He looked where she indicated and saw Aveline Cathcart watching him hopefully. With a smile, therefore, he rose, bowed, and went to claim his designated partner. At least she could talk sensibly, unlike Miss Parish.
“She does not dance,” Aveline said, as they waited for the musicians to begin.
“The black gloves—?”
“No, she has never learnt. She plays divinely, but she does not dance at all.”
“I know her mother died young, but surely her father had her educated?” Bertram said.
“If one could call it education. She knows all about engines and spinning machinery and the cost of flax, and she darns stockings admirably, but she cannot paint or embroider, and she thanks the servants for doing their work.”
“Such good manners are refreshing,” Bertram said, offended on Miss Parish’s behalf.
“There is no accounting for taste,” Aveline said, with a curl of the lip.
Bertram had nothing else to say to her, and they remained silent for the rest of the dance. He noted, almost without thinking, that Julia and Penelope were dancing but Emily was not. She sat in a corner with Mother, watching surreptitiously, but averting her eyes with a blush whenever a man looked her way. Shyness was a terrible affliction, and Bertram might have been no better, had not several years at Harrow and then Cambridge knocked it out of him.
When released from Miss Cathcart's sneering company, he ambled over to Emily and led her across the room to where Miss Parish sat. They had met before, in that they had been introduced and occasionally spent some time in the same room, but they had never before had an opportunity to talk to each other. Being so similar in age and temper, he was not surprised to see them soon chatting comfortably together.
As he turned his attention to his next partner, and wondered if he might escape to the card room now, he found Kent by his side, a mischievous grin on his face. “Have you escaped unscathed from Bea Franklyn’s clutches, cousin? Or are you even now preparing to return tomorrow for the necessary interview with her father?”
“No interview, cousin,” Bertram said, with an easy laugh. “I am not so easily caught.”
“And yet she contrived to get you outside, did she not? If you had been discovered kissing her in the garden—”
“There was no kissing and we were not in the garden,” Bertram said sharply. “We were on the terrace in full view of anyone near the windows. Indeed, Mother saw us and rushed out to swathe Miss Franklyn in a shawl, lest she fall ill with some putrid fever after five minutes out of doors.”
“Aunt Jane saw you and rushed out to ensure you were not compromised, you mean,” Kent said, with a wry grin. “Take care, cousin, or you will be leg-shackled yet.”
With a languid wave, he ambled away, leaving Bertram in an odd mixture of fury and chagrin. Had he been naive? Had Bea led him out onto the terrace in order to compromise him? It was an unsettling thought, and her behaviour at the time and afterwards — her obvious agitation, the babbling, her unusual nervousness — all suggested it. And yet she hadnotproposed anything improper. There had been no attempt to kiss him, nor to lead him down into the darkness of the garden, and it was malicious of Kent to suggest otherwise.
When the Athertons left, there was a rearrangement, such that Bertram’s sisters and brother travelled together in the second carriage, and Bertram was in the first with his parents. Barely had the horses begun to move before his mother said, “I was a little concerned this evening, Bertram.”
“Were you, Mother? In what regard?”
“Regarding Bea Franklyn. She is a mischievous creature, and I should hate to see you taken in by her wiles.”
“Mother, I know you mean well, but Miss Franklyn is as good-hearted a girl as ever breathed, and I will not hear her impugned in this way. Far from being wily, she has been utterly straightforward in all her dealings with me. She has told me openly that she intends to persuade me to the altar, and I have told her openly that she will not succeed in that objective.”
“But she is so very enticing, dear.”
“Just because we stood up for one dance does not mean that there is enticement going on. I am perfectly capable of resisting the charms of a young lady, you know. I have been doing it for years, after all.”
“Bertram, dear, few men are proof against a truly obstinate woman. Look at Walter, after all… or his father, come to that. He was looking in quite a different direction when Caroline got her claws into him. All men have their weaknesses and a woman like Bea Franklyn will always seek them out.”
“You make her sound like a manipulative harpy, full of schemes and devices.”
“And is she not full of schemes?” his mother said in her gentle way. “Inveigling you out onto the terrace in that underhanded manner! If I had not gone out after you—”
“She was hot and wanted some air,” Bertram said huffily. “You refine too much upon a perfectly innocent event.”
“Very well, dear,” she said calmly.
Bertram was cross the whole way home.
***
Bea prepared for bed, but did not attempt to sleep. Instead, she wrapped herself in a robe, lit several candles and waited for the inevitable visit from her stepmother.
