Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson
Chapter 11
My plan was not advanced one bit at dinner, as I was seated between two married men. So I took advantage of the first opportunity I could find when the gentlemen joined us in the drawing room. The man who had recently returned from India took a seat first, on one of the settees arranged in front of the fire. I hurried to join him before anyone else could claim the seat next to him.
“Mr. Pritchard,” I said. “I am very interested in talking to you about India.”
He was probably twenty years older than I, but Sylvia had confirmed that he was not married. He had sandy blond hair and was very tan. I had chosen him knowing that we would have common interests.
He took his time taking a snuff case out of his pocket, tapping it with a fingernail and then flicking it open. Looking at me, he took a pinch of snuff and said, “Yes? What about?” He held the snuff to a nostril, sniffed, then did the same to the other nostril. He dusted off his fingers and pocketed his snuff case before looking at me again.
Now that I had set the plan in motion, my nervousness had returned in full force. What was I doing? And how would I actually go about encouraging this man to like me?
Eleanor.The thought came to me again, and I thought of all the times I had watched her flirt. I thought of her smile, and the tilt of her head, and how she would stand and sit and what her hands did.
I slid closer to him on the settee, aware suddenly of the people around us. Tilting my head to one side, as I had seen Eleanor do, I smiled at him. “I would love to hear what India is like.”
He stared at me without blinking. “Hot.”
I blinked enough for both of us. “Hot?”
“Yes. Hot.”
My smile faltered, especially as I saw the amusement on the faces of the people listening to us.
“Yes, I understand that it is a warmer climate, Mr. Pritchard. But I was hoping you could tell me something more. You see, I plan to travel there myself, very soon.” I remembered how Eleanor would lean toward a man she was interested in. So I leaned toward Mr. Pritchard.
A movement at the corner of my eye caught my attention. Henry was standing there, watching us with an unsmiling expression. In fact, his expression went beyond unsmiling. His jaw was set, his eyes like steel.
“You plan to go to India?” Mr. Pritchard surprised me by actually showing some expression on his face. “With whom?”
“With my aunt.”
“Just the two of you? Alone?”
I nodded.
He looked from me to the people who were watching and listening to us, then chuckled, as if it was all a great joke. They smiled in return. Miss St.Claire smiled, and so did Sylvia, and an older couple whose names I could not remember. My face was hot. I felt sure I was the cause of those smiles and that laugh, but I could not guess why. The nervous-looking Mr. Dyer smiled the broadest of them all. I did not look at Henry to see his reaction.
“Why is that amusing to you, sir?” I forgot to smile and lean toward him.
“Two reasons.” He held up his fingers and ticked them off one at a time. “Two single ladies. Going to India alone.” He shook his head. “I have never heard of anything more foolish in my life.” He shifted in his seat, as if dismissing me, and turned from me. But my pride would not let me lose.
“I do not think it foolish,” I said, loud enough for everyone in the group to hear. “I think it is adventurous.”
Mr. Pritchard turned back to me, with one eyebrow raised, and looked me over with disdain. He shifted again, but this time he leaned closer to me. Looking straight into my eyes, he said in a blunt voice, “India is no place for girls looking for adventure. It is a hostile country. The journey alone has a good chance of killing you. And if you are not lost at sea, you will probably die of some disease once you are there.” His eyes drifted over my figure lazily. “You are not ugly. It would be better for you to get married and save the adventures for those suited to them.”
He stood, straightened his jacket, and walked away from me. My face burned. I did not dare look at anyone, but I felt their gazes. I felt Henry’s gaze, and I was so humiliated I did not think I would ever be able to meet it again. After sitting awkwardly for a long moment, I stood and walked away with as casual an air as I could force myself to adopt.
I did not know where to look or go. I knew only that I had to leave the group that had witnessed my humiliation at the hands of Mr. Pritchard. Crossing the room, I did not have a safe harbor in mind. But then, like a ray of sunshine, I saw the gaze of the elder Mr. Brandon. He was watching me from where he sat in a corner, far enough removed from the group that he could not have overheard my conversation.
Grasping my courage with desperate hands, I turned my steps to him. I would try once more. Mr. Pritchard had been cruel, and the nervous Mr. Dyer had clearly agreed with him. But Mr. Brandon was kind. I could see it in his eyes.
He stood as I approached, bowing to me, and offered with an outstretched arm the chair next to his. I smiled with relief. I had not erred in my judgment here. He was a kind man.
“Miss Worthington, you look rather flushed. Perhaps the fire was too warm for you?”
I pressed a hand to my hot cheek, thinking of how my face burned from embarrassment, not heat.
“Perhaps.” I thought bravely of my bargain with Mama and my escape to India and the example of Eleanor. I would try again. I had to try again. I could not give it all up because of one man’s rudeness. Sitting next to him, I smiled in the way Eleanor had smiled, and I leaned toward him, and I asked him to tell me about himself.
“I need to speak with you, Kitty.” Sylvia stood before me. Her gloved hands were clenched into fists, and a warning blazed from her cool blue eyes.
I had just left speaking with the elder Mr. Brandon for the past hour. Acting like Eleanor had exhausted me, and the room was much too warm. Seeking the coolness of the hall, I had walked toward the doors when Sylvia intercepted me.
“Of course,” I said, a little surprised by her demeanor.
I followed her out of the room, down the hall, and into the dining room, which had been cleaned after dinner and now sat empty. She closed the doors carefully behind us before whirling around to face me.
“How could you, Kitty?”
I fell back a step, startled. “How could I what?”
“How could you do this to me? After everything I have done for you?” Her face was a splotchy red, and tears made her eyes glisten.
Completely dumbfounded, I shook my head. “What have I done to you?”
She stepped toward me, pointed a finger at my chest, and said with a sob, “You have just spent the past hour trying to steal Mr. Brandon from me! After I told you I liked him! After I showed you the ... the quote ... that he gave me.” Her lips trembled. “The quote about me. Maybe you did not think it was significant, because he didn’t write it himself, but I loved it! It was the sweetest thing any man has ever done for me, and I could easily fall in love with him, and you knew that, and you just sat there and—and—flirted with him, in the most obvious and disgusting manner!”
My mouth had dropped open at her first sentence and I stared at her, stunned. “You mean that paper was from the elder Mr. Brandon?”
“Of course it was!” She wiped at her cheeks. “Who else could it have been from?”
“The son, of course!” I was yelling now. I was horrified at what I had done, but I was appalled, too, that Sylvia had not imagined that there could have been some confusion on my part. “The man who is closer to your age! The handsome one!”
Her eyes opened wide with incredulity. “He is a younger son, Kitty. My children would never have a chance at inheriting anything. The father at least has a title, even if he is only a baron. Besides, I would never be interested in the son. He would drag me all over the countryside, talking about adventures and making me go places that I did not want to go. It would ... it would be like being married to you! I would hate it!”
I reared back, feeling as if I had been struck. “I ... I thought it was a compliment to me that you liked the son. I thought we ...” I took a breath, and let it out with a feeling of great loss. “I thought we were the dearest of friends.”
She was quiet for a long moment. “I think we were good childhood friends, Kitty. But we have been different now for quite some time.”
I sighed and rubbed my forehead, feeling suddenly much too tired for this. “Kate. Please. Please, just once, call me Kate.”
Her expression hardened again, and she looked at me with tightly closed lips.
“You never liked who I grew into, did you?” I asked, suddenly realizing the truth. “That is why you refuse to call me Kate.”
She lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. She did not need to confirm it. I knew it was true. And with the knowledge came a heavy sense of loss.
“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what you call me. I am so sorry I flirted with your Mr. Brandon. I had no idea. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think there is any chance of my having stolen him away from you. He kept looking your way.”
“Really?” A small smile appeared.
“Yes. Really. Hopefully no permanent harm has been done.”
I pulled out a chair and sat down heavily, feeling defeated. There went two of my prospects. Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Brandon both had to be crossed off my list. That left only the nervous Mr. Dyer, and I had no hope in him. I rested my chin on my hand. Sylvia pulled out the chair next to me and sat down, turning toward me. I could feel her gaze on my face, but I was too embarrassed to meet it.
“I have never seen you behave like that,” she said in a quiet voice. “I have never seen you flirt with any man, much less two in one night. But watching you reminded me very much of someone else.”
I covered my eyes with my hand, dreading her next words. I shook my head. “Don’t say it.”
“You looked very much like Eleanor in there. First, with Mr. Pritchard. And then with Mr. Brandon.”
I closed my eyes tight and fought back tears.
“I need to know why you acted that way, Kitty. If you want to stay here, I need to understand.”
Her words sounded like a threat. If I wanted to stay here? I dropped my hand and looked at her with disbelief. Would she really make me leave Blackmoore simply because I had flirted with two gentlemen? She met my gaze directly and did not look as if she was teasing.
“Very well. I will tell you why I flirted this evening, even though flirting is no great crime.” I drew in a deep breath. “I made a bargain with Mama. She will give me my freedom—my independence—to go to India if I receive and reject three marriage proposals.”
Sylvia stared at me, then laughed, one short, mirthless laugh. “So you thought you could flirt with some gentlemen and then they would propose to you?”
My face burned again. “It has happened to other young ladies.”
She was shaking her head, and her disbelief turned to something I hated even more: pity.
“I have to tell you something, Kit—Kate. And I am not telling you this because I’m upset with you. I am telling you this because I am your friend and you deserve to hear the truth.”
Dread pooled within me. My heart picked up speed with nervousness. I was quite certain I did not want to hear whatever she had to say.
Leaning toward me, she looked into my eyes and said, “No man here will propose to you.”
I flinched. My pride reared up. “You sound so sure of yourself, Sylvia.” My voice sounded bitter. “How can you say that?”
“Because all of the people here are friends of my mother. And all of them know about Eleanor.”
I blanched. “But that is old news. She is married now. She cannot hurt me anymore.”
Sylvia shook her head, and her cool blue eyes were full of pity. “There are new rumors in London. I didn’t want to tell you, but everyone in our set, the entire Ton, is whispering about her.”
“But she is married,” I said again, unable to think past that idea.
“Married women can cause as much scandal as unmarried ones,” Sylvia said with a jaded look.
I dropped my head into my hands, feeling all hope leaving me.
“In fact, when Mama heard the rumors, she wrote to Henry and told him you could no longer come to Blackmoore. But Henry fought her, and I stood up for you, too, Kitty. I told her that you had never behaved like Eleanor, and you never would. I told her that our guests would have nothing to fear from your company ... that they would not be tainted by any scandal while you were with us.”
I breathed in and out, trying not to cry. “I only want to go to India. It’s the only reason I did what I did.”
She was silent for so long that I raised my head and looked at her. Condemnation was written all over her face—judgment and reproach and dismissal. “Even if there was a chance that you might succeed, I cannot believe you would use some unsuspecting man to get what you want. Did you not think of the moral implications of your plan? To use these men—to toy with their hearts—to lead them to fall in love with you, all the while knowing you would reject them! It’s heartless. Absolutely heartless. And selfish and ... and ...” She sucked in a breath. “It sounds like your mother, to be honest. It sounds exactly like something she would do.”
I flinched at the words she threw at me. “It does not,” I said, my voice sounding savage. I pushed back my chair and stood, hands clenched into fists. “I am not my mother. I am never going to be like her. I can’t believe you would say that. After all these years of knowing how I feel about her and knowing how loath I am to become like her! How could you say such a thing?”
She stared at me, her eyes filled with pain but her lips pressed tight. An apology would not escape, she seemed to say. She was separate from me. She looked at me as someone she pitied but not someone she cared for.
The truth of her words pounded at my soul, but I would not let them in, just as she would not let an apology out. We were beyond each other’s reach, and after a long stretch of tension and silence and stubbornness from both of us, she looked over her shoulder at the door. At the way back to the world she belonged in.
“I should return to the guests. Mama will be wondering where I am.”
She waited, shifting from one foot to another, and I felt a crack in my defenses—a weak place where truth knifed and twisted and pried for an opening. I could not bear to have her witness my vulnerability. I brushed past her and opened the door myself. I left her with a strong stride and a lifted chin and the injured pride of someone who would not admit her own mistakes.
But as soon as I opened the door to the second music room—the room I had claimed as my own, and the room with the stirring, silent bird in it—I lost everything that had been protecting me. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes as the truth found my weakness and expanded it and then poured in, blinding me with the pain of illumination. I had spent the last few years running away from becoming like my mother. But in my effort to escape my fate, I had become her. I had been willing to use others for my own gain. I had been willing to target the weakness of others—their hopes and dreams and the most tender feelings of their hearts—and manipulate them and trap them and then gut them. All for my own dream of India. And in that moment of illumination, I hated myself.