Mercedes Lackey - The Gates of Sleep

For a moment, he looked so startled that she had to swallow an entire cup of tea in three gulps to keep from laughing aloud. “Are you serious, cuz?” he said incredulously. “Do you really want to see the pottery and watch me at work?”

“Absolutely,” she replied, looking straight into his eyes. “More than wanting to see it, I feel that I must see it, and that I can never properly understand you or Madam unless I see you in command of it all. Could you take me? Perhaps on your next business trip?” She actually stooped so low as to bat her eyes at him, and tried not to gag.

“By Jove, I not only could, but this will fit in with my plans splendidly!” he exclaimed with such glee that she was startled. “Just yesterday Mater was saying that I ought to take you to some place bigger than Oakhurst and let you see the sights; maybe do a trifle of shopping, I know how you little creatures love to shop—”

She stifled the urge to strangle him and concentrated on looking overjoyed with the prospect of a day away from the house and the village. It wasn’t that hard to do, given the promise of “a little shopping.” Perhaps she could manage to get hold of some money in the process.

“I would like that above all things, so long as I can also see the pottery,” she said, gazing at him with feigned adoration. “Oh, Reggie, you are so good to me, and I know I must bore a worldly fellow like you to distraction. I can’t help it, I know I’m too serious, and so horribly provincial. I must seem like such a bumpkin to a man of the world like you.”

“Oh no—you have other things to distract me with, fair cuz,” he flattered, with such complete insincerity that she wondered why every woman he met didn’t see through him immediately. “Well then, this is Saturday—I’ll send Hibdon down to reserve a first-class compartment on the first train down to Exeter Monday morning and the last returning Monday night. We’ll be up at dawn, catch the train and have breakfast on it, be in Exeter by ten. We’ll trot you about the shops, a handsome little luncheon, perhaps a little more shopping, then we’ll off to the pottery. I’ll do my duty to the old firm, don’t you know, then we’ll catch the train, have a good tea on it, and be back here in time for a late dinner!” He laughed then, and winked at her. “I know that won’t be nearly enough shopping for you—you ladies don’t seem to want to do anything but shop, but maybe you’ll take pity on a poor fellow and let me make a promise to take you up again another time.”

She simpered, and dropped her eyes, to avoid having to look at him. “Oh, cousin Reggie, I really have very simple tastes. I would like to see a bookshop, and I haven’t nearly enough gloves, and perhaps a hat—”

He guffawed—there was no other word for it. “A hat? My dear cuz, I have never yet seen a woman who could buy a hat! If you manage that feat, I will fall dead in a faint!”

I just wish you’d fall dead, she thought ungenerously, but she managed to fake a giggle. “Shoes, too,” she added as an afterthought. “And riding boots, at least. Mine,” she added with genuine regret, “are a disgrace.”

“That’s enough to fill a morning and an afternoon. Gloves, hats, books—romances, I’ll be bound, or poetry—and shoes. Hands, head, heart and—” he grinned at his own cleverness, “— soles.”

She did the expected, and groaned and rolled her eyes at the pun. He looked pleased, and chuckled. “I’ll tell the Mater; she’ll be cheered. She thinks you ought to see the big city—well, something bigger than a village, anyway. Maybe we can go down for a concert or recital or whatnot after this, if the sight of all those people in one place doesn’t give you the collywobbles.”

“I shall do everything on my part to avoid the collywobbles,” she promised solemnly. She managed to be flatteringly good company until he finished his breakfast, then went off to whatever task he had at hand. She finished hers, then took herself off to the long gallery for her newest lessons, which were occupying her mornings now.

The long gallery was a painting and statue gallery, with windows looking out on the terrace on one side, and the artworks on the other. To show off the art, the walls had been painted white and had minimal ornamentation. And now, during autumn, winter, and early spring, the ornamental orange trees in their huge pots from the terrace were kept at the windows inside. The highly polished stone floor echoed with every footstep, and a glance at the rain-slick terrace outside made Marina shiver.

Mary Anne was conducting these lessons, but Marina had hopes that they would be over relatively soon, since she was mastering them more quickly than the dancing lessons. And for once, the wretched girl was actually being helpful instead of superior. It didn’t seem as though one ought to need lessons in how to move and walk once one was past babyhood, but as Marina was discovering, it wasn’t so much “how to walk” as it was “how to walk gracefully.”

The first mistake in her carriage that Mary Anne had corrected had been that Marina always swung her right foot out and back when she moved—she wasn’t sure why, or how she had gotten into the habit, but now she understood why it was that she was always stubbing the toes of her right foot on things she should have passed right by. Then Mary Anne had made her shorten her stride and slow down by tying a string between her ankles, so that she couldn’t take a long stride and was constantly reminded by the string not to.

Yesterday, at the end of the lesson, the string had come off so that Mary Anne could view her unimpeded progress.

Today, Mary Anne ordered her to walk the long gallery with a proper stride without the string. She began, taking steps half the size of the ones she was used to, and feeling as if she was taking an age to traverse the distance.

“Now, mind, if you’re in a great hurry, and there’s no one about to see you,” Mary Anne said, as she reached the other end of the Gallery, “then go ahead and tear about with that gallop of yours. But if there’s anyone who catches you at it, they’ll know in an instant that you’re a country cousin.”

Eh? “What on earth do you mean by that?” she replied—pitching her voice so that it carried without shouting, which had been Madam’s personal lesson for the afternoons when she wasn’t at the vicarage.

“You can’t race about a townhouse like that without tripping over or running into something,” the maid replied smugly. “Nor on a city sidewalk. You have to take short strides in a city; dwellings are smaller, there’s much less space and more people and things to share it. Why do you think people talk about going to the country to ‘stretch their legs’?”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted.

“I’m not going to put a book on your head, though Madam said I should,” the maid said thoughtfully, watching her as she approached. “That’s only to keep your chin up and your shoulders back. I must say, for someone tossed about in a den of artists, you have excellent posture.”

“My uncles used to have me pose for ladies’ portrait bodies and busts, so that the ladies themselves only had to sit for the faces,” she said, giving a quarter of the truth. “And I posed for saints, sometimes—Saint Jeanne d’Arc, for one. You can’t slouch when you’re posing for something like that. They have to look—” she pitched her voice a little differently now, making it gluey and unctuous, like the utterly wet individual who had commissioned a Madonna and Child once, when she was very small and posing as Jesus as a young child, with Margherita standing duty as Mary.