Magic and Manners (An Austen Chronicle Book 1)

by CE Murphy

  He was not to be found, although Miss Julia Webber and Sophia Enton were ensconced together in a darkened corner, whispering secrets to one another—a sight which gave Elsabeth a strange sorrow; Sophia had long since been her special friend, and she found, to her own shame, that a thread of jealousy wound through her heart that she should have to share Sophia with another—and Mr Fitzgerald Archer was lurking about in a disagreeably handsome manner rather than participating in any sort of usual conversation. He nodded stiffly when he saw Elsabeth; she, after glancing about to see whom he might have chosen to acknowledge, realised it was herself, and offered a curtsy as formal as his greeting had been. Instruments began to be tuned, and a peculiar look came over Archer’s face as Elsabeth glanced around once more in resignation, but before she could interpret it, to her consternation, Mr Cox appeared at her side.

  “My dear cousin,” he said with insultingly deep solicitude, “I could not help but note that you seem to be without a partner for these first dances after all. I should consider it no more than my duty, but it is also my profound pleasure to stand up with you now. Miss Dover has consented to dance the next set with me, and I have engaged your younger sisters for dances later in the evening. I should hate to fail in my familial obligations by not dancing with you as well, for it is quite proper I should attend each lady of the family throughout the course of the evening.”

  Elsabeth, who could not now say no, agreed with as little evident pleasure as she dared show, and suffered thoroughly the ineptitudes of Mr Cox’s dancing, although, she dared say to Sophia some time later, she had not suffered them any more than those around them had, for his skill led him to trounce not only her own toes, but those of the gentlemen and ladies who passed him by. One of the latter had nearly lost the train to her skirt to his mis-stepping, and he had simply collided with two other gentlemen when, it seemed, he was unable to tell his left from his right in the pattern of the dance. Her regret over Captain Hartnell’s failure to appear had been lessened by the time she spoke with Sophia, as she had in the interim danced with two far more agreeable young men as well, one of whom was an officer and had spoken warmly of Hartnell, though he did not know why the captain had not joined them for the evening. She was therefore quite able to laugh at the misadventure with Mr Cox, and was, indeed, doing so when Mr Archer appeared at her side and asked in dreadfully formal tones if she might agree to dance with him.

  For the second time in the evening, she looked about in search of the woman Archer intended to address and once again found only herself, for Sophia, sparkling with amusement, had stepped back and—despite her height and the rich mulberry tones of her gown—had made herself inconspicuous. Too startled to make an excuse, Elsabeth replied, “I should be pleased to,” and turned a look of accusation upon Sophia as Archer departed as abruptly as he had arrived.

  Sophia, still merry and quite lovely with it, stepped forward again to say, “I thought you should never dance with him, Elsabeth. Fear not: I have spent some time with Miss Webber and Mr Archer over the past week, and I think you might find him agreeable after all.”

  Elsabeth had not revealed and could not now reveal the tale of woe betwixt Archer and Hartnell, and so could only say, “I most sincerely doubt it, but I am sure he only meant it as a jape, and will not come to collect the dance.”

  A steely look of practicality came into Sophia’s eyes. “Perhaps, but if he does, Elsa, remember that his fortune is ten times that of Mr Webber’s, and a thousand times that of an officer’s.”

  “You have no romance in your soul,” Elsabeth replied lightly.

  Determination glittered in Sophia’s gaze. “I am nearly twenty-eight years old. I cannot afford romance, and you ought not rely on it. Here he comes, Elsabeth. Try not to stand on your pride; both of you have too much of it.”

  In truth, though, without pride Elsabeth thought she could not join Archer in the dance at all. Without pride, the astonished looks of her fellow dancers as they glanced from Archer to herself might have felled her; without pride, they certainly would have seen that she shared their astonishment and perhaps felt it even more deeply than they did. She was not certain they didn’t see it anyway: she felt as though her amazement at dancing with Archer was writ large on her face for all to see, and she was not above exchanging a wide-eyed glance with a young woman of her distant acquaintance who stood nearby.

  For his part, Archer showed no sort of discomfort at all. Indeed, to Elsabeth’s view, he seemed to gaze at some distant point above her head, no more interested in her as an individual dance partner than he might be interested in the difference between one cow and another in a field.

  It might have done her some good to know that beneath his lofty visage, Mr Fitzgerald Archer was equally taken aback by his actions. He had not intended on asking Miss Elsabeth to dance; it had, after all, been made manifestly clear—on both their parts, he was loath to admit—that they found one another to be undesirable dance partners. He was even more loath to admit—did not, in fact, admit it on any recognisable level—that she had quite captured his attention with her arrival at the ball. She was prettily gowned in pale pink, which in no way made her stand out from the sea of similarly gowned young ladies; it was only the bold or very wealthy who wore stronger colours this evening. Miss Webber and her protégé Miss Enton were among them, and Miss Enton in particular looked well for it, but to Archer’s eye, Miss Elsabeth had no need to adorn herself in the more dramatic shades of dress for an evening.

  Nor, certainly, was it her family who caused her to so thoroughly ensnare him, save she and her eldest sister seemed demure and proper in comparison to the garish mother, loud sisters and daft father. No: she had separated from them as soon as she could, leaving Miss Dover to charm Webber on topics Archer had nothing to say about. He had not meant to follow Miss Elsabeth through the ballrooms, and he was not above admitting a small, mean gladness in his heart when he realised she searched for, and could not find, David Hartnell. It was in the midst of her disappointment that they saw one another, and, suddenly struck by the opportunity, he had thought then to ask her to dance.

  He ought to have moved more swiftly: a tall, plump, oily man in an ill-fitting suit appeared to press Miss Elsabeth for a dance instead, and proceeded to escort her around the floor so badly as to embarrass even Archer, a task which most would regard as impossible. Miss Elsabeth, showing admirable forbearance, survived the sets and quit the man as soon as she could, but Archer regarded his own opportunity as quite lost.

  It was therefore a shock to him when, some time later, he turned to discover Miss Elsabeth at his elbow and made the offer of a dance without a moment’s thought or hesitation. She accepted with surprise evident even through her grace, and now he stood across from her in the opening positions of the dance and could not think of a word to say. So complete was his inability to speak that he dared not even meet her eyes, for fear that she would—reasonably—expect him to offer some polite inanity, or worse, that she would recognise that he was tongue-tied and—equally reasonably—laugh at him.

  Curse it, but why could he not be a little more like Webber? Robert had never once been unable to speak charmingly to a young woman; Robert would never find himself staring stonily at curtains and candles rather than risk glancing at his dance partner. He commanded himself to pretend, just for a moment, that he was Robert, and finally met Miss Elsabeth’s eyes, only to find her struggling to hold back laughter. “I find the quadrille to be an exceedingly diverting dance,” she said as swiftly as could be, as if she had been waiting for him to break and finally look her way, “do you not?”

  “I do,” he replied, and, unable to find some idle pleasantry to follow this abrupt comment with, fell into dreadful silence again. It had to be a question of her position within Society; he had never been so ill suited to speaking to women of his own rank. He spoke to Julia Webber with ease, and of course it was no difficulty to discuss matters of dress or friendship with his own cousin, Miss Annabel Der
rington.

  Satisfied and somewhat relieved to have hit upon a reason for his reticence, Archer was prepared to complete the dance in silence when Miss Elsabeth spoke again. “It is your turn, Mr Archer. I have spoken of the dance; you might now mention the weather or how well our hosts look this evening. I believe we must talk for at least some part of our time together.” She said all of this with such solemnity that Archer glanced at her again, suspecting—and finding—that humour danced in her dark eyes.

  He was not a man who cared for being laughed at, and found some release in a dark glower. “Must we, Miss Elsabeth? Why is that?”

  “Because if we do not, Mr Archer, then others will.” Her smile no longer laughed at him: it thrust, a pin-point strike to his very heart. “What do you suppose they might say, to watch two young people—I use the word advisedly in your regard, of course—spend the whole of a half hour straight-faced and mute even as they enjoy the intimacy of a dance? I should think,” she said in a murmur, “that they would imagine that the young people were trying very hard to hide something from the rest of them.”

  “I am only twenty-eight!”

  At this outburst—and it was, Archer feared, an outburst—Elsabeth Dover threw her head back and laughed aloud, drawing the attention of every individual in the room, and some from the rooms beyond. Archer, hot with humiliation, paraded stiffly through the next segment of the dance whilst attempting to ignore the muffled, but still visible, laughter of his partner, who finally recovered herself to whisper, “I had thought intimations of secret affection would raise your ire, Mr Archer. I had not realised it would be a chide about your age that would draw blood. Oh, my, how ill suited we are to partnering one another, for I cannot help but be merry and you, sir, cannot help but be dour.”

  “Is that your estimation of my character, then?”

  “Is it not your estimation of your own? If I am wrong, pray, set me straight, for I should dislike to hold to a bad judgment, in the event that I have made one.” Her tone implied she had not made an error; her expression, all girlish curiosity, charged him to deny it.

  “You are not wrong,” Archer finally replied, and in Miss Elsabeth’s satisfaction saw a different sort of truth: that it was her very merriment that drew him to her. He, who had always been concerned with that which was right and proper, was rarely drawn to that which was simply gay; even Robert Webber’s kindness and soft heart were seated within a very suitable gentleman. “That disposition which you so correctly ascertain,” Archer said then, with some caution, “causes me to have some difficulty in making friends easily, though I like to think that my friendship, once secured, is unflagging.”

  The joy fled from Miss Elsabeth’s face and she struck as quickly as a viper. “How, then, do you explain Captain Hartnell?”

  Displeasure twisted Archer’s face, for he had opened himself to that strike without thinking of it. “Hartnell is not the man you think he is, Miss Elsabeth.”

  “Captain Hartnell has confessed his sins to me, and I could never look kindly upon a man who has denied him a vocation over such trivial matters.”

  “I should be very interested to hear what sins he has confessed, for I cannot believe they are the very ones I know to be his. Mark me, Miss Elsabeth: where he has the gift of making friends, he has not the knack of holding them. He is dangerous and a friendship with him is ill conceived.”

  “Dangerous,” snapped Elsabeth Dover. “Give me but a moment’s opportunity, Mr Archer, and I shall show you dangerous—”

  “Why, Mr Archer,” said a pleased voice from the edge of the dance floor, “how excellently you dance, and with such passion. I am most pleased to see you with our dear Miss Elsabeth, and dare say there could be no finer set of matches made than yourself and herself along with good Mr Webber and darling Miss Dover. I do believe that is a match almost made, would you not say so yourself? Entirely splendid, I say, entirely splendid. But I have interrupted the steps of your dance; let me remove myself and we shall speak again of this later. Mr Archer, Miss Elsabeth.”

  Sophia’s father, Mr Enton, a fine and kind-hearted gentleman himself, excused himself from the midst of what had been a battlefield, and Archer, gazing after the man, could not say whether he had performed a deliberate and timely interruption or had, as it appeared, merely seen something that pleased him in the two of them and stopped to comment upon it. But he and Elsabeth had been spatting quietly; surely, Enton could not have heard them over the bustle of the ball. Moreover, his commentary—absurdly inappropriate with regards to himself and Miss Elsabeth—had sparked an awareness in Archer, who forgot his partner for a moment and looked over the ballroom until he found Webber deep in conversation with Miss Dover.

  No: Archer dismissed the thought. Webber could not be genuinely serious about the oldest Dover girl; she came from too little, and had a wretched family besides. Archer was now inclined to include Miss Elsabeth in that wretchedness; if she would not listen to his warnings, then the consequences could be on her own head. They finished the dance in the silence in which it had begun, and it was with a certain mean satisfaction that Archer saw Elsabeth’s first dance partner of the evening approach her again and demand her attention.

  “My dear cousin,” Mr Cox said upon approaching Elsabeth, “could that gentleman with whom you were dancing be Mr Archer? Mr Fitzgerald Archer?”

  “Yes.” Even one word was too many to speak to Cox, particularly after such a tête-à-tête with Archer, but Elsabeth could not simply turn away from her cousin, much as she might like to.

  “Why, he is the very nephew of my dear patroness. I shall introduce myself; I believe it is the only appropriate thing to do.”

  “You cannot possibly be serious, Mr Cox. Mr Archer is extremely proper, and one does not simply introduce oneself to a man of his station. You must be introduced. Ask Papa to do so if you must, although I think it is better that you do not.”

  “I insist upon it.” Cox edged his way through the ballroom toward Archer as Elsabeth, helpless with dismay, searched the room for a glimpse of Ruth, whose treatise on the necessity of proper introductions had been crushed by the family weeks before. If only they had not hushed her, Elsa felt, she herself might have had the words to dissuade Cox; even now, if Ruth could be found, she might yet convince him of the folly of his ways.

  Too late: Cox was at Archer’s elbow, plucking at his sleeve and speaking to him. Archer gazed at him with the amazement of a man who has discovered an inexplicable stain on the elbow of his jacket, and briefly—terribly—flickered a glance toward Elsabeth, thus informing her that he was entirely aware that Cox was a creature of her acquaintance. She could not allow herself to cringe externally, but within, she shrank away, embarrassed for herself and her family alike. Archer’s opinion ought not bear any weight with her, and should certainly not be worthy of embarrassment, but to Elsabeth’s dismay, she found it did. Certainly, it was only that he was so well placed in Society; no one would want to gain the censure of a man in his standing. Thus reassured by her own logic, Elsabeth watched in dismay as Cox persisted with Archer.

  Twice, Archer attempted to disengage himself; twice, Cox failed to recognise he was being dismissed, until finally Archer simply turned away and engaged in conversation with someone else. Elsabeth, unmoving with mortification, realised too late that she had lost the opportunity to slip away into the crowd, and found herself the centre of Cox’s pleased attentions again. “What an exceedingly polite gentleman,” he announced. “I believe he was most pleased to make my acquaintance, and very glad to hear that his aunt retains her health and vigor, or at least had done so when last I saw her, a mere fortnight ago. I dared tell him that I presumed she should enjoy his company—”

  “Mr Cox,” Elsabeth said in dismay, “had you that intelligence from the Lady Derrington herself, or was it a surmising of your own?”

  “Entirely my own. I believe a man of ambition should seize the initiative, Miss Elsabeth, as I should like to seize it upon a topic nea
r and dear to both of—”

  “Mr Cox, I suddenly recall Ruth mentioning that she was quite famished,” Elsabeth said in a burst of terror. “Do you suppose you might procure for her some bit of meat or bread and bring it to her?”

  “Miss Ruth?” Cox glanced about the room, then swelled with purpose. “For you, my dear cousin, I should be most pleased to—”

  “Excellent, thank you, now please forgive me; I see someone seeking my attention—” Elsabeth veritably fled from Cox into Rosamund’s arms, where, for a few glorious moments, she was surrounded by the laughter and pleasantry of the Newsbury party, save with Sophia Enton standing in the place of Mr Archer at Julia Webber’s side. A more delightful gathering could not have been found, but all too soon, Rosamund and Mr Webber joined the dancers, leaving the rest of them to disperse into dances or whispered intimacies, as with Sophia and Julia. Bereft and determined not to show it, Elsabeth approached her own family, only to hear her mother in an endless discussion of how lovely it would be when Rosa and Mr Webber were settled at Newsbury together, only a three-mile walk, it did a mother’s heart good, with all those who passed by or settled within earshot.

  Mr Archer was amongst the latter, and the more Mrs Dover spoke on the topic of Rosamund and Mr Webber, the grimmer Archer’s expression became. Thrice, Elsabeth tried to draw her mother onto another subject, but Mrs Dover would have none of it: her eldest daughter’s good fortune, and the good fortune of the Dover family by extension, was the only matter upon which she had any desire to speak. When Archer turned abruptly and strode away, Elsabeth, no longer able to bear Mrs Dover’s endless litany, departed that conversation only to be caught and ensnared for the remainder of the evening by Mr Cox, who, having done his cousinly duty to Ruth, was eager to regale Elsabeth with news of his good deed.

  “I had hoped you and she might find a topic of conversation suitable to both of you as she ate,” Elsabeth replied wearily, rather than extol his virtues. Not to be dissuaded, Cox protested that he could not sit and talk with a younger sister when an older one, and one of such intelligence and beauty, remained unaccompanied.