Katharine Ashe - How to Be a Proper Lady

“Boadicea was Emily’s chosen name before Lysistrata,” Lady Fiona whispered into Viola’s ear.

“I did not weary of it,” Lady Emily replied to Mr. Yale. “But I am already weary of you and I have only seen you for ten seconds.” She paused. “Now it is fifteen and I am still weary.”

Mr. Yale chuckled.

“Pay no attention to ma petite Emilie, chère mademoiselle.” An elegant lady of black, white, and red contrasts pecked Viola on either cheek in a waft of Parisian perfume. “She does not like the long carriages, you see.”

“This is Madame Roche, Miss Carlyle,” Lady Fiona said, dimples denting her alabaster cheeks. “She is Lady Emily’s companion and positively diverting.” Her gaze followed Mr. Yale. “But I see you are already enjoying diverting company.”

Serena drew forward a lean, fair-haired man with bright blue eyes. “Viola, meet our stepbrother, Sir Tracy Lucas.”

“You must call me only Tracy, I hope.” He bowed and gave her an attractive smile. “And I will be honored to call you sister.”

“This is a lovely party, isn’t it, Miss Carlyle?” Lady Fiona’s smile lit up her face. She was taller even than Serena, lithe maidenly perfection in white muslin. “It will be quite splendid coming to know you, and I know Lady Emily-rather Lysistrata-will like it too once she has thrown off the discomforts of travel.” She darted another glance at Mr. Yale, this time sly and not in the least bit innocent. “Do you think we may have dancing?”

Viola lifted her brows. “I do not know how to dance, actually.”

The girl’s face brightened. “How perfectly splendid! We shall give you lessons.”

The house abruptly became quite merry. Accustomed to living among many people in close quarters, Viola did not mind the activity. These people from London, however, were not like her sister and the baron, rather a bit more like Mr. Yale-clever, fashionable, and very gracious to her. Still, Viola found herself stealing away to the coastal path over the bluff where far below waves bathed the narrow beach in froth and gulls’ cries could be heard more stridently. She sucked in the briny air, the sun warmed her cheeks, and she was nearly happy, except for the empty, twisted space in her middle that would not seem to go away.

Mr. Yale remained kindly attentive. But his pleasure in his visit to Savege Park seemed to have paled.

“Lady Fiona admires you.” She slid her gaze to the pretty girl perched at the pianoforte playing a lilting tune, her voice sweet as nothing at sea ever was, rather more like the songbirds in Serena’s terraced gardens on the inland side of the house.

“Yes, well.” He swallowed a mouthful of port. “If I were to pursue that admiration her brother would have my neck in a noose.”

“I thought you and Lord Blackwood were quite good friends.”

“Precisely.”

She studied his silvery eyes, not a bit misty with drink although she had watched him consume at least three glasses of wine with dinner.

“You have no interest in her, do you?”

“She is all that is lovely.” He sipped again.

“But-”

“Miss Carlyle, I find that I am unable to pursue this particular avenue of conversation. Pray, forgive me.”

“Mr. Yale, after three weeks in my company, you have not yet come to understand the measure of me?”

His mouth slipped into a grin. “Ah. I have mistaken myself.” He looked at her directly. “I shall put it differently: I haven’t any interest in girls barely out of the schoolroom.”

“And yet you tease Lady Emily nearly every occasion offered to you. She cannot be more than twenty.”

His silvery eyes sparkled. “She is quite another sort.”

“She thinks you are an indolent fop. Are you?”

“Naturally you must make your own judgment.”

“I have very little upon which to base a comparative judgment. Only Lord Savege, Sir Tracy, and Lord Carlyle, really.”

“You omit our mutual friend from that short list. Is he not a gentleman, Miss Carlyle?”

Her cheeks warmed. “I don’t know what you can mean.”

A grin split across his face. “Why, you have done it! You have truly become the lady you sought a month ago.”

She did not know whether to laugh with him or to cry. Had the world she had inhabited for fifteen years truly disappeared in a matter of weeks? If she donned again breeches and sash, would the calluses on her palms renew themselves swiftly, or slowly as when she had first trained her hands to labor?

The skirts of a white dress flittered into her sight like the wings of gulls about a topsail.

“Mr. Yale,” Lady Fiona said, her long lashes dipping over pretty brown eyes. “If I play tomorrow, will you teach Miss Carlyle how to dance? Lady Savege says we are to have a party at week’s end, with the neighbors from all about. But Miss Carlyle insists she cannot dance and I will not have her sitting on the side while the rest of us enjoy ourselves. She is far too pretty for that.” She grasped Viola’s fingers and pressed them warmly. “Our host is an exceptional dancer as well. With your assistance, Mr. Yale, I am certain Miss Carlyle will be more than prepared to take the floor for the party. Will you, sir?”

“It would be my honor. Miss Carlyle?”

“Well, why not?” She could not possibly acquit herself worse at dancing than at painting and the harp.

She did. Considerably worse.

“Oh! I am sorry.”

“No need for apologies, my dear. I am no doubt at fault.” Lord Savege’s grin glimmered.

Viola narrowed her eyes skeptically and tripped over the earl’s feet again.

“This is hopeless.”

“Ladies do not mutter on the dance floor.” Mr. Yale winked as he took her hand from the earl’s.

“Ladies do not wish for their cutlass to cut off the bottom six inches of their dress either, or to tear a space to breathe in their stays, I suspect.”

“Oo, la!” Madame Roche laughed. “Miss Carlyle, she is vraiment charmant, no?”

“I daresay,” Mr. Yale said with perfect equanimity. Serena chuckled. From Lady Fiona at the pianoforte came a delighted ripple of notes. Even Lady Emily sitting removed from the dancing with a book cracked a smile. Warm breeze drifted in through long windows open to the late-summer afternoon, billowing the draperies out like Viola’s skirts, and she could not be unhappy. There was great joy to be had in her new friends’ company, great challenge to overcome in mastering new skills, and great comfort in which to revel in her sister’s beautiful home. To feel this persistent emptiness inside, despite all, seemed ridiculously contrary. She should have become accustomed to it by now.

Lady Fiona set her fingers to the keyboard again and Viola set to dancing with renewed application. Turning about, she came to face the drawing room door, and there he stood. Jin. Without warning. Perfectly handsome as always, and watching her.

Quite abruptly she knew that she would never become accustomed to the emptiness inside her, not even were she to try to distract herself from it by sailing all seven seas in a leaking ship. Nothing on earth existed that could distract sufficiently. For there was no more dangerous venture than loving Jin Seton and not being loved by him in return.

He could not look away from her. He knew he ought. But as she stumbled through the set, tangling her feet in her hem and her partners’ steps and generally making a hash out of the dance, the knot that had taken up residence in Jin’s chest during the past month loosened. She was beautiful-as beautiful groomed like a lady as she had been garbed like a sailor. She moved about the floor smiling and laughing, her pleasure and occasional uncertainty unrehearsed and unrestrained. As she captained her ship and bewitched her crewmen, she danced with all her heart, if not with all her limbs in concert.

Finally her gaze came to him, her eyes widened, and the breath went out of him. She tripped again.

“Jinan, you have returned!” Lady Savege clapped. Her husband swiveled about, a smile crossing his face. He came forward in long strides. Hand outstretched, he took Jin’s.

“I shall not embrace you here before these others,” the earl said quietly, roughly, his grip hard. “I’ve no doubt you would knife me for the indignity. But know that could I, I would.”

Jin allowed himself a slight grin, the mountain of purpose he had carried slipping finally from his heart. The debt of life that had bound him to this man, his friend, for twenty years was now paid.

Alex shook his head and laughed. “So that is where you were all those months when we heard nothing from you? Looking for a girl everyone believed dead?”

“It seemed as good a task to pursue as any.” He released his friend’s hand.

“And how is my ship? Your ship, that is.”

“At the bottom of the sea, Alex.”

“You say? How? By whom?”

“By a lady.” His gaze flickered over Alex’s shoulder to Viola once more. Alex followed, then came back to him, open eyed. “Yes.” Jin smiled. “She is… remarkable.”

The others waited for their host’s cue, curious. But the lady whose dark eyes he saw in his dreams each night averted her face from him now.

Serena came to them. “Welcome back, Jinan. Allow me to introduce you to the others. Lady Emily-”

“We are already known to one another from a brief encounter at my parents’ house nearly two years ago,” Lady Emily said from her chair with a nod at him. “How do you do, Mr. Seton. I don’t suppose you will take Mr. Yale away with you when you go this time, will you?”

“The lady is all charm, as always,” the Welshman drawled. “How was town, Seton?”

“Well, thank you.” Empty of the one person he wished to see, who still did not look at him. “Lady Emily, it is a pleasure to meet you again. I am afraid, though, that I haven’t any plans to depart soon.”

Then Viola glanced, a flicker of her violet eyes in his direction, her lips parted. He had not known his intentions until he spoke them, and he had spoken them entirely to draw her gaze.

Panic slid through him again. He should not have come. But he had been drawn and now it was too late. Willing himself steady, he turned to Lady Emily’s companion and bowed.

“Madame Roche, j’espère que vous allez bien.”

“Je vais très bien, monsieur. Merçi.” She curtsied, then gestured to the girl standing by the piano. “But you know Mademoiselle Fione, the sister of your good friend, the Lord Blackwood, I think?”

He bowed. She curtsied, a flutter of lashes over dark brown eyes.

“Of course, I needn’t introduce you to my sister.” Serena beamed as she took Viola’s arm snugly. “Now, shall we have tea? All that dancing has given me a dreadful thirst.”

“My dear,” Alex said, “if you will excuse us, I will take the gentleman to seek out stronger refreshment. Seton, Yale, Lucas, shall we?”

“Superb suggestion,” Yale murmured and, casting Jin a grinning glance, moved toward the door. Jin bowed to the ladies and followed willingly. It was one thing to dream of a woman’s eyes and lips and touch from hundreds of miles away, and to regret the distance from her. It was another entirely to remain in the same room with her, his blood spinning with need and that hot thread of alarm, and to remain any saner than she.

He had returned. Just like that. Viola had no warning of it, no announcement even of his name by the servants who seemed to otherwise declare it each time a member of the company of ladies and gentlemen at the Park yawned or blinked.

Not this time. In the midst of the minuet he had appeared, standing at the threshold to the drawing room as though he had been watching the spirited group romping about the floor for ages and was perfectly content to remain there indefinitely. And now as the party gathered in the drawing room before dinner, he again enjoyed a comfortable position, this time by the piano. Lady Fiona flashed her pretty dark lashes at him, showing him her sheet music. Madame Roche stood nearby, but the thrice-widowed Frenchwoman of indeterminate age and a remarkable froth of black organza did not bother Viola, despite her sharp eyes and elegant looks. Only the lovely, highly maidenly Fiona mattered, the girl she had come to like very much and felt absolutely wretched envying now. Lady Fiona had his attention, and it made her sick to her stomach.

He wore a dark coat, buff trousers, and white linen, as though he had not come from the road only that afternoon. But so he had always appeared aboard ship, in command of himself and of everyone else he encountered. Including his very foolish captain.

She found it difficult to breathe properly and she felt like a ninny. Violet la Vile was most certainly not a ninny.