Finally, the household settled down to a semblance of its usual daily affairs. The servants set about their duties and served up a tardy dinner, which Sir Christopher tenderly spoon-fed to his wife, who was nearly as overwhelmed by the glad tidings as he. In all her wildest longings for a weapon to use against her sister-in-law, Lavinia had thought of nothing so effective as this. Naturally, Christopher would not wish the bearer of his future heir to be upset. Lavinia smiled tenderly at her spouse and uttered a fragile sigh.
Lady Sherry, meanwhile, had withdrawn to her bedchamber with Aunt Tulliver and Daffodil, who had combined efforts to make her presentable for an evening party she had promised to attend. “No, milady, you shan’t cry off!” decreed Daffodil as she applied her foot to the small of her mistress’s back and pulled smartly on the laces of her stays. “You promised that you would go, and so you must, before poor Lord Viccars thinks you’ve changed your mind and wish to break off with him. Anyways, it will do you good to get out of this house and away from Her Highness’s high flights!”
Sherry did not comment. To do so would have been difficult, lying facedown as she was upon her bed while Daffodil attempted to compress her waist into a circumference several inches smaller than nature had intended. Sherry’s thoughts were not happy ones. Her highwayman had gone, leaving behind no trace, nothing to indicate that he had been anything but a figment of her imagination. She would never see him again, never know what had become of him.
Daffodil at last tied the laces to her satisfaction. She helped her mistress to rise from the bed. Daffodil knew by way of the household grapevine—by way of Lavinia’s maidservant, in point of fact—what accusations had been made of her and as a consequence angry enough to spit nails. Perhaps Daffodil was less than perfect and in the past had done certain things that she should not, but she had nobly withstood temptation the entire length of her residence in this house. And this was her reward for such self-sacrifice, Lady Childe saying that she must have left the door open for her friends to come and pillage the house. As if she would! It made Daffodil almost wish she had taken Lavinia’s jewels and hid them somewhere, just for the pleasure of watching Madame High-in-the-Instep go off in a conniption fit.
Aunt Tulliver interrupted Daffodil in the midst of airing these feelings. “What a rumption!” she said. “And all over a hound, because that witless female don’t know there’s nothing else missing from her house. But we know better, don’t we? And I’d like to know why our friend left so quick. His leg wasn’t healed yet. And nary a good-bye or a thank-you did he say to any one of us.” She cast a keen look at Lady Sherry. “Or did he?”
Sherry avoided meeting the old woman’s shrewd gaze. She walked to her dressing table. “He said nothing to me.”
“Humph!” Tully hadn’t reached her advanced age without gaining considerable knowledge of the world and what went on in it, especially as concerned those matters that touched the human heart. “I’m not convinced that it wasn’t all a hum. There was something not quite right about him, if you take my meaning, and about him meeting up with you like that.”
“Not quite right about it?” echoed Sherry, puzzled. “What do you mean? It was the most accidental of meetings. No one knew that I was going to be there. The thing could not have been contrived. Anyway, why should it have been?”
Tully left off fussing with Lady Sherry’s party dress, and sank down into a chair. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll tell you this much as should know, ‘tis never wise to bet against a dark horse!”
A brief silence descended upon the bedchamber, no one caring to ask Tully to explain her enigmatic remark. Sherry sat down by her honeysuckle-wreathed mirror, and watched as Daffodil began to arrange her hair. “Say what you wish,” the abigail muttered. “I thought he was all the go!”
“And so he was. Prime and bang up to the mark!” retorted Aunt Tulliver from the depths of the chair into which her bulk had settled so thoroughly that anyone glancing at her retained an impression primarily of a pink and green turban and red shoes. “Which is how he set the household by its ear.”
Lady Sherry had been involved in sufficient set-tos for one day—perhaps even for one year; she was not naive enough to think that Lavinia would not somehow take her revenge—and quickly intervened before her two retainers could come to blows. “I’m afraid I’m responsible for that. Or perhaps Lavinia is because she did not stay snug in her bed. It hardly matters. Micah is gone now, and we can relax. It doesn’t matter even if Chris does call in Bow Street, because we’ve nothing to hide.”
This was a pleasant notion. Unfortunately, both Daffodil and Aunt Tulliver knew it wasn’t true. Their glances met. “You’d better tell her,” Tully said.
“Tell me what?” Sherry realized the answer even as she spoke, as she looked at the pert and mischievous face reflected near her own. Not only to her had the highwayman made advances; Daffodil would be much more his type. Probably he wouldn’t have made advances to Sherry at all if she had not practically hurled herself at him.
It was a very good thing that he was gone. And she would bite out her tongue before she told anyone what had transpired between them in the book room the day before. “You mean that the man was an arrant flirt? Heavens, I knew that!”
“Oh, he weren’t no flirt.” Daffodil applied her brush to Lady Sherry’s hair with rather more force than was strictly necessary. “Leastways, he didn’t flirt with me, and I’ll say as shouldn’t that he could’ve if he was of a mind! But he was right good company even if he didn’t throw the hatchet at a girl, and for the life of me I can’t figure why he left in that queer, abrupt way. Taking Prinny with him yet!”
“All my eye,” muttered Aunt Tulliver. “More like the beast took himself along.”
For a foolish moment, contemplating the adventures Prinny must have in the company with Micah, Sherry envied the dog. She was also very curious about something Daffodil had said. Micah had not flirted with her? Could that be true? “There’s no need to try to pull the wool over our eyes, Daffodil,” she said. “You would be neither the first nor the last to find yourself in amours with a man who wasn’t all that he should be.”
Daffodil set down the brush, satisfied at last with her arrangement of Lady Sherry’s curls, and reached for a pretty little pot. Then she attempted to repair the ravages of the day by the discreet application of a little rice powder and rouge. “Yes, well, that’s what I was wishful of speaking to you about, milady!”
So it was true. He had trifled with not only mistress but also abigail. Lady Sherry was filled with sorrow and indignation at the ignominy of woman’s fate. With false deceivers lurking in every bush, how could one be expected not to go astray? “Oh, Daffodil!” she cried, and turned on her stool to grasp her abigail’s wrist. “I am so very sorry! Had I known that this would happen, I would not have had him in the house! I would never have gone out that morning, and indeed I wish I hadn’t, because if I hadn’t, none of these horrid disasters would have taken place!”
Though Daffodil was still of tender years, in some areas of experience she was almost as old as Aunt Tulliver. Therefore, she understood why Lady Sherry spoke as she did and on whose account. “Oh, milady!” she protested. “It’s Ned as is the bad lot, not anybody else.”
Sherry was relieved to have her thoughts take a more pleasant direction. “Well, at least that trouble we no longer have on our dish! How fortunate that Christopher is turning out to be such a miser, or Lavinia is persuading him to be so! Ned can no longer threaten us, because what can he say? Who would believe him if he went about saying we’d hidden a highwayman in the attic? There is no proof of such a thing. People would think he was queer in his attic, most likely.” She smiled for the first time in many hours. There were no answering smiles on the faces of her companions. “Well, wouldn’t they?”
Daffodil looked at her own reflection, not wishing to meet her mistress’s beseeching gaze, then helped herself to the rouge pot because her own healthy cheeks were unnaturally pale. �
��Neddy don’t see it that way. He thinks you should pay up anyways. He’s hinting that there’s others as’ll pay him for what he knows if you won’t.”
Lady Sherry was being made cross by this relentless adversity. “Then let him!” she snapped. Daffodil said nothing. After further reflection, Sherry added, “Who can he mean?”
Daffodil put down the rouge pot. “I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Maybe not, but you could guess!” offered Aunt Tulliver from the depths of her chair. “If you was to put your mind to it. Think on this, milady: who do we know that’s pettish and peevish and tiresome and fretful, and who also hasn’t exactly welcomed you with open arms to this house?”
For a person who was not addicted to guessing games, Sherry divined this answer very promptly. “Lavinia, of course. She would listen to Ned.”
“Aye, and Sir Christopher would listen to her, and then we’d all be in the basket.” Tully shook her turbaned head. “I don’t say I blame you for ripping up at her, milady. Anyone would be thrown into a pucker by finding her snooping about like that. But now that she’s increasing— If Sir Christopher was besotted previously, now Her Spitefulness will truly be able to wrap him around her little finger. Devil of a business as it is, milady, you’d best pay up!”
How sad to think of her brother dwelling beneath the hen’s foot. Sadder still to think of herself and her retainers exposed as accessories to a highwayman’s escape from his justly deserved fate. “I’ll think of something,” Sherry murmured. Daffodil looked relieved.
Tully’s expression was not so readable. “I wonder,” she murmured, “if the scamp will be back on the high toby now.”
Sherry’s patience was exhausted. “Oh, let us hear no more of the wretch! Daffodil, do you mean to stare forever into that mirror, or will you help me dress? Andrew will be here at any moment and I do not wish to keep him waiting, and so if you do not mind—”
No more did Daffodil wish to keep Lord Viccars waiting. He’d take Lady Sherry’s mind off things it had no business dwelling on. Aunt Tulliver lent her assistance also, and soon Sherry was turned out, as Daffodil put it, in prime style. Chemise, drawers, stays that further constricted her small waist and emphasized the shape of her breasts, silk stockings, and a thin sarcenet slip; a gown of white French gauze striped with blue, with long, full sleeves and a lace-scalloped hem, a very high waist and a very low bodice cut into a deep V; satin slippers tied with crossed ribbons and long white gloves.
At last she was ready. Sherry fastened a sapphire and pearl necklace around her throat and picked up a blue Levantine pelisse edged with floss silk, then went downstairs to await the arrival of her escort.
Chapter Seventeen
Lady Sherry might have been en route to her own execution rather than a party in her honor, so grim was her mood. Nor were her spirits elevated when Lord Viccars’s elegant carriage rattled past St. George’s in Hanover Square. Not that the church was not impressive, with its elegant portico and large Corinthian columns, its lofty tower terminated by a turret-crowned dome; but Sherry could not think with complacency of the wedding ceremony that was scheduled to take place there within a few weeks.
Yet again, she forced Micah from her mind. Idylls end, she told herself; she must be grateful that she had enjoyed one at all. If the world seemed a great deal more flat than it once had, if she knew there was no grand and glorious surprise awaiting her around the comer, because she had already had her surprise and it was behind her now— Well, that was just the idyll’s price. Sherry was no green girl; she knew that for all things payment must be made. Now she was to be married, and time was marching forward at a relentless pace. As was Andrew’s carriage, arriving long before Sherry was prepared to face his sisters at a big, red mansion with a balustraded roof, which was approached by way of a forecourt and a prominent portico.
Within that elegant structure waited, amid a great deal of fashionable company, the Ladies Cecilia and Sarah-Louise. Sherry was introduced to a great many people whose names she would not remember; and was reminded of the comment of a fellow writer who had said to her that in society he felt like a poodle dog compelled forever to stand on its back legs. The sisters drew her away to a brocaded sofa and seated themselves on either side of her for a comfortable little coze. They bore a marked resemblance to their brother, who looked very fine this evening in his knee breeches and striped stockings, frilled shirt and Florentine waistcoat and long-tailed blue coat. Not that either Lady Cecilia or Sarah-Louise could lay claim to lush side-whiskers—though Cecilia did have the faint shadow of a mustache on her upper lip—but both had the same sandy hair and Sarah-Louise had a familiar smile.
Lady Cecilia was a great deal less merry. The heat and dust in London at this time of year were unbearable, were they not? And what did Lady Sherry think of these Hampden clubs that had sprung up all around the city, many of which entertained very seditious ideas, even designs of seizing property? Lady Sherry thought she must avoid a discussion of politics with her prospective sisters-in-law—as if Lavinia were not sister-in-law enough for anyone!—and adroitly turned the conversation to the Horticultural Society, which she knew was Cecilia’s consuming passion. Consequently, she was privileged to hear a dull, if uncontroversial, discussion of the experimental growing methods that produced strawberries as large as small apples and eleven-pound Providence pines.
Sarah-Louise broke into the conversation then; at five-and-thirty, she still remained the impetuous, spoiled darling of her family. “Cut line, Cissy! That is such dull stuff. I wish to know what Lady Sherry is writing now. Andrew mentioned a highwayman. I am a great fan of murder in Gothic castles and Oriental palaces myself! Ancient, moldering castles! Ghostly apparitions and avenging shades!”
“Ah, yes, the highwayman.” Was everything to remind Sherry of Micah? “It does not go as well as I might wish.”
“I am an admirer of Miss Austen’s work myself.” Lady Cecilia launched into an erudite discussion of Pride and Prejudice. “And Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda is quite unexceptionable.”
“At least the first volume is,” remarked Sarah-Louise. “I found it dull going after Lady Delacour reforms. Although I did like the locked room!” She nudged Sherry with her elbow. “You must not listen to my sister! She will have you writing such dreary stuff as Mary Brunton. ‘ The mind must be trained by suffering before it can hope for usefulness or true enjoyment,’ indeed! Well, I have not suffered, nor do I intend to, and though I may not be useful, I certainly know already how to enjoy myself!”
“Rather too much so,” observed Lady Cecilia disapprovingly. “Lady Sherry, you must pay my sister no mind. Tell us, what renovations do you plan for Andrew’s town house?”
“Yes, do tell us!” Sarah-Louise chimed in. “Because even Cissy admits she couldn’t live in that old bam. Although we all did live there as children, of course. Talk about your dreary mausoleums! If ever a place deserved to be haunted, that one does!” She opened her eyes wide. “Why, perhaps it is! Perhaps Mary walks there. Mary was Andrew’s first wife, you know. Not that her death wasn’t perfectly natural, because it was: she tripped over her own skirts and fell down the stairs. Which served her right in a way, because she was so very vain. But she was not a very obliging person, and she did not get along well with Andrew, and so if she had the opportunity of—”
“Sarah-Louise!” Cecilia looked very stern.
The younger woman flushed guiltily and broke off. “I fear I tend to chatter like a magpie. You must pay me no mind!”
“Indeed!” said Lady Cecilia icily. “You show so little manners, Sarah-Louise, that one would think you went seldom into society!” Then it was Cecilia’s turn to flush as she realized what she’d said—for this little party was a dress rehearsal for the larger betrothal ball that was being planned, at which Cecilia wanted to make certain that their brother’s affianced bride wouldn’t disgrace herself and them. “Not that you will need me to give you a gentle hint, Lady Sherry, as to how one should go on.
I will not stand on ceremony with you: I feared I might have to speak where I should not! But you are perfectly correct and unassuming in your manners—obviously a model of good breeding, my dear!”
A number of things occurred to Sherry during this speech, primarily that Lady Cecilia had a very high sense of decorum and a disposition to think well of herself. Perhaps this was a characteristic of ladies of the very first distinction. Andrew’s eldest sister put Sherry strongly in mind of Lavinia.
Even with marriage, Sherry was not to escape this sort of quizzing. As Andrew’s wife, she would still be interrogated and have her every action criticized. Lady Cecilia, like Lavinia, would demand an accounting of her time.
“In other words,” murmured Sarah-Louise as her elder sister’s attention was attracted by a passing guest, “we are delighted to find in you nothing for which to blush. You won’t furnish the tea tables of the ton with tittle-tattle, as Cissy had feared you might, for she doesn’t know you as I do— She doesn’t read your books, you see! They’re not elevating enough for her. Although if Cissy was elevated any higher, she’s scrape her nose on the ceiling, I vow!” She leaned closer. “Tell me the truth! You don’t read that Brunton female!”
“No.” Lady Sherry was beginning to like this prospective sister-in-law rather a lot. “I am rather more prone to read things like The Annals of Newgate. Or The Genuine History of the Life of Dick Turpin, who—”
“I know!” interrupted Sarah-Louise. “Who rode to York, jumping over all the turnpike gates on the way. I wonder if that tale is true. What do you think about this Captain Toby person? Cissy will threaten to wash out my mouth with soap if she hears me say it, but I’m glad he escaped!”
Lady Sherry and the Highwayman Page 13
