After nearly two hours of such exertion, as delightful as it was, Lucy ordered refreshments brought to the drawing room. A platter of fruit, sweetmeats, and ices were prepared for the dancers, all of whom expressed their appreciation for the sustenance.
During this time, Lucy found herself in a quiet corner with Robert. “You have been quite gracious this evening,” she said.
He seemed surprised. “Thank you, but to what are you referring?”
“Your kindness to Alice is both remarkable and admirable. I commend you, indeed, I do.” When he chuckled and appeared disbelieving, she continued, “I promise you, I am most sincere. Indeed, I am not funning.”
“I can see that you are not, so I thank you, very much, but Alice is after all my sister and it is no hardship for me to offer my help.”
Lucy smiled. “You were at your best, you know, when you tripped.”
He met her gaze and smiled as well. In that moment, time paused for Lucy. She had forgotten how easily it was to become lost in his eyes for reasons that were as incomprehensible to her as they were magical. He continued to smile as he looked at her, which only made her smile a little more.
Hetty once more took up her place at the pianoforte and called out another country dance.
“You should dance with me this time,” he said, offering his arm.
She looked at his arm and wanted nothing more, but the dancing was not meant for her but for Anne and Alice, and certainly Lady Sandifort had no intention of giving up the set to her. “I should not,” she whispered. “You know I should not.”
Robert glanced about and lifted his chin in Alice’s direction. “She is becoming exhausted and will benefit at this point as much from observation as from practice.”
Lucy saw that Alice was indeed looking a trifle fatigued. Before she could say anything, however, Robert called to his sister. “Alice, do sit down for the next set. Lucy means to dance with me.”
Even if Lucy had been inclined to object, she could not have done so in the face of Alice’s expression of supreme gratitude.
“Very well,” she said, taking his arm.
He chuckled. “I would not have insisted had I thought you would be so reluctant.”
“You know very well why I refused. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Indeed! Now you have given me a shock.”
Lucy took her place opposite him and when the music began she offered her opening curtsy and he his required bow. The dance progressed in a manner that suited her quite well, for he teased her a great deal and nothing could have pleased her more.
He was quite a skillful dancer, there could be no two opinions on that score. He moved as a gentleman on a ballroom floor ought to move, with considerable grace and confidence that left his partner feeling quite secure both in her steps and in the certainty that her feet would not be bruised by his inadequacies. She realized he was in many respects just as she believed a man ought to be, and something inside her began to tremble.
After the dance, Henry demanded that he be permitted to go down the next set with Lucy. Again she might have refused, but Alice was quick to call out. “Please, Lucy, do dance with Henry. I am beginning to see where I have been erring. Indeed, it is of great use to me to watch all of you perform your steps.”
Lucy smiled at Henry. “Very well.”
As a partner, Henry danced nicely but not so well as Robert. His movements were perhaps more graceful but he lacked something that his brother possessed quite fully. There was a purposeful feel to Robert’s dancing that as a partner gave her greater confidence.
Having sat out for two sets, Alice was properly rested and agreed to once more take up her place, this time opposite Lord Valmaston. Henry partnered Lady Sandifort and Robert offered his arm to Anne. Lucy watched with great interest as the rogue continued to charm Alice from her embarrassment and was even able to engage her in conversation toward the end of the dance. There was no surer indication that Alice had mastered her steps than when she exhibited the ability to converse while dancing. So it was that she gave a small cry of delight when Hetty played the final notes.
Two more sets convinced the party that both young ladies were well prepared for the assemblies.
Over the next several days, an air of excitement ran through the house. It seemed to Lucy that Anne and Alice were not the only ones looking forward to the local ball. The dressmaker arrived nearly every day for fittings, for the delivery of headdresses and finished gowns, for a consultation about stockings and gloves and slippers, so that the ladies especially spent much of each day traveling from one bedchamber to the next examining the latest addition to one or the other’s wardrobe. Even Lady Sandifort was so happy that she forgot her usual machinations and dispensed her advice with what seemed to Lucy to be a genuine spirit of generosity and happiness.
Only one hiccough occurred to mar the joyful air of the house. Lucy had accompanied Anne and Alice to Lady Sandifort’s sitting room, which overlooked the back gardens. Lady Sandifort was dancing the waltz about the chamber in a beautiful dark blue silk gown, embellished with Brussels lace that framed a quite lovely décolletage. Both the younger girls laughed and clapped their hands in three-quarter time. Anne was humming as well.
“How well you look in blue,” Lucy said. “I vow I do not know which I prefer with your dark brown hair, the blue or the exquisite pink satin.”
Lady Sandifort waltzed by the window, began to make her turn, and stopped abruptly. An expression of horror suffused her face as she gazed down into the garden. “Good God!” she cried.
Lucy could not imagine what had overset Lady Sandifort so severely. At first she thought perhaps one of the children had been hurt, for their playful cries had been rising from below for the past half hour. Yet this seemed unlikely, since Lady Sandifort rarely expressed even the smallest concern for her brood. No, something else had disturbed her ladyship.
She moved quickly to the second window and saw what had brought the color draining from Lady Sandifort’s face. Hetty was walking toward the maze in the company of Lord Valmaston and they appeared to be deep in conversation, even though the children followed them.
Lucy wished desperately that she could slip her thoughts quite magically into Valmaston’s mind and give him a hint. Beneath her breath, she murmured, “Please let her go, please let her go.” She understood there was a great deal of mutual dislike between the ladies, but this trespassing upon Lady Sandifort’s territory would be unforgivable in her eyes. For the present, however, the two of them were just walking and not particularly close together. If they entered the maze, however, she was convinced that the entire roof would suddenly collapse on the household!
Lucy mentally continued to speak to Valmaston and as if having heard her silent pleas, he bowed to Hetty and headed in the direction of the stables, his riding crop in hand. The children ran into the maze. Lucy was ready to breathe a sigh of relief but Hetty made the enormous mistake of glancing in Valmaston’s direction. The distance was too great to possibly construe her expression or meaning, but this final glance was Lady Sandifort’s undoing.
“What the devil does that horrid little wretch think she is doing?”
Lucy felt Lady Sandifort’s rage flood the bedchamber. She quickly signaled for Anne and Alice to leave the room. They needed little encouragement, being well versed in their stepmother’s ways, and disappeared into the hall with the force of a cavalry charge.
“She has designs on him!” Lady Sandifort fairly shouted. “That . . . that complete simpleton who cannot say two words together without sounding like a complete ninnyhammer! She means to have Valmaston, only how does she think she will win such a man as that? She has no beauty, no skills, no conversation, no grace in her countenance, and what man could ever love a woman with black hair?”
Lucy did not know where to begin. She was a little frightened by the violence of her expressions, and that over Hetty merely turning to look at the earl. “Do you think she was, indeed, looking at Valmaston? It did not seem that way to me.” Oh, the whiskers she often told in her ladyship’s presence.
“Do not play the ninnyhammer with me, Lucinda Stiles. You know very well she was.”
“Well, there are innumerable rabbits in the garden, and snakes as well, for that matter. She could have heard something in the shrubbery and surely Valmaston would have disappeared down the path to the stables before ever she turned to look at him. Surely! Besides, Hetty has already told me that she is rather disgusted that Valmaston is come.”
“Much she knows about anything!” she cried irrationally.
Lucy let her shoulders sag. “It is very sad, is it not?” She was about to tell more whiskers, more horrible whiskers, for they were wholly disloyal to one of her dearest friends. “Hetty has been nowhere and seen nothing. Oh, I admit she has had several Seasons, but she is hardly to be considered a woman of great breeding, experience, and ton. Would you not agree?”
Lady Sandifort puffed her cheeks and finally moved away from the window. “She is one of the most ridiculous females I have ever known. Why, do you know that when her father died, she tried to take over the management of the house in my stead?”
“Whyever would she want to do that when you are here?”
“Precisely!” Lady Sandifort flopped down in her
chaise longue
and popped a sweetmeat in her mouth. “I have always disliked her. She sneers at me, you know.”
“No,” Lucy breathed.
“Yes, she does, quite frequently. She thinks herself so superior and yet she ought to be learning at my feet. We are of an age, you know. But she has never been married and I have every confidence she has never taken a lover.” An odd expression, quite vile, overcame her pretty features and transformed her beauty into something quite hideous. “How well I know she has not! I am aware of her secrets, though. Of course, she does not know that I know, but I am well versed in the very core of her heart and if she is not careful I know precisely where to aim a dagger from which I know she would never recover.” She glanced at Lucy. “You see how restrained I am? I could have hurt her quite deeply a score of times but I withheld because she is my stepdaughter. Yet she uses me so very ill!”
Lucy was shocked by this speech, in part because it would seem Lady Sandifort had a weapon ready to use against Hetty whenever it pleased her but also because she had confirmed her own suspicions. Hetty it would seem had some great secret. Knowing that Lady Sandifort had somehow become privy to it was unsettling in the extreme. Instead of revealing her disquiet, however, she glanced at Lady Sandifort’s slippers. “I never noticed before how small your feet are.”
Lady Sandifort sighed with pleasure. “They are small, are they not, and prettily shaped?”
“Very pretty, indeed!” With at least a dozen more compliments, Lucy was able to distract Lady Sandifort from Hetty’s perfidy.
Later, Lucy related to Hetty all that had transpired and even confessed how badly she had spoken of her. Hetty dismissed this with a wave of her hand, for she understood quite well the lengths to which Lucy went in order to keep the beast tamed. She was, however, properly shocked that Lady Sandifort would have interpreted a mere glance at Lord Valmaston as interest on her part.
“Good heavens!” she cried, walking briskly from the window of her bedchamber to her writing desk and back. “I have never heard anything more ridiculous, more absurd! I could never,
never
, like such a man, nonetheless have designs on him or even
love
him.” She paused and looked very odd for a moment, before continuing, “Lucy, you do know how I feel about Lord Valmaston? Have I not told you a hundred times?”
“Indeed, you have.”
“Why would I have altered my opinion even in the slightest? That would be absurd! Just because he was kind to Alice when he danced with her, and to Anne as well, is no reason for any of us to think better of him. His reputation is truly horrid and I could never love such a man.”
“Of course not.”
“Lady Sandifort is as mad as bedlam.”
“Undoubtedly, to think such a thing of you.”
“I really despise him.”
“Of course you do.”
The day of the assemblies arrived and the excitement among the ladies rose to a fever pitch. Anne had already shed nervous tears because the pearl-studded band she had meant to wear in her hair had disappeared, only to be found after a quarter of an hour’s search beneath her pillow. “I had put it there last night in hopes of having the sweetest dreams ever, but I forgot all about it.”
Lucy embraced her while she shed a few more tears. “You will perform beautifully tonight.”
“I do not give a fig for that,” she cried, pulling out of Lucy’s arms. “I only want to have more beaus than Kitty Bartley!”
Lucy laughed. “I am very certain you will if Kitty is the young lady who at church, Sunday last, pulled a face at you.”
Anne gasped. “The very one, and you think I am prettier than she?” Kitty was accounted a very fine beauty, indeed.
“Have you never regarded yourself in the looking glass?”
Anne, who was wretchedly vain but a darling nonetheless, turned to her dressing table and peered at her features. With her blond hair and unusual green eyes, she would undoubtedly surpass all the young ladies at the ball in beauty as well as vivacity.
She then turned back to Lucy. “I am so excited, you can have no idea!”
Lucy laughed. “You had best finish dressing then.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Robert will want to leave at seven.”
“That he will.”
By the time the dinner hour arrived and the ladies were dressed in their finery, Lucy called the children from the schoolroom where they had just finished their supper. She wanted them to see their mother and their half sisters before the party left for the assemblies.