“I don’t dance.”
“Oh goodness. How much time do we have?”
“Not enough.”
Maggie was looking thoughtful. “I have an idea,” she said. “You go on downstairs, Jessie, and don’t worry. You want to have a nice time.”
He was waiting outside her room, as he’d been so many times since her arrival at Chase Park. He looked magnificent in his evening garb, his cravat as white as his teeth. He looked her over thoroughly. She found herself holding her breath for his opinion. He said finally, stroking long fingers over his jaw, “Maggie did a fine job. You’re ready to meet all our illustrious neighbors. I want you to stretch out your charming drawl. I want you to emphasize it. You’re to show them you’re different and that you’re very likely better than they are. Can you do it, Jessie?”
She looked at this gentleman who surely had to be a duke at least and said, “You truly believe I can, sir?”
“I truly do. Give me your hand and let’s get you downstairs.”
This time she didn’t ask him if he were dining with them. She simply smiled up at him at the bottom of the great staircase and said, “Thank you, sir.”
“Now,” the earl said as he drew her into his arms, “we’re going to waltz. We have time for one lesson before the guests arrive. Maggie tells me you’re smart and will learn quickly.”
Sampson was playing the pianoforte. He marked the first beat of the three heavily as he played. Jessie was terrified and delighted. It was true that the earl practically held her off her own feet most of the time, but before the end of the waltz she nearly had the knack.
“You’ve got to relax and trust your partner,” he said. Then he frowned. “Well, trust is perhaps too strong a word. Many of the men are clods and would land on your feet. Others are lechers and would try to make love to you. I’ll tell you whom to dance with, all
right?”
Jessie agreed to that. Dinner was in the state dining room. There were twelve couples, twelve footmen, and more food than Jessie had ever seen in her life. She sat between the Earl of Rothermere—the gentleman who oversaw James’s stud when he was in America—and a Mr. Bagley, the local curate, whose abiding interest was in the Norman cathedral in Darlington. After the boiled salmon in lobster sauce, roast quarter of lamb and spinach appeared, the Earl of Rothermere, Philip Hawksbury, said to her, “Just taste this boiled salmon. Badger cooked this evening, praise the Lord. I prayed he would. I’ve offered him anything he wants to come to Rothermere, but he refuses, damn Marcus and the Duchess. I tell Badger my wife and I are so thin our ribs knock together, but he just smiles and offers me a taste of his new creation. The last time it was an oyster patty of sorts. I thought my belly was going to expire on the spot from happiness.”
She laughed even as she felt like a fraud. She watched the Duchess and tried to copy her. But the Duchess was so graceful, so utterly serene and calm, even the movement of her fork from plate to mouth was done exquisitely and naturally, without conscious thought. There was simply no way she could be like the Duchess.
She was utterly relieved when the Duchess rose and took the ladies into the Green Cube Room. Jessie met all the ladies, who didn’t know what to make of her. However, since the Duchess introduced her as a friend from the Colonies, they were reserved but polite. Jessie stretched out her Colonial drawl as much as she dared. She couldn’t tell if the ladies were gratified or not hearing it. In but moments, the gentlemen came into the huge room and the orchestra tuned their instruments.
She sat beside the curate’s wife during the first waltz, her foot tapping heavily on the first beat. The second waltz, she danced with Marcus, and he only had to lift her off her feet three times to prevent disaster. Then he handed her over to the Earl of Rothermere.
“Take good care of her, Hawk. This is the third waltz in her entire life.”
“A pullet then,” the Earl of Rothermere said, and gave her a dazzling smile. He was more energetic than Marcus, whirling her around until she was laughing aloud and gasping for breath. When it was over she said, “The earl told me he would be careful not to give me to clods or to lechers. He said nothing about volcanoes, my lord.”
“He never does,” Philip Hawksbury said. “You’re doing well, Jessie. Very well.”
She went upstairs some time later with an ice cream for Anthony. He was sitting at the top of the stairs, ready to hide in one of the niches whenever a lady came up the stairs to go to the withdrawing chamber. When he saw Jessie, he said, “You look different, Jessie. Your face is very red.”
“That’s because your papa is dancing my feet off. Now, here’s an ice cream for you from Badger. He said he knew you’d already eaten at least four others and this was to be the last.”
“How odd that Badger wouldn’t count right,” Anthony said, looking puzzled. “It’s five actually, but they were small. I do wonder how Badger miscounted—he never has before.”
When she returned from her bedchamber, he was licking his fingers. “It’s a wonderful party,” she said. “Everyone is being very nice to me.”
“They have to be or else my mama and papa would nail them behind the wainscoting.”
She had to smile at that. “I must go back now. Isn’t it time for you to go to bed?”
“Not yet. Spears said I could have an extra thirty minutes tonight. He said I was to watch the gentlemen in particular. He said I was to make a list in my head of all the things they did or said that I didn’t think were right. I am to tell him in the morning.”
“Do you think your papa will do anything that will go on that list of yours?”
“I asked Spears that, and he said that my papa was unique and exempt from any list.”
She kissed him goodnight and started down the huge staircase. She heard the knocker on the front door and watched Sampson, resplendent in magnificent evening garb, open the great doors. There stood James, his black cloak billowing out behind him in the stiff evening wind, his head bare.
“Ah, at last you’ve arrived, Master James,” Sampson said.