Laura Matthews by A Very Proper Widow

she pooh-poohed the matter. Yes, she did,” he insisted, as though someone had contradicted him. “After twelve years, you would think she understood the delicacy of my constitution.”
    Alvescot heard his elaborate sigh all the way out on the terrace. Twelve years! The earl could scarcely believe his ears. Surely Oldcastle could not have been courting the woman for that long. And yet, on second thought, considering the two people involved, he would not have sworn it wasn’t true. How the devil did Mrs. Damery put up with all these fools?
    The sound of chairs being shifted in the dining room recalled his attention and he followed the other gentlemen back into the Saloon where Louisa was already seated at the pianoforte in anticipation of their return. Coached by her mother, who regularly seemed to forget her daughter was over thirty years old, she meekly asked Alvescot if he had any preference in music.
    Mr. Oldcastle glared at this sign of preferentiality, and Alvescot demurred. “Please play what you like best, Miss Curtiss. I’m sure we’ll all enjoy it if it’s a favorite of yours.”
    Louisa took her time deciding. She thumbed her way through a bundle of music sheets, first setting aside one and then another. Finally her mother, exasperated, moved forward, forcefully removed the sheets from her daughter’s hands, tapped a finger against one resting on the pianoforte and said, “Play that.”
    And she did. To Alvescot’s surprise, she played extraordinarily well, as though every ounce of her talent was invested in her music. While she played, an idiotic half-smile sat firmly on her lips, no doubt trained into obedience by her mother. But the music she played was expressive and moving; her hands had a life of their own which imbued the strains with feeling one could not have guessed by looking at her face.
    “Admirable,” Alvescot pronounced when she concluded the piece. “I haven’t heard a better performance in months, Miss Curtiss. Would you honor us with another?”
    Louisa willingly acquiesced, looking pleased at his tribute. The reaction of the others varied from disdain to surprise. The captain, having no ear for music, barely tolerated any performance at all and sat scowling at poor Louisa, while Mr. Oldcastle, surprised but delighted at this commendation of his (sometime) beloved, thumped a foot in time, more or less, to the new piece she played. Edward slipped out onto the terrace as his mother cast significant glances at Vanessa, clearly indicating her immodest pride in her daughter’s accomplishment. Hortense and Mabel then talked to one another in insufficiently lowered voices.
    Not waiting for the song to be concluded, the captain stalked from the room. Alvescot shook his head in disbelief at this new evidence of rudeness, but could get no rise from Vanessa, who met his eyes with an impartial gaze of her own. If he expected her to be apologetic for her household, he was far off, he decided, though he felt sure she no more condoned this behavior than he did. Really, he must do something about her intolerable situation—if only for Frederick’s sake.
    This conclusion was reinforced several hours later, after three hands of boring, bickering-filled whist, when he himself escaped from the company to stroll about the grounds just as dusk was falling. The captain had not returned, nor had Edward, and a certain curiosity drew him to the spinney mentioned earlier. Its existence he remembered well, for it had been the spot in which he had sought solitude as a boy visitor to Cutsdean. The summer night was filled with the gentle sounds of insects and a warm breeze floating over the undulating landscape. Without precisely pinpointing why, he did not approach the spinney in a direct route from the house but circled around by the pebble walk which came from the south and skirted the stand of trees.
    As he approached, he knocked his pipe out onto the pebbles and stamped the smoldering tobacco until it was