Carola Dunn (13 page)

 The reading continued. Prudence was quite satisfied with her secondary part as Constance Neville. Some of the things Young Marlow said to Kate Hardcastle when he believed her to be a servant were decidedly improper. Though Aimée took it all in her stride, Prudence was sure she herself would have been disconcerted, not to say embarrassed. Hampered by her upbringing, she began to wonder whether she was really cut out to be an actress.

 Constance Neville and her betrothed, Hastings, were much more decorous. The worst they did was plan to run away together to be married.

 Admittedly Prudence had to flirt with Tony Lumpkin, Mrs. Hardcastle’s good-natured but loutish son, pretending to be in love with him. However, she had already made it plain to Bob Dandridge that where the stage directions said: “They retire and seem to fondle,” he was to observe the “seem,” not the “fondle.”

 All the same, she winced when she thought of Lord Rusholme watching that particular scene. It could only reinforce his assumption that she was a wanton lightskirt.

 The reading ended, with Tony Lumpkin jubilantly renouncing Constance Neville’s hand in favour of her faithful Hastings, and Aimée coyly accepting Marlow. Mr. Hardcastle sent them all off to start learning their lines. Prudence and Aimée retired to their small shared chamber, perching on the bed for want of chairs.

 For a while silence reigned, broken only by occasional mutters. Prudence had no difficulty with this part of the acting business, since many hours of her childhood—the majority, she sometimes felt—had been spent learning Bible verses by heart. To Aimée it was agony, and she soon asked for help. In tutoring, too, Prudence had experience. Aimée was duly grateful.

 “I’ll lend you a gown for the ball tonight,” she proposed. “You haven’t got anything pretty.”

 “I wasn’t going to go.”

 “Course you’ll go, Sera! It’s not like it was the Cyprians’ Ball in London, with all the Fashionable Impures parading about and the gents looking for a new convenient. It’s only a bunch of servants, all of ‘em as seraphic as you, I daresay. Most, anyways.”

 “Well, maybe.” Prudence did not want to be thought prim or above her company. “But I don’t know how to dance.”

 Aim‚e gaped at her. “What, not at all? Never mind, me ‘n’ Bob’ll teach you a few steps quick as winking. That’s settled then. Lessee, you can wear the lemon-yellow crêpe. You’re thinner than me so we’ll have to take a tuck or two.”

 “I’m taller, too.” And Aimée wore her gowns well above the ankle.

 “It won’t take but a minute to stitch a ruffle round the hem. There’ll be summat in the wardrobe box we can use. Come on, let’s go look.”

 To Prudence’s relief they also found a lace fichu to be pinned into the alarmingly low bodice of the lemon crêpe. The result was not exactly elegant, but prettier than any of her own clothes, she had to admit. Thus arrayed, refusing rouge and powder, she set off for her first ball.

 The servants’ hall was bedecked with holly and evergreens. Just inside the main doors, a big bunch of mistletoe dangled from the old minstrels’ gallery. Opposite the doors, in the vast fireplace, the remains of the Yule log still smouldered, supplemented by a dozen faggots. At each end of the room, stood a trestle table laden with food and drink.

 The smell of tallow candles was overlaid by the odours of woodsmoke, pine, spiced ale, and oranges. At Christmas Lord Easthaven always provided an orange as a treat for each member of his huge staff and visiting servants.

 Entering the crowded room, Prudence managed to dodge Bob Dandridge’s kiss, though he landed a peck on her cheek. His breath was redolent of brandy. Aimée’s lips met his and she recoiled with a “Faugh!” wrinkling her nose.

 “Come on,” she said, “you’d better dance it off.” She pulled him out onto the floor.

 Hastings, at his most gentlemanly, offered Prudence his arm and they took their place in a set as the fiddlers struck up a lively air.

 After her single brief lesson, Prudence lost her way at once, but neither Hastings nor the marquis’s servants cared. They steered her about, calling out the steps and encouragement equally. Breathless with exercise and laughter, she survived the first dance and went on to accept First Footman Samuel’s invitation to stand up with him for the second.

 Her arm linked with his, she was in the middle of a turn when Lord Rusholme appeared under the mistletoe.

 “Oh!” she gasped. “Oh no!”

 “What’s the matter, Miss Savage?” Samuel peered down at their feet. “I didn’t step on your toe, did I?”

 “No. It’s just.... I didn’t know any ladies and gentlemen came to your ball.”

 “Some o’ the family generally puts in an appearance for a while.” He guided her to one side while another pair took their turn. “That’s Lord Rusholme, that’ll be the next marquis. You had a word with him out in the woods this morning, didn’t you?”

 “Yes,” Prudence admitted unwillingly. “He needed help with the children.”

 “Lady Maria’s children. That’s her beside him, and Lady Julia, his other sister, and the gentlemen they married. T’other fellow’s Lord Rusholme’s friend, Mr. Denham. His wife’s sister’s after his lordship. Leastways, Miss Wallace is too bashful to chase him like them other two do, but her ladyship’ll set her onto him.” He laughed. “Looks like he’s slipped the leash for half an hour. Hey, come on, it’s our turn again.”

 He tugged Prudence into the centre of the set. Her clumsiness, which had been a joke, was suddenly painfully mortifying. She wished she had never come. She wished she could leave without affronting Samuel. She wished she might at least go to sit with the scullery maid, Rosie, in an inconspicuous corner where Lord Rusholme would not see her.

 Concentrating on the steps, she tried to avoid looking in his direction. Nonetheless she was instantly aware when he spotted her. At once she turned away, but she felt his gaze burning into her back through the thin, silky crêpe.

 When the pattern of the dance made her face that way again, she dared a peek. His head was bowed, speaking to Lady Julia. Prudence scolded herself: what vanity to imagine he was watching her! His interest was of the most casual kind, a matter of chance proximity. All she had to do was keep out of his way.

 The dance ended. She could not leave since Rusholme still stood in the entrance and she did not know where the other doors led to, so she made for the farthest corner of the room.

 Rosie sat there on a bench against the wall. “You’re looking ever so pretty, miss,” she said, her thin face lighting as Prudence joined her.

 “Thank you, my dear.” Prudence fanned herself with the fan borrowed from the props box. “I wish I knew the steps properly! Do you?”

 “Oh yes, miss, only there’s none but the stable-lads’ll dance wi’ the likes o’ me.” She glanced down at her red, chapped hands. “It takes ‘em a few pints to get up their courage,” she explained with a wisdom beyond her years. “I ‘specs I’ll be dancing later. Meantimes, I likes to watch.”

 “So do I.”

 A gentleman’s gentleman, stiffly proper in black, approached and begged Prudence for the honour of the next dance. “His lordship has requested a waltz,” he said, “which being a new dance and foreign, the lower servants haven’t had no opportunity of learning.”

 “Nor have I,” Prudence excused herself. “I’m sure you will be able to find a proficient partner.”

 But the valet considered it not at all correct to desert a lady he had invited to stand up with him simply because she chose to sit out the dance. He fetched her—and, at her prompting, Rosie—lemonade, then hovered over her until she asked him to be seated.

 Lord Rusholme waltzed past, Lady Julia in his arms. A wave of longing swept over Prudence. If she could dance, if she was well-born and beautiful and beautifully dressed, if she was one of the young ladies chosen by the marchioness as a suitable bride.... What she wanted was to feel his strong arms about her without in any way compromising her principles and that was clearly impossible.

 She turned her attention to the man at her side.

 He was employed, he revealed, by Mr. Denham, a good master but without the figure or the style, he confessed, of his friend Lord Rusholme. His lordship was a Corinthian of the first stare, a Nonpareil, equally at home on horseback or in the ballroom and always elegant, always impeccable. As the valet waxed enthusiastic, Prudence recalled Rusholme in the woods, bareheaded, hair ruffled, a child on his shoulders; Rusholme wobbling on the lurching Yule log, arms waving wildly; Rusholme seated cross-legged on the floor in his mother’s drawing room. She stifled a giggle.

 Those were the images in Prudence’s mind when the waltz ended and Rusholme, impeccably elegant, swirled Lady Julia to a halt just in front of her. Thus, instead of freezing him with glance as she had intended should he approach her, when he bowed to her she smiled up at him.

 She quickly came to her senses when he failed to introduce her to his sister, whose eyes passed over her as if she were not there. Lady Julia murmured something to her brother and sailed off, the crowd parting deferentially before her.

 “Miss Savage, may I have the pleasure of the next dance?”

 “Pray excuse me, my lord,” Prudence said coolly, “I do not know the steps.”

 Lord Rusholme looked taken aback. “You don’t know yet what it will be,” he pointed out, clearly aware she was snubbing him.

 She had to make sure he understood that her excuse was the truth, as well as a rebuff. “I don’t know any of the steps,” she explained.

 “I saw you dancing earlier.”

 “My partner and the others in the set all told me what to do as we went along.”

 “Do you think me less capable of instructing you than my father’s footman?” His smile was quizzical, her snub forgotten or disregarded. “I promise to steer you right and not to tread on your toes. Come.” He held out his hand.

 Half unwilling, half glad to be overruled, Prudence rose, venturing a last protest: “I may tread on yours. You cannot wish to stand up with anyone so clumsy, my lord!”

 “I believe my toes and my credit will survive. Besides, however inaccurate, your movements were never less than graceful, I assure you.”

 “I don’t care for Spanish coin, sir,” she said tartly, laying her hand on his arm.

 He laughed. “I should have guessed that of you, which is why I’d not dare offer it. I shall not, for instance, tell you your gown becomes you.”

 “I didn’t choose it.”

 “I suspected as much, having already complimented your taste. Your cloak was a good colour. Sophie was right, you looked like a wood elf.”

 Prudence hurried to change the subject. “The children all seem very fond of you.”

 “I am told I spoil them abominably. The advantage of nieces and nephews is that one need not fear to ruin their characters by overindulgence. That’s for their parents to fret about. Children are a great responsibility.”

 “I daresay there are rewards to having one’s own children,” said Prudence dubiously. Her father had certainly never appeared to think so.

 “I daresay.” Rusholme sighed. “I cannot avoid marriage and setting up my own nursery much longer. Perhaps David’s little sister-in-law would do,” he mused aloud. “She’d bore me to tears but I’d rather be bored to tears than pestered to death.”

 Once more they were on dangerous ground. To Prudence’s relief the fiddlers started to make preliminary scrapings and they took their places in the nearest set.

 The dance was “Strip the Willow.” Prudence and Lord Rusholme were in the middle of the set, so for some time all she had to do was link arms and turn with whichever footman, valet, or groom presented himself, then promenade with his lordship. By the time they moved to the top of the set, she had watched enough to understand the pattern.

 Alas, understanding and performing proved to be two different things. Bewildered, she lost her place, offered the wrong arm, turned the wrong way, faced in the wrong direction. She even found herself linking arms with a surprised abigail on the wrong side of the set. Rusholme grinned and cheerfully corrected her. As soon as the servants realized he was not miffed they all joined in to help. Instead of a humiliating disaster, the dance turned into a merry romp which left Prudence as laughing and breathless as her first efforts of the evening.

 The final chord sounded and she curtsied to Rusholme’s bow. His friend Mr. Denham appeared at his elbow.

 “Time we were getting back to the drawing room, old chap,” he said. “Your sisters left long ago.”

 “Be damned if I will,” Rusholme exclaimed. “I’ll only be trapped into turning Lady Anne’s music for her, or offering Lady Estella the use of my best hunter. I’ll have one more dance first.”

 As the gentlemen spoke, Prudence had moved back towards Rosie’s nearby bench and they had drifted after her. Now Rusholme looked at her as if he meant to ask her to dance again.

 She must not let him single her out so! “If you are seeking a partner, my lord,” she said hastily, “I’m sure Rosie will be happy to stand up with you. She knows all the steps.” And she indicated the little scullery maid.

 Rosie gazed up at him in speechless fright, with just a touch of incredulous hope.

 After a start of surprised dismay, quickly hidden, he said smoothly, “Will you do me the honour, Miss Rosie?”

 Rosie gasped. Eyes huge, she nodded. As they moved out onto the floor, the scrawny child with her hand on the arm of the tall, broad-shouldered, fashionable gentleman, Prudence watched uneasily.

 She could fight her attraction to him, the disturbance she felt in his presence, the flutter at his touch. The trouble was, she liked him.

* * * *

 When Rusholme returned the scullery maid to her corner, Prudence was gone. Though she was not there to observe him, he thanked the child with the same punctilious courtesy he would have expended upon a duchess.

 She bobbed a curtsy. “Strewth, m’lord,” she said, her little face glowing, “I’ll never fergit it all me born days!”

 He smiled at her, half ashamed that so simple an act could give so much pleasure. He’d never have thought of it without Prudence’s intervention.

 However, he did not flatter himself that her only motive had been to give the maid something to remember “all her born days.” Prudence was almost as eager to evade him as he was to evade the ladies Anne and Estella.