Daisies and Devotion

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Deborah’s smile widened, and her look become pointed. “What a thoughtful gesture.”

  “Indeed,” Maryann said with her brows lifted. “Because he acted a complete cotton-head yesterday and owed me an apology.” She gestured toward the flowers as proof.

  Deborah’s smile fell, and her hand dropped to her side. “What?”

  Maryann had promised not to reveal the change of Timothy’s circumstances, so she merely said, “He has changed his interest in me and has chosen to pursue a different sort of girl.”

  Deborah’s voice was heavy. “What?”

  “It is fine,” Maryann lied, waving her hand casually. “Timothy and I are good friends, Deborah, but not all that compatible when one really considers the intricacies of marriage.” She was not nearly blonde enough, for one thing. And quite frankly, he lacked the depth she would put on her list, if she had one. Which she didn’t.

  Deborah sat across from Maryann, her golden-brown eyes—same as Maryann’s—filled with compassion and regret. “What are you talking about? The two of you are perfect for one another. He is so sociable, and you are such a good hostess. You temper his enthusiasm, and he brightens your mood.”

  “He is not attracted to me,” Maryann said, causing Deborah’s expression to turn from concern to glowering. “And that is all right. I am not keen on some of his sillier mannerisms anyway. He shall make a wonderful friend here in London, and I bear him no ill will.”

  Deborah glanced at the flowers again, and Maryann felt prompted to explain further. “He did not express himself as well as he should have when we spoke yesterday, but then I responded with unkindness, so perhaps I should be sending him flowers as an apology for my part.”

  Deborah’s eyes snapped back to Maryann. “I’m sure your reaction was perfectly reasonable.”

  “It was not,” Maryann assured her. Deborah would have a fit if she knew how boldly Timothy and Maryann had conversed. “But we are friends again, and the bouquet is lovely. Did you tell him that daisies were so meaningful to me? I have not seen any since leaving home, though the woods would be bright with them now, wouldn’t they?”

  “I have never mentioned anything about daisies to Timothy,” Deborah said flatly. It might be harder for her and Lucas to accept that her relationship with Timothy would only ever be as friends than it was for Maryann to accept it herself. Well, not really, but it helped to tell herself as much.

  Something caught Deborah’s eye out the window, and she straightened before looking at Maryann. “You’ve another caller. I don’t know him, but I believe you danced with him at Almack’s.” She lifted the watch pinned to her bodice. “At least it’s past eleven; I shall give him credit for that.”

  Maryann smiled and arranged herself on the chair so that she was ready to receive when the man, Mr. Burkstead, was let into the room. She looked into the man’s brown eyes set too closely beneath eyebrows that came together just off center of his nose and kept her sigh to herself. Without any prospects regarding Timothy Mayfield, it may prove to be a rather long day . . . ere, season.

  Two other gentlemen called after Mr. Burkstead, and Mrs. Callifour and her two daughters came as well. Maryann enjoyed that visit best; the eldest Callifour sister was Maryann’s age, and they shared a similar, slightly cynical humor they could hide beneath what seemed to everyone else to be polite conversation: “Oh, yes, Mr. Burkstead is a nice gentleman. Those eyes!”

  Then there was tea with Lady Dominique, Lucas’s mother. Lady Dominique was a powerful woman in London and hosted a weekly tea with her friend, Mrs. Blomquist, where they got to know young ladies they would then recommend to other friends. The two matrons did not specifically cater to the highest social ranks, rather they concentrated their attention on those young women without strong connections in town so that they might have the distinction of helping debutantes find their place. An endorsement from Lady Dominique and Mrs. Blomquist was as much a credential as a voucher to Almack’s. Deborah and Maryann attended the weekly “welcome” teas as often as possible to keep the afternoons from feeling like interviews, though that was exactly what they were.

  It was through one of those teas that Maryann had met Mrs. Callifour and her daughters. Today was not one of those teas, however. Today was sheer gossip, and by the time the macarons were gone, Maryann knew that Mr. Burkstead was the fourth son of a baron and without a living. Additionally, she learned that Mr. Andres would likely have a commission by the end of the summer and wanted to marry before then so he would have someone to kiss him goodbye and someone to come home to.

  It was useful information to have, but it was not hard to imagine that at some other tea in some other part of the city—or perhaps over brandy at one of the gentlemen’s clubs—Maryann’s name was being batted around by others determined to reduce her solely to money and circumstance. A person’s character seemed to matter very little. And she was as bad as any of them. Perhaps London brought out the worst in everyone.

  There was a dinner party that evening, but it did not go too late and Timothy had not attended. It was a relief to enter her bedchamber and know that nothing was required of her for the next eight hours. Lucy, her maid for ten years, was waiting for her, and Maryann smiled at her gratefully. She sat at her vanity, and Lucy began to take down her hair.

  “You seem out of sorts, miss,” Lucy mused after a few minutes. “Are you unwell?”

  “I am well enough,” Maryann said, arranging the pins on her vanity in straight lines, side by side. At least she could enforce order amid her accessories. “Only . . . unimpressed with this city, I suppose. Everyone seems to wear a mask, and I wonder how a woman is to ever know a person.” Except Timothy, she realized. He did not wear a mask. He was exactly who he said he was. But he didn’t want her, so what did it matter?

  “I am sorry, miss,” Lucy said with a thoughtful nod.

  “Have you enjoyed London, Lucy?” The woman had been far more excited to come to town than Maryann when the decision had been made at Christmastime. Maryann envied her maid’s simple joy of things; she did not have markers to reach or motivations to sift through.

  “Oh, very much,” Lucy said, grinning. “They have assemblies for the serving class three times a week at a variety of different halls throughout the city. The housekeeper arranges schedules so that each of us might attend at least one. I went last night in fact, while you attended your ball, and I enjoyed it very much.”

  Maryann met Lucy’s eyes in the mirror and smiled at the maid’s enjoyment. Lucy was seven years older than Maryann, and a bit of a flirt. “I am glad to hear that.”

  Lucy nodded, still smiling to herself as though remembering the evening.

  A few minutes passed as Lucy finished taking down Maryann’s hair. Maryann thought about Lucy’s social nature among her own class. Then she thought about tea that afternoon. Lady Dominique knew so much about so many people, but not everything or everyone. Mr. Fetich, for example, was someone Lady Dominique knew nothing about.

  “Lucy, do you remember that time you learned that the curate was paying inappropriate attention to the maid in the Jaberstone house?”

  “It was far more inappropriate than attention, miss.” Lucy’s eyes sparkled. She liked to talk, which was why Maryann was careful not to share too much of her own information, but then again, she did not have much to hide. “I was glad to see that curate leave the village,” Lucy continued. “I tell you that for sure. A man of the church must live as such.”

  Maryann had told her father what Lucy had told her. Father had then told the vicar, who had investigated, proven Lucy’s story true, and sent the curate packing. “I agree. He was of no character to represent the church. It reminds me, however, how very good you are at learning about households, and I wonder if you and I might make an arrangement.”

  Lucy lifted her eyebrows and removed the last pin. She used her fingers to further separate the locks
of hair that had been twisted up all day. It was all Maryann could do not to close her eyes and melt into the sensation. Instead, she picked up the brush and handed it over her shoulder, forcing herself to focus.

  “What sort of arrangement?” Lucy asked, running the brush through Maryann’s hair.

  “If I could work it out with the housekeeper for you to attend all the gatherings through the week, could you seek out servants from other households and learn information for me?”

  “If those servants are at the events, I suppose I could, but there are a great many servants in this city, and learning specific information from a specific person might be difficult. This is not Dunster.”

  Excellent point. Maybe her plan would not work, but it was worth a try, was it not? “And if you cannot find information, that is fine. I have ways of learning what I can above stairs, but it could be quite a benefit should you learn a detail or two as well.”

  Lucy was thoughtful. “What sort of thing are you looking for? Immoral conduct?” Her eyes were a little too bright. Maryann was quick to shake her head. This was not an opportunity to share salacious stories. At least not only salacious stories.

  “You know of my trepidation regarding the men who have been calling on me these last few weeks, now that my inheritance is known in the city.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “While many of them have circumstances that are publicly known, there are some who are not so forthcoming, and I am hesitant to open my heart to them until I know the reason for their interest. To marry a man who wants only my money seems a fate worse than spinsterhood.”

  Lucy looked thoughtful as she continued to draw the brush through Maryann’s hair. “You want me to learn about the men who call on you?”

  “I specifically want to know if the men who come to see me are in need of my fortune. I suspect they all are, but perhaps I am wrong about some of them. I could interact with them differently if I better understood their situation. Could you determine that, do you think?”

  “Why not just ask them, as you did Mr. Mayfield?”

  Lucy had been in the room for the bold conversation that day and afterwards had deemed Mr. Mayfield exactly the sort of man Maryann should fall in love with. So much for that.

  “Most men are nothing like Mr. Mayfield.” Her heart ached to say it. “They do not tell me the truth and instead act out a part as well played as Mr. Mayfield’s tribute to Hamlet was.”

  Lucy laughed. “That was great fun.”

  “Yes, it was,” Maryann said dryly. “But Mr. Mayfield has made his intentions clear, and they are not pointed toward me.”

  Lucy frowned and shook her head.

  “I must therefore make the most of my other prospects, and I think your particular skills would be just what I need to do a good job of it. I would pay you for the service, of course.”

  Lucy’s eyes snapped up. “Yourself, miss? It would not go through your father or the staff?”

  Interesting, but not too surprising. Lucy would not want any other staff to know she was gathering information. Maryann did not want that either and had a generous enough allowance that she could keep things discreet between them.

  “Payment shall come directly from me, and no one will be the wiser. Anonymity is paramount.” She thought of Mr. Andres heading off to fill his commission. She admired his patriotism but did not want to marry only to be left alone weeks afterward. Character mattered more than anything to her, and Lucy could help her better determine what a man’s character truly was. “To be clear, I want more than financial reports. I want an understanding of who the man is, where he comes from, and what his intentions might be. Perhaps we can agree on . . . six shillings for each man you are able to gather information for.”

  “Could we instead deal in stockings?”

  Maryann pulled her eyebrows together. “Stockings?”

  “London is a town of commodities,” Lucy said, sounding very modern for an uneducated girl from Somerset. “Silk stockings are worth more in trade than money and difficult for women in service to buy for themselves.”

  And they cost more than six shillings. Lucy was a frighteningly savvy woman. “If you would like silk stockings, then silk stockings it shall be. One pair for each man about whom you find solid information.”

  A stealthy smile grew on the maid’s face, and she nodded with satisfaction while plaiting Maryann’s hair. “I shall do my best by you,” Lucy said.

  “And we shall keep your actions between the two of us, agreed?”

  Lucy tied the end of Maryann’s plait and met her eyes in the mirror, looking like a child on Christmas. “Agreed.”

  “Miss Morrington.”

  Maryann put on her hostess smile and extended her hand so Timothy could bow over it. It had been a few weeks since their walk in Hyde Park, and they had shared little more than polite greetings since. Tonight, Deborah and Lucas were hosting a dinner party at Father’s house, and as an assistant hostess for the event, Maryann could not avoid Timothy as she had at other events.

  Maryann hoped that, in time, she would not feel so much embarrassment for her part of the conversation that had caused the breech, nor so much regret for his. She also wished she hadn’t missed him so much nor felt the rush of pleasure when she’d watched him enter the front doors of the town house a few minutes before. Trying to determine how to be friends was proving to be more difficult than she’d expected.

  “Lovely to see you again, Mr. Mayfield.”

  “The pleasure is all mine, I am sure.”

  He may have held her eyes an extra moment, and she may have seen some regret there, but then he moved on to greet Deborah. Maryann did not let herself watch him circulate the drawing room even though her mind seemed to track him of its own accord. He was the last of the thirty guests to arrive, and so she turned her attention to Mr. Fetich, who had been hovering just beyond her elbow for the last quarter of an hour. He’d continued his attention to her these past few weeks, and while she had not necessarily encouraged him, she was not particularly discouraging either.

  Lucy’s investigation had turned up that he owned a small shipping company out of Portsmouth but he kept the information quiet because the ton abhorred tradesmen. Maryann, however, did not. Her father had done well in his own ventures; the ton did not mind basking in the glow of his gas lamps, only that he’d had a hand in the industry of the innovation.

  It had been a relief to learn that Mr. Fetich wasn’t necessarily after her fortune. He did, however, ask after her father a great deal. When would Sir Wayne be in London? Did he ever give lectures about his rise in business? What did he think of the mining operations taking over Manchester?

  It was frustrating that Mr. Fetich seemed to want a connection to her father more than he wanted a connection to her—inheritance or no. He was a nice enough man, but there was no spark between them, and she suspected she might have the superior wit. All three of those considerations kept him below the mark she was still hoping to find among the men who sought her out.

  The dinner was excellent and the entertainment lovely. Miss Hansen played the harp, which had been delivered by her man that afternoon since Father’s house was not equipped with one. Miss Morningside then gave a reading from her favorite Jane Austen novel. Maryann suspected she did not know that her chosen excerpt was meant to be satirical.

  Maryann’s eyes moved to the vase Timothy had used the day he acted out the scene from Hamlet in this very room. That had been superior entertainment. Unable to resist looking in his direction, she was surprised to find him watching her from where he sat beside Lady Dominique. He winked, and the warmth that flooded her body helped her relax for the first time all night. Playing hostess alongside Deborah meant ensuring other people’s comfort before her own. Yet he had set her at ease with such a small gesture. She smiled softly and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, before looking back at Miss M
orningside and keeping her expression of rapt attentiveness in place though her mind began to wander.

  The London Season was in full swing, which meant there were multiple balls a week, dinner parties, teas, shopping, theater, opera, and readings. Maryann had attended all of them. Or at least as many as she could, often three events in a single day, which meant three different dresses with matching gloves and bonnets and a dozen other fripperies. Deborah had told Maryann from the start to be mindful of the other debutantes and see them as allies and lifelong friends rather than competition. It had proven good advice, and Maryann appreciated the friendships she had made with the other women more than any other part of the experience.

  With the men she had met in town this last month, Maryann was more circumspect. Her conversations with Timothy had taught her how not to converse with anyone else. She held back her boldness and was careful not to appear too . . . attainable. Instead, she fell into the same games many a woman had played before her: carefully crafted questions that helped her learn more than the man would generally tell her, coy smiles, not too much eye contact, a repertoire of small talk. She was careful not to give too much attention too quickly or show too much interest, ever. Keeping such arrows in her quiver kept her from making herself too vulnerable, as she had with Timothy. Lessons learned, she would tell herself whenever she found herself missing the comfort she’d felt with him. She glanced at him again, but he was looking at Miss Morningside now. Accepting his rejection would be far easier if she had another prospect upon which to focus her attention.

  After the performances, the guests began to depart. Maryann fell into conversation with Mr. Fetich and told him about a letter she’d received from her father earlier that week, in which he’d explained that he would not be joining them in London as he’d originally planned. He would instead continue to oversee his interests in the north and in Wales—which needed more attention than expected—and return to Somerset in September. Maryann had wanted to be sure she did not want Mr. Fetich’s continued attention before she informed him of Papa’s plans. For whatever reason, she was ready now.