Miss Lindel's Love (10 page)

“I don’t mind. No, I really don’t. I know our mothers have to save what they can.”

“Yes.”

“It’s foolish to yearn for fine things when one misses people so.”

Lilah turned a most penetrating gaze on her. “You feel that, do you?”

“Naturally I miss my mother and sister.”

A twist to Lilah’s mouth came and went so quickly Maris couldn’t be certain she’d seen it. “Naturally.”

“And it isn’t as though I were used to luxury, nor, for that matter, afraid of poverty,” Maris said, wondering about Lilah. She wasn’t more than a year or so older yet she seemed so much wiser. “We have only the little Father left and the allowance Mother receives from her family.”

“You’re not afraid of being poor?” Lilah asked, quite as incredulously as she would have asked a lamb if it was not afraid of the lion sleeping in its pen.

“No. Poverty means no money and we’ve never had very much to spare. But one can make and mend quite well and even come to enjoy it. A friend of mine, Miss Menthrip, says that it takes more intelligence to be genteelly impoverished than to be prime minister. Though, to tell the truth, I’m never quite sure how she means that.”

“She has the right of it, if one considers the caliber of today’s politicians.” She lay back against her pillows, the long ripples of her dark gold hair spread out from under her cap. “Not to be afraid of poverty,” she said softly, as if musing to herself. “To think of being poor as a game, one’s wits against the world. But don’t you find it diminishes your soul?”

“How could it? Most of the great figures of history had no money ...well, the religious ones anyway. And poets, even the greatest, never have twopence to rub together.”

“But to argue with butchers for credit and stave off bailiffs when run into debt...”

“Of course, one must live within one’s means.” Maris smiled. “We can hardly say we are accustomed to living in the height of decadence,” she added, gingerly testing a chair before she sat on it. The one in her room always turned a leg just as she sat down.

“No, we are not spoiled. But can it be done, year after year? There may be children, droughts, crop failures...”

‘You sound as if you have some future in mind, Lilah. What is it?”

“A man, of course.”

“What man?”

“Will you be so kind as to hand me my letter?” She pointed to the lap desk. A sheet of paper, closely written over, lay on the slanted wooden top. Maris wished she hadn’t been so carefully raised, for her curiosity demanded a long and hungry glance. But she kept her eyes raised and never stole so much as a peek. Yet even with the best will in the world, she couldn’t help reading the salutation. ‘My dearest Nehemiah ...”

“Nehemiah Preston has been my beau since we were children. He keeps sheep on a farm not far from Hay-on-Wye where I was born.” Lilah opened the letter and added a postscript.

That explained the slight lilt in her voice, for Hay was on the border between England and Wales. “A shepherd?”

“Yes. The farm was his father’s and it came to him. At the end of the Season, I shall marry him.”

Maris didn’t mean to be impertinent but the words wouldn’t be denied. “Won’t your mother object?”

“She may if she wishes,” Lilah said coolly. “It will make no difference to me. I have already delayed for two years. I won’t wait any longer.”

“Two years? This Season and last year’s?”

“Exactly. My mother’s wish has always been for me to make a dazzlingly successful marriage. She felt that my marrying Mr. Preston would be too great a comedown for a gentleman’s daughter. But what of it? I despise all this emphasis on gentility and superficial appearance. I didn’t not ‘take’ at my first appearance. I told Mother then that any further attempt would merely be a waste of money and time. Time I could use to grow accustomed to my future. But she wouldn’t listen. She arranged this plan with your mother so that her costs would be less but the outcome will be the same.”

Maris felt a little as though she had stood on a beach to watch the tide come in, only to be swept away by a breaker. Lilah looked quite different, her eyes sparkling with determination, her cheeks flushed with indignant rose, and her chin lifted in defiance. Her voice had a ring in it, nothing like her usual soft tones. Maris felt that it was just as well for Lilah’s plans that no young men were present to see her looking so extraordinarily beautiful. She wondered if Mr. Preston appreciated the qualities of his future bride. If it were left to Lilah, he’d soon be an exceedingly prominent sheep farmer.

“Then you don’t want to be in London at all?”

“No. Not even remotely. I did, however, promise Mother that I would not act in any manner calculated to give people a disgust of me.” She smiled, a touch slyly. “I could have, very easily. The
ton
is so readily shocked.”

“What would you have done?” Maris breathed, fascinated.

Lilah made an airy gesture. “I had so many plans to be outrageous. It’s just as well I need not implement them. It would be just my misfortune to find that instead of making me an outcast, my exploits would make me the toast of town.”

“That would be a risk,” Maris agreed. “So instead you show no interest in gentlemen or indeed anything very much.”

“Exactly. I cultivate an air of world-weariness, though I must confess I do still sometimes blush for Mother. She is so blatant about throwing me at various eligible gentlemen’s heads.” A cloud of memory seemed to wrap about Lilah. “I should warn you, I suppose. Mama’s methods are not always suitably subtle. In fact...”

Maris waited, but Lilah had obviously thought the better of what she’d begun to say.

“But, come,” Lilah said, smiling with genuine warmth. “You didn’t knock on my door to ask about my future, did you?”

“Not really. Speaking of Mrs. Paladin, she said something to me this evening that I didn’t understand.”

“What was it?”

Briefly, Maris explained the circumstances of Lord Danesby escorting her to her chaperon’s side. “Your mother asked me if he’d offered me a
carte
blanche.
I know it means ‘white card’ but what the true meaning is I cannot guess.”

“Are you truly as innocent as all that?” Lilah marveled. “I hadn’t thought anyone was.”

Though Maris felt a spark of anger at being thought such a ninnyhammer, she concealed it. She couldn’t see that it was in any way her fault. Girls were brought to town to acquire “town bronze,” not because they had it already. Give her a month and she’d have as good a grasp of the essentials of town life as any creature born and bred in London.

Lilah twisted a lock of her loosened hair as she thought. “How to put this delicately ...”

“Never mind delicacy. If I am not to continually make a fool of myself, I must know these things. I can’t spend my whole life so innocent that I am mistaken for ignorant.”

“I quite agree. But take care with whom you speak. I don’t mind; heaven knows I find a little plain-speaking refreshing. There are others, higher sticklers than Mother, who would take it ill that any young woman would be acquainted with such a phrase.”

“But what does it mean?” Maris asked again, more impatiently.

“To offer a girl
carte blanche
means that a man wishes to enter into an irregular relationship with her. He offers her in effect a blank draft on his bank. Anything she wants could be hers so long as his interest does not cool.”

“‘Irregular relationship,’“ Maris echoed, not feeling particularly enlightened.

Lilah sighed. “Love but not marriage. Do you understand?”

“No. Why wouldn’t a man just marry the girl if he loved her that much?”

“Men don’t always marry where they desire nor always love whom they desire. Sometimes they are married already. Sometimes they don’t wish to be married or at least not to be married to a girl of much beauty but low station.”

Maris shook her head at the complications people put in the way of an essentially simple matter. “It sounds very odd and most uncomfortable for everyone.”

“Men don’t find it so. They find it very convenient. Certainly there are many lowborn girls who choose the ducats in hand of a wealthy lover rather than let their beauty be wasted on the streets.”

Putting all her confusion aside, Maris returned to her former point. “Your mother shouldn’t have suggested such a thing. Lord Danesby would never...”

“No, I doubt he would. His reputation is not all it should be perhaps, but no one has ever said he cast out lures to unmarried girls. Too afraid of being trapped into matrimony, I would guess.”

“If he doesn’t interest himself in unmarried girls,” Maris said, trying to fit her new knowledge into her image of Lord Danesby, “does that mean ... ? No.”

“That married women are fair game? Indeed. Last year, he and Mrs. Armitage were notorious. Of course, she’s no innocent either. Her passion for Alastair Lament two years ago was shockingly blatant. They say she was so careless that even her husband began to suspect. Then Lamont married that little American creature and Mrs. Armitage set her cap for Danesby. He never had a chance of escaping her toils. She’s still quite handsome,” Lilah admitted kindly, “if terribly old. She must be at least forty.”

Maris, her mind whirling with new thoughts, didn’t remember whether she said good night before she left. Undressing in her room, she lay her dress carefully over the back of the chair before hurrying into bed. Pulling the covers up to stay warm, she changed under the blankets. She couldn’t tell if the room had suddenly grown colder or if it was just her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scolded herself, blowing out the candle. “Did you expect him to live like a monk on a mountaintop while he was waiting for you? He’s a man and the flesh is weak. It says so in Mark or maybe it is in Matthew.” Her feet were too cold to carry her out of bed to check the reference.

“Mrs. Armitage?” she thought in some disgust. “She’s so hardened. What on earth could he see in her?” She was rather pretty for, as Lilah said, an older woman. Perhaps she had all the seductive powers of a Salome. Certainly she was more appealing than a washed-out blond virgin who couldn’t open her mouth without making some ghastly faux pas.

Maris never ceased to be amazed by how readily her own mind could put her in the wrong. Point by point it examined the sophisticated perfections of a Mrs. Armitage compared to the awkward and obviously homespun charms of a country miss. In every instance, save for youth, Maris came out the loser. After all, what good was youth? Everyone could fool her, everyone could patronize her and, with justice, everyone could and probably did laugh at her. Lord Danesby would never lower himself to think of her as a possible bride. The wisest course would be to put him right out of her thoughts.

He had been kind to her that evening. He had seemed to enjoy her conversation, though she could not now recall all that they’d discussed. She remembered him laughing at something clever she had said. His laugh, even in memory, enlivened her like a sudden ray of sun breaking through bed curtains to wake a lazy lie-a-bed. She’d been unable to resist the tug of his hand on hers as he led her away to dance.

Not even the remembrance of Mrs. Armitage’s odious behavior could spoil Maris’s memories of this evening. Maris puzzled over the coincidence for a moment. Mrs. Armitage had said that Maris had been making sheep’s eyes at Lord Danesby but surely that had been before he’d talked to her. True, she’d been present in the cathedral but surely too far away to see Maris’s expression while speaking to his lordship. Had it merely been malice that had engendered that remark? How odd that it should strike so near to the gold of truth.

She fell asleep toward dawn, still torn even in her dreams between her love for Lord Danesby and this new light on his character. She seemed to see him as a monk one moment and a libertine the next, praying in one guise, and inviting laughing women of low morals to sit on his knee in the other. Maris couldn’t see herself anywhere. She certainly wasn’t present in the cloister, though she watched every step Lord Danesby took. Nor could she find herself among the multitude of women thronging about him where he sat on a golden throne.

When she awoke at last, her mouth was dry and she could scarcely manage to open both eyes at the same time. The cup of hot tea that the hired maid presented did help to awaken her. By the time she came downstairs to greet Mrs. Paladin and Lilah, her spirits were rebounding. Lord Danesby had found her interesting enough to remain by her side for an hour, surely more than any other girl present last night could boast.

“Dear, dear Maris,” Mrs. Paladin said. “You must come and see the tributes that were delivered this morning. Charming! If only your mother were here. Now, you must immediately write notes of thanks to all your admirers. You mustn’t appear haughty or in any way vain.”

“No, of course not,” Maris murmured, raising up on tiptoe to see around Mrs. Paladin.

Lilah took pity on her. “She can’t write notes until she sees what she’s thanking them for. Mother, let her come in.”

Bunches of flowers lay on the polished oak of the morning room table. Some were quite formal in design, looking, to Maris’s eyes, beautiful enough for a ball. Others were loose sheaves of hyacinth or calendula or other heralds of spring. Each bore a card. By the time she sorted through them, she realized that at least six gentlemen had thought it worthwhile to send her a bouquet. “How kind everyone is,” she said. “Oh, look. These are from Sir Rigby Barrington. I didn’t even dance with him.”

She missed Mrs. Paladin’s expression, but the older woman’s tone was cold. “I am well aware of that. In truth, I meant to read you something of a scold regarding your manners.”

“At least she threw him over to dance with Lord Danesby, Mother,” Lilah said, turning the pages of the
Gazette.

“Kindly don’t be vulgar, Lilah,” Mrs. Paladin said, but perhaps her daughter’s reminder of Maris’s triumph softened her. “Never mind,” she added. “If Sir Rigby is willing to forgive you, so am I.”

Lord Danesby had not sent any flowers. She told herself she didn’t care. To have danced with him, to have been the sole focus of his brilliant eyes however briefly, was more of his attention than she’d ever dreamed she’d have. Even if she should never see him again, she had enough to fuel her happiness for a lifetime. Yet, despite that, she couldn’t keep a slight pang of disappointment at bay. It would have crowned her first appearance to have been able to write to Lucy that she’d received even the humblest drooping daisy from Lord Danesby.