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8
Snowy Surprise
“Harriet!” Mama chided Anne’s sister in a hushed tone that nevertheless carried far beyond their two places at one end of the long table. “Stop whining over your dinner. Leave off crying and eat, child.”
Mama had lost a wager with the twelve-year-old—else Harri wouldn’t be anywhere near the adults but rather up in the nursery, helping oversee and entertain the young visitors who had traveled on this brisk winter day with their families to attend the Twelfth Night Ball their parents hosted this night—supposedly to celebrate the season.
In actuality, to celebrate—or so her parents and Harri and their esteemed guest, Lady Redford, hoped—the betrothal of Anne and Lord Redford. And really, how preposterous, to call it a Twelfth Night Ball, when the Christmas season—and the twelve nights, had barely begun.
How ludicrous, to expect she would affiance herself to the absent viscount.
As if she would even consider agreeing to marry a lout who couldn’t be troubled to introduce himself beforehand.
The gall!
The selfish, inconsiderate… Her brow lined as she cast about, unsuccessfully, for something harsher to call him.
Inconsiderate…imbecile!
Butterflies did not inhabit Anne’s stomach. Nay, nothing so tame. ’Twas more like marauding midges inhabited her middle, causing all sorts of annoyance and angst Anne would rather pretend bothered her naught.
If she didn’t truly like Lady Redford—the imbecilic lout’s mother, soon-to-be Dowager Redford…if she and Harri and Anne’s parents all had their way—Anne wouldn’t even have presented herself at tonight’s holiday festivities. Though the Great Hall was seldom used by their small family of four, it had been decorated to within an inch of its life and looked downright beautiful…with its abundance of fresh greenery, festive red candles and sprigs of holly tacked up around the hearth and doorframes. Overly pointy holly, she had learned to her detriment that morning, helping Harri gather more when her sister deemed the servants’ efforts “not quite adequate for a party of such notable import”.
Even mistletoe, tied with bright ribbons, had been sprinkled throughout the common rooms—something Harri had insisted on, claiming what better way for Anne to celebrate with her new betrothed.
Pah. Would it be up to Anne? At this very moment? She would have already declined.
Better to be lonely—and forever childless—than to tolerate a miserable marriage for the rest of her days.
What makes you think it would be miserable? You haven’t even met—
Oh but she had. She had met the sort of man she could imagine growing old with, mayhap raising a family with… But it was not to be.
For transient gamekeepers and former soldiers thought of her as a mistress (which even days later, still did not fail to both mystify, flatter—and yes, sadden), not as marriageable. Not as mothers for their children, but rather as a strumpet, fit to strum but not to love.
And whose love is it you are hankering after? You, who claim she wants no children of her own?
“Eat your goose,” Mother ordered her recalcitrant youngest in a strident voice, reminding Anne of the joys of motherhood (she thought with a large dose of sarcasm), “and quit carrying—”
“But, Mama!” Harri cried in such a way everyone present was privy to the private conversation, likely even the mice, asleep in the stable walls outside. “I knew Sir Galahad. I walked him and petted him and—and…” The tears started rolling down flushed cheeks yet again, making the brown-haired, hazel-eyed child on the verge of womanhood resemble nothing so much as a bawling cherub. “I looked into his glossy black eyes…”
The last was nearly howled and half the guests around the table glanced at their plates and turned a bit green, while the other half bit cheeks and tongues, trying to stifle laughter.
All except for the lone empty seat, that was. The one conspicuously between Anne and Lord Frostwood—supposedly a good friend of the missing Imbecile’s. Redford’s other friend, who had arrived with Lord Frostwood in a Merlin’s chair, had been seated at the head of the table near Anne’s father, on the opposite side of the melodrama going on about the goose. These two men, at great cost to themselves, had managed to arrive from London, yet Redford himself could not be troubled to appear in a timely manner?
The man was not just an imbecilic, idiotic chuff. He was an arse. A most awful, rude one, to be sure. And Lady Redford had vowed he was the most thoughtful of her offspring? Hardly.
Mama was still in high dudgeon, chastising Harri, completely impervious to the girl’s tears and wobbling lips.
“I daresay, ’tis the last time you entertain the chit’s fascination with whist,” Anne’s father remarked in his unruffled, droll tone, the ideal counterpart to her mother’s exasperated napkin toss—directly upon her plate of uneaten braised pigeon, glazed venison and Sir Galahad the goose.
“Up! Up this instant, young lady,” Mother instructed Harri, snapping her fingers for the girl’s governess, hovering just out of sight. “Your antics have been indulged quite enough for one day.”
“Oh, do let the child stay,” said Mr. Gregory, a neighboring bachelor whose even temper—if overly bland manner, to Anne’s way of thinking—overrode Harri’s sniffles. He addressed the table as a whole. “Who among us has not befriended at least one thing found upon our plates during our lifetime?”
“Hear, hear,” said Anne’s father. “For me, it was the time I realized turtle soup was just that—made from the turtles I played with at the lake.” He caught Anne’s eye and winked, giving away his clanker. Her father had an aversion to lakes (and snakes)—certainly would not have played near one as a lad.
But his response, thanks to Mr. Gregory’s beginning, took the attention off Harri’s tear-stained face and mutinous expression long enough for Anne to motion her sister over.
