Belle of the ball

by Donna Lea Simpson

  Arabella thought how her mother would criticize to hear a woman spoken of in such terms. In her mind men wanted women to be fragile, frail, a delicate ivy needing the strong oak of the male to cling to, so she could wind herself around him and live off his strength. But in her own experience she had seen that the men she had most admired, and that included her cousin True's husband, Lord Drake, appreciated strong women, women who were themselves. Was there something in that then? Did she not have to pretend to be something she was not for her whole life?

  But no, she was going to marry Lord Pelimore, and she had seen how he criticized the girls who seemed too independent. He derisively called them "boys," and said they would never marry, for no man would want them. She would be doomed, then, to play the clinging vine her whole life, or live in disharmony with her husband.

  She turned her thoughts away from London. "Would you like to have more children?" It was out before she could bite it back, and so she watched Marcus curiously, wondering what his answer would be.

  He frowned and laced his fingers together. They both watched his long, strong fingers create a pattern as he threaded them through each other. "The idea has its charm. When I see Mary and George, I think I would. But—" He shook his head. "I think that part of my life, that possibility in my life, is over. I belong in Canada, and the moment my inheritance is out of the way, I will return."

  Disappointed, Arabella said, "It is only a couple of hundred pounds. Can they not send it to you?"

  Unaccountably, he looked uncomfortable and stood. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. "There are . . . details to be worked out, paperwork to be signed."

  "Ah." That was men for you; they went all mysterious whenever financial matters came under discussion. And of course she, a mere woman, could never understand.

  They walked, but some of the comfort between them had disappeared. He held her hand, though, and they walked back through the woods to their picnic area, which had been tidied by the servants—the groom, two drivers, and a maidservant—who now sat a ways off having their own lunch.

  Arabella and Marcus were just sitting back down on the blanket when Harris and Eveleen came out of the far copse. Eveleen had a grin on her face, and when she got nearer, Arabella could see twigs and leaves clinging to her hair and dress.

  Harris collapsed on another blanket, yawned, and said, "I am sleepy. Going to take a nap, children." He closed his eyes and drifted to sleep rapidly.

  Eveleen sat down beside her friend and took a bottle of lemonade out of the basket that anchored one corner. "I am so thirsty," she said. She took a long drink and corked the bottle again, sighing with satisfaction. "What have you two been up to?" she asked, brightly, looking from Arabella to Marcus.

  Assailed by suspicions of what her friend had been doing, flustered and confused that she would even think such a thing, Arabella was unable to answer. Marcus jumped in and retailed parts of their conversation, leaving out the kiss.

  "How well behaved you two are."

  She seemed her usual bright self, but Arabella detected a hint of dissatisfaction, or edginess in her friend, she couldn't decide exactly what it was. It irritated her, this distance between them, this secrecy on Eveleen's part.

  Nettled, she replied, "Better well behaved than misbehaved."

  "Better misbehaved than bored!" Eveleen's smile had turned sour, and her voice had a bite of tartness to it.

  "Better bored than with child," Arabella blurted pointedly, glaring, and then was immediately sorry. Especially when Eveleen's eyes drifted shut and she fainted.

  Eleven

  There was shocked silence for one moment, and then Marcus flung himself into action, kneeling beside Eveleen on the soft blanket and checking her head to make sure she did not bump it.

  "Here, you," he called to Eveleen's maid, a tiny girl named Molly. He beckoned to her. "Smelling salts I Bring smelling salts."

  Molly dithered and fluttered, but in the end it turned out that she did not carry that necessity. Miss O'Clannahan never having had an ill moment in her life before this one. Arabella's Annie was not with her, or she would have been so equipped. One of the manservants brought a bottle of water and a cloth, and Marcus hastily poured some of the chilled liquid over it and held the damp cloth to Eveleen's pale brow.

  Arabella was shocked to the core and near tears that her nastiness should have had such an outcome. What had she been thinking? How could she be so bitter, so spiteful? And even now it was Marcus, virtually a stranger to them, who was holding her limp friend, and tenderly administering to her. Finally finding the use of her limbs, Arabella knelt beside them and took one of Eveleen's hands. *'Eve, Eve?" she said gently. "Awaken, my dear."

  Glancing at her with a question in his tormented eyes, Marcus said, "Is there something here that I donot know about? You do not need to tell me what it is, if it is a secret."

  Arabella gazed at him blankly for a moment, and then remembered her mean-spirited remark and what it might seem to imply, and further, what that implication would mean to Marcus. Shame engulfed her. What had overtaken her? She had reacted to Eveleen's tweaking her on her innocence with such a monstrous barb! Monumental bad judgement, and this was the result Calmly, she looked Marcus in the eye and said, "No, there is nothing there, believe me. It was merest chance that what I said—horrible, mean, and impolite as it was—should have this outcome."

  At least so she believed. Or was there something there? Arabella shook her head as Marcus, satisfied with her answer, had gone back to his nursing. Watching him, she wondered if he had performed this service for his beloved Moira before her demise. A streak of jealousy chased by remorse coursed through her. He was unlike anyone she had ever met, she thought as she watched Eveleen's eyes flutter open. He was unlike anyone she was ever likely to meet again. He was everything that a man should be, and more.

  "What. . . what is wrong?" Eveleen sat up, then held one delicate, freckled hand to her head. Her maid dithered around in the background, offering up prayers for her mistress's recovery.

  "You . .. the heat overcame you for a moment," Arabella said, awkwardly.

  Eveleen's eyes widened. "The heat? Oh. Yes. The heat. Molly, do stop that moaning, I am perfectly all right, as you can see."

  Harris, oblivious to the commotion, snorted and turned over, settled himself once again, and slept on.

  "Are you sure that you are all right now. Miss O'Clannahan?" Marcus asked, squeezing out the rag and handing it back to the manservant who stood nearby, ready to offer assistance.

  "I am fine," she said. "I just—it was just a passing faintness. How odd! I have never felt that way in my life."

  "Eve, I think we should be going home, don't you?" Arabella watched her friend with worry nagging at her. She wished a certain suspicion had not entered her brain; once there, it would not be calmed. But how could she ask? What could she say?

  The drive back to London was long and quiet.

  The next morning Arabella was handed a note by a footman as she sat down to breakfast It was brief and to the point; Eveleen was going away for a while. She and Sheltie were traveling to a distant relative's home on the Isle of Wight.

  Stunned and disbelieving, Arabella read the last few lines. 'Do not worry about me, my dearest friend. I will tell you all about my decision to leave London, but only when the time is right Just trust me that I am fine. For yourself forget some of my disastrous advice and heed only this; Marcus Westhaven loves you and you love him. I can see it in both your eyes when you look at each other. Marry him, even if you have to break with convention and ask him yourself. Good-bye, my dear, and I hope to see you in the not-too-distant future. "

  "What is that, my dear?" Lady Swinley asked as she entered the breakfast room.

  "A note.'* Arabella frowned down at it and chewed her lip. So much of Eveleen's life was a mystery to her, and so much of her character, too. She was like a placid lake with a mirror surface that teemed with life and tumultuous activity underneat
h. Who was the real woman? And what did the note mean?

  Lady Swinley's dark eyes sharpened and she snatched the paper from her daughter's hand. "From Pelimore? Is it from Pelimore? Is he finally securing your hand? I cannot believe he has been content to be away from London for a whole week on business! Business! His business this Season is getting a wife, and he should be more attentive to it. It would serve him right if you found another wealthier beau while he is frittering his time away on his estates."

  Arabella snatched back the letter, desperate to keep her mother from reading it. Lady Swinley had enough to say about Marcus Westhaven, all of it bad; she did not need to see Eveleen's mysterious advice. "No, Mother, it is just a note from Eveleen saying she has gone out of town for the rest of the Season. And as far as Lord Pelimore goes, you know as well as I do that he is with Lady Jacobs, his mistress, this week. That is what detains him."

  Her mother hissed with shock, the sound whistling through her gapped teeth. She gripped the curved mahogany back of a dining room chair so hard her knuckles turned white. "Arabella Swinley, I never thought to hear you say such an indelicate thing! That is what comes of consorting with the likes of Eveleen O'Clannahan. No daughter of mine—"

  "Do not disparage Eveleen to me; she is my friend!" Arabella clutched the note to her bosom.

  "And I have never been sure that she was a healthy, moral influence. But regardless, no daughter of mine will ever say or think such coarse, vulgar ..."

  Arabella failed to listen to what no daughter of Lady Swinley's would ever do, say, or think. She read the note again, and worried over Eveleen's sudden disappearance. The Isle of Wight? Though she had never been there, she had heard tales of that island off the south shore of England, and they were stories of pirates and smuggling and sundry illegal and dangerous activities.

  She had not known Eveleen had relatives there. But as her friend was already gone and had not left an address for Arabella to write to her, she supposed there was nothing for it but to pray for her, wait for another letter, and hope that her suspicions were not true. She hoped that Eveleen was not with child and alone.

  At the Vaile ball that evening, Arabella stood alone and missed Eveleen. She kept thinking what Eve would say about that dress, or what witticism Eve would come up with on the occasion of a certain couple's engagement. Was that all their friendship had amounted to? A social liaison, a pairing of two sarcastic spinsters? She hoped not. She truly loved Eve and felt that they had woven a friendship over the last few London Seasons. The note had been so brief; Arabella truly hoped that her friend was not in trouble.

  Standing there at the edge of the ballroom floor, watching the groups of young girls stroll by, their heads together as they giggled and gossiped, Arabella realized that she had not really made a lot of friends in London. Hundreds of acquaintances, many valuable social contacts, but few friends. Why was that, she wondered?

  Perhaps she knew, and just did not want to admit it to herself. She had noticed in herself in recent months a few mannerisms that were startlingly like her mother's. She almost sounded like her mother sometimes— judgemental, snobbish, fault-finding, harsh. Had she driven people away with her shrewish manner? Look at how cruel a barb she had leveled at Eve, her best friend! That was the action of a harpy. She was lucky Eve seemed to have forgiven her, or perhaps had forgotten her words.

  Is that what she did to others, though? Drove them away with her sharp tongue? Had there been opportunities for friendship that she had caused to wither and die with her caustic remarks, or her cool demeanor?

  And yet Eveleen had become a steadfast Mend. She did not think she had been any different with her than with anyone. And she had tried to drive away Marcus Westhaven and it had not worked for some reason.

  As the music started with a screech of bow across violin strings, and couples took to the dance floor, her thoughts drifted inconsequentially to the past, and her occasional opportunities to observe her parents' marriage. Lady Swinley let no opportunity for fault-finding pass. She belittled her husband in private and in public, complaining constantly about his weaknesses even in personal areas that should not be canvassed in company. Her behavior had undermined what could never have been a strong marital bond, until Lord Swinley frankly loathed his wife, from what Arabella had observed on her rare visits home.

  And yet Lady Swinley accused her daughter of being vulgar, for merely stating the truth, that Lord Pelimore was visiting his mistress? It was ludicrous in the extreme. Was it not more vulgar to air in public personal grievances with one's husband?

  Did she want to be like that? When she married would she treat her husband like that, hold him up for public ridicule in that manner? Her two choices were to marry a man above reproach or learn to hold her tongue. Since the first was highly unlikely, she would have to start practicing the second.

  "Tuppence for your thoughts."

  The voice in her ear made her jump, and her heart leap. "Marcus!" She whirled to find him grinning down at her. She had a strange urge to throw her arms around him and thank him for not abandoning her despite her occasional sharp tongue. If nothing else came of this Season, she was learning the value of friends. Instead of greeting him in such a wildly inappropriate manner, she smiled up at him and said, "I'm glad you're here."

  His gray eyes widened and he cocked her a comical grin. "You do me honor, madam!" He swept her a deep bow, and she giggled.

  "But what is the most beautiful girl in the room doing standing alone and not dancing?"

  "I . . . I—" Arabella frowned. Now that she thought of it, why was she alone? Surely at least one of her beaux should have approached her by now? Her court had been thinning of late—most had defected to throng around Lady Cynthia—but surely some of her more devoted admirers—

  Then, through a clearing in the crowd she spotted Daniel, Lord Sweetan, his fiancée, and the Snowdales. The Snowdales! In a second all the humiliation of her snubbing at their hands returned to her, and she wanted to slink out of the ballroom. They had been silent until now, and she had believed the danger from that quarter was past, but what if they had decided to tell what they knew? What if even now they were telling Daniel? After her rejection of him the previous Season he had been extremely angry; he would feed upon that black mark on her character and would doubtless show no compunction in retailing it abroad. Marcus followed her gaze.

  "That is that wretched couple who cut you in the store the first time I met you. And they are with—"

  Arabella's mouth trembled and she finished his phrase. "They are with the man I rejected. And they have likely told him all of the details of that dreadful day at Lord Conroy's family home—" She felt Marcus's curious gaze settle on her as her words trailed off.

  "What exactly happened that they felt they should snub you?" he asked, stooping slightly to catch her eyes.

  "It doesn't matter," Arabella said, hastily. She glanced around the ballroom, looking for an escape route, wondering if she should send for Annie. "I must leave, before—"

  "Before what, another snubbing? You survived the first one very well, I think. Surely you can brazen this one out, too."

  Worse than snubbed, she would be ostracized and she would be laughed at! And all of her hopes, all of her schemes would die in the face of society's ridicule. She would never be able to hold her head up in London again, and would have to retire . . . somewhere! Where, she did not know, for Swinley Manor would be given up to the moneylenders if she did not manage to marry Lord Pelimore.

  "You do not understand," she said, turning on him. "You have no idea! This is not the backwoods and these are not painted savages! Their opinions matter; they could destroy me—my position in society, my future plans—with one well-placed bon mot!

  "No they are not 'painted savages,' they are a good deal less civilized!" Westhaven retorted, his voice low and fierce. "Cruelty has no gender, nor any particular culture attached, Arabella. I don't know what you have done to earn their ire." He frowned and gazed down
at her, then reached out one hand and touched her arm. It was a small gesture, but it comforted her a tiny bit.

  "I cannot imagine it was such a very big solecism," he continued. "I know you, Arabella; you are thoughtless on occasion, sometimes you speak before you think, but you would never deliberately hurt someone, so I can only believe you have offended some arbitrary social rule—wore pink on a Sunday or something ridiculous like that"

  She turned tragic eyes on him. How little he really knew of her! And how kind of him to say such a sweet thing when she had been rude to him just moments before. "If only it were something so simple! If only. But I am afraid—I fear—"

  He gazed steadily at her. "I don't believe you. I think you have much more courage than you give yourself credit for—pluck to the backbone is the phrase, I believe. Buck up, my dear one; if all the world should crumble around you, I will still be your friend."

  They were magical words, magical and inspirational. How had she managed to inspire such friendship in a man like Marcus Westhaven? He was as steadfast as a rock, and she felt she could trust him. She gazed into his dark gray eyes and saw in them courage that had faced a thousand challenges. Was she such a wet goose as to turn tail and run from a bunch of cork-brained, thin-blooded aristos? No, she was better than that, and better than them!

  If she was ruined, if no one in London would look at her and talk to her anymore, well, then, she would go to join Eveleen on the Isle of Wight, or she would run away to Canada with Marcus. A thrill of wild hope ran through her. She would be free. No one would blame her for leaving—they would expect her to! And she would no longer be responsible for helping her mother out of her predicament; she would not be able to, after all. No rich, well-positioned man would marry a girl who had done what she had been accused of doing at the Farmington home. If she was ostracized, she could forget marriage to Pelimore or anyone else, for that matter.

  Marcus was watching her. He nodded with satisfaction, reading the resolution on her face. "That's better. Now, take my arm. We are going to stroll over there, and you are going to say hello to the frightening Lord Sweetan and the terrifying Lord and Lady Snowdale and you are going to introduce me."