Elisabeth Kidd (5 page)

Today, however—there being no one to shock—she was dressed simply
in a grey gown that came up to her throat in a line of small black buttons and ended with a double ruff of pointed lace. She held herself militarily
erect, while gracefully pouring tea from a Chinese porcelain pot.

“But do not keep me on tenterhooks!” she admonished Antonia. “Tell
me who that was who accompanied you here.”

“Why, Imogen, surely you are well acquainted with Mr Kenyon,”
Antonia teased her.

“Oh—Philip!” Imogen exclaimed, dismissing their mutual friend with
a wave of one beringed hand. “You know perfectly well I meant the other
one.”

“He is Viscount Kedrington.”

Imogen’s eyes and brows flew up. “Kedrington? Oh, surely not! No, it
can’t be—Desmond must be dead these fifteen years or more. This must be the—let me see—the sixth viscount? What is his name? I thought he
was out of the country.”

“I regret I did not ask for particulars.”

“No matter. But tell me what he said to you.”

Antonia did not appear to recall the interview in any detail, but she did
dredge out of her fickle memory the viscount’s Christian name and that
he had a well-developed literary instinct. Imogen stared at her, as if this was the last thing she would have expected to hear.

“Well!” she said at last. “This Duncan is every bit as attractive as his
father was, but no one would ever have accused Desmond of having a
literary notion in his head—nor a grain of imagination, for that matter.
My dear, you should have heard the—I suppose you may call it a
suggestion—he made to me once! I laughed in his face. A remarkably
effective means of ridding myself of him, but not the best thing for his
pride. Don’t you want that cake, Antonia? Would you rather have some
bread and butter?”

“Thank you, no. Just another cup of tea, if you please.”

Mrs. Curtiz eyed her speculatively. “You don’t eat enough, my girl. I
have some fruit and cheese, if that will tempt you.”

“No, ma’am, I assure you —

Imogen rose and crossed the room to a shaded window to the side of
the garden. “When you begin to call me ma’am, I know you are about to
turn obstinate,” she said, raising the sash. She reached out and plucked
two apples and a York cheese from a ledge immediately outside, where
they had been keeping cool, and set these down in front of Antonia.
“There, now! If you do not eat at least half of that, I shall not finish my
story.”

Antonia smiled. “That, my friend, is blackmail pure and simple!”

“I thought you would not be able to resist my terms.”

Antonia obediently picked up her knife and began to pare an apple.
“But really, Imogen, I have only the most academic interest in the family
history of the—the—oh, very well! Tell me, if you must. What is the
family name?”

“Heywood,” said Mrs. Curtiz, making herself comfortable again. “On
his mother’s side, the Coverleys were Irish aristocrats of some sort—it
doesn’t signify. Cecily was one of the celebrated Coverley sisters, renowned
beauties in their day and both heiresses. Cecily was the frail one, but she
had a will of iron. To give Desmond his due, he was never afraid of
her—too buffle-headed to think he should be, I suppose. At any rate,
when they knew Cecily would have no more children, he spent less and
less time at home. She outlived him, nevertheless, so I should not be
surprised to find her son taking after her rather than that fool of a
father.”

She paused to see that Antonia was making satisfactory inroads on the cheese, and went on. “Desmond died, as I recall, the same year the boy
came of age, so that he came into his title, his fortune, and his majority
all at one stroke. Many a young man in that position would have
squandered everything in a few years, but Cecily persuaded him to enter
diplomatic service, and he was posted to the West Indies. Mind you, he may have sown his wild oats there—I remember some stories about a Creole countess—and he was transferred rather more abruptly than
diplomatically to Spain a few years after that. I don’t know what happened to him there. I heard nothing more until today.”

“Is he, as was said of Byron, ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’?”

“Oh, not so bad as all that,” Imogen said, adding slyly, “If you are
thinking of him for Isabel, I daresay he is perfectly eligible. He does not
look to me to be a seducer—or even a hardened flirt—although if he
remains single for a few more years, he may well become one.”

Antonia suspected that this process was probably more advanced than
her friend supposed, but she said only, “How many Coverley sisters were
there?”

“Only two. The other is Duncan’s Aunt Hester. There’s an aunt on the Heywood side as well, but I am not acquainted with her.”

“Why, Imogen, how disappointing! We are counting on you to know everyone, or how shall we make a success in London?”

The equanimity with which this remark was delivered did not deceive
Mrs Curtiz for an instant. She set her cup on her saucer with a clatter
that made Antonia wince, and demanded, “Are you telling me that you
have decided to go to London after all? Did you and Philip devise this
scheme between you just this morning?”

“No, Isabel decided it,” Antonia said. She hesitated for a moment,
then looked at her friend enquiringly. “She has determined to marry
someone of fortune in order to recover our own, and she believes that London is the most likely place to find such a someone.”

There was a brief silence before Imogen said, “How very practical of
her, to be sure.”

Antonia protested, “But, Imogen! How could she say such a thing?
I’m sure I never indicated that we were in such straits, nor—even if we were—that it was Isabel’s responsibility to get us out of them! I do not
understand how she can have conceived such a notion!”

Imogen smiled in what Antonia thought was a deplorably indulgent
way, as if she were an ignorant child. “You must remember, my dear, that you and Isabel are two different people. Isabel has always had the levelest
head of any of you Fairfaxes—although I must concede that this notion
carries practicality to an extreme.”

“It most certainly does! Really, Imogen, I did not know where to look
when she said it, I was so taken aback.”

“On the other hand,” the older woman went on, as if she had not
heard this outburst, “there is some merit in it. After all, what could be
better for all of you, Isabel included?”

“Anything but selling herself to the highest bidder! It would be better if I married myself, than that.”

“How would your marriage solve anything?”

Antonia hesitated. The idea had taken hold of her mind the moment
she read Charles’s letter that morning, but she saw now that she had given it little real consideration, and she could now make only the most
obvious reply.

“Isabel would not then feel so
...
so pressed to take on this supposed responsibility of hers,” she said. “As a married lady, I could sponsor her
debut and she could then take the time to choose among her multitude of suitors the man she would be most comfortable spending her life with.”

“Why should you suppose that Isabel will not decide against making a
sacrifice of herself as soon as she meets someone with a face handsomer
than his purse—or for that matter, that she could not love a rich man?”

“I daresay she could, but—well, it seems so
...
so cold-blooded to
think of fortune first and love a poor second.”

“Most people do think that way. I’m sure even I weighed all the
advantages before I married Edmund, for all that I was past hope and past
thirty when I met him. And here you are contemplating the same for
yourself. You will forgive me, my dear, if I point out that your bringing
the matter up at all strikes one as calculation every bit as cold-blooded as Isabel’s.”

Antonia glanced at her friend, who was regarding her fixedly if not
critically. Imogen—who never criticised or condemned—had never opposed
her attachment to Charles Kenyon, but Antonia had never felt quite
comfortable discussing him with her either. She had always supposed this
to be due to Imogen’s assertedly unromantic outlook on life. However
fond Antonia might be of her, she resisted pouring out her heart on those
things dearest to her, for fear of meeting with, if not scorn, then that
kind of amused sympathy guaranteed to take the blush off the rosiest
illusion.

But even more daunting was Antonia’s suspicion that Imogen
was right about her motives. Easing Isabel’s passage into society seemed
a noble goal, but to commit one marriage of convenience to prevent
another presented, even to her own mind, a lowering picture of herself as
a designing female of the worst kind.

There was nothing for it but to put Charles out of her calculations—
and back into her fancies, where he belonged. Antonia shrugged lightly,
and the smile that was never long out of her eyes began to form again.

“What a poor creature you make me out to be, Imogen! Very well—I
give you my word not to interfere with whatever course Isabel may
choose for herself. I can only hope that whatever it may be, she will not
be handicapped by her eccentric relations. Do you suppose London will believe that I have settled down to maiden-aunthood, or will it watch for me to fall into some new scrape? Or, worse still, for Isabel to do so?”

“You Fairfaxes have never cared for what strangers think of you, as I
need not remind you. Witness your perfect willingness to walk out with me! I should like, by the by, to meet this Lord Kedrington. Will you
introduce me to him?”

“With the greatest pleasure. I should like your opinion. To that very
end, I have invited him and Uncle Philip to dinner at Wyckham tomorrow.
I naturally hoped to include you in the party, if you care to pack your things to stop over tonight.”

Imogen rose with alacrity. “I shall do so this instant. Shall my dress be
conformable or outré?”

“I rather think Lord Kedrington expects the worst.”

“Then I shall endeavour not to disappoint him.”

The company at Windeshiem consisted solely of its lord and master,
Mr Philip Kenyon, and his guests, the Viscount Kedrington and Mr Octavian Gary, the viscount’s secretary. Furthermore, as Mr Kenyon had been a widower for ten years, and possessed for longer than that of a
peripatetic tendency that kept him away from home more often than it
led him to it, it had been some time since as many as three persons had
occupied the house at once, so that there was no more than a skeleton
staff available to wait on them and no entertainment in the ordinary
sense of the word at all.

The viscount was so well accustomed to
hardship, however, and young Mr Gary possessed of so adaptable a
nature, that neither gave any thought to their situation until milord’s
valet saw fit to make certain lugubrious observations.

“That will do, Milford,” his employer admonished him after a number
of these complaints had been aired. The viscount was stretched out in a
wing chair in the library, whence he and Mr Gary had retired with a
bottle of brandy and half an hour to themselves. “Had I foreseen that you
would prove yourself so ill-bred as to criticise the hospitality afforded you,
I would have left you in Brook Street—or better still, sent you to
Haverhill, where you would not be marked in the surrounding gloom.”

“I beg your pardon, my lord. I meant no disrespect to Mr Kenyon. But it is undeniable that the fireplace in my lord’s chamber smokes, and there
is a decided draught coming in the north window.”

“Milford, have you ever slept in a cave in Spain?”

“No, my lord.”

“You should try it, Milford. Once having done so, you would find any
other accommodation princely by comparison.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Milford, unconvinced.

Kedrington shrugged and gave it up. “Go and see to procuring some
shaving water hot enough to suit your notions of my consequence. We are invited to dine this evening.”

“Yes, my lord. Shall I lay out the grey superfine or the dark blue?”

“Oh God, I don’t care!” muttered the viscount, sinking deeper into his
chair. But as the valet opened the door to depart, he sat up again abruptly.

“Milford!”

“My lord?”

“The grey, I think. And the striped waistcoat—the narrow stripes.”