Resilient by necessity, she had soon discovered a silver lining to the clouds. Find a husband in Cornwall, Papa said, and Alicia had been perfectly prepared to do so. Pirate might not come home often those days, but he was bound to be there for Christmas. When he saw that she was now a young lady, with her hair put up and her skirts let down, he would offer for her hand, and they would live happily ever after.
Alicia sighed again, for the eternal optimism of youth.
She had done her best to give her daughters an easier childhood than she had experienced. They were cheerful, good-natured girls, whose sunny natures drew the gentlemen to their sides as much as did their pretty faces. They had plenty of choice. Thank heaven Alicia could afford to let them follow their hearts.
The figures of the dance brought Frederica within a few yards. Waiting for her turn, she darted out of the set to speak to her mother.
“It seems Mr. Pendragon is not a pirate after all, Mama, but he has been a privateer, which is the next best thing!” Laughing, she swirled back into the dance.
Alicia was not perfectly certain what a privateer might be. Girls these days were expected to be much more educated than when she was young, and to give her husband his due, Lord Ransome had not begrudged the expense of the finest governesses and schools. If he had known...
Mrs. Drummond Burrell approached again, apparently patrolling the room to insure against infractions of the strict etiquette enforced at Almack’s. A few steps beyond Alicia, she met Lady Jersey, a fellow-patroness. They exchanged a few words, then Sally Jersey came on to take a seat beside Alicia.
The fifth Countess of Jersey was known as “Silence,” because she only ever stopped talking for long enough to learn the gossip she then relayed. A beauty several years younger than Alicia, she fanned herself with a roguish smile which set Alicia’s mind at rest. Silence was just as capable of stern hauteur as Mrs. Drummond Burrell if the rules were infringed. Since she smiled, presumably Frederica and Emily had done nothing to set her back up.
“My dear Lady Ransome,” she cooed, “a little bird has whispered to me that you were once well acquainted with our latest Lion.”
Hoping she had misunderstood, Alicia forced herself to smile, willed her voice to remain steady and casual. “Lion?”
“Or should I say our latest Dragon?”
Betraying heat rose in Alicia’s cheeks. She fanned her face, saying, “One might almost imagine everyone here to be fire-breathing dragons, it is so hot this evening.”
“Excessively warm for the time of year,” Lady Jersey agreed with a touch of malice. “I speak of the Honourable Peter Pendragon, of course. Pirate Pendragon is an old friend of yours, I collect?”
“Yes, indeed. Lord Orford’s estate marches with my father’s, in Cornwall. The Pendragons and we Roscoes more or less grew up in each other’s pockets. As children, we never stood upon ceremony.”
“Ah, no doubt that would explain my informant’s misapprehension. She was quite convinced of a romantic attachment, but a lack of ceremony might lead to that impression, might it not?”
“I daresay,” Alicia managed to utter, scarcely above a whisper.
“A childhood friendship,” mused Lady Jersey. “I am much inclined to believe the parties know altogether too much about each other for illusions to survive. It is not at all likely to lead to a flight to the Border.”
“Not at all likely,” Alicia echoed more firmly. She had lived out of the world, but even she knew that not only had Silence eloped with her husband, but her husband’s parents had also married at Gretna Green. The maxim about people who live in glass houses floated through her head.
She had just decided that voicing it could only confirm Lady Jersey’s suspicions, when Colonel Lord Arthur Spence came up to them.
A fine figure in his scarlet regimentals, Lord Arthur was a friend of Alicia’s brother James. He bowed to the ladies, and said something to Lady Jersey which Alicia did not catch. She was too startled at the sight of the slight, brown-faced gentleman standing behind him.
She had quite convinced herself that he had forgotten, or did not care.
“Lady Ransome,” said Lord Arthur, “I think I need not introduce Peter Pendragon?”
“Yes. No! I mean....”
“Lady Jersey,” he continued smoothly, “may I escort you to take some refreshment?” Lord Arthur and Lady Jersey departed, scarcely noticed by Alicia.
“Ma’am.” Pirate’s dark head, as dark as her own, bowed over her hand.
Her throat hurt. She managed to force out, in scarcely more than a whisper, “M-mr. Pendragon.” Then she blinked. “Why, sir, have you really been absent from England so long that you are still wearing your hair in a queue, in the fashion of twenty years ago?”
He grinned at her, and his grin had not changed by an iota. “We sailors still wear our hair long. None of these new-fangled crops for us. Shall we dance, Allie-oh?”
“Oh, Pirate!”
Cornwall 1793
“Allie-oh, shall we dance?”
“Oh, Pirate, yes, please, but it is the middle of a set, you know.”
“Dash it, so it is. I did not notice. I am not much in the petticoat line, you see. Next dance, then?”
It was Christmas. The Pendragons had brought a large house party to Cornwall, and they invited their neighbours to a Christmas ball.
The great hall was decked with evergreens and holly, and a Yule log burned in the vast fireplace. Alicia had never seen so many people in one place, almost all of them strangers. Feeling intimidated, in spite of her new gown, she hovered at her mother’s elbow.
Lady Roscoe was in her element, laughing and chattering and avidly acquiring gossip about Society acquaintances. She had to catch up on the latest on-dits, for they were to go to London after all.
Three things had changed Lord Roscoe’s mind:
The first was the latest fashions come from France. France and England might be at war, but where ladies’ dress was concerned Paris still led the way. In Paris, sporting silks and satins could lead to the dreadful guillotine. Simple muslins erased the visible difference between hated aristos and the hating populace. So in England, ladies at the forefront of fashion were passing their silks, satins, and velvets to their abigails and wearing simple muslins, high-waisted and straight of skirt. The cost of outfitting a wife and daughter for the Season plummeted.
The second factor influencing Lord Roscoe was an invitation to stay at his brother-in-law’s town house, thus obviating the expense of leasing a suitable residence.
The third was desperation. No matter how hard he struggled, he was deeper in debt each year.
Alicia, while in her father’s eyes she would never match her mother’s fair beauty, had turned into an unexpectedly attractive young lady. In London, she might--she must!--catch the eye of a gentleman wealthy enough to bail out his bride’s family.
So Alicia was at the Pendragons’ Christmas ball, testing the waters, and feeling very much as if she had plunged in over her head, until Pirate materialized at her side. At twenty, he was still slight and not above middle-height, but for all that, a good-looking, well set up young gentleman.
“Here, Allie, let me put my name down on your programme, so you don’t forget.”
“As though I could!” Alicia proffered her humiliatingly bare card. The only names on it were those of her brothers, all home for Christmas, and her mother had written in those.
“Rupert don’t want to take you in for supper,” Pirate declared. “I shall scratch him out and put him in here instead, and you will take supper with me.” He scribbled for a minute, then turned to her with a smile. “I’ll be dam...dashed if you have not turned out quite well, Allie-oh. Devilish pretty, in fact.”
Blushing, Alicia said breathlessly, “Really? Do you really mean it, Pirate?”
“I don’t deal in Spanish coin, even if Spain’s our ally at present.”
“Is it? Mama does not let me read the political news. It is not proper for a young lady to know much about politics. She says if I am interested and my husband approves, there is time enough for that after marriage.”
“Marriage!” Pirate frowned. “But you are not getting married. You are much too young.”
“I shall be eighteen next May. I am going to London in the spring to look for a husband.”
Alicia did not exactly expect him to tell her on the spot that she need look no further, so she was not too downcast when he laughed.
“Off to the Marriage Mart, are you?” he said. “Bedamned if I don’t put in an appearance at the odd ball or two, then. You must let me know which you mean to attend.”
“Will you, Pirate? I shall not feel half so terrified if I know you will be there.”
“Nothing to be terrified of, Allie-oh,” he said indulgently. “I daresay you will take very well. Come along, and I’ll introduce you to a couple of friends of mine. Between us, we shall see that you don’t sit out too many dances.”
Brought up with a swarm of boys, never having learnt to be bashful, coy, or flirtatious with the opposite sex, Alicia was a great success with Pirate’s friends. Between them they nearly filled her dance card, and drawn by their example, three other young gentlemen soon took the rest. She danced until supper, ate ravenously--to Pirate’s amusement--and then returned to the great hall to dance again. And each of her partners in turn manoeuvred her beneath the bunch of mistletoe dangling from the musicians’ gallery.
They kissed her on the cheek, boldly, shyly, apprehensively, smirkingly. All except Pirate, who kissed her teasingly, on her lips.
“Privilege of an old friend,” he claimed, laughing.
Her lips burned. They still tingled hours later, back at home, when she tumbled sleepily into her bed, to dream of Pirate. She had thought she loved him before. Now she knew what true love was.
* * * *
London was bewildering at first. The noise was what most struck Alicia. The racket of roisterers seeking their beds merged with the early morning cries of street sellers, peddling everything from clean sand for scouring pots to milk fresh from the cow. The din of iron-clad hooves and wheels on cobbles never seemed to cease.
Soon Alicia grew as oblivious to these sounds as she was to the birds’ dawn chorus or the wind in the elms at home. Almost as quickly, she grew accustomed to the life of a young lady making her come-out.
There were endless fittings for gowns, as “simple muslins” turned out not to be so simple after all. Moreover, the whites and pale colours now in favour dirtied so quickly one had to change one’s dress half a dozen times a day. And the presentation gown was another matter altogether--Queen Charlotte still required silks and velvets, hoops and feathers, of all those making their curtsy to her.
Then there were pelisses, shawls, gloves, stockings, boots and slippers, fans, and a hundred other oddments to be purchased. The choosing of a single hat or bonnet could take an entire morning.
Lady Roscoe was in heaven. Lord Roscoe looked blacker and blacker.
As soon as the ladies had a couple of new gowns apiece, the morning calls began. Lady Roscoe knew all the important hostesses. Alicia became accustomed to being introduced with a deprecating, “Of course, I married young, and the dear child is scarcely out of the schoolroom.”
What did her mother say when accompanied by Rupert, now four and twenty? Alicia wondered, as she curtsied to yet another of the Society matrons upon whose approval all depended.
Having passed this initial scrutiny, she was made acquainted with their daughters, the dozens of young ladies in the same situation. Unused as she was to the company of girls her own age, she was shy. Though she was quickly accepted as an unexceptionable companion for a walk in Hyde Park or a visit to Hookham’s Circulating Library, she made no particular friends among them.
It was quite otherwise with the young gentlemen. True to his word, Pirate called, bringing a couple of friends, one of whom she had met in Cornwall. Another of her Christmas ball partners heard she was in Town and dropped by to pay his respects. With them she was at ease.
Word spread that she was a comfortable sort of girl, as well as pretty. Youthful sprigs of fashion begged their friends for introductions. Alicia had the inestimable felicity of going to her first London ball with every single dance spoken for beforehand.
Neither Lord nor Lady Roscoe appeared to be as pleased as might have been expected. Not until much later, looking back, did Alicia guess why.
Alicia’s court rivalled her mother’s, and the baroness looked upon the callow youths with a jealous eye. She soon realized with relief, however, that her daughter was ill at ease with her own cicisbeos, mature men of the world who reminded Alicia of her father. She had never in her life held a proper conversation with her father.
On the other hand, the baron’s disappointment rose from the youthfulness of Alicia’s beaux. Most were of modest means, but even the two or three wealthy enough for his needs were young enough to be still under the influence of older relatives. They would not be permitted to marry a penniless bride and dissipate their fortunes in rescuing her family.
Scarcely aware of her parents’ concerns, Alicia drove in the park with a different gentleman each day of the week, and danced each night away in the splendid ballrooms of Mayfair and St. James’s. She was thoroughly enjoying herself.
If she occasionally felt guilty at the pleasure she found in frivolity, it was because of the news from France. Even the most sheltered young ladies knew that in the autumn Queen Marie Antoinette had followed King Louis to the guillotine. As the Terror’s grip tightened on France, some fashionable ladies in England took to wearing red ribbons around their necks in sympathy with the victims.
However, for the most part gentlemen saved their talk of the Terror and the war against its perpetrators for occasions when ladies were not present. The only visible effect in England was the flood of emigr‚s fleeing across the Channel.
Alicia was less sheltered than most young ladies. Her beaux liked her because she was not missish. She did not expect a stream of extravagant compliments, or bridle at the odd oath inadvertently dropped into a conversation. They could talk to her without minding their tongues, and inevitably they talked of war.