Crossed Quills (14 page)

 The others came up then. “You are prodigious energetic, I vow, Miss Lisle!” said Miss Pendrell languidly. “We saw you striding along at a great rate. I am quite fatigued after walking so far.”

 “Yet I wager you think nothing of dancing all night,” Lord Selworth drawled with a touch of sarcasm.

 Lieutenant Pendrell laughed heartily. “He has you there, Lyddy. If you are so tired, you had best wait here while the rest of us go back and bring the barouche to fetch you. You are not tired, are you, Miss Catherine?”

 “After so short a stroll?” said Kitty. “Heavens, no, though I do believe walking slowly is more tiring than walking fast. But there was such a great deal to admire. Pippa, did you ever see such a variety of fowl? And some of them very pretty. I wish we had brought bread crusts to feed them.”

 The Misses Pendrell stared, and even their brother, though clearly much prepossessed with Kitty, looked taken aback. Miss Vanessa murmured something to her sister; Pippa thought she caught the word “hoydens.”

 Mr Chubb sprang to the rescue. “Splendid notion, Miss Kitty. We’ll come back with bread, a loaf, two loaves. Drive you myself, soon as I’ve bought my carriage.”

 “I shall look forward to it, sir,” Kitty said with a serene smile, not at all distressed by the Pendrells’ disdain. “Do you suppose it might be possible to obtain eggs or ducklings of the rarer birds for my poultry yard?”

 Pippa envied her sister’s equable temperament. The jibe about her “striding” had hurt, though Lord Selworth’s prompt retort soothed the wound. She resolved not to let petty snubs daunt her as they had in her first Season, not to allow others to dictate her behaviour. This time she came without any expectation of attracting a husband, so what did it matter what people thought of her?

 Lieutenant Pendrell did not long permit Mr Chubb to enjoy Kitty’s attention, Pippa saw. He won her back with an outrageous plan to enlist his fellow officers in a plot to ducknap her chosen waterfowl from the park one dark night. His sisters, too, abandoned their supercilious airs to join in the laughter.

 Mr Chubb was left to listen in philosophical silence to Millicent’s monologue, which began with the misdeeds of a rooster at the Rectory and drifted into uncharted by-ways.

 “Millie, Chubb,” Lord Selworth interrupted, “Miss Lisle and I will listen to the band for a while, then catch you up.”

 “Come back to fetch you,” Mr Chubb suggested, “and Miss Pendrell.”

 “I fancy Miss Pendrell has forgotten her exhaustion,” said Pippa dryly, waving at the others, who had already set out around the north side of the lake. “And I have not yet had as much exercise as I would wish.”

 “We shall stay and listen, too,” said Millicent. “I do not mind walking fast, and I shall like to hear the music. I like a military band of all things, such a splendid sight in their scarlet—”

 “Oh no,” said Lord Selworth, “we shan’t hear a note if you stay. Take her away, Chubb, there’s a good fellow.”

 Millie pulled a face at her brother but obediently went off. She and Mr Chubb might suit each other very well, Pippa decided. The lady would never be interrupted, and the gentleman would never have to struggle in vain for words to fill a silence.

 Pippa and Lord Selworth stayed a few more minutes then walked back along the southern path, talking of music. They joined the others at the barouche all too soon for Pippa. She was sure she had never passed a pleasanter afternoon, in spite of an odd contretemps or two, minor in retrospect.

 It was wonderful to find a variety of subjects she could discuss sensibly with Lord Selworth. As long as they avoided politics, she felt no need to guard her tongue.

 The trouble was, they both found politics so absorbing it was an excessively difficult subject to avoid.

Chapter 10

 “If skirts get any wider,” grumbled George Debenham, seated between his wife and Mrs Lisle, “we shall have to take two carriages.”

 “I hardly think it likely, dear,” Albinia said placidly, tucking a white kid-gloved hand beneath his arm. “No one would choose to return to those ridiculous hooped skirts of the last century. It is bad enough having to wear them at Court.”

 “I am glad I never had to manage a hoop,” said Pippa, sitting opposite her. She smoothed her ball-gown with nervous fingers.

 The claret-red crape, trimmed with full-blown white satin roses and worn over a white satin slip of Bina’s, was quite the most beautiful dress she had ever owned. It was wasted on her. Even Bina’s superior dresser had given up trying to put a fashionable curl in Pippa’s hair, and pinned it up into a topknot as severe as her usual style. Her cheeks were so pale with trepidation, the least touch of rouge made her look like an actress, so that too had to be abandoned.

 “I found the train of an evening dress difficult enough, remember, Bina?” she continued.

 “I recall one or two stumbles,” Bina admitted.

 “Thank heaven they are no longer worn. As for a hoop, I would surely have made a shocking mull of it and disgraced myself.”

 “Must I be presented, Bina?” Millicent asked plaintively. “Everyone says it is a dreadful ordeal. You were not until you married, and Kitty does not have to. I should prefer just to go to balls without having to worry about it. I am sure we could alter my Presentation gown to make it into another ball gown. I wish I had thought of it sooner, then I could have worn it tonight, for our first ball.”

 “You are the sister of a peer now,” said Bina, “which I was not then. It is proper for you to make your curtsy to the Queen, if she is well enough.”

 “She is excessively old,” said Millicent, with a note of hope which drew instant censure from her elder sister.

 Unrepressed, Millie chattered on. Pippa ceased to listen, concentrating on trying to still the flutters in her stomach. At her age, she ought to have outgrown such foolish apprehensions, yet she felt just as she had four years earlier on the way to a ball. Worse, even, since tonight she would be thrust into the heart of the beau monde instead of flitting about on the outskirts.

 It was some comfort that Lord Selworth would be there. Indeed, he had already requested a country dance of each of the ladies, as had Mr Chubb, so Pippa would not be a wallflower the entire evening.

 After dining at the Debenhams’, the two younger gentlemen were coming together in Lord Selworth’s brand-new curricle. The viscount had confessed to Pippa that he was in not much less of a quake than his friend when it came to their first venture into Polite Society.

 “Far more frightening than speaking before the entire House of Lords,” he had said. “From all I hear, the ladies of the haut ton are a thousand times more critical.”

 Though she had not said so, Pippa thought she too had rather face the House of Lords, speech in hand.

 Lord Selworth had promised Bina to be there. He would not break his promise, nor fail to attend his younger sister at her first ball, would he? Surely he and Mr Chubb would not sheer off at the last minute!

 Pippa longed to let down the window and peer out into the lamp-lit night at the row of carriages they had just joined. Millicent, with the same notion, nearly put it into practice.

 “I wonder if Wynn is in front of us or close behind?” As she jumped up and reached for the strap, Mrs Lisle caught her hand just in time.

 “We shall get there no faster for fidgeting,” she pointed out.

 “May we not get down and walk, ma’am?” Millie begged. “I cannot sit still while we crawl along like this. We should arrive much sooner walking, and I daresay—”

 “I fear etiquette requires us to arrive by carriage, my dear,” Mrs Lisle said sympathetically.

 “What a goosecap you are, Millie,” said Kitty. “You cannot wish to soil your slippers in the dirty street!”

 “No indeed, I did not think. Miss Vanessa Pendrell says there is generally a carpet laid across the pavement to the front door to keep the ladies’ feet clean and if it looks like rain the first-rate hostesses have an awning set up over the carpet. Would it not be dreadful to arrive soaked to the skin at one’s first ball? Silk spots so shockingly and....Oh, look, there is Wynn!” She pointed at the window on Pippa’s side.

 About to knock, Lord Selworth lowered his hand as Bina reached across to let down the window.

 “We were held up,” he said, raising his top-hat in salute. “We’re a long way back in the line. We didn’t want you to think we had abandoned you so we left the curricle with my groom and walked on.”

 “What!” Pippa exclaimed. “You entrusted your new carriage to a mere groom?”

 He grinned at her, walking alongside as the Debenham carriage moved up a place. “I’d be happier standing guard over it all night, but then I might as well not have come at all. The fellow knows his head is on the block if there is a single scratch or nick in the paintwork.”

 “You settled on black picked out in gold?”

 “Yes, or yellow, rather. Gold seemed unnecessarily extravagant. The seat is black leather.”

 “It sounds prodigious smart, Wynn,” said Millicent. “You will be quite one of the swells. Will you take me for a drive in it? I should like it above anything. Only think—”

 “If you promise not to frighten the horses with your prattle. I decided against maroon—your choice, Bina—in case I find myself driving a lady dressed in a conflicting colour.”

 By the dim light within the carriage, Pippa saw Bina raise her eyebrows. “Did you indeed, brother mine! Are we all to be honoured with invitations, then?”

 “Certainly, starting with Miss Lisle since it is on her advice I purchased a curricle instead of a tilbury.”

 “I only said two horses were better than one for longer journeys,” Pippa protested.

 “A very material point, Miss Lisle. I shall be able to leave the chaise for my mother’s use while I gad about the countryside. Will you drive with me in the Park tomorrow afternoon?”

 “I am honoured, sir, and I shall be delighted to accept if my mother has no need of me. And if the weather continues fine. I should hate to be the cause of rain-spots on your paintwork and the seat leather!”

 “Your true concern is for your best bonnet, confess! For the weather I cannot answer. I shall beg Mrs Lisle on bended knee to spare you—as soon as we are inside, for here we are at the door at last.”

 He opened the door, and would have let down the step but that their host’s footman forestalled him. However, the servant then stood back and permitted Lord Selworth to hand down first his sister and then Pippa.

 George Debenham emerged next and turned to assist Mrs Lisle. Mr Chubb, who had been lurking behind Lord Selworth, moved forward to hand out Kitty, and Millicent, exclaiming over the red carpet, also accepted his help.

 The footman signalled to the coachman to drive on. Another carriage pulled up as Mr Debenham offered one arm to Mrs Lisle and the other to his wife. By then, Pippa and Lord Selworth had moved as far as the doorstep to make room. The press of people behind forced them to continue into the house together.

 Once inside the hall, the crush was much worse. Pippa gave up her shawl reluctantly, for between décolleté neckline and high waist, the bodice of her gown was alarmingly brief.

 Lord Selworth did not appear to see anything amiss. “Dash it,” he whispered in Pippa’s ear, though he might as well have shouted for the babble of voices, “I don’t want to go first. It’s for Debenham to lead the way.”

 “I am sure Bina intended you to take in Millicent,” Pippa hissed back.

 “In that case, by all means let us forge ahead. I had ten thousand times rather face the lions with you at my side than Millie! I trust you are acquainted with our hostess, for I certainly am not.”

 “I have been presented to her, but she will not remember me.” Pippa glanced back at Bina, who gave her an encouraging smile. Hemmed in as they were, and constantly inching forward, they could not exchange a word, far less places.

 Thus Pippa made a grand entry into the Fashionable World on the arm of one of its most eligible bachelors. That Viscount Selworth was little known to Society only increased the general interest in the young lady accompanying him. To this as much as to the Debenhams’ sponsorship Pippa attributed her success.

 For it was a success. She was not the Belle of the Ball. There were diamonds of the first water present, eligible maidens with large fortunes and blue blood-lines and fathomless funds of inconsequential chatter. Even Kitty and Millicent gathered larger crowds of would-be partners. Yet to one accustomed and expecting to sit out a great many dances, simply to stand up for nearly every set was triumph beyond her wildest dreams.

 Mama was right, Pippa had gained in address in the past few years, if address was the ability to make small talk—and listen to it without obvious impatience. She found herself more tolerant of other people’s foibles.

 It helped that she no longer felt the pressure to catch a husband, experienced by every girl in her first Season. She did not study every gentleman she met wondering whether she could bear to be his wife, if ever he happened to show the slightest interest in her.

 It helped also that she was one of hundreds in a huge ballroom, not one of a couple of dozen in two rooms thrown together with the carpet rolled back. She did not feel her looks, her clothes, her every move under constant scrutiny.

 It helped to have three sets taken in advance, by Lord Selworth, Mr Debenham, and Mr Chubb. Knowing one would not be an utterly unredeemed wallflower gave one self-confidence. Pippa recalled entire evenings spent examining her toes. Tonight she looked about her, admiring the glitter of the chandeliers’ lustres in the light of a thousand wax candles, and the scarcely less glittering throng swirling and spinning beneath.

 She expressed some of these thoughts to her mother, when a partner delivered her back to Mrs Lisle, where she sat at the side of the room chatting to the other chaperons.

 “As I expected, my love,” said Mrs Lisle. “I am prodigious glad you are enjoying yourself. Dear Albinia would be most disappointed if all her efforts to that end were in vain, and she has been so kind I should hate to disappoint her.”