Sheri Cobb South (13 page)

No argument could be more effective in changing Margaret’s mind. She threw up her hands, conceding defeat, and turned back to Lady Palmer with a smile. “You see how I am beset, my lady. We shall be delighted to attend.”

“Wonderful! And of course you, Mr. Fanshawe, are also included in the invitation, as an old friend of Peregrine’s.”

“Lord, yes,” agreed Peregrine, grinning wickedly at James. “Like Miss Amanda, you must learn how to conduct yourself in social situations. One never knows when one might find oneself, oh, addressing Parliament, for instance, or making one’s bow to the Regent!”

It was a very merry group that made its way back to Darrington House. Aunt Hattie and Amanda expounded upon the need for new dresses, and speculated as to the fabrics and trims available at the local dressmaker, while Margaret bethought herself of several gowns remaining from her own long-ago Season which might be cut down and retrimmed. Philip, still too young to attend such a gathering, was only too happy to eschew an entertainment that would require him to do the pretty for the local girls.

James, however, found himself unable to enter into the general enthusiasm. The truth, he knew, must be told. If he had gone to church that morning to beseech Providence for a sign, the answer could not have been any plainer. For with the appearance of Peregrine Palmer on the scene, everything changed. Peregrine was the best of good fellows, but he had always been a sad rattle, and James could not be sure of his discretion. Much as James disliked having his hand forced, he no longer had the luxury of choosing the most opportune moment.

He did, however, insist upon his right to break the news to Miss Darrington in private. With this end in view, he waited until that night, after Aunt Hattie folded away her needlework and the younger members of the family had departed for their separate bedchambers, to make his confession. He lingered in the privacy of his own bedchamber, pacing the floor while wording and rewording his speech in his head, until the household settled down for the night.

At last reasonably certain of an uninterrupted word with his employer, he abandoned the sanctity of his own room and crept downstairs, candle in hand, to the study, where he hoped to find Miss Darrington; although he had not taken part in the discussion on new gowns, he had been sufficiently aware of it to suspect that she might even now be scouring the household accounts for the wherewithal to clothe the beauteous Miss Amanda in finery suitable for that young lady’s rural debut.

His theory proved accurate. Margaret sat alone in the darkened study, poring over an open ledger. A single candle illuminated the pages, casting a golden circle of light that turned her light-brown hair to burnished copper. James wondered why the local lads had never noticed that she was, in her own more subtle way, quite as lovely as her sister.

Pushing aside the irrelevant thought, he raised his hand to rap lightly on the frame of the open door. An abrupt movement on her part, however, stayed his fingers scant inches from the doorframe. As he watched, she pulled a sheet of paper across the desk and began to make a series of rapid calculations, scowling at the results before trying again. James, having had his share of experience at this same task, had no difficulty in recognizing a desperate yet futile attempt to coerce numbers into performing functions of which they were wholly incapable. Slowly, so as not to attract her attention, he lowered his arm back down to his side.
As he debated the most tactful way to make his presence known, she laid aside her pen and, propping her elbows on the desk, dropped her head into her hands in a gesture replete with quiet despair.

James, feeling like a voyeur, stepped back into the shadows, and found himself shaking with an unaccountable anger. Why should she be put to such shifts, all so that her sister might not be obliged to wear a made-over gown? Why, for that matter, should she be so determined to sell Amanda to the highest bidder that she gave no thought to finding a husband of her own? Granted, her Season might not have been an unmitigated success, but at four-and-twenty, she was hardly on the shelf. The stubborn wench might still marry someone like—like—

Like me.
The answer hit him with all the force of a blow. As with Saul on the Damascus road, the scales fell from his eyes, and he knew why he had been so reluctant to press his suit, now that he had the wherewithal to do so. Ever since he had first taken up residence in the Darrington household, it had been Margaret Darrington, not her sister, whose company he consistently sought out. Amanda’s chief attraction—aside from the obvious—lay in the fact that through marriage to her, he might have the satisfaction of lightening her sister’s load, thus earning Miss Darrington’s gratitude, respect, and admiration. Particularly admiration. Now, for the first time, he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to be married, not to Miss Amanda, but to her sister. The prospect was surprisingly pleasant and somehow
right,
even—perhaps especially—down to the sharing of the great ducal bed upstairs at Montford Park.

But this would not be his first proposal of marriage. There had been another, and although his heart had obviously recovered, his pride had not. He had no more desire to be accepted for wealth by Margaret Darrington than by the faraway belle of Fairford. True, he had an advantage this time that he had not before. He might remove himself to the big Palladian house on the hill, trick himself out in fine clothes, and make her an offer in form, but he would always wonder whether she was marrying
him—
James Weatherly—or the long wondered-about duke of Montford.

Of course, there was another option. One had only to look at the armies of ancient Greece and Troy to see that a stealth campaign might succeed where a frontal assault would fail. He could stay where he was, as Philip’s tutor, and woo her in earnest. Although she had left him in no doubt as to her opinion of his eligibility as a husband for her sister, he flattered himself that she did not find him utterly repulsive.

Shielding his candle with his cupped hand, he backed away from the study and crept back up the stairs to his room. The matter was settled. Tomorrow he would begin to lay siege to his love’s rather avaricious affections, but when at last he made his proposal, it would be as Mr. James Fanshawe, former curate and sometime Latin tutor.

Chapter 9

The following day seemed particularly designed to contrast with the merriment of the one before. The sky, so blue and dotted with puffy white clouds a scant twenty-four hours earlier, was now gray and overcast, the clouds heavy with incipient rain. A further pall descended at breakfast, where Margaret imparted the news to her sister and aunt that there would be no new gowns for the Palmers’ entertainment. Amanda bore the disappointment nobly, but although she voiced no complaint, her downcast eyes and trembling lower lip spoke volumes.

An awkward silence greeted this pronouncement, and Margaret, finding herself the object of her aunt’s silent reproaches and the tutor’s searching gaze, became uncomfortably aware of having been cast as the villain of the piece. Only Philip, tucking into his breakfast with the enthusiasm of the adolescent male, seemed oblivious to the silent drama being enacted at the breakfast table.

“It is only a country party, after all,” she reminded her sister somewhat defensively, as if refuting an unspoken accusation. “Only wait until your presentation in the spring, dearest, and you shall have all the new gowns your heart can desire.”

Amanda’s smile was brave, if somewhat shaky. “Oh yes, I am sure I will. It is not as if I particularly wanted to impress anyone, anyway.”

At that moment, the skies opened and the rains fell in earnest. When Amanda Darrington grieved, reflected Margaret bitterly, all Nature mourned.

“Still,” Margaret added on a brighter note, “there is no reason why we cannot cut down one of my own presentation gowns for you. As I recall, there is a white muslin that should look lovely on you.”

“And what will you wear, Margaret dear?” asked Aunt Hattie.

“I have not given the matter much thought,” she answered with perhaps less than perfect truth. “I daresay my blue satin will serve the purpose very well.”

“That old thing?” cried Aunt Hattie, aghast. “Why, it is ages old!”

“Nonsense! Three years at the very most. Surely styles have not changed so very much in three years.”

“I could not feel right wearing something new—even if it was only remade—while you wore an old gown,” protested Amanda.

“And quite right, too,” nodded Aunt Hattie. “Margaret, if anyone is to wear one of your presentation gowns, it should be you.”

“And a fine figure I should look, too, dressing like a debutante at my age! ‘Mutton dressed as lamb,’ Lady Palmer would say, and she would be quite right.”

Another man intent upon courtship might have seized the opportunity to offer flowery compliments to his inamorata’s youth and beauty, but James, seated at the opposite end of the table, kept his own counsel. It was not that he had nothing to say in opposition to Margaret’s unflattering assessment of her own charms—quite the contrary. But he knew his opinionated love well enough to realize that any such attempt on his part would be disbelieved at best, and very likely laughed to scorn as well. He would hold his tongue until he won the right to speak what was in his heart, and when the time came he would not air his opinions at the breakfast table, his thoughts on the subject were for her ears alone. In the meantime, he left to Aunt Hattie and Amanda the task of chiding Margaret, and bore his pupil upstairs to the schoolroom where Homer awaited.

Deprived of male company, the ladies gave themselves over to the delights of debating ribbons and laces, and eventually abandoned the breakfast table in favor of the humbler confines of the attic, where the trunks containing Margaret’s finery were stored.

As her sister and aunt removed the protective tissue from each gown, exclaiming over the prospects for restoring it to the current fashion, Margaret could not suppress a pang of regret for the girl who had once put on these gowns with such eagerness. So many youthful hopes and dreams, and what had become of them? She had not met the man she could love, much less marry, and it seemed highly unlikely now that she ever would. What would become of her? Would she end her days like Aunt Hattie, a maiden aunt to Amanda or Philip’s children? In recent years she had begun to accept that this would most probably be her lot, and it had seemed no great tragedy; Aunt Hattie, after all, was held in great affection by her nieces and nephew. But then, Aunt Hattie was no spinster; she was a widow who had once loved and been loved in return, however briefly. Suddenly life as a maiden aunt no longer seemed desirable, although Margaret could not have said with certainty when, or why, her views on the matter had changed.

You are becoming maudlin,
she chided herself. She had not slept well the previous night, and this was the result. Determined to be cheerful, she wedged herself between her sister and aunt and, withdrawing a pale primrose frock from the trunk, began to relate a long and rather involved anecdote about the long-ago ball to which she had worn it.

Amanda’s enthusiasm, however, soon proved to be contagious, and when Aunt Hattie unearthed an all-but-forgotten creation of lilac lace over a white satin slip (which, ironically, had been judged too sophisticated for a young girl just emancipated from the schoolroom), it was unanimously determined Margaret would be foolish to appear at Lady Palmer’s party in anything else.

Margaret was not so sunk in the dismals that she could not appreciate the irony of that same schoolgirl, still unmarried, fretting over whether that too-sophisticated gown was now too youthful. By the time the family reconvened that afternoon for tea, she was looking forward to the Palmer entertainment with something approaching enthusiasm, and was able to join the others in describing to James the various people he might expect to meet.

“Only beware the Widow Thornton,” cautioned Aunt Hattie, gesturing ominously with a butter knife. “Don’t let that fragile air deceive you. The woman is a harpy, plain and simple.”

“Why, Aunt!” cried Amanda, “how can you say so? She gave me my first lessons on the pianoforte, and I have often heard the vicar say the Ladies’ Altar Guild would be lost without her.”

Aunt Hattie gave a most unladylike snort. “She may fool them all, but she cannot fool me! She once won ten shillings from me at whist, and you will never convince me she was not cheating!”

Philip Darrington rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, and this, along with his sisters’ sudden preoccupation with the buttering of scones, gave James to understand that this particular grievance was not a new one.

Seeing that the role of outraged audience fell to him, James stepped gamely into the breach. “Such perfidy must not be allowed to go unchallenged,” he declared in tones of deepest revulsion. “If you will allow me, Aunt Hattie, I will set up a card table after tea. I feel certain that with a little practice, we may win your ten shillings back.”

Philip volunteered to help make up a foursome, and Margaret agreed to make a fourth, if for no other reason than to prevent James from soliciting Amanda for that honor. She was gratified to hear that damsel profess herself more than willing to forego a diversion for which she had no natural aptitude, but any hope that this might indicate an indifference for the tutor was short-lived; she was familiar enough with Amanda’s indifferent play to know that no young lady in the throes of a violent
tendre
would want the object of her affections to see her displayed to such disadvantage.

As soon as the tea cart was removed, a once-fine card table of inlaid rosewood took its place, and the card players settled down to the business of shuffling, cutting, and dealing.

“What about stakes?” fretted Aunt Hattie. “Shall we play for penny points?”

“Pennies?” echoed James. “Nothing so paltry! I shall stake my curricle and pair against Miss Darrington’s pearls.”

“Done,” replied Margaret, her fine eyes sparkling in anticipation.