Page 33 of A Lesson in Forbidden Love

“Nurse weighs twelve stone and waltzes like a coal-scuttle. It does not count.”

“Stirling!”

“It does not count. Miss Wharton, if you would.”

Madeleine found a slow waltz — a thing of Hummel’s, which had a steady even beat a child could follow — and began to play. She played quietly, more quietly than she would have done in another room, and she kept her eyes on the music, and she heard, behind her, the Marquess of Greyscarp laying his sister’s hand on his sleeve and beginning to count, in a low voice, one, two, three; one, two, three; and Lady Sophia, with the desperate concentration of a child who had been promised a Ball and informed that she would disgrace herself at it, following him.

For some minutes it went well enough. Lady Sophia was a quick child, and not unmusical, and her brother — Madeleine could hear it without looking — was a patient teacher, with that particular patience men of his kind reserved for the very young and the very old, and would not have shown to a contemporary if their lives had depended on it.

“One, two, three. Not up and down. Along, smoothly, with just a little rise and fall. Sophy, you are pumping like a stable hand. Along.”

“I am moving smoothly.”

“You are bobbing.”

“I am not bobbing, Stirling, I am — Miss Wharton, am I bobbing?”

“A little, Lady Sophia.”

“Miss Wharton.”

“His Lordship is correct. The step travels. It does not rise very much at all.”

“You see?” the Marquess said.

“Miss Wharton is on your side because she has to be. She is paid to be.”

There was, behind Madeleine’s back, the infinitesimal pause of a man deciding not to say a thing.

“Lady Sophia,” Madeleine said, evenly, to the music in front of her, “Miss Wharton is on the side of accuracy. Begin again.”

They began again.

One, two, three; one, two, three.

The polished boards of the schoolroom, which had been waxed that morning, took the soft slide of Lady Sophia’s slippers and the firmer measured tread of her brother’s, and Madeleine played, and did not look around, and was conscious — with a precise awareness that astonished her — of every quarter-turn they made behind her.

Then Lady Sophia stopped. Lady Sophia stopped in the middle of a bar, and stamped one foot, and said:

“It is no use. I cannot do it with you because you are too tall. I am dancing with your waistcoat. I cannot see the steps. Miss Wharton must show me.”

“Sophy.”

“She must. She is the right height. She is exactly the right height. If she stands where I am standing, and dances with you, I can see what her feet do.”

“Lady Sophia,” Madeleine said, and her hands went still on the keys, “I am playing.”

“You can stop playing for a minute. The piano will not run away. Stirling can dance with you. Stirling can count. Miss Wharton, please.”

It was the please that did it. It was a small please, and it was not the please of a child being indulged, but the please of a child who had been told that she would look like a perfect savage at her cousin’s coming-out unless she got this right, and who had remembered, with the cold clear instinct twelve-year-olds were capable of, that her dignity was at stake. Madeleine heard it.

She heard, also, the small silence behind her in which the Marquess of Greyscarp did not, immediately, intervene.

She rose from the piano stool. She made, to no one in particular, a small inclination of the head.

“Very well, Lady Sophia. For three minutes. While his Lordship counts.”

She did not look at him as she crossed the room. She looked at Lady Sophia, who had retreated to the hearthrug and clasped her hands and assumed the demeanour of a person about to be instructed. Madeleine stopped a yard short of where the Marquess was standing.