Duel of Hearts

Duel of Hearts

Elizabeth Mansfield

Prologue

I
T WAS QUITE
a pretty little cap, really. Hardly the sort of trifle a lady should stare at with such a troubled frown. It lay on Sarah's lap, resting on the bed of tissue paper in which it had been wrapped, looking quite innocent and charming—a frivolous confection of pure white dimity trimmed with rows of satin ribbon and edged with the finest Alençon lace. But Sarah's fingers trembled slightly as they played with the ruffled lace, and she looked down at the cap with an expression of dismay. Yet she herself had ordered it just a week ago—on the occasion of her twenty-seventh birthday—from one of London's finest milliners. There seemed to be no reason why its arrival this afternoon should have caused any agitation of the spirits.

A little cap could not be, of itself, an object to be feared. What, then, was the problem? Sarah knew the answer. Shaped very much like the mob caps worn by housemaids while doing their cleaning, this delicately trimmed headpiece (often erroneously called a widow's cap) was an item of clothing meant to be worn indoors, but not only by widows. In households in which proper attention was paid to tradition, this type of cap was worn by married women as well—indeed, it was appropriate dress for
all
females of mature age. Only young girls were exempt from covering their hair with headpieces of this sort. As soon as a girl married, she took to wearing a cap about the house as a symbol of her new maturity. As such, it was usually donned with a feeling of delight.

But Sarah was not married. There was the rub.

Sarah looked from the cap in her lap to her reflection in the mirror of her dressing table with a wince of pain. She was well aware that, at the advanced age of twenty-seven, most women had long since been claimed in matrimony. She, however, had been left on the shelf. It was of small comfort to her to realize that most people considered the situation to be her own fault; a woman, they said, whose appearance was so extraordinarily pleasing must surely have been spoken for by this time. A refined young female with a slender, graceful form, a pair of intelligent eyes, a well-modelled face and a head of thick, warmly auburn hair could not possibly be passed over in the matrimonial stakes
unless she herself had wished it so
. That was what everyone said. And although Sarah felt that the encomiums to her appearance were exaggerated, she had to admit that her single state was as much her fault as anyone's.

The abrupt opening of the bedroom door interrupted her ruminations. Her mother, Lady Laurelia Stanborough, bustled in with her customary disregard for her daughter's privacy. She was dressed for the outdoors in a fur-trimmed pelisse and a bonnet bearing a number of enormous plumes, and she carried an oversized muff of the same fur which edged the pelisse. Lady Stanborough, a woman of remarkable style and charm (but rather
un
remarkable intellect), stood under five feet tall even in her highest-heeled shoes, a fact which had irritated her since her salad days and for which she attempted to compensate by wearing the tallest hats she could find. The hats, while they did nothing to disguise her lack of stature, nevertheless inspired many admiring comments and did much to give her a reputation for possessing a daring sense of fashion. To her mind, the success of her hats signified that
other
items of her wardrobe should be made oversized as well, and she ever afterward dressed herself in the widest scarves, the largest rings, the broadest muffs and the longest gloves she could find.

Struggling to fasten the many pearl buttons of her lavender gloves, she barely glanced up at her daughter as she spoke. “I'm off to Lady Howard's. Are you determined not to come? If you should ask me, an afternoon of cards is just the sort of diversion you need.”

“No, thank you, Mama,” Sarah answered promptly. Her mother would have been surprised by any other response. Sarah never went to card parties.

“Mmmmph!” her mother grunted with habitual disdain. “Very well, I'll convey your regrets to La—” Her eye fell on the open package in Sarah's lap. “Good heavens! What's
that
?”

“You can see very well what it is,” Sarah said defensively, holding it up for her mother's inspection.

“Surely you don't intend to … to
wear
that thing!” Lady Stanborough exclaimed, aghast.

“But of course I do.”

“Over my bruised and broken body!” her mother declared, trying to snatch the cap from Sarah's hand.

Sarah, who took after her deceased father in the matter of height, stood more than six inches taller than her mother. She jumped up from the dressing table and held the cap aloft, well out of her mother's reach. “But why should I
not
wear it?” she asked reasonably. “It is certainly appropriate costume for someone my age.”

“Give that cap to me at
once
,” Lady Stanborough demanded furiously, “and don't be such a green-head! Putting on a cap is like admitting to all the world that you're … you're—”

“That I'm an old maid? But that's just what I am.”

Lady Stanborough glared up at her daughter. “Don't talk such drivel! You're a mere child!”

Sarah had to laugh. “Really, Mama, be sensible. A woman of twenty-seven is hardly a child. I'm sorry to upset you, dearest, but at my age I can't even be called a
girl
any more.”

“Sorry to upset me, indeed!” her mother responded with a pout. “You upset me all the time! I declare, I shall have an attack of apoplexy if you don't stop this foolishness. And
look
at what you've made me do—my hat is completely askew…”

“That's because you insist on wearing bonnets that are much too large for your head to carry. Sit down here, and I'll set it right.”

“Never mind,” the older woman said curtly. “I'll do it myself.” And she sat down at the dressing table and proceeded to repair the damage the altercation with her daughter had done to her appearance. “Old maid!” she muttered. “You don't look a day above nineteen!”

“
Nineteen
!” Sarah giggled and knelt beside her mother so that their two faces were reflected side by side in the mirror. “Take a good look at me, Mama, and try not to tell yourself—or me—a rapper. Is that the face of a nineteen-year-old?”

“Of course it is,” her mother said promptly, looking more carefully at her bonnet than at her daughter's face. Lady Stanborough was given to self-deception. She found it pleasant to believe whatever made her most comfortable. But Sarah could not fool herself so easily. The hazel eyes that looked back at her from the mirror had an unmistakable world-weariness that would never be found in the eyes of a girl of nineteen. Her auburn hair, while still thick and rebellious, had lost the reddish gleam it used to have. And there were tiny smile-lines at the corners of her mouth.
Oh, Mama
, she thought with a sigh,
it's been a long while since I had the face of a girl
.

Lady Stanborough, intent on her own appearance, patted a recalcitrant strand of hair into place. “You'd not
be
an old maid,” she scolded, more out of habit than conviction, “if you'd listened to me
once
in all these years and married North.”

There it was again, the same old refrain. Sarah was heartily sick of hearing her mother harp forever on the same string:
John Phillip North, the Marquis of Revesne, so handsome, so well-placed, so rich, so impressive, so important
! Her mother tended to latch on to an idea and hang on to it forever, no matter how mistaken it was. “Oh, Sarah,” she'd moaned repeatedly over the years, “
why
were you so foolish as to have
refused
a man like that!” Nothing that Sarah said could convince her mother that her evaluation of Lord North was misjudged.

“And you
still
can have him, if you will only exert yourself in that direction,” Lady Stanborough was saying as she rose from the dressing table. It was a remark she made every time she brought up the subject of Lord North. “Hasn't he remained single all these years?”

Even though Sarah and Lord North barely spoke to one another except in the coolest civilities, it was generally whispered about that Lord North still wore the willow for her sake. What her mother—and the other London gossips—could not seem to understand was that he was utterly detestable to her. Anything in the world—even spinster-hood—was preferable to being married to Lord North.

The trouble, Sarah admitted to herself with a deep sigh, was that she was an idealistic dreamer. All she'd ever wanted was a quiet life—a life with some purpose, some meaning, some sense. The society of London—the London of opulent ballrooms, of card games and cotillions, of scandals and marital infidelities, of debauchery and deceit, of duels and dishonor—was not a likely breeding ground for the sort of man who would prefer her style of life, but she'd always hoped that
somehow
she would find one man of honesty, valor, dignity and common sense. She had not found him. But it seemed to her that John North, the Marquis of Revesne, was the complete
opposite
of the sort of man she wanted.

Lady Stanborough gave herself a last, quick look in the mirror and turned her attention back to buttoning her gloves. “I know it's a waste of breath to speak to you about North,” she said, “but I hope you'll listen to me about that cap. Wearing it is a good as admitting you've taken yourself off the Marriage Mart.”

“And so I have, Mama. At twenty-seven, it is time to face the facts,” Sarah said firmly.

Lady Stanborough stalked to the door. “If I see you wearing a widow's cap,” she threw over her shoulder as she took her leave, “I shall have the megrims! The
megrims
, I tell you! You'll be the death of me yet!”

When the sound of her mother's footsteps had faded away, Sarah sank down on the edge of her bed and stared at the inoffensive little frippery in her hand. Such a to-do over nothing … over merely the making of an overt admission (by the donning of an innocuous little white cap) that the days of her youth were over, as were the rituals of courtship. Cap or no, those days of girlhood had passed. She had not had a suitor for a long while. Why couldn't her mother recognize and accept that fact?

For the first time in a long while, Sarah fell to wondering if she had been wrong to have refused matrimony. Surely in the nine years since she'd been presented there must have been
someone
whose attentions she might have encouraged! If only Lord North had not frightened away so many potential suitors with his fierce possessiveness. If she were to be absolutely truthful with herself, she would admit that it was quite her own fault that her suitors had been a rather sorry lot.

It was not shyness which had kept her from the great social success her mother and the rest of the
ton
had expected from a young woman of her physical, mental and financial advantages, although most of the gossips blamed everything on what they called her shyness. She did not usually feel shy; it was just that she always felt decidedly out of her element at the huge, ostentatious social gatherings which single young women were forced to attend. She did not care to make the simpering, foolish little remarks which young girls were expected to utter: “Oh, think
shame
on yourself, Mr. Stiffback! I am
not
the prettiest girl in the room (tee-hee)!” Or, “Yes, indeed, this is the most enjoyable
squeeze
of a party I've attended all season!” And yet again, “Now,
really
, Sir Hotbreath, I've stood up with you for two country dances and the gavotte. We would
not
—(entrancing giggle)—wish to set the tongues
wagging
about us, would we?” In order to avoid the necessity of uttering such inanities, she tried to keep herself quietly in the background.

Her reputation for being shy and withdrawn had spread quickly (probably encouraged by the tongues of jealous mamas of girls who were less advantageously placed), but her good qualities were evidently sufficiently attractive to entice some eligibles to look in her direction. However, it had come as a considerable surprise to most onlookers—and to Sarah herself—when Lord North indicated his decided interest. North was everything a Matchmaking Mama would wish for her daughter. Tall, handsome, with an impeccable lineage and an income fit for a King, he embodied every quality the ton considered admirable: he was cool in his enthusiasms, he was a sportsman of considerable talent, he gambled at cards and horses with icy control, he looked at strangers through his quizzing glass with such practiced hauteur that it gave the object of his scrutiny a case of the fidgets, he was acquainted with the Regent, and he knew how to keep his numerous paramours hidden with admirable discretion. In short, he was considered a nonpareil. What more could one wish from a gentleman?