A Match of Hearts: A Regency Romance (12 page)

‘No,’ she agreed, resting her cheek
briefly against his arm. ‘If you say so.’

‘And don’t do that!’

‘Yes, Jarvis—I mean, no, Jarvis.’ She smiled
up at him. ‘Will you really rip his head off?’

He laughed aloud at the hopeful note in
her voice. ‘It was a figure of speech, my Lady. But I shall make him very sorry
he ever thought to draw you and Parry into his net
a
nd ensure that
he does not show his oily face in Bath again for many a long day.’ They began
to walk on toward Milson Street. ‘How comes it about that you are walking
alone? Where is your footman?’

Zanthe explained that John was lending
his muscle to the concert
organisers
. ‘And why are you not among
them? Playing truant, Lady Brookenby?’

‘Not at all. Well, perhaps. The case is
that Margery, my sister-in-law—’

‘I know who Margery is.’

‘Well, she is running away to be married
tonight, and so I am going to collect some dresses she ordered from Mareille’s
in Milsom Street so she will have something pretty for the wedding.’

‘Your sister-in-law is eloping?’ He
sounded thunderstruck.

She nodded. ‘With Mr Cholmondeley.’

‘At your instigation?’

‘Of course.’

He stopped dead in the street, struggled
with himself for a moment, and then broke into uncontrollable shouts of mirth.
‘Oh, Zanthe, darling Zanthe,
how
I have missed you.’

To
punish his lordship for his unseemly mirth, Zanthe made him carry the beribboned
bandboxes that contained Margery’s bride-clothes all the way back to the Rooms.
He was quite unrepentant, however, merely demanding the whole story of the
romance and why an elopement should be considered necessary.

‘I
told
you. Because Mama-in-Law is
determined to put a stop to it.’

‘Damn it! They’re both in their forties.
How could she?’

‘You do not know her. She is like a
spider. Once you are caught in her web, there is no escape.’

‘You appear to have done so.’

‘Not entirely. She still frightens me. I
just hide it better than I used to.’ She thought for a moment and added, ‘I
have a temper, you see, which Margery does not. When I lose it, I can defy her,
at least for the moment. But—’ despairingly, ‘—I always end by apologising and
doing as she bids me. I should not have come to Bath if Doctor Miller had not
told her I was about to go into a decline and die.’

He cast her a searching glance. ‘Was
that true?’

She gave a little shrug. ‘Not really;
but I was very unhappy.’

‘Brookenby’s death hit you hard, I
daresay.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I cannot claim to
have mourned him very greatly. I grew fond of him, naturally. He was very kind,
but—’

‘But—’ he prompted.

‘He was not—you.’

He was silent for a moment; then: ‘If
you did not mourn him, why were you so unhappy?’

She murmured something inaudible.

‘What was that? Tell me,’ he urged in a
gentle voice.

‘I was so very—lonely,’ she confessed.
‘I have always been lonely, except for that one time—with you.’

‘Zanthe! I—’

‘That is the thing, you see, Jarvis. You
think that to marry you would be my ruin. What you don’t understand is that my
life is in ruins already.’

He looked very much struck by this but
made no answer for, at that moment, they were joined by Margery and the
Cholmondeleys, who had met by chance in Bridge Street. They stopped, and
Launceston shook hands, saying significantly, ‘I understand I have to
congratulate you, Cholmondeley.’

The reverend gentleman was still buoyed
up by the consciousness that he was acting in a very heroic way and answered
with far less reserve than was his wont. ‘You may, indeed, my dear Launceston.
I can hardly believe it myself. I have won such a prize as any man might—’ he
stopped, overcome with emotion.

The Viscount held Margery’s hand in his,
his rude laughter quite forgotten as he took in the radiance that transfigured
her plain features into beauty. ‘I wish you very happy, Miss Brookenby. As
happy as you deserve to be.’

‘Very kind—’ she responded gruffly.
‘Hope to wish you the same someday.’

‘Me? Oh, I am past praying for.’

Mr Cholmondeley shook his head and said
quietly, ‘No one is past praying for, my dear Sir. I shall remember you in
my
prayers, I assure you.’

They entered the building together and
made their way to the concert hall. In their absence, a great deal of work had
been done. The benches were set out in rows, and there were several gilt-chairs
placed at the front for the most important of the expected guests. The little
platform that did duty as a stage had been decked with garlands of flowers and
streamers, and the performers had begun to gather and huddle nervously.

Mr Templeton and his friend were
agitatedly running their lines while Lady Templeton constantly interrupted them
in her attempts to wind her son in a length of white sheeting, to represent a
toga, and to set upon his head a wreath of laurel leaves that she had fondly
sewn with her own hands. Sir Humphrey Norman walked about the room begging
anyone, even the chair-men, to ‘take a card, Sir, any card’; and the young lady
pianists played imaginary scales in the air with their fingers. Only Susanna, admirably
calm, was seated, quietly scanning the score of her selected pieces.

It was growing late. The performers left
the hall and concealed themselves in a small salon, the entrance to which was
curtained off to provide a wing from which they could ascend the little stage. The
audience began to arrive in twos and threes, family parties, single gentlemen,
local church dignitaries, and noble patrons of the charity. Among the earliest
arrivals were Lord and Lady Fallowfield, accompanied by Mr Fallowfield, who
came over to shake hands with Zanthe and the Cholmondeleys in a friendly way,
while Lady Fallowfield accorded them a distant bow. Lord Fallowfield looked as if
he would have joined his cousin but, at a word from his wife, he followed her
to the refreshment table and accepted tea from Susan, the youngest Miss Weatherspoon,
who was dispensing refreshment from a huge urn.

Mr Fallowfield glanced around the room.
‘Where is my little cousin? I wanted to wish her luck.’

Zanthe looked shocked. ‘Sir! Even I know
that it is most unprofessional for the
artistes
to be seen by their audience
before a performance.’

‘Is it? But I know very little of these
matters. I have only once been acquainted with an
artiste
, and that was
many years ago. A glorious creature she was, and had the most exquisite voice.’
He moved away to join his cousins
,
and Zanthe watched
him go, thinking that Susanna had acquired a very useful ally when Mr
Fallowfield came into her life.

For the next half-hour or so, Zanthe and
the Cholmondeleys greeted arrivals, exchanged pleasantries, begged newcomers to
take a little refreshment, and generally acted as hosts at a large reception.
Zanthe was a little distracted by keeping an eye out for Lord Launceston, who
had retreated from the Rooms as the crowds began to arrive and had gone, she
strongly suspected, in search of stronger refreshment than that dispensed by
Miss Susan.

She saw him stroll into the room
presently and felt a little thrill mingled with irritation. Why did he present
himself with his cravat as ever loosely tied and his shirt front un-pressed,
and why did his disheveled appearance give him such a roistering air, as though
a pirate had wandered by chance into a ladies’ sewing circle? Their eyes met,
and a smiled passed between them, but he did not approach her.

A few minutes later, Parry arrived
escorting the Dowager with casual grace. Zanthe found a chair for her at the
front of the room, all the while shielding Margery, who was sitting at the back
with the Cholmondeleys, from view.

Presently, a bell rang out, and those
clustering around the refreshment tables obediently found their seats. The hall
had now filled up with the performers’ friends and family, many charitable
persons interested in the cause, and a scattering of hangers-on who took any
opportunity to mingle with the higher orders.

The programme opened with Sir Humphrey’s
magic tricks, performed to an accompaniment upon the pianoforte provided by
Miss Tarleton, a spinster of uncertain years but spritely demeanor. The card
tricks went very well. Several gentlemen were invited up onto the stage to pick
cards and looked suitably thunderstruck when their own card was presented back
to them. But, most unfortunately, Sir Humphrey, who was an admirer and disciple
of the celebrated Monsieur Louis Comte, next attempted the trick, first
practiced by that great illusionist, of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The
rabbit, who was in a very bad mood, kicked and struggled so violently as to tip
over the little table upon which the hat rested and thereby revealed the hidden
compartment where he had been enjoying a quiet nap. He then bit Sir Humphrey on
the finger, leapt nimbly from his arms, and hopped off the stage into the
audience. Ladies screamed and pulled their flounces around their ankles until
several youths with shouts of
yoiks
! and
tally ho!
captured the
beast and returned him to his owner.

After this, even Mrs Preston, who
performed it, felt that
The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk
was an
anticlimax. Spirits descended even deeper into gloom when Miss Amelia and Miss
Katherine Weatherspoon seated themselves at the pianoforte and commenced to
play an interminable Haydn sonata. It was, thought Zanthe fairly, no reflection
upon Herr Haydn that the audience shifted in their seats, coughed, and glanced
surreptitiously at their pocket-watches. The playing was ponderous, and the
young ladies would have required to be a good deal more attractive than they
were for the ordeal to be thought tolerable by any but their Mama.

‘Oh, dear, what’s next?’ she whispered
to Margery, who was sitting in a happy dream beside her.

‘What? Mmm—er—it is the Quarrel Scene.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ sighed Zanthe with a sinking
heart. There was nothing to be done. She and the other members of the audience
must simply grin and bear it.

But, most unexpectedly, the Quarrel
Scene became the hit of the evening thus far. It began quite as badly as Zanthe
had expected. The young gentlemen had finally mastered their lines, but the
effort of memory was so great as to put any prospect of actually acting them
quite out of the question. However, during the first of Cassius’ speeches, the
young actor made a wild gesture, which inadvertently knocked Brutus’ laurel
wreath off his head and left it hanging upon the end of his decidedly retroussé
nose. The audience laughed. It was not the laughter that had greeted poor Sir
Humphrey’s rabbit trick. They laughed because they thought it a part of the
performance. Zanthe saw the realisation dawn upon the players and watched with
deep misgivings as the scene turned into an impromptu Punch and Judy show. The gleeful
participants raced around the stage, and there were trips, falls, tweaked
noses, slapped bottoms and, as a finale, an improvised duel with walking canes
filched from the gentlemen in the front row. Zanthe laughed so hard that she
could not speak but only pressed her hands to her side where a painful stitch
was forming. The young men took their bows to thunderous applause, with only poor
Lady Templeton regretting that the vast majority of the famous text had been
left unheard or unspoken.

Susanna was the last to perform in the
first half of the concert. She walked on to the stage to find the audience
still laughing and chattering over the last scene. People were fidgeting and glancing
over to the refreshment tables, impatient of sitting any longer on the hard
benches. It was a prospect that would have daunted most young performers.

Miss Fallowfield, a slight, graceful
figure in white voile interwoven with strands of silver that gleamed in the
candlelight, simply stood and calmly waited for the hubbub to die down.
Politely, the audience members hushed each other and turned their faces to her,
pitying her youth and willing to extend their indulgence just five minutes
more.

When all was quiet, Susanna inclined her
head to her accompanist, folded her hands in front of her breast, and sang.

Never, never, thought Zanthe, had there
been anything like it. The crowd was on its feet clapping, cheering, calling
for more, although Susanna had already given three encores. They would not let
her go. She smiled and curtsied and sang for as long as they wanted her,
soaking in the applause and giving back—enchantment.

Even Zanthe had never heard her sing as
she had that night. She realised that Susanna had been saving her voice in
rehearsals, just sketching in her performance. She turned to Margery and
exclaimed, ‘There can be no doubt about it now! She must be given the freedom
to sing, to be heard; anything else would be a crime.’

There was a sudden disturbance at the
back of the hall. A lady who had been listening from the farthest bench,
cloaked and veiled, arose, cast off her cloak and paced in stately
splendour
down the centre
aisle until she reached the stage. She mounted it and threw back her veil. There
was a gasp as the audience recognized Signora Villella. In a superb gesture,
she lifted the heavy gold and emerald tiara she wore from her head and placed
it upon Susanna’s. Then she took the young soprano’s hand in hers and led her
down to the front of the stage. ‘So, I am deposed. I pass the crown to my
successor.’