Reputation

by Lex Croucher

  One of Christopher’s friends passed his pipe around, and it travelled lazily from hand to hand; when Cecily took her turn she blew smoke rings, much to the delight of everyone except Frances, who rolled her eyes and waved a hand through them so that they dissipated around her.

  ‘I feel very observed right now,’ Jonathan said.

  He gestured around at the many stuffed and mounted heads, the antlers above the fireplace, the pile of seemingly extraneous animal hides thrown over the back of one of the sofas. Now that he mentioned it, Georgiana felt there were a few too many leering, glassy eyes peering at her through the gloom – Christopher’s chief among them.

  ‘Oh, God. I feel as if they’re looking directly into my soul,’ Georgiana said, holding up a hand that suddenly seemed semi-translucent to try to shield herself from the gaze of an extremely judgemental zebra.

  ‘What soul?’ said Frances; her tone was intentionally light, but entirely unconvincing.

  ‘Come on, George,’ said Cecily, her hand alighting on Georgiana’s shoulder. ‘You haven’t had the grand tour. Anybody else? Jane?’

  Jane eyed Frances, who was now stroking the ears of a wolfskin rug as if it were still alive to enjoy it, and shook her head.

  Georgiana allowed herself to be pulled gently from the room. The air outside it was mercifully fresh, despite the crush of guests, and Georgiana found herself taking deep breaths of it as if she had just emerged from a cave or been pulled from the bottom of a well.

  They struggled through the raucous crowds, ricocheting off anybody who got in their way and giggling as they went, and then stumbled up a grand staircase until they reached a long, expansive hallway that was far less populated. Cecily tried a door handle at random and found it locked; the next she attempted to throw open dramatically, clearly expecting similar results, and they both squeaked in shock when it did in fact swing open to reveal an elderly man in a very revealing toga. He was standing in the middle of the room on top of a wooden chest while three women, lounging on large cushions, appeared to be painting him. The inhabitants of the room all turned to look at them, and Cecily quickly shut the door, trying to smother her laughter.

  The next door she approached slowly, putting a finger to her lips with an exaggerated ‘shush’ as she opened it just a crack so they could see what was happening inside.

  At first, all Georgiana could see was movement – then it became a mass of something, something writhing, some vast creature that had many arms and many legs moving independently – and then it fell into place and she realised they were bodies. Georgiana clapped both her hands over her mouth in shock, blinking rapidly. They were naked human bodies, seemingly completely unashamed of their nakedness and of the fact that they were touching, kissing, fornicating—

  ‘Oh,’ Cecily said faintly. ‘Oh my.’

  ‘But they’re . . . What are they doing?’ Georgiana whispered, steadying herself against the wall.

  Cecily let the door fall closed and turned to her with wide eyes.

  ‘Well – certainly not painting! Oh, goodness. I think Lord Haverton might have been in there somewhere, but I didn’t dare look too closely.’

  ‘I – I can’t believe it,’ said Georgiana truthfully.

  She had thought herself beyond shock, now – had imagined that she had seen the most scandalous of what this world had to offer – but clearly for some people, the limit did not exist. She knew that she would never be able to unsee it; the image was imprinted in her mind indelibly, and would probably haunt her for years to come.

  ‘Goodness, it’s like we’re in Hell,’ Cecily said, sounding quite pleased. ‘Quick, quick!’

  She was pulling Georgiana down the corridor again, this time with purpose.

  ‘Oh, God – what now?’ Georgiana asked with genuine apprehension, trying to steady herself as they reached another door.

  ‘Don’t worry. I know what’s in this one, and it’s lovely,’ Cecily said, pushing it open.

  They were immediately hit with the smell of manure. Georgiana put her hand over her nose and mouth, fearing the worst – and then her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she understood why it smelled so strongly of shit.

  It was shit. The room was piled with straw, and in the far corner, flicking its ears in an interested sort of way towards the intruders, stood an enormous black horse.

  ‘Is this . . . ? Is this his horse’s bedroom?’ Georgiana asked incredulously, her qualms forgotten.

  ‘Yes!’ Cecily cried gleefully. ‘If you look in the corridor on the way back you can see . . . You can see these little dents in the floorboards, all the way from downstairs. He leads it up here whenever he comes to stay, so it can be close to him. Is it not the most wonderful thing you’ve ever seen?’

  ‘It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. This horse has a finer room than I do. It’s a lovely horse, though.’

  She approached with her palm out flat, and the horse whickered gently, rubbing its velvet nose over her fingers to see if she had anything for it to eat. When it found she did not, it went back to grazing from a basket that had been suspended from the wall. She scratched it behind the ears, and it bore her attentions without complaint. Looking around, Georgiana saw that every painting in the room was of a horse. She felt faintly hysterical.

  ‘Are those the horse’s ancestors?’ she choked out, pointing at a very solemn-looking portrait of a similar horse, framed in the finest gold gilt.

  ‘Yes,’ came a smooth voice from behind them. Georgiana and the horse both jumped.

  A short, dark-haired man dressed only in a loose red robe and with elaborate horns protruding from his head had entered the room and was observing them with his arms folded. Cecily dipped into a quick curtsey, so Georgiana did the same.

  ‘Incidentally, his name is Atlas. The horse.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Georgiana nervously, wondering if they were about to be thrown out of the ball, ‘what a beautiful name.’

  ‘You may visit with him – he likes company – but please, do not bring him down to the party. He is terrible when he drinks.’

  Georgiana bit her lip to keep from laughing, but the man who must have been Lord Haverton did not seem to be joking.

  ‘We won’t,’ Georgiana reassured him. ‘In fact, ah – we’ll just be going.’

  She carefully clambered over the straw towards the door, trying not to get any manure on her shoes or the very white sheet.

  ‘Hang on – let me look at you.’

  Georgiana stopped next to Cecily and turned to face him. He leaned back with his hand under his chin, assessing them silently for a moment.

  ‘Superlative. Glorious, both of you. You’ – he gestured at Cecily – ‘are an angel among mere mortals. And you’ – here he pointed at Georgiana – ‘I love your take. Minimal, stripped back. Just as gods would have walked the earth. Go forth and get up to some mischief!’

  He shooed them away, and they turned to leave, giggling.

  ‘Have fun, ladies!’ he called down the corridor after them. ‘And if you see a fire, whatever you do – don’t put it out.’

  They only made it as far as the top of the stairs before collapsing to the floor, both laughing so hard that their eyes were shining with tears.

  ‘Oh, he’s an odd man,’ Cecily said when she was able, which seemed a very generous sort of understatement.

  ‘He’s brilliant,’ Georgiana said, wiping her eyes. ‘I love him. I’ll propose to him and put Frances’s fears about the house to rest, if any wife of his would be treated half as well as that horse.’

  ‘I wish Frances wouldn’t needle Jane so about him,’ said Cecily, sighing. ‘She keeps on about marriages of convenience, but Jane has never been the sort to . . . well.’ She suddenly seemed to think she had said too much.

  Georgiana kept her expression entirely neutral.

  ‘Frances has a needle for everybody right now. We’re starting to look like so much embroidery.’

  ‘She has been dreadful,
hasn’t she? Much worse than usual. I think perhaps she’ll feel better now that Annabelle – oh. God, I wasn’t supposed to say.’

  ‘Annabelle?’ Georgiana said, confused. ‘Annabelle who? Annabelle Baker?’

  ‘I imagine so. The girl, you know, from the public house. Jonathan wasn’t supposed to tell me, but of course, he told – and anyway, she’s gone now, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.’ Her pale eyebrows were knitted together in consternation. ‘You won’t tell that I told, will you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ve been told,’ Georgiana said truthfully.

  ‘Oh, it’s a silly thing, really. Frances found out who her father was. She wrote to him to tell him what Annabelle had been up to with Jeremiah, and now I suppose she’s been . . . sent somewhere.’

  ‘Sent somewhere? Where?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. A school? The convent? Wherever they . . . you know. Send people.’ Cecily didn’t seem at all disturbed by this.

  Georgiana’s mouth had dropped open. ‘But Ces, she didn’t . . . Did she even know about Frances? And what if Jeremiah had spun her some tale about getting married, or . . . or—’

  ‘You are sweet,’ Cecily said, patting Georgiana on the nearest part of her she could reach, which happened to be her foot. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s a very nice convent. Oh!’ She suddenly seemed to be struck by a thought, and she got unsteadily to her feet, holding a hand out for Georgiana. ‘We must go down-stairs. It’s almost time for the dancing.’

  ‘The dancing?’ Georgiana asked dubiously, her head still full of Annabelle Baker as she was hauled to her feet by a surprisingly strong arm. She barely dared to imagine what kind of dancing would take place at a party like this one.

  ‘Yes, George, of course! What sort of ball would it be without dancing?’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  T

  he guests were already lining up as Cecily and Georgiana re-entered the ballroom, and they joined

  in with the applause as the musicians struck up a rousing song and the dance began – thankfully, it seemed to be of the ordinary sort, and did not involve any abnormal levels of nudity or manure.

  ‘There you are!’

  Jane had spotted them; she had one hand on Frances’s back, and judging by the state of the latter’s current equilibrium, it seemed integral to keeping her upright. Cecily exclaimed in delight and kissed Jane on the cheek with an enthusiastic flourish, as if she hadn’t seen her for weeks, rather than half an hour. Or – perhaps it had actually been hours? It was hard for Georgiana to keep track; the minutes were blending in to one another, simultaneously seeming to last an eternity and disappear in an instant. She felt a little sick from the rapid motion, as if she had lost the reins on a horse and was galloping out of control.

  Jonathan appeared suddenly at Frances’s shoulder, leaning in to be heard.

  ‘He’s here,’ she heard him mutter in Frances’s ear. It took Georgiana a second to parse who exactly ‘he’ might be. ‘I saw him in the entrance hall just a few minutes ago.’

  Frances’s expression tightened, but she nodded in return, biting her lip with a look of extreme determination. Without another word to any of them, she turned and shouldered through the crowd, back towards the front of the house.

  Georgiana watched her leave, and then turned to Jonathan to ask him if they should really be letting her go alone – but he was already gone. He seemed to have spontaneously dematerialised, and Jane had vanished with him. Before Georgiana could voice her concern, Cecily grabbed her by the hand, pulling her into the next dance. They whirled around each other in the chaos, buffeted on all sides by people. Georgiana was barely able to keep Cecily in focus, momentarily forget-ting her worries as the room blurred and her feet stumbled in time with the music, throwing her head back with closed eyes and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

  Halfway through the song, the crowd parted for a moment and Georgiana saw a tall, curly-haired figure dressed entirely wrong for the occasion, his back stiff and flush to the wall as he watched the dancers with a guarded expression.

  She tried very hard not to run towards him, and hoped she was managing a casual, dignified pace as she abandoned Cecily and pushed her way to him. Thomas saw her before she reached him, which put her in the awkward position of needing to do something vaguely normal with her facial features. She settled on watching her feet as she walked, a necessary precaution even as the immediate effects of whatever had been in Christopher Crawley’s bottle started to wane a little.

  ‘You’re not in costume,’ she said when she reached him, raising her voice to be heard above the merriment.

  ‘No,’ Thomas replied, still watching the dance. He did not seem to want to look at her.

  ‘Would you – would you like to dance with me?’

  Georgiana wasn’t convinced she was a particularly skilled dancer at this moment, but dying in a freak ball-room accident was preferable to being utterly, furiously ignored.

  ‘No.’

  Georgiana was frustrated now. Not at Thomas, but with herself – she wanted very much to make things right between them again, but it felt beyond the limits of her cognitive function.

  ‘Will you come outside with me? I need to . . . to say something,’ she said quietly.

  He didn’t hear her at first, and she had to lean in to repeat herself, overestimating the enthusiasm required and feeling a lock of his hair brush her cheek as she asked him again. She was almost certain he’d repeat his denial, but instead he nodded curtly, and followed her out onto the patio. It was full of people drinking, screaming, laughing – the party spilling out into the night. The fresh air had a slightly sobering effect, and Georgiana realised she couldn’t very well have a serious conversation with him while people staggered past, fully absorbed in the bacchanalia.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, exercising boldness of character she didn’t know she possessed and taking him by the arm. Surprisingly Thomas did not resist, and allowed himself to be walked out across the grounds towards what Georgiana could only assume was the famed orangery.

  It was warm and dark and fragrant inside, lit with candles that must have been a terrible fire risk – but then, it probably wasn’t considered romantic to think about fire safety, and this was certainly an area of the party designated for romance. Trees were growing wild and unchecked, with branches crossing and bending above their heads to make a sort of canopy. She heard giggles and the scuffles of shoes against the path through the leaves, but couldn’t see who they belonged to – and then the sound of a distant door opening and closing again, followed by silence, told her that they were alone. She sat down on a stone bench, trying to gather herself.

  Thomas was still standing, looking at her warily, as if she might be about to attack him. She supposed that she essentially had; bodily dragging a man away from the company of others and into a darkened greenhouse might be considered a little forward, even at this party.

  ‘All right. Well . . . firstly I just wanted to apologise,’ Georgiana said haltingly.

  He gave a curt half-nod.

  ‘We did not part how I had wished us to, the last time we met, and I . . . Well, I have no excuses. I was dreadful. Frances is a very difficult person to contradict sometimes, but I should have said something. She was completely out of order. And I hope you know that I really did appreciate what you shared with me. I know that it might have been . . . difficult for you to say it.’

  He was regarding her solemnly, and Georgiana felt a rush of affection towards him for the way his brow wrinkled when he frowned, and then shook her head slightly to try to regain her focus.

  ‘There was no truth in what she said about you – we both know that. She was just angry and hurt and . . . anyway. You don’t have to forgive her. You don’t have to like her. I hardly like her some days. But she is my friend, and that’s important to me.’

  ‘Fine,’ Thomas said, crossing his arms.

  ‘Listen, I know I must seem a terr
ible disappointment – but I don’t think you understand. Coming here was like being reborn, Thomas. I had resigned myself to the notion that life would pass me by – that there would be no great adventure, no close companions, no tales to tell. I would be nothing – nobody of importance to anybody in particular.’ Georgiana stopped to take a breath, surprised by the sudden force of her feelings. ‘I never dared dream of a life in which I might have friends like Frances, and places to be, and consequence. Perhaps it’s unforgivable vanity, but now that I have had a glimpse of this world, I don’t know how I could retreat into my old life and be content.’

  Thomas approached her – warily, as if there was some chance she might be rabid and he didn’t want to get within biting distance – and took a seat next to her on the bench.

  ‘I wouldn’t have any of it, if it weren’t for Frances. I was so very alone before I met her. Perhaps it sounds like a poor excuse for even poorer behaviour, but I just wanted . . . Well, I just wanted to say that. To explain myself. Because I care very much what you think of me, although I have done a bad job of showing it. I have liked you from the moment we met.’

  ‘Georgiana—’

  ‘Perhaps I make myself foolish by saying it aloud,’ Georgiana said, her words coming out in a panicked rush, ‘but – I want to be foolish. I’ve never been allowed that, until now.’

  ‘Georgiana—’

  ‘I’m sorry for everything, Thomas, I really am; if I made you feel like you didn’t matter, then that was the worst sort of lie imaginable.’

  She felt a solitary tear spill over her lashes; she couldn’t look at him, and stared at her hands instead, curled tightly in her lap.

  ‘Are you quite finished?’ Thomas asked, still sounding very serious.

  ‘Yes,’ Georgiana said in a small voice.

  ‘Are you going to look at me?’

  ‘No,’ Georgiana said, just as quietly.