Lady of Quality

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “Oh, how unjust!” cried Lucilla indignantly.

  “I should rather think so! For how the devil could I have prevented you from running away, I should like to know?”

  “You couldn’t. No one could!” she asserted. “They ought to have been grateful to you for coming with me!”

  “Well, that’s what I thought!” he said. “What’s more, if anyone was to blame for driving you out of the house it was Them, not me!”

  “Did you tell them so?” asked Lucilla eagerly.

  “No, not then,but in the end I did, when I got into a pelter myself! That was when I found that your aunt’s prostration was being laid at my door, if you please, instead of at yours! I don’t know what she might have said to me, because I didn’t see her—thank God! She fell into hysterics when it was discovered that you had run away, and then had strong convulsions, or spasms, or whatever she calls ’em, and was laid up in bed, with our doctor in attendance, and my mother trying to restore her with burnt feathers, and sal volatile, and smelling-salts; and my father almost pushing Sarah out of the house, because the mere thought that she was still at Chartley threw your aunt into fresh spasms! Well, I did say, What a wet-goose! and Papa—Papa!—said I had much to blame myself for! And Mama said how could I have reconciled it with my conscience to have abandoned you to a total stranger, and never would she have believed that a child of hers could have behaved so heartlessly! And when it came to Cordelia and Lavinia starting to reproach me—but I precious soon put a stop to that!—I—I lost my temper, and said Very well, if they thought it was my duty to protect her from you,ma’am, I’d go straight back to Bath, and stay there! And—and I’m afraid I said that any place would be preferable to Chartley, and even though you were a total stranger I was sure of a welcome in your house, which was more than I had had in my own home!”

  “Oh, well done,Ninian!” exclaimed Lucilla enthusiastically clasping his arm, and squeezing it. “I never dreamed you were so full of pluck!”

  He coloured, but said: “I don’t think it was well done of me. I ought not to have spoken so to my father. I’m sorry for it, but I meant what I said, and I’m dashed well not going to crawl back until he is sorry too! Even if I starve in a ditch!”

  “Oh, pray don’t think of doing such a thing!” said Miss Farlow, who had been listening open-mouthed to this recital. “So embarrassing for dear Miss Wychwood, for people would be bound to say she should have rescued you! Not that I think you would be allowed to die in a ditch in Bath—at least, I never heard of anyone doing so, because they are so strict about keeping the streets clean and tidy, and destitute persons are cared for at the Stranger’s Friend Society: a most excellent institution, I believe, but I cannot think that your worthy parents would wish you to become an inmate there, however vexed they may be with you!”

  This made Lucilla giggle, but Miss Wychwood, preserving her countenance, said: “Very true! You must hold it as a weapon in reserve, Ninian, to use only if your father threatens to cast you off entirely. In the meantime, I suggest that you put up at the Pelican. It is in Walcot Street, and I’m told its charges are very reasonable. It isn’t a fashionable hotel, but I believe it is comfortable, and provides its guests with a good, plain ordinary. And if it should be too plain for you, you can always dine here!” She added, with a lurking twinkle in her eyes: “I’ve never dined there, but of course I have visited it, to see the room Dr Johnson slept in!”

  “Oh!” said Ninian, all at sea. “Yes—of course! Dr Johnson! Exactly so! Was he—was he a friend of yours, ma’am? Or—or one of your relations, perhaps?”

  Lucilla gave a crow of laughter. “Stupid! He was the dixionary-man, and he died years and years ago—didn’t he, ma’am?”

  “Oh, a writing cove!” said Ninian, in disparaging accents. “Come to think of it, I have heard of him—but I’m not bookish, ma’am!”

  “But surely, dear Mr Elmore, they must have used his Dixionary at your school?” said Miss Farlow.

  “Ah, that would be it!” nodded Ninian. “I daresay I must have seen the name on the back of some book or other, which accounts for my having had the notion that I recognized it!”

  “If recognition you could call it!” murmured Miss Wychwood. “Never mind, Ninian! We can’t all of us be bookish, can we?”

  “Well, I don’t scruple to say that I never had the least turn for scholarship,” Ninian somewhat unnecessarily disclosed. He added a handsome rider to this statement, saying, with a beaming smile: “And I promise you, ma’am, no one would ever suspect you of being bookish!”

  Overwhelmed by this tribute, Miss Wychwood uttered in a shaken voice: “How kind of you, Ninian, to say so!”

  “It’s very true,” said Lucilla, adding her mite. “No one could think she was bookish, but she reads prodigiously, and even keeps books in her bedchamber!”

  “How can you be so treacherous, Lucilla, as to betray me?” demanded Miss Wychwood tragically.

  “Only to Ninian!” Lucilla said, regarding her rather anxiously. “Of course I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else, but he won’t say a word about it, will you, Ninian?”

  “No, never!” he responded promptly.

  Miss Wychwood shook a mournful head. “If only I may not have sunk myself beneath reproach in your eyes!”

  They made such haste to reassure her that her suppressed laughter escaped her, and she said: “You absurd babies! Oh, don’t look so astonished, or you will send me into fresh whoops! I know you can’t think why, and if I were to explain it to you you would believe me to be all about in my head! Tell me, Ninian, did you give my letter to Mrs Amber?”

  “No, because she was too ill to receive me, but my mother gave it to her.” He hesitated, and then said, with a deprecatory grin: “She—she wasn’t well enough to write to you, but she did charge my mother with a message!”

  “A message to me?” Miss Wychwood asked, her brows lifting slightly.

  “Well, not precisely!” he replied. His grin widened, and he gave a chuckle. “What she said, in fact, was that she washed her hands of Lucilla!”

  “She says that every time I vex her!” said Lucilla disgustedly. “And never does she mean it! Depend upon it, she will come to fetch me back, and all my pleasure will be at an end!”

  “Oh, I don’t think she’ll do that!” said Ninian consolingly. “She does seem to be quite knocked-up. What’s more, when my mother asked her if she was to direct one of the maids to pack up your gear and send it to you she said that if after all she had done for you you preferred a stranger to her she only trusted that you wouldn’t regret it, and wish her to take you back, because she never wanted to set eyes on you again!”

  Lucilla considered this, but presently shook her head, and sighed: “I don’t set the least store by that, but it does at least make it seem that she won’t come to Bath immediately. It always takes her days to recover from her hysterical turns!”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But perhaps I ought just to mention to you that the first thing she did, before she took to her bed, was to send off a letter to Mr Carleton. Ten to one he won’t pay any heed to it, but I think I ought perhaps to warn you about it!”

  “Oh, if that isn’t just like her!” cried Lucilla, flushing with wrath. “She is too ill to write to Miss Wychwood, but not too ill to write to my uncle! Oh, dear me, no! And if he means to come here, to force me to return, I can’t and I won’t bear it!”

  “Well, don’t put yourself into a stew!” recommended Miss Wychwood. “If he does come here with any such intention he will find he has me to deal with—and that is an experience which I fancy he won’t enjoy!”

  Chapter 4

  On the following morning, Miss Wychwood sent her groom to Twynham Park with instructions to bring her favourite mare to Bath. He carried with him a letter to Sir Geoffrey, in which Miss Wychwood informed her brother that she had a young friend staying with her whom she wished to entertain with riding expeditions to the various places of interest in the surroundin
g countryside.

  When she had first set up her own establishment in Camden Place, she had brought two saddle-horses with her, assuming, rather vaguely, that she would find riding, in Bath, the everyday matter it was at Twynham. It had not taken very long to disabuse her mind of this misapprehension. At Twynham, she had been used to ride, as a matter of course, every day of her life, whether into the village, on an errand of mercy to one of her father’s tenants struck down by sickness, or on a visit to a friend living in the neighbourhood; but she soon discovered that life in town—particularly in such a town as Bath, where the steep cobbled streets made equestrian traffic rare—was very different from life in the country. In Bath, one either walked, or took a chair: one could not stroll down to the stables on a sudden impulse, and order one’s groom to saddle up for one. It was necessary to appoint a time for one’s horse to be brought round to the house; and it was even more necessary that the groom should accompany one. Miss Wychwood found this intolerable, and frankly owned that it was one of the disadvantages of town-life. She also owned (but only to herself) that it was one of the disadvantages of being an unattached spinster; but having decided that the advantages of living under her own roof in Bath, subject to no fraternal vetoes, outweighed the disadvantages, she indulged in no vain repinings, but within a very few weeks sent her mare back to Twynham Park, where Sir Geoffrey, to his credit, kept her, exercised and groomed, for her use whenever she came to stay with him. She kept her carriage-horses in Bath, and one neatish bay hack, which, being an old and beloved friend, she could not bring herself to sell.

  Seale brought the mare to Bath, but he was accompanied by Sir Geoffrey, bristling with suspicion that his sister had taken it into her wayward head to befriend some Young Person who would prove to be an adventuress. Unfortunately, he arrived in Camden Place to find only Miss Farlow at home, and when he had learnt from her the circumstances under which Annis had made Lucilla’s acquaintance he became convinced that his suspicion had been correct.

  “How can you have been so caper-witted?” he demanded of his sister, an hour later. “I had not thought it possible that you could be such a noddy! Pray, what do you know about this young woman? Upon my word, Annis—”

  “Heavens, what a piece of work about nothing!” interrupted Annis. “I collect you’ve been talking to Maria, who is positively green with jealousy of poor Lucilla! She is a Carleton: an orphan, living, since her mother’s death, with one of her aunts; and since this Mrs Amber is in indifferent health Lucilla has come to stay with me for a few weeks, as a sort of prelude to her regular come-out. Ninian Elmore escorted her here, and—”

  “Elmore? Elmore? Never heard of him!” declared Sir Geoffrey.

  “Very likely you might not: he’s a mere child, not long down, I fancy, from Oxford. He is the son and heir of Lord Iverley—and I daresay you haven’t heard of him either, for I collect that he lives retired, at Chartley Place. A Hampshire family, and, even if you haven’t heard of them, perfectly respectable, I promise you!”

  “Oh!” said Sir Geoffrey, slightly daunted. Chewing the cud of this information, he made a recover. “That’s all very well!” he said. “But how do you know this girl is a Carleton? Not that I like the connection any the better if she is! The only one of the family I’m acquainted with is Oliver Carleton—”

  “Lucilla’s uncle,” interpolated Miss Wychwood.

  “Well, I can tell you this!” said Sir Geoffrey. “He’s a damned unpleasant fellow! Got no manners, never scruples to give the back to anyone he don’t happen to like, thinks his birth and his wealth gives him the right to ride rough-shod over men quite as well born as himself, and—in short, the sort of ugly customer I should never dream of presenting to my sister!”

  “Do you mean that he is a libertine?” asked Miss Wychwood.

  “Annis!” he ejaculated.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Geoffrey—!” she said impatiently. “I cut my wisdoms years ago! If you wouldn’t dream of presenting him to me, what else can you mean?”

  He glared at her. “You seem to me to have no delicacy of mind!” he said peevishly. “What my poor mother would say, if she could hear you expressing yourself with such unfeminine want of refinement I shudder to think of!”

  “Then don’t think of it!” she recommended. “Think instead of what Papa would say! Though I daresay that would make you shudder too! Where did you learn to be so mealy-mouthed, Geoffrey? As for Mr Oliver Carleton, between you, you and Lucilla have inspired me with a strong desire to meet him! She has told me that he has all but one of the faults you’ve described to me; and you have added the one she, naturally, knows nothing about. He must be a positive monster!”

  “Levity was ever your besetting sin,” he said severely. “Let me tell you that it is not at all becoming in a female! It leads you into talking a deal of improper nonsense. A strong desire to meet a monster, indeed!”

  “But I have never seen a monster!” she explained. “Oh, well! I daresay it is nothing but a take-in, and he is much like any other man!”

  “I must decline to discuss him with you. I should suppose it to be extremely unlikely that you ever will meet him, but if some unfortunate chance should bring him in your way I should be doing less than my duty if I did not warn you to have nothing to say to him, my dear sister! His reputation is not that of a well-conducted man. And if we are to talk of take-ins,what reason have you to think you are not the victim of one? I don’t attempt to conceal from you that I am far from satisfied that this girl is the innocent you believe her to be. I know from Maria Farlow that she ran away from her lawful guardian, and in the company of a young man! That is not the conduct of an innocent—indeed, it is the most shocking thing I ever heard of!—and it wouldn’t surprise me if she were bent on inching herself into your regard!”

  “You know, Geoffrey, no one who heard you talking such skimble-skamble stuff would believe you to have any more sense than a zero! How can you be so idiotish as to pay the least heed to what Maria says? She has been convinced from the outset that Lucilla is scheming to take her place in my household, but you may rest easy on that head! Lucilla is a considerable heiress—far plumper in the pocket than I am, I daresay! She won’t come into her fortune until she is of age, but she enjoys what I judge to be a pretty handsome income. Mr Carleton, who is her guardian, pays it to Mrs Amber; and it is very obvious to me that it must be a handsome sum, for Mrs Amber gives her what Lucilla calls pin-money,but which a girl in less affluent circumstances would think herself fortunate to receive as an allowance to cover the cost of all her clothing. Mrs Amber pays for every stitch the child wears—and, although she seems to be a foolish creature, I must acknowledge that her taste is impeccable. I should doubt if she ever counts the cost of anything she buys for Lucilla. None of your poplins or cheap coloured muslins for Miss Carleton!” She laughed suddenly. “Jurby unpacked her trunk, and I may say that Lucilla has risen enormously in her estimation! She informed me, in a positively reverential voice, that Miss has everything of the best! As for her having run away with Ninian, it was no such thing: she ran away from Chartley Place, and Ninian very properly acted as her escort. Her aunt had very foolishly taken her there on a visit, and a great deal of pressure was being brought to bear on Ninian, to make her an offer, and on her to accept it. It seems that this scheme was hatched years ago between their respective fathers, who were devoted friends. Ninian believes this to be the only reason his father has for trying so hard to bring the match about, but I suspect Lucilla’s fortune has a good deal to do with it. The estate she inherited from her father runs, I gather, close enough to Chartley to make its acquisition by the Elmores extremely desirable. Understandable enough, you will say, but can you conceive of anything more cocklebrained, in this day and age, than to try to force two children—for they are little more than children!—to get married when they have been on brother-and-sister terms since they were in short coats?”

  He had listened to her in staring silence, and he did not
immediately answer her. But after a moment or two, he pronounced in pompous accents that he was no advocate for the license granted to the modern generation. Embroidering this theme, he said: “I hold that parents must be the best judges of such matters. They must, of necessity, know better than their children—”

  “Fiddle!” said Miss Wychwood, bringing this dissertation to a summary closure. “Did Papa arrange your marriage to Amabel?” She saw that she had discomfited him, and added, with her lovely smile: “Trying it on too rare and thick, Geoffrey! You fell in love with Amabel, and proposed to her before Papa had ever set eyes on her! Didn’t you?”

  He flushed darkly, tried to meet the challenge in her eyes, looked away, and replied, with a sheepish grin: “Well—yes! But,” he said, making another recover, “I knew Papa would approve of my choice, and he did!”

  “To be sure he did!” agreed Miss Wychwood affably. “And if he had not approved of it, no doubt you would have cried off, and offered for a lady he did approve of!”

  “I should have done no such thing!” he declared hotly. He met her laughing eyes, seethed impotently for a moment, and then capitulated, saying in the voice of one goaded to extremity: “Oh, damn you, Annis! My case was—was different!”

  “Of course it was!” she said, patting his hand. “No one in the possession of his senses could have raised the least objection to your marriage to Amabel!”

  His hand, turning under hers, grasped it warmly, and he said, with all the embarrassment of an inarticulate man: “She—she is past price, Annis—isn’t she?”