The Education of Portia (15 page)

Caldwell Dent cleared his throat, and Stadbroke realized that he had been holding
Portia's hand far too long. He kissed the air above it, and restored it to her while avoiding her
gaze. He turned his attention to Dent.

"Good evening! This must be the highlight of the festive season for you." He was
pleased to note that his sardonic words made Portia bristle.

Dent chuckled his understanding. "'Tis a necessary bore," he nodded. "But the ladies all
enjoy it, and we men must wish to keep them happy." His gaze was wandered to Mme.
Montlucon, standing with a brace of proud parents and their budding daughter.

"Exactly so," Stadbroke agreed, and bowed politely to his hosts, He found himself, as he
forged into the room, wondering involuntarily what would keep Miss Crossmichael happy. He
had thought of several things when he found his eldest daughter. She was standing on tiptoe
searching the crowd.

"Looking for me?" he grinned as he came up with her. "Or for Cal Dent?"

Her eyes rounded. "You, Papa. We are not allowed to dance with the masters. Papa, is it
true Mr. Dent is to take our portrait--all of us?"

"It is. We begin sitting for him next week."

"Oh, splendid...I thought p'raps it was a hum--or Penny being wishful." She clapped her
hands in delight. "I shall see him--you--more often. Once a week or twice?"

The orchestra--comprised of the music master and two other musicians, one each at the
pianoforte, a violin and a flute--began to tune their instruments.

"Once at first, beginning Tuesday. Should you like to dance, poppet?"

"Yes, please, Papa. It has been so wonderful seeing more of you since we came to
school, sir. Mel is not nearly so unhappy, and Penny is always of a flutter for your next
visit."

Stadbroke was smote with a pang of regret. He had not realized three years ago that his
search for his own happiness would affect his daughters so much. He had departed Lincolnshire
in confusion and had thought his children content with their home, their governess and their
grandparents nearby. He had thought only of himself, it was true but surely that was no crime?
He shook his head at his own thoughts and led Sabina onto the polished wood of Miss
Crossmichael's music room floor to join a set for the country dance.

"If you meant to ignore us when we grew up, you should not have made our childhood
so very fine," Sabina said with uncanny acuity.

Ingram had the time it took to complete their separate movements in the dance to
recover his composure after this facer from his child. It seemed his mistakes were visible to
everyone and that everyone understood his designs better than he did himself. He was appalled
but had no leisure to consider the matter. "I have not ignored you and your sisters," he said in his
own defence.

"Oh, not Penny. And not Mel, too much. But you never talk to me anymore. Except
now," his daughter grinned. Her eyes, he suddenly realized, were the mirror of his own. "Never
mind, Papa, Miss Crossmichael says fathers are frequently confounded when their daughters
become young ladies. They do not know what to say or how to behave around them. And they
detest their beaus. Shall you detest my gallants, Papa? You quite like Mr. Dent, do you
not?"

Ingram had his choice of topics to pursue with this onslaught of Sabina's chatter. "Miss
Crossmichael is a fount of wisdom, child, and I think she has too good an understanding of
fathers--or at least your father. And yes, I like Dent--and he thinks of you as nothing more than a
student, which is what I should expect." He was disturbed to see his child's eyes fill with tears.
"He's as good as promised to Mme. Montlucon, Sabina!"

"Oh...I didn't...oh..."

He could that Sabina was trying to control her trembling lips and sought to comfort her.
"I thought you must know. Miss Crossmichael says it is nearly a settled thing. I am glad their
discretion is so complete as to keep you in ignorance, but you must realize that a rather younger
gentleman would be more suitable."

He knew immediately he had said the wrong thing. Suitable was an unappealing term; in
fact, he recalled having the word thrown at him repeatedly before he had married her mother.
Theirs had been an eminently suitable match.

"What of Christmas?" Ingram offered a desperate distraction. "Shall you enjoy
Christmas in London?"

"Won't we go home to Stadley?" Sabina seemed to be recovering her composure.

Stadbroke was relieved, though there was a desolation at the back of her eyes that
disturbed him. Across the chamber he could see Miss Crossmichael still besieged by parents. He
had no doubt they all were looking for reassurance that their daughter was the most talented of
the school's inhabitants. "No, my dear, we'll celebrate in Hill Street. I have experience of the trip
north to the Court in December. Remember last year when my arrival was so late? Not a journey
I wish to repeat. And I would not for the world expose you three to an expedition like it."

"It will be different celebrating in town," Sabina unconsciously displayed a struggle to
mature acceptance of the news.

"Not very. And you have done such a fine job of decorating for this ball, that you shall
have charge of decorating the Hill Street house, with Mel and Penny and the housemaids to assist
you."

"Really, Papa? When may we come? It is five weeks until Christmas; shall we come
tomorrow? Where does one find holly in the city? And we must have mistletoe. A Yule log...
Shall we have a Yule log? But we have no bit of last year's log with which to light it; they are at
home. May we ask Miss Crossmichael to join us, and Mr. Dent? Oh, and Madame with
Gavrielle."

The dance slowed to its end to Stadbroke's relief. He had not at all considered Christmas
as yet, having been occupied with the opening of Parliament, and was unprepared for the flood of
questions. But his daughter's last question he could parry. "I am certain Miss Crossmichael and
her brother have their own celebrations here in their home."

"But we could ask!"

They exchanged courtesies as the music stopped, and Ingram escorted his prettily
flushed daughter from the press of dancers to the side of the chamber. "We could ask, of
course."

Stadbroke was offered a reprieve from her questioning when another beknighted father
came to solicit Sabina's hand for the next set. He leaned against an unoccupied chair and mulled
over the many topics of his daughter's conversation. Half child, half woman, he thought with a
private smile, and with less of her mother's nature and her grandmothers' faults than he had dared
ever to hope. He could deal with her better than he did, he realized.

Then he was aware before even she spoke, that Portia had approached his other side. He
swung round slowly to consider her.

"Sabina dances very prettily, Lord Stadbroke. May I find you another partner?"

"She does indeed Miss Crossmichael, thanks I think to you. She has been telling me of
her studies here, and they are not all classroom fare. And no, I will have no other partner, unless
you will dance, ma'am?" The little orchestra had struck up a quadrille.

"I don't dance, my lord, especially not this evening."

"On the contrary, I suspect you dance very well." He smiled, wondering at his desire to
tease his daughters' teacher.

"I do not flirt either, my lord, especially with my pupils' fathers."

"A wise decision, no doubt. And there's not many here worth employing a teasing
smile." He glanced around at the self-satisfied members of his sex in the music room; they were
on the whole a comfortable, homely group of minor aristocrats.

"Really, Lord Stadbroke!"

"That's better, I feel much more at ease with your temper than with your civility." His
admission surprised even himself. "Just the quadrille, ma'am, just to keep your hand in. No one
will fault you for taking a little enjoyment for yourself. You work very hard, all your parents
know it."

He smiled his most charming smile, little understanding why it was important to him
that she stand up with him.

And after staring into his eyes, she gave him her slender hand, and walked with him
onto the dancing floor.

* * * *

Two days later Portia was still wondering why she had done so. She never danced at the
Christmas ball, and she did not understand why she had broken her own rule for Lord Stadbroke.
And to make matters worse, she had enjoyed the dance too much.

Stadbroke had made her feel desirable, womanly in a way she had experienced only
once before, in the upstairs corridor with his fingers tangled in her hair. She had found, in her
observations of her sex, that there were women who simply did not attract male attention. She
had never been able to discern why that was. Those women were perhaps on the whole less
pretty, less flirtatious, more candid and more astute than their peers, but not so much that it
precluded their selection as spouses or even lovers.

Why it should be she could not understand, but she knew that she was one of their
number. Her circumstances of course had militated against her. But even in her salad days, and
her one unmemorable season, she had not taken, had not appealed to the gentlemen's tastes.

So that now when Stadbroke stirred up responses and urges that she had well buried in
the last ten years, she almost resented it. She believed she had grown beyond the need for
physicality, but with the viscount she found herself longing for his embrace, wondering about his
kiss, thrilling to his touch.
Like one of my own pupils
,
like Sabina mooning after
Caldwell
.

She stared at the neglected ledger before her, and thumped it resolutely with her closed
fist. It would not do. She was a woman without appeal and, if Heloise's gossip was to be
believed, he was a connoisseur of female beauty. Her notion that he enjoyed her company, even
when they sparred, was nonsense, and any hopes she might be so foolish as to harbour were
ridiculous.

She was relieved to attend to a knock on her door. "Come," she called, dismissing her
wayward thoughts.

Sabina Perrington entered at her words, a Sabina with a pink nose and red-rimmed
eyes.

Portia was sorry to see it. She thought something had occurred at the ball to distress
Sabina and she had wondered if it had to do with the girl's infatuation for Caldwell. She had
waited only upon Sabina's approach to discuss the matter.

Hovering just inside the door, twisting a handkerchief in her small hands, Sabina asked,
"Is it true that Mr. Dent is promised to Madame, Miss Crossmichael? Please I must know."

"Sabina, come and sit down." Portia felt a new pity for the girl and a better
understanding of the pangs of unrequited attraction. And the irony of it--she entranced by
Sabina's father and Sabina infatuated with Portia's brother. It had all the elements of farce.

But it was all too real for this young woman who now sat before her.

"Papa told me so and I know he wouldn't lie to me." A few tears escaped Sabina's brown
eyes.

God bless the viscount
, thought Portia ironically, he had been cruel while
intending to be kind.

"I have watched them closely but I cannot think it true, Miss. Madame shows no
consciousness in Mr. Dent's presence; I...I flutter when he enters a room. I blush when he speaks
to me, and my hands tremble, Miss...tremble. Surely she does not care, and I do, so very much."
Sabina mopped the wayward tears and cleared her throat.

Portia glanced at her own hands and remembered the dance with the viscount and his
touch. She thought she concealed her reactions well however. "It is true, Sabina, that my brother
loves Mme. Montlucon very much, has since the first month she joined me here to teach. And
she does care for him, but she--and I tell you this in confidence--is older than he and has
Gavrielle to care for. So she feels that she will not burden him with her acceptance of his suit. It
is a difficult time for them Sabina, though I have no doubt that they will resolve their differences
and win through to happiness."

The girl looked distraught. Portia recalled how many other young ladies she had
supported through this same crisis without fully understanding their pain. How odd that she
should achieve nine and twenty before experiencing a need, an infatuation like theirs.

"Sabina, every young woman and man will experience emotions they will believe to be
love many times before they settle upon a life partner. Love has many faces. And you are not
alone in thinking my brother is your heart's desire; many of your classmates have felt the same.
Some of it has to do with propinquity, some with inexperience." She lifted a hand as Sabina
showed an intention to burst into speech.

"I know you believe your love to be strong and true. And it is not for me to say that that
is not so. But whatever your feelings you must believe that his are already bespoke. He will not
return your affections. So that is an end to it.

"That sounds stern I know, but such is life. Yours is the heroic role of living life in the
face of unrequited love." Portia had found this grandiloquent statement had bolstered young
ladies in the past. She could see the effect of it in the straightening of Sabina Perrington's
shoulders and the drying of her eyes.

"Have you ever been in love, Miss Crossmichael?"

Portia was taken aback. It was not a question anyone had asked her ever before. She
could reply in the negative; whatever her unsatisfactory, inconvenient feelings for Lord
Stadbroke were, they surely were not love.

"No, Sabina."

"My papa has not either. He and Mama did not love each other, not really love, I mean.
It was just that they were convenient if you understand me--our lands ran together, and it was
just accepted that they should marry. That is why he has come to London I think; he is looking
for love."

Portia choked back a cynical laugh, and thought that love was the last thing that
Stadbroke was looking for in the women he chose to companion. "It is not appropriate for you to
speculate about or comment on your parents' marriage, or on your father's actions. The older one
becomes the better one becomes at dissembling. One adult will never know what another truly
thinks, nor is it proper that one should. You cannot know anything of your parents' relationship
or of your father's nature."