Chapter 1 #3
"With a man who was arguing with Mr. Ellery about an orchid text." She paused. "He knew his Vanilla pompona from his planifolia, which is rarer than it ought to be."
Cressida was quiet for a moment with the quality of a person assembling information.
"And was he—"
"We talked about botany. And Linnaeus. And the enclosure acts." Verity turned from the window. "It was interesting. That's all."
"Interesting," Cressida repeated, in a tone that meant she found the word interesting.
"Do not."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're thinking loudly."
Cressida smiled and said nothing else, which was in some ways worse.
The Marchioness of Haverleigh was waiting in the front hall when they arrived, which was never a good sign. She waited in the hall only when the matter was urgent enough that she could not trust herself to let Verity reach the drawing room first.
"There you are." She said it with the brightness of a woman exercising considerable restraint. "You left!"
"Are you surprised?” Verity asked.
"I arrived home nearly two hours ago."
"Yes." Verity offered nothing further. Her mother looked at her with the expression she wore when she was deciding whether to press, then apparently decided against it, because she turned and moved toward the drawing room.
"Come and sit down. I have news." She settled on the sofa with a letter already in hand. "We've had an invitation. A house party at Briarcliffe Park. Samuel Fitzwilliam, the eldest son of Lord Harrow, is hosting in three days."
Cressida glanced at Verity. Verity sat quietly.
"Lady Harrow keeps a very good house," the marchioness continued. "She's well connected. Half the families of consequence will be there, and I understand there are several gentlemen of—"
"The Fitzwilliam family. Who are they?" Cressida asked pleasantly.
"Lord Harrow is in the House of Lords. A sensible man, considerable estate in Hampshire." The marchioness smoothed the letter. “Verity, we ought to take some care with your presentation. You want something that shows to better advantage in candlelight. The ivory, perhaps. Or the gold."
"The gold," said Verity, because it was easier than discussing it.
"The gold," her mother agreed. "You know, Lord Pemberton asked after you again at Lady Finchmore's last week."
"Did he?"
"He is a very respectable man. A very eligible man. I do not understand why you persist in—"
"Because I have spoken with Lord Pemberton on four separate occasions," Verity said, keeping her voice even, "and on four separate occasions he has managed to discuss, in total, his horses, his club, his opinion of the Scottish climate, and his horses again."
"Marriage is not a conversation, Verity."
"I rather think it should be."
Her mother looked at her.
"This is your third Season," she said.
"I know."
"And you are not growing any younger."
"I know that, too."
"I simply want—"
"I know what you want, Mama." Verity stood. She said it quietly, without heat, because she had had this conversation in various forms for three years and had long since burned out the heat, leaving something cooler and harder underneath. "So do I."
She was crossing the hall toward the stairs when her father appeared from the direction of his study.
The Marquess of Haverleigh, impeccably dressed at all hours in the manner of a man who considers slovenliness a moral failing, with Verity's coloring and none of her expression. He had papers in one hand and the look of a man passing through a room he had temporarily noticed.
"Verity." He stopped and looked at her as he always looked at her, assessing, briefly, in the way he looked at things that were under his management and in which he had a material interest. "The Harrow invitation. You'll attend."
"Yes, Father."
"Conduct yourself well. People will be there worth knowing." He paused. Something crossed his face that might, in another man, have been something warmer—but it did not quite arrive. "The Harrow ball first. Wear the gold."
"The gold," she agreed.
He went back into his study. The door closed.
Verity sighed and ascended the stairs. Her chambers were quiet in the way of a place that keeps itself apart from the rest of a house.
She'd arranged it that way over several years: the books along the windowsill, the pressed specimens in the frames she'd done herself, the desk angled to catch the north light in the mornings. It was the one room in Haverleigh House in which she could breathe without measuring the breath.
She sat on the edge of the bed and did not reach for a book, which was unusual. The dress for the ball. The house party. Lord Pemberton's horses. The cool geometry of her father's face.
She thought, instead, of a voice arguing with perfect precision about a dorsal sepal. Of the near-smile that had crossed a severe face when she outmaneuvered him on the price.
Of an hour among the shelves. No cards exchanged, no names offered, no social machinery engaged. That had felt more like a real conversation than anything she could recall from three full Seasons of them.
She wondered, briefly, whether she would ever see him again.