Chapter 10 #2
They settled into Mrs. Humby’s new Hepplewhite chairs, and the ease of familiarity lightened the taut curl of emotion in Lucasta’s chest. She had missed this, a domestic space that felt welcoming, being at liberty with her friends.
“My aunt has been approached about founding a new academy.” Annis blew on her tea. “In addition to the Imperial Academy, which she already directs. I believe the goal is to support the study of the Russian language. She’s asked me to assist.”
“Tell her we shall all assist,” Minnie exclaimed. “I should like to learn Russian. Perhaps it will help me with the translation of my poem. The Middle High German is quite different from Gothic.”
“But is the work any good?” Annis wanted to know.
“Not at the moment. My knight is spending a great deal of time being beaten about by monsters and feeling sorry for himself. It’s high time for some virtuous action.” Minnie rolled her eyes.
“The cat I rescued from the trap survived,” Selina reported, adding a second lump of sugar to her cup.
“Her leg is quite mended, though part of it is now missing. I named her Nila. She earns her keep chasing rats from the mews, but I believe she may be in the family way. I shall have to try my experimental surgery on Tom, if I can catch him.”
All eyes turned expectantly to Lucasta. She replaced her cup in its dish with trembling fingers, watching the milky liquid wash back and forth.
“I have been invited to get up a charity concert to benefit the Foundling Hospital.”
Her friends stared. “What?” Annis blinked.
“A concert?” Selina breathed.
“We shall play for you,” Minnie said immediately. “Who else shall you ask? This is your chance to become known to Signor Marchesi!”
Lucasta swallowed hard. “My aunt says I cannot accept. She says it is too large a task. I can only fail, and when I do, the shame will reflect on her and Cici.”
“Lucasta!” Annis cried. “She cannot deny you this. Not when you have dreamed of such a thing. And think of all the concerts you have organized at Miss Gregoire’s. There are no possible grounds upon which you could fail.”
“If the governors themselves have invited you, how can she say no?” Minnie demanded.
Selina laid a warm hand on Lucasta’s arm. “Oh, my dear.”
Lucasta sniffed and wiped her cheeks. “Suppose she is right? I have no standing in London, no knowledge of its musical scene. I cannot imagine why the governors should approach me with such a project. And how could I, with a complete lack of connections, possibly engage anyone of note, much less a figure like Signor Marchesi…” She blinked back burning tears.
“I am sure it is for the best to decline. If it did go off poorly, it should reflect on the Pevenseys, and that is a sad way to repay their charity to me.”
“The governors settled on you because you’ve been visiting the hospital for weeks, and the girls adore you,” Annis said. “They could not have chosen a better person to ask.”
A sudden thought lifted the hairs on the back of Lucasta’s neck. Silas, the porter at the hospital, had greeted Rudyard as if he were there for a governor’s meeting. Was Rudyard somehow behind this invitation, as he was behind new gowns for the girls?
“Do they want the foundlings to perform as well?” Selina asked.
“I would adore having the girls perform a few pieces. They would enjoy it so much.” Lucasta lifted her shoulders.
“And if I could arrange us to perform in the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, I am sure any number of people would agree to play. Georg Friderich Handel donated that organ, and his Messiah is performed there every year. It would be an honor to prepare a concert there, and an honor to perform in it.”
Minnie frowned. “Then you cannot allow Aunt P to silence you. Where is our fearless Gorgon? Where is our Medusa?”
“Medusa was mortal, recall. The only sister who was. A handsome and arrogant Greek hero comes along with a sword, and that is the end of her.”
She feared therein lay a metaphor too close to home.
Rudyard was no Greek hero, but the more time she spent with him, the more Lucasta risked falling under the spell of his attractions and forgetting what he had shown of his nature.
She would lay herself open to his cruelty, and she would not recover from his cut as Selina had.
“You belong on a stage,” Annis said firmly. “You belong there, Lucasta. Your aunt only fears that, if you gain recognition of your own, she will no longer have the power to command you.”
“It is kind of her to think about Miss Pevensey,” Selina said, “but really, how could a benefit concert for foundlings be a less than noble pursuit? The effort alone speaks well of all of you.”
“You must accept,” Annis decided. “I will have my father speak to her if necessary. Aunt Pevensey shall find herself overruled.”
Minnie nodded. “Tell her the Duke of Luneberg-Zuwecken adores charity benefits.”
Annis, as a Russian count’s daughter, was accustomed to overruling people, and Minnie’s father, the duke, simply ignored the mutterings about German ways. Lucasta, a vicar’s daughter, was not so protected.
If Aunt Pevensey turned her out for accepting, the prospect of a concert was ended, for Lucasta could not organize such an event from Bath.
But if she made a hash of the event, as her aunt feared, the gossip would be scathing, and the ton might scorn Cici in rebuke.
Lucasta pondered her options as she made her way through the dreamlike cloud of fog and smoke that wrapped the homes and commerce of busy London.
She found it increasingly difficult to submit to Aunt Pevensey’s capricious whims. Seeing Signor Marchesi had shown her what she was missing.
Somehow, so had Rudyard.
She found the Pevenseys in the parlor, regarding a dress box much like what the other girls had received.
“It cannot be meant for Lucasta,” Aunt Pevensey said. “I knew that girl must not be putting herself forward. What will be the end of it all?”
She whirled as Lucasta entered the room and pinned her with the glare of a hen regarding an insect. “Lucasta Lithwick. What is the meaning of this?”
Lucasta pushed back the folds of the box and caught her breath.
The note was the same, but the fabric was not as showy as the others.
It was a beautiful chintz the color of milky tea, as soft as silk to the touch.
Delicate flowers hand-painted in brown and blue patterned the fabric, giving it movement and life.
The colors flattered Lucasta’s complexion, burnishing the olive cast to her skin.
“Lucasta,” Cici breathed. “It suits you beautifully! You will be so elegant in this.”
“I have never heard of Mlle. Beaudoin,” Aunt Pevensey said. “We cannot be seen patronizing a new shop. It will look as though we cannot afford the best mantua-makers.”
The Baron spoke from behind Lucasta, making her heart thump in surprise. She had not realized he had wandered into the room.
“Dixon & Co. is Rudyard’s warehouse, isn’t it?”
Aunt Pevensey smoothed a hand over the blonde lace at her bosom. “If he means to pursue Cecilia, he must rise above trade. We cannot have the Pevensey name lowered by coarse associations.”
The Baron raked Lucasta with a narrow-eyed stare, the gaze of a man who assessed people by their utility to him. Rudyard’s scorn seemed practically gentle in comparison.
“First he persuades the governors of the Foundling Hospital to engage you in some public scheme. Now he wants to dress you. He’s heard Lady Evers plan to make you her heir, and he’s trying to cozen you, the greedy pup.”
Of course to the Baron, and so many others, all Lucasta had to offer could be summed up in pounds and pence. Lucasta wished she were Medusa and her answering glare might turn his lordship to stone.
“The heir to Arendale has no need for my aunt’s fortune,” Aunt Pevensey said quickly. “A knight’s relict? How rich could she possibly be?”
“Well, he’s cannot be interested in her person.
” The Baron flicked the card that had been enclosed in the box, not caring where it fell.
“Cici can’t be seen in a shop of Rudyard’s ladybird, but you were, right, Pet, that Lucasta could use some smartening.
She’s not dashing enough for Trevor in your old frocks, and everyone will say I foisted your niece on my son. ”
“Ladybird?” Cici asked.
Aunt Patience spoke as if she were choking. “My love, as I told you, I cannot agree—”
“Let Rudyard freshen her up as his own expense. Make her a plum ripe for the plucking.” His lordship rang for a servant. “Just don’t let him do more than sniff around your skirts, mind.”
Heat rushed from her cheeks to her ears, toes, everywhere, as if she’d been doused in boiling water. The Baron regarded her with amusement, as if he could read her look of mutiny. “I’m setting you up for life, gel. Don’t bite the hand lifting you from the gutter, eh?”
As if Miss Gregoire’s was a gutter. As if a career teaching and composing and singing wasn’t what she dreamed about, prayed for, worked to achieve. As if a miserable marriage to Trevor Pevensey were an outcome to desire.
Lucasta lifted her chin. Her heart rapped inside her chest like a trapped bird. “I can think of a way I might come across very smart, sir.”
He scowled, accepting his hat, coat, and walking stick as the butler brought them. “It’s not enough I provide your gowns and fripperies, and let you roam where you wish, like a kitchen maid?” His tone was low but razor-sharp, meant to cut.
“If I am consumed with an activity—something like organizing a benefit concert, for instance—I will have no time to entertain suitors.”
Aunt Pevensey hissed, watching Lucasta step around her prohibition and go directly to a higher authority. Cici held her breath.
“And there’s the foreign blood coming out, isn’t it?” The Baron curled his lip. “You manipulative little baggage.”
“Peter. You see? You cannot ally Trevor with someone of shameful birth,” Aunt wailed.
Lucasta breathed from her navel, as her music masters had taught. Control. Tone. Volume. Her aunt would never accept that her father had been a worthy man, the best of men. All they saw was that he was born abroad, and from a family of no standing.
“If I host a successful concert, all our friends might be persuaded that Mr. Pevensey looks favorably upon my talents and accomplishments, and scarcely regards my fortune.”
The Baron made a sour face. Everyone of his class cared for nothing more than fortune and the status it bought. But to be transparent about this was vulgarity of the worst sort.
“Very well.” The Baron met her eyes with a snarl. “But if you shame your family, like your mother did—”
My mother was happy! Lucasta wanted to shriek, but it would not do to behave like a kettle at full boil. The Baron would dismiss her as a hysterical woman, and that would be the end of all.
So she let the Baron have the last word. He set his brimmed hat at a rakish angle and whacked his walking stick against the paneled door as he left, off to his club. Aunt Pevensey looked as if she’d swallowed a bird, but she had no choice but to submit.
That was what marriage required of women—to submit.
“I suppose the Baron believes you might keep yourself out of mischief if you are consumed with your little charity project,” Aunt said faintly.
“You might go to this Miss Beaudoin tomorrow, early enough so that no one will take any note of you.” She gathered up the morning correspondence with trembling hands.
“You heard his lordship, I hope. There is to be no more encouraging Lord Rudyard.”
“No, mum,” Lucasta said.
She would trade him for a chance to organize her own concert. She would sacrifice him a thousand times. A man who bought her friends silks after he heaped them with scorn, a man who thought most of the world beneath him. It was no loss.
It was no loss, she told herself as she took the box of exquisite chintz fabric to her bedchamber, to give up foolish dreams that had no hope of coming to pass.