Lady of Quality

Chapter 5

Five minutes later, Miss Wychwood entered the drawing-room, having paused on the way to assure herself, by a swift, critical glance at her reflection in the long looking-glass in her bedchamber, that she was presenting just the right picture of herself to Lucilla’s uncle. She was satisfied with what she saw. Her gown of soft dove-gray silk, with its demi-train, and the little lace ruff round her throat, were exactly the thing, she decided, for a lady of consequence and mature age; but what she failed to perceive (for she never gave it a thought) was that her beauty was enhanced by the subdued colour of her gown. She considered gray to be a middle-aged colour, and if it had occurred to her that her luxuriant golden locks hardly belonged to a lady past her prime she would undoubtedly have hunted through her wardrobe for a suitable cap to wear over them. Not that a cap could have dimmed the glow in her eyes, but that did not occur to her either, because familiarity with her own beauty had bred contempt of it. She would have preferred to have been a brunette, and was inclined to think her golden loveliness a trifle flashy.

On entering the drawing-room, she paused for a moment on the threshold, surveying her visitor.

He was standing before the fireplace, a powerfully built man with dark hair, and a swarthy complexion. His brows were straight and rather thick, and under them a pair of hard gray eyes stared at Miss Wychwood, their expression one of mingled surprise and disapproval. To her wrath, he raised his quizzing-glass, as though to appraise her more precisely.

Her own brows lifted; she moved forward, saying with chilling hauteur: “Mr Carleton, I believe?”

He nodded, letting his glass fall, and replied curtly: “Yes. Are you Miss Wychwood?”

She inclined her head, in a manner calculated to abash him.

“Good God!” he said.

It was so unexpected that it surprised an involuntary laugh out of her. She suppressed it quickly, and made another attempt to put him out of countenance, by extending her hand and saying, in a quelling tone: “How do you do? You wish to see your niece, of course. I am sorry that she is not at home this morning.”

“No, I don’t wish to see her, though I daresay I shall be obliged to,” he replied, briefly shaking her hand. “I came to see you, Miss Wychwood—if you are Miss Wychwood?”

She looked amused at this. “Certainly I am Miss Wychwood. You must forgive me if I ask you why you should doubt it?”

And if that doesn’t make you apologize for your incivility, nothing will! she thought, waiting expectantly.

“Because you’re by far too young, of course!” he replied, disappointing her. “I came here in the expectation of meeting an elderly woman—or, at least, one of reasonable age!”

“Let me assure you, sir, that although I don’t think myself elderly I am of very reasonable age!”

“Nonsense!” he said. “You’re a mere child!”

“No doubt I should be grateful for the compliment—however inelegantly expressed!”

“I wasn’t complimenting you.”

“Ah, no! how stupid of me! I recall, now that you have put me so forcibly in mind of it, that my brother told me that you are famed for your incivility!”

“Did he? Who is your brother?”

“Sir Geoffrey Wychwood,” she answered stiffly.

He frowned over this, in an effort of memory. After a few minutes, he said: “Oh yes! I fancy I’ve met him. Has estates in Wiltshire, hasn’t he? Does he own this house as well?”

“No, I own it! Though what concern that is of yours—”

“Do you mean you live here alone?” he interrupted. “If your brother is the man I think he is, I shouldn’t have thought he would have permitted it!”

“No doubt he would not had I been ‘a mere child’,” she retorted. “But it so happens that I have been my own mistress for many years!”

The flash of a sardonic smile vanquished the frown in his eyes. “Oh, that’s doing it much too brown!” he objected. “Many years, ma’am? Five, at the most!”

“You are mistaken, Mr Carleton! I am nine-and-twenty years of age!”

He put up his glass again, and looked her over critically before saying: “Yes, obviously I was mistaken, for which your youthful appearance is to blame. Your countenance belongs to a girl, but your assured manner has nothing to do with infantry. You will allow me to say, however, that being nine-and-twenty years old doesn’t render you a fit guardian for my niece.”

“Again you are mistaken, Mr Carleton! I am neither Lucilla’s guardian, nor have I the least ambition to supplant Mrs Amber in that post. I conclude, from your remarks, that you have come here from Chartley Place, where, I don’t doubt, you have heard—”

“Well, that, Miss Wychwood, is where you are mistaken! What the devil should take me to Chartley Place? I’ve come from London—and damnably inconvenient it was!” His penetrating gaze searched her face; he said: “Oh! Are we at dagger-drawing? What have I said to wind you up?”

“I am not accustomed, sir, to listen to the sort of language you use!” she replied frostily.

“Oh, is that all? A thousand pardons, ma’am! But your brother did warn you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, and also that you don’t hesitate to ride rough-shod over people you think beneath your touch!” she flashed.

He looked surprised. “Oh, no! Only over people who bore me! Did you think I was trying to ride rough-shod over you? I wasn’t. You do put me out of temper, but you don’t bore me.”

“I am so much obliged to you!” she said, with ironic gratitude. “You have relieved my mind of a great weight! Perhaps you will add to your goodness by explaining what you imagine I have done to put you out of temper? That, I must confess, has me in a puzzle! I had supposed that you had come to Bath to thank me for having befriended Lucilla: certainly not to pinch at me for having done so!”

“If that don’t beat the Dutch!” he ejaculated. “What the deuce have I to thank you for, ma’am? For aiding and abetting my niece to make a byword of herself? For dragging me into the business? For—”

“I didn’t!” she broke in indignantly. “I did what lay within my power to scotch the scandal that might have arisen from her flight from Chartley; and as for dragging you into the business, nothing, let me tell you, was further from my intention, or, indeed, my wish!”

“You must surely have known that that fool of a—that Clara Amber would write to demand that I should exercise my authority over Lucilla!”

“Yes, Ninian Elmore told us that she had done so,” she agreed, with false affability. “But since nothing Lucilla has said about you led me to think that you had either fondness for her, or took the smallest interest in her, I had no expectation of receiving a visit from you. To own the truth, sir, my first feeling on having your name brought up to me was one of agreeable surprise. But that was before I had had the very doubtful pleasure of making your acquaintance!”

The effect of this forthright speech was not at all what she had intended, for instead of taking instant umbrage to it he laughed, and said appreciatively: “That’s milled me down, hasn’t it?”

“I sincerely hope so!”

“Oh, it has! But it’s not bellows to mend with me! I warn you, I shall come about again. Now, instead of sparring with me, perhaps you, in your turn, will have the goodness to explain to me why you didn’t restore Lucilla to her aunt, but kept her here, dam—dashed well encouraging her in a piece of hoydenish disobedience?”

This uncomfortable echo of what Sir Geoffrey had said to her brought a slight flush into her cheeks. She did not immediately answer him, but when, looking up, she saw the challenge in his eyes, and the satirical curl of his lips, she said, frankly: “My brother has already asked me that question. Like you, he disapproves of my action. You may both of you be right, but I set as little store by his opinion as I do by yours. When I invited Lucilla to stay with me, I did what I believed—and still believe!—to be the right thing to do.”

“Fudge!” he said roughly. “Your only excuse could have been that you were bamboozled into thinking that she had suffered ill-treatment at her aunt’s hands, and if that is what she told you she must be an unconscionable little liar! Clara Amber has petted and cossetted her ever since she took her in charge!”

“No, she didn’t tell me anything of the sort, but what she did tell me made me pity her from the bottom of my heart. Little though you may think it, Mr Carleton, there is a worse tyranny than that of ill-treatment. It is the tyranny of tears, vapours, appeals to feelings of affection, and of gratitude! This tyranny Mrs Amber seems to have exercised to the full! A girl of less strength of character might have succumbed to it, but Lucilla is no weakling, and however ill-advised it was of her to have run away I can’t but respect her for having had the spirit to do it!”

He said, rather contemptuously: “An unnecessarily dramatic way of showing her spirit. I am sufficiently well acquainted with Mrs Amber to know that she would not indulge in tears and vapours if Lucilla had not offered her a good deal of provocation. I conclude that the tiresome chit has been imposing on her aunt’s good-nature yet again. Mrs Amber has frequently complained of her wilfulness to me, but what else could she expect of a girl brought up with excessive indulgence? I guessed how it would be from the outset.”

“Then I wonder at it that you should have given your ward into her care!” exclaimed Miss Wychwood hotly. “One would have supposed that if you had had the smallest regard for her welfare—” She stopped, aware that she had allowed her indignation to betray her into impropriety, and said: “I beg your pardon! I have no right, of course, to censure either your conduct, or Mrs Amber’s!”

“No,” he said.

Her eyes flew to his in astonishment, a startled question in them, for she was quite taken aback by this uncompromising monosyllable.

“No right at all,” he said, explaining himself.

For a perilous moment, she hovered on the brink of losing her temper, but her ever-ready sense of the absurd came to her rescue, and instead of yielding to the impulse to come to points with him she broke into sudden laughter, and said: “How unhandsome of you to have given me such a set-down, when I had already begged your pardon!”

“How unjust of you to accuse me of giving you a set-down when all I did was to agree with you!” he retorted.

“It is to be hoped,” said Miss Wychwood, with strong feeling, “that we are not destined to see very much more of each other, Mr Carleton! You arouse in me an almost overmastering desire to give you the finest trimming you have ever had in your life!”

Her laughter was reflected in his eyes. “Oh, no, you would be very unwise to do that!” he said. “Recollect that I am famous for my incivility! I should instantly give you your own again, and since I am an ill-mannered man and you are a well-bred woman of consequence you would be bound to come off the worse from any such encounter.”

“That I can believe! Nevertheless, sir, I am determined to do what lies within my power to bring you to a sense of your obligations towards that unfortunate child. For fobbing her off on to Mrs Amber, when she was still a child, there may have been some excuse, but she is not a child now, and—”

“Permit me to correct you, ma’am!” he interrupted. “I should undoubtedly have fobbed her off on to Mrs Amber if she had been left to my sole guardianship, but it so happens that I had no choice in the matter! My brother appointed Amber to share the guardianship with me; and it was the expressed wish of his wife that, in the event of her death, her sister should have charge of Lucilla!”

“I see,” she said, digesting this. “But did you also delegate your authority over Lucilla’s future? Were you willing to see her coerced into a distasteful marriage?”

“No, of course not!” he replied irritably. “But as marriage doesn’t come into the question I fail to see—”

“But it does!” she exclaimed, considerably astonished. “That is why she ran away from Chartley! Surely you must have known what was intended? I had supposed you to be a party to the arrangement!”

He stared at her from under frowning brows. “What arrangement?” he demanded.

“Good gracious!” she uttered. “Then she never told you! Oh, how—how unprincipled of her! It makes me more than ever convinced that I did the right thing when I kept Lucilla with me!”

“Very gratifying for you, ma’am! Pray gratify me by telling me what the devil you are talking about!”

“I have every intention of telling you, so you have no need to bite off my nose!” she snapped. “For goodness’ sake, sit down! I can’t think why we are standing about in this absurd way!”

“Oh, can’t you? Did you expect me to sit down before you invited me to do so? You do think me a ramshackle fellow, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t! I don’t know anything about you!” she said crossly.

“Except that I am famed for my incivility.”

She was obliged to laugh, and to say, with engaging honesty, as she sat down: “I am afraid it is I who have been uncivil. Pray, will you not be seated, Mr Carleton?”

“Thank you!” he responded politely, and chose a chair opposite to hers. “And now will you be kind enough to tell me what is the meaning of this farrago of nonsense about Lucilla?”

“It isn’t nonsense—though I own anyone could be pardoned for thinking so! I collect that you don’t know why Mrs Amber took her on a visit to Chartley Place?”

“I didn’t know she had taken her there, until I received a blotched and impassioned letter from her, written from Chartley. As for the reason, I don’t think she divulged it. It seemed to me a perfectly natural thing: Lucilla’s own home is in the immediate vicinity, and until her mother’s death she was as much a part of Iverley’s household as her own, and no doubt formed friendships with his children—particularly, as I recollect, with Iverley’s son, who is the nearest to her in age.”

“Are you quite positive that she didn’t tell you of the scheme she and the Iverleys hatched between them?” she demanded incredulously.

“No,” he replied. “I am not positive that she didn’t, but I was unable to decipher more than the first page of her letter—and that with difficulty, since she had spattered it with her tears! The second sheet baffled me, for not only did she weep over it, but she crossed and recrossed her lines—no doubt with the amiable intention of sparing me extra expense.”

Her eyes had widened as she listened to him, but although she was shocked by his indifference she could not help being amused by it. Amusement quivered in her voice as she said: “What an extraordinary man you are, Mr Carleton! You received a letter from your ward’s aunt, written in extreme agitation, and you neither made any real effort, I am very sure, to decipher that second sheet, nor—if the blotches did indeed baffle you—to go down to Chartley to discover precisely what had happened!”

“Yes, it seemed at first as though that hideous necessity did lie before me,” he agreed. “Fortunately, however, the following day brought me a letter from Iverley, which had the merit of being short, and legible. He informed me that Lucilla was in Bath, that her aunt was prostrate, and that if I wished to rescue my ward from the clutches of what he feared was a designing female, calling herself Miss Wychwood, I must leave for Bath immediately.”

“Well, if that is not the outside of enough!” she said wrathfully. “Calling myself Miss Wychwood, indeed! And in what way am I supposed to have designs on Lucilla, pray?”

“That he didn’t disclose.”

“If he knew that Lucilla was staying with me, he must have written to you after Ninian’s return to Chartley, for he couldn’t otherwise have known where she had gone to, or what my name is! Yes, and after Ninian had given Mrs Amber the letter I had written to her, informing her of the circumstances of my meeting with Lucilla, and begging her to grant the child permission to stay with me for a few weeks! I should be glad to know why, if she thought me a designing female, she sent Lucilla’s trunks to her! What a ninnyhammer she must be! But as for Iverley! How dared he write such damaging stuff about me? If he talked like that to Ninian I’m not surprised Ninian ripped up at him!”

“Your conversation, ma’am, bears a strong resemblance to Clara Amber’s letter!” he said acidly. “Both are unintelligible! What the devil has Ninian to do with this hotch-potch?”

“He has everything to do with it! Mrs Amber and the Iverleys are determined to marry him to Lucilla! That is why she ran away!”

“Marry him to Lucilla?” he repeated. “What nonsense! Are you trying to tell me the boy is in love with her? I don’t believe it!”

“No, I am not trying to tell you that! He wants the match as little as she does, but dared not tell his father so for fear of bringing about one of the heart-attacks with which Iverley terrorizes his family into obeying his every whim! I don’t think you can have the least notion of what the situation is at Chartley!”

“Very likely not. I haven’t visited the house since my sister-in-law’s death. Iverley and I don’t deal together, and never did.”

“Then I’ll tell you!” promised Miss Wychwood, and straightway launched into a graphic description of the circumstances which had goaded Lucilla into precipitate flight.

He heard her in silence, but the expression on his face was discouraging, and when she came to the end of her recital he was so far from evincing either sympathy or understanding that he ejaculated, in exasperated accents: “Oh, for God’s sake, ma’am! Spare me any more of this Cheltenham tragedy! What a kick-up over something that might have been settled in a flea’s leap!”

“Mr Carleton,” she said, holding her temper on a tight rein, “I am aware that you, being a man, can scarcely be blamed for failing to appreciate the dilemma in which Lucilla found herself; but I assure you that to a girl just out of the schoolroom it must have seemed that she had walked into a trap from which the only escape was flight! Had Ninian had enough resolution to have told his father that he had no intention of making Lucilla an offer it must have brought the thing to an end. Unfortunately, his affection for his father, coupled with the belief—instilled into his head, I have no doubt at all, by his mother!—that to withstand Iverley’s demands was tantamount to murdering him, overcame whatever resolution he may have had. As far as I have been able to discover, the only notion he had was to become engaged to Lucilla, and to trust in providence to prevent the subsequent marriage! The one good thing that has emerged from this escapade is that Ninian, finding, on his return to Chartley, that his fond father had worked himself into a rare passion, without suffering the slightest ill, began to see that Iverley’s weak heart was little more than a weapon to hold over his household.”

“I am wholly uninterested in Ninian, or in any other young cub!” said Mr Carleton trenchantly. “I accept—on your assurance!—that the pressure brought to bear on Lucilla was hard to withstand. What I do not accept, ma’am, is that her only remedy lay in flight! Why the devil didn’t the little nod-cock write to me?”

She fairly gasped at this question, and it was a full minute before she was able to command her voice sufficiently to answer it with composure. “I fancy, sir, that her previous experiences of writing to you for support had not led her to suppose that any other reply to an appeal to you for help would be forthcoming than that she must do as her aunt thought best,” she said.

She observed, with satisfaction, that she had at last succeeded in discomfiting him. He reddened, and said, in a voice of smouldering annoyance: “Since the only appeals I’ve received from Lucilla have been concerned with matters quite outside my province—”

“Even an appeal for a horse of her own?” she interjected swiftly. “Was that also outside your province, Mr Carleton?”

A frown entered his eyes. “Did she ask me for one? I have no recollection of it.”

It was now her turn to be disconcerted, for she found that she could not remember whether a refusal to permit her to have a horse of her own had been one of Lucilla’s accusations against him, or merely one of Mrs Amber’s prohibitions against which she had not thought it worth her while to protest to her uncle. Fortunately, she was not obliged either to retract or to prevaricate, for, without waiting for a reply, he said: “If she did, I daresay I did refuse to let her set up her own stable. I can conceive of few more foolish notions than to be keeping a horse and groom in a town—both, I have little doubt, eating their heads off!”

Having discovered the truth of this herself, she was unable to deny it, so she prudently abandoned the question, and cast back to her original accusation, saying: “But am I not right in believing that your custom is to refer every request Lucilla has addressed to you to Mrs Amber’s judgment?”

“Yes, of course you are,” he replied impatiently. “What the devil do I know about the upbringing of schoolgirls?”

“What a miserable sop to offer your conscience!” she said.

“My conscience doesn’t need a sop, ma’am!” he said harshly. “I may be Lucilla’s legal guardian, but it was never expected of me that I should be concerned in the niceties of her upbringing! Had it been suggested to me I should have had no hesitation in refusing such a charge. I’ve no turn for the infantry!”

“Not even for your brother’s only child?” she asked. “Don’t you feel any affection for her?”

“No, none,” he replied. “How should I? I scarcely know her. It’s useless to expect me to become sentimental because she’s my brother’s child: I knew almost as little about him as I know about Lucilla, and what I did know I didn’t much like. I don’t mean to say that there was any harm in him: no doubt there was a great deal of good, but he had less than commonsense, and too much sensibility for my tastes. I found him a dead bore.”

“Well, I find my brother a dead bore too,” she said candidly, “but however much we rub against each other there is a bond of affection between us. I had thought that that must always exist between brothers and sisters.”

“Possibly you know him better than I ever knew my brother. There were only three years between us, but although that’s a mere nothing between adults, it constitutes a wide gulf between schoolboys. At Harrow, he formed a close, and, to my mind, a pretty mawkish friendship with young Elmore. They were both army-mad, and joined the same regiment when they left Harrow. From then on I only saw him by scraps. He married a pretty little widgeon, too: she wasn’t as foolish as her sister, but she had more hair than wit, and a mouth full of the sort of pap I can’t stomach. I knew, of course, when he bought Chartley Manor that the bosom-bow friendship between him and Elmore was as strong as ever, and I suppose I should have guessed that such a pair of air-dreamers would have hatched a scheme to achieve a closer relationship by marrying Elmore’s heir to Charles’s daughter. Though why Elmore—or Iverley, as by that time he was—should have persisted in this precious scheme after Charles’s death is a matter beyond my comprehension! Unless he thinks that Lucilla’s property is just the thing to round off his own estate?”

“Well, that is what I suspect,” nodded Miss Wychwood, “but it is only right that I should tell you that Ninian says it is no such thing. He says his father has never had a mercenary thought in his head.”

“On the whole,” said Mr Carleton, with considerable acerbity, “I should think the better of him if his motive had been mercenary! This mawkish reason for trying to marry Lucilla to his son merely because he and my brother were as thick as inkle-weavers fairly turns my stomach! I never liked the fellow, you know.”

Her eyes were alive with laughter. She said perfectly gravely, however: “For some reason or other I had suspected as much! Is there anyone whom you do like, Mr Carleton?”

“Yes, you!” he answered bluntly.

“M-me?” she gasped, wholly taken aback.

He nodded. “Yes—but much against my will!” he said.

That made her burst out laughing. Still gurgling, she said: “You are quite outrageous, you know! What in the world have I said or done to make you like me? Of all the farradiddles I ever heard that bears off the palm!”

“Oh, no! I never flummery people. I do like you, but I’m damned if I know why! It isn’t your beauty, though that is remarkable; and it certainly isn’t anything you have said or done. I think it must be your quality—that certain sort of something about you!”

“It’s my belief,” said Miss Wychwood, with conviction, “that you are all about in your head!”

He laughed. “On the contrary! But don’t delude yourself into thinking that my liking for you makes me think that you are a fit person to have charge of my niece.”

“How mortifying!” she retaliated. “What do you propose to do about that, sir?”

“Give her back into her aunt’s care, of course!”

“What, take her back to Chartley Place? What an addlebrained notion to take into your head! You had as well bestow your blessing on her marriage to Ninian without more ado!”

“No, not to Chartley Place! To Cheltenham, of course!”

She shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll be able to do that! The last intelligence we had of poor Mrs Amber was that she was prostrate, with Lady Iverley’s doctor in attendance on her, and since Lucilla tells me that it takes her weeks to recover from these—these hysterical seizures I should very much doubt if she will be able to return to her own home for some time to come. Now I come to think of it, she has announced that she never wants to set eyes on Lucilla again, and although I don’t set much store by that I do feel that it would be unreasonable to expect her to change her mind before she is perfectly restored to health.”

“I’ll soon restore her to health!” he said savagely.

“Nonsense! You’d be more likely to terrify her into strong convulsions. And even if you did succeed you could still have Lucilla to contend with.”

“There will be no difficulty about that, I promise you!”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you could bully her into going with you to Cheltenham!” she said, with maddening affability. “What I do doubt is your ability to prevail upon her to remain there.”

He regarded her with kindling eyes. “I should not bully her, ma’am!”

“Well, do you know, I think that’s very wise of you,” she said, in an approving tone. “She has a great deal of spirit, and any attempt on your part to coerce her would be bound to set up her bristles. She would run away again, and it really won’t do for her to spend the next four years running away! No harm has come from her first flight, but if she were to make a habit of it—”

“Oh, be quiet!” he interrupted, between exasperation and amusement. “What did you call me? Outrageous, wasn’t it? What’s sauce for the gander, ma’am, is also sauce for the goose!”

“That’s given me my own again, hasn’t it?” she said, with unabated cordiality.

A tell-tale muscle quivered at the corner of his mouth; he met her quizzing look, and quite suddenly laughed. “Miss Wychwood,” he said, “I lied when I said I liked you! I do not like you! I am very nearly sure that I dislike you excessively!”

“What can I say, dear sir, except that your sentiments are entirely reciprocated!” she responded.

He smiled appreciatively. “Has anyone ever got the better of you in a verbal encounter?” he asked.

“No, but it must be remembered that I have not until today had much opportunity to engage in verbal encounters. The gentlemen I have previously been acquainted with have all been distinguished by propriety of manners and conduct!”

“That must have made ’em sad bores!” he commented.

She could not help thinking that that was one accusation which could not be levelled against him, but she did not say so. Instead, she suggested, rather coldly, that they should waste no more time pulling caps, but should turn their attention to a matter of much graver importance.

“If you mean what’s to be done with Lucilla—” He broke off, frowning.

“Well, I do mean that. It would be useless to take her back to Mrs Amber—even if Mrs Amber were willing to receive her. It might be thought that you were the properest person to take charge of her—”

“Oh, my God, no!” he exclaimed.

“No,” she agreed. “It would be quite ineligible. You would be obliged to hire some genteel lady to chaperon her, and I should doubt very much if you could find anyone suitable for the post. On the one hand she must have enough strength of mind to enable her to exercise some degree of control over Lucilla; on the other she must be meek enough to bear with your overbearing temper, and to obey even the most idiotish of your commands without argument.” She smiled kindly at him, and added: “An unlikely combination, I fear, Mr Carleton!”

“I am relieved! If the unpleasant picture you have drawn is with the object of inducing me to leave my ward in your care—”

“Not at all! I shall be happy to keep her with me until some more suitable arrangement has been made, but at no time have I had the smallest intention of keeping her in my permanent charge. May I suggest to you that your immediate task must be to set about the business of launching her into Society? I am astonished that this very obvious duty should not have occurred to you.”

“Are you indeed, ma’am? Then let me tell you that I have made arrangements for my cousin, Lady Trevisian, to bring her out next year!”

“Oh, that will never do!” she said quickly. “After having had a taste of the very mild entertainments offered in Bath at this season, you cannot expect her to sink back into the schoolroom—which is what will happen to her if you succeed in bullocking Mrs Amber into resuming her guardianship.”

“In fact, ma’am,” he said, in biting accents, “you have made her dissatisfied—which proves how very unfit you are to have even temporary charge of any girl of her age!” He saw that his words had brought a flush into her face, and fancied that he detected a hurt expression in her eyes. It was a fleeting look only, but he said, in a milder tone: “I daresay you may have meant it for the best, but the result of your action has been to land us in a rare mess!”

“Pray don’t hide your teeth, sir! You do not think I meant it for the best! You’ve as good as accused me of trying to make mischief, and I very much resent it!”

“I haven’t done any such thing! And if I had it wouldn’t have been as insulting as your accusation, that I would bullock Mrs Amber!” She sniffed, which had the effect of bringing the smile back into his eyes. “What an unexpected creature you are!” he said. “At one moment a woman of the first consequence, at the next a hornet! No, don’t scowl at me! Really I’ve no wish to break squares!”

“Then don’t provoke me!” she said crossly. “Why don’t you ask your cousin to bring Lucilla out this year?”

“Because I’ve no fancy for finding myself at Point Non Plus! She wouldn’t do it: her eldest daughter is to be married in May, and she has her hands full already with all the ridic—with all the preparations for the wedding! I could no more persuade her to present Lucilla at such a moment than I could bullock her into doing it!”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” she exclaimed, looking daggers at him, “must you be so—so naggy?”

“Alas!” he returned mournfully. “The temptation to rouse you to fury is too great to be resisted! You can have no notion how much your beauty is enhanced by a blush of rage, and the fire in your eyes!” He watched her close her lips tightly, and his shoulders shook. “What, lurched, Miss Wychwood?” he mocked her.

“Oh, no, there is much I could say, but having been reared—unlike yourself!—to respect the common decencies of established etiquette I am unfortunately debarred from uttering even one of the things which spring to my mind!”

“Don’t give them a thought!” he begged. “Consider under what a disadvantage you must be if you respect the common decencies which I don’t!”

“If you had an ounce of—of proper feeling you would respect them!” she told him roundly. “You are a positive rake-shame—as my brother would say!” she added, rather hastily.

His face was alive with laughter, but he said reprovingly: “You shock me, ma’am! What an indelicate expression for a lady of quality to use!”

“Very likely! But as for its shocking you I shouldn’t think anything could!”

“How well you understand me!” he said, much gratified.

“Oh, how can you be so abominable?” she demanded, laughing in spite of herself. “Do, pray, stop trying to goad me into being as uncivil and as disagreeable as you are yourself, and let us consider what is to be done about Lucilla! I perfectly understand how awkward it would be for your cousin to be saddled with her at this moment, but have you no other relation who would be willing to bring her out?”

“No, none,” he replied. “Nor can I think her come-out of such urgency. She can only just have reached her seventeenth birthday, and the last time I went to Almack’s I found the place choke-full of callow schoolroom misses, and determined that my ward shouldn’t swell their ranks!”

“I know exactly what you mean!” she said. “Girls pitchforked into the ton without a notion of how to go on, and betrayed by their anxiety not to seem as innocent as they are into quite unbecoming simpering, titters, and—oh, you know as well as I do the sort of detestable archness which so many very young girls display! That is why I have made it my business to introduce Lucilla into Bath society! I think it of the first importance that a girl should learn how to conduct herself in company before being introduced into the ton. But you need have no fears that Lucilla would disgrace you! She is neither shy nor coming: indeed, her manners are very pretty, and do Mrs Amber the greatest credit! If you doubt me, come and see for yourself! I am holding a small rout-party here on Thursday, particularly in her honour, and shall be happy to welcome you to it. That is, if you are still in Bath then? But perhaps you don’t mean to make any very long stay here?”

“I must obviously remain in Bath until I’ve settled what’s to be done with Lucilla, and shall certainly come to your party. Accept my best thanks, ma’am!”

She said mischievously: “I warn you, sir, it will be the most boring party imaginable! I have invited all the young persons of my acquaintance, and as many of their parents who don’t care to allow their daughters to go unchaperoned to parties! I daresay you can never have attended any party even half as insipid!”

“I would hazard a guess, Miss Wychwood, that you have never before given such an insipid party!” he said shrewdly.

“No, very true!” she confessed. “To own the truth, I laughed myself into stitches when I read over the list of my invited guests! However, I’m not giving it to please myself, but to introduce Lucilla into Bath society. I am confident that she will make a hit. She did so when I took her to an informal party the other day.”

“So I suppose the next confounded nuisance I shall have to face will be sending either love-lorn cubs, or gazetted fortune-hunters to the rightabout!”

“Oh, no!” she said sweetly. “I don’t number any fortune-hunters amongst my acquaintances! I collect, from certain things she has said, and from her extremely costly wardrobe, that she is possessed of a considerable independence?”

“Lord, yes! She’s rich enough to buy an Abbey!”

“Well, in that case I need not scruple to provide her with a good abigail.”

“I thought she had one. Indeed, I’m sure of it, for I’ve been paying her wages for the past three years. What has become of her?”

“She quarrelled with Mrs Amber, when Lucilla’s flight was discovered, and left the house in a rage,” she responded.

“Women!”he uttered, with loathing. “It’s of no use to expect me to engage an abigail for her: what the devil does she imagine I know about such things? Since you have usurped Mrs Amber’s place, I suggest that it is for you to engage a maid!”

“Certainly!” she replied, quite unruffled.

“Where is Lucilla?” he demanded abruptly.

“She has ridden out to Farley Castle with a party of young friends, and I don’t expect to see her back for several hours yet.”

He looked annoyed, but before he had time to speak an interruption occurred, in the person of Miss Farlow, who came into the room, with her bonnet askew, and words tripping off her tongue. “Such a vexatious thing, dear Annis! I have been all over the town, trying to match that sarcenet, and, would you believe it, not even Thorne’s were able to offer me anything like it! So what with this horrid wind, which has positively blown me to pieces, and—” She stopped, becoming suddenly aware of the presence of a stranger. “Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t know! What a sadly shocking thing of me to do, bursting in on you, which of course I should never have done if James had informed me that you had a visitor! But he never said a word about it—just relieved me of my parcels, you know, for it was he who opened the door, not our good Limbury, who I daresay was busy in the pantry, and I desired him to give the large one to Mrs Wardlow, and to have the others carried up to my bedchamber, which he said he would do, and then we exchanged a few words about the way the wind whips at one round every corner, and how dreadfully steep the hill is, particularly when one is burdened with parcels, as, of course, I was, and which has made me quite out of breath, besides tousling me quite abominably!”

Miss Wychwood, having observed with malicious enjoyment the effect on Mr Carleton of this tangled speech, intervened at this point, saying: “I’ve no sympathy to waste on you, Maria! Indeed, I think you very well served for being so foolish as to walk home, instead of calling up a chair! As for ‘bursting in’, I am glad you did, for I wish to make Mr Carleton known to you—Lucilla’s uncle, you know! Mr Carleton, Miss Farlow—my cousin, who is kind enough to reside with me.”

He favoured Miss Farlow with a brief bow, but addressed himself to his hostess, saying, with the flicker of an impish smile: “Lending you countenance, ma’am?”

“Exactly so!” she said, refusing to rise to this bait.

“You astonish me! I hadn’t supposed that any lady so advanced in years as yourself would be conscious of the need of chaperonage! Is your name Annis? A corruption, I believe, of Agnes, but I like it! It becomes you.”

“Well!” exclaimed Miss Farlow, bristling in defence of her patroness, “I’m sure I don’t know why you should, not that I mean to say it is not a very pretty name, for I think it very pretty, but if it is a corruption it cannot be thought to become dear Miss Wychwood, who is not in the least corrupt, let me assure you!”

“Thank you, Maria!” said Miss Wychwood, bubbling over with ill-suppressed mirth. “I knew I might depend on you to establish my character!”

“Indeed you may, dearest Annis!” declared Miss Farlow, much moved. She glared through starting tears at Mr Carleton, and added, with a gasp at her own temerity: “I shall take leave to tell you, sir, that I think it most ungentlemanly of you to cast aspersions on Miss Wychwood!”

“No, no, Maria!” said Miss Wychwood, trying to speak with proper sobriety, “you wrong him! I don’t think he meant to cast aspersions on me—though I own I wouldn’t be prepared to hazard any large sum on such a doubtful chance!”

“Hornet!” said Mr Carleton appreciatively.

She twinkled at him, and awoke a reluctant smile in his hard eyes. “Let us leave my character out of the discussion! You have come to Bath—at great personal inconvenience—to see your niece, but, most unfortunately, she is not here at the moment. So what is to be done? You will scarcely wish to sit here, kicking your heels, until she returns!”

“No, by God I wouldn’t! Any more, I dare swear, than you would wish me to do so!”

“No, indeed! You would be very much in my way! Perhaps it would be best if you were to dine here tonight.”

“No,” he said decisively. “You’re very obliging, ma’am, but it would be best if you brought her to dine with me, at the York House. I’m putting up there, and they seem to keep a tolerable table. I shall expect you both at seven—unless you prefer a later hour?”

“Oh, no! But pray don’t depend upon my joining you! My abigail shall escort Lucilla to York House, and I feel sure I can rely on you to bring her back later in the evening.”

“That won’t do at all!” he said. “Your presence at any discussion about Lucilla’s future is indispensable, believe me! I do depend upon your joining me. Don’t fail me!”

With that, he took his leave, bowing slightly to Miss Farlow, but grasping Miss Wychwood’s hand for a moment, and favouring her with a rueful grin.