You May Kiss the Bride(43)
“So I’m told.” A yawn threatened, and quickly Livia swallowed it with a sip of lemonade. Was Mr. Olivet boring her on purpose? Surely this wasn’t how everyone in Bath talked at dinner-parties. Maybe she could improve matters by introducing a perfectly unexceptional change in topic. But what might that be? Her brain skittered wildly. Then something came to her. “I hope,” she said, “to soon visit Godwin’s Circulating Library—”
“Whatever for?”
“Why, to take out a book or two, about—”
“A book?” He scrutinized her more closely. “Not a bluestocking, are you?”
“Hardly. But—”
“Oppressive females, bluestockings, and not the thing. Wouldn’t wish any of my sisters to stuff their heads with learning. Men don’t like it. I say, here’s the fellow with some fish—stewed trout, is it?—excellent! Well, well, Miss Stuart, what do you think? Rain tomorrow?”
Defiantly Livia rejected the trout and accepted boiled capon, thinly sliced, and served with a delicate saffron sauce.
Lady Gibbs-Smythe turned to Livia and smiled benignly. “Did I hear you mention Godwin’s, Miss Stuart?”
“Yes, your ladyship. I hope to visit there very soon.”
“I am a great reader myself. Last year—or was it the year before? Yes, to be sure it was the year before, when I was staying in Kent with the Duke and Duchess of Wetherby—are you acquainted with them? The most affable couple in the ton. I vow I am devoted to them both! Her brother and my brother, you know, were at Eton together. You must meet the duchess’s brother, Carlton. He is the dearest man in the world, and such a jokester! Always putting frogs in the beds! Oh, no, not Carlton—how silly of me! His name is Theodore. But of course, everyone calls him Theo. Do you know him?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Oh, you ought to! At any rate, one afternoon it rained, and also I had slightly twisted my ankle the day before. No, no, two days before. Running down the stairs like the veriest girl! And I a grandmother. I wonder if you might know my youngest daughter, Miss Sarah Dauncey that was? She was at Miss Bassenstoke’s Select Academy in Kensington. You are quite of an age. Or perhaps you are younger? I must introduce you. The most delightful girl in England, I assure you. She married de Cheuvre—the dearest fellow!—and now has two children of her own. Or is it three?”
Her ladyship looked at Livia as if she would know, but before Livia could do more than helplessly open her mouth, Lady Gibbs-Smythe plunged gaily on.
“So there I was, simply dashing down the stairs, and it was on the next to last step that my ankle turned quite underneath me. Or perhaps the step before that. I was wearing the sweetest little slippers, sky blue, with white ribbons. Although now I come to think on it, they may have been silver. How Lord Gibbs-Smythe teased me afterwards! Insisting that I was inebriated! He has such an engaging sense of humor, and is forever sending me off into absolute gales of laughter.”
“Indeed,” Livia murmured, hating the way she sounded exactly like Aunt Bella, and also the fact that she was so bored right now that she’d gladly take a swig of Aunt Bella’s cordial.
“Yes, gales! Having positively limped into the drawing-room—or was it one of the saloons? Yes, it was one of the saloons, for I distinctly recall the charming wallpaper. It was mauve, in the French style. Or was it yellow? And I quite devoured that novel—oh dear, what was it called? Wonderfully Gothic, and the story was simply riveting! The Romance of the Grove? Dangers in the Forest? I was there all the afternoon, and finished three chapters entirely. So you see,” her ladyship finished victoriously, “I am quite the reader.”
Now that she thought about it, Livia mused balefully, it would be better to pour a large dose of Aunt Bella’s cordial into Lady Gibbes-Smythe’s glass instead. Lady Gabs-Smythe was more like it. Why had she even bothered reading all those books and newspapers?
Her ladyship had turned once more to the gentleman on her left, and Livia looked down the table again, to Gabriel. He was tonight utterly the cool, elegant, imperious-looking gentleman. She watched as he responded with courteous reserve to a remark from his own neighbor, a rotund dowager sporting an immense spangled turban festooned on one side with a long, broad ribbon, the gaily fringed end of which seemed likely to end up in her plate at any moment.
She wondered what Gabriel was saying.
Was he bored also?
He seemed infinitely far away from her.
Mr. Olivet began to talk about the wind possibly rising later that evening, and Livia simply stopped listening. Instead she rehearsed in her mind all the steps Monsieur Voclaine had been teaching her.