When the Splendor Falls (8 page)

“I’m going to wear a pale green silk with ruffles. I was fitted for it in Richmond just before I left, and Althea brought it with her when she arrived,” Blythe said, and thinking about her beautiful gown, she decided against another sausage roll.

“Oh, la dee, how wonderful, Lucy. Green truly is your color,” Julia agreed. “Of course, I am rather more fortunate, because Simone says I can wear any color. ’Tis the fairness of my complexion and hair. I really do not think yellow would be a proper color for you.”

“I suppose your cousin Justin Braedon will be arriving when Palmer William does?” Blythe asked, fiddling with a half-eaten stuffed egg.

“Oh, la dee, I s’pose. Mama and Papa are expecting him, and his brother from the territories. I hardly remember him, but from what I’ve heard I am certain I shall not like him at all. I can tell you I am not looking forward to having to put him up, especially with Adam home too. It might be nice, though,” she said as a sudden thought struck her, “if Justin brought along a few of his cadet friends to stay over the weekend. Of course, I imagine that Matthew Wycliffe will be arriving shortly. He was invited, wasn’t he?”

“I believe so. He is interested in some of our stock which will be auctioned on Saturday, and then the race is on Sunday. Many are betting on Sea Racer to win, and he came out of the Wycliffe stables,” Leigh told her.

“Horses! Really, Leigh, is that all you can think about?” Julia demanded in exasperation. “Of course,” she continued in a different tone of voice, for she knew her friend, “he must truly love horses to have bred such fine stock and have such famous stables.”

“He is a very fine rider,” Leigh agreed. “I’ve never seen him take his whip to his mount, nor has he ever lost his seat as far as I know,” she said, which was high praise indeed.

Julia bit her lip in vexation. “Yes, that would seem to indicate he is very well-bred.”

“He converses quite well,” Leigh added, taking a sip of the lemonade Blythe had retrieved from the stream and poured into the goblets.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Julia was quick to agree, although, privately, she thought Matthew Wycliffe’s conversation rather dull. “You do like him, then?” she asked hopefully.

“Hmmm, I s’pose,” Leigh responded, glancing away for a moment, and only Blythe saw the smile that curved her lips.

“Oh, Leigh! Please!” Julia cajoled, straining to catch sight of Leigh’s face, but when her friend looked back, her expression was one of innocence. “You know I won’t breathe a word of it. You are my very dearest friend, and I do mean that,” Julia said with great solemnity, and she did mean it, for she and Leigh had been friends since they had taken their first tentative steps out of the nursery.

“Well,” Leigh said, relenting in her teasing of Julia, and knowing she could indeed trust her with any confidences, for although Julia could be exceedingly irritating at times, and rather silly, and selfish even, she was a trusted friend, and they’d stood together against many an adversary, “he is rather handsome.”

“Oh, most certainly,” Julia agreed, nodding her blond head and licking a dab of crabmeat from the corner of her lips. “And…”

“And very much a gentleman,” Leigh allowed.

“Not a word spoken against him.” Julia was in complete agreement, for if Leigh married Matthew Wycliffe and went to live in Charleston, then, as Leigh’s very best friend, she would be invited to stay and would accompany Leigh and Matthew to every important party of the Season. “And…”

“And he is very soft-spoken and he seems a very considerate man,” Leigh continued, remembering his patience with a confused and crotchety old gentleman who’d known his father and wanted to reminisce, and his kindness in comforting a frightened young boy who’d been thrown from his mount.

“You’ve already said he’s a gentleman, Leigh,” Julia reminded her. “And?” she prompted, her mouth full of pâté and biscuit.

“And?” Leigh asked, curious, for it seemed she had described Matthew Wycliffe reasonably well.

Julia swallowed the mouthful of half-chewed food, nearly choking in her haste. “Why, he’s rich! I declare, Leigh, how Matthew Wycliffe is situated in life is to be considered above all else. Naturally, it would be hoped that he is handsome, but then, that is why we are considering him in the first place. We don’t have to choose just any ol’ body. We can be selective.”

“
We?
”

“Well, of course, silly, you don’t think I’m going to let you choose your husband? I’m family now with your sister married to my brother. You’ve too soft a heart. As your very best friend, which I trust you will always remember—especially when I come to visit you in Charleston—I really must look out for our best interests,” Julia declared, although she wasn’t too concerned because Mrs. Travers had a keen eye when it came to matrimony and doing what was proper. Mrs. Travers would never allow Leigh to make a mésalliance. And Matthew Wycliffe as a son-in-law was hardly that, Julia thought with a sigh of deep satisfaction as she planned their futures in Charleston, her thoughts drifting dreamily away into the warm afternoon.

“Actually, I think I will never wed,” Leigh stated, thinking Julia had far too smug a look about her. “I will become another Rebecca, who can never know the love of her knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe,” Leigh predicted, pleased by the momentary start of surprise on Julia’s face. “I shall pine away with unrequited love, leaving this land to journey far.”

“La dee, then I’ll be the Lady Rowena, I am as fair as she, and then I’ll be the lady of the manor,” Julia decided, wishing she could spy a knight in shining armor come riding through the trees to sweep her up in his arms and carry her off to be ravished.

“You would be the lady of the castle. Ivanhoe had a castle.”

“Hmmm, I declare I like that even better.”

“Even if named Udolpho or Otranto?” Leigh asked with a shudder as she remembered the castles of those Gothic tales of old.

“Even then, for I might meet up with a very mysterious, handsome prince who would hold me captive until I fell in love with him.”

“Or you could end up like poor Clarissa,” Leigh said, reminding Julia of Richardson’s classic, while holding her clasped hands against her breast, “dying because she has been held against her will and cruelly violated.”

“Oh, Leigh, really!” Julia said with a look of outrage on her blushing face. “The scandalous things you say.”

“Which are not unknown to you, I suspect, since you were raised on a horse-breeding farm the same way I was,” Leigh reminded her, surprised by Julia’s sudden missishness, for unless she had been blind her whole life she must have seen a stallion mount a mare in heat.

“Well, I think I will be Evangeline,” Blythe said softly, “and I will search for my true love, only to find him on his deathbed, then I will die tragically of a broken heart.”

“Oooh, la dee, I do so hate unhappy endings,” Julia exclaimed. “At least little Jane Eyre found her Rochester, although, ’twas a pity he was nearly blinded in that fire and he was never considered quite handsome. I’m sure I don’t know what she saw in him. He was quite disagreeable and she was far too much the mouse to suit me. I dare say, I would not have had the patience to put up with his ill humor.”

“But if you loved him, you would stay by his side despite whatever happened to him,” Leigh said.

“I most certainly would not, because, I would have the foresight not to choose him in the first place. I declare, Leigh, you have me worried. A lady
always
knows when a gentleman means trouble. You can spot it a mile away. Never marry a man with a swagger. It’s a sure sign. What do you think we’ve been learning at school? How to find a proper husband and make an ideal match. You don’t want to be another Catherine Earnshaw, do you? Oh, she made the right decision, and married her proper Edgar Linton, but then she tormented herself pining away for that Heathcliff. A dark-visaged gypsy. Nothing good can come of such a mismatching. You have got to be coldhearted about matrimony. Love, my dears, has nothing to do with it.”

“But I think of the noble sacrifice some heroines make for love. Like Marguerite Gautier? She gave up Armand because she loved him, only to face his wrath, know unhappiness because of his contempt, then die knowing she had made the greatest, most unselfish sacrifice for love.”

“Well, pooh, who wants to die and leave your lover? What pleasure is there in that? We should never have read so scandalous a story, except that Madame loved it. It’s French,” Julia declared, taking a slice of sponge cake.

“What about his love? He might die of unhappiness,” Blythe said, defending the hero of
La Dame aux Camelias
.

“Oh, la dee, Lucy dear, don’t you believe that. Heroes are never the ones who have to sacrifice anything in romantic novels. It is always the heroine. If she doesn’t die of a broken heart because she didn’t capture the hero’s love, then she dies in childbirth because she did and has to suffer the consequences of their illicit love—because it usually is. He, of course, rides off to great adventure on the last page, certain to find a new love.”

Leigh stared dreamily at the sky, the pear tart on her plate untouched. “’Twas on an afternoon, much like this, when Daphne fled Apollo, and I am certain that Atalanta stopped in this very glade to pick up one of the golden apples dropped by Hippomenes.”

“Oh, Leigh, you do know I never enjoyed reading that stuffy ol’ Greek mythology,” Julia reminded her with a frown. But when Leigh remained silent, she added, “So?”

“Atalanta had to wed Hippomenes, because he had outraced her and won her challenge. She was very fleet of foot and thought no one could catch her, but he tricked her by tossing three golden apples, which were quite irresistible, in her path. She could not resist them, and stopped to capture them for her prize. Alas, no more would she roam the woods alone, because he won the race and claimed her as
his
prize. And poor Daphne, well, she was turned into a laurel tree in order to escape from Apollo, who was determined to possess her. But a maiden who is loved by one of the gods is to be pitied, for a child of that union is doomed to death, and the maid to exile. She wished for neither, and chose instead another fate. To honor her, Apollo chose to wear a crown of laurel leaves whenever victorious.”

“Really,” Julia breathed, thinking the Greeks had been more romantic than she remembered from her studies. “La dee, but I am sleepy,” she said with a sigh of contentment, her plate empty.

“Oh, no, we have work to do, so you’d better not get comfortable,” Leigh reminded her sleepy-eyed friend.

“Oh, Leigh, you know I can’t go blackberry picking in this,” she said, holding out the fine muslin of her skirt. “It’ll be ruined. Mama will be so displeased with me if I come home with it snagged and stained,” she explained unhappily, yet hopeful of being excused from the purpose of their picnic. “Simone, my
modiste
in Charleston, she sewed this gown for me and it cost a fortune. And my slippers, remember them,” she added just in case.

“I did offer you one of my old dresses to wear,” Leigh reminded her, unimpressed by Julia’s argument.

Julia eyed Leigh’s slender shape with a look of envy. “I declare, you eat the same things I do, yet you never even put on a pound. Only to you will I admit this, and I’ll deny it later, but I was afraid I might not be able to fasten your gown around my waist. It would have ruined the whole week for me, Leigh, to learn that your waist is smaller than mine,” she confessed with such a heartbroken expression that Leigh took pity on her.

“There are many who think I am too thin, and unfashionably tall,” she said. “You know you are an acclaimed beauty, with countless beaus, and you’ve one of the smallest waists in the county,” she reminded Julia.

“Yes, that is true, Leigh,” Julia said, pleased to hear as much even if she knew it was the truth, for she was quite proud of her figure and fair complexion. “Of course, your waist
is
tinier, and for someone who is not in the least bit plump, you are quite nicely rounded in all of the proper places,” Julia added, thinking it must be inherited from Mrs. Travers, who could still wear her wedding gown. “You are a trifle taller than I am, but not unfashionably so, truly,” she added generously, eyeing the length of Leigh’s skirts. “I’d have tripped over the hem of your gown anyway.”

“Here’re the pails,” Blythe said, tossing one to Leigh, then, thinking better of the temptation, placed Julia’s pail with undue care before her.

“Thank you, Lucy. Always so helpful,” Julia said sweetly, her expression looking as if she’d bitten into a sour berry by mistake. “Why, whatever are you doing, Leigh?” she exclaimed, her attention drawn to her friend, who’d kicked off her slippers, and was now unrolling her stockings.

“I don’t want to ruin my shoes either,” Leigh said, and taking the hem of her skirts she crossed and draped them around her hips before tying them together in a bulky knot at her waist. “There!”

Leigh turned around to show off her handiwork. Putting on her bonnet and picking up her pail, she said, “No stains or ruined slippers now. And I bet I’ll have a pail full of the biggest, blackest, juiciest berries before either of you,” she challenged, glancing over to where Blythe was already following her lead and removing her slippers and stockings. “Julia?”

But Julia had already kicked off her finest pair of kid slippers and unrolled her silk stockings; gathering all of the material of her voluminous skirts was another matter, though. But with Blythe and Leigh giving her a hand, they were soon searching the thick brambles for the prized blackberries.

Three

How sweet I roam’d from field to field,

And tasted all the summer’s pride,

Till I the prince of love beheld

Who in the sunny beams did glide.

William Blake

“I just hope you haven’t been picking farkleberries instead of blackberries, Julia,” Blythe said, eyeing with some suspicion the full pail Julia held up so proudly.