A Lady in Love

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  From Fred, she heard of the drying and fading of the blisters, and the triumph of the first shave. From ‘Lizabeth, coming in to do Sir Francis’ room, she heard all the details of Lord Reyne's return to good humor. But Sarah did not see him again until the day he arose from his bed to re-enter the world.

  Though she knew it most likely contravened the spirit of her promise, Sarah lurked in the hall to see him descend. He came down quickly enough, his fingers still smoothing the wings of his cravat. Harvey was close behind, and Lord Reyne addressed a few words to him. “All the other guests are flown, Phelps? Believe me, it was never my intention to overstay my welcome.”

  “On the contrary, I fear we have overdone our hospitality.”

  Reaching the hall. Lord Reyne said, “You must call on me when you are next in London.”

  Harvey was visibly gratified. “I shall, sir. Gladly.”

  “Just leave your nephew at home, eh, Phelps?” Laughing, Lord Reyne pushed his fist against Harvey's shoulder. Then his smile went directly to the pillar which Sarah clutched in front of herself like a shield. “Is that my playmate? Come out.” He took her wrist and pulled.

  Sarah could only stare dumbly at him, certain the gesture would bring everything back to his mind. However, he only said, “What of all those promises to let me win at cribbage? You've not been near me since. Afraid your victory was a fluke?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ah, then you're confident you'll best me tonight! The good doctor forbids travel for two more days, so I must impose further on the good offices of our friends. And yours.” He stood before her, looking into her eyes. Then a frown came between his brows, and Sarah thought a memory stirred. Though she knew it wrong, she longed to hear those breathless phrases in her honor repeated, again and again. But all he said was, “Do you hear something?”

  “Something?”

  “Like the blowing of horns.” The front door was beside them. He opened it and dimly, yet growing nearer, came the sound of horns lustily blown. “Someone's coming,” he said, stepping out onto the half-round steps.

  Sarah stood by his shoulder as a team of outriders came up the drive, gravel spraying from beneath their horse's hooves. The men wore grey-and-blue livery, silver braid contrasting with the brass of their instruments. They put them to their lips for one more blast that brought servants, guests, and family members to every window.

  Then a darkly varnished carriage, its exquisite lines showing beneath the dust, drew around the sweep of the drive, the four horses seeming fresh from the stable. The footman swung from the back as lightly as a whirligig on a stick and bent like a sawdust doll when he bowed on opening the door. Sarah expected at least a wattled duchess for all this ceremony, yet the first person to come from the carriage was obviously a maid. The next personage, though much finer and grander than the first, also turned and waited for the last one out.

  A small foot, a ruffle of gleaming petticoat beneath a soft strawberry-colored pelisse, a gloved hand, and at last the face of a lovely girl beneath a large yet tasteful hat. She cast one glance up at the house, and a ripple of laughter broke from the rosy lips. “Alaric! My foot's asleep. Help me out.”

  Lord Reyne said, “Lillian?”

  Sarah stood wondering on the step as Lord Reyne went down to her. He'd mentioned sisters. Perhaps this was one. Now they were returning, she leaning on him and saying, “Isn't it just like me to come to you a little too late? How dare you recover before I could nurse you devotedly.”

  “Well, I shan't fall prey to it again just to please you. Besides, I had excellent nursing as it was. Miss Canfield, may I present Miss Sarah East?”

  Sarah was ready to curtsy, but the other woman put out her hand. “I'm surprised you aren't malingering, Alaric, with such a fair one as this to look after you. How do you do. Miss East. Thank you so very much for looking after my fiance.”

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  Chapter Seven

  “May I join you, Miss East?” Miss Canfield parted from Lady Phelps and crossed the drawing room to sit beside Sarah on the silver-striped settee. A scarf floated from one shoulder and reflected the candles’ light in its rosy threads of shot silk.

  “Certainly,” Sarah said, prompted only by politeness.

  “What a charming home Hollytrees is. Lady Phelps says that it is historically nothing, however, compared with your own, I hope I may come to see it while I am here?”

  “Lady Phelps is very kind.”

  It was after dinner. Mrs. Smithers, joyful because her husband felt more the thing, had created a splendid feast for the mere eighteen persons who now sat at the family table. The gentlemen, replete, lingered over their wine while the ladies departed to take tea in the drawing room.

  With Miss Canfield's arrival at Hollytrees, a new spirit seemed to have taken hold. When his wife gave him an embroidered waistcoat on his last birthday. Sir Arthur had declared no power on earth would make him wear such a dandified garment. He wore it tonight. Lady Phelps selected a dashing turban to complement her husband's choice. The twins, heavy-eyed and sniffling still, rebelled at staying in bed any longer and had come down with marvelously inventive cravats. The rest of the guests were fine enough for a ball. Even Mr. East had taken trouble enough to brush his hair over the balding spot at the back.

  Sarah's choice, if left to herself, would have been mourning. Today she had discovered the truth of the proverb that declares “Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves.”

  “Sarah East?” Lord Reyne had said in answer to a question put by his fiancee. “She's a beauty, I quite agree. But I'm afraid babes in arms have few attractions for me.” Miss Canfield had laughed and then said something in an undertone. “Well, yes, you are rather long in the tooth, aren't you, Lillian? What are you now, twenty-one? Ah, twenty-two! Our marriage is off.”

  She had not meant to listen. Lady Phelps had sent her to ask Miss Canfield if she needed anything in her room. Sarah couldn't say that she'd rather walk barefoot through alligator-infested waters than speak to Miss Canfield. Approaching the open door, she'd heard Miss Canfield say, “What an amazingly lovely creature you introduced as your nurse. Is her character as charming as her face?”

  Upon hearing Lord Reyne's cool reply, Sarah kept only enough wits to glide, rather than clatter, away. In a vacant room, she caught her breath with a sob. The odor of flowers, placed here to drive off the bad air that came with sickness, filled her lungs. Raising her eyes, Sarah saw that this was his room. Here, on that bed, he'd poured out his admiration for her. That, she now realized, was only the ravings of a fevered man. If dreams went by contraries, so might delirious praises of her beauty mean something entirely different.

  Once, she'd found a wounded rabbit under a bush, pressed into the moist ground as though praying to be absorbed by the sheltering earth. Picking it up, she'd felt it shudder, yet it was too wretched even to kick out against her. Her father had delicately removed the wire that had lacerated its leg. Though it recovered, it always lay flat in the bottom of the hutch, until Sarah could bear its sadness no longer and let it go.

  She felt like that now, dumbly miserable, yet there was no hand to free her. Sarah felt the impossibility of sharing her newest sorrow with anyone. She had no more words to express it than did the rabbit.

  Mrs. East, approaching the settee, was in time to hear her daughter's ungracious reply to Miss Canfield. “Of course, you must visit,” Mrs. East said. “We are returning home this evening.”

  Sarah looked up. “We are?”

  “I hope you shall find time to visit us, Miss Canfield.”

  “Thank you, I certainly shall. Having made Miss East's acquaintance, I am reluctant to sever our friendship so soon. I have such cause for gratitude towards you.”

  At the warmth of Miss Canfield's tone, Sarah straightened her sloping shoulders and said, “I haven't done anything.”

  Miss Canfield's dark eyes smiled. “You cared for Alaric when I co
uld not. What greater cause could there be? I wonder ... would you accept some token of my gratitude?” She wore, as was the fashion, five or six beaded bracelets on her left wrist. Now she unfastened one, and with a glance upwards to receive Mrs. East's approval. Miss Canfield pressed it into Sarah's limp hand.

  It was a pretty thing, of lozenge-shaped blue stones flecked with gold, separated by golden spheres. Sarah looked at it, cool and solid in her hand, and dully said, “Thank you.”

  As Sarah fumbled with the tiny hook. Miss Canfield said, “The stones are lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. I spent several years in India with my father, where we collected many beautiful things.” Fleetingly, she touched the fine sapphires that dazzled with blue fire about her slim throat.

  “Is he a scholar?” Mrs. East asked.

  “No, a merchant. He retired, more or less, last year, but I'm afraid he is still susceptible to the lure of business.” Sarah noticed that Miss Canfield's easy posture became the tiniest bit rigid when she explained, though her smile was as gracious as before.

  When Mrs. East said, “I understand that soldiers often have the same difficulty adjusting to civilian life,” Sarah saw Miss Canfield relax. Sarah herself was too unhappy to attach any meaning to the other's behavior. Her interest only awakened when Miss Canfield used Mrs. East's comment to discuss Lord Reyne.

  “He actually resisted his doctor's suggestion to visit the seaside because he'd be unable to keep regular hours away from his home. He has the most completely correct manservant, who quite terrifies me. Barton used to be his orderly and raises military precision to an art.”

  “I was surprised to learn Lord Reyne traveled without some staff. His father was very particular about that, as I recall.”

  “Mother! You knew Lord Reyne's father?”

  “I had my Season, my dear. He was married then, of course, but I remember vividly how proud he was of his rank. If any hostess made an error about who went into dinner first. Lord Reyne would leave at once, never to return.”

  “So I have heard also, Mrs. East. I'm happy to say Alaric isn't like that in the least. Barton usually accompanies him everywhere, though. Now he is in London, preparing Lord Reyne's new house for next Season. It was not kept in the best repair by the former owners, and there is much work to be done.”

  Their conversation then passed into a discussion of fabrics, styles, and the necessity for good flues in all the rooms. Though Sarah barely listened, she came to understand that Miss Canfield had recently decorated her father's house with as liberal a license as his great fortune allowed.

  When the gentlemen, fragrant with cigar smoke, emerged from the dining salon. Lord Reyne came directly to the settee. He bowed to Mrs. East and to Sarah, but raised his fiancee's hand to his lips. Sarah, awake to his every action, observed that he made no contact with the fine kid glove. “I have been praising your playing to the skies, my dear. Won't you honor us?”

  “And I have been longing to touch the splendid instrument I see in the corner. Lady Phelps,” she said, raising her voice a trifle, “may I weary the company with an air or two?”

  “By all means, though I'm sure you play charmingly,” her hostess replied, nodding her turban.

  The unevenness of the numbers had forced Lady Phelps to seat her guests promiscuously at table. Lord Reyne had been placed beside Miss Canfield, naturally enough. Sarah, near the twins as always, had been unable to keep her gaze long away from the handsome couple. She had wished fervently that it might be she who kept him so attentive. Now, however, when he took the seat his fiancee had left vacant, she could think of nothing to say.

  He looked up and said, “Have I stolen your place, madam?''

  “Not at all,” said Mrs. East, still standing behind her daughter. “I shall sit closer to the pianoforte so that I lose none of the notes.” Yet, she half-twisted in her seat when she reached it, to keep close watch upon Sarah, very much annoying Mrs. Dealford who sat beside her.

  “Do you play, Miss East?” Alaric asked.

  “No, I have never learned.” There was wine on his breath, and smoke, mingling with his own woodsy fragrance that she'd noticed from the first. The combination made her dizzy, yet she inclined closer to him to more fully absorb it. Then she remembered the words she'd overheard and leaned away.

  “Now Lillian is a most accomplished musician. She not only plays each note with precision, but there is such a depth of feeling in her playing. It brings out the composer's true meaning. Don't you think so?”

  “I know nothing about it.” She hated to expose her ignorance to him, but she did not even know enough about music to pretend an interest. She sat there, her shoulders once more slumping, as the music, conjured up by Miss Canfield's delicate fingers, floated like a genie across the room.

  Sarah's own thoughts shouted so loudly in condemnation of her foolishness that she did not regard the frantic pssts coming from behind her. Only two things could have roused her. One—a cannon fired immediately beside her. The other—a single word from Lord Reyne. “Miss East,” he whispered. “I believe Miss Phelps is attempting to capture your attention.”

  Turning, she saw Harmonia summon her with an imperious wave. “I'm sorry,” she said. Standing, she drifted forlornly out of the room, noticing only that Miss Canfield smiled and nodded graciously on catching her eye.

  “I wanted you to be the first to know,” Harmonia said, encircling her friend's waist with her arm. “After Mother and Father, of course.”

  “To know what?” She hoped that some new epidemic, preferably fatal, had struck, so that she might be the sole victim. A dreadful certainty had struck her in the drawing room. Not only did Lord Reyne think of her as a foolish child, but she was afraid Miss Canfield knew that Sarah loved him. Something about the other woman had been so sympathetic in a loathsome mature way that Sarah shuddered at the shame of it all.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Harmonia repeated. “Harlow and I are to be married.”

  “Married?”

  “Not so loud! Father's going to announce it in a few minutes. He's conferring with Smithers on which champagne to serve out. But I wanted you to know first. Aren't you happy for me?”

  Something sharp in Harmonia's voice penetrated Sarah's gloom. Dredging up a smile, Sarah embraced her friend. “But when did this happen?”

  “Yesterday. As soon as he was recovered, he said he knew I was the wife for him by the way I nursed him. Of course, he was a very easy patient, so docile and gentle. I'm so very happy!”

  “And I'm so happy for you!”

  The rest of the company echoed her sentiment when Sir Arthur made his announcement. Harlow Atwood, looking thin and pale beside his strapping future brothers-in-law, wrung his hands and said how much at home he felt in the bosom of his new family, and that he truly regretted leaving the comfort of home life so soon.

  “What did he mean, Harmonia?” Sarah asked when the engaged girl came to her for her official congratulations.

  “Harlow is to be a secretary to some lord in Scotland. He must take up his position within two weeks. His illness has delayed him already. He'll be there for at least a year before we can be married. I wanted to marry at once, but he thought it wisest to wait so that he will be able to support me in our own home.” For a moment, disappointment overlaid her radiance.

  “Never mind,” Sarah said. “A year is nothing. Think of all we must do. I'll even help you with your sewing, if you like.”

  Mrs. Dealford, who stood near, said, “I personally think a quick marriage often leads to disastrous results. Mr. Atwood is quite correct. You are indeed wise to wait.”

  Though Harmonia had overcome her dislike of Emma, upon noticing her decided preference for Harvey, she went wary of Mrs. Dealford, suspecting her of still wanting Harlow for her daughter. She now dragged Sarah out of earshot and said fiercely, “I'm sure she'd marry in haste enough if anybody asked her!”

  Someone proposed dancing in honor of the engagement. Servants rolled back the carp
et, exposing the gleaming parquet in light and dark wood. Harcourt and Harold were seen to flip a coin. Harvey and Emma stood together. After some cajolery, Lady Phelps agreed to honor Sir Francis and astounded the company by the lightness of her dancing. Mrs. East, seeing Mr. Posthwaite gazing enviously at the others, invited him to squire her.

  Sir Arthur, Mr. East, Mr. Randolph and Mrs. Dealford were all adamant that a round of whist would be preferable to dancing. Though Harriet looked with longing eyes at her husband, she, in the end, agreed to play so that Miss Canfield could have the pleasure of dancing with her betrothed. Harold went to turn pages for his sister. They chose a shortened cotillion in which, as at dinner, the men and women stood mixed, side by side.

  Sarah's feet were heavy with unhappiness, but Harcourt had won the toss. Besides, if she refused there would be but five couples, which made for awkward figures. As Harriet began to play, peering nearsightedly at the page, Sarah followed Harcourt through the round. She kept her gaze on him or on the floor, for the sight of her neighbor. Lord Reyne, laughing into his beloved's eyes was more than she could quite stomach. Even when she passed down the row, though she knew his touch at once, she did not glance up at him. Only when she returned to Harcourt did she raise her eyes and smile.

  “I say,” he said, “are you all right?”

  “Perfectly well.” It was Miss Canfield's turn to pass down the row. She called out something to Sarah as she passed, waving her free hand for an instant before giving it to Sir Francis. When Miss Canfield returned to her place opposite Lord Reyne, the gentlemen stepped in front of their ladies to bow profoundly.

  Harcourt's nose and mouth twisted in the effort to contain a sneeze. He failed. As he grabbed furiously for his handkerchief, Sarah started back to avoid the spray. Her heel slipped on the shiny floor and her feet went out from beneath her. Her arms flailed as she strove to regain her balance. She felt as though she were once more falling into the lake, but winced in advance, knowing the floor would hurt her.

  Instead of grievously injuring her posterior, Sarah found herself safely caught in the arms of the one man, above all others, she'd rather not be saved by. She knew she gaped and felt his forearms tighten beneath her fingers.