Baroness in Buckskin by Sheri Cobb South

Author:Sheri Cobb South [South, Sheri Cobb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 2015-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Every savage can dance.

JANE AUSTEN, Pride and Prejudice

The following afternoon had been set aside for Susannah’s first instructions in dancing. Aunt Amelia was appointed to play the pianoforte, thus freeing Jane to demonstrate the steps Susannah was to imitate. As soon as the Aunts arrived from the dower house, they and the four “young people,” as Amelia and Charlotte dubbed their junior relations (including the thirty-one-year-old head of the family), repaired to the music room. While Aunt Amelia took her place at the instrument and Aunt Charlotte settled herself in a chair along the wall to observe the proceedings, the dancers paired themselves off. Susannah was partnered with Lord Ramsay, since everyone present at the ball would expect to see the betrothed pair lead out the dancing. This left Jane with Peter, to whom she had given very similar lessons only two years earlier.

They began with the minuet. Although quite outmoded in London, and performed nowadays only in places where the elderly were wont to congregate, such as Bath or Tunbridge Wells, this antiquated dance possessed the advantage of being easy to learn and, consequently, of giving Jane the opportunity to assess her pupil’s skills before moving on to the more fashionable—and complicated—cotillion, quadrille, and, of course, the waltz.

For her part, Susannah found that after the initial awkwardness, she enjoyed the lessons very much. Although she hadn’t the advantage of the musical training that was—or at least should have been—part of every gently bred lady’s education, she possessed an innate sense of rhythm, and her proficiency in the saddle had imbued her with a natural grace and fluidity of movement.

From the minuet, they progressed to the Sir Roger de Coverley, and Jane noted with considerable frustration that the lively and popular reel could not be done correctly with only two couples.

“Perhaps we could hold an informal little morning dance a week before the ball,” she suggested. “I believe the vicar’s eldest daughter is to go to London next spring for her aunt to bring her out in Society; I daresay she would welcome the opportunity to practice, and other young people in the neighborhood would very likely do so as well.”

As daunting as Susannah found the prospect of displaying her newly acquired skills before a roomful of strangers her own age, she found the prospect of doing so at a formal ball in front of a glittering assembly of aristocratic strangers infinitely worse. She agreed somewhat tentatively to this program for her education, and the lessons resumed. At the end of an hour of instruction, they had covered the steps for the minuet, the Sir Roger de Coverley, the cotillion, and the quadrille (these last two with an entirely imaginary third and fourth couple, which strengthened Jane’s conviction that an informal dance before the betrothal ball was necessary, if Susannah were to comport herself with confidence). Jane then exchanged a word with Aunt Amelia and, while that lady rifled through her music, announced her intention of instructing Susannah in the waltz.

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