to win Mrs. Rockingham’s support when Sir Roger had all but ruined the possibility of that good lady ever forgiving him.
~ ~ ~
Sir Roger glared at his friend. “Would you please stop laughing,” he said.
Lord Anthony was holding his sides and laughing in an almost hysterical manner. “B-but you have no idea. Sh-she looked as though you had slid a sword between her ribs.Thought I would perish, indeed I did. Stuff it up your corset. Oh, dear God,” he was off again, laughing so heartily that tears poured in rivulets down his face.
Sir Roger chuckled. He could not help himself. He had lost his temper and made a complete fool of himself, besides offending every lady present and undoubtedly giving half the gentlemen at the soiree sufficient reason to call him out. He would otherwise have been quite content with the evening, since he had accomplished his first object, to steal a kiss from Madeline, and had had the additional delight of making the evening uncomfortable for her as well. The cold, disapproving expression on her face after he had quarreled with Mrs. Rockingham ought to have justified his conduct completely, only he could not revel in it. He had hurt her terribly, yet did she not deserve such ill treatment? Had she not insulted him as badly as most of Chilchester society?
Still, he could not rest in his victory.
As Lord Anthony’s tears ceased to flow and his laughter subdued to an occasional chuckle, and as the coach began its plodding ascent to Pelworthy, his own thoughts drifted into the past.
He was reminded of having been in a coach with his mother many, many years ago, nearly three and twenty years past now. He had accompanied her on a visit to her aunt in a neighboring town ten miles distant from his own. The conversation had grown heated, and the subject, as usual, was the unyielding position the family had taken against her husband, Major Angus Mathieson. No matter how many victories he had enjoyed in the early years of the war with Bonaparte, his success could never overcome her family’s abhorrence that Louisa Romney, of the Romneys of north Sussex, had actually married a Scotsman.
