Elisabeth Kidd (21 page)

They entered the refreshment room just as Mr Chatham-Hill was
handing Isabel a cup of lemonade. Imogen Curtiz and Lord Alvanley had
converged over a cup of tea, and Lord Geoffrey could be seen glowering
on the scene from behind a pillar. He did not look to Antonia to be
contemplating erupting into it again, however, particularly not after the arrival of Miss Cloris Beecham, looking ravishing in a yellow gown
trimmed with white rosettes and pearls—and wearing
two
pearl earbobs,
Antonia observed thankfully.

“Dear Antonia!” exclaimed this vision, kissing that lady on both
cheeks and remarking how lovely she looked, a compliment which Miss
Fairfax naturally returned before introducing Clory to Lord Molyneux.

“How do you do?” Miss Beecham said demurely, but interrupted herself before his lordship had finished his bow. “Oh, listen! They are
striking up that Austrian tune that is all the rage. Do you waltz, my lord?
But of course you do!”

Being thus prodded, Lord Molyneux had little option but to solicit
Miss Beecham’s hand for the dance and went away with her much in the
style of a lamb being led to the slaughter.  Antonia was not left to play
gooseberry for very long, however, several gentlemen having discovered
an ardent desire in themselves to partner the elder Miss Fairfax, so that
for some time it was difficult to say whether the elder or the
younger enjoyed more opportunities to take the floor.

Antonia
found herself regretting her promise to Imogen not to interfere when it
became apparent that Isabel was favouring gentlemen—however unap
pealing otherwise—of large fortune. This must have struck other observers
as only natural, however, for they nodded sagely and wondered why
Maria Sefton should have all the credit for having sponsored the two
beauties.

Then, shortly before eleven o’clock, a discreet but palpable flurry, like a summer breeze over a meadow, spread over the room. Antonia was
startled to see a young lady standing near her raise a trembling hand to
her girlish bodice as she stared wide-eyed at the door.

Turning her head,
Antonia saw standing there, as if he had only been waiting for someone
to notice him, England’s greatest living poet—or devil or clown, accord
ing to one’s taste—George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron.

Whichever of his personalities was the true one, even Antonia could
not deny his fascination. His dark, brooding eyes and scornful mouth, the painful deformity of his foot, his whole attitude of weary disdain,
were in their own way all quite beautiful. Antonia distrusted perfection
in any human being, and Byron’s spectacular faults suited his flamboyant
legend far more than did his perfect profile. They made him, at the same
time that he was being idolised, a little more human.

He was instantly surrounded by women who claimed acquaintance and presumed upon it outrageously. Byron said little and looked pained, as if
such adulation still made his head ache—even if, since the morning in
1812 when he “awoke to find himself famous,” it had ceased spinning.

Standing quite still among the butterflies, Byron looked around him
and nodded recognition to a few acquaintances. Antonia saw Kedrington raise a quizzical eyebrow to him, and Byron shrug lightly in return. Lord
Alvanley, waiting beside Antonia to lead her onto the floor, offered to
introduce her to the poet, but she declined to join the throng surrounding him, preferring, she said, to observe the spectacle from afar.

Soon
after, however, in the movement of the dance, she inadvertently jostled
Byron as he attempted to pass near her. Alvanley offered a careless apology, but Byron disregarded him. Antonia, whose initial detachment
had become tempered with a flash of understanding for Byron’s peculiar vulnerability, gave him a warm smile when he bowed wordlessly to her.
Barely minutes later, having stayed only long enough to turn everyone else’s conversation to the subject of himself, Byron departed.

“Did you see that?” Angus Wilmot remarked unnecessarily when the
door had closed on the poet and a fresh buzz of gossip had broken out.
Antonia, who had discovered Angus somewhat at a loss beside the
punchbowl, feared it would be a time yet before the boy ceased to emulate
fashion’s idols and discovered a style of his own. She hoped Kedrington
would be patient with him.

“I should not take Lord Byron too much to heart,” she said kindly to Angus. “He is a world unto himself, you know, and scarcely to be taken as the norm—or even the ideal.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Angus said, adding feelingly, “But still—I wonder how he does it?”

He seemed inclined to expand on this, but the sight of Lord Kedrington
and Miss Coverley coming toward him at that moment sufficed to
staunch any further confidences and, indeed, to drive Angus to retreat in
disorder to the card rooms. Kedrington did not fail to notice this
manoeuvre, and his silence on the matter told Antonia much of how he thought about it.

“Did you see Byron?” Miss Coverley repeated, only slightly less breathlessly than Angus. “I wonder that he troubled to come at all, only seconds before the doors were closed.... It’s a great pity that Lady Caro wasn’t here after all.
...”

Kedrington raised a hand to interrupt her. “I beg you, Aunt, spare me
any more of that lady. I have little patience with such public hysterics as Caroline would have felt it incumbent upon her to perform tonight, and I am weary of the subject. Miss Fairfax, I came to ask you to dance and to
distract my mind from such unpleasantries. You see—they even play
another waltz for us.”

“I cannot engage to distract you from thoughts of other ladies, my
lord, but I shall be happy to dance with you.”

He held his hands out to her. She took them, making some jest about
her dancing lessons, and he replied in kind. But a moment later she
could not remember what they had said and was aware only of the
pressure of his gloved hand at her waist, guiding her. She felt for the first
time a certain uneasiness with him, but she could no more account for it
than she could disregard the unexpected warmth she felt wherever he touched her or when she felt his breath close to her face. The warmth
spread through her with the beat of the music and she felt it reach her cheeks. She hoped he would think it was only the exertion that made her
redden so.

“That is very becoming,” he said after a moment, of her coiffure. She
thought he spoke rather quickly, as if his breath came irregularly, like
hers. She schooled her thanks to be graceful but distant, so that he was moved to try another tack.

“I chanced upon your sister and Mrs Curtiz this morning,” he told her. “They were coming out of Westminster Abbey.”

“Yes.”

“You were not with them,” he persisted.

She had to smile at that, and lifted twinkling eyes to his. “I have seen
the abbey before, sir. It cannot have changed so very much in the interval.
Why should I go again?”

“To see how you would like to be married in it.”

The sparkle faded again. “What nonsense.”

“I agree. Affected, too. St George’s Hanover Square it must be.”

Antonia sighed. “My lord, ‘I could find it in my heart to marry thee purely to be rid of thee.’”

“
Brava
,” he said, but did not pursue the subject, instead allowing the
motion of the waltz to bind them together a little longer. When it ended
at last, Antonia detached herself gently from his hold, but he kept her
arm loosely on his, saying, “There is Miss Beecham giving me a reproach
ful look for having deceived her that I could not find my way to King
Street without her assistance. I see that I shall be obliged to exercise the utmost tact when next she accosts—that is, when next I speak with her.
Do me the kindness to escort me to those two chairs there by the wall, so
that we may escape her for a moment. I expect it will be permissible for
us to sit down briefly, both of us having made more than our share of
polite conversation this evening.”

When she made no response, he enquired, “You are not amused by
Almack’s, Miss Fairfax?”

She looked at him, but her smile was hesitant. “To the contrary, I find
myself vastly entertained. But it is a little tiring, as if one had entered a race after not having so much as sat a horse for a long time.”

“You lack a little practice only.”

She considered this in silence. He was right, of course. She would
soon be her untiring self again and dance until dawn. If she did not have
Isabel to concern herself with ... But she did not in fact need to concern
herself with her niece. Isabel was doing very well on her own, and
between Cloris Beecham and Imogen Curtiz she had all the advice and
chaperonage she required, so that Antonia might well forget her notions
of duty and enjoy herself, particularly now that Charles was in London to indulge her in any entertainment she might fancy. She did not under
stand why she did not feel her freedom as she ought.

The viscount tried again to initiate a little small talk by thanking her
for being civil to his heir. Unfortunately, this reminded her that she had
intended to drop a little hint to him about Angus. She remarked that she
thought Mr Wilmot might profit from the viscount’s attention more
than from her own.

“It seems to me that he is continually clamouring for my attention. I
wonder if it would improve his soul to have the means by which he
indulges in lemon-yellow waistcoats cut off?”

“Have you the power to do so?”

“He receives an allowance from me, yes.”

“So that you accept responsibility for him, putting him in your finan
cial debt, but consider your duty finished there? Why do you not free him
to follow your example instead of merely attempting unsuccessfully to
ape your style?”

“Do you suggest I should abet him in
successfully
aping my style?”

“If you truly wish him to follow in your footsteps, yes!”

“I am visited by the suspicion,” he remarked dryly, “that you are attempting to burden me with more of my family’s concerns than I care
to shoulder, with the sole object of forcing me to set those of your family
aside.”

“Oh, no, my lord. I am certain your shoulders are broad enough to support both.”

“Vixen. I have a good mind to take myself to the country on a repairing
lease and leave the lot of you to fend for yourselves.”

“No,” she said. “Don’t do that.”

He searched her face. “What’s happened to you, my heart? You are most decidedly not your usual delightful self this evening.”

Forced to the counterattack, she replied lightly, “How ungallant of you, my lord! Surely your instructive aunts must have told you never to say to a lady that she is in any but her best looks. If I am a little tired this evening, it is only...no, it is nothing of significance.”

“Nevertheless, something is cutting up your peace. Will you not tell me what it is, so that I may try to remedy it?”

“Oh, no! I am certain there is nothing gentlemen detest more than a female sighing all over them in melancholy. I am not often so blue-
devilled, I assure you, and I shall come about quickly enough!”

He did not pursue the subject, but made up his mind not to let so
much time go by before he saw her again. She seemed almost to have
forgotten what had passed between them already—did she really think
she had to explain to him that she was normally the sunniest, most
delightful of companions? That if anything disturbed her, it must be
something of significance, even if she did not recognise it as readily as
he, who knew her better than she realised?

For the first time, he
regretted the obligations he had taken on for friends who had once meant
so much to him but whose claims now only distracted him from spending
every waking thought and moment on Antonia Fairfax. He had taken
them on, and he would have to see them through, but his heart was no
longer in them.

“It won’t do,” pronounced Mrs Curtiz of a huge gilded pierglass that
had been brought down from the attic.

“A pair, even four, would be suitable, but one alone will only draw
attention to itself rather than to what it is intended to reflect.”

“I very much fear you are right,” Antonia said with a sigh. She had
become enamoured of the idea of hanging mirrors on opposite walls of
the ballroom to reflect the light from the chandeliers, but those which
already hung there were insufficient to this purpose. Regretfully, she
said, “Take it away, please,” and two strong footmen picked it up between
them and carried it out.