Always the Bluestocking

by Murdoch, Emily E K

  Pleasantries were exchanged as Orrinshire and Larnwick disappeared in one direction, bickering like an old married couple.

  Chester smiled affectionately. “They have not changed a whit, have they? Perhaps they might have done if they had married.”

  “Not like you,” Patrick said easily as they started walking. “It has been—what, a year since you wed your lovely lady?”

  “Just over a year, the best year of my life, I will own it,” said Chester cheerfully. “I do enjoy our lunches, however infrequent they are, and however frequently the bill ends up at my door, but I will admit I am looking forward to getting home to my wife.”

  They passed a crowd of young gentlemen arguing vociferously, taking up the entire pavement, and not noticing that Patrick and Chester were forced to step into the road.

  Patrick smiled after them. “Were we that obnoxious as children?”

  “They are hardly children!” Chester laughed. “And my dear chap, we are not that old!”

  “You are, I think,” countered Patrick, “with all your talk of your wife, scuttling off home before dark. Are you that forced under her thumb that you have a curfew?”

  Chester shrugged. “Not in the slightest—if anything, I have far more leeway than I ever thought possible for a wedded gentleman. When you meet that right person, all you want is to be with them. Being away from them is, somehow, less exciting, less thrilling than anything else.”

  “Anything else?” Patrick raised an eyebrow as they turned a corner. “Well, to be sure, there must be plenty of things a gentleman and a lady can entertain themselves with in the home—the bedchamber, for a start…”

  But his quip had fallen on deaf ears. Chester gave him a look that was almost pitying. Patrick found his words stumbling on his tongue and eventually fell silent.

  “’Tis far more than that. A connection, something I never knew I could have with any person,” Chester said quietly. “It is special. Unique.”

  Patrick opened his mouth to inquire further. Matrimony was not something he knew anything about; his own father, Lord have mercy on his soul, was not the sort of gentleman to share anything with his son. And his mother…

  But just as he was searching for the right question, he was distracted by something about fifty yards ahead. They were approaching the Bodleian Library, the streets teeming with students with harassed looking expressions on their faces.

  None of them, however, looked as harassed as the two porters dragging a figure, kicking and screaming, away from the doors of the Bodleian Library. They were making such a racket that people up and down Catte Street were staring.

  They kicked again, and Patrick saw a flurry of skirts rise.

  It was a woman.

  “And stay out!” The porter snarled as he and his companion deposited her onto the ground in a heap.

  The woman crumpled, hair loose over her face and skirt dusty from the road. Patrick could not help but laugh to see her sprawled outside the library. It was so ridiculous, so comical that—

  She swept back her hair, and Patrick stopped laughing immediately, halting in his tracks.

  Mariah.

  “These bluestockings have no concept of proprietary,” Chester was saying, shaking his head. “To think, carried out of the Bodleian like—”

  “One moment,” Patrick muttered, barely taking in a word. Moving away from Chester, he stepped toward the now upright Miss Wynn. Something drew him close, a desire to speak with her, though he barely knew what to say.

  “Should I wait for you, Donal?”

  Chester’s words reached his ears, but their meaning seemed lost. All Patrick could concentrate on—causing an awkward collision with an elderly gentleman—was Miss Wynn.

  She had not walked away from the steps of the Bodleian Library, focusing instead on brushing the dust from her skirts.

  Patrick swallowed. Why did his words feel so strange in his mouth? “Well, what a surprise.”

  Miss Wynn turned to face him. The moment she recognized him, her hazel eyes narrowed, and she returned her attention to her skirts.

  “My, my, Lord Donal,” she said airily, “are you following me in the hope of being afforded the pleasure of seeing me denied education over and over again?”

  Patrick shrugged, noting the averted eyes of other gentlemen. “’Tis a small town, Miss Wynn. If you are determined to make a scene, chances are I will be in the crowd.”

  Miss Wynn looked around pointedly. “I think you will find you are the only gentleman so uncouth as to stare at me, my lord. Perhaps you are more interested in women’s education than you think.”

  It was impossible to tell whether it was the lingering heat of the afternoon, Chester’s staring and confused expression now that he had wandered over to see what Patrick was doing, the splendid lunch he had so recently enjoyed, or Miss Wynn’s words which had done it, but Patrick found his waistcoat was suddenly a little too tight around his chest. His heart was pounding, and he was hot, far too hot.

  “It was chance I saw you,” he said a little too quickly. “You cannot have forgotten my opinions on women’s education.”

  Miss Wynn snorted. “Yes, you consider us subhuman, not worthy of any intellectual abilities, with any encouragement utterly wasted.”

  Now Patrick knew where the heat was coming from. It was rage.

  “That is absolutely not what I think,” he said hotly. “Men and women are different beings, created differently, and with different roles in society. We deserve different things, and—”

  “What you mean,” returned Miss Wynn quickly, “is women do not deserve an education.”

  They were starting to attract attention. A trio of gentlemen had stopped their conversation and halted their progress down the street to watch, and there was a young lady, perhaps only seventeen, staring avidly.

  Patrick swallowed. He did not perform well before an audience. “That is not what I meant at all,” he started, trying to keep his voice low and steady.

  But before he could explain to Miss Wynn his beliefs that a gentleman should provide and care for their families, and shoulder the natural pressures from such a responsibility, Miss Wynn spoke again.

  Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks pink as she raised her voice. “You have no understanding of women at all, Lord Donal, and I believe your mother would be ashamed to hear you speak in such a way!”

  Pain radiated through Patrick’s heart as though Miss Wynn had taken a knife to his chest. It was agony, pure unadulterated agony to hear that aspersion cast on him—and worse, in public.

  “Y-you have no…no…” he tried to say, his tongue seemingly dislocated from his mind as the shock of the agony rippled through him.

  Miss Wynn was waiting for him to continue, but there was an arched eyebrow, which made it clear she had gained the better of him.

  Patrick swallowed. Grief overwhelmed him, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not speak coherently.

  “Damn and blast it!” he managed to shout, causing great consternation in both his audience and Miss Wynn, and without saying another word, he turned on his heels and stormed away.

  Miss Wynn be damned, Patrick thought as he escaped. He did not have to stand there and take such insults. He would spend the next few weeks doing naught but sleeping in lectures and indulging in lunches.

  He had no time for bluestockings.

  Chapter Five

  “And of course, I saw the avenue as it could be, once the firs have grown, and it was my father after all who had always said he wanted a road leading up to the house, and so when it came for me to take charge of the estate, the first thing I did was…”

  It was all Mariah could do to prevent her boredom from becoming obvious. That was not how a lady of society behaved, especially when invited to what was considered the most fashionable house in Oxford.

  She stifled another yawn by lifting up her hand of cards. The gentleman seated opposite her did not notice. The man to her left was still talking, almost wi
thout taking a breath.

  “—and yet, I had my way. Oaks, I said? Nonsense, no one will want oaks in a hundred years, they will look simply ghastly. What you want is something a little more decadent, and so firs, I thought. I sent a man up to Scotland, and he advised me that for the best firs, I must speak to…”

  Mariah breathed out heavily and shifted in her seat. Really, she had not even wanted to accept Mrs. Worsley’s invitation to her stupid card game. She could think of few evenings more dull than forced conversation with Oxford’s society over port and candlelight.

  But that was not how it was done. Her mother had taught her enough about good manners and what was expected of her after joining society, that Mariah had written back to Mrs. Worsley with relatively good grace and accepted her invitation.

  She had regretted it the moment she had walked into the room.

  “Can you not keep quiet?” The gentleman opposite Mariah snapped at their talkative companion. The young lady on Mariah’s right gave a giggle, which she quickly suppressed. “I am trying to concentrate, Mr. Hobbs, and your endless firs talk is mighty distracting!”

  Mr. Hobbs colored, and Mariah felt a little sorry for him. She could sense the nervousness in him. She had met plenty of gentlemen—and a few ladies, too—who had compensated for that fear through over-eager talking.

  Mariah leaned toward the now silent gentleman. “I heard tell that firs are quite challenging to protect, especially in those estates where deer or rabbits are quite numerous. Have you found that?”

  The gentleman attempting to concentrate on the game, Mr. Wright, scowled. Mariah stared back. She was not going to allow a bully with such little intelligence for a simple card game tease this Mr. Hobbs.

  “Y-Yes,” Mr. Hobbs said hesitantly, with a quick look at Mr. Wright. “But I…I find that with good management, and a park manager who knows his onions, firs can…can thrive.”

  Mariah did not have a chance to respond. With a cry of delight, Mr. Wright laid down his cards and looked proudly up at the table.

  The other young lady gasped and applauded, her own cards all played.

  Mariah sighed. Card games were always dull when it was easy to win, but there was nothing for it. She was not going to pretend her intelligence was lower than it was, like Miss Lawson evidently was. Why, they had had a reasonable conversation about the latest political scandal not twenty minutes ago, but now that Mr. Wright was preening, she was fawning over him.

  Mariah attempted not to gloat overly much as she laid down her winning hand. “I think, however…”

  Her voice disappeared delicately as her three companions stared at her hand, and then over to Mr. Wright’s.

  It was Mr. Hobbs who spoke first, almost with a laugh. “My word, Miss Wynn, you are a dark horse!”

  The smile on Miss Lawson’s face had frozen, but it was nothing to the look of shock on Mr. Wright. His eyes darted between the two sets of cards, as though attempting to discover exactly how he had been outwitted.

  Well, it was all about calculating chance, was it not, and there were few people in Oxford, it seems, that bothered to consider such things before laying down a hand.

  “Brava, Miss Wynn,” Miss Lawson said quietly, her eyes now focused on Mr. Wright.

  He had still not said a word, but a crease of suspicion was now marring his forehead.

  Mariah smiled softly. “No, Mr. Wright, I have not cheated. Indeed, it would be difficult to cheat at this game, do you not think?”

  “Then, how?” He spat most ungraciously. “I mean…you are just a…I have been playing this game for over a decade!”

  Any desire to speak kindly to Mr. Wright had now disappeared from Mariah’s heart, but she was still in public and a guest of Mrs. Worsley, so she attempted to explain without fury.

  “You see, Mr. Wright,” she said, not taking her gaze from him, “with the cards already presented to the table, the odds ensured it was unlikely, although not impossible, for you to be holding the winning cards. As soon as you revealed your hand, it was clear. The formula is not so complex, and I can take you through it if you wish.”

  She shot a smile at Miss Lawson but was disappointed to see that instead of being impressed, Miss Lawson looked a little embarrassed by her. Mr. Hobbs was now also a little discomforted, and neither of them met Mariah’s eyes as she looked around the table.

  Mariah swallowed. She had never felt comfortable in company, and ever since her adoption by the Wynns, she had been conscious she did not belong to this world.

  She had not been born to it. She did not have noble blood running in her veins. Society was something you were born and bred into, and it was moments like this that reaffirmed she did not belong here.

  A young lady who had been observing the card table leaned forward and whispered something into Miss Lawson’s ear. Mariah was not able to catch the exact words, but she could hear her name. Miss Lawson and the lady simpered, and Mariah’s face grew hot.

  “Well then,” she said awkwardly, desperately attempting to ignore them. “Whose turn is it to deal the next hand—is that you, Mr. Hobbs?”

  But Mr. Wright was rising from his seat hurriedly. “I do apologize, Miss Wynn, Miss Lawson, Mr. Hobbs, but I simply must speak to…”

  His voice trailed off, disappearing with his coattails as they whirled away.

  Mr. Hobbs coughed and looked at the cards spread out across the table. Discomfort settled in Mariah’s stomach as she tried not to allow Mr. Wright’s rudeness to overshadow her evening, but it was at that moment, Miss Lawson leaned over to hiss.

  “That was my one chance to speak properly to Mr. Wright,” she glared at Mariah, absolute venom dripping from her words. “And now you have ruined it for me! Good evening, Miss Wynn.”

  Miss Lawson rose haughtily, and at the exact same instant, Mr. Hobbs rose from his chair, not even bothering to concoct an excuse.

  Mariah sat silently at the empty table. This was certainly not the evening she had predicted; she had now opened herself up to public ridicule. There was a quiet cough somewhere behind her, and someone else giggled.

  Perhaps if the floor could swallow her up, she could disappear from this nightmare and avoid the party entirely.

  Ever since a child, the rules of society had been overly complex. Little Miss Mariah had been the darling of her tutors, but the simple rules that dictated conversation with others were a complete mystery to her, no matter how much she studied them.

  The memory of a particularly stuffy afternoon in the schoolroom rose in her mind, and Mariah tried not to allow her face to portray the pain it revisited.

  “Miss Mariah, you will attend!”

  Her tutor, Mr. Portland, was glaring as Mariah reluctantly put away the book about the planets and attended to the dancing steps, which had been carefully written in elegant chalk on the blackboard.

  “I apologize, Mr. Portland,” she had said meekly, but her words had done nothing to prevent his ire.

  “You will notice, Miss Mariah, that you have not finished your assigned reading,” he said, looking at the book abandoned on the side by the window, A Young Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Enjoyment.

  Mariah had scrunched up her nose. Even when the rules of polite society were written down in a book, they seemed far more complex than they needed to be.

  “I am far more interested by—” she had begun.

  The ruler Mr. Portland had been holding was slapped down onto the desk, causing a resounding smack, which echoed around the room. Mariah jumped, and Mr. Portland smiled.

  “It does not matter to me what you are interested in, Miss Mariah,” Mr. Portland had said in a low voice. “You are just a little girl, and an adopted one at that. You will not need to learn much, just how to smile, simper, and dance. Dancing is today’s lesson. Put away your book.”

  And Mariah had looked down at her book on planets, which had exquisite drawings of the stars and the constellations they made, and her gaze had moved to the ruler, still quivering in M
r. Portland’s hand.

  “Miss?”

  Mariah jumped. She was no longer eight years old, but one and twenty, and had evidently lost all concentration whilst seated alone at a card table. A gentleman she did not know was leaning over her with a concerned look.

  “Are you expecting three to join you? Or are you happy for us to take the table?”

  Mariah blinked. The gentleman stared back, three ladies around him, all looking confused.

  “The table,” she repeated blankly. Then comprehension rushed through her mind. “The table! Please, sir, my game has finished, and I am more than happy for you to take the table.”

  In her haste to vacate her chair, Mariah almost lost her footing as the chair leg tugged on her skirts. Another giggle erupted behind her, and Mariah looked around to see Miss Lawson grinning beside Mr. Wright.

  Mariah inclined her head to the incoming four and gratefully stepped aside to the wall where she could be alone and think.

  A grandfather clock chimed beside her, and a quick glance told her it was only nine o’clock in the evening.

  Nine o’clock. She could not possibly think of returning to her rooms yet; it would be considered the height of rudeness. Mariah sighed and tried not to think about how she was going to fill the next few hours to prevent tedium.

  Standing at the opposite side of the room from her was a pair of gossiping ladies, evidently watching their daughters. On their left was an elderly gentleman trying to have a conversation with a footman through a large ear trumpet, and on their right was Patrick O’Leary.

  Mariah’s heart literally skipped a beat, and she unconsciously raised her hand to her chest. It had been—what, three days since she had last seen him?

  That shouting match outside the Bodleian had hardly been her finest hour, but there had been something she had not expected.

  She had hurt him. She had seen arrogance in that face, laughter, even a little surprise. But when she had taunted him, said his mother would have been saddened, she had seen his eyes flash with pain.

  Lord Donal, which is what she must think of him—not Patrick—was standing silently beside the gossiping women. His dark eyes were moving slowly across the room, a bored expression on his face.