Winter Wonderland (3 page)

She could sense that poor Barnaby, too, was beset with doubts, though not from the flaws in his costume or the gaps in his education, for he was too naive to be aware of them, but from the shyness that was so much part of his character. But Lawrence pulled him into the ballroom before she could prevent it. And before they'd had a chance to adjust to the noise, Barnaby spotted Miranda Pardew!

Honoria, following his gaze, felt her heart sink. Right before her eyes, the boy became bewitched. She could not blame him; the laughing young woman attracted the eye of many of the gentlemen present. But of all the women in the room, this one was the last she would have chosen for her shy, inexperienced brother-in-law.

But her husband, with typical male ineptitude in these matters, would not heed her warnings. Before she could persuade him to change his intent, Lady Lydell came up to them, linked her arm to Honoria's and, without giving her a chance to object, bore her off to make the social rounds. As she moved away, the last words Honoria could hear were her husband's: “Come, boy,” he was saying, “and let me introduce you to that charming creature who has you gawking.”

Honoria had wanted to wring his neck. She kept looking back over her shoulder, wishing urgently that she could find a way to keep her husband from throwing Barnaby to the mercy of the room's most notorious flirt. But her hostess's strong grip was irresistible. She tried to signal her alarm to Lawrence by means of meaningful glances, but the Earl did not receive his lady's mental messages. He merely pushed the boy onward to what Honoria feared would be certain disaster.

Later, at home, after everyone in the household had gone to bed, Honoria learned how right her feelings had been. She came downstairs to find Barnaby brooding before the embers of the sitting room fire. With gentle prodding, she drew the story out of him. It moved her to tears. “Oh, my poor, sweet boy, how dreadful! That you should have had to experience such a set-down … and at your very first ball … it breaks my heart!”

But Barnaby was past self-pity. “Don't cry over the incident, Honoria,” he said to her, his jaw set and his eyes dark with resolve. “It won't happen to me again. When next I set foot in society, I shall be fully prepared.”

And so he was. No sign of shyness ever again appeared in his demeanor. He conquered that tendency so completely that now, eleven years later, none of the ladies drinking tea with Honoria would believe that the word
shy
could possibly apply to him.

Honoria looked up from her reverie to find Jane Ponsonby staring at her speculatively. “Well?” she was asking.

“Well, what?” Honoria blinked at her in confusion, not having heard a word.

“Well, do you think Barnaby would like her?”

“Like who?”

“Dash it, Honoria, haven't you heard
anything
?” Molly Davenham asked in disgust. “Your habit of drifting off is becoming positively distressing. Jane was speaking of her niece, Olivia. Do you think Barnaby might take to her?”

“Little Livy?” Honoria looked from one to the other in surprise. “But she's much too young, isn't she? A mere child.”

“She's twenty-two,” Jane Ponsonby declared, “and has been out three seasons.”

“Has she really? How time does fly! But how did you come to think of her as suitable for Barnaby?”

“Because of what you said about him, insisting that the fellow is shy. So is Livy. If she weren't, she'd have been spoken for years ago, pretty thing that she is. Three seasons on the town and the chit still hangs back behind her mother's skirts. She's perfectly charming and talkative at home, but bring her to a ballroom, and she barely utters a word!”

“It might be a perfect pairing,” Lady Lydell cooed, her eyes alight with a matchmaker's gleam.

Molly Davenham, however, was not a romantic. “I don't see how it can be done, with Barnaby so put-offish and Livy so shy.”

“I do,” said Honoria, already smiling dreamily at the prospect of a bride for her darling Barnaby. “I know just how to manage it.”

“How?” asked the skeptical Molly.

“The family will all be meeting at Terence's place for Christmas. I'll simply bring Livy with me. At a quiet family gathering in the country, we can all relax and be ourselves. No one need worry about being shy.”

The ladies all smiled at each other over their cups. Not even Molly could think of an objection. And as for Honoria, her heart actually sang in her chest. Olivia Ponsonby, little Livy, was just the sort of girl Honoria had wished for Barnaby all those years ago at the Lydell ball: a girl who was sweet, modest, pretty and shy! Livy had come along eleven years late, but better late than never.

Honoria lifted her cup in a toast. “To sweet little Livy!” she said happily.

“To sweet little Livy,” the others echoed.

“May she have success,” Molly added wryly, “where braver girls have failed.”

Two

Miranda, Lady Velacott, looked most unladylike sitting on the dining room floor. She was swathed in an oversized apron and employed in wrapping pieces of china in sheets of old newspaper. It was an unusual occupation for a lady, but Miranda had long since grown accustomed to performing menial tasks. In a household that had once been run by a dozen servants but which had for a long time been reduced in staff to only three, she'd learned that her title did not protect her from having to engage in such unladylike but necessary tasks as bedmaking, laundering, mending, cooking and dusting.

A few feet away from Miranda, kneeling in front of two wooden crates into which she was carefully placing the wrapped dishes, was her Aunt Letty, a bony, spare, aristocratic old woman with small black eyes, a beak-like nose and a smooth helmet of iron-gray hair, all of which gave the impression of a silver-headed bird. Miranda, in her shapeless apron and with her curly auburn hair falling in neglected disarray around her shoulders, made a sharp contrast to her formally-clad, neatly-coiffed aunt.

The younger woman, her head lowered and her falling hair shading her face, was carefully keeping her back to her aunt. By hiding her face, Miranda hoped the sharp-eyed old woman would not notice that she was crying again. She couldn't seem to keep from dripping tears today. The sight of the familiar blue willow pattern on the Minton china reminded her of the many soothing cups of tea she'd taken in Letty's company during the past eleven years in this London house. Through those long years of her disastrous marriage, the companionship of this honest, blunt, sensible yet affectionate woman—who'd been like a mother to her after her parents died—was her one blessing, her bulwark against life's storms, the lifeline that kept her from drowning. The thought that this was their last day together was too hard to bear.

But Aunt Letty was indeed sharp-eyed. “You are not working, my dear,” she said, eyeing her niece's back suspiciously. “Don't tell me you've turned on the waterworks again.”

Miranda surreptitiously wiped her eyes. “No, of course I haven't,” she said bravely. “I was only …” Her mind raced about, searching for an excuse for her idle hands. “… only noticing something in the newspaper here.”

“Were you indeed?” Letty was too shrewd to be easily fooled. “And what on earth can interest you in a newspaper so old that it's good for nothing but wrapping?”

Miranda looked desperately at the printed sheet she had half-folded over a pretty saucer. “Advertisements,” she said with false brightness. “Have you ever read these advertisements, my love? Did you know that ladies of quality actually use newspapers to find themselves household help? Here's a Lady Millington in Kent seeking ‘a well-qualified butler with experience in supervision of household staff of more than two dozen.' Two dozen! Imagine! And here … a family in Norfolk by the name of Traherne seeks ‘the assistance of a gentlewoman to supervise and educate three boys, ages five through twelve.' And this one, from a Mr. Drinkwater in Essex for ‘a gentleman's gentleman, skilled at hairdress—'”

“Thank you, my dear, that's quite enough. You may find such reading interesting, but I do not. Besides, did you not insist that we pack these crates before I take my leave?”

“Sorry, Aunt,” Miranda said, making a last brush at her cheek with the back of her hand and hurrying on with the wrapping, “but we have all afternoon. We'll finish in time.”

A sound of wheels on the gravel drive outside the windows caught their attention. “Goodness me, Higgins can't have brought my carriage round so soon!” Aunt Letty exclaimed, raising herself to her feet with the stiff awkwardness of age. Once on her feet, however, she scurried to the window with the agility of a much younger woman and peered out. “Heavens, that's not my carriage! It's a drayman's cart! Those blasted Velacotts have sent their things!”

“Already?” Miranda felt her heart sink.

Aunt Letty frowned in irritation. “Isn't it just like your brother-in-law and his grasping little wife to take over the house a day early?”

Miranda rose and joined her at the window. “It's their right,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “At least they gave me a year's mourning before moving in.”

Letty snorted. “How very good of them.”

They stood in the window, arms about each other's waists, listening to the November wind rattle the panes. The draymen down below ignored the wind as they busily carried furniture and boxes from the equipage and piled them up in the drive. Letty leaned closer to the window, her birdlike eyes glittering in disgust as she watched them. “I suppose this means that the Charles Velacotts themselves will be following shortly.”

Miranda winced at the prospect. “Oh, dear, I suppose they will. I had hoped for one more night …”

Aunt Letty threw her niece a quick look of sympathy before turning away from the window and starting across the room. “Then I'd best send Higgins for the carriage and take myself off before they arrive.”

“Yes, I suppose you sh-should,” Miranda said, her voice choking on the tears she was trying desperately to control. “I know you don't wish to f-face them.”

Letty, hearing the catch in Miranda's voice, stopped in her tracks. She'd made up her mind to keep her emotions in strict restraint during this final hour, but her strength failed her. She turned back to her niece, her eyes filling with the tears she'd promised herself not to shed. “Oh, my dearest,” she cried, taking Miranda's hands in hers, “don't look so! Come with me to Cousin Hattie. We shall manage somehow.”

Miranda shook her head. “We've been over this too many times to have to remind ourselves again how impossible it would be. You know there's no room for another female in your cousin's house.”

Aunt Letty sighed helplessly. “Yes, I know. I keep assuring myself that you'll probably do better here in London than rusticating in Surrey in Hattie's tiny cottage with two old biddies. Here at least you'll have your old room, and all your things about you.…”

Miranda smiled ruefully. “Except that china. And my old Aunt.”

“Perhaps you should keep the china after all,” Aunt Letty suggested suddenly.

“No, I want you to have it. It belongs with you. It was you who brought it to this house when I married.”

“As a gift to
you
,” the aunt amended.

“Yes, but this house is mine no longer. If it remains here, my sister-in-law will think of it as her own. Belle has plenty of china. She doesn't need this.”

“
Can
she claim it as her own?” Letty asked, her bird-like eyes flashing angrily. “Does everything in this house now belong to Charles? Even things you brought with you as a bride?”

Miranda shrugged. “I'm not certain. Mr. Baines said that Charles has ownership of the house and its contents. I didn't ask him about those ‘contents' that Mama left to me. But there isn't very much. Just the Sheraton desk. And my bed, of course.”

Aunt Letty looked over at the china piled on the floor and frowned. “Then I
will
take the china. I've no wish to add our lovely Minton to the other things Belle Velacott is taking away from you. But you'll have to send the crates to me later on. We shan't have time now to finish the packing.”

Reluctantly, they started toward the door, both ladies throwing a last, longing look at the cups, saucers, butter plates and creamed-soup bowls still piled on the floor. “I never should have permitted you to wed him,” the older woman suddenly burst out, tears rolling down her wizened cheeks again. “I should have told you what I felt the moment you announced your betrothal.”

Miranda stopped and stared at her. “What did you feel?”

“That you were making a terrible mistake. I knew in my bones that Rodney Velacott was an irresponsible rake. I should have warned you. I should have threatened to break with you forever if you went ahead with the wedding. I was a coward.”

Miranda almost laughed. “How can you be so silly? I would never have believed so ridiculous a threat. I didn't know much in those days, but I did know that you would stand by me no matter what happened. It was not your cowardice that ruined my life. It was my own vanity. Do you remember, Aunt Letty, what they used to call me?”

“Of course. The Magnificent Miranda.”

“Yes, and I was stupid enough to believe them. What a silly young idiot I was. So pleased with myself. So foolishly arrogant. I'd caught the uncatchable Rodney Velacott, and I felt superior to every other girl I knew.” She shook her head in bitter amazement at the memory of her younger self. “The Greeks had a word for it, you know. Pride. Hubris. The gods must have had a merry laugh at my expense as they took me down. I suppose I should be thankful they didn't make me blind, like poor King Oedipus.”

“You may have been arrogant and foolish,” her aunt said as they went up the stairs to collect her things, “but your crime was not so great as to deserve what followed. Why, you had not a single year of happiness with that man.”