“That means yes, does it?Ita vero. Ita vero.What would no be?”
“Non ita.Do you truly plan to learn Latin, Bea?”
“Why not? It is by far more exciting than embroidery. I have been listening to all of you chattering away in Latin for more than a week now, and some of it is lovely. Whatever it was you read out at Mr Fielding’s talk last week — that was so beautiful and melodic and poetic.”
“Horace, the third book, Ode number nine.‘Donec gratus eram tibi nec quisquam potior bracchia candidae cervici iuvenis dabat, Persarum vigui rege beatior.’”
“Ohhh,” she breathed. “Yes! That was it. What does it mean?”
“Let me see… I might translate it thus.‘As long as I was agreeable to you, and no one more favoured put his arms around your white neck, I was happier than the Persian monarch.’”
“Oh. He is writing to a lady, then? It is quite pretty, although it sounds better in Latin,” she said disappointedly. “You must teach me the words… although I dare say I can find the book. Horace, third book, Ode number nine. I can teach myself to recite it by rote, but I should so like tounderstandit. I thought if I learn the language, then next year I shall be able to listen to all your talks and understand what is said.”
“Bea, I started learning Latin when I was six, I think, and intensively by the age of eight. It took me ten years, perhaps, to reach this level of fluency.”
“Ten years… then I shall be fluent by the time I am one and thirty.” He laughed out loud at her insouciance. “Oh, you think I cannot do it? Let me tell you, Bertram Atherton, that I alwayssucceed at whatever I set my mind to, no matter how long it takes. I succeeded with Walter, did I not?”
“But you have not, andwillnot, succeed with me.”
“Only because you have given me an acceptable alternative,” she said smugly. “Lord Thomas Medhurst, Viscount Brockscombe or the Marquess of Embleton. Although… I am not getting on very well.”
“No?” he said teasingly. “I should have said you were making excellent progress.”
“But I cannot tell whether they would suit me or not,” she burst out. “How can I possibly know? They are all perfectly agreeable and gentlemanlike, but I cannot tell what their characters are. I sit beside them at dinner, I play cards with them, we talk about… well, nothing at all. How may I know which of them would be faithful or not? Which might prove to be extravagant or frugal or downright penny-pinching? Or which might explode with jealousy if I so much as look at another man? With Walter, I had known him long enough to understand him. You, too, are no mystery to me. But your friends… it is an impossible task. I have a month, Bertram… a single month in which to decide the whole course of my future life, and I have no idea how to do it.”
He was silent, quite unable to answer her satisfactorily. Having never looked for a wife himself, he had never had to make such calls of judgement, and had no idea how it might be done.
“The duchess said—” she went on, stopping abruptly with a quick laugh. “I dare say it is all nonsense, but it is how she chose her own husband.”
“Did she go out at dawn and throw a silver sixpence down the well?” Bertram said teasingly. “Or make a wish while stirring the plum pudding? Or was it a Romany prophecy?”
She tutted at him. “No, silly! She kissed them, that was how she decided. And when she kissed the duke, she just knew… and so did he. Do you think if I kissed the three men on my list—”
“Bea, that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,” Bertram said. “As if you could simply kiss a man — several men! — without consequences. If you were caught, you would be obliged to marry, whether you wanted to or not.”
“I should not be caught. It is not like—” She looked embarrassed. “It is not like that evening at Highwood when we went out onto the terrace… do you remember?”
“When my mother rushed out after us with a shawl for you?”
“Yes! And I was very glad of it, I assure you, for Mama had devised this cunning scheme… I was to take you out into the garden and get you to kiss me… well, it hardly mattered whether you did or not, for Mama planned to find us out there and make a fuss so that you would be obliged to offer for me, being a man of honour and so on. But I found I could not do it, in the end. I was so relieved when your mama rescued me. It was a dreadful thing to do, and I should never have countenanced the idea, not for a moment, but Mama… well, she is quite immovable sometimes, and there is no help for it but to go along with whatever devious plot she has dreamt up.”
“You are not much of a plotter, are you?” he said, with an unexpected rush of affection for this odd girl, so different from anyone else he knew. “Your nature is too straightforward, too honest.”
“I hope so,” she said, sounding dubious. “I told Walter exactly what I was about, and the same with you. But your friends… I do not know them well enough to say,‘Delighted to meet you and by the way, I plan to marry one of you.’That would take more brazenness than even I can summon.”
He chuckled. “There is no need for brazenness. They are looking to marry already, and they are well aware of your attractions, I assure you.”
“My forty thousand pounds, you mean,” she said gloomily. “Do you know, Bertram, I would trade the whole of it any day for even half of Miss Grayling’s beauty. Those blonde curls, and great big blue eyes — would it not be glorious to be so lovely?”
Impulsively, he took her hand, raising it to his lips and kissing it, and because in that moment he sincerely felt for her, he kissed it properly, not the almost kiss that politeness decreed. “Bea, even if you were the greatest antidote in the kingdom, and you are very far from that, believe me, you should know by now that beauty is not everything. Being open and kind and warm-hearted — these are far more important, and you are all of those.”
“You are very good to say such things, but it is not true. If I were better looking, I should have had men falling over themselves to wed me, including lords. I should have been married long since, with my great house and a carriage with a crest on it. Or if I could flirt, perhaps, like Miss Hutchison — that thing she does with her eyes, looking up through her lashes. It must be very beguiling to a man, because so many of them cluster around her. No one clusters aroundme, except your friends and that is only to oblige you. I am destined to end up an old maid, like Winnie Strong.”
“Stuff and nonsense, Bea. You are very well looking, and never let anyone suggest otherwise, and as for flirting, sensible men detest a flirt. You are certainly not likely to end up an old maid, like— Oh, that reminds me,” Bertram said excitedly. “Mother wrote to me, and Lady Strong told her that Winnie has a suitor — a serious one, seemingly. Someone she met down in London. She was attacked by pickpockets and this manrescued her and was instantly smitten, and now they are in daily expectation of a proposal.”
“Winnie Strong?But she must be twenty-five if she is a day.”
“She is four and twenty, Bea, and her aunt was well into her middle years when she married, if you remember.”
