When the Splendor Falls (23 page)

Althea tightened her grip around the tender flesh of two soft arms to silence the muffled giggles she could hear behind her back. “You needn’t disturb yourself, Mama. I will be returning to the dining room shortly. I am feeling better, so I shall enjoy a cup of tea and perhaps some buttered toast and marmalade. Rest a while longer, please, ma’am,” Althea pleaded, for their mother looked rather frail, her complexion startlingly pale as she lay against the piled-up pillows of her bed. She had loosened the customary, tight chignon, allowing her hair to fall in long golden strands that curled naturally over the soft cashmere of her dusky rose dressing gown.

“Shall I have another pot of tea brought up for you, Mama?” she inquired solicitously, for she could see a half-emptied china cup next to her mother’s bed, the contents having grown cold.

“No, truly, I will be quite refreshed when Jolie returns with my syllabub. As soon as I make myself decent, I will join you in the dining room and greet our guests. But the mere thought that your Aunt Maribel Lu will be arriving tomorrow causes my temples to pound, and I dare say the milk is already beginning to curdle in anticipation of her visit,” she declared, lightly pressing her fingertips against her blue-veined temples. “And no telling what ideas she will have planted in Thisbe’s head if she and Stuart James rode up with them. Oh, and where is Leigh Alexandra? Did she return from her ride?” Beatrice Amelia asked again, not having forgotten her middle daughter for a second.

“Yes, ma’am, she’s changing,” Althea replied, bending the truth slightly.

“Give her a hand, dear, will you? I trust you can help her do something with her hair. It is so thick and unruly. Inherited from the Travers side of the family. And I do believe we will allow Blythe to wear her hair in a more sophisticated style come Friday. I’ve also decided she may dab on a drop or two of my gardenia
eau de toilette
. It is a lovely, light scent I picked up in Charleston at my perfumers, but only a drop or two, and no perfume for her quite yet. Now, run along, dear, and see that Leigh finds the appropriate morning gown. One never knows who might come to call. And make certain you have plenty of butter on your toast.”

“Oh, I’ll see that Leigh looks quite proper, Mama,” Althea reassured her, backing out of the doorway as her mother settled herself more comfortably against the lace-edged pillows, the lavender and roses fragrance that permeated the fine linen apparently soothing to her nerves because she sighed deeply.

“Oh, Leigh, did you hear?” Blythe whispered, her voice rising as they reached their own bedchamber. “Mama said I could wear scent! I’ve never worn any before! And it is to be her finest from Charleston,” Blythe said in awe, her steps carrying her figure spinning into the room, where she threw herself onto the bed. Arms folded behind her head, she stared up dreamily at the canopy above her head, wondering what hairstyle she would choose. “In another year I’ll be able to wear perfume. I want a scent bottle just like you have, Leigh, and filled with jessamine perfume. That is your favorite, isn’t it, Leigh?”

Leigh glanced over at Blythe’s ingenuous expression. “Yes, that is my favorite, but are you certain you haven’t already sampled some of it?” she asked, for her perfume always seemed to be in a different position on their small dressing table.

Blythe blushed guiltily. “Only twice, Leigh,” she admitted. “But I do so love the way you smell after you’ve used some of it. And it is such a pretty bottle. I just love to hold it,” she said, glancing over at the tear-shaped flacon of dark sapphire-blue glass, cut and polished and gilded with stars. The ornate mount and top of shining gold.

Leigh smiled understandingly, suddenly feeling as old and wise as Althea, for she could never become truly angry with Blythe. “I love it too.”

“I’ll have to bring back one for you too, Lucy, only in a deep emerald-green, the next time Nathan takes me to Paris,” Althea promised, a smile tugging briefly at the corners of her lips as she thought of the present she would give Blythe on Friday to celebrate her birthday; for she had indeed brought back that scent bottle for her youngest sister with the intention of giving it to her on the special day when she would be considered a young woman.

“Oh, Althea, would you really, truly do that? Promise?” Blythe asked, her dreams soaring as she looked again at Leigh’s treasured scent bottle.

“I promise. I’ve always liked this gown on you, Leigh,” Althea commented as she took the mauve-striped muslin down from where it hung on the clothes press. The layers of gauzy muslin floated airily around her figure as she placed it on the bed, carefully spreading out the folds of the full skirt. The many flounces were decorated in a wide-bordered, exotic-patterned print in varying shades of purple and trimmed in lace. The tight-fitting bodice had a row of tiny silk-covered buttons, and the bell sleeves showed the crisp linen of the undersleeves. The high neckline had a wide, turned-down lace collar that was fastened with a colorful trimming of matching silk ribbons; just the gown for a demure young woman.

“Really, Leigh, I do not think I have ever seen you looking quite so…so…” Althea paused, unable to find the proper words to describe her sister’s appearance.

“She tripped and fell into a haystack,” Blythe said, wondering how Leigh had even managed to get straw stuck in the lace of her pantalettes. Suddenly, she sat up, and as straight as her mother never seemed tired of requesting her to, her expression incredulous.

“
Married by spring?
” She repeated their mother’s words of moments before. “Are you really getting married, Leigh? You never told me Matthew Wycliffe had actually asked for your hand in marriage,” she said, her eyes full of hurt bewilderment. “I thought it was just wishful thinking. Has he really asked you? When? When did he ask you? I wish you’d told me.”

“He hasn’t asked me,” Leigh said, her voice muffled as she pulled her petticoats over her pantalettes with their lacy, beribboned hems.

“He hasn’t?”

“No,” Leigh said, puzzled herself now by their mother’s statement, and as her head appeared above the petticoats, her curious gaze met Althea’s.

“Well, I believe it is rather more than wishful thinking on the part of our mother,” Althea said, watching Leigh’s expression carefully. “It would seem as if Matthew Wycliffe will ask Papa’s permission to ask for your hand in marriage this week. What do you say to that?”

Leigh quickly glanced down, pretending to be lost in the act of tying the strings of her petticoats, but Althea’s hands gently replaced her fumbling fingers as she quickly completed the task.

Glancing around Leigh’s hunched shoulders, Althea frowned slightly as she noticed Leigh’s curiously disturbed expression. Her sister was either being very modest, and was extremely embarrassed by the thought of Matthew Wycliffe’s proposal, or she was concerned that he might not ask for her hand as Guy seemed to expect him to, or…Leigh did not welcome such a proposal.

Standing in her freshly laundered chemise and petticoats, the smooth curve of the back of her neck exposed as she tried to pull the tangles from her hair, Leigh suddenly seemed so vulnerable to Althea. She didn’t want her sister to feel pressured into accepting Matthew Wycliffe’s proposal if she did not wish him for her husband.

How fortunate she had been that Nathan, whom she loved dearly, had asked her to become his wife. Although one did one’s duty in life, to be wed to a man one did not love would be unbearable, Althea thought, thinking of the intimacies she shared with Nathan as she gazed at her sister’s down-bent head in growing concern.

Taking the silver-backed brush from the dressing table, she patted Leigh’s slim shoulder comfortingly. “You do not have to marry anyone unless you wish to. Always remember that, my dear,” Althea told her, beginning to brush the long strands of golden-brown hair.

“I am fond of Matthew. Very fond. In fact, I like him better than any other gentleman of my acquaintance. He is a fine man, a man one would be proud to wed,” Leigh said softly in praise of him. “And lately, I have come to believe that I am in love with him. I have no objections to anything about him, either in appearance or demeanor. And I suppose I have led him to believe that I would welcome his suit. B-but what is love? How do you know when you are truly in love?” she asked suddenly, staring up worriedly into Althea’s eyes.

“Love is a very strange emotion, and it is one that cannot be explained very simply,” Althea said, continuing to brush Leigh’s hair until the strands were free of tangles and straw and crackled beneath the bristles. “Sometimes it grows gradually, and sometimes, it comes very unexpectedly.”

“How did you feel when you fell in love with Nathan?” Leigh asked again, determined to have it explained so she would know exactly when it happened to her—or if perhaps it already had. She needed to know.

Althea stilled for a moment, her thoughts drifting back across the years to Charleston. It had been her last summer there, before returning home to Virginia—and to Nathan. She had fallen in love, but not with the man she was expected to wed. Not with the man she had grown up with, who had been her dearest friend. Althea smiled with contentment, for she did love Nathan with every breath in her body. It was a love she treasured, which was strong and everlasting, which had grown deeper with each year of their marriage, but that summer, when she dreamed of her secret love, it had not been Nathan. She had thought she would die with the pain of her aching heart. For the man had been no gentleman, although he was of an aristocratic family from the Coast. He had been a heartbreakingly handsome rake. A gambling man who smiled with pale eyes and sensuous lips, and played a woman as false as the cards he laid down on the green baize.

“Your heart pounds so wildly that you cannot catch your breath,” she said softly, her brown eyes saddened with remembrance of the foolish young girl she had been, dreaming dreams that summer that could never come true. With gentle efficiency, she plaited Leigh’s long length of hair. “Your stomach churns with butterflies, you shiver uncontrollably, and your palms feel clammy,” she continued. “When you meet his eyes, you feel as if he can see into your soul, and it bares itself to him. You cannot hide your love from him, and, if he is not a good man, he can hurt you,” Althea said, her words hardly above a whisper as she remembered the stolen kiss she had foolishly believed had been a declaration of love—at least until she’d seen him in the gardens with another man’s wife, their passionate embrace shocking her back into common good sense and the arms of Nathan Braedon.

“Well, I’m never going to fall in love if that’s what happens,” Blythe declared in amazement, her rapt attention broken by so horrible a description. “It sounds like swamp fever.”

Althea laughed, for it had been a long time ago, and she could hardly even remember his face. “One day, little one,” she warned, taking the two heavy braids and wrapping and pinning them into a neat coronet atop Leigh’s head. Finding a pair of delicately hued silk bows, she pinned them where the two braids met at the crown. “However, do not mistake infatuation for love. There is a difference. And if you confuse the two, you could come to make a tragic decision that could affect the rest of your life, destroy it even, and the people you love.”

“How do you know the difference?” Leigh asked, her heart pounding sickeningly as Althea began to button her into her very proper mauve-striped muslin, her hair neatly confined in prim braids and dressed in a manner her mother would have approved of.

Althea sighed. “Sometimes it is difficult to know the difference. That is the danger. Now, a little cologne,” she said, picking up a floral-painted porcelain bottle and touching the light scent of jessamine and roses behind Leigh’s ears and on the underside of each of her wrists. With a low laugh, she added, “I will give you the truest test of love. Infatuation is like cologne, it will fade after a short time. It is light and airy, never meant to last because it was never as strong to begin with. However, it has its proper time and place to be worn, perchance a dalliance in the afternoon, but love, love is much like perfume, and should be worn for special occasions, a masked ball, or perhaps at a wedding. A perfume is based on essential oils which are rich and long-lasting. When placed on a woman’s skin, and at a point where the pulse is warm with her heartbeat, it will blossom into a very heady fragrance, and one that will endure. That is what should happen with love.

“Infatuation never truly touches the heart. Love comes from deep within the heart, and touches it in so many ways. Love goes far beyond mere attraction. Physical appearance changes through the years, and the attraction one might have felt once for a person can fade. That is why love, especially when between two people who marry, should be based on more than that initial attraction. There must be respect and trust between them. They must honor each other. If they are friends, then their faith in each other, their love, will always remain. That can never fade.”

“Is that what you and Nathan feel?” Leigh asked, thinking her sister had never looked more beautiful, for her words had been reflected by a warm glow in her brown eyes when she spoke her husband’s name.

Althea nodded. “I have been very fortunate that Nathan offered me his love. I cannot imagine a life without him now,” she admitted. “So search your heart very carefully before you give it into the possession of someone who is not deserving of so rare a treasure,” she warned her sister, for Leigh had a very giving heart, full of warmth and love, and she would despair of seeing the wrong man stealing something so precious from her. “’Tis far too priceless a gift to squander,” she said, turning Leigh around and nodding her approval as she smoothed a fold of the mauve-striped muslin.

“Oh, look, Leigh! It’s Adam, and his friend, the stranger, they’re walking up to the big house. I can hardly wait!” Blythe cried from the window, where she’d run just moments before, hoping she would see their guests.

Leigh hurried over, squeezing beside her as she leaned out over the windowsill, forgetful of ladylike behavior as she tried to catch a glance of them, but they’d already disappeared beneath the veranda roof.