The Demure Miss Manning

Mary had not an instant to protest as Louisa took her arm and bustled her away from the dowagers’ chairs. She pulled Mary through the heavy press of the crowd, so quickly there was no time to look at the people they pushed past. They nearly stumbled over one lady’s train and Mary stammered an apology.

‘Ah, Lord Sebastian! Surely you remember us. We met at Lady Alnworth’s,’ Louisa cried. Mary whipped her head back around to find they had landed right in front of Lord Sebastian. The duchess watched them with an astonished look on her face, her gloved hand on the red sleeve of her prized guest, the heroic Lord Sebastian. But Mary barely noticed the social nuances she was usually so carefully attuned to. She could only see him.

‘Lady Louisa, Miss Manning,’ he said with a bow. ‘How very good to see you again. I was hoping you would be here tonight.’

‘Were you?’ Mary blurted out, then bit her lip.

He smiled down at her, his eyes shimmering. ‘Indeed. I enjoyed our talk at Lady Alnworth’s. I did glimpse you both at the park, but did not want to interrupt your conversation. Such fine weather this morning.’

Weather? It seemed such a mundane thing to speak of after all Mary’s daydreams of his handsome face, his voice, his smile. Yet she was glad of the familiar chatter. It gave her time to compose herself. She surreptitiously smoothed her skirt and gave him a careful smile.

After a few more pleasantries about the warm days and the loveliness of the party, the duchess was reluctantly distracted by even more new arrivals and Louisa tugged on Mary’s hand.

‘Lord Sebastian, I fear dear Miss Manning was just saying the ballroom is so very crowded she feels rather faint,’ Louisa said. ‘We were just on our way to seek some fresh air, but I fear I must repair my torn hem.’

Mary looked frantically at Louisa, trying to shake her head in protest. Whatever was her friend trying to do? Her face felt flaming warm all over again. But Louisa just smiled.

‘If Miss Manning feels faint, I would be happy to escort her to the terrace for a moment. I am not so fond of crowds myself,’ Lord Sebastian said, his smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. It made him look even more handsome.

‘Lord Sebastian, really, you must not—’ Mary began, breaking off on a gasp as Louisa’s grip tightened.

‘So very kind, Lord Sebastian!’ Louisa said merrily. ‘I will join you both in just a moment.’

Louisa spun away and Lord Sebastian held out his red-clad arm to Mary.

She accepted, feeling caught up once again in a hazy, sparkling dream, and let him escort her to the half-open doors of the terrace. She was afraid to look at the people around them, afraid to look up at all, almost fearing it would all vanish.

She was also afraid he had been caught by Louisa’s machinations, that he had a thousand places where he would rather be. Yet he gave no sign of resentment at all, no indication he wanted to leave her in the nearest corner at the first chance. He held tight to her arm, smiling solicitously as if he did indeed think she might faint. He talked in a low, deep voice of more light things such as the weather and the music, things she only had to make blessedly short answers to.

She glanced at him secretly from the corner of her eye, examining his sharply chiselled profile. There was no sign of what she thought she had glimpsed at Lady Alnsworth’s, that stark second of loneliness, and then in that brief glimpse at the park. That raw, burning solitariness she herself hid so deep inside.

They slipped through the doors on to the terrace. It was an unusual space in a London house, a wide marble walkway with carved stone balustrades looking down on to a manicured garden. Down there, Chinese lanterns strung along the trees gleamed on flower beds and pale classical statues.

Along the terrace itself, potted plants created intimate little pathways, with chairs tucked behind their leafy shelter, perfect for quiet conversations. A few other couples strolled there, pale glimpses between the dark green.

The hush after the roar of the ballroom was almost deafening.

‘If I had my own house, I would make a space much like this,’ Lord Sebastian said, his voice quiet, with a rather musing tone, as if he was somewhere far away.

Mary glanced up at him, startled to see how serious he looked as he studied the garden. ‘Your own house, Lord Sebastian?’

He looked down at her, a half-smile on his lips. ‘I could hardly add it to my father’s house. He would consider a terrace a great frivolity.’

‘I sometimes think about what I would like to have in my own home, as well. I have never really had one, we move about so much. No one asks what colours one might like in lodgings! But some day...’

‘Some day a real home of one’s own would be nice.’

‘Yes, indeed.’

They stopped at the end of the terrace, where two marble balustrades met and a set of stone steps led down to the garden. The corner was sheltered by a thick bank of potted palms. It was quiet there, no sound but the faint echo of music and laughter from the ballroom, the whisper of a breeze through the trees.

Mary could almost imagine they were alone there. It was disconcerting, making her shiver with nervousness—yet it was also rather alluringly lovely. In the crowded ballroom, she had felt so alone, as she often did at large parties. Here, with just him, she didn’t feel alone at all.

‘A terrace like this could be so lovely for a luncheon party on a warm day. Or maybe a small dance party in the moonlight for just a few friends,’ she said, watching the way the breeze danced on the flowers.

‘A home where one’s true friends could gather would be a wondrous thing indeed. I have lived in camp tents so much of late, that—’ He broke off with a rueful laugh. ‘Forgive me, Miss Manning, I must be so boring. I get carried away with my own thoughts far too often these days.’

‘I’m not bored at all,’ Mary said. Rather, she was most fascinated by this tiny glimpse of the man behind the heroic Lord Sebastian Barrett. A man who might long for a real home just as she did.

‘Once, while we were camped at a field in the middle of nowhere, I saw a constellation of stars I had never noticed before,’ he said. ‘Like a diamond necklace, all sparkling against the darkness. It was wondrous.’

He looked up into the sky and Mary did the same. The darkness was just as it always was in London—hazy, with only a few very bold stars managing to peek through. Yet she could imagine what he had once seen in that field. A dazzling sparkle of lights blazing their way across a black-velvet sky, before the unimaginable carnage of a battlefield.

‘Do you ever dream of what it might be like to float up there among the stars, all untethered from—everything,’ she said fancifully. She was surprised at herself, at her sudden dreams. ‘To just—be.’

He looked down at her. He looked surprised, too, his smile so very real this time. He slowly nodded. ‘Of course. Especially here in London.’

‘Here?’ she asked. ‘Not on campaign?’

His smile turned lopsided, his eyes distant. ‘It sounds strange, I know. But with my regiment, I knew what was expected of me, what I was meant to do and how to do it well. I knew what was thought of me, what I thought of the world around me. Here—here I seem to know so little. It’s London that has become the alien world.’

Mary nodded. It was how she had felt for so long, ever since they came back to London, that she no longer knew where her place was. ‘I have never been in battle, thankfully, but it’s been a long time since I lived in London. My father and I have been our own small world for so long, the one thing I take from place to place, and it’s hard to know quite what to do now. I know I am English, that this is meant to be my home, yet—’

She broke off, unsure of what she was saying. These were thoughts she had kept pressed down so hard, not even daring to think them to herself. Her father had enough to worry about—what with losing her beloved mother and the vital importance of his work, he couldn’t worry about her, too.

Yet the strangeness of being back in England, the lonely moments—how could anyone understand?

But it seemed that, of all people, the handsome Sebastian Barrett did understand. His smile widened, a gorgeous white flash in the shadows, and he nodded. ‘It’s as if everyone here was speaking a foreign language, one I can only decipher on the surface and speak well enough to play my part passably.’

Mary was fascinated. He was the hero of society! How could he be lost? Yet she could see the dark gleam in his eye. ‘What part is that, Lord Sebastian?’

He leaned his forearms on the marble balustrade and stared out at the dark garden. ‘Oh, we all have our parts here, don’t you agree, Miss Manning? Most people have played them so long they can’t even look past them any longer. They have become what they are meant to be. When I was with my regiment, I felt that sense of rightness, that sense that I knew my duty and could carry it out well. It was a feeling everyone should have at some time in their lives, even though it might mean others then carry far too many expectations. But some of us do wonder what it would be like to float among the stars and just be, as you say.’

‘Free to find our real selves?’ Mary thought that a most astonishing, and delightful, idea. She longed to know more of his life in the Army, more of what that feeling of ‘rightness’ could entail.

‘What would you do, then, Miss Manning?’

She studied him in the half-light, the sculpted angles of his handsome face, then glanced back up at the sky. ‘I hardly know. I have worked for my family for so long.’

‘So you would be a diplomat, like your father?’

Mary laughed. ‘There are certainly things I do like about my father’s work. Doing good for one’s country, seeking peace, seeing fascinating places, meeting different people—I do like those. But there is one thing I wish was different.’

‘And what is that?’

Mary smiled up at him. Could he be truly interested in her own musings, her own inner thoughts? He looked back down at her, his smile vanished. ‘A real home. We have moved about so much, I can’t even remember what a place that was truly my own would be like.’

‘A cottage in the woods?’