Danse De La Folie Read online

  “I think we can manage for a night,” the marquess said, making an airy gesture upward. “We’ve only to open a few rooms, light some fires, and perhaps air things as best we can.”

  He smiled, his voice was light, but there was that at the corner of his eye and in the quality of his smile, and in the very airiness of his gesture, that prompted Clarissa to say, “This is a beautiful home. If I did not fear I might freeze, which could happen anywhere, I would beg to be conducted over it, and be told its history.”

  The marquess flushed. “Thank you,” he said. “No doubt every man in the country would say much the same about his ancestral home, whether castle or cottage, but I believe some of our stories are diverting enough. Kitty knows them all.” He turned to his sister. “How long a visit are you making? You will need to give your orders to Mrs. Finn.”

  Kitty turned to Clarissa, her lips parted.

  Once again Clarissa, customarily so careful, spoke recklessly, “I had hoped she might wish to enjoy the Season.”

  “Ah!” Kitty uttered a small shriek, causing the others to turn to her.

  The marquess laughed, then said to Clarissa, his color high, “I trust you know just how much we are in your debt.”

  “On the contrary. The debt is mine, for you preserved our lives.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” Kitty cried, taking Clarissa’s hand. “Let us go look at your things,” she cried, and flitted away down the passage to the stairs, leaving Clarissa to make a more appropriate curtsy of departure.

  The marquess said, “I’m afraid my bailiff is waiting upon me in two minutes. I must go. May I speak to you later?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  He bowed, and walked on. Clarissa followed after Kitty. As a shortcut, they passed through Kitty’s own bedchamber to the suite allotted to Clarissa.

  Kitty’s bedchamber was frigid. Kitty seemed accustomed to the cold as she walked through to the significantly warmer guest bedchamber. In the walnut-paneled dressing room, they found two large and well-built trunks set against one wall. Clarissa had to smile. “As I thought. Between my aunt and my step-mother, they must have sent me enough gowns to last me a month at the least.”

  Clarissa flung open one of the trunks, and began pulling out gowns. She shook them out, and cast them over the nearby chair. Sucking in her breath at such cavalier treatment, Kitty reached out to pick up a cerise-striped spencer with reverent fingers.

  Clarissa said, “All of these things make me look vile, which is why I did not want to take them to Holland.”

  “But these look quite new,” Kitty exclaimed as she fingered a knot of yellow ribbon at the neck of the Indian mull walking dress that Clarissa had just thrown over the chair.

  “Many of these my aunt insisted upon ordering, as they are her favorite colors. In her defense, I must say, I do not think she sees how badly they look on me. She is accustomed to my sisters, who can wear any color.” She held up another gown, this one made of beautiful, heavy linen figured with classical geometric shapes in a shade of yellow that was unfortunate for Clarissa’s complexion. “Do you see? Hideous the first time I put them on, and I refused to wear them.”

  Kitty saw the justice of this remark but, out of sympathy, said nothing.

  Clarissa picked up this arm load of fabrics, and held them out to Kitty. “But you would look charmingly in these shades. If you would do me an immense favor and take them, they will be put to good use, and my aunt cannot claim that I was wasteful.” As Kitty gaped, lost in euphoria, Clarissa’s cheeks reddened, and she bent hastily over the trunk again. “Here is another. The accents in this craped muslin would match your eyes.” She laid the dress over Kitty’s unresisting arm. “And this pink morning gown. I once came down to breakfast in it, and my father asked if I were ill.”

  “What will you do for gowns?”

  “Why, order some more, as soon as we reach London. And if you accompany me, then my aunt will be free to see to my sister Amelia.”

  Finally Kitty could speak. “I never thought I should be thankful for a shipwreck.”

  o0o

  Rosina, Clarissa’s maid, entered with Becky shortly after. They were delighted to be taken into their mistress’s confidence, and once they learned that these gowns (which Rosina had long deplored) were to be made over for Lady Kitty, they closeted themselves with Alice, who had her mistress’s pattern.

  Alice, given to understand that she would be promoted to lady’s maid and taken to London, received this news as one stunned by a thunderbolt; as she went down to Mrs. Finn to retrieve sewing supplies from the linen closet, she dreamed of herself in Lady Kitty’s old blue wool gown at church, and wouldn’t that just go to show those encroaching Riverside Abbey servants!

  Clarissa and Kitty met the brothers at the midday meal. Kitty could scarcely contain her joy. But, where once she would have blurted out her good fortune, there had been that odd moment with Carlisle, that note in his voice that she could not define, the glance of his eye, when he’d said that he should have contrived her visit to Town. Perhaps it might be better not to mention the gowns—women’s topics—probably not suitable for the table—she must accustom herself to Town manners.

  She sensed a similar constraint at table, and she longed for Carl to know how generous Clarissa had been. Perhaps if they all spent a little more time together, the news might slip out.

  And so she was on the watch for an opportunity. It came at the end of the meal when Edward sat back, heaving a sigh as he tossed his napkin away. “Lord! What shall we do? We could propose a whist table, but I’ve been sitting too long.”

  Kitty said, “I suggest we might all take our guest over the house. You might help me with the family history.”

  “Ah!” Edward jumped to his feet. “The gallery! Or, as Papa used to call it, the Rogues’ Roost.”

  Clarissa readily assented, and so Kitty linked arms with her guest, in charity with the world as they walked through the cold halls to the vault-ceilinged gallery. The marquess had intended to attend to the many tasks awaiting his attention, but he permitted himself to be drawn along. It was polite—Kitty expected it—and he wished to see a little more of Miss Harlowe. Perhaps she would find herself sadly bored. He did not know if he wanted her to be bored, or dreaded it.

  Framed pictures crowded the walls, some protected by layers of cloth. Edward dashed about, pulling down these shrouds to reveal some splendid portraits, many by famous artists.

  As he pointed out ancestors, Edward began giving an irreverent history of the family. In this, he was joined by Kitty as the two exchanged laughing commentary on their ancestors.

  The marquess hung a little back, for the first time in his life discovering a sense of unease. He had never considered this gallery full of his ancestors private or secret, and yet he could not rid himself of the sensation of intrusion. No, that was not it. She was not the least intrusive. He was being a fool. Merely he was unused to entertaining, and those rare times were confined to the drawing rooms.

  Clarissa did not hide her genuine interest as Ned and Kitty explained that the family was ancient but the title was not, the first marquess having gained his title on the continent in aid of one of the bewildering series of alliances that Charles Stuart made before he returned to England as King Charles II.

  Though strictly speaking, it was a continental title, on the boat ride over before Charles’s triumphant landing, the happy, generous young king had assured the marquess that equivalent lands would be found in England. A suitable holding, which had once been the monastery (to which Riverside Abbey was a mere annex), had changed hands rather frequently under the Tudors, only to be granted a grim new owner in a Puritan commander.

  “This,” Edward explained with a suitably airy gesture that took in the entire estate, “was bestowed upon the marquess after the Restoration, who promptly pulled down the Puritan’s grim old barrack, and put up the new wings.”

  Kitty pointed out the gentleman’s gold-framed portrai
t. “He wrote a vast number of pompous epistles about his progress to his wife.”

  “Our tutor once made us copy out some of them to improve our handwriting,” Edward put in. “You cannot conceive the outlandish language, half in French.”

  Kitty said, “The letters lie in the family treasure room, in cedar boxes. No one has wanted to burn them.”

  Clarissa observed the arrogant gentleman, and next to him, his plump, close-mouthed wife wearing gem-encrusted court dress in the Louis XIV style. “Why did he write to his wife? Was she not here?”

  “She did not come to England until she was ever so old,” Kitty explained. “He had to visit her in France, where all her children were born, for she was convinced that the Puritans were merely biding their time before springing upon Charles II to decapitate him as well.”

  Edward took over, explaining that it was the second marquess who increased the family fortune by investing in ships with which he imported tea. This fortune came down more or less intact, in spite of some wild ventures and even wilder excesses, to the present marquess’s father, whose single talent, Edward said with a laugh, “was fiendishly inventive ways of spending.” Ned shrugged, hands outstretched. “He was known through society for being point-de-vice in matters of dress, and ... well, if I tell you that he was friends with Fox, you will probably understand how it could come to pass that by the time he took himself off to the afterlife, he’d left behind nothing but—”

  He was interrupted by St. Tarval, who regretted his younger brother’s openness. The marquess indicated a painting near at hand. “That was painted when he reached his thirtieth birthday. He sat to an artist he’d met in Florence. When the fellow came to London, Papa hired him at once.”

  They looked up at the handsome gentleman in his heavily laced blue satin coat, the glint of a gorgeous brocaded waistcoat under it, the long beringed hands carelessly disposed. The heavily lidded eyes gazed with secret amusement out at the viewer.

  Side by side, in an equally heavy frame worked with real gold, was his wife in portrait. She was decorously seated on a bench in a Sylvan setting, and wore an elaborate feathered hat that obscured half the sky, but it was set over a profusion of magnificent blue-black curls. As Ned talked on, Clarissa discovered that she owed the golden tints of her skin to ancestors from southern France, and the bright green of her eyes were the legacy of her Irish grandmother, a famous beauty in her day.

  “I don’t recall her ever sitting still like that,” Edward observed. “She was always a goer, Mama, clear to the end.”

  Clarissa observed the deep dimple beside her enchanting mouth, and the secret smile, as Kitty said, “Mrs. Finn once told me that they watched one another while those portraits were painted, and they wouldn’t stop joking. How I wish I had known her.”

  St. Tarval reached out to flick one of the long black curls lying on Kitty’s shoulder. “You have her laugh, Kit.”

  Kitty shrugged, not knowing what her laugh sounded like. Her mind was running on other things. “When I was little I could not believe she made a runaway match. She looked so decorous in this portrait. Did you not tell me that your mother died young, too, Clarissa?”

  “My mother was not precisely young. That is, she was nine-and-twenty when she married my father, but she did not live long after I was born, which was a year after her marriage. She had always been sickly, I was told,” Clarissa said. “She was soon in child again, and though my grandmother insists that she would have recovered her health had not my father brought what she called London quacks to physic her, she died and my brother was stillborn.”

  The Decourceys hastened to say what was polite, the marquess with regret, and Kitty with her ready sympathy. Then Edward opened his hand toward the gallery. “Have you as sound an array of rakes and wastrels behind you?”

  Clarissa had been dividing her interest between the portraits, the stories, and the marquess when his profile was turned her way as he gazed reflectively up at his ancestors. What could he be thinking?

  Clarissa was thinking, What a handsome set of ancestors. But she was curiously loath to say so. “The Harlowes do have a few black sheep,” she said slowly, “but until recent generations our picture gallery is a most unprepossessing display. In fact,” she said with a glance at Edward’s expectant face, “my brother said once he has never seen such a set of hum-drums and lobcocks in his life.”

  At that they laughed, and as the room was icy cold, they descended in search of refreshment.

  Kitty ran off to speak to Mrs. Finn—and also to check on Alice’s progress on the enchanting prospective wardrobe—and Edward dashed away on some errand of his own, leaving St. Tarval to open the door to the drawing room for Clarissa.

  For the first time, they were alone together. He had not meant for this to happen. He’d intended to be the first away, but his heedless siblings had decamped, and good manners required him to stay. Besides, he knew he ought to put some questions to Miss Harlowe.

  Clarissa took a chair and occupied herself with stretching her hands to the fire. It had been a very long time since she had felt so self-conscious. It was unsettling, like being a girl of eighteen again.

  She was attempting to scold her thoughts into order when he spoke.

  “Miss Harlowe, I hardly know how to begin, or really what to say. But for my sister’s sake, I feel duty-bound to make the attempt. You have been living in the first circles, I know, and I believe you are aware that my sister has never been introduced into society outside the occasional parish gathering. She has, in fact, only once gone into company outside our parish. It was not successful for reasons I still do not precisely understand, for I was not present.”

  He walked toward the fire, standing a little apart, his profile lit as he stared down into the flames. Clarissa waited, for he seemed to be choosing his words. “My grandmother had her in charge, but she refused in later years to come downstairs. We had just left off mourning after her death when my father died.” He made a quick gesture, his fingers open, almost in appeal. “I trust you will forgive me for boring on so about our affairs,” he began.

  It was that gesture more than the words which prompted Clarissa to say, “If I may be permitted a guess, your brother and sister have largely fallen to your charge. And while you may introduce a brother into parish society, it is difficult to do so for a sister.”

  His brows lifted. “That is it exactly. And so, I entreat your understanding when I ask, will it really do, for Kitty to go with you to London?”

  “Do?”

  “Yes. Clothes, fans, you know the things one must have. Manners. Despite all her talk of writing novels, in spite of her reading — perhaps because of it — she is not at all conversant with how to go on, and I hardly know the right way of bringing her to it. In the last years, the reason our grandmother kept Kit upstairs was because my father sometimes brought...” St. Tarval turned away and shook his head. “I beg your pardon. Perhaps this is not a topic for the drawing room.”

  “If you will forgive me, I must disagree,” Clarissa said earnestly. “Your sister has been nothing but kindness and generosity. I could not begin to repay her, except in this small way.”

  “But it is not small,” he returned gently. “Were a season in London small, I should have contrived it somehow, four years ago, when Kitty turned eighteen.”

  He took a turn around the room. Clarissa could see that he was disturbed; she sensed his inward struggle, but was helpless to identify the cause. She only knew she wanted to help if she could.

  He stopped by the fireplace and spoke while looking down into the flames. “I had thought that under Lady Bouldeston’s eye, and for only two weeks, I could feel confident that she might see something of the city, but not make the sort of unhappy mistake that occurred on her single venture into company unknown outside our parish. As for what she needs, circumstances are such that I can only put the sum of fifty pounds into her hands. I do know that that will not cover a portion of what she will need.”
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  Clarissa said, “We are already far along in solving that difficulty, for all your mother’s fine things are well preserved. I believe we shall contrive very well. And I will promise you this. If she is at all unhappy I will see to it that she arrives safely at her home. It is the least I can do in trade for the preservation of our lives.”

  “So you have said,” he rejoined, “but we both know the truth. If my cutter had not been there on illegal pursuits, you would be in Holland now.”

  “All the more reason for gratitude,” Clarissa retorted, thinking of Aunt Sophia’s lachrymose hatred of travel. Then she blushed. “Ah, pray overlook that, if you please.” She transferred her gaze to an ornamental grouping of flirting shepherds and merry shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. “The truth is, I am a selfish being. Your sister’s presence in town will be diverting in what would otherwise be another sadly boring year.”

  There was no answer to be made to that. He suspected her claim of selfishness masked a kind heart, but he recognized that his wish to believe the best of her was putting them both in danger. And so he must surrender to the demands of good manners. “Thank you. You have relieved my mind greatly.” He bowed, and left the room.

  She watched the door close, aware of an almost overwhelming desire to go after, to call out some new subject so that he might linger. She scolded herself for that, waited until she knew he would be safely away, then went upstairs to her bedchamber.

  o0o

  To spare the family the expense in firewood, Clarissa had given a considerably surprised Rosina orders not to light her fire.

  Waking up and dressing in a frigid room gave Clarissa a new understanding of what Kitty’s life must be like. But understanding only goes so far. She went down early to the little drawing room outside the breakfast chamber to wait for the others. Rather than dwell on their imminent departure, Clarissa let herself enjoy the absolute quiet of a country-house parlor on a winter’s day. The room really was handsome, even if the furnishings had been new around the time of the first George. Though the things were thus worn, they were not neglected. Careful hands had done they could to preserve threadbare cushions and carpets.