Chapter 20 #3
“Been there.”
“. . . Trudging about in the rain to visit the sick . . .”
“Oh.”
“. . . Visiting parishioners who would rather not be disturbed or who spend the whole time complaining . . .”
“I’m not great with complaining.”
“And occasionally preaching sermons no one will remember to an audience largely asleep.”
“Sounds like a good time,” said Billy.
“Precisely,” said Tudor with a guffaw.
“But, truth?” said Billy. “All those begats and doeths kind of tire me out, and all that smiting!”
“Truth?” said Tudor. “Were I a young man again, a commission in the regiment is where I’d set my sights. That’s where the freedom and adventure is, for ‘a rolling stone’ like you.”
“The problem is . . . I’m not really big on guns.”
“Well, I always took them to be mostly for show. A sort of accessory, really.” Tudor winked at Billy. “I don’t like them much either.”
Billy put a grateful hand on Tudor’s shoulder. “Thanks, Reverend.”
***
Fanny spotted Harriet and D’Evercy strolling in the garden. She joined Annabel, now standing alone, trying not to look at them.
“Do not underestimate Harriet,” said Fanny. “She quite intends to be mistress of Ellesmere.”
“Oh, I think she will be,” said Annabel.
“But a bride need only have wit, merit, and money. You are blessed with all three.”
Annabel looked at her. “What if one had only two out of three?”
Fanny tipped her head. “Then one would make only two-thirds a wife, of course, which is hardly a wife worth having.”
“But what about love?” said Annabel.
“Oh, love is not at all practical. As Mother always says: For the stable continuity of wealth and class, money ought to marry money and then reproduce as often as possible.”
“Is that what you believe?”
Fanny gazed out to the near distance where Billy chatted with Reverend Tudor. There was something sad in the way she looked at him, underscored with a sigh.
“I’ve money enough to make any man’s fortune.”
“Then shouldn’t one hope for a man who cares nothing for her fortune, and everything for her?”
Fanny turned to Annabel. “What a state you’re in! Why, Henry doesn’t mind you being an American, if that’s what you’re worried about. And it isn’t as if you’re penniless.”
Annabel knotted her hands together. “It’s worse than that.”
Fanny put her gloved hand firmly over Annabel’s knot of fingers. “Oh, there is nothing worse than that.”
They both looked at Harriet and D’Evercy, now walking toward them.
“But do not tarry, Annabel. You must make your move.”
Fanny stepped forward and slipped her arm through Harriet’s. “Miss Lackington, Mother and I have a sudden mind to go to Paris, and I hoped you might advise us.”
Harriet glanced back, somewhat helpless, as Fanny nearly dragged her away. Annabel stood with D’Evercy, not sure what move she could possibly make. She cupped the back of her neck, her fretting tell.
“Are you all right, Miss Blake?” said D’Evercy. “You seem not yourself.”
She looked at him squarely. “That’s just it, Mr. D’Evercy. I’m not myself, but at the same time, more myself than ever.”
“I believe you could do with a turn about the garden.” D’Evercy glanced at the cloudburst making its way toward the patches of blue overhead. “I think we have just enough time.”
Annabel took his arm lightly. This might be her last chance to make things right between them.
They walked at first in awkward silence as she searched for what to say that wouldn’t give their predicament away but might make her feel she’d been honest in some way he deserved.
She was used to losing, but not to lying.
This felt wholly out of character. She wanted to be true to herself, true to him.
But the skirt of her dress rustled against his breeches, intensifying every feeling she had.
“I find this the loveliest time of year in the rose garden.” D’Evercy broke the silence first. “Just beginning to show its full promise, delivering a cascade of colors, one after another, yet retains its sense of order.”
When Annabel said nothing, still deep in thought, he plucked a bloom and politely went on.
“Yet I find a paradox in a rose.”
Annabel turned her face toward him, now fully present.
“For me, there’s no bloom more beautiful, but if one touches it, or tries to hold it, one bares oneself to the prick of a thorn. The pain, perhaps, not worth the pleasure.”
Annabel stopped. “But what if the pain is worth the pleasure?”
D’Evercy stopped too.
“I mean, it seems like the things we care about are inevitably the ones that hurt us most. If we protect ourselves, we never get pain or pleasure, and I realize I’d rather have both than neither. But I didn’t know that . . . until recently.”
Her face was upturned, his angled toward hers.
“What pain have you ever caused anyone, Miss Blake? The girl who would throw a game to protect someone else’s sensibility?”
“We all wobble sometimes. That’s what you said.” Annabel wrung her hands. “Maybe we even find ourselves compromised in some way at some point, don’t we?”
“I do try very hard not to be. Compromised. In my own behavior.”
“I can see that. And that’s how I’ve lived my life too. But certain complications arise, completely unforeseeable, even out of our control, that are by their nature . . . compromising.”
“What are you trying to say, Miss Blake? That you’re more complicated than you appear?”
“I just couldn’t bear the thought that I’d somehow misled you,” she said.
The sky started to lightly spit rain.
“I don’t understand,” said D’Evercy.
“For the sake of our friendship—”
“Miss Blake, what would you have me know?”
Annabel looked at him, unable to form words. She was terrified to tell him the truth, and equally afraid not to.
A loud clap of thunder sounded over their heads. D’Evercy looked up to the threatening sky and started to take off his coat.
“Oh, I fear this is the death knell.”
Annabel studied his beautiful profile and said to herself, So do I.
***
Just before the thunderclap, Harriet and Cassie looked up too.
Fanny had been called away by her mother to bid goodbye to the reverend and his son, leaving the two young women side by side, sipping champagne on the upper lawn near the terrace at the back of the house.
From their perch, they could survey the territory, assess their prospects, and everyone else’s, while each taking the measure of the other, a certain mutual respect.
“It is a shame when the fun and games are spoiled.” Harriet turned her gaze from the clustering gray clouds to Cassie.
“Oh, I’m just getting started,” said Cassie, not intimidated in the least.
“Are you?”
Cassie smiled, smug. She liked the feel of the upper hand.
Harriet trained her eagle eyes on the rose garden, where D’Evercy and Annabel had stopped and turned to face each other. Cassie followed her gaze.
“I must say,” said Harriet, “Mr. D’Evercy seems somewhat fond of your sister.”
“Funny, I somewhat thought the two of you—”
“I confess, so did I.”
“I wonder if they’ll get—”
“Engaged? I certainly hope not,” said Harriet. “For your sake, of course.”
Cassie turned to her. “For my sake. Really?”
Harriet feigned a sympathetic sigh. “Well, it is always frightfully sad for the elder sister when the younger marries first.”
“I’m not that much elder.”
“Nevertheless, the elder sister is seen to be passed over, her prospects . . . diminished.”
Cassie searched for Warnaby, some distance away on the left lawn. He had two glasses of lemonade in hand. “I have prospects.”
“Do you?”
They both watched Warnaby join Fanny and her mother, handing them each a glass. There was something familial in their ease with each other, Cassie had to admit.
“A game of pall-mall is one thing,” said Harriet. “A proposal, another entirely.”
Cassie followed the turn of Harriet’s head from Warnaby and Fanny on the left, to the right, where D’Evercy gazed down into Annabel’s eyes, dangerously close.
The thunderclap sounded, rattling her brain.
They both looked up, waiting for the low rumble to subside.
When it did, Harriet gave Cassie a pitying smile.
“Why, brides might bloom for years and years, but spinsters are made in a day.”
At that, the sky let loose its most thunderous round, opened up, and poured rain.
A look of panic crossed Cassie’s face. She looked one more time at Annabel and D’Evercy, who’d put his coat around her shoulders, trying to shield her from the onslaught as they dashed toward the house.
She looked at Fanny and Warnaby, herding Lady Gidding-Wedmore houseward as well, all remaining guests scrambling for shelter.
Servants were ready under the portico with blankets for everyone.
Harriet held her parasol over them both. “Come, Miss Blake. We should retreat!”
Cassie looked between Harriet and the rain coming down in sheets, a split decision. She untied her bonnet, shook her hair loose, and ran as fast as she could straight into the squall.
Warnaby, having reached the portico, turned to see her running wildly in the wrong direction. “Good Lord! She’s lost her way!”
Lieutenant Revell stepped beside him, watching too. “On the contrary, Warnaby, I believe she’s just found it.”
When Cassie ran past Annabel and D’Evercy, he pointed Annabel to the terrace and, without a second thought, started after Cassie, calling her name. She looked back to see the wrong person on her heel and Warnaby still watching from the terrace. Desperate, she pretended to trip, a spectacular fall!
Warnaby threw off his blanket, trying to see through the blinding rain. “I can’t tell whether she’s fainted or fallen!”
“Perhaps both,” said Revell, watching Warnaby bolt after her.
Seeing them both running toward her from different directions, Cassie waved D’Evercy away.
“Not you! Not you!” She pointed at Warnaby. “Him! Him!”
As Warnaby was closing in, D’Evercy slowed his run to a walk. His white shirt was rain-soaked, his curls dripping wet. Annabel, now on the terrace with a blanket around her shoulders, watched it all play out. She closed her eyes, dying a thousand deaths.