For the sake of honesty: I would have died before I got a Second, since Squibby got a First.
I should add here that I examined the garden very carefully while perambulating with Roderick. I don’t have much to say about the flowers, unfortunately. What really caught my attention was the way the swallows dove into their little mud houses under the eaves. They could have been bullets, unerringly striking home.
Once again, I have failed to sound romantic.
Like Cupid’s arrows, unerringly striking the breast of a young woman named Feodora.
January 20, 1815, sent by Baron Hugh Skelmers Vaughan to Miss Margaret Dashwood:
Dear Snaps, I’m going on to Vienna without Bobby. Remember how we termed the Italiansamorous? Suffice to say, he is more enamored than I am (in truth, his father may have to travel over to separate him from a lady of dubious morals). An old fellow in the Vatican yesterday predicted that the Holy Roman Empire will be dissolved in the next year—which he compared to the Fall of Troy. I can tell you more about the empire when I’m home, but essentially the Emperor of Austria will no longer rule the whole thing, but just his tiny country. I want to see Vienna while it’s still the center of the empire.
That Night
It’s two in the morning, and I’ve had an extraordinary evening:twoproposals of marriage! I turned both of them down, but there’s something very heartening about a proposal. It’s liketurning up late for breakfast and discovering that all the bacon hasn’t been eaten.
Around midnight I found myself on the terrace with Squibby and shared that simile. He understood it instantly. “Did you accept either of them?” he inquired. He needn’t have made it quite so clear that he didn’t give a damn what I did, and I almost fibbed, but then I confessed the truth.
“Excellent,” Squibby said. “If you were betrothed, we’d have to stop meeting on the terrace like this.”
That comment wasmostunwelcome. “I intend to meet you on the terrace many times in my life,” I declared. (Had I drunk more than was strictly advisable? Yes, I had.)
“Not after you’re married, Snaps,” Squibby said. He was leaning against the marble railing, glancing down at me with a sort of negligent, sardonic expression.
“Are you thinking that I will marry a jealous man?” I demanded. “I shan’t. Jealousy is frightfully tiresome. A woman should be allowed to live her life as she pleases.” I finished my glass of champagne with an air of bravado.
He stepped closer to me and put his hand on the marble, just beside mine. I couldn’t help noticing that, valet or not, his hands were beautifully kept. “Jealousy is not something that any woman can prevent,” he said.
“Her husband can and should stifle his feelings,” I pointed out.
He shook his head. “Not if he’s in love with his wife. He won’t be happy to find her chatting with another man in the middle of the night.”
I chewed on my bottom lip for a while, because I reckoned he was right. At the same time,Iwas right. A woman should be able to do whatever she wanted.
“Perhaps you won’t want to meet me,” Squibby suggested.
Inconceivable, though I wouldn’t want to flatter him by blurting it out.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because you’ll be in love with your husband, and you’ll want to be talking to him. You’ll find him fascinating, and when you look at him with those green eyes of yours, he won’t want to stop talking. He’ll make a fool of himself trying to keep you interested, just like poor Freddie is doing, not to mention the rest of the fools in there.”
That wasn’t a very nice way to refer to his friends, since all the men seemed to know one another from school. More to the point, I felt a wave of emotion at his description, which I can only sum up as a passionate wish that he, Squibby, would make a fool of himself to keep me talking.
Alas, the poet, Lord Dulloch, showed up and offered to recite a poem he had written for me. Squibby turned to go, and I caught the hem of his coat just in time.
“Snaps!” he complained. “I promised this dance to Miss Feodora.”
I gave his coat a tug. “What if Lord Dulloch and I are discovered alone on the terrace?” I hissed.
It was unlikely, because Marianne is a lax chaperone, to say the least. In fact, I think she had dashed off to the nursery an hour prior and never returned, but the last thing I wanted was to be forced to marry a man simply because we were discovered in improper proximity.
Thankfully, Squibby groaned and folded his arms over his chest. “Are you any better at poetry than you were at university?” he asked Lord Dulloch.
The poet scowled at him. “This poem is entitled ‘For Margaret.’?”
“Original,” Squibby said grumpily.
I beamed, because even though I could not imagine falling in love with Lord Dulloch—his sparse beard, if nothing else, would preclude it—a poem written in my honor was grist for the mill.
