Noises from outside intruded as the front door was presumably swung open. Carriage wheels. Distant voices. The clicking heels of whatever caller was now being admitted. A draft came, too, an outdoor breeze turning domestic and mundane. He felt a shiver run up the short-sleeved arm pressed against his before he felt the chill himself.
Quietly as he could, he unbuttoned his coat. This would be his response to the shiver of lovely Miss Katherina Westbrook’s arm against his: not to seize her, but to stop her being cold.
He shrugged out of his coat. The kind of man who’d kiss an innocent under the staircase would wear a flawlessly tailored coat, with sleeves and shoulders so fitted that he must rustle a great deal in removing it. His own coat came off with scarcely a sound.
He pivoted halfway and set his free hand on her upper arm to pivot her, too, so they stood face-to-face. She’d succeeded in swallowing her laughter: her mouth was full and soft once more. She looked up at him, trusting, in perfect dependency on his honorable intentions.
The stair treads began creaking as the new caller made his way upward, and Nick swung his coat over Miss Westbrook’s shoulders and settled it there. That would be the extent of intimacy between them. He’d been tested, and he’d prevailed.
He pivoted back and touched his shoulder blades to the wall. The footsteps had reached the next floor and gone off down the hall. They could speak again. “Did your aunt have a particular lady in mind, who would engage you as a companion?” He would never betray the least sign of having been tempted, that half minute or so.
“Not at present. She proposes to take me to some parties where I may meet grand ladies and presumably impress them with my manners, that they might mention me to any acquaintance who is in want of a companion.” She huddled deeper into his coat, clutching at the buttons and buttonholes to wrap herself snug. She, too, put her back to the wall. With the caller gone upstairs there was no reason for them to remain there, shoulder to shoulder in the small shadowed space. But she didn’t stir, so neither did he.
She cast her eyes to the floor. “It hurts my pride, Mr. Blackshear.” Her voice, too, sank to somewhere near the level of their shoe soles. “And it doesn’t serve my purpose. I’d thought of her taking me to balls and routs and making introductions, yes, but I’d supposed she’d be introducing me to gentlemen. I’ve pinned all my hopes on making a good marriage.”
Yes. To think of and speak of her eventual marriage would reinforce his triumph over temptation. Already he was beginning to feel an appropriate friendly interest in her fortunes. “You have stringent ideas of what constitutes a good marriage. Myself, I know of no better union than the one to which you owe your existence.”
“My parents have a happy marriage. That’s not the same thing.”
He tipped his head back, to frown up at the underside of the stairs. She was young, and full of feminine ambition, and she would doubtless learn in time how well her parents’ marriage compared to many of those around her. He’d refrain from correcting her now.
Besides, he couldn’t altogether condemn her unsentimental view. Will and his wife, after all, probably had a happy marriage. That didn’t make it a good one.
Not that the two cases were comparable. In only one of them had the bridegroom wed a Cyprian after poaching her from another man.
“You may go ahead and call me heartless.” She didn’t look at him. She was misinterpreting his silence. “I know you think it.”
“Not today.” He folded his arms, careful not to dislodge his coat from her shoulder. “I think you ought to go to those parties, Miss Westbrook. You’d need practice, wouldn’t you, before you were ready to assume a post? That would give you two or three parties, at least, in which to catch the eye of a marriage-minded duke.”
She was smiling now, and beginning to look more like herself. “Are you the same man who warned me against hoping to be acknowledged by my own aunt? And now you would have me go into a ballroom as a companion-in-training and set my sights on a duke?”
“I grant it won’t be as easy as it would if you were an invited guest, with her name announced.” He could feel the tide turning, almost as if he argued before a jury. “But as I recall, you don’t demand that things be easy before undertaking them. And if there’s any lady in the world I’d wager on to capture a duke with only her personal charms for a lure, it’s surely you.” He’d been addressing her sidelong; now he turned his head, to send the conclusion of his argument by the shortest possible path. “I don’t deny the odds against you are long. But the fact is, if you’re in that ballroom, you have a chance. If you stay home, you haven’t.”
Gratitude flowed from her, filling the space between them. “I don’t need a duke, you know. I’m perfectly willing to settle for a marquess.”
“Now, there’s the brash, presumptuous Miss Westbrook I know.” He brought his shoulders off the wall. He didn’t have to be entirely reserved and distant, after all. Indeed why should he? She’d confided in him a deal today, and he’d made his bold confessions, too. Thus men and women might do, once youthful one-sided infatuation had bloomed and withered and been swept away into the gutter. “Now shall we go upstairs? I’d like to pay my respects to the rest of your family. And perhaps we’d better rescue the young men from their edification.”
She half turned away, that he might slide his coat off her shoulders, and if he had a brief vision of leaning in to kiss the bare nape of her neck, well, it was no more than any man in his position would have done. The vision flitted through and past. By the time she’d turned back around to face him, he’d wiped all trace of its existence from his eyes and his thoughts alike.
AT DINNER she sat between a Mr. Sterling and a Mr. Green, both of them new to Papa’s favor, both young enough for all manner of foolish fancy, both showing the usual, wearying signs of inclination to be smitten with her. Mr. Blackshear sat by Papa. They were speaking of barrister business, anyone could tell. Mr. Blackshear had a certain animation in his features—in his eyes, his mouth, the emphatic dive or arching of his brows—that appeared only when he got on that subject, which of course was the subject he liked best. His attention didn’t wander her way.
She knew his scent now. A plain clean soap. His coat had brought it to her notice, and left traces on her shoulders. If she concentrated she could still catch the notes.
He didn’t go in for fragrance, as some men did. Perhaps he followed Mr. Brummell’s regimen of a daily bath, instead of the usual cloaking of one’s odors in perfume. Though it was difficult to imagine he paid much heed to any of the Beau’s dictums. Likely he disdained the man for living profligately and then fleeing his debts, if he hadn’t already disdained him for an excessive preoccupation with the trivial matter of personal style. And that was presuming he even knew who Beau Brummell was. He very well might not.
In any event, Mr. Blackshear’s coat had smelled of soap. So had he, in those few minutes she’d stood with her arm pressed to his, confined with him under the stairs. That was the nearest she’d ever been to a man. She’d heard his breaths, and felt them in the steady slight advance and retreat of his arm against hers.
“Are you fond of novels, Miss Westbrook?” Mr. Sterling, at her right, did use fragrance. Sandalwood. One didn’t have to stand in contact with him to detect it. “My sisters are ferocious readers. Whenever I dine at home they must be telling me all about the latest volume they’ve taken out. I calculate within another three months they’ll have read all that the subscription library has to offer.”
“Not quite all, I should think.” Viola, sitting directly across, was her usual impatient self. Unimpressed with these new visitors, but taking enough of an interest to point out their errors. “Most libraries of my experience offer books of history, philosophy, economic theory, all manner of topics, in addition to the surfeit of novels. Some ladies find these books make a welcome change from the lurid and fantastical tales they’re expected to prefer.”
“Novels aren’t all lurid.” Kate turne
d her smile, quick and warm, on Mr. Sterling before he could have time to absorb her sister’s ungracious remarks. “I have Pride and Prejudice out just now. No crumbling castles or spirits wandering the moors, but a fine sketch of country village life, with many amusing parts. I’d recommend that to your sisters, if they haven’t already read it.”
“Pride and Prejudice,” Mr. Sterling repeated, before fishing a small book and pencil from one of his pockets and marking the title down. “Pride and Prejudice,” he said again.
“By the same accomplished lady who brought us Sense and Sensibility.” Mr. Green, on her left, contributed this to the proceedings, with an air of general authority and a faint aroma of lemon and cloves. “Mansfield Park as well, and then Emma. Beloved not only by gentlemen’s sisters but by the Prince Regent himself. I commend your taste, Miss Westbrook.” He raised his glass to her.
Viola’s glance flicked from Kate to Mr. Green and his glass, to Mr. Sterling and his pencil, then back to Kate. She didn’t roll or narrow her eyes, or put any particular twist in her mouth, but it was an eloquent look all the same.
Well, this was precisely why she’d spent that time downstairs in the entry hall. If Mr. Blackshear should glance this way they might share a second or two of recognition; of wry, private understanding.
He didn’t, though. He was entirely occupied in relating something to Papa. He’d halted in the middle of cutting up his ham, and the knife in his right hand carved small circles in the air as he spoke, his wrist rotating as though he were physically reeling the story along.
She had some acquaintance with the knobby-boned contours of his left wrist. Not his right. They probably didn’t differ in any way significant enough to note.
He’d seemed very little moved by his proximity with her, for all that he claimed to be susceptible. But then it wouldn’t have been such a novelty to him as it had been to her. Doubtless he had acquaintance with women who would indulge him in all the proximity he’d like. Most men did, by the time they were approaching the age of thirty. For ladies it was different.
She ran her left hand up her right arm to the elbow and back. It had been an extraordinary conversation, really. Not only the part in which she’d stood with her arm pressed to his, but the earlier part that had begun with his asking permission to be candid.
A gentleman oughtn’t to say those things to a lady and yet … such frankness proved unexpectedly reassuring. To suspect a man of harboring an attraction, and to be always weighing his words and looks for evidence, was after all a good deal more unsettling than simply to have it acknowledged. She would never wonder whether there was a secret subtext to his conversation now. They could speak openly, safe in the shared understanding that they did not suit.
She reached for her glass. “How many sisters do you have, Mr. Sterling? And are there brothers as well, or are you woefully outnumbered as our Sebastian is here?” There’d be time enough later for speaking with Mr. Blackshear. The task immediately before her was to make these new callers feel at ease. And when they’d taken their leave, all glutted with Westbrook hospitality, she would summon up her courage and talk to Mama and Papa about Lady Harringdon.
“YOU’RE OF age.” Kate could tell Mama was piqued when she spoke in clipped, unmodulated syllables. “If you came to us and said you’d had an offer and meant to marry, we could not prevent the match, regardless our opinion of the man involved. I think the same rule must apply in the question of your taking a position.” No hint of tension showed in her face, nor in her posture, nor in the grip of her fingers on the saucer holding her teacup. “Your father and I can express our reservations on the arrangement—and I assure you we will—but in the end I believe the decision must be yours.”
Kate rested her hands on the arms of her chair and let her fingers tighten. A histrionic parent might have been easier to face, or else one who made a great show of her mild temper in hopes of inducing filial guilt—but Mama, for all her thespian experience, scorned such indulgences. No matter how she might be angered or offended, she consulted Reason above all else, and this, naturally, made a Westbrook child feel that much more reprehensible for having offended or angered her. “I’m not decided on taking a position. Only on going to some parties, if I may, and seeing to what sort of people I’m introduced.” Better to leave out the part about charming a duke, for now.
“I don’t understand, Kate.” Papa leaned on the back of Mama’s chair, as he always liked to do when they were all in the parlor together. All the guests had gone save for Mr. Blackshear, who was turning pages for Bea at the pianoforte. “You know what your Westbrook relations are. They made wrong, unjust judgments on your mother’s character based solely on the fact of her having been on the stage, and they’ve chosen to sustain that insult to her for twenty-three years. Why would you court the notice of such people?”
She frowned down at her right hand, relaxing the fingers and tightening them again. No, I don’t know them, not at all. Because you’ve never told us anything about them beyond how unjust they were to Mama. And that’s not the entirety of who they are. If it were, you wouldn’t have kept those letters.
And I court their notice because I cannot afford your kind of pride. None of your daughters can. Beyond the piano, Rose sat on the sofa, her teeth absently worrying her lower lip as she worked at her embroidery frame. She hadn’t reported any more pranks since the day of the knotted silks, but perhaps that was only the sign of a stauncher secrecy.
Kate willed her spine stiffer. “I wish our Westbrook relations could have been so fair-minded as to see that a woman might be an actress and still be a lady of virtue. Their failure to do so indicates, to me, not malice or ill will but a want of imagination. A want of the courage that would allow them to slip the rigid grasp of convention and think for themselves.” And they are family. She didn’t know how to even begin to speak of Lord Harringdon and the dowager.
“Even if I were to concede that point, again I should have to ask what could compel you to seek a connection with them.” Father, as always, was warming to the debate. “I’d hoped we had raised you to prize fair-mindedness, imagination, and independent thought above the purely superficial sort of consequence Lord and Lady Harringdon represent.”
“Are you speaking of Lady Harringdon?” Viola swiveled to look over the back of the sofa where she sat and put aside her book. She’d shown very little interest in the descriptions of Harringdon House that were all Kate had disclosed of yesterday’s call. Here, clearly, was a more promising subject. “What has she done; offered to nod at you when you pass on the street if you will repudiate our mother?”
And now every Westbrook in the room was privy to the conversation. Mr. Blackshear as well: he glanced over, his brow impressing itself with sympathetic concern. At least it looked like sympathetic concern; she would take it for that, and fortify her resolve with the idea of an understanding ally near at hand.
“She never asked me to repudiate anyone.” She brought her attention back to her parents. “I sent her notes of congratulation on such occasions as seemed appropriate, and she invited me to call, and I think she’d like to do a service for our family. And so she’s offered to bring me to some parties and introduce me to some of her acquaintance, that I can see what it would be like to be a lady’s companion and decide whether such a position would suit me.” That wasn’t quite true. But if she said she was allowing Lady Harringdon to believe she’d made up her mind to take a companion post, she’d never be permitted to go.
“Companion? Good Lord.” Vi folded her arms atop the sofa’s back and rested her chin on one wrist, apparently settling in to watch the rest of this debased spectacle. “Mind you, I don’t suppose a lady who takes a post as a companion really gives up much more of her autonomy than does a lady who marries. Where a wife has the advantage in consequence, the companion at least retains the integrity of her person.”
This was what came of too little emphasis on narrow conventions, and too much encouragement given to
imagination and independent thought: a daughter who felt free to spout off in mixed company about bodily integrity.
“I don’t intend to give up any autonomy.” Kate could feel a blush creeping from her cheeks to the tips of her ears. Studiously she kept her glance from the pianoforte. “As I said, I’m only accompanying my aunt to some social occasions. I’m not obliged to any more than that.”
“What are these social occasions?” Mama’s delicate brows drew a fraction of an inch nearer each other. “I’m not easy with the idea of your going into strange company—people whose names I’m sure I wouldn’t even recognize—with a chaperone about whom we really know nothing at all.”
“I wouldn’t be doing anything that would require the services of a chaperone. I expect I would be at Lady Harringdon’s side constantly. And the social occasions would be mostly private balls and card parties, all given by respectable people. I’m to go with her to a rout on Tuesday, if I might, at the home of that same Lord and Lady Astley whom we spoke about when Mr. Blackshear last came to dinner.”
“Astley?” Mr. Blackshear still had one hand on the music book, though his attention had all gone this way. “Lord Barclay’s brother and his wife, do you mean?”
She nodded. “It won’t be a very large party. Just the marchioness and some of her friends. I’m sure they’re all as respectable as can be.” And Mama said the decision was mine. She thought those words but didn’t speak them. She still had hope of gaining her point on more reasonable terms.
“Ah. I didn’t realize there was to be a party.” Mr. Blackshear looked at her parents. “I’ll be there that same evening, meeting with Barclay. He invited me informally, so I didn’t grasp the exact nature of the event.”
“Indeed.” Papa stepped away from Mama’s chair. “Blackshear, will you grant me a word?” Mr. Blackshear left the piano, and a moment later both men were gone from the room.
“That can be nothing good.” Viola twisted round and went back to her book. “If Mr. Blackshear knows his own interest he’ll decline to be involved.”
Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] Page 10
