What a Judgemental Miss!
Meredith's Tender Awakening 6:2
Previously Meredith and her Aunt Cecilia call on Phillida D’Arby and her mother. Meredith swiftly surmises they are unlikely to form a friendship
Aunt Cecily, however, was keen to catch up with Lady D’Arby: Talking in person being so much more satisfying than exchanging news and views via correspondence. They chattered away, and after a while, Phillida stifled a neat yawn.
“Will you take a turn about the room with me, Miss Millais?” she piped up, interrupting Meredith from contemplation of a watercolour in a gilded frame.
“Certainly,” Meredith had no choice but to comply, and rose to her feet.
Phillida offered a slender arm to Meredith and they began to walk slowly out of range of her mother and Meredith’s aunt’s hearing.
“So your season has been exciting; Pray tell me, what did you think of the ball hosted by the Crawford-Browns?”
“It was extravagant, to be sure,” Meredith remarked, “and the gardens were beautifully lit for the firework display.”
Phillida made an irritated gesture as if flicking flies away from a picnic. “But what of the gossip? Whose dress was unflattering, who danced out of time. Which debutantes clung to the wall all night?” She fixed Meredith with an unhealthy glint in her eye, waiting for an outpouring of uncharitable observations.
Meredith saw glimpses of the ball flash before her eyes in a montage of movement and color, the way she had perceived it on the night. So many handsome gentlemen and young women, all beautifully outfitted and on their best behavior. She had rarely seen such grand rooms or enjoyed better music: it had been her first ball and quite overwhelming.
“The punch was rather too sweet,” she mused, refusing to give in to the pettiness of back-biting to win some grade of interest from her vapid companion. “But I find I prefer lemonade in any case.”
Miss D’Arby expressed her displeasure with a toss of her golden hair.
“What is your opinion of Miss Georgiana Varcoe? She seems dull to me and dances like a carthorse, but I am sure many will overlook that to get control of the large estate in Cornwall she inherits when she is one and twenty.”
Meredith was shocked at Phillida’s blatant bitching, but she wouldn’t be drawn in.
“I have barely spoken to her, except for when we sat down to dinner at the Fortescue’s, and even then I was mostly engaged in conversation with the gentleman to my right --”
“Who was?” Phillida interrupted imperiously.
“Who was about to take over as clergyman for the Fortescue’s estate," Meredith continued. "A Mr Albermarle Marten. He was very passionate about his new position and grateful to his patrons.”
Meredith didn’t add how boring he had been or that she had wished she could shield her plate from the spittle that flew when Mr Marten talked. Either of which tidbits would have been fuel for her companion’s spite.
“I believe I heard that you were dancing with the Marquess of Davenport,” Phillida said. Her over-casual manner was much at odds with her previous efforts to get Meredith to open up. “At Lady Abington’s soiree. Word is, he’s a bit of a rake.” Now her gaze caught Meredith’s with a blaze of intensity.
“Indeed. Lady Abington is my godmother,” she supplied, stalling for time.
Meredith felt her composure evaporate at the mere mention of Lord Davenport’s name. The press of his warm hand against her gloved one, and the depth of his sea-green eyes, merry from their heated debate, mingled confusingly with the dreams she’d had ever since. Bright memories and emotions crowded into her mind and made it hard to find an innocuous way to answer.
“A rake? I had not heard that,” Meredith eventually murmured. “He seemed most decorous on the few occasions I have met him.” She hoped the tremble she felt would not be transmitted through her arm for Phillida to detect.
“Well, I heard it from a friend, whose brother was at Eton with him, that after the death of his parents, he got into all kinds of scrapes.” Phillida arched an eyebrow, presumably in an attempt to look worldly-wise.
Cold disdain flooded Meredith’s being, and when she next spoke her tone was so frosty as to draw their circuit of perambulation to a halt.
“The loss of a parent, at any time in one’s life, is like stepping off a cliff into an abyss. I had not been aware that it happened to the Marquess when he was still a schoolboy, but I’m inclined to view any erratic behavior that ensued with sympathy rather than negative judgments.” After delivering those words she disentangled herself from Phillida’s arm and resumed her seat on the pastel-striped settee.
She remained silent after that, and her Aunt Cecily wisely concluded their visit and bade her hostess farewell. Meredith resisted all her aunt’s attempts to make conversation on the carriage ride back to the Bairstowe’s and, once there, she retired to her room: Ostensibly to rest and change for their outing later.
In truth, she sat on a slipper chair by the window, but she saw nothing of the view. Instead, her mind went back to the final phase of her father’s illness, his funeral and the terrible grey days, weeks, and months that stretched afterward. Phillida’s revelation about the Marquess of Davenport had unwittingly opened a door that Meredith usually kept firmly closed and bolted. This time, however, as she revisited that time of relentless, dragging sorrow and painful separation, she could also picture Lord Davenport enduring the same; worse even, because he had been at school, and thus had no privacy in which to ride out his grief. And because he’d had the double blow of losing his mother too.
Meredith hung her head and wept, hot tears that washed down her cheeks and refused to be soaked up by her decorative, lace-edged handkerchief. Time passed and she rose to splash her cheeks with water before lying on the bed, utterly spent, and drifting into a dreamless sleep.
[To be Continued …]