The Perfect Waltz

by Anne Gracie

  “And Cassie does not know, and Dorie cannot say.” He sighed heavily and clenched his fist. “I wish I knew when and how she became a mute . . . Somewhere in those eleven lost years—”

  She put her hand on his arm. “Would Cassie not be able to tell you?”

  His big hand came up to enclose hers, and then he froze as if transfixed. “She never has before, but then, she never would so much as touch my hand before. So much has happened in recent days, I’ve not had time to absorb it all.” He lifted his head; his eyes glittered with hope. “Cassie trusts me a lot more than she used to. Perhaps now she will tell me.”

  She squeezed his arm reassuringly, and he looked down at her. His grip tightened. “Thank you for bringing my sisters to me,” he said raggedly, and it was not the cab ride he was talking about.

  The moment stretched endlessly. The hand covering hers seemed to burn to her core. Heat spread in slow, languid waves, lapping at every secret corner of her body. She had forgotten to breathe. She took a long, shaky breath. His eyes darkened, like a pool under moonlight, deep, rippling with emotion. She made a helpless gesture and leaned into him, and with a groan, he drew her into his arms and kissed her.

  The kiss was ragged and heartfelt and tasted of gratitude and humility. And of hunger. And of desire. She made a small sound deep in her throat and kissed him back with everything in her.

  There were no preliminaries, only his mouth meshing with hers, his tongue tangling hers, his big, hard body crushed against her soft curves. And it was everything she had dreamed of and more.

  She was lost in the taste of him. He was intoxicated by the taste of her. He pressed her hard against the wall and covered her with his body, lost in the kiss, the need, the hunger. She pressed herself hard against him, reveling in his strength, his power, and his fierce, compelling, exhilarating desire.

  His hands roamed over her body, caressing, cupping, creating trails of shivering sensation. She smoothed her hands over his chest, over his shoulders. How had she ever felt wary of this glorious body? She stroked the strong, tanned column of his throat, explored the delicious abrasion of his jaw, and her fingers buried themselves in the thick, dark, closely cropped hair. And all the time kissing him, kissing his mouth, his jaw, his throat. And he was kissing her as if he would never, could never stop, kissing Hope as if she were life itself.

  He touched her breast, and a fiery arch of pleasure speared through her, and she gasped and arched and clutched his hair.

  He lifted his head, breathing in jagged gasps, his chest heaving. And pulled back.

  “I’m sorry—”

  But she was having none of that. She pressed her fingers over his mouth and said, “I’m not sorry. And I never will be.” And she tried to tell him with her eyes what she was not yet ready to say, but what her heart and body knew already.

  And he gazed into her eyes for a long, long moment and opened his mouth to speak, but there was a knock on the door and they had just seconds to pull themselves together before a servant entered with the hot chocolate and pastries.

  The moment was gone. And then the girls clattered in, ready for chocolate and hot, fresh pastries.

  “When she was a baby, Dorie had a voice.” Sebastian watched Cassie’s face as he said it. It was not a question.

  They were all seated around the table, Hope, too, even though she’d suggested she should probably leave. He’d given her a look, and Dorie had reached out and taken her hand.

  No doubts remained in his mind. Sebastian felt unutterably blessed. For the first time in his life what he wanted and what he ought to do dovetailed perfectly.

  “Cassie?”

  She nibbled on her sweet, flaky pastry and watched him with a hint of the old wariness.

  “Did she ever learn to speak?”

  Cassie glanced at Dorie, who returned the look and gave an infinitesimal shrug in response. “Yes,” said Cassie.

  “Normally?” It had to be asked.

  Cassie nodded.

  “When did she stop?”

  Cassie glanced at her sister again and seemed to read consent in her expression again. “Two years ago. Just after Mam died.”

  Sebastian sat back, feeling a small trickle of relief. “So she loved Widow Morgan and was distressed because she died. Is that it?”

  Cassie said nothing, just drank some of her chocolate. She avoided his eyes.

  “Did you both love her?”

  Cassie darted a look at her sister, then said, “Mam was all right, she was good to us. She treated us fairly, but we knew we weren’t her daughters or anything. She worked us hard, said we owed her.”

  “Worked you doing what?”

  “The inn.”

  “What inn?”

  “The Bull and Boar. Mam ran it. Dorie and me, we did what was needed, made the beds, cleaned, scrubbed, helped with the cooking—whatever.” She darted him a glance. “In the last couple of years I helped out in the bar. Not Dorie. She stayed in the back, helping in the kitchen or upstairs.”

  The inference was clear. Cassie was coming to womanhood, so she’d been put in the bar. Sebastian swallowed. It didn’t bear thinking of. She wasn’t telling him the whole, he knew. He hoped she would, in her own time. Hoped, too, that he could bear it when she did.

  “So if you didn’t love Mrs. Morgan like a mother, why did Dorie stop talking after she died?”

  Cassie shook her head. “I don’t know. She just stopped, that’s all.”

  “The day she died or a few days afterward?”

  “The night Mam died. Mam died, and Dorie never spoke another word.”

  “But why—”

  “Look!” Cassie slammed down her cup. “Do you think I didn’t try? Do you think I just let my sister stop talking and didn’t do anything to find out why? She won’t talk to me about it. Won’t say a word. Won’t even write anything down!” Cassie’s face crumpled. “I know I should have been able to help her, but I can’t. I tried, I really did.”

  “I’m sorry, sweeting.” He reached across the table and took her hands in his. “I know you tried. I know. You have looked after Dorie beautifully.”

  Dorie sat frozen, a pastry halfway to her mouth, looking stricken at her sister’s outburst. After a moment she carefully set the pastry down on her plate, slipped off her chair, and apologetically put her arms around her big sister.

  But she didn’t utter a sound or make any attempt to explain. Whatever had caused her silence in the first place seemed destined to remain forever a mystery.

  Chapter Twelve

  The miserable have no other medicine but only hope.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  “MAY I ASK WHY YOU HAVE COME, MR. BEMERTON?” LADY ELINORE asked coldly. “It was my understanding that the Misses Merridew were invited, and Mr. Reyne, of course, needs no invitation.”

  “Lady Elinore.” Giles Bemerton bowed gracefully over her reluctantly outstretched hand. “When Bastian here mentioned it, I could not resist. I’m thinking of purchasing an orphan institution myself.”

  Lady Elinore stared. “You?”

  Giles gave a smile, which took in all the ladies and Mr. Reyne and said in a mock-bashful voice, “A gift for a lady.” He batted his lashes. “I understand it’s all the crack at the moment.”

  Hope and her twin spluttered with laughter at his mischievous expression. Mr. Reyne cleared his throat significantly. Lady Elinore gave Giles a cold look, then sniffed. “Follow me then,” and she led the way into the Tothill Fields Institution for Indigent Girls.

  “And here is the dining hall, where the girls take all their meals. Three nourishing meals a day.” The room was large, bare, and very clean, containing two long, scrubbed wooden tables flanked by wooden benches.

  Hope heard her sister sigh. Hope knew what she meant. The visit was proving quite depressing. The orphan asylum was rigidly respectable and so very grim and gloomy. Dinnertime was not far off; an acrid well-boiled vegetabley smell wafted from the adjoining kitchen.

/>   Lord Bemerton sniffed. “Cabbage,” he pronounced gloomily. “Can’t stand cabbage. We’re not staying to dine, are we?” His sunny spirits seemed to be fading fast.

  “Certainly not,” Lady Elinore said.

  Two small girls dressed in gray dresses and white aprons, marginally too big for them, clattered about in hard, shiny boots also a little too large for them, setting the tables: a spoon, a bowl, and a beaker of water for each child. A plate containing slices of dry bread sat at the center of each table. Presumably bread and soup were the only items on the menu. Their job done, the girls disappeared into the kitchen. They hadn’t uttered a word. Hope had not yet heard one child speak, let alone laugh. It seemed quite unnatural.

  Lady Elinore explained, “All of the girls take turns in the kitchen, the scullery, and the laundry. As well as earning their keep, they are trained in habits of cleanliness and good, plain cooking.”

  The smaller of the girls, a skinny little urchin with dark hair braided in tight pigtails, reemerged from the kitchen carrying two small dishes. On each lay a tiny pat of butter and a dab of reddish jam. She carried them very carefully, as if they were precious or fragile, but the dishes themselves were the same thick and ugly earthenware as the bowls on the table, and the butter was a meager scrape, hardly worth bringing out, in Hope’s opinion. With great deliberation, her tongue thrust between a gap in her teeth as she concentrated on the task, she placed one dish exactly halfway down the second table and another beside the bowl three places from the end on the first. Clearly each butter dish was for a particular girl.

  Hope was intrigued. There was barely enough butter and jam on each dish for one small slice of bread. Why would only two girls out of so many merit a scrape of butter and a dollop of jam? A reward system?

  The small girl turned to leave. “Excuse me,” called Hope. “Little girl.”

  The urchin froze and turned huge, apprehensive eyes on the group of visitors. She glanced nervously at Lady Elinore.

  “May I talk to her?” Hope asked Lady Elinore.

  “Of course.”

  Hope approached the child and knelt down beside her. “How do you do?” she said gently, for the child was anxiously bunching her apron in her fists. “My name is Hope. What’s yours?”

  The child glanced from Hope to Lady Elinore and then back. She bobbed a curtsy. “Please miss, me name’s May.”

  “That’s a pretty name. May is one of my favorite months.”

  The waif nodded fervently. “Mine, too, miss, coz it’s me birfday—well, not me real birfday—I dunno when that is. But they give us a month when we first come here, an’ all the girls who have that month have a birfday in the middle of it. An’ today is the middle day of May.”

  “Oh! You have birthday celebrations here? How lovely.” Hope was delighted. It was the first small human touch she had seen at the institution. “And what happens here on your ‘birthday,’ May?”

  The child jerked her head at the butter dishes. “We get butter an’ jam wiv our bread at dinner. And—” She bunched her apron again in her fists, but her eyes were bright with excitement. “We get a present!”

  Hope smiled, able to empathize. Her own childhood had been bare of presents, except for small items her sisters had given her and Faith in secret. She still found presents thrilling. “And what do you hope to get this year?”

  “A doll.”

  “And do you think you will get one?”

  “I dunno, miss. I hope so. I’d love a little doll.” Her eyes were bright with anticipation.

  “Were you here last year?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “What did you get last year?”

  The child screwed her face up endearingly. “Wool and a needle to darn my stockings wiv.”

  “Oh dear.” It wasn’t much of a present, Hope thought. “And the year before that, were you here?”

  May gave a rueful, gap-toothed grin. “Yes, miss, an’ I got wool and a needle then, too.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “It’s what they usually give us, miss. A darning kit.”

  Hope bit her lip. “And yet this year you’re hoping for a doll?

  May nodded emphatically.“They say in church if you really want something, you haveta pray for it, and so I’ve prayed an’ prayed for a doll, so maybe . . .” She gave a bright-eyed, optimistic shrug.

  Hope smiled warmly. “I hope you get your doll, May.”

  “Thank you, miss. I ’ope so, too. I’ve never had a doll. Never had nuffin of me own.”

  Probably not even a name of her own. Were both butter and jam dishes destined for a child called May? wondered Hope. No wonder she longed for something of her own. A doll was something to love. “How long have you lived here, May?”

  “Five years, miss. I come here when I was about four, I think.”

  Hope couldn’t help but smile back. “And yet you keep hoping for a doll?”

  The child shrugged. “It don’t hurt to dream, miss, does it?”

  Hope put her hand on the child’s small head. “No, May,” she said softly. “It certainly doesn’t hurt to dream.”

  The child ran off to her duties, and Hope returned to the tour, a lump in her throat. She said to Lady Elinore, “The child said today was her birthday. She said there would be a small celebration?”

  Lady Elinore nodded. “Yes, we do it on the fifteenth day of every month. All nonsense, of course. Celebrating a birthday is not at all Rational, particularly when you reflect that most of these children were born unwanted. But some of the ladies on the board like it. And it is a reward for good behavior.”

  “And the children get a present?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will May get?”

  “Darning wool and a needle.”

  “She’s been praying for a doll to love.”

  “Good heavens, why? They always get darning wool and a needle. She knows that. It’s a good, useful gift.” Lady Elinore nodded in a satisfied manner. “They must darn their stockings anyway, so the expense is justified, and we have found that when they are given their own darning needle, they treat it more carefully. Fewer are bent or broken.”

  “I see. It is a cost-saving measure.”

  “Yes.” Lady Elinore smiled.

  “And she won’t get her doll?”

  “No. It’s not at all practical. Now, shall we move on to the dormitories?”

  Hope followed, inwardly frozen. These little girls’ lives were so cheerless and grim. Completely devoid of joy.

  She thought of little May, with anxious fists and gap-toothed smile, in her tight pigtails and her shiny, too-big boots. And her bright optimism, flourishing in the face of all the grim, gray Rationality.

  A doll. Was it so much to ask?

  A doll was easily come by—a small hank of rag and a couple of well-placed buttons, and you had a little friend of your own to take to bed and hug, to love and tell your secrets to.

  She followed the group silently.

  They viewed two dormitories, in each of which were ranged fifteen narrow beds covered with gray woolen counterpanes. Behind each bed was a hook on which hung each girl’s Sunday dress. At the end of each bed sat a small chest that contained their other clothes. Lady Elinore showed them the contents of one such chest. Other than the clothes, there were no personal items.

  The little ones’ dormitory was identical. Not a doll or book or a keepsake in sight. The walls were decorated with texts from the published works of Lady Elinore’s late mother.

  And everything—everything!—was gray, black, white, or brown. Not a hint of blue or green or pink or yellow or red.

  Hope examined it all without saying a word. She kept thinking about little May. The Merridew girls were orphans. If they’d had no one to take them in, they could have ended up in a place like this . . . And this was one of the good places.

  They viewed the workroom. Sixteen girls, ranging in age from about eleven to fifteen, sat in rows, silently plying their needles. T
heir birthday needles, no doubt.

  “Girls!” A black-clad woman at the front of the class rapped. “We have guests.”

  In unison the girls lay down their task, stood, and curtsied to the visitors. Each girl was clad identically in plain gowns of gray serge, with black woolen stockings and thick black boots. Their hair was scraped back from their heads and knotted tightly behind them. Their young faces were pale and solemn.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” they chanted, then sat down again and bent diligently over their tasks. The needles barely slowed, though Hope noticed that many of the girls were eyeing her and her sister curiously from under their lashes, taking in every detail of their clothing and appearance. Their heads remained bowed.

  Their meek silence depressed her. Faith slipped a hand in hers and squeezed it.

  Hope watched the needles flash in and out, in and out. She thought of the hours she’d spent as a child, hemming seams. Her stitches had always to be pulled out for being uneven or crooked.

  Faith whispered, “It’s nearly as bad as Grandpapa’s.”

  Hope shook her head. It was worse. Grandpapa may have been hate-filled and violent, but her sisters were loving and supportive. These girls seemed to have . . . nothing. No fellowship or camaraderie. No one to care for, no one to love. They were allowed nothing personal, not even a doll. Their bodies were cared for, but not their hearts.

  Hope ached for their poor, lonely little hearts.

  “It’s a treat to watch such happy diligence,” Lady Elinore said proudly.

  Hope stared at her in incredulity. Didn’t she realize?

  “Our girls fashion all the garments they are wearing, even down to their knitted stockings. Not, of course, their boots, which are made by a local cobbler. But some of the older girls are being trained as milliners, and they make the hats and bonnets.”

  Hope looked back at the row of plain gray bonnets hanging on pegs in the hallway. Underneath each peg hung a plain gray coat. All that distinguished one from the other was the size of the garment and the number above each peg.

  She wanted to scream, to shatter the silence and order, to run through the bare, echoing rooms, shouting and hooting at the top of her voice. She wanted to knock all the neat, gray, ugly bonnets to the floor and jump on them. She wanted to drag all the girls outside and run with them to the park, to skip and sing and play.