Althea (19 page)

“I am always unjust when I can get away with it, child,” the
dowager admitted equably. “It is one of the few compensations one receives for
achieving age and losing beauty.”

“And I promise you, Lady Boskingram, that whenever I hear
you speak so fetchingly of the advantages of your advanced age, I am altogether
green with envy, and long to be a grand old matron and wreck reputations with a
blow.”

Georgiana suppressed a strong urge to giggle at this
exchange.

“I am unconscionably rude,” Lady Boskingram was saying.
“Althea, my dear, I must make you known to a new young friend of mine, who has
been listening patiently to my nonsense. Althea, this is Georgiana Laverham.”
The dowager paused a moment for effect. Tracy choked slightly and looked away
as she continued: “Georgiana,” she said affably, “this is Althea Ervine.”

Althea suppressed a strong urge to run away. Georgiana, with
a little more warning, had her feelings well in hand, and of the two of them
presented the braver front. Lady Boskingram sat and watched the two girls with
a smile of delicious amusement. Tracy stood by without comment, conscious of a
tightness in his usually comfortable neckcloth. It was the Countess who finally
broke the silence she had produced.

“Well, Althea, where are your manners? Make your curtsy to
Miss Laverham!” Althea obeyed blindly, and in another minute was sufficiently
collected to be able to say how do you do as well. Georgiana replied in kind
and then there was nothing else to say.

“Tracy, go give my compliments to your Aunt Tyl — no, pray
do
not
bring her to me here. Just the sight of her in that dreadful
violet gown is almost more than I can stomach. Go, boy. Out of my sight.” Tracy
obeyed with alacrity, noting that his collar grew looser as his distance from
the uncomfortable scene he had just witnessed grew greater.

“All right, then, you ninnyhammers,” the dowager said with
some asperity. “I have told Miss Laverham that you have no designs upon her
fiancé, Althea, so I really think that you might prove it and act a little more
kindly toward her. After all, it is she who will undertake to wed the
indecisive Mr. Pendarly, so you can certainly afford to feel a little pity for
her.” Georgiana started indignantly at this. “Quiet, child,” Lady Boskingram
said indulgently. “You cannot expect me to appreciate your betrothed as I do my
own nevvy, can you? I am sure that
you
and
he
shall do together
à
merveilleux
.”

Althea, who had been stiff and wary throughout the
interview, began to be overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of her situation. She
began to giggle, and then to laugh. Georgiana, not so accustomed to finding
humor in her own discomfort, stared at Miss Ervine for a minute before
subsiding into a weak chuckle.

“I declare, ma’am,” Althea said chidingly to the dowager,
“you must be the most outrageous person I have ever met.” She turned to
Georgiana. “Now confess, are you not shocked at her treatment of us? She sits
there trying to make a battle royal from us, and the only thing for us to do is
deny her the satisfaction — at least within her view. Do you know, I think I
have been dancing this hour and more. Will you sit a while with me?”

Georgiana nodded mutely and Althea turned toward a row of
empty chairs well to the rear of the room.

“By your leave, of course, ma’am!” Althea called back to
Lady Boskingram, who waved them away helplessly and groped for a handkerchief
to wipe her streaming eyes.

“What a dreadful old woman. I enjoy her no end.”

“I have never met anyone like her,” Georgiana admitted as
she settled her skirts primly about her. “I rather wonder what she would be
like if she met my mama.”

“I do not know your mama, but I should think Lady Peg must
conquer all.”

Georgiana did not know what to make of Althea’s free manner
where Lady Boskingram was concerned. “Lady Peg? Well, in any case, you
certainly cannot know my mama — she is something to be reckoned with. Brummell
told someone once that she was like Mrs. Drummond-Burrell for her hauteur and
like Mrs. Fitzherbert for her determination. I am afraid Mama assumed that it
was a compliment. Last year the gentlemen at White’s had a bet on the book as
to whether or not Mama would capture a title for me within the first Season —
and I understand that the betting was heavily in her favor. I was a sad
disappointment to her, I fear,” Georgiana said glumly.

Althea observed Miss Laverham with rather more interest than
she had before: the girl was shy, of course, and given the overbearing manner
of her mother, this was perhaps not much to be wondered at. But certainly she
was not stupid, nor as insipidly dishonest as most schoolroom girls were wont
to be: she knew her mother’s quality, knew her own character. Althea found herself
warming to her companion.

At that moment the “shy white mouse” was scanning the crowd,
hoping for a glimpse of her Mr. Pendarly. Althea saw, and saw the blush of
gratification that greeted her new friend’s success.

“Lady Boskingram was right, you know,” she said gently. “I
did not know that Pendarly was betrothed to you, or anyone, in faith. I do now,
of course, and I am not pining for him or plotting to wrest him from your arms.
You are quite safe from me. I should have learned soon enough that we should
never suit.”

This speech had the effect of utterly undoing Georgiana’s
composure. She did not burst into tears, but looked very much as if she would
have liked to, and her voice, when she spoke, was tremulous.

“You are so pretty,” she began. This excellent beginning
degenerated as her voice sank lower and lower and her words became a mumbling.
“So pretty...and Edward — I mean, Mr. Pendarly — is so...and Mama told me...and
I supposed that anyone, most of all Edward, would see…you have conversation and
I have none...and how could Edward — I mean, Mr. Pendarly — resist...and I have
been so miserable!” Althea reached for Georgiana’s hand and thought wryly that
it was indeed fortunate that they were situated so far from the common eye.
After a while Georgiana looked up apologetically.

“I am so sorry,” she gasped. “I have been ill, you know, and
then to have all this to worry over — but I should never have bothered you in
such a fashion. It is the most dreadful sort of imposition, and exactly what
you must deplore. But when Mama told me that Mr. Pendarly seemed to have a
partiality for you, I was...I was quite overset. Mama is not so very tactful,
and she pictured you to me as the most awful, managing hussy with a fatal
beauty, which is what I know well enough I shall never have.”

“But here you see me, Miss Laverham, with two eyes, a nose,
a mouth, a quantity of hair, and no fatal beauty at all. I spent my young years
wishing
au désespoir
that I had charming yellow hair and a straight nose
like my widgeon sister. I doubt that anyone with sense ever thinks she looks
the way she exactly ought, until she has disposed of silly notions like that.”

“I suppose Mama has the most improbable notions in London —
for I know that she fancies herself monstrous attractive still, and has hopes
of catching a husband for herself when I am safely wed away.”

“Heaven save me from such a fate,” Althea muttered devoutly.
“But you are not such a ninnyhammer as to worry over such things seriously, are
you?”

“You know, that is the first time that anyone has ever told
me that I am
not
a ninnyhammer?” Georgiana said shyly. “I never thought
that I was, but it can be hard to keep believing that when everyone seems to
insist that you are.”

“Well, you are not,” Althea said sharply. “You want a little
bringing out, but you are certainly not a fool, except in letting yourself be
named so. But I see that my sister is making griffon faces at me, which I
suppose to mean that she wishes to leave. Stay a moment. Will you come and call
upon me? I will try to see that Maria is elsewhere, for while I do love her
dearly, she does get in the way of a rational conversation. I would come to
visit you, but I confess that I am vilely afraid of your mama.”

“If you would like me to, I would be pleased to come,”
Georgiana said slowly. “You know, Miss Ervine, I was prepared to be afraid of
you, or at least to dislike you, but I think you are quite the nicest person I
have met this age — always excepting Edward, of course.” Althea winced at the
company she was put in, but smiled at Georgiana anyway as she rose, dimpled
with a deep smile, and was gone from her chair, threading her way through the
crowd toward her mama’s chair. Althea, staring after her a moment, shook her
head ruefully and returned to Lady Boskingram’s side to take leave of her. From
there Tracy gave her his arm to Maria.

Bearing each other company on the ride home, both girls, for
differing reasons, were in cheering spirits. Since Francis’s return, Maria
seemed to see everything with a slightly roseate halo, and chattered away to
her sister like a pretty magpie. Althea had a tendency to stare into space and
dissolve into chuckles, which Maria assumed were a response to the witty
stories she was telling, until a particularly raucous burst of laughter made her
tax her sister with her unreasonable hilarity. “Whatever possesses you? Have
you reconciled yourself at last to being Lady Calendar?”

“I suppose I shall have to marry him,” Althea answered. “If
only to make sure I have his aunt on my side of any argument. What a devil that
woman is, to be sure.” And she began to detail the whole of her introduction to
Georgiana Laverham.

“Do you mean to say that Lady Boskingram placed you in such
a position and all you can do is laugh about it? And in front of that condescending
man, too. I know he is your fiancé, but he condescends to me — at least I think
he does. I wish you would let me announce your betrothal to the world, though:
if you should lose him through your peculiar treatment of him, I should never
forgive you.”

“Sis,
all
I can do now is to laugh at it. Once it is
known that I am to marry Tracy, people will have their nine days’ wonder and
then they will forget how I threw myself at the head of an impecunious younger
son with nothing to his credit but other people’s debts.” Maria, engaged again
in the glories of a dream of Althea married to a Matrimonial Prize and queening
it over Society, entirely missed the bitterness in her sister’s voice.

“I am sure you are right, Ally.” She sighed. “And once this
annoying affair-of-honor thing with Francis and Sir Tracy is concluded, I am
sure I shall be able to like him as well as Merrit, or even Papa, I suppose.”
She settled back into the seat lazily. “Mmmm. I wonder will Francis be home
when we arrive.”

“Maria,” Althea said slowly, “what affair-of-honor thing?
You cannot mean that Francis is to meet Tracy.” Her face had gone very white as
the images conjured up by that appalling phrase presented themselves.

“Ally dearest, don’t faint. We are almost home, and think
what a to-do it would make. There is no duel, nor is there like to be. Do
please be calm and don’t look so — so dreadfully white.” Maria chafed her
sister’s hand and made motions of searching out her vinaigrette.

“I will not faint, provided you do not assault me with those
dreadful salts,” Althea said grimly. “Don’t flutter about so, Mary, but tell
me, if you please, what you
do
mean by such a Cheltenham phrase as an
Affair of Honor? What am I to suppose if you use such a term?”

But the barouche was coming to a halt. Maria refused to tell
her sister anything until they were safe inside and Althea bestowed in her
room.

Upstairs in the dressing room of her apartments Althea at
last turned and ruthlessly demanded of her sister that she stop tormenting her
immediately.

“There is nothing to be so excited about, Ally.” Maria
pouted. “All it is is that Francis owes Sir Tracy some money — a dreadful sum,
to be sure, but he shall be paid, never fear for that. You understand, don’t
you, dearest, that it makes Francis just the slightest bit nervous to be much
in company with Sir Tracy until it is paid. That was why Francis was so
dreadful put out over Helena’s reckoning: he had lost that horrible amount to
Sir Tracy only the night before, and when he got the account from Helena, well,
of course, you see how he was placed. So you see, it is all the most natural
thing in the world, and there was no reason why you should look so stricken.”

“I am no longer stricken, Mary, I assure you,” Althea said
quietly. She bade Maria good night in the same subdued tones and retired to her
room, leaving her sister to puzzle over her strange behavior.

Blessedly alone at last in the dark, Althea tried at first
to calm herself. She realized that she was still in a rather hysterical state
from the sudden meeting with Georgiana Laverham, and the subsequent discussion
of it with Maria, and she did not really want to consider this latest piece of
news while she felt so. When she thought her head a little cooler she began to
calculate: Francis had left the house the day after he received Helena’s bill,
and that had been the day after her own first appearance, at the Fforydings’
ball, which meant that — what it meant was that Sir Tracy had gone direct from
the Fforydings’, where he had met her, to some club, where he had won a
prodigious amount of money from Francis. What was a prodigious sum of money?
Maria’s ideas on the subject were notoriously inaccurate so that she could not
judge. But for the mild Francis to rail at Maria for extravagance while worrying
over his own debts argued that the sum must be enormous indeed. And all the
misery it had caused her sister and brother-in-law! It was not as though Tracy
were in need of the money. The very night they had met he had won it. Maria’s
face when she read Francis’s note about Helena’s bill. Her own voice saying to
Georgiana Laverham, “I would have learned soon enough that Pendarly and I
should not suit.” Tracy’s cynical smile that infuriated her so — at least she
assumed that it infuriated her. A prodigious sum of money. Tracy was — Tracy
was — Tracy....