by Mira Stables
“Good gracious! A paragon indeed. I can scarcely wait to meet him in the flesh. Has he no faults?”
Margaret considered her reply carefully. “Not faults,” she said fairly. “One foible—that made me take him in mild dislike. He shuns the society of single females, preferring that of married ladies. Perhaps one should not blame him too much. Ever since he was thrown upon the town he has been much harassed and hunted. I daresay he has been subjected to every device and trap known to a matchmaking mama. But—I am sorry for it—it is sheer prejudice—it still seems unnatural to me for a man of his age—and he must be all of five and thirty—to prefer the role of cicisbeo to the normal paths of courtship, betrothal and marriage. It is not as though he was the victim of a consuming passion for one particular female who had married some one else. In such a case one would be obliged to feel some compassion. But no, it is simply that he prefers to attach himself to some acknowledged diamond who is unattainable because she is already married. Which, you will admit, is quite another pair of shoes.”
Perhaps it was because she was not expecting very much that Anna found Sir Aubrey perfectly charming. At Lady Holroyd’s direction he took her in to dinner, and very correctly divided his attention between her and his other neighbour. But when he did turn to her, his conversation was very entertaining, and even when he was apparently engrossed in a tedious account of a very dull play that the other lady had recently attended, he managed to attend to Anna’s needs in an unobtrusive fashion that was very comfortable, since her other neighbour was not only hard of hearing but was plainly much more interested in his own dinner than in doing the polite to a lady, be she never so attractive.
When the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room, Sir Aubrey made no bones about his pleasure in her company, coming straight to her side and keeping her amused with his apt comments on a number of mutual acquaintances. He was not malicious, though he had a knack of light-hearted caricature that had her chuckling more than once. He paid her one or two compliments, and although she was no longer so naive as to believe them to be sincerely meant, he did it so beautifully that she was left with the feeling that they stemmed from genuine liking and approval.
Sir Aubrey was a skilled practitioner, but this impression was not wholly unjustified. He was inclined to be very pleased with young Lady Wellasford. Indeed, he was almost prepared to believe that she would do. While not a classical beauty, her looks were striking, her figure was delightful and she had excellent style. Moreover Caro Holroyd had given him to understand that the Wellasford marriage was purely one of convenience, so the lady’s husband was unlikely to make trouble. Not that there would be anything to make trouble about. Sir Aubrey’s attachments were conducted with the utmost discretion and were surface affairs that never outlasted one Season. He would as soon have thought of wearing an outmoded wig or last year’s waistcoat as of paying his attentions to last year’s flirt. It was his custom to select some charming and popular young matron and use all his savoir-faire to win her favour in the face of all contenders. It was a sport at which he excelled. And as Margaret had shrewdly noted, he preferred married ladies. He could not then be accused of arousing expectations that he had no thought of fulfilling. He decided to invite Lady Wellasford to drive in the Park with him on the following day. That would give him a chance to assess her quality without committing him too far.
He had, alas, made one serious miscalculation. Julian, while outwardly perfectly affable, had not cared for the way in which Drysdale had singled out his wife. At so small and intimate a party he should have bestowed his attentions more evenly. It was bad form, to say the least of it. Julian, who had been amused and secretly flattered by the adoring gambols of Anna’s youthful admirers, had decided at once that Sir Aubrey was a little too much of a good thing. If he was not actually a rake or a man of the town, he was a good ten or twelve years older than the inocent Anna, and infinitely more experienced. But though Julian might be the merest novice in the art of managing the female sex, he had, during his military career, learned a good deal about the handling of headstrong youngsters. To criticise Sir Aubrey at this stage of the game would, he felt, be a strategic error, perfectly calculated to set up all his wife’s prickles, the more so since she seemed to be pleasantly impressed with the mountebank. So he allowed him to be a very pleasant sort of fellow, assured Anna that in winning his admiration she might now consider herself to be socially top-of-the-trees, and regretted that he personally had enjoyed so little opportunity of furthering his acquaintance with the gentleman.
He was a little startled to discover in himself a distinct sensation of disappointment, even annoyance, when Anna mentioned her engagement to drive with Sir Aubrey. It so chanced that this was the first occasion on which any one had usurped his privilege in this respect. The members of Anna’s juvenile court were mostly unable to afford the dashing vehicles and the blood horses that were essential if one wished to invite a lady to drive in the park. Especially when the lady’s husband drove such fine cattle. Thus Julian had come insensibly to count upon this hour as his, the more so since further riding lessons had long been found unnecessary. Anna had become a reasonably competent whip, but when they were in Town she still preferred to be driven. There was so much to see, so many friends to be acknowledged that one could not enjoy the exercise of a skill so recently acquired. She reserved that enjoyment for the occasions when they paid a brief visit to Wellasford, or sometimes, if there were few people about, at Richmond. Julian, driving with absent-minded ease, was able to talk to his wife almost as though they were alone—for one did not count the groom perched up behind—even though they were frequently interrupted by the exchange of greetings with a growing circle of acquaintances. He had not realised how much he had come to value these brief intervals of easy camaraderie.
During the days that followed, as the Season worked up to its peak and, gradually, the first deserters began to leave Town, Julian came to detest Sir Aubrey with a bitterness that he had not dreamed he could nourish. The damned fellow was always under foot. If he was not riding with Anna or driving her down to Kew to visit the Botanic Gardens, he was advising her, quite unnecessarily, thought her husband savagely, as to schemes for decorating the reception rooms at Wellasford (which he had never seen) or endeavouring to persuade her to remove to Brighthelmstone for the months of July and August, assuring her that his influence would be perfectly adequate to the task of hiring a genteel lodging, even at this late date. As for evening engagements, Julian thought he might as well have stayed at home. Within ten minutes of their arrival his wife was inevitably whisked away from him, and if he did chance to set eyes on her again before their carriage was called, she was, equally inevitably, in the company of Sir Aubrey. Reluctantly he was obliged to concede some admiration for the man’s finesse, for there was never a word or an action to which a husband could take exception; never, even, a degree of attention so marked that it might give rise to a breath of scandal. The ‘ton’ placidly accepted the fact that young Lady Wellasford was Sir Aubrey’s latest flirt. The only sufferers were the Wellasfords.
Anna suffered a degree of remorse for permitting Sir Aubrey to devote so much of his time and attention to her. She credited him with a good deal more heart than he possessed and hoped, anxiously, that he had not developed a genuine tendre for her. She did not really think so, because on the rare occasions when they were alone together his manner became distinctly formal. But conscience did not acquit her of using him for her own purposes. She liked him very well though she was not in the least in love with him, but it had seemed to her possible that the attentions of so notable a beau might have a desirable effect upon a laggard husband. After all—you might exact a promise of freedom to try your wings unfettered by conjugal responsibilities, but when you had achieved success beyond your wildest dreams, surely it behoved your husband to show some awareness of your success. Could he be impervious to the charms that had subjugated the lions of London? Perhaps Sir Aubrey’s at
tentions would sting him into action.
The unfortunate Julian was torn between his determination to honour his promise to his wife and a strong desire to plant the ubiquitous Sir Aubrey a facer. Trouble was that the fellow never gave him quite sufficient cause to relieve his feelings in this way and he was, in any case, restrained by the knowledge that such behaviour must surely provoke a resounding scandal. Would it serve, he wondered, to attempt to distract his wife by setting up a flirt of his own? To be sure he had promised that he would not make her a laughing stock by blatant indulgence of what they had euphemistically described as his baser instincts. But flirting was different. His wife was in no position to cavil at that! And there was Caro Holroyd, ready to hand and, as she had shown with increasing frankness, perfectly willing to oblige.
Compared with Sir Aubrey he made a poor fist of it. His compliments lacked polish, his bearing was embarrassed rather than devoted. Most disastrous of all he lacked Sir Aubrey’s subtle skill in disengaging from the most delightful dalliance if it showed signs of becoming inconveniently intense. Where Sir Aubrey would have pointed out a fine burst of country or a delightful pastoral scene, Julian found himself tenderly pressing the lady’s hand, even kissing her fingers, and, on one disastrous occasion, her cheek.
No gentleman could openly blame the lady for that occurrence. Nor, at the time, was he in any mood to offer explanations.
He had planned to drive to Pittsfield House to give an eye to various improvements that were in progress, and had invited his wife to go with him. An invitation that she declined in favour of a long-standing engagement to attend a military review in Hyde Park. When he had ventured to press his claim, she had pointed out that the long drive into Surrey would make her very late for Lady Penmarston’s theatre party which she was promised to attend that evening. This was perfectly true, and he would probably have suggested another day for the proposed visit to Pittsfield House, had it not emerged that her escort to the review would be none other than Sir Aubrey. If she preferred that gentleman’s society to her husband’s, not to mention the dust and noise and crowds of Hyde Park to a comfortable drive into the country, there was obviously no more to be said. Julian retired behind his newspaper with dignity—and with no idea of how close his wife had come to wavering at the sight of his disappointed face. If only he had said, “Oh—let the fellow go hang. We could steal a day together, just the two of us,” or something of that sort, she would have met him more than half way. But he did not speak again until he had finished his coffee, when he said coolly, “In that case I may not see you again today. I doubt if I shall be back before you leave for the theatre, so I had best bid you goodnight.”
In such circumstances there was nothing a girl could do except feign a gaiety and an enjoyment that she was far from feeling. So much, at least, she owed her escort.
Julian, however, usurped the feminine prerogative of changing his mind. Just as he was about to set off, a groom arrived from Wellasford with a note from his father-in-law. That gentleman would appreciate the favour of a few words with him. The matter was personal and private, and he did not, at this stage, wish to take his daughter into his confidence. Could Julian find time, during the next sennight, to ride out to Wellasford so that they could have a quiet talk together?
A word with the groom eliciting the information that Mr. Morley was to be found at home, it seemed to Julian that there was no time like the present. If Anna was not to know of the business he would be obliged to devise some excuse for the visit, and of late he had come to rate his capacity for invention pretty low. Whereas today his excuses were already made. He had little heart any way for a solitary expedition into Surrey. He sent a message to the stables and shortly thereafter took the Watford road instead of driving south.
Chapter Eleven
Mr. Morley was delighted by Julian’s prompt response but appeared to be in no hurry to explain the reason for his summons. In fact he carried his son-in-law off to the stables to inspect a beautiful mare that he had just bought, obviously a lady’s mount. Julian rather naturally assumed that the animal was designed primarily for Anna’s use, and enquired with a hint of mischief if it was trained to accept a side-saddle.
For the first time in their acquaintance Mr. Morley actually looked embarrassed, muttered something disjointed about Anna’s progress in riding and hurried his companion out of the stable, although they had not nearly done justice to the mare’s perfections. As they emerged into the yard he ran a finger round a stock that he seemed to find uncomfortably tight and said on an explosive sigh, “That’s the nub of the matter, lad. That’s what I wanted to see you about. The mare’s not for Anna.”
There was a brief silence, amazed on Julian’s part but apparently restorative so far as Mr. Morley was concerned, for it was in an almost jovial voice that he continued, “It’s an odd sort of thing to be telling one’s son-in-law—all the wrong way round—and indeed I’m sometimes not certain whether I’m on my head or my heels. Fact is, I’m going to be married.”
If Julian had been amazed before, this piece of information took him completely aback. He stared at Mr. Morley as though doubting the evidence of his ears. Fortunately this attitude seemed to please and amuse the older man, who, now that his secret was out, reverted to a much more normal manner.
“Not very observant, are you, m’boy?” he said cheerfully. “Though I suppose that’s natural enough since you’ve only got eyes for that girl of mine. And very pleased I am to see it. We made up a grand match when we agreed together that you and Anna should wed, though I’ll admit I never dreamed that I’d be the next to enter parson’s mouse-trap. A bachelor all these years and thought to die one.”
He lapsed into silence, pondering this incredible change of heart. Julian, who had recovered his powers of speech if not his composure, stammered as awkwardly as any schoolboy, “But sir, who is the lady?”
Mr. Morley chuckled. “Told you you wasn’t very observant, didn’t I? Just goes to show. I suppose you thought I was for ever dropping in at Portman Square for the pleasure of your company—or even because I was lonesome and missing Anna. And I’ll not deny there was something of that nature in the beginning. I suppose it really started the day of Anna’s presentation. That was the first time we really talked together, Margaret and me. Yes,” he nodded happily, in response to Julian’s exclamation of delight, “it’s Margaret who has done me the honour of giving me her promise. I don’t know where I found the impudence to ask her, a lady born as she was, and so rare and fine a woman. I suppose it got so there was no bearing it, wondering if there was just a chance that she might say yes, and thinking that by not speaking out I was wasting days and weeks of happiness when maybe I’d not so many left to me. And do you know what she said to me? When I plucked up heart at last? She said, ‘I was beginning to think that you were never going to ask me; that somehow I’d have to do it myself.’ There’s a woman for you! As sound and sweet as a pippin and straightforward with it. None of your die-away airs and graces like that silly Holroyd creature.”
Julian expressed his very real delight and satisfaction in the news, declaring that it was the neatest possible scheme for keeping Margaret in the family. “And we are both much attached to her, you know. You could not have presented us with a more acceptable step-mama. Anna will be over the moon.”
“You think so?” said Mr. Morley eagerly. “That would be splendid. Because Margaret has consented to marry me as soon as it can be arranged, but only if Anna can dispense with her services. I told you this was a topsy-turvy affair. I need my daughter’s consent—or at least connivance—to hasten my marriage plans.”
“Then you can safely arrange for the banns to be called without further loss of time,” assured Julian confidently. “Anna will be just as delighted as I am.”
Mr. Morley looked gratified. “I reckoned as much,” he admitted, “seeing the three of you so comfortable together. And my marrying makes no difference to you, lad,” he added simply. “Marrying s
o late in life, it’s unlikely we’ll be blessed with childer. But even if we should be so blessed, it won’t affect Wellasford. I mean to make that over to you and Anna before I marry. I’ve enough from other sources to provide comfortably for Margaret.”
For the last time Julian attempted to persuade Anna’s father to sell him Wellasford. It was a half-hearted attempt, because he knew from the outset that it was unlikely to succeed. And even the temptation of being able to lavish the purchase price on extravagant gifts for his bride failed to move Mr. Morley. “Margaret would be the first to comb my hair for me if I behaved so scaly,” he pronounced finally. There was a good-humoured twinkle in his eye, but his determination was never in doubt. He convoyed his son-in-law back to the house and his hospitality was as generous as ever, but he made no effort to delay Julian’s departure.
“I leave it to you to be my emissary to Anna,” was his valediction. “Just you put it to her that it’s time she was done with junketing about Town. Once she settles down at Wellasford she’ll not need Margaret in attendance, and we can get married right away.”
The injunction gave Julian rather seriously to think. He was fully in sympathy with Mr. Morley’s views, but could not help feeling that he could scarcely put them to Anna in quite so forthright a fashion. Nevertheless it was in a mood of delighted anticipation that he maintained a brisk pace on the homeward journey, eager to share his surprising news with his wife.
His cheerful spirits were sadly dashed by the information, conveyed upon his arrival by Bailey, that Lady Wellasford was not yet returned from the Review and that Lady Holroyd was awaiting his arrival in the library.
Bailey had no great opinion of this visitor, but since she appeared to be on terms of intimate friendship with his employers he was careful to treat her with the greatest respect. She had arrived some half an hour earlier, enquiring first for Lady Wellasford (of whose present whereabouts she was perfectly well informed) and, when Bailey told her that both Lord Wellasford and his wife were from home she had calmly announced that she would wait a little while in the hope that one or other of them would return. Her business, she added airily, was important. Bailey knew what he thought of such encroaching manners, but was too well trained to show it, offering her ladyship refreshment, which she declined, and then showing her into the library.
