Free Animating Maria by MC Beaton

chair.
    She sat and rested her head on her hand. What if this very expensive Season came and went and she did not find someone to love? Her parents would never forgive her. Her life would return to that old hell of nagging and bullying. She had a chance of becoming the Duchess of Berham. She would go to court, be presented to the Queen and the Prince Regent. She would be a failure, a disgrace, no more in the eyes of her parents. Freedom, he had promised. Freedom to have friends, freedom to dream, freedom to read all the books she wanted. And the Tribble sisters, of whom she had become so very fond, would have a great success. Their charge engaged to a duke before she had even made her début!
    If he had said something, if he had interrupted her thoughts, she might have refused him. But he sat down again and waited quietly.
    After a time, when she did not speak, he found himself becoming irritated and anxious. What was up with the girl? Any other woman in the land would have jumped at such an opportunity.
    At last she raised those fine eyes of hers and looked at him. There was a trace of sadness in them as she said quietly, ‘Very well. I accept.’
    ‘You have made me the happiest of men,’ he replied politely.
    ‘I doubt that,’ said Maria with a sudden gurgle of laughter. ‘You look as if you have just successfully bid for a horse.’
    ‘My dear Miss Kendall, I am not entirely without romance in my soul.’
    ‘I think you are,’ sighed Maria. ‘But you have offered me freedom and what a beautiful word that is.’ Her face clouded over.
    ‘Now what is wrong?’ he asked gently.
    ‘I assume you will be travelling to Bath to ask my parents’ permission?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘You have never met my parents. They may come as a shock to you.’
    ‘I am not high in the instep. It is you I plan to marry, not your parents.’
    Maria shook her head. ‘You are very proud. I will make you a promise. If, after meeting my parents, you decide not to marry me, I shall understand.’
    ‘I find it distressing in you that you are obviously ashamed of your parents and yet you call
me
proud.’
    ‘Make no mistake about it, I love my parents because they are my parents and their harsh treatment of me is prompted in part by wishing the best for me, but they do disaffect people. Please, your grace, send them an express warning them of your arrival or they will set out for London, and, please, see if I can be married from the Tribbles’ home.’
    ‘You are fond of those oddities?’
    ‘The Tribbles? Yes. Very. They are kind and funny and generous.’
    ‘And quite mad,’ he said. ‘I feel they have done nothing to earn this social success.’
    ‘When you speak like that,’ said Maria, ‘I am afraid I might be in danger of taking you in dislike.’
    He looked at her in genuine surprise. Dukes were never disliked.
    ‘I shall take you back to the Tribbles,’ he said, putting down her last remark to nervousness.
    The house in Holles Street was in an uproar when they arrived. Amy was lying on a sofa in the drawing room, wrapped in a quilted banyan and with a turban on her shorn locks. Effy was walking up and down, her many gauze scarves floating about her. Mr Haddon was studying that announcement in
The Morning Post
through a quizzing-glass, and Mr Randolph was sipping tea, trying to look helpful and wondering whether eating one of the delicious cakes on the plate in front of him would show signs of a lack of sensibility.
    ‘It’s some mad, cruel joke,’ said Effy again. ‘Someone is trying to ruin us. And where is Maria?’
    ‘Her parents, I gather,’ said Mr Haddon, ‘sent her to you in part to cure her of dreaming. Could she not have decided in her dreams that this duke was in love with her and put these advertisements in herself?’
    Amy looked stricken. It was beginning to sound like the sort of thing Maria
would
do.
    And then Harris announced the arrival of the Duke of Berham and Miss Kendall. Helped by Mr