Baroness in Buckskin (12 page)

“You should be very thankful that I answered you as I did, else you would not have been free to offer for Susannah.”

“No,” he said, his expression curiously unreadable. “No, I wouldn’t have, would I?”

Every savage can dance.

JANE AUSTEN, Pride and Prejudice

The following afternoon had been set aside for Susannah’s first instructions in dancing. Aunt Amelia was appointed to play the pianoforte, thus freeing Jane to demonstrate the steps Susannah was to imitate. As soon as the Aunts arrived from the dower house, they and the four “young people,” as Amelia and Charlotte dubbed their junior relations (including the thirty-one-year-old head of the family), repaired to the music room. While Aunt Amelia took her place at the instrument and Aunt Charlotte settled herself in a chair along the wall to observe the proceedings, the dancers paired themselves off. Susannah was partnered with Lord Ramsay, since everyone present at the ball would expect to see the betrothed pair lead out the dancing. This left Jane with Peter, to whom she had given very similar lessons only two years earlier.

They began with the minuet. Although quite outmoded in London, and performed nowadays only in places where the elderly were wont to congregate, such as Bath or Tunbridge Wells, this antiquated dance possessed the advantage of being easy to learn and, consequently, of giving Jane the opportunity to assess her pupil’s skills before moving on to the more fashionable—and complicated—cotillion, quadrille, and, of course, the waltz.

For her part, Susannah found that after the initial awkwardness, she enjoyed the lessons very much. Although she hadn’t the advantage of the musical training that was—or at least should have been—part of every gently bred lady’s education, she possessed an innate sense of rhythm, and her proficiency in the saddle had imbued her with a natural grace and fluidity of movement.

From the minuet, they progressed to the Sir Roger de Coverley, and Jane noted with considerable frustration that the lively and popular reel could not be done correctly with only two couples.

“Perhaps we could hold an informal little morning dance a week before the ball,” she suggested. “I believe the vicar’s eldest daughter is to go to London next spring for her aunt to bring her out in Society; I daresay she would welcome the opportunity to practice, and other young people in the neighborhood would very likely do so as well.”

As daunting as Susannah found the prospect of displaying her newly acquired skills before a roomful of strangers her own age, she found the prospect of doing so at a formal ball in front of a glittering assembly of aristocratic strangers infinitely worse. She agreed somewhat tentatively to this program for her education, and the lessons resumed. At the end of an hour of instruction, they had covered the steps for the minuet, the Sir Roger de Coverley, the cotillion, and the quadrille (these last two with an entirely imaginary third and fourth couple, which strengthened Jane’s conviction that an informal dance before the betrothal ball was necessary, if Susannah were to comport herself with confidence). Jane then exchanged a word with Aunt Amelia and, while that lady rifled through her music, announced her intention of instructing Susannah in the waltz.

For all her ignorance, Susannah was familiar with this shocking German dance, as her missionary escort aboard the
Concordia
had been quite vocal on the subject. “Are you sure I should, Cousin Jane?” she asked, rather taken aback by her elegant English cousin’s determination to set her feet on the path of iniquity. “I thought—that is, I was given to understand that the waltz is not at all the thing.”

“Oh, that was the case years ago, but now it is danced everywhere,” Jane assured her. “Indeed, it would be thought very odd if we did not include at least one waltz, and very probably more. But pray learn the steps first, and then you may decide for yourself. It is quite simple, you know. You have only to count to three.”

Jane turned to her partner to demonstrate, and Susannah, suppressing her misgivings, allowed Richard to place his right hand at her waist and take her right hand in his left. With some hesitation, she followed Jane’s example and put her free hand upon her partner’s shoulder, an act which brought them into such close contact that, if she crossed her eyes, she might study in minute detail the starched folds of his cravat.

Having grown up in the midst of a thriving horse-breeding enterprise, Susannah was familiar enough with the habits of animals to have a general idea of the conjugal act between men and women. It stood to reason, then, that this approximation of an embrace in the arms of the very man with whom she would soon be engaging in so intimate an act should set her senses all a-twitter, but instead she felt . . . nothing. This dis-covery should have been a relief, but in fact, Susannah found it vaguely disappointing. Her future husband’s hand gripping hers was simply a hand; his other hand at her waist was no more than a slight pressure felt through the boned fabric of her stays.

 She could not understand it; one glance at Peter and Jane in a similar hold was enough to inform her that it should have been a gross impertinence. Indeed, the sight of Peter’s arm about Jane’s waist was so unsettling that she lost her step, causing Richard to bump into her.

“No, no,” Jane said, stepping out of Peter’s hold. “You must relax, Susannah, and allow Richard to lead you. Here, Richard, let us show her. Aunt Amelia, will you begin again from the fifth measure?”

The elderly lady nodded. “Of course, Jane dear. Richard, are you ready?
One
, two, three,
one
, two, three—”

As Aunt Amelia’s fingers came down on the keys, Richard took Jane in his arms and steered her in time to the music, the pair of them turning in a clockwise direction as they glided about the room.

“Oh!” Susannah breathed. “Why, it isn’t wicked at all, is it? How very elegant they look!”

Peter, standing beside her, agreed. “They are very well matched, are they not?”

“They are. In fact,” she added, as a new thought occurred to her, “I wonder why Richard has not married Jane.”

“I confess, I have wondered that myself. They are so very compatible that I should have thought they would be well suited. But there has never been anything like that between them, so far as I know.” He shrugged. “Perhaps they see no reason to spoil a perfectly good friendship with wedding vows.”

“But why must one choose? Can husbands and wives not be friends as well?”

Peter shook his head. “I fear you are asking the wrong person. While I flatter myself that I have many friends, I have never had a wife, and so can offer no opinion on the subject.”

As the demonstration came to an end, Susannah hoped she might be given a chance to try the waltz with Peter as her partner. It was very odd, but she felt much more comfortable with him than she did with the man who was soon to be her husband; she supposed it was because Peter was a mere “mister,” just like men in America, instead of a lord. But no, as the final chord faded, Richard bowed very formally and Jane curtsied in like manner, and then both of them returned to their original partners. Stifling a pang of disappointment, Susannah allowed Richard to take her in the now familiar hold, and if she failed to match Jane’s elegance of movement, at least she contrived to get through the dance without stumbling.

With this performance, the dancing lesson was concluded, and Richard let his hand fall from her waist. “If you are not exhausted from your terpsichorean efforts, Susannah, I should be pleased to show you about the portrait gallery and introduce you to your ancestors.”

“Exhausted? By
dancing
?” exclaimed Susannah, who on her Kentucky homestead was accustomed to doing more physical labour by noon than her English cousins, so far as she could tell, did in a week. “Why, no, I’m not tired at all, and I would be very pleased to see my ancestors in the portrait gallery.”

This proved to be a long passage lined with tall windows on one wall, presumably placed there for the purpose of illuminating the framed portraits on the other. Susannah, rather intimidated by the rows of ruffed, powdered, or bewigged Ramsays glaring down at her from their frames, paused before the likeness of a lady with wide, panniered skirts of deep blue satin balanced by a towering powdered wig adorned with a stuffed bird perched on the edge of a nest containing a trio of open-mouthed hatchlings. The stiff formality of the lady’s pose was belied by the twinkle in her eye, as if she were fully aware of the absurdity of fashion, and invited the viewer to share in the joke.

“Who is she?” Susannah asked, liking the lady already.

“My mother,” Richard said with a hint of pride in his voice. “She was held to be a great beauty—said to rival the famous Gunning sisters, in fact—and might have looked a great deal higher than a mere baron, had she not fallen in love with my father.”

“What a romantic story!”

“I suppose it was, in some ways.”

A shadow crossed his face, but Susannah, absorbed in her study of the portrait, did not notice. “She looks as if she must have been a very
happy
sort of person.”

“She was—and a very kind one, as well.”

“I’m sorry I never had a chance to know her.”

“So am I. She would have liked you very much.” Even as he said the words, he realized they were true. His mother had liked everyone, had even seen the humour in Sir Matthew Pitney’s pompousness. It suddenly occurred to him that the Dowager Lady Ramsay would have laughed aloud at the tale of Susannah and her “riding costume,” much as Jane had done. Resolving to be kinder to his betrothed in the future, he took Susannah’s elbow and led her further along the passage.

“But is there no picture of your father?”

“On the contrary. There is a portrait by Reynolds which is said to be very fine—and indeed, it is a very accurate likeness—but it no longer hangs in the portrait gallery. When my father died, it was moved to his bedroom—which became mine, along with the title.”

This mention of sleeping arrangements reminded him of an aspect of his approaching nuptials which had not yet been addressed. “I must not forget to show you my mother’s bedchamber. Her tastes tended toward the rococo which was fashionable in her younger days, but you may have it redecorated according to your own preferences.”

This discussion of mutual (and, presumably, adjoining) bedchambers was much too intimate for Susannah’s liking. “You must have loved your father very much, to keep his picture in your bedroom,” she observed, returning the conversation to the less unnerving subject of his parentage.

“Love?” Richard frowned as he pondered the matter. “I was devoted to him, of course, as a son should be, but he was too distant a parent to inspire true affection in his children. No, his portrait was placed there by my uncle, his younger brother, as a reminder to me of my obligation to my father, and to all the Lords Ramsay who preceded him.”

“Oh,” said Susannah, rather daunted by this revelation. “But if he loved your mother—”

“I said she fell in love with him; I never said he felt the same about her. Oh, he was never unkind to her, and certainly not cruel,” he added hastily, seeing shocked dismay writ large upon her expressive countenance. “But I suspect his choice of her as a bride was inspired not so much by the tender passion as it was by my mother’s genteel birth and sizeable dowry—not to mention the satisfaction of snatching the Season’s reigning beauty from under the very noses of gentlemen whose social status was far superior to his.”

“Your poor mama!”

“She would be very shocked by your pity, I assure you, for as you yourself noted, she was by nature a happy person. If she was at times neglected by her husband, she compensated by lavishing affection on her children and, later, on her companion, Jane Hawthorne.”

“Children?” echoed Susannah, noting his use of the plural. “You have siblings, then?”

“Had,” he corrected her, thinking of the family vault where three tiny bodies lay entombed, none of them having survived beyond their fifth year. Shaking off a sudden sense of melancholy, he took her elbow and led her further down the gallery. “Now that I am to be married myself, I wish Mama were still alive so that I might question her about her marriage. It might have helped me to be a better husband to you. I will do my best, but I fear I did not have the most shining of examples.”

He stopped before a large painting of a young man astride a prancing black steed. The rider’s curled and powdered wig dated the portrait to the previous century, and his scarlet coat identified him as an officer in His Majesty’s army. “Now, here is a portrait that might interest you.”

“ ‘Captain Benjamin Ramsay,’ ” she read aloud from the small brass nameplate at the bottom of the frame, then looked up at Richard, wide-eyed. “But that would make him—”

“Your grandfather,” he said, nodding. “I gather this is the first time you’ve ever seen his likeness?”

“Yes, for he died before I was born.” She leaned closer, peering intently at the painted face. “I don’t look much like him, do I?”

“No.” Richard saw no point in denying the obvious. “I daresay you resemble your mother, or perhaps your grandmother.”

But Susannah had already moved on to the next painting, a man with dark eyes and black King Charles curls hanging down to his shoulders. One hand rested on the hilt of his sword, and the other stroked the head of a sleek greyhound.

“A very dashing cavalier, don’t you think?” Richard asked. “He was the fourth Baron Ramsay, but I have always thought that if we could cut his hair and shave his moustache, he would look just like Peter.”

Susannah, determined to put this theory to the test, closed one eye and raised her finger to hide the pencil-thin moustache, then giggled at the result. “You’re right—he does! What a pity this betrothal ball can’t be a masquerade. Peter’s costume would be quite settled!” Her smile faded as she recalled the discussion she’d had with him the previous day during their ride. “Richard, what do you intend to do about Peter?”

He frowned. “ ‘Do?’ I wasn’t aware that I had to ‘do’ anything about him. What are you thinking?”