Chapter One #2
“The very moment,” Victoria said. “I have never once failed to come when you sent for me, and I do not mean to begin tonight.”
“Ruth is frightened of new houses,” Sophy offered in a small voice.
“Then you must be brave for her, as you always are. And I shall be brave for the both of you.”
“She says you should dance at least once, so the journey was not wasted,” Sophy said gravely.
“Ruth is very free with her advice for someone who was so recently in the gutter,” Victoria said.
“She has forgiven the gutter. She says it was educational.”
“Did she indeed?” Victoria kissed the top of her daughter’s head and went back down into the noise with the particular armour a woman puts on when she has decided, in advance, to feel nothing at all.
It held as far as the ballroom door.
The first to reach her was Mrs Radley, who collected other people’s misfortunes the way some women collected fans.
“Lady Hemsworth. We had quite given you up.” Mrs Radley’s gaze travelled down the grey silk and back up. “And in grey, how brave. Most widows have the decency to choose between mourning and not, but you have found a third way, and I confess I admire the economy of it.”
“You are too kind,” Victoria said. “Grey hides both grief and the dressmaker’s bill, which are the two subjects a widow is least eager to be asked about.”
“They are saying you have come to town to look for another husband.”
“Then they will be sorry,” Victoria returned. “I have come to town to disappoint my cousin, and I mean to do it thoroughly before I go home.”
Mrs Radley laughed, uncertain whether Victoria had insulted her, and drifted off to spread the report that the widow Hemsworth was sharper than grief had any right to leave a woman.
Then Lady Agatha found her again, the way water finds the low place in a floor.
“You slipped away before we had finished,” the old woman said, and took Victoria’s hand in a grip that read as affection to anyone watching and as inspection to Victoria herself. “I had wished to speak of the child’s future, which weighs upon me far more heavily than her manners.”
“Sophy’s future is settled. She has a mother, and that mother is not going anywhere.”
“You always did have an answer ready.” Lady Agatha’s gaze travelled over her, cool and thorough. “It is only that a girl of her age, kept always at her mother’s skirts and so far from her father’s family… One cannot help wondering whether she quite knows who she is.”
“She knows exactly who she is,” Victoria said.
“She is mine.”
“She is also a Hemsworth,” the old woman said.
“She is a Hemsworth by an accident I have spent five years repairing.”
That landed harder than she had aimed it, and for half a breath, the pearls at the old woman’s throat rose and fell too fast before the smile came down over them.
“An accident,” Lady Agatha repeated, as though tasting the word. “You did not call it an accident when it made you a lady.”
“I called it a bargain,” Victoria replied. “I have since found the price was printed on the far side of the page.”
“You are bitter, Victoria,” the old woman said, almost fondly.
“I am accurate. You have simply never had occasion to tell the difference.”
“Roland was saying only this week,” the old woman continued, “that Sophy ought to spend a season among us. Among people who remember her father as he truly was.”
“How generous of Sir Roland to remember him at all,” Victoria said.
Roland, who had been lingering a few paces behind his mother, came forward with a smile.
“She would want for nothing,” he said. “Nor would you, cousin. Surely that must tempt you, after such lean years.”
“You mistake lean for free,” Victoria said quietly. “It is the commonest error your family makes.”
“The girl should know her father’s house,” Roland pressed. “That is all my mother means. A season, no more. You could hardly object to a season.”
“I could object to a great many seasons,” Victoria said, “and I find I object to yours first.”
“You will not always have the choosing of it,” Roland said, still smiling.
“While I live, cousin, I will have the choosing of everything that touches my daughter. You may write it down, if your memory runs as short as your delicacy.”
“You were gentler as a wife,” Lady Agatha said.
“I was quieter. You mistook the one for the other, as your son does now.”
“You mistake me for an enemy, my dear,” said Lady Agatha.
“No, Lady Agatha,” Victoria answered. “I have never once mistaken you for anything.”
The smile did not falter, but a cold attention behind it took note and filed the remark away.
“You will find,” the old woman said softly, “that the world is not half so fond of a sharp widow as it was of a sharp wife. A husband can afford you. A reputation cannot.”
“Then it is fortunate I have stopped trying to be afforded.”
“And how do you keep yourself, my dear, now that you are so independent?” Lady Agatha asked, gentle as a blade. “Gerald’s people were always generous. It would grieve me to hear you had fallen into difficulty.”
“It would grieve you far more to hear I had not,” Victoria said. “But you may be easy on both counts. I want nothing from Gerald’s people that Gerald’s people have not already tried very hard to keep from me.”
“You were always quick,” Lady Agatha said. “Gerald admired it. In moderation.”
She moved off before Victoria could answer, the last word carried away like a stolen glove.
Amelia was at her elbow within the minute. “What did she want?” she asked.
“Sophy,” Victoria said evenly. “She dressed it as concern, but that is what she came to say.”
“She cannot have her.” Amelia’s whisper shook. “Gerald is dead, and a mother has the keeping of her own child.”
“A mother has the keeping of her own child until a family with money and lawyers decides otherwise,” Victoria murmured. “Do not comfort me with certainties you do not possess.” She heard the sharpness and gentled it. “Forgive me. It is not you I am angry with.”
“I know it is not.” Amelia followed her gaze, which had drifted, without permission, towards the pillar at the far side of the room. “What are you looking at?”
“That man by the pillar,” Victoria said. “Do you know him?”
Amelia looked, and frowned, and looked longer. “I have never seen him before in my life,” she said. “And I know everyone here, which is one of the few things at which I may claim some competence. Why?”
“He pulled Sophy’s doll from the gutter earlier and made her laugh. Now he stands very quietly in a corner, watching the Hemsworths as though he were pricing them.”
The man from the street stood near a pillar, wearing a fresh pair of gloves and holding a glass from which he did not drink. He watched the Hemsworths as a man watches weather he has decided not to trust.
“He is not watching them,” Amelia protested. “He is watching them watch you.”
The truth of it went through Victoria, cold and sudden.
When Lady Agatha turned for one last measuring glance across the room, the stranger’s eyes followed hers and tracked the look to its object.
For a moment, the three of them were joined by a single line of attention: the old woman, the widow, and the man who had bowed to a doll.
Then he found Victoria watching him. He made no attempt to look away or pretend otherwise, but inclined his head once before returning his attention to Lady Agatha, as though the widow’s enemies had already become, by some private reckoning, his own affair.
“Well,” Amelia said faintly. “He might have introduced himself first.”
“Men of that sort never do,” Victoria said drily.
“Perhaps he means to. He looks as though he means to.”
“Then he had better be quick, for I intend to be in my carriage within the hour, and no gentleman who bows to dolls is going to alter that calculation.”
“You might at least learn his name,” Amelia said. “For curiosity, if nothing else.”
“Curiosity is how I acquired my first husband. I have sworn off it.”
“He is still watching,” Amelia said quickly.
“Let him watch. Watching is free, and it is the only thing in this room that has cost me nothing tonight.”
“You are impossible,” Amelia said. “A handsome stranger notices you across a crowded room, and you wish to flee.”
“He has noticed a disagreeable old woman staring at me,” Victoria said. “Let us not turn observation into gallantry.”
Victoria closed her fan against the heat rising in her throat. She lingered a moment longer than she needed to, watching the stranger keep one eye upon Lady Agatha. The cold in her chest eased a little before she turned away and refused to examine why.