Page 19 of Dangerous Illusions (Dangerous #1)
Charley giggled, and even Melissa smiled. Hugging them both, Daintry told them they might sit down again, and took a seat beside Susan, saying, “Melissa, darling, did your papa bring you anything else?”
“This,” the little girl said, producing a flaxen-haired china doll from beneath a fold of her skirt, which had concealed it when she sat down. She handed it to Daintry.
“Oh, how pretty! She looks just like you, my dear.”
“Dolls,” Charley said scornfully, “are for babies. Melissa would much rather have had a new riding whip.”
“You would rather have had a riding whip,” Daintry said, smoothing the doll’s pink silk gown and admiring the roses and cream complexion of its exquisite face.
Melissa said, “You can keep that bracelet since you like it so much, Charley. It looks very pretty on you.”
Susan exclaimed, “Oh, no, darling, your papa would be so extremely disappointed if you were to give away his gift. He will want to see you wear it frequently, you know. Gentlemen are very observant about such things.”
“Oh,” Melissa said. “I just thought that since Charley so rarely likes feminine gewgaws Papa would not mind if—”
“No,” Susan said with uncharacteristic firmness.
“Very well, but you may wear it this afternoon, Charley.”
“Well, I will wear it if we are allowed to go downstairs for dinner,” Charley said, “but since I mean to ride Victor this afternoon, perhaps you had better keep it until then.”
Susan said quietly, “I am sorry to sound disobliging, Charlotte, but when the two of you go downstairs, Melissa must wear her bracelet, for it will be the first time she sees her papa after receiving his gift. Moreover, you forget that you are in disgrace. Your grandpapa ordered you to seek your bedchamber, you know, and in all truth, though I did not like to say so, that is where you ought to be right now, not here with us.”
Seeing that Charley was about to say something impertinent, Daintry intervened. “Aunt Susan is right to remind you that your credit is not very good at the moment. You must make your peace with Grandpapa before you do anything else, certainly before you go out to the stables again.”
“But—”
“No,” Daintry said. “It is as important for you to learn that limitations exist as to learn to think and to speak for yourself. Part of thinking for oneself is learning to recognize obstacles when they present themselves, and understanding that one must confront those obstacles, not merely ignore them in the mistaken hope that they will disappear.”
“But I already sent an order to the stables,” Charley said stubbornly, “and I promised Melissa she could go too, so you are punishing her if you forbid me.”
Daintry stood up, but before she could administer the reproof the child so richly deserved, there was an interruption.
“Begging your pardon, Lady Susan,” the maid at the door said, “but Sir Geoffrey requests your presence in the drawing room at once. He said …” The maidservant paused, swallowed, looked at the floor, then murmured, “He said to tell you, you be neglecting your guest, ma’am.”
Daintry’s temper, checked mid-breath by the entrance of the servant, found welcome relief in an even more worthy target than Charley.
“If that is not just like a man,” she snapped, “to blame a woman for not being where he wants her when he is the one who sent her away!” Turning on the quaking maidservant, she said, “Did he order you to say those exact words to her ladyship? Come, Millie,” she added, forcing herself to speak more quietly.
“I did not mean to terrify you, but do answer my question.”
Still looking at her feet, Millie said, “In truth, m’lady, his lordship told Jago to say it, and Jago told me.
Said it warn’t his business to be coming up to the schoolroom, that he’d go to Lady Susan’s bedchamber, and I were to come up here in case she had come up to visit the young ladies, which she had. ”
“Just as I thought,” Daintry said. “You may go, Millie. And I hope you, Susan, will give Geoffrey a piece of your mind for sending such an impudent message to you by a servant.”
Susan smiled. “Oh, no, for it would do no good, you know, and I believe poor Lady Catherine must by now be quite bewildered by all the commotion, and yearning for someone to take her away for a quiet respite. Why, she has not even seen the bedchamber that has been allotted to her. We have been quite remiss.”
“In my opinion, she was highly entertained by it all,” Daintry said, “though I cannot doubt that she will be glad of a chance to get away from Papa’s ranting and Geoffrey’s absurd advice to him on how he ought to manage things.
Even Davina abandoned her, for she followed me out of the room to speak her mind to me.
She called the proceedings a commotion, just as you did, but she blamed me for creating it, if you please. ”
“Well,” Susan said, getting to her feet and smoothing the front of her skirt, “you did little to pour oil on the troubled waters. No, no, pray do not bite my head off! I am sure that even you could not have stopped Papa from ordering that poor man off the premises. In any case, I must go downstairs at once.”
She was gone on the words, and Daintry turned back to attend to her errant niece.
The two little girls had their heads together, but Charley looked up just then and said quickly, “I’m sorry, Aunt Daintry.
I should not have spoken as I did, and I ought not to have talked to Grandpapa as I did either.
I will apologize to him when we go down for dinner.
And,” she added with a sigh and a glance at Melissa, “if you truly forbid it, I suppose I can send a message telling them we won’t want our horses after all.
” The look that accompanied this noble statement was both melting and hopeful.
Daintry, her sense of humor tickled and her temper eased by the opportunity to express her opinion of Sir Geoffrey’s behavior, nevertheless forced herself to remain firm.
“An excellent notion,” she said. “If you do make your peace with your grandfather, then you and Melissa may go to the stables after dinner to take sugar lumps to Victor and Tender Lady.”
“Very well.” Charley sat down again, looking rather put out but resigned. Then a new thought entered her agile mind, for she widened her eyes and said, “And tomorrow, Aunt Daintry, will you take us riding again?”
Daintry hesitated. “First we must discover when your Uncle Geoffrey intends to take his family home,” she said.
Melissa said, “Mama told us that he wishes to remain here for a few days, Aunt Daintry. I think that when he wrote to tell her to look for his arrival, he wrote that as well.”
Charley said casually, “We could ride up onto the moor if it is not foggy, and have a really good gallop. Although,” she added with a thoughtful frown, “I daresay we ought not to mention the galloping part to Uncle Geoffrey.”
Deciding that she had been firm enough for one day, Daintry refrained from pointing out the impropriety of the afterthought, particularly since she wholeheartedly agreed with it.
Instead, she said that if the little girls behaved themselves and the next day proved a pleasant one, she would certainly take them riding.
Not until later did she wonder if Charley had mentioned the moor for any particular reason, but she dismissed the thought at once, for it led far too easily to others that were much more disturbing.
As she tossed and turned in her bed that night, unable to sleep, she came to the unwelcome conclusion that a certain tall, broad-shouldered gentleman with speaking golden eyes, an attractive smile, and a deplorably commanding nature had made more of an impression upon her wayward sensibilities than was commensurate with the comfortable image she had of herself as an independent female.