Chapter Fourteen
Before They're ask'd, can Maids refuse?
This must be what it feels like to be struck by lightning, Frances thought. Every hair stood on end; heat washed over her, and then a numbing cold.
Mrs. Eveleigh sputtered and Miss Jarvis stared.
Jane alone found any delight in the situation. “If you could see yourselves!” she crowed with an unladylike snort. “Is it so surprising?”
“But—you said you could never be content merely to look at a man the rest of your life,” managed Frances, while Miss Jarvis nodded in support. They had both been there; they had both heard her.
“I have changed my mind,” Jane shrugged. “For he is lovely to look at, and I could do it all day long. And you have got him to speak a few words, Frances. I see you have.”
“Not about anything of substance!” But it wasn’t altogether true. Mr. Hearne had proven uncomfortably insightful at times, whether he meant to be or not.
“And which of us has said anything of substance?” asked Jane.
“Is it even possible, in such a setting? How many dinners and evenings have we had, and I have learned little of Mr. Midgecomb, save through you, Mama, telling me what he says to you at dinner. No—stop. That isn’t true.
I have learned he is a middling whist player and a passable actor. There.”
Her mother was slowly recovering. “Oh, Jane.”
But Frances could tell, from the tone in which Mrs. Eveleigh said it and the calculating knit to her brow, that her fruitful mind was already making adjustments to the original plan.
If the earl’s grandson must be given up, along with his superior fortune, then, by heaven, let it be Mr. Adam Hearne instead.
“Nor do I think, in the long run, a man’s looks form a solid foundation for marriage, any more than a woman’s would,” rejoined Frances.
“Perhaps not,” Jane conceded, “but if all men must end in being wizened or paunchy, and having much less hair than they began with, might I not enjoy his looks while they last? And he will start from a stronger position, so it will take him longer to grow ugly.”
“Oh, Jane,” said Mrs. Eveleigh again. “Do be serious now. This time let us all be perfectly plain.”
“Apart from Mr. Hearne,” her daughter rallied her. “I believe we are unanimous in thinking him not a bit plain?”
“Let us be clear, then. Jane, you have conceived a preference for Mr. Hearne, and, Miss Barstow, you now believe your own preferences lie with Mr. Midgecomb?”
What could Frances do but gulp and nod? But, no—if Jane didn’t want Mr. Midgecomb—if Jane thought she would refuse the man, even if he asked—did that not shipwreck Frances’ own strategy?
Suppose—horrors!—Mr. Midgecomb should indeed come to like her and offer for her, Frances?
What excuse would she have then to refuse, after her behavior?
That she would refuse went without saying, but who knew how Mrs. Dere would respond.
It would be an end to Frances’ favor with her.
An end to the boons and benefits Frances and, by extension, her entire family had enjoyed.
An angry Mrs. Dere could make life very, very, very miserable for them at Iffley Cottage.
“Don’t look so frightened,” Jane jeered.
(Now that the sauciness Miss Eveleigh had formerly only displayed for her mother was aimed at her, Frances was beginning to wonder what, exactly, she had liked about the girl.) “As I pointed out, nobody is asking anybody to marry anybody. Yet. We ladies might scheme and connive, but in the end we haven’t the power to bring any of these matches about. ”
“That’s not altogether true,” replied Mrs. Eveleigh.
“You have the power to smile and encourage or the power to be cold and forbidding. You have the power as well to assist each other, by speaking kindly of the other to the appropriate person, or to do what you can to…thwart the other’s success.
” Here she lifted a meaningful eyebrow at Frances, and to her credit Jane Eveleigh protested.
“Honestly, Mama, hasn’t poor Frances done enough, being forced to admit her tendre for Mr. Midgecomb before us all? What earthly reason would she have to hinder me winning Mr. Hearne, when I have so graciously surrendered my own claim to the object of her heart?”
“I will not hinder you,” Frances bleated. “But I had better go home now. I—I—” Frankly, she couldn’t think of an excuse.
“But do we have your word this time?” Mrs. Eveleigh insisted. “If you wake up tomorrow to discover your affections unaccountably transferred to Mr. Hearne, you will not begin to encourage him, at Jane’s expense?”
Her bosom swelling with indignation, Frances said stiffly, “I would never stoop to win someone at someone else’s expense, madam. But I would and will continue to show him the courtesy I would show to any other member of the party.”
“Very well, very well,” soothed Mrs. Eveleigh, thinking Miss Barstow might be a penniless nobody, but she had evidently been under the tutelage of Alice Dere long enough to absorb the woman’s lofty airs.
Although she was a strong walker, Frances Barstow took an inordinate amount of time to return home. It might have been the detour she took by way of the meadow, one that left her hot, red, and cross. But, no, she had been cross to begin with.
The impudence of Mrs. Stanton Eveleigh! To assume Frances was (1) fickle and (2) spiteful!
To assume that she would try to undermine Jane Eveleigh, if she saw her in the light of a rival!
Why, even when Frances was pretending to love Mr. Midgecomb, it was not with the intention of stealing him from anybody.
But on her second circuit of Iffley Meadow, she halted some little ways from the banks of the greenish Thames and tugged absently at the stalks of foxglove and meadowsweet.
“Mr. Hearne was right,” she muttered. “There are no more cowslips blooming, this time of year. And Midsummer Day was only last week.”
She twitched, as if an insect had scuttled down the back of her dress.
Mr. Hearne.
Mr. Adam Hearne, whom Jane Eveleigh now thought she could fancy.
Well, and—? Frances thought impatiently. What did it matter if she did? I only thought of him because of the cowslips.
And yet his image swam up before her, more vivid than the riverman dipping his oar in the water as he passed, not twenty yards from where she stood, his nod to her going unseen and unacknowledged.
No, Frances saw instead Mr. Adam Hearne leaning forward in his neighboring armchair. Saw his dark eyes, the line of his jaw, the sweep of his dark hair over his brow.
What was the matter with her?
She gave herself a shake. Was she catching Jane’s disease? Was she beginning to “like” a man, simply for his looks?
“No, that’s not it,” she said under her breath.
“It’s not that simple. It would be liking him for his looks in spite of everything else.
Not in spite of his character, I don’t mean.
I know no ill of it. But it would be deciding I could content myself with someone who was not my intellectual equal.
He can be interesting at times, certainly, in his eccentric fashion, but really—most of the time—doesn’t one simply want straightforward conversation?
How would one ever make plans with such a person?
Or talk about pressing cares? Or share one’s deepest sentiments? ”
Perhaps Jane Eveleigh didn’t ask herself these questions because she was keen on being both master and mistress of her future household, but Frances—Frances wanted a partner in life. A partner such as her father had been to her mother and such as her new brothers-in-law were to her older sisters.
So that was that.
And Miss Eveleigh—Jane—was welcome to the peculiar and peculiarly thick-headed Mr. Hearne.
Declaring herself satisfied after this meditation, Frances trudged homeward, thirsty for a glass of the orange winter wine Mrs. Barstow and Reed were engaged in transferring to bottles.
While she had not expected anyone to be anxious for her return, she was surprised on entering the cottage to find no one in the parlor and all the voices issuing from the back of the house.
“Set the funnel carefully, Reed,” Mrs. Barstow was saying, “and Mr. Hearne and Irving, you must tip the runlet more steeply now, but beware the wine coming down in a wave.”
An astonishing sight greeted Frances in the kitchen yard.
It was like the spectacle of tumblers and acrobats at the fair.
There were the children, placing bottles to be filled and wiping them dry, Maria counseling little Bash to move more slowly.
There was Sarah gingerly stopping the bottle necks with pieces of soaked cork.
There was the maid Reed holding the funnel steady, down which the clear stream of orange wine ran.
And there, in the very center of all this activity, were the manservant Irving and Mr. Adam Hearne in their shirtsleeves, carrying and angling the cask according to Mrs. Barstow’s instructions!
“What on earth?” Frances murmured.
“Mr. Hearne came to try on the ass’s head!” Gordon greeted her.
“And what has that to do with this?”
“Nothing,” grunted Mr. Hearne.
“It’s light enough for one person now, sir,” said Irving. “I’ve got it, and you can attend to business.”
“Yes, thank you so very much, Mr. Hearne,” Mrs. Barstow beamed at him.
“It was so gallant of you, and the laundress at Greenwood Hall can make that spot of wine come right out with salt and vinegar. Frances, dear, go with Mr. Hearne and see about the costume, and then we will all sit down with a glass when we are finished here.”
“But—”
But nothing. The family had already returned to its task, and Mr. Hearne took up his discarded pale-brown coat, prepared to follow her.
Turning on her heel, Frances led the way back inside, calling over her shoulder, “I don’t know why Sarah would ask you to come and try on the head when it is not even partly finished, only the materials gathered, really.”