Mrs. McVinnie's London Season by Carla Kelly

Author:Carla Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history 1700s
Publisher: Camel Press

Chapter 11

In a shimmer of light and sound that reverberated like the tinkle of tiny bells, the chandelier rose higher and higher until the audience was in semidarkness. A young man, clad in the rich stuff of a Renaissance merchant, strolled down to the brightly burning footlights.

“ ‘In sooth, I know not why I am so sad,’ ” he said, and gestured toward his friend.

Jeannie sighed. Then you must be the veriest slow-top, she thought as she unconsciously edged closer to the captain.

“ ‘… and such a want-wit sadness makes me,

That I have much ado to know myself.’ ”

I thought I knew myself, Jeannie considered. I used to be sensible and modest, carefully planning out everything, mothering my father-in-law like an old-maid aunt. She glanced down at her bare expanse of bosom. Good Lord, I used to wear more than this to bed, she thought, even when I was married! She forced her attention back to the stage as Salarino took his turn. “ ‘Your mind is tossing on the ocean ….’ ”

The captain sighed. With a quick look at his sharp profile, Jeannie shoved aside her own dismals. She raised herself up and whispered in his ear. “Did you ever see two mopers worse than we?” she asked. “I sigh, and then you sigh, as we wish ourselves elsewhere.”

He did not take his eyes from the stage as he reached for her hand and raised it to his lips. “Guilty as charged, madam,” he said finally, “and yet …” He left the thought incomplete and then he released her hand. “Oh, I do not know about that.”

Jeannie dragged her eyes toward the stage again. Likely this time tomorrow evening she would be on the mail coach again, headed north. Galen had pocketed the key to the house on McDermott Street, but he had left a spare with the Reverend McDougal. The reverend would protest and argue about her being alone, but he would let her in. And he would insist that she write to Galen, whose sense of honor would compel him to abandon trout streams far to the north and come to her rescue. I cannot do that to so kind a man, she thought. Galen has as much need to forget as I.

She would go instead to Edinburgh and drop herself on her sister’s doorstep. Agnes would invite her to stay, of course, and all her nieces and nephews would be glad to see her, at least until the one whose bed she had appropriated began to chafe at sleeping on a pallet, or until Jeannie found herself standing by the window and wishing herself elsewhere. But where would that be? she asked herself as she stirred restlessly.

She knew the captain was looking at her. He is probably examining me as he would a fretful child, she thought. She sneaked a glance at his face. It was indistinct in the darkness, but she felt his breath on her cheek.

He said nothing, and she directed her gaze to the stage again.

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