Lady of Quality (19 page)

The unexpectedness of this took her breath away. She could only regain enough of it to thank him, but this she did so fervently that he laughed, flicked her cheek with one finger, and said: "Ridiculous brat! There's no need to thank me: your mother's jewels are yours: I merely hold them in trust for you until you come of age—or until I judge you to be old enough to wear them."

Mr Beckenham having come back by this time, Mr Carleton left Lucilla to his care, and returned to Miss Wychwood. She had been observing what had passed between him and his niece, and moved forward to meet him, saying in a conscience-stricken voice: "I have been shockingly remiss! I ought to have told Lucilla not to drink champagne!"

"You ought indeed," he said.

"Well, if you know that, I am astonished that you should have given your glass to her!" she said, with some asperity.

"Did you like your first sip of champagne?" he asked.

"No, I don't think I did."

"Exactly so! Young Beckenham had told her she wouldn't like it, so I proved his point for him."

"I suppose," she said thoughtfully, "that that was probably more to the purpose than to have forbidden her to drink it."

"Certainly
more to the purpose!"

She flashed a mischievous smile at him, and murmured: "I feel it won't be long before you become an excellent guardian!"

"God forbid!"

At this moment, Denis Kilbride, disengaging himself from a group of matrons, bore down upon his hostess and said in deeply wounded accents, belied by the laughter in his eyes: "Now, how could you have misled me so about your party, most cruel fair one? Is it possible you can have been trying to keep me away from it! I cannot believe it!"

"Dear me, no! why should I?" she returned. "I am glad you don't find it abominably insipid, which I feared you might."

"No party which you grace with your exquisite presence could be insipid, believe me! I have only one fault to find with this one: I cherished the hope of being permitted to bring you down to supper, only to find myself cut out by Carleton here! But for one circumstance, Carleton, I should ask you to name your friends!"

Mr Carleton was so patently uninterested and unamused by this lively nonsense that Annis was impelled to step into the breach caused by his silence. She said smilingly: "It's to be hoped the one circumstance was the impropriety of spoiling my party!"

"Alas, no! It was mere cowardice!" he said, mournfully shaking his head. "He is such a devilish good shot!"

Mr Carleton accorded this sally a faint, contemptuous smile, and stepped back politely to allow Major Beverley to approach Miss Wychwood. He then strolled away, and was next seen talking to Mrs Mandeville. He left the party before the dancing began, declining unequivocally to join the whist-players for whose entertainment Miss Wychwood had had two tables set up in the book-room. Nettled by this cavalier behaviour, she raised her brows, when he took leave of her, saying sarcastically: "But dare you leave Lucilla in such dangerous company?"

"Oh, yes!" he replied. "From what I've seen, young Beckenham and Elmore will take good care of her. And since the only
dangerous company
seems to be bent on fixing his interest with you rather than with Lucilla there's no need for me to play the careful guardian. It's not a role which suits me, you know. Ah—accept my thanks for an agreeable evening, ma'am!"

He bowed, and left her. She was so much infuriated that it was long before her wrath abated sufficiently to permit the suspicion to enter her head that his outrageous conduct sprang from anger at what he no doubt considered her encouragement of Denis Kilbride's familiarities. While she continued to move amongst her guests, outwardly as serene as ever, uttering smiling nothings, her brain was seething with conjecture. She had been prepared to play the game of flirtation with Mr Carleton, but it was now plain that idle flirtation was not what he had in mind. It seemed incredible that he could have fallen in love with her, but his anger could only have been roused by jealousy, and such fierce jealousy as had led him to say the most wounding things he could think of to her had nothing to do with flirtation. It clearly behoved her to set him at a distance, but even as she resolved to do this it occurred to her that perhaps he believed her to be ready to accept an offer from Denis Kilbride, and instantly it became a matter of the first importance to disabuse his mind of this misapprehension. It was in vain that she told herself it didn't matter a button what he believed: for some inscrutable reason it did matter.

The last of her guests did not leave until eleven o'clock, a late hour by Bath standards, for which the success of the impromptu hop was responsible. Several very young ladies were too shy to waltz, or perhaps too conscious of parental eyes of disapproval on them; but although the waltz was barred from both the Assembly Rooms even the starchiest and most old-fashioned of the dowagers knew that it would not be long before it penetrated these strongholds, and confined their objections to sighs and melancholy head-shakings over times past. As for the matrons with daughters to launch into society, few were to be found whose principles were so rigid as to make the spectacle of their daughters seated against the wall preferable to the shocking, but gratifying, sight of these dashing girls twirling round the room in the embrace of a succession of eligible young gentlemen.

Miss Wychwood confined her part in these mild revelries to keeping an eye on them, seeing to it that inexperienced girls unaccompanied by their mamas did not stand up more than twice with the same man, and finding partners for neglected damsels. Since nearly all the young people were well acquainted there was not much of this to be done: indeed, it was more important to take care that the impromptu dance did not develop into a romp, which, with so many very young persons who had known one another from the nursery onwards, was more than likely it would.

She was many times solicited to dance, but smilingly refused to stand up with even a gallant old friend, who might well have been her father. "No, no, General!" she said, twinkling up at him. "Chaperons don't dance!"

"Chaperon?
You?"
he said. "Moonshine! I know to a day how old you are, puss, so don't talk flummery to me!"

"Next you will say that you dandled me when I was an infant!" she murmured.

"At all events, I might have done so. Now, come, Annis! You can't refuse to stand up with such an old friend as I am! Damme, I knew your father!"

"I should like very much to stand up with you, but you must excuse me!
You
may think it absurd, but I
am
being a chaperon tonight, and if I were to stand up with you how could I refuse to stand up with anyone else?"

"No difficulty about that!" he said. "You have only to say that you stood up with me because you didn't care to offend an old man!"

"Yes, no doubt I could if you weren't well known to be the wickedest flirt in Bath!" she retorted.

This pleased him so much that he chuckled, threw out his chest a little, apostrophized her as a saucy minx, and went off to dally with all the best looking women in the room.

Miss Wychwood enjoyed dancing, but she was not tempted to take the floor on this occasion. There was no one with whom she wished to dance; but no sooner had she realized this truth than a question posed itself in her mind: if Mr Carleton, instead of leaving the party in something remarkably like a dudgeon, had stayed, and had invited her to dance a waltz with him, would she have been tempted to consent? She was forced to admit to herself that she would have been very strongly tempted, but she hoped (rather doubtfully) that she would have had enough strength of mind to have resisted temptation.

In the middle of these ruminations, Lord Beckenham came up, and sat down beside her, saying: "May I bear you company, dear Miss Annis? I do not ask you to dance, for I know you don't mean to dance this evening. I cannot help being glad of it: it gives me the opportunity to enjoy a comfortable cose with you, and—to own the truth—I don't care for the waltz. I am aware that it is the height of a la modality, but it never seems to me to be quite the thing. You will say I am old-fashioned, I fear!"

"Quite Gothic!" she answered flatly. "Excessively uncivil, too, when you must know that I delight in waltzing!"

"Oh, I intended no incivility!" he assured her. "You lend distinction to everything you do!"

"For goodness' sake, Beckenham, stop throwing the hatchet at me!" she said tartly.

He gave an indulgent laugh. "What an odd expression to hear on your lips! I myself am not familiar with modern slang, but I hear a great deal of it from Harry—more, indeed, than I like!—and I understand
throwing the hatchet
means to flatter a person, which, I promise you, I was not doing! Nor am I doing so when I tell you that I have rarely seen you look more beautiful than you do tonight." He laughed again, and, laying his hand over hers, gave it a slight squeeze. "There, don't eat me! Your dislike of receiving compliments is well known to me, and is what one so particularly likes in you, but my feelings overcame my prudence for once!"

She drew her hand away, saying: "Excuse me! I see Mrs Wendlebury is about to take her leave."

She got up, and moved across the room towards this formidable dame, and, having said goodbye to her, responded to a signal from Mrs Mandeville, and went to sit beside her.

"Well, my dear, a very pleasant party!" said Mrs Mandeville. "I congratulate you!"

"Thank you, ma'am!" Annis said gratefully. "From you that is praise of a high order! May I also thank you for having been kind enough to honour me with your presence tonight? I assure you I appreciate it, and can only hope you haven't been bored to death!"

"On the contrary, I've been vastly amused!" replied the old lady, with a chuckle. "What made Carleton take himself off in a rage?"

Annis coloured faintly. "Was he in a rage? I thought him merely bored."

"No, no, he wasn't
bored,
my dear! It looked to me as though he and you were at outs!"

"Oh, we come to cuffs whenever we meet!" Annis said lightly.

"Yes, he makes a lot of enemies with that bitter tongue of his," nodded Mrs Mandeville. "Spoilt, of course! Too many caps have been set at him! My second son is a friend of his, and he told me years ago that it was no wonder he'd been soured, with half the mamas and their daughters on the scramble for him. That's the worst of coming into the world as rich as a Nabob: it ain't good for young men to be too full of juice. However, I don't despair of him, for there's nothing much amiss with him that marriage to the woman he falls in love with won't cure."

"I haven't understood that
love
was lacking in his life, ma'am!"

"Lord, child, I'm not talking of his bits of muslin," said Mrs Mandeville scornfully. "It ain't
love
a man feels for the lightskirts he entertains! Myself, I'd always a soft corner for a rake, and it's my belief most women have! Mind you, I don't mean the sort of rabshackle who gives some gal a slip on the shoulder, for them I can't abide! Carleton ain't one of those sneaking rascals. Has he put you in charge of that pretty little niece of his?"

"No, no! She is merely staying with me for a short time, before going to live with one of her aunts, or cousins—I am not perfectly sure which!"

"I'm glad to hear it. You're a deal too young to be burdened with a gal of her age, my dear!"

"So Mr Carleton thinks! Only he goes further than you, ma'am, and doesn't scruple to inform me that he considers me to be quite unfit to take care of Lucilla."

"Yes, I'm told he can be very uncivil," nodded Mrs Mandeville.

"Uncivil! He is the rudest man I have ever met in my life!" declared Miss Wychwood roundly.

CHAPTER 9

B
y the time Miss Wychwood had said goodbye to the last, lingering guests she was feeling more weary than ever before at the end of a party. Everyone except herself (and, presumably, Mr Carleton) seemed to have enjoyed it, which was, she supposed some slight consolation to her for having spent a most disagreeable evening. Lucilla was in what she considered to be exaggerated raptures over it: she wished it might have gone on for ever! Miss Wychwood, barely repressing a shudder, sent her off to bed, and was about to follow her when she found Limbury in the way, obviously awaiting an opportunity to speak to her. She paused, looking an enquiry, and he all unwittingly set the seal on a horrid evening by disclosing, with the smile of one bearing welcome tidings, that Sir Geoffrey had arrived in Bath, and wished her to give him a look-in before she retired to bed.

"Sir Geoffrey?" she repeated blankly.
"Here?
Good God, what can have happened to bring him to Bath at this hour of the night?"

"Now, don't you fret yourself, Miss Annis!" Limbury said, in a fatherly way. "It's no worse than the toothache which Master Tom has, and which my lady thinks may be an abscess, so she wishes to take him instantly to Mr Westcott. Sir Geoffrey arrived twenty minutes before you went down to supper, but when he saw you was holding a rout-party he charged me not on any account to say a word to you about it until the party was over, him being dressed in his riding-habit, and not having brought with him his evening attire, and not wishing to attend the rout in all his dirt. Which is very understandable, of course. So I directed Jane to make up the bed in the Blue bedchamber, miss, and myself carried up supper to him, which is what I knew you would wish me to do."