Barnes withdrew from her as unceremoniously as he had approached her. He buttoned his trousers and carefully opened the closet door. He looked around and, seeing nobody, slipped out. On his way, he gave her a smile that looked to her to be just a little diabolical.
She put herself back together as quickly as she could, and was back in the scullery before she was missed.
Upstairs, Georgiana sat on her bed, looking at the scarlet letter and trying to align her feelings with her thoughts, and her thoughts with one another.
Her talk with Lord Grantsbury had made an impression, she realized. Had she thought him to be completely wrong, she knew her feelings about Barnes wouldn’t have changed. It was because she was afraid he was right that she could no longer feel the attraction to Barnes that she had.
She needed to talk this through, and she needed a friend. She reached for her boots, put them on, and was about to leave the room when she turned, picked up a handkerchief, and wiped the lipstick off the mirror as best she could. Then she strode purposely to Miss Niven’s room.
“Come in,” Alexandra said in answer to her knock.
“Oh, Alexandra, I’m so glad to have found you in your room. So much has happened that I must tell you about.”
Alexandra’s face took on a rather confused look, and she made a downward gesture with her hand that Georgiana read as an invitation to sit, so she took a seat on an upholstered chair near the door. “You won’t credit it, but I’ve found a scarlet letter on my mirror!” she blurted. “A great big capital A written in lipstick! Someone doesn’t know any better than to label me an adulteress.”
Here she sat back in the chair with a bemused look. Miss Niven didn’t respond, but only coughed, and Georgiana looked at her curiously.
At that point, Miss Mumford stepped out from behind the open door of the wardrobe, where she had been setting Miss Niven’s costume to rights.
Georgiana colored. She had not intended to share her news with any but her friend, and she would have preferred that Miss Niven’s rather disagreeable companion not know. But it was done, and she would make the best of it.
“Miss Mumford, I apologize for bursting in on you like this,” she said a little stiffly. “Had I known you had a prior claim on my friend’s attention, I would have come back another time.”
“Not at all, Lady Georgiana,” Miss Mumford said with an oily grace. “I was simply making sure all was in order with Miss Niven’s masquerade costume, and that can certainly wait. I will leave you two alone.” She left the room and closed the door behind her.
“I was trying to let you know she was there,” Miss Niven said almost disconsolately. She knew that Lady Georgiana would not want Miss Mumford to know about the incident. “Had I had my wits about me I would have called to her to come out and meet you. I’m so sorry.”
“Never fret,” Georgiana said, looking kindly at her. “I daresay no harm is done. She knows about everything else, so it means nothing that she knows about this, too.”
Alexandra relaxed a little, and her thoughts turned to Georgiana’s news. “When did you find the letter?”
“Just this afternoon. I returned to my room from an interview with the Earl of Grantsbury, about which I would very much like your opinion.”
Miss Niven was exceedingly flattered by her friend’s soliciting her opinion, and on a matter she discussed with Lord Grantsbury! But her natural modesty made her doubt that her thoughts could be of much use to one such as Georgiana.
“I am, of course, happy to give you my opinion, but I don’t know that it will be helpful to you,” she said.
“I disagree,” her friend said firmly, “and my thoughts are in such a state of confusion that I can’t make heads or tails of them. I need a clear-thinking, sympathetic friend to help me sort it out, and you are just such a one.”
Miss Niven flushed with pleasure. “I shall do all I can, but first you must tell me about the A.”
“I have told it already. I came to my room, and there it was.”
“And you didn’t see anyone in the corridor?”
“Not a soul, and the letter could have been there for an hour or more, as that is how long I was gone. But,” she added thoughtfully, “I do think this tells us something about our culprit.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. Because The Scarlet Letter is so well-known, anyone might know that an A brands a woman in that particular way. But only someone essentially ignorant would apply that to me, an unmarried woman. ”
“You may very well be right that it was someone ignorant,” said Miss Niven, “although it might simply be someone educated taking a semantic liberty with the word. But, even if that’s not the case, might not someone ignorant be as dangerous as someone knowledgeable?”
“You are right,” said Georgiana, giving this some consideration. “But it is hard for me to take it seriously when it is so comical.”
The two women agreed, though, that this new piece of information made it look as though servants were more likely suspects than guests. Which servants, though, they could not say.
“One other thought did occur to me,” Georgiana said, a bit tentatively.
“Yes . . . ?” Miss Niven encouraged her to go on.
“Well, at first I thought it could be Mr. Barnes.”
Miss Niven looked at her wonderingly. “Mr. Barnes? But why on earth . . . ?” she said.
“In order to be the hero. It was he who identified the bouquet as poison ivy. He would have been one of the first to know when the peacock died, and he came to remove it himself.”
“That seems like an awful lot of work just to make a good impression,” Miss Niven said, puzzled that her friend would suggest it.
“It’s not just that,” Georgiana said. “I think he’s a shrewd judge of character, and he might have believed that leaving those notes would have the effect of driving me closer to him, not farther away. It’s not difficult to see that I’m rather a defiant sort of girl, and censure I feel to be unjust would simply make me dig in my heels.”
Miss Niven thought about this. She wouldn’t have described Georgiana this way, but now that the description had come from Georgiana herself, she saw its aptness.
“You may be right,” Alexandra said. “And, since he certainly wouldn’t have the same motive where I’m concerned, that would leave open the possibility that it was Miss Mumford in my case.”
“Or anyone else who knew about the notes,” Georgiana added. The girls tried to think of everyone who fell into that category, but the list was much too long.
“Anyone could have told anyone else,” Alexandra said, throwing up her hands.
“You’re right,” said Lady Georgiana. “We can talk about it all day and all night, but it’s getting us no closer to an answer.” She sighed.
Their speculative efforts exhausted, Georgiana then broached the topic of her talk with Lord Grantsbury. She told Alexandra of all he had said, and again asked her opinion.
Alexandra sat silent for a time, thinking carefully about it. She didn’t want to oppose her friend, or appear to criticize, but neither could she say anything other than what she believed to be true. Finally she said, “I cannot but think that he is right.” Georgiana sighed and nodded but didn’t respond, and she went on. “Perhaps it is because I am more accustomed than you to thinking myself at the world’s mercy, and always keep in mind the importance of safeguarding my reputation.”
“But why must women do that, while men need not?”
“I don’t know. I know only that they must, and so I do.”
They talked at some length about men and women, and reputation and restrictions, and Lady Georgiana found Miss Niven’s thoughts on the subject clearer and more compelling than she had expected. At the end of a half hour, she was determined, if not to walk the straight and narrow from that day forward, at least to check some of her more outré impulses.
She didn’t like it, though, and she couldn’t help but resent Lord Grantsbury’s
harsh words.
“But he called me an ass!” she said plaintively, holding on to the last objection she had.
“Perhaps that was what the A was for, and it was someone knowledgeable after all,” said Miss Niven, smiling and blushing slightly at her own daring for making fun of her friend.
Georgiana looked at her in wonder, surprised that such a joke had come out of such a girl. And then she laughed as long and loud as she had in many days.
It was only when she stopped that they heard the knock on the door. “Come in,” Alexandra called, and Freddy did as he was bidden.
“What’s the joke?” he asked. “It sounded like an awfully good one.”
“Oh, it’s much too long a story to tell,” said Georgiana.
“That’s what people say when they simply don’t want to tell you,” he said petulantly.
“All right, then, we simply don’t want to tell you.”
“Well, at least now you’re being straight about it.”
“I’m always straight, Freddy; haven’t you figured that out by now?” Georgiana asked as she stood up. Her mind was still on her conversations of the afternoon, and she was in no mood for Freddy’s nonsense. “And now I will go straight out of the room and leave you to our good Miss Niven.”
When she was gone, Freddy sat down in her chair without waiting to be asked. He had hoped to find Alexandra alone but, now that he was with her, he wasn’t sure how to begin.
“I say,” he started haltingly, “my mother told me about the milk. You’re a trump for not letting on.”
Alexandra’s color rose. The milk and the note were not something she wanted to discuss with Freddy. “It wasn’t so very bad,” she said, and then did her best to change the subject. “Have you played more tennis?” she asked with artificial brightness.
“Tennis?” he said. “You gave me such a thrashing that I believe I shall give up the game. Unless, of course, you would like to give me lessons.” He looked at her with wide eyes and a meaningful expression.
She colored again, and began to have a sense of the direction this conversation was taking. But she would take him at his word. “Oh, I’m certainly unqualified to give lessons, but I should hate to bear the responsibility for your giving up the sport.”
“I would never hold you to account,” he said awkwardly, not knowing how to dig himself out of this hole. He didn’t come here to talk about tennis lessons. He’d never approached a girl in this way before, and he was finding that it wasn’t nearly as easy as he thought it would be.
“Devil take it!” he said, and plunged in. “Miss Niven, I think you’re the finest girl I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Alexandra was startled at this declaration. Her mouth opened a bit in surprise.
“I mean, it’s not how you look,” he went on confusedly. “I mean, it is how you look, but it’s not just how you look.” He knew he was making a hash of it. “It’s just that you’re such . . . such . . .” He struggled to articulate what she was. “Such a good sport,” was what he settled on.
She had to smile. She had a sense that, in Freddy’s lexicon, “good sport” was a high compliment indeed, and she was ready to take it in the spirit in which it was intended. She wasn’t sure, though, whether he was making love to her or not. If he was, it was a curious sort of lovemaking. But if he wasn’t, as conversation it was more curious yet.
“I am glad you think me so,” she said with a kind expression intended to put him more at his ease.
The two were seated in twin upholstered chairs with a small table in between them. Freddy got up from his and sat on the table, close enough to her that her skirt rustled against his legs.
He took her hand. “I know I’m making a grand muddle of it,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “But I can’t help myself.”
Now she was sure he was making love to her. She was less sure about how to respond. Was this to be her second marriage proposal in as many days?
Freddy put her hand to his lips, and she had only a moment to decide whether this was a liberty she ought to allow. On the whole, she thought she oughtn’t, but a girlish curiosity to let the scene play out stopped her from stopping him.
Freddy tested the limits of that girlish curiosity as he took her hand from his lips and put it in both his own. He turned it over, so her palm faced upward, and ran his hand gently from her wrist to her elbow.
This was the first time in her young life that Alexandra had been touched in a deliberately provocative way, and it turned her insides liquid. Just a moment before she had been smiling at Freddy in a calm, composed manner, completely master of herself. And now, after such a simple touch, she suddenly felt a yearning the likes of which she had never known. It was as though there were a direct connection between his fingertip on her skin and the warmth and dew that were building inside her. Her body seemed to be asserting itself, separate from her, driving her, compelling her to answer Freddy in kind.
She felt the yearning, but she knew the danger. She had spent her life being prudent, understanding that a young woman in her position must be so. Although she had the benefit of noble and wealthy connections, she herself did not have the protection of high birth. A whiff of scandal could jeopardize her future in a way that she didn’t want to contemplate.
She withdrew her arm.
Freddy caught her hand, though, and held tight. “It’s possible that I imagine it with imaginings fueled by my feelings for you, but I believe you are not indifferent to me,” he said in a low voice, keeping his eyes squarely on hers. He was now in territory where he was more comfortable.
She turned her eyes away, but her hand remained in his. “Of course I am not indifferent to you,” she said, not wanting to commit herself further.
“Then you must not deny either me or yourself,” he said, and moved closer to her. He put a hand on her thigh, lightly at first, and then closed his fingers more firmly around her leg just above her knee.
She closed her eyes. She felt his touch. She heard his breath. She smelled his musky, male smell.
He moved his hand up her thigh and then up to her waist. He pulled her forward, away from the back of the chair, and with the movement she opened her eyes.
She saw his face, inches from her own. His wide blue eyes and his fine blond hair. The expression that combined passion and tenderness.
She had never yet been kissed, and Freddy was determined that he should be the first to do it. He put his hand on her cheek and leaned in.
He did kiss her, but on the hand that had interposed itself between their two sets of lips.
“You must not, Freddy,” she said in a whisper. “Indeed, you must not.”
“And why must I not?” he asked, but he recognized something in her tone that told him the battle was lost.
“Nay, you know why you must not,” she said hoarsely. And then, with more severity, “And I have been schooled to understand that a gentleman does not ask such questions.”
This stung, for although Freddy understood that he was more inclined to gentlemanly behavior when it was convenient and consistent with his interest than when it was not, he did not like to be called out on his lapses.
And this was certainly a lapse. He had approached a young lady of unimpeachable moral character with a proposition—unspoken, but a proposition nevertheless—that was most disreputable. Had he cataloged all he knew of her, and considered carefully whether this was wise, he probably would have thought better of his attempt, but careful consideration had never been Freddy’s long suit.
Resilience, though, he had in spades, and even a rejection and a rebuke couldn’t completely daunt him.
“You were schooled correctly, and I hope you will forgive me,” he said. “You must understand that I am acting under the influence of your very considerable charms, and my good manners are not strong enough to hold up under such powerful”—he searched for the word—“allure.”
She stood up. “Perhaps I shall see you at dinner,” she said by wa
y of dismissal.
He stood also. “I hope you shall,” he said as he left, and his parting words still had a faint echo of the tone of intimacy he had assumed with her. “I hope you shall.”
She didn’t see him at dinner. She didn’t see anyone at dinner. She had tea and toast in her room because she felt she was too preoccupied to be good company.
She wasn’t angry with Freddy. She was flattered, and fascinated by the sensations he had awoken. Still, the way he had approached her cast him in a new light, and she couldn’t help but mark the contrast between his behavior and Gerry’s. Freddy had been a cad, trying blatantly to seduce her. Gerry had been a gentleman, professing his love and proposing marriage.
Could she ever feel the thrill at Gerry’s touch that she felt at Freddy’s? She wasn’t sure. What she did know was that she felt a warm glow suffusing her whole self, and she was sure it was attributable more to the older man than the younger. He had honored her in a way that touched her profoundly. She felt cherished. That, too, was a new sensation for her, and she thought it to be a more substantial and important sensation than the yearning she had felt with Freddy.
She thought about her two suitors as she sipped her tea and prepared for bed, and she knew without a doubt which of them was the better man.
EIGHTEEN
The much-anticipated day of the masquerade finally arrived. The rain of the day before had exhausted itself, and the sun was out in full force, warming the crisp fall morning. It was perfect.
Miss Niven came down late to breakfast, and was glad to spot Gerry at the buffet, taking seconds on kippers. The house was so busy and so full that the odds of finding any particular person were long.
“Hello, Gerry,” she said, taking a plate and joining him.
He smiled broadly and warmly. “Hullo, Miss Niven,” he said. “Have you not breakfasted yet?”
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