Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

“While all I can fairly promise,” the elder sister told the younger, “is to bore her to tears in your absence.”

“Yes,” the younger replied, “boredom is best. Spectacular failure at Almack’s would be a sad miscalculation-she’d only take it as a challenge. Mediocrity is what you want, Phil; you must dance with cousins whenever possible, or with debt-ridden nobodies. A pity Fred had got into his scrape when I got into mine; he’d have queued ’em up for you. Still, I’ll insist he write to his least impressive schoolfellows and solicit their help in the service of true devotion. If they intend to dance with me next season, they’ll do as they’re told for the remainder of this one.”

For Fannie was of that happy race of mortals who enjoy arranging matters in the simultaneous interest of as many people as possible. She was rather like her universally lamented uncle Arthur in this, but blessed with superior initiative and originality. Loving her sister dearly, she sincerely hoped to marry her to Adam Evans as soon as could be managed-both in the service of true devotion and in her own self-interest, being impatient to get on with the career she’d been prepared for. It was a pity, Fannie Grandin sometimes thought, that she hadn’t been born a boy; she might have liked to be a bishop, a diplomat at the Congress of Vienna, or perhaps (given her secret penchant for figures and equations) Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But in the meantime (and like her uncle Arthur as well), she continued to find herself entertained by the family he’d connected the Grandins to. How oddly passionate they all were, even Betts. Just see, at this moment, her erstwhile hoyden of a cousin becoming so lost in her romantic imaginings that she was making the horse skittish. Fanny took the reins from her.

“He goes in the direction of their farms, and I keep hoping that I’ll encounter him when I ride through the meadows near there.” Elizabeth’s eyes were soft and clear as early morning skies reflecting back the dew on the grass. “I’ll be cantering by, with my hair untied. It’s rather a bother when one’s riding, but I think it looks best that way, don’t you? And there he’ll be, striding across the land like Mr. Knightley in the book Aunt Mary lent me.”

How passionate and how annoyingly like a novel reader.

Still, Elizabeth did look best with her hair untied.

While Fannie’s hair was beginning to frizzle in the heavy air. Impatiently, she pushed an auburn tress back from her moist forehead. When they returned to Beechwood Knolls, she’d have her maid rinse it with rosemary water, of which they’d brought a large supply from London. Enough for Elizabeth too, if she wanted-not that those loose ripples of pale spun gold ever seemed to need extra attention.

How amazingly pretty her cousin had become these past months. Which might have grown irksome, if Fannie hadn’t already assigned Elizabeth a part in a strategy she was planning: next year, when they came out, the two of them would join forces with the Honorable Mariah Plummer, a redoubtable raven-haired beauty from the Misses Duxbury’s. Three was a good number: comparisons to the Graces inevitable, if boring; their various colorings a point of fascination; together, the little battalion of them would be unstoppable.

Strategizing kept one busy and cheerful; what was more difficult was maintaining patience with Elizabeth’s nattering on about the book she was so taken with, about a country gentleman who’d spent a good portion of his adult life ogling the little girl next door. Fannie, who preferred books with facts in them, could nonetheless understand why Elizabeth might find that particular novel so apposite to her fancies.

I should be more sympathetic, she chided herself, to someone who hasn’t had my advantages. Because although Fannie and the other girls from the Misses Duxbury’s had recovered from their own cases of novel reading and other literary hero worship by the age of sixteen or so, poor Betts had spent that particular year of her life grieving over Uncle Arthur’s death. No wonder her cousin was having such trouble making her way to young womanhood-and now that she had, no wonder she’d chosen a handsome older neighbor to focus her feelings on.

Simple enough to construe-but then, Fannie had always enjoyed so many advantages over Elizabeth.

Or had she? Fannie still wasn’t sure of how to resolve the conundrum of the tender solicitude and violent envy she bore her adored childhood friend.

Rather as though one life wasn’t enough for a young woman; the more you appreciated and enjoyed what you had, the more tempting you found the things you lacked. When they’d been younger and Fannie the unrivaled beauty of the pair, she used to wish for Betts’s freedoms to romp, ride, and run about the estate, to speak her mind at a dinner table whose conversation was a fascinating jumble of books, poetry, food, fashion, and even politics-often with the ladies’ opinions taking precedence.

Mama and Papa used to shake their heads in distressed amazement in the carriage on the way home from the midsummer festivities at Beechwood Knolls, reviewing the proceedings and concluding that Arthur’s wife and her sisters had as little propriety as guinea hens, and less ton. Of course, Mama was sure to concede that Mrs. MacNeill was extraordinarily well dressed. But Glasgow … now, really. While as for Lady Christopher, her scandalous separation from her husband, her raffish, radical friends…

How delightful to have such an aunt, Fannie would think-usually at the inevitable moment when Lady Grandin would nudge her husband, put a finger to her lips, and nod at the two girls in the backward-facing seat, eyes glued to their embroidery while they pretended not to listen.

She laughed now at the memory, loudly enough to jolt Elizabeth from her reverie. “I was just thinking how dreamy and bookish you sound. A veritable Penley after all-and how surprised your mama would be, to hear anyone call you that.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Don’t tell her, please. I can’t abide it when she gets so taken with her own cleverness-she and her sisters too. You can’t imagine how tiresome it gets, their self-regard when it comes to their precious educations, their self-congratulation for not being like most silly women, and their insistence that I be grateful for being included in their little sisterhood.”

None of which sounded so awful to Fannie.

“Your aunt Mary’s all right, I think. And she’s still even rather pretty-for her age anyway. Lord Ayres is quite excessively smitten with her, or has decided to be, since you pay him no attention. Of course, you haven’t noticed this, but it’s clear as day. A pity she won’t be going to the assembly; it would be fascinating to watch him pine after her in a public venue. And it gets other gentlemen’s attention as well, you know, but I believe I’ve already explained that to you. Still, I gather your aunt only cares for her man of business Mr. Bakewell. Do you know, if I were a man, I might find business and manufacturing quite fascinating…”

Elizabeth shrugged.

“And your mama’s quite correct,” Fannie continued, “about most women being silly. Most women are, and so are most men, especially in exclusive society. Perhaps you’ll be permitted to come spend Christmas with us in Buckinghamshire, and you’ll see for yourself.”

There had been a time, little more than a week ago, when Elizabeth’s heart would have leaped with delight at just such an invitation. What perfect happiness, she would have thought, to spend time in a family where outrageous demands weren’t always being made on one, and where being pretty, well dressed, and otherwise quite ordinary was to be quite as one should. To dress, to dance, to meet new people, to think of nothing but looking one’s best, and to let one’s precious interior life go to the devil if it chose to-all quite splendid, she would have thought.