Mary left the window and took a slow visual turn of her room. The maid had called it the iris bedchamber, and indeed the wallpaper was patterned with delicately drawn flowers. The drapes and bedcover echoed the deep blue of the irises, and a dark golden wingback chair by the fire offered a welcome accent. The furniture was neither as dark nor as heavy as the pieces in her room at Stewkesbury House, which pleased Mary as well. Perhaps, she thought, it would not be so bad here after all.
That hopeful idea was doused the following day, however, when Miss Dalrymple set out in earnest to train the Bascombe girls into proper young ladies. First she tested their skills in the various arts required of a girl about to make her debut, marching them into the music room to play the piano and sing, then taking them to the nursery for a bit of watercolor and charcoal drawing. It did not take her long to discover that none of the girls had the slightest ability to draw and had not, indeed, ever picked up a paintbrush. Their musical skills were almost as horrifying to her, for while all four girls could carry a tune and Camellia, at least, had a nice, clear voice, only Lily could play the piano, and her skills were limited to a few rollicking popular songs.
When they moved on to sewing, Mary had higher hopes, but she soon found out that Miss Dalrymple was not impressed by the girls’ ability at such prosaic things as making dresses or mending rents or tears. What she wanted was fine needlework like embroidery.
“But making a frock is more useful,” Mary pointed out. “Rose is an excellent seamstress. She makes nearly all our dresses. We help with the seams, of course, but the fine work is hers.”
“Don’t!” Miss Dalrymple raised both hands, her eyes rounded in horror. “Don’t ever tell anyone that! It will positively ruin your chances.”
“Why? I would think it would be a good thing to be able to make one’s clothes.”
“You might as well tell everyone you can chop wood or scrub the floors.”
“Well, we can, though I was never very good with an axe.”
Miss Dalrymple looked for a moment as if her eyes might roll back in her head. She dropped into a chair and fanned herself furiously to regain her poise. “I haven’t the time to teach you all the skills you lack. We will concentrate on the most important. You cannot hope to ‘take’ if you cannot dance.”
“We can dance,” Lily protested.
“I do not mean a jig.” The older woman sent her a withering glance. “I mean the quadrille, the cotillion, the country dance, and the waltz. These are the essential dances for every ball, and until you have mastered them, it would be an absolute disaster to take you to even a county assembly.”
The girls began a daily routine of deportment lessons after breakfast, followed by a luncheon with Miss Dalrymple that was primarily an exercise in table manners and in learning the names and uses of a dizzying array of utensils and dishes. Next came instruction in music and singing, ending finally with a dance lesson in the small ballroom. It was, Mary thought, a testament to their teacher’s grim character that she managed to turn even normally pleasurable things such as singing and dancing into boring drudgery.#p#分页标题#e#
At first the girls danced with each other, but when Miss Dalrymple realized that the girls were dancing the men’s steps even when they should be following the women’s, she called in Sir Royce to serve as their partner. Royce was agreeable, as he usually proved to be, and his presence greatly enlivened the lessons. He was an excellent dancer, and even Mary, who had up until now declared herself hopeless on the dance floor, found it easy to follow the steps. Moreover, he kept up such an easy, effortless flow of chatter that she found herself paying more attention to his voice than to the movement of her feet, and, amazingly, before long she was able to sail through an entire dance without any stumbles or missteps.
The country dances were the easiest for the girls, for they closely resembled the reels that were popular at home. The quadrille and the cotillion, with their numerous couples and intricate patterns of steps, were more difficult, and it was almost impossible, with their small group of participants, to replicate what an actual dance would be like. But it was the waltz that captured their attention.
“Now, the waltz,” Miss Dalrymple began, her mouth pinching up, “has not always been considered proper. A few years back you would not have found it approved at an assembly in the country, and it was not introduced into Almack’s until ten years ago. Indeed, I am not convinced that it is the sort of dance that a young girl should be allowed to do. In particular, I have grave misgivings about teaching it to a group of girls who are, well, less than genteel in so much of their manner.”