A Christmas Cotillion

Chapter 1 What on earth am I doing here? Jonathan Cavendish, Esquire wondered for the twentieth time that day, while he maintained a pleasant social smile for the bespectacled older gentleman talking to him. He knew there was no real reason why he shouldn’t be enjoying himself. He and the other guests were three days into a two-week visit to Abbeyfield House in Northamptonshire for Christmas. His hosts, the Grant family, were numerous and gregarious and as providers of hospitality, both generous and unpretentious. As a result, the invited company was varied and convivial. He should be relaxing and embracing the agreeably unsophisticated entertainment like his fellow guests, and on the surface, he was doing exactly that; being a good sport, joining in the seasonal fun and games, making congenial conversation with the young and not so young of the party, both male and female. All the same, some inner, deeper part of him could not or would not allow him to let down his guard and unbend. He’d had to be persuaded on two fronts to leave his much less welcoming home for the Christmas period. Must be something to do with being lord of the manor, he thought with a sardonic grin, as his noble domain was merely a tumbledown farmhouse surrounded by lands that had gone to seed. At least, that’s how it had been five years previously when he had inherited the property from an elderly uncle. Nowadays, after a great deal of hard work, the main house was restored, or at least weatherproofed, and the land was starting to break even. His man of business, or less pretentiously and more realistically, farm manager, had encouraged him to accept this invitation. “You haven’t had any time away in these past years, except trips to town to negotiate with the bank,” he’d said. Jonathan had guessed that his steward needed a break from him more than anything and was looking forward to a full fortnight without Jonathan driving him almost as hard as he did himself. “You can’t keep working all hours like this. You’ll make yourself ill,” he’d added, surprisingly firmly. It was this genuine concern for his well-being that really made Jonathan pause. This appeal was coupled with another persuasive force, due entirely to his cousin Freddy. Jonathan flicked a glance over the company to see that young man’s fair head bobbing about amongst the youthful dancers. Freddy had declared himself to be madly in love. This was nothing new, as the romantically-inclined young man had made similar declarations on a semi-regular basis. This time, however, he was seriously thinking of making a proposal of marriage to the object of his affections. So, his mother, Jonathan’s Aunt Matilda, had pleaded that Jonathan accompany Freddy to these festivities to which both Freddy and the young lady had been invited, so he could supervise the progress of this romance. “Not that I don’t trust Freddy’s judgement,” Aunt Matilda had said dubiously, “but it would set my mind at ease if you were there to keep an eye on him.” As head of the family, he would have felt grudgingly obliged to find someone suitable to chaperone his feckless but charming young cousin. But his aunt’s appeal to his better nature was very hard to resist and he was very fond of her. As a widow with numerous children, she depended on and deferred to his opinion with open gratitude. He was only thirty but he often felt almost twice his age, with so many people reliant on him. Perhaps this was why he could not quite let go, even in this happy, celebratory atmosphere, while making an apparently considered response to the white-haired elderly man with his long hair tied back in an old-fashioned queue. The chat he was idly taking a part in widened to include another gentleman and Jonathan was no longer really required. Looking about, he spotted a young lady, sitting on her own looking a little sad for she was lacking a dancing partner. As he took her arm and they joined the fray, and receiving a delighted smile, he thought of Freddy’s current inamorata, Belinda. Steering his animated partner through the familiar patterns of a country dance, Jonathan mused on that other young woman. During the journey together, Freddy had eulogised on her sterling qualities. An angel sent down from heaven and a flaxen Venus were some of the epithets on her loveliness. Jonathan was amused, rather than taken in by this enthusiasm, especially since he had heard enraptured utterings on a similar theme about Freddy’s previous amours. Nevertheless, some of this high-flown praise must have rubbed off on him, as when he met Belinda, he was rather taken aback by her appearance. She was not at all the rather showy and mildly flirtatious blonde he was half-expecting. She was pretty in a quiet, neat-featured way. Her hair was indeed light in colour, but tidily arranged, rather than the glowing halo Freddy had fervently described and her manner and attire were similarly modest. Having continued to observe her in the few days they’d been there, he was less and less certain of Freddy’s mother’s anxieties that her son’s good nature was being taken advantage of by a designing girl on a husband hunt. In fact, the relative who was accompanying her, much as Jonathan was Freddy, seemed a great deal keener to push her young charge towards Freddy than the young lady was herself. Jonathan was starting to consider whether Belinda found Freddy’s demonstrations of affection a little overwhelming. She had not responded with unbridled eagerness to Freddy’s enthusiastic entrees. She smiled politely but was the same with Freddy as she was with the other young men in the party. There seemed to be no partiality towards him. Jonathan reckoned that behind that rather delicate, youthful appearance was a sensible person who knew her own mind. As he turned and stepped with and twirled his young dance partner, he made a mental note to find some way of getting Belinda alone to discover her real feelings, without any interruptions from her chaperone or Freddy. The dance ended with a flourish from the musicians and he bowed politely to the now happily flushed girl and gracefully handed her on to her next dance partner, glad for some respite.