“What an air you have about you!” Katherine exclaimed. “I enjoy dancing and am counted as good at it, but my promenade is nothing like that!”
“Show me,” demanded Lady Clara, and Katherine promenaded down the walk toward her. “More dignity!” Clara said. “You must glide along.” She demonstrated. The two young ladies promenaded up and down the walk, with a great deal of laughter, and in the process Lady Clara obtained an amount of walking exercise that would have brought a gleam of approval into the eyes of Sir William Knighton.
They talked as they promenaded, and were soon indeed great friends. Lady Clara had an infectious gaiety about her that Katherine found most stimulating, and the more sober Katherine displayed a dry wit that confirmed Lady Clara’s belief that she was most droll.
Lady Clara enjoyed the exercise outing so much that she returned to Rosebourne several times a week. Katherine found that she enjoyed Lady Clara’s company; the married woman was older than Katherine but her light-hearted personality made her seem younger. Katherine even found herself confiding in Lady Clara. Not, certainly, the family’s financial situation, or her own assumption of her father’s Mrs. Wilson role, but about personal matters, such as the perplexing question of Julia Fordice.
One day as they promenaded the shrubbery, the topic of Julia Fordice came up, and Katherine confessed to being bewildered by that lady’s recent attitudes. “I’ve known Julia all my life,” she said. “I’ve always considered her my best friend. But of late, she has become quite sharp-tongued with me, and I feel in her almost a hostility. There’s no accounting for it.”
“No accounting for it?” repeated Clara with a trill of laughter. “Oh, you goose, it’s perfectly reasonable and understandable.”
“It is?” said Katherine in surprise. “Am I offensive in some way to her?”
“You could be as sweet as honey to her, and it wouldn’t matter,” Clara assured her. “My dear, you are both single young women, yet to establish yourself. She sees you as her principal rival for all the best men.”
“She does?!” Katherine exclaimed. “She’s never said.”
“One wouldn’t, of course,” Clara said. “But I am certain that is what is at the heart of the matter. Why I recall during my London season, some of my dearest old friends turned into such disagreeable cats that I hardly recognized them. But once my engagement was announced, they returned to being as sweet and friendly as can be.”
“Did you accept them back as friends?” Katherine wondered.
“Oh, my dear, certainly I did. I quite understood and suspect that I would have been every bit as disagreeable if I hadn’t come to London already determined to marry my dear Hector. So I didn’t see those girls as rivals at all, they were welcome to the beaus for all I cared.” She patted Katherine’s hand. “Don’t worry. As soon as your engagement is announced, Julia will be the old friend she always was.”
“My engagement!” Katherine cried. “What engagement?”
“Perhaps no date has been set,” Lady Clara said archly, “but I am well aware that there is a certain handsome young clergyman with designs on your hand.”
“Indeed, if that is so, I have not been made aware of it,” Katherine answered.
Clara opened her eyes wide. “La,” she said at last, “how slowly you people do move in the country. Has he not declared himself yet? Well, rest assured that he will do so eventually, the slow top.”
“I think you refine too much upon a simple friendship,” Katherine said awkwardly and the conversation moved on to other topics.
But Lady Clara was right, as Lady Clara tended to be, and an offer from Mister Downey was soon forthcoming.
NINE
Katherine was in the study, scratching busily at her novel when Mister Downey was announced. She was feeling a sense of triumph, because she’d solved a conundrum that had troubled her for some days.
The difficulty was this. Now that she had revised Baron de la Tour and made him a more subtle villain, how was Euphonia to finally become aware of his perfidy? It needed to be something simple, since Euphonia was still a guileless little widgeon to whom an intricate line of logic and reasoning would be foreign. Katherine had decided that she needed to have Euphonia overhear the Baron talking with one of his henchmen; that would be unmistakable. And yet Euphonia was a trusting soul, sneaking and prying and eavesdropping were alien to her nature, so what would cause her to listen?
But today Katherine suddenly remembered something from much earlier, from Papa’s portion of the manuscript. Papa had given Castle Thunderclap a whispering gallery! Katherine flipped eagerly back to the first portion of the novel and there it was in Chapter 3; the long gallery was so arranged and proportioned that a faint whisper uttered at one end, though inaudible from the middle of the gallery, or even scant yards from the speaker, was nonetheless perfectly audible at the other end. How clever of Papa, he must have intended to use that somewhere, and now here was the gallery, perfectly situated for her use.
Katherine was bent over her work and Euphonia was innocently overhearing the Baron’s dastardly plans, when there was a scratch the door and Sally entered. “Mister Downey come to see you, Miss,” Sally said with a meaningful smile. “He most particularly asked if he might speak with you alone, so I’ve put him in the back parlor.”
“I’ll be right along,” Katherine said, putting down her pen with reluctance and smoothing her hair. She was so caught up in the fictional doings of Euphonia that she completely missed the significance both of Sally’s pointed look and of Mister Downey’s request for a private interview. She entered the back parlor still in the throes of satisfied authorship, a slight smile on her lips and her cheeks becomingly flushed. It made her even more attractive than usual, and the poor young man awaiting her could only believe that the pleased smile and the flush were intended for him.
He started forward with an exclamation of “Katherine!” and seized both her hands.
The sudden move, so unlike the gentlemanly vicar, brought Katherine back from Castle Thunderclap to Rosebourne with an almost audible thump. She carefully detached her hands and said with a polite smile, “Mister Downey? You wished to speak with me?”
Mister Downey took a step back. Somehow the matter, so carefully rehearsed so many times, had taken a wrong turn. “Forgive me,” he said awkwardly. “You just looked so pretty that I forgot myself.”
Katherine now realized why he was here, and was confused into silence. “Won’t you sit?” she said, gesturing to a chair and taking a seat across from it.
Mister Downey sat in the chair indicated, and for a moment they just stared at one another uncomfortably. Then the vicar took a deep breath and sought refuge in his prepared remarks. “Miss Rose,” he said, with more formality than he intended, “surely it cannot have escaped your notice that the emotions that I feel for you are of the warmest and closest nature.”
Twisting her hands together, Katherine said, “I’ve always considered you a dear friend.”
“I would like to be closer to you than a friend,” Mister Downey said. “My dear Katherine, surely you realize that I wish to marry you? Would you do me that honor?”
Katherine jumped to her feet and paced the small room. It occurred to her that she could not enter into any engagement while her family’s situation was as precarious as it was. How much to tell him? She turned and said, “Mister Downey, I am naturally quite honored that you consider me worthy of such a position. But at the moment there are circumstances…” She stopped.
Surprised, he prompted, “Circumstances?”
She hurried on. “Since my father’s death, I have found such a level of confusion in matters regarding his estate that I don’t feel comfortable leaving them for others to resolve.”
Downey was baffled by this turn in the conversation. “Your father’s estate! But my dear, it’s been months, surely that’s all resolved by now.”
“No,” Katherine said. “Things are not resolved. And I can’t foresee of a
certainty when they will be.”
“My dear Katherine,” Downey said. “I had no notion that you were dealing with a problem alone. Allow me to help you. Describe the problem to me and let’s see if together we can arrive at a solution.”
“No!” exclaimed Katherine, more loudly than she intended. She was recalling a dinner at Rosebourne when the vicar was newly arrived in the village, and how the young man had spoken disparagingly about the effect of novel reading on women’s minds. Novels might, he stated rather pompously, give young ladies a restless taste for the sensational and a discontent with their lives.
At the time, Katherine felt a certain level of agreement with him. Aunt Alice, however, had drawn herself up and took up the cudgels on behalf of her beloved books. “Mister Downey,” she told him, “you are a very young man and I’m an old woman. You listen to me, because I’m speaking from life, not something I heard in a lecture or essay. I read at least a chapter of a novel every evening when I get the chance, and I have not experienced any taste for the sensational other than between the covers of a book, and my only discontent with my life is that I wish there were a few more novels in it. I think my brother will tell you that I accomplish my household tasks undeterred by my taste in reading material, and I’ll thank you to trouble your mind no further on my behalf.”
Mister Downey had ceded the point gracefully. “Indeed, Miss Rose,” he said. “If that is the case, then I will concern myself no more with the matter, and turn my attention to other foibles more surely injurious to sense and morality.”
He had never mentioned novels to the Rose ladies again. Katherine wondered whether Aunt Alice had indeed convinced him, or if it was simply a case of a young newcomer resolving not to offend the ladies of one of the most prominent families in the neighborhood. But she certainly would not now confess to him that the problem was how heavily reliant her father’s estate had turned out to be on the sale of gothic novels!
But now the vicar was staring at her in pained astonishment and Katherine realized she was being rude. “Forgive me,” she said. “But this is a personal family matter that I don’t feel comfortable sharing with anyone.”
“Very well,” he said stiffly. Then, gently, “I am indeed sorry that you have a trouble in your life, and chagrined that I didn’t notice you were troubled. Please assure me that it’s not me that you have a distaste for, but rather this problem that prevents you from accepting my proposal.”
“Mister Downey,” Katherine said carefully, “I do assure you that as long as I have this difficulty to resolve, I will not marry anyone, you or anyone else. And of course I don’t have a distaste for you. I enjoy your company greatly and have always considered you a dear friend.”
“Just a dear friend?” he asked sadly.
Katherine thought about it, and finally said, “To be honest, my mind has been so taken up with my own concerns that I haven’t had time to examine the state of my emotions in regards to you. But it would be unfair of me to give you license to hope that I will be able to answer your question any time soon.”
“I see,” he said, and that seemed to settle the matter.
After a few more awkward commonplaces, the vicar took his leave, beset by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he genuinely cared deeply for Miss Katherine Rose, had wanted for some time to marry her and spend the rest of his life with her. That side of his mind ached for her and the mysterious burden she carried all alone.
But on the other hand, regardless of his cloth, he was yet a very young man and his pride had been hurt. He had come to Rosebourne today to propose, his first and presumably only proposal, and he came confident in the knowledge that he would be accepted. Not only had his proposal been rejected, but he was not even allowed to know why he was being rejected. He couldn’t help feeling a flicker of resentment about that. Surely, if not as Katherine’s dear friend, then as the local vicar, he was an appropriate recipient for troubling confidences! Between worry on Katherine’s behalf and offense on his own, Mister Downey was so deeply sunk in his own reflections that he unwittingly snubbed a passing Mrs. Worth, and wondered for weeks afterward why that lady was acting so sharp with him.
Mister Downey told no one about his interview with Katherine and its unsatisfactory resolution, and Katherine held her own counsel as well.
That summer, Piddledean saw a round of parties and social events such as it had never seen before. The Fletchers, proud of their grounds, gave a garden party. The Massinghams countered with a dinner and dance, and the Fordices, though planning a ball for later in the season, hosted a card party, something that Julia Fordice considered the height of sophistication. There were dinners and riding parties and visits to local beauty spots.
The Roses attended only some of this surfeit of socializing. Some of the proposed outings seemed to Katherine inconsistent with their mourning status. But even turning down some invitations still left them with a calendar fuller than they had ever experienced. Lady Clara made a point of attending all the events that Charles attended, and looked over the region’s crop of young single ladies with a critical eye.
One afternoon, following a promenade with Katherine at Rosebourne, while the two young ladies rested on a bench and admired the flower gardens, Lady Clara suddenly said, “Someone who is a friend of Julia Fordice ought to tell her that an air of conceited self-consequence is not the way to any man’s heart, let alone my little brother’s.”
Katherine, who’d been staring at the roses and pondering Euphonia’s next move, looked at her in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m thinking of that card party last night,” Clara said.
“I was not there,” Katherine reminded her.
Clara gave a snort. “Of course you were not. Surely it has not escaped your notice that the entertainments on offer at the Place are such that you cannot attend them?”
Katherine gasped. “I never thought of it!”
Lady Clara patted her hand. “Such an unworldly little thing you are, to be sure. But rest assured that I have noticed it and it gives me a poor opinion of Miss Fordice, as well as Lady Fordice for allowing her daughter to have such influence over their decisions.”
“I’ve seen very little of Julia this summer,” mused Katherine.
“Because she’s far too busy chasing after my brother,” Lady Clara said.
“Poor Julia,” said Katherine. “Has she a chance there?”
“Not a prayer,” said Lady Clara decisively. “I see that I must take a hand. Charles means to settle down, but he expects to be able to just meet the perfect lady naturally. This poor district has gone half out of its mind having a young rich man up for grabs. I declare it is most fatiguing.”
“Fatiguing after London?” exclaimed Katherine.
Clara smiled. “It’s true that in London I might find myself attending four events in a single evening, but the London season doesn’t last all the year through and trotting so hard becomes wearisome in time. In the country, one expects a quieter style of life.”
Katherine smiled. “So you are going to manage your brother’s bride quest?”
“I truly think I shall,” said Lady Clara. But then she put her finger to her lips and refused to answer any more questions on the subject.
One morning at breakfast, Lady Clara looked up from her correspondence with a pleased smile. “How nice, we’ll be having company,” she said.
“We will?” asked Charles. “I’ve invited no one.”
“I did,” Clara said. Seeing his astonished look, she hurried into speech. “I’ve felt so at home here that I felt perfectly comfortable issuing invitations on your behalf. And I’ve been getting so blue lately…”
“You HAVE?” exclaimed Charles with incredulity. “You’ve been flitting to parties all over the county; when have you had the time to be blue?”
Ignoring this interruption, Clara continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “… that it occurred to me how cheering it would be to have the support of a dear old fri
end, someone bright and cheerful to pull me out of the megrims.”
Charles turned to Hector. “Was she always this outrageous and I’ve just forgotten?”
“Always,” Hector confirmed, not looking up from his beefsteak. “I remember it well.”
“So,” Charles asked Clara, “who is this dear old friend that ‘we’ have invited to Greymere?”
Clara said, “Oh, don’t be like that, I’m sure you’ll like her. It’s Amanda Mason.”
“Mandy Mason?” Charles said. “Good lord, I haven’t seen her for years.”
“Of course you haven’t, you’ve been at war for years. You remember her from our childhood, I’m sure.”
“Oh, naturally,” Charles said. “Mandy Mason. She could climb trees and catch fish with the best of us. You almost forgot she was a girl sometimes.”
Later, visiting with Katherine, Clara said with satisfaction, “I have Charles well on the way to be sorted out.”
“Indeed?” asked Katherine with some amusement. “How have you done that?”
“None of the ladies on offer here are suitable for him, so I’m importing one,” Clara said.
“Are you indeed?”
“Yes, and she’s perfect for him.”
“How so?”
“When we spoke of young ladies and settling down, Charles insisted he didn’t want to find a lady during the London season. They are too artificial, he decreed. What he wants, he told me, is a ‘jolly girl’. Well! As soon as he said that, I immediately realized who it must be. Mandy Mason.”
“How do you know her, and what makes her ideal?” Katherine prompted.
“The Masons live near Winton Court; we’ve all known them all our lives. And Amanda was the girl who always wanted to trail after the boys, fishing and jumping and entering into their games. I confess I always found her rather exhausting, but she’s undeniably a lot of fun.”
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