Chapter Delaford, Dorsetshire #5
“Excellent,” Squibby said. “If you were betrothed, we’d have to stop meeting on the terrace like this.”
That comment was most unwelcome. “I intend to meet you on the terrace many times in my life,” I declared. (Had I drunk more than was strictly advisable? Yes, I had.)
“Not after you’re married, Snaps,” Squibby said. He was leaning against the marble railing, glancing down at me with a sort of negligent, sardonic expression.
“Are you thinking that I will marry a jealous man?” I demanded. “I shan’t. Jealousy is frightfully tiresome. A woman should be allowed to live her life as she pleases.” I finished my glass of champagne with an air of bravado.
He stepped closer to me and put his hand on the marble, just beside mine. I couldn’t help noticing that, valet or not, his hands were beautifully kept. “Jealousy is not something that any woman can prevent,” he said.
“Her husband can and should stifle his feelings,” I pointed out.
He shook his head. “Not if he’s in love with his wife. He won’t be happy to find her chatting with another man in the middle of the night.”
I chewed on my bottom lip for a while, because I reckoned he was right. At the same time, I was right. A woman should be able to do whatever she wanted.
“Perhaps you won’t want to meet me,” Squibby suggested.
Inconceivable, though I wouldn’t want to flatter him by blurting it out.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because you’ll be in love with your husband, and you’ll want to be talking to him.
You’ll find him fascinating, and when you look at him with those green eyes of yours, he won’t want to stop talking.
He’ll make a fool of himself trying to keep you interested, just like poor Freddie is doing, not to mention the rest of the fools in there. ”
That wasn’t a very nice way to refer to his friends, since all the men seemed to know one another from school. More to the point, I felt a wave of emotion at his description, which I can only sum up as a passionate wish that he, Squibby, would make a fool of himself to keep me talking.
Alas, the poet, Lord Dulloch, showed up and offered to recite a poem he had written for me. Squibby turned to go, and I caught the hem of his coat just in time.
“Snaps!” he complained. “I promised this dance to Miss Feodora.”
I gave his coat a tug. “What if Lord Dulloch and I are discovered alone on the terrace?” I hissed.
It was unlikely, because Marianne is a lax chaperone, to say the least. In fact, I think she had dashed off to the nursery an hour prior and never returned, but the last thing I wanted was to be forced to marry a man simply because we were discovered in improper proximity.
Thankfully, Squibby groaned and folded his arms over his chest. “Are you any better at poetry than you were at university?” he asked Lord Dulloch.
The poet scowled at him. “This poem is entitled ‘For Margaret.’ ”
“Original,” Squibby said grumpily.
I beamed, because even though I could not imagine falling in love with Lord Dulloch—his sparse beard, if nothing else, would preclude it—a poem written in my honor was grist for the mill.
(The mill being Memoirs of an Heiress, obviously.)
“For Margaret,” Lord Dulloch said again, with dignity. “Tell me not, Sweet, that I am unkind.”
Squibby intervened. “Are you joking? You’re calling Snaps here ‘sweet’?”
“Be quiet!” I exclaimed. “I am sweet.”
Sometimes.
Squibby’s laugh rumbled over the garden. “No, you’re not. You’re snappy and bad-tempered and endlessly curious.”
Was that a compliment? My foolish heart thought maybe it was. “Please, Lord Dulloch, continue,” I said, with just as much dignity as the poet.
“Tell me not, Sweet, that I am unkind, for from the nunnery of thy chaste bosom—”
Squibby interrupted that line before I even absorbed it. His voice is normally low, but it dropped an octave. “How dare you refer to Miss Dashwood’s person?”
“It’s poetic license,” I explained, though I wasn’t actually in favor of the line. I couldn’t help thinking that Sally’s breast would never be called “chaste,” which implied that mine was flat enough to warrant the adjective.
“From the nunnery of thy chaste bosom and quiet mind, I fly,” Lord Dulloch said doggedly.
“ ‘Quiet mind?’ You’re blurting out poetry you wrote for some other woman,” Squibby said, interrupting again. “Did this used to be called ‘For Molly’? Wasn’t that the name of the barmaid you were so obsessed with at university? Though ‘chaste bosom’ might be a stretch.”
See what I mean?
Obviously, no woman wants a chaste bosom.
Lord Dulloch’s lips thinned until he looked as indignant as a bird whose worm got away. As grumpy as an owl. As sour as a beetle.
(The problem with nature similes is that I have no idea how to interpret a beetle’s mood.)
“I was inspired on first glimpsing Miss Dashwood’s face,” he declared.
At least he didn’t refer to his first glance at my bosom. I had the feeling Squibby might have knocked him down.
“We all have attacks of strong emotion now and then,” Squibby said more kindly. “Snaps here is doubtless responsible for any number of men losing their heads. But writing poetry about her bosom is not on, old chap.”
Lord Dulloch cleared his throat. His face had gone rather red. “I shall rewrite that line and recite it to you tomorrow, Miss Dashwood.” He cast a nasty look at Squibby. “When such a flippant critic is not present.”
“I shall look forward to it,” I said, giving him my kindest smile.
“You’ve never had a ‘quiet mind,’ ” Squibby said, chuckling to himself, as his lordship disappeared into the ballroom. “Dulloch always was a fool.”
“I don’t suppose you would ever court anyone with a poem,” I said, because (again) I had drunk too much champagne, and it made me giddy.
“Not my own,” Squibby agreed. “If I was to court you—which I won’t, because we are only friends—I’d use Andrew Marvell. There’s a brilliant one called ‘To His Coy Mistress.’ ”
“I am never coy,” I said indignantly.
“And I glory in that,” he retorted obscurely. “Come on. I can’t play chaperone all night.” He caught up my hand and drew me through the tall doors leading to the ballroom.
To my profound annoyance, he paused for a moment on the threshold. He’s tall and has a commanding way about him, so a great many people turned and saw us hand in hand.
I felt a spasm of embarrassment, but at the same time, I liked the feeling of his hand around mine. My hands match my feet, but Squibby’s fingers make me feel delicate.
“There she is,” he said, dropping my hand as if it were a beetle.
He headed straight over to Feodora, whose silly face was wreathed in smiles. Imagining herself as the Countess of Vaughan, no doubt.
I felt an unladylike stab of jealousy along with embarrassment. One moment he was holding my hand, and the next he was paying particular attention to another woman. Not that I wanted him to hold my hand…. It was frightfully annoying, and I was glad when the dancing concluded.
If he hadn’t let go of my hand, I would have pulled away, of course. I thought it through on the way up the stairs to my bedchamber. I would have pulled away and given him a stern glance that said, “I am not your little sister.”
Tomorrow afternoon the entire party will visit Barton Place, the estate of Sir John Middleton, one of my relatives. I mean to steal into Sir John’s library and see whether I can find any poetry other than Shakespeare’s.
I am positively writhing with curiosity about Andrew Marvel and his “coy” mistress. Colonel Brandon’s opinion of poetry is as low as that of novels, so I shan’t find it here.
February 3, 1815, sent by Baron Hugh Skelmers Vaughan to Miss Margaret Dashwood:
Dear Snaps, No one in Vienna seems to care whether the city is termed the capital of the Austrian Empire or the Holy Roman Empire.
They are mad about dancing, so my waltz has improved.
When a lady enters a ball here, they give her a miniature of a new invention to pin onto her dress.
I wanted to bring one home to show you, so I talked a young princess into giving me her tiny telescope.
It turned out her present was the sign of great favor, so I am leaving Vienna at first light before I am coerced into marriage.
September 3 Very Early Morning
Even though it is practically dawn, I am sitting down to narrativize my experiences at Barton Place, because Feodora was once told that Miss Austen was a “husband-hunting butterfly,” who took all her novels from her own life.
That suggests there was a Darcy in Miss Austen’s life.
She must have been madly in love with him, and he rejected her.
Then she wrote the novel in which he falls madly in love for the pure satisfaction of crushing his dreams, albeit in fiction.
I approve, and so does Feodora.
Directly after luncheon, I drifted over to Lord Boucheron, the only other novelist in the party besides myself (I’ve decided Lord Dulloch’s claims to literary prowess are dubious at best). Lord Boucheron published one novel a year ago, and Marianne reports that he has a second one on the way.
I meant to engage him in literary conversation on the way to Barton Place, but somehow Squibby ended up in our carriage as well. It turned out that he knows Lord Boucheron just as well as Roderick and the rest.
“I didn’t realize that you were ‘Snaps,’ ” Lord Boucheron exclaimed, turning to me.
“I know all about you. Why didn’t you tell me, old chap?
” he asked Squibby, reaching out and picking up my gloved hand to bring to his lips.
“I would have been kneeling at your feet, Miss Dashwood, any number of times in the last year.”
“Just what did you tell your friends about me?” I asked, turning to Squibby.
(Yes, I knew that he had claimed I would get a First, but “all about me”? I couldn’t stop myself from inquiring.)
Squibby was leaning back in the corner of the carriage. “Nothing more than the truth.”
I narrowed my eyes.