“I shall see you there,” the baron said. Then, turning to the ladies and smiling, “I shall do myself the honor of paying my respects to you again tonight, ma’am, Miss Wilson.”
Arabella smiled, but her eyes had lost some of their sparkle. Lady Berry was eager to “show her off” to her guests? She was to be the center of attraction at tonight’s soiree? She would be introduced as Lord Astor’s wife. Everyone present there would see what a very unfortunate choice of bride he had felt obliged to make. They would see Frances at her side and wonder why she was not the new Lady Astor. And Arabella had not even had time to lose more than a few ounces of weight!
It was perhaps fortunate for her that Lord Farraday moved on in search of his female relatives and her own party turned in the direction of the menagerie. Her spirits rose immediately. Even Frances seemed eager to see the elephant.
They stood gazing at it a few minutes later. Arabella was speechless. It was huge. But there was far more than its size to stupefy the viewer. It legs were like tree trunks. And its skin was wrinkled and leathery. It looked a thousand years old. Its eyes were small and seemed almost human in its mammoth body.
“Well, what do you think?” Lord Astor asked after a while.
“I cannot imagine living in a country where such creatures run wild or where they are ridden down the streets,” Frances said. “I would be extremely frightened to venture outdoors, my lord.”
“Is there only one elephant?” Arabella asked.
“Did you expect a whole herd?” Lord Astor grinned down at her.
“But it has no company,” she said. “It is all alone, my lord. And in a bare cage.”
“The expense of having two and housing them in a larger area would probably be prohibitive,” he pointed out to her.
“But he looks so lonely,” she said. “Look at his eyes, my lord.”
“I am very glad it is locked safely away in its cage,” Frances said with a shudder.
“There used to be many different kinds of animals here,” Lord Astor explained. “Unfortunately, now there are only the elephant and a grizzly bear, apart from various birds. Shall we look at the bear?”
Arabella was glad to move away from the quiet, patient, sad-looking elephant. But the poor bear looked even worse, she found. Its fur looked moth-eaten and dusty. It was pacing its cage with a slow, rolling gait.
“The bear is a far more deadly creature than it appears to be,” Lord Astor explained to them. “One blow from one of those paws would doubtless kill any one of us.”
Frances took a step backward. “I do hope the bars are strong,” she said.
“You are quite safe, Frances,” he assured her. “Would you feel better if you were to take my other arm?”
Frances hastily availed herself of the offer. Arabella felt herself unaccustomedly close to tears. She hated it! She could have howled with pity for the two poor animals, so far away from where they belonged, so irrevocably cut off from all communication with animals of their kind, so utterly devoid of activity or exercise or love.
“What do you think of it, Arabella?” Lord Astor asked.
“It is very nice, my lord,” she said politely.
He looked down at her lowered head and smiled fleetingly.
“Oh, how I wish Mama and Jemima could have been with us this afternoon,” Frances said half an hour later when they were all in the carriage on their way back to Upper Grosvenor Street. “How they would have loved the Crown Jewels. And the dangerous splendor of the animals.”
Arabella sat beside her husband, her hands in her lap. “Thank you, my lord,” she said. “It was kind of you to take us. I am very grateful.”
Lord Astor looked thoughtfully down at the top of his wife’s bonnet while his sister-in-law gazed eagerly from the carriage window. He reached across finally, lifted one of Arabella’s hands from her lap, and drew it through his arm. He kept his hand over hers.
Arabella did not look up or try to withdraw her hand.
Lady Berry was an attractive and fashionable lady in her early forties. She loved to entertain and to be the focus of attention. There was a Lord Berry, an earl in fact, but people tended to forget the fact. He lived in his wife’s shadow, seemingly content to finance her whims and to keep himself quietly out of sight. On the night of his wife’s soiree, he spent the evening in his library with a bottle of port and two particular friends who enjoyed social pleasures about as much as he did.
Lady Berry was in her element, having a new niece to introduce to theton. And if the niece was not a remarkably pretty girl, she was fortunate to have brought along with her a quite extraordinarily lovely sister, who was bound to have all the unmarried young bucks swarming around her in no time. The two of them would take quite nicely. There was a certain fresh charm about Geoffrey’s bride that would set her off from the majority of the young girls who had begun to descend on London in large numbers.
And so Arabella found herself being conducted around the drawing room in Grosvenor Square on the arm of her husband’s aunt, Frances beside her, being presented to a bewildering number of elegant people. She did not feel nearly as shy as she had feared. Lord Astor had been left behind almost in the doorway, and she did not feel quite as plain and inadequate without his splendid person at her side.
And he really did look quite dauntingly magnificent tonight, dressed to match her ice-blue silk gown—in dark blue velvet coat, paler blue silk waistcoat, and silver silk knee breeches. Arabella had quailed when she had joined him in the drawing room at home, despite the fact that she had been twirling before her looking glass a few minutes before, feeling quite delightfully pretty in her new gown and with her new newly acquired short curls. And she was inordinately proud of her new pearls, which his lordship had brought to her room one hour before and clasped about her neck himself. A present from her husband! He must not be entirely displeased with her if he had bought her such a costly and lovely gift. And surely she must have lost at least one pound of weight.
Frances, of course, looked breathtaking in her pale apricot satin gown with its netted tunic. And her blond hair was dressed in shining ringlets. Arabella looked eagerly at all the people to whom they were presented, especially at the young men, to see if her sister was properly appreciated. And she was not disappointed. Frances’ blushes and shy, downcast glances were creating a decided stir. Frances would have a splendid Season before going home to Theodore in the summer.
