by Dorothy Mack
The ensuing silence lasted a full half-minute by the mantel clock ticking monotonously away six inches from Miss Seymour’s ear. The next sound to reach that ear was a soft sigh from across the room and a rustle of taffeta as Lady Honoria sank onto the sofa.
“I was afraid that might be the case,” the older woman admitted heavily.
“Then you do understand?” The golden head turned eagerly from a contemplation of the portrait. Beseeching brown eyes sought support that was not forthcoming.
“I do not understand,” replied Lady Honoria acidly. “What I do understand is that you are five-and-twenty and still unwed because you are too particular in your requirements for a husband. No man could hope to live up to your expectations. It was all well and good to cherish romantic notions at eighteen, but at your age you should have learned better. If it were not for that face and your considerable fortune, you’d have been on the shelf years ago, and that is where you’ll end up, my girl, if you whistle Ellerby down the wind! You cannot play fast and loose with men for years without acquiring the kind of reputation I should very much dislike to have associated with a relative of mine.” She paused to draw breath and glare at her niece, who was smilingly shaking her head from side to side.
“Where do you find your expressions, ma’am? ‘Fast and loose’ indeed! You know very well that until Gregory came along, I never encouraged any of the suitors who courted my fortune so assiduously, and I don’t think I gave him much encouragement either, but he was so persistent.” Her voice trailed off and the smile faded from her eyes, leaving them bleak.
“Vicky, Ellerby is head and shoulders above the rest. I believe him to be really worthy of you,” her aunt said earnestly. “Oh, I don’t mean dull and worthy. That type would set your teeth on edge within a month, but he has great charm of manner, thinks just as he ought on important subjects, and is quite the handsomest man I’ve seen in two score seasons. And he is sincerely in love with you! It wouldn’t matter to him if you hadn’t two pennies to rub together. That kind of devotion is not to be winked at.”
“I know, I know.” Vicky made a little moue of distress.
She raised a hand to her face and kneaded her forehead in a weary gesture. “I think that is the reason I feel I must break it off now. If he only regarded me as a decorative or suitable wife and didn’t need so much from me, perhaps I would feel differently, but he deserves so much more than I can give him.”
“Fustian!” asserted Lady Honoria. “If you would just stop living in the past and allow yourself to accept Ellerby’s devotion, you’d find in time that you could return it.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt. That is what Gregory said, and I allowed myself to be persuaded against my better judgment, but it isn’t true! Believe me, I wish it were! Do you think I would not enjoy being married, that I would not love to hold my own child in my arms?”
“Well, then, stop yearning for a dead man and enjoy the benefits of a living man’s devotion.”
“It isn’t that,” Vicky explained patiently to her exasperated relative. “I assure you I’m not pining for Edward after all these years or measuring every other man I meet against him. In some ways, Gregory is superior to him — no, hear me out, please,” as Lady Honoria opened her lips to speak. “The thing is that I was in love with Edward; all I wanted out of life was to become his wife, so you see I recognise the difference now. I know what I should be cheating Gregory out of and what he deserves to find with another woman.”
“Ellerby doesn’t think he’s being cheated, and he’s the best judge, after all.”
“He doesn’t now perhaps, but he will. I have seen a change in him over the weeks of our engagement. I’ve noticed the hurt look in his eyes when I’ve been brisk or said wounding things with this serpent’s tongue of mine. And what is infinitely worse, though I despise myself afterwards, I do it again! I can’t seem to prevent myself from being clever at his expense, and I can’t seem to lessen the distance between us or allow him to lessen it. He’ll end up by hating me, and I couldn’t bear that! The end seems hideously inevitable, as though I were digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole. Like Macbeth, I feel ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound by saucy doubts and fears.’ ”
During this speech, Vicky’s calm demeanour gradually disintegrated, and by the finish she was pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace in her agitation.
“Don’t you think you are being overly melodramatic about this?” demanded Lady Honoria in an astringent voice. “And do stop that eternal pacing; you put me forcibly in mind of a lion I once saw at Exeter Exchange. What makes you think your situation is unique? Other women, and men too, I have no doubt, have experienced doubts and qualms before marriage. Yet they seem to muddle through somehow and make a fair success of wedlock eventually.”
“I don’t want a muddled marriage! If I cannot have a real one, I’ll do much better to stay unwed. At least this way I shan’t be responsible for ruining another’s life as well.”
“What about this child you say you’d like to hold in your arms? How do you plan to acquire it without a husband?”
Vicky merely hunched a shoulder at this dry interjection. “There are worse things in life than remaining childless,” she said shortly.
“There are indeed,” agreed her aunt in level tones, “but not many.”
Contrition spread over the girl’s features, and she bounded forward to clasp strong young arms about her aunt in a brief hug. “Forgive me, darling Aunt!” she cried, sliding back onto her knees in front of the sofa, squeezing her relative’s hands lightly. “I always think of myself as your child. You’ve been as good as a mother to me for these dozen years and more.”
Lady Honoria absently patted the hands resting on her knee. “It doesn’t signify,” she said, “but, my dear child, consider the alternative. If you break your engagement, there will be the usual nine days’ wonder. You have always provided the jealous tabbies of the town with plenty of ammunition for their gossiping tongues, but it was all nothing compared to the sensation this announcement will produce. Can you face the talk and the censure?”
“I could for myself. What I cannot face is to be meeting Gregory everywhere and seeing his unhappiness as a constant reproach. Even though I am persuaded he will shortly fall in love with a tractable young girl who will adore him, I know he’s going to be miserable for a time, and I am wretchedly at fault for having accepted his offer. I’ll have to go away. It’s only fair.”
“Where will you go, back to the Oaks?”
Vicky nodded and gave her aunt a twisted little smile. “Where else? I never should have left. I have outgrown the delights of London, I fear. I thought I should enjoy being part of society again, but it palls quickly, I find.”
“Thank you for prevaricating,” said her aunt with a wry smile of her own. “You returned to town solely because I was bored to extinction in the country, but I did it as much for your good as my own, my dear. It worried me to see you grieving for your father and wasting your youth in a locality nearly devoid of eligible males. Richard should have seen to it that you married years ago if he meant to die in that untimely fashion.”
This time, Vicky’s smile was real and lit up her face. “Papa was as bad as you for trying to get me safely riveted. I lost count of the sons of old friends who ‘just happened to be in the neighbourhood’ and were pressed into staying at the house to be paraded in front of my eyes. Obviously it isn’t meant to be.”
“Nonsense,” said Lady Honoria briskly. “You’ll change your tune after a few weeks’ solitude in that great ark of a house. It will be too late for Ellerby, perhaps, but there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.”
“You won’t come with me, then?” Vicky asked a trifle wistfully.
Lady Honoria was very decided. “Not this time, my child. The little season has scarce begun, and I have a mind to play the socialite yet awhile. Besides, you will have need of me here to line up the next candidates when the quiet an
d monotony of the country drive you back to London with, I trust, a more realistic attitude toward marriage.”
Vicky laughed. “Very well, ma’am. I see I am to be banished as I deserve. But I beg of you to spare your efforts to matchmake on my behalf. It is quite apparent that I was born to lead apes in hell.”
A ladylike snort greeted this pronouncement. “Fustian! You are no more intended for a life of single blessedness than Cleopatra! I always said nothing good ever came from reading Shakespeare. And now I am off to my bed for what is left of the night. I cannot forbid you or chain you up or physic you to eliminate this foolishness. You are a woman grown. All I am going to request, my dear, is that you consider all the consequences of this rash step you are proposing to take before you do something you are sure to regret.”
Lady Honoria pressed a rare kiss on her niece’s bowed head before rising with a groan. She went away muttering about the stiffness of her joints, leaving Vicky staring unseeingly at the portrait over the mantel. It wasn’t until Barrows poked his head into the room to see why the lights had not been extinguished that she too rose to her feet and headed for her bedchamber.
CHAPTER 2
For the past hour there had been a welcome silence in the chaise, but this had been achieved only after a persistent and determined pretence of sleep on the part of Miss Seymour. They had been on the road close to eight hours now, and she had been regretting for almost as long the impulse that had caused her to take a young housemaid in her dresser’s place so that Lady Honoria might continue to reap the benefits of Trotton’s matchless skill at hair design. Certainly she herself would not be requiring the elaborate coiffures that were Trotton’s specialty and delight in the wilds of Leicestershire, but she might have thought long and hard before electing to travel with Lily as her companion had she had the least notion of the little maid’s penchant for mindless chatter.
A certain amount of nervous excitement was to be expected, of course, for the town-bred Lily had never been farther from London than Windsor, and Vicky had been prepared to be indulgent while the novelty of rolling over unfamiliar territory in a luxuriously appointed chaise held sway. Long before the first change of horses at Welwyn, however, indulgence had worn thin. As the monotony of travelling over an unending post road set in, it had the unsuspected effect of loosening the young maid’s tongue. Unresponsiveness on her mistress’ part had done nothing to stem the resultant tide of confidences. Vicky had been regaled with sundry details of Mam’s sinking spells and Pa’s inability to keep a job for more than a few months, which seemed to bear some direct relation to his periodic disappearances. He never failed to reappear after a sennight or so, chastened and somewhat the worse for drink, but by then it was generally necessary to find a new employer. Apparently Lily and her five brothers and sisters accepted this familial pattern as the norm and were none the less happy for the lack of stability. Two of her brothers had already embarked on promising careers, she confided. Joseph was working as a printer’s devil in Fleet Street, and Tom, who had a passion for horses and an ambition to be a gentleman’s groom, had been fortunate enough to secure employment in a livery stable, where he could hope that his diligence and skill would sooner or later catch the eye of some gentleman who shared his ideas on the care of prime horseflesh.
By the time the ladies had partaken of a light lunch and stretched their cramped legs in a short walk, Miss Seymour felt as familiar with all the individual members of Lily’s family as if she had dwelt among them for years. It was her own fault, of course; a sufficiently brusque rejoinder at any moment would have crushed the timid maid and stemmed her cheerful garrulity, but Miss Seymour found herself incapable of administering such a rebuff. Her own spirits having been strangely in eclipse these past weeks, she could not be the instrument to depress those of a girl who contrived to remain optimistic in the face of difficult home conditions and the unenviable prospects of a life of servitude before her.
In desperation she had resorted to feigning sleep, which had served to dam the flow of chatter. Unfortunately, silence had proved a mixed blessing. Granted, the sound of Lily’s breathy, slightly nasal, and more than slightly slurred tones had ceased, but only to be succeeded by a train of disturbing memories of the uncomfortable scenes she had enacted with Gregory during the past week. With her eyes closed, there was no keeping them at bay by focusing on her young companion’s comely and eager countenance. Gregory’s face as she had seen it last, quietly set, an eloquent reproach in its unhappiness, though he had uttered no words of reproach, persisted in remaining stationed behind her eyelids, as vivid as though he were sharing the chaise with her. She had known it would be a difficult task to convince him her decision was necessary, and only a strong conviction that she was sparing him greater pain in the future had sustained her resolution to persist in the face of his persuasive arguments against ending their betrothal.
Aunt Honoria had proved correct also in predicting that the rupture would produce a sensation in society. In the two days that elapsed between the appearance of the announcement in the Gazette and her departure from London, she had been greeted with decided coolness by two matrons encountered by chance in the Pantheon Bazaar while doing some hurried shopping. That she had been the subject of their conversation, broken off abruptly as she came around a corner, had been made perfectly apparent by their conscious expressions. It would be a decided relief to sink once again into the welcoming atmosphere of the Oaks, where she could be herself without a care for anyone’s opinion of her behaviour, but even the thought of her home and the horses was not sufficient to dissolve the pervasive fog of depression that had been creeping up on her these past weeks. Lately she seemed unable to summon up any resistance to this perpetual midnight of her spirits. The skies would lighten with the first sight of the lane of oaks leading to the house. They must! Most likely she was low in her mind because for the first time, there would be no one to greet her return. Papa was gone forever, and Aunt Honoria had held steadfast to her decision to remain in town for the little season.
Miss Seymour’s eyes flew open as an obvious explanation for this sensation of emptiness occurred to her. Lunch had been a long time ago and had consisted of bread and butter and tea, for neither woman had been particularly hungry when they had stopped. She looked quickly at her companion and was relieved to note her blue-bonneted head angled against the padded backrest, straight brown lashes resting on pink cheeks while her breath came evenly and softly. A glance at the jewelled watch pinned to her dress confirmed the impression Vicky had gathered from peering outside. It was after four o’clock. A slight frown appeared on her smooth brow as she did some rapid thinking. The final change of horses was always at Stamford, where they left the post road. Normally they would proceed directly to the Oaks, which was located a few miles east of Melton Mowbray, arriving in good time for a late dinner. They had been delayed earlier today by unexpectedly violent showers, which had settled down to a steady light rain as they came farther north. Surely they must be nearing Stamford soon. She couldn’t remember another such interminable trip home. Though the day couldn’t be described as especially cold, the continuing damp had penetrated the comfortable carriage and taken possession of her extremities. Uncomfortably she flexed chilled fingers in their kid gloves and wriggled her toes inside their admittedly lovely but inadequate half-boots of softest leather. Suddenly the immediate advantages of a warm fire and a hot dinner far outweighed those of an earlier arrival at home. She let down the window on the driver’s side, admitting a gust of the damp air, stuck her head out, and called to the coachman, “Amos, how far are we from Stamford?”
“I calculate we’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
“Good. We’ll stop there for dinner.”
“Can’t stop long if you want to get to the Oaks afore dark, Miss Vicky,” cautioned the old driver in his restrained bellow.
“We won’t, but if this rain worsens I’ll wager you’ll be glad of some hot rum punch inside of you be
fore we go on,” his mistress predicted, closing the window on the low rumble of laughter that signified Amos’ agreement with this prescription for warding off chills.
Smiling in sympathy, Vicky turned back to the interior to find her maid, bonnet askew but bolt upright, rubbing her eyes.
“Are we almost there, Miss Seymour?” she asked, looking around in confusion.
“No such luck, I’m afraid. We are going to stop for dinner in Stamford. One more change will do it, but we have another couple of hours ahead of us after we leave the post road.”
As Lily, prattling compulsively all the while, straightened her hat, Vicky watched indulgently, her good humour restored by the promise of warmth and food. She had been confusing discomfort and hunger with lowness of spirits, she told herself firmly.
All was hustle and bustle at the Candle and Unicorn when the ladies entered the public dining room some twenty minutes later. Miss Seymour’s request for a private parlour had been met by a regretful denial on the part of their host. All his dining rooms were already reserved, unless Madam cared to engage a bedchamber and order a repast to be sent there. Seeing a quick frown gather on her brow, he had assured the ladies that the patrons in the public room were a quiet, genteel crowd tonight, and had offered them a private table in a corner and a waiter to see to their needs. Miss Seymour hesitated fractionally, but the sight of Lily’s dark eyes growing round as she gazed about with patent anticipation decided the issue. The landlord looked a respectable sort; he’d see they were not subjected to unwelcome attention. She nodded acquiescence and allowed herself to be led forward. After a half-dozen paces, she paused and looked back to make sure Lily had come out of her trance and was following. She was, just barely, her head swivelling on her shoulders as she tried to take in the whole of the busy room at once. A tolerant smile tugged at Miss Seymour’s lips as she resumed her walk.
