Constance was to understand that everyone had seen Better Days but her; they were now living through The Worst.
That was in London.
The real “Worst” was yet to come at Claxton House in York.
Constance had been totally unprepared for that, of course. Listening untiringly to her father’s stories, she had built up in her mind a magic picture of the majestic edifice that was Claxton House, a place of wondrous joy, set in a fairyland and ruled by Sir John Dacey, Baronet, her own grandfather! For there was a luster to Hammond Dacey’s descriptions of his home and boyhood that painted for the child word pictures of luxury, ease and secure position—all that they did not have in London.
And then they had sold their meager possessions and with the money that brought had traveled north one fall by stagecoach—and all Constance’s illusions about Claxton House had collapsed one by one.
London and faraway Yorkshire faded as Pamela’s voice cut into her reverie.
“Whatever did you do to Ned to make him run off like that?” Pamela sounded plaintive.
Constance gave her a hard look. “Nothing. Ned has offered and I’ve refused—that’s all.” She began to beat snowflakes from her muff.
“Sometimes I get the feeling you really care for Ned but you just won’t admit it.” Pamela was still clawing at the bits of ice and snow that had slid down her neckline and were dripping an icy trail down her back as she followed Constance up the stairs. “Or”—she gave the dark-haired girl beside her a slanting speculative gaze—“is it Captain Warburton you care about?”
Constance bit her lip. Could she really be so transparent? Or was this just woman’s intuition speaking?
“I don’t care for either one of them,” she shrugged. “What about Tom?” she demanded, desperate to change the subject. “Did you scold him for hiding in the buttery with Melissa Hawley?”
“No, I didn’t,” confessed Pamela, giving her wet hair a shake that scattered droplets all over Constance. “Indeed I forgot all about it. It was so like old times, having Tom chase me with snowballs, gamboling like children over the snow. Constance.” She grew suddenly serious as they reached Constance’s room and she turned in with her. “What do you think Tom sees in Melissa?”
“An easy conquest,” Constance told her in a jaded voice.
“Do you really think that’s it?”
“Certainly. You’re much prettier.”
But being prettier hadn’t seemed to matter in the darkness of the buttery.
“I can’t stand Melissa Hawley!” Pamela’s light young voice was indignant. “She goes around with that sleepy, heavy-lidded look, as if she should be in bed. And her clothes all somehow look like chemises! Tell me, how do you think this dress looks on me?” She twirled about and her heavy indigo woolen skirts—damp at the hem from trailing in the snow—whirled stiffly.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” murmured Constance, determined that the conversation should not veer back to the Warburtons. “That dress is warm, I’ll allow, and it’s serviceable—”
“And it’s a good color for me, don’t you think?” asked Pamela anxiously. “This deep blue?”
“With your cheeks red from the cold, yes, it is. But it’s very plain—”
“Well, it’s woolen. I like plain woolen dresses for outdoors. And my eyes do pick up color from it, don’t they? I mean, they’re so pale.”
“What I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t think anybody will turn and look at you twice in it. It completely hides your figure. You veer from dresses so plain and heavy that you might as well be wearing a sack, to gowns so—so ornamented with ruchings and tucks and braid and ribands and embroidery that nobody can see the real you!”
“Men always turn and look at you first anyway!” Pamela stopped whirling and regarded willowy Constance indignantly. “Although for the life of me,” she added in a burst of frankness, “I can’t understand why. Blondes are much more striking than brunettes—Tom says so.”
That ultimate authority—Tom! Constance resisted an urge to point out that Melissa Hawley too was a blonde, but she did not. She had guessed that Pamela’s urge to overdress came from a basic sense of insecurity. Outdoors Pamela’s childhood world had been complete—and outdoors even now she cared not what she wore, so long as it was serviceable. But life indoors had been more complex. Her father had had reason to shun the house while his wife Virginia was alive and had had little time for Pamela since; her mother, the lightskirt, had been forever retreating behind closed bedroom doors with a variety of men and had left young Pamela with a succession of nurses and governesses. Pamela was trying to bolster her damaged ego by getting herself up like the decoration for a wedding cake!
“I’m only trying to point out that your clothes are too stiff,” she told Pamela gently. “Sumptuous, I’ll grant you—but stiff. And you do wear your necklines cut too high.”
“I’m high-busted,” countered Pamela defensively. “If I cut my gowns any lower, my nipples will show!”
Constance shrugged. She went over to the big press in the corner and pulled out the gown Pamela had worn last night, of heavy strawberry pink damask alight with silver threads. “Take this thing you wore last night.” She shook it negligently at Pamela. “As you can see, it practically stands alone—it doesn’t need you. How can you expect your figure to survive that?” She cast a scathing glance at the heavy indigo wool dress whose wet hemline Pamela was vainly trying to wring out. “No one knows what you look like, Pam!”
Pamela straightened and surveyed critically Constance’s flowing velvet dress that moulded her every line and flowed with her as she walked, gracefully suggesting slender hips and long beautiful legs. She bit her lip. “But I silvery pink things,” she complained.
“Then try silver tissue over thin apple blossom pink silk—you’ll be surprised what it will do for you!”
Pamela frowned at her but her expression was wavering. She phrased her next words carefully. “You’re saying I’d be—noticed more if I wore what you suggest?”
“By Tom, at least,” said Constance ruthlessly, going directly to the point.
The Squire’s daughter flushed, for they both knew that this whole exercise had to do with Tom and Tom only. “Well,” she said doubtfully. “I’ll think about it.” She brightened. “After breakfast.”
It began to snow again during breakfast, which kept them inside. Afterward Constance curled up with a book in the window seat of one of the big overhanging bays and read a novel while Pamela spent a happy morning in the hot kitchen supervising the making of plum pudding. And listening to cook recount her early days in Torquay as she stomped, heavy-footed, back and forth before the steamed-up windows. According to cook, she had seduced half the young sailors in Torquay! Pamela listened attentively, hoping she’d learn something. Cook, sensitive to Stebbins the butler’s muttered warning about making her stories too broad, cheerfully cleaned them up for Pamela’s dainty ears. And while the scullery maids giggled (for they didn’t believe a word cook said) and Puss contentedly gorged himself on cold mutton, a plum pudding came into being.
The afternoon was spent decorating the house for Christmas, for tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. Pamela was adept at making the big holly wreath which, with a red satin bow tied by Constance, graced Axeleigh’s front door, surrounding the big iron knocker. They placed evergreen boughs behind the heavy gilt-framed family portraits and arranged holly across the mantels and hung mistletoe from the big chandelier in the hall.
As they worked they discussed clothes, and together they selected the gown Pamela was to wear that night at dinner. It was to be a sort of trial run, they would try the gown out on the Squire and see if he commented on it.
The gown was a new one that Pamela had never worn. It was of thick undulating ice blue satin, trimmed in ermine tails that swayed with every movement, calling attention to Pamela’s delectable bustline. It was so low-cut that Constance felt called upon to remark accusingly,
“The reason you haven’t worn it is because you’re afraid you’ll pop out! But you must stop being afraid. With forty whalebone stays holding you rigid, there’s no chance for such violent motion!”
“You don’t wear stays at all,” accused Pamela, who hated anything that even resembled a corset. She often looked with horror at those whalebone instruments of torture, corsets with unyielding pointed horn busks that reposed in trunks of her mother’s things, imagining those busks—that reached from the décolletage to run the full length of the bodice to be tied into place by something called a busk lace—cutting into her flesh.
“Well, I have plebian tastes,” sighed Constance. “I like to be comfortable. You, on the other hand, want to dazzle everyone in sight.”
Pamela gave an irritable nod. “This dress may be fashionable but I can’t move about in it,” she complained.
“You’re not supposed to take violent exercise in it,” retorted Constance. “And it doesn’t weigh as much as your pink damask by half!”
Pamela glared at her. Her idea of a proper ball gown was a gown as stiff and ornate as possible—but loose-fitting so that one could move around nimbly in it and at the same time look splendid! She tried an experimental wriggle of her shoulders. Nothing much happened because the sleeves were sewn in so low on her upper arms that they reached the deltoid muscle. The oblique-angled seams at the shoulder were far back on her trapezius muscle, which made elevating her arms very difficult and reaching the top of her head impossible.
“I won’t be able to push back my hair if it falls over my eyes,” she announced dolefully.
“So that’s why all your dresses are cut wrong?” Constance pounced on that. “This one makes you look the way you should. See that sloping line? It’s very fashionable this year!”
Gazing at her reflection in the mirror, Pamela had to acknowledge that Constance certainly had a flair for style. She looked elegant—and sophisticated. But she wailed when Constance went about with a pair of scissors, mercilessly snipping off a riband here, a rosette there, deleting what Pamela had thought to be interestingly placed bits of braid or lace.
“Now we’ll catch the skirt up at the sides with a pair of jeweled clasps to display your petticoat—no, that petticoat definitely will not do”—this as Pamela indicated one of rose taffeta heavily ornamented with metallic lace laid out in a geometric pattern over the narrow flat braid called “galloon.” “Here, this one would be perfect.” She held up a thin petticoat of delicately embroidered silvery silk that caught and reflected pale blue lights from the ice blue satin.
“It’s quite old,” objected Pamela.
“No matter. See how it undulates as you walk.”
Pamela tried it on and took a couple of experimental steps in her smart long vamp, high-heeled blue satin slippers. The heels were set almost in the center of the foot and narrowed in the center like little hourglasses. They were the latest thing.
“Now with your hair parted in the middle and your curls swept to the sides—”
“Like spaniels’ ears,” giggled Pamela.
“And glittery earbobs and a string of pearls, and a blue satin riband—just one!” This as Pamela, deciding if one riband was a good thing, three might be better, picked up three. “One blue satin riband peeking in and out of your golden curls—there.” Constance stepped back. “Now if only the point lace on your chemise cuffs could be a little daintier so more of your arms would show through—you have good arms, Pamela. Do you think you could tug your neckline down a little farther in the front?”
“Oh, no!” wailed Pamela. “I’ll be out!” She was awfully glad Tom wasn’t going to be here for dinner tonight for she was sure she’d forget and reach up to toss back a falling lock and bring her arm up—and hear a terrible ripping sound as the seams gave way!
“Now,” said Constance, “we’ll see what your father thinks. And then you can try it out on Tom.” She put down the scissors and brushed bits of riband and lace from her skirt. “I must dress for dinner myself,” she said and left the room.
She had not cleared the door before all her problems were back again, nagging at her. And as she went into her own room to change into something that would complement Pamela’s “new look,” she pondered bitterly on what she had been— and what she would become.
From the corridor she could hear Pamela calling to Tabitha to catch Puss, he had made off with some of the Christmas greenery, and she smiled wistfully. Pamela, safe in her sheltered world... Outside, the blue-gray winter dusk was fast closing down. A few flakes of snow were falling and while she stood there they became a great swirl that obscured the oaks and turned the world to a white whirl outside the tall casements. And she was reminded of another day, and another snow that would always linger in her memory. Now those memories she had fought to push away rushed back unbidden to overwhelm her and she was back again at Claxton House in Yorkshire’s wild West Riding.
Claxton House,
The West Riding, Yorkshire,
November 1679
Chapter 7
A great November ball was in full swing at Claxton House, family seat of the Daceys. Usually a gray forbidding pile of stone, standing like a sentinel in the middle of its lands, the great house was tonight a miracle of light with candles winking from all its windows and the great Banqueting Hall glowing in the radiance of myriad chandeliers. The guests were to stay the night—and maybe longer because, while it had snowed only fitfully throughout the day, it was now snowing hard. Great flakes drifted down, giving a new frosting of white to an already white world. Frost glittered on the small panes of the massive stone edifice’s mullioned windows, and the smoke from its banks of tall chimneys were smudges that disappeared into a snow-drifted sky.
The great house was filled with merriment, for guests had come from far away, many of them making the hard slow progress across the snowy Yorkshire moors for this occasion, although most had arrived by sled and were from the environs of nearby Ripon. Laughter rippled above the tinkling music, toasts were being drunk, satin skirts swished by heaping tables laden with great pastries, hams, every kind of dainty, and upon vast silver chargers rode peacocks and swans in full plumage.
But in the great stone stables—almost as large as the house—where the horses, including those of the guests, were already bedded down for the night, a strange tableau was taking place.
By the light of a lanthorn set on the hard-packed floor, a little girl—she could have been no more than eleven—was carefully mimicking the dance steps she had seen in the great house a short time before—seen through the carved balusters at the top of the stairs, for the child was not allowed to mingle with the guests whose satin skirts and breeches were swirling to music in the Banqueting Hall. She swooped earnestly about on shoes and stockings wet with snow, fluffing out the much-mended and faded indigo blue homespun of her too-short skirts.
She thought she was alone.
She was not.
From behind a tall mound of hay, a boy watched her. He was fifteen, although he looked older, and his rapt young face, watching her graceful swoops and swirls, was grave and intent. Indeed he thought her the most beautiful creature he had ever beheld.
She must have felt the intent pressure of his gaze, for she turned suddenly and stopped dancing.
“Who’s there?” she asked uncertainly.
“ ’Tis only I,” he said, coming out and showing himself so that she might not feel frightened.
Little Constance looked uncertainly at this tall lad in clothing even more disreputable than her own. She had seen him about, of course, but she had never spoken to him. Her position in the family was a strange one. She lived in the great house, was accepted as kin—and yet not as kin. Although she was included in the lessons that Henriette, the French governess, taught young Hugh and Felicity, she was not included in most social functions. She took her meals in the servants’ hall. The ball just now taking place in the great Banqueting Hall was definitely not for her. Even had she h
ad a proper gown to wear for the occasion—which she did not—she would not have been allowed to attend.
It was all part of the same pattern that had emerged almost immediately when she had—wearing the same indigo gown in which she was dancing by lanthorn light tonight—arrived through a blinding snowstorm at the Daceys’ ancestral home. Their journey north had been arduous for they had not been able to afford a coach past Lincoln and had had to bargain with local farmers along the way for transportation in carts and uncomfortable nights spent in the lofts of cottages. Indeed it was a lumbering farm cart that delivered them to the main entrance of Claxton House.
Seated, half-frozen, in the cart, the child had brushed the snow from her hood and stared at the building in fascination. Of heavy ashlar masonry, it frowned down upon her from its many gables. Its numerous small-paned windows seemed to peek out at her like a rodent’s eyes. Her awed gaze swept upward to the lofty finials crowning the battlements like watchful stone guardians atop the massive square stone projection that formed the entrance. Two stories tall and with an enormous circular window of eight lights rising above the yawning arched entrance, it presented a picture of menace to her childish eyes.
She did not want to leave the cart.
“Come, Constance,” urged her father. “We’re home.” He caught his wife’s eye and a look of foreboding passed between them.
The child caught that look and in a sudden flash of intuition she knew that nothing good was ever going to happen to them here. She hung back stubbornly.
“Constance,” said her mother with a catch in her voice. “Stand straight when we go in and remember to give your best curtsy.” She took the child’s hand, and they followed her father as he went to bang the heavy iron knocker.
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