Chapter Twenty #2
The little thrill his words caused ran the length of her, equal parts stirring and alarming, and Maria tried to retreat a few inches without the appearance of retreating. “Nothing which need be repeated here,” she said crisply, “for nowhere was ‘modesty’ found on the list.”
Austin Ellsworth laughed at that, punching his brother in the arm and turning to the backgammon board. “You haven’t asked about the formal hall we just came from, Mrs. Ben,” he prompted, sliding the wooden men into their starting positions.
“Very well. How was formal hall?”
“Stodgy,” said Benjamin.
“The stodgiest,” agreed his brother. “The worst thing about hall—any hall, formal or otherwise—is seeing the same faces every day. The same male faces, mind you, all shoveling in the food as if each meal might be their last.”
“And don’t forget listening to them all discuss the same things which were discussed the day before and the year before and the decade before,” said Benjamin.
“I suppose you play no part in the stodginess and dullness?” Maria rallied them.
“On the contrary,” her husband replied. “One feels the transformation slowly taking hold—hence our dismay.”
Austin heaved a mocking sigh. “Our dread! For everywhere one looks one sees the same dyspepsia.”
“The same expanding paunch.”
“The same inebriation.”
“The same bombast.”
“Bombast can’t be seen,” Austin corrected his brother. He gave the dice cup a shake. “Though I should have disqualified your previous contribution as well because nor are expanding paunches visible, at least under academic gowns.”
“What horrors,” Maria said. “Benjamin, perhaps it is a good thing you have only this year remaining on your fellowship. Your digestion might yet recover.”
“Too late for the bombast, though?” Austin jested, sending the dice tumbling on the board.
He handed the cup to Maria, and she drew up to play.
Benjamin followed suit, draping his arm along the back of her chair, and she wished she had not sat forward, for then his arm might have brushed her.
If she were to sit back now, would it not look like she asked him to touch her?
“And you, Maria?” he asked. “What did you do today?”
She and Mrs. Ellsworth shared the most fleeting glance.
“I called on Adela again, and—on Miss Hancock.”
He removed his arm.
“Hancock?” said Austin. “Which one was she again?”
“My friend George Denver’s intended.”
“Cousin of Miss Allen of St. John’s College,” added Benjamin shortly. “For heaven’s sake, Maria, why the continuing fascination with them?”
Now, it could not in all honesty be said that Maria felt no fascination for Miss Allen.
She would not have been flesh and blood if she did not, but to say that fascination was the chief lure drawing her to St. John’s College was, all things considered, false.
Therefore, it was a combination of shame (over the particle of truth) and indignation (over his exaggeration of it) which provoked her.
“Whatever can you mean?” she demanded, twisting to level a scowl at him over her shoulder. “I said I went to call on Miss Hancock. I cannot help it, and neither can she, if she lives with your Miss Allen.”
Now, this last jab—calling Miss Allen his Miss Allen—was probably indefensible and certainly should not have been done before witnesses, but who among us is so wise as never to overstep?
His features hardened, and his eyes narrowed to slits.
“She—is—not—that.”
“Not what?”
“Not—‘my’—Miss—Allen.”
“Not for your lack of trying, I suppose,” Maria retorted. Because that was how he was going to be? In front of his mother and his brother, he was going to bite his words off and spit each one at her like that?
Mrs. Ellsworth made a humming sound in her throat, and Austin Ellsworth shook out the dice and thrust the cup back at Maria, but instead of backing away from the figurative precipice, Maria flung herself from it.
“And if ‘she—is—not—that’” (she mimicked him wickedly) “not—your—Miss—Allen, I mean, why should you take that tone with me?”
Icier still: “I took no tone—with you.”
“Ahem.” Austin cleared his throat and muttered, “Your turn again, Maria.”
Recklessly she shook the cup and flung the dice down.
But now she was fighting back tears. Not of sorrow, by any means, though sorrow formed an ingredient.
No, these were half angry, or some blend of anger and mortification.
For how did it look for them to be jarring, when they were so newly married?
She moved her man automatically, but even this she did wrong, for Austin quietly repositioned the marker after she released it.
And though Maria would have liked to nurse her injury a little longer, in her head she heard the words so often repeated by her mother when Maria would run to her, complaining of Frances or Gordon’s various sins: “It takes two to make a quarrel, sweeting.”
Two, not one.
And she suspected, if Mrs. Barstow had been present, she would not have found her daughter innocent of blame. Why could she not control her temper better?
Perhaps similar thoughts were running through Benjamin’s mind (or perhaps he received a kick from his brother, for he did smother an oath and withdraw his foot rather abruptly).
In any event, before Maria could finish steeling herself to make an apology, Benjamin said stiffly, “I beg your pardon, Maria. I—should not have assumed unfavorable motives for you. Let us try again. You were saying, you called upon Miss Hancock—”
“Nor should I have been so quick to take offense,” she interrupted. Then, thinking that might have sounded rote or insincere, she reached a hand to pat his knee. Pat pat, she intended, as she might pat the dog or cat at home. Pat pat.
But it appeared her irrational, foolish hand could not follow this simple command. For, without her conscious volition, it landed on his leg and—heaven have mercy upon her!—lingered, her equally uncontrollable fingers curling to cup his knee.
Benjamin ceased to breathe, staring down at this interloper.
Maria’s gaze followed his.
Let go of him! ordered her brain. At once, you simpleton!
Her rebellious hand, however, merely lifted its forefinger and traced a caressing arc along the black wool. And though her palm was no warmer than was natural to her after hours spent indoors, Benjamin could have taken an oath it was burning a hole straight through the weave.
“What are you doing?” burst from him. Not in accusation, so much as apprehension. Because he had been seized with a sudden urge to pull her onto his lap. Into his arms. The presence of his mother and brother notwithstanding.
Instantly Maria whisked her offending hand away, going scarlet, and she not only turned back to the game, but she jerked her chair nearer the table, snatching up the dice cup and rattling it as if nothing mattered more.
Even the easygoing Austin was briefly paralyzed by the awkwardness of the moment.
He glanced from his brother, whose face looked like he’d stuck it in the fire, to his mother, who seemed to be trying not to laugh, before saying hesitantly, “Hadn’t you better move this one, Maria? You can hit me and send me to the bar.”