Beauty in Black Read online

  “I will simply caution you not to expect too much.”

  Marianne raised her brows, not sure how to interpret this cryptic warning. “I don’t understand.”

  “Some families are close, some are not,” the countess said. “And if Psyche must decline, I’m sure she has good reason.”

  “Of course,” Marianne agreed, although she suspected that the countess had more in mind than a previous social engagement.

  It had seemed so simple, merely a quiet dinner party, with nothing more to worry about than her cook becoming overly ambitious and ruining all the sauces. Why did Marianne now experience a nervous feeling in her stomach?

  On Thursday she received a short note of acceptance from Psyche. Relieved, Marianne stared at the gilt-edged piece of paper. No doubt she had worried too much about the delay, and even upon the countess’s puzzling pronouncement.

  So she went down to the kitchen to tell the cook the final number of guests. When she entered, she smelled smoke in the air and the acrid scent of scorched butter.

  “Is everything all right, Mrs. Blount?” Marianne asked, after giving her servants the total to expect.

  The cook stood squarely in front of the cookstove, her wide hips blocking any view of the modern innovation, which Marianne had had installed in her kitchen a few years before. In the corner the housemaid fanned her apron, as if to dispel the strong odor. “Oh, no, ma’am, just trying out a new sauce for the custard.”

  “Ah, yes,” Marianne agreed. “I have total confidence in your abilities,” she told the servants. “It is only a simple dinner, you know, so no need for nervous qualms.”

  The cook wiped her brow. “Of course not, ma’am. But it’s a marquess! First time we ever had such to sit down for dinner in this house.”

  She spoke as she might about a wild tiger, Marianne thought, swallowing a smile.

  “So, I still think we should add more side dishes.” The cook sounded determined to uphold the honor of the household.

  “Very well,” Marianne agreed. “But don’t put yourself out concocting new sauces, please. Your usual caramel sauce is quite delightful.”

  “Thank ’e, ma’am,” Mrs. Blount said. “Very well.”

  Marianne thought it best to make a tactful departure and to hope that things in the kitchen would return to some semblance of normalcy. She went back upstairs and found Louisa waiting for her in the hall. She had promised the younger woman they would take a turn about the park in the center of the square.

  “It’s such a pretty day,” Louisa pleaded. “And we have been inside so much, Aunt.”

  “Yes,” Marianne agreed. “Let me get my hat and gloves.”

  When they set out, with Masters a few steps behind them, Marianne told her companion about the new addition to the party.

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” Louisa exclaimed. “I shall much enjoy meeting Lord Gillingham’s brother and sister-in-law. I’m sure the marquess will be delighted.”

  Marianne nodded in agreement.

  John was walking, too, with his disreputable spaniel at his heels. When they had first arrived in London, Runt had displayed an unhappy tendency to bark at all the traffic and fellow pedestrians. She was finally becoming inured to the carriages and wagons that thronged the streets, and even to the herds of cattle that weekly flooded the roads on their way to market.

  Today she trotted along obediently and only sniffed at the unusual odor of a coal wagon that rumbled past them.

  “Good dog,” John told her. “You’ll become city wise yet. I wish I could say the same about myself.” He tugged his wide-brimmed hat farther down to shade his face. It was the only part of his old costume he still wore every day. He now had, it seemed to him, a whole room full of new clothes, shirts, and new boots as well as all the different outfits the tailor had deemed necessary. A lot of fuss for nothing, he thought, and worse, now he had to have one of the inn’s servants help him into the close-fitting coats.

  When he bothered. Today he had shrugged on an older jacket to take his dog out for a stroll, and the people who passed spared them barely a moment’s glance. Which was just how John preferred it. He certainly had no desire to be singled out, either for his raiment or his disfigurement.

  Yet his longing to retreat to the countryside was not as pressing as it had been when he’d first arrived in town. His brief visits to Mrs. Hughes’s house were always pleasurable, and if he enjoyed the conversation with the chaperone somewhat more than Miss Crookshank’s artless chatter, well, that was something he chose not to dwell on. No, London was not quite as bad as he had expected. And as for Mrs. Hughes’s personal attractions, perhaps he was only too long without a woman . . .

  While his thoughts wandered, a cab veered into the side of the road and came alarmingly close to John. He jumped out of the way, whistling to his dog. The animal yelped.

  “Watch what you are about,” he yelled toward the driver. “Here, Runt.” He ran his hands over the trembling dog, but could not find any injury. Perhaps the hackney’s nearness had scared her.

  “Sorry, sir, the foreleader shied, weren’t my fault,” the man on the box called back as he hauled on the driving reins.

  Runt turned her back on the offending vehicle and barked sharply toward a pedestrian a few yards away, as if to regain her pride and show how unimpressed the little dog was by the potential dangers of the road.

  “Yes, I know,” John told her as the cab got under way again. “Come along. We’d best get back to the inn. I have one more evening of quiet before I have to face the social whirl once more.”

  The dog barked, and John grinned. “You can say that; you don’t have to go.”

  As they approached the inn, a slight figure stepped out of the alley that ran behind the houses. “Like a good time, sir? Only a shilling.”

  Pulling his hat farther down to hide his face, John stared at her. She was a prostitute, her form skinny beneath her slatternly gown, her brown hair bedraggled. She had been pretty once. Now her eyes looked old before her time, though he doubted she was out of her twenties.

  “I can give you a good time, sir,” she repeated, stepping closer as if encouraged by his hesitation. She smelled like unwashed clothes and cheap gin.

  He had been reflecting on his body’s need, but despite her smile of invitation and her low-cut gown, he felt a curious absence of desire. No, it was not this woman, it was not just any woman, he longed for.

  “Sorry, no,” he told her.

  Her thin face fell. She was likely hungry, he thought. But if he gave her money, would she only buy more gin?

  He saw a hot-pie vendor at the corner of the street and beckoned the man closer. “Two of your best for this—this young person,” he told the man, taking coin from his pocket.

  She looked puzzled, but she licked her lips at the succulent scent of the pies. “Thank ’e, sir.”

  And John, not altogether pleased at what he had discovered about himself, went quickly into the inn.

  On Friday Marianne woke with a sense of tension. Blinking, she tried to think what worried her, then she remembered. Tonight’s dinner!

  She sat up, her mind at once reverting to the list of details she had been mulling over when she went to bed. The napkins and linen tablecloth had been pressed, the silver polished, the house cleaned from top to bottom—not that anyone would be inspecting her bedchamber. She paused, pondering an impossible scenario that somehow did away with all the other guests, Louisa included, and had the marquess leaning over her in this very same chamber, his dark eyes glinting in a way that made her heart beat faster . . .

  Good heavens, what was she thinking? She hastened to direct her thoughts toward more acceptable channels. She’d ordered fresh flowers. She’d finally cajoled Cook into a reasonable menu. And she needed to check that the fresh fish had been delivered, and that it was indeed fresh.

  Marianne rose and rang for her maid. She was already half dressed before Hackett appeared with her breakfast tray.

  �
��Here, ma’am, let me.” The maid put down the tray and hurried across to fasten the remaining buttons on the back of the morning dress, which Marianne strained to reach.

  “Have the flowers arrived, Hackett?” Marianne asked as her dresser picked up a brush and nodded to her mistress to sit.

  “Yes, ma’am. The primroses are in good shape, and the hothouse blooms, but I tossed half the daffodils, as they was a bit brown about the edges.”

  “Oh, dear,” Marianne said, already turning.

  “Sit still, if you please, ma’am,” her maid commanded, as if Marianne were still a fidgety child in short skirts.

  Marianne obeyed. “I don’t wish the arrangements to look skimpy.”

  “No need to worry,” her maid said. “I already sent Masters out to fetch more, and Miss Louisa is working on the flowers right now.”

  “Oh, good,” Marianne said, hiding a smile. At least the dinner had led Louisa to do something of which Hackett approved. Which meant that whatever happened, the evening would not be a total loss.

  And why did she keep thinking something untoward was going to happen? It was a quiet dinner among friends, she reassured herself, just as she had the cook, and she could not put her finger on the source of her disquietude. Was it the countess’s hesitation, that comment she had not made?

  No, all would be well. Determined to hold on to that thought, as soon as her maid finished brushing and pinning up her hair, Marianne hurried down the staircase.

  She stopped in the dining room to commend Louisa’s efforts with the flowers. The girl was sitting at the table, three vases on its polished top, and what appeared to be a whole field’s worth of flowers and wildflowers in tubs on the floor beside her.

  “That’s looking lovely,” Marianne told her.

  Louisa beamed. “Thank you, Aunt. This one is for the table, this one for the sitting room, and this small one for the front hall. We had to send for more daffodils, but the rest of the flowers and greenery are quite fresh. Do you think I need more pink in this one?”

  “Perhaps just a little, on the side. You’re doing a fine job,” Marianne told her. “Excuse me, I’m going down to the kitchen.”

  “Good luck,” the younger woman said, wrinkling her nose. “I put my head in this morning and Cook almost tossed a pot at me.”

  “Oh, dear,” Marianne murmured and headed for the lower floor.

  But when she entered the kitchen, all seemed well. A large pot bubbled on the stove top, and the housemaid was at a side table scrubbing vegetables. The cook herself had flour up to her elbows and looked a little flushed from bending over the stove, but nonetheless, her nervous qualms seemed to have settled into a comfortable optimism.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said in answer to her mistress’s query. “The fish is just what we should want, scarce out of the water, and the turtle, too. The turtle’s already in the soup pot, cooking up nicely. And the beef roast is in the cold-safe steeping in marinade, and the hen is stuffed with herbs and ready to go into the oven, when the time is right.”

  “Excellent,” Marianne told her. “It already smells heavenly in here.”

  “This pastry is almost ready to put into the oven, and though I may be only a good plain English cook, not one of them hoity-toity French fellows, if I do say so, pastry is my strong point.” The cook gave the dough a resounding slap and smiled grimly at the large bowl of flour and dough in which she had immersed her hands.

  “No one makes a better fruit tart than you, Mrs. Blount,” Marianne agreed quickly. “I see that all is in order, and I can rest easy with you in charge.”

  The housemaid smiled just a little from her vantage point behind the cook, but Mrs. Blount swelled with pride. “Yes, ma’am. We never had a marquess dine at our table before, but he shall have nothing to complain about tonight, on my honor.”

  Marianne made another soothing comment, and then, leaving the reputation of the kitchen, and the cherry tarts, in her staff’s capable hands, went back upstairs.

  By the time she reached the ground floor, Louisa called her to come and inspect her progress with the flowers. Or lack of progress. In her anxiety to achieve the perfect grouping she had pulled the first arrangement almost to pieces.

  “Is this too top-heavy? It should suggest a pleasing balance.” Louisa worried. “Or so Aunt Caroline always says.”

  Marianne sat down to help with the flowers. After another hour, the vases and urns were filled, and Louisa had been persuaded to the pleasing aspects of each. Just in time, too, as the housemaid was waiting to set the table for a light luncheon.

  Masters brought in the post and Marianne glanced through the letters. One from her sister-in-law Caroline in Bath she scanned quickly, but it was all family news, with no new information about Alton Crookshank.

  She and Louisa carried vases into the sitting room and the hall. Then lunch was served, and she persuaded the girl to eat a few bites, although Louisa chattered so much about the evening that she barely had time to swallow.

  “I’m sure all will be well,” Marianne tried to tell her ward, “and everyone will enjoy the company as well as the meal.”

  “Oh, I do hope so,” the younger woman said, picking up a slice of pear and then putting it down again. “I have such butterflies in my stomach that I am not even hungry.”

  “You shall have to do better tonight,” Marianne warned, smiling. “Or else, after all her work, Cook will be highly offended.”

  Louisa laughed.

  When they rose from the table, Louisa’s maid came in to report that she had a cleansing cucumber mask ready for her mistress, and Marianne sent her ward away to lie down with the gunk on her face, secretly happy to see the girl kept occupied for a while.

  The rest of the day whirled by in a succession of small tasks, and before she knew it, the sun had dropped in the sky and it was time to change before their guests arrived.

  Marianne had chosen a simply cut silk gown of soft blue, which she knew became her. It was Louisa who was the star of the evening, but she herself did not wish to look too drab. Did Louisa’s artless comment about dull colors still sting? Marianne shook her head at herself as she reached for her pearl necklace.

  Louisa was still in her bedchamber when Marianne came downstairs to inspect the rooms one more time before the first guest arrived. The dining-room table was resplendent in snowy linen, the china plates and crystal goblets ready to receive the results of Cook’s labors. The flowers were graceful, and the whole room seemed to shimmer with an air of pleasant anticipation. Marianne nodded in approval and went up to the sitting room.

  She sat down in one of the slender chairs just as, almost in unison, she heard the knocker at the front door and Louisa hurried into the room.

  “Oh, Aunt, is it the marquess? I didn’t wish to be late.” The younger woman sounded breathless.

  “Whichever guest it is, Masters will show them up,” Marianne said. “Take a long breath. You don’t want to look flustered.”

  “Oh, no,” Louisa agreed, throwing herself into a settee with her usual impetuousness. “I do not wish to look overeager. That would be gauche.”

  Marianne swallowed a smile and said, truthfully, “You look lovely, my dear.”

  Louisa beamed. Her maid’s cucumber mask, or simply her own youth and good health, had added a rosy glow to the porcelain fineness of her skin. Her eyes were bright. Her fair hair was swept up into a riot of curls, and the white dress with pink ribbons was perfectly suited to a young lady in her first Season. Marianne had no doubt that Louisa would enjoy the evening thoroughly and be admired by all who saw her—especially the marquess.

  Which was just as it should be, Marianne told herself as Masters announced, “Mr. and Mrs. Denver, ma’am.”

  Marianne stood and went to greet the first guests.

  “Marianne, how lovely to see you,” Roberta Denver said as her husband bowed to the ladies.

  “I’m delighted you were able to come,” Marianne told them both. “This is Miss
Louisa Crookshank, who is visiting me for the Season. You met her at Vauxhall.”

  “Of course. Are you enjoying your time in London as much as you hoped?” Mrs. Denver asked, sitting down beside Louisa.

  The housemaid offered glasses of wine, and Mr. Denver accepted a glass. “Just got back to town, myself,” he told his hostess. “Had to post to Salisbury for a few days.”

  “I hope all is well,” Marianne asked politely.

  “Colic in my favorite mare,” he explained, and plunged into a discussion of equine remedies that lasted until the next guest was announced.

  “Mr. James McNair,” the footman said.

  Behind him a man of middle age with a merry smile, his slightly widening girth almost disguised by his well-cut coat, paused in the doorway.

  Marianne excused herself and went to say hello.

  “So, my dear, you have been dragged into the Season,” the gentleman said, grinning. “About time, I say. If you won’t marry me, the least you can do is get out into Society a bit more.”

  Laughing, Marianne put out her hand. “Jamie, you know perfectly well you have no serious interest in marriage. You would faint dead away if I made any indication of accepting your suit. Besides, you ‘proposed’ to at least three different women last year, and none of the offers were serious.”

  “Ah, but it brightens a lady’s day, don’t you know,” her old friend suggested, taking a glass of wine. “Nothing like an offer of matrimony to make a lady feel desirable.”

  “And what will you do if someone takes you up on your kind proposal one of these days?” Marianne asked.

  “No, no, that’s why I make my offers very carefully,” Jamie answered. “Otherwise, I might have to disappear into the wild northland, and that would never do. I mean, a spot of fishing is one thing, but I would miss my tailor if I had to go into real exile.”

  “Just your tailor?”

  “And your company, of course,” he corrected hastily, lifting her hand to his lips for a showy salute.

  Marianne laughed again. Jamie was a middle-aged dandy, and totally self-centered beneath his easy charm, but he was excellent company.