by Joan Smith
Some minor irritation was added to Mr. Hudson’s vexation by the fact that Miss Watters was on her high ropes for some reason, and after he had been at such pains to talk her down from them, too. He might have had some small pleasure from Tony’s million faux pas if she had shared a smile with him, but she was cool to the point of freezing.
Sara sat on his right and received the greater part of his attention to distract her from Mr. Alistair, and on those few occasions when he dared to direct a look or a word to Lillian, she looked at him as though he were a cup or a saucer, or better a dirty dish.
Lillian too thought it an abominable meal, with Mr. Hudson showing Sara the distinction of taking her to table and honoring her with nine-tenths of his time. This, coming on top of his à suivie flirtation with Miss Ratchett, in whose direction he was still smiling at intervals during the meal, galled her mightily. To add to her annoyance, she couldn’t get Mr. Alistair to so much as look at her in order to make Hudson jealous. When at last the meal was over and she stood with Sara waiting for a partner, Hudson walked purposefully toward them. Her heart lifted despite his treachery. At least he was going to dance with her first!
“Will you get a hand on Fellows?” he asked her, and then turned to Sara to ask her to stand up with himself.
She was through with hopping through hoops for him! She wouldn’t have stood up with Fellows if he’d gone down on his knees and begged her. When Mr. Alistair, also coming for Sara but having her whisked off under his nose, asked her to stand up with him, she accepted with the greatest good will and exerted herself to the utmost to keep him well entertained, that Mr. Hudson might see she was not a despicable partner. She noticed with anger that Miss Ratchett, in an expensive, gorgeous, and much too fancy rose silk gown, was the next young lady to have Mr. Hudson’s company. She herself had only the minimal pleasure of standing up with Mr. Basingstoke and hearing his polyglot talk, one half of which she could not understand, and two halves of which was not worth listening to in any case.
The evening wore on, becoming noisier and more crowded as those with free tickets came in. Lillian was sure Martha would whisk them off home and she had not had one dance with Mr. Hudson, nor said more than a word to him. But Martha had secured the company of Lord Allingham and was not about to part with a lord merely because every vulgar hedgebird in town was rubbing elbows with her nieces. A title was a dearly beloved thing to Martha; she was busy substantiating details of Mr. Hudson’s pending title and estates and trying to decide which of her nieces it was he merited.
Lillian’s evening continued steadily downhill. She had to be jerked around the hall by Mr. Fellows for a waltz, and then was made to feel worse by seeing Mr. Hudson sink from Miss Ratchett to a brace of women who had all the earmarks of ladies of pleasure. Their garish, low-cut gowns, their loud laughter and their immodest ogling of every man in the room left little doubt as to their calling. She was pretty sure it was Hudson who had brought them in, along with his flash culls. Who else could be so low? She was rapidly reaching the conclusion she should ask her aunt to take them home.
It was 11:30, nearing intermission, when she glanced up to see Mr. Hudson walking toward her group, with Fellows in tow. She turned resolutely away to ask Martha on the spot if they could go home.
“Go home? My dear, we’ll wait just a little. Here is Mr. Fellows come to dance with you.” As Hudson was favoring Sara this evening, Fellows was falling to Lillian’s lot.
“Well, Miss Watters, it looks like I am stuck to stand up and jig it with you again,” Fellows told her. “At least you are light-footed—I’ll say that for you thin girls—you ain’t heavy to steer around the floor.”
“A pity we can’t say the same for you!” she retaliated, her anger suddenly too great to suppress. And he had to say it in front of Mr. Hudson too!
“By Jove, you’ve a sharp tongue in your head! But you skinny girls are all alike. Sour as vinegar, every one of you.”
“You haven’t danced with me, Mr. Fellows,” the artless Sara proclaimed, and Mr. Fellows was encouraged to turn his suave charms in her direction.
“He’s in a bad skin because I’ve been giving him a rare raking-down,” Hudson apologized to Miss Watters. “Was there ever such a night at this? I thought dinner would never be over, between casus belli and tainted fowl.”
The words were fine, but Lillian could not quite forget that the appalling dinner had been over for several hours, and this was the first decent conversation she had had with him. “Bad-tempered, skinny girls have added nothing to the night, I daresay,” she replied tartly.
“Nonsense, you’re a fine figure of a woman,” he answered rather unthinkingly, only wanting to placate her.
“Thank you very much.” She was accustomed to hear herself complimented occasionally as a “pretty girl,” and to have graduated overnight to a “fine figure of a woman” implied an advanced maturity with which she was not ready, in her greenish years, to come to terms.
“Did I say something gauche? I have been too much with the candidate. I mean it as a compliment.”
“High praise indeed. Why not make it a portly dame and have done with it?”
“Not for another ten years. I have aged you with my poor praise, is that it? But you surely need no reassurance as to your appearance. You and your cousin are the fairest flowers in the room. It is hard to tell which is the more beautiful specimen.”
“Most people have no trouble telling which is the more beautiful,” she replied. “It is quite clear, I think.”
He compared them judiciously. “You’re right. You have the definite edge, but it is unbecoming in you to say so yourself,” he said with a smile.
“I didn’t mean that! You know she is much prettier. In fact, it is no comparison at all. I am plain and I know it.”
“Another bad trait—putting yourself down to worm more compliments out of me. But I’m not so stingy that you need resort to tricks. The fairest of them all, as usual.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she answered, flustered at the flattery. “Everyone knows Sara is beautiful.”
“Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.”
“You are indebted to Mr. Fellows for that striking truism, I assume. A pity he hadn’t remembered comparisons are odious. When the beholder’s eye becomes so purblind as yours seems to be, it is time he looked into a pair of spectacles.”
“Or better, through them, but my eyes aren’t that far gone yet. Oh, they blur out the crow’s foot and the spots, no doubt.”
“They must also deprive you of the sight of a dimple, must they not?”
“Have you a dimple, Miss Watters? You should try a smile once in a while to show it.”
“We thin, sour females have no truck with smiles.”
“Don’t lay Fellows’s compliments at my door. Vent your ill humor on him, if you are determined to be nasty. I came in peace and charity.”
“You may keep your charity.”
“But not, it seems, the peace. I perceive a frost setting in, and here it is only October.”
“I’m surprised if you do perceive it. I hadn’t thought you were perceiving anything beyond the set of dashers you have brought in to liven up your little party.”
He looked at her in a knowing way that infuriated her. “So that’s it! Tell me, is it their presence or my attendance on them that has you in the boughs?”
“I am not in the boughs.”
“I beg to differ. Right up there in the branches with the jays and crows and other bird-witted creatures.”
“If you want the truth, then, I think it was a perfectly scandalous thing to do, bringing in loose females to—to influence men’s voting.”
“They would stare to hear you describe their activities so euphemistically.”
“Yes—well, the less said about how they mean to do it, the better in polite company, but that is why they’re here, isn’t it?”
“Their main aim is to fill their pockets, and they will certainly do it in t
hat manner too low to be mentioned in polite company. If they can swing a few votes in the process, well, that is only incidental.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. I’m ashamed for you.”
“You owe me an apology, for once. I do draw the line at whore-mongering, believe it or not. It was Reising who brought them in. There are limits to how low I will sink, even for the party.”
“It is you who is chummying up to them. But perhaps it has nothing to do with politics.”
“Wrong again! It has only to do with politics. Since they are here, I don’t want them upsetting the applecart. This stunt does more harm than good. No man is going to be swayed to vote for anyone only on a—er—female’s suggestion. I merely pointed out to them the Tories with the deepest pockets. Once they have frisked the squires of a pony or so and bolted back to London, I wonder whether their gents won’t be eager to vote against the dashers’ advice. Tell me now, do I reason wrongly?”
“Not you, Machiavelli!” she charged. “Never a wrong step.”
“Why does that sound so awfully like an insult, I wonder?”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
“At least it is an old insult. If that is the worst you have to say of my conduct, or lack of it, I don’t despair. We may see a little St. Martin’s summer yet before the evening is out.” He saw no signs of it in Miss Watters’s direction, however, and commented to himself that despite his reputation, he seemed to have made some wrong step.
Miss Watters turned her head quite in the opposite direction, and there was a silence between them till the music struck up.
“Well, Beanpole,” he said unceremoniously, “there is a waltz striking up and you’ve let Sara walk away with Fellows right under your nose. You are stuck to jig with me. A fine dancer—only two left feet, of course, and no sense of rhythm.”
“If you’re sure the London molls can spare you,” she answered, cajoled into a brief smile.
“Oh, I didn’t dance with them. I am too top-lofty for that. Just gave ‘em a little advice to make sure they didn’t go interfering with my Whigs.” He led her to the floor, where his two left feet contrived rather well to follow the music. “Why didn’t you dance with Fellows when I asked you to?” he inquired.
“You didn’t ask me, you told me. I am not in your employ, like the flash culls.”
“I would have been happy to pay you,” he said, smiling and refusing to take offense at her continuing pique. “You know how free I make with other people’s money. You might have earned yourself a good sum. Why should the dashers be the only ones to profit from this little shindig?”
“There isn’t enough money in all the Whig coffers to make me go along with your stunts.”
“You have gone along with them without a penny till now. Has Alistair perverted your reason? Are you turning Tory on me? I noticed you two laughing it up. Bad enough he has snatched Sara on us; don’t you succumb to his blandishments too.”
“Till after the election, you mean.”
“Not ever I mean, Sourpuss.”
“I think you should limit the number of your flirtations, Mr. Hudson. Not even you, with all your light-fingered skills, can juggle so many of us at one time.”
“Bungled, have I?” he asked humbly. “I hope I have not dropped the important ball.”
“Miss Ratchett seems to be in good spirits still,” she assured him.
“I never thought you’d be the jealous type,” he answered, remaining unoffended. She felt a perfect fool to be made to feel jealous by a man who had not distinguished her by any more attention than he had shown to other girls in the community.
“I have nothing to be jealous of.”
“I am glad you realize it,” he told her, his dulcet tone removing any ambiguity from the words. The look that accompanied this speech confirmed his meaning.
“As if I would be jealous of a man who came here to bribe and corrupt and tear down barn doors and flirt with—with dashers!”
“And rich Cit’s daughters. Don’t leave out Miss Ratchett. I have a notion she is offense number one. Dare I suggest even the casus belli between us? The very sine qua non of our little misunderstanding, for I refuse to believe you are foolish enough to be jealous of dashers. But Tony’s latest scholarly acquisition—and it will be my last detour into Latin, I promise you—gives me some hope. Amor omnia vincit.”
“I don’t understand Latin,” she said a little mendaciously, for she knew at least this phrase well enough.
“I won’t bore you with a translation. I have an idea you’re determined not to understand English tonight either, as spoken by me. Well, it is a great pity, for there was something I was particularly looking forward to telling you.”
“What is it?” she asked, curious and also somewhat mollified by his cajolery.
“Oh no, I don’t mean to reward you for all your hard words, Miss Watters. I have learned not to practice my bribery and corruption on you. Let us by all means keep pure Watters pure. You must wait and read it in the papers tomorrow, like everyone else.”
“But what is it?”
“Try a little bribery of your own. You well know I’m corruptible. Very.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it,” he said teasingly, and laughed. “What would a pretty young girl—or even a fine figure of a woman—use to bribe a man?”
“Money, of course,” she answered with a studied obtuseness.
“Just for that, I really won’t tell you. I can be a stubborn oaf too,” he said, and refused to be talked around.
The dance was over too soon, and Miss Watters was at too high a tide of jealousy to put forth her best efforts at bribery, and so she never found out. She knew perfectly well Mr. Hudson was making fun of her, the more so as he went directly from her to Miss Ratchett and sent her a mocking smile across the room. He was obviously an incorrigible flirt, and she an irreclaimable idiot to lose as much as a minute’s composure over him.
For the remaining quarter of an hour allowed her at the dance she didn’t look at a soul but Mr. Alistair causing Sara to think her cousin was not really so nice as she had come to imagine. The party had reached such a rowdy level by this time that even the presence of Lord Allingham could not induce Martha to remain. There was some little confabulation then, as it was not desirable for the ladies’ escorts to leave the field to the Tories, yet they must have one gentleman, at least, to see them home.
A successful solution was for Lord Allingham to take them, and with unhappy hearts Sara and Lillian were taken away, leaving behind Mr. Alistair and Mr. Hudson to make up to all the fortunate females (including Miss Ratchett), who were not too high-born to stay at such a wild frolic as the harvest ball was becoming.
Chapter 10
Miss Martha Monteith slept ill the night after the ball. Having learned from Lord Allingham that Mr. Hudson was not only heir to a barony, but a very rich gentleman, in his own right, as well as a man of huge consequence in the party, she lay awake for two hours trying to decide what to do with him. It seemed to her he had shown a marked preference for Sara’s company, taking her to dinner and standing up first with her.
On the other hand, there was Mr. Fellows residing so wonderfully close to New Moon. It would be very handy for Melanie to have Sara married on her own doorstep. Then, too, there was the little detail of Sara being a fool, whereas Mr. Hudson was a clever man who might possibly require a sharp wife to help him in his party doings. That pointed to Lillian, but there back in Yorkshire was Mr. Thorstein and his fine estate, his fortune, and his shelves full of lovely woolen goods.
It was a new problem to have too many beaux to go around, and she dickered with herself as to which of them was expendable. She passed over Mr. Alistair entirely—not that she had failed to observe his interest in Sara, she wasn’t that blind—but only because four beaux for two girls was too much. His being a Tory would not in the normal way have been any impediment, but in the midst of a heated-up campaig
n it served as an excuse to eliminate him and get the number down to manageable proportions. The problem was still unresolved when she arose in the morning in a cross mood as a result of her lack of sleep.
Martha had a chance to gauge Mr. Hudson’s preference in the matter of a bride very soon after arising, for he had relented during the past hours and decided to inform his cohorts of his news before it was made public in the papers. He and Fellows came to call on their way to the village.
“We are just on our way to Crockett to meet Mr. Telford,” Mr. Fellows told the four ladies.
“Indeed, and who might Mr. Telford be?” Martha inquired eagerly, wondering if she had yet another possible husband to dispose of.
“He builds canals,” Fellows told her.
“And bridges, Tony,” Hudson reminded him.
“Has it to do with a bridge for the river?” Lillian asked,
“Yes, by Jove. If those Tories think to keep all the treats for their own ridings, Matt and I will have Telford throw a bridge across the Severn for us Whigs to use.”
It was necessary for Mr. Hudson to explain the nature of the plan. “The Tories promise a bridge every election, but they have not delivered it yet, and there is no reason to think they will do so this time. We have been in touch with Mr. Telford, a marvelous engineer who has constructed many canals and harbors and bridges, and have got him interested in trying out a new sort of bridge that was erected in America fifteen years ago. It’s called a suspension bridge. Towers are built on either side of the river. Chains are laid across with hanger-rods suspending, and a roadway is held by the rods. It sounds precarious enough, but it is a very solid sort of construction, actually, if it is engineered properly, and Telford is the best.”
“It sounds awfully risky,” Sara said, picturing a road swaying in the breeze suspended from a couple of chains.