Chapter 3 #4
The blue silk moved correctly. She had not been certain it would, since Beatrice’s conviction was not always verifiable in advance, but as she rose and took Mr. Alderton’s arm she was aware of it doing the thing it had been made to do, which was to fall and turn and catch the candlelight without her having to think about it at all.
She had thought about it anyway, but that was her own concern.
The set was forming. She took her place and looked down the line.
Two girls on the opposite side of the room were not looking at the floor, or at the musicians, or at their own partners.
They were looking at her. She caught it in the half-second before they looked away, the quick assessing sweep, the small shift in one girl’s face before she corrected it.
Sophia knew the look. She had watched it settle first on Juliana, later on Beatrice, the eyes narrowing as the room recalculated what sort of woman it believed itself to be observing.
She was not, she thought, what they had been expecting.
She was new, and she was wearing that dress, and she had been sitting with Louisa Colville for the better part of an hour, and Roland Colville had come to them and bowed.
She had not sought any of it. She had, in fact, spent most of the evening in a chair with a book in her reticule, which was not, by any measure, a campaign.
But the room did not know that, and the room had drawn its conclusions.
The music began.
Mr. Alderton was an adequate dancer, attentive to the figures, sufficiently well timed, disinclined to conversation except where the form required it, which suited Sophia entirely.
She went through the opening figures and looked at the room, and the room was different from inside it.
The noise was more immediate, and the heat, and the smell of the candles close above, and the movement of the other couples created a kind of pressure she had not felt from the chair.
She was part of the mechanism now. Different was the nearest word she could find for it, though not quite accurate.
The figure brought her level with the couple above, and she gave her hand for the turn.
It was Miss Prewett’s brother, Mr. Thomas Prewett, whom she had identified earlier from the chairs.
She smiled at him, he smiled back, and they moved through the figure without incident before the progressive movement of the country dance carried the couples down the set.
She was four exchanges into it when she found herself facing Roland Colville.
He had been dancing three couples above, with Miss Wilson in the green dress, and the exchange of partners had worked its way through the set with the inevitability of all country dances, and now here was his hand and here was hers.
He was warm. The warmth of his hand came through the glove immediately, certain and close.
He was a good head taller than she was, and at this distance his face resolved into sharper detail, grey eyes holding steadily when he looked at her, a strong clean line to the jaw, and a sureness that made the whole movement of the dance appear effortless.
He turned her through the figure without thinking about it.
She went. The movement was smooth, correctly timed. His hand knew what it was doing.
She had time to notice that his dancing was like his walking, nothing performed in it, just the body doing what it knew, and then he spoke.
“Miss Lockwood.”
She had not expected him to speak. The exchange of partners in a country dance did not require it. “Mr. Colville,” she said.
The figure brought them briefly side by side, moving down the set together. Two beats, perhaps three.
“You dance well,” he said. He said it without the colour of a compliment. An observation.
“Thank you,” she said, equally simply.
He glanced down at her, brief and direct, as he had looked at his sister earlier in the evening. The look landed before it could be moderated into charm.
Then the figure carried them apart, and Miss Wilson’s hand was in hers, and she completed the exchange and went on down the set.
She did not look back. Something had shifted in her chest, small and unwelcome, and she registered it precisely, without time to stop and examine it, and turned back to Mr. Alderton and the figures and the remaining length of the dance.
The dance ended. Mr. Alderton returned her to her previous spot with a bow of thanks and disappeared back into the room so unobtrusively that Sophia lost sight of him almost at once.
* * *
Juliana found her at the edge of the floor, Sebastian a step behind.
“You danced,” Juliana said. She was pleased about it, and she was not making a fuss of it.
“Mr. Alderton,” Sophia said. “Sebastian’s doing.”
“He was adequate,” Sebastian said of Mr. Alderton, without apology for having produced him. “How did you find it?”
“The dance?”
“London.”
Sophia considered all of it, the noise, the heat, the blue silk moving correctly, Roland Colville’s hand warm through her glove for three beats of a country dance figure. “Various,” she said.
Sebastian heard more than she had said. She could see it. He was not going to press it. “Good,” he said.
Juliana touched her arm briefly, a light contact that carried more feeling from her than most people managed in entire conversations, and then someone claimed Sebastian’s attention from behind and they were gone again into the room, while Sophia returned to Louisa and her chair.
* * *
“The blue,” Louisa said, by way of greeting.
“What of it?”
“Miss Cavendish has been looking at it since the second figure. Mrs. Hadley’s daughters have been looking at you since before that.” She opened her fan without ceremony. “They saw Roland come to us.”
“I was aware.”
“And they saw you dance with Mr. Alderton, who is not a figure worth remarking on, but they did not know that, and they noted the dress.” She paused. “It is extraordinary, that dress. I do not say that to be agreeable. I say it because it is true and someone should tell you.”
Sophia looked down at it, the blue, in the candlelight, doing precisely what Beatrice had known it would do. “My sister made it.”
“Mrs. Blackwood?”
“My other sister. Beatrice. She is…” she stopped. “She makes things. She understands fabric the way I understand…” Another pause. “She understands it.”
“She should come to London,” Louisa said.
“She has her own life,” Sophia said. “In Harbury. She is married.” A beat. “She is very happy.”
Louisa looked at her. “You said that as though it were entirely true and had cost you some effort to arrive at.”
Sophia considered disputing this and did not. “She had a difficult year. She is happy now. Both are true.”
Louisa accepted this without pressing it, which was one of the things Sophia was beginning to understand about her. She knew which doors to leave closed.
The room had eased into the interval before supper, and the noise had adjusted accordingly, louder in the voices, lower in the music, a general shifting and regrouping as people moved toward refreshments or toward each other.
Across the room, Roland Colville was speaking to two men Sophia did not know, his back partly toward them.
He had not looked at her since the dance.
She had not expected him to. The book remark was said. The dance had happened.
He would not be thinking about either.
“My brother danced with you,” Louisa said. She said it without preamble, watching her fan.
“We were exchanged partners. Briefly.”
“He said something to you.”
Sophia looked at her. “Can you see across an entire ballroom in full candlelight?”
“I was watching the set from here. His lips moved.” She was unapologetic about it. “He does not usually speak during an exchange. He is generally too occupied managing whatever the dance requires.”
“He said I danced well,” Sophia said.
Louisa was quiet for a moment. “Did he.”
“He said it as one states a fact. It was not…” she paused. “It was not remarkable.”
“No,” Louisa agreed. She closed her fan and set it in her lap.
“Roland does not remark on things unless they have registered. He does not make conversation for its own sake during a dance.” She was quiet again, looking at the room.
“The book comment was unkind. I want to say so again, in case it was not clear the first time.”
“It was clear.”
“And yet you are still here.”
“You are here,” Sophia said. “That is why I am still here.”
Louisa looked at her warmly, her face revealing things a moment before she seemed to remember not to, and then she smiled suddenly and without reserve. Something had pleased her more than she had expected.
“Good,” she said. “That is a very good reason.”
On the other side of the room, the supper doors were being opened, and the crowd was beginning its slow, purposeful drift toward them, and the candles above burned on, perfectly bright, and Sophia sat with her reticule in her lap, clasped shut now, the Cowper invisible inside it, and felt, for the first time since the carriage had turned into Grosvenor Square, that she was somewhere she might, in time, learn to be.
* * *
The carriage brought them home at half past midnight.
The cold was waiting. The April night had sharpened while they were inside and it hit her at once, finding the gap between her glove and her sleeve, cutting through the thin silk without ceremony.
She crossed the pavement quickly. The door was opened by the night footman, the hall dim with a single branch of candles.
The house was warm and quiet. The household had gone to bed; two candles burned out of duty.
Juliana pressed her hand at the foot of the stairs.
“Well?” she said. She kept her voice low, the children asleep above them.
“Louisa Colville,” Sophia said. “She is… I think she is worth knowing.”
Juliana looked at her for a moment, clearly seeing more than she intended to comment upon. “Good,” she said. “Sleep.”