Elizabeth Mansfield (27 page)

He downed another glass the next time Lutton and Caro stood up together. He couldn’t bear Lutton’s unctuous manner or the self-satisfied smile on his face when he looked at Caro. It was a relief to him when the musicians struck up a waltz and the betrothed pair left the floor. Evidently Lutton did not feel that dancing the waltz was appropriate behavior for a vicar. For Kit, however, waltzing was almost second nature; if there was a single social grace an officer of the dragoons learned early in his career, it was the waltz. He decided, therefore, to take this opportunity and dance with her himself.

Caro accepted his invitation with a blush, and they walked out onto the floor. She’d never danced with him before and, what was worse, had never waltzed before at all ... ever ... except by herself in the privacy of her bedroom. Filled with abject terror—quite like a schoolgirl at her first dance—her heart pounded and her knees trembled. She would be tongue tied and awkward, she thought miserably as he put his arm round her waist.

But as soon as he’d spun her into the first turn, her self-consciousness vanished. She found herself carried away on a whirlwind of motion, spinning and swirling like a leaf in a storm, her feet barely touching the ground, the flounce of her gown floating about her ankles, her curls bouncing on her forehead, her whole being borne on the air, nothing anchored, nothing secure but his hold on her waist and her desperate clasp on his shoulder. After a few moments, she seemed to lose herself in sheer motion, to become one with it, as she was drawn into the graceful pattern of light leaps and sweeping turns, his arm guiding her, bending her, moving her to the lilting rhythm of the music. This was no country dance where one could pause between figures, catch one’s breath, and exchange pleasantries with one’s partner. A country dance was restrained, polite, civilized. This was something else entirely. Restraint, conversation, even breathing had nothing to do with it. In the waltz, one could only surrender oneself ... and dance.

When it was over, she looked up at him, wide-eyed with awe. “Oh,
Kit!
”
she gasped with the last, tiny spasm of breath she had left.

He stared at her, wincing as if in pain. “Damn you, Caro,” he swore in a hissing whisper, “don’t look at me like that! Here, give me your arm. I’ll take you back to your betrothed.”

She did not dance again that evening. She couldn’t. When Henry asked her to stand up with him for a quadrille, she pleaded fatigue. To ensure that she would not be asked again, she went to the dowagers’ row and sat down beside Martha. “I knew the moment I saw your face this evening,” she said when Martha turned to greet her, “that you’d had your talk with Kit.”

“Yes, I did”—Martha beamed—”and it was not a bit embarrassing. He was very understanding. Can you believe, Caro, that he made my meal of humble pie almost pleasant?”

“Yes, I can. I’m afraid I’ve greatly misjudged him. But what did you decide to do?”

“He offered to buy back my house for me, but I declined.”

“But
why,
dash it?” Caro glared at her in frustration. “I thought you’d decided to accept his help.”

“I did. But I told him I no longer wish to live in London. That if he could bear to have another old lady taking residence here at the Grange, that is what I would like above anything.”

This took Caro by surprise. “Oh, Martha, did you mean it? Don’t you wish to go home to London, to your old friends, to your accustomed life?”

“Not anymore. At my age I have very few friends left, you know. Everyone I care for is here. And Kit—he is such a darling!—says he’d be happy to expand his family. He’s going to give me rooms quite like Letty’s. So now we shall all be together. Isn’t that lovely?”

“Oh, yes!” Caro agreed, embracing her. “As lovely as can be!”

At that moment, Melton appeared in the ballroom doorway, striking a gong to announce that a late supper was about to be served. Fifty guests swarmed toward the large dining room, where a generous buffet awaited them. Caro stopped Gil at the door. “Isn’t it time you went up to bed, young man?” she asked him pointedly.

“Ah, Caro, that isn’t fair,” the boy objected. “You let me stay for the dancing, which is the greatest bore, but you won’t let me stay for the food! The buffet is the best part of the party!”

It was hard for her to find a counterargument, so, with a warning to him not to make a pig of himself, she let him stay.

There were many who would have agreed with Gil that the buffet was the best part. The long buffet table was heaped with treats: lobster cakes, rolled veal
à la royale,
smoked salmon fillets, mutton pates, piles of cheese buns, orange biscuits, and rolls
à la duchesse,
an assortment of aspics and gelatin molds, and all sorts of jellies, creams, soufflés, trifles, and cakes. When the guests had heaped their plates, they took seats at one of the five tables placed round the room, each of which was served by two footmen who filled their glasses with wine. When most of the eating was done, Kit tapped on his glass with his knife and rose from his chair. “My aunts have both insisted that I, as host, must be the one to announce the various reasons we have come together in celebration,” he said, raising his voice so that he could be heard throughout the room. “I must admit that I’m not in the best condition to do this, being already very well to live. In addition, I am about to propose a number of toasts, so many that by the end of this speech you all will be as diddly as I am now, and I, I fear, will be completely cast away.”

He paused to let the ripple of laughter die down and to be sure the footmen had filled all the glasses.

“First, let us raise our glasses to Arthur Wellesley, the heroic Duke of Wellington, who last week at Waterloo put Napoleon at last and finally to rout.”

Again he paused. The guests rose to their feet and drank, several gentlemen shouting, “Hear, hear!”

“Next,” Kit went on when they’d resumed their seats, “I’d like to toast all of you who’ve graced my tables this evening, with a special welcome to my nephew Arthur, who’s just returned from school with a medal in the hundred-yard dash. To Arthur, and to you all.”

Applause filled the room, the second toast was drunk, and the footmen again circulated, refilling the glasses.

“Now, may I ask that you all drink with special enthusiasm to my friend Mick Mickley and Miss Betty Rhys, whose banns were read in church this very week. May I offer my warmest congratulations on your coming nuptials. Stand up, you two, and let everyone see your radiant faces.”

There was a buzz of voices that greeted this announcement as Betty, looking very ladylike in a blue muslin gown that Caro had given her, and with her hair (without a cap for once) done up magnificently in the fashion called
à la Grecque,
got awkwardly to her feet, with Mickley beside her, grinning in besotted pride. “Isn’t she a housemaid?” one woman was heard to ask. But Kit began to applaud enthusiastically, and his example was soon followed by everyone else. If the viscount was eccentric enough to invite a housemaid to his table, they thought, it was his own business, and certainly not a matter to cast shadows on this generously opulent party. Mickley, in a burst of courage, kissed his betrothed on the cheek, bringing on another—and more spontaneous—round of applause as they both sat down.

“And finally,” Kit went on, his smile fading. “I’ve been assigned to make the most important announcement of the evening, the principal reason for this gathering...” He paused, reached for his glass and took a good, if unorthodox, swig. “... the principal reason for this gathering ...” He looked at Caro, who was staring at him with an expression that hovered somewhere between smiling politeness and bone-chilling dread. “... the principal reason ...” He could see from the corner of his eye that Henry Lutton was leaning forward in his chair as if ready to leap to his feet at a moment’s notice. “I am honored to—no, hang it, I’m not honored! I’m
expected
to... to announce the upcoming nuptials of yet another happy couple...”

He felt ill, desperate. If I don’t get out of here, he thought, I shall lose my mind! He turned to Letty, who was seated at his right. “Confound it, Letty,” he muttered, leaning down and speaking into her ear, “I can’t do this.
You
do it!” He thrust the glass into her hand and strode out of the room.

Letty looked after him, her eyes moist with sympathy. Then, leaning heavily on her cane, she got to her feet and faced the now silent audience. “It gives me great pleasure,” she said, her voice pitched achingly high, “to announce the betrothal of our beloved Caroline Whitlow to the eminent, respected vicar of our church, Mr. Henry Lutton.”

There was a gasp of surprise, but before the listeners could raise their glasses, a youthful voice cried out, “No!” Gil, his underlip trembling, lifted himself from his chair, picked up his crutches, threw Caro a look of heartrending reproach, and hobbled from the room.

“Gil!” Caro cried, starting after him.

“Caro, my dear, you can’t go now!” Martha hissed, grasping her arm.

Arthur jumped up. “It’s all right,” he said quietly to his sister, “I’ll see to him.” And he followed his brother out.

Caro reluctandy resumed her seat. With Martha prodding her, Letty raised her glass again. ‘To Henry and Caroline!” she said, trying her best to sound cheerful. “May they have the happiest of futures.”

The guests, fully enjoying being privy to this private drama (and the prospect it gave them for delicious gossip later), rose and raised their glasses. “To Henry and Caroline!”

THIRTY-SEVEN

The guests were gone. Henry and Caro stood outside the front door, waving off the last carriage. When it was out of sight, Caro dropped her face in her hands. “What a fiasco!” she muttered.

“Only a small part of it,” the vicar said, taking one of her hands. “Most of the guests had a fine time.”

She shook her head. “We’ve provided them with enough scandal to keep them gossiping for months. Whatever made Gil behave that way?”

“I suppose he doesn’t wish his stern tutor to become his equally stern brother-in-law. I am less disturbed by his outburst than I am by His Lordship’s.” He squinted intently at Caro’s face, trying to read her expression in the dim glow emanating from the still-lit windows. “What do you make of his strange behavior?”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” she said.

He shook his head and gave her a chiding smile. “I
thought we agreed to be truthful with each other.”

Her eyes flew to his face. “Do you think I
lie?
Kit Meredith’s behavior has
always
been confusing to me.”

He drew her arm through his. “Let’s take a stroll down the drive,” he suggested. “It’s a lovely night.”

They walked along in silence. Caro braced herself for a sermon, which she supposed she deserved, but she wasn’t certain why. “You and His Lordship danced the waltz as if you’d practiced together for years,” he remarked after a while.

“Did it seem so? I’ve never waltzed before in my life.”

“Indeed? Then it was an amazing performance. You seemed to enjoy it a great deal.”

“I did.” She stopped and looked over at him. “Was that wrong of me?”

“No, not wrong. It only makes me wonder how you will feel when you may no longer indulge in the waltz when we go to parties.”

“Why may I not? I know you don’t like it, but may I not dance it with other partners after we’re wed?”

“I don’t think it appropriate for the vicar’s wife to dance the waltz with a man not her husband.”

“Oh, I see.” She walked on for a few steps, wondering in what other unexpected ways her life would be restricted after she married. Suddenly she swung about and faced him. “Henry, will you do a favor for me? Kiss me!”

That startled him. “Now? Here?”

“Yes, right now and right here. We are betrothed, are we not? And we’re quite alone. In these circumstances, it
must
be permissible.”

“Very well, my dear,” he said. He took a step closer to her, cupped her face in his hands, and softly kissed her lips. “Is that what you wanted?” he asked when he’d done.

“I ... suppose so,” she said. She turned away, unable to meet his eyes.

“That’s not the way Lord Crittenden kissed you, is it?”

Her eyes flew to his. “No,” she whispered guiltily.

“I did tell you, remember, that I am not much interested in the physicality of wedlock.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“That may prove ... er ... difficult for you?”
 

“I don’t know. It may.”

There was a long pause. She could not read his face in the darkness. But suddenly his voice came to her in sharp, perfect clarity. “He loves you, you know. The viscount.”

She threw him a look of amazement. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

“I think you know he does. The question is, how do you feel about him?”

She clenched her fists. “I despise him.”
 

“Do you, indeed? Why? Is it because he hired you as his housekeeper?”

“No, that was my doing, not his. He wanted me to live here in the same manner as I did with Uncle Clement.”

“That was certainly good of him. Then what is it about him that bothers you so?”