A Country Gentleman (12 page)

‘I will send for the doctor,’ said Thurlby to Miss Wheatman, ‘if you will help her to get into bed.’

‘I do not need the doctor,’ the sufferer protested. ‘You said yourself that it was only a bad sprain.’

‘I am not an expert,’ Thurlby replied. ‘I would prefer the doctor to look at you.’

‘I agree,’ added Ames.

‘Am I to have no say in the matter?’ Caroline asked.

‘No,’ the two men responded in unison.

In the meantime, Isobel and Lavinia were entertaining Hawkfield and Laver in the drawing room. ‘What a lot of fuss about nothing,’ Isobel was saying. ‘The young woman only turned her ankle. I’m sure she could walk if she tried.’

‘Tricky things, ankles,’ remarked Laver, then paused.

The rest of the company waited for him to say something more. When nothing else was forthcoming, Lavinia said, ‘How true. I am sure that it is better to be safe than sorry.’ Then the conversation turned to something else.

Chapter Twelve

M
r Hawkfield came to see them the following day,
ostensibly
with the purpose of enquiring after Miss Tasker, but actually with some very surprising news. ‘I have received a letter from a schoolfriend who tells me something quite extraordinary,’ he said. The day being fine and warm, Lavinia and Isobel were sitting outside on a wooden seat under a tree, when Lord Thurlby’s butler conducted their visitor to pay his respects.

‘Oh really,’ said Isobel, fanning herself with deliberate
casualness
. ‘Has he found his Latin primer?’

Hawkfield had taken the letter out of his pocket. Now he put it back again. ‘Oh well, you obviously have no interest in it, so I will not trouble you. Did I tell you that Laver is planning to buy a new horse?’

‘No, you did not,’ replied Isobel. ‘Pray, tell me, what is your extraordinary news?’

‘Nothing worth troubling you with,’ he replied, ‘although I would never have thought such a thing of Riseholm. In fact, I would have said that he was the last man to … But there we are, it is of no interest to you. I always think that people who can do nothing but talk about their relations are intolerably tedious. Would you like to come and view Laver’s prospective purchase?’

‘Oh, who cares about Laver’s stupid horse?’ said Isobel angrily. ‘Of course I want to hear your news. What about Riseholm?’

‘Only that it seems as though he is about to become engaged.’

‘Engaged? Engaged to be married?’ said Lavinia hurriedly, seeing that Isobel had lost a little colour.

‘Is there any other kind?’ asked Hawkfield whimsically.

‘But to whom?’ put in Isobel. ‘He said nothing of this in his—’

‘Been writing to him, have you?’ Hawkfield asked. She held his gaze with a defiant stare. He relented and looked down at his paper. ‘To a Miss Egan, I think.’ He scanned the page. ‘Yes, Miss Hermione Egan. Now tell me that my news is not exciting.’ He eyed Isobel a little maliciously.

‘Hermione Egan,’ Isobel repeated. ‘But she will bore him silly in approximately five minutes. Has it been announced?’

‘Not as yet,’ he conceded. ‘But he has been paying her very particular attention, apparently. All of London is waiting for the announcement. There has even been betting on it in the clubs.’

‘It is amazing to me the things that gentlemen will bet on,’ said Lavinia severely, seeing another means of drawing Hawkfield’s attention away from Isobel, who had gone strangely still.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Hawkfield agreed. ‘Or so I’m told. Do you recall Miss Egan, Miss Muir?’

‘There is precious little to recall,’ Isobel put in bluntly, before Lavinia had time to say anything. ‘Young, silly and stupid would sum her up, I think.’

‘And exceedingly pretty,’ put in Hawkfield.

‘Oh yes, of course she’s pretty,’ said Isobel sarcastically. ‘Riseholm would hardly look her way if she were not. Excuse me, will you? I have a hem that needs stitching, and this conversation has suddenly become very dull.’

She strolled back towards the house. Lavinia fully expected Hawkfield to make some remark about her reaction to the news, but instead, he went back to talking about Laver’s plans for acquiring a new horse.

She nodded politely at everything that he was saying, but in reality, her mind was elsewhere. It was the first time that she had
ever known Isobel excuse herself from a conversation with a young man in order to set a stitch in anything. In fact, if Isobel had so much as taken up her needle since their schooldays, she would be very much surprised. What was more, she had seen her friend’s face at the very moment when Lord Riseholm’s
engagement
had been mentioned. The girl had looked positively stricken.

If Hawkfield had hoped to see Isobel again, he was to be
disappointed
, for she did not come back downstairs and after the correct half an hour, he took his leave. ‘Doubtless half the hem had come down,’ he remarked with a little gentle malice. Lavinia could not think of a response to this, so simply bade him ‘good day’.

Having drifted languidly away from her companions, Isobel went up to her bedchamber, forcing herself to walk in a leisurely fashion, even though every instinct was telling her to pick up her skirts and run. Eventually, she gained the sanctuary that she desired, and once in the room with the door shut, to her
astonishment
, found herself crying. What is the matter with me, she asked herself? Lord Riseholm is a rake, a flirt, an amusing dinner companion, but nothing more, surely?

Her mind went back over some of the occasions when they had met in London. Usually, this had been at some kind of society event, attended by members of the
ton
. At these functions, he had conducted himself towards her with his usual careless grace. When unobserved, however, there had been times when he had been more daring in his behaviour.

It had happened that she had visited Vauxhall for a masquerade one evening with Mrs Wilbraham and a party of her choosing. At such events, dancing became a much more exciting business, since disguise meant that it was possible to partner those with whom it might not, in other circumstances, have been permitted even to pass the time of day.

Isobel had been wearing a charming pink gown, with a domino of a darker shade, lined with white silk. She had just enjoyed a splendidly vigorous excursion with a slim, fair man whom she had not recognized, and who, she suspected, might have been a footman on his night off, when a familiar caressing voice had spoken from behind. ‘Dance with me, fair Rosebud.’

Like everyone else, Lord Riseholm had been masked, and nearly everything he was wearing was of the darkest black. His linen was snowy white, trimmed with rich lace, and his domino was lined with purple shot silk. His teeth had gleamed in the lamplight.

‘Thank you, kind sir,’ Isobel had responded, not giving away the fact that she had recognized him.

She had danced with him before, and had discovered their steps to be wonderfully well attuned. That evening had done nothing but confirm that impression, and when the dance had finished and he had slipped an arm about her waist, she had
willingly
gone with him off the dance floor and under the trees.

‘Do you know me, sweet?’ he had asked her, as he had pulled her into his arms.

‘I believe so,’ she had responded demurely.

‘Then prepare to have your education extended, for you are about to know me a good deal better,’ he had said, before kissing her. At first his kisses had been languid, seductive and assured. Then as she had gained in confidence and begun to return his caresses, his languor had appeared to diminish and his passion increase. They had remained in seclusion, kissing and murmuring endearments for quite some time; and when at last he had led her back to the dance floor, she had felt breathless and not quite steady.

From that moment on, Riseholm had been the man she had looked for at every gathering. Anyone could have told her that the wisest course would have been to avoid him completely; she knew it herself. She had quite deliberately set up other flirtations
so that her interest in him would not look so particular. It was only Riseholm who made her heart beat faster, however, and she had been foolish enough to allow her preference to lead her into indiscretion. The occasion when Lavinia had seen them together in the street had not been the first time that they had met thus. Eventually the scandal had forced Mrs Wilbraham to take the step of threatening to send her away from London, but this had been the last thing that she had wanted. She had managed to manipulate things so that she could come to Thurlby, rather than be sent to Harrogate. Truth to tell, wherever she had gone, she would have found a way of keeping in touch with Riseholm. She did not by any means wish to be parted from the earl.

Circumstances had fortuitously combined to enable her to find a way of writing to Riseholm. This did not mean that she was unaware how wrong it was to engage in a secret correspondence with a libertine in the way that she had. Why else would she keep this secret from Lavinia? Nevertheless, she found herself wanting to know everything about him. She had asked him questions which he had answered, before asking some of his own in his response. Why had he said nothing about an engagement? Had he said anything about Miss Egan at all? Could Hawkfield’s friend have been mistaken?

She hunted at the back of the cupboard where her clothes were kept, and got out the box in which she kept all his letters. Carefully she re-read each one, but there was nothing about the wretched girl. With a man like Riseholm, she knew that there was a great danger of out of sight, out of mind. She now realized with added force that the notion of his forgetting about her was very disturbing, to say the least.

She sat nibbling the end of her finger before making a decision. She decided to write to Riseholm playfully, teasing him a little about his conquest of Miss Egan. Then in the same letter she would boast discreetly about her success in enslaving the vicar. He was, after all, the nephew of Lord and Lady Smilie, a wealthy
childless couple. Yes, a hint that she was on the point of contracting an alliance with Timothy Ames would make his
rakeship
think!

She was also aware that she needed to do something to get rid of Benjamin Twizzle. Short of a torrential downpour, she could not see a way out of meeting him in the wilderness the day after tomorrow. Thanks to her craftiness, she had some money to give him, but her allowance was not a bottomless pit, and what would he do when her money was gone? If he told Thurlby, as he had threatened, then Thurlby would send her back to London, and Mrs Wilbraham would send her to Harrogate to her
grandmother
’s house. She could not think of her grandmother without a shudder. She remembered a cold voice, the grip of bony fingers, and a thin switch, vigorously applied. Her grandmother was the only person of whom Isobel had ever really been afraid. Getting rid of Benjamin Twizzle was becoming a matter of urgency.

The only certain way out of the situation, as far as she could see, would be to become engaged. Then any tiny scandal of the past would be covered by a cloak of respectability. There were four men in her immediate orbit who might fit the bill. Lord Thurlby she discounted immediately. In a private conversation before she had left London, she had suggested to Mrs Wilbraham that she could exert herself to attach him. She might have done, too, had it not become perfectly plain to her that he was in love with Lavinia, and she with him if only they would pull themselves together and realize it. Isobel had very few scruples, especially with regard to attracting men, but spoiling her friend’s romance was one of them.

Mr Laver would never do. He had an irritating laugh, and was so self-effacing that she could imagine him agreeing to pay Twizzle twice as much rather than getting rid of him. Hawkfield would not do either. He looked too much like Riseholm for comfort, and Isobel had a suspicion that he would not take any of her overtures seriously. It would have to be Timothy Ames. She
had no scruples about breaking
that
engagement. Caroline Tasker was not a friend of hers after all and she was as she, Isobel, had already observed, a dyed-in-the-wool spinster. Her own
engagement
to the vicar would be announced; Twizzle would retire in discomfort, and Riseholm would be made to think twice about engaging himself to that insipid creature. She was not sure which eventuality would give her the more satisfaction.

‘Really, Timothy, I am not an invalid,’ Caroline protested the following morning. ‘There is no need for me to stay in bed. The doctor said so.’

‘The doctor said that you must keep the ankle still,’ the vicar retorted. ‘If you remain in bed, then that is the best way of ensuring that you do not move it. The doctor said that as well.’ He had just come from making a formal call, and was dressed all in black, with a high stock and bands. Caroline thought that he looked exceedingly attractive, but did not say so.

‘Well when
can
I get up? Did you ask him that?’

The vicar smiled down at her. She was wearing a nightgown which had been lent to her by Lavinia, and had a frilly cap on her head. Her hair, which waved gently, was gathered loosely under the cap, allowing a few tendrils to escape. This more casual arrangement was much more becoming than her usual severe style and Ames thought how desirable she looked. He smiled. ‘How very dear to me you are, my darling,’ he said, sitting down next to her and tilting her chin with his long fingers so that he could press a kiss upon her lips.

‘Timothy!’ she exclaimed, intending to reprove him, but sounding half-hearted about the business.

‘Now now,’ he said in minatory accents, wagging a finger at her. ‘You are not to move. The doctor said so.’

The interval that followed was very satisfactory to both parties, and when the vicar got up to leave, not forgetting to say a brief prayer for the speedy recovery of his future wife, Miss
Tasker lay in a happy daze until eventually she dropped off to sleep.