Miss Francie's Folly Read online

  “My dear child, such presumption! I do not always lose,” her mother responded in something of a huff.

  “You would not have left a winning hand, Mama,” Francie pointed out with only half-interest. “But since Almack’s does not allow anything beyond penny stakes, you can’t have gone aground.”

  She relapsed into meditative silence, while on the opposite seat, Mama appeared to have fallen asleep. But as they were nearing Mount Street, she suddenly pierced Francie with one of her amazingly awake stares and announced, “Sir Thomas made it known to me this evening that he wishes for the wedding to take place as soon as possible.”

  Francie felt as if someone had punched the air from her abdomen. She gasped for breath, for sense, and was grateful for the night shadows hiding her expression.

  “Did—did he say how soon?” she managed in a voice little more than a croak.

  “He put forth his desire to be wed within the month.”

  “And—and Mary? Did she express her desires?”

  “No,” confessed her mother with a yawn. “But she was feeling poorly, dear thing, and it is not to be wondered at if she could not speak a word. Still, I am certain she does not object. Mary is such a sweet child, never objecting to anything. So unlike you, Frances, so very unlike you.”

  For once, Francie did not rise to this unfair rebuke. Her mind was spinning, her earlier sense of desperation reinforced. She had always known that, once engaged, Mary would never break her commitment to Sir Thomas. But this! Mama, of course, was right. Mary would not object to whatever date was chosen for her wedding. Now, in truth, Francie felt ill.

  When at last the coach rolled to a stop, she alighted and followed her mother into the house without being conscious of the steps she took. A thick fog of depression had settled over her, muffling her senses as she mounted the stairs. She did not at first perceive Agnes Dill awaiting her by the door of her bedchamber. After she had been addressed twice, she finally recognized her friend.

  “You should not have stayed up, Agnes. There was no need,” she said listlessly.

  “It was not a matter of need, Frances, but of desire. I wished to speak with you.”

  Though it was the last thing she wanted at this moment, Francie beckoned her friend into he room, then requested Agnes to speak out while she removed her gloves and began to undo the intricate coils of her hair.

  “I wanted to tell you that I have decided to return to Norfolk once the matter of the ball is over. I have, in fact, booked a place on the Royal Mail for Saturday morning.”

  Francie felt Agnes’s eyes following her about the room as she discarded her ball clothes and donned her shapeless white mull nightdress. She knew what her friend wanted, but an unreasonable stubbornness took hold of her, and she refused to say it.

  At last, Agnes put it into words. “I should like for you to accompany me, Frances.”

  Francie gazed into the mirror above her vanity and studied Agnes’s reflection. Concerned, capable, conscientious, and critical—these traits were reflected in the erect bearing, the neat appearance, and the compressed lips. Francie had always know that Agnes, though truly fond of her, disapproved of her temper and her vivacity. Yet their friendship had held together through the years since they were schoolgirls. She found herself wondering why, even as she recognized with a sense of shock that she did not want to return to her life in Norfolk. She had neither the patience nor the temperament to run a school. But more, she simply did not want to run it.

  These thoughts overwhelmed her. She longed to cry out, “No, I shan’t be going back to Norfolk!” Instead she gazed into the mirrored eyes of Miss Dill and said hoarsely, “Yes. Book a place for me. We shall leave Saturday.”

  A flash of triumph ignited Agnes’s pale eyes, and Francie dropped her own to the scratched top of the vanity. Slowly, her hand clasped a hairbrush and she began to stroke her copper curls. She did not turn or raise her head when the door opened and then clicked shut.

  When she had counted one hundred long, leisurely strokes upon her unruly hair, she set down the brush and rose. She cast a glance at her bed, then one at the door. Hesitating a heartbeat longer, Francie suddenly shivered, then strode to the door.

  From the darkened threshold of Mary’s room it appeared that she was fast asleep. Indeed, she was curled up beneath her coverlet, her round cheek resting on one hand, much as it had when she was a child. But when Francie’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she caught the rapid movement of the covers and knew her sister was no more able to sleep than she. She crossed the shadows with measured steps, as if giving each footfall great consideration.

  As she neared the bedside, she thought she detected a stirring, but it was swiftly stifled. Finally, just a breath away from Mary’s side, she said softly, “Dearest, I know you are awake. Mama said you did not feel well and I’ve come to ask if I might be of help.”

  The stretch of silence that followed seemed darker than the night. Francie did not move. She scarcely breathed.

  Then, at last, a whisper floated up to her, “No, thank you.”

  “May I stay a moment, Mary? Do you feel up to conversing with me?” As she spoke, Francie perched on the edge beside her sister, and she felt a rustling motion as Mary twisted to sit upright.

  “If you must,” she said.

  “Shall we have a light, or would you prefer the darkness?” Francie thought she saw a hand quiver. Taking this for assent, she rose and groped among the objects lying atop a small bedside stand until she found the desired flint and candle. As she lit the wick, she faced the bed so that, as the candle flame flicked the black shadows away, she could watch her sister’s face. She read both sadness and apprehension in Mary’s clouded eyes and downturned lips, and she felt hope wake within her.

  Reclaiming her seat on the edge of the bed, she confided, “I actually wanted to discuss something of importance to me, something that I feel cannot wait. I have been thinking for some time that I was not truly suited to running a school. Oh, I know you will think me suffering some odd fancy, but it isn’t that at all. I have not the patience, the aptitude for such a life. And it is because I feel unsuited to continue on with my school that I want”—she ended with a large expulsion of breath—“to ask your advice regarding Mr. Harvey.”

  Mary’s sadness became pronounced. Her face took on a sepulchral cast as she nodded wordlessly.

  “I have been thinking, dearest, of how good a gentleman he is and what a worthy husband he would make.”

  “You have” Mary asked funereally.

  “Yes,” Francie replied with an emphatic nod. “And I have quite decided that I should marry him.”

  “You have?” Mary repeated, this time in a shocked voice.

  “Yes, and it is upon this matter that I wished to ask your advice. You see, I know how deeply you respect him—”

  “I do not possibly see what advice I could give you,” Mary objected with some force. Her voice shook, her eyes fastened on the hand pleating her flowered chintz coverlet.

  “Well, of course, Mr. Harvey has not yet asked me, or even given me the slightest encouragement. But he has confided that he no longer has any attachments . . .” Her voice faded, and Mary flinched. Gratified, Francie pressed on. “I am given to hope that, when he sees how much he has come to mean to me, he will be willing to settle for a . . . well, a comfortable match.”

  A heavy pall seemed to settle over the two sisters. Each silent moment seemed magnified by the intensity of emotion between them. At length Mary raised her eyes, dimmed to a dreary shade by her unspoken sorrow. Her lips quivered.

  “Do you love him?” she asked tremulously. “Do you think he might love you?”

  “But I do not look for his love, my dear. Indeed, Mr. Harvey could not give it, for he is just the sort of man who only loves once, if you understand my meaning. And, of course, he has already done so . . .” Again, Francie let her words drift between them as she watched Mary covertly. Satisfied with the mournful pallor she saw stea
ling over her young sister’s face, she continued in brisk tones, “But I am hopeful that he could come to be fond of me, and I am certain we could deal tolerably well together.”

  “D-deal well t-together?”

  “Yes, as husband and wife.”

  Once again a shroud of silence fell between them. Taking note of her sister’s distressed appearance, Francie felt better and better. Hope rang cheerily through her next words.

  “But Mr. Harvey is like all men. You may depend upon it that he shall never think of offering for me. And that is why I’ve come to you, dearest. If you could give him the merest hint, a suggestion that his suit should not be unwelcome to me . . .”

  This time Francie did not wait for her sister to respond. She pressed a kiss against Mary’s unnaturally cold cheek and stood up. Blowing out the wavering light with a brisk puff, she hoped that this time she might succeed. She could not doubt the depth of Mary’s love. Her sorrowing heart had revealed itself. If this did not spur Mary into crying off from her match with Sir Thomas, there was nothing left for Francie to do but accept the dictates of a malicious Fate. But as she returned to her own room, she felt better than she had in days.

  ***

  Her optimism did not last. Though Mary appeared for breakfast the next morning looking sadly wan, with half-circles ringing her eyes, she drained Francie of hope by informing her that she was sending a note round for Mr. Harvey, asking him to call.

  “Oh, you are going to speak for me,” Francie said in hollow tones.

  “Yes,” Mary said, failing to meet her sister’s eyes.

  Francie lost the opportunity to scotch this plan when Miss Dill and her father entered. Wearing an unusual smile upon her wide mouth, Agnes began speaking long before she reached her seat at the table.

  “My congratulations to you, Mary,” she said. “Your dear father has just been telling me that wedding plans are progressing more rapidly than you originally planned. You shall be a bride long before spring is out. Why, it is quite exciting, isn’t it, Frances?”

  “Thank you,” Mary mumbled as Francie muttered her agreement.

  “Mr. Hampton has told me how anxious the groom is,” Agnes continued as she lavishly spread honey on a thick slice of bread, “and I cannot but feel it is a good sign for your marriage. Has the actual date been settled upon yet?”

  The Hampton sisters were saved from having to answer by their father’s gruff intervention. “Humph, humph! Not yet, m’dear, Miss Dill, not yet. Humph! But we’ll have it set before the day’s out.”

  “We will?” Mary blanched to the shade of the linen tablecloth.

  “Didn’t I just say so?” her father returned on a slight huff. “I’m to see Spencer this evening to settle the matter. He wants to announce the wedding day when he puts out the news of your betrothment tomorrow night.”

  Following this astonishingly lengthy speech—for him, at least—Mr. Hampton retreated behind his coffee cup and morning paper, leaving the discussion to the ladies. This, unfortunately, did not make for a great deal of conversation. Mary had given up even the pretense of eating, while Francie sat staring into her teacup as if transfixed by the liquid inside it. Meanwhile, Miss Dill selected her second slice of bread and seemed extraordinarily cheerful.

  “I am to go to Lombard Street this afternoon to book that seat on the Mail,” she said. “Did you wish to come with me, Frances?”

  “What? Uh, no.” Francie had no wish to be reminded further of her departure, but saw the quizzical lift of Agnes’s thin brows and offered hastily, “I have quite a deal to do to finish before tomorrow night, you know.”

  “Ah, yes, the ball. How you must be looking forward to it, Mary,” she added before biting into her honeyed bread.

  Mary leapt up at that, sending her chair flying. “I—I’m sorry! It’s just that—that I’ve remembered dozens of things that m-must be d-done!” she spluttered as she dashed from the room.

  “What the deuce’s got into that chit?” demanded Mr. Hampton, snapping his paper back into position before his nose.

  Without answering, Francie made her excuses and fled after her sister. All her earlier spirits had been crushed with the morning’s disclosures, and she now needed some vigorous activity to revive them.

  She found it in the kitchen. After pounding bread dough with such vehemence that the cook feared for the outcome of the buns, Francie progressed to making a cake. She was in the midst of zealously whisking a spoon through a bowl, scattering drops of batter without heed, when James coughed behind her.

  “Well, what is it?” she demanded without missing a stroke.

  “You have a caller, Miss. Lord Coombs awaits you in the sitting room.”

  Her fierce scowl sent the servant away with a shake of his head, but she clapped the bowl down to the tabletop, spilling a large quantity of batter, and followed him. Her hair, which she’d put up neatly this morning, now tumbled haphazardly from its knot around her heat-flushed face. She had not removed the apron she had donned in the kitchen and so presented Lord Coombs with a bespattered, befloured image.

  He gazed at her in open-mouthed amazement until she snapped, “Well? I haven’t all day, Arthur. What do you want?”

  “I, that is to say, uh—”

  “For heaven’s sake, speak out!”

  “D’you always look like this at home?” he asked, his mouth finally closing.

  His question was so unexpected that for a moment Francie was taken aback. Then, looking down at her smeared apron, she realized what a sight she must present, and her impotent anger vanished in a flood of humor. Shocking the viscount still more, she burst into laughter, laughing harder when she caught sight of herself in the circular convex mirror. While Lord Coombs stood by helplessly, she gripped her sides and panted with near-hysteria. Her hair! Her face! No wonder he was looking at her as if she were mad!

  Finally she collapsed onto the jade settee and wiped the tears from her eyes, feeling relieved of the tension she’d sought to release in baking. Studying his lordship as she calmed herself, she could not help smiling. If he had called to restate his petition for her hand, he clearly no longer desired to do so. Seeing her for the first time as something other than the magnificent goddess he had always thought her, the veils had been lifted from his eyes. Francie could not help feeling a little sorry for him and for herself because of it, so she smiled kindly at him and gestured for him to be seated.

  “Please forgive me, Arthur. But I looked such a sight! I admire you for not laughing at me when I entered.”

  “Oh, no, I would not, I could not—”

  “But of course you wouldn’t! You are quite the kindest gentleman I know. But I ask your forgiveness for my intemperate, untidy entrance just the same. I’ve been under quite a strain recently, but that gives me no right to act in an ill-bred manner toward you.” She saw him color up and changed to a crisper tone. “Now tell me, if you will, why you wished to see me.”

  He looked relieved and managed a smile of his own. “The thing is, Francie, I’ve struck upon a way to raise the wind for you. I knew I should, given the chance.”

  She frowned, confused. “Raise the—you mean, to get the twenty thousand pounds for me?”

  “Yes, dash it! I knew we weren’t basketed, not while I still had a bit of the ready.”

  His boyish enthusiasm brought her to her feet in a joyous leap. “But how? Where? Do you have it now?”

  “Well, no, not yet,” he admitted. As her face fell, he went on swiftly, “But we shall have it today, I assure you. Can you come out with me now?”

  “Oh, I—yes! Yes, I can. Wait for me!” As she raced upstairs to throw off her apron and old gown, it occurred to Francie that she still had not the least idea by what means Lord Coombs had raised the funds. But she did not really care so long as she had it in hand to Sir Thomas before tomorrow night’s announcement. She would, of course, be repaying the viscount for the rest of her life and could never now be free from her school, but none of that ma
ttered as long as Mary had the chance for happiness that she herself had lost.

  Grabbing at random from her mahogany wardrobe, Francie pulled on her dark green merino dress without even seeing what she put on. Without brushing a curl, she stuffed her hair beneath her green-sashed chip bonnet, then pulled on a fringed shawl and her short kid gloves as she descended to the sitting room. Lord Coombs seemed as impatient as she, and they were off the instant she appeared.

  * * * *

  It was not until they had passed the limits of the city, seated side-by-side in his lordship’s curricle, that Francie at last wondered where they were going. Her mind had been thoroughly taken up with visions of Sir Thomas’s face when she coolly presented him with twenty thousand pounds and bade him to cease forcing himself upon her family. But when she noticed they were coming upon Putney Heath, Francie started from her pleasant reflections and desired Lord Coombs to tell her what they were doing so far from Town.

  “We’re going to collect our winnings, Miss Hampton,” he replied with a ready smile.

  A feeling of dread stole over her, but she beat it back and inquired as calmly as she could, “But whatever do you mean, Arthur? What winnings?”

  “Our twenty thousand pounds, of course,” he said in surprise. He cast her a soulful glance, then returned his attention to his team as he turned them onto a little-traveled, poorly marked country road. “When Fancy Dancer comes in, we must be there to pocket the blunt!”

  “Do you mean—can you possibly mean to say that we are going to a race?” she demanded in an ominously quiet tone.

  “Well, of course. What else did you think?”

  “I thought that we were doing something other than wasting my time!”

  “But Fran—”

  “Have the goodness to turn around and bring me home,” she requested with icy hauteur.

  “But it’s a certain thing,” he assured her. “We’ve as good as got the ready in our hands. Why, when I won at Brook’s yesterday night, it all but fell into our laps. Fancy Dancer is running at fifty-to-one—”