Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

The morning’s expedition had proven at least a partial success, not counting the loan of the fascinating drawings. They hadn’t discovered when Viscount Sherwynne was expected to return from his tour, but Lord Christopher had stopped into the young marchioness’s sitting room, which event was far more interesting to Elizabeth-and even to Fannie, as evidence of her cousin’s precarious emotional condition, and (she couldn’t help affording) it had constituted an agreeable encounter in itself.

Congratulating them on how merry they made a dull morning, he’d beamed with pleasure to see his brother the marquess smiling and even attempting to pronounce a few halting phrases. “You have my deepest gratitude, ladies,” he’d told them, “for sharing your presence and your esprit with us.”

“But it’s no more than the family at Rowen should expect,” Elizabeth had responded. “For we are your nearest neighbors, after all,” she’d added, in an indignation so purely sincere, Fannie thought, that no one could accuse her of putting herself forward. Well, perhaps just a little, but in the main the effect had been extremely pretty.

Lord Christopher had laughed and said that at his advanced age, one could remember when relations between the families had been otherwise. Sadly, though, he must beg to be excused from the young ladies’ company; he’d been occupied all morning and had a busy afternoon ahead of him.

He’d moved quickly to the doorway, but halted there in response to a remark of his sister-in-law’s. Glancing back over his shoulder-“Ah yes,” he’d exclaimed, “I’d quite forgotten.” With his eyes glittering so green, Fannie thought, and his smile curving so provocatively that one might even forgive him his mediocre stature.

Of course. For he and the Marchioness Susanna would be seeing their nearest neighbors, he’d told the girls- and their neighbors’ charming guest, he’d added-quite soon again. In just two days, wasn’t it, at the upcoming assembly at Cauthorn?

“We’ll be stopping very briefly,” the young marchioness had interjected with her characteristic caution. “Just to bid the company good evening.”

“Perhaps for an hour or so,” Lord Christopher had agreed. He’d nodded at his sister-in-law. “Just to afford this good lady a dance or two, a change of scene and a brief respite from the ceaseless and splendid attention she’d been paying her husband.”

Whereupon the girls had fairly twittered their approbation for her ladyship’s devotion, their sad disappointment that they were to lose Lord Christopher to his business this morning, and their delight at the advent of the upcoming assembly-only in two nights, just fancy.

What sort of business can he have, Fannie wondered, when he’s so recently arrived from the continent? For charming and attractive as he’d been, Fannie couldn’t help thinking that he’d looked pleased enough to get to whatever he was obliged to be doing and to go wherever he was going.

He hadn’t mentioned his destination. The omission had troubled Elizabeth as well. “He walks out every afternoon,” she said now. Her cheeks were pink, and Fannie wondered whether it had been such a good idea after all to take off their bonnets.

She hated to be the one to suggest putting them back on again. Well, what was the point of being young if one had to set curbs on one’s own freedoms? But there was the upcoming assembly to consider; reluctantly, she covered her head and nodded for her cousin to do the same. Provoking how remiss in her duties Miss Kimball was; the least the old bat could do was keep a lookout for their complexions, leaving Fannie at liberty to attend to her cousin’s interesting and volatile emotions.

Astonishing that no one else had noticed the flutter Betts was in. I’ll have to take charge of her myself, Fannie thought. For someone had to.

Anyway, it was always instructive to watch someone fall in love, particularly because Fannie didn’t intend to do it herself. Well, perhaps in a number of years, after she’d safely and successfully discharged her obligations to herself and her profession.

For like a dutiful son directed toward the army or the church, Helen Francesca Grandin had had her career charted out for her almost since birth. Or at least since the inspiring moment when she’d smiled her deeply dimpled smile, fluttered her long lashes, and executed a wobbly but promising fourth position, a three-year-old prodigy of Mayfair femininity at her first dance lesson.

Fannie’s profession was to come out brilliantly and marry splendidly; any suitor below the rank of viscount would be turned away at the Grecian portico of Sir Edward Grandin’s house in Cavendish Square. But this long-cherished project (Lady Grandin’s life work, if truth be told) must be put by until a reasonably acceptable husband was found for Philamela, the eldest of the family’s two daughters. The younger wouldn’t be out until next season at the earliest, which would have been a boring and provoking situation for anyone-even a young lady as good-humored and interested in the world around her as Fannie was.

How foolish of her parents, she thought, to exile her from London, merely because Lieutenant Birney had tried to kiss her while dear, timid Phila was upstairs retying her sash for the eleventh time.

At least that was the official story; in actuality the lieutenant had tried and succeeded quite brilliantly (in his own estimation, at any rate), the week before in the Grandin library. For her part, Fannie reserved some doubts, along with a firm conviction that her family should have been grateful for the assistance she’d rendered them. Well, how else, she’d argued, should they weed out suitors of questionable character?

Her mama hadn’t been swayed by her logic. And so Fannie had been banished-under the tutelage of one of those pokey relatives a wealthy family collects like scraps and patches from worn-out gowns-to rusticate and romp and giggle at Beechwood Knolls with her cousin Betts-become-Elizabeth.

She’d been sorry to be interrupted in her researches. And her sister, Philamela (who was as deeply in love with the curate in their country neighborhood in Buckinghamshire as the curate was with Philamela), was equally sorry to see Fannie go.

“Without you around, to remind her how much fun she could be having, dressing you up and setting you pirouetting across a dance floor, she’ll simply redouble her efforts to find me someone who’s more the thing than Adam.”

Fannie afforded that she’d been careless-not to speak of ungenerous-to have given way to girlish curiosity, especially in the company of a gentleman with such a pronounced overbite.

“It is awkward,” she agreed. Surely there was more to this kissing business, but sadly, all that would have to wait for a more propitious time and a less toothy partner.

“Don’t worry. I’ll write every other day from Derbyshire, lacing and spangling the prose of my letters with illustrious names and titles, to remind Mama that I haven’t forgotten my purpose in life.

“After all, we shall be calling upon the Stansells at Rowen; surely they’re splendid enough-perhaps if I’m very lucky, the Viscount Sherwynne will have returned from his tour. Lord Ayres is moderately acceptable as well-and who knows, it could turn out that Aunt Jessica has invited someone else Mama would approve of. That Penley family Uncle Arthur married into has such quaint, random notions of who’s worth knowing, a few peers must occasionally creep into their circle of acquaintance, if only by statistical probability.”

Sta-TIS-ti-cal. She smiled as she clicked her tongue over the word she’d recently learned. Such a piquant way to look at the world, she thought: gentlemen and ladies bowing and smiling, marrying, conceiving heirs, and going to war-an entire population moving as though in a dance, through the figures of bloodless mathematics. She’d picked up a text that explained it all quite clearly-reading it absentmindedly, as she read most things, while she stood in a bookshop, waiting to purchase her own copy of Debrett’s. For it had been her plan to sprinkle a few additional names and titles through the correspondence she’d be sending home. Wisely, Phila had cautioned prudence; their mama (who was as quickwitted as Fannie, but more single-minded) maintained her own inner calendar of the comings and goings of at least nine of the nation’s upper ten thousand. Fannie had nodded soberly and promised to be careful.