CHAPTER THIRTEEN #3
His eyes assessed the situation as he approached Laura and Miss Albright standing in animated conversation with a half-dozen attentive men, including Hugh Redmond.
Correctly estimating his chance of breaking into the circle as near zero, he contented himself with making a thorough appraisal of Redmond before nipping into the chair beside Mrs. Marsh the instant Lord Exton quitted it to obey a summons from a prominent member of Parliament who steered him off to a corner.
Basic honesty compelled the admission that there was nothing amiss with Redmond’s appearance.
His height was not much above the average, but he had a good pair of shoulders and carried himself with an air of easy assurance that set him apart from the callow youths forming the nucleus of the girls’ court.
Jack focused his attention on Mrs. Marsh, who greeted him with her heartwarming smile as he sat beside her. “This is a night of triumph, is it not, ma’am?” he suggested after another brief glance at her radiant charges.
“Oh, goodness, did I appear to be gloating? Such an unworthy emotion, but so tempting at this moment,” she confessed with a half-ashamed little moue.
“Not a bit of it,” he replied at once, patting her clasped hands and smiling with indulgence. “By the way, who is Laura’s new admirer, the older fellow among the youths?”
“Such an intriguing coincidence. Do you recall the afternoon young Henry was injured and Laura reported that a man had carried him to the cab? Well, Mr. Redmond was the good Samaritan,” she explained as he nodded his comprehension.
“Laura said Mr. Castle introduced them, but I gather he is not known to you?”
“Not yet, but I shall make it my business to become acquainted with him,” he promised, hoping it did not sound like a threat.
“Thank you.” She looked searchingly into his determined countenance before saying, “You have been exceedingly kind to us since our arrival in town, making the transition so much easier for Laura, and I am excessively grateful to you. She was not at all eager to have a season, you know. She agreed only to please me.”
“Nothing could have exceeded your kindness to me in Hertfordshire, ma’am; the obligation is all on my side,” he protested.
“But how is this? I thought all girls looked forward to making their come-out.” Annabelle was biting her lip, obviously regretting her impulsive confidence.
A true gentleman recognising her discomfort would hasten to change the subject.
Without a qualm he cast aside the shackles of a gentleman.
“Why must she be persuaded to something that other girls of her station happily expect to do?” he asked bluntly.
“That is the point, at least partially.” Mrs. Marsh was forming her words with care.
“Her father was born a gentleman, but his father wasted a large estate, leaving nothing but the farm. My husband eschewed all society and trained Laura up to succeed him as the son he had been denied would have done.”
“She insisted the day we climbed St. Paul’s that she was a farmer, not merely a farmer’s daughter, but why should that keep her from taking her place in society? Which of course it did not, because here she stands,” he added as she hesitated.
“My daughter is a complex personality, and her father’s influence —” She broke off and spread her hands in a little gesture of helplessness.
Jack leaned closer and grasped her hands in an attempt to render comfort.
“And I am a bully and a boor to be harassing you about what is none of my business — yet — and on a dance floor too. Nothing could be more inappropriate,” he finished with a cheerful grin that drew a faint smile from his companion and more than a little understanding in the look she gave him as the music wound down and the knots of people shifted and merged into new patterns.
Being committed for the next number, he rose and took his leave of her, pleased to see that Redmond was forced to give way before Laura’s next partner.
As he crossed the floor, Jack was still turning the conversation with Mrs. Marsh over in his mind, unaware that he had been under stringent scrutiny during the time he had spent with her.
Though unable to hear the conversation, his godmother, Lady Crofton, newly arrived in town, was sitting a short distance away.
Thanks to the removal to two persons between herself and the group of chairs where Mrs. Marsh sat at the moment when Lord Hastings had joined her, she had been granted an unobstructed view of the engrossed pair.
Not only did she witness the widow’s manifest pleasure at his arrival, but she was unpleasantly struck by the apparent intimacy of the tête-à-tête.
Their appearance gave the lie to this being a meaningless exchange of social nothings.
Nor had the Marsh woman’s increasing unease and Jack’s comforting — to use the least objectionable interpretation — clasp of her hands escaped Lady Crofton’s censorious eye.
Impelled by some idea of confronting him as he walked away, she half-rose out of her chair, but prudence prevailed over emotion.
Unable to recall a single instance when confronting a male with the stupidity of his proposed course of action had ever resulted in the abandonment of said action, she sank back on to the chair and considered her options.
Having rejected the strong possibility of alienating her godson by reading him a lecture on the folly of dangling after seductive widows, Lady Crofton passed quickly over the option of minding her own business and set herself to mentally composing an urgent letter to her bosom friend, Jack’s long-suffering mother.
Between keeping up her own end of the conversation with the friend who had requested her company while she did her duty by her newly launched daughter, and maintaining a covert watch over as much of her godson’s activity as came within her field of vision, she did not get very far, but her resolution to warn Hannah Hastings of her son’s continued contact with Annabelle Marsh did not waver.
Over the next hour or two she caught glimpses of Jack partnering a number of attractive girls and was relieved to see that he did not attempt to sit in the widow’s pocket despite his obvious infatuation.
She managed to avoid actual eye contact with Annabelle Marsh during the time she sat in her vicinity, which was long enough to note that several other men singled her out for sustained conversation.
She recognised Lord Exton among them. Being a fair-minded woman, she did not begrudge her lovely neighbour the attentions of any man save Jack Hastings.
It was not until late in the evening when Lady Crofton was leaving the refreshment room that she permitted herself to come face to face with her godson, who blinked in surprise and then enveloped her in an exuberant hug, lifting her off her feet.
“Lady Cath, have you been here all evening? I had no idea!”
“Put me down, Jack, you’ll have every tongue in the place wagging.” Lady Crofton aimed for severity but fell short, as women generally did when attempting to bring Lord Hastings to a sense of his shortcomings.
Her unrepentant godson obeyed her command, planting a kiss on her cheek as he did so. “Have you been in town long? You are looking very much the thing tonight. I like that cashmere shawl.” He re-draped it for her as he spoke.
“I arrived last week. What do you hear from your mother?”
Jack’s smile faded. “The same as always. She is feeling well, everything is fine, she has no complaints about anything and no items of news to report, not even small happenings on the home farm or in the parish. I have asked her repeatedly to come to town; I’ve even opened up the house instead of staying in rooms this spring, but she claims she is unequal to undergoing the rigours of the season. ”
“Do not despair, Jack,” Lady Crofton said, patting his cheek. “I believe you can expect to see your mother here within the sennight. Now you will have to excuse me; my friend is signalling that her carriage has arrived. I must go. Come and see me soon.”
“I will, I promise.”
Jack was looking at his godmother’s retreating back, puzzling over her strange prediction regarding his mother when Laura appeared at his side. “Was that Lady Crofton?”
“Yes. She is my godmother, you know.”
“I did not recognise her at first, but Mama was sure she’d seen her tonight, though Lady Crofton didn’t seem to see Mama.”
Jack blinked and stared at Laura’s neutral expression, caught by something in her voice, but he went back to her first statement. “Why did you not recognise her?”
“I’ve only ever seen her at church and from a distance.”
“I thought everybody knew everybody else in the country.”
“Not if you are the family of James Marsh. We know everyone in the village, of course, and Mama has remained on friendly terms with some of the genteel families she met when she first came to Hertfordshire as a bride, but I do not remember my parents ever exchanging visits with anyone. I did have one friend when I was a girl, and even stayed briefly with her family once, but she married last year and moved away.”
Jack was listening to this bald tale of isolation with pity and dismay as they walked back into the ballroom, when they were jolted out of their mutual absorption by Sir Oswald’s voice.
“Ah, here you are, my dear Laura, just in time to meet a friend of mine.”
Turning, they found themselves facing Sir Oswald and Sophia in company with a man some few years younger than Sir Oswald and of somewhat the same stamp, slender to the point of attenuation, well barbered and shaved, his dress precise to a pin.
“May I present Sir Cyril Mildmay, my dear? Miss Marsh is my sister’s daughter, Cyril, and this is Lord Hastings.”
Civilities were exchanged. As Laura rose from a curtsy, Sir Cyril remarked in what she uncharitably labelled a fatuous tone, “I see all the ladies in your family have great beauty, my friend. You are to be felicitated indeed.”
In the few minutes before Jack and Laura excused themselves, Laura found herself again wishing she possessed her cousin’s easy manner with all types of persons.
Her own tongue was tied in knots, her smile forced, but Sophia received the knight’s fulsome compliments with smiling equanimity, responding with a watered-down version of her customary flirtatiousness.
Laura felt like one rescued from a quagmire as she and Jack walked back to her mother, and she wondered that her fastidious uncle should tolerate such pointed gallantries toward his daughter, for it had been clear to her that Sir Cyril had been slathering over Sophia.
Perhaps this was the style amongst the older generation of beaux, she decided, dismissing the incident with a mental shrug of distaste as she prepared to enjoy the rest of the evening.
All in all, it had been a marvellous evening, she concluded an hour later, snuggling into her cloak in the carriage on their return to Mount Street.
And the best had come at the end. She’d been waiting for her wrap to be returned when a fresh-faced young woman even taller than herself, with a wealth of wildly curling brown hair, had said, “Excuse me, you are Miss Marsh, are you not?” At Laura’s acknowledgment, the girl had said, “Dolly Chandler pointed you out to me earlier. My name is Lucinda Cahill, and I believe we are cousins — second cousins at least.”
Laura’s stupefaction must have been obvious because the girl had rattled on, “I can see my name means nothing to you, but when Dolly mentioned that Sophia Albright had a cousin named Marsh staying with her, I asked Mama about it, because that was her name before she married Papa. She told me she and your father were cousins, their fathers were brothers. Evidently she and your father were the only children of the brothers and were friends when they were young, before Mama married and moved to Northumberland. They lost touch then, and later when Mama wrote to her cousin after his marriage, not once but several times, he did not reply.”
Miss Cahill had paused then and looked questioningly at Laura, who was processing this freshet of family information. She had produced some inanity on the order of “Gracious!” or “My goodness!” and had confessed to being ignorant of the existence of any relatives on her father’s side.
“Aren’t families strange?” this delightfully frank self-proclaimed relative had remarked before going on to say, “We learned of your father’s death from the Chandlers just a few days ago.
Mama would have written our condolences but she has been laid up with a feverish cold since then.
Some friends kindly took me under their wing and brought me here tonight.
We should love to call on you and your mother when Mama is well again, unless you think your mother might not care to acknowledge the connection? ”
Faced with the immediate loss of this new-found cousin, Laura had not hesitated to pledge her parent’s utter delight in the proposed call.
After exchanging directions, the girls had separated to join their respective parties prior to leaving.
So far there had not been a moment of privacy when she might have described the meeting in the cloakroom to her mother, but Laura sat in her corner of the carriage hugging the delightful discovery to herself as they rattled over the cobblestones toward the Albright house.