Chapter Delaford, Dorsetshire #7
Feodora’s eyes rounded as if she’d never heard the word. Divorce is supposedly a forbidden subject in the presence of innocent maidens—but frankly, ladies rarely discuss anything else, what with reviewing recent divorces and predicting new ones.
Hugh’s mouth was quirking at the corners again, and he nudged my shoe with his boot. But since we weren’t friends anymore, I moved my foot to the side.
“I am never bored,” Sir John continued, with an air of self-congratulation. “Not when my skills and talent are so desperately needed amongst my young acquaintances. I can’t tell you how many happy marriages I am responsible for.”
His wife popped up at his elbow. “Come along, dear. It’s time to retire to the dining room.”
“I’m just telling these pretty young ladies that I mean to stir myself on their behalf and ensure they marry well,” Sir John told her.
Lady Middleton patted his arm. “It really isn’t up to you, dear.” She looked at me and Feodora. “I always advise young women that the most important calculation a woman can make is weighing money against boredom.”
With that extraordinary comment, she sailed away, leading her husband over to the door to head up the procession to the dining room, followed by Marianne and the Colonel.
At the butler’s prompting, Roderick came over to fetch Feodora, who walked away with one lingering glance over her shoulder at Hugh (I really must give her lessons on disguising her feelings).
“May I escort you to dinner?” Hugh asked me.
“No, you may not,” Lord Boucheron said indignantly. “I’ve already been told that Miss Dashwood will sit to my right.”
“Ah, but I have more money, and I’m less boring than you,” Hugh said.
Just in the nick of time, Sir John’s butler loomed up before us. “We have unequal numbers this evening, so I would be grateful if both of you would escort Miss Dashwood to the table.”
Right.
I suppose I should recount the dinner, but honestly, it was just like every other meal at Sir John’s house.
He prides himself on offering an orgy of food and drink, all of it served on silver platters.
By unfortunate chance, a boar’s head was plunked down on the table just in front me, festively attired with a circlet of rosemary and bay leaves.
“Would you like me to ask a footman to remove it?” Hugh asked, following my gaze.
“No, because I am trying to figure out how to describe it,” I confessed, which led to my telling him about my novel. Even though I had been ferociously hurt by the demise of Squibby and Snaps, his eyes were so interested and intent that I couldn’t stop myself.
“The boar looks like a statue of Bacchus,” Hugh offered.
“That Roman god, the one who loves wine?”
“Precisely. A little tipsy, with a wreath of grape leaves over one eye.”
“I thought you were playing the role of Bacchus,” I retorted, starting to enjoy myself.
“That was yesterday. Today I’m more like Eros.”
Even I knew that Eros was the Roman god of love, so I was preparing a riposte, when Lady Middleton turned her head to talk to the person on her left, which meant that all of us had to do the same, like the clockwork mechanism on a chiming clock.
I took the opportunity to ask Lord Boucheron—as a published novelist—how he would describe the boar’s head.
He squinted. “Ugly, isn’t it? I don’t care for the boiled look of its eyeballs.”
“That is so observant!” I cried, perhaps a little louder than necessary, because Hugh turned from his conversation with Feodora and threw me a sardonic look.
“I don’t care about eyeballs,” Boucheron said. “Or eat them, either. Why should an exquisite lady like yourself be interested in something as ugly as a boar’s head?”
To my other side, Hugh let out a distinct groan, which implied he was ignoring his conversation in favor of ours.
“I am writing a novel,” I told Boucheron. Hugh couldn’t expect to be my only confidant, now that he’d thrown away Squibby and Snaps.
Boucheron eyed me. “I didn’t know that.”
“No one does,” I assured him. “I’ve only just begun. Actually, I haven’t quite begun.”
“Don’t,” Boucheron said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“It’s a fool’s business. I did it to prove my wits, but it turns out that writing a book makes you stupider.”
That was surprising. “How so?”
“Getting all those words down on the page changes your brain,” he elaborated. “Pretty soon you’ll find yourself looking at a mere acquaintance and imagining he’s villainous, when in fact he’s grimacing after drinking cheap sherry. It isn’t gentlemanly. Or ladylike,” he added, for my benefit.
“Miss Jane Austen doesn’t write about villains,” I pointed out.
“Haven’t read her stuff,” Boucheron said. “I like a novel with some meat, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t.
“Good novels need a monster,” he continued, recognizing that I was perplexed. “A villain of untold cruelty. Readers expect to read about someone ravishing women and poisoning people right and left. The problem is that once you’ve done it, you see monsters everywhere.”
That didn’t sound comfortable.
He lowered his voice. “Did you hear that Vaughan’s cousin ran away with a coachman?”
I nodded.
“I can’t help thinking that she’s lying decapitated in a ditch.”
I blinked.
He pointed his fork. “I look at that boar and think about decapitated women. The eyeballs of decapitated women whose heads have been boiled.”
Hugh cleared his throat and said, “That is an utterly inappropriate subject for dinner conversation, you fool.”
I admit to being rather glad of the interruption; I sat back and let the two of them fling insults at each other until Lady Middleton turned her head once again.
“May I apologize for my pigheaded friend?” Hugh asked, as Lord Boucheron turned away. “I use that adjective knowingly.”
Hugh did have a lovely smile. “There is no need,” I said. “Amongst themselves, ladies constantly talk about terrible things.”
“You do?”
I sorted through the recent conversations I’d been party to and picked a subject that wasn’t too embarrassing. “Eating brains for breakfast is excellent for regularity,” I told him.
He made a face.
“I’m serious. Drains and digestion are discussed almost every day.”
“No wonder you looked so blue when I first arrived,” he said. “Nothing but drains and digestion since I left for France?”
“To the contrary,” I retorted. “I’ve had heaps of suitors, who discuss all manner of fascinating subjects.”
That was an exaggeration, but I couldn’t help it.
He tactfully didn’t ask me to elaborate. “Tell me more about your novel.”
“Lord Boucheron was quite discouraging,” I admitted.
“Don’t listen to him,” Hugh said. “You were always going to be a novelist. It was only a matter of when you decided to put a quill to paper.”
I have to admit that his statement was so baldly said that it flew to my heart and nestled there. (Not a bad sentence.)
“What were you always going to be?” I asked.
“Don’t you know?”
I shook my head.
“You will,” he said, but the conversation was interrupted by Sir John rousing himself to offer a long series of toasts to the health of the King and Queen, the Duke of Wellington, the Prime Minister, and each of his unmarried guests and their future spouses, to be determined by him.
It occurred to me that Sir John was likely responsible for Marianne marrying Colonel Brandon, since the Colonel is one of his closest friends. While love didn’t bring them together, I must admit that they are well matched.
Toward the end of the meal, Marianne bored everyone to tears by declaring that her second daughter, Delphinium, was showing clear signs of genius along with her first tooth. The Colonel didn’t precisely agree with her, but he did pat her hand and make approving noises.
Hugh whispered that when he had children, he expected them to have all their teeth at birth because they would be that brilliant. In fact, they might rival the birth of Venus and come out fully formed.
“Babies are not meant to have teeth,” I pointed out.
“Why not?”
“Because they are fed from the breast,” I said, before I thought better of mentioning body parts. Once I realized, I felt myself turning pink.
His eyes did fall to my “chaste bosom,” almost entirely on display thanks to my tiny bodice. But then he looked directly back into my eyes. Maybe his color heightened. Slightly.
“I didn’t think about that,” he said.
The whole conversation was improper, but we ended up discussing an article from the Times that argued that most wet nurses addle babies’ brains by drinking too much beer.
“It may explain why arguments in the House of Lords are so turgid,” Hugh said.
“Will you take up your seat in Lords?”
“After my father passes away,” he said. “Until then, I mean to travel.”
I couldn’t help sighing.
Hugh looked sympathetic. “Remember how you loved that old atlas they had in Norland Park?”
“I was just thinking about it,” I said. “I’ll never forgive my aunt for insisting that every single book must remain in the Norland library. She was critical of ‘foreign parts,’ so she had no need for an atlas.”
“Like body parts,” Hugh said, nodding. “Ones she found improper.”
Exactly.
But we were dangerously close to breasts and bodices again, so I turned to Lord Boucheron.
After the meal concluded, Sir John ushered us all into the ballroom, where he spent the evening pacing around the dance floor, squinting at the dancers. He was clearly playing the part of a bee and deciding which of us to pair off.
Hugh said that he was reminded not of a bee but of a trout, a fish that rises to the surface of the water to eat flies. The way Sir John lurked by the wall reminded him of a trout lurking at the side of a Scottish stream.