The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  * * *

  Happily Mercy Cordel did not know of the resolution made by the girl whom she had come to think of as her friend. Indeed, if she had known, it might have been difficult for her to register any emotions concerning it, for it seemed to her that she had never felt so cold – what she herself always called ‘inside cold’ – nor longed so much to be somewhere, anywhere, other than where she was at that moment, seated on a gilt chair at yet another ball – it seemed like her thirtieth – behind the beautiful and ever fascinating Lady Violet.

  The coldness, Mercy knew, sprang from the inescapable realization that she was a social failure. It was not as if her dress had not been carefully chosen, nor her hair beautifully arranged. The dress she was wearing was perfect for her in every way. She knew this because Lady Violet had particularly selected it to go with her brown hair.

  Coral and brown are perfect together, my dear. Mercy could still hear the voice of her stepmother – as Mercy had come down the stairs to muted applause from the servants. Perfect, my dear, perfect. You will dance all evening and your feet will never touch the ground!

  The servants had applauded again, knowing that Lady Violet was the acme of elegance and beauty. Being so proud of their mistress as they were, they liked to applaud both her and her pronouncements on semi-state occasions such as departures for balls.

  ‘Oh, Miss Mercy, I just do not know how it must feel to be you,’ one of the maids had said this particular evening, while handing Clarice the hairpins to fasten diamond stars into the back of Mercy’s raised and coiled hair. ‘Every evening when we see you dressed and ready for yet another ball, I think you must be in heaven, you must really!’

  If only that little maid had known just how much Mercy longed to be her at that moment. Wearing yet another dress that seemed to her to turn her skin the colour of putty, Mercy was all too aware, after endless balls and routs, that she was doomed to failure in the ballroom, whereas doubtless the young maid, on her monthly day off, probably went home to her ‘beau’ and was the greatest success possible in whatever she chose to do, or wherever she chose to go, on that most special, and treasured, of days.

  Lady Violet turned to Mercy and said, rather too loudly Mercy felt, ‘Do not worry, Mercy, my dear, there will be a dancing partner along quite soon. I know there will be. Quite, quite soon. It is just rather trying for us all, the wait and so on, do you know? Just so trying, waiting for a partner to put his name in your card, dear. I do so hate you always having to sit among the chaperons. If only you had a brother with whom you could dance, what a difference that would make, would it not? But there, your brothers are with their regiments, and nothing to be done.’

  It was quite clear that Lady Violet, unlike so many who chaperoned the young, had decided to take each ball as a great event of enormous interest. Not for her the bored yawns and the surreptitious glances towards some timepiece of the other chaperons and dowagers who sat upright and eagle-eyed watching for the time to pass. Rather, she preferred to take a lively interest in who danced with whom, and as of that minute who did not dance with whom.

  ‘My dear, did you see?’ she said suddenly to Mercy from behind her fan. ‘Lord Haskett is taking Miss Bouverie de Blanche into the conservatory. And she hardly yet out!’

  Mercy did not look up. She preferred to stare at her feet rather than observe this minor sensation of the London Season. She did not want to be taken into any conservatory. Nor did she want to dance, really. She just wanted to go home and read a book, but to admit as much to anyone, anyone at all, would be to earn herself a reputation as a blue stocking, and it was bad enough being a brown mouse without being known as a blue stocking as well.

  ‘Might I see your card, Miss Cordel?’

  A young officer glanced down at Mercy’s card with momentary interest as she and Lady Violet passed him on their way to find some lemonade.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lady Violet, immediately speaking for Mercy, and at the same time giving the officer her most dazzling smile, a smile which was instantly and quite understandably returned in kind. ‘Show Sir Perry your card, Mercy, my dear.’

  Mercy held up her card for the young man to write in it. Her mother had left her a gold bracelet attached to which was a small gold pencil, for just the use to which she now fervently hoped the young officer would put it, namely to scribble his name in her card.

  Oh, please, please, God, help him to just put his name in my card. Just one name in it, for once, please!

  The young man, handsome and slim with dark hair almost as polished and black as his boots, glanced down at the card, and seeing it quite empty of any other names looked briefly at Mercy – without his eyes lighting up, it had to be admitted.

  Nevertheless, he did seem to be about to make use of the precious little gold pencil when Lady Violet said, ‘As everyone knows, my stepdaughter has weak ankles. That is why her card is always so empty, nothing to do with her appeal. Too annoying for her, would not you say?’

  The officer glanced down at Mercy’s quite elegant little feet and looked momentarily put out.

  ‘How too, too tiresome for you!’

  ‘Yes it is, too tiresome,’ Mercy agreed miserably, hardly able to believe her ears.

  ‘In that case might I ask you for the pleasure, Lady Violet? Seeing that Miss Cordel is not quite up to it?’

  ‘Sir Perry! How amusing you are, to be sure! Good heavens, I am not a debutante, you know, by any means.’

  ‘Yet I know you will say yes, for you are quite as fresh as any here tonight.’

  ‘It is not done, Sir Perry, and you very well know

  it.’

  Lady Violet laughed, pretending to be shocked, but hugely enjoying the moment.

  ‘Then it should be done, Lady Violet. There are none as beautiful as you dancing. I promise you, once on the floor you will be the toast of the Season yet again.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Well, if you insist.’

  As Lady Violet, head held high, presented herself on the ballroom floor, to the open astonishment of all present, Mercy once more settled back on her wretched little gold chair, her cheeks flushed with the embarrassment of it all.

  She sat down in a flurry, making sure that she was behind a large pot plant where her continuing failure to find a partner would be hidden from the majority view. Little wonder she had not enjoyed any partners at any of the balls, if her stepmother had given out that Mercy had weak ankles and could not dance. What a cruel thing to go round saying. She could hardly believe it. But then, since she loved her stepmother, it seemed to her that she must have said this to protect Mercy in some way. That would have to be it. Lady Violet would have felt nothing but protective towards her stepdaughter. Indeed, Mercy could well remember how embarrassed Lady Violet used to be for her, and anxious to point out how Mercy could improve her dancing and deportment. How she should hold her head, and so on. Constant improvement had been the theme of Mercy’s upbringing and she had always, until now, been most grateful. She had always seen Lady Violet’s side of things, which was that Mercy, because of her lack of looks, had to try harder.

  But, as the dance wore on, and despite trying to be reasonable, the miserable thought would keep coming back that Lady Violet had announced that Mercy had weak ankles less to help Mercy out of the embarrassment of having a blank card than because she herself was bored to ribbons with sitting it out for yet another ball with the rest of the chaperons.

  It had to be faced that Mercy’s beautiful young stepmother could not wait to take to the floor.

  Mercy sighed inwardly. Whatever the reason Lady Violet had spoken as she had, there was no getting away from her own lack of social success. If she was to be honest, given her dull looks, she was really unsurprised to see that Sir Perry was finding Lady Violet infinitely more interesting and amusing than Mercy Cordel, who it must be said was hardly going to turn a head even on the brightest evening. She had been a failure at the start of the Season, and now, as Ascot approached, she was about to be a f
ailure at its end.

  She would be returned to Cordel Court, an unwanted parcel, destination unknown – except it was known. She would become part of the vast team of unmarried women who serviced old houses, unmarried women whose feelings were supposedly put on the shelf, like their marriage prospects, whose frustrations with life and its endless greyness would manifest themselves in occasional fainting fits, or endless miles of tapestries.

  To take her mind off her feelings of ignominy and embarrassment, Mercy switched her thoughts back to the undoubted glories of Cordel Court. To the birds and the trees, the flowers that would even now be blooming in the warm May night, the dawn chorus to which she loved to awaken. She thought longingly of how quiet it would be there at this moment. No wretched orchestras, or elegant young men, and above all no utterly miserable young girl sitting it out on a gilt chair of incredible discomfort, fanning herself while at the same time keeping her eyes from straying in any direction. Around the old house there would be just nature, straggling and struggling, beautiful and bold, but understandable too somehow, certainly to her, in a way that London and its Season was not.

  ‘My dear Miss Cordel, might I have the pleasure?’

  Mercy looked up at a tall, dark man, older than Sir Perry, because, although he had the same kind of thick dark hair, his was greying at the sides. He also had dark eyes but with an older, more bored look to them. Yet altogether the face was very handsome, and what was better, it was smiling down at her.

  ‘I am sorry, really, but I don’t think so. I mean I don’t think I can give you the pleasure, because I am not really dancing. Indeed I have been sitting on a gilt chair for so long now, I think I have probably forgotten how to dance at all.’

  ‘Oh, and why is that?’

  ‘Because,’ Mercy replied with her usual candour, ‘my stepmother was so mortified, quite properly of course, that I had not been asked by anyone – not for the whole Season, and certainly no-one here tonight – for the pleasure of any dance that it seems she has given out that I have weak ankles. So should I leap up and prove to Sir Perry, with whom she is now dancing, that my ankles are perfectly all right, I will make her out to be telling some sort of a lie, albeit a kindly meant one.’

  The tall, dark, older man looked towards Lady Violet and Sir Perry, his expression thoughtful for a second. They undoubtedly presented a fine sight together, Lady Violet being so tall and elegant and the young man quite the same.

  ‘Sir Perry is a brilliant dancer, we must give him that at least! And being a hereditary knight he is obviously intent on being dashing and courtly, and who can blame him for that either?’ he asked, but he turned back to look down at Mercy in some amusement.

  Mercy nodded, yet, determined as she had suddenly become to be frank, she could not let go of her point of view. If she had to remain seated for yet another ignominious evening, watching everyone else enjoying themselves, she might as well be truthful about her situation, and that would be that.

  ‘Oh, yes, you are quite right, he is a brilliant dancer,’ she agreed. ‘But, do you see, Sir Perry was my one chance to remove myself from this wretched gilt chair? My first and only chance for the whole Season, a Season in which I have been not just a complete failure but almost, I think, a famous one, if there can be such a thing.’

  He laughed again, and looked at Mercy appreciatively.

  ‘If you truly can not dance, I shall be forced to join you on a chair, and pretend to be a dowager chaperone, for there is no-one else in this whole room with whom I would rather dance at this moment, I promise you.’

  ‘Oh but I can dance.’ Throwing care to the winds, Mercy sprang up suddenly. ‘I can dance all evening, I assure you, and what is more I love dancing, more than anything in the world, except swimming in the sea.’

  ‘In that case, as I see you are walking perfectly, will you please do me the honour, Miss Cordel?’

  ‘How do you do?’

  ‘John Brancaster. Quite well, thank you.’

  He bowed, smiling, instantly affectionate, almost paternal, and they began to dance. Mercy knew at once that everything was going to be all right again, and she no longer wanted to swap places with the little maid who, earlier in the evening, had helped to put up her hair.

  ‘You dance beautifully, if I may say so?’

  ‘You are very kind.’

  ‘It is not said to be my first virtue, Miss Cordel – kindness.’

  Mercy smiled up at him. ‘I thought it was a girl’s place to be modest, Mr Brancaster, not yours!’

  ‘Touché. Men are deemed to be braggarts, are they not?’

  In the back of her mind just actually who ‘John Brancaster’ might be was even now coming back to Mercy. He was not unknown, she realized, as she moved gracefully around the ballroom with him.

  John Brancaster was a renowned sportsman, a huntsman, a man about town, unmarried, and very much a person around whom much talk centred, the interested being more than fascinated by why he still remained, or indeed how he still remained, a bachelor. And this despite his being rich, sporting, a godson of the Prince of Wales, and altogether very much in demand in the ballroom and the hunting field, and on shooting weeks.

  ‘May I say that your first name, Miss Cordel, is very unusual, is it not?’

  Mercy gave a small sigh. She was all too used to both the question and her own answer.

  ‘I know, it is rather strange, but on the other hand, when you hear the reason …’

  ‘Which is?’

  Mercy hesitated. ‘It is quite a – shall we say intimate story, Mr Brancaster.’

  ‘I am a man of the world, Miss Cordel. It will remain with me, I promise you.’

  ‘Well, it seems that when my mother was presented with me by the doctor in attendance at my birth, she said just that.’

  ‘Mercy?’

  ‘No, Mr Brancaster, not “Mercy?”, but – Mercy!’

  He threw back his head and laughed at that, and Mercy saw that he had good strong white teeth, which was always attractive in a man, not to mention a most amused laugh, the laugh of someone who found life endearing, but absurd, who thought that life should be challenged, and enjoyed, and wanted more than anything to ... live.

  As the dance came to an end, Mr Brancaster carefully picked out the pencil from Mercy’s bracelet and scribbled Mr John Brancaster over the space left for the next dance too, because as he said to Mercy, ‘I am not going to be so amused by anyone else present, and at least, being older, I have the good sense to know it.’

  And so they danced the following dance, but etiquette forbade more than two, and they parted at the close, Mercy to return to her chair, although not for long.

  Happily, as she soon discovered, once danced with by one man she was soon taken up by all men, which meant that for the first time ever the evening ended on a successful note, despite all her worst forebodings. She could hardly believe her luck as she glanced down at the names now scribbled on her card. And she knew just to whom she owed this ‘luck’. Mr John Brancaster.

  When Lady Violet signalled that they would be leaving, Mercy hung back from collecting her cloak, leaving her stepmother to sweep ahead of her to their carriage, hoping to catch sight of Mr Brancaster and thank him for his kindness.

  The men too hung around, waiting for cloaks and top hats, for carriages, wives and daughters – all the usual reasons, and many another too.

  Mercy, not finding Mr Brancaster among the stragglers in the hall and feeling oddly disappointed, went out of the great marbled hall with its sparkling Italian chandeliers and down the wide steps into the street.

  It was only as she made her way towards the Cordel family coach that she realised just where it was that she had seen John Brancaster before.

  Dorinda knew what she was being prepared for and deep down inside she could not help feeling just like a nice plump chicken being made ready for the oven. No different from one of the many dishes that Signor Lambrusco, the famous chef, was probably preparing for yet anot
her supper party to entertain the future King of England. And his sous chefs would be chopping and basting, mixing and stirring as hard and as fast as Blanquette, the dressmaker and the hairdresser had stirred and mixed, as it were, all the many and beautiful adornments for Dorinda’s first supper presentation.

  Earlier in the day Dorinda had received a Mr Tarleton, who had come round to the house armed with leather and velvet boxes containing a whole new set of jewellery.

  Gervaise had not wanted anything too spectacular for what was, in effect, Dorinda’s entrée into Society. On instructions from his client Mr Tarleton had therefore designed a delicate dog collar of pearls and Indian sapphires.

  As Gervaise had explained, ‘The blue of the sapphires is not quite Dorinda Blue, but it is beautiful none the less, I think.’

  And the blue was beautiful, almost matching the violet blue of her eyes. And what with earrings and a ring to match the dog collar, and a most delicately designed stomacher of small diamonds and pearls, Dorinda knew that she was going to look at her most beautiful. And yet still her heart sank, and she wished herself somewhere other than going to supper with the Prince of Wales.

  The truth was that she was desperately nervous. Indeed she fidgeted so much that the hairdresser introduced into the household by Blanquette to help her produce something very spectacular in the way of a coiffeur, dropped the hot curling tongs with which she had been coaxing Dorinda’s hair into a confection of curls, narrowly missing burning Dorinda’s magnificent silk-clad legs.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry, ma’am, really I am. I would not have such a thing happen for the world.’

  Blanquette frowned at the hairdresser. ‘Careful, careful,’ she warned. ‘Madame’s jambes are monsieur’s pride!’

  There was a few seconds silence as the remark seemed to hover in the air, and then all three women burst into fits of laughter, at the end of which Dorinda felt a great deal better.