Elizabeth Mansfield (21 page)

“Now?” Lady Branscombe peered at her daughter over her tiny, square spectacles. “We’re in the midst of—”

“Yes, now, please, Mama. It’s very important.”

Lady Branscombe bit off a thread, thrust the needle into a pincushion and pulled herself to her feet. “I’ll return shortly,” she promised the modiste as she stepped out into the corridor. “What is it, Julie?” she demanded impatiently. “I haven’t time to stand about gossiping. You know how much there is to do before the wedding.”

“It’s not gossip. Let’s go into the sitting room.” The girl was so nervous her voice shook, but her purpose remained firm. “I think you should be seated when you hear what I have to say.”

Her ladyship’s eyebrows rose. She opened her mouth to object, but something she saw in her daughter’s face stilled her tongue. Without another word, she turned and led the way down the hall. In the sitting room, she lowered herself upon the sofa, removed and pocketed her spectacles, folded her hands in her lap and looked up at her daughter. “Well, here I am, seated just as you asked. What is it you want to say?”

Julie, standing before her mother like a guilty child, clenched her fingers together and took a deep breath. “I’ll say it right off, Mama. Tris and I have decided not to marry after all. I know this news will pain you. I’m very sorry.”

Lady Branscombe stared up at her, agape. “What are you saying? I don’t understand.”

A flame of irritation flared up in Julie’s chest. She’d had no expectation that this chore would be easy, but if her mother was going to resist even facing the bare facts, it would be impossible. “It’s not hard to understand,” she said with precise clarity. “The words are perfectly simple:
Tris and I are not going to marry.”

“But—”

Julie burst out with “I know what you’re about to say, Mama, so you needn’t bother.” Anticipating her mother’s anger, she worked up an anger of her own to combat it. She turned away from Lady Branscombe’s anxious eyes and paced about the room. “You will say I can’t be serious,” she said, continuing to storm. “That we’ve announced the nuptials to all the world. That I’ve been feted and congratulated by everyone in town. That Phyllis has given me the grandest ball ever held in these environs. That you are already preparing the wedding feast. That my blasted wedding dress is being made right down the hall. Well, I don’t want to hear all that! I know it well enough. It can’t be helped.”

“I was not g-going to s-say any of that,” came her mother’s voice, a voice so shaken with tearful regret that Julie could scarcely recognize it.

The girl wheeled about. Her mother—the stalwart, unbending, implacable, strong-minded Lady Branscombe—was weeping into her hands.
“Mama!”
Julie cried out, startled out of countenance.

“I knew it,” the older woman sobbed, “I knew it. I just couldn’t f-face it.”

Julie had never seen her mother cry. Her anger seeped out of her like the air from a punctured soufflé. Nevertheless, she could not quite believe what was happening. It was not beyond possibility that her mother would use tears as a ruse. She crossed back to her mother’s side. “Knew what, Mama?” she asked suspiciously.

Lady Branscombe wiped her cheeks and, taking hold of herself with an effort, gazed up into her daughter’s face. “I’m your
mother,
Julie. Did you think I wouldn’t notice your unhappiness? Did you think I’d be fooled by that pitifully false smile you showed the world? I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do about it.”

Her sincerity was evident. Julie, shamed to the bottom of her heart by her earlier suspicions, knelt down and took one of her mother’s hands. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you, Mama. Blame it on sheer terror. I was afraid of telling you the truth, knowing how much you desired this wedding. But, you see, the truth is that Tris and I don’t love each other. Not in the way that’s right for man and wife. We’re fond of each other, like brother and sister, but we would be miserable if we were wed.”

Lady Branscombe winced painfully. “Yes, I do see. I think I’ve always seen it. I just haven’t wanted to admit it until now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s I who should apologize,” her mother said miserably. “You were right when you said I indulged my own dreams, without thinking of yours. I’ve spent years dreaming the wrong dreams for you.” Her tears began to fall again as she dropped her face in her hands. “I d-don’t even know how to make amends. I hope, Julie, my love, that you can f-forgive me.”

Julie, dumfounded by her mother’s unexpected and complete collapse, cast herself on the sofa beside her mother and threw her arms about her. “Oh, Mama, don’t cry! A mother can be forgiven for having dreams for her child.”

They remained in the embrace for a long time, drawing solace from this unwonted display of affection. At last Julie spoke. “I know how hard it will be for you to let everyone know the wedding plans have been canceled.”

“I shall manage it,” her mother assured her. “It will be worth the effort, and even the disappointment, if it means I’ve won my daughter’s affection back.” She brushed aside a strand of her daughter’s hair fondly. Then she rose from the sofa with a sigh. “Thank goodness the wedding gifts have not yet begun to arrive,” she said as she prepared to return to the sewing room. The wedding gown came to her ladyship’s mind as she walked slowly to the door. She would finish it anyway, she told herself, for it was unlikely that it would go to waste.
This
wedding would not take place, but her lovely daughter would certainly be married sooner or later.

“Wedding gifts?” Julie asked, not having thought of them before.

“They would have had to be returned, of course,” her mother explained, “but I shan’t be put to that trouble because none have yet arrived.” Having been forced to give up her dreams of this wedding, she was ready to dream of the next. She glanced over at her daughter with a calculating look. “Except for that beautiful pianoforte. You’ll have to return it, I suppose. It’s really too bad. I know how much you’ve enjoyed playing it. Unless...”

Julie stiffened. Her mother’s eyes had taken on a familiar gleam. It was the look she always had when she wanted to manipulate fate by manipulating the people under her influence. It alerted Julie’s defenses. “Unless?” she prodded cautiously.

“Unless there is a reason for you to keep it.” Lady Branscombe cocked her head and asked innocently, “Wasn’t there something going on between you and Lord Canfield?”

Julie jumped angrily to her feet. Her mother, it seemed, had very quickly recovered from her momentary show of affection. Peace with that woman, Julie realized with a pang, would probably never be more than short-lived. “You’re dreaming again, Mama. There was nothing at all ‘going on’ between his lordship and me.”

“It’s not a bad dream, you know,” Lady Branscombe went on, quite as if Julie hadn’t spoken. “If you’re not going to have Tris, then I’m willing to grant that Lord Canfield has much to be said for him: good looks, brains, charm, wealth. Not a bad dream at all.”

“Really, Mama,” Julie snapped in disgust, “have done! I don’t want to hear another word on this head. There’s to be no more dreaming on my behalf, do you hear? I hereby declare a ban on dreaming. Your last was enough for a lifetime.”

30

Peace between Tris and his mother came about more easily, although the scene was equally tearful. When it was over, Lady Phyllis regretfully accepted Tris’s decision to call off the wedding and acquiesced in his determination to return to London. By the next morning, he was gone.

As soon as she’d waved good-bye to her son, Phyllis walked across the fields to Larchwood, hoping to console her friend for what she knew was an overwhelming disappointment. To her surprise and relief she found Madge in moderately good spirits. “Since a wedding between them is not to be,” Madge said placidly as she poured her friend a cup of tea, “we may as well make the best of it.”

Phyllis eyed her suspiciously. “I don’t like the sound of that, Madge. You are being too sanguine. Have you some plot up your sleeve?”

“Of course not,” Lady Branscombe said, dropping a generous spoonful of sugar into her cup. “A good general knows when to retreat.”

“This is more than a retreat, my dear. It’s a complete surrender.” Phyllis lowered her eyes to her teacup as she added fearfully, “Tris has gone off to London to offer for Cleo Smallwood.”

Madge Branscombe did not even wince. “Yes, I supposed as much,” she said calmly. “I hope he will be successful.”

This was too much for Phyllis to accept. “You can’t mean it! Are you saying you
want
him to wed her?”

“Under these circumstances, I do. Since I am now convinced that he and Julie don’t suit, I think Miss Smallwood is the next best choice.”

Phyllis expelled a breath of real relief. “So do I,” she admitted. Then, after sipping her tea thoughtfully, she broached the other subject that was on her mind. “Now if we can only see Julie happy with someone, I shall rest content.”

Madge glanced at her from the corner of an eye. “What do you think of Canfield as a possibility?” she asked, nonchalantly stirring her tea.

“Canfield?”
Phyllis brightened at once. “Yes! Of course! I should have thought of him myself. He’s
perfect
for her.”

“Exactly.”

“But ... isn’t it too late? I hear that he doesn’t intend to return to Wycklands for a long while. He’s gone back to London, dash it all!”

Madge merely smiled. “London isn’t the end of the world. In fact, my dear, I’ve been thinking that London is the very place for you to hold Tris’s betrothal ball. As soon as he sends word that he’s betrothed, we should all go down and join him in town to make the preparations.”

Phyllis’s eyes took on a sparkle of excitement. “By ‘we’ you mean—?”

“Yes, the three of us,” Madge said, her smile widening to a mischievous grin. “You, of course, with Julie and me to help. It should take weeks. A month at least. Don’t you think it possible that a great deal might happen to Julie in a month?”

Phyllis grinned back at her. “A very great deal. Madge, my love, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You are a genius!”

With that satisfying remark hovering in the air, Madge refilled their cups and the two of them contentedly drank their tea. But neither lady realized they had little cause for contentment, for Madge Branscombe’s plan had a crucial weakness. It depended on Tris becoming betrothed to Cleo, and Tris was at that moment discovering that such a betrothal would apparently never come to pass.

31

Tris arrived in London in the late afternoon. After arranging for rooms at the Fenton Hotel, he immediately went to call on Cleo at the Smallwood townhouse. He was bursting with eagerness to get down on his knees and apologize for his strange behavior on her last day at Amberford. But the butler would not admit him. He was coldly informed by that high-in-the-instep personage that neither Lord Smallwood nor Miss Smallwood would agree to see him.

He spent that night lying awake in his dreary hotel room trying to think of a plan of action to overcome this first obstacle. It had to be overcome, for if she would not even see him, how could he convince her of the sincerity of his contrition? The next afternoon he purchased the entire contents of a street vendor’s flower wagon and, tottering under the load, again appeared on her doorstep. Again the supercilious butler told him he would not be admitted. “Hold these for a moment,” Tris begged the fellow. “I want to get something from my pocket for you.”

The butler, no fool, guessed that Tris intended to bribe him. Not being opposed to bribes, he took the huge pile of blooms in his arms. Tris fished out a gold sovereign from his pocket. “Here, this is for you, if you will only bring the flowers up to her and come down and tell me what she says.”

The butler did not take long to agree, a gold sovereign being worth almost three pounds and therefore only slightly less than a month’s wages. “Wait there, sir,” he said, backing into the hallway with his load and closing the door with his foot.

Tris paced about on the doorstep for several minutes. Then, to his delight, he heard a window being opened somewhere above him. He looked up eagerly to discover a cloud of flowers being flung down at him. They fell like a shower of arrows about his head and shoulders, one almost piercing an eye, and finally lay strewn on the doorstep, ankle-deep. In utter discouragement, he waded through them and went back to his hotel.

By the next day, he was furious. What right had she to treat him in this shabby way? he asked himself. He hadn’t done anything to her that was so unforgiveable, had he? He’d only broken a silly doll and left her alone on the green. Was that so very dreadful? Did he deserve to be so callously spurned? In a rage, he stormed up to her door, brushed by the butler as soon as the fellow opened it, and demanded loudly to see Miss Smallwood at once.

“She won’t see you,” the butler said, not unsympathetically. After all, he’d been enriched by a sovereign, and with any luck some other bribes might be forthcoming. “I’d like to help you, sir, really I would. But I have my orders. I’m not to let you in.”

“Well, I
am
in. So go and tell the lady I’m waiting.”