Mrs. Ballinger was waiting for a reply.
Rathbone looked at Margaret, and his compassion overcame his sense and he answered with the truth.
'Yes, I am very fond of music, particularly the violin.'
Mrs. Ballinger's answer was immediate.
'Then perhaps you would care to visit with us some occasion and hear Margaret play. We are holding a soiree next Thursday.'
Margaret bit her lip and the color mounted up her face. She turned away from Rathbone, and he was quite certain she would have looked daggers at her mother had she dared. He wondered how many times before she had endured this scene, or ones like it.
He had walked straight into the trap. He was almost as angry as Margaret at the blatancy of it. And yet neither of them could do anything without making it worse.
Delphine Lambert was watching with an air of gentle amusement, her delicate mouth not quite smiling.
It was Julia Ballinger who broke the minute's silence.
'I daresay Sir Oliver does not have his diary to hand, Mama. I am sure he will send us a card to say whether he is able to accept, if we allow him our address.'
Margaret shot her a look of gratitude.
Rathbone smiled. 'You are perfectly correct, Miss Julia. I am afraid I am not certain of my engagements a week ahead. My memory is not as exact as I should like, and I should be mortified to find I had offended someone by failing to attend an invitation I had already accepted. Or indeed that a case kept me overlong where I had foreseen it might…'
'Of course,' Margaret said hastily.
But Mrs. Ballinger did not give up so easily. She produced a card from her reticule and passed it to him. It noted her name and address. 'You are always welcome, Sir Oliver, even if you are not able to confirm beforehand. We are not so very formal as to admit only those we expect when an evening of social pleasure is to be enjoyed.'
'Thank you, Mrs. Ballinger.' He took the card and slipped it into his pocket. He was sufficiently annoyed with her insen-sitivity that he might even go, for Margaret's sake. Looking at her now, standing stiffly with her shoulders squared, horribly uncomfortable, and knowing this ritual would be observed until she was either successfully married or past marriageable age, she reminded him faintly of Hester Latterly, whom he had come to know in some ways so well in the last few years. There was a similar courage and vulnerability in her, an awareness of precisely what was going on, a contempt for it, and yet a knowledge that she was inevitably caught up in it and trapped.
Of course, Hester was not any longer similarly caught. She had broken free and gone to the Crimea to nurse with Florence Nightingale, and returned changed forever. It was her personal loss that both her parents had died in the tragedy which indirectly had brought about her meeting with William Monk, and thus with Rathbone. It had also spared her the otherwise inevitable round of parties, balls, soirees, and attendances at any conceivable kind of social occasion until her mother had found her an acceptable husband. Acceptable to her family, of course, not necessarily to her.
But Hester must be about thirty now, and too old for most men to find her appealing-of which fact she could not be unaware. Standing in this glittering room with the music in the background and the press and hum of scores of people, the clink of glasses, the faint smells of warmth, champagne, stiff material and sometimes of flowers and perfume, he could not help wondering if it hurt her. And yet only a few months ago he had been so close to asking her to marry him. He had even led into an appropriate conversation. He could remember it now with a sudden wave of disappointment. He was certain she had known what he was going to say, and she had gently, very indirectly, allowed him to understand that she was not ready to give him an answer.
Had that been because she loved Monk?
He did not wish to believe that; in fact, he refused to. It would be like ripping the plaster off a wound to see if it was really as deep as one feared. He knew it would be.
And he would go and listen to Margaret Ballinger play her violin. Damn Mrs. Ballinger for insulting her so!
The conversation was going on around him, something to do with a house they had all seen recently, or a public building of some nature.
'I am afraid I do not care for it,' Delphine Lambert said with feeling. 'Most unimaginative. I am disappointed they chose such old-fashioned ideas. There was nothing new in it at all.'
'Restricted budget, I daresay,' her husband offered.
She gave him an odd look. 'Mr. Melville could have designed something far better, I am sure. Don't you think so, my dear?' She looked at Zillah.
'He is quite brilliant,' Zillah agreed, unable to hide her enthusiasm. 'He is so sensitive. He is able to create beauty where one would never have imagined it possible and to draw designs so it can be built. You cannot imagine how exciting it is to see drawings on a page and then to see them come to rife. Oh!' She blushed. 'I mean-to reality, of course. But such grace and inventiveness almost seem as if they have a life, an existence of their own.' She looked from one to another of them. 'Do you know what I mean?'
'Of course we do, my dear,' Lambert assured her. 'Only natural for you to be proud of him.'
Delphine smiled at Rathbone. 'Perhaps you did not know, Sir Oliver, but Zillah is engaged to marry Mr. Melville. It is quite charming to see two young people so devoted to one another; they cannot but be happy. He really is a most talented man, and yet not in the least immodest or overbearing. His success has never gone to his head, nor has he lost his sense of gratitude to Mr. Lambert for his patronage. You believed in him from the very beginning, didn't you, my dear?' It was a rhetorical question. She did not wait for an answer but turned again to Mrs. Ballinger. 'Mr. Lambert was always good at seeing a man's character. Makes a judgment from the first meeting, and never wrong that I know of.'
'How fortunate,' Mrs. Ballinger said dryly, 'we have not the opportunity of having to exercise such a gift. So much in society is already known of a person.' She did not add the implicated aside that the Lamberts were not part of society, but it hung in the air unsaid.
Mrs. Lambert merely smiled. She could afford to. Society or not, she had successfully accomplished her principal role in life. She was not only married to a wealthy man herself, she had engaged her only daughter to a man of good looks, good manners, brilliant talent, and excellent financial prospects. What more was there to do?
The orchestra had begun to play a waltz. Rathbone turned to Margaret Ballinger.
'Miss Ballinger, will you do me the honor of dancing with me?'
She accepted with a smile and he excused himself and offered her his arm to lead her to the floor. She took it lightly- he could barely feel her hand-and followed him without meeting his eyes.
They had been dancing for several minutes before she spoke, and then it was hesitant.
'I am sorry Mama is so… forward. I hope she did not embarrass you, Sir Oliver.'
'Not at all,' he said honestly. It was she who had been embarrassed. He had been merely angry. 'She is only behaving as all mothers do.' He wanted to think of something else to add which would make her feel easier, but he could imagine nothing. This would go on, and they both knew it. It was a ritual. Some young women found a certain excitement in it or had a self-confidence which bore them along. Some were not sufficiently sensitive or imaginative to suffer the humiliation or to perceive the young man's awkwardness or knowledge of being manipulated, almost hunted, and the burden of expectation upon him.
He must find a conversation to hold with Margaret. She was dancing with her head turned away, self-conscious, almost as if she feared he had invited her only to save her embarrassment It was half true. He wished to make it wholly a lie. She seemed so very vulnerable.
'Do you know this architect, Killian Melville?' he asked.
'I have met him three or four times,' she answered, a slight lift of surprise in her voice, and she looked up towards him. 'Are you interested in architecture, Sir Oliver?'
'Not especially,' he said with a smile. 'I suppose I tend to be most aware of it when it offends me. I am rather used to agreeable surroundings. Perhaps I take them for granted. What is his work like? A less biased opinion than Miss Lambert's, if you have one…'
She laughed. 'Oh, yes indeed. I did like him. He was so easy to talk to. Not in the least… brash or-oh, dear, I don't know how to pursue it without sounding…' She stopped again.
'Now you have me fascinated,' he admitted. 'Please tell me. Speak frankly, and I promise not to take offense- or to repeat it.'
