Lovesong

by Valerie Sherwood

  Carolina gave the mellow colors a regretful look. “I like it the way it is,” she said wistfully.

  “Oh, but these things aren’t new,” laughed Reba. “Everything must be new and expensive if we are to take what Mamma calls ‘our place in society.’ ”

  Carolina blinked. Reba had not talked this way at school. There she had been the sleek young sophisticate leading the way. Here at home she was something else. And then Carolina chided herself. Reba was her best friend here in England and she had been endlessly kind. But in the easygoing plantation aristocracy of the Tidewater and the Eastern Shore such a remark as Reba’s would have been considered vastly peculiar. People knew exactly who they were and where they fit and so did everybody else. It seemed to be different here at Broadleigh.

  “Mother expected you to be wearing velvet and furs,” confided Reba.

  “I would love to be wearing velvet and furs,” said Carolina crossly. “Could I but afford it!”

  Reba could have pointed out that she had invited Carolina to wear hers, but instead she laughed. “Well, that’s what marriage is all about, isn’t it? I mean, that’s undoubtedly why your mother sent you overseas to school—so you could marry a fortune in London!”

  Carolina grimaced. “My mother sent me overseas to school because she was afraid I would run away to the Marriage Trees with a miller’s son,” she said frankly. “And as to finding a fortune in London, she was careful to send me to a place where I’d be chaperoned to death!”

  “Yes, I wonder how they expect us to do it?” puzzled Reba. A frown creased her smooth forehead. “I mean, we walk about in groups, always watched, always being hovered over. Do our mammas expect us to break away suddenly and hurl ourselves into some passing coach that has a coat of arms emblazoned on the side, appropriate the occupant and straightaway marry an earl?”

  That brought a smile to Carolina’s mouth—it was more like the old jaunty Reba. “Some magic like that, probably,” she agreed.

  “I get the distinct impression that Mamma is terribly disappointed in me that I didn’t return with a baron under my arm,” murmured Reba.

  Or at least a baron’s sister!

  “Well, perhaps you can furnish her with a marquess,” suggested Carolina dryly.

  “If only I’m given enough time,” Reba sighed. “Mamma is a very sudden sort of person. At any moment, now that I am home, she may march in a candidate for matrimony and demand that I accept him!”

  Both girls looked momentarily gloomy.

  “Arranged marriages without our consent ought to be illegal,” declared Carolina with sudden vehemence.

  “Agreed!” laughed Reba, her mood suddenly lightened. For a pair of simpering maidservants had appeared at the door with two enormous silver chargers piled high with all manner of good things, and were depositing the big trays on a table. “Food at last!” she sighed—for Reba was fond of eating and would one day be as stout as her square-built mother even though for now she was lithe as a reed. But after the maidservants had left she turned impulsively to Carolina. “Oh, you will help me if Mamma decrees I am to marry some choice of hers while you are here, won’t you?”

  Carolina envisioned aiding a runaway—as she had aided her older sisters back home in Virginia. Reba’s request appealed to her reckless nature.

  “Of course I will,” she declared warmly.

  Reba went back to munching bullace cheese spread on little cakes. But the sidewise look she cast upon her friend was entirely satisfied and more than a little triumphant. She had planned her campaign well and Carolina was moving exactly in the direction she had schemed for while she was at school. Her bright gaze played over Carolina for a moment. Even in her plain dark brown woolen dress she was as lovely as a delicate piece of porcelain. So beautiful with that wealth of shining fair hair, silver in one light, gold in another. And those luminous silver eyes with their fringe of dark lashes. And that smile that would melt stone.

  Oh, yes, she had chosen well. Mamma was definitely on the brink of springing something on her—she had sensed it from the suddenly intent look on her face when she had turned and seen her standing there—and she would be ready for that something when it came. All these months she had planned to be ready for it—with Carolina.

  And now she was.

  If Mamma chose to spring her trap, it would be Carolina and not Reba who was caught by it.

  THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

  BROADLEIGH, ESSEX

  1687

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  Christmas Eve and Christmas Day both passed at Broadleigh with surprisingly little merriment. Carolina tried to put it down to the head of the household being gone and to Reba’s mother being indisposed—but gave it up. Indeed she had begun to suspect that her hostess’s “indisposition” was no more than drink, for she consumed more port than Carolina had ever seen a woman drink. Although she did not appear actually tipsy, she became belligerent and red-faced over supper every night, and once Reba muttered apologetically, “Mamma’s in her cups again!” as they scurried upstairs to bed. Mistress Tarbell always vanished right after supper and Carolina wondered if she did not drink herself insensible in her bedchamber, which could certainly account for her bad temper at breakfast every morning.

  Carolina found it a strange Christmas. Nobody called. The snow that fell steadily became an excuse not to go to church, the girls prowled the halls restlessly— and even Reba admitted that it would have been more fun to have remained in London and listened to the sleighbells and the carolers and the bell ringers on the streets.

  Carolina thought with a homesick pang what Christmas would have been like at Aunt Pet’s in Williamsburg where Letty and Fielding, at Aunt Pet’s insistence, always brought their little brood for Christmas.

  Aunt Pet’s pink brick, green-shuttered house would be transformed for the holiday season. The front door would sport an enormous wreath of holly and bayberry tied with a wide red velvet bow. Mistletoe would hang from the brass hall chandelier and over the front doorway—for Aunt Pet thought Christmas kissing quite appropriate. All the downstairs fireplaces would be ablaze with fragrant hickory logs, the tall brass candlesticks would be ringed with holly. Ropes of fluffy green pine needles and holly berries would adorn the stairs—Carolina and her sisters had usually made those.

  And in the dining room holly and red satin bows would have been tied to the shining brass wall sconces, the long dining table would groan beneath a huge roasted wild turkey stuffed with oysters and fresh ground cornmeal and walnuts and spices. Seated at that table, the family would face each other across an elaborate centerpiece of pine cones and red apples and golden oranges set upon a bed of boxwood and holly. Soup would be ladled out from a big steaming tureen, there would be a rich plum pudding to end the meal, and on the heavy polished sideboard, centered among the mincemeat pies and spicy gingerbread and crabapple jelly and fruitcake and plum tarts, on a bed of dark green waxy magnolia leaves, a cornucopia basket would spill out oranges and lemons, red holly berries and juniper.

  And after dinner they would all merrily toast each other’s health—the adults in Aunt Pet’s best Madeira and the younger children in hot fruit punch.

  Carolers would come singing to the door, their breath making little steamy clouds as they lilted “God rest ye, merrie gentlemen ...” and then stamped snow off their shoes as they were invited in to drink tankards of hot chocolate or hot rum punch.

  Guests would call—and be invited in joyously. And kissed amid gales of laughter under the mistletoe. And they would sally forth to go calling themselves, taking with them baskets containing white linen-wrapped Christmas fruitcake and little cakes and fruit and nuts. And there would be dances and frolics and sleighrides in the snow—a joyous season, full of memories.

  Christmas at Broadleigh was nothing like that.

  They exchanged gifts. Carolina apologized to Reba for having to give things she already possessed, “for as you know, I lost all my money in that d
ice game and had none left to shop with in London,” but Reba did not seem to care. The whole idea of Christmas bored her. Costly gifts were exchanged between Reba and her mother—but without kisses and without hugs. And without laughter.

  There was plenty of dark green shiny-leaved holly in Essex, rich with red berries—indeed Carolina could see it from the windows of the house! But not so much as a sprig of holly or a spray of mistletoe did she see about the place, and there was more cheer in the servants’ dining hall, where everybody was getting drunk on Christmas ale and roaring out bawdy songs, than there was at the master’s board!

  Christmas dinner at Broadleigh was elaborate and meant to impress—as indeed were all the dinners there—but it varied from the other dinners served only in that it featured a Christmas goose. And Carolina found the sugar plums and marzipan and candied orange peel and exotic fruits and nuts small substitute for all the homely goodies that enriched Aunt Pet’s holiday season. There was not even a Yule Log to burn its way through the season in that cavernous fireplace! And she had expected one, at a country house in England! Instead a perfectly ordinary fire blazed upon the hearth in the great hall.

  By comparison with this subdued Christmas in Essex, Christmas in the Colonies—at least in Williamsburg— seemed a mad social whirl.

  When Carolina wondered if the neighbors might not come calling, Reba shook her head.

  “You see, we haven’t really been accepted by the gentry here,” Reba told her in an offhand way. “Oh, Papa bought the hall and all that, but it takes more than that to be accepted .” And at Carolina’s puzzled frown she added briefly, “No one who counts has called since we’ve been here.”

  Steeped in friendly Virginia ways, where hospitality was offered to all, Carolina tried to take that in.

  “No one?” she asked, shocked.

  “Well, only one,” amended Reba. “Sir Kyle Williston from Williston House—that’s the estate next to ours—did pay Papa a brief call to talk about a broken enclosure and some cattle that had got out, but his wife didn’t come. Lady Williston was ‘indisposed’ when Mamma returned the call; she didn’t come down herself, just sent word. And that was after she’d been seen riding all about Essex in a carriage!”

  That would indeed have been a social slap! “Perhaps Sir Kyle will come again,” Carolina suggested. And you will get another chance at him—and perhaps win him over, so he will send his wife calling! “But there must be other people,” she added desperately. She had been about to say “other merchants and their wives” but she thought better of it.

  Reba had guessed what she meant.

  “Oh, there are,” she said dryly. “All dying to be invited to Broadleigh now that Papa has bought it. But Mamma doesn’t want to see them. She nagged at Papa to buy a place where she could run with the gentry— and this was supposed to be it. Only so far it hasn’t happened that way.”

  Reba’s mother was just the type to drop all her old friends, thought Carolina wryly. It served her right that she hadn't been able to make new ones!

  The snow stopped falling late on Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day dawned bright and clear with a chill in the air carried in from the North Sea. Carolina was delighted to wake and learn that while she and Reba were still asleep an invitation had come for Jonathan Tarbell’s family to attend a ball that night at neighboring Williston House and “weather or no,” they were going.

  “Mamma feels it will be ‘Getting a Foot in the Door’ to attend a ball at Williston House,” Reba informed her friend excitedly. “Of course Sir Kyle isn’t rich but she says he Carries Weight with the local gentry!”

  Carolina would have been glad to hear it put less baldly but she was sure it must be true. The invitation made her feel a little less homesick for Virginia. She wondered what Lord Thomas, in Northampton for Christmas, was doing now—and if he was missing her as she missed him.

  That evening, when they were all dressing for the ball, she learned her real mission here at Broadleigh. Which was to be something more, it seemed, than just a friend. She was here to Save the Day, as Reba dramatically put it.

  This was to be Carolina’s first ball in England, for as a schoolgirl she had been allowed nothing of the sort at Mistress Chesterton’s and Thomas had “sheltered” her from his friends. She felt very excited about it and wandered into Reba’s room to find out what Reba was going to wear.

  She found her friend in a dressing gown seated before the beveled French mirror of her ornate ormolu dressing table, nervously dabbing crushed alabaster powder on her face.

  “Wouldn’t you know, Carolina?” she cried with a groan. “On the very day I learn that my marquess is coming home to England, Mamma must ruin it all?” She lifted another puff of powder to her face and dabbed it on so energetically she nearly choked on the cloud of white powder dust.

  “Oh, do stop,” cried Carolina. “You’re already chalk white—people will think you’re ill!”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Reba stared despondently at her ghostly reflection in the mirror. “But I’ll remind you that I haven’t got your flawless complexion, Carol—mine needs some help!” She began to rub the powder off as energetically as she had applied it.

  “How do you know your marquess is coming home?”

  “I overheard Papa’s farm manager tell Mamma that Papa was hoping to sell some horses to the Marquess of Saltenham now that he was coming home. Robin’s a famous horse fancier, you know.”

  “Did he say anything about the marchioness?”

  “No, and since I was eavesdropping I could hardly break in and ask. But she must be gone by now,” said Reba impatiently. “After all, Robin described her as practically dying then. But now that he’s actually on his way, something dreadful has happened—just as I knew it would.” She leaned forward and began to dab at her cheeks with Spanish paper, rouging them. “You should try this, Carol—no”—she looked at Carolina’s pink cheeks regretfully—“I suppose you don’t need rouge any more than you need powder!”

  “But what awful thing has happened?” asked Carolina, surprised that Reba was making her drag the story out of her.

  Reba tossed away the Spanish paper, picked up her silver hairbrush and threw it down again. She took a deep breath and whirled to face Carolina.

  “Mamma told me I am to meet Lord Gayle’s third son at the Willistons’ ball, that Papa has spoken to him about me and they hope to reach an understanding as soon as he has met me.”

  “And what is Lord Gayle’s third son like?” cried Carolina, thoroughly absorbed.

  “Oh, I’ve never seen him.” Reba shrugged with complete disinterest. “Although once in Colchester the fourth son was pointed out to me—a spindly sort of fellow. He had his head in a book as he walked and his clothes were downright shabby—oh, I couldn’t bear to be married to a man like that!”

  Carolina could well imagine that Reba, with her earthy interest in life’s pleasures, would find it galling to be cooped up with a bookworm!

  “But anyway, what does it matter what he looks like?” Reba surprised her by adding. “He’s the third son, mind you, not even the second. No chance of a title in that. I’d never be Lady Gayle—both his older brothers would have to die first!”

  Carolina wished unhappily that Reba hadn’t said that. A romantic herself, she preferred to imagine that Reba had tender feelings as well, that her interest in her marquess was strictly a misguided affair of the heart rather than misplaced ambition. She might have spoken at that point but Reba raced on.

  “The worst of it, Carol, is that Mamma has given me to believe that it is all virtually settled except that he wants to meet me first. Doubtless Papa has told him what a huge dowry I will have as a lure and he will want to assure himself that I don’t have two heads as well. And once he’s established that, my parents are sure to betroth me to him,” Reba rushed on tragically, “because Lord Gayle is a viscount from a terribly old family, which impresses Mamma, and their family seat is near Colchester instead o
f clear across England somewhere, and Papa will say that counts in his favor because they can ‘see something of me after we are wed’—indeed I can hear him saying it now! And Mamma with her usual energy will force me right into wedlock just as she did my sisters, and the ceremony will already have been held before my marquess can get back home a widower to claim me! Oh, Carol!” Reba’s voice held a pulsing entreaty. “You will help me?”

  Carolina saw her vision of her first ball in England flying out the window. Reba obviously wanted to run away and she wouldn’t want to do it alone. Two girls would be much safer than one. She’d want to go somewhere and wait until her marquess “returned to claim her.” She stifled her regret.

  “Of course I’ll help you, Reba,” she said staunchly. “Where do you want to go?”

  Reba gave her an uncertain look. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said, puzzled. “I want to stay right here. I want your help with Lord Gayle’s third son at the ball tonight.”

  At the ball tonight? Carolina peered at her friend. “What do you want me to do to him?” she asked in some alarm.

  “I want you to lure him away!” cried Reba passionately. “Just for now, just for a fortnight or so—until my marquess can come to claim me!”

  Carolina drew back in alarm. “But I’ve no great fortune,” she protested. “Indeed my clothes proclaim it.” She looked down at the simple blue ballgown with its modest edging of lace that was the best she owned. “If, as you say, he is interested in a dowry—”

  “Oh, Carol, you can make him forget the dowry if only you will try! You must dazzle him. You may have your choice of my clothes to wear the whole time and my jewelry too—and I will persuade my mother’s own maid to arrange your hair in the very latest mode!”