“Really?” Cecilia asked sweetly. “One hears he has picked up the oddest notions abroad. Does he affect oriental garb as well, or does he confine his strange sartorial humors to the work of Mr. Stultz?”
“Wickham is considered the best-dressed gentleman in these parts,” Dallan told her.
“But you will put him to the blush when you appear at the assembly in your London jacket,” she replied, still demure. “Weston, I expect?”
“I don’t use Weston,” he said, becoming irate.
“You prefer Scott,” she nodded. “Several provincial gentlemen do. He is cheaper, of course.”
“The cost is immaterial to me,” he retorted angrily. He longed to tell her that Stultz was the first tailor in the land, but it occurred to him that Wickham had mentioned not liking the shoulders of his latest acquisition and he was going to try someone else. The name escaped him.
“But surely, Mr. Dallan, when you have only a modest estate, you must weigh the cost of everything,” Cecilia said innocently. “Or are you a large landowner?”
“Seven hundred acres,” he exclaimed, growing angrier by the minute.
Again Cecilia smiled in sympathy. “You are wise to have one or two really good jackets. People in straitened circumstances should buy fewer things, but of good quality. It is a saving in the long run.”
Cecilia was aware of receiving silent but speaking glances from her cousins, and felt she had gone far enough for an initial encounter. In fact, she decided to leave them all alone, and let them enjoy a good ripping apart of her manners. It would make them feel closer together.
“Speaking of scrimping and saving,” she said brightly, “I mean to polish my diamonds for the assembly myself and save three shillings. Good day, gentlemen. So happy to have made your acquaintance, for I believe Alice mentioned you before, Mr. Wideman.”
She had every intention of limiting her slight to Dallan to this inference that Martha had
not
mentioned him, but he then had the ill-timed idea of delivering a parting shot of his own.
“I believe Miss Meacham has mentioned you to us also, Miss Cummings. You
did
say, did you not, Martha, that you had a spinster cousin from Hampshire?”
“Indeed, I did not!” Martha objected instantly.
Miss Cummings’s hackles were up, and she stopped at the door. “I cannot say I have ever heard you mentioned, Mr. Dallan, but then there are some acquaintances one does not boast of. Good day.” She waited till the door was closed behind her before emitting a gurgle of laughter. The impudence of the puppy! Spinster!
She was no sooner out the door than Dallan gave vent to his spleen. “Pity you have that lady battening herself on you,” he said to Martha. “How long does she mean to stay?”
“Not very long, I think,” Martha said apologetically. Her finger found its way to her mouth as she thought about Cecilia. She had never mentioned her to Henley. He had called Cecilia a spinster in spite.
“I hope she leaves soon. I for one do not plan to call and be insulted while she remains with you.”
“You shouldn’t have called her a spinster,” Alice said.
“She’s a quarter century if she’s a day,” he asserted, and looked to hear her true age.
“How do you conjure out that, Henley?” Wideman asked innocently, and received no reply. “She’s very pretty,” he added. He had heard from Lord Wickham that a regular dasher was visiting the Meachams, and so had Henley. It was the main reason they had come, to make her acquaintance.
Recalling all this, Dallan began to tuck in his horns. “She is well enough for an older lady,” he conceded.
“She is very fashionable,” Martha told him, knowing his love of fashion. “She always visits London for the Season and knows all the smarts and swells.”
It was no more than Dallan suspected, and he was particularly ill-humored that he had come to cuffs with the charmer, whom he had hoped to set up a flirtation with. Certainly Wickham had been impressed with her. “I suppose she is well greased. She mentioned wearing diamonds.”
“Her papa is a regular nabob,” Mrs. Meacham told him. “He owns half of Hampshire. She has two brothers who will get the bulk of the estates, but she has thirty thousand in her own right.”
“How old a lady is she?” he asked, eager to hear just how outstanding a prize he had come to cuffs with.
“Twenty-two,” the mother said.
Dallan was twenty-five. It formed no part of his plan to marry Miss Cummings. Merely she was to have been a sophisticated diversion. When—if—he ever married, it would be Martha. She was looking jolly today. Sort of distinguished somehow, with that new hairdo and a different gown. There was something else, too, that he could not quite put a finger on. She seemed to be looking at him differently. The unrecognized difference in her mien was calculation, certainly the last thing he would have suspected her of. He did not yet realize that his beloved was measuring him. Even—astonishing thought—finding him lacking in some respects.
That was unkind of Henley to tease Cecilia about being old, Martha thought. He ought not to have called in buckskins and top boots. And having called, he ought to have done more than loll in his chair, take snuff twice without offering his box to George, and look out the window with his back to the company half the time.
“Shall we go on the strut?” Henley asked her.
This was condescension of a high order, and she was not yet strong enough to resist the treat. She went for her bonnet, and the two young couples went out to walk to the village church and amble through the small graveyard, and they never once reflected that this was their own ultimate destination, in some few years.
Martha even entertained, for a half hour, the delightful notion that the gentlemen meant to remain to luncheon, but this was pushing compatability too far. They left the ladies at the door, with assurances of seeing them at the assembly.
The visit was the occasion of a long gossip about the gentlemen, for the girls had to hear Cecilia’s opinion of them. She gave moderate approval, but did not let her praise reach any rarefied heights. In fact, she had taken Dallan in such dislike that she decided he must be supplanted, and meant to con alternative possibilities at the assembly. When the girls left, she and Mrs. Meacham continued talking.
“You sent young Dallan to the rightabout,” Mrs. Meacham congratulated.
“And vice versa, ma’am—calling me a spinster!”
“I call that dig downright shabby.”
“His manners are really atrocious.”
“So they are, but you must pay him no mind. I’m sure you could marry where you liked.”
“He won’t be an easy man for Martha to live with.”
“Not the easiest. I don’t know what maggot you have got in your head, Cecilia, wasting your time making matches for everyone else and never a mite of thanks will you get for it either.”
“I enjoy doing it. Do you really think Dallan—”
“Henry wanted it.”
That was always the last word. Cecilia saw they were not communicating and went upstairs. The afternoon was spent in preparations for the evening party and receiving a call from Kate Daugherty. Mrs. Meacham was her usual chaperon for such outings as the assembly, which the vicar and his wife did not wish to attend.
By dinnertime, the new gowns were in readiness, the coiffures properly set, a glass of sherry drunk to settle their nerves and hopefully brighten their cheeks. After dinner they called the carriage and stopped at the vicarage to pick up Kate. At eight-thirty they all stepped into the parish hall and deposited their pelisses in the waiting room, tidied their hair and gowns, and went on into the dance hall, pulses racing with anticipation of the evening.
Chapter Five
Cecilia noticed at once that the assembly hall was little better than a barn. It was a large, bleak, cold room, lacking even curtains. Black, glinting windows along the length of two walls gave a ghostly reflection of the crowded room. But she was soon distracted by the pleasant murmur and bustle of the crowd. Whether at a private ball in a stately home or at a country assembly, there was always that air of suppressed excitement, of waiting, and wondering what the evening would bring.
The ladies’ toilettes must be examined and compared, and the gentlemen observed in hopes of an interesting newcomer. On the ladies there were many adornments: a surfeit of floss trimming, tinseled silk turbans and strass glass jewelry. Cecilia found herself scanning the crowd for a tall, dark gentleman who wore a size nine glove. She was sure he would stand out in this countrified throng, but she did not see him.
The object of most outstanding interest was, in fact, herself. Mrs. Meacham’s visitor had been glimpsed in shops and introduced to a select few, but this was her first public appearance. She had not been seen before decked out in diamonds and a gown designed in Paris, and a gown of such magnificence that all the ladies gaped in envious pleasure. Beneath a rose-lace overdress, a glimmer of cream satin was to be seen. Her raven curls bounced in saucy abandon, with only a small diamond star over the left ear to restrain them. This casual use of diamonds was a new thing entirely in Laycombe. Miss Cummings and her grand toilette would provide gossip for a week.
Gossip was soon enriched by an item of even greater interest when Lord Wickham strolled in. The village had had little more than a glimpse of him either, and now they would have five hours in which to take in any foreign tricks he had picked up during his travels. His haircut, done in London, was thought to have something of old Rome in it. He had traded in his
au naturel
for a Brutus cut. His complexion, darkened by Albion’s wind and rain, suggested to local eyes the sun of Egypt. The ruby nestled in the folds of an intricate cravat was credited to Turkey. When he walked directly to Mrs. Meacham and bowed punctiliously over her hand, there was thought to be something Gallic in his posture. And when he led Miss Cummings into the first dance, many a wise head nodded and inferred silently, “I thought as much.”
Miss Cummings had rather thought the same herself and had polished her diamonds and worn her best gown for no other reason than to impress Lord Wickham. The tricks she purveyed to her charges were the same ones practiced by herself. She had decided she would set up a flirtation with him to get into his confidence and direct his interests in the proper course, to help along her cousins.
She was no stranger to masculine admiration and realized from their first meeting that Lord Wickham was interested in her. When his first object upon entering the hall was to look all around till he spotted her, and his second to come and be presented, she felt the battle half won. The remaining half would be taken care of while they danced. She set out to charm him.
“You see I have kept my word and come to the assembly,” she said, with a flirtatious smile.
“I am happy to have the opportunity to continue our chance meeting,” he replied, in the same manner. “And how happy the locals are to have someone new to stare at.”
Cecilia silently acknowledged that he had noticed she was garnering more than her share of attention, but of course made little of it. “Are you sure it is not yourself that is being quizzed? You are a rara avis here as well. I have heard unflattering tales of your being too toplofty to attend the local dos, sir.”
“I’m here, ain’t I?” he riposted. “I think you know what has drawn me out of hibernation. Tonight I was promised
you
would be here.”
“I don’t recall that it was a solemn promise.”
“Oh no, not solemn.”
The flirtation was off to a fine start. Such attentions as this were mere commonplaces to Miss Cummings. She smiled, believed perhaps a tenth of what he was saying, and forged on. “You would have me believe you are here on the strength of a one minute conversation with a stranger?” she asked archly.
“Mrs. Meacham is a neighbor, and perforce her cousin is not a total stranger. As to that one minute conversation—what a fast pair we are, to have set up an assignation in sixty seconds flat.”
“You make it sound as though I had accosted a strange gentleman for no reason but to tell him I would be attending the assembly,” she charged. “You asked me if I would be here.”
“How else should I have discovered what I wanted to know?” he asked reasonably. “As to that description, ‘strange gentleman’! I am not
that
strange.
You
are the one who hurled the buttons all over the shop when you could not get the clerk’s attention. I did no more than holler like an auctioneer.”
“I knocked the box over by accident. How horrid you are—you make me sound like a monster,” she said, and used it as an excuse to pout.
Lord Wickham recognized her every stunt and approved them all. This was no innocent miss, but a high-flyer very much to his taste. “Horrid,” he agreed amiably. “And now I mean to be fast as well and ask you an impertinent question. How long do you stay in Laycombe, and when may I call on you?”
“That is two impertinent questions, sir, one of which you have asked before. You were obviously paying no attention whatsoever to my reply. My stay is of an indefinite duration.”
“But it is really the other question I am more interested in. When may I call on you? You see my trick, I do not ask
if
I may call, or you might say no.”
“A loaded question, in fact. Such ruses are not necessary with me. You may call whenever you wish.”
“Carte blanche?” he asked, lifting a black wing of brow. “That is
much
better than I dared to hope.”
“I can’t say I care for your choice of words, sir. Carte blanche has ambiguous overtones.”
“Only when given to ladies by gentlemen, surely?” he quizzed.
“You mean to women, I think. The practice is not in vogue with
ladies,
to my knowledge.” The correction was delivered in a bantering way, to remove the sting.
“I stand corrected, ma’am,” he said humbly, and immediately ran on to make sport of her. “I have so little knowledge of how affairs of that sort are carried on that I must accede to your superior knowledge.”
“Take care, sir, or I shall rescind that generous invitation to call when you wish.” Oh dear, was she to begin sitting at home every day, too, waiting for her beau? “Of course,” she said hurriedly, “I cannot promise I shall be at home every day.”