Intermezzo (10 page)

Eight

The following afternoon work continued on the Beethoven piece and Adela was delighted to see Rebecka slowly accepting a more mature interpretation of the work. They were engrossed in the interpretation of one particularly long crescendo passage when there was a rapid knock on the door and Mrs. Soames, Miss Tucker, and a stranger, excusing themselves for the interruption, came into the room. Mrs. Soames seemed even more than usually bustling while the gray-haired shy Miss Tucker quietly effaced herself as Mrs. Soames introduced “Moosur” De La Courte.

Adela turned to the stranger who appeared, at first glance, to be an exquisite pink of the ton, but on further examination Adela revised that judgment. She had been living in his lordship’s house now for several months and her eye had become trained to distinguish some of the niceties of masculine attire. This young man was merely an
aspiring
pink. If, however, he had not attained the exalted status of pink, it was not for want of inspiration but for want of capital. Unlike his lordship, who dressed very conservatively, but very expensively, Monsieur De La Courte was dressed neither conservatively nor expensively.

Mrs. Soames hesitated before explaining that “Moosur” De La Courte had been employed by my lord to teach the young ladies dancing.

Turning slowly to Mrs. Soames, her eyes gleaming dangerously, Adela asked for an explanation.

Mrs. Soames looked down at her apron to check for incriminating spots before beginning a lengthy monologue, the gist of which was that his lordship had decided that both young ladies were in need of instruction in the art of the dance and that he had just this day engaged M. De La Courte, who, he was assured, was one of the best dancing masters in the city, and M. De La Courte would be coming to St. James Square four times a week to give instruction.

“Very good, Mrs. Soames. Rebecka will learn to dance and I will play.”

Mrs. Soames coughed—that veritable prattle box was finally at a loss for words—and while silently blasting his lordship for cowardice, she prepared herself for the worst. “Beggin’ your pardon, miss, but his lordship said
both
the young ladies were to learn the dance or ‘Moosur’ is to be immediately dismissed. Miss Tucker is to play, you see.”

Adela did see. “Very well, Mrs. Soames. You may leave now.” Miss Trowle managed this last with a flat civility that simultaneously put Mrs. Soames in a quake and elicited from her a great deal of admiration.

Adela did not notice her effect on Mrs. Soames because her mind was elsewhere. At that moment, Miss Trowle, who not only wished Lord Waterston to the devil but would have gladly dispatched him there, hesitated before turning her attention to the remaining occupants of the room. Flaring up at Monsieur De La Courte would serve no useful purpose whatsoever. She had no wish to victimize that man as well. Not only was Rebecka clearly enthralled at the prospect of these lessons, but Adela was exceedingly reluctant, as his lordship knew she would be, to turn away someone else who had the misfortune to be teaching hourly lessons to difficult young ladies.

Inclining her head gracefully, Adela conceded defeat and prepared herself for the first of many dancing lessons.

Monsieur De La Courte released his breath and bowed.

Louis De La Courte was a fair-haired slight young man with wide-set delicate blue eyes and a moderately aquiline nose. His stiff carriage was characteristic of both a slight young man determined to stretch his inches to the maximum, and of a less than perfectly secure aristocrat determined to flaunt his status. He was not one of those émigrés who, while dressed in clean but shabby clothes, could yet, with a flick of their wrists or a quick bow, radiate one thousand years of unquestioned authority. Both by profession and by personal preference, Louis De La Courte was something of a dandy. His clothes, certainly not made by the best tailors, nevertheless, reflected the latest quirks of fashion. He was, as Becka said immediately after the first lesson, a mincing man milliner.

The dancing lessons were not the disaster that Adela had anticipated. Both Rebecka and she had a fine sense of rhythm, and in fact, the worst part of that dreadful first lesson was Miss Tucker’s accompaniment on the piano. Miss Tucker at the piano was an
agony.

Fortunately, Monsieur decided that, as Miss Trowle and Miss Beaumont could not both be dancing simultaneously, one of them could play the music for the other. Having effected this clever rearrangement, Monsieur himself began to enjoy the dance lessons both when he had the charming Miss Trowle as a partner and when he had the charming Miss Trowle as a pianist.

The lessons proceeded well. Monsieur had made discreet inquiries and found that Miss Trowle was not merely a governess companion but that she was a member of the English aristocracy. She was also a wonderful pianist, and in Monsieur’s eyes, she was not unattractive. Indeed, she was far more attractive than the spoiled little schoolroom misses he was accustomed to teach. He began to take his role as dancing master very seriously. Monsieur had despaired of finding a wife in England equal to himself in rank and with some refinement of spirit who might be willing to marry a mere dancing master. Miss Adela Trowle was a definite possibility—and she made such beautiful music.

Fortunately Miss Trowle was quite ignorant of the direction of her instructor’s thoughts. Had she known of his budding honorable intentions, she would have lost all pleasure in the classes. And, surprisingly, she did find
some
pleasure in learning the various formalized dances—especially the quadrilles, minuets, and pavanes. Dancing gave her a new insight into her music. Within a week or two, Adela felt awkward only when they practiced the waltz. She had tried to argue that the waltz was quite inappropriate as a subject for instruction—in part because Rebecka was too young and in part because she herself was too old. Monsieur pooh-poohed this with classic French resourcefulness and continued the lessons. But alas, Adela simply
could
not follow a lead. She could easily memorize the figures of other dances but she could not follow a lead. Monsieur persevered. He enjoyed the lessons and he believed he understood that Adela’s ineptitude was a mask for an almost praiseworthy modesty and embarrassment.

After the dancing lessons, almost every afternoon as the days lengthened into spring, Adela and Becka would don their coats and go out the door into the square. Finding a secluded spot, they would run around and play the games of childhood. Casual observers noting nothing but Adela’s diminutive size, assumed that they were seeing two overly excited schoolgirls with their gray-haired nanny, Miss Tucker.

Rebecka Beaumont was growing up and Adela Trowle was flowering. Somehow, his lordship had begun referring to them collectively as “the children.” It was, Adela decided, despite her caps and her status as a spinster, delightful to be thought a child. It was delightful as well to occasionally think of oneself as a child and to do the things that children do. Adela Elizabeth Trowle had grown up and old so very quickly.

Late in February, Rebecka was invited to tea with Lady Diana, and Waterston insisted, at the breakfast table, that Adela accompany her.

“Thank you, my lord, but if it is all the same to you, I think I shall remain here. I see no reason why
I
should be expected to attend.”

“To look after the brat, of course.”

“You, sir, will be there to look after Rebecka.”

“Nonsense, I will be fully occupied courting the fair Diana. I would have you know that the Lady Diana requires a gentleman’s undivided attention.”

“Oh yes, do let’s go and see Uncle Charles’s courting of the fair Diana. Adela, you mustn’t miss the fun. Please come and I will promise to be on my most ladylike behavior. May I wear my new rose-colored
dress with the velvet ribbons in my hair? May I, Adela?”

“Yes, you may, dear, and if I have your promise to behave, I will come with you.”

Waterston raised an eyebrow. “You shall come in any case, Miss Trowle. Do not, I beg you, try to bribe the child; she is difficult enough as it is. Aren’t you, brat?”

“Yes, Uncle Charles.”

Adela laughed and left with Becka to continue her lessons and prepare for the tea.

By three, she and Becky were dressed. Becky looked like a dainty doll from a book of fairy tales, while Adela, in her dreadfully worn gray silk walking dress, was content in the belief that she herself looked like nothing so much as a prosaic little storybook governess. This once Rebecka did not urge her to change into a more attractive gown. Glancing into the pier glass, Adela was pleased that despite Becka’s prodding she had not abandoned the cap for daytime wear nor the studied formality of the severe bun at the base of her neck. Preparing for her first tea with Lady Diana, she knew instinctively that there was safety, security, and peace in being a dowd.

But the mirror did not in fact reflect the change that the last few months had made in Adela. There was a glint in her eyes, a spring in her step, and a rose in her cheeks. She was, had she dared to admit it to herself, actually becoming happy. Not truly happy—without Jon and her mother she had no right to be happy, but something akin to it, something she’d not felt since Jon’s death. And so, although she was about to go and beard the Ice Queen in her palace, Adela was feeling almost flighty.

His lordship was waiting impatiently for Becka and Adela in the foyer. He smiled at them with some constraint, and Adela automatically hastened to excuse herself for being late.

“You are not late, children. I am merely being ogerish. Now out into the carriage and we will be on our way.”

Becka and Adela scooted down the stairs the moment Soames had opened the door, and in their eagerness not to inconvenience his lordship, the two clambered into the curricle with remarkable speed and no grace.

Waterston smiled. “Please to remember, that you are young ladies and not schoolboys—you will wait to enter a carriage properly. Miss Trowle, aren’t you teaching this brat
anything
?”

“Only piano, sir, only piano. I feel that for the rest Rebecka is teaching me more than I am capable of teaching her. If you will recall, my lord, I never made any claims to the more general sorts of accomplishments of young ladies of breeding.”

“You are both shockingly lacking in breeding if not in birth. I cannot understand it. The females in my family were all of an extraordinary delicate nature—our wilting aunt Sophia, for example.”

Becka raised one hand languidly. “Dear Cousin Adela, we really ought to learn to wilt. May we practice wilting for Lady Diana?”

Adela answered, “Becka, it is far too lovely a day for wilting. When the trees are budding out, you cannot expect
us
to wilt. Wilting in the spring is contrary to the very laws of nature. I think your uncle Charles would be quite content if we managed to pinch back some of our natural buoyancy. Breeding, you must remember, is, to some extent, a matter of strategic pruning—a cutting back of the natural man.”

“Miss Trowle, are you a horticulturist as well as a pianist?”

“No, sir. I am merely aspiring to polite conversation And ladies, you must remember, are restricted in the range of suitable subjects for conversation. They may safely discuss fashions, the weather, and horticulture. I know nothing of fashion, I will be almost indecently exuberant if I think about the weather, and so, alas, we must, of necessity, discuss horticulture.”

He chuckled and looked about him. “Very well, children, we have arrived. Pull yourselves together and tuck your hair into place, and please practice some decorum. We are almost certainly being observed.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Yes, Uncle Charles,” chimed in Becka, not to be outdone in docility.

They both allowed his lordship to help them from the curricle, although Rebecka could not resist thanking him with the deepest of her curtsies.

“Please, Rebecka,” Adela whispered under her breath while Charles lingered behind to exchange words with the groom, “we must be very careful for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Or the Ice Queen will have your head, Adela?” Becka asked with assumed innocence.

“I do not take my head or my position for granted. Please! I beg you be pleasant and unassuming.” And so, by the time they entered the drawing room on the first floor, Rebecka and Adela resembled in most apparent respects any other well-born little ten-year-old with her dutiful governess-companion.

Lady Diana was sitting in state while her mother, a woman of equally forbidding breeding, was pouring. There was no voice raised above a moderate hush and even the hushed conversations were conducted in monotone. The pitch was a monotone and the subject matter seemed to be a monotone as well. Except for an occasional period the conversations were quite devoid of punctuation.

Adela made a mental note, on entering the room, that had she been able to freeze every occupant in position, render them in wax, and transport the figures and the furnishings to Madame Tussaud’s museum, the whole scene would not have lost anything in vitality or content over the original. Tedium moved in very slow currents about the room. Adela could feel Rebecka stiffen beside her.

Miss Trowle was quite sure that the child was waiting for even the slightest encouragement to run about the room crowing like a rooster and flapping her wings if only to break through this glass wall—this undifferentiated continuum of propriety.

When his lordship’s presence was announced, there was a barely perceptible difference in the room. The conversations seemed to hang in midsentence for a moment or two while Lady Diana, porcelain perfection as always, unfolded herself from her sitting position and rose to greet his lordship’s party.

“Waterston, how very kind of you to join us and you have brought little Rebecka with you as well.”

Becka managed a very correct curtsy as did Adela, whose existence was graciously acknowledged by Lady Diana’s nod.