"And so?" his mother demanded. "Do you think I do not know exile?"
He stopped and looked around at her.
"Trevelyan," she said, more quietly. "I will tell you something, mon ange. It is you who condemn her to exile."
He gazed at her. Then he looked away blindly.
She lowered herself to the chair again. "What will the life be with this officer who cares only for her money?"
"She says they're growing to love one another."
His mother gave him a look of scorn. "You will let another man take her from you?" she asked provocatively.
"I'm not fit for her," he said, scowling at the fading gilt on a pier mirror that was older than he was.
"Chut! Your grand-père will strike us with light ning bolts! The duc de Monceaux, twenty generations in Bourgogne, and to say you are not worthy of some English girl."
He gave a reluctant laugh at her exact imitation of his grandfather's frosty tone. "How many times have I heard that? Twenty generations in Bourgogne."
"At the measured pace you are proceeding, mon fils, I will not live to see twenty one, not any place at all."
He gave her a speaking look. "I'm not quite past that point, ma'am," he said dryly. "But if you mean to talk in this shockingly forward manner to a gentleman of my advanced years, while sitting up in your morning negligee, then you'll find yourself swept off your feet and carried directly to your sickbed."
"Bien," she said with a sigh. "You may carry me, so that Nurse will not scold, but do not disturb the Runner with a great noise on the stairs."
"I doubt a full cannonade would disturb him," Trev said and gave his hand to help his mother from her chair. "But what's this, Mademoiselle?" As she stood up, he noticed a pair of billowy yellow trousers that had been lying folded over the chair back. "Have you been cheating on me?"
"Never!" she declared, placing her arms lightly about his neck as he lifted her. "It is most mysterious. Nurse found them hung over a rafter in the attic, and we have no notion how they arrived. I meant to have Lilly put them in the rag bag."
"The rag bag! I'll have you know those cossacks cost thirty guineas."
Her fingers tightened as he mounted the stairs. "Assure me that they can't be yours, my son."
"Hmmm," he murmured. "I may have to discover if they fit me now."
"S'il te plaît!" she begged. "Spare my frail health."
Callie tried to make a daydream for herself. It was what she always did when she could not quite bear what was real. She was, as most of those who knew her had informed her with some exasperation at one time or another, quite capable of becoming so lost in her thoughts that she did not hear any words spoken to her. But this time she could find no way to lose herself in any reverie-or delusion, as they all seemed.
So she heard her sister clearly when Hermey came to her door, but she didn't rise from her place on the window seat in answer to the knock.
"At least the sky has cleared," Hermey was saying to Anne as she came in without waiting for a reply. "The mud will be horrid, but-" She stopped on the threshold, a vision in pink in her costume of Venus rising from the waves, a necklace of seashells about her throat and a foam of sparkling net and lace at her hem. "My dear sister," she said with gay reproof, "it's nearly half past six-haven't you begun to dress?"
Callie bit her lip and shook her head. "Not yet."
"Callie!" Hermey came forward. "What is it? Do you feel quite well?"
"Oh yes." She summoned a smile. "I'm all right."
Hermey reached for the bell pull. "We'll have something to eat. The Lady's Spectator strongly advises that one should always eat before a ball and take a short nap. Come and sit down, I've brought some plumes to try in your hair."
In numb obedience Callie sat before the mirror and turned her head from side to side as Hermey held up the feathers. She ate the slices of buttered bread and drank some wine without protest. She allowed Anne and her sister to dress her in the costume that the maid had created by cutting up two of Hermey's overgowns, then swath her with spangles and the blue and green gauze. Below a shortened hem, her ankles were covered by a pair of puffy silken panta loons drawn up with ribbons, and Hermey had tied tiny bells to her slippers.
It was only when her sister, reaching for some pins, instead accidentally swept a folded note out of a dish on her dressing table, that Callie awakened from her deadened state and made a sudden move. "That's nothing," she said quickly. "I'll take it." She held out her hand for the oddly shaped paper.
Hermey had been about to toss the note aside, but she paused then, a teasing expression on her lips. "What is it? Are you keeping secrets?"
"No," Callie said, with too much emphasis.
Hermey giggled. "Well, it's a night for secrets, is it not? A masquerade." She held the note just out of Callie's reach. "Is it from the major?"
"No, it is not," she retorted, realizing that she had made a grave tactical error by drawing any attention to the paper at all. She turned back to the mirror. "This plume is drooping," she said, pulling it out of the turban Anne had wrapped about her hair. "I look like Mrs. Farr's cockatoo after a disorderly night on the town."
Hermey made as if to unfold the note, and Callie grabbed for it. She managed to seize it from her sister's hand, but then there was no escape. She felt herself blushing fiercely as Hermey and Anne both stared at her.
"I heard a whisper about something," Hermey said with a smirk.
Callie felt her heart go to her feet. She glanced at Anne, saw the maid bite her lower lip, and suddenly knew that the servants had been talking. Her mouth went dry. She gripped the note in her hand and turned away.
"Callie?" The bantering tone left her sister's voice, replaced by wonder, as if before she had only been teasing but now she saw more than she had expected in Callie's reaction.
"I'd like to take my nap now," Callie said.
"You can't lie down now that you're dressed," Hermey pointed out, "or you will look like a demented parrot. You should have rested earlier. What have you been doing in here all afternoon?" she demanded.
"Merely watching the rain and reading a little." Callie plucked all the feathers from her headdress. "I'll come to your room in a little while, and you can put them in again. I only want to doze for a few minutes first, to refresh myself."
Hermey looked at her and then at Anne. The maid cast down her eyes and stood with the dumb and blind expression that Lady Shelford encouraged in her servants. "All right," she said, favoring Callie with another speculative glance. "You may read your love letter in peace. I'll send for you at quarter to eight. That should give us time."
Callie waited until they had both gone out. She waited for some little time longer, just to be sure Hermey would not find some excuse to come back. Then she opened her fist and looked down at the note in it.
She had meant to tear it up. Almost, as she fingered the thick seal of wax, she did so. She hadn't sent any ticket for the masquerade to the Antlers, of course. If Mrs. Fowler wished to find him, she would have to chase after him herself. On a broomstick.