Falling in Love with English Boys

by Melissa Jensen

  My eye fell upon Nicholas.

  Could it be Nicholas? He is handsome, certainly, and clever. A bit starchy, perhaps, but I do not believe she would mind that overmuch. She would certainly appeal to him. She is pretty, intelligent, and disinclined to prattle. She is also wealthy. Not that money matters in the least to Nicholas; he has plenty of his own, but it certainly would not hurt any romance to have a fortune thrown in.

  Still, I do not think them a good match after all. She is far too sharp of tongue. He does enjoy a good debate, but not more than occasionally. And he, he is too tall for her. And too used to having his own way in all matters. No, they would not suit at all.

  I was just realizing how unsuitable they were when suddenly Thomas was there, standing over us. My heart thumped and my palms grew moist. I wondered if I could discreetly wipe them on my dress before taking his hand.

  He did not offer it to me, but to Luisa. “Would you do me the honour, Miss Hartnell?”

  For an instant, Luisa looked as if he had offered her a snake. Her eyes widened, then slewed to me. I confess, I, too, was startled. Was he not perhaps taking discretion a step too far, especially as I have not so much as hinted at my father’s threats?

  Or was it all a very clever ploy on his part?

  I could only give Luisa a faint nod. She hesitated a moment, then rested her hand on his arm—she did not take his hand—and allowed him to escort her onto the dance floor. It was hardly her fault, but there I was, suddenly alone almost in the middle of the party, feeling confused and completely foolish, and looking, I am sure, even worse than that.

  “I am sorry, Miss Percival. Thank you for waiting for me. Shall we?”

  There was Nicholas, hand extended. I hesitated a mere second before taking it. As we followed Thomas and Luisa, I lifted my chin and managed a smile.

  “Good girl,” Nicholas murmured, and guided me into the dance.

  He does not care to dance. I do not believe he minded so very much before he went to war, but I know the constant twists and turns are difficult for him, with his barely healed leg. So for him to step and spin this way and that—and with me, no less, in whom he finds so much fault and tedium, was notable. And people noted. They always pay attention to young Sir Nicholas Everard. When he attends a party, one hears whispers of a future in Parliament, of high expectations for a brilliant career, marriage, dynasty.

  I have been amused by this attention to the Nicholas I have known since he and Charles collected frog spawn in their hats. If only the whisperers knew, I have thought time and again, that he becomes seasick just stepping in a puddle, and is not at all fond of spiders.

  This time, I was grateful for the fact that people watch him. His choosing to dance with me made me, for the moment, notable, too. As Thomas had ignored me, Nicholas paid court. He watched me as we moved upward through the set, smiling when our eyes met, and when the steps brought us together.

  “This is not your best face, Katherine,” he said into my ear. “More snapping turtle than fish, perhaps, but still watery.”

  “Oh, so witty,” I whispered back. “Be careful you do not impress yourself too much. Hats can only be made to fit so swelled a head.” He laughed aloud, as if that had been the wittiest reply ever heard.

  “I always know that if I wait long enough, I will see the sweet, malleable girl whose only desire is to attend to my pride.”

  “I would sooner attend to your feet!” I retorted, but by now I was smiling, too.

  He laughed again, only this time it was his familiar, deep chuckle. People turned to watch him, to watch us. I saw several faces break into their own grins. I had forgotten that his laugh has that power. I have heard it so seldom this Season. I felt my spirits lift. He had done me a very good turn, Sir Nicholas Everard. I liked him very well indeed, as much as I ever have, through all these many years that I have admired him.

  After the dance, he found me a seat, and another for Luisa. He fetched punch, stayed with us while we drank it, and pretended, bless him, to be having the most lively time possible. When Mr. Davison came to request a dance from me, Nicholas did the same for Luisa.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly as we all walked onto the floor. “You have been very kind.”

  “It was nothing.” He shrugged. “A promise to your brother that I would look after you should you need it.”

  I cannot decide, as if I should care one way or the other, if those words were gallant—or quite the opposite.

  Not that it mattered at all, in the end. Luisa grew tired soon after and, as I required her escort home, we prepared to leave. Luisa went in search of her mother.

  Thomas was waiting for me just outside the hall door.

  “Are you forsaking me, Katherine?”

  I could not help it; at the sound of my name on his lips and the sight of his questioning eyes, I forgave him the pangs of uncertainty he had caused me. There could be no question but that he desired my favour now.

  “I am leaving,” I told him—a bit sharply, I must admit. I did not object to him suffering, just a little. “It is not the same thing.”

  “Stay,” he coaxed.

  “Why? So I might sit and not dance for another hour or more?”

  “You danced. You danced with Davison. You danced with Everard.”

  I liked very much that he had noticed. “Still.” I did not say it, but “Not with you” hung between us.

  “Stay,” he commanded again.

  “I will not.”

  He shook his head, making his bronze curls wave and glint in the candlelight. “Cruel Nymph.”

  “Yes, I am,” I agreed, just as Luisa and Lady Hartnell appeared at the end of the hall. “Good night . . . Thomas.”

  All the way home, I held his words close. Cowpats, pah!

  11 June

  I am having my portrait done. Mama and I traveled to the artist’s studio in Harley Street for the sitting. It is not so very far from the Spensers’ grand house, but seems still a world away. The painter, Mr. Turner, is an odd man, perhaps the same age as Mama, but unmarried and assisted in his studio by his own father. He is not handsome; he has a great deal of nose, eyebrows, and chin, but very little light in his countenance or vitality in his mien.This is most curious, because each and every canvas in his studio (and there are dozens, one stacked against the next on the floor, piled on every table, stuck haphazardly to the walls) is a riot of colour and motion. There are crashing waves illuminated by lightning, rolling fields enflamed by the blaze of sunset, snowcapped peaks turned silver and black by a nighttime blizzard.

  It scarcely makes sense for Mr. Turner to be painting me. He is talented, certainly, and well known. He is a member of the Royal Academy, and exhibits there every year. He creates these roiling landscapes that almost frighten me. What he does not do is portraits. Yet he painted the little watercolour of Mama which hangs above her dressing table. In it, she appears as if she has just come in from one of the long walks she used to take at Percy’s Vale. She looks slightly flushed and very lovely.

  Mine is to be larger and done in oils. So I sat on a lumpy chaise just so, shawl draped over my arm just so, and tried not to move. Just so.

  Mama and Mr. Turner chatted while he sketched, in low voices so I could not hear many of their words. I daresay he wishes her patronage. She, always so pleasant to her motley collection of painters and philosophers, did not appear to be discouraging him. I do wish she would not giggle and blush so. She is far too old.

  Mr. Turner said little to me during the sitting, not much above “Lift your chin” or “Be still, for pity’s sake!” Yet in the end, as we were leaving, he asked quietly, “I am curious, Miss Percival. What future are you seeing with that faraway gaze?”

  Somehow it did not seem as impertinent a question as it might have. I certainly was not so impertinent as to inform him that my distant gaze had far more to do with boredom than prophecy. Yet I was most glib when I replied, “I see stormy seas and battles waging.” I had spent the afternoo
n staring at several of his paintings on those very subjects.

  I rather think he knew exactly what I was doing, and was amused by it. “Ah. You are to be our next Helen of Troy, perhaps?”

  “Oh, Katherine fully intends to inspire epic verse,” Mama teased.

  “Rather than write it, certainly,” I replied with a smile. “I have no talents or aspirations there.”

  “Aspire for love and glory, then,” Mr. Turner advised me in like spirit. “You could do far worse. I could do far worse in my own endeavours.”

  I liked him, odd as he was. I only hope I like my painting just as well. How dismal it would be to look upon a rendition of myself, and find the sight distasteful.

  July 26

  Viva Forever (Radio Edit)

  Mom was interviewed for BBC Radio today. Radio Four, to be exact, the one where they put all the book-y stuff. They’re doing a Regency literature month, all stuff from those few years around 1815 when King George went so mental that they had to put him in a rubber room and his son had to rule for him as Regent. Not a great time for British royalty, but pretty damned impressive for literature. Byron, Blake, Austen, Keats . . .

  The guy who was supposed to come talk about Mary Shelley (she wrote Frankenstein, lest you’ve forgotten) had an unfortunate encounter with an electrical current. How freakily appropriate is that? I ask you. Apparently he’ll be fine, but they needed a sub, and fast. A few phone calls later and presto whammo, the (s)mother and I were sitting in the studio (she’s in the inner; I’m in the outer, still feeling heartbroken-sorry-for-myself and not really having anything better to do than be there), and the interviewer was pretending to be fascinated with Mary Percival. Shelley—Percival, what’s the diff?

  (Fame, fortune, many movies, and a gazillion printings, but who’s counting?)

  It was live, but you’ll be able to listen as soon as they upload it, whenever that is. www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/

  So Mom was in this room with typical radio equipment, and an interviewer who looked like she reads doorstopper books about the inner lives of famous Victorian women. Or, maybe, stuff like Mary Percival’s unfamous books about Regency women. She had short gray hair that stuck out in all directions, red-framed glasses, and a sweatshirt with roses on it.

  Intros over, she jumped right in. “So, Polly,” she asked in a surprisingly Cockney voice (c’mon, you expect plummy posh on English radio, don’t you?), “what’s the biggest difference, as you see it, between English and American literature?”

  “Other than the language?” Mom quipped. Her fave joke. But she has a good voice for radio, smooth and kinda deep, and she made the comment sound cool and funny. The interviewer laughed, a real laugh, said something about how there isn’t a Brit alive who can do Edgar Allan Poe or Eminem justice, and I decided I liked her and the whole thing was going to go just fine.

  Just then the production assistant came back into my space. His name was Luke and he’d made sure I was extra comfy when we arrived. He clearly thought I was a bit of all right. He wasn’t bad, himself, with his spiky yellow hair and nerdy-cool specs. He plunked down next to me with a sigh, then took a huge gulp of his drink and promptly started to choke and splutter. I thumped him on the back a few times. It felt like twigs under a tarp. How is it that English guys can do weedy-skinny and kinda-sexy at the same time?

  “Cheers,” he thanked me when he was able to breathe again. “You’d think I’d learn not to inhale Coke. This kind of Coke.” He rattled the ice in his cup, as if he really needed to clarify. “Not the other. So, enjoying yourself? You must be chuffed to see your mum in there.”

  I opted for honesty. “Better than the dusty depths of the BM, sure.”

  Inside, they were still talking about the difference between American and English. Yawn. I spied a MacBook just like mine on a desk nearby. There was something I’d been meaning to do for days. I just hadn’t felt up to it. Now, with weedy-but-cute Luke making eyes at me, I felt ready.

  “Wireless access?” I asked, pointing to the Mac.

  “Yeah.” He almost tripped over himself in his eagerness to get the thing open and in front of me. “No porno, huh? Don’t want the tech lads doing the nudge-nudge-wink-wink for the next six months.” He gave a “just kidding” grin. Nudge-nudge-wink-wink.

  I went straight for Google. I had it up on the screen in less that ten seconds: “No Second Troy” by William Butler Yeats.

  Why should I blame her that she filled my days

  With misery, or that she would of late

  Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

  Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

  Had they but courage equal to desire?

  What could have made her peaceful with a mind

  That nobleness made simple as a fire,

  With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

  That is not natural in an age like this,

  Being high and solitary and most stern?

  Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

  Was there another Troy for her to burn?

  “Wow” was about all I could manage after reading through it. Wow, Will.

  Luke nudged his way in. “Ah. One of his finest moments.”

  “You understand this?”

  “Oh, yeah. I studied literature at Durham. Critical Theory 1850 to 1950. Believe me, they serve you Yeats with a trowel.”

  “So explain it to me in twenty words or less.”

  I could almost see him counting. “Nope, can’t be done. But in a nutshell: it’s about a wild gorgeous Irishwoman Yeats was in love with, Maud Gonne. Like crazy in love. She didn’t feel the same way. In the poem, he doesn’t hold it against her, but can’t stop loving her. Some people think the poem is mostly about that, about his massive passion for this woman. Others think it’s more about the Irish war for independence. She was a nationalist, a rabid one. Didn’t think England had any right to be in Ireland and needed to be gotten out, whatever it took. Hence the teaching common men to fight, with sticks if they didn’t have guns.”

  He paused to catch his breath. “Personally, I lean toward the love thang. Yeah, it’s about war, but it’s more about the fact that everyone wants this incredible woman, who can’t be tamed or blamed or controlled, enough to follow her into hell or battle. Enough to commit violent acts because of her. Like Menelaus did, attacking Troy to get his Helen back. Man”—Luke sighed—“how sick, how flippin’ unreal would it feel to be in love with someone like that? To even know someone like that?”

  Pretty unreal indeed.

  The perfect time, I thought, to turn my attention back to the (s)mother and her moment in the proverbial spotlight. She was reading from the battered old brown book that I knew was her first-edition copy of Mary Percival’s The Abandoned Bride. Not that there was a second edition. She complains about that every time she can get someone to listen.

  “In later years, though few remained,

  Her mind oft turned to what was gained

  And lost upon that sacred altar

  When his tongue amid the vows did falter.

  When second sight is diamond clear,

  When looking back costs the heart dear,

  ‘Tis harder to pretend all’s well

  Or that heaven cannot turn to hell.

  Our dreams: familiar, ordinary—

  Whom to be, to follow, to marry?—

  So quickly turn to nightmare stuff

  When we realize love is not enough.”

  “Autobiographical?” the interviewer asked.

  “Almost certainly,” Mom answered. “And prophetic. Her marriage, by all accounts, was a love match originally that soured within a few years. Her husband was a womanizer and a gambler who loathed intellectual women.”

  “Why did she marry him?”

  Mom laughed a little, and rolled her eyes. “Why do any of us pick the wrong guy? She was young; he was good-looking and probably very charming. Everyone pretty much spends the first few months of
a relationship pretending to be perfect, right?” That got her chuckles from around the studio. “At the turn of the nineteenth century, when Mary was young, you were already married by the time you stopped being perfect and figured out he wasn’t, either.”

  “So she had an unhappy life?”

  “Not at all. I think for the most part, she was probably very content. Her essays and first two novels were published to general critical success. She had a wide circle of fascinating acquaintances, including Turner, Byron, and Scott, among other writers and artists. She probably had affairs with one or more of them, although there’s no way to be certain. Unfortunate marriage aside, I think she loved well. She certainly adored her children.”

  “You used the word ‘prophetic.’ How so?”

  “Mary Percival died in February 1816, four months short of her forty-fifth birthday and less than a year after completing this work. She was living separately from her husband at the time.”

  “Hmm. Young.” The interviewer sighed. “How did she die?”

  “Well, as with her contemporary, Jane Austen, we can’t be entirely certain. Medicine at the time was far less advanced than people even imagine. Her letters and her daughter’s diary mention a long illness, with symptoms like frequent headaches, nausea, and fatigue. Just from basic research I’ve done, I suspect it might have been kidney disease. Again, like Austen. It was sadly common.”

  I felt cold suddenly. Katherine’s diary was from the summer of 1815. That meant her mother was going to die in less than ten months. I watched Mom carefully turn a few pages, finding the next excerpt. I didn’t hear what it was she read. All I could think was, She’s almost 45, exactly Mary’s age. She could die and then she would be gone and I really really don’t know what I would do without her...

  And I felt absolutely sick—real sick, not slangy—that I knew now what Katherine didn’t then, that she was going to lose her mom just when she was kind of finding her. It was two hundred years in the past, but still in the future. Bizarre.