“Very well, the next day, then. Lord Exton also expressed his intention to call one day soon. No doubt he feels he must thank us in person for the service Laura and Aubrey rendered his son.”
“Very proper of him,” agreed her brother before helping himself to another veal collop and some mushrooms. “This dish is more than tolerable,” he remarked in some surprise.
“His sister smiled. “I have had several conversations with the chef and urged him to send someone more discriminating to do the marketing. The quality of the produce and meat has been poor. I have also endeavoured to persuade him not to try to cram the baking into his busy schedule now that there are more of us to feed.”
“But there are actually no more of us here than there were six months ago,” a puzzled Sophia pointed out.
“I know,” Annabelle twinkled a smile at her niece, “but the man obviously has no skill at baking, so he cannot like doing it. I’ll see if anyone else in the kitchen can take over that department after a bit. Meanwhile, it is wiser to buy baked goods and let the question rest for the present. Your father would not care to experience a complete upheaval in the kitchen if it can be avoided.”
“Lord, no!” Sir Oswald agreed in heartfelt accents, returning his attention to his meal with rare enjoyment.
The evening passed peacefully. Sophia diddled at the pianoforte while contributing to a lazy conversation among the ladies until her father joined them. She then obliged her parent by playing his requests. Mrs. Marsh worked on her exquisite embroidery and Laura sat enjoying the music, setting an erratic stitch now and then in the ancient, yellowing piece of fancy work she kept to hide behind on the infrequent occasions in the past when she had found herself in female company. From time to time her thoughtful glance dwelled on her mother’s madonna-like features for an extended moment, noting that the impression of quiet contentment Annabelle presented never varied.
Laura was still thinking about her parent later as she prepared for bed. She acknowledged a faint sense of disappointment that during their customary final goodnight in her bedchamber, her mother had made no reference to her vaguely deceptive statements to her brother about Lords Hastings and Exton. Laura saw the omission almost as a denial of the tenuous little conspiratorial bond she had experienced — or fancied she had felt between them — at dinner. She’d been uncharacteristically reticent about broaching the subject herself, fearful of invading her parent’s privacy perhaps.
Laura frowned unseeingly into the mirror as she tied a nightcap under her chin. Why should she find her mother’smasterly evasion of her brother’s questions so surprising? Because in the self-absorption of youth she was used to considering her parent’s words and actions faithfully reflective of her thoughts and emotions?
Obviously Annabelle had learned circumspection during the long years of concealing her feelings about her unsatisfactory marriage from the world. And she must emulate her mother’s example and learn this art also, Laura resolved, climbing into bed. As well she must master the smarting little hurt at discovering that her mother’s heart was not as wholly accessible to her daughter’s perusal as that daughter had always assumed in her adolescent conceit. After all, every heart deserved to keep its own secrets, even from loved ones. Satisfied with the result of her complex ruminations, Laura slept the sleep of the just and the sensible that night.
The pace of life quickened for the ladies of Mount Street now that their initial wardrobe inadequacies were well in hand to be eliminated. The next day saw them calling on Lady Sefton in the company of Mrs. Chandler and Dorothea. Next to Emily Lamb — Lady Cowper — Maria Sefton was reputed to be the most attractive and approachable of the lady patronesses whose vigilant oversight kept the weekly balls at Mr. Willis’ rooms in King Street the most select and desirable venue in which genteel families could introduce their marriageable offspring of both sexes. She greeted Mrs. Chandler as a friend and displayed warm cordiality in dispensing the coveted invitations to Almack’s, going so far as to offer a smiling prediction that her services in presenting would-be dancing partners to such charming girls as Miss Marsh and Miss Albright would be in great demand at their initial ball and completely redundant thereafter. The girls received the compliment as their different natures dictated: Sophia with sparkling pleasure, lightly overlaid with the requisite assumption of modesty dictated by a properupbringing, and Laura with a touch of shyness and innate reserve underlying her grateful smile.
In the carriage after delivering the Chandlers to their home, the Mount Street ladies agreed that, although perhaps not a beauty, Lady Sefton was still a pretty woman, whose gentle eyes and kindly smile gave her a timeless appeal. They returned home in time for lunch, well pleased with the morning’s accomplishments, to learn from Jimson that Lord Hastings had called in their absence.
“Well, now, I call that promising indeed — do not you, cousin?” Sophia tenderly removed a dashing straw bonnet whose high crown was encircled with large yellow roses, opening her dark eyes wide at her cousin over the brim. Sophia at her most ingenuous.We’ll be stepping over the bodies of love-smitten young men in the near future,Laura predicted mentally.
Taking a leaf from her cousin’s book on impulse, she removed her own hat and peered over its more modest brim, her sea-green gaze limpid. “Whatever can you mean, Sophie? What is promising?” she inquired, putting as much coy innocence as she could muster into the sweet tones.
The lovely brunette’s eyes narrowed in suspicion before she dissolved into giggles.“Touché!”she admitted, tossing the prized bonnet on to a table before strolling over to a mirror and pushing her fingers into her flattened curls to restore them to their usual state of luxuriant fullness. “One call would have satisfied all claims on civility considering the recent nature of the acquaintance. I wonder what could have prompted another visit scarcely three days later?”
“Oh, I can tell you that,” Laura replied in the confiding tones of one big with news. “Lord Hastings has formed atendrefor Mama. He was forever flirting with her in Hertfordshire even though he was concussed at the time.”
“Laura Marsh, you will give your cousin a vastly mistaken idea of Lord Hastings’ character with your ridiculous funning — which is in very poor taste, let me add, as well as being untrue,” Mrs. Marsh said with some asperity.
“No, really, Aunt Annabelle,” Sophia said earnestly, “no one would find it difficult to credit. You do not look a day over thirty. I could see that Lady Sefton did not believe you were actually Laura’s mama at first.”
Mrs. Marsh laughed, erasing several more years from her lovely countenance. “That is quite enough nonsense from the pair of you,” she declared, patting her niece’s cheek as she headed for the stairs. “I have a lowering suspicion that chaperoning you girls is going to age me rapidly this spring.”
All three women were smiling as they proceeded up the stairs to get ready for luncheon.
CHAPTER NINE
Monsieur Charpentier arrived the next morning.
Laura had been fixed in town little longer than a fortnight and had yet to attend a social event with gentlemen present, but even she found the dancing master’s appearance unusual, to say the least. The Frenchman was of less than moderate stature and so thin as to appear cadaverous. The skeletal impression was reinforced by a high forehead, eyes that seemed to retreat into bony caverns and sunken cheeks. Nature had endowed him with a long nose and skimped on his chin, which did not redress the balance, but she had been prodigal in one area: M. Charpentier’s hair was dark and abundant, worn longer than Laura had yet seen, aromatically pomaded and arranged in deep waves swept back from his brow. Apart from the glossy hair, M. Charpentier would still have been noticeable in a crowd for his dress. Never before had Laura seen that shade of canary yellow used for men’s inexpressibles, and the appellation “blue” was woefully inadequate to describe his wide-lapelled and wasp-waisted coat. Its brightness put sapphires to shame.
The ladies were waiting in the saloon, where the servants had rolled back the large central rug, when Jimson showed the dancing master in. The faint whisper of her mother’s skirts as she rose to greet M. Charpentier recalled Laura from her awed trance. She reminded herself that only rustics stared, and tore her gaze away from the lithe figure mincing forward to bow over Mrs. Marsh’s hand. Sophia’s delicate features were arranged in an attitude of pleasant attention, but Laura noted that she refused to meet her cousin’s eyes. Hastily she emulated this prudent pose when her mother performed the introductions.
M. Charpentier may have looked as though a good wind would have blown him away, but the Roman Legions couldnot have produced a sterner taskmaster. He had come highly recommended by Mrs. Chandler, and he wasted no time on trivialities. Mrs. Marsh was relegated to the pianoforte, where she provided the music as he proceeded to instruct his pupils in the basic steps of various round dances, demonstrating the steps and acting as partner to each in turn as he took them through the movements. He suffered from no scruples about offering criticism on any aspect of his pupils’ performance, from posture to rhythm and coordination, at one point exhorting Laura to cease flapping her arms about like a chicken on a nest labouring to produce an egg. The admonition caused Sophia to lose her countenance, which brought the teacher’s censure down upon her head in turn.
“Non, non, mademoiselle! Une petite sourireon the lips while performing is permitted,oui,but a … a smirk,jamais!”
Sophia imposed a stern control over her features for the next few moments, but threatened her cousin’s composure by making soft clucking noises when they passed close by each other in their execution of the various figures of the dance.
A sorely tried Laura was limp with relief when an egregious misstep on her part caused a tear in the flounce of her gown that necessitated leaving the room to seek pins with which to make a temporary repair. M. Charpentier waved away her stammered apologies and she raced up the stairs, marvelling at the naivety that had assumed instruction in the art of dancing would be an enjoyable activity.
Her mind reeling with terpsichorean details, her eyes fixed on the carefully lifted, gaping flounce of her gown, Laura reached the landing and, turning, caromed into an unexpected obstacle. The obstacle, a six-foot male, swooped and grabbed her arms above the elbows, saving her from what would have been an ignominious landing on herderrière. The only thought — and that barely coherent — that came into Laura’s head as she staredinto a pair of startled grey eyes was an irrelevant interest in how Sophia would describe this man, if she termed Lord Hastings an Adonis. This must be Apollo himself, she decided, fighting an insane desire to laugh.
“Are you all right, ma’am? Are you certain I have not hurt you by my clumsiness?”
