At the time attending the annual village harvest dance hadn’t tempted Jennet, who preferred to stay home with her mother after the summer waned and the days grew shorter. She knew Margaret hated the cold, and without some distraction would grow melancholic. Together they spent the evenings sewing, playing cards or reading together. Often her mother would badger her on getting out to socialize, however, and on that occasion she had insisted.
“You have been shut in this house with me too long, my dear,” Margaret said. “I daresay Catherine Tindall and your other friends will be there. All of the young men in Renwick will wish to dance with you, I am sure.”
Jennet frowned at her. “Why are you so set on this, Mama? I have never been fond of going out in society.”
“But that is where you can be with people your own age,” her mother said, sounding slightly exasperated now. “You need not worry about me. I mean to change the ribbons on my good church bonnet, and I have the new Edgeworth novel to read. I do hope it is as scandalous as Lady Hardiwick claimed. Now, please, go, and enjoy yourself.”
Held at the spacious hall in the heart of Renwick, the harvest dance attracted most of the younger set. Jennet hovered outside for a moment to peer in through the windows and see if Catherine and her friends had arrived. That was when she overheard the conversation among a group of bachelors who had congregated just on the other side.
“I vow I saw her driving herself here,” one of the young men said. “She is wearing dark velvet, and comes alone. I hardly ever see her out in society. I must ask her to dance as soon as she makes an appearance.”
“Do you mean Jennet Reed?” another man asked, his upper lip curling. “As dour as a dowager, that one, and twice as prim.”
Jennet recognized her disparager. He had made a nuisance of himself at another assembly, simply because she had refused to dance with him.
“She refused to dance with you, I take it?” a tall, dark-haired gentleman inquired, as if he had heard her thoughts. When the other man scowled, he said, “A shame, then, that the lady has good taste.”
She moved to the other side of the window to get a better look at her defender’s face, and saw it was William Gerard. She had been introduced to him years ago, while he had been on holiday from school. At the time she had been a skinny girl of ten with dark red braids and very little to say, mostly out of embarrassment. In those days Margaret had dressed her like a doll, usually in fussy lace gowns that made her resemble a moth cocoon with legs.
I like your eyes much more than my own, Jennet remembered William saying to her. Shall we trade?
William had changed greatly since that brief meeting. The lanky, polite older boy she remembered had grown tall and broad-shouldered, and dressed in the latest fashions for men without looking foppish. He greatly resembled his father in coloring and features, but did not share the baron’s perpetually stern expression. His dark green eyes seemed to smile even when his mouth didn’t.
Jennet felt mesmerized.
Of course, every unattached young lady inside the hall was discreetly watching the dark, handsome heir to the Greystone barony; William’s father was enormously wealthy as well as a peer of the realm. His son would someday inherit all of it, including a grand house in London as well as Gerard Lodge, a magnificent Georgian mansion on an expansive estate, making him quite the eligible bachelor. From the polished perfection of his appearance he also possessed, as her friend Catherine would say, town bronze.
She would go home this moment, Jennet decided, turning away. The last thing she needed was to spend the night mooning over a man she had met exactly once. Yet before she could take a step the door to the hall opened, making her step back.
William Gerard came outside, closing the door and blocking her path. Jennet pivoted, intending to go the other way, when his voice stopped her.
“Miss Reed.” As she turned, he bowed to her. “I have not seen you at church all month. Are you become a heathen?”
Jennet bobbed. When she lifted her chin to meet his gaze she started to reply, and then a shaft of light from the setting sun fell over them, gilding William with the softest, purest glow. He looked so resplendent in that moment she forgot her manners, her sensibility, everything.
“Where have you been?” she murmured, although her own words made absolutely no sense to her.
He looked all over her face. “Trying to find you.” He sounded as dazed as she felt.
The music and voices from within the hall dwindled away as William matched her silence and stillness with his own. Looking at him made Jennet wonder why she had ever bothered to do anything else. She imagined standing in that spot and gazing at him for years; she would not consider the time wasted. It could not happen this way, she thought in some distant corner of her mind, and yet it was. It had.
“You look so much like your father,” Jennet finally said, shocked again by how her voice sounded now, as if it came from her heart rather than her throat. “And yet, you are nothing at all like him.”
“You could not have offered a more perfect complement,” he said, smiling a little. “I miss your braids, but not the lace. Will you come and dance with me, Miss Reed?”
“I am not inclined to, Mr. Gerard, and with you…” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Perhaps it would not be wise.”
“I would agree, but I cannot help myself. You bewitch me.” William took hold of her hand, bowing down to press his mouth against her knuckles. “Shall we be foolish, then?”
The memory of meeting William Gerard for the first time faded as the straw man straightened, and Jennet came back to her senses.
“You are an unrepentant cad, Mr. Pickering.” She turned and marched after Catherine into the reception room.
As the assembled guests milled around them, Jennet took in her surroundings. The oval room’s curving walls had been repainted a snowy white, but she could see hints of older, slightly foxed paint in the nooks and curls of the ornate molding. The hundreds of crystals on both of the grand chandeliers had been cleaned, but a few dusty cobwebs still decorated the upper tiers between the sparkling prisms, likely left for the haunting effect. Long tables draped in damask and linen held punch bowls filled with spiced cider, and pitchers brimming with mulled wine encircled by rows of polished silver goblets.
“You look splendid, my dears,” an older woman told Jennet and Catherine, and then leaned closer to say in a much lower voice, “If you mean to imbibe, you should know our host has prepared a retiring room on the second floor.” She hurried off to speak to another group of new arrivals.
“Ah, the rustic nature of country manners.” Catherine gave her a rueful look. “In London no one at a ball tells you where you may find a chamber pot. I suppose that is why we ladies refrain from imbibing.”
Jennet smiled. “Now that you know, you may drink as much as you like, but I would advise you keep to the cider.”
“If you find me in my cups, then you may send me home.” Her friend looked over at a group of young men and giggled. “But not too soon, please.”
They took a turn around the reception room so that Catherine could attempt to guess which of the guests they knew. Jennet silently corrected her speculations as she used her talent for observation to determine their identities. The vicar and his wife, both short of stature and staying well away from the wine, had dressed appropriately as a shepherd and shepherdess. The Brexley spinsters Jennet recognized from their costumes as Selene, goddess of the moon, and Eos, goddess of the dawn, also sisters. They had also retreated to a corner where they might watch and whisper to each other, which is what they did at every party they attended.