The Hermit's Daughter (7 page)

“Even with the inducement of my colossal winnings,”
he added, sweeping a few coins of small denomination into his hand and pocketing them. “Did the pharmacopoeia in breeches we met today come to call?”
he asked.

“Mr. Heppleworth was here this afternoon,”
she replied.

“Was Miss Hermitage home to greet him, as he so ardently hopped?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Is he an example of the suitors available to you at Ashford?”

She felt an unwelcome blush stain her cheeks, that Monstuart should see the paltry quality of her suitors. “I have always preferred older gentlemen.”

“Older is a relative term. Older than what? Watch your answer closely, Miss Hermitage. It cannot have escaped your sharp eyes that I am older than you.”

Her eyes snapped angrily. Was he daring to imply she had set her cap at him? Had she betrayed the growing interest?

“Caught without an answer, Miss Hermitage? Use that much-vaunted intelligence. You prefer white hair, perhaps? A touch of the gout?”

“I prefer white hair to town bronze, in any case.”

He rose and hunched his elegant shoulders nonchalantly. “We have already discussed the impossibility of accounting for taste on a former occasion. Now I bid you good evening.”
On this speech he went to join the others.

Derwent was just rising to take his leave. “Tomorrow at six, then.”
He smiled to Mrs. Hermitage.

“I hope you will join us for dinner tomorrow evening as well, Lord Monstuart,”
the mother said. “We are having a few guests in—-Mr. Heppleworth and the Crosbys.”

“I have been hoping for an opportunity to know Mr. Heppleworth better. I will be delighted to come,”
Monstuart said without a trace of a smile or a blush. Sally stared at him, but he kept his head averted, talking to her mother for another moment.

He only turned back to her when he took his leave. His satirical grin might have been caused by the invitation, or the fact that he was ushering Derwent out the door at such an early hour. It certainly did not match his polite murmurs of having had a delightful evening.

“I don’t see why you had to include Monstuart,”
Melanie scolded as soon as the ladies were alone.

“He is reconsidering, my dear,”
her mother reminded her. “It would not do to be rude at such a time. He hinted, just before he left, that if he finds you girls to behave with propriety, he will allow the match.”

“There’s nothing improper in what we do!”
Melanie exclaimed.

It would have been difficult to level such a charge against Melanie. Sally often wished for more social awareness from her sister. She thought perhaps Monstuart wanted a more polished bride for his nephew. As a peer, he would be meeting persons from a high social level, and a wife that did no more than smile at her husband would be small asset. But her mother’s remark caused her to wonder whether it was Melanie’s manners he referred to.

“He has the greatest dislike of pertness,”
Mrs. Hermitage mentioned. To accuse Melanie of pertness was like accusing a sloth of speed. When the mother slid a questioning look at her elder daughter and said, “I hope you were not pert, Sal,”
Monstuart’s meaning became perfectly clear.

Indignation burned deep, and Sally flared up. “Is that what he was whispering in your ear, Mama?”

“He didn’t say so, not in the least, but as he spent all his time with you, I did just wonder whether it was not you he meant. You do have a habit of saying things you ought not to, no denying.”

“He’s a fine one to talk.”

“Oh, Sal, you
have
been flirting with him,”
her mother charged.

“Flirting with that jackdaw? I’d as soon flirt with a—a weasel!”
she declared, and flounced from the room. But when she was alone, she had to ask herself in good earnest whether she was not guilty. Her tongue had the habit of running free, but so far from trying to dampen it, Monstuart had egged her on at every turn. He was
trying
to make her behave ill, to have an excuse to find fault with the family! Knowing Melanie and Mama were unexceptionable, he had found out the weak link and concentrated his efforts on her. And how easily she had fallen into the trap. Like a Bartholomew Baby, she had been cozened into behaving with an unbecoming freedom.

His repeatedly suggesting that she would like London—that, too, was a trick. He wanted to be able to tell Derwent she intended attaching herself to him and Melanie. He had been wise enough to see there was no love lost between Derwent and her. She could almost hear what he would say to his nephew: “A solicitor’s undowered daughter is disadvantage enough. But a pert sister who battens herself on you and leads your bride astray ...”
That’s how he would twist things.

Her blood fairly boiled when she thought of it, and she longed to retaliate. A dozen brazen speeches occurred to her. If Derwent was not led astray by a philandering uncle, it was not likely his wife would be led astray by her sister. If Melanie was so biddable as that, why had she remained unspoiled for so long? And furthermore, Sally had no intention of living with them! An occasional visit, a few weeks during the Season, was all she ever had in mind.

After hearing Monstuart boast of his social whirl, Sally wanted those few weeks very much. And she wanted it from such an unexceptionable base as her sister, married to Lord Derwent, would provide. What was the point of hiring a set of rooms in some apartment house in Upper Grosvenor Square? She wanted Melanie’s marriage for her sister’s sake, and there was no reason a small benefit should not trickle down to Sally. Melanie
would
marry Derwent, and she
would
visit them. Strong as the temptation was to come to cuffs with Monstuart, she would behave with the greatest propriety he had ever seen. She would utter not a word that might not be said before the twelve apostles and their mothers.

The next meeting with him would be her mother’s dinner party. She would make Mr. Heppleworth her dinner partner and her conversation partner after dinner. It would take a miracle to make Mr. Heppleworth misbehave, but she must not encourage the old fool to think she loved him. Let Lord Monstuart raise his black brows and quiz her as much as he liked; she would not be betrayed into impropriety.

No definite meeting between Derwent and Melanie was set for any time before the dinner party, but there was a general expectation that he would not allow nearly twenty-four hours to roll by without a glimpse of his beloved, nor did he. He was there the next morning at ten forty-five, striking a balance between his own preferred time and that of his uncle, who was again with him. Monstuart’s city barbering and tailoring received no smiling welcome this morning. Sally sat silent in a corner, determined to be civil. He asked her to drive out again, and she bit back the rejoinder that she was surprised he should suggest it, when yesterday’s drive gave him so little pleasure.

“I’m afraid I’m busy this morning,”
she replied. From having been in the saloon since ten-thirty, waiting for him, she knew the gentlemen had come in two carriages, and her going was not necessary. She did wonder why he wanted to be alone with her and could only conclude he intended to step up his plan of luring her into indiscretion.

“Setting up a new tambour frame?”
he asked politely.

“It is my sister and Mama who are the needlewomen,”
she reminded him.

“And you, if memory serves, like reading. What book have you discovered that you can’t be drawn away? Byron—it must be Byron. You have not fallen behind in your literary fashion, at any rate. All the young ladies are hiding the new cantos of
Childe Harold
from their mamas.”

“I am reading a very exciting drama by Hannah More,”
she said, lying through her teeth and enjoying it.

Monstuart looked for a telltale movement of her lips and saw only a prim line. “Exciting in the same sentence as Hannah More? That sounds like a contradiction in terms to me.”

“I enjoy her uplifting theological exercises.”

Monstuart didn’t answer immediately but just lifted his quizzing glass and stared at her till she became nervous. “I had hoped you might be kind enough to accompany me to Canterbury,”
he said next.

The weather was particularly fine. A drive of fifteen or so miles to Canterbury in Monstuart’s elegant carriage and luncheon at a restaurant were a strong inducement. But as the outing offered so much opportunity for pertness, Sally declined.

He never for a moment thought he was really being refused. She was playing hard to get, a game he knew well and rather enjoyed. “We could visit the cathedral—Hannah More would approve of that,”
he tempted with a smile that had nothing to do with cathedrals.

Sally thought Hannah herself would find that smile hard to resist, but she was made of sterner stuff. “Living so close, we have toured the cathedral several times. I do recommend it to you, however, if you haven’t been there. It is considered a particularly fine example of perpendicular architecture, I believe.”

“I’ve paid my duty visit to admire it. That removes the onus of having to do so today. My real reason for the trip is to visit an everything store and find some games to help us wile away the evenings,”
he tempted, but still she demurred.

Finally convinced that Sally was adamant, he rose with a questioning look. “It seems we must rely on a recital of Mr. Heppleworth’s assorted ills for our evening’s entertainment, unless you can suggest something I pick up while there?”

Sally had not a single suggestion to make.

“You won’t be needing any fish—mutton?”
he teased, trying to beguile her into a smile before leaving. He discerned a glitter in her green eyes and waited expectantly for her retort.

“No, thank you,”
she said calmly.

No jibes, no sparks, no taunts. “I didn’t expect my advice to your mother would have this effect!”
He scowled and finally left, alone.

Sally was well satisfied with her fortitude. He had thought her temper so unstable that she would be betrayed into even worse behavior than usual, and had the barefaced audacity to say as much. That evening she would be even more polite, let him goad as he might. She was in good spirits for half an hour, till she began envisioning the trip she had missed, at which point she turned waspish.

As afternoon advanced into evening, her spirits rose once more. Determined to be acceptable, she wore her least dashing gown and wished it were even less dashing. It was an elegant robe of deep mulberry that brought her ivory neck and shoulders into prominence without suggesting any impropriety. Around her throat she wore the small strand of diamonds Papa had given her on her seventeenth birthday, and had her hair dressed
à la Grecque.
To change it would suggest she cared for Monstuart’s opinion.

Looking at her image in the mirror, Sally gurgled softly to herself to consider that this fashionable lady was about to play the role of Bath Miss. She hunched her impertinent shoulders and danced downstairs when she heard the knocker through her open door. The gentlemen being shown in by Rinkin caught only a glimpse of her laughing eyes. The minute she recognized Monstuart’s dark head and wide shoulders, she pokered up and advanced at a stately gait to make them welcome. Her curtsy was the stiffest curtsy ever performed by her lithe young body.

The single glimpse he had seen of Sally’s habitual self had already put a smile on Monstuart’s saturnine face. He bowed, flickering a practiced eye over her toilette. “Enchanting,”
he murmured.

“Mulberry is still being worn in the provinces,”
she replied, and led the guests into the Rose Saloon with a word tossed over her shoulder to Derwent to assure him Melanie would be down presently. Little tendrils of black curls fell below the Greek knot and nestled on her white neck, causing sufficient interest to Monstuart that he was still smiling when she showed him a seat.

“Did you have a pleasant drive to Canterbury?”
she inquired.

“Not so pleasant as it would have been if you had accompanied me, but tolerable. I found a book I hope you will accept,”
he said, and handed her a small volume bound in Russian leather.

Surprised, she glanced at the title and saw it to be a play by Hannah More entitled
The Fatal Falsehood.
“A dramatic tragedy by your favorite author,”
he said, his dark eyes laughing.

Sally refused to recognize any significance in the title and thanked him calmly. “I look forward to reading it. This is one that hasn’t come my way before. I have just been dipping into her
Thoughts on the Manners of the Great
and found it most amusing,”
she said, not betraying by an accent that she was retaliating for his
daring
to hint she had lied to say she was busy.

“That’s
Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great,
ma’am, if I’m not mistaken,”
Monstuart pointed out. “Not quite so apropos—from your point of view—but a very good riposte. I congratulate you.”

Her raised brows and blank look were meant to imply she was lost at his rejoinder, but as some widening of her great green eyes accompanied the gesture, Monstuart failed to perceive anything but their beauty and smiled on, bemused. “Is the wandering pharmacopoeia not here yet?" he asked. “I made sure he was the sort who would be awkwardly on time and rushed Derwent out of the house with his cravat untied in a race to beat him.”

It provided an excuse to include Derwent in the conversation. “I see you have managed to get it tied, and must congratulate you on doing it so well in a jostling carriage,”
she said.

“Your congratulations are misdirected, Miss Hermitage,”
Monstuart informed her. “It was I who executed the Oriental you are admiring. I wear the same style myself. Perhaps you would care to admire mine as well?”

This venture earned him a brief glance and a very mild “Lovely."

“Where did you and Melanie go this afternoon?”
she asked Derwent. Melanie had already related every stop and every flower seen, but Sally was determined to converse with the less interesting gentleman, and trying to talk to Derwent was always a trial.