Authors: Cynthia Bailey Pratt
David Mochrie only smiled ironically. He had not money enough to send expensive gifts, but he could write passable poetry. Sweets, flowers, and scent bottles did not fit comfortably beneath Blanche’s pillow, but Rietta had seen sheets of paper there.
Rietta tried to draw Niall Joyce into a conversation, but it was difficult. He sat with his ear cocked toward where Blanche entertained Mr. Greeves and Mr. Mochrie, leading him to answer Rietta very much at random.
Blanche’s peal of laughter was cut short by a rapping at the door knocker so vigorous that it seemed to shake the whole house. She stood up and fluttered to the window. “Who can it be?”
While there, Rietta noticed, her sister peeped into the mirror and tucked up a fallen lock of hair. Perhaps she had pinched her cheeks surreptitiously, for when she came to sit down again, her face was suspiciously pink. “I couldn’t tell,” she said in answer to Mr. Joyce’s stammered question. “A gentleman, I think. I only saw the back of his coat and his hat as Arabella opened the door.”
Yet it was enough to put her into an agitated state. Rietta did not need to see the card that Arabella brought in to know that Sir Nicholas had arrived.
“Yes, of course,” she said to the maid. Her own heart had begun to beat faster, though she hoped she did not show it as Blanche did.
For Blanche had started across the thick blue carpet before Arabella had reached the door. She was standing behind her sister’s chair when Arabella announced their new visitor.
“Why, Sir Nicholas.” There could be no mistaking the delight in Blanche’s voice. “I hardly expected you to call so soon—you must have so much to keep you occupied now.”
She looked around prettily, drawing all her other suitors in with a glance. “Gentlemen, I want to make Sir Nicholas Kirwan known to you.”
Going to him, she took him possessively by the arm and led him to each man in turn, pronouncing their names. “And this is Mr. Mochrie of Scardaun.”
“Sir Nicholas is well known to me. We’re old friends.”
“I didn’t expect to see you here today, David.”
“This is the one place in all the world you may count on seeing me. For nowhere is the company more to my liking.”
Blanche, who counted all conversation lost until it referenced herself—preferably with a compliment—sparkled when at last she saw David turn to her with admiration. “Tell me, Sir Nicholas, how you and Mr. Mochrie met.”
Rietta heard the same coaxing tone Blanche had used with their father that morning. She seemed to believe that the way to a man’s heart was through showing a deep, if feigned, interest in him. Though Rietta scorned to play such games, she couldn’t help looking up from her tatting to meet, surprisingly, Sir Nicholas’s eye. At once, Rietta looked down at her fingers.
“Our fathers were friends and it was passed to us,” he said. “I made my first trip abroad in David’s company, when I was just a lad.”
“Oooh,” Blanche said, looking angelically wistful. “How I’d love to travel to France and the rest of the Continent. Tell me about it.”
“We couldn’t go to France.” David said, “due to Madame Guillotine being so busy, so we headed into less civilized climes. Morocco, Egypt, the Grecian Isles— grand times.”
“Which islands?” Mr. Greeves asked, turning about in his chair. “I spent some months serving in Ionian and Aegean waters when I was a ship’s boy.”
“I didn’t know that, sir,” David said with more respect than was usual when he spoke to the older man. “Did you go to Delphi? This lout...” He clapped his hand on Sir Nicholas’s elbow. “He would hardly stir from the fleshpots of Athens to seek out the real Greek culture, but I persuaded him at last.”
Sir Nicholas raised his hands. “Hold me blameless,” he said with a chuckle. “David was mad for overthrown statues in broken temples, hiding in the most remote of mountain villages. Can I help it if I had a preference for clean sheets and decent food?”
“Did you find much of either in Greece?” Rietta asked.
“Enough to content me.” He came closer. “Have you ever traveled outside of Ireland, Miss Ferris?”
“Never yet, sir, but I have hopes.”
Mr. Greeves and Sir Nicholas exchanged places. Blanche was looking bored as the two enthusiasts discussed sights they’d seen. She seemed glad of the rescue of even Mr. Joyce, turning her petulant pout into a rather dark radiance as she pointedly turned her back on the others.
Rietta could only go on tatting as Sir Nicholas sat beside her. She began to work more quickly as she tried to ignore that they sat virtually thigh against thigh.
“What are you working on?” He took the strand in his hand and began stroking it with his fingers, trying to smooth it out.
“I hope to lay up enough trimming to edge some bed linen.”
“A meritorious hope. Will you achieve it?”
“I believe I shall. I have already done one set for my father; this shall be for Blanche.”
“You are very kind to them.”
She could have sworn her entire attention was fixed on the white thread as she twisted and turned it in her fingertips, her needle a flash of silver. Yet how was it that she could see that his expression was sardonic?
“It is little enough. How do you find Ireland, Sir Nicholas?”
“You sail across St. George’s Channel or the Irish Sea.”
At this piece of nonsense, she turned her full attention on him with a light-lipped expression of disdain. “I meant, after your travels?”
“Who says I’ve been traveling?”
“Mr. Mochrie—”
“That was years ago....”
“And the state of your boots when we first met.”
“They became muddy while I was helping your coachman.”
“No. The road was dry enough for this time of year. Your breeches were gone in mud to the knee—and the stripe down the side told its own tale. Were you at Waterloo?”
“Yes, ma’am. You are rather observant....”
“For a woman?” she asked, finishing his thought. “A woman must be more observant than a man because no one ever tells her anything. We must learn by observation and deduction if we are to learn anything at all.”
“By God, a proponent of women’s rights.”
“By God, sir, a proponent of the notion that we have our own heads and the right to use them.”
Rietta glanced toward Blanche who sat sighing, the picture of long-suffering femininity, while her three admirers discovered a like passion for the Greek theater.
“I am no radical, Sir Nicholas,” Rietta said, lowering her voice. “We must each be satisfied with our lot in life.”
“Must we? Why?”
“To rage against our situation is to deny the destiny that has been created for us.”
“So you think we should all be born, live, and die on the same plot?”
“No, I—”
“I agree with you. Some day you must come to see Greenwood. Then you’d know why.”
Relieved to have been rescued from the involved philosophy she’d been carelessly embracing, Rietta smiled. “I should like that very much.”
“Come Wednesday. I’ll tell my mother to expect you.”
Chapter Four
Rietta could only stare at him, wondering if she’d heard him correctly. If she had, then he was quite the boldest of Blanche’s suitors. Had she struck him so powerfully that he felt compelled to proceed in this hurried fashion?
“Oh, but we cannot,” she said, after several false starts. “Blanche has her harp lessons and we must decorate the church.”
“Your sister plays the harp? Well, she is an angel. What instrument do you favor?”
She wondered how he’d look if she confessed that her favorite instruments were the pen, inkpot, and ledger. Shocked and horrified, no doubt, for business sense was not a feminine accomplishment of which a woman boasted.
“I used to play the pianoforte, but I was thankful to surrender my lessons once it became apparent I had no aptitude.”
“You may have been better than you know. I’m sorry I never heard you play.”
“You would have been sorrier still had you done so. My instructress threatened suicide, but she was ever highly strung.”
He chuckled, though he seemed more obliged to be amused than in truth touched in his humor. Rietta studied him. He met her eye so steadily that she looked away first. His tone had been light, even bantering, but his eyes were as serious and focused as cannon mouths lifting inexorably toward their target. Yet his natural mark sat on the other side of the room.
Rietta quickly grasped the perfect explanation for Sir Nicholas’s singling her out. He no doubt realized that Blanche was highly sought—five minutes here with her other suitors would have so informed a blind man. Winning her sister’s approval might just be the feather that tipped the scales in his favor. With Rietta’s approval, he might run tame in the house and if she could be brought to sing his praises, Blanche would soon echo them,
Perhaps that might be true in ordinary households, but Rietta knew he was wasting his time. No one had influence over Blanche, least of all her unyielding sister. Besides, even if she could act upon Blanche the way a breeze moves a feather, Rietta flattered herself that she was too downy a bird to be caught that way twice.
Never again,
she thought.
As the clock in the hall struck a deep note, Rietta gathered up her work. “I’m afraid that we must say good morning, Sir Nicholas. My father prefers that we entertain morning visitors for only half an hour at a time.”
“That is customary, is it not?”
“I am surprised you know of that, sir, seeing how you have been out of the country,” Rietta said.
“My sisters see to it that I stay reasonably well informed. I hope to see you at Greenwood very soon, Miss Ferris, and for more than half an hour.”
He held out his hand. Rather clumsily, Rietta transferred all her supplies so that she might slip her fingers into his grasp. To her surprise, he bent his dark head low and brushed his lips warmly against the back of her hand. She felt as if dark wings had passed over her and shivered.
Nick felt her tremble. Though she had instantly suppressed the reaction, it had happened. He raised his head and thought how well the bright carnation in her cheeks became her. She was rather too colorless and pale, excepting her splendid hair.
He found himself strangely reluctant to let go of his one chance to touch her. Her skin was soft and lightly fragranced with lavender. His memory of her, overlaid by David Mochrie’s unflattering report, had become distorted overnight until he’d been surprised to find her young, quite attractive, and pleasingly slender, rather than elderly, ugly, and painfully skinny.
Under the scrap of lace pinned to the crown of her head, her hair was more gold than red. Though ruthlessly pulled off her face and bound into a chignon, tiny sprigs had worked free to emphasize with natural curls the lines of temple and cheeks. She had a small cluster of freckles on her nose and eyes of so many shades of green that she could have given a few to Ireland. He had a sudden vision of her dressed in a low-cut gown of grass-green silk with nothing but her unbound hair for ornament. White muslin, however maidenly, didn’t suit her.
Nick bowed over Rietta’s hand once more, not merely brushing over the back but pressing there, showing more by a kiss than he’d intended for today. She pulled away with some strength and straightened. “Sir!” she said in a sharp whisper. He saw her glance toward the others but the men were clustered so close about Blanche that they had no eyes for anything else.
“Flirting with me won’t help you reach your goal,” she said frigidly. “I am not susceptible to the lures of gentlemen who wish only to reach my sister’s favor.”
Nick straightened. “The devil with your sister’s favor. She has enough moths to her flame. I’m a bit particular that way.”
Her eyes widened. She took a step away, her hand fluttering up. He noticed, with pleasure, that she put it behind her back, pressing it against her waist as though to erase with another pressure the touch of his lips. “Absurd.”
“Why?” He glanced at the others and saw David. Mochrie’s eye flickered in a wink as he nodded encouragement. “You’re not an antidote, you know.”
“You never even looked at me the other day.”
He smiled at her unconscious admission that she had been disturbed by this neglect. “I did. You wore a dark-green habit.”
“No, I wore a black cloak.”
“Yes. Over a dark-green habit. I recall perfectly, Miss Ferris. You cannot convince me otherwise. After ten years of army life, no camouflage can deceive me.”
‘That is neither here nor there. You cannot convince me that you took any notice of me whatsoever. Now to come here and play this game ...”
“I assure you I am in deadly earnest.”
The others came forward now to take their leave of Miss Ferris. She was plainly distracted by his standing there, yet she managed to smile and speak naturally to each of Blanche’s suitors. He was not attracted to Rietta, he did not believe that he could ever love her, yet he could respect her self-control and her natural graciousness.
David, of course, he knew well. Niall Joyce was a stranger to him, though Nick thought that he’d once known his older brother. Mr. Greeves, though he smelled of the shop, had an air of respectability that charmed. Nick thought it a shame so good a gentleman should make a fool of himself over a so much younger woman.
“Sir Nicholas,” Blanche hissed from beside him. “I’m sorry I didn’t speak more with you. Stay behind the others, do!”
“Isn’t our allotted time up?” Nick asked.
“For the others, yes. But you needn’t run away.”
“Your sister ...”
“Oh, she’s so fussy, it makes me cross. There’s no sacred law that a morning visit can only last half an hour, is there?”
“Miss Ferris thinks so.”
Blanche’s alabaster brow wrinkled in a charming frown. “I know!” she said, brightening. “We’ll go shopping soon down on Quay Street. Monsieur Andalouse’s millinery shop. There’s the dearest bonnet in the window. Meet me there. Anyone can give you the address.”
“Will your sister accompany you?”
“Yes. But you needn’t let that stop you. She hates shopping for anything interesting. She’ll leave me to it and go to the bookshop—a dreary, drafty place. And the books are all dusty.”