Page 2 of One Perfect Dance
It was useless to point out that Elijah’s gloves no longer fit his hands, any more than his other clothes had stretched to cover his growing body. They were all hand-me-downs from his stepbrothers, and Elijah had grown bigger than them a full two years ago. The major and his sons didn’t care to spend anything on Elijah. Asking for clothing, even a pair of gloves, would only fetch him a lecture about gratitude, if not a beating.
At least he had a roof over his head, and the food was plentiful. And he could last six more days.
“Never mind, Ash Boy.” Mouth waved a newspaper. “Regina Kingsley is making her come out at a ball next Tuesday. Remember Miss Kingsley?”
Elijah remembered Regina Kingsley. She was the daughter of the manor in the village where he’d lived with his mother when his father was alive, and after until his mother married Major Defect. Four years younger than Elijah, Regina had looked like a delicate fairy, as if at any moment she would spread wings and fly. But she was as bold and as brave as any boy, and well able to hold her own as one of the youngest of a tribe of village children who swarmed across the countryside when free from their lessons and chores, looking for fun and adventure.
Ginny Kingsley. Somehow, as one of the older lads, it had fallen to Elijah to make sure that the viscount’s daughter was returned home each day in one piece, not visibly battered. Despite the four-year difference in their age, they’d had a lot in common. They’d both loved to read, especially books of adventure. They both wanted to travel and see the world. They were both lonely children with fond, if ineffectual, mothers and largely absent fathers.
Then, when Ginny was ten, her mother suddenly noticed her daughter wassocializing with urchins, as the viscountess put it. Suddenly, she was confined to the manor, able only to leave under strict escort, and dressed in expensive silks even when accompanying her mother on a visit to the tenants.
Elijah wished he could see her again. She must have grown into a lovely young woman.
“Why would you want to see Regina Kingsley again?” Dilly’s question was so in-tune with Elijah’s thoughts that he nearly answered it. But Dilly was, of course, talking to Mouth, and he hadn’t finished. “She was a stuck-up brat when we were in that village. Thought she was better than everyone else just because her father was a viscount. I don’t imagine she has improved any in the past six years.”
Mouth grinned, as he propped himself on the corner of Dilly’s dressing table. “Now that is where you would be wrong. I saw her yesterday, riding with her parents in Hyde Park. She is not bad. I think we should try to get an invitation to the ball. After all, Father does know the viscount.”
Dilly snorted. “The viscount hired Father to gather investors for a canal project and fired him when Father tried to blackmail him. I can’t see the viscount doing Father any favors. Anyway. I cannot think of a single reason why I should want to go to a ball for a chit like Regina Kingsley.” He gave Elijah a kick to push him away from the boot. “That’s good enough, Ash Boy. Leave them alone.”
Elijah wanted to hear what else they had to say. Instead of taking his dismissal, he began picking up Dilly’s discarded cravats and the other items of clothing strewn around the bed chamber. His stepbrothers went on talking as if he was not there.
“It was a waste of six months,” Dilly continued grumbling. “Worse than wasted. We left that village with a heap of debt, our landlady as father’s new wife, and Ash Boy.”
“I can give you a reason to go to Miss Kingsley’s ball,” Mouth said, ignoring the rest of Dilly’s grumbling. “I’ll give you ten thousand good reasons. Well, perhaps not quite that much since I only want to talk the chit into loving me and be paid off. Even if I didn’t already have a wife, curse her, I wouldn’t want to marry a baby out of the schoolroom, especially a spoiled aristocrat.”
He suddenly noticed Elijah. “Get out, Ash Boy. I am going riding. Make sure my horse is at the door in five minutes.”
Elijah left, though he would have liked to hear what else they had to say.
He heard Dilly tell Mouth, “I have better address than you.”
Mouth replied, “I don’t care which one of us does it, as long as we share the money. Once I can get some funds behind me to pay better lawyers than my father-in-law, I’m taking my son back.” One of them closed the door, and Elijah had to go downstairs.
He remembered the viscount as a smart man. Surely, he would see straight through the Deffew brothers, and keep them a mile from his only daughter?
Even so, Elijah fretted about the brothers’ plans as he carried on with the day’s tasks. It put his own letter right out of his head, and he didn’t remember it until early afternoon when all the Deffew men were out, the cook and butler were both having their naps, and Elijah was taking ten minutes to himself in his little room, where he had been making a pair of pantaloons that actually fitted him. He had managed to get the cloth for a few pennies because it was soiled, had laundered it himself, and had managed to cut three pairs from it. Pantaloons were the last item he needed for his new job.
He had the new position thanks to his old friend and teacher, the vicar. On the day after his twenty-first birthday, he was boarding a ship with his new employer, to leave on a world tour. By nightfall that day, he would have sailed down the Thames and out to sea, but not before giving himself the pleasure of saying goodbye to his persecutors.
He’d learned to sew and make alterations as part of his work as a valet, and he thought the fit of his new pantaloons, waistcoat, and coat was not too bad. Not fashionably tight, of course, because he was going to be a working man, after all. But neat and tidy.
He knotted the thread and there, he was finished. Three pairs of pantaloons, a single coat (bought second-hand from a barrow and refurbished with new buttons and some deft sewing for a better fit), two waistcoats remade from some Mouth had thrown out, and half a dozen shirts.
He went to put his sewing kit away in his drawer and saw the letter.
He glanced at the door. He probably still had a few minutes. He slipped his scissors under the seal—the wax had been stamped with a circle containing a delicate drawing of a crown.
The folded paper contained a piece of glossy card. The same crown was embossed on the top as part of an elegant frame, touched with gilt. He read the words inside the frame twice.
Viscount and Viscountess Kingsley seek the pleasure of the company of… Then, on a line all its own and in a different hand and slightly different ink:Elijah Ashby…There was a return to the first writing,…at the coming out ball for their daughter Regina on the occasion of her birthday, at ten of the clock, in the evening of Tuesday, April ninth.
There was an address to reply to the invitation, and then there was the actual letter, for the folded paper was covered with the same neat handwriting as his name on the invitation.
Dear Elijah
You may not remember me, though I hope you do. I was the little girl who made such a pest of herself when I used to follow you around the village.
I never had the chance to tell you goodbye when your mother married Major Deffew, and you went off to London with them. I was sad when you left.
