Cousin Cecilia by Joan Smith Page B

all that.” She shot a meaningful glance down the table to Alice and George.
    Mrs. Meacham smiled in agreement. “That there will. A match you came to make, and a match there will be.”
    “Perhaps two,” Cecilia suggested.
    Turning, she noticed that Sally Gardener stood directly behind her, with her ears on the stretch. And let us see what you make of that, my girl, she thought to herself. The snatch of conversation was forgotten in an instant by Cecilia, but it found a restless home at the bottom of Sally’s heart, where it festered sorely.
    Five miles away at Jack Duck’s Tavern, Lord Wickham sat with a glass before him, staring into its depth with unseeing eyes. Across the room a girl—Irish he thought, with her skin tinted brown—performed an ungainly imitation of an Egyptian belly dance to some discordant tune. He was ineffably sad for her, and for himself, and for Peg, the woman who sat at his elbow, trying to cheer him up. He was generally amused by Peg. Her rough speech revealed a sharp good humor and a lively wit. Tonight he wished her at Jericho. He was only half listening to her story about some swell from the city who was trying to lure her away. His eyes flickered from group to group, all of them ramshackle people.
    They were mostly young bucks, thinking themselves daring to be in this den of iniquity, drinking blue ruin and gambling more than they could afford. And the older ones were worse; at least the youngsters would grow out of it. A pair of aging gents sat across from him, men in their forties, drinking noisy toasts to a pair of trollops young enough to be their daughters. People with nothing to do—like himself. He could have gone to Mrs. Meacham’s rout. At least the company would have been respectable, if dull.
    “So I says to him—are you listening at all, Wickham?” He nodded to Peg. “I says to him, ‘What kind of a girl do you think I am?’ And he says, ‘You’re not a girl.’ I made sure he was giving me a dig at my age, but no, he goes on to say, ‘I hope I know a lady when I see one.’ A fine gent he was, but married, of course. You can always spot the married ones. They have a guilty look about them, coming to a place like this. Like boys running away from school. Take you now, you’d never mistake you for a married man.”
    “Would you not, Peg? I was married, you know.”
    “Was you really, Wickham? I never knew it. Have you got any kiddies?”
    “No.”
    “You wife’s dead, is she?”
    “Yes.”
    “I wager she was a grand lady. What was she like?”
    “Pretty.”
    “It’s too bad she went and died on you.” She lifted her glass and drank. “You must be thinking about her tonight. You look sad. You need a drink, Wickham. Drink up, the night’s young.”
    “But I’m not.” Till that point, he had not been thinking about his wife, but Peg’s words called up her image. “What was she like?” She was tall, blonde, with a face like a Grecian statue, and about as much life. He had been a fool to marry her for her beauty, but not the first young fool to make that error. Really it wasn’t fair to say she had no life; that cold reserve had broken down once she met her banker, Mr. Gregory. His image was sharply etched in Wickham’s brain as well. A handsome rattle, with a second-rate character and no mind worth the name.
    Wickham had thought Adrianna shy at first, shy and very beautiful, like the proverbial violet blooming unseen. He had thought he would draw her out, but he’d never succeeded. Nothing worked. Not compliments, not tenderness, not patience, certainly not the irritable impatience that had finally grown in him. He often wondered if her parents had pushed the match on her. It couldn’t have been for money. Her father was rich.
    Very likely it was the title, so overvalued by those who didn’t have one. If that was the case, it was the father who aspired to a connection with the nobility. Adrianna’s Mr. Gregory had no handle to his name, but she