Escapade (15 page)

She went to the mirror and rearranged her locks hastily, in a careless fashion adopted from Bickles. She was ill at ease, with Clare watching her perform this feminine ritual. Looking at his reflection in the glass, she said, “At least it's good and dark in the ballroom, so no one will see if I look a mess."

“
I
will see,” he told her.

“But it's your fault, so I shan't mind what
you
think."

He expected no better of Miss Fairmont.
I shan't care what you think!
“You have a knack for making a fellow feel insignificant,” he said, smiling while she pulled the gown down around her and rearranged the belt.

“A new experience for you, Your Grace."

“An entirely new experience. Only Prattle has treated me so shabbily till now, and I never favored her with my gallantry."

That again! She recovered and retaliated, “Do you call it gallantry to tell a girl she looks a mess, and you are tired of waiting for her?"

“Come, Lady Hamilton. I don't want to miss that waltz.” He held out his hand impatiently.

She took a last look in the mirror. “I don't look much like her."

“No, for she was fat and long in the tooth when I met her. Much inclined to pose and prose too, I might add."

“But she looks so lovely in that series of Romney's portraits!"

“She must have been something in her youth. To do her justice, she had gone well to seed before I ever made her acquaintance."

“A lady of any age would not feel she had been done justice if you should say so, however."

“I know you would like to stand here all night arguing, shrew, but I should like to dance.” He took her arm and marched her swiftly to the ballroom.

The first sight they met was Miss Sheridan, looking exquisite in her mauve gown, her black curls framing her face. “It was foolish of me to wear this costume and end up looking so awful,” Ella complained.

Clare followed her glance and stood observing Sherry a moment. “Beauty is only skin deep, Ella. The world is full of beautiful pictures and statues and faces. All very pleasing to look at, but it is intelligence and imagination and, of course, charm that hold the interest in the long haul."

“I should concentrate on trying to be charming,” Ella thought aloud.

“Just what I was thinking myself for, of course, you have no intelligence or imagination!"

She looked hurt for a minute, till she saw he was quizzing her. “Well, that was horrid of you."

“'Wasn't it? Ah, the music at last."

They twirled around the floor in rhythm. The near darkness and the intimacy of the waltz added a heady excitement, almost a sensation of unreality to these moments.

“Three more days, Ella,” Clare said. “How shall we amuse our guests?"

The words sounded awesomely strange to her ears. She could not imagine what madness had come over him. But, inexperienced as she was, she had a sharp idea what madness was coming over her. At least she retained enough sanity to know it was madness. She racked her brain and recalled another pastime from Fairmont.

“Why don't you gentlemen put on a curricle race for us? You can wear our colors—a ribbon round your arm or hat, like knights of old."

“It will be done, milady, providing I may wear your color."

“To save Paris the bother of making his choice?” she asked.

“Any rumors of an impending engagement have been greatly exaggerated—in fact they are sheer invention.” Still, he knew that if he didn't secure Ella's favor for the curricle race, Honor would slap a blue ribbon round his curled beaver and put yet another knot in the noose tightening round his neck. “What is your color?” he asked.

“Our servants wear gray livery."

“How cheerful. I shall go in half-mourning."

“Do you think you might have a jousting contest too?” she asked, relieved, though not entirely happy, to get the conversation down to earth.

“Where we have at each other with those great long poles? I'm afraid not, Ella, even for you."

“Bows and arrows?"

“Pistols it will have to be. We're not set up for bows and arrows. Besides, I shall most assuredly win for you if it's pistols."

“You're very cocksure, Your Grace."

“Tell me, why is it I am still ‘Your Grace,’ while you have been Ella this quarter hour?"

“You didn't tell me your name."

“Ah, and in my vanity, I assumed you to know it was Patrick, when you must have heard my Mama call me so fifty times."

“But you did not ask me to call you so. Bippy calls you Pa'k, I notice, like they call me Ella."

“Is that not your name then?"

“Only half of it. The whole is Puella. Papa is a Latin scholar of sorts, you see. I'm glad he didn't take into his head to call me Hera or Athene or some such horrid thing."

“Girl.
Puella
means girl. I wonder if he oughtn't to have made it
Mulier
."

“Good gracious, it sounds like a disease. What is it?"

“Why, it is the most beautiful word in the Latin language—woman. But I like Puella. It has a nice generic sound to it. I shall call you Puella."

“Not if you wish me to answer, you won't."

“Pue?"

“Worse! I beat my two brothers to a pulp to cure them of the horrid habit."

“You say
horrid
too often. All you young ladies do."

“You're very fussy."

“Surely that is established beyond question. But the most charming face is ruined by a common bonnet, and the most interesting speech by a dull repetition."

This coming on top of Clare's former gallantry was a disagreeable surprise. She began to think him in need of another set-down. “Upon my word, I never heard such gall."

“You can't be abreast of your Prattle. You must know when I condescend to attend one of my own parties, I demand perfection from everyone. Miss Sheridan is perfectly lovely; Miss Prentiss is a perfect imitation of Caroline Lamb..."

“And Lady Honor?"

“She is a perfect lady—did you expect some indiscretion to escape me? Sorry to disappoint you. And you must be perfectly conversable."

“You have left yourself out of this list of perfection."

“An amazing oversight! I must blame it on the waltz. But it is perfectly obvious I am here. And now perfectly plain that this perfect waltz is ended—you see how a word palls after a while?"

“Perfectly. I ask nothing more than that this
horrid
waltz be finished."

“I despair of ever getting the last word with you, Puella,” he said, giving her his most charming smile. Intimate, disarming—and on that odd note it was over.

No denying all other partners were dull after him, though they came with a flattering regularity. Bippy, Peters, Harley, and the gentlemen of the neighborhood, so that sitting out a dance was unnecessary, and in fact impossible. But always from the corner of her eye she was aware of the Admiral's uniform. Knew at exactly what moment he reached up and pulled the patch from his eye with an impatient gesture. Could almost hear him say ‘damned nuisance.’ She had to take herself sharply in hand to prevent trailing him around the room with her eyes, as all the other ladies were doing. She had her Prattle duties to help her, mixed blessing that they had become.

She would have been gratified to know she was as much in Clare's thoughts as he was in hers, while he danced and made himself polite to everyone. His next partner, one of the daughters of a neighbor, found a ball a suitable time to tell him her papa was interested in buying a little ten-acre field adjacent to their farm that he apparently never used, and even asked him what price he would take for it. He told her he made it a practice not to sell off any land, but he might rent it, if her papa cared to call on his bailiff tomorrow. He was invariably polite to his neighbors, however strong the inclination to be otherwise. Miss Sheridan next regaled him with the thrilling saga of her efforts to find a masquerade costume, and why it was she was wearing a ball gown. He had failed to notice this tremendously important fact and stung her to the quick by saying no one else would notice, either. Lady Sara had her turn about the floor with him, for she adamantly refused to sit against the wall all evening like a dowager, when she was not quite thirty and adored dancing.

Three times she tried some bantering conversation with him, and three times he returned to the subject of her niece. Had she always been such an outrageous little baggage, and how did it come Sara had not put her in his way before. In vain she told him he had met her years ago. He insisted he had never really known her. By the dance's end, such an untenable idea had entered her head that she felt weak. But no, he had only decided to make her his latest flirt, for a lark. She must warn Ella not to go falling in love with him. Looking out for Ella around the room at various times during the evening, she noticed she was paying no heed to him. Never came within a right angle of looking at him. Well, the Great Absent One would find that interesting.

When everyone had retired to his chamber after an enjoyable evening, Lady Sara undertook to hint her niece away from Clare.

“I see Clare is setting up a flirtation with you,” she said, in an offhand manner. “What an odd creature he is. I suppose he does it to let the three beauties know he doesn't plan to make his selection from this year's crop."

“Very likely,” Ella agreed.

“Not falling for him, I trust?"

“Oh, no, after following his amorous exploits all these years, I am on to his tricks."

Sara looked at her niece levelly. “He can be mighty charming. I'm half in love with him myself, when he smiles at me. But only half. He doesn't mean a thing by it."

“I know,” Ella said and turned to the mirror.

“That's good. I felt it my duty to mention the fact, for it is becoming rather clear he's singled you out for special attention, and it would be a wonder if it didn't go to your head."

“A good thing I wasn't wearing any this evening,” Ella replied in a droll voice.

Sara nodded, satisfied that her niece's heart was not at stake. “Well, so long as you realize the situation, I see no harm in playing up to him. It will set you quite apart and will make the other gentlemen sit up and take notice when we go back to town."

“Yes, that's what I thought,” Ella said, keeping her back to her aunt, while she fiddled with her hair in the mirror.

Her duty done, Sara retired to her room, and Ella considered this good advice—the same she had been giving herself all evening. She had a shrewd notion her main attraction for Clare was his belief she didn't care overly much for him. If she took to languishing after him, he'd be finished with her in two minutes. All right, then, go on just as she had been doing, and try to keep her heart in line. The best means of accomplishing this would be to stay away from him as much as possible.

Keeping away from Clare proved exceptionally difficult for Miss Fairmont in the following days, for it was soon clear to everyone that he had chosen her as the special object of his attention.

“Ella has had another of her inspired notions,” he announced at breakfast next morning, using her first name in the most casual manner in the world. Sherry's mouth fell open, and Belle's topaz eyes narrowed. If Lady Honor had been there, she would likely have blinked. “We are to have a knights’ contest—curricle races, pistol match—and no, Ella, no jousting."

“By Jove, a very good idea,” Bippy remarked, buttering a hot scone of a sort he could find nowhere but at Clare Palace. “Knight errantry ain't dead by a long shot. Will you do me the honor to let me wear your color, Miss Fairmont?"

Before she could reply, Clare informed him, “Ella has done me the honor of being her knight."

“Oh, I say, that ain't fair, Pa'k,” Peters jumped in. “I wanted to be Miss Fairmont's knight, or swain, or whatever you call it. Soon as you mentioned it, it came to me I'd wear green, in honor of Green Boy and Miss Fairmont."

“It seems Miss Fairmont is not so green as we had thought,” Belle said in a spiteful tone.

Ella could hardly believe her ears. It was a Prattle-like comment, and she realized how her own sharp words over the years must have stung.

“Ella's color is gray,” Patrick said to Peters, ignoring Belle's ill humor entirely.

“Gray?” Belle asked. “Why, that is a mourning color."

“You ought certainly to wear green though, Peters, for Miss Prentiss’ eyes."

“My eyes are hazel,” Belle retorted angrily.

“They have a definite tint of green at the moment,” he told her, smiling lazily.

He means jealousy, Ella thought, and glanced at him. He was still observing Belle, but she fancied there was a slight twitching of the lips.

“No way of getting a hazel ribbon,” Bippy said, in a rare streak of practicality.

“No, nor a gray one either,” Belle continued, “unless you happen to have some mourning ribbons around the place."

“It will be arranged,” Patrick assured her, in unimpaired humor.

“I'd like to have a go at the jousting, Pa'k,” Harley declared. “Be famous fun. Get some long barge poles or some such thing, and pad up the end of them so we don't break each others’ ribs. Love to give it a try."

“And I know some Elizabethan madrigals I shall sing for you later on in the evening, to continue the theme,” Miss Prentiss added.

This was greeted with an unenthusiastic silence till Miss Sheridan said, “We could all dress up in Elizabethan outfits!” with her mind as usual running to gowns.

“What a good idea, Sherry,” her Mama congratulated her.

The Straywards, worried at Miss Fairmont's sudden entrance into the chase after Clare, had left word to be roused early and made a dragging entry at this point. Honor had orders to be lively, and she spoke up immediately.

“We have a gown at Strayward belonging to Queen Elizabeth,” she informed them.

“It has eight hundred seed pearls on the bodice alone,” the Marchioness added.

“How ambitious of you to have counted them, ma'am,” Clare praised her. “But we haven't enough Elizabethan costumes here to go halfway around."

“Good,” his mother murmured in a low voice.

“About the jousting,” Harley returned to his favorite topic. “Do you have any long poles in the barn, Pa'k?"