“I thank you for your compliment,” she replied. “Though I must say, Mr. Harding, that I would sooner be appreciated for any number of virtues more than how I appear in a pretty gown or how well my hair might look when I have taken time to arrange it carefully.”
“Indeed, there are other virtues,” Mr. Harding said, “and I believe that you have them in abundance. I would not have you think that I admire you merely for your beauty, though on an evening such as this, the strength of your beauty cannot be denied, and I should be a hypocrite if I tried to do so.
“But there are different times and settings for appreciating different virtues,” he continued. “When we have met in the grove with only the sound of the leaves to disturb us, it has been the ideal setting for marveling at how much I enjoy your lively mind and insightful conversation.
“But you know as well as I do,” he continued, “that the function of a dance is not the conversation, though conversation may play a part. No, the function of a dance is to create a spectacle for us to see one another to our full advantage. And if you will forgive me for saying so, Miss Miller, to see you the way you look tonight is a rare pleasure.”
Charity knew that the seemly thing to do would be to look away, to make some pretty little comment in response that would simultaneously entice and deflect Mr. Harding.
But she did not look away nor did she want to. Something about the quality of Mr. Harding’s gaze made her feel that he understood her and he saw her real self in a way that no one else ever had.
When they joined hands dancing, Charity had a remote and distant sense of being grateful she was wearing gloves, for she could not imagine how she might have responded if she had felt the intimate shock of Mr. Harding’s warm palm in hers. He was gazing at her so intently that it felt to her as if his very eyes were touching her skin.
She was so captured by his gaze and flooded by his compliment that she only just remembered to murmur a brief ‘thank you’. Even that seemed to catch in her throat, such that when she spoke the words they came out in barely more than a whisper.
Mr. Harding smiled. It was as if he understood how she was feeling, why she could barely even speak. Was that because he felt it too? She saw his face as a mirror of all she was feeling at that moment, and yet she scarcely dared to believe that he might have been filled with the same heady sensation as she was.
The dance was drawing to an end with the violin sounding out a final, sweet note that hung in the air between them.
“Meet me again in the grove.”
The words were spoken so suddenly that they cut through the dreamlike quality of everything that had come before. Charity blinked as though waking from a dream. The music had stopped, and the assembled couples were walking away from the floor — laughing, chatting, fetching refreshments as if everything were normal.
But everything was not normal. How could it be, when Mr. Harding had made such an impertinent suggestion?
“Meet you again?” Charity felt her face growing warm. “Arrange to meet a man, alone, in a secluded place?” She took a step back. “I do not know what kind of young woman you think I am, Mr. Harding. Perhaps I must attribute this forwardness to your time abroad, but I would remind you that we do things very differently in England.”
Mr. Harding’s cheeks had flushed bright red.
“Forgive me,” he said at once, the words seeming to tumble out of his mouth in his eagerness to express his remorse. “I forgot myself.”
“Indeed you did,” Charity replied sharply.
She knew that the substance of what he was proposing was not so very different to what had already taken place in their chance encounters. After all, they had been alone together in those moments, she quite unguarded, and he had behaved like a perfect gentleman.
Yet to suggest such a meeting — to actually endeavor to arrange it — was another thing entirely. It suggested an assumption of loose virtue that stung Charity to her very core.
They had created such powerful enchantment between them with such a strong sense that they knew one another more intimately than they knew anyone else. Charity feared that it was this very feeling that had deceived her into having too much faith in him.
Yet, she had not felt deceived. Not at the moment. That was what made it all the more confusing.
“Excuse me,” she said, her cool voice a contrast to her burning cheeks. “I must return to my company.”
“Miss Miller…”
Mr. Harding’s voice was quite unlike how Charity had heard it before. There was a desperation in it, an infusion of remorse that made Charity want to hesitate, to allow her hand to remain in his.
But there was too much at stake.
“Good evening, Mr. Harding,” she said coolly. “It was very pleasant to speak with you.”
She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew that she was hiding behind the veil that they all hid behind — all the time — that veneer of social politeness that hid secret frostiness, or manipulation, or simply a cold heart. She knew that Mr. Harding had valued the way such stiff manners had not mattered between them before because she valued it too.
“Miss Miller…”
She turned away and quickly took out her fan in the pretense of cooling herself, but it was really so that she could hide the pain in her face from Esther who she could see watching her eagerly from the other side the room.
She knew that by speaking to him that way she might well have destroyed that precious way of being together that they had shared in their few private moments. She had damaged that feeling they had both had in the grove -— the feeling they were the only two people in the world and that grove the only place.
She could not bear to speak to Esther and instead hurried to the side-room where her father was dozing in a winged armchair by the fire.
“Papa,” she shook him gently by the shoulder. “Papa, I wish to go home now.”
Her father awoke with a sudden jerk and looked dazedly about him.
“Hmm?” he said, blinking rapidly. “All the prancing around too much for you, is it? I cannot say I am surprised. Well, child, I suppose it is all for the best.”
Grumbling in a slightly befuddled manner, the Reverend Miller rose from his chair and led Charity outside to where the carriage waited for them. She could see Esther looking for her in some confusion on the other side of the room and caught her friend’s eye.
She hoped that her expression conveyed that she was obliged to leave but that there was no cause for concern. She could see a crease forming on Esther’s brow as she looked at Charity, but knew that she could not bear to try to explain.
She did not look to see where Mr. Harding was. As far as she was concerned, it did not matter.
Settling back into the carriage with her father, she deflected his questions about whether she had enjoyed the dance with bland smiles. She said that to be sure, it was always pleasant to come together with one’s neighbors for the purpose of a cheery occasion.
Her father was watching her very carefully. She knew that his real question was whether she had met any young men, whether he ought to be concerned.
And, Charity thought, there was no reason to be concerned, for she did not intend to see Mr. Harding again.
The truth was that she was afraid.
She was afraid of the way that touching Mr. Harding’s hand with hers had made her heart hammer in her bosom. She was afraid of what might happen if she allowed herself to care too deeply about this man. She feared how badly she might be hurt by him.
Chapter 14
Miss Esther Campbell was an eminently sensible young woman.
She did not wear white muslin to dances because she knew how prone it was to tear and become soiled. She had never danced with any young man more than twice in the same evening because she was too sensible to the dangers of public speculation to run such a risk. She spoke only when she was sure of what she wanted to say, and maintained her reserve scrupulously, except when around those that knew
her best.
Her good sense generally extended to her perception of love and marriage and the gulf that so often existed between the two things. For herself, she had few notions about what a husband might offer her and asked only that a gentleman seeking her hand possessed a kind heart and a comfortable home, and perhaps indeed she was a little too generous in her definition of what constituted a ‘kind heart’.
But underneath her pragmatic exterior was a softness, a tenderness. Being an only child with two rather uncaring parents, this tenderness had very few outlets, but her primary way of expressing her emotional kindness was toward her friends, and there was no friend dearer to her than Charity Miller.
Esther was a profoundly generous young woman. The fact that she had felt not a jot of jealousy, but only of delight, when Mr. Harding had approached her friend Charity and asked her to dance, was a testament to the quality of her heart.
Indeed, while she had watched the two of them dancing and sensed the clear attachment between them, her pleasure on her friend’s behalf only grew. Charity had always been a beauty, but she had previously lacked a kind of confidence she now seemed to fully inhabit, in those moments while her eyes locked with those of Mr. Harding.
But as soon as the music ended, Esther’s heart fell. The pleasure that she had taken in watching two people who clearly had between them a fledgling, yet strong, attachment, was very great. But Charity had walked away from Mr. Harding very quickly and then left soon after that. Esther could not be sure, of course, but she suspected that her friend’s sudden departure had something do with all the hurdles that stood between her and Mr. Harding.
Esther and Charity had always had a profoundly sisterly relationship, though the question of who was most like an elder sister and who was the younger varied with the years and the matter at hand.
Watching Charity dancing with Mr. Harding, Esther felt, all at once, both younger and older than her friend. Younger, because it was clear from Charity’s face that the attachment she felt for Mr. Harding exceeded any interest in a man that Esther had ever experienced. Older, because it was so painfully evident to Esther that this match could never be.
For Esther knew enough of the world to know wealth did not ally itself with genteel poverty, nor was an unblemished reputation ever permitted to sully itself with the association of disgrace.
She saw no way in which the situation might be alleviated. If Mr. Harding’s name were to be cleared, then very likely he would be obliged, by duty or by his own desires, to seek out a wife more equal to him in status. If the stain on his reputation were not to be scrubbed out, however, then Charity would be forced to reckon with the prospect of being married to a man who was supposed by some to be a murderer.
And then there was the fact that the Reverend Miller would never allow it.
Esther had always been perplexed by Charity’s father. He seemed to believe that his daughter should be sheltered from the world in general, yet assumed that somehow she would be able to secure her own place in the world despite this seclusion. It had become something of a jest between Charity and Esther that Charity’s father expected her to become the wife of a clergyman, just as her mother had been, and yet there was never any prospect of her meeting any man, clergyman or otherwise, with her father’s hawkish gaze always turned upon her.
Yet somehow, despite all this, Charity had met Mr. Harding again.
Mr. Harding, of all people.
Something about the chance quality of this meeting, combined with the glowing looks that had passed between Charity and Mr. Harding while they were dancing together, had convinced Esther that fate or destiny or whatever it might best be called, had played its part in their meeting.
She hoped that those who had been brought together by fate would be permitted by fate to be together, but for pragmatic reasons, she feared this would not be the case.
Esther gazed into her looking glass, her own visage lit by a single candle. Everyone else in the household was long abed, and only she was awake, her mind still racing at all the events of the dance, her cheeks still flushed from the warm room and the dancing.
* * *
As Esther had gotten to sleep so late in the night, she did not arrive at the vicarage for her daily walk with Charity until nearly noon. She had expected to find her friend in some state of heightened emotion; indeed, that would have been quite justified given all that had taken place the previous night.
But she had not expected Charity to meet her at the gate with red, swollen eyes. Nor had she expected that her friend would be so silent on their walk — not when there was so much to tell.
It was after a good ten minutes of walking in mostly silence before Charity let her feelings out, in a sound that was somewhere between an angry exclamation and a sob.
“Oh, Esther!” she exclaimed, all at once. “What a fool I have been! I am quite ashamed of myself!”
“What should give you any cause to feel shame?” Esther asked in amazement. “Is there something wrong, dear Charity? The last time we spoke, you were aglow walking on Mr. Hardings’ arm, and now I am sorry to see that you are in a good deal of distress. What is the matter, dear? Was there something unpleasant in your dance with Mr. Harding?”
“It was perfectly pleasant,” Charity replied, and then continued, “no, indeed, it was a great deal more than pleasant. It was one of the most joyous moments in my life, and perhaps it will be the most joy that I ever feel in all my life!”
Esther had not expected her friend to express herself with such strength of feeling and remained silent for a few moments before asking, “then what is the cause of your present unhappiness? For I can see that you are indeed most unhappy.”
“I am indeed,” Charity replied, her voice grown small with misery. “Perhaps I ought to be ashamed of myself that I am so distressed by the actions of a man that I have only met four times in as many days, but I must confess that it is so. Oh, Esther, Esther, what must he think of me to behave as he did?”
“What is it that he said?” Esther was now growing alarmed at her friend’s evident distress. “Surely he has not done something to insult you?”
“Not deliberately, perhaps,” Charity conceded. “But I find myself insulted nonetheless, and a great deal discomfited by the strength of my reaction to the insult.”
She went on to explain to Esther what had taken place during the dance the previous evening and how Mr. Harding had taken the liberty of asking her to meet him illicitly, unchaperoned, and outside the realms of propriety.
Esther paused for a long while, considering how best she might reply.
“I do not deny that he made a grave error of judgement in speaking to you so,” she eventually said, “but it seems to be that he spoke on the spur of the moment and immediately owned that he had behaved improperly.”
“That is true,” Charity conceded with some reluctance. “I do not mean to suggest that he revealed himself to be some sort of flagrant libertine. And yet… and yet it awoke a fear in me that I had not allowed myself to feel until now.”
“Does any of this behavior make you doubt his character more generally?” Esther asked after some hesitation.
Charity, too, hesitated.
“I did at first,” she owned. “When I arrived at home last night I was so incensed and distressed — so complete in my conviction that I had gravely misjudged the man and the quality of his character — that I confess I did start to wonder. Perhaps I was wrong about him in every particular, and I was fortunate that it had been shown to me in this way.”
“But?” Esther probed gently. Charity sighed.
“But when I woke this morning I knew perfectly well that that was nonsense. I believe that he is a good man, both by the ruling of my heart and by the conviction of Mrs. Warwick. I believe that he made a mistake and immediately repented of it.”
“But you have not forgiven him for it?” Esther pressed.
“I have in my heart,” Charity replied. “But there would have been n
o good in forgiving him at that moment, while we were dancing. It would not do to let him know that I had forgiven him.”
“Why not? Surely there is no reason to cause him unnecessary suffering?”
“I do not wish to cause him suffering, but the fact is that he has power over me,” Charity said simply. “Because he is a man and I am not, and because he is wealthy and I am not. I suppose that when he proposed I meet him in the grove, he imagined that we are equals, that there can be no harm in an innocent meeting between us.”
She smiled, but the smile was clearly pained.
“How fortunate he is — and how naive — to believe that anything can ever be so simple when it comes to the question of a young lady’s reputation. And the fact that he did not understand that, I believe that is what hurt me, Esther, more than anything else. The idea that he had no notion of how much I should be at his mercy if such a meeting were to take place.”
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