Two in the Bush
Page 7
Somewhat belatedly, her mother charged her with the utmost discretion, and she hurried away, stumbling a bit on the damp grass.
Mrs. Breckinridge, determinedly trusting to Lenora’s competence, pushed all thoughts of a pessimistic nature aside and distracted herself by attempting to find a comfortable pose. In this she had, in the end, to make do with simply staying in balance on her perch, one hand on a branch overhead, and the other against the trunk of the tree. Lenora was gone for some time, and Mrs. Breckinridge whiled away the minutes by gazing out over the park, enjoying the peaceful views of grazing milk cows and barefoot milkmaids amid rolling green grass and graceful trees, and composing in her mind an explanation to anyone who should happen to discover her in this ridiculous predicament.
At last, she heard quick footfalls on the grass, and Lenora’s voice panting, “Here is the tree!” Her daughter rounded the periphery of the tree, and Mrs. Breckinridge sat up straight, prepared to face her rescuer with fortitude, but when her daughter’s companion came into view, her resolve fled, for it was none other than Sir Joshua Stiles. Mrs. Breckinridge bowed her head, covering pained eyes with one hand, while the other clung to the overhead branch.
Sir Joshua, having met with the little boy whom he had assumed at first to be fictitious, but whose nurse’s adjuration to thank the kind lady for retrieving his ball had allayed his suspicions, gazed up at her. “How do you do, Mrs. Breckinridge?” he said, with meticulous politeness.
She could only shake her head, her face hidden in mortification.
“You must pardon my feelings of astonishment when I was apprised of your present situation, ma’am,” he said in a conversational tone, “for though my previous knowledge of your adventures has persuaded me that you would be intrepid enough to attempt such a thing, I could not bring myself to credit it.”
She peeked down at him from between her fingers. “Oh, sir! You behold me humbled beyond anything. It seemed the simplest thing, and it is not as though I have never climbed a tree! Of course, that was years ago, but I am far from incapable, and I never imagined the branch would break!”
Sir Joshua surveyed the damaged branch, his gaze travelling up the tree and back to her. “You must forgive my plain-speaking, ma’am, for I am shocked that no alternative to climbing a tree like—again, I beg your pardon—like a hoyden, presented itself to a lady of such resource as yourself. One or two occur to me even now! For example, one might have thrown something at the ball to dislodge it.”
Rendered speechless for a moment by this simple good sense, she blushed, but presently gathered her wits to exclaim, “How could you suggest anything so poor-spirited, sir, as to stand on the ground, hurling things impotently into a tree? For I am a terrible shot, you know, and should have missed. My plan was far superior in sense and in execution, for whatever the consequences, my object is achieved.”
He gazed blandly at her. “If your object was to be stranded in a tree, I can do no other than agree with you.”
Effectively silenced, she bit her lip and averted her eyes, and he removed his hat, handing it along with his cane to Lenora, who had been attending to their dialogue with some awe.
“As you have fetched me here,” he said, “I shall do my poor best to assist you, a circumstance I trust you shall not presently regret, for I perceive only one way out of your predicament.” He straightened his coat. “You must jump.”
Mrs. Breckinridge stared at him for some moments, frantically grasping in her mind for any alternative. “Surely there is something else that can be done!” she cried.
“I fear not, short of summoning the Guards, which would bring upon us all the most painful embarrassment.” He stepped forward, extending his arms. “Come now. You must jump.”
She blinked, but upon somewhat agitated reflection, was compelled by her own good sense to concede. With a sigh, she brought her legs up enough to cinch her skirts tightly around her ankles, pressing her feet together to hold the fabric, then she inched forward to the very edge of the branch, clinging to the bough above and the trunk beside her. The ground seemed very far below, perched so precariously as she was, and she found it necessary to take several calming breaths before bracing her hands on the branch and pushing off. Sir Joshua caught her neatly, and without obvious effort, placing her gently on her feet on the grass.
He stepped back, his hands steadying her waist. “Well?”
She met his gaze a trifle uneasily, then pulled away, straightening her skirts and her bonnet. “As well as can be expected, sir, for one whose dignity can never seem to recover.”
She thought his lips twitched, but he turned to the tree, examining the broken branch more closely. “It seems it was unstable at the outset. There are signs it had been cracked previously.”
“Then it is just as well that I broke it, rather than that poor child, or some other,” said Mrs. Breckinridge in a stout tone.
“Even had you broken your neck?” returned Sir Joshua coolly.
“Especially so! When put in that light, I feel rather heroic, actually,” she said with spirit. “A sacrifice to a worthy cause.”
“Mama!” protested Lenora, but Sir Joshua merely gazed at her. “A most interesting view of the situation, ma’am.” He turned to Lenora. “And are you quite recovered from your fright, Miss Breckinridge?”
She looked gratefully up at him. “Yes, with Mama safe, I am quite well, thank you!”
“By all appearances, you were very brave. You did not even swoon!” he added, nodding gravely at her. Lenora blushed prettily and ducked her head, which caused her to recollect that she still held his hat and cane, and she instantly gave them up to him.
He took the hat, placing it on his head, and leaned upon his cane, looking from daughter to mother. “I trust you will be safe from here?”
Mrs. Breckinridge, wishing to oblige Sir Joshua no more than absolutely necessary, put her arm through her daughter’s. “You needn’t be troubled, sir. We are going to the confectioner’s on Bond Street, and I will readily promise to attempt no more perilous feats.”
“I hope it may be so,” he answered, as if unconvinced.
Her eyebrows went up, a challenge in her eye. “Well, sir, if you cannot be satisfied, I shall engage to meet you next without emergency.”
He regarded her steadily. “Do you intend to lay odds?” With something very like a twinkle in his eye, he bowed to them both and walked away across the park, leaving them to gape after him in astonishment.
It was with dismay that Lady Cammerby heard of their adventure, for she had determined upon endearing her friend to her brother, and the account that reached her ears did not bode well for her success.
“I recall most vividly, Genevieve,” she said, in tremulous accents, “a promise from your own lips that you should act your age! How can you betray me by—by climbing a tree in the Green Park?”
“I promised to endeavor, my dear Amelia,” responded her friend in her most soothing tone, “which I have most faithfully done, I assure you.”
“Yes, but climbing a tree? I can only be grateful such gross impropriety was witnessed by no one else!”
“But you must allow that my motivation was not a disregard for propriety!” cried Genevieve. “The poor little boy, Amelia—one must not discount the urgency of his plight! I had no other choice.”
Lady Cammerby had recourse to her vinaigrette. “Oh, what must he think of you?”
“The boy?” asked Genevieve, settling herself onto the sofa. “I fancy he thinks me a right one.”
“Oh!” her ladyship cried, closing her eyes in agony and uttering, in accents of doom, “Genevieve, I fear Bertram has ruined you!”
“Oh, dear, no, Amelia, I was a hoyden long before Bertram carried me away.” In a reflective tone, she added, “Indeed, I count myself fortunate that my marriage did not entirely stifle what spirit I had to begin with.”
“Oh, Amelia,” said Genevieve, chastened at last, “you bear so bravely with my ridiculous starts! Truly, I never meant to cause you anxiety, and I am a monster to have teased you. Forgive me.”
Lady Cammerby was much mollified and expressed her willingness to do so, but, after a short struggle, she said abruptly, “It is merely that I wish my brother to have a good opinion of you, for you deserve anyone’s respect, Genevieve, and as you are both to be thrown much together during the season, I will be more comfortable—indeed, we all will be—if there is nothing to set you against one another.”
“Well,” said Genevieve, gleaning much of the truth from this speech, “you may rest easy in the knowledge that I promised your brother not to be in need of rescue the next time we meet, and I feel certain you may depend upon my keeping that promise, if you recollect that I was a pattern of propriety for our first fortnight in London, and there is not even that between now and Lenora’s ball. I shall be too busy to get into a scrape.”
With this assurance, Lady Cammerby had to be satisfied, and turned without demur to finalizing plans for the upcoming ball.
Sir Joshua’s part in their adventure in the park could not but captivate Lenora, and she lost no time in sharing the story of it with Elvira, who was suitably impressed, even going so far as to forgive him some of his years.
“For he cannot be so very old, Lenora, if he can run after wild horses and catch fully-grown women jumping out of trees, without so much as a strained muscle. My papa, you know, would’ve been winded after two steps, and he’d as soon have dropped your mama as caught her!”
Lenora giggled. “How can you think to compare Sir Joshua with your papa? His notion of action is any motion belonging to anyone or anything else, my dear, and I should have been very much surprised if he had thought it his duty to move at all.” At Elvira’s look of chagrin, Lenora patted her hand. “I am persuaded that he would have valiantly looked about him for someone else who could help.”
“Oh, Lenora, I love my papa, but his malaise tries the patience of a saint! I vow I shall marry someone who will leap without hesitation to my rescue, whenever, and wherever I need him!”
“And you will!” Lenora assured her. “Indeed, I prophesy that you will meet him at your coming out next week.”
This turned the conversation back into enjoyable channels, and the girls instantly began to discuss the length of their respective guest lists, the enormous quantities of champagne that had been ordered from Gunter’s by each house, and the great good fortune that Lenora’s mother had succeeded in dissuading Lady Cammerby from festooning her ballroom in pink silk.
“Only think, Elvira, how insipid! And my hopes should have all been dashed, for who could admire me against such a background? I’ve never shown to advantage in pink.”
“I don’t know, dearest,” said Elvira, who had always looked lovely in the color. “I think pink would have been charming.”
“You would!” replied Lenora. “And as an accent, I am sure it should have been, but Lady Cammerby meant to turn the ballroom into a tent of it! We should all have been sick of pink by the end. But my mama had the lucky notion of turning the room into a bower, with bunches of fresh flowers in urns all around.”
Elvira clapped her hands. “Oh, that will be lovely, like a fairyland!”
“Won’t it just? Lady Cammerby was quite taken with the idea, and handsomely agreed that pink ribbons in with the flowers would be just the thing. Oh, Elvira, I was simply terrified that all the gentlemen should take violent exception to dancing in a pink tent, and would make the flimsiest excuses just to get themselves off!”
“But they shouldn’t, Lenora! My mama says it isn’t done, for leaving early from a party is very bad ton.”
“But they could never wish to return to a house that lived in their nightmares as a florid pink prison! We would have been snubbed from that day on, and my season wasted.”
Elvira laughed, throwing her arms around her friend. “You take on so, Lenora! I know you cannot be serious. Surely Lady Cammerby had meant to choose a pale pink, not a florid one, and all the gentlemen should have been too captivated by the lady of honor to be offended by something as paltry as decoration.”
Lenora blushed, returning her friend’s embrace. “I’ve never captivated a man before, Elvira.”
“Yes, you have, Lenora! I have not forgotten that fine gentleman outside the bazaar, if you have!”
Lenora’s eyes gleamed, but she shook her head. “I am persuaded that that man did not admire me, precisely, Elvira.”
“I cannot think what you mean!”
“Never mind, dear. But I also have not forgotten Mr. Ginsham, who said he would call, and he has not.”
“But he may have any number of reasons for not having come, and none of them to do with his lack of admiration for you.”
Elvira’s explanation was waved aside. “For all you say, I am nothing out of the common way, and without a fortune to tempt a man, what hope do I have of making a good match?”
“Dearest! You are far from ordinary!” Elvira sat back, regarding her friend keenly. “For one, you are delightful company—even Harry says so!”
“But he is your brother, Elvira, and only said so because I was used to follow him like a puppy. I daresay my worship administered to his vanity, but he should be of a very different mind now.”
“Yes, he should. He will like very much to court you when he sees how pretty you’ve become.”
“We must leave off appearance, Elvira,” cried Lenora, “for I fancy I have been long enough in London to know I am not a beauty, and I am very much mistaken if Harry, or any gentleman for that matter, should look twice at such a beanpole as me.”
“You do yourself an injustice, Lenora! Your figure may be slender, but you are far from a beanpole!” Elvira at once seemed to be taken by a wonderful notion. “On the contrary, Lenora, you are very near to fragile, and men cannot resist fragility! A maiden whom an errant wind would wither rouses all their protective instincts, and they will fall over themselves in their attempts to shield you from the least danger.”
Impaired as her sensibility was by anxiety at present, Lenora considered this eventuality with little enthusiasm, pointing out that she’d prefer not to have a train of suitors who would never allow her to see the sun or feel the wind again.
Elvira blinked at this. “Well, I suppose you are right. Perhaps—perhaps stately grace is more fitted to your character!” Quite taken by this fancy, she expatiated, “You will greet every gentleman with polite indifference, and each, pining to be the one to inspire passion in your breast, will woo you with such devotion that you shall be forced to break all their hearts!”
“All their hearts but one, I hope!” cried Lenora. “That is the point, is it not, Elvira, to have one suitor left?”
Elvira sought in some confusion for an adequate amendment to her scenario. “All resign themselves to despondency but one, who, in spite of his broken heart, will love you from afar until he is able to render you a signal service which melts your heart of ice and makes you his own!”
“That’s better,” sighed Lenora. “Though, I have never been inclined to indifference, and all may fail if I cannot stand firm against so much devotion. It is more likely that I shall melt at first sign of it.”
“Exactly, Lenora! You instantly fall in love, at first sight, but hide your feelings until the crucial moment, when his sufferings and yours have unalterably bound you together, and the revelation of your true feelings reclaim him from a disa
strous course, and he hails you as his beloved angel!”
With a rapturous sigh, Lenora relinquished her anxious hold on reality and allowed herself to enter fully into Elvira’s schemes for her future happiness. But as the date of the ball drew nearer, she discovered that she was unequal to Elvira’s expectations. The role of Ice Maiden was not so easily assumed, for Lenora simply could not refrain from smiles, or laughter, or other such displays of genuine pleasure, especially when confronted with the gorgeous gown Lady Cammerby had ordered for her on that first frenetic shopping spree. The gown arrived with only a day to spare and, when paired with the long, white kid gloves and reticule her hostess had so kindly provided, and the simple pearls Mrs. Breckinridge had thoughtfully brought along from Branwell Cottage, was deemed by all three ladies as the loveliest toilette imaginable.
Lenora was a tall girl, but demurely proportioned, and the tucked bodice, cut modestly across the bosom, joined to a flowing silk skirt under a spangled gauze overdress, lent her a fairy-like appearance, which gave Lenora to think that, stately grace being unattainable, and fragility undesirable, perhaps maidenly could be made to answer. But when Lady Cammerby’s own maid dressed her hair in a dashing new style, and dabbed the tiniest bit of rouge on her lips and cheeks, turning her charge exultantly toward the mirror, Lenora felt anything but maidenly, for no shy maiden’s eyes ever sparkled with excitement as did Lenora’s at that moment, and she could find within herself no desire to shrink. On the contrary, she knew a desire to flirt outrageously, and to conquer hearts, a desire not at all foreign to her, but until that moment, one she had unquestionably supposed impossible. She felt, in short, powerful—an emotion very far from her romantical ideal—and had a strong notion that in feeling so, she stood to disappoint not only herself, but Elvira as well. However, she was patently unable to feel sorry for this, and went down to dinner, intent upon enjoying herself to the fullest.