Page 2 of The Beloved Escapade

Not today, though. Not when Uncle Henry was coming. He was the fresh wind that blew through the closed-up rooms of her life. He brought the outside in.

She turned back to the window.

The light had lifted a little. The frost was thinning at the edges. She could hear the housemaids moving about, the soft swish of skirts and the thump of a coal scuttle. Cook would be at the range with her sleeves rolled up. Papa would be in his study with his morning letters. Mama would still be at her dressing table, telling Bessy which cap to bring out.

Uncle Henry would arrive when he arrived. Papa always said a civil man would send word ahead. Uncle Henry never did and always looked puzzled when Papa brought it up, as if the post had been invented just to vex him.

Lucy smiled at the thought.

Then she saw the rider.

He came around the bend at a fast trot. A dark figure on a dark horse, both of them breathing white into the cold air. He came up the drive like a man with somewhere important to be. Her heart gave a hard, glad kick inside her chest. An outrider. He had never sent one before, but maybe this time he had. Uncle Henry must be close behind. Any minute now, the carriage would come into view.

She watched the man reach the sweep in front of the door and swing down, a groom running from the yard to take the reins. The rider kept his leather satchel and went up the steps with quick purpose.

Please let Uncle Henry be right behind him. Please, please, please.

She stepped back from the window and clapped her hands once and turned in a circle. She could not go down like this. Nightgown and braid from last night. She needed to be dressed. Now.

She ran to the bellpull and yanked it hard three times.

Bessy came in less than a minute, the way she did when she smelled trouble. She stopped in the doorway with her hands on her hips and scowled at Lucy.

“An outrider,” Lucy said, breathless. “There is an outrider. Uncle Henry must be right behind him. Bessy, I need to dress. The moss green. It suits me best. And my hair up. With the green ribbon.”

Bessy did not exactly smile, but her mouth twitched at the corner.

“An outrider, is it?”

“Bessy, please.”

“On your birthday morning, with the ground still white? Miss Lucy, your uncle is not the sort to send a man ahead. He is the sort to arrive with a stray dog he found on the road and expect Cook to feed it.”

“He did that once.”

“Twice, if I remember right. And Cook still has not forgiven him for what it did to her larder.”

But Bessy was already moving, taking the moss-green gown from the wardrobe and shaking it out over the bed. She helped Lucy out of her nightgown and washed her face and hands and neck with the hot water from the ewer. Lucy stood as still as she could while Bessy buttoned and tied the gown and fastened the little brooch that had been Grandmama’s. Then Bessy sat her down and brushed out the braid with long, slow strokes.

Lucy could not keep still. She fiddled with her skirts and kept glancing toward the window, wondering if Uncle Henry was already turning in at the gates and telling the post-boys to hurry because he had a birthday girl waiting.

“Bessy, the ribbon⁠—”

“The ribbon is right here in my hand, Miss Lucy. I have not forgotten which one.”

“Faster!”

“Not on your life. If I go faster, you will have tangles and I will be an hour working them out.”

That threat worked. Lucy sat still after that.

Bessy pinned the knot at the top of her head and threaded the green ribbon through it. Lucy looked at herself in the glass. The knot was more than she would usually wear for a morning at home, but a visit from Uncle Henry was worth the effort.

She was ordinary, as Mama said with regret and Papa said with satisfaction. Neither tall nor graceful, hair neither black nor gold but the plain brown painters did not like, hazel eyes that could not decide on a color, and a chin that set stubborn when someone told her she could not do something.

But the moss-green suited her, and her cheeks were still pink from the wash. When Uncle Henry came, he would say she was a beauty, and she would blush at the compliment and pretend to believe him, and Papa would clear his throat and Mama would sigh, and everything would be the way it always was.

A door closed below, and she heard voices in the hall.