How was Henry to know that the ladies Clarissa, Edwina and Margaret enjoyed one another’s company largely for the opportunity to establish which sister was to be envied most? On this occasion, Clarissa’s desire to make her husband take notice of her was superseded by the challenge of making her sisters jealous.
Thus Margaret and Edwina, on arriving at the manor, had been greeted with the breathless news that Clarissa had made a conquest in London, a dashing military man no less, and that he had followed her here, hoping to break down her iron resistance in her very home! This was news indeed, and a triumphant Clarissa discerned a tinge of envy around her sisters’ pursed lips. Clarissa was not a clever strategist, however, or she would have foreseen the outcome of this move: now Edwina and Margaret had no choice but to join in the game, and try to coax the captain away from their sister.
And so Henry had found himself the target of a heavily perfumed firing line after the meal had been consumed, the sack-posset had been swilled, and the ladies had repaired their toilette.
“Pray tell, Captain,” wheedled Lady Margaret, “How is it that you serve the French king? Does England not need protection too?”
“Madam,” said the gallant captain, “if ever an enemy were to threaten such fair company”—his eyes flitted diplomatically over each lady without resting on any one in particular—”I assure you, not even the King of France himself could stay me from rushing to your defense.”
“Is it true,” asked Lady Clarissa, “that the French officers dine better than they do at the French court, what’s it called, Saint-Germain?”
“No, Clarissa, you mean that new place everyone’s talking about, you know, Versayles!” Lady Edwina corrected her.
“Versailles, dear Edwina,” said Margaret, “is how it is pronounced.”
“Nothing, madam, compares to what I have sampled at your table.” Henry said smoothly. He could not help a wistful glance at the adjoining room, where card tables had been set up.
“But,” Edwina said with a pretty pout, planting herself squarely in his line of vision, “you have not given an explanation, sir. Why must you go overseas?”
“Ladies, ladies,” Henry replied with a sigh. “As you know, we are in alliance with France. His Majesty King Charles has ordered that his French cousin be provided with as many able-bodied Englishmen as he needs to help him vanquish Holland. But believe me, my fealty is to England first.”
“I understand that son-of-a-whore Louis has been paying a fair rogue’s ransom for his fealty, too,” Edmund mouthed to his brother-in-law Sherworth.
“Certainly more than our poor Charles can squeeze out of those penny-pinchers at Westminster,” murmured the other.
“Oh, Captain! But aren’t those Hollanders or Spaniards or whatever they are, animals? We hear such stories! Is it very dangerous? I should be so frightened!” Clarissa looked ready to swoon.
Henry decided that if he was going to have a tryst at all during this hunting week, it might as well be the tall one, Lady Margaret. She had the freshest face and the tautest breasts; and her husband did not seem to be of the company. Happy to have solved his little problem, and to cover up his stratagem, he turned his back on the chosen one and oozed his charms at her sisters, the ladies Clarissa and Edwina.
The highlight of hunting week at the manor was a ball to be held on Saturday, and Sarah was to be allowed downstairs for it.
“My lady deems you are old enough,” said Mrs. Limpid over breakfast. “And she says you will wear the new dove-taffeta.”
“What about me?”
Mrs. Limpid and Sarah turned to Lucinda with identical expressions of annoyance.
“What about you, Lucinda?” Mrs. Limpid said.
“May I go to the ball too? I’m the same age as Sarah.”
Mrs. Limpid thought the question was a fair one and, since she had always tried to be even-handed and even felt a little sorry for the girl, she took it to Lady Clarissa in her dressing room. She already knew the answer, however.
“Lucinda? Certainly not.” Clarissa spoke to the governess hovering over her shoulder in the looking glass without taking her eyes off her own reflection. “It isn’t suitable. I mean, considering her origins, it will not do to…” The sentence trailed off, as Clarissa remembered with whom it was that she was sharing this confidence. It was better to be vague with the servants. She sat back a little, digging a knuckle into her cheek in the spot where a dimple would have been so becoming.
“And anyway,” she chided, “what would the poor girl have done for a gown?”
7
THE KISS
Lucinda decided the sketch was no good. She couldn’t help brooding about the injustice of not being allowed to go to the ball, and it made her heavy-handed, too clumsy for the light touch the snowy landscape demanded. She had been sitting on the frozen ground so long that her right leg had begun to fall asleep, but was too intent on capturing the stooped silhouette of a willow tree to shift her weight under her board.
“Ah, if it isn’t one of the little Nayerdells,” she heard, and looked around. When she saw who it was, she tried to scramble to her feet, but crashed inelegantly into the snow when her numb leg refused to bear her weight.
“Let me help you up,” he said, smirking.
“I can manage, thank you,” she panted. “I am not, actually,” she stammered, stamping her foot to get rid of the pins and needles.
“You are not what?”
“I’m not one of the little Nayerdells—I mean, I am not a Nayerdell.”
“I do beg your pardon. I thought we met…?”
“Yes, I came down the other night, with the others. Only, I am their cousin.” She felt a little sick, and her breathing was unnaturally ragged.
Henry Beaupree was well enough versed in the behavior of young women to know that this one was ripe for the plucking.
He shook out the cloak she had been sitting on and led her to a bench, then motioned her to sit down, all in a manner devastatingly chivalrous.
“Are you not cold?” He carefully draped the cloak around her shoulders.
Lucinda shook her head no, at a loss for words. She thought guiltily of the role he had played in the night, in her head, and wondered if he could have read her mind. She quickly tried to think of something pure, something irreproachable, to blot out the fantasies.
“You have been drawing, I see,” he said. “That is admirable. I cannot for the life of me draw anything—a child of three sketches better than I.” He smiled, and Lucinda couldn’t help smiling back. Then jerked her head down, flustered at having been caught gazing into his eyes.
Henry drew closer, and very deliberately let his eyes skim her entire person—up and down. Gently, he picked up her hand.
Lucinda sat frozen still. Something told her that he was taking a liberty with her, and that she should not let him. But she could not move. It seemed terribly important just then to let not a quiver, not a movement, not even a breath escape her, lest he notice that her heart was performing cartwheels inside her ribcage, and that her lungs were suddenly, inexplicably, bursting with superfluous air.
“My sweet girl.” He did not remember her name (if he had been told it), hence the endearment. “Such soft, soft skin,” he continued, teasingly raising her hand to his lips.
A shock wrenched her lower abdomen. Her eyes slid out of focus.
“And so cold, too,” he deplored, and started chafing her icy hand between his two large warm ones.
The spell was abruptly broken, and she pulled her hand away. From close by, someone was calling the captain.
They both looked up guiltily. It was Sir Edmund who had come striding around the corner of the building, with a stable hand leading two saddled horses.
Edmund flashed Henry a warning scowl. All he had caught was the guilty look, but that was enough to draw his own conclusions.
“Ah, there you are! Come, man, the hounds are already on the scent.”
“Sorry, old man. I was loo
king for the stables and got lost. Your niece was very kindly showing me the way.”
The niece in question, mortified and bewildered, clutched her cloak at her neck and ran.
The hunt had returned. Lucinda heard the commotion in the courtyard, and dashed outside with the other children who, as custom allowed at the manor, were clamoring to see the spoils and pet the hounds.
She hung back a bit, aware that a lady kept a certain composure and did not scream “Let’s see him! Let’s see him!” as the twins were doing when the carcass of the slain stag was lowered to the ground.
She did not glance at the captain, not even in his direction. She just tried looking happy and interested. Her gown this afternoon was impeccable, her hair prettily braided and tied up in satin. She wondered how she looked to him.
She heard him bark directions at the servants. His voice sounded a little crabby, normal, bored. It was not the voice of a man who had lost his heart that morning, here, on a bench behind the very building he was about to enter. He disappeared into the stable, surrounded by the other riders.
Crestfallen, she walked around the back to the kitchen door. Bessie was churning butter on the snow-covered stoop. Her cheeks were flushed, for it was hot work, even in this bracing weather.
“Look at you!” exclaimed Bessie, “A little lady! A right gentlewoman! I do wish you would take such care every day, my pet. You look so pretty!”
“Why should I?” muttered Lucinda. “Nobody notices anyway.” Her hand went up to her head to yank out the hair ribbons.
Bessie did not protest, because her attention was on something happening a few yards behind Lucinda.
“Sir. May I be of service…?” She bustled to her feet.
Lucinda swung around.
He was leaning over a low brick wall. He did not say anything. He had a quizzical smile on his lips. And he was staring fixedly at Lucinda.
“Oh…Ah, Bessie, this is Captain Beaupree. My old nurse,” she introduced them, her face aflame.
He smiled vaguely, politely, but kept his eyes on Lucinda. “I seem never able to find my way around here. Would you be so kind as to show me the way to the grooms’ quarters? My man has disappeared and I need him to pull off these boots.”
Lucinda was at his side in a flash. She did not look back at Bessie. He offered her his arm, and she slipped her hand under it. How firm, how cool his flesh felt, through the stuff of his coat! They walked down the snow-crusted garden path arm in arm. Like walking down the aisle, she thought, elated.
The captain’s man was not in his room. Henry entered it just the same. He kept Lucinda’s arm in his. He looked around, shrugged and said,
“Well, you see now? The fellow is not even here. Although I don’t know why I should be surprised. They’re never to be found when needed, are they!”
Lucinda nodded, flattered that he assumed she belonged to his world, that she shared with him the burden of having to put up with insubordinate personal servants.
“Hmmm…?” he teased, looking down at her with a knowing grin. She could feel him slip his arm around her back.
And then, the kiss. But it was disconcerting, that kiss. It wasn’t anything like the softly melting lip-touching of her fervid imaginings. A little rough, a little cruel. And rude, too: his tongue—what did he think he was doing? She drew back. Her lips stung.
“Oh,” she complained, twisting her head away.
He let go of her abruptly, causing her to stumble and grab at him for support. With a delicate gesture he pried himself loose.
“Well. Come, let’s see if we can’t find this rogue eye-servant of mine. I must get out of these boots…”
He strode down the stairs ahead of her. She had to take a few running steps to catch up.
What had she done? She had frightened him away. And now he didn’t like her anymore. Wait, wait, she wanted to shout. Give me another chance…
Lucinda wiggled her freezing toes. Under her woolen cloak she had on nothing but her linen nightgown and a pair of flimsy slippers. When the other children had started making the sounds of sleep, she had slunk out of the nursery, padded along the corridor and clambered out the window at the far end, where a wide parapet afforded a view of a slice of the ballroom below.
It was one of those crisp winter nights when everything seems crystal clear and new. The shapes of hedges and trees were outlined in pristine white. She sniffed deeply. The freshness of the night stung her nostrils. The stars sparkled as if newly minted, and the moon, half-full and reclining lazily on its back, provided a blaze of white light that made the snow glitter as gaily as the sky.
Through the wavy glass of tall windows, hundreds of candles lit up satins and silks of every hue. Sounds wafted up to her ears clear as the night—a clatter of dishes, the heavily accented dance music, a baritone guffaw here, a trill of feminine laughter there. She felt a thousand miles away from the throng below—the initiated, the privileged, the glamorous denizens of the ballroom, who moved with such confidence in and out of her field of vision, and who excluded her so ruthlessly from their sensational secrets and brazen delights.
Every once in a while she would catch a glimpse of the captain, unmistakable in his red officer’s coat, sweeping past in a long line of bowing, tapping, and twirling people. She smiled when she saw the dignified skill with which he evaded Monsieur Piétain, the dance instructor, who was prancing around the dancers singing out directions in an obsequious falsetto. She saw the captain holding now this, now that lady’s hand: he had already danced with each of her aunts.
She hoped he was disappointed not to see her. She had not told him she would not be at the ball. He must be wondering where she was. So far, he had not yet appeared with Sarah. Lucinda prayed. She prayed and prayed that Sarah would be left fluttering her sandy eyelashes at him in vain.
She closed her eyes and for the umpteenth time replayed the scene of that afternoon. The kiss that had dismayed her a few hours earlier had already undergone a transformation and become a passionate embrace.
When they had arrived back at the main house, the captain had solemnly bowed over her hand—a mark of respect Lucinda had not before enjoyed in her life—and said wryly, “You see, there was nothing to worry about—I have delivered you safe.”
Lucinda had nodded. She’d even ventured a saucy retort.
“I am grateful, sir. But weren’t you the one who needed a guide…?”
The sentence ended in a mortifying squeak.
Henry laughed out loud. “Funny child,” he said. And winked at her, and left.
She had been craning her neck for close to two hours when the dancing below stopped, and the guests disappeared to partake of the midnight feast prepared by Mrs. Kettle, Bessie and their helpers in the dining hall. Lucinda turned and made her way along the parapet to the window, slid open the casing and slipped inside. She brushed some telltale snow off the windowsill, and was about to sneak back to the nursery when she froze.
At the far end of the intersecting hallway, where the guest chambers began, she made out two figures struggling a little and bumping into the walls. The woman was trying to stifle giggles, and the man had a hand awkwardly pressed into the top of her gown. In the tall figure of the woman, Lucinda recognized her Aunt Margaret. The man was wearing a red officer’s coat.
Before she knew where her bolting legs were taking her, she was running, almost tumbling down the narrow circular staircase, out the back door and into the biting night. She ran past the barren kitchen garden, along dark paths sheltered by ghostly hedges, to the spot behind the stables where they had met that morning. There she stopped, panting and sobbing. The bench still showed the imprint where they had sat side by side. The print of two ludicrous human bottoms resting on a snowy bench while their owners were playing out some scene above that was suddenly too painful to recall…
Her breath came in raw, angry gasps. Running had not helped—the pain inside her ribcage was sharper than before. Her chest was being crushed by an
awful, humiliating weight. Helplessly she lifted her fists high above her head and spun around and around, like a crazy spinning top, faster and faster, until dizziness made her totter and sway. She lost her footing and found herself sprawled on the ground in a heap. The brutal sting of the snow was a welcome diversion. She tore at her cloak, flinging it as far away from her as she could, and continued to roll and writhe until she was drenched to the skin.
The cold finally penetrated her madness and made her come to her senses. She sat up, panting, her hair dripping. She looked around anxiously, sick with embarrassment. Had anyone seen her? The silhouetted trees drooped lugubriously, their branches bowed down with ice. What on earth had possessed her? She got up and, as quietly as she could, slunk back to the house.
8
AFTER THE BALL
From her earliest childhood, Lucinda had shared every delight and every setback with the woman who had taken her mother’s place. Bessie had consoled her through umpteen disappointments, mended her torn gowns, bandaged her scraped knees, and helped her weave nests of straw and wool for all the injured frogs, insects and birds Lucy was in the habit of rescuing. From the very start of her stay at the manor, when Lucinda’s sunny little world was first darkened by the realization that her cousins were never going to stop shunning her, Bessie had provided her with the ammunition to hold her head high. It had been Bessie’s whispered tales of princesses masquerading as paupers and of goodness triumphing over evil that first introduced Lucinda to the world of her own imagination, that great healer of blows to the ego.
But now for the first time there was something Lucinda felt she had to hide: a disturbing, dark thing that could not be shared. Which meant that she was suddenly unable to talk to Bessie about anything at all, in case she involuntarily betrayed the one thing that was uppermost in her mind.
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