by Amanda Scott
Laughter bubbled up again, and Nell had all she could do to stifle it. As it was, a small gurgle escaped before she could stop it. “How … how kind of your sister.”
He grinned at her. “It was, wasn’t it.”
“Well, it was.” Suddenly feeling as if eight years had simply melted away, she grinned back at him. “I needn’t ask you how your proposal was greeted at Crossways, either, for my elder sister is as much a trial to me at times as yours is to you. It is quite lowering to reflect that your wealth and property must have put any other consideration to flight. Poor Rory.” The last words were spoken without thought, but Huntley seemed to take no offense.
“Why ‘poor Rory’? She seems well enough pleased.”
“But she has such a romantical disposition,” Nell protested. “Surely she must yearn for a love match!”
“You forget that she was raised by your sister, my dear.” The cynical look was back. “Aurora may yearn for romance, but she finds the thought of being a countess with endless pin money quite palatable, I assure you.”
Nell thought over his words and was forced to admit that, from what she had so far seen of her niece, he very likely had the right of it. She sighed. It seemed so wrong. But really, when one came to mull it over, it was probably not wrong at all. Rory would have security, a very fine old title, and a no doubt indulgent husband.
Huntley suddenly leaned forward in his seat, and she realized that her niece was approaching the carriage. His lordship pushed open the door and jumped down to assist her, but paused suddenly and stared.
“What is that thing?”
Rory was all smiles. Her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed from the cool sea air. She wore her russet pelisse, and wrapped up in one of its folds was something she was handling with excessive care.
“Only look at him, sir! Aunt Nell, ’tis the dearest little kitten. He was shivering in a nook of the sea wall and mewing so piteously. I’m persuaded he must have misplaced his family.”
“More than likely, a wise mother abandoned him,” Huntley said. “Which is precisely what you will do, Aurora, if you’ve got any sense at all.”
“Well, I haven’t, then, for I should never do anything so cruel.” She put her foot on the step and turned beseeching eyes upon her aunt. “You will not make me abandon something so helpless as this, will you, Aunt Nell?” She held out her prize, a bedraggled, very small, slightly damp, gray kitten. From the look of it, Nell thought, it could not be more than three weeks of age. Her brow wrinkled slightly.
“I doubt it will live, Rory. ’Tis so very small.”
“Of course it will live. I shall make it do so. Is there any more of that gingerbread?”
“Mostly crumbs, but it doesn’t signify,” Huntley answered, waiting impatiently. “I doubt he can eat. He still needs his mother.”
“Just let me try.” She climbed into the carriage and, taking Huntley’s handkerchief from Nell, spread it on her lap and offered the kitten one crumb. To everyone’s astonishment, the little mite accepted it hungrily.
“It will make him sick,” Huntley prophesied. “He needs milk. And he is probably flea-ridden as well. I shan’t thank you, Aurora, if I find tomorrow that my carriage has been infested.”
“Oh, don’t be so fusty, Huntley. Get in. He will take cold if we do not get him home soon.”
He obeyed, and they were soon on their way back to Upper Rock Gardens. Rory continued to feed her protégé crumbs from the napkin, and the kitten seemed equally as grateful for the last bit as the first.
“He has been starving,” she announced. “Anyone can see that. Once he has been well fed, he will be a beauty, won’t you, my dear.”
“In my experience, stray cats rarely turn into beauties,” Huntley said with a near sour expression.
Nell bit her tongue. It was easy to see that he was annoyed, but she could think of nothing to say that might alleviate his displeasure. It seemed such a trifling thing. Of course, if Rory truly meant to keep the little thing, it might not seem a trifling thing to Lady Agnes. She pointed this out gently.
“Pooh, Grandmama will not care a button. Once she sees him, she will know he belongs with me. And I shall see she is not troubled by him one bit. I shall attend to his feeding and care all by myself.”
Nell wondered how Rory thought such a thing would be possible with the busy social schedule they would have once the Season truly began. But the thought brought another upon its heels that nearly caused her to laugh aloud. Sadie. No doubt most of the care of the stray would fall upon her shoulders, and it would be interesting to know just what might happen the first time she asked any one of the Lindale servants to assist her. On that thought, she looked up, her eyes brimful of amusement, only to discover that Huntley was watching her again, an enigmatic expression in his own eyes. She was conscious of a wish that she could share her amusement with him.
“I believe we are nearly there,” he said almost hastily when their eyes met. There was still some distance to go, however, and he seemed disinclined to speak, so Nell passed the time listening to her niece crooning nonsense to the tiny bundle of fur in her lap.
Once they reached Number Twenty-seven, Huntley paused only long enough to escort them safely inside before taking his departure. Nell left her niece to the happy task of explaining to Pavingham that she would require a bowl of warm milk and perhaps some minced beef for her charge, while she hastened upstairs to warn Lady Agnes about the newest arrival to the house. Amazingly, her ladyship seemed not the least dismayed.
“Whatever will make dearest Aurora happy. I am persuaded that it must be a very nice kitten. I shall be interested to make its acquaintance. Now do, Nell, hand me that tambour frame. I’m of a mind to work some petit point, I believe.”
“Of course, Mama,” Nell replied, concealing astonishment. Clearly, Lady Agnes no longer feared that her granddaughter would set them all in an uproar. “Shall I get you anything else?”
“No, no, dear. You run along and take off your pelisse. You will catch cold if you let yourself get too warm. You may come back once you have tidied yourself.”
Accordingly, Nell repaired to her own bedchamber where she doffed her velvet pelisse and decided to change her walking dress as well. Without bothering to ring for Madge, she made a rapid search of her wardrobe and decided in favor of a simple moss-green frock with puffed sleeves that tied at the elbow with narrow yellow satin ribbons. While she changed her clothes, she thought back over the afternoon and wondered what the future would bring.
Rory had seemed perfectly content to wander by herself, and she had been greatly excited over the kitten. But she still expected everything to go her own way, so if Huntley had no intention of lending them his escort on a regular basis, how on earth was Nell to keep her niece in line? She would have to embroider the fact of their betrothal on every gown the chit owned! Undoubtedly, Crossways would have arranged for a notice in the London papers, but there had been none in the Brighton Herald, and she did not think she ought to arrange for one herself. She decided she would simply have to have a straightforward discussion with her niece, in hopes of avoiding some of the worst of the problems that no doubt lay ahead.
VI
DESPITE NELL’S GOOD INTENTIONS, there seemed to be little time for a heart-to-heart chat with her niece. If she hadn’t known the thought to be a ridiculous one, she might even have suspected Rory of attempting to evade just such a confrontation. To be sure, they both had a number of things to occupy their time. Mr. Wade came to call upon them Saturday afternoon and agreed that invitations to the first assembly at the Castle Inn would be delivered into their hands no later than Monday afternoon.
He stayed no longer than the requisite twenty minutes, of course, but his rival from the Old Ship, Mr. Hicks, was announced by Pavingham before Mr. Wade’s footsteps had faded out of hearing. Rory thought them both quaint little men, if a bit more puffed up in their own esteem than they had any call to be.
“Very true, i
n these days of relaxed manners, my dear,” observed her grandmother, who had been present during both interviews. “But Mr. Wade—or Captain Wade, as he was known to us then—once held quite an important position here. “’Tis the same position he holds now, of course,” she added vaguely, “but ’twas of vast importance then.”
She went on to explain that Mr. Wade had been a fixture in Brighton for nearly thirty years. “At first he officiated in Bath, too, alternating his time between the two towns. Only there was a dreadful scandal in Bath, so his services came to an abrupt end there.”
“Mama told me about that,” Rory admitted. “He read aloud some love letters a lady wrote to him. Mama said the whole town was angry with him. She had that from Cousin Selina in Bath after she wrote to tell her I’d be making my come-out here.”
“No doubt. I had the tale from Selina myself some years ago. We were both quite young at the time it all happened, of course.”
“They say the housemaids in Bath were too indignant even to make his bed,” Nell put in with a smile. “And I must confess, Mama, I have always thought him a disgusting little man myself.”
Lady Agnes agreed that Mr. Wade had never been what one might call truly popular in Brighton. “Your papa was used to say he neglected his duties for the gaming tables. I know nothing of such matters myself, however.”
“Well, he still enjoyed a good deal of power the year I came out,” Nell said. “Why, even theatrical performances were allowed only on evenings convenient to his plans. They were certainly never allowed on Monday or Thursday evenings as they are now.”
“There have been other changes, too, however,” Lady Agnes said with a sigh. “To be sure, there are a good many more private parties now, but Mrs. Calvert was telling me only the other day that the public ball at the Old Ship on Thursday last—the first of the Season, don’t you know—was quite deplorable. She would have it that all the rabble was there. City beaux and cits’ wives, she said, dared to mingle with true gentry and the nobility. I make no doubt the assemblies there will soon become mauvais ton, and I am not at all certain, Nell, that you would be well advised to take Aurora. I have heard nothing against the assemblies at the Castle, for of course, Monday’s is the first. But in these modern times, with so many foreign elements about, one never knows what to expect next.”
“Never mind, Mama. I shall endeavor to take good care of her.” It was an opportunity for that conversation, Nell thought then. But she could not bring herself to take Rory away to the privacy of her own bedchamber. Lady Agnes would surely demand to know the reason, which would prove awkward to explain, and it was possible that more people would come to call upon them, too.
Indeed, Lord Huntley was shown into the drawing room not ten minutes later. Rory greeted him politely but seemed to have little to say to him, so it fell to Nell and Lady Agnes to maintain the flow of conversation. This task proved simple enough, however, once Lady Agnes thought to ask his lordship how he had been occupying the years since she had last clapped eyes upon him.
“For as I recall it, my lord, you went out of town not three days before my poor husband’s collapse, did you not?”
“As to that, my lady, I cannot say, as I was unaware of your tragedy until some months later. I was, however, called away very suddenly.”
“Not a death in your own family, I trust, sir.”
“Unfortunately, ma’am. My father, as it happens, passed to his reward quite as unexpectedly as Mr. Lindale passed to his. He was—again like Mr. Lindale—quite a young man.”
“Mr. Lindale was only forty-six,” she replied, reaching for her vinaigrette.
His lordship eyed that gesture with undisguised alarm and said hastily that he had subsequently joined the Army. The vinaigrette hovered as her ladyship paused, replying that she had not taken him for a military man.
“Nor I, sir,” Nell put in, watching his rapidly changing expressions with amusement.
He glanced at her briefly, then rather pointedly gave his full attention to Lady Agnes. “A military career seemed better than hanging on my brother’s sleeve,” he said, “but I stayed only six years. I wasn’t much cut out for campaigning, though I served in a Hussar regiment on the Continent for several years before a bayonet thrust to the shoulder got me sent home just before Amiens. Subsequently, I transferred to the Tenth, which by then had been ordered to Manchester, supposedly for training. By the time hostilities resumed, my brother had died and I’d sold out. I confess, I am not precisely sorry to have done so.”
“Your brother, as well,” said Lady Agnes weakly, waving the vinaigrette under her dainty nose. “Poor, wretched lad. You have suffered exactly as my dearest Nell has suffered, have you not?”
Huntley was certainly looking rather wretched, and although he glanced helplessly at Nell, he managed to keep a wary eye on the vinaigrette. “Have you suffered so much then, Miss Lindale?”
“Indeed, oh, indeed she has,” replied Lady Agnes in lachrymose tones. “You’ll scarce credit it, sir, and I could not have been more sorely provoked, I promise you. But we suffered six of them in as many years.”
“What? Not deaths!” Huntley sat up straighter in his chair, then looked more directly at Nell, who was having difficulty retaining her composure. Thankfully, he addressed his next words to her mother. “You are quite right, my lady. “’Tis a difficult fact to credit.”
“Nevertheless, ’tis the very truth, sir. Six of them, and very inconsiderate I thought them at the time, I can tell you. For what was my poor Nell to do when she must positively live in black crape? ’Twas monstrous unfair. As though Fate herself thrust my poor darling onto the shelf.”
“On the shelf? How absurd! Why, Miss Lindale is quite as beautiful as ever and seems to have developed a good deal of character into the bargain. She is scarcely at her last prayers.”
Nell turned quite pink at these unexpected compliments, but fortunately there was no need for her to reply to them.
“Oh, but she is! Or, at least, if she is not at her last prayers, no one can deny that she is beyond her first youth.” The vinaigrette paused directly under the little nose, and to Huntley’s all too evident discomfort, a lacy handkerchief appeared in her ladyship’s delicate hand. “What else,” she demanded mournfully, “could one expect, my lord, when she is all of five-and-twenty and insists upon behaving like a spinster woman? Besides, the eligible men hereabouts are not seeking mature young women of character. They are looking about for youthful beauties whose character they might mold to suit themselves.”
This statement being clearly unanswerable, Nell took pity on his lordship and spoke up in her own defense. “Pray, Mama, do not speak as if you expect poor Huntley to mend matters. You will at the very least unman him. What’s done is done and cannot be mended, and ’tis just as well, I’m thinking. For if I was not so clearly upon the shelf, who, pray tell, would take dear Rory out and about? We are already agreed, are we not, that it would not suit your delicate constitution to do so.”
“Oh my, no!” Lady Agnes replied hastily before turning melting eyes toward Huntley. “For you must know, my lord, that the least little exertion oversets me. ’Tis my poor nerves. Ever since my dearest Lindale passed on, God rest him, I have not seemed to have the energies of my earlier days.
Why, the smallest activity—even a mere afternoon spent playing at silver loo—sends me to my bed prostrated for quite three days’ time.”
“Amazing, ma’am. And you still so young and beautiful.”
“Indeed, sir,” she returned, smiling without a blush, as both vinaigrette and handkerchief came to rest in her lap. “I am still quite young enough to enjoy life, I suppose, if it were not for the dreadful burden of my weakened constitution.”
“I understand your plight, ma’am. My own dear mother suffers from much the same malady, but she has suffered,” he added with the wry twist of lips that was rapidly becoming so familiar to Nell, “for many, many years—even before my father’s untimely death.”
/> “Poor creature. How very sad for her. Although,” she added thoughtfully, “I daresay her form of the malady, while longer-lived, is not quite so acute as my own. Doctor Penworthy, after grievous expense, I might add—Nell, do you know his last bill came to more than three guineas? Well, at any rate,” she continued rapidly as though she feared Nell might actually trouble herself to respond, “he told me mine is quite a unique case. And you must know he has treated a good many nerves, sir. But he gave me to understand that mine was quite the worst case he has ever seen.”
“Indeed,” Huntley responded, coloring the one word with a well feigned display of deep interest. Nell was pleased to note that he did not make the fatal error of attempting to defend the relative severity of his mama’s ailments against those of Lady Agnes. From what she had seen so far, he could not hope to win such a debate.
She glanced over at Rory, who was seated quite at her ease in a chair slightly removed from the others. She appeared to be gazing intently out the window, as if concentrating upon some fascinating view. But since Nell’s own experience gave her to know that there could be nothing out there worthy of such rapt attention, she deduced that her niece was daydreaming. Deciding not to disturb her, she turned her attention once more to the others.
Lady Agnes had taken the opportunity to expand upon the various disadvantages of being cursed with a delicate constitution, and Huntley bore with it for some minutes longer before making deft excuses and taking his departure. The three ladies sat quietly for a moment or two before Rory stirred in her chair, thus drawing her grandmother’s notice.
“You were very quiet during his lordship’s visit, dearest,” that lady observed. “I hope you did not take a chill during your visit to the esplanade.”
“Oh, no, I’m perfectly well, thank you, Grandmama. I was merely thinking about Ulysses. Did you notice that Huntley did not so much as inquire after the state of his health?”
