Marjorie Farrel (2 page)

“I will expect you early,” Barbara warned. “We have a lot of time to make up for. Give me your direction and I will send the carriage.”

“Oh, no,” protested Judith, “that won’t be necessary. I can take a hackney.”

“I insist. John Coachman will be at your door at eleven o’clock. That way we will have almost a whole day together.”

“Are you sure eleven is not too early?” Judith teased. “Will you not still be tired after yet another assembly or evening at the opera?”

Barbara laughed. “This is only the Little Season, so I attend only two functions a night, not four or five,” she teased back. “I will be up long before you arrive. I am so happy we met. I have missed my dear friend. I must go, but I look forward to Tuesday.”

Judith smiled her farewell. “Till Tuesday.”

She watched Barbara rush off with her companions in a flurry of pinks and primrose. Her own dress, which had satisfied her as being rich and simple, now seemed only dark and plain. She would not have exchanged it for a less-becoming but fashionable pastel, but she did feel a bit like a moth in a flock of butterflies. A beautifully marked moth, but a different species all the same.

I do wish I could be consistent, Judith thought. I am not interested in living Barbara’s life. I know I would not be happy with endless socializing and I despise the superficiality of the ton. Yet I feel twinges of envy and inferiority with young ladies of fashion, while at the same time being critical of their empty lives. Judith smiled at her own ambivalence and proceeded to the desk to complete her transaction.

When she finally reached Gower Street, she was greeted with the smells of roasting chicken and the spicy aroma of warm gingerbread.

“Hannah, that makes me feel like a child again. I can close my eyes and be back in the vicarage.”

Were Hannah the sort to blush with pleasure, Judith would not have known, for her naturally high coloring had been increased by her proximity to the stove. Although she turned away, Judith knew her too well to assume that she was not pleased. She moved over to the older woman and placed her arm around her shoulders. “We are blessed to have you with us, Hannah, and do not take for granted the fact that you have left your own family to help us set up house.”

* * * *

When Stephen arrived home, he brought with him an inexpensive bottle of port, and after a supper of chicken, potatoes, minted peas, and gingerbread with fresh cream, he and Judith toasted each other and their endeavor.

“Did you find your way to Hatchards, Judith?”

“Yes, and I found Miss Austen’s latest ... and a long-lost friend, Barbara Stanley.”

Stephen was delighted to hear the details of their meeting. The one worry he had about their arrangement was that Judith would be deprived of any companionship of her own age and interests. He had the opportunity to socialize with his fellow workers, but Judith was on her own in a rather ambivalent social position. Although they were both the children of a gentleman, the vicar having been the younger son of a baronet, Stephen’s place in society was much clearer. It was expected he would follow a profession, since there was no chance of him succeeding to the title, there being four male cousins ahead of him.

Although he would therefore not be moving in the first circles of society, he did have the opportunity to socialize with gentlemen of his class. For Judith, it was more complicated. Aside from marriage, she had had no choice three years ago. Working as a governess had been preferable to accepting her only offer, from the local squire, twenty years older than she, and in need of a mother for his four children. Now that Stephen could support her, she was freer, but fit no place. Unless Judith found one of the wives of his fellow barristers a kindred spirit, she was again betwixt and between. Stephen trusted her resourcefulness, and knew that between her art and the house she would be kept busy enough. But busyness could not make up for the lack of companionship.

“Lady Barbara Stanley ... I remember meeting her when we once picked you up from school. Did she ever stop growing, or is she as tall and weedy-looking as she was then?”

“She is no weed, my dear brother. She is now a goddess-like, lovely young woman, and I was rather overawed at first by her fashionableness. But she was genuinely happy to see me and invited me to call at the first opportunity.”

“And will you?” Stephen asked.

“Yes. She is sending a chaise for me on Tuesday. I am ashamed to confess I thought she had quite forgotten me. She never answered my last letter, you know. But I found out today she had never received it.”

“Ahem,” Stephen said with pointed emphasis and looking questioningly at his sister.

“Yes, I know, I know. You deplore my tendencies toward humility. I suspect it isn’t humility, Stephen, but my feeling of insecurity is quite real, nonetheless. Do you remember that Barbara had a brother who was a captain? Robin?”

“Yes, I remember you mentioning him after one of your visits. Is he still in the army?”

“Yes. He was not wounded in the last campaign, thank God, for I remember him as quite active.”

“He was lucky, then, Judith. I see soldiers begging in the streets who are in pitiable states, lacking eyes or limbs.”

“I am glad that you did not choose the army,” said his sister. “I do not think I could have survived these last three years had I known that you were in constant danger.”

“I was never interested in that kind of action. I would far rather put my energy to work in the courtroom. It was necessary to stop Bonaparte, but I do not wish to see us forgetting what led to his ascendance in the first place. We can’t turn our backs on Europe now that we are at last the victors. Well, enough politics for tonight! Let’s sit in front of the fire and enjoy
Emma
.”

Barbara returned home after her meeting with Judith feeling that something very valuable had been returned to her. Her intimacy with Judith had eased her loneliness at school and helped make up for the lack of a warm and responsive mother. The countess, by no means a neglectful parent, was, however, like many women in her position, rather removed from her children. Barbara relied mainly on her brother, and she and Robin were very close, having drawn together for comfort and support, but his seven years seniority meant he was gone just at the time Barbara needed him most. She left for Miss Hastings’ feeling awkward, gangly, and homesick. Judith, who remembered her own first weeks, was quick to respond to Barbara’s silent but obvious unhappiness.

What could have been only a brief relationship blossomed into a rich friendship. Both girls shared a self-reflectiveness and intelligence that enabled them to laugh at their adolescent agonies even as they suffered them. The social distance between them was not a barrier. Barbara loved hearing about the small, cozy vicarage in Hampshire, and Judith’s unworldly but adored father. Judith, on the other hand, was fascinated by Barbara’s life, which alternated between Ashurst and London. And both of them were impatient with the limitations on their lives as women. They resented their brothers’ greater freedom, but swore to each other they would never marry just to gain the greater freedom as a married woman. They dreamed of marriage with men who would treat them as equals and appreciate them for their intelligence as well as their beauty. If either of them would ever be said to be beautiful, a development they despaired of! They read Mary Wollstonecraft secretly and imagined themselves setting up house together. Judith, in addition to her painting, would learn German and Italian and support them by translating, while Barbara worked on her music. Somehow, in their fantasies, their dreams of romance and independence seemed not incompatible.

Despite their dreaming, they were both in touch with reality. They knew that Barbara would make her come-out. They knew too that Judith would not, and that it was less than likely that she would ever marry, the selection of eligible men in Cheriton being rather limited. There was the baronet, and a few gentlemen’s sons from the surrounding neighborhood who treated Judith like a sister. When the vicar died suddenly and Judith was forced to cut short her last year at the school, she and Barbara swore to maintain their friendship. They had successfully done so for a few years. Barbara had read between the lines of Judith’s letters and felt the old anger at the lack of opportunities for women.

As for herself, she had wealth and position, but except for Robin, no one to whom she could reveal her ironic view of the world. The few occasions upon which Barbara had spoken plainly had taught her it was safer to appear thoroughly conventional if one wanted to keep one’s friends. To have Judith back in her life was like recovering a part of herself.

On Tuesday morning, therefore, she woke early, with a feeling of excitement, like a child who is anticipating a special outing. At first she could not identify the source, and then she realized that she would have a whole day to herself. No calls to make, no shopping to do. A rare luxury.

When she walked into the breakfast room, she found Robin already there, reading the newspaper. There was no footman about, for both the Stanleys preferred to live more informally than their parents and took advantage of their absence to be more relaxed. Barbara served herself eggs and ham and muffins from the sideboard, and Robin looked up from his paper.

“You are up early this morning,” he teased. “I am sure you were not in earlier than two last night.”

“I hope you weren’t waiting up for me,” Barbara laughed. “Weren’t you also out?”

“No, I had planned to go to the Beckwiths’ assembly, but I was tired, so I sent my apologies and had a quiet night here, losing to Devenham at piquet.”

Barbara tried not to react to the viscount’s name. All the men she had met in London had not diminished her feeling for Robert Chase, Viscount Devenham. He had grown up with them in Kent, and was the heir to the large estate bordering Ashurst. Several years younger than Robin, he had been at school while Robin was on the continent. Now that Robin had returned, he had resumed his habit of treating the Stanleys as his second family.

Although Dev was only a few years older than Barbara, he teased her like the younger sister he considered her to be. Barbara, however, was afraid she was more than a little in love with him. She had tried to talk herself out of it, for he was hardly the serious partner she and Judith had fantasized. He was charming, boyish, and apparently frivolous, although she knew that he was also a responsible landlord and loving son.

She had no illusions that he looked for more in a woman than any other male of her acquaintance. He would more likely amuse himself with the demimonde before he settled down with some seventeen-year-old, fresh from her first Season. Barbara was sure that he had no knowledge of what she disparaged as her “schoolgirl infatuation”: in fact, he seemed blissfully unaware of her as a woman at all, and had, over the years, come to her for sisterly advice regarding his affairs of the heart.

“Are you doing something special today? Or did you come to breakfast early just to watch the eggs get cold?”

Barbara was jolted out of her daydreaming, and blushed as she realized that Robin was repeating his question for the third time.

“Do you remember Judith Ware, my good friend from Mrs. Hastings’? She visited us one summer, and the last Christmas you and Simon came home on leave together. It was the year of the big snowstorm, and we were all housebound. Remember you and Simon taught us to waltz?”

“Yes, that nice little wren-like girl? I thought you told me she left school to work as a governess?”

“She did, after her father died. But she has a brother who is now in London studying law. He sent for her, and I met her by chance at Hatchards and invited her to spend the day with me.”

“So you have been reunited with an old friend, and I fear I have lost one,” replied Robin.

“Simon?”

“Yes. He has been in London for almost a month now and will not admit anyone. I have tried for weeks, Barbara, and he just sends his butler back with apologies that he is not in to visitors. He seems to be living in the expectation that his sight will return.”

“But I thought the surgeons told him he was permanently blind?”

“Yes and no. There was no damage to his eyes, Francis told me. They speculate that the head injury irreparably damaged whatever part of the eye conveys images to the mind, but since they cannot see the injury, there was initially room for hope. Simon is holding on to that for all he is worth. But he sits all day in the library, looking at nothing. He is eating little and has lost almost a stone since he came home, according to Francis. I am worried about him, and don’t know what to do. I can’t very well force my way in and drag him out.”

Barbara placed her hand on Robin’s arm. “Do not give up, Robin, keep going back. Even if he refuses to see you now, you may eventually wear him down. And he has to be taking it in, on some level, the fact that you have not given up on him.”

“I hope so, Barbara, I hope so. Well, I must be off. I will see you later.”

Barbara sat over her last cup of tea until it grew cold, lost in thought. Of all her brother’s friends, Simon, Duke of Sutton, was the one she felt closest to. He was the son of an old friend of their father’s, and they had seen him many times over the years, on his visits to Ashurst. She had many memories of the three of them picking raspberries or racing their ponies. She had been allowed to tag along after her older brother and his friend, and they tolerated her as long as she didn’t become missish.

 “Missish” meant being unwilling to bait their hooks for them, so Barbara had learned to close her eyes and quickly press fat, wriggling worms against the needle-sharp hook, sometimes impaling her thumb in the process, but never crying out. “Missish” meant worrying about her clothes, so Barbara had learned to kilt up her skirts and ignore scratches on her legs when they went berrying. “Missish,” she thought, would also have been complaining about a twisted ankle, so she hobbled after them one day, until Simon, glancing back, noticed her grimace of pain and supported her the rest of the way home.