Page 24 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
Even in the dull roar of sound that permeated the ballroom, the silence that hung over the three of them was a palpable thing. Like a thick layer of fog, heavy enough to blunt the worst of the chatter about them.
“No names?” Thomas echoed at last, incredulous.
“Thomas,” the baroness said, her voice chiding. Offended, perhaps, on Mercy’s behalf, by her son’s poor manners.
“Not a one.” It wouldn’t have bothered her, except that it had clearly bothered the baroness. “I’m sorry,” she said, faltering over the words. “I did try to warn you.”
The baroness sighed, “Oh, Mercy, my dear girl.” And really, it was the faint pity in the woman’s voice that hurt the most.
“I think I’ll go to the retiring room,” Mercy said. “If you don’t mind.”
“Yes, of course,” the baroness said sympathetically. “Do hurry back.”
Mercy gave a brief nod as she turned to go, though she didn’t intend to return in anything even vaguely approximating ahurry. After all, she knew well enough that she would not be missed.
∞∞∞
No names, Thomas mused to himself over his second glass of champagne. How was that possible? Even he had to admit that Mercy had turned up perfectly attired, and despite the wretched mangle she’d made of her dance card, she appeared to be comporting herself well enough.
She’d cleaned up better than he’d expected, given the right state she was generally in, and to which he was most accustomed. Wild hair tamed to perfect sleekness. A ball gown of the latest mode, in a deep blue that flattered her complexion, fashioned of elegant silk brocade—which he assumed must be from one of her father’s most current patterns. Evening gloves which did not bear even the faintest stain.
It was true that she was somewhat older than the average woman out on the marriage mart, but her father had a damned fortune to his name, and Mercy was his only child. She would, eventually, inherit every bit of his business and that fortune. Not to mention the obscene dowry which he would settle upon her in the meantime. He’d not managed, yet, to let slip that information to the public, but still—
Notonename?
As he considered seeking out a third glass, it occurred to him that three dances had come and gone and still Mercy had not returned to the ballroom. It might well have meant nothing, or so he attempted to tell himself. Perhaps there had been some mishap with her gown, or her slipper ribbons, or perchance herhairpins were in want of some adjustment or other. It was quite a common occurrence, really, for a woman who had not been engaged for a dance to make her way to the retiring room during that set to refresh herself as needed. To his understanding, there were often servants placed within to assist, should a lady require a quick stitch with a needle and thread, or some other such aid.
But threedances could hardly be ignored. And this was Mercy—he simply could not put it past her to have gone wandering, which would be bad enough on its own, but in a crush like this one, where anyone might stumble upon her? Where shemight trespass where she ought not, and cause a scandal in the process?
Notonedamned name, despite the fact that she had turned up quite elegant and pretty. Not quite so pretty as she was with her hair windswept and wild, and her cheeks flushed with the exertion of tromping across the countryside. But pretty all the same, in an odd, vaguely unsettling sort of way. As if a part of her had been laid bare which had never been meant for the public; a secret which had until now belonged only to him.
Briefly, Thomas caught sight of Marina upon the ballroom floor in one of her new gowns. It had a lovely net overlay, sparkling with tiny stars of gold embroidery, but beneath it was a smooth, rich lilac silk—one of Fletcher’s, no doubt. Somewhere upon the floor, though out of sight at present, Juliet had a beautiful new gown of her own. It did not escape him, in this uncomfortable moment of reflection, that those gowns had been purchased with funds not his own. That Fletcher’s money had paid for them and more besides, while Fletcher’s daughter had languished at the edge of the ballroom all evening amongst the dowagers and the chaperones.
Christ. He should have asked her to dance.
“Yes, you ought to have done.” Mother’s voice; a bit snippy for his taste.
“What?” Had he spoke aloud?
“You said you should have asked her to dance,” Mother said, with the very same recriminatory tone she’d often used in his childhood, whenever his actions had merited being called out onto the carpet. “I assume you meant Mercy. I agree; you ought to have done.”
He supposed the infliction of guilt was a weapon every mother must learn how to wield like a knight with a sword. “Can she dance, then?” he inquired, sulkily.
“Thomas!” Mother chided. “Of course she can dance. The dancing master I hired for the girls taught Mercy before them. It was on her father’s recommendation that I engaged the man.”
“Well, how was I to know?”
“I’ll grant you, you were still away at university when Mercy had her Season,” Mother said. “But you would have known, Thomas, had you bothered to attend any of the Fletchers’ dinner parties, or our dances. Mercy is a fine dancer.” She heaved a sigh, and cast him a pointed look. “It is a pity that no one’s asked her.”
Most especially, he assumed she meant to imply, herson, whom she had expected to have better manners than that. “Why do you suppose that is?” he asked. “Did she cause a scandal during her Season?”
“None that ever reached my ears,” Mother said. “But then, she was in town for all of a fortnight before she quit the Season and returned to the countryside. I asked, of course, once we returned ourselves. She said the city did not agree with her.” Mother sipped her champagne slowly, pensively. “I wish I had thought to sponsor her then,” she said, and Thomas thought he detected a thrum of something like maudlin sentimentality in the low tones of her voice. “But the girls were not yet out, you know, and your father…”
Would never have approved.Hadnever approved; neither ofMercy nor her father. Thomas had been on the receiving end of his father’s long-winded diatribes about their neighbors for as long as he could remember. For the first time, he began to wonder if the opinions he had formed of her had ever been his own—or if he had allowed, for nigh on twenty years now, his father to make them for him. “She wasn’t your responsibility,” Thomas said. But now she was his.
“It is not responsibility; it is affection. I know you have never been particularly fond of Mercy, but she has been so good for the girls. There’s four years between her and Marina,” Mother said, “and eight for Juliet. It is such a difference, Thomas, in childhood. They followed her about like baby chicks, and she let them. She never had to, you know. But she did.” Mother gave a soft sigh, as if reflecting upon a sweet memory. “Such a kind little girl. Lonely, I think, since she lost her mother so young and without siblings of her own.”
Thomas had some significant trouble reconciling his mother’s image of Mercy with the child who had pushed him straight into a pond at their first meeting.
