When the Splendor Falls (30 page)

“I am certain she will. Why wouldn’t she, after all, she will be Mrs. Matthew Wycliffe. Naturally, however, since this will occur before their marriage, we will handle it in a completely businesslike manner, as if he were not family. We can have Guy draw up the papers. But I declare, it will be quite wonderful once Leigh is married to Matthew. Blythe will be able to go to Charleston now and attend school there. She can stay with Leigh on the weekends. Leigh will be such a success, and that will improve little Lucy’s chances of catching herself a husband. She’s a sweet child, but rather awkward at times. I could scarcely believe my eyes watching her around that young Justin Braedon. I was quite beside myself with nerves for fear she would spill something. He’s a nice young man, but not at all suitable. Good Lord, if she were to marry him, well, he’d probably want her to return with him to the territories. It would be unthinkable. I would never agree to one of my daughters going out to that savage land. I would never recover, I’d be so heart stricken, never!”

“You worry far too much, my dear. None of our daughters, except for Leigh who’ll be moving to Charleston, which grieves me, will ever leave Virginia, and then she’ll come visitin’ half the time. She’s got bluegrass in her blood. Life will continue as it always has, with our sons and daughters and grandchildren around us. I’ve only friends and family, and no enemies that I am aware of who will cause us any harm here at Travers Hill. You work yourself up into a lather needlessly, but then you always have been a worrier. It is a beautiful summer’s eve. How about a little stroll into the gardens before we greet our guests. I can remember a time not too long ago, when you and I…”

“Yes, yes, that is a very good idea. I want to check the Chinese lanterns and make certain they’ve all been lit properly. And I’m not certain we’ve enough napkins by the punch bowl despite what Stephen says, and last time there was far too much whiskey in the punch for the gentlemen. I declare, it was the dirtiest brown color. I nearly fainted, thinking some…some…” Beatrice Amelia frowned, searching for the right description.

“Yahoo?” Mr. Travers supplied helpfully.

“Exactly, Mr. Travers, that some Yahoo had spat tobacco juice in the punch bowl, and I told Stephen as much, and to be on the lookout for so uncouth an individual, for you’ll remember we had a number of those unruly, crude frontiersmen visiting from Tennessee last month, and I still say it was a mistake to invite them to stay up at the house, and you were up all night drinking and telling tall tales. I’ve never seen so many spittoons so close to overflowing.”

“Them Tennessee boys are the best marksmen around. You have to admit,
Mrs. Travers
, their aim was without fault. You can have no complaints on that score, for there wasn’t a stain to be found on your waxed floor,” Mr. Travers said, grinning, for he had never had such a night.

“Indeed,
Mr. Travers
, I only wish I could say the same for their marksmanship where the chamber pots were con—” she began, not seeing her husband’s shaking shoulders as he followed her figure, stiff-backed with ladylike dignity, from the room.

Eleven

No one is so accursed by fate,

No one so utterly desolate,

But some heart, though unknown,

Responds unto his own.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Brightly colored Chinese lanterns spilled an eerie, amber glow into luminous pools of light that appeared suspended between heaven and earth like small captive moons. The air was heady with an exotic perfume that overpowered the senses. The scent of roses and jessamine, blending with the smoke rising from the flickering candles of bayberry wax, created an incense that drifted along the shadowy paths of the darkened garden as if lost in an Arabian night. Flashes of light, like sparks of fire, appeared mysteriously and, just as quickly, disappeared, before flashing magically again high in a treetop or deep within a spiny hawthorn hedge as fireflies flitted to and fro on fairy wings and enticed strolling couples deeper into the gardens.

Inside Travers Hill, the setting was no less magical. The long banqueting tables were lit by many-branched silver candelabras and decorated with a profusion of fresh flowers arranged in tall cut-crystal vases that sparkled with prisms of dazzling light. Garlands of evergreens were draped around the moldings of the ceiling, the windows, and the double doors, and potted palms and miniature orange and lemon trees were grouped together in the corners of the room where chairs had been placed for those wishing to sit and converse quietly while catching their breath from the more arduous demands of dancing.

The damask-covered tables were heavy with the bountiful feast offered in celebration of a young girl’s sixteenth birthday and coming of marriageable age. The tables were crowded with diners progressing from course to course while they inched along a slowly moving line and were offered ample time to choose from a variety of tempting delectables. Silver dishes full of pecans, walnuts, and almonds; molded jellies, pâtés, crepes, and turnovers; consommé clear soups, chilled ones, bisques, and gumbos; shrimp, melon balls, salmagundi, salads, chicken and marinated; oysters on the half shell, crabmeat, and lobster; garnishes and stuffings and relishes; French peas, snow peas, black-eyed peas; asparagus spears, okra and stewed tomatoes, ratatouille; mounds of steamed rice and wild rice, or potatoes, rissole, creamed, fried, and sweet; casseroles and souffles, puddings and puffs; ham and joints of meats, tender veal or lamb, roasted fowl and stuffed game; salmon, trout, and flounder; stacks of muffins, biscuits, hard rolls, and fritters; sauces, Madeira, sweet and sour, tarragon, and apple brandy; pyramids of fruit, fresh, dried, and sugared; cheeses; mousses, cakes, tarts, and charlottes; frozen creams and ices, custards, cookies, and dumplings. And centered in a place of honor, in a great crystal bowl, a mountain of ambrosia, the slices of oranges, grapefruit, and pineapple, blended with strawberries and blueberries, and sprinkled with shredded coconut, ripened overnight in sherry, orange juice, and corn syrup, then chilled, was sweet enticement for those who wished to taste the food of the gods.

A steaming coffee urn, and several decanters and carafes full of assorted spirits, and sparkling silver and crystal occupied the last table.

People drifted from room to room, some choosing to sit and partake of the feast, while others, hearing the soft strains of music from the small grouping of musicians in the corner of the ballroom, chose to dance a reel or two, or if having already consumed a goodly portion from the buffet or punch bowl, a slow-stepping waltz would serve as exertion enough.

“Enjoying yourself?” Adam Braedon asked his young cousin. “Saw you dancing a couple of waltzes with the redheaded Misses O’Farrell.”

“They’re very charming, and their father is a professor of mine at VMI,” Justin Braedon remarked, nodding in polite acknowledgment of several people walking by.

“Well, I’d say the most charming young woman in the room tonight is our young hostess,” Adam commented, his light gray eyes following the pale green figure of Blythe Travers as she moved among the guests attending her party, laughter following in her footsteps as she entertained them with a quick-witted, humorous retort and a ready smile.

“Who? Oh, Palmer William’s little sister. Yes, quite nice.”

“Nice? I hardly recognized her tonight. She’s blossomed into a beautiful young woman,” Adam said, his gaze searching out her figure again. And he was not speaking in exaggeration, for he had been almost speechless when greeting her this evening at the entrance to Travers Hill. Dressed in her pale green ball gown of ruffles and lace, she had been a startling vision of loveliness. Her dark hair was swept up to reveal the swan-like arch of her neck and the lovely contours of her bare shoulders, and the lacy décolletage of her bodice had revealed a tantalizing curve of soft breast, and Adam had forced himself not to stare like a country bumpkin standing dumbfounded before a queen. Why had he never noticed before what a lovely shade of hazel her wide long-lashed eyes were, and how they sparkled with humor? Her soft skin was creamy and touched with a blushing pink, her lips beautifully shaped and full above her delicately rounded chin, and when she smiled her left cheek dimpled just slightly, and the more he had watched her, the more he could guess by the dimple when she was about to smile. And it was indeed odd that he’d never realized what a perfect height she was. He had come to find it quite tiresome to hang his head low while bending down from the waist to converse with some of the smaller women of his acquaintance. But now Blythe, yes, Blythe was…

“…yes, well I suppose some might consider her pretty, but she is rather quiet. Doesn’t say much, although I suppose she is bright enough,” Justin remarked, his eyes lingering on a petite blond who was chatting easily with friends nearby.

“Quiet? Little Lucy?” Adam demanded, wondering if they were speaking of the same young woman. He laughed softly as he remembered her charging across the green with a saber in her hand. “Quiet?” he repeated.

“Actually, I rather prefer fair-haired women. A pity only Althea inherited the fair hair from Mrs. Travers,” Justin remarked as Althea danced past, held close in the arms of her husband. Dressed in a ball gown of Lyons silk, with deep falls of lace trimmed with dark rose satin ribbons, she was, in Justin’s adoring eyes, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and she was married to his cousin. “Although not fair-haired like her sister, Leigh Travers is certainly beautiful, in fact,” he allowed as she waltzed by in the arms of a handsome gentleman, “I’ve never seen her looking quite so lovely. She does have fine eyes, doesn’t she, and a very small waist,” he added, noting how easily the gentleman’s arm fitted about it while they danced. “And she certainly dances well,” he said with a look of admiration in his eye as she swung by again, showing a flash of lacy petticoat and slender length of silken calf above apricot-tinted silk slippers.

“Well, I happen to like dark-haired women,” Adam said, feeling oddly irritated by his cousin’s cavalier dismissal of Blythe, “and admiration is all you are allowed as far as Leigh is concerned. She’s engaged, or have you already forgotten?”

“I could hardly forget. My ears are still ringing from the tumultuous cheers that greeted the news. It would seem to be a match made in heaven. Leigh Travers and Matthew Wycliffe. An acclaimed beauty, and a handsome, wealthy gentleman, and a well-respected one at that. And both from good families, and from what I’ve heard, Matthew Wycliffe is the wealthiest man in the Carolinas. Do you know, I don’t believe I have heard a word spoken against the man’s name this whole evening? Quite remarkable. You’d think he’d have at least one enemy, would have slighted at least one fellow. Someone must bear a grudge against him. And everyone seems exceptionally pleased by the announcement,” Justin stated. “You’d think they were all about to marry the man.”

“Yes, so it would seem.”

“Except perhaps for that auburn-haired young woman in yellow,” Justin said, nodding in the direction of the woman of whom he spoke.

“Sarette Canby. Once she gets over her envy, she will be quite pleased to have Leigh out of the county, and beyond her brother’s ear, for I suspect she thinks Leigh has influenced Guy against her. But Guy, when he is thinking clearly, is not stupid, despite the way he acts at times. His temper will get the best of him one day, I fear.”

“Wasn’t she after you last summer, at least till you took to your heels?”

“Yes, I could introduce you again, but I don’t think she’d like army life, and that is what you intend, isn’t it?”

“Seems a respectable career. I’m not like my father, or Neil. I am not content to spend the rest of my life in the territories, at least, not as a rancher. Both he and Neil like roaming the hills by themselves, and riding into the high country to hunt. Neither of them answers to anyone. They are lords unto themselves. A pity they don’t get along better. Now, I happen to like army life, and having my days regimented. I like order. And, I imagine, I’ll be back out in the territories soon enough when I get my commission, but I’ll be going back there with the power of authority of the United States government on my side. And I will use it against anyone who breaks the law, whether he be a white man, or a red man. And a Comanche is the worst, for he answers to no man,” Justin said, glancing across the room momentarily before emptying his punch glass. “Well, I must say, this has certainly turned into quite a celebration. It was a surprise, of course, to me, about the engagement. However, half the gathering seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of the betrothal,” Justin said with a wide grin, winking at the petite blond who had managed to move slightly closer to where he stood in conversation.

“Yes, quite a surprise for some,” Adam agreed, his glance finding that same familiar, dark-clad figure across the room that Justin had been staring so intently at only moments ago.

Justin was right. What an evening it was turning out to be, he thought, wondering about all of the undercurrents swirling about the room and promising himself he’d find Blythe and ask her to dance before the evening was over.

“You danced with Blythe earlier, didn’t you?” he asked Justin, casually flicking a nonexistent piece of lint from his cuff as if more concerned by that than the answer to his question.

“Yes, as a courtesy to Palmer and the family. It is her party, after all. Stepped on my foot too. Palmer does dote on her, though. And since I’m the same way about my little sister, Lys Helene, I can understand and take pity on both of them. Don’t want the wrong sort dancing with your sister. Knows she is safe with me. I’m like a brother to her. Wish I’d been with Lys Helene in Charleston. Had a rotten time, poor child. She’s much too shy and came hotfootin’ back to the territories after a year. Wasn’t good enough for her snooty classmates.”

“I liked her when I met her,” Adam said, surprised. “Ah, is Blythe’s card filled?”