The Lady of the Butterflies

by Fiona Mountain

  There was only one gentleman whose opinion mattered to me, though, and I would know soon enough what it was.

  “Hold still, now,” the tailor said, “while I adjust the hem.” He removed a pin from where it was stowed between his teeth and stuck it into the fabric. “I’ll need to take up another inch. How old did you say you are?”

  “Almost twenty.” I smiled proudly, as if it was a very great age indeed.

  He looked at me as if he didn’t quite believe me. But it was true. I was under five feet tall, a good three or four inches shorter than most girls my age, but I didn’t have any more growing to do.

  “For a special occasion, is it, the gown?” the tailor asked. “Sweetheart paying you a visit, is he?”

  My blush deepened. “Oh, I don’t have a sweetheart.”

  He glanced up at my pink cheeks, winked. “Ah, but there is someone you like, I think?”

  I had not seen Edmund Ashfield since I was eleven. Nine whole years had passed since then. I knew for a fact that my guardian had long favored a match between us and he had surely invited Edmund to visit to determine if he too was in favor of it. Why else was I to have a lovely new gown for the occasion? Edmund was arriving from Suffolk on Friday, and for so many reasons I was half in dread of seeing him again. What if he had changed? It was surely impossible for him to be as wondrous as I remembered him. As I had grown from child to woman, all my fantasies of falling in love had centered on him. And how could any man possibly live up to them, live up to my most cherished memory of a gleaming knight striding in out of the rain and lighting up my life?

  What if he did not want me?

  TO HELP PASS the time until Edmund’s arrival, I went to tend the bulbs beneath my mother’s walnut tree. It stood on the stretch of grass bordered by the cow barn and the rectory. She had planted it herself but never lived to see its first blossom. Soon it would be a mass of white petals and fresh green leaves and, despite its smallness, it already hinted at the majesty it would one day possess.

  I was kneeling down on a jute sack, pulling weeds from the black peaty earth, when Mr. Merrick came strutting across the soggy ground with his stiff lacquered cane and—never seen before this—a book in his hands. I wrenched out a particularly tenacious dandelion by its roots, showering my skirt with particles of soil in the process, then stood, as was expected of me in my guardian’s presence, not that I was favored with it very often. He was too busy attending to his business interests in Bristol. My aged great-aunt Elizabeth from Ribston had been installed in the house to watch over me. Supposedly. She was kind, but she had had apoplexy a year ago and barely moved from her chamber now.

  I wiped my dirty hands hastily on the jute and then smoothed away a lock of hair that had broken free from its fastenings as usual and had tumbled down over my brow.

  “Why must you be forever fussing with that blessed shrub?” Mr. Merrick snapped.

  I judged that question unworthy of a reply, saw that the dignity and splendor of the little tree didn’t touch him at all. Though doubtless he’d be quick to calculate how much its wood would be worth in a few years to the cabinetmakers and gunsmiths.

  “I was wondering when the walnuts will come, since they’re such a delicacy,” he said. “No doubt you can tell me precisely, given that you have an answer for everything.”

  I shaped my mouth to say October, but he didn’t wait to hear. “I had a most interesting conversation with the tailor when I went to settle the bill for your gown,” he said acidly. “You made quite an impression on him.”

  “Did I, sir?”

  “He’s not accustomed to having conversations with ladies about insects while he’s doing his measuring.”

  “Isn’t he?”

  “You know damned well he’s not, girl.” His small, nondescript eyes had all but vanished they were so narrowed in his reddened face, and he puffed up his pigeon chest and glowered at me. “I blame John Burges for this entirely,” he exploded. “I left him and his wife in charge of your welfare and only now do I find that they have been utterly negligent.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, indignantly. “John and Mary have cared for me very well.”

  “Evidently,” he spat. “They have taught you that it is acceptable for a young lady to quarrel with and contradict her guardian. And instead of ensuring you are proficient at embroidery, drawing and dancing, as well as balancing budgets and managing a household, you have been learning about worms.”

  I could have told Mr. Merrick that if he had taken any interest in me whatsoever over the past years, he would have discovered long ago that though I had no liking for embroidery I loved to dance, had a whole sketchbook filled with studies of butterflies and orchids and water snails and had paid great attention to the lessons I had been given on how to balance budgets, since I wanted to manage the estate competently as I had promised my father I would do. Admittedly I had given just as much attention and care to the books in the library and to my own natural observations. If Mr. Merrick had ever bothered about my welfare before now, he would have known that those books had become my constant companions, that I loved them so well I had practically memorized every page. I had taught Reverend Burges as much about God’s natural creation, about the behavior of grass snakes and damselflies, as ever he had taught me about algebra and Latin and geography. “John made a pledge to my father that he would make sure I continued my studies,” I said quietly. “I made a pledge to him too.”

  “Well, then, you will have to break it.” Mr. Merrick rounded on me spitefully. “You will continue these absurd studies no more. From now on you will receive instruction only in dancing and music and drawing and housewifery, like a proper young lady. You have had your final lesson with the reverend, or he will find he has preached his final sermon in this parish. Do I make myself clear?”

  For John and Mary’s sake, I nodded submissively, even as I clenched my hands into fists behind the folds of my skirt.

  “I have already removed all of your father’s books from the house.”

  “No! Please, sir, anything but . . .”

  “They will be returned to you when you come into your inheritance and are no longer my concern. Your father made the gravest mistake teaching you to take an interest in masculine concerns,” he added superciliously. “The weaker sex may have fruitful wombs but they’ve barren brains. Learning makes them impertinent and vain and cunning as foxes. I fear I shall never get you off my hands, even if you do come with a fine manor and a good income. I caution you to mind your tongue when you meet Mr. Ashfield again.” He smirked nastily, as if he knew very well how what he was about to say would cut me to the quick. “No gentleman wants to marry an educated girl.”

  “I understand your wife is very competent in business, sir,” I said, voicing what I had always taken as an assurance that women had an accepted place beyond homemaking. “She is your trusted partner in most of your ventures, I gather.”

  “She is a city wife.”

  He did not need to elaborate. City merchants were happy to have wives who were helpmeets, whereas gentry marriages were bound by an entirely different set of rules. What gentry husbands looked for were meek and dutiful wives. What a man like Edmund Ashfield would be looking for was a meek and dutiful wife, not a know-it-all.

  Not me.

  “Your father chose me as your guardian because he knew I would make a good guardian for Tickenham Court,” Mr. Merrick continued. “You have me and the trustees to thank for the fact that you shall have an income of six hundred pounds a year.” He touched the bedraggled edge of my dress with the toe of his highly polished buckled shoe. “Enough to keep you in pretty gowns, no matter how many you’ll undoubtedly ruin by wandering around like a Romany. But pretty gowns do not come cheap and I’d like to see a return on my investment. I’d like to see you betrothed and off my hands as soon as possible.” He glanced at the book he had been holding, drummed his stubby beringed fingers on the cover. “This is the only book you will be reading
from now on, and since you are so keen on study, I urge you to study this particularly well.”

  He held it out to me and I took it reluctantly, glanced at the cover.

  “It’s a conduct book, in case you are wondering. For most gentry girls it is as important as the Bible. It instructs you on how to behave. The skills you will need in order to secure a husband and then fulfill your wifely duties.”

  Stubbornly, I knelt back down on the ground. I laid the conduct book to one side on the grass and attacked another dandelion. But as soon as Mr. Merrick had gone, I picked up the book and flicked through the pages.

  EDMUND ASHFIELD ARRIVED at Tickenham Court in the early evening while Bess was dressing me in my new gown. He and Mr. Merrick immediately shut themselves away in the parlor, so I did not get to see him until supper, when my guardian seated himself beside our guest at the polished oak refectory table.

  I took the place directly opposite Edmund and tried not to gaze at him and act the mute ninny I had been before. It was not easy. For he was just as I had remembered him after all, and more. He had filled out in the intervening years, lost any trace of boyish lankiness, so that he seemed even taller and broader-shouldered and more imposing than ever. But his gray eyes were just as merry, and in the light from the candles in the wall sconces his wavy copper hair rippled and shone luxuriantly. If I touched it, I wondered, would it be soft as kitten fur or prickly as a bulrush?

  As he helped himself to a slice of cold beef off the pewter platter, I stared at the flurry of pale freckles and red-gold hairs scattered across the back of his hand. I reached out for a slice and my fingers brushed his and made every fiber of my body start to tingle. Solicitously, he moved the platter nearer to me, but I found that I was not in the least hungry, despite the fact that I had been too excited to eat all day. I did not think I could manage one bite. There was no room in my belly anyway. With my corset laced up tight, there was hardly room to take air into my lungs, not that I was complaining. With my hair piled on my head and ringlets coiling down to my shoulders, I had never felt so grown-up or so elegant.

  I watched Edmund cut his meat as if I had never seen a person use a knife before. Then he stopped cutting and his hands were quite still. I looked up and our eyes met. He gave me one of his gloriously sunlit smiles and my heart skipped.

  “Eat up, girl,” Mr. Merrick scolded. “What’s the matter with you today?”

  “Yes, do eat, Miss Goodricke,” Edmund said, and the little apple in his neck bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “I have never tasted beef this good.”

  “We’ve killed the fatted calf for you, my boy,” Mr. Merrick said heartily. “Mind you, if this land were to be drained and reclaimed like your father’s, we’d have no end of fatted cows. These pastures would breed the fattest, most succulent calves in all of England, isn’t that so?”

  So that was why Mr. Merrick was so keen on marrying me off to Edmund, I realized with sickening dismay. I should have guessed. I should have known. If I tried to eat the beef now, I thought, I might very well choke on it.

  Edmund must have been looking at me closely enough to notice the color drain from my face. “Reclaimed land may breed fat cattle, but wetlands draw and breed good, fat wild geese,” he said supportively. Astonishingly he must have even noticed the faintest flicker of disagreement in my eyes, for he added quietly: “Or don’t you think so, Miss Goodricke?”

  I parted my lips to speak, hesitated.

  “Please, do go on,” he said, encouragingly. “You had something to say, I think.”

  “The girl always has something to say,” Mr. Merrick said through gritted teeth, his eyes like daggers intended to pierce my tongue and hold it still.

  I gave a small shake of my head, my eyes downcast. “It was nothing.”

  “But I should like to hear it all the same,” Edmund persisted gently.

  I set down my knife and fork as if throwing down armor and relinquishing weapons. I looked up defiantly. It was absurd to try to pretend to be what I was not, especially since every thought I had seemed to show on my face. If Edmund Ashfield did not like the fact that I was educated, that I took an interest in the natural world and so-called masculine concerns, then so be it. I might as well know sooner rather than later. I had always been proud of my learning, too proud maybe, but I could not, would not, consider it a shameful thing that must be concealed. I had not read the conduct book Mr. Merrick had given to me, nor had any intention of ever doing so, but I had glanced at sufficient pages to know that I could never be the kind of modest and maidenly girl it set out to create. I would never be content with a life of needlework and gossip. If Edmund wanted such a girl, then I would never be happy with him, did not want him at all, no matter how handsome he was, no matter how his smile made me feel all warm inside and aware of my body in a way I never had been before.

  I gulped down my wine, swallowed, handed the glass to Jack Jennings to be refilled. Edmund was still looking at me expectantly.

  “It is just that . . . well, the wild geese never breed here,” I said.

  Mr. Merrick snorted derisively. “Miss Goodricke is a proper little know-it-all, I am afraid,” he said grimly. “Though I imagine much of what she says is nonsense. How can anyone possibly know a thing like that?”

  I flushed hot with embarrassment and anger. “All the wild geese have flown away by spring,” I countered with quiet confidence. “Long before the mallard ducklings and the heron chicks are born. I have watched them.” Overcome suddenly with a need to make mischief, I turned my head slightly, flicked my eyes sideways at Edmund as I had seen Bess do to Ned, the stable boy, whom she had married a year ago. “I’ve never once seen wild geese climbing on each other’s backs like the cock does to the hens.”

  Mr. Merrick spluttered as if the succulent beef was poisoned. This was followed by a deathly hush. I hardly dared even glance at Edmund Ashfield. But when I did I saw with enormous relief that he was grinning from ear to ear as if I had said the most amusing and delightful thing he had ever heard. I could not help but grin back at him. I had not meant to test him, not really, and yet it had been a kind of a test and my heart sang at how completely he had passed it.

  “This is not a conversation for the supper table,” Mr. Merrick said when he had recovered. “Indeed it is hardly fit conversation for any young lady in any situation.”

  “My father taught me that it is a godly duty to take a keen interest in the world,” I said with a pert smile.

  “You take rather too keen an interest in worldly things,” Mr. Merrick grunted. “I ask you! How the deuce do you even know that the behavior you so eagerly describe results in the begetting of offspring?”

  “Oh, I’ve thought about it a lot,” I said, so happy and so emboldened by how much Edmund Ashfield seemed to be enjoying the conversation that I felt almost invincible. “You couldn’t live amongst livestock for long and not work it out.”

  “It’s true, Merrick,” Edmund said supportively. “You merchants and town-dwellers are shielded from the basic facts of life in a way that those of us who work the land and live in proximity to beasts and birds can never be. I’d say there was nothing at all amiss with having an earthy approach to life.”

  “You may be nineteen years old, Eleanor,” Mr. Merrick said. “But I’ve a mind to send you to your chamber at once, supper or no. You are too forward by half.”

  I hated my guardian then. I hated him for making me appear like a child when I was trying so very hard not to be one. But again Edmund Ashfield leapt to my rescue.

  “Oh, don’t send her away, William,” he said in his affable tone. “I beg of you. She’s such delightful company and we would be so dull without her. And I have to say, I don’t think she’s too forward at all.”

  Actually, until that day, I’d considered myself rather backward when it came to the intriguing subject of mating. Though when I thought of Edmund when I was out riding it made me shift restlessly in the saddle, I’d been quite disturbed at the idea
of men and women doing together what I had watched the bull doing to the cows. But now I did not think I should mind it so very much at all, so long as it could be Edmund Ashfield who was doing it to me.

  “Are you on your way back from London,” I asked him, “as you were when last you came to Tickenham?”

  “Fancy you remembering that after all this time,” he said.

  I blushed, feeling I had given away the secrets of my heart too freely and he would know now that I had been half in love with him since I had been a little girl. That might perhaps be a grave mistake. But then I saw the way he was looking at me, almost wonderingly, and I knew I need not be concerned. He would never use such knowledge against me, never do anything to hurt me. He seemed very straightforward, not the kind of person to appreciate dissembling at all. I did not care if I had inadvertently declared my feelings. In fact, I was glad that I had.

  He looked at me as if he could hardly believe I had been that little girl in the drab dress he had first met all those years ago. “I am on my way to rather than from London this time,” he replied.

  “And are you going to meet your friend again?” I asked.

  “Richard Glanville, yes.”

  “I wonder, does young Glanville ever spend any time at Elmsett?” Mr. Merrick asked disparagingly.

  “He doesn’t like to,” Edmund said with a glance down the table at the other man. For just a moment the merriment dimmed in his eyes. “You can surely sympathize with him on that score, sir.”