“They’re not like you. Well, Rose isn’t.” Bea had her own kind of protection, a single-minded devotion to music that left her little spare attention for taking note of how she was snubbed. She might well come through unscathed. But Rose was different. “A fifteen-year-old girl ought to have friends. She oughtn’t to have to try to convince herself she’s better off without them. It taxes her spirit, I’m sure.” Indeed their youngest sister looked a bit smaller every day when they came to collect her from Miss Lowell’s, and every day her smile seemed more a product of effort.
She smiled now, catching sight of them, and the falseness of it, the strain in her undissembling blue eyes, made Kate’s heart sink like a stone.
She returned the smile nevertheless. All the harder, in fact; all the brighter she beamed at both approaching sisters, that they might look only at her, and not turn to notice how several of the girls by the fireplace were watching their exit with a smirking exchange of whispers.
“How were your lessons today?” Kate ventured once the girls had their wraps and the footman had seen them all out the front door. “Did you make anything pretty to show us? Shall you be demonstrating the steps of the quadrille?” Even to her own ear, her good cheer rang hollow and inane, but what else could she do?
“Not today.” Bea was the one to answer, while fastening up her cloak. “We didn’t study the quadrille, and at all events, Rose missed the entire dancing lesson. I wish I’d been so lucky.”
Rose’s smile collapsed. She threw a single wounded look at her sister, then spun and started down the walk to the gate.
“What is it?” Bea followed, the two older girls falling in behind. “I didn’t say anything about why you missed the lesson.”
“Yes, but now they’ll ask, won’t they, and they’re liable to make a to-do of everything, when it was nothing at all and I wish it could just have been forgotten.” At the gate she fumbled with the latch for a second. “Someone tied knots in my embroidery silk,” she said without looking up. “A knot every inch. Miss Riggle wouldn’t let me go until I’d undone them all, and so I missed the dancing lesson.” She pulled the gate open and walked through without waiting for a response. Her cheeks had gone red.
“What a lot of stupid cows.” Viola was not taken aback for even a second. “Whatever satisfaction they got from the prank could hardly have been worth the time and effort on their part.”
Vi didn’t understand. The time and effort were precisely what made the prank so breathtakingly cruel. Whoever had done it must have told herself—probably more than once—Yes, this drudgery is worthwhile. I will persist in this tedious task because that is just how much I’m willing to do, how far I will go, to hurt Miss Rosalind Westbrook. And depend upon it, that detail wasn’t lost on Rose.
Kate slipped through the gate and caught up to her sister’s vehemently striding form. “I’ll say something to Miss Lowell if you like. About Miss Riggle, at least. It was wrong of her to—”
But Rose was shaking her head, hard. “I beg you won’t. It was of no consequence. And please not to mention it to our mother and father.” Beneath her brusque dismissal was such desperation, such raw, heart-piercing humiliation, as made Kate want to seize something and tear it to pieces.
All she had for that was Pride and Prejudice, still clutched in one hand. The volumes felt awkward now, unwieldy. Heavy and sharp cornered and crammed full of wishful fancy.
She would not tear them. A lady didn’t destroy library property. But if she were ever to write a novel, it would be the opposite of a love story. Her hero and heroine would choose duty over their hearts’ desire, that their children need never be taxed for a romantic indulgence that was none of their own.
A cold wind rushed down from the late-afternoon sky, and Kate caught her cloak edges together with her free hand. Yes, the very opposite of a romance would be the story to warm her heart. Something full of prudent choices and practical considerations. Something where people consulted their heads and kept a tight rein on their sentiments.
She huddled deeper into her cloak. Men thought her unfeeling, she knew. Heartless, Mr. Blackshear had pronounced her, the last time he’d come to call. Of course he’d laughed as he’d said it, good-natured and brotherly, though they both knew he had reason to mean it.
Well, be that as it would. She carried enough already, what with worrying for her younger sisters’ welfare, scheming to make connections that could better all their prospects, and striving to somehow mend the great rift in Papa’s family. She had neither time nor energy enough to feel guilty for every young man she’d disappointed. They’d surely all go on to find girls who could afford the luxury of marrying for love, and they’d be happier than they ever could have been with her.
Beauty faded, after all, and with it, the love it had inspired. A beautiful woman did well to be heartless. And if she hadn’t quite attained the state herself, at least she could make such a show as would convince all the rest of the world.
THE NEWS of opportunity did not wait for port. That was the way at the Westbrook table. As in the dining halls at the Inns of Court, spirited conversation must accompany the meal, and business, not the mundane niceties of a dinner party, must be the consuming topic.
“Barclay is the fellow’s name, and his title now as well.” Mr. Westbrook went right on carving up his cutlet while delivering this, the intelligence that had warranted Nick’s invitation. “He means to turn his seat in the House to some purpose, one can see. No gradually learning the lay of the land, and certainly no giving his votes to a proxy. He’s resolved to attend regularly, and to argue bills and even introduce them, just as soon as he’s acquired a tolerable proficiency in the requisite skills.”
Here was everything to awaken his approval. There were skills pertinent to the responsibilities of a parliamentary seat, and precious few men, from what he’d heard and occasionally observed, ever troubled to improve their mastery of those skills. Lord Barclay showed promise already.
“Is he Tory or Whig, this baron?” Across the table, Miss Viola inclined slightly forward in her chair, the merest accent of distaste on the word baron. Miss Viola had opinions about rank and privilege, and no hesitation in making those opinions known. “What sorts of bills does he mean to introduce?”
“His letter did not disclose a party affiliation, but he seems to take a particular interest in matters of public welfare. Especially—as might be expected from a former military man—the welfare of returned soldiers.” Westbrook nodded down the table at Nick. “You shall see the letter for yourself, over our port, and glean what you can of his political leanings.”
“I would think his affiliation might be the same as his brother’s.” The eldest Miss Westbrook usually kept silent, with a look of graceful forbearance, when the conversation turned to politics. She sat at his right hand tonight and he could feel her delicate air of triumph at having this knowledge to contribute. “Unless there’s more than one Major Barclay, recently created baron, he’s the younger brother of the Marquess of Astley.”
Perhaps he took a small fortifying breath before turning to face her directly. Even after three years of acquaintance, with all the accompanying disillusion, with witnessing the mundane flaws and pettiness to which any mortal must be prone, the sight of her could still hit him like strong sunlight after a day spent in windowless rooms.
Of course they were a handsome family altogether, the Westbrooks. Handsome parents did generally tend to produce handsome children. The middle three—Viola, Sebastian, Beatrice; such was the consequence of marriage to an actress—took after their mother, fair-skinned and auburn-haired with heart-shaped, piquant faces. The youngest, Miss Rosalind, had her father’s pale hair and expressive blue eyes. But in the eldest, Katherina, mother’s and father’s looks had mingled to downright alchemical effect: her beauty somehow exceeded what she’d gotten from both parents combined.
He couldn’t much blame himself for the folly of three years since. Probably every man who met her
fell a little in love, at least in the beginning.
“What have you done, committed all of Debrett’s to memory?” He teased her because everyone in the family teased her. And because teasing required a certain nimbleness of his brain, and prevented him from sinking into a languid contemplation of her eyes, or her hair, or the precise curve and color of her lips.
“Not all of it, I’ll wager.” Her brother, seated on her other side, leaned forward to speak past her. “Our Kate is particular. She confines her notice to earls and above.”
“My interests are not so narrow as that.” She spoke with a playful, arch quality, presenting Nick with her profile as she went back to carving tiny bites of her own meal. “I also take note of new creations, and of second sons in the case where the first has produced no heirs. Your Lord Barclay happens to be both of those. His brother the marquess has been married over a dozen years and hasn’t any children at all.”
Mrs. Westbrook frowned across the table at her daughter. “I know you speak flippantly, dear, and mostly in jest.” For all the scandal of her former profession, she had an air of moral authority that would do any jurist proud. “But we oughtn’t to take pleasure in a childless marriage. I’m sure there’s a deal of sorrow behind what you see on that page of Debrett’s.”
“Must there be sorrow?” Miss Viola seized at this point like a terrier snatching a veal chop from an unattended plate. “Is it not possible that Lord and Lady Astley themselves take pleasure in their childless marriage? I can well imagine that the lady, at least, might welcome the freedom to pursue other interests and occupations.”
The first time he’d dined at this house, and witnessed this style of conversation, his jaw had nearly hit the tabletop. If either of his sisters had ever dared to address their mother the way Miss Viola spoke to hers … well, there’d really been scant opportunity for that. Mother had so seldom felt well enough to appear at the dinner table, and was gone altogether by the time Kitty reached the age of sixteen, and Martha eight.
Score a point for Miss Viola, by the way. Mother might have been better off, and might even be alive today, without the dubious blessing of fecundity.
“It’s possible.” Mrs. Westbrook answered her daughter with the graciousness of a barrister who held better arguments up her sleeve. “However, I think it unlikely that a husband and wife would both have wished for childlessness, particularly in the case where there’s a title and estate and the consequent need for an heir.”
“I hope my husband would wish for childlessness, for my sake.” Miss Beatrice was one of several artistically inclined Westbrooks, not so forward with her opinions as Miss Viola, though she might well get there given time. “I hope he would value my dedication to the study of music, and not wish to see me give it up.”
“I might have expressed that same sentiment when I was seventeen.” The Westbrook matriarch directed a nod at her second-youngest daughter. “But feelings can change, sometimes in ways you would never expect. I passionately loved the theater, and I have not the smallest regret over leaving it to marry your father and bring you all into the world.”
“Well said.” Mr. Westbrook raised his wineglass to his wife, and grinned a challenge at Miss Viola. “Does the counsel for the prosecution care to make a response?”
The truth was, the Blackshear dinner table had been a sad, staid, lifeless affair in comparison to the Westbrooks’ argumentative warmth. Father, on those occasions when he’d emerged from his study like an owl venturing out from its hollow tree, had never goaded them in any way; never demanded to know the boys’ opinions on any matter, let alone the girls’. Not that he’d meant to discount or discourage their thoughts. To be sure, it was more a matter of—
“Mr. Blackshear.” The voice came from his right, soft enough to be confidential, and his thoughts pulled up hard, like a horse refusing a jump. Much as he might have believed himself absorbed in the conversation, or in his reflections on dinner tables gone by, some delicate spider-silk strands of awareness had run all the while to Miss Westbrook, and she need only make the slightest tug to have his full attention.
He turned. She was looking up at him, grave eyed, no trace visible of the flippant manner she’d worn a minute before. A single line of unease creased her brow. His thumb twitched, restless to reach out and smooth the worry away.
Hang his idiot body. His brain knew he’d never be anything to her; knew, moreover, that outward beauty was the shallowest of reasons for admiring a woman; the poorest signifier of her merit. And still his pulse would stutter when she spoke to him, and his thumb and every other fool part of him would poise themselves, puppet-like, to do her slightest bidding.
“I have a favor to ask of you.” To her credit, she didn’t look as though she expected him to dance on her string. She kept her voice low, and it occurred to him she’d been waiting to address him under cover of such energetic conversation as now occupied the others—Miss Viola having launched into an impassioned denunciation of all debaters who would employ “You’ll understand when you’re older” as a trump-card argument.
“I’d be glad to grant it, I’m sure.” His words came out cordial but distant. The response of a man who didn’t dance on strings, never mind the runaway thumping of his heart.
“When we’re in the parlor after dinner, will you speak to Rose?” She sank her voice even lower. He had to lean in a bit to hear. She smelled faintly of some flower.
“To Rose? On some particular topic?”
She shook her head, flicking a glance to the end of the table where her youngest sister sat. “Any topic, excepting school if you please. Perhaps you might ask her to sing as well. She’s had a difficult day, and I think the attention might be a comfort.”
She had been very quiet through dinner, Miss Rosalind had. He inclined his head, suffused already with the warmth of a shared good deed. “You may rely on me. I shall make it my mission to cheer her, beginning by asking her to sing.”
“Thank you.” Her lashes swept down. “You’re a good friend to this family.”
To that he made no reply. This was their odd little charade, his and Miss Westbrook’s; the pretense that there’d never been a time when he’d hoped to be more than a family friend.
But everything on that head had worked out for the best, really. Now that she’d turned back to her plate—and he wasn’t confronted with the distraction of her looks—it was easier to recall that. If he’d succeeded in attaching her affections, then she, too, would now bear the stigma of a connection that made her own parentage look like the very pattern of propriety.
Or perhaps she wouldn’t have borne it. A lady so concerned with social status might very well leave her husband’s house, in such circumstances, and go back to the lesser evil of residing with her mother and father.
Nothing to the purpose, all this speculation. He hadn’t won her affection, and he wouldn’t repine. All scandal and stigma aside, a woman who thought herself too good to be a barrister’s wife was a woman he could never make happy, nor ever quite fully respect.
Besides, he’d come here to learn about Lord Barclay and the opportunity. Not to covertly admire Miss Westbrook, not to fall into a melancholy reverie over respective family dinner tables, not to get caught up in a debate over other people’s marriages and whether youthful feelings might change.
He bent his attention to his plate, and silently reckoned how many courses remained before he was left alone with Mr. Westbrook, a bottle of port, and the letter of opportunity.
THANK GOODNESS for steady, resilient Mr. Blackshear. If she’d disappointed his hopes three years ago—
No, that was disingenuous. She had disappointed his hopes. There was no if in the matter. She might not shuffle about feeling guilty for the fact, but she would at least face it honestly.
At all events, the important part was that he’d absorbed the disappointment quietly and then recognized his sentiment for the superficial infatuation it had been. No nursing his wounded pride, as so many men
liked to do. No turning up his nose at the friendship that was all she could offer. He’d kept his connection to the family and now here he was, ready to show kindness to Rose for Rose’s sake, not because he hoped to rise in her own estimation.
Kate climbed the stairs to the room she shared with Viola, skirts caught up in one hand, candle held steady in the other. Likely the gentlemen wouldn’t appear in the parlor for some time, with Lord Barclay’s letter to dissect and interpret like some exhibit admitted into evidence. She’d have a few minutes’ respite from the chore of acting lighthearted. A few minutes to indulge her still-sagging spirits, and then she’d be fit for company once again.
The bedroom sat all in darkness, naturally. A barrister’s income didn’t provide for constant lamplight when the entire family was downstairs. A marquess’s income, now …
She crossed to the dressing table and sat, setting the candle directly between herself and the mirror to cast the most merciless light on her reflection. A lady needed to be rigorous in her self-appraisal, when beauty was all the dowry she had.
One small section of her hair was not perfectly smooth; she adjusted the pin. If Mr. Blackshear entered into a professional association with this Lord Barclay, she would be but one friendly remove from the connection. If she could only prevail upon Mr. Blackshear to somehow bring her to the baron’s notice, she would at least make the excellent first impression she always did with men.
And a marquess-to-be—was she tempting disappointment by daring to think of this?—might suit her purpose even better than a marquess. He would have grown up without expectations of inheriting, and thus he might have a broader conception of what kind of woman would make him a suitable wife. Too, if he interested himself, as Papa had said, in matters of public welfare, perhaps he was one of those modern sorts who argued for the dignity of all people and could easily be brought to see that the daughter of an actress might have every virtue that really mattered.
Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] Page 3
