Page 51 of Unending Joy
“What do you want in a husband, Joy?”
“I asked you this before.”
“But it has new meaning now.”
“I want,” she began, smoothing the ribbon at her waist, “a partner who will not scold when I ride too fast, who will laugh when I misquote Shakespeare, and who will not attempt to cage me with embroidery hoops. Someone,” she finished with a small shrug, “whose conversation keeps pace with my curiosity.”
Freddy’s chest tightened. “Then you want much the same as I—a wife who will not expect perpetual doting, who can ride to hounds without swooning, who will turn the dullest day into an adventure.”
She glanced up, meeting his eyes—an earnest blue behind their lenses. “We describe each other, Freddy.”
He swallowed. “Dash it all, Joy, but you are soon to be betrothed to St. John!”
Joy stuttered in her step, but he corrected the rhythm before onlookers noticed. “Soon?” she echoed. “That is news to me.”
His heartbeat hammered against his ribs. “Would you—could you—consider me instead?”
She looked at him with utter shock and almost missed another step.
“Why not? You are my best friend, and you ain’t insipid! Life with you would never be dull, and you would not require me to ‘do the pretty.’”
Colour blossomed along her cheekbones. “Freddy, I…you would truly consider me?”
“Whyever not?” He managed a crooked grin to mask the quaking inside. “Though, as mentioned, we are in the devil of a fix.”
Music drew them through the final revolution. Words faltered, replaced by quiet contemplation. As the last chord faded, he escorted her to the edge of the floor, silence as deep as any chasm between them.
She faced him, still breathless. “It is my deepest wish. I will try to think on what to do. There must be a way, Freddy.”
“I am at your mercy.”
“Start dancing attendance on several others so she does not seem favoured. Perhaps you could give her a disgust of you, or find her another beau?”
Freddy’s brow furrowed as he considered her words. How was he to do that?
“I should go and ask every eligible female to dance this night, and avoid Letty Partridge like the plague!” Joy turned away, and joined Maeve by the refreshment table. Freddy watched her go,every pulse suddenly aware of what he had somehow overlooked for years. Letty Partridge—pretty, pliant, perfectly acceptable—appeared now a painted shell beside the living sparkle of Joy’s spirit. And now it might be too late. He sought out the opposite side of the room from Letty and asked the first girl he saw to dance.
CHAPTER 16
Joy awakened the morning after the Thornhill ball with a mind so riotous that even the kittens surrounding her seemed to pounce in sympathetic agitation. Frederica was curled by her head, Lord Orville decided to attack her legs, and Camilla leapt upon the counterpane to pounce on an imaginary thread. The single thought that occupied her entire being was Freddy’s remark that he would choose her were circumstances different.
Had it been a casual jest, a friendly gambit in the face of Letty Partridge’s desperation? Or had it been a confession he scarcely knew how to frame? The words had been light, yet the earnestness in his eyes had left her tingling from scalp to slipper tips.Why not?he had said.You’re my best friend and you ain’t insipid!Joy repeated the phrase now, silently, and warmth flooded her cheeks beneath the bed curtains, knowing it was the highest compliment Freddy could have bestowed.
But then—Letty. Lady Partridge’s triumphant cooing at the ball had reached every dowager’s ear within minutes. The Dowager claimed that she had overheard Lady Partridge announcing, “The banns are a mere formality, my dear. Mr Cunningham is as good as ours.” A formal declaration mightnot yet have been made, but Society’s infallible instinct for matchmaking had drawn its conclusions. Could Freddy extricate himself without incurring the label of jilt?
Joy’s conscience pricked. Was it selfish to hope he might try? Had she entertained Freddy’s half-avowal too eagerly? All night the question had whirled round her head, stealing sleep and leaving her nerves humming like harp strings. When she rose at last, she found the mirror holding an unaccustomed flush upon her cheekbones, an almost shy brightness in her own eyes. She brushed and plaited her hair with a care she seldom expended outside the stables, and descended to breakfast determined to think clearly.
She found no tranquillity down stairs. Maeve, radiant in a wrapper embroidered with rosebuds, had commandeered the morning room and turned it into a depot of matrimonial strategy. Sheets of parchment, detailing guest lists, overflowed the escritoire; samples of cream satin for altar cushions littered every chair; and Grace, quill poised, presided like an amiable clerk of the rolls.
“Joy,” Maeve cried, waving her into the fray, “Thornhill has secured St. George’s for the twenty-second of July! And afterwards, the wedding breakfast will be at Thornhill Place.”
Joy bestowed dutiful murmurs of pleasure while helping Camilla, who had wedged herself into a basket of thread, to freedom. Amid Maeve’s rapture her own disturbance seemed trivial, even selfish, but Grace’s perceptive glance soon detected something amiss. When Maeve scurried off to fetch something, Grace caught Joy’s sleeve.
“You look pale, yet flushed,” she murmured. “Does your head trouble you?”
“My head is clear,” Joy replied. “My—my thoughts less so.”
Grace opened her mouth, but the footman entered with fresh chocolate and Maeve with a sheaf of more parchment, and the question was postponed. “We will speak later.”
