The Frost Fair (15 page)

Her equilibrium regained, she looked up to find the ladies standing about all ready and waiting for her. Lady Carrier was resplendent in a velvet cloak and feathered turban, in the center of which gleamed a diamond brooch; Sybil was appropriately and modestly gowned in a girlish blue lustring covered with a warm pelisse; the butler, Keating, was helping Trixie—luminously lovely in silvery-white—to put on her cloak; and Isabel, as she fastened the buttons of a warm, wool spencer over her burgundy gown, was eyeing her niece in approval. “How lovely and festive you all look,” Meg told them warmly.

“Oh, but
you
, Lady Meg,” Trixie exclaimed, “will
truly
take everyone's breath away!”

“Yes, indeed,” Lady Carrier agreed admiringly, “our dressmakers will undoubtedly be asked to make copies of your gown for every lady who sees you tonight. Oh, here's Mrs. Rhys with your cloak, my dear. Look, Trix, it's of brown velvet lined with the fabric of the gown. Do you see what it means to have a London
modiste?
But put your own cloak on, my love, for we're all ready to go. It won't do for us to stand about here in the hall when we're dressed for outdoors. Geoffrey, take her ladyship to the coach right now, if you please.”

“No, thank you,” Meg said firmly, putting her crutch into place under her arm. “I shall manage it all by myself.” And she began to hobble toward the door.

“Don't be a ninny,” Geoffrey said, pulling on his greatcoat before hurrying after her. “You may not be aware of it, but there are nine steps leading down from the doorway to the—”

He was interrupted by a loud gasp. Meg had stumbled. Her crutch fell to the floor with a clatter, and uttering a piercing scream, she tumbled down in a heap and lay still.

All the ladies shrieked in horror and clustered around her, but Geoffrey pushed through and dropped to his knees beside her. “Meg, what—”

Her eyelids fluttered open. “Oh … my
ankle,
” she moaned weakly. “I'm such a … fool!”

He stared at her a moment through narrowed eyes and then lifted her to a sitting position, supporting her against his shoulder. “Have you hurt anything else?”

“No … I don't think so …”

“Oh, dear,” Trixie said in concern, “what a dreadful pass. Do you think you can still go to Lady Habish's?”

“How can you even think of such a thing when her ladyship is obviously suffering?” Lady Carrier muttered, but the tone of her voice clearly indicated that Lady Habish's
soirée
was as much her concern as her daughter's.

“Oh, but you
must
think of it,” Meg insisted weakly. “You must all go at once, of course. I shall be quite all right by myself. Mrs. Rhys … and Keating … shall be able to help me …”

“Nonsense, my love,” Isabel said firmly, “I shall stay with you. I'm sure Lady Habish will understand.”

Trixie and Meg exchanged looks of secret alarm. “No, no, Aunt Bel, you mustn't,” Meg put in quickly. “Didn't you say yourself that, since the party is in our honor, our absence would be terribly cruel? At least
one
of us must make an appearance.
Do
go along and enjoy yourselves. I promise that I shall be quite all right.”

“No,
I
shall stay with you, my dear,” Lady Carrier said bravely. “I am your hostess, after all, and—”

A chorus of voices interrupted, all volunteering to give up their evening of pleasure to keep Meg company. “Be still, the lot of you!” Geoffrey said coldly. “It's obvious that the absence of any one of you would be more greatly noted than my own, especially since Lady Habish has never
yet
seen me at her table and probably has no expectation of seeing me there tonight. On the other hand, it's I who will be of greater assistance to our invalid here than any of you. So go along at once, make our excuses and leave us in peace.”

He got up and lifted Meg into his arms again. The others, realizing that Geoffrey's words were both reasonable and adamant, said apologetic and reluctant goodbyes to Meg and went out to the waiting carriage.

Geoffrey, without another word, carried his burden to the library where he dropped her unceremoniously upon the sofa, turned his back on her and began to remove his greatcoat.

Meg watched him warily. He seemed to be showing more anger than concern over her new “accident,” and his coldness frightened her a bit. “I'm sorry to have caused you to miss the festi—”

“Don't bother to continue the pretense, ma'am,” he barked, tossing his greatcoat aside and turning on her abruptly. “Did you think me so simple-minded that I'd not see through your little scheme? Was it Trixie who devised this feather-headed plot to keep me at home, or was it a fabrication of your own?”

“It was my idea,” she admitted, pulling herself up to a sitting position and facing him bravely. “How did you guess?”

“How could I
fail
to guess?” he sneered. “With Trixie in a state of high excitement instead of flat despair, and with you suddenly so insistent on using a grossly inadequate crutch to hobble about with, it was plain as a pikestaff that you'd concocted
some
scheme to thwart me.”

“Yes, I can see now that I underestimated you. But Geoffrey, I don't understand. If you weren't fooled, why did you play along with the plot? Why didn't you expose me?”

“What?
Expose
you? Before my mother and your aunt? That would hardly be the act of a gentleman.”

She smiled faintly. “I've known you to act ungentlemanly before this, and with less reason.”

“Perhaps, but this time …” He hesitated and turned away from her, crossing to the fireplace and stirring up the flames.

“This time?”

“This time I did not wish to give you
another
excuse to … hold me in abhorence,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed on the fire.

She felt her heart make a little leap. “I don't hold you in abhorence,” she said, realizing with surprise that the words were suddenly quite true.

“Don't you?” He turned and gave her a mocking smile. “Yet surely a man whom you describe as an arrogant tyrant must be abhored.”

She lowered her eyes. “I … I may have overstated the case,” she said shyly. “Perhaps those words are a bit too … strong. Aunt Bel has often accused me of being rash in my judgments.”

His smile became wry. “You are still being rash. Only a few minutes ago, you were endangering yourself by taking a foolishly headlong spill just to keep me from what you undoubtedly considered an act of tyranny over my sister. In your sudden gratitude toward me for not exposing that deception, are you now ready to take a completely
opposite
view of my character?”

She looked across at him with a brow knit in perplexity. “I don't know. I truly don't know
what
to make of you. If you're not a tyrant, then you must have had a sound reason for wishing to prevent your sister from a perfectly proper association with a young man. If you had such a reason, why did you remain behind when you knew I was really perfectly well?”

He shook his head. “I don't know either.” He turned back and resumed his contemplation of the flames. “Perhaps I felt a need to justify myself to you. Kneeling down beside you on that stone floor, I at first felt terror-stricken that you'd done yourself a terrible injury. When I realized, from that artificial fluttering of your eyelids, that you were counterfeiting, I wanted most urgently to wring your neck. But I wished, too, to shake you into some understanding of what you were doing.” He looked over his shoulder at her, his smile gone. “Do you realize, girl, that your interference in family matters that you know nothing of is as high-handed and arrogant as any act of mine?”

“But … Trixie confided in me all the pertinent details—”

“Yes, I realize that. But do
you
realize that there might be
two
sides to the story?”

“I had thought of that, of course. But it seemed to me that a brother who disparages every one of his sister's beaux except the one he chose for her himself had very little justification on his side,” she said in self-defense.

“Yes, my dear, but you've never met any of Trixie's beaux. You're not acquainted long enough with my sister to know that she loses her heart—with the most unrestrained enthusiasm—at least once a month. This fact is even more alarming when you take into account that this is a society very thin of company. When we were in London, where there are many more young idiots for her to adore, she fell madly in love at least once weekly.”

“Come now, Geoffrey, you're surely exaggerating.”

“I was certain you would think so. Damnation, I don't know why I feel impelled to discuss these matters with you at all! But fate has seen fit to thrust you into our midst, my family has seen fit to embroil you in our problems, and
you
have seen fit to act upon the information they've supplied. Therefore, you may as well listen to the whole tale. If you are determined to interfere, your actions will be less troublesome if they're based on sounder knowledge.”

She hung her head. “You needn't say anything more, Geoffrey, if you don't wish to. It was wrong of me to have interfered, and I shan't do so again.”

“But I
do
wish to. I feel this uncommonly compulsive need to make you understand me,” he said ruefully. “That's why I didn't leave you out there on the floor, as I should have done, and go along with the others to the Habish domicile to keep an eye on my sister.”

He sat down on a wing chair near the fire and stretched out his legs, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back in reflective relaxation. “It's not a very long story,” he began. “I need go back only to last year—though it seems more like a decade since—when I was serving in the peninsula with Wellington. I'm sure you can understand how different that life is from any which you and my family are accustomed to. It is, at best, a very Spartan existence, even when one is not involved in the smoke, the filth and the noise of battle. A soldier grows accustomed to doing without the niceties. Many of us grew almost to prefer a tent and a camp-cot to the featherbeds and lace hangings of our bedrooms at home.

“We were in the midst of the drive for Salamanca when the news came of my father's sudden demise. I was given leave, of course, but when I arrived home and saw the state of affairs my father had left behind, I knew I had only one course open to me—to sell out. I don't suppose one who has not been a soldier can appreciate the pain of being forced to desert one's post in the middle of a major campaign, but I realized that my family's needs were my first responsibility. Fortunately, the news of the victory at Salamanca came in time to keep me from falling into complete despond. And the subsequent successes of the peninsular campaign made it perfectly obvious that the army had done very well without me.”

He fell silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on the portrait over the mantelpiece with an unseeing stare. Meg felt her throat constrict in sympathy for the soldier who'd been snatched from the fray before the victory and who had had to hear the bells peal from a lonely lace-hung London bedroom, far from his comrades-in-arms and without being given the satisfaction of feeling that his years of sacrifice in his country's behalf had done anything to bring that victory about.

But he proceeded with his tale without the slightest hint in his voice of regret or self-pity. “My father's woeful management of what had been fairly extensive holdings had left us with a heavily mortgaged town house, a pile of gambling debts amassed by, of all people, my
mother
(who has absolutely no sense of the value of money), and the lands and buildings of Knight's Haven which, miraculously, were still unencumbered. I must confess, Meg, that Knight's Haven has always been, to me, the most beautiful place in the world, but that is not the only—or even the major—reason for my choosing this for our home. Once I'd gone over the records and accounts, it seemed plain to me that our only recourse was to sell off the London property and put what was left of our assets into making Knight's Haven a productive estate.

“In this decision I was vociferously opposed by my mother and sisters. They loved their London life as much as I detested it; they disliked Knight's Haven as much as I loved it.” He turned in his chair to look at Meg with eyes that sought plainly for her understanding. “I
tried
for a while to oblige them. I paid off the debts and put the family on a strict budget, warning them that unless they followed it to the letter, we would be forced to move to the country. But I had no idea of the extent of women's propensities for frills and fripperies. They were always in dire need of new gowns, new gloves, new slippers, new draperies, new furnishings. Mama couldn't understand how it was
possible
that she'd lost three hundred guineas in one evening's game of silver-loo.

“Meanwhile, Sybil spent her afternoons being checked by every new doctor she could discover, and Trixie was busily engaged in any number of romantic encounters, each one of her swains more foolish and impecunious than the last. At one point, she managed to get herself betrothed to two of them at once, while making a third believe that it was only a matter of time before she would accept
him
. It was when she pleaded with me to extricate herself from all three of these commitments, having discovered a
fourth
who was
truly
her one-and-only love, that I realized that London was not a beneficial place for any of us. In the country our expenses would be decreased, my mother's opportunities for extravagance and gambling would be limited, Sybil would have to make do with only
one
medical man, and Trixie would find it difficult to become betrothed more often than monthly.

“I admit, Meg, that by that time, I'd completely lost patience with all of them. I admit that I found the fair sex, as a whole, to be exasperating—so exasperating that, at times, I run from the house and seek refuge in the taproom of the Horse With Three Tails. I admit that I'm churlish and unsympathetic when it comes to your female preoccupations with matters of dress and appearances. I even admit to being an arrogant tyrant in implementing my decision to move my family here and in compelling them to live in a more restrained style. But I'm convinced that what I'm doing is for the best.”