The spinster and the wastrel (7 page)

When the vehicle passed the inn, he could see into the lighted upper room set aside for private dining. Inside he saw Mortimer Wallace seated before a rich repast. Despite the sight of so many deliciously cooked dishes, Sir Gerard felt a sick nausea settle in his stomach that had nothing to do with the jerking movements of the carriage. Until the end of the month. That was all the time remaining before the money-lender destroyed his dreams.

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Annette discovered she enjoyed being an heiress. It was pleasant to pay off her debts owed to the shopkeepers. No longer did she worry about ducking into the store to buy a necessity. Now, wide smiles and welcoming bows from the merchants greeted her.

When Annette donated enough to the church to replace the leaking roof, the vicar's praise for her generosity swelled to the old rafters. His effusiveness embarrassed her. She had long known the needs of the church and the rest of the district. At last she had the opportunity to do something about both of them.

The universal approval that met her actions soothed any doubt in her heart that Sir Gerard's demands might have created. She told herself, "I am using the money wisely."

Her greatest pleasure came the day she tramped over the musty cold warehouse with the carpenter. Wisps of straw blown about by the wind whistling through the bigger cracks in the walls covered the floor. A large puddle in one corner had frozen into an indoor skating rink. Even the mice, certainly inhabiting the walls, stayed hidden for

warmth. Rubbing her hands together to stay warm, Annette knew she would have to add a chimney and stove to her plans.

The carpenter Tubbs assessed the damage and his client before quoting a price to repair the roof and the walls.

Annette's gasp of surprise echoed in the hollow building. "That's an outrageous price!"

The burly man shrugged. "Lot of work to be done."

"I am aware of that, but your price is too high."

"I need help with some of this bigger work. I have to pay them, too," the carpenter pointed out.

Annette gazed directly at him, her hands on her hips. "Now, Tubbs, I know times are hard and prices are high. I also know I have the money to pay you a decent wage, and that is what I am going to do. Pay you a decent wage, not allow highway robbery."

He scuffed his feet against the dirt coating the floor. "You been good to me and my family many times, Miss Courtney. I don't forget that."

The adjusted price he named was far more reasonable, and with a little bit more negotiation, they reached a rate acceptable to both of them.

Annette shook his hand. "I want to open the school as soon as possible, so do your best."

"For you, I will."

His promise reassured her. Tubbs was a man who kept his word. With pleased expectation, Annette gazed around the warehouse. A few empty barrels remained of the former inventory. Soon her benches filled with children would replace the dark emptiness. The sound of recitations would resound in the bare space as the students learned their arithmetic and reading. She sighed with hap-

piness at the prospect. Her dream of a school finally seemed within reach.

The only area where Annette did not exert control was her social life. Here, to her dismay, her companion Lucille dominated.

"The first thing we must do," Lucille stated, "is to make your wardrobe more fashionable. More color would not be a bad idea, either."

They were visiting the dressmaker's place, and the woman had just placed a nice length of brown wool before them. Annette liked the cloth.

"This looks very serviceable," she told her companion. "The brown will not show the dirt, and the fabric appears strong enough to wear well."

Lucille sniffed in contempt. "Service is not something we are looking for." Her gaze assessed the bolts stacked at the back. She marched over to a dark green silk and ran her hand over it. "This looks very nice. You would like a gown sewn from it."

Mrs. Hutchens, the dressmaker, blinked in surprise behind her round glasses. A tall, spare woman with her brown and gray hair pulled back from her face, she dressed in the clothes she sewed, providing an excellent model for her creations. A pleased smile spread across her face as she sailed over to join Lucille. "Forgive me. I did not realize you wanted an evening gown."

Neither did Annette. She tried to interfere. "I have two perfectly good gowns already."

Lucille did not even turn around from her inspection of the bolts. "Pshaw! You have worn those to such threads that I am amazed they still hold together. You need something new to wear for the Assembly."

Mrs. Hutchens nodded in agreement. "If you wish, I can sew it in time for the next one."

Annette raised her eyebrows at this statement. "It always took almost a month to make one of my gowns before."

"But an evening gown is ever so much more important," the dressmaker said.

The price would probably reflect the extra work, Annette supposed. All other thoughts vanished when the woman unrolled a length of deep blue silk shot through with silver threads. Annette's breath caught in her throat at the sight of the shimmering fabric.

Unable to stop herself, she reached out to caress the smooth, cool cloth. It spilled through her hands as though the night sky unfolded before her. For an instant, she wondered how Sir Gerard would regard her in a gown created from this silk. Would he see someone more than the spinster everyone considered her to be?

"You like this one?" Mrs. Hutchens asked.

There was no need for Annette to pretend otherwise. Her hands still played with the fabric. "Yes. How much does it cost?"

'Two guineas a yard, plus the cost of the sewing."

Annette gasped. 'Two guineas!"

The dressmaker defended herself. "It is a fair price. The silk was smuggled all the way from France. There is no duty included."

"Excellent!" Lucille declared. "We will buy enough to make a gown from that. It will be the first one we want made up, but we shall choose the design later."

"But..." Annette tried to protest she did not want to encourage smuggling, but Lucille had commanded Mrs.

Hutchens's attention. The women ignored her as they turned back to examine the fabrics.

"I do like this green silk," Lucille said. "It would also look good on Miss Courtney."

After choosing the evening dress fabrics, they selected others for day gowns. When Lucille and Mrs. Hutchens pored over the patterns, Annette offered an occasional opinion. It was usually disregarded. Lucille's wishes determined the designs for their clothes.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the large order they left with the dressmaker, Mrs. Hutchens was able to finish both the elegant blue and silver gown for Annette and the deep gold one Lucille had set her heart on for herself in a record time of three weeks.

Annette had spent the time overseeing the repairs to the warehouse, while Lucille supervised the sewing of their evening dresses. Acting with the same speed of the dressmaker, the carpenter Tubbs was able to renovate the building without delay. He employed a large crew of men eager for work. Sooner than she expected, her school was ready to open.

No thoughts of her dream intruded on her mind when Annette stood outside the Assembly room ready to make her entrance; rather a fluttering of nervousness capered within her. This was the first time she was appearing at a social gathering since her inheritance, and she felt like a young girl just beginning her debut. These people were her lifelong neighbors, but would they regard her differently now? She had already seen ample signs of how the money was changing her life. The very gown she wore offered proof.

Then her name and Lucille's were announced. Annette did not imagine the brief pause in the conversation as she

felt every eye turn towards her. She lifted her chin and tried to pretend she did not notice. The music continued to play. After that short hesitation, the guests returned to their flirtations and gossip. Annette unfurled her fan with seeming unconcern, but her hand trembled. She had done nothing wrong. Yet, for a moment, she had felt pilloried beneath the assessing gazes of her neighbors.

The feeling did not last. It did not take long for the various men in the gathering to appear beside her, requesting a dance. Some of the bolder ones asked for two. With a lightness foreign to her, Annette laughed off those beseeching for more than one. She knew why she had suddenly become the belle of the ball.

From young Daniel Talbot, who had barely escaped from school, to widower Mr. Deschamps with four children, the motives of the single men were no puzzle at all. However, it shocked her when several of the married men also requested dances. After a moment she realized her money attracted them, too. Not for marriage, but for the investments she could fund.

Annette laughed and enjoyed her popularity to the fullest, with her eyes wide open. The only thing to mar her enjoyment was that her popularity did not extend to Lucille.

Her companion sat off to the side, a bewildered look on her face. With her congenial nature, Lucille was not often ignored at social gatherings. She had even been more excited about her new dress than Annette had been. Now Annette ached for her friend's hurt. She tried to have some attention turned to Lucille. All her hints about how the other woman enjoyed dancing, too, met with studied ignorance by her partners.

Then Sir Gerard Montfort joined the court clustered

around her. He dressed in a formal black coat sewn with the elegance only a London tailor could master, yet an air of ease emanated from him. The gold of his watch chain gleamed in the candlelight, emphasizing the black ebony of his coat. A smile lit his face.

Her heart seemed to pause before beating again at a much faster pace. Suddenly Annette knew her fears at the beginning of the Assembly had nothing to do with her reception by her neighbors and had everything to do with how this man would regard her in her new dress.

She managed a tolerably cool greeting. "Good evening, sir."

He bowed. "Good evening, Miss Courtney. I hope you saved a dance for me."

"I have promised so many," she replied with honest regret.

"All?"

When she looked up into his brown eyes, she knew more than anything, she wanted to dance one set with this London society man. "There is still the supper dance."

"Excellent! I not only have the chance to dance with you, I may take you to supper."

A thrill sparkled through her at the prospect. The fact that he greeted it with pleasure only deepened her anticipation.

The musicians struck a warning chord, announcing the start of the next dance. Annette's partner, the widower Mr. Deschamps, approached, and Sir Gerard started to turn away.

Afterwards, Annette did not know how she came to be so daring as to stop the baronet with the request, "Please, wait."

Sir Gerard halted. "Yes?"

Annette swallowed and then spoke in a rush, almost slurring her words together. "My companion, Mrs. Lucille Downes, she does not have a partner for this dance."

At his surprised look, heated mortification flushed her cheeks and spread through her. Then she remembered how eagerly Lucille had looked forward to this night. Her friend had never anticipated being a wallflower, and now her expected pleasure had been disappointed. Previous hints to other partners had not worked, so Annette had made her request plain.

"You want me to dance with her?"

Annette heard surprise in his voice, though not an instant refusal. "Lucille is not usually a wallflower. She can be so charming and witty that usually partners cluster around her."

Sir Gerard held up his hand as if to halt the flow of words. "You have already convinced me, Miss Courtney. I will do as you ask."

There was no more time to speak. Her partner stood by, an eager expression on his face, and his arm extended to lead her onto the floor. As she went, Annette noticed Sir Gerard bowing before Lucille, and then her friend's face lightening with pleasure.

The dance was a vigorous reel. As she swung around, Annette was able to catch glimpses of the other couple. Once she heard Lucille's giggle above the music. Laughter was as much her friend's partner as the baronet.

Annette noticed Sir Gerard, too, seemed to take pleasure in the dance. He smiled and paid attention to his partner's remarks. One of his sallies earned him a light tap of reproof from Lucille's fan. His answering smile showed it did not appear to bother him. Even from across the dance floor, Annette could tell that Lucille did not mean it.

A warm glow spread within Annette that had nothing to do with the vigorousness of the dance. For her friend's sake, she was glad she had been so bold.

When the dance ended with a flourish of music, Annette realized she had paid more attention to Sir Gerard and Lucille than to her own partner. To make amends, the smile she bestowed on Mr. Deschamps was warmer than she intended. He responded with a squeeze of her hand. She remembered he had one wife in the graveyard and four lively children. As much as she wanted a family, his was not the one she desired.

The eager approach of her next partner saved her. Since he was a married man, he wanted to talk about money to improve his lands. The topic interested Annette because she knew how cruelly the cold winter and rise in prices were hurting the people of the area. Still, she could not linger with him. The next dance set and partner awaited.

And so it went throughout the evening. A brief partnering and then a switch. She almost became dizzy with the pace of it. She noticed that after the initial dance with the baronet, Lucille snagged several more partners and her friend's face now wore its typical happy expression.

Annette also managed to keep track of Sir Gerard. After dancing with Lucille, he partnered several other ladies, both married and single. However, he never danced more than once with any of them. Nor did he head for the card room and the betting games going on within there.

As her feet flew in the steps of the cotillions and polkas, she puzzled over the baronet's behavior. The story of his wastrel reputation was well entrenched, but he did not act in any such manner.