“You have great powers of perception, Miss Austen, to be able to detect the slightest foible of character at fifty paces,” C.J. murmured to her new acquaintance.
The young women shared a laugh, and Jane, sensing a kindred spirit, took hold of C.J.’s hand. “I do believe we shall become great friends,” she pronounced with assuredness.
Chapter Twelve
A chapter fraught with incident, in which Miss Austen shares her opinions on the follies of both sexes; Lady Dalrymple puts on a show; our heroine gets kissed in the moonlight, followed by a stunning, though not altogether unexpected, proposal; and Lady Oliver’s checkered past is disclosed.
RETURNING FROM THEIR EXERTIONS, the Leigh-Perrots asked Darlington if he would kindly fetch them some punch. Lady Oliver wished for a full report on all of the available refreshments before she would commit to a preference for a single one of them, and insisted that these days all the best assemblies served orgeat water, a nonalcoholic beverage made from barley and orange-flower water.
Miss Austen directed C.J.’s attention to two members of the adulteress’s party. “I cannot remember being so amused at a ball,” she informed her companion with a gleeful smile. “Mrs. Busby is abandoning the two young women whom she is obliged to chaperone to run ’round the room after her drunken husband. His avoidance and her pursuit, with the probable intoxication of both, has provided the most convivial entertainment I have had this past hour.” Jane urged C.J. to quickly turn her chair, as the objects of Miss Austen’s pointed censure were headed their way. They swiftly rearranged their positions so as to avoid the addresses of Busby and wife.
The earl rejoined their party with glasses of punch for the Leigh-Perrots and for his aunt, despite her earlier directives. No orgeat water, or ratafia liqueur either, was to be had this evening.
Lady Oliver missed nothing of her nephew’s interest in Lady Dalrymple’s poor relation and squandered no opportunity to issue a rebuke. “If I had wished to spend my evening in the company of a salivating male, I should have brought my best Pointer. Percy, you are perfectly aware of the impropriety of the situation. To give Miss Welles such undue attention is not becoming to your status as a gentleman, and it will undoubtedly cause embarrassment to the family, not to mention damage to your already blemished reputation.”
“Then a further blot will pass undetected, Aunt Augusta,” the earl replied.
C.J. smiled complaisantly. “Lady Oliver, forgive my rudeness. Although we are seated five persons apart from each other, I could not help overhearing your remarks to your nephew, which I am sure were intended to be in confidence. Surely, if my presence is intolerable to his lordship, he is free to direct his attentions elsewhere.”
Her ladyship’s rather audible grunt connoted her defeat as well as her displeasure. She adjusted her position with the aid of her ivory-handled walking stick.
“She likes you well enough,” C.J. whispered to Miss Austen.
Jane looked up and smiled placidly at Lady Oliver in case the old bat should misjudge the young women’s gentle conversation for internecine plotting. “Her good nature,” she said sardonically, “is not tenderness.” Miss Austen lowered her voice to a whisper and raised her fan. “All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it.”
Darlington cleared his throat, which had the intentioned result of interrupting the tête à tête. “Ladies, I do believe it is time for the supper dance. Miss Welles, if I am not mistaken, you have promised this one to me.” He offered C.J. his arm and helped her from the hard wooden chair.
An agreeable-looking young man with a fair complexion and reddish hair approached Miss Austen and requested the dance. The escorts led the young ladies out to join the longways set that was forming in the center of the room.
Now that she was on the dance floor, C.J.’s anxieties about dancing all but dissipated and she began to feel herself on a surer footing. Owing to her twenty-first-century workshops in English country dancing, she was somewhat practiced at the kind of repartee exchanged among the gently bred men and women as they faced one another, traded partners, entwined under a raised arm, or took hands.
She overheard Jane, down the set, engaged in an animated discussion with her russet-haired partner, a vicar’s son named Mr. Chiltern. The latter, who did not wish to share his witty partner with others in the set, was emphatically arguing, “I consider a country dance as the emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or marry themselves have no business with the partners or wives of others.”
Miss Austen twirled away from him as they moved one couple down the set. “But there you are wrong, sir. People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour.”
C.J. and Darlington laughed. “I daresay, your lordship, your witty cousin is getting the better of the poor vicar’s son. He may wish to switch partners after all, despite his views on the parallels between making hays and holy matrimony.”
Jane was clearly enjoying herself, pressing her point that a difference indeed existed. “You will admit that in marriage the man is supposed to provide for the support of the woman, and the woman to make the home agreeable to the man. He is to purvey, and she is to smile.” Jane beamed triumphantly. “But in dancing,
