The Girl in the Gatehouse (24 page)
Maggie and Lizzy appeared at the drawing-room window, Maggie’s nose pressed against the wavy glass. Dixon gestured them inside. As the girls entered, Mariah smiled her welcome and unlatched the trunk. “Come and see. What is your guess? Pirate treasure? Mr. Martin did deliver it, after all.”
Maggie giggled. George rubbed his hands together.
Mariah pushed back the lid and looked inside. “No treasure, I am afraid.”
George peered over her shoulder. “Clo-o-othes,” he muttered in disgust. He tipped his hat and was out the door in two seconds.
His sister rolled her eyes, and the women shared a smile.
Mariah pulled out a feathered mask from some long-ago masquerade ball, followed by a pleated betsie. “Martin was right, these do look a bit dated.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Dixon tied the betsie around her neck. The ruff was so stiff she could barely turn her head.
Mariah laughed. “You look like Queen Elizabeth in her lace collars.”
Mariah wrapped a mantle of moth-eaten mink around her own shoulders and set a tall chimney-pipe hat upon her head. “What do you think?”
Dixon regarded the ensemble. “It is not quite the thing.” She replaced the hat with a gauze turban sporting a jaunty egret plume. “Oh yes, infinitely better.”
They put a faded, tunnel-like poke bonnet on Maggie, who disappeared within it, laughing all the while.
Eyes wide, Lizzy lifted out a silvery wig from one of the bags, a high Cadogan hairdo with roll curls.
“Well, go on,” Dixon urged.
Lizzy giggled and settled the confection upon her head, and was utterly transformed into an imperial lady.
Soon, an all-out game of dress-up and charades ensued as four females indulged their playful feminine natures.
Dixon pulled on a pale satin tunic over her day dress. She fitted her head with a Grecian style coronet complete with attached snood to cover her pinned hair.
Mariah helped Lizzy into a velvet spencer jacket with fur-trimmed collar and flared cuffs. Then she handed her a soft muff of matching fur.
She extracted a gold-braided Hussar jacket for herself and pulled it on. Near the bottom of the trunk she spied a riding habit – long skirt and short jacket. There was nothing extravagant or amusing about those pieces. In fact they brought a stab of regret, reminding her of her fine riding habit, and fine horse, at faraway Attwood Park.
She left those garments where they were and instead pulled out a wide mushroom-shaped muslin hat with eyelet trim and bow, a fashion from at least twenty years ago, though it seemed familiar. Why had Aunt Fran kept it? And then she remembered her aunt showing her this very hat when she was a girl, and telling her it had been what she was wearing when Uncle Norris proposed. How sweet that she kept it after so many years, even after another husband.
With a grin, Mariah removed the bonnet from Maggie’s head and replaced it with the ballooning hat. “Adorable. The hat and the girl wearing it.”
Maggie ducked her head but could not conceal her delight.
Martin walked in, eyes focused on the bottle of oil in his hands – on his way to refill the lamps, no doubt. His eyes lifted, then widened, as he looked from the mound of clothes, to bandboxes spewing tissue paper and ribbons, to Lizzy, Mariah, Maggie, and Dixon dressed in musty finery. “I feel as though I have walked into the pages of
La Belle
Assemblée
,” he said. “You all look like fashion plates.”
Maggie and Lizzy giggled.
Martin’s eyes lingered on Dixon. “May I say, Miss Dixon, the coronet suits you. You look like a goddess.”
Dixon bit back a smile, clearly pleased yet self-conscious. “Oh, go on with you.”
But Martin was right. She did look like a goddess. And it was at that moment that the idea struck Mariah. They should put on a theatrical for the children of Honora House. She remembered her aunt saying she recalled the “little plays” Mariah wrote and performed as a girl. She would no doubt approve of them putting her old things to such good use.
Mariah walked across the grounds and spotted Captain Bryant and Mr. Hart reclining on a picnic cloth spread beneath a leafy oak. Remnants of a repast were tossed haphazardly in a basket on one corner. Both men were reading in casual, relaxed poses, but Captain Bryant straightened when he saw her approach.
Mr. Hart remained propped on one elbow. “Miss Aubrey, come and have pity on us. We are reading novels and feel our manliness diminishing by the moment. Come restore our vanity, do, and tell us we look the dashing officers we once were.”
What cheek,
Mariah thought, amused
.
But as Mr. Hart reminded her of an overgrown little boy, she smiled at him. “Hello, Mr. Hart. Captain Bryant. What are you reading?”
Hart cocked his head in Captain Bryant’s direction. “Bryant here is reading a new novel, reported to be all the crack in London.”
Mariah felt her brows rise. “Captain Bryant reads novels? I am surprised.”
“Yes.” Hart sat up and crossed his legs. “You see, I happened to meet a certain young woman he admires, and she told me she
adored
it and thought it ‘everything romantic and thrilling.’ ”
Captain Bryant rolled his eyes and looked very much as though he wanted to kick Mr. Hart’s foot. His bad foot.
“And so you purchased him a copy,” Mariah said. “How kind.”
William Hart’s eyes shone with mischief, and he leaned forward conspiratorially. “I don’t believe
he
sees it as a kindness. For if Bryant here has ever read more than his ship’s log and the newspaper accounts of his own exploits, I should be very much surprised.”
“Thank you, Hart,” Captain Bryant said dryly. “I am afraid it is not to my usual taste, but I am endeavoring to enjoy it.” He lifted the book in his hand. “Have you read it, Miss Aubrey? Perhaps you could give us a summary and pithy commentary, so we can have done. I have not shot nor ridden in two days, and I feel my legs turning to pudding.”
“I may have read it. What is the title?”
“
A Winter in Bath
, by Lady A. Do you know it?”
Mariah started, her stomach knotting. “Well . . . yes. I suppose I am familiar with it.” She suddenly felt dizzy. “You say you don’t find it to your liking?”
“How can I? Listen to this.” Captain Bryant began to read.
And Mariah began to squirm.
“The wind whipped his raven hair and black cloak about him. He stared at her with smoky grey eyes, fiery with intensity. She could not look away. She was ensnared all over again, caught in the brambles and powerless to escape.
“She thought of what her aunt had said, about the blackberry being a symbol of lowliness and remorse. She felt both of these emotions now, trapped as she was in a bramble of her own making. The thorns had caught her, tripped her, held her. She had fallen among them. Or had she been pushed?”
He snapped the book shut. “It is all so much gentlewoman gibberish to me.”
Hart lifted one shoulder as he idly picked and twirled a blade of grass. “I like that bit about the thorns.”
Captain Bryant regarded Mariah frankly. “You are a woman, Miss Aubrey. Tell me. What did that certain lady mean when she said she found this ‘everything romantic’? Must I have raven hair and grey eyes to win her heart?”
“
Smoky
grey eyes,” Hart amended.
He grimaced impatiently. “Who has grey eyes, anyway? Light blue or brown or green, or any combination thereof, but grey?”
“I have seen grey eyes,” Mariah defended.
“On an
Englishman
? In any case, I am afraid I find the book frightfully dull.”
“Let me guess,” Hart said. “No swordplay, no gunfire, and no horse races.”
“Exactly. Lots of long looks and deep discussions.”
Hart raised one finger high. “And therein lies the void between the sexes. Women want long looks and deep discussions, and men want to ride and shoot.”
Captain Bryant nodded. “I know I do. Can we lay aside novels for a few hours and go shoot something?”
“Oh, very well.”
Captain Bryant got to his feet and gave Hart up a hand up. “But you are my witness, William. I did try to read
A Winter in Bath
.”
Mariah felt her throat tighten. “And you, Mr. Hart. Is your novel frightfully dull as well?”
“Actually, mine is excellent. Most diverting.
Euphemia’s Return
by a Mrs. Wimble. I shall be finished soon, Matthew, and we might switch if you like.”
Captain Bryant groaned. “No. If this is her favorite novel, I shall read it. Or die trying.”
“Well.” Mariah formed a brittle smile. “I was going to ask you and Mr. Hart to take part in a theatrical we are putting on for the poorhouse children, but no doubt you would find that frightfully dull too.”
Captain Bryant looked wary. “What sort of theatrical?”
“Is there to be swordplay?” Hart asked eagerly.
Mariah looked from one man to the other, and then answered carefully, “There . . . can be.”
Jane Austen’s juvenilia contains a one-act play,
possibly written as a Christmas entertainment
by the young Jane.
– Maria Hubert,
Jane Austen’s Christmas
Knowing she would need permission to hold the theatrical, Mariah spent the morning working up her courage to go and see Mrs. Pitt. On her way to the poorhouse, she stopped to speak with the Miss Merryweathers. The sisters advised her to involve the matron in the production somehow, saying she was more likely to grant her approval if given a role. Mariah thanked them but was secretly reluctant to ask Mrs. Pitt to take any part.
In the poorhouse office, Mariah stated her case. As she spoke, the matron’s mouth tightened, her eyes narrowed in obvious disapprobation.
Desperately, Mariah added, “And you might even take part in the theatrical, if you like.”
The woman hesitated. Mariah was sure she was about to refuse outright, when a voice from the door startled them both.
“A theatrical! Excellent notion.”
Mariah looked up to find the vicar standing there, eyes bright. “The children will so enjoy it.”
Mrs. Pitt paused, then said, “I am glad you think so, Mr. Lumley. For I have just agreed to introduce the theatrical and to narrate one of the plays.”
Had she? Mariah was not certain she wanted the woman to participate. She faltered, “I . . . was not sure you would be able to get away.”
With a quick glance at the vicar, Mrs. Pitt smiled her close-lipped smile. “The poorhouse is not a prison, Miss Aubrey.”
“Of course not,” Mariah murmured, thinking of the man kept on its top floor. But she thought it best not to mention him.
Mrs. Pitt intertwined her bony fingers atop the desk. “Yes, I think I must take part, to assure the performance is suitable for the children and all the inmates.”
“Wonderful,” the vicar said. “I shall look forward to it.”
Mariah smiled weakly, wondering if Mrs. Pitt would have agreed to the production at all had the vicar not arrived when he had.
“And in my brief absence,” Mrs. Pitt added, “my son, John, is more than capable of overseeing the institution. Now, when is the first rehearsal to be?”
