Chapter 14 #2
Cerys reflected on this. She had never in her life been independent. Self-reliant, yes, but she went from living in one merry, odd community to traveling and living with another.
“So the lesson is, do not marry simply to make an arrangement,” Cerys reflected aloud.
“Have you not been listening, child? The lesson is, make an arrangement you can live with.” Diana straightened in her chair as another woman came through the tall, paneled door of the salon. “Oh, good. Niblett said I wanted you?”
“Do you still, if you have our Cerys?” Mame asked mildly.
Mame’s morning ensemble was a Flemish jacket trimmed with points of white cord and a petticoat of cerulean blue poplin.
Modest, matronly, but still a bit dashing, particularly with her Parisian mob cap set back over her curls.
Diana gave her a careful survey, followed by an approving nod.
“I always want the company of a woman of sense, and you can join me. I’m lecturing your girl on romance, and how to be wise about it.”
Mame took another red velvet chair that sat near them and picked up the Monthly Museum. “Do romance and wisdom ever go together? I hope you are warning her not to lose her head over an Italian architect.”
“Too late for that.” Diana snorted.
“I beg your pardon,” Cerys said, smoothing the checks of her skirt now that she had nothing to do with her hands.
“Oh dear, is it?” Mame studied Cerys with careful attention, noting the collar and no doubt the flush rising to her cheeks. “I was afraid so.”
“I have not lost my head over anyone,” Cerys lied.
“She’s all but spouting poetry and pulling flowers petals to guess how much he loves her,” Diana said, settling back in her chair.
“To madness, I think. But madness is temporary, is it not?”
“That is my fear,” Cerys admitted. It did no good decrying her emotions if she were being so obvious. “I won’t be a mooncalf.”
“But will you let yourself be ruined?” Mame’s shrewd gaze didn’t waver.
“If by ruined you mean left with a babe in my belly, I won’t,” Cerys said.
“I’ve seen too often how that can go, for mother and child.
” Her mother had sworn often enough that, after Jan Van Der Welle had drowned, Dovey feared she and her child would starve until they found Gwen and the great, ruined abbey to shelter them.
“There are other ways to be ruined.” Mame tapped a finger on a colored plate of the magazine.
That, too, was her fear. That she would love and not be requited, and the ache would be something she could not live with.
The world might have denied Cerys Van Der Welle Evans many advantages, but she had been spoiled with love.
It was another character flaw to be held against her.
She did not know if she could bear this, wanting Dante Manelli to desire her in the real ways, not in the ways of fleeting passion, but in the ways of a man who had found the woman he wanted to bind himself to for life.
She surprised herself with her own thoughts. She wanted that much from him, did she?
Yes. After this morning’s kiss, and the fire that came roaring to life inside her, she was left with a hunger for all of him. Not just his touch. Not just his architectural designs. She wanted his attention, she wanted his adoration, and she wanted his kisses.
She wanted everything. She wanted something real.
“Did you marry for love?” Cerys returned Mame’s study. “Or for an arrangement?”
“Both, I thought at the time.” Mame traced a finger over the picture in her lap as if the image held the answer to a secret.
“But he changed the terms, so I had to change mine also. I told him if he ever struck me again while he was drunk, I would leave him and take the children. I kept my promise.”
Cerys forced her hands to stay flat in her lap and not fidget with her collar, which suddenly felt too tight. Dorsey’s players never spoke much of their past to one another. To many, the troupe offered a chance to start life anew. But this was important, and she’d never known. “How long ago?”
“Fifteen years ago or more.”
“You do not have children with you now,” Diana observed.
“They are all in their own homes now, safe and happy,” Mame said. “At least, as far as I know.”
“It seems very often that a woman can attach herself to a man and not find him a safe anchor at all. I do not think marriage a state much to be desired,” Cerys said.
“Then you plan a temporary liaison with your architect?” Diana asked. “An affaire?”
But she didn’t want something passing with Dante, either.
If she did, she’d have acted the scene through to completion this morning.
She would have let him take her right there in the grand saloon, and she would have gloried in the discovery of him, in the fulfillment of passion.
She would have savored the exchange until the consequences came home to her, which they were bound to do.
She wanted to be more to him than a passing fancy.
Cerys looked down at her knees. She was moving her palms along the fabric as if she were one of the witches from Macbeth, trying to conjure a future from wisps of smoke.
What was this ache in her, that she wanted to be loved and seen? Why did it matter if what he felt was not lasting and real? She could enjoy the momentary pleasure anyway.
But it wouldn’t be enough. She stood on the precipice of something great and terribly frightening with him, and she wanted him to join her there.
Buckle, the butler, entered the room and made a small bow. Another woman filled the doorway behind him. “Lady Diana, Lady Baeccon wishes to congratulate you on the great success of the play you hosted a day past, and express how much she is honored in having you dedicate the performance to her.”
“I’d the impression she gave Andover no choice.” Diana did not rise, but she assumed a regal posture in her chair. For all her age, she was the picture of genteel elegance in her silk gown, encased in the luxurious parlor with its tasteful, expensive furniture and rich colors.
Diana bore the blood of earls, even if her own father had not taken the title until a few years before his death, and she would make sure that a common woman who had managed to marry a baron would remember that.
“Lady Baeccon, good of you to call. Have you heard what people are saying about our play?”
Bathsheba stood as if debating where to seat herself, or to give everyone in the room an opportunity to admire her figure.
She wore a full-length pelisse in rose merino wool, fastened down the front with frogs set into intricate embroidery.
It reminded Cerys of her own lilac pelisse, but more elaborate.
“Everywhere I went last night, they could do nothing but discuss how daring a choice it was to let Hamlet be acted by a woman.” Bathsheba settled on a mahogany chair with scrolled arms. Her back didn’t touch the cushion as she sat.
“Some were amused, I grant you, though a great many thought it terribly vulgar. I daresay you have not captured everybody, Miss Evans.”
“One rarely does,” Cerys said.
“The question on our minds is whether Lord Baeccon is persuaded to stand by his offer to invest in a new theater.” Diana had no qualms about being seen as vulgar; it wouldn’t harm her station in the least. “He seemed as rapt as anyone.”
“His lordship is known to be thrifty,” Bathsheba answered. “He might need more persuading.”
Mame smothered a delicate cough. Cerys bit back a smile. One needed only to circulate through town for an afternoon and some venture of the profligate Lord Baeccon would be described. He seemed as bent on sinking himself as his lady seemed determined to raise them both.
Diana tilted her head in that canny way of hers. “Is his lordship prone to making promises and then reneging on them?”
“He is no more capricious than any man,” her ladyship said. The sour press of Bathsheba’s lips implied that Lord Baeccon, indeed, was a source of many disappointments. Cerys marveled that any woman would have chosen a Baeccon, titled or not, when she had Dante Manelli at her feet.
As if she guessed the subject of Cerys’s thoughts, the other woman’s gaze rested on Cerys, narrow, calculating. “And what promises has Mr. Manelli made to Miss Evans, I wonder?”
The probe stung, for Dante had made no promises. No vows. Other than the assurance of sexual desire, which made the flush rise again beneath her collar.
She had chosen to play the ingenue with Bathsheba Baeccon before. She would continue in that vein. Cerys widened her eyes. “One, he had promised to build us a magnificent theater, if the funding for the building can be found.”
Mame snorted and looked at the rosette carved into the ceiling to contain her laugh. Bathsheba’s lips tightened, bringing out lines around her mouth.
“I hope you have not already found his affections are waning. He is very warm, for a short time. It’s quite overwhelming.”
Cerys studied her opponent. First, she had sworn Dante had eaten his heart for her.
Now she called the man changeable. “I wonder how well you know Mr. Manelli, milady. He is ardent in his passions, I grant you. But he is the most steadfast soul. I would say his constancy to one purpose is admirable. As is loyalty to those who have won his affections.”
Bathsheba stiffened her shoulders. “I knew him quite thoroughly.”
“In London?”
“Yes.” Bathsheba watched her warily. The deep rose of her pelisse went well with her dark hair and eyes, giving her complexion a warm glow. She was a beautiful woman, but she was clutching at that beauty as her last piece of armor against the world, and she knew she would drown if she lost it.
Bathsheba Baeccon had only ever been valued for her charm and beauty, and now she looked on the days when those would no longer serve her.
The petulant husband she had gambled everything to have was disentangling himself from his infatuation with her, she did not seem to have family to rely on, and she had no genuine friends.