Simon sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, and sighed deeply. “Aye, Douglas, I remember all too well. It was only ten years ago that Maybella dragged me to London, to see a balloon ascension, she assured me. I was moved by her attempt to please me because I very much wanted to see the balloon ascension, Douglas, and it was indeed an incredible sight, but I fear I was taken in. It was six weeks before I could come home. There was only one other balloon ascension during that very long, tedious time. Do you mean that I must go there again?”
“Yes, you must. However, I fear that a balloon ascension isn’t a certain thing. The weather in the fall is unpredictable, and as you know, balloons need to have clear weather and very little wind.”
“Then why must I go to London if the weather is too uncertain for the balloons?”
“Because Corrie is eighteen, a young lady, and young ladies must be presented. They must attend balls and be seen and admired and taught to dance. James tells me that Corrie is going to come out in the Little Season, Simon, a sort of practice season, so she can learn how to go on. I fear, Simon, that you will have to go yet again to London next spring when Corrie is officially presented.”
Simon moaned, then perked up. “Perhaps Corrie has no wish to go to London and be presented.”
“She must be in the middle of things in order to find a husband, Simon. Young gentlemen are thick on the ground in London during the Season. Only then are there enough of them about to give a girl a decent selection. Alexandra and I will be in London this fall. We can assist you. Now, if you would call Corrie, I can begin advising her on her apparel. Also, James has offered to teach her to waltz.”
Buxted cleared his throat from the doorway. “Ah, please regard me, my lords. I managed to snag some lovely cinnamon bread from the kitchen from under Cook’s nose. It is Lady Maybella’s favorite. When I found out she didn’t consume all of it at the breakfast table, I moved quickly. Just look-there are six nice fat slices left. There were seven, but I must confess that I nipped one slice, to ensure its freshness, you know.”
“Excellent, Buxted,” Simon said, and pushed a quantity of scientific journals off the table at his elbow. “You didn’t eat more than one, did you, Buxted?”
“Just one, my lord.”
Simon never looked away from that plate Buxted was holding as he said, “Did you find Corrie?”
“Yes, my lord. In the middle of the upstairs corridor. She was tugging on her breeches that have become too short in the past months.” Buxted fidgeted, looked over his master’s left shoulder, then drew himself up. “I warned her we had a very august personage visiting. I even managed in a very roundabout manner to let her know that she might also want to change her stockings. She squeaked and ran to her bedchamber. I daresay the result of my words might be a pale blue gown, just like her ladyship’s.”
“Well done, Buxted,” Douglas said.
Buxted drew himself up and gave the earl a blinding smile. “As to that, one would never wish to repel an earl, my lord.”
“Naturally not,” Douglas said. “I shall tell Hollis of your wily brain, Buxted.”
“Will you, my lord? Will you indeed? Oh, to have Hollis know that I perhaps managed to bring something worthwhile to fruition. Perhaps you’d best not, my lord. One must wait and see.”
“The cinnamon bread, Buxted. Now.”
Buxted reverently laid the plate on the table beside Simon, gave one last wistful look at the artfully arranged slices, sighed, blotted the sweat on his bald head with a handkerchief, and walked out the door.
The instant Buxted was gone, Simon grabbed up a slice of cinnamon bread. “I thought he would never leave, Douglas. We must hurry and eat the cinnamon bread before Maybella comes down. Don’t talk, Douglas, just eat, or else Maybella may appear and she will snag the other slices. She has a powerful sense of smell, does Maybella.”
Douglas smiled, took a slice, bit into it. He realized this wasn’t just any sort of cinnamon bread, this was cinnamon bread straight from the celestial realm. He was reaching for a second slice when his hand hit Simon’s.
“There’s a problem about this, Douglas,” Simon said, and gently eased out the slice from beneath Douglas’s hand.
Douglas snagged the next slice, managed to polish it off before he raised an eyebrow in question.
Simon sighed so deeply he nearly choked. “The money.”
“Money? Isn’t Corrie well-dowered?”
Simon looked on the point of bursting into tears. Oh God, Douglas thought, what was wrong? No dowry? No, surely that couldn’t be true.
“That would be bad enough. No, Douglas, it is far worse than that. She’s an heiress.”
Douglas nearly laughed aloud. “Surely that isn’t all that bad.”
“You know what will happen when it’s discovered she has bucketfuls of groats, Douglas. She will be hunted down like a rat.”
“I wouldn’t put it precisely like that, Simon, but I do understand that she will be the focus of any fortune-hungry young gentleman in London.”
“If the young gentlemen don’t have the wit to do it, then their parents will plot and scheme to get her to the altar. Not to mention all the old gentlemen who would want to get their hands on her money. You know the sort-womanizers, lechers, gamblers who will forbid her breeches and keep her breeding until she’s thirty and likely dead of it. I don’t want that to happen, Douglas.”
“Is she really an heiress or does she have, say, in the vicinity of five thousand pounds?”
“She could drop five thousand pounds in a ditch and not even blink, Douglas.”
“I see. I will think about this. Perhaps we can keep it quiet.”
“Ha! When money is involved it won’t remain a secret for long.”
Douglas frowned. “Well, it has until now, but you’re right, Simon. Once she gets to London and it’s known she’s looking for a husband, even burying her money in the kitchen garden won’t help.” Douglas sighed and tapped his fingertips together.
A lovely low musical voice came from the doorway. “Good morning, my lord. So you are our august personage?”
CHAPTER SIX
There is no such thing as too much couth.
S. J. PERELMAN
DOUGLAS QUICKLY ROSE. “Maybella. You are looking fine this morning.”
She looked as she always looked, wearing one of her many pale blue gowns that covered her from throat to toe. She nodded and headed straight to the cinnamon bread. The plate was empty.
Maybella merely held out her hand. With obvious reluctance, perhaps even a small whimper, Simon stuck out his hand. On his palm lay two slices.
She took both slices without a word, sat herself down on the small sofa facing Douglas, and smiled placidly at him.
“Corrie will be down presently,” she said, and proceeded to eat, both men watching her avidly. “I believe she was searching for a stocking.”
“As I was telling Simon, Maybella, you are going to have to take Corrie to London this fall.”
She said matter-of-factly, “I hadn’t informed him of it yet, Douglas, because he would figure a way to get out of it.”
Simon said, “The weather is uncertain in the fall, Maybella. Perhaps Corrie can be presented when the weather is finer, in the summer, perhaps, two or three summers after this one.”
Douglas said, “I have just recalled that the second week of October is always pleasant, Simon, and we will see every balloon ascension during that week. Perhaps several will be held. Trust me.”
Buxted’s throat cleared once again in the doorway. “Miss Corrie is here, my lord, and she is not wearing her breeches. I did not inquire about her stockings as such a query could be taken amiss.”
Since Maybella’s mouth was full, she only nodded. Corrie came into the drawing room dressed in a very old muslin gown the same pale blue as her aunt’s. It needed more petticoats and fewer flounces and perhaps an inch of her neck showing. At least she was straight and tall, her waist small enough to please even Do
uglas’s mother. On the other hand, probably not.
“Good morning, my lord,” Corrie said and gave Douglas a fine curtsy.
“I taught her to curtsy,” Maybella said, beaming at Corrie as she chewed on the cinnamon bread. “Isn’t that shade of blue particularly fetching on her?”
“It always is on you, my love,” Simon said, eyeing that final slice of cinnamon bread lovingly held in Maybella’s right hand.
Douglas said, “Good morning to you, Corrie. That was a lovely curtsy. You’re tall and that’s excellent. No, straighten your shoulders. That’s right. Never stoop. Small, mincing girls aren’t to any gentleman’s taste, unless he is very short himself. You do not wish to attract a short man, he will make you bow your shoulders. Hmmm, yes, your shoulders are nice.” Douglas rose and made a circuit around her. Her hair was in a single fat braid down her back. “I think with your height you will enhance any gown Madame Jourdan can make for you.”
“I don’t understand why you are examining me, my lord.”
Simon said, “Douglas is going to advise you on clothes, Corrie, for London. He is evidently superior to his wife in this. He is evidently renowned at it. We will listen to him.”
“Pale blue is such a lovely color, don’t you think, Douglas? What a girl needs is blue, a lovely pale blue, I’ve always said.”
“She will have one pale blue gown, Maybella, no more. Your coloring is very different from Corrie’s. Now, you must trust me on this.”
Maybella bit into a slice of cinnamon bread, then said, “Perhaps you are right. Corrie has never had my radiance.”
“Indeed,” said her husband, and pushed his glasses back up.
Maybella, having finished the second slice of cinnamon bread, cleared her throat. “I say, Douglas, why is Jason skulking out there leaning against one of the lime trees on the drive? Or is it dear James? One can never tell since they are like two heads on the same Greek coin.”
Corrie immediately whipped around and skipped to the windows. “It is James, Aunt Maybella. He isn’t doing anything at all.”
“Why is he outside, Douglas?”
Douglas gave Simon a harassed look and said, “Some idiot shot me in the arm yesterday and my sons must need keep me under close watch every waking hour.”
“Such good boys.” Maybella said. “I daresay Corrie would do the same for her Uncle Simon if some idiot shot at him. Do invite him in, Douglas. There isn’t any more cinnamon bread. However, Cook hides food in the expectation that we will have an earthquake or a flood, so Buxted will find something else for James.”
Corrie said, “I have noticed that young men are usually happy to eat anything one throws at them.” She walked to the windows and tapped on the glass. When James looked at her, she waved him in.
He raised a perfect dark eyebrow, and nodded. A moment later, he was making his bows to Lord and Lady Montague.
“So you are protecting your father,” Maybella said, smiling and nodding at the young Adonis who stood before her, all windblown, white-toothed, his lawn shirt open at his throat. “How very lovely. Your father is looking particularly fine this morning, James, don’t you think?”
James, who had known Lord and Lady Montague nearly all his life, nodded and smiled. The overly admiring gleam in Lady Montague’s eyes wiped the smile off James’s face in a hurry. He supposed his father looked fine, but the fact was, his father looked like his father-an aristocrat, tall and lean, silver threaded through his black hair.
“Throw him some food, Buxted,” Corrie said. James turned, eyed her up and down, and said, “Where is Corrie? I would swear I heard her voice, but all I see is a chit with a gown on that’s too short and too tight and comes almost to her chin. Also the color makes her look sallow.”
“I was looking at my eyelashes this morning, James, and they’re quite long. Mayhap even longer than yours.”
Douglas cleared his throat. “Be seated, James. I was about to tell Corrie that you were going to teach her to waltz.”
Lord Montague gave his full attention to his niece and said in an austere voice, “You know, James, Lord Hammersmith, is a young man of excellent parts, Corrie. He was quite the scholar at Oxford, fast becoming an expert on celestial bodies and their movements. In particular he knows all three of Kepler’s laws, the third one, simply stated, is-well I forget-but the fact is that Galileo observed that the moon is not a smooth, polished surface as Aristotle had claimed.”
“He must have had very sharp eyes,” Lady Maybella said.
“No, my dear,” Simon said. “Galileo was using the telescope, just invented by Dutch lens grinders. What was the year, my boy?”
James started to say he didn’t know when he happened to glance at Corrie and saw the sneer on her face.
“It was in the early seventeenth century,” he said.
“A nice guess,” Corrie said. “I don’t believe that you have any comprehension at all about Dutch lens grinders, James. I think you made it up to make yourself look intelligent.”
Maybella said, “James doesn’t need to know about stars and telescopes, Corrie. All he has to do is stand rather still and let everyone look at him.”
Corrie’s sneer was near to overflowing. Truth be told, she knew well enough that James had looked into the heavens since he’d been a boy, studied and learned and built his own telescope, but any chance she could find to bait him wasn’t to be ignored.
James was ready to run out the door, Douglas knew it, but there wasn’t the chance because Simon said, “So you see, James is not too pretty, Corrie. No one can be too pretty who understands Kepler, even though I can’t remember that third law. James has his father’s jaw, which is the most stubborn jaw in all of England. And that little hole in his chin, that’s his father’s as well.”
That was true, Douglas thought, pleased. Not everything on his face belongs to Melissande.
Simon bent then to pick up a journal off the pile on the floor beside his chair, and paged to an article titled The Workings of Black Air During an Eclipse.
“Corrie,” Douglas said, rising, knowing escape was imminent, “I know exactly the style and colors that will suit you. Mrs. Ann Plack’s daughter, Miss Jane Plack, from Rye, is an excellent seamstress. She will make you several gowns. Then I will take you to Madame Jourdan once you’re settled in London.”
“Corrie’s maid is a perfectly good seamstress, Douglas,” Maybella said. “Why, she sewed this gown I’m wearing as well as the one Corrie is wearing. Surely she-”
Simon said, “My dear, you ate the last two slices of cinnamon bread. Now you wish to foist Corrie’s maid onto good material. Corrie needs to be dressed appropriately. Wherever am I to get fabric, Douglas?”
“Don’t worry, Simon. I will have Miss Plack deliver both the materials and various patterns, and herself, and I will make the appropriate selections. Are you in agreement, Corrie?”
She desperately wanted to ask him what men said instead of bosom. “I thank you, my lord.”
“Good,” Douglas said. “I knew you weren’t a blockhead.”
“Ignorant as a post,” James said, “but not a blockhead.”
Corrie opened her mouth to blast him, but Douglas was faster. “Now, James, are you ready to take your leave?”
“I will fetch our horses, sir.”
After James bid his host and hostess good-bye and gave Corrie the tolerant look he bestowed on his grandmother’s pug, he was outside, circling trees, looking behind bushes, and even peering down into a rain barrel.
“He worries,” Douglas said. He walked to Corrie, cupped her chin in his palm, and studied her face a moment. He slowly nodded. “You’ll do,” he said, and then he smiled down at her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
’Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
THE DOWAGER COUNTESS of Northcliffe said, “Corrie is a misfit, a ragamuffin, a disgrace to her parentage. Hollis, where is my dish of prunes?”
&n
bsp; Hollis said, “I have frequently noted, my lady, that even the Norman church bells that chime so beautifully in New Romney need a bit of polish on the outside.”
“Corrie Tybourne-Barrett isn’t an old bell, Hollis, she is a new bell with excessive rust. Not acceptable. I would have nothing rusted in my house. What is wrong with you, Hollis? You are paying no attention to what is important, like my dish of prunes.”
Hollis merely smiled and made his way to the sideboard to fetch the prunes. He was humming under his breath when he poured Douglas some tea.
“At least you will be dressing her, Douglas, and that must certainly help.”
“It will,” Douglas said. “Who knows what we’ll find beneath those absurd costumes she wears.”
The dowager said, waving a slice of toast, “I have often wondered at Maybella and Simon. Why would they let the girl run around like a tart in breeches?”
Douglas realized he now knew the answer to that question, but he merely shook his head and smiled. Their strategy had worked-no budding fortune hunter would ever look in her direction-but at what cost to a young lady who’d never been a girl?
Douglas waited until his mother was concentrating her full attention on her prunes, then said quietly, “Hollis, when will we meet this paragon Alexandra saw you kissing in the butler’s pantry?”
“Ah, I thought I saw a shadow of movement, sniffed the lightest of perfumes.”
“Yes, it was her ladyship on a mission to discover what had happened to me. You routed her.”
“I will introduce you to Annabelle very soon now, my lord.”
“Annabelle?”
Hollis nodded and moved a small jug of milk closer to his lordship’s elbow. “Annabelle Trelawny, my lord. A very fine young lady, one of immense good will and fine taste.”
“Why don’t you bring her by this afternoon? I believe my mother will be off to visit some of her cronies.”
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