Chapter Eighteen #2
“I commend you, sister,” he began, “for being willing to stand up with some of these buffers.”
“Buffers like you and your brother?”
He grinned. “To name a few. It’s a good thing you’re already shackled to Ben, dear girl, or I suspect a few of these blockheads around us would have a go.”
“Then they’d be blockheads all right, because there are others here with more to recommend them.”
“Are you fishing for compliments, Mrs. Ben?”
She made a rueful face. “Goodness. It did sound like that, didn’t it?
I only meant, if the buffers and blockheads knew what was best for them, they would choose a girl who could sit beautifully at the foot of the table or assist them in their professions.
” While she didn’t name Miss Allen as a case in point, her gaze wandered thitherward, and Austin saw it.
“So they might, but I daresay others might prefer a life of comfortable cozes by the fireside.”
The picture he painted appealed to Maria vastly, but there was no use in sighing, and when the figures brought them together again she said, “Do give me hints about my future partners, if you know them yourself, that I might prepare, as I do for George Denver, who I have next.”
“Who do you have after him?”
“Miss—Allen’s—first partner Mr. Eddings.”
“Ah, Eddings. Her cousin, I believe. Quite the gallant. Good-looking and rich. He’ll likely charm you. Who next?”
But when Mr. Eddings approached Maria for the fourth dance, she soon decided Austin had got it wrong.
For her new partner had little to say and made no effort at all to charm her.
Not that Maria minded—his lack of interest would leave her free to observe Benjamin, who was now dancing with Miss Allen, and when Christchurch Bells was called, she could not help glancing down the line to make calculations.
“They’re a first couple,” Mr. Eddings informed her.
“Who is?” she asked, startled.
“Ellsworth your groom and Miss Allen, of course,” he replied. “And we’re a second couple, which means we’ll go through the figures with them at some point.”
“Oh. Well, it’s all the same to me.” But she could not help adding, “Are you and Mr. Ellsworth acquainted?”
He shrugged.
“Tonight is the first time we have met, though I daresay we had heard of each other. He was known throughout Oxford even before his most sudden and surprising marriage.”
“Oh?” she returned, not liking this allusion to the Ellsworth scandal.
“Nothing bad, of course,” Mr. Eddings mused. “I refer only to his enterprising spirit—publishing his cousin’s book, you know, and…other money-making measures.”
Only a man who never worked a day in his life would sneer thus at a poorer man’s efforts, and Maria took umbrage.
“Indeed,” she rejoined, “it is one of the things which drew me most strongly to him—my husband’s ‘enterprising spirit.’”
“Drew you most strongly and…most rapidly, one hears.” Mr. Eddings’ lip gave a mischievous curl.
Maria’s bosom swelled in wrath, but probably the man was only repeating what everyone in Oxford thought; he simply hadn’t the manners to keep it to himself. She would be a fool to let him nettle her.
Pinning a determined smile to her face, Maria returned sweetly, “Just as you say. Nevertheless, I find him everything that is admirable. I dislike nothing so much as a self-satisfied man without energy or ambition.”
Truth be told, she had never thought much about it, but once the words were spoken Maria felt the rightness of them. She did like this about Benjamin, and she hoped stupid Mr. Eddings was exactly the lounging, idle sort to feel her comment as a hit.
Fired by her burst of loyalty, she took another peep at Benjamin and Miss Allen, whom the figures had brought nearer.
Miss Allen just then held up her elegant arms to perform the silly clapping Christchurch Bells called for, and as Benjamin did the same (somehow not looking at all silly), he smiled down at his partner.
Perhaps he was admiring her arms, but more likely her face, and as quickly as she had been buoyed up Maria plunged into depression.
He does love her! she despaired. He doesn’t think she looks silly when she claps.
But a sensible voice was quick to retort, Give yourself more time. And in the meanwhile, don’t watch them, you ninny, if it makes you unhappy.
To which Despair countered, Not watching changes nothing. And why should he require more time to love you, when you have already begun to love him?
Good sense then pointed out, Suppose you had been forced to marry someone else, after having already met Benjamin? Wouldn’t you have required more than a month to forget him?
Not helpful at all.
Seeking distraction, Maria returned her gaze to her partner, only to find that Mr. Eddings, too, was studying Benjamin and Miss Allen, his own brow knit as hers must be.
An impulse of sympathy surprised her. Why—was this what made him unpleasant to her? Did he love Miss Allen, as she did Benjamin, and fight jealousy when he saw her with others?
Not only did the possibility of shared sufferings diminish her dislike, but the thought of someone else—anyone else—winning Miss Allen’s affections cheered her a good deal.
Indeed, if every other “buffer” and “blockhead” present pursued Miss Allen, she would have neither time nor attention to spare a former swain.
Yes! And if opportunity presented itself, Maria would do her part.
She would talk up the other gentlemen’s charms, in hopes that Benjamin would lose some of his luster in Miss Allen’s eyes.
The next progression brought them at last to form their square with Benjamin and Miss Allen, and everything else flew out of Maria’s head.
Her husband smiled at her as they took their one-hand turn at corners. “Having fun?”
“Yes. You?”
“I’ve had better,” he answered. “Even quite recently.”
And then Maria forgot about the voices of Despair and Good Sense in her head because her husband’s eyelid flickered in a wink, and she thought she just might flutter away.