With This Ring (2 page)

Major Reed lay back down on his cot.
Put that way, I am in for an interesting time of it, he thought. He
watched the ladies again until they loomed larger and larger and
stepped into his dreams. When he woke, the cot next to his was
empty, and the ladies were gone. His dilemma, however,
remained.

“
L
ydia, I
vow if you do not come quickly, Kitty will go into deep spasms! She
will never find a duke or a marquis, and we will all be
ruined!”

“
Yes, Mama. At once,
Mama.”

It was impossible to ignore Mama,
even heard through two closed doors. Lydia closed her book, but did
not move from her perch in the window seat. She glanced at the
clock. “I wonder, Kitty, what has precipitated this latest crisis,
the third of the morning?” she asked out loud. “Could it be that
your curling rod is misplaced, and because this is not Imperial
Rome, you cannot beat your maid into a coma? Or perhaps you cannot
find the ribbon we wasted four hours picking out yesterday. Yes, I
am certain that is the problem.”

“
Lydia!”

Still she did not leave her
comfortable spot. There was suddenly something so daunting about
facing Kitty and Mama at the same time, both of them upset, both of
them convinced that nothing could be more important than their
needs. Not for the first time since their arrival a month ago from
Devon did she kick herself for thinking for even one moment that
life would be different here on Holly Street.

I have the vast misfortune to be an
optimist in a family where one crisis follows another like waves on
a beach, she considered. I even thought that London might be fun.
Mama is right;
I am a
fool.

“
Courage,” she muttered as she stood
up, took one last look out the window at all the activity in the
street below, and went slowly down the hall. She imagined the scene
even before she opened the door. Kitty would be in tears—not
ordinary tears, mind you, but tears that clung to her long
eyelashes like dew on rose petals. Her lower lip would be
quivering, and her eyes would be stormy with disappointment. Lydia
knew from a lifetime of experience that if she waited just one
second too long to appear, Kitty would begin to breathe in short
gasps, a prelude to towering, monumental hysteria.

“
And we can’t have that,” she
murmured as she took a deep breath of her own and opened the
door.

Her younger sister Kitty stood in
the middle of the room, surrounded by a morning’s worth of dresses
tried on, rejected, and left to wrinkle on the floor. Her arms were
stiff by her sides, but she had not quite reached that state of
irritation that led to the ruin of one’s entire day.

“
Yes, my dear?” she asked quietly as
she picked up a discarded dress and shook it as she wanted to shake
her sister.

Kitty regarded her with beautiful,
mournful eyes, eyes of the sky in early evening, violet eyes
already the subject of innumerable dithyrambs from besotted poets
in Devon too young to know better. She took a deep breath and a
sob—the perfect sob—caught in her throat. “I cannot find the
ribbon, Lyddy!”

“
I know that you have hidden it to
do poor, poor Kitty mischief! I was telling your father only this
morning that you are an unnatural child and should have been left
behind!”

On a hillside like the Greeks? In
Devon? Then, who would fetch and carry and smooth over everyone’s
spasms and indignations? Lydia thought as she turned to regard her
mother. “Mama, I would never,” she said quietly. “Kitty, remember
that we put it in the top drawer of your bureau so you would not
forget?” She went to the drawer, pulled out the length of ribbon,
and handed it to her sister.

Kitty clutched the ribbon to her
heaving breast, shed a few becoming tears of relief, then took a
good look at the object of her distracted search. “I thought it was
darker, sister,” she said accusingly. She held it out at arm’s
length, as though it would sink its fangs into her perfect arm. “It
won’t do. Mama, make her take it back and choose me
another.”

No, Lydia thought, in that quiet
place inside her mind that was hers alone. I will not return that
stupid ribbon and drag myself through three more hours of shops to
agonize over the merits of one color over another. I will not.
“Whatever you wish, Mama,” she said.

Mama, no stranger to tragedy
herself, threw herself into a chair and stared at her elder
daughter. “Lydia, what I wish is that you would mind the
insincerity of your tones. No wonder you are twenty-two and still
single.” She patted her heart, that organ of affection. “With
notably few exceptions, I can trace every one of my palpitations to
your intransigence.”

These are heavy doings, Lydia told
herself as she folded the ribbon. The day is so beautiful that I do
not have the strength for Mama’s cardiac insufficiencies and my
role in them. “I will be happy to return the ribbon, Mama.” It
sounded sincere to her. She meant it sincerely—anything to stave
off another lecture, more accusations, and perhaps the back of
Mama’s hand for punctuation.

After a long pause, long enough for
Lydia to feel the familiar gnawing in her stomach, Mama nodded.
“Very well.” She smiled at her other daughter. “Kitty, love, be a
dear and step aside so Lydia can pick up the rest of your frocks
and return them to the dressing room. Sit here, my dear.” She
patted the cushion beside her. “I have something of interest for
you, and I suppose, for Lydia, too, if she can do two things at
once!”

She and Kitty put their blond heads
together and laughed. Lydia knew better than to look at either of
them. That would only mean more laughter at her expense. It is one
of the seven wonders of the world that I have any pride left at
all, she thought as she carried the dresses into the next room
where Kitty’s maid cowered. “Best iron them quickly,” she whispered
as she shut the door.

“
As I was walking this morning, I
overheard dear Lady Walsingham remark that it was all the rage for
young women of fashion and sense to go to St. Barnabas.”

Kitty gave her a blank stare. “Mama,
it is not Sunday,” she said.

Mama laughed and touched Kitty under
the chin. “You are so amusing!”

Thank goodness I did not say that,
Lydia considered as she edged herself into a chair. Mama would have
called me a dolt and tugged at my hair.

“
A number of wounded soldiers are
lodged there right now. Some battle or other ….”

“
Toulouse, Mama,” Lydia said without
thinking. “It has been in all the papers, and now the war is ov—”
Mama glared at her, and she was silent.

“
One battle is very much like
another, and it is amazingly ill-bred to claim knowledge of any of
them,” Mama declared, dismissing most of history in a single
sentence. “The import is this: The better sort are going to St.
Barnabas to minister to the soldiers.”

“
Good God, Mama, you cannot be
serious!” Kitty exclaimed. “We have to
touch
them?”

“
Oh, no, dear, no,” Mama soothed,
taking Kitty’s hands in hers to stop their agitated motion. “I
think you merely walk up and down and look sympathetic. Possibly
cluck your tongue, but surely nothing more. I have it on good
authority that it is the high kick of fashion right
now.”

That will be onerous, indeed, Lydia
considered. No wonder Kitty is concerned. I do not think Kitty
understands the ramifications of sympathy, particularly since such
an emotion requires the acknowledgment of others.

Kitty shuddered and drew closer into
the circle of her mother’s arms. “But, Mama, suppose one of them
reaches out to touch me?”

They wouldn’t dare, Lydia thought,
then turned her head to cough so Mama would not see her
smile.

Mama drew herself up straight again.
“My dearest, that is why nature intended for young ladies of
fashion to carry parasols. You can beat them off!”

Oh, I like that, Lydia told herself.
So much philanthropy all at once must be nipped in the bud.
Probably it is a good thing that soldiers are used to harsh living,
particularly if they run afoul of the “better sort,” as Mama puts
it.

“
But why, Mama, why do we have to do
this?” Kitty asked as the storm warnings rose in her eyes
again.

Mama regarded Kitty sorrowfully.
“Because, my precious kitten, your father—drat his timid soul—never
could bring himself to visit London, or even pursue acquaintances
beyond the borders of our own district!” She rose suddenly and took
a turn about the room, her agitation unmistakable. “We have money
enough, but no one knows us! We are living in a rented house on the
fringe of the best area, and your father makes no push to renew old
friendships.”

And if I have told him once I have
told him a thousand times, Kitty love, you are too beautiful to
waste on a red-faced squire’s son in Devon, Lydia thought as she
watched her mother take another turn about the room. Isn’t that
what you have always said next, Mama? See? I have memorized
it.

She knew what would follow that
speech, so she tried to make herself smaller in the chair.
“… Too beautiful to waste on a red-faced squire’s son in
Devon,” Mama was saying. Lydia winced as Mama directed her
attention to her. “Blame Lydia, if this exercise makes you
uncomfortable,” she said to Kitty. “If Lydia had been even slightly
less plain,
she
could have smoothed the way for
you!
As it is, you must exert yourself and be seen where it will do you
the most good.”

“
But a church with wounded soldiers?
Oh, Mama!”

Kitty, you are fast approaching the
limits of Mama’s endurance, Lydia thought as she watched her mother
and sister. Lips in a thin line, eyes narrowing … I know the
signs. Kitty, are you really so dense that you never figured them
out? Of course, the wrath comes down less strenuously on you,
because you are beautiful, where I am not.

“
It is an excellent plan,” Mama was
saying now, her tone placating. “You and Lydia will wait outside
the church in our carriage until you see young ladies and gentlemen
going inside. Join their party. Tag along behind them.” She took
Kitty by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Make something
of this opportunity!”

“
Suppose no one notices us, Mama,”
Kitty countered.

“
Everyone notices you, my love,”
Mama soothed. “It is Lydia that no one notices. It must be the
right people, however, to do us any good. When we go to Almack’s on
Friday, you will have someone to talk to,” she reasoned, concluding
triumphantly, “Visiting a few dirty soldiers will not have been in
vain.” She waited a moment. “Very well, then. The coachman will be
ready for you at two of the clock.”

So we are reduced to nipping at the
gentry’s coattails like ill-mannered puppies? Lydia wondered as she
gave Mama sufficient time to descend the stairs. When she was sure
Mama was down the stairs, she opened Kitty’s door quietly and
tiptoed to the landing. As she looked down to the main floor, she
saw the door to Papa’s study open. She watched, humiliated for him,
as he stuck his nose out, looked this way and that for Mama, heaved
a sigh that she could hear on the first-floor landing, then quietly
closed the door again.

Poor Papa, she thought, and not for
the first time, as she returned to her room. He has nothing but two
daughters, and his estate is entailed away to a male relative who
scarcely needs it. I wish it were not so, but I believe he only
waits to die, and inflict Mama on one or the other of
us.

She picked up her book again, but it
held no interest for her. Instead, she looked out the window,
dreading, like Kitty, the visit to St. Barnabas, if for different
reasons. I do not wish to tag along and encroach upon the goodwill
of others, she thought. I am not nosing after scraps from the
ton’s
table, or licking someone’s pot, no matter how it
might forward Kitty’s prospects.

As she looked at the traffic in the
street below, she noticed her own outline in the wavy window glass,
indistinct and barely there. It was her life’s story, and as she
sat and looked at her dim reflection, she discovered that she did
not care for what she saw. “But how do I change the people that I
must live with?” she asked herself. She peered closer at the
outline of herself in the glass, then reached out to touch her
reflection. “Could it be that if these people will not change, then
I must change myself?” she asked.

With varying degrees of impatience
and resignation, they waited for what seemed like eons in the
family carriage outside the church of St. Barnabas. It was on the
edge of London’s docks, but on a quiet, little used street made all
the quieter by the quantities of straw strewn throughout the entire
block to muffle the sound of passage and allow a measure of peace
to the suffering inmates within.

“
It is a mystery to me how you can
remain so content, Lyddy,” Kitty complained after an entire stretch
of ten minutes when no one paid any attention to her.

“
My dear sister, that is why I
always travel with a book. Let me recommend it to you,” Lydia said
as she slit open another page.