The Autumn Bride

by Anne Gracie

  After their luncheon, Lady Beatrice had a nap and the girls went for a walk by the river. When they returned, a large, elaborately carved wooden trunk was sitting in the middle of the bedchamber. The kittens, Marmaduke and Snowflake, were sniffing cautiously around it. Max the kitten sat on top of it, ready to pounce.

  The girls eyed the trunk curiously. “What’s in the trunk?” Abby asked, picking up the small black kitten. A small, rusty-sounding purr was her instant reward.

  “I believe we have a chapter to finish,” Lady Beatrice said austerely.

  Abby hid a smile, passed her the kitten, picked up the book and continued from where she’d left off before luncheon. The others eyed the trunk curiously but continued work on their garments.

  While she was reading, Featherby and William carried in two more large trunks and placed them with the first. These were leather, well-worn and embossed with the Davenham coat of arms.

  “Will that be all, m’lady?” Featherby asked.

  “Yes, yes.” She waved them off imperiously and gestured to Abby to keep reading. Abby did, but nobody’s attention was on the story. What was in the trunks? Lady Beatrice was being very mysterious.

  Finally Abby reached the end of the chapter and closed the book firmly. “Time for your exercises.”

  The old lady eyed her speculatively. “Don’t you want to know what’s in the trunks?”

  She did, of course, but, “After you’ve done your exercises.”

  Lady Beatrice snorted. “You’re a hard woman, Abigail Chance.” But she handed the kittens to Abby, pushed back the bedclothes and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Jane and Damaris put her slippers on, then helped her to stand. She waved them off. “I can do it.”

  She walked to the window and back three times, a little wobbly, it was true, and the last was more of an exhausted totter to the bed, but her progress was noticeable.

  “Getting better, aren’t I?”

  “You’ll be waltzing by Christmas,” Abby said warmly.

  The girls tucked her back into bed, and when she’d caught her breath the old lady said, “Go on, then. Open them—the carved cedar one first. And put everything on the bed so I can see.”

  Jane opened the cedar chest. It contained dozens of parcels wrapped in tissue. She unwrapped the first one and gasped in wonderment as a length of brilliant blue-and-silver silk slithered from her fingers.

  “Oh, my gawd,” Daisy murmured, as she unwrapped another length, this one of ruby silk as fine and delicate as anything any of them had ever seen.

  Damaris said nothing as she unwrapped a length of heavy cream silk, embroidered on the border with fine knots of roses, but her eyes widened. She stroked it with lingering fingers.

  “Here.” Lady Beatrice passed a parcel to Abby. Opening it, she found a cashmere shawl of scarlet and blue and green and gold.

  “Put it on,” Lady Beatrice ordered.

  Abby swung it around her shoulders. It was so light and soft and fine, it settled around her body like warm snow. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “My nephew sent me all these things when he first went away. Parcels used to arrive on a regular basis, all kinds of strange and beautiful things—he sent the chest too.”

  “Cedar,” Abby said, inhaling the clean fragrance from the shawl. “I’m amazed it wasn’t stolen—the chest alone is worth a lot of money, and as for this shawl . . .” Shawls like this sold for a hundred pounds or more.

  Lady Beatrice nodded. “These all came before Caudle came to work for me, and before I got sick. I forget why I had the chest placed in the attic in the first place—I didn’t even recall it was there, but obviously it’s been in some dark corner, gathering dust for years. It was the other trunks I sent Featherby and William up for, and when they brought this down I nearly wept.”

  She turned to where Daisy was holding up a length of fine shimmery rose fabric. It had an elaborate gold-embroidered border. “Pretty, isn’t it? That’s a saree or some such thing—from India. The women wrap themselves up in it, and call themselves dressed. And there’s jewelry too,” she added as Jane unwrapped a jangly silver necklace. “Just trinkets—nothing an English lady would wear except for a masquerade ball—but pretty. Shame I didn’t put the good stuff in this box; might have had some jewels left.”

  “It’s very pretty, though.” Jane held it up against her throat, and admired it in the looking glass.

  “There should be letters, somewhere to go with each item,” Lady Beatrice said. “See if they’re in there, will you, Abby?”

  Abby dug around in the chest and found tucked in at the side a packet of letters tied with a ribbon. It was quite a thick packet, all addressed with the same firm hand.

  “Put them here.” Lady Beatrice patted the bedside table. “We’ll read them later. My nephew was always a good letter writer.”

  Abby was surprised. Lord Davenham hadn’t seemed to her to be the kind of man who’d send his elderly aunt beautiful things, let alone take the trouble to write regularly. She recalled his anger when she’d accused him of leaving his aunt to rot.

  But if he cared about her so much, why had he stayed away for nearly ten years?

  “So what’s in the other trunks?” Jane asked eagerly, after they’d examined and exclaimed over every beautiful item in the cedar chest.

  Lady Beatrice smiled. “My youth.”

  Abby opened the first leather trunk and lifted out the tissue-wrapped gown that lay on the top, a deep rose satin with a faint cream stripe and dozens of tiny embroidered roses. The skirt was very full and gathered to a tiny waist. With it came a bodice that looked as if it would be amazingly tight, almost like wearing a tube.

  She shook it out of its folds and held it up, looking from the dress to Lady Beatrice, trying to imagine her wearing it.

  “You are wondering about the pink clashing with my red hair, I suppose,” Lady Beatrice said, “but recollect, we all wore our hair powdered in those days.”

  “This is beautiful,” Daisy said, shaking out a dress in apple green silk trimmed with white gauze and knots of ribbon.

  “Oh, yes, that one.” Lady Beatrice gazed at the dress fondly. “I wore that one at a ball given by the Duchess of Salisbury. Ah, what a night that was. I danced until dawn. . . .”

  “Who did you dance with?” Jane asked.

  “Everyone,” she said with satisfaction. “I was no beauty, but I was never a wallflower. I remember . . . Oh, you don’t want to listen to an old lady boring on.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Abby, “and it’s not the slightest bit boring.”

  Jane joined in. “Yes, please go on. Our mama used to tell us stories about her come-out, and I loved them.”

  “Well, if you insist . . .” The girls gathered around. “It became quite warm in the ballroom, and one young man enticed me onto the terrace to cool down. Oh, it was all perfectly respectable at first—there were plenty of others doing the same.” She sighed. “But this man had rather a naughty reputation, and we danced on the terrace, and soon we found ourselves alone. . . .” She gave them a mischievous look. “Without my realizing it, he’d danced me off the terrace and down the garden path—in more ways than one.” She sighed. “My first kiss. My mother scolded me roundly for disappearing, of course, but oh, it was worth it.” She stroked the green dress. “That man kissed like a dream.”

  She sat up. “And I wore the most divine pair of shoes—green silk with pearls and diamond buckles.”

  “Diamond?” Daisy gasped.

  “They were paste, of course, but the pearls were real. They should be in the trunk too. See if you can find them.”

  Daisy felt around and came up with several odd-shaped cloth bags. She pulled them open and a pair of shoes fell out. She opened bag after bag and soon nearly a dozen pairs of shoes lay tumbled on the bed. The girls exclaimed over the old-fashioned shoes.

  “Look at those heels,” Jane exclaimed. “They’re so high! However did you manage to danc
e in them?”

  Lady Beatrice laughed. “Try them on and see for yourself.”

  Jane eagerly pulled off her own low slippers. A scene out of Cinderella ensued, with Jane, Abby and Damaris all trying and failing to fit in the tiny, exquisite shoes. “Your turn, Daisy,” Jane said.

  “No, no point in me trying,” Daisy said, pulling a face. “Look stupid, I would, clumping along all lopsided in them things.” But she looked longingly at the pretty shoes.

  “Nobody here would think any such thing, young woman,” said Lady Beatrice sternly. “And if you don’t try them on, you’ll always wonder if they would fit. So you have a limp! What does that matter? All women are entitled to pretty shoes. Do not let fear or embarrassment make you less than you are.”

  Daisy shrugged and pulled off one of the heavy boots she habitually wore. She picked up a pair of dark rose pink embroidered satin shoes with high heels and diamond buckles and slipped one on. And stared.

  “A perfect fit,” Abby breathed, and handed her the other shoe. Daisy put it on.

  “Let me see,” the old lady demanded, and Daisy stepped back, raising her skirts to show the shoes.

  “Beautiful,” Lady Beatrice said, and Abby had to agree.

  “Yeah, until I walk,” Daisy said.

  “Pish-tush! Those shoes weren’t made for walking,” Lady Beatrice said. “They’re for dancing.”

  “I can’t do that neither,” Daisy said.

  Lady Beatrice gave her a thoughtful look, but all she said was, “Keep the shoes, Daisy girl. Put them on whenever you need to remind yourself that you have beautiful feet.” She glanced at the others. “Unlike Cinderella’s big-footed stepsisters.” She cut off their laughing protests. “Now, let’s see what else is in those trunks.”

  They pulled out gown after gown, and for each one there was an event—a ball, a soiree, a night at the opera, at Ranelagh, at a fireworks display, a picnic—and a story: a stolen kiss, a magical dance, a particular young man. . . .

  As Lady Beatrice reminisced, those long-ago nights came to life in their minds, and they pictured the gentlemen in their powdered wigs and the ladies in their full-skirted dresses and high-piled white-powdered hair teetering along on high-heeled shoes.

  The clothes were odd—old-fashioned, heavy and, to the girls’ eyes, cumbersome, but the fabrics, they all agreed, were beautiful.

  Daisy, in particular, eyed them covetously. “Look at all that fabric—there’s yards and yards and yards in that dress,” she whispered to Abby. “I could make two whole dresses from just that skirt.”

  “But weren’t they uncomfortable to wear?” Jane asked, holding one of the dresses against her and examining her reflection in the cheval looking glass.

  “Not with the correct corsetry,” Lady Beatrice said. “They should be in there too. The dresses won’t fit properly without the corsets. And the petticoats and the panniers and all the rest.”

  But when they looked, the corsets and panniers were nowhere to be found, and only two particularly fine petticoats were in the chests.

  “They’d make beautiful summer dresses for all of us,” Daisy whispered to Abby.

  “I want to try them on,” Jane said, lifting a cerulean blue silk gown trimmed with blond lace from the piles on the bed. “May I, Lady Beatrice?”

  “Go ahead, my dear, but they won’t look right without the underpinnings.”

  Jane passed a rose pink gown to Damaris. “Come on.” The two girls disappeared behind the Chinese screen in the corner of the room, and soon giggles and rustles came from behind the screen, and a call for Daisy to come and help them.

  Abby tried not to feel a small pang at the giggles and murmurs. These days Jane turned more often to Damaris than to her sister. Abby supposed it was natural. For a start, they were closer in age. Abby had left the Pillbury when Jane was only twelve, and in the six years since, Jane had learned to do without her big sister.

  And, of course, the recent ordeal that Damaris and Jane and Daisy had shared had forged a strong bond among them—and Abby was glad of it.

  Still, it was hard not to feel left out occasionally.

  “What were you wearing the night you met your husband?” Abby asked Lady Beatrice while the others were changing. “Did you fall madly in love with him and slip out into the dark velvet night for some stolen kisses?”

  “Ta-daaah!” Jane and Damaris stepped out from behind the screen. They posed a moment, then, picking up the skirts—which, unsupported by the “underpinnings” dragged along the floor—they twirled around in a vague kind of old-fashioned dance.

  As they turned, Abby saw the dresses had been laced over bare skin. Of course, their modern underclothes would be all wrong for these dresses. How strange, the way ladies’ figures had changed over the ages.

  “Come on, Abby,” Jane called. “Put this apple green one on; it will look lovely with your coloring.”

  Lady Beatrice, who had been absently stroking a satin bodice with fingers that still remembered, set it aside, frowning thoughtfully. She waved at Abby to go ahead. “Do you know, I can’t for the life of me recall what I was wearing the day I met my husband.”

  “The day? So it wasn’t at a ball?” Abby said as Jane pulled her dress off over her head.

  “No, my parents introduced him to me at a house party at his country estate. His father had arranged it all with my father, and he was presented to me as a desirable parti.”

  “Eh?” Daisy stuck her head out from behind the screen. “A desirable party? He was a lot of fun, then?”

  The old lady chuckled. “No, they meant I should marry him. It was all arranged by the fathers.”

  Jane tugged the gown up around Abby’s shoulders. It felt odd, a little uncomfortable. “You didn’t fall in love with him?” Abby asked.

  “Not really—well, it wasn’t the done thing in my day. Love between husband and wife? A trifle vulgar for our class, though for myself, I wouldn’t have minded it at all. But my husband and I respected each other, and it was considered an excellent alliance between our two families. It’s how they did it then, and still how people do it today, for all this modern talk of love. Marriage is about property and family, not love.”

  “Our parents married for love,” Abby told her.

  “And look where it got them,” Jane said, as she laced Abby into the gown.

  Abby swiveled around to stare at her sister in shock. She’d always thought Jane felt the same as she did about their parents’ marriage—that despite all the hardships, the poverty and the pain, their love had made it all worthwhile. But it seemed she was wrong.

  “Our parents both had good marriages all but arranged,” Jane explained, stepping out from behind the screen. “But they fell in love with each other and eloped instead. It was all very romantic, I suppose, but they died in poverty, and Abby and I ended up in an orphanage. And after that . . .” She shrugged. “Abby became a governess working for the meanest people—”

  “The children were lovely.”

  “But the last lot of parents were horrid—you wrote to me, recollect, so don’t defend them; I know,” Jane said. “And I was destined to become a companion to a vicar’s mother in Hereford.” She looked at Abby. “Was that truly what Mama and Papa would have wanted for us? And that was when everything was going well, and before it all went wrong.” She turned to Lady Beatrice. “Before we met you, I mean. You’re the best thing that’s happened to us . . . ever.” She suddenly realized how that sounded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you’re a thing, of course; I meant—”

  The old lady patted her on the hand. “I know what you meant, my dear, and you gels are the best thing that’s happened to me in forever too. So, young Jane, you’d make a practical marriage, would you?”

  Jane nodded. “The very best marriage I possibly can.”

  Lady Beatrice turned to Abby. “So, Abby what kind of marriage do you dream of?”

  Abby looked down and smoothed the fabric of the lovely old dress. “As y
ou said before, Lady Beatrice, we don’t all get the choi—”

  “What on earth . . . ?” a deep masculine voice interrupted. Lord Davenham stood in the open doorway, lord of all he surveyed.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?”

  —JANE AUSTEN, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

  Max had had a good day. The second of the two houses Bartlett had found in Mayfair was most suitable, and Max had instructed Bartlett to buy it. The trip to Richmond had been delightful, the road good, the weather chilly but dry and the inn where they’d stopped for lunch excellent. It was everything he’d missed about England.

  To top off the day, Freddy’s friend was indeed selling up, and Max had purchased a phaeton and a beautiful pair of high steppers that would give Freddy’s sixteen-mile-an-hour pair a run for their money, as well as a pair of matched bays that he thought would suit his aunt’s barouche very well. They would all arrive tomorrow.

  He’d planned to round off the day with dinner at the club with Freddy and some old acquaintances, and had just dropped past to change his clothes and inform his aunt. Her door was open. He glanced in.

  “What on earth . . . ?”

  The bedchamber was an explosion of color and fabric and garments, a feminine Aladdin’s cave. Even more so than usual. “What are you doing?” he asked, eyeing the pile of fabrics cautiously. Presumably there were kittens buried under it somewhere.

  “Max, my dear.” His aunt’s eyes were a little red rimmed, as though she’d been weeping.

  In two strides Max reached her. He took her hands in his. “Aunt Bea, what is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, nothing. We’re going through all my old gowns, and oh, the memories.” She waved a crumpled wisp of lace. “A few sentimental tears, that’s all, but mostly tears of laughter.”

  “I see.” His gaze roamed over the tumbled mass of clothing.

  “No, you don’t, dear boy, but never mind. I’ve had the most delightful time reliving my youth. The gels have had me in stitches.” She chuckled. “Stitches, gels, did you hear? I made a pun.”