Lady of Quality

Chapter 11

In assuming that Lady Wychwood was coming towards them to protect Annis, Mr Carleton wronged her. She had swallowed the glass of hot water, had enjoyed a comfortable chat with Mrs Stinchcombe, and she now wished to go back to Camden Place, to take Tom for a gentle airing in the crescent-shaped garden which lay between Upper and Lower Camden Place. Not being in the habit of indulging ridiculous fancies, the fear that Mr Carleton could do Annis a particle of bodily harm in the Pump Room never entered her head; and as for the danger of his ingratiating himself with her to her undoing, she thought this equally ridiculous. While she talked to Mrs Stinchcombe, she had contrived to watch, from the tail of her eye, the brief tête-à-tête between Annis and this reputed profligate, and she was perfectly assured that her lord had allowed his brotherly anxiety to overcome his good sense. She was going to occupy herself during the afternoon by writing a soothing letter to him, and she said, as she and Annis left the Pump Room: “I can’t for the life of me conceive, dearest, what can have made Geoffrey take such a maggot into his head as to suppose that there was the least fear of that disagreeable man’s making you the object of his gallantry—if gallantry it can be called! I promise you, I mean to give him a severe scold, for supposing that you, of all people, could possibly develop a tendre for such a brusque, and extremely ungallant man!”

“Deplorably rag-mannered, isn’t he?” agreed Annis.

“Oh, shockingly! I could see that he had made you as cross as crabs, and positively quaked for fear that you would fly up into the boughs, which wouldn’t have astonished me, but which would have been a very improper thing to have done in the Pump Room. How unfortunate it is that you are obliged to be on terms with him! Forgive me if I say that I think the sooner he removes Lucilla from your house the better it will be for you! What was he looking so black about?”

“Denis Kilbride,” replied Miss Wychwood, calmly, but with a gleam in her eyes hard to interpret.

“Denis Kilbride?” echoed Lady Wychwood, too much surprised to notice either the gleam, or the little smile that hovered at the corners of Miss Wychwood’s mouth. “Why, what has he to say to anything?”

“Too much!” said Miss Wychwood, with a wry grimace. “I fear he may be in a fair way towards capturing Lucilla’s silly heart, and although that possibility doesn’t seem to worry Mr Carleton much, what does worry him, and made try to ring a peal over me just now, is the circumstance of Kilbride’s having escorted Lucilla yesterday all the way from Camden Place to Laura Place. It was unfortunate, for several people saw them, and if you had ever lived in Bath, Amabel, you would know that it is a veritable hotbed of gossip!”

“But surely, Annis, it is perfectly permissible for a gentleman to accompany a girl through the town, in the daytime, and with her maid walking behind, as I don’t doubt Lucilla’s maid did!” expostulated Lady Wychwood. “Why, it is quite the thing for a gentleman to take up some young female beside him in his curricle, or his phaeton, or whatever sporting vehicle he happens to be driving! And without her maid!”

“Perfectly permissible, my dear, but not if the gentleman is Denis Kilbride! At the best, he is recognized as a dangerous flirt, and at the worst, a confirmed fortune-hunter.”

“Oh, dear!” said Lady Wychwood, sadly shocked. “I know Geoffrey didn’t at all like it when Kilbride was courting you, when we were all three of us in London. He said he was a here-and-thereian; and I do recall that he once said he suspected him of hanging out for a rich wife. I didn’t set much store by that, for Geoffrey does sometimes say things he doesn’t really mean, when he takes anyone in dislike, and he never desired me not to receive him, or to invite him to my parties. And when, last year, he had been visiting his grandmother, and had ridden over to Twynham to pay his respects to us, Geoffrey received him with perfect complaisance.”

“By that time, Geoffrey knew that there was no fear of my succumbing to Kilbride’s wiles,” said Annis, with a touch of cynicism. “He is everywhere received, even in Bath! In part, this is due to the respect in which old Lady Kilbride is held; and in part because he is regarded as an amusing rattle, whose presence can be depended on to enliven the dullest party. For myself, though I can imagine few worse fates than to be leg-shackled to him, I like him, I invite him to my own parties, I frequently dance with him at the Assemblies. But although—in Geoffrey’s opinion—I set too little store by the conventions!—I take care not to see so much of him as to give even the most censorious critic reason to say that I live in his pocket! Because I was well-acquainted with him before I came to reside in Bath, he is thought to be an old friend of mine, and as such his presence at my parties, the free-and-easy terms on which we stand are looked on with indulgence. But although I am no girl, and might be supposed to be past the age of looking for a husband, I should hesitate very much to drive with him, ride with him, or even walk with him. Not because I am not very well able to check his familiarities, but because I know just how many malicious tongues would start to wag if I were to be seen tête-à-tête with him! So, with the best will in the world to do so, I cannot blame Mr Carleton for having raked me down!”

“I consider it to have been excessively impertinent of him, and I hope you gave him a set-down!” said Lady Wychwood roundly.

Annis made no reply to this, but it occurred to her that giving Mr Carleton a set-down was something she had never yet succeeded in doing. She thought that it would perhaps be as well if she didn’t discuss his character with her sister-in-law, for she had made the disconcerting discovery that however much she herself criticized his faults an almost overmastering impulse to defend them arose in her when anyone else did so. So she turned the subject by directing Lady Wychwood’s attention to a very pretty bonnet displayed in a milliner’s window. The rest of the walk was beguiled by an animated discussion of all the latest quirks of fashion, which lasted until they reached Upper Camden Place, and Lady Wychwood caught sight of her small son, playing ball in the garden with Miss Farlow. This made her exclaim: “Oh, look! Maria has taken Tom into the garden! What a good, kind creature she is, Annis!”

“I wish I were rid of her!” replied Annis, with considerable feeling.

Lady Wychwood was shocked. “Wish you were rid of her? Oh, no, how can you say so, dearest? I am sure there was never anyone more amiable, and obliging! You cannot be serious!”

“I am very serious. 1 find her a dead bore.”

Lady Wychwood thought this over for a moment, and then said slowly: “She isn’t bookish, of course, and not clever,as you are. And she does talk a great deal, I own. Geoffrey calls her a gabble-grinder, but gentlemen, you know, don’t seem to like chatty females, and even he recognizes her many excellent qualities.”

“Are you trying to hoax me into thinking that you don’t find her a bore?” demanded Annis incredulously.

“No, indeed! I mean, I truly don’t. Oh, sometimes she does chatter rather too much, but, in general, I enjoy talking with her because she is interested in the things which don’t interest you. Little things, such as household matters, and the children, and—and new recipes, and a host of things of that nature!” She hesitated, and then said simply: “You see, dearest, I’m not clever, as you are! Indeed, I often wonder whether you don’t find me a dead bore!”

Annis instantly disclaimed, and warmly enough to win a grateful smile from Lady Wychwood; but in her secret heart she knew that fond though she was of her gentle sister-in-law she did find most of her conversation insipid.

“What I like in her so much,” pursued Lady Wychwood, in a thoughtful tone, “is the way she enters into all one’s chiefest concerns, as one couldn’t expect even Geoffrey to do, gentlemen not being able to share one’s anxieties about household matters, and croup, and the red gum. And the way she busies herself with any small difficulty that arises, without having been asked to do so—which I hope I should never do! I cannot tell you what a support she was to me when I arrived here, with poor little Tom frantic with the toothache! She went with us to Mr Westcott’s, and actually held Tom’s hands down—which I, alas, had not the resolution to do—when he pulled out the offending tooth.”

“Sister,” said Annis, solemnly, but with wickedly dancing eyes, “I have long wanted to make you a present of real value, and you have now shown me how I may do it! I will bestow Maria upon you!”

“How can you be so absurd?” said Lady Wychwood laughingly. “As though I would dream of taking her away from you!”

No more was said, Tom, by this time, having seen his mother, and run to the railings to greet her. She entered the garden, and Annis went on by herself to the house. Lucilla was spending the rest of the day with the Stinchcombes, and as Mrs Stinchcombe had promised to have her escorted back to Camden Place in time for dinner she felt herself relieved of responsibility. She could not help feeling glad of it, for not only was the entertainment of a lively seventeen-year-old a more onerous charge than she had foreseen, but what Mr Carleton had said to her had made her realize that a period of quiet reflection was her most immediate need. Unless she had been wholly mistaken in the meaning of his cryptic utterance in the Pump Room, she could not doubt that he had the intention of making her an offer of marriage. It would have been false to have said that such a notion had never before occurred to her: it had occurred, but only as a suspicion, which she had been able, without very much difficulty, to banish from her mind. Now that the suspicion had been confirmed she felt that she had been taken by surprise, and was vexed by the realization that she was shaken quite out of her calm self-possession, and was suffering all the fluttering uncertainties of a girl in her first Season. She had been for so long a single woman that it had become a habit with her to think herself beyond marriageable age, and even more beyond the age of falling in love. It was a shock to discover that this had suddenly become a question open to doubt, and that it was a matter for doubt made her out of reason cross with herself, for she ought, surely, to be old enough and wise enough to know her own mind. But the melancholy truth was that she didn’t know it. She told herself, in a scolding way, that it ought to be obvious to her that Mr Carleton possessed none of the attributes (except fortune, which was of no interest to her) which could be supposed to make him an acceptable suitor to a lady who had had many suitors, nearly all of whom had been blessed with good-looks, excellent address, polished manners, and a considerable degree of charm. To none of these attributes could Mr Carleton lay claim: it made her smile to think of setting even one of them to his credit; and as she smiled the thought darted through her mind that perhaps it was his lack of social grace which attracted her. It seemed absurd that this should be so, but it was undeniable that not the most charming of her suitors had so much as scratched her heart. She thought that if she had been left without the means to support herself she might have accepted an offer from that particular man, for she liked him very well, and felt reasonably sure that he would be an amiable husband; but when he did make her an offer she unhesitatingly declined it; and, far from regretting her decision, was thankful that her circumstances did not compel her to accept it. She had been sorry for him, because he had been desperately in love with her, and had exerted himself in every imaginable way to win her regard. The only effect her snubs had seemed to have on him had been to make him redouble his efforts to please her. She thought, recollecting his courtship, that he had been quite her most assiduous suitor; and as she remembered the attentions he had lavished on her she instantly contrasted him with Mr Carleton, and gave an involuntary chuckle. No two men could be more unlike. The one had employed every art known to him to bring his courtship to a successful conclusion; the other employed no arts at all. In fact, thought Miss Wychwood judicially, he seemed to lose no opportunity to alienate her. He was ruthlessly blunt, too often brusque to the point of incivility, paid her no extravagant compliments, and showed no disposition to go out of his way to please her. A very odd courtship—if courtship it was—and why he should have seriously disturbed her tranquillity, which, since she was too honest to deceive herself, she owned that he had done, was a problem to which she could discover no answer, the only solution which presented itself to her, that her well-regulated mind had become disordered, being wholly unacceptable to her. She wondered if she was refining too much on the few signs he had given of having fallen in love with her, whether they betokened nothing more than a wish to engage her in a flirtation. This idea no sooner occurred to her than she dismissed it: he had never tried to flirt with her, and the indifference of manner which characterized him did not belong to a man bent on idle dalliance. She thought that the best thing for her peace of mind would be for him to go back to London; and instantly realized that she did not wish him to do so. But she found herself unable to decide whether she wished to become his wife, or what she was to say if he did propose to her. She had always supposed that if ever she had the good fortune to meet the man destined to reach her heart she would recognize him immediately, but it seemed that either she had been mistaken in this belief, or that he was not that man.

It was with these tangled thoughts jostling against each other in her head that she joined Lady Wychwood and Miss Farlow to partake of a light luncheon, but she was too well-bred to allow the least sign of her mental perturbation to appear either in her face or in her manner. To invite anxious questions which she had no intention of answering would be to show a lamentable want of conduct: no woman of consideration wore her heart on her sleeve, or made her guests uncomfortable by behaving in such a way as to lead them to think she was blue-devilled, or suffering from a severe headache. So neither Lady Wychwood nor Miss Farlow suspected that she was not in spirits. She listened to their everyday chit-chat, responded to such remarks as were addressed to her, made such comments as occurred to her, all with her lovely smile which hid from them her entire lack of interest in what they were discussing. It was second-nature to her to maintain a boring conversation with the better part of her mind otherwhere, but she would have been hard put to it when she rose from the table to tell an enquirer what had been the subjects under discussion.

It was Lady Wychwood’s custom to retire to her own bedchamber for an hour’s repose in the early afternoon before spending the next hour with her much loved offspring; Miss Farlow, for reasons which she frequently gave at tedious length, never rested during the daytime, and brightly detailed the several tasks which awaited her. They ranged from mending a broken toy for Tom to darning a sad rent in the flounce of one of her dresses. “How I came to tear it I cannot for the life of me conjecture!” she said. “I haven’t the smallest recollection of having caught it on anything, and I am persuaded I couldn’t have done so without noticing it, and I am always careful to raise my skirt when I go upstairs so I cannot have trodden on it, for even if I did I should very likely have fallen, which I did once, when I was young and thoughtless. And I must have noticed that,for I daresay I should have bruised myself. Yes, and talking of bruises,” she added earnestly, “it has me in a puzzle to know how it comes about that one can bruise oneself without having the least recollection of having done so! It seems to me to be most extraordinary that this should be so, for one would suppose it must have hurt one when it happened, but it is so. I well remember—”

But what it was she well remembered Miss Wychwood never knew, for she slipped away at this point, and sought refuge in her book-room, with the intention of dealing with her accounts. She did indeed make a determined effort to do so, but she made slow progress, because her mind wandered in an exasperating way which put her out of all patience with herself. Mr Carleton’s swarthy countenance, and his trenchant voice kept on obtruding themselves so that she continually lost count in the middle of a column of figures, and was obliged to start adding it up again. After she had arrived at three different answers to the sum, she was so cross that she uttered in a far from ladylike manner: “Oh, the devil fly away with you! You needn’t think I like you, for I don’t! I hate you!”

She bent again to her task, but ten minutes later Mr Carleton again intruded upon her, this time in person. Limbury came into the room, carefully shutting the door behind him, and informed her that Mr Carleton had called, and begged the favour of a few words with her. She was immediately torn between conflicting emotions: she did not wish to see him; there was no one whom she wished to see more. She hesitated, and Limbury said, in deprecating accents: “Knowing that you was busy, Miss Annis, I informed him of the circumstance, and ventured to say that I doubted if you was at home to visitors. But Mr Carleton, miss, is regrettably not one to take a hint, and instead of leaving his card with me, and going away, he desired me to convey to you the tidings that he had come to see you on a matter of considerable importance. So I agreed to do so, thinking that it was on some question concerning Miss Lucilla.”

“Yes, it must be, of course,” replied Miss Wychwood, with all her usual calm. “I will join him immediately.”

Limbury coughed in a still more deprecating manner, and disclosed that he had been obliged to leave Mr Carleton in the hall. Encountering an astonished stare from Miss Wychwood, he explained this extraordinary lapse by saying: “I was on the point, Miss Annis, of conducting him upstairs to the drawing-room, as I hope I have no need to tell you, when he stopped me by asking me in his—his forthright way if there was any danger of his finding Miss Farlow there.” He paused, and a slight quiver disturbed the schooled impassivity of his countenance, which Miss Wychwood had no difficulty in interpreting as barely repressed sympathy for a fellowman faced with the prospect of encountering her garrulous cousin. He continued smoothly: “I was obliged to tell him, Miss Annis, that I believed Miss Farlow to be occupied with some stitchery there. Upon which, he desired me to carry his message to you, and said that he would await your answer in the hall. What would you wish me to tell him, miss?”

“Well, I am very busy, but no doubt you are right in thinking he has come to consult with me on some business connected with Miss Lucilla,” she replied. “I had better see him, I suppose. Pray show him in!”

Limbury bowed and withdrew, reappearing a minute later to usher Mr Carleton into the room. Miss Wychwood rose from the chair behind her desk, and came forward, holding out her hand, and with a faint questioning lift to her brows. Nothing in her demeanour or in her voice could have given the most acute observer reason to suspect that her pulses had quickened alarmingly, and that she was feeling strangely breathless. “For the second time today, how do you do, sir?” she said, with a faintly mocking smile. “Have you come to issue some further instructions on how I am to treat Lucilla? Ought I to have asked your permission before permitting her to spend the day with the Stinchcombes? If that is the case, I do beg your pardon, and must hasten to assure you that Mrs Stinchcombe has promised to see her safely restored to me!”

“No, my sweet hornet,” he retorted, “that is not the case! I’ve no wish to see her, and I don’t care a straw for her present whereabouts, so don’t try to stir coals, I beg of you!” He shook hands with her as he spoke, and continued to hold hers in a strong grasp for a moment or two, while his hard, penetrating eyes scanned her countenance. They narrowed as he looked, and he said quickly: “Did I hurt you this morning? I didn’t mean to! It was the fault of my unfortunate tongue: pay no heed to it!”

She drew her hand away, saying as lightly as she could: “Good God, no! I hope I have too much sense to be hurt by the rough things you say!”

“I hope so, too,” he said. “If my tongue is not to blame, what has happened to cast you into the doldrums?”

“What in the world makes you think I have been cast into the doldrums, Mr Carleton?” she asked, in apparent amusement, sitting down, and inviting him with a slight gesture to follow her example.

He ignored this, but stood looking down at her frowningly, in a way which she found disagreeably disconcerting. After a short pause, he said: “I can’t tell that. Suffice it that I know something or someone has thrown a damp on your spirits.”

“Well, you are mistaken,” she said. “I am not in the doldrums, but I own I am somewhat out of temper, because I can’t make my wretched accounts tally!”

His rare smile dawned. “Let me see whether I can do so!”

“Certainly not! That would be to acknowledge defeat! I wish you will sit down, and tell me what has brought you here!”

“First, to inform you that I am returning to London tomorrow,” he replied.

Her eyes lifted swiftly to his face, and as swiftly sank again. She could only hope that they had not betrayed the dismay she felt, and said at once: “Ah, you have come to take leave of us! Lucilla will be very sorry to have missed you. If only you had told us that you were going back to London she would certainly have stayed at home to say goodbye to you!”

“Unnecessary! I don’t expect to be absent from Bath for very many days.”

“Oh! She will be glad of that, I expect.”

“Doubtful, I think! Lucilla’s sentiments upon this occasion don’t interest me, however. Will you be glad of it?”

Something between panic and indignation seized her: panic because a proposal was clearly imminent, and she was as far as ever from knowing how she was to respond to it; indignation because she was unaccustomed to dealing with sledge-hammer tactics, and strongly resented them. He was an impossible creature, and the only fit place for any female crazy enough to consider becoming his wife for as much as a second was Bedlam. Indignation made it possible for her to say, with a tiny shrug, and in a voice whose indifference matched his own: “Why, certainly, Mr Carleton! I am sure we shall both of us be happy to see you again.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—!” he uttered explosively. “What the devil has Lucilla to do with it?”

She raised her brows. “I imagine she has everything to do with it,” she said coldly.

He apparently managed to get the better of his spleen, for he gave a short laugh, and replied: “No, not everything, but certainly a good deal. I am going to London to try if I can discover amongst my numerous cousins one who will be willing to take charge of her until her come-out next year.”

Her eyes flashed, colour flooded her cheeks, and she said, in a shaking voice: “I see! To be sure, it is stupid of me to feel surprise, for you have repeatedly informed me that you consider me to be totally unfit to take care of Lucilla. Alas, I had flattered myself into thinking that your opinion of my fitness had undergone a change! But that, of course, was before you flew up into the boughs when you learned that Denis Kilbride had accompanied Lucilla to Laura Place! I perfectly understand you!”

“No, you do not understand me, and I shall be grateful to you if you will stop ripping up grievances and flinging them in my teeth!” he said savagely. “My decision to remove Lucilla from your charge has nothing whatsoever to do with that episode! I don’t deny that I thought, at the outset, that you were not a fit person to act as her chaperon. I thought it, and I said it, and I still think it, and I still say it, but not for the same reason! I find it intolerable that anyone as young and as beautiful as you are should set up as a duenna, behaving as though you were a dowager when you should be going to balls and assemblies for the pleasure of dancing till dawn, not to spend the night talking to the real dowagers, and keeping a watchful eye on a silly chit of a girl only a few years younger than you are yourself!”

“Lucilla is twelve years younger than I am, and I frequently dance the night through—”

“Don’t try to humbug me, my girl!” he interrupted. “I was cutting my wisdoms when you were sewing samplers! I know very well when dancing comes to an end at the New Assembly Rooms. Eleven o’clock!”

“Not at the Lower Rooms!” she protested. “They—they keep it up till midnight there! Besides, there are private balls, and—and picnic parties, and—and all manner of entertainments!” She perceived by the curl of his lip that he was not impressed by this list of Bath gaieties, and said defiantly: “And in any event if I choose to chaperon Lucilla it is quite my own concern!”

“On the contrary! It is mine!” he said.

“I acknowledge that you have the right to do as you think best for Lucilla, but you have no right to dictate to me, sir! And, what is more,” she added wrathfully, “you need not try to ride rough-shod over me, so don’t think it!”

That made him laugh. “I am more likely to box your ears!”

She was spared the necessity of answering by the appearance on the scene of Miss Farlow, who peeped into the room at that moment, saying: “Are you here, dear Annis? I just looked in to tell you that I am obliged to—Oh! I didn’t know you had a visitor! I do trust I don’t intrude! If I had had the least suspicion that you were not alone I shouldn’t have dreamt of disturbing you, for it is of no consequence, only that I find myself obliged to run into the town to purchase some more thread, and so I just popped in to ask you if you happen to need anything yourself. Oh, how do you do, Mr Carleton? I daresay you are wishing me at Jericho so I won’t stay another moment! I shall just look into the nursery before I go out, Annis, because we think poor Baby is cutting another tooth, and I mean to ask dear Lady Wychwood if she would wish me to purchase some teething-powder, though I daresay she has some by her, or, if she hasn’t, you may depend upon it Nurse will have brought some from Twynham. Well! I mustn’t interrupt you for another instant, must I? Of course, I shouldn’t have come in if I had known that Mr Carleton was with you, no doubt to consult with you about Lucilla. So, if you are quite sure there is nothing I can do for you in Gay Street—not that I am not perfectly ready to go further, as I hope I need not assure you!”

Miss Wychwood stemmed the flow at this point by saying firmly: “No, Maria, there is nothing you can do for me, thank you. Mr Carleton has come to talk privately to me about Lucilla’s affairs, and I am afraid you are interrupting us! So pray go away to do your shopping without any more ado!”

She had been in a state of seething fury when Miss Farlow had come into the room, but the expression on Mr Carleton’s face had turned fury into amusement. He looked as though it would have afforded him the maximum amount of pleasure to have wrung Miss Farlow’s neck, and this struck Miss Wychwood as being so funny that a bubble of laughter grew in her which she had the greatest difficulty in suppressing.

The door was hardly shut behind Miss Farlow when he demanded, in the voice of one driven to the extreme limit of his patience: “How you can endure to have that prattle-bag living with you is beyond my comprehension!”

“Well, I must confess that it is beyond mine too,” she answered, allowing her mirth to escape her.

“What the devil possessed her to come in babbling about thread and teething-powder when she must have known you were not alone?”

“Rampant curiosity,” she replied. “She must always discover whatever may be going on in the house.”

“Good God! Send her packing!” he said peremptorily.

“I wish I might! But since the world thinks that I should sink myself beneath reproach if I didn’t employ a respectable female to act as my chaperon I fear I can’t. It would be too brutal to dismiss her, for she means well, and what possible reason could I give for getting rid of her?”

“That you are about to be married!”

She was growing accustomed to his abrupt utterances, but this one came as a shock to her. She stared at him with startled eyes, and only managed to say faintly: “Pray don’t be absurd!”

“I am not being absurd. Marry me! I’ll engage myself to keep you safe from all such pernicious bores as your cousin.”

“You are being absurd!” she declared, in a much stronger voice. “Marry you to escape from poor Maria? I never heard anything to equal it! You must be out of your mind!”

“No—unless to be deep in love is to be out of one’s mind! I am, you see. After all these years, to have found the woman I had come to think didn’t exist—!” He saw that she was looking at him in considerable astonishment, and exclaimed, with a rueful crack of laughter: “Oh, my God, what a mull I’m making of it! I deserve that you should refuse ever to speak to me again, don’t I?”

“Yes,” she said candidly.

“I can’t make elegant speeches. I wish I could! If I could find the words to tell you what’s in my heart—!” He broke off, and took a quick turn about the room.

“Do you always find it impossible to make elegant speeches?” she asked. “I can’t bring myself to believe that, sir. You must have made many pretty speeches in your time—unless report has wronged you.”

“To the incognitas? That’s a very different matter!” he said impatiently. “A man don’t form a connection with a convenient with the same feelings as he has when he forms a lasting passion for the one woman in the world he wishes to make his wife!” He came to a sudden stop in his agitated perambulation, and directed a look of fierce enquiry at her, saying incredulously: “Good God, are you holding it against me that I have frequently had some high-flyer in keeping?”

This blunt reference to his checkered career, coupled as it was with his cool acceptance of her understanding of the meaning of such terms as he had used to describe his mistresses, pleased rather than shocked her, and certainly did him no harm in her eyes. Contrasting his attitude with her brother’s, she thought it was as refreshing as it was unusual, and, insensibly, she warmed to him. The abominable Mr Carleton was not one either to credit unmarried ladies with an innocence very few of them possessed, or to subscribe to the convention that prohibited a gentleman from mentioning in their presence any subject that could bring a blush to their cheeks. She liked this, but saw no reason why she should say so. Instead, she said, with unruffled composure: “By no means, sir! Your past life concerns no one but yourself. But if I were to accept your extremely obliging offer your future life would also concern me, and, at the risk of offending you, I must tell you that I have no ambition to marry a rake.”

He did not seem to be at all offended; rather, he seemed to be amused. He heard her out in appreciative silence, but when she came to an end, he adjured her not talk like a ninnyhammer. “Which, dear love, I know well you are not! You should know better than to suppose I should continue in that way of life if I were married to you. I shouldn’t even wish to! No man who had the inestimable good fortune to call you his wife would ever desire any other woman. If you don’t know that, there is nothing I can do or say to convince you!”

She felt her cheeks growing hot, and instinctively pressed her hands to them. “You are very obliging, sir, but—but sadly mistaken, I fear! I am not the—the paragon you seem to think me!” she stammered. “I—I know that I am generally held to be quite pretty, but—”

“If ever I heard such a whisker!” he interjected. “Generally held to be quite pretty? You are generally held to be a diamond of the first water, my girl! And don’t tell me you don’t know it, for I am a hard man to bridge, and I give you fair warning that you’ll catch cold if you try to gammon me!”

She smiled. “That I can well believe! Try, in your turn, to believe me when I say that I don’t admire my kind of—oh, beauty, for want of a better word!”

“There isn’t one,” he said. “I have a wide experience of beauties, but during the course of a misspent career I have never set eyes on a woman as beautiful as you are.”

She tried to laugh, and said: “It is clearly midsummer moon with you! I think you have fallen in love with my face, Mr Carleton!”

“Oh, no!” he responded, without hesitation. “Not with your face, or with your elegant figure, or your graceful carriage, or with any of your obvious attributes! Those I certainly admire, but I didn’t fall in love with any of them, any more than I fell in love with Botticelli’s Venus, greatly though I admire her beauty!”

She knit her brows, in honest bewilderment. “But you know nothing about me, Mr Carleton! How could you, on so short an acquaintance?”

“I don’t know how I could: I only know that I do. Don’t ask me why I love you, for I don’t know that either! You may be sure, however, that I don’t regard you as a valuable piece to be added to my collection!”

This acid reference to Lord Beckenham’s determined courtship drew a smile from her, but she said: “You have paid me so many extravagant compliments, that I need not scruple to tell you that yours is not the first offer I have received.”

“I imagine you must have received many.”

“Not many, but several. I refused them all, because I preferred my—my independence to marriage. I think I still do. Indeed, I am almost sure of it.”

“But not quite sure?”

“No, not quite sure,” she said, in a troubled tone. “And when I asked myself what you could give me in exchange for my liberty, which is very dear to me, I—oh, I don’t know, I don’t know!”

“Nothing but my love. I have wealth, but that’s of no consequence. If it were—if you were purse-pinched—I would never offer you any of my possessions as inducements. If you marry me, it must be because you wish to spend your life at my side, not for any other reason! There are many things I can give you, but I don’t mean to dangle them before you, in the hope that you might be bribed into marrying me.” His eyes gleamed. “You would send me to the rightabout in two shakes of a lamb’s tail if I did, wouldn’t you, my dear hornet? And I wouldn’t blame you!”

“It would certainly be carrying incivility to the verge of insult!” she said, trying for a lighter note. “There’s no saying, however, that you might be able to bribe me by promising never to snap my nose off!”

He smiled, and shook his head. “I never make empty promises!”

She could not help laughing, but she said: “A grim warning, in fact! I begin to suspect, sir, that you already wish you hadn’t made me an offer, and are now trying to frighten me into refusing it!”

“You know better!” he said. “Could I frighten you? I doubt it! It would be an easy matter to promise never to be out of temper, but I mean you to find me as good as my word, and the deuce is in it that I have an untoward disposition, and a hasty temper!”

“Yes, I have noticed that!”

“You could hardly have failed to!” He hesitated, and then said roughly: “I’ve several times hurt you—snapping your nose off, as you say—but never without wishing that I hadn’t done so. But when I’m put out my tongue utters cutting things before I can check it!”

“What an admission to make!”

“Shocking, ain’t it? It cost me something to make it, but I like pound dealing, and I won’t attempt to fob myself off on to you with court-promises.” She did not reply to this, and, after a moment, he said: “Have I made you take me in dislike? Be frank with me, my dear!”

“No—oh, no!” she said. “I too like pound dealing, and I will be frank with you. I don’t know if you can understand—or think that I must be indulging a distempered freak—but the truth is that my mind is all chaos!” She got up jerkily, and again pressed her hands to her cheeks, saying with an uncertain litde laugh: “I beg your pardon! I must sound detestably missish!”

“I think I do understand. You have persuaded yourself into the belief that you prefer to live alone—and that, if the alternative was to live with your brother and sister-in-law, is perfectly understandable. You have grown so much accustomed to your single state that to change it seems to you unthinkable. But you are thinking of it! That’s why your mind is all chaos. If you felt that to continue to live alone would be infinitely preferable to living with me, you would have refused to marry me without an instant’s hesitation. Was your mind thrown into chaos when Beckenham proposed to you? Of course it wasn’t! You regard him with indifference. But you don’t regard me with indifference! I’ve taken you by surprise, and I am threatening to turn your beautifully ordered life upside-down, and you don’t know whether you would like it or loathe it.”

“Yes,” she said gratefully. “You do understand! It’s true that I don’t regard you with indifference, but it is such a big step to take—such an important step—that you must grant me a little time to think it over carefully before I answer you. Don’t—don’t press me to answer you now! Pray do not!”

“No, I won’t press you,” he said, unexpectedly gentle. He took her hands, and smiled into her eyes. “Don’t look so fussed and bewildered, you absurd child! And don’t turn me into a Bluebeard while I am away! I have a damnably quick temper, I have no agreeable talents, and very little regard for the proprieties, but I’m not an ogre, I assure you!” His clasp on her hands tightened; he raised them to his lips, kissed them, and released them, and went out of the room without another word.