The Shadow And The Star by Laura Kinsale

Author:Laura Kinsale
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-09-23T05:23:34+00:00

Chapter Twenty-three

Leda sat paralyzed in front of the mirror. From what seemed a long way away, the bell chimed for dinner.

She was aware of the door standing open behind her. The necklace sparkled on her neck in a blaze of diamonds. The image began to swim in her eyes.

She fumbled for the catch, could not find it, and began to weep in earnest.

It is because my mother was French, she thought. I am frivolous. I am wanton. I am happy.

I cannot be happy.

She stared at herself through the blur. Mortification and miserable joy muddled together inside her breast.

She could not be happy. It was indecent to be happy. She had been deeply and dreadfully insulted. He had behaved with gross impropriety. It was an affront to Lady Kai, to the family, to the very roof over their heads. It was unforgivable.

She was unforgivable. For the tears were not tears of remorse.

The necklace would not come free. She struggled with it, heard a step and voices from the domed hall outside, and in panic forced open the clasp. She grabbed the box from the desk, darting into the shadows of the room. In a few moments the houseguests would all be leaving the great drawing room through the open double doors at the head of the staircase, the gentlemen taking the ladies down to dinner in the order of precedence that Leda herself, after careful consultation with Burke's Peerage, had outlined for Lord and Lady Ashland.

Now, after months of dining happily with the family, the very notion filled her with panic. She had the order of the evening's dinner partners by heart. As an employee and female of common rank, she would go down last, just before the hostess, on the arm of the gentleman whose lack of social precedence matched her own.

Mr. Gerard.

And she would sit on his right hand through the meal, while Lady Kai sat directly across the table from him.

Leda was horrified to realize that she had planned it that way. Within the boundaries of precedency, she might have instead paired a daughter of the house with Mr. Gerard, and herself with elderly Mr. Sydney, who had no more business than she to eat in the dining room, if one were stricter in one's conventions than the Ashlands ever cared to be.

But in writing out her place settings, she had indulged herself, just a trifle, just for this one week, taken just a tiny advantage of the circumstances that she and Mr. Gerard had in common: the fact of being nonentities in society, if one disregarded his steamship company and directorships and the timber mills and the banks and marine insurance and ten pounds a week to a secretary who did precisely nothing.

The sound of conversation grew louder, Lady Whitberry's voice a distinctive quaver echoing in the domed spaciousness of the hail. Leda daubed hastily at her eyes with her handkerchief, praying that they were not reddened and swollen. Unable to think of anything better, she pulled down the first book within reach and stuck the necklace behind it.

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