We had been making our way toward another, larger room, and now I could hear the intriguing sounds of unfamiliar instruments. As we entered that next room I saw a half dozen or so negroes clustered in a far corner with two or three drumlike instruments and a fiddle or two and some horns, which they played with nearly professional skill.
In time, the dancing began. Miss MacKinnon claimed me for a reel almost immediately and for several dances thereafter. She was pleasant enough, but not a particularly interesting conversationalist. Her attention was flattering, I suppose, but I didn’t want it to appear that I was particularly attached to her. I danced with various other young women as well, though I think it was not that I was so desirable a partner, but simply that their lives were so limited that any stranger was a welcome change. Despite the attention I garnered, I kept my eye on Richard, hoping he would give me some kind of sign when his sister appeared. Yet it was well into the evening before a bustle of activity at the doorway announced the arrival of a cluster of young ladies. Everyone paused to watch them flit into the room like a covey of bright birds. No sooner had I stopped to watch than I felt a hand on my arm. Expecting Richard, I turned—and found myself once more in the company of Miss MacKinnon. “It’s your Miss Mason,” she whispered.
“My Miss Mason?”
“Well, you are staying with them, are you not?”
“In truth, I am not,” I said.
“Truly?”
I could not help smiling at her obvious pleasure with that news. “Truly.”
But Richard was there at my elbow by then, pulling me away from Miss MacKinnon. “You must meet her; you simply must,” he urged.
The circle parted as we approached, almost as if they were expecting us, and I saw in the center of that group the most astonishing-looking woman I have ever seen. She was tall, as tall as I at least, and she had masses of black hair that shone as if it had been oiled and that fell into curls that framed her face and clustered on her shoulders and hung down her back nearly to her waist. She was dark skinned, but not as dark as I, and her eyes were black, with thick black lashes. She wore a dress of brilliant red with some sort of bangles on it, and that dress was cut in such a way as to leave little to the imagination. She stood among her coterie of friends like a queen, proud and elegant and stunning.
“My dear sister,” Richard said as we came close, “may I present Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester. Rochester, my sister, Miss Mason—Miss Bertha Antoinetta Mason.”
Bowing over her hand, I said, “I prefer Edward, if you please.”
She smiled broadly. “But I don’t please,” she said. “I prefer Fairfax. And you may call me Antoinetta.”
It was my turn to smile then. And to be unconventional. “I shall call you Bertha,” I said.
Her eyes clouded for a moment, but her smile remained.
Chapter 5
We danced a few times that evening, she radiant and glowing, the silk of her dress slipping through my hands as I struggled to hold her in a fashion that would not appear unseemly. I was nervous and found myself nearly stumbling through the sets. She laughed at my missteps, a deep, vibrant laugh, her breath warm against my cheek when the dance brought us close. “You are new to this music?” she asked.
“Yes, I am,” I replied. “But I am sure I will learn.”
“You will, Fairfax, you will indeed,” she said. She smiled at me, her lips parting to reveal perfect teeth, the hint of a tongue flashing between them. I felt as if she owned me already.
I reminded myself as we danced that I had never cared for dark-haired women, but I had never known—never seen—a creature like her. When she stared directly into my eyes, which, unlike so many women, she often did, I felt as if she saw into my soul, saw all that I was, and when she smiled, I felt the kind of approbation I had always hoped for. When she danced with other men, my heart turned in my chest. I knew it was jealousy, and it made no difference at all that I had no claim to be jealous. She was courted at that ball, and at the balls to come, by nearly all the eligible young men in the neighborhood, and some who were neither eligible nor young. I looked for signs that she preferred me, but I never saw any, but neither did I see a sign that she preferred anyone else.
“So!” Richard grinned as we rode back to Valley View the following afternoon, still recovering from the ball, which had lasted through the night. “Is she not the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?”
“Actually,” I responded, just to tease him, “I have always preferred fair ladies.”
Richard’s head turned so quickly toward me that I thought it might fall right off his neck. “Really? Really? In preference to my sister?”
I laughed. “She is striking,” I admitted. And she was. But I would not allow myself to fall so easily as that. No, it took at least another event or two before I could admit to myself that I must have Miss Bertha Antoinetta Mason as my bride. However, I was sure I wasn’t the only young man with such thoughts, for wherever Bertha went, men dropped whatever they were doing and clustered around her as honeybees to clover. But I hoped, given what my father had told me about his friendship and history with Mr. Mason, that my chances might be higher than most. Indeed, it had almost seemed that my father had promised her to me.
It was Bertha’s custom to arrive late in order to make the kind of entrance I had seen at Monteith. She would dance for an hour or two and then leave. She did not single me out particularly, but we usually danced together two or three or four times, and she always managed to charm and flatter me to the point where it was all I could do to keep myself from running off with her. But inevitably she would flit away with another man, or with her friends, and be, once again, lost to me.