Rondo Allegro (65 page)

Parrette scowled as she took the gown from Polly. She had
trained Anna to take care of her clothes, and during their Paris days, the
dancers had appreciated her work, treating their gowns as rare and precious as
money was so scarce.

She liked Harriet, but disapproved of her heedlessness,
which seemed to have worsened ever since she found out she was to go to London.

o0o

Parrette was right about the heedlessness, but wrong about
the reason. Harriet sat in church scowling at the faded blue light in the
windows. She was cold, and wanted winter to be over. And how could Anna say
that sound was so beautiful in this church? Did that simply mean you could hear
Dr. Blythe from the back? The hymns just sounded like people singing, some as
croaking as old frogs.

Anyway, she didn’t want to hear Bible verses from
Corinthians. Those Corinthians were long gone, and they never had a problem
like Robert Colby. She was certain she could feel him staring now. Why did he
have to come back to Barford Magna at all if he was going to be fun one day,
and disagreeable the next?

After church, she dodged around Caro, who was walking slowly
with Henry, and she pretended she didn’t hear Penelope’s sharp, “Harriet, pray
slow down. Where are your manners?”

Penelope was standing near the rector like a watchdog,
probably judging everyone who came out of church, as if she had taken St.
Peter’s place at the heavenly gates. Only who’d want into any heaven that Pen
approved of?

Harriet looked for Cicely or Jane, so they could talk over
the disaster at the Ashburns’ soiree the night before. Where were they?

“Harriet.”

She spun around, then crossed her arms when she saw Robert.
He had always been tall, but now he looked taller than ever, with those high
shirt points, and those huge gold buttons on his coat. “I wanted to apologize,”
he began.

“You ruined my gown,” she snapped. “Ruined it!”

“It was an accident,” he said miserably, all the words he
had carefully planned fleeing from his head. What could he say? You couldn’t
offer satisfaction to a girl.

“It was stupid,” she shot back in a fierce whisper. Both
were aware of the rest of the congregation talking a few paces away.

She stepped behind one of the tree trunks to screen herself
from Pen, at least, and when he followed, she said, “
You
were stupid. Why do you hate Tom Rackham all of a sudden, when
you were in each other’s pockets before you went off to university? He’s not
good enough for your exalted self, now you are come down from Oxford?”

“He acts as if he was the richest dog on the turf,” Robert
muttered.

“Tom?” Harriet repeated. “Tom hasn’t changed.
You
have. You walk around looking as if
you have a stomach ailment, and you think you have to claim all a person’s
dances, and—”

“Stomach ailment?” His surly expression altered to
astonishment. Then he flushed. In his mirror, he looked rather like one of
those dangerous and brooding fellows in the German novels.

“You have ruined all our fun, with your spooney quarrel,”
Harriet went on. “Everyone is taking sides, or refusing straight out to come
when you are invited. Did you really think that everyone was sick, or afraid of
slipping on ice, when the company was so thin at the Rackhams’ the other
evening? Everything was wonderful before you came back, and you turned
all
the boys into spooneys.”

He pressed his lips together and bowed jerkily. “I will
remove myself from your presence,” he said awfully.

Her anger vanished. “Robert,” she said, catching him by the
arm.

He stopped, looking down at her wide eyes. His heartbeat
thundered in his ears.

“Make it up with Tom, please?” Harriet said.

“Why is Tom so all-fired important? Are you attached?”

“No!” She stepped back, irritated. “How did you get that
idea into your head?”

“I apologize.” He bowed stiffly, and was about to speak
again when they both heard his sister Georgiana calling him. “I must go. May I . . .
may I call on you?”

Harriet gazed at him in exasperation. What maggot had got
into his head now? He was used to ride over whenever he wanted, usually with
Tom, sometimes with Bartholomew Ashburn as well. What did they
do
to him at Oxford? “Of course you may.
Don’t keep your family waiting.”

Harriet turned away before he could respond, and made her
way toward the row of carriages. Her mood worsened when she spied Penelope
tugging at Caro’s ugly old carriage cloak, her breath clouding as she scolded
her sister up into the shabby one-horse trap that Penelope had hired from the
Pig. Harriet paused to watch Penelope take her place, head high as if she were
in a tumbril on the way to the guillotine.

“I feel for Caro,” Harriet said, seeing Anna close by. What
a contrast she was to her half-sisters’ shabbiness, in her bottle-green pelisse
with its fur lining, her hat matching with a green feather curving down next to
her cheek, and her beautiful smile.

Harriet sighed, wishing she could look that stylish. Even
though she was acquiring the right clothes, she could not get the way of moving
about so well. Every time she tried before a mirror, she looked like someone
had thrust a stick down her neck.

“I hate the way Pen keeps Caro on short commons, just
because she’s the worst skinflint alive,” she muttered as she climbed into the
carriage. “She
enjoys
being a
skinflint. But I know Caro doesn’t. She won’t stand up to her, though. Cannot
bear loud voices.”

Anna had also seen Henry walking about with Dr. Blythe, and
once the two had stopped, both glancing Caro’s way as she talked to the
dowager. She trusted that was a hopeful sign, but said nothing as the carriage
door opened and Emily entered, a now-familiar pucker between her fine brows. It
would soon become a line, Anna thought, as Emily said, “It is so embarrassing,
Penelope hiring that dogcart that a grocer’s boy would not deign to drive. Of
course she gives no thought to how it must make the family look.”

She settled herself, hands crushed in her muff, then added,
“If I thought Henry might listen to me, I would ask him to buy them a carriage.
Lady Northcote, you might perform this office, as he listens to
you
.”

Harriet eyed her, sensing undercurrents she could not
define. But she had little interest in what Emily thought.

The dowager arrived with Henry, and they were soon on their
way back to the Manor.

A thaw over the next day meant the formal drawing room
fire was lit in expectation of the customary Tuesday callers. Anna resigned
herself to duty in spite of a disinclination for sitting downstairs. But when
she looked into the room with its inviting fire, she discovered she was alone.

She hummed
pianissimo
,
and a pulse of longing seized her. She drew breath to sing, but quashed the
impulse. The thought of singing called to mind the confining cage of her
promise, moreover the water in the breakfast tea must have been bad. The ill
taste was still with her.

She picked up the March issue of
La Belle Assemblée
and had just opened it when she heard voices in
the hall: Harriet’s high, fierce tones overriding a lower male rumble. By now
Anna recognized Robert Colby, the moody fellow whose gaze always followed
Harriet about. She was already feeling distinctly queasy; she could not face
company now.

“. . . if you
must
talk to me, you might as well talk in here,” Harriet was
saying.

Anna nipped up the magazine and whisked herself out the
other door just as the hall door opened. Whatever argument the two were having
would not welcome a third.

Her impulse was well meant, but Harriet, on finding the room
empty, sighed. She thought she’d seen Anna go inside—now what was she to do?

Grown-up manners required that she have a maid present, or
somebody
, even though she was not yet
out. Polly was probably sewing upstairs, and she knew she couldn’t suddenly
tell him they could not talk alone. He would only retort that she and Jane and
even Georgiana had been chattering with the boys in and out of rooms since they
were all in short coats, and he would be right.

That would start a new argument, and she was afraid that
Robert was here to continue the quarrel that he had started after church.

Remorse set in when she recollected her own spiteful words.
She was just as bad as Penelope, a lowering idea. She indicated a chair, hoping
just to get it over, as he stepped toward her.

She had a moment to notice that he was dressed more
gorgeously than ever, his blue coat new and tight above a waistcoat of gold
brocade and satin knee breeches that one expected to see at a ball, not on a
morning call.

Then everything fled out of her mind when he knelt down
carefully, clasped her hand, and said, “Harriet, will you marry me?”

She pulled her hand away. “Robert, if this is one of those
horrid hoaxes you and Tom and Bart was used to play off . . .”

He flushed beet red. “Hoax?” He sounded genuinely insulted.
“Hoax!”

She said hastily, “Robert, please sit down, do. Right here,
beside me, on this couch. I am not out, as you very well know. There can be
nothing thought of in that way, and in fact if I was, you ought to have spoken
to my brother, and I would have to run off and fetch Polly, or Lady Northcote,
to sit gooseberry with us.”

Robert scowled, knowing that all these things were true. But
it had sounded so much better in his head on the ride over.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “I asked an honest
question, and I know my heart.”

“But I . . . that is . . .”
Harriet flapped her hands.

“Just tell me this, is there anyone else?” he asked.

“No! I don’t wish to marry
anybody
. I have no idea of marriage until I have had plenty of time
for good fun.”

Though once she might have shared her reasons without
thinking, somehow the gulf between her and Tom, Bart, and the other fellows had
widened: she could not possibly say that her Ponsonby third cousin, and that
horridly superior Lady Lydia she had met once at her cousin’s estate, were both
her age, and already in the family way. From her cousin’s letters, they were
expected to settle down to matronhood. Harriet did not intend to be mewed up
before she turned twenty!

Robert studied her. “So you don’t wish to hear poetry, or
ought I to tell you how much I admire you? I do, you know. I thought about you
often, when I was up at Oxford, and when I returned, you were in every way
superior to what I remembered. I thought I would speak before you leave for
London, and your head is turned by a parcel of coxcombs and rakes.”

She said indignantly, “If you believe I am spooney enough to
be swept away by coxcombs and rakes, I wonder why you are here at all.”

He scowled. “It’s not that, but you having had no experience
of the metropolis, which is full of—” He saw that this topic was not gaining
him the sympathy he had expected, and abandoned it. “Out of all the girls in
this parish, you are the best. Georgiana even agrees with me, and she’s merely
sixteen. You know she hasn’t a hope of ever seeing London, as my father cares
only for sport, and my aunt hates the metropolis—”

Harriet gasped, overcome by a sudden idea, and succumbed to
laughter. “Robert,” she said, wiping her eyes, “if this start of yours is due
to your wish to gain a chaperone for your sister next year…”

He looked pained. “I did think it would be capital if you,
as my wife, could accompany me to town. And with Georgiana, too, in another
year or so. We would have a bang-up time, I am convinced, but that was
not
my motivation.”

Harriet got control of her laughter, wiped her eyes with her
handkerchief, and smiled. “Marrying me to make me sit gooseberry is the
funniest thing I have heard this age, and I cannot stay angry with you. I wish
we all could go to London together, including Jane, Tom, Bart, and everyone
else.”

Robert sighed. “So I don’t have a hope, is that it?”

“I don’t know. Ask me again in a year, or two years, or
maybe
more
. I don’t think of marriage
with
anybody
. I am as happy to dance
with any of you. Except when you look glumpish at Tom.”

“Then a year it shall be,” he said, rising, and they parted
on better terms than they had since his return from Oxford.

As soon as he was gone, the dowager and Emily entered the
parlor with questioning faces, the dowager saying, “From the tone of your
voices, it sounded like Master Robert wished for a private interview.”

Emily sent her a cold look. “Harriet, it is past time for
you to be acting the hoyden. You ought to have rung the bell for one of us to
join you. You are past the age to require reminding of proper etiquette.”

Harriet felt a chill at the notion of Emily overhearing
that
conversation. She said impatiently,
“It was just a misunderstanding.” And she ran off before either could detain
her with a lot of questions.

Anna had retired to the informal drawing room to read the
magazine, which she found unexpectedly interesting, as there was an article
about Paris. The unknown writer maintained that there were no current great
voices in French opera. Vestris was proclaimed the current great male dancer, and
Madame Gardel for women.

She paged on, a story catching her eye.

Malice must always
have a victim; but I have observed this difference between fashionable malice—I
mean the malice of a London drawing room, and the vulgar backbiting of a
country neighborhood. The one is content to tease, torment, and play with its
unfortunate object; the other is a bloody demon, and demands a complete
sacrifice.

Malice, she thought. Was that what she saw in Emily’s face?
What type was it, or more important, whence the motivation?