Chapter 10
Elsworth Manor was a charming house on modest grounds surrounded by farmland.
As it was not on any major thoroughfare and seldom inhabited, it made little sense to have expansive gardens and rather it was dotted with various copses, and beyond them fields and orchards tended by local farmers.
Lucy noted as their coach approached that the existing gardens, while simple, had been well tended recently to bring them up to the required standard for hosting a social event.
The interior was well lit and cheerful, but not overly decorated.
There was still a faint scent in the air of dust and absence, one that even the light aroma of cleaning and candles could not fully disguise.
Lucy, who often found such events initially overwhelming, was grateful for the simplicity of it all.
There were already many familiar faces assembled as the Elliots entered.
While decorum suggested introductions, Lucy instead found a quiet corner where she could process the surroundings in her own time.
Turning down the voices of a crowd to a tolerable level was a skill Lucy had been forced to develop over time.
Her debut some years prior had been a thoroughly unpleasant affair that still on occasion arose in her nightmares.
While she had been to a handful of larger gatherings before that event, such as the wedding of a cousin or a Christmas spent with family friends, that first ball was on quite a different scale.
In the preparation she had been excited, being especially particular about her dress and her hair, gathering a list of guests and food and dances.
As she always liked to be, she’d entered the ball as prepared as possible.
But the practical experience was something no level of foreknowledge could prepare her for.
There was talking. More talking than she had ever encountered in a single place.
Dozens of voices were speaking, each drawing her attention, but each crossed with so many others that to focus on any one was like trying to focus on a single drop in a waterfall.
There were footsteps, laughter, the distant sound of a string quartet …
A young man had endeavoured to talk to her, but she was unable to make out his words, let alone form any in reply with so many others drowning her out.
Drowning. That was what she imagined it felt like; inundated by so many other voices, so much information, that even the inside of her head could not be heard.
It had been too noisy. And too hot. And, if anything, the crowds had insisted on getting louder and louder, each new piece of chatter or laughter causing her hand to twitch of its own accord.
The only way to silence them, she’d concluded urgently, would be to take one of the candlesticks and shatter the large mirror on the wall beside her.
She had almost started reaching for it before a hand had seized hers and dragged her with irresistible force.
She’d found herself on a patio. It was dark, it was cold, it was unknown, but the noise of the ballroom had been muted by distance. The distance had given her the space to think, to reason, to hear her thoughts, her pounding heart. Just enough distance that she could focus on something else.
The first thing that came to mind was to name the types of coach, which she’d begun to list in reverse alphabetical order.
‘Underwood, Thornbrook, Rawleigh, Pemberley Cross, Norfolk …’
By the time she’d reached Carrington, she’d felt her breath returning to normal, her heart swift but calming. She’d realised her eyes were closed and decided to open them.
Margaret had stood before her, calm and compassionate.
‘Too much talk,’ Lucy had explained, still gathering her thoughts.
‘We’ll go to the sewing room. Nobody visits the sewing room during a ball. Once the dancing starts, people talk less.’
And indeed they had. Lucy had enjoyed the dancing. And the meal. And the dresses. She did not enjoy the conversation, but she had managed, though she did visit the sewing room more than once.
When she had returned home from London she’d done what she always had. She’d planned. There would be more balls, more occasions, more chatter. She would need to prepare herself.
Now, her mind settled, Lucy’s thoughts returned to Elsworth Manor.
Only when she felt she was ready did she rise and prepare to move among the guests.
Lucy was not a natural mingler. Rather it was something she had forced herself to develop through time and observation.
There were proper ways to do things, pleasantries to exchange and unwritten rules to follow.
Unwritten rules frustrated Lucy and she converted them into written rules as best she could, as evidenced by a large notebook in her chest of drawers.
Some she deemed reasonable. Some she deemed unreasonable but necessary: civilised society had chosen a specific order to lay out cutlery; the fact that it was not smallest to largest was something she would suffer in silence.
Where her instincts failed her, she propped herself up with this encyclopaedic knowledge of etiquette and a sprinkling of topics that could be dropped into appropriate exchanges.
She had just disengaged from a conversation on the most appropriate time to start wearing summer hats (the third week of June), when she was intercepted by the smiling face of George St Martin.
‘Miss Elliot. A pleasure to see you here.’
‘As it is to see you. Are you well?’
‘I am. Though I am pleased to see the end of winter. One prefers to get out of the house more often.’
She nodded in polite agreement.
George was the eldest son of Sir Walter St Martin, a well-respected statesman.
George had inherited all the charisma that had made his father a success, but less of his ambition.
He was a tall, handsome and charming man, a fine dancer and a fair hand at cards.
Their two families socialised regularly and at first his affable demeanour had been a great comfort to Lucy, who found his mood easy to interpret where those of others were more obtuse.
But over time she found him less charming, for his blithe happiness was always on display and he seemed to drift through life too carelessly for Lucy’s tastes.
‘Did you see the cherry trees coming in?’ he asked after it became clear she was not responding further. ‘They shall bloom later than usual this year, I think.’
‘It was a long winter,’ she replied. ‘How is your father?’
‘Back and forth to London all the time. Something to do with some affair happening in Europe.’
‘The war?’ she suggested helpfully.
‘Hmm. Yes. Probably something like that. I wonder if our host knows anything about it. But no, he was in Africa, I hear.’
‘The war affects Africa,’ she replied, immediately worrying her tone might have been too sharp.
Fortunately, her lack of eloquence was surpassed by his lack of acuity.
‘Really? Well, he must be glad to be home from it then.’
‘I have not had the pleasure of meeting him yet. Are you able to point him out?’
‘Dashwood? Oh, yes, that’s him there, over by the mantelpiece.’
Even with George pointing it took her a moment.
There were three gentlemen happily chatting together.
One she recognised as Ford Mayhew, Sarah’s older brother.
One was an older gentleman she recognised but did not know well.
Thus, by process of elimination, the third man must be Captain James Dashwood.
He was handsome in a slightly rough way, his face a shade darker than the other men, suggesting his time spent in warmer climes.
His hair, coat and boots all conformed to the fashion of the season in a way Lucy found sadly unoriginal.
There was, of course, a very narrow conformity that must be followed in style, but a host should endeavour to define himself in at least some way.
A broader stock perhaps, or a stronger colour.
He bore a smile at least, a jolly one in reaction to the conversation she could not hear.
‘Shall I introduce you?’ George offered.
‘Perhaps later. Thank you.’
‘Then I shall take my leave. Would you permit me to add my name to your dance card, Miss Elliot?’
She smiled. ‘That would be most pleasant.’ George might not make for scintillating conversation, but he carried his dancing feet as lightly as he did his burdens.
Left alone, her attention returned to Mr Dashwood. Perhaps he was more fetching than her first assessment, though it was clear he was a conventional gentleman.
Almost studiously so, she thought.
Lucy felt a rare sensation, a prickling along the nape of her neck, an uncertainty and excitement she had felt only once or twice. Felt in those moments at the Night Races where the outcome hung uncertainly between seconds.
‘Almost studiously so,’ she repeated aloud.
But perhaps there was no ‘almost’. His laughter was authentic.
So too seemed his conversation. There, he appeared to have none of the shortcomings Lucy realised in herself.
His coat was well tailored to his lean frame, but he seemed ill at ease with it, as though he preferred a looser cut.
He held his glass in his left hand, while his right rested by his side, moving back and forth, with fingers tapping his thigh.
And he watched the room. Not obviously, but rather in quick glimpses, checking faces, taking stock.
‘He is not what he seems.’
She might have started in surprise, but the words were so close to her thoughts that at first Lucy did not notice they came from behind her.
‘Mr St Martin.’ She nodded in greeting as she turned.
‘Miss Elliot.’
Oliver St Martin shared little of his older brother’s charm, but his physique lent him a cetain presence.
He stood a head taller than George, but was of notably lighter build and a considerably darker disposition.
George was a bush in full summer bloom while Oliver was an autumn tree thin of leaves.
Yet in a way Lucy held him in higher regard than his amicable brother.
He was certainly taciturn, but always polite and never bitter that his father’s favour and fortunes were placed upon his older sibling.
And where his brother was often oblivious, Oliver was shrewd, a trait Lucy could not help but admire.
‘Why do you say such a thing of our host?’ Lucy asked.
‘Why do you think it?’ he countered with a thin smile.
‘His manner is too studied,’ Lucy said. ‘His eyes are ever watching people’s faces.’
‘Not merely their faces – their positions.’
Lucy followed this intimation and found it to be quite true. Every so often Dashwood would scan the room as if mapping it out in his head.
‘How extraordinary,’ she exclaimed. ‘I am at a loss to explain it.’
‘Exits,’ Oliver replied. ‘He is watching the exits. The instincts of a soldier, Miss Elliot.’
She was about to ask how he discerned this, but he merely nodded politely and drifted out among the other guests, his head bobbing above his contemporaries like a buoy on the ocean.
Observing the exits, she wondered. For threats coming in? Or for the shortest route out?