Timepiece

by Heather Albano

  Elizabeth bit back a sound of annoyance. “I am sorry, mamma. I had forgotten, or I would not have been gardening.” This was true. If she had remembered Mrs. Wilton’s incipient visit, she would have taken care to be out walking, as far from home as she could reasonably get.

  “Well, go and tidy yourself now, at once. Put on your new muslin, and I shall send Sarah in to do your hair. Make haste, child, make haste!”

  “Yes, mamma—” Elizabeth chose to interpret this instruction as permission to run in an unladylike manner. She darted into the house, ignoring her mother’s despairing wail about her hoydenish ways and clutching her bonnet to her so that Mrs. Barton would not notice how it bulged.

  Elizabeth thanked her stars that she chanced to encounter Bronson as she pounded up the stairs. He stepped smoothly aside, and she paused to stop and whisper, “I have left the wrapping paper in the garden. Will you please go and tidy it, and please, Bronson, do not tell—”

  “Leave it to me, miss,” Bronson assured her, and Elizabeth flashed him a smile and ran up the second flight of stairs to her bedchamber.

  She had barely enough time to hide the pocket watch in the drawer containing winter underclothing before Sarah arrived to assist her in changing her gown. A simple morning dress would never do to wear before company, of course—even Elizabeth had to admit that—but she grudged the time it took to don her new white muslin. She supposed she should be grateful that it was of a simple enough line not to require a long corset and the fuss that entailed, but she still had a hard fight to keep from betraying her impatience at every step. And when the muslin was donned, she must sit still while Sarah combed and arranged her unruly curls. She had hoped for a few minutes between the maid’s departure and the guests’ arrival to examine the pocket watch again, but she heard voices below while Sarah was pinning up the last lock of hair.

  Elizabeth made her way down the stairs as sedately as a young lady ought. Whether that sluggishness was due to reluctance for walking away from the pocket watch and its secrets or to reluctance for entering Mrs. Wilton’s company, she could not have said. She opened the door to the drawing room just as Mrs. Wilton and her nephew were invited to sit, which at least gave her mother and aunt no opportunity to criticize her appearance or caution her regarding deportment. But it also meant that all heads swiveled to watch her as she entered, and her chances for playing an unobtrusive role in the conversation were reduced to nothing.

  Mrs. Wilton’s nephew rose. The ladies remained seated. Elizabeth made a curtsy to the room as a whole. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting,” she said.

  “Miss Elizabeth,” Mrs. Wilton greeted her, without any discernable warmth.

  Something in the tone stiffened Elizabeth’s back. Mrs. Wilton might have been addressing a child, which Elizabeth certainly was not. She was of an age to be “Miss Barton,” in fact—but her father’s sister lived with the family and indeed was in the room, and it was she who claimed that title. Still, that did not give Mrs. Wilton the right to say “Miss Elizabeth” as though speaking to a schoolgirl.

  “It is a pleasure to see you, ma’am,” Elizabeth replied as politely as she could. “I hope you are well.”

  Mrs. Wilton sniffed. “Tolerably so, Miss Elizabeth, thank you. Perhaps you remember my nephew Charles?”

  Elizabeth turned obediently to the young man who had risen, and made a second curtsy. He bowed, in a manner more theatrical than correct. As he straightened, she was able to observe the dashing cut of his blue coat and the dazzling starched whiteness of his cravat. He had folded it into that most complicated design known as the ballroom—indicating that either he had taken the time to become proficient at executing such a piece of nonsense, or that he had attempted the fold on numerous cravats that morning before getting one right. Mr. Wilton saw the direction of her gaze, assumed her approval, and beamed. Elizabeth stifled a sigh.

  “Indeed, Mr. Wilton, it has been too long,” she said, and moved to take a seat.

  “Allow me.” Mr. Wilton swung around, took a chair from the small table, and set it with a flourish beside his own. Elizabeth looked with longing at the far corner of the sofa, but seated herself in the chair.

  “Since my nephew has recently attained his majority,” Mrs. Wilton said, “his uncle and I thought it time he favor us with a proper visit. He is to inherit, you know.” Indeed, that was something everyone knew, all three parts of it, for Mrs. Wilton had mentioned it in every conversation for six months. “We are paying calls throughout the neighborhood. It is only right that my nephew becomes acquainted with my neighbors, since they will one day be his neighbors.”

  Which meant, Elizabeth interpreted, that Mrs. Wilton and her nephew were making the rounds of every family who had a daughter approaching marriageable age, to decide if there were any worthy of being offered an alliance with the House of Wilton.

  From her corner, Elizabeth’s aunt spoke with her usual grimness. “Are you finding your visit to the country congenial, Mr. Wilton, after the dissipations of Town?”

  “Indeed yes, Miss Barton,” Charles Wilton assured her. “I am finding the company in Hartwich even more charming than I remember from my boyhood visits.” He looked significantly at Elizabeth as he spoke, and she kept herself from rolling her eyes by an extreme force of will. Two floors above nestled a mysterious pocket watch in a plush velvet bag. For that matter, outside the window birds chirped and a soft breeze blew. And here she was trapped in a drawing room without even the consolation of interesting conversation.

  “That is very kind of you to say, sir,” she said. Her mother looked at her sharply.

  “But—if I may ask, Miss Elizabeth—why do I have the good fortune to meet you here? Why is a lovely young lady such as yourself not making her curtsy to Society?”

  “I am not yet of an age to do so, Mr. Wilton,” Elizabeth replied, keeping her eyes cast down. Let him strike her off his list as too young, and then he could go about interviewing other eligible young ladies and she could go back to the pocket watch.

  “My daughter is only just seventeen, sir,” her mother explained. “We did think of this year’s Season, but next year, her cousin Lily will be of an age to join us, and it will be merry indeed for the girls to have each other’s companionship. Unless, of course...” Mrs. Barton trailed off innocently, and Elizabeth gritted her teeth.

  The conversation chirped along around her, and she returned her thoughts to the pocket watch, trying to construct from memory what the picture on the fourth face had been. A dark street, overlaid with fog...and within the fog, a shape moving...what sort of shape? Something quite large, she thought, and—

  “Miss Elizabeth?”

  Elizabeth jerked herself back to the drawing room and lifted her eyes to Charles Wilton’s. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “I said, it must be very quiet here for a jolly young girl such as yourself. Town will make your head spin next year.”

  “Indeed, sir, I am certain it will,” Elizabeth said. Her mother cleared her throat.

  “Only, I suppose, if you are fond of diversions,” Mr. Wilton went on, a little uncertainly. “Perhaps you are one of those studious young ladies who do not care for dancing...?” He glanced toward Elizabeth’s aunt, obviously a studious old lady who did not care for dancing.

  “Elizabeth? Studious?” Her mother laughed. “Oh, but that is a very good joke, sir. She is a most lively girl indeed, and likes nothing better than to dance. Do you not, Elizabeth?”

  Elizabeth said, “Indeed, sir, I do enjoy a dance.”

  “Perhaps I can prevail upon my aunt and uncle to give a ball,” Charles Wilton said, leaning toward her, “and perhaps you will consent to dance with me upon that occasion?”

  “I would be most happy to, sir.” Elizabeth shifted to avoid the tickle of his breath on her neck. “It is very kind of you.” During her campaign to convince her mother to delay her entrance into Society one final year—and she was still rather surprised Mrs. Barton had fallen for the argu
ment that Elizabeth wished to wait for Lily; Elizabeth and Lily were not so great friends as all that—she had thought of the reprieve as representing twelve additional months of freedom. It had not occurred to her that her mother would not wait for a triviality such as her presentation in London to commence a search for an eligible young man. But Mrs. Barton was not one to deny herself any of the fun accorded to a mamma with a marriageable daughter, and Elizabeth had therefore spent many tedious mornings since her seventeenth birthday trapped in a drawing room with some coxcomb or another. Now, nodding her head without listening to the anecdote Mr. Wilton was telling, she had to repress a shudder at the idea of an entire Season surrounded by men like him. And then what? Decades upon decades of drawing rooms and embroidery stretched out before her.

  Mr. Wilton paused, looking at her with eyes like a good-humored dog. Elizabeth inferred it was time to make some reply. “How diverting, sir,” she said.

  “I am glad you think so!” Mr. Wilton leaned forward. “That’s nothing compared to what happened to a man I know out in Surrey...”

  Elizabeth had a sudden savage wish that she had been born to a family of good breeding but no fortune, so she might be “reduced” to marrying a second or third son, a soldier who would whisk her off to foreign places. To the East Indies, say—or the West Indies, she wasn’t particular. But her thirty thousand pounds restrained her as effectively as a butterfly in a net, and Charles Wilton laid out before her all the details concerning his friend’s recent purchase of a horse.

  “And what do you think of that, Miss Elizabeth?”

  “Very droll indeed, sir.”

  Perhaps when she did enter Society next year—if she got that far, if she could dodge the advances of her mamma’s parade for that long—she might contrive to entangle herself with such a young officer. It could not be very hard to do; she had read of such things in novels. Or to be precise, she had not read them herself. It was one unladylike habit her mother did not need to worry over. Her elder cousin Mirabelle had read them out loud, and Elizabeth and Lily had listened. It had been, Elizabeth thought, preferable to attempting conversation with Mirabelle. Hearing all the novels meant she knew how the story went. A young lady goes to London for her first Season and is swept off her feet by a dashing young man, but he proves faithless or disreputable or both, and sometimes the young lady is ruined. Or sometimes she merely makes an “unfortunate alliance.” Elizabeth thought an unfortunate alliance a perfectly acceptable price to pay for the chance to see something more of the world than the walled-in gardens of fine houses.

  “Elizabeth,” her aunt said in a freezing whisper, “Mrs. Wilton asked you a question.”

  Elizabeth started. “Oh, I beg your pardon. I...I cannot think what is causing my mind to wander so. It must be the heat, or perhaps I am coming over poorly...”

  No one in the room was fooled. Well, Charles Wilton, perhaps; Elizabeth sensed it wouldn’t take much to fool him. But her mother and aunt knew she never took ill, and Mrs. Wilton’s lips pursed as she repeated, “I wondered if you would join your mother and your aunt when they take tea with me on Friday.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, I should be most happy to.” Elizabeth attempted to give the impression of enthusiasm, but there was not much that could be done to repair the tatters of the visit. Elizabeth was of two minds on that. She was in many ways relieved to have Mrs. Wilton taking her departure, and if she had shaken off Mr. Wilton’s interest, so much the better. But as she took note of the agitation on her mother’s face and the anger in her aunt’s eyes, she became abruptly uncertain if the victory won over the Wiltons was worth the punishment she was sure to catch once they were gone.

  Her aunt waited only until the sound of the closing outer door proclaimed the Wiltons to be out of earshot. “Your manners, Miss Elizabeth Barton, do no credit to your family.”

  “I am sorry, ma’am,” Elizabeth replied as evenly as she could. “I am unaccountably distracted today.”

  “A fine day you have picked for it,” her mother exclaimed. “Before Mrs. Wilton, of all people! She is a force to be reckoned with in this neighborhood, as you very well know! She pays us the compliment of bringing her nephew to meet you—and he is to inherit, Elizabeth, you know that! You could hardly find any better match! Here close to home, too! But no, you must go and be sulky and probably you have put him off for all time!”

  Elizabeth devoutly hoped so. She wished her mother would have done with the scolding and move on to the punishment, so that she could escape to her room.

  “I never heard of such an inconsiderate girl! You have no regard for my feelings at all!”

  “I do beg your pardon, mamma,” Elizabeth said, steadily still. “I did not mean to insult you. Or Mrs. Wilton, for that matter. I find my mind wandering today. Perhaps I had better lie down before dinner...”

  “I am certain your time could be more usefully occupied,” her aunt said crisply. “In such a way as might train it to keep attention where attention belongs. Sit with me, Elizabeth, and read to me while I wind yarn. That will be much better for you than lazing about your bedchamber.” She resumed her seat, took up Hannah More’s Practical Piety, and held it out. “Now, miss.”

  There was no escape to be had. Elizabeth, longing to be anywhere else, resumed her seat in the hard chair and opened the book. Her aunt took up a skein of gray yarn and began to wind it. Bees droned against the window.

  And this was her other option. Either she married some handsome featherhead like Charles Wilton and spent her days making insipid conversation as the mistress of his house, or she declined all suitors until Society deemed her “on the shelf” and thereafter wound yarn year upon year. She fixed her mind on the thought of the disreputable and dashing young officer and resolved to borrow Mirabelle’s novels at the first opportunity, so that she would be well versed in the techniques used to secure such a man when the opportunity presented itself. It was the only escape route she could discern.

  Her aunt allowed her to cease reading only when it became time for dinner. Elizabeth followed her to the dining room with downcast eyes and an outward show of meekness, and sat down to endure the interminable courses and still more maddening conversation—the latter mostly conducted mostly by her mother and her aunt, with her father occasionally interjecting comments that showed him to have not been listening. Elizabeth managed to keep her tongue in check until the chairs were at last pushed back and the family made ready to remove to the drawing room. Then, taking care to speak politely, she announced her intention of enjoying the remainder of the day out of doors.

  Her aunt sniffed. “Mind you keep to the path, Elizabeth, and do not run about. You’ll disgrace us all if Mrs. Carrington or Lady Anderson sees you with mud on your ankles and your face red like a farmgirl’s. Really, John—” She turned to her brother. “—I do not see why the girl should be permitted to run wild like this. There is no need for her to be gypsying over the countryside; she ought to take her exercise nearer home. When I was a girl, a turn in the garden was enough for me, as you very well know, and I never stayed out of doors above half an hour. I would be ashamed to tan my skin in the sun and wind—” Elizabeth backed through the door before either of her parents could command her to restrict her movements to the garden, ran upstairs to snatch her bonnet and reticule and the pocket watch in its bag, and escaped for the orchard.

  Chapter 2

  Hartwich, Kent, June 17, 1815

  On the other side of the orchard, conversation over port had thus far dwelt exclusively upon hunting and the business of estate management. Understandable enough, William Carrington thought, as the three participants other than himself—which was to say, the three participants who were indeed participating—consisted of an elderly gentleman with an extensive estate, a middle-aged gentleman with a great love of hunting and an extensive estate, and a young gentlemen with a great love of hunting who would someday inherit an extensive estate. William had little to contribute on either topic, for he was not h
imself in line to inherit anything, and he had never been overly fond of the hunt even before he lost the use of his right arm. In any case, there was room in his thoughts for only one subject. He kept waiting for his father, his brother, or his brother-in-law to broach it, but they did not. Apparently, it did not interest them.

  Or perhaps they avoided the word “Belgium” deliberately, out of some misplaced sense of delicacy. If that were the case, he ought to introduce the topic himself; but he couldn’t be sure, and moreover, he rather thought he had made enough of a fool of himself for one day. He had pounced upon his brother-in-law almost before Sir Henry had descended from his carriage to ask if there were news in the London papers from the Continent. There was not—or at least, no news more recent than that which had already filtered into Kent—and Sir Henry had raised his eyebrows at William’s urgency.

  “Well.” William’s father set aside his napkin, setting aside with it the problem of roof repair upon which he had been expounding. “Perhaps we ought to join the ladies, hey?” He scraped back his chair, and his son George and son-in-law Henry followed suit. William trailed behind them across the passageway and to the drawing room.