Lady of Quality

by Джорджетт Хейер

  Lady Wychwood eyed the potion doubtfully, but obediently took, not a gulp, but a cautious sip. She then took a larger sip, and declared that it was not by half as nasty as Annis had led her to expect.

  “By which I collect you to mean that it is not as nasty as they tell me the Harrogate water is! You must let me present Mr Carleton to you: he is Lucilla’s uncle, you know!”

  Mr Carleton, who had exchanged a brief greeting with Mrs Stinchcombe, bowed, and said that he was happy to make her ladyship’s acquaintance. He sounded indifferent rather than happy, and Lady Wychwood, somewhat coldly acknowledging his bow, was much inclined to suspect that her dear Geoffrey had been mistaken in believing Annis stood in danger of succumbing to this libertine’s fascinating arts. It did not appear to Lady Wychwood that he had any fascinating arts at all: why, he wasn’t even a handsome man! Recalling Annis’s past suitors, all of whom had been blessed with good-looks and distinguished manners, she began to suspect that Annis had been making a May-game of her brother, as (regrettably) she too often did. She could perceive nothing in Mr Carleton that could appeal to any female as critical and fastidious as Annis, and consequently unbent towards him, complimenting him on his charming niece, and saying how much she liked Lucilla.

  He bowed again, and said: “You are too kind, ma’am. Are you making a long stay in Bath?”

  “Oh, no! That is to say, I hardly know, but not more than a week or two, I think. Are you making a long stay, sir?”

  “Like you, I hardly know. It depends on circumstances.” He glanced round, and addressed himself to Annis, saying: “Spare me a moment, Miss Wychwood! I wish to consult you—about Lucilla.”

  “Certainly! I am quite at your disposal,” said Annis.

  He took civil but unsmiling leave of the two other ladies, and moved apart with Miss Wychwood. No sooner were they out of tongue-shot of her companions than he said abruptly: “How came it about that you permitted Kilbride to escort Lucilla through the town yesterday, ma’am? I thought I had made my wishes plain to you!”

  “My permission was not sought,” she replied frigidly. “Mr Kilbride met Lucilla, and her maid, on their way to Laura Place, and turned back to accompany Lucilla.”

  “It hardly seems that the maid was an adequate chaperon.”

  “I don’t know what you would have had her do,” she said, nettled. “It was not as though Kilbride were a stranger! Lucilla greeted him with pleasure, believing him to be a friend of mine, and I have no doubt Brigham accepted him as such.”

  “In which she was justified!”

  She heaved an exasperated sigh. “Very well! he is a friend of mine, but I am as well aware as you are, Mr Carleton, that he is not a fit friend for an impressionable and quite inexperienced girl, and I shall do my best to keep him at arm’s length. In future, when I am unable to accompany her myself I will send her out in the carriage! And when she objects, as object she will, I shall tell her that I am merely obeying your orders!”

  “But I haven’t given such an unreasonable order!” he said. “I haven’t, in fact, given any order at all.”

  “You said that you thought you had made your wishes plain to me, and you might as well have said orders, instead of wishes, for that was what you meant! So detestably top-lofty that you apparently think I must obey your wishes,as though I had no mind or will of my own!”

  “Well, where Lucilla is concerned I do think you must,” he said. “Recollect that you took it upon yourself to assume control over her, and not, let me remind you, by any wish of mine! I said then, and I will say again, that I do not think you a fit person to have charge of her.”

  “Then I suggest, sir, that you take charge of her yourself!” she said tartly.

  “I might have known you would be quick to seize the opportunity to throw me in the close,” he murmured.

  She was obliged to laugh. “I collect that is a piece of pugilistic slang, and I suppose I can guess what it means! I only wish it might prove to be true! It would, I daresay, be useless to tell you that it is not at all the thing to employ cant terms when you are talking to a female!”

  “Oh, quite!” he said affably.

  “You know, you are perfectly abominable!” she said. “And far less a fit and proper person to have charge of Lucilla than I am!”

  “You can’t think how relieved I am that you’ve realized that!”he said.

  She cast up her eyes despairingly. “I had as well level at the moon as try to get a point the better of you!”

  “You are mistaken. You tipped me a settler at our very first meeting, my dear!”

  “Did I?” she said, wrinkling her brow. “I can’t imagine how I contrived to do so!”

  “No. I am unhappily aware of that,” he replied, with a wry smile. “And this is not the place in which to tell you what I mean!”

  Colour rushed into her cheeks, for these words had made his meaning very plain to her. She said hurriedly: “We seem to have strayed a long way from the point, sir. We were discussing Lucilla’s somewhat unfortunate meeting with Denis Kilbride. I shan’t attempt to deny that I regret it, but is it, after all, such a great matter that she should have accepted his escort to Mrs Stinchcombe’s house? What harm could come of it?”

  “More than you think!” he answered. “I haven’t sojourned in Bath for long, but for long enough to have arrived at a pretty fair estimate of the amount of tale-pitching that goes on amongst those known, I believe, as the Bath quizzes! Kilbride’s reputation is well-known to them, and I think it of the first importance that Lucilla should not be seen in his company. Tongues are wagging already, and who can say how many of the scandalmongers have friends or relations living in London whom they regale with tit-bits of the local on dits? Don’t think that it was one of these who dropped a word of warning in my ear! It was Mrs Mandeville, with whom I dined last night!”

  “Oh, heavens!” exclaimed Miss Wychwood, dismayed. “I wouldn’t for the world have Mrs Mandeville, of all people, think Lucilla to be a coming girl!”

  “You have no need to be afraid of that. She doesn’t think it, but she knows as well as I do that nothing can do a pretty innocent more harm than to be seen to encourage the attentions of such men as Kilbride.”

  “Oh, nothing! nothing!” said Miss Wychwood fervently. “I can assure you that I shall take good care that it doesn’t happen again!” A rather rueful smile touched her lips. She said, not without difficulty: “I am afraid she is not—not impervious to his charm, and I ought perhaps to tell you that I find it very difficult to know how best to combat this. I think—no, I am sure that I took a false step yesterday, when she was telling me about his escorting her to Laura Place, and how kind and amusing she thought him: I said—funningly, of course!—that I had lost count of the silly girls who had lost their hearts to him, and had been left languishing. If I had said no more than that, it might have given her pause, but when she replied that perhaps he hadn’t truly loved any of them I was betrayed into suggesting that perhaps none of them had been as well-endowed as he had believed them to be. She—she flew out at me, asked me how I could say anything so detestable about him, and fairly ran out of the room. Pray don’t rake me down for having said anything so ill-judged! I have been raking myself down ever since I said it!”

  “Then stop raking yourself down!” he replied. “I am not concerned with the possibility that Lucilla might fall in love with him: one doesn’t form a lasting passion at her age, and the experience won’t harm her. All that concerns me is that she should not be beguiled into indiscretion.”

  “You don’t feel—it has occurred to me that you might perhaps say something to Kilbride?”

  “My dear girl, it is not in the least necessary that I should do so. He may flirt with her, but he won’t go beyond flirtation, believe me! He is no coward, but he is as little anxious to risk a meeting with me, as I am to force one on him. You may rest assured that I shan’t do so, for nothing could be more prejudicial to Lucilla’s reputation than the scandal that w
ould create! Take that anxious frown off your face! It doesn’t become you! I perceive that Lady Wychwood is about to descend on you, so we had better part: she clearly feels it to be her duty to come between us! I wonder what harm she thinks I could do you in such a public place as this?”

  Chapter 11

  In assuming that Lady Wychwood was coming towards them to protect Annis, Mr Carleton wronged her. She had swallowed the glass of hot water, had enjoyed a comfortable chat with Mrs Stinchcombe, and she now wished to go back to Camden Place, to take Tom for a gentle airing in the crescent-shaped garden which lay between Upper and Lower Camden Place. Not being in the habit of indulging ridiculous fancies, the fear that Mr Carleton could do Annis a particle of bodily harm in the Pump Room never entered her head; and as for the danger of his ingratiating himself with her to her undoing, she thought this equally ridiculous. While she talked to Mrs Stinchcombe, she had contrived to watch, from the tail of her eye, the brief tête-à-tête between Annis and this reputed profligate, and she was perfectly assured that her lord had allowed his brotherly anxiety to overcome his good sense. She was going to occupy herself during the afternoon by writing a soothing letter to him, and she said, as she and Annis left the Pump Room: “I can’t for the life of me conceive, dearest, what can have made Geoffrey take such a maggot into his head as to suppose that there was the least fear of that disagreeable man’s making you the object of his gallantry—if gallantry it can be called! I promise you, I mean to give him a severe scold, for supposing that you, of all people, could possibly develop a tendre for such a brusque, and extremely ungallant man!”

  “Deplorably rag-mannered, isn’t he?” agreed Annis.

  “Oh, shockingly! I could see that he had made you as cross as crabs, and positively quaked for fear that you would fly up into the boughs, which wouldn’t have astonished me, but which would have been a very improper thing to have done in the Pump Room. How unfortunate it is that you are obliged to be on terms with him! Forgive me if I say that I think the sooner he removes Lucilla from your house the better it will be for you! What was he looking so black about?”

  “Denis Kilbride,” replied Miss Wychwood, calmly, but with a gleam in her eyes hard to interpret.

  “Denis Kilbride?” echoed Lady Wychwood, too much surprised to notice either the gleam, or the little smile that hovered at the corners of Miss Wychwood’s mouth. “Why, what has he to say to anything?”

  “Too much!” said Miss Wychwood, with a wry grimace. “I fear he may be in a fair way towards capturing Lucilla’s silly heart, and although that possibility doesn’t seem to worry Mr Carleton much, what does worry him, and made try to ring a peal over me just now, is the circumstance of Kilbride’s having escorted Lucilla yesterday all the way from Camden Place to Laura Place. It was unfortunate, for several people saw them, and if you had ever lived in Bath, Amabel, you would know that it is a veritable hotbed of gossip!”

  “But surely, Annis, it is perfectly permissible for a gentleman to accompany a girl through the town, in the daytime, and with her maid walking behind, as I don’t doubt Lucilla’s maid did!” expostulated Lady Wychwood. “Why, it is quite the thing for a gentleman to take up some young female beside him in his curricle, or his phaeton, or whatever sporting vehicle he happens to be driving! And without her maid!”

  “Perfectly permissible, my dear, but not if the gentleman is Denis Kilbride! At the best, he is recognized as a dangerous flirt, and at the worst, a confirmed fortune-hunter.”

  “Oh, dear!” said Lady Wychwood, sadly shocked. “I know Geoffrey didn’t at all like it when Kilbride was courting you, when we were all three of us in London. He said he was a here-and-thereian; and I do recall that he once said he suspected him of hanging out for a rich wife. I didn’t set much store by that, for Geoffrey does sometimes say things he doesn’t really mean, when he takes anyone in dislike, and he never desired me not to receive him, or to invite him to my parties. And when, last year, he had been visiting his grandmother, and had ridden over to Twynham to pay his respects to us, Geoffrey received him with perfect complaisance.”

  “By that time, Geoffrey knew that there was no fear of my succumbing to Kilbride’s wiles,” said Annis, with a touch of cynicism. “He is everywhere received, even in Bath! In part, this is due to the respect in which old Lady Kilbride is held; and in part because he is regarded as an amusing rattle, whose presence can be depended on to enliven the dullest party. For myself, though I can imagine few worse fates than to be leg-shackled to him, I like him, I invite him to my own parties, I frequently dance with him at the Assemblies. But although—in Geoffrey’s opinion—I set too little store by the conventions!—I take care not to see so much of him as to give even the most censorious critic reason to say that I live in his pocket! Because I was well-acquainted with him before I came to reside in Bath, he is thought to be an old friend of mine, and as such his presence at my parties, the free-and-easy terms on which we stand are looked on with indulgence. But although I am no girl, and might be supposed to be past the age of looking for a husband, I should hesitate very much to drive with him, ride with him, or even walk with him. Not because I am not very well able to check his familiarities, but because I know just how many malicious tongues would start to wag if I were to be seen tête-à-tête with him! So, with the best will in the world to do so, I cannot blame Mr Carleton for having raked me down!”

  “I consider it to have been excessively impertinent of him, and I hope you gave him a set-down!” said Lady Wychwood roundly.

  Annis made no reply to this, but it occurred to her that giving Mr Carleton a set-down was something she had never yet succeeded in doing. She thought that it would perhaps be as well if she didn’t discuss his character with her sister-in-law, for she had made the disconcerting discovery that however much she herself criticized his faults an almost overmastering impulse to defend them arose in her when anyone else did so. So she turned the subject by directing Lady Wychwood’s attention to a very pretty bonnet displayed in a milliner’s window. The rest of the walk was beguiled by an animated discussion of all the latest quirks of fashion, which lasted until they reached Upper Camden Place, and Lady Wychwood caught sight of her small son, playing ball in the garden with Miss Farlow. This made her exclaim: “Oh, look! Maria has taken Tom into the garden! What a good, kind creature she is, Annis!”

  “I wish I were rid of her!” replied Annis, with considerable feeling.

  Lady Wychwood was shocked. “Wish you were rid of her? Oh, no, how can you say so, dearest? I am sure there was never anyone more amiable, and obliging! You cannot be serious!”

  “I am very serious. 1 find her a dead bore.”

  Lady Wychwood thought this over for a moment, and then said slowly: “She isn’t bookish, of course, and not clever,as you are. And she does talk a great deal, I own. Geoffrey calls her a gabble-grinder, but gentlemen, you know, don’t seem to like chatty females, and even he recognizes her many excellent qualities.”

  “Are you trying to hoax me into thinking that you don’t find her a bore?” demanded Annis incredulously.

  “No, indeed! I mean, I truly don’t. Oh, sometimes she does chatter rather too much, but, in general, I enjoy talking with her because she is interested in the things which don’t interest you. Little things, such as household matters, and the children, and—and new recipes, and a host of things of that nature!” She hesitated, and then said simply: “You see, dearest, I’m not clever, as you are! Indeed, I often wonder whether you don’t find me a dead bore!”

  Annis instantly disclaimed, and warmly enough to win a grateful smile from Lady Wychwood; but in her secret heart she knew that fond though she was of her gentle sister-in-law she did find most of her conversation insipid.

  “What I like in her so much,” pursued Lady Wychwood, in a thoughtful tone, “is the way she enters into all one’s chiefest concerns, as one couldn’t expect even Geoffrey to do, gentlemen not being able to share one’s anxieties about household matters,
and croup, and the red gum. And the way she busies herself with any small difficulty that arises, without having been asked to do so—which I hope I should never do! I cannot tell you what a support she was to me when I arrived here, with poor little Tom frantic with the toothache! She went with us to Mr Westcott’s, and actually held Tom’s hands down—which I, alas, had not the resolution to do—when he pulled out the offending tooth.”

  “Sister,” said Annis, solemnly, but with wickedly dancing eyes, “I have long wanted to make you a present of real value, and you have now shown me how I may do it! I will bestow Maria upon you!”

  “How can you be so absurd?” said Lady Wychwood laughingly. “As though I would dream of taking her away from you!”

  No more was said, Tom, by this time, having seen his mother, and run to the railings to greet her. She entered the garden, and Annis went on by herself to the house. Lucilla was spending the rest of the day with the Stinchcombes, and as Mrs Stinchcombe had promised to have her escorted back to Camden Place in time for dinner she felt herself relieved of responsibility. She could not help feeling glad of it, for not only was the entertainment of a lively seventeen-year-old a more onerous charge than she had foreseen, but what Mr Carleton had said to her had made her realize that a period of quiet reflection was her most immediate need. Unless she had been wholly mistaken in the meaning of his cryptic utterance in the Pump Room, she could not doubt that he had the intention of making her an offer of marriage. It would have been false to have said that such a notion had never before occurred to her: it had occurred, but only as a suspicion, which she had been able, without very much difficulty, to banish from her mind. Now that the suspicion had been confirmed she felt that she had been taken by surprise, and was vexed by the realization that she was shaken quite out of her calm self-possession, and was suffering all the fluttering uncertainties of a girl in her first Season. She had been for so long a single woman that it had become a habit with her to think herself beyond marriageable age, and even more beyond the age of falling in love. It was a shock to discover that this had suddenly become a question open to doubt, and that it was a matter for doubt made her out of reason cross with herself, for she ought, surely, to be old enough and wise enough to know her own mind. But the melancholy truth was that she didn’t know it. She told herself, in a scolding way, that it ought to be obvious to her that Mr Carleton possessed none of the attributes (except fortune, which was of no interest to her) which could be supposed to make him an acceptable suitor to a lady who had had many suitors, nearly all of whom had been blessed with good-looks, excellent address, polished manners, and a considerable degree of charm. To none of these attributes could Mr Carleton lay claim: it made her smile to think of setting even one of them to his credit; and as she smiled the thought darted through her mind that perhaps it was his lack of social grace which attracted her. It seemed absurd that this should be so, but it was undeniable that not the most charming of her suitors had so much as scratched her heart. She thought that if she had been left without the means to support herself she might have accepted an offer from that particular man, for she liked him very well, and felt reasonably sure that he would be an amiable husband; but when he did make her an offer she unhesitatingly declined it; and, far from regretting her decision, was thankful that her circumstances did not compel her to accept it. She had been sorry for him, because he had been desperately in love with her, and had exerted himself in every imaginable way to win her regard. The only effect her snubs had seemed to have on him had been to make him redouble his efforts to please her. She thought, recollecting his courtship, that he had been quite her most assiduous suitor; and as she remembered the attentions he had lavished on her she instantly contrasted him with Mr Carleton, and gave an involuntary chuckle. No two men could be more unlike. The one had employed every art known to him to bring his courtship to a successful conclusion; the other employed no arts at all. In fact, thought Miss Wychwood judicially, he seemed to lose no opportunity to alienate her. He was ruthlessly blunt, too often brusque to the point of incivility, paid her no extravagant compliments, and showed no disposition to go out of his way to please her. A very odd courtship—if courtship it was—and why he should have seriously disturbed her tranquillity, which, since she was too honest to deceive herself, she owned that he had done, was a problem to which she could discover no answer, the only solution which presented itself to her, that her well-regulated mind had become disordered, being wholly unacceptable to her. She wondered if she was refining too much on the few signs he had given of having fallen in love with her, whether they betokened nothing more than a wish to engage her in a flirtation. This idea no sooner occurred to her than she dismissed it: he had never tried to flirt with her, and the indifference of manner which characterized him did not belong to a man bent on idle dalliance. She thought that the best thing for her peace of mind would be for him to go back to London; and instantly realized that she did not wish him to do so. But she found herself unable to decide whether she wished to become his wife, or what she was to say if he did propose to her. She had always supposed that if ever she had the good fortune to meet the man destined to reach her heart she would recognize him immediately, but it seemed that either she had been mistaken in this belief, or that he was not that man.