The Frost Fair (24 page)

Geoffrey had made the remark quite humorously, not intending it to cast any reflection on his relationship with Meg, but she made the connection at once. Her smile immediately faded, and he, seeing her changed expression, also drew back behind his protective reserve. “So you see,” she said stiffly, hastily returning to her original argument, “there's no need at all for you to feel guilty about the blasted accident.”

“Damn it, Meg don't be childish about this,” he said curtly. “Do you seriously think I would permit you to leave this place in a rented hack, without servants, without funds and without proper escort?”

“You have no right to
permit
me anything!” she said angrily and turned away. “And how do you know
what
funds I have?”

“Twenty sovereigns were all you had at the Horse With Three Tails,” he reminded her, “and I don't suppose you could have increased that sum since. With twenty sovereigns you may be able to rent a rig, but you'd not have enough left for a proper dinner.”

“I shall manage. Good heavens, the way you speak, one would think you'd like to send me home in a coach-and-four, with footmen, coachmen, postillions and a pair of outriders! I am not the Queen Mother, you know!”

“But you are my responsibility, whether you like it or no, and until you've safely stepped over your own threshold, I intend to fulfill it. Therefore I shall send you home in my phaeton and pair, with my own groom riding the box with yours, and a maid to accompany you. Since, as you remind me, you are not the Queen Mother, I will forego the footmen, the postillions and the outriders. There, now, are we agreed? If you have the sense you were born with, you'll accept the offer as no more than your due, and stop this foolish argument.”

She went to the window and stared out into a blur of sunlight through eyes that stung with tears she would not let herself shed.
Oh well
, she thought,
let him have his way
. She had insufficient strength with which to struggle. It would take what little stamina remained to make a departure with the proper dignity. “I didn't
mean
to have an argument with you,” she muttered in glum surrender. “I didn't wish your last memory of me to be that of a stubborn shrew.”

He gave an abrupt and bitter laugh. “There's no need to worry about
that,
” he said, his voice husky with self-mockery. “In any of your guises, even that of a stubborn shrew, my memory of you will be … will be too disturbing for my comfort.”

When the import of his words struck her, she whirled about to face him. Their eyes locked, his clouded with unreadable emotions and hers plainly asking why—
why, if my effect on you is so strong, are you pushing us into this dismal separation?

As if in response to her unspoken cry, and without taking his eyes from her face, he moved toward her. She felt a constriction in her chest, a surge of hope so strong it stopped the blood from coursing through her veins. But as if he saw a reflection of that hope leap up into her eyes, he froze in his tracks. With a shake of his head, he wheeled abruptly about and strode from the room.

He was gone. And she knew he would not appear at the carriage door with the others to say goodbye. Unless the Fates saw fit to intervene, she'd seen the last of Geoffrey Carrier.

Chapter Seventeen

January the first, 1814:

My dearest Aunt Bel, your letter of December seventeenth has just reached me, probably delayed by the fog that has been hanging over us for the past four days, and I am hastening to answer it so that I can put your fears to rest. No, I am not in the least downhearted or glum. If you received that impression from my last, it was either because my phrasing was infelicitous or because your imagination is too vivid. I assure you that I am as active, cheerful, busy, lively and animated as ever and, except for missing you, of course, am enjoying life to the full.
..

Meg threw down the pen in disgust. How could she write a letter brimming with good cheer when she was deep in the doldrums?

The six weeks since she'd last seen Isabel had been the worst of her life, and having to pretend to her doting aunt that all was well was extremely difficult. Especially now that she'd sent Miss Dinsmore packing.

Miss Felicia Dinsmore, a maiden lady of indeterminate age, was a distant cousin whom Isabel had selected to fill her place in Meg's London household. From the moment the woman had arrived (with seven trunks, two abigails, and a fat lap-dog named Bo-Coo) Meg knew that not only the dog but Miss Dinsmore herself would be Too Much. The overly cheerful female chattered and giggled all day, and Meg (who only wanted to be alone, to be able to brood in silence and permit the wounds inflicted by her first rejection in love to heal) found her garrulous companion's constant presence almost too much to bear.

Last week, learning that a mutual relation was expecting a baby, Meg urged Miss Dinsmore to offer her services where they would be more greatly needed, and Miss Dinsmore cheerfully agreed. Meg sighed with relief as the seven trunks, the two abigails, the ugly Bo-Coo and her smiling cousin were loaded into a carriage and trundled off out of her life.

Meg knew that, sooner or later, she'd have to admit to Isabel that she'd sent her companion away, but for the time being she would avoid the subject in her letters. Before she would set about finding herself a new companion, she intended to enjoy a few days of peaceful solitude.

She leaned back against the graceful little Sheraton chair she kept at her writing desk and let her eye roam about the room. She'd always loved this room. It was square and high-ceilinged, and George Smith (one of the most talented interior designers in the world, who'd decorated it for her a few years earlier) had said that, with its tall, tall windows opposite the door and the way the bookshelves on the west wall balanced the marble mantelpiece of the east, it was perfectly proportioned. He'd placed her writing desk (a magnificent Harlequin trestle table of his own design, with inlaid woods, a leaf in the center that could be raised to prop up a book, and an elevated section at the back housing a dozen little cubby holes and drawers which kept her writing things in neat, well-organized symmetry) between the two windows, draped the windows with hangings of ornate grandeur, hung several of her favorite paintings on the wall over the mantel, designed a sofa and table to be placed before the bookshelves and two wing chairs before the fire, and—voila!—this beautiful room.

It had always given her pleasure to sit here, working on her correspondence or her accounts. In the bright daytime, she could lift her head and look out upon a small but elegantly landscaped courtyard. And when it was dark—or foggy, as now—the fire and the desk lamp gave the room a warm, golden glow that delighted her. The rose-colored, richly opulent orientals on the floor, the velvet-covered sofa at her left, the marble bust of a Greek boy on a pedestal in the corner had all added to her feeling of luxury, a feeling of being surrounded by comfort and beauty that had been a major source of her own sense of security and self-worth. Why was that feeling eluding her now?

At Knight's Haven, the furnishings and accoutrements had been so sparse and shabby that there had been no pleasure in looking around the rooms. In spite of their impressive proportions, the rooms could easily bring a depression of the spirit to anyone with aesthetic sensitivities.
Then why
, she asked herself impatiently,
do I so crave to be back in those surroundings again?

She didn't deny to herself that her feelings for Geoffrey accounted for a large part of her yearnings for the neglected old castle. But there were other factors as well to account for them. For the first time in her life she'd been part of a real
family
. True, they were eccentric, foolish and spoiled, but, she realized with some surprise, she'd
enjoyed
them. She'd liked being asked her advice, she'd liked the younger girls' obvious admiration, she'd even developed a fondness for the garrulous, selfish, wasteful and silly Lady Carrier. If Geoffrey had been willing to marry her, she could have helped him to direct his mother's interests away from card games by setting her busy at redecorating the house (for if Meg married before her birthday, she would surely have the funds to do it), she could have used her influence with Trixie to help the girl mature, and she could have helped Sybil divert her mind from her imaginary symptoms to learning how to turn herself into an attractive young woman. Yes, she would have very much enjoyed being at the heart of a large, noisy, annoying, demanding family that needed her. Why couldn't Geoffrey have seen that?

Of course she couldn't really blame Geoffrey. To him she'd seemed just another of the troublesome females who'd saddled him with problems and who'd distracted him from the goals he'd set himself. He'd wanted to be a soldier, and his women had kept him from that; now he wanted to succeed at land management, and his women seemed bent on making
that
difficult for him. And what had
she
done to convince him that things could be otherwise? She'd come into his life during a wild, ill-planned escape from an ill-considered entanglement, behaved in a high-handed, lofty, lady-of-the-manor-greets-the-peasants style, jumped to false conclusions about his family and his problems, and ended by encouraging him to believe that she was a heartless, superficial London flirt to whom love was only a social game. That certainly was not a portrait of a marital partner on whom a hard-pressed, insecure, suspicious, thrice-burned, woman-shy male could pin his hopes.

Oh, well, it was too late now to dwell on it.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
, Shakespeare once said … and she'd missed hers. Her chance had gone, and the end was, as Shakespeare had predicted,
bound in shallows and in miseries
.

But she was not the sort to wallow in self-pity. Even on the journey back to London she'd hardly shed a tear. (Perhaps during the first hour or two she'd turned her face to the window and permitted some tears to fall, but it was so slight an emotional display that the little maid, Brynne, didn't even notice.) And in the weeks since, she'd hardly cried at all. Oh, sometimes late at night when she couldn't fall asleep …

However, this blasted letter was a different matter. It was hard to pretend in a letter that one's heart was ready to go skipping through the daisies when, in reality, one wanted to hide in the corner and lick one's wounds. How could she write to Isabel a spirited, carefree letter when her spirits were as heavy as lead? If only she'd forced herself to attend the D'Eresbys' ball last night, she might have been able to record some lively gossip that would convince Isabel that …

Her thoughts were interrupted by the butler's tap on the door. “Mr. Steele is calling, your ladyship,” Maynard, the butler, informed her. And Arthur, for too many years a visitor to this house to stand on ceremony, promptly strolled in. “The fog is so thick out there, I couldn't take my curricle. Had to walk over,” he remarked.

“Arthur, this
is
a surprise,” Meg said, rising and extending her hand. “I thought this was the day you were to take tea with your sister and brother-in-law.”

“So I was, but I cried off. I was too worried about
you
, you see.” Having placed his hat and cane on a table, he bowed over her hand and began to pull off his gloves.

“Worried about me? Whatever for?”

“You never appeared at the D'Eresbys' ball last night!” he accused, permitting the butler to help him off with his greatcoat.

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that. Half the bachelors of London have fallen into flat despair. How could you have disappointed us so?”

“I shall explain in a moment. But first let me arrange to give you some tea, since you walked all the way in the fog and probably haven't had any. Maynard, will you see to it, please?”

The butler nodded, collected Arthur's things and bowed himself out.

“I was convinced you'd fallen ill,” Arthur said, taking a seat beside her on the sofa.

“No, not ill. Just uninterested,” she admitted with a guilty smile. “I somehow couldn't seem to dredge up the enthusiasm necessary to bother with having my hair done up, donning a ball gown, sending for Roodle to ready the carriage, and struggling through the fog and the traffic only to have to endure the dubious pleasures of standing up for a country dance with D'Eresby treading on my toes, of eating Lady D'Eresby's dreadfully parsimonious lobster cakes which everyone knows are made of halibut, and of coming home in the wee hours with a splitting headache. So, instead, I simply ate my dinner at home, read a few chapters of
The Absentee
and went to bed.”

“You read a book?” He stared at her in genuine horror. “I don't know what's come over you of late, my dear. You're not the girl you were. Who would ever have thought that the celebrated Lady Meg Underwood, always at the forefront of the fashionable, would choose a book over a ball!”

“Well, it's quite a fascinating book, you see. Miss Edgeworth has written a somewhat satirical tale about an Irish landlord who tries to make his way in London society and—”

“Spare me, Meg, please!” He held up his hands as if to ward off an attack. “I find literary discussions to be the greatest bore. I hope you are not going to make a habit of this sort of thing. People might begin to say you're a bluestocking, and that will be the end of your reputation as the Reigning Belle of the
ton
.”

“Will it?” She got up, wandered across the room and stared down into the fire, resting her forehead on the mantelpiece. “I suspect that my reputation has long since been superceded.”

“What rubbish! There wasn't a single female in the ballroom last night who could have held a candle to you!”

She smiled wanly. “You needn't try to flummery me, Arthur. I shall soon be twenty-six. Twenty-six! By any method of measuring, that means I've been ‘on the shelf for a considerable length of time already.”