The Marriage Mart (17 page)

Miss Yardley accepted his arm, and John thought for a moment that perhaps he ought to insist on a shawl for her, or at least a bonnet, but then he mentally shrugged, and told himself she was young and healthy enough to withstand the effects of a breeze on a wetted gown. And if the garden light provided yet further glimpses of the lady’s form, well that had not been of his arranging, now had it?

Sunlight adored the youthful skin and dark hair of the lady. Her cheeks began to glow a healthy pink at the touch of the breeze, and her dark hair in places glinted almost silver where rays of light touched her head. Soft curls fell about her face, while the bulk of her hair was pulled back and up, disguising her youth a bit. She was not an exception for seeking to be settled at the meager age of sixteen, but still her adolescence was, to John, a tick against being even a little serious with her. He managed to coax some smiles from her. Her hand on his sleeve was almost weightless, a reflection of her delicate construction, and her dark eyes were bright with a kind of excitement he was not too cynical to take as a compliment.

The time had come upon him--not quite set in stone, but still feeling heavy as though one hung about his neck--when he must decide about the chit. She was ravishing, of that there could be no doubt, and she also obviously admired some, if not all, aspects of his own person and company. But could the girl
speak?
Or, rather, could she entertain, enlighten, amuse, challenge, set verbal sparks stinging about his ears, and cause him to listen to more than every other word she said? It was not fair to expect too much, for such youth must of necessity know less of the world than an old rake such as himself, but one could hope for signs of future talents, couldn’t one?

“Annalee, tell me about yourself.” It was a flat sort of thing to say, not his usual flattering way with women, but along with the decision to decide had come the lack of desire to play at games with the innocent.

“Oh, there is not much to tell,” she answered. She had a pleasant voice, but her answer grated on his nerves. It was exactly the answer any other girl would have given. It flashed through his mind that Mary would have gaily launched into a storm of words, telling and showing him exactly what she was made of, but Mary was the exception to the rule, and therefore could not be used as the unit by which others were measured.

“No, in truth, Annalee, I wish to know something of you. Take, for instance…,” he thought a moment, and settled on, “do you have any pets?”

“Papa has his hunting dogs, of course. He lets me feed them bits of beef sometimes. They adore Papa.”

“Do you play with them?”

“Play?” she laughed, a slight look of genuine surprise coming to her features. “I’m no longer a school miss, my lord,” she said. “Of course I do not
play
with the dogs.” She shook her head at the silliness of the question, but perhaps sensing something of his mood, she hastened to add, “Do you care for dogs, my lord?”

“Care for? I haven’t any of my own, but, yes, I guess you could say I have a care for dogs in general. I, too, grew up with hunting dogs. My father was very indulgent of them, and they had the run of the house. I used to ride upon the backs of the larger ones, until I grew too big for that, and had to settle for merely running with the pack.” He smiled at the memory.

“You…you ran with the dogs? Through the house?” she said hesitantly, a smile flickering in and out of existence around her mouth.

“Indeed I did. Would you care to hear me howl? I am quite accomplished at it. I can get a pack of almost any breed going.”

She blinked slowly, then nodded, equally slowly. “Yes, of course, if you like, my lord.”

“Call me John, please,” he said, even though the offer felt wrong the minute it slid off his tongue, and even as he pushed aside the idea of giving his demonstration. You could read the bewilderment on her face. She was doing her best to appear an adult, and he was testing her beyond her mama’s training, poor dear little thing. Instead he went on, “Tell me, have you ever traveled?”

“Oh yes!” she cried with enthusiasm, obviously relieved with the change of topic. “My parents have taken me to Brussels, France, Prussia, and Italy. I speak a little of the languages, but I am only truly proficient in French. I did so enjoy seeing all the capitols. Rome was fascinating, even if Papa was very uncomfortable in the midst of ‘all that Papacy’, as he called it. Brussels was beautiful, but very cold when we were there. And Paris! Paris was simply heavenly! How I admired all the shops. Everything is so
au courant.
I felt a perfect dowd, though my gowns were new. And such hats! To put on a French
chapeau
is to never want to wear another plain English poke in your life!”

“Did you attend any of the night life? I myself was always partial to simply strolling the
Champs Elysees
after dark, for that is when the city truly shows its face.”

“Oh no, I would never venture out after dark, not in a strange city.”

“But if I were to escort you? Keep you safe from any indecent types?” he said, re-testing the teasing waters, pleased to see she was not completely void of the ability to converse.

He had expected her to smile and nod, so he was startled when she cried, “Oh no, I could not. Papa says it would be unsafe. And not only that, it would also cause others to question my judgment, if not my virtue.”

“But if you and I--?” he cut himself short, not wanting to say exactly “if we should be married.”

“My lord?”

“If we were alone. Without your papa around. At all.”

“Without Papa? Why would I go to Paris without Papa?”

He gave a half-laugh, not sure what to make of her continued lack of sophistication. Was he glad she did not leap, as others might, to matrimonial thoughts? Was he merely unused to such greenness? Or could it all be a ruse, a sly act of innocence? If so, that in itself was not all bad, for it showed she had some cleverness about her.

“Ah, well, as to that…” he said, allowing the words to trail away. He shook his head, and turned the conversation even as he turned them down a side path in the garden. “What do you care to do of a day, Annalee?”

As she began to describe a typical day, he found himself listening with only half an ear, as he tried to understand his tolerance of the girl. Normally he had no time for fools, but then again, he was far from convinced she
was
a fool. No, no, he could not mistake youthful incomprehension for foolishness. She was, as Mary had once said, merely
gauche,
in the same way that a new colt was
gauche,
and such simple, honest
gaucherie
was easily cured by time. She had the refinement of her raising, and if that could be coupled with a little polish and knowledge, she would be an admirable hostess and companion, he did not doubt.

“…And I often spend at least an hour at the pianoforte, practicing my playing, and another hour with my voice instructor. I cannot like him, for he is harsh in his manners, but he has helped me to improve my voice.”

“Ah, you sing. Would you sing some little thing for me now?” John asked, coming back from his pondering thoughts to latch unto this latest revelation.

“Oh, I could not, my lord,” Annalee said, blushing a light, pretty pink.

“Certainly you could. Who is there to hear? Your neighbors? I doubt it, and even if so, then they shall just have to endure us at our leisure.”

“No, honestly, my lord…”

“I tell you what. I shall embarrass myself first, so that you may easily best my efforts. How does that sound?”

She did not shake or nod her head, so he began to sing anyway. He sang “Lads, to Your Steeds, Away, Away”, knowing his voice was fine enough if not excellent. When he finished he smiled at her and said, “Now it is your turn.”

She shook her head.

“Come now, you would not want me to be alone in my discomfiture, would you?”

Other ladies might have answered “Yes” to make him laugh, or “No” to make an end of the matter, but Annalee seemed uncertain, unable to answer either way, and so he pressed again.

“Come now.”

“I should...I mean…” she stammered.

“A little ditty. Nothing much.”

“It is so disconcerting. To sing in the garden!” she cried.

“Try it. The novelty is refreshing.”

Finally she agreed. She sang “Fair Bonnie Maid of Upton Glade”. Her voice, well trained, was pretty and even, though not truly perfect, and understandably lacking in emotion. Still, he was sincere when he complimented her efforts, even though he could not help but recall the clarity and emotional appeal of Mary’s voice.

They walked a while longer, and he asked her all manner of questions about her days of youth (a thought which made him smile to himself), and came to learn the lady knew much about the management of a household. She had been well-schooled by her mama, who appeared to be only slightly less (he thought to himself with another smile) an authority on all matters than the girl’s papa. He knew, even as he smiled, that it was quite the thing for her to think so well of her parents, and indeed what other experience of life had she been given by which to judge? He found she had a sincere love of painting, and when he escorted her into the house, she took him on a tour of her works, well represented in the rooms of the household and tolerably well done.

After a fair time had passed, he bid the lady and her parents farewell, put on his curly crowned beaver, and climbed into his dog cart, at last firmly sure in the matter of his marriage to Miss Annalee Yardley.

When next Mary and John met it was at her betrothal party.

She had not seen him, not even so little as across the park, in three weeks. She hadn’t exactly gone out of her way to avoid him; had he avoided her? Either way, gone were her tears now, replaced by a calm and composed demeanor.

His sister, Hortense, had arrived at Edgcombe House before him. Hortense’s greeting had been all it should be, but Mary fancied she’d detected a touch of censure from the other lady.

Mary had gone on to accept the best wishes of thirty or forty other souls before Rothayne walked through her door, eclipsing everyone else in the room--yes, even Charles. But that was not to be wondered at, for she did not love Charles, and she did love John.

That fact was inescapable to her since she had lain all that first betrothal night weeping copiously into her pillow, never well enough because Gladys had overheard her. She thought perhaps she had always known how deeply she’d fallen for John, but there had been a time when she’d thought she could simply will it away. What a lie! What a fool’s dream.

Now it was all she could do to appear as composed before him as if he were the fishmonger delivering wares, and not her heart’s desire. She was able to look him in the face, if not exactly in the eyes, to form a smile, to say softly that he was looking well, all the while immensely aware of Charles at her elbow. She wanted to ask John where he had been, but that would not have been fair. He had called twice at her home, both times when she was out and about on errands for this very party. She could have sent him a note or two, telling him when to find her at home, but she had not.

She’d been correct to allow a separation to begin, certainly.

But all her carefully arranged notions, alas, fell to nothing when he took her hands between his own, and leaned forward to place a light kiss on her cheek. She had read in books of women who, tortured by the pangs of love, had behaved as nothing more intelligent than geese, and finally she knew it could be so. Her thoughts were shattered, her composure in shreds, her ability to smile, even idiotically, erased.

“Mary, I wish you well,” he said, in the spirit of the evening, and then he hesitated. He gave a kind of tiny shrug of his shoulders, his hands tugging slightly at hers. He then walked away, leaving her devastated, but not so completely that she’d missed a certain light in his eyes, a light she did not know, had never seen before. It was not anger, nor irritation, nor judgment. She had seen those things on his face before. This was…something softer than those others, yet just as intense.

When she turned to Charles, the light in his eyes was different, too, not his usual open, friendly, pleasant gaze. He looked annoyed or confused, or perhaps both. In her befuddled state she could not say. When she forced a smile up at him, his odd look faded and he brought forth a smile in return. As he turned to greet another guest, she closed her own eyes for a moment, willing away cognizance, praying for a blissful state of numbness. It came to her, not completely, but in a fashion that allowed her to smile and nod, rather as though she were watching another person perform the duties for her.

Dinner was served once everyone had arrived. Mary felt the food slide down her throat, knew enough to nod and attempt a smile or two when the many toasts were raised to her and Charles, and felt the warm touch of the wine as it slipped into her veins. Yet still she seemed to be standing a little beside herself, half-marveling at her own talent for maintaining an outwardly calm demeanor. Though it was true she could not think what to say, and so said nothing at all, everyone must have taken her silence as either a variety of shy gentility or perhaps bride-to-be jitters. None chastised her for her silence, nor did they try to coax forward more than a word or two from her. Charles, seated next to her at the broad end of the long formal table, was quite verbose enough for both of them, and even she had a brittle smile or two at the quips and tales he shared with such easy abandon with the table.

John, seated many seats from Mary’s side, looked up once or twice to give Mary a nod or a smile, but mostly he gave his attention to those seated around him. She saw, however, that near the end of the meal he excused himself, and that he did not return.

Servants came to light the many tapers of the overhead chandeliers against the approaching gloom of summer nightfall, just prior to the arrival of a large and elaborately iced cake. The many tiers were arranged to look like a set of grand stairs, bedecked with all manner of candied flora, fauna, and winged cherubim leading up to the church at the top, which was out of all proportion to the stairs leading up to it. The church’s doors were open, and a tiny marzipan bride and groom were just stepping out its doors, hand in hand. Mary had never seen a cake like it, a thought that for some reason only added to her feeling of discomfort. The party of well-wishers murmured at the sight of the sweet, and then broke into applause, saluting the cook’s master work as well as the couple whom it was intended to celebrate. Charles’s hand slipped over Mary’s, but she found she could not turn her head and look to him, could not smile, and so she settled on merely leaving her hand where it lay under his. Again she felt the need to close her eyes and hide away from everything and everyone in the room.

Charles and she were the first served, and when she had raised a bite of the cake to her lips, Mrs. Everett, on her right, asked her if it was tasty. She nodded even though her mouth had gone dry. She moved her fork on her plate, but not another morsel could she bring to pass her lips.

It was with an enormous sense of relief that she found the men now wished to take their port, pulling Charles along with them to drink to his health and that of his lady. The relief was not long standing, though, for the ladies were just as inclined to surround the bride-to-be, and she found herself at last having to crawl from her virtual silence to answer a hundred questions on where they would live, and what she would wear, and how did they meet? It kept her mind busy; at least she could say that for the assault.

***

John knew the house well enough to easily find the most deserted room. It was at the back of the house, far removed from the gaiety in the front rooms. Longing for solitude, he had made his way without a candle. The room was dark and with no fire on the grate, it mirrored the growing gloom outside.

The room’s air was still as well, and he found he longed for a fresh breath. He crossed to the double French doors leading out to the garden and threw open the doors. He leaned against the doorframe, letting the fresh air touch the skin of his face and hands, pulling it into his lungs as though he had been deprived for some while of its sweet flow.

He let the night sounds--of both the house and the garden beyond--override his own jumbled thoughts. He heard them without trying to comprehend them. It was a kind of music, soothing, steadying. The three-quarters moon was still low in the sky, but its light was not obscured by even the tiniest of clouds, so once his eyes adjusted, there was much that could be seen. Inside, a chair, a desk, a pile of unorganized books, while out of doors he saw gray shadow blossoms nodding in the night breeze, saw the pattern of the trellis, and the glistening of a little pond. It was a scene of serenity, and yet, he knew he was not really a part of such a vastly desired thing as serenity.

And so, despite his attempt to find a measure of peace, he was not particularly surprised when a voice invaded his wished-for obscurity.

“There’s the very fellow,” Lord Bretwyn said from the doorway, holding a lighted candlestick aloft. He squinted through the gloom, the small light only serving to make the darkness more apparent.

“You were looking for me?” John made no move to come away from the doorframe. So here was one of the very players who was disturbing his mind, making him restless in a way he had not been in many a year.

Bretwyn strode into the room, the light revealing a face not over-filled with jolliness, despite his hale-and-well-met tone. John felt his shoulders tense, Bretwyn’s tone telling him this was no accidental meeting. Mary’s fiance proved the point by saying, “I think we should talk. Each say what we would, yes?”

“Yes,” John said at once, allowing his relief at the lack of need for any more pretense to come into his answer.

“About Lady Mary, of course,” Bretwyn said.

“Yes,” John agreed again. “You must know she is very special to me.”

“I know it.” Bretwyn gave him a long up and down look, measuring him. “I’ll tell you true, my lord, there was more than once when I thought perhaps I should step aside, let you have the girl.” The statement hung in the air for a long moment. Bretwyn, perhaps a trifle flustered, went on at last.  “But then, at other times I got the distinct feeling even if I did, you’d not make a move in that direction.”

John looked back to the garden, as though to assess the quality of the roses whose color he could only guess at, but then he turned once more to the other man. He said simply, “I doubt I would have, at that.”

Charles turned his head a little, in the way a dog does when it hears a far and faint sound. “I hope…you realize of course that a man must declare himself at some point or other? One cannot string a woman along forever. That is to say…” his voice trailed away.

John stood straight, away from the door frame, his eyes narrowing. He did not like that there was something in Bretwyn’s voice that made him not entirely clear if the man spoke of John or himself. Surely one of them ought to be sure of the state of things…?

“Charles,” John said on a sigh, making himself relax once more against the open door’s frame. The man had been one of his few friends for some years now, since before his banishment, and John hated the unwanted but nonetheless tangible restraints springing up between them this night. “I know it is wrong-headed of me to speak-- but I want you to understand how easily Mary could be hurt. I want to be sure in my own mind that you know the manner of temperament which is hers. She’s been…overlooked, when she ought to have been the catch of any season.”

Bretwyn stared, scowling, and giving John the impression he wasn’t taking in the words.

In frustration, John went on. “She wouldn’t stand up well under those conditions which are normal in most households. The mistresses. The lengthy leaves. Liquor, whoring, all of it. She could not abide to be used and forgotten. If you want just a brood mare, then I beg you, do not take
this
woman to wife…” His words trailed away, for there was so much more he wanted to say, so many cautions and restrictions and guidelines, all of which he had absolutely no right to utter.

“I’m not an oaf,” Bretwyn said, a crackle of anger in his voice.

“No. No, of course you’re not.”

“I know how to treat a woman.”

“She won’t be just ‘a woman’. She’ll be your wife. She’ll expect...so much. She would deny it, if she heard it said, for she believes herself capable of a marriage of convenience, but in truth she would look to you, expecting fidelity. Affection. Support. All those finer instincts a husband is supposed to show, but which our gender so seldom seems capable of for long.”

“Well then!” Charles said, as he turned abruptly back toward the door to the hall. “Is there anything else you think I do not know about my betrothed?” he threw over his shoulder. It was not gently asked, and John could not fault him for being insulted.

There must have been something in the set of John’s face, for when Bretwyn spoke again, some of the edge had dropped away. “What if I were to tell you something of the lady, Rothayne? I will tell you, to ease your mind.”

He turned to stare out the open doors as John had done before him. John looked to the carpet at their feet.

“I know Lady Mary is not passionately in love with me. Sometimes I think I see a softening... She is ever gracious, of course. But, affection?” He pursed his mouth and considered. “Truth, I think I see it for…for someone else. And, yet, other times I think that is nothing more than merely a reflection of Mary’s sweet nature. I know...I like to think, once we are married, we will deal well together. Like most everyone, we’ll have to find our way.”

He paused, but seemed compelled to go on. “I have seen her looking upon me, judging me. But too, it...is as if she is searching me for…well, I do not know for what exactly. A kind of knowledge, I suppose. I see in her eyes that she is struggling. And there is something else--something I betray only to you, for I know how close the two of you are--that though I have had the privilege of three kisses from the lady, they have been very chaste kisses, very circumspect.”

Behind him, John slowly began to raise his head, a question flickering up into his eyes.

“Although I can only applaud her, er…
rectitude,
one could be excused for being surprised that a lady of her--well, face the truth!--a lady of her years is so well
sheltered,
let us say. One could be excused for expecting some more response than…” he gave a self-conscious laugh, “well, than your sister might give you.”

John stared unblinkingly at Bretwyn’s averted face.

“Don’t mistake me,” the man said with some fervency, still staring out at nothing, choosing not to meet John’s steady gaze. “I am pleased to find Mary of such fine, upstanding morality, and there’s time enough for...refinements of behavior later. Still, one could hope for a
hint
of ardor, just a flicker…” Bretwyn frowned of a sudden, and then cleared his throat, scowling even more deeply as he fell into silent thought, obviously disturbed at the tenor of his own mind.