She was going to wear the pink.
And she was going to wear it without a cap. She had pondered the matter, having resumed wearing one after that lone evening with Harry, but really it was high time she stepped away from the old life and into the new, no matter how frightening the prospect was. And she would do it boldly and all at once tonight. She had made the decision this afternoon while icing cakes to take with her.
The spring assembly was the perfect occasion upon which to unveil the new Lydia. And the pink gown was the perfect garment. It was a shame she had no maid to style her hair a little more elaborately than she could herself, but she was quite pleased nevertheless with the result of her efforts. And she was very glad the vicar and his wife had insisted upon fetching her in their carriage, though the inn was not far away—nothing was in this village. It had turned suddenly windy and cloudy during the afternoon and was actually raining in squalls now. Her poor apology for an elegant hairstyle would be ruined if she had to walk.
At least, she thought, Harry would not feel obliged to offer to walk her home tonight.
The carriage came early. Mrs. Bailey moved over on the seat facing the horses to make room for Lydia as the coachman handed her in. The vicar smiled from the seat opposite and wished her a good evening.
“And an ugly evening it is to have to go out in,” Mrs. Bailey said. “But I do love the village assemblies, Lydia. They are so much jollier than the more formal dances to which we have been invited occasionally at Sir Maynard Hill’s, with only the gentry folk in attendance. I love to dance. Much to the dear vicar’s dismay, I might add.”
“Isaiah disapproved of dancing too,” Lydia said.
“Oh, I do not disapprove, Mrs. Tavernor,” the Reverend Bailey assured her. “I like to see my parishioners trip the light fantastic, so to speak, and enjoy themselves. It is just that when the good Lord was handing out body parts around the time I was lining up to be born, he discovered that somehow he had more left feet than right and gave me two of them. Or perhaps he had an even number but was not paying careful enough attention at the time and someone about my age has been shuffling about for the past fifty years or so on two right feet.”
He laughed heartily at his own joke while Mrs. Bailey clucked her tongue, told him that Lydia would think he was a heathen, and laughed too.
“Though I daresay your dear husband enjoyed a good joke every bit as much as mine does, Lydia,” she said.
Lydia smiled but did not offer an answer.
They were among the first to set foot in the assembly rooms.
“You may be sure, Lydia,” Mrs. Bailey explained to her, as she had done on numerous occasions before, “that if we are supposed to be somewhere at a certain time, we will actually arrive at least a quarter of an hour before that time. It would be half an hour if I had not learned to ignore the vicar standing at the door, hand on the knob to open it, shifting his weight restlessly from foot to foot, and gazing reproachfully at me while I deliberately go about my business and wait until I can stand his silent impatience no longer.”
Lydia laughed, thankful for the distraction of Mrs. Bailey’s chatter. She felt very self-conscious indeed as she removed her cloak and hung it in the cloakroom and then entered the assembly rooms to take her plate of iced cakes over to the refreshment table. She glanced longingly at one grouping of chairs in the corner farthest from the door but would not go and sit quietly there, as she would normally have done. She had become an expert at going virtually unnoticed in company. But her decision tonight to wear her new pink dress and to leave off her cap was only a part of the larger plan she had decided upon this afternoon.
She was going to hide no longer.
She had been a dutiful wife. She had observed a quiet and decorous period of mourning. She had eased herself quietly out of that period. She was free now, with the means to remain free and independent. She had a home here and neighbors who respected her for Isaiah’s sake and probably her own too. She had a few newly made friends. She was invited everywhere. There wasno needto hide any longer. No one was about to come along to snatch everything away from her.
She was strong. It was a novel idea, but she had thought it through this afternoon and decided that it was true. She had always been controlled by men and conditioned to think of herself as a fragile, timid creature who could not possibly exist without their support and protection and direction. Well, shecouldexist alone. She was doing it. She had been doing it for more than a year.
She did not need to hide and hope no one noticed that she had escaped. Let them notice if they wished. There was nothing anyone could do about it.
She was free. And she was strong.
It was one thing to think it. It was quite another, of course, to live it.
She felt horribly nervous and exposed to view. For as she walked about the room, forcing herself to stop and talk with each group of new arrivals before moving on to the next, she would not allow herself even the limited protection of lowering her eyes and her chin. And the reaction of her neighbors to the sight of her was not reassuring. Most of them seemed to look at her twice in quick succession, first with only a passing glance and then with a more pointed awareness—taking in her pink dress, she supposed, and her bare head and smiling face. They looked surprised. And scandalized? She saw no evidence of the latter. Appreciative? Yes, in several cases. And it was not her imagination. A number of people of both genders commented upon how lovely she looked. That was surely an exaggeration, but at least it assured her that she was not looking as inappropriately clad as she had feared she might be.
Yet when no fewer than three men, including Mr. Roger Ardreigh, Lady Hill’s nephew, who had just been introduced to her, asked her for the opening set of dances, she refused them all on the grounds that she did not dance. Old habits died hard. But though she was determined to fight those habits, there were limits upon what she was willing to do. She would not make an utter spectacle of herself by trying to dance in full sight of her neighbors and friends. It had been a long time …
But from the moment she arrived, while she mingled and talked and listened and looked about at her fellow villagers, at the food tables, at the orchestra tuning their instruments, she was really waiting forhisarrival and trying to convince herself that she hoped he would not come. And telling herself that it would really make no difference to her if he did or did not. For no matter what, they were in all probability going to be neighbors for the rest of their lives and must grow accustomed to seeing each other and even to being in company together. And she had seen him once since her return and even spoken with him and somehow survived the ordeal.
Then suddenly he was here.
He was standing inside the door, talking with Hannah and Tom Corning, laughing over something that had been said, looking handsome and elegant despite—or perhaps because of—the simplicity of his evening clothes. They were, of course, expertly tailored. His clothes always were. He wore silver knee breeches with a black evening coat and silver waistcoat. Knee breeches for evening wear were old-fashioned in town, Lydia had been told, except at Almack’s and at court, but they were what the other men here in the country always wore for evening. His stockings and linen were very white. His neckcloth, though neatly tied, was not an elaborate creation.
Lydia’s heart turned over. Or her stomach. Or perhaps nothing turned at all but she was just reacting as any other woman would to the sight of a handsome man. Who also happened to have been naked in her bed with her not so long ago. Yes, it was definitely her stomach.
He looked about the room as he talked and laughed. Lydia could have stepped sideways and been hidden beyond Denise Franks and her husband and Lawrence Hill and Vivian Ardreigh, with whom she was conversing at the moment. She did not do so. She did not even pretend not to have seen him.
He reacted as a number of others had done. His eyes alit upon her, moved onward, and then came back to rest on her. He paused in his conversation and smiled and said something. Both Hannah and her husband turned to glance her way, Hannah smiling too as she answered him. And he moved away from them and came in her direction.
She needed a fan, Lydia thought. And it struck her that she no longer possessed one. Why until this moment had she been unaware of her hands and what she ought to do with them? Let them hang at her sides? Clasp them at her waist? Saw the air with them as she talked? But she was not talking at present.
“Mrs. Tavernor?” He made his bow and smiled at her, but with no suggestion that they had ever been more to each other than neighbors. “Mrs. Franks? Franks? Lawrence? And—?” He smiled at Vivian and looked at his friend with raised eyebrows.
