A BALL TO PREPARE FOR
“A plague on it, Mrs. Merrick. If you insist, though; I won't.”
Mrs. Merrick, the cook, rolled her eyes. “Be sure you don't, then,” she said stonily.
Arabella sighed, letting her temper cool with the breeze from the kitchen garden. “As you say,” she admitted. “It's daft.” She felt silly for her reaction – she was twenty, and should be more mature.
“Quite,” Mrs. Merrick nodded.
Arabella sighed again and bit back a sharp retort. She was the earl's daughter and, really, the cook had no place to be ordering her about. Mrs. Merrick was more than just their cook, however. Without any parents save their distant and disinterested father, Mrs. Merrick had become Arabella and her siblings' touchstone of trust.
“I'll only be a moment,” she agreed. “That's safe.”
“Whist,” Mrs. Merrick sniffed. Her long, gaunt face showed disapproval. “Ye ken these woods is perilous.” She sounded upset.
“I know,” Arabella nodded. It wasn't boars or bears she meant, either.
And I know that better than anyone. Just two days ago, she had seen something far more dangerous – the English soldier. It was a vivid memory. She didn't want anyone to know of it. Least of all Mrs. Merrick. The wretched woman would never stop reproaching her with the risk she'd taken going there.
“I'll just be a few moments,” she told herself, and disappeared briefly into the margin of the woods. Here, the trees cast gloomy shade over a bed of wild garlic. Arabella knew it was a good cure for some ailments. Also, that now was the best time to harvest. She learned that from Mrs. Merrick, who insisted that the girls learn of the healing arts. Their mother, Lady Mirelle, she said, would approve of it.
Mother. I wish I knew her.
Arabella sighed as she bent to gather the plants. Her mother was someone she could barely recall. She had been at least four when their Mama died. Francine was two, and Douglas just born.
Of us all, I have the only memories.
She closed her eyes, thinking back, and recalled a long oval face and dark hair, eyes of enigmatic black. Douglas had inherited her eyes. She wished she could have known her. Legends of the Duncliffe family said she was almost exactly like an ancient ancestress, who had been skilled in healing arts. Arabella didn't know if that was true. She just wished she'd known her.
“I'm twenty now. I could do with a mama to guide me.”
She would soon embark on the perilous task of finding a husband. Her father had found one prospect that he approved of – Arthur McInver, son of a loyalist to the Stuart kingship.
A plague on Papa and his Jacobite sentiments. All that mattered was that her husband be a Jacobite – a cause Arabella could neither care about nor dismiss. It was a cause that brought conflict to her doorstep, and sought to shatter her world. If she thought about it at all, it was to feel angry about it. Why did men care who ruled? So long as people were happy and well provided for? Why bleed, fight and die for the right of one man to wear a crown? It made no sense to her.
She sighed, stood and dusted leaf-mold off her long linen dress, and put the problem of her father's wretched allegiance, and Arthur, from her mind.
I should go in.
Her basket was full of all the wild garlic she would need. She didn't want to take all of it from this patch, or next year there'd be none. She paused, making the little sign Mrs. Merrick had taught her to thank the fairies of the place for their gift. She liked it – she did appreciate the plants and their healing power. It made her feel happy to acknowledge it.
She gathered her basket on her arm and headed indoors.
“See?” she said to Mrs. Merrick as she unpacked in the kitchens, relishing the warmth of the fire as it soaked into her skin and dried off her hair. “I'm well.”
“Not because you're canny,” Mrs. Merrick said sourly. “Because you're lucky, is it.”
“Oh, stop being horrid,” Arabella snapped. She still felt badly shaken after the encounter in the woods. The last thing she needed, right now, was Mrs. Merrick making her feel foolish.
“Easy, lass,” Mrs. Merrick said, looking round at her with big, sorrowful gray eyes. “I wasnae stealing yer horse.”
Arabella sighed. Usually, Mrs. Merrick made her smile. However, today, she was simply wearing on her nerves.
“How is the dinner progressing?” she asked instead, seeking to change the subject from her wayward ways.
Mrs. Merrick shifted position, her narrow shoulders hunching. “Fine,” she said tersely.
Arabella bit her lip. She didn't want to hurt the woman. All the same, she hadn't the reserves right now to face her older friend's moods. She needed soothing.
“I'm going to find Francine,” she said firmly.
“She's in the solar,” Mrs. Merrick said. “Or, she was when I came down here earlier.”
“Thank you.”
Arabella headed up the stone steps to the kitchen door, and then out into the rest of the house.
Duncliffe was a beautiful home. Some parts of it were ancient – reminders of its fortress past. Arabella stared at the high, vaulted ceilings on the way past. Some parts of it were little changed since medieval days, some built, she guessed, the previous century.
Blocks of gray sandstone formed a solid, grim shape to the house, turrets at either end making it meet the line between true castle and manor-house. She loved it.
“I wish Francine and I were young enough to play hide-and-seek,” she smiled, remembering how she and her young sister had run wild in this very hallway. They'd spent hours there playing hide-and-seek in the hallways and all the way through the gallery. As long as they didn't disturb their father in his office, anything was allowed.
Until Mrs. Merrick. Mrs. Merrick had been partly responsible for taming them – recruited out of desperation by her father when Arabella was about fourteen. She was too old for hide-and-seek and regretted the maturity.
Now she paused at the doorway of the solar.
“Francine?”
In the half-light by the fire, she could just discern pale skin and paler hair. She smiled to herself. Her sister, Francine, was clearly too engaged in whatever she was doing to heed her.
“Francine?” she called from closer to the white-clad form.
“Oh!” Francine looked up, blinking hazel eyes like Arabella's own. She smiled. “You startled me, sister.”
Arabella smiled. “Sorry, dear. You were concentrating overmuch, I think.”
Francine grinned. “I don't concentrate too much.”
“No,” Arabella teased. “Definitely not. That's why you learned to read when they taught Douglas. Because you weren't focusing on Father Brogan's work at all.”
Francine pulled a face at her. “Fine.”
Arabella laughed. She loved her tenderhearted sister so much. She just had to see her to feel a sense of rightness, of beauty. With her pale reddish hair and brown eyes, the peace that seemed to radiate out of her, Francine was her touchstone for serenity. As well as wisdom. She had, indeed, learned to read in the month the churchman taught Douglas, without a single lesson being given to her.
Father wouldn't see the need to teach girls to read.
She sighed and settled on the carved wooden seat, trying to relax.
“You're staying here?” Francine asked. “I'd like your company a while.”
“Well, I'd like to,” Arabella nodded. “Though I suppose I should go and find Glenna and find out if the gown's done,” she added glumly. Any thought of the ball was upsetting.
“For the ball?”
“Aye,” Arabella nodded. She leaned back on the carved bench, the velvet cushions shifting under her as she moved back. She let her eyes shut. That wretched ball! She hated the thought.
Father would have invited Arthur and many of the other local Jacobite supporters – of the right age and standing for marriage – and she'd have to choose one. Well she wouldn't really have a choice – Father had already decided on Arthur. This was simply his way of making it seem fair. It was a gesture that Arabella felt made it all seem so much more unfair.
“You're wearing green?” Francine asked, raising a brow.
“Blue,” Arabella countered. Her father had even provided the bolts of cloth for making their gowns. Velvet, sent out from Venice, but not what she'd wanted. She loved green; a color that brought out her fiery hair. “Yourself?” she inquired.
“I wanted blue,” Francine grinned. “And I got green.”
“Green?” Arabella frowned. “With your hair? Blue is better.”
“Swap?” Francine said, one brow curved.
Arabella laughed. “Francine! That's brilliant.” She felt a bubble of excitement rise inside her at the thought.
“Well, not brilliant,” Francine demurred, looking at the floor. “But it should work – and it's the best way to have it our way without fussing anyone.”
Arabella laughed again. “Well, I like that plan.”
“Me, too.”
They were decided.
As they chatted some more, focusing on the local events and happenings, Arabella felt herself draining of tension. She felt like a bucket must feel as someone slowly tipped water from it, leaving it empty and clean. She stretched, long arms reaching out.
“I suppose we should prepare soon?” She asked, yawning. The warmth in here was making her drowsy.
“Indeed,” Francine nodded, one brow raised. “If we wish Glenna to alter things, we ought to find her before she finishes that dress. I think she might be almost done on mine.”
“Oh! Yes.” Arabella nodded, shooting to her feet at the suggestion of altering. Francine was eighteen, and slight, where Arabella had a fuller bust and wider hips. She would have to ask Glenna to adjust the gown accordingly.
“Let's go,” Francine nodded, standing.
They went upstairs to the turret room where Glenna, the resident seamstress and wardrobe-mistress, sewed their clothes.
As soon as Francine proposed their idea, Glenna was in agreement – the colors suited much better the other way round.
“Aye, and for certain I'll make some wee adjustments,” she nodded, brushing pale hair out of her eye. “We'll let out the seams in the green dress a little for Arabella, take in the shoulders and chest a bit for Francine.”
“Thank you!” Arabella breathed. She looked at the green dress, so pleased that it would soon, finally, be hers. Dark green velvet, the skirt slashed to reveal a navy underskirt both patterned with silver lace; it was just what she wanted.
By five of the clock, the dresses were both ready.
Glenna just smiled as she passed them over. “I'm glad to help, milady. Next time, tell me first. He'll never know.”
“It's true,” Arabella sighed. In its own way, that was upsetting. Her father wouldn't really notice which of them wore which – in fact, he'd likely forgotten what he chose the moment after he'd ordered the cloth. She headed back downstairs, the gown draped over her arm, going to the bedroom.
I can only hope he pays as little mind to Arthur as he did to the color of my gown. Mayhap then I can change my mind and he will choose another husband for me.
She chuckled to herself, the irony not escaping her. Her father probably had put as much thought into both the gown and the man.
“And I'll be stuck with it.”
She didn't want to let it happen. However, who else was there? All of the staunch Jacobites her father invited to the house never really appealed. All of them seemed either feverish with fanaticism in supporting the Cause, or too full of lassitude to be fevered about anything. How was one supposed to make a choice, in any case? What made a good husband?
Arabella sighed. She looked at herself in the mirror. The surface showed her a pale oval face, the paleness of the skin enhanced by long red locks – dark red like chestnut shells. Her eyes were hazel, in sharp contrast with the hair, and her face had a sweet, solemn look, resulting from the big eyelids and the small chin.
I know what I look like, she thought, sighing. But what would a man I fancied look like?
She blushed as she recalled the afternoon those days ago when she had seen that soldier in the woods. Now, he had caught her eye. She already knew then that anyone she wished to wed would likely have to look like he had, to catch her interest.
I am not going to think of that man, ever again, she told herself sternly. I will never see him again. He was an English spy. She couldn't risk thinking of him. What if someone found out what she'd done? No, better to forget.
She reached firmly for her brush and turning to call Matty, her maid. She needed help with her hair.
“Oh, milady. You look as pretty as a picture. Now, let's arrange it in that new style, eh?”
“The one with the raised sides?”
“Aye, milady! With such hair as yours, the more you can show it off the better. Now, there we are...if I just put a pin in the side here, and another there...”
Arabella listened to her maid chatting to herself as she arranged her hair. When it was done – a simple style, fashionable at Court, that raised the sides and left the curls loose – she headed downstairs.
The faint sound of conversation grew louder as she walked down the elaborate, vaulted hallways toward the great hall. Built on ancient lines, Duncliffe manor still had a vast, vaulted hall in the center. The hall had been furnished in recent years with a checkerboard floor and a carved gallery for the musicians. Otherwise, it was still a vaulted, dark space of a style of centuries before.
Arabella felt her pulse flutter as she peeped in through the door, a wall of faces and bodies clad in tartan meeting her. She took a steadying breath. As she had expected, the hall was full of her father's Jacobite acquaintances. This meant she had been right about his intent for tonight.
She was meant to meet someone.
Her body was tense and her heart was thudding with uneasy anticipation, her gaze wandering. Which was why she didn't notice him, not at first – not before she was standing face to face with him, looking into his blue eyes. She knew, then, that it was the one man it couldn't possibly be: the man from the woods.