Althea (8 page)

Francis could only thank him and leave the club, his head
buzzing and his heart sinking, as he repeated to himself the figure Calendar
had given. He was not yet sober but was becoming so with disastrous rapidity.
All that was left was to return home, submit himself to the ministrations of
his sleepy valet, and fall into a deep, uneasy slumber, dreading tomorrow’s
reckoning and cursing the night entirely.

Sir Tracy Calendar, having left Lord Bevan, spoke for a few
minutes with Mr. Brummell and Lord Petersham, then took his leave, preferring
to walk rather than to call a chair or ride. He was surprised at his behavior
tonight but felt he must not refine too closely upon it. After all, Bevan did
not ordinarily game so freely. It would seem that the young lord and his lady
had had some sort of falling out: the seeds had been perceivable at the
Fforydings’ ball. Tracy thought to himself that it would be a shame if their
infelicity should overset Miss Ervine and, on this notion, he smiled to
himself, continuing up the streets to Cavendish.

The atmosphere in the house at Grosvenor Square the next
morning could only be said to be oppressive. Maria slept late, and even after
she did awake, kept to her room, sulking over her chocolate and cards of
invitation.

Since Mr. Pendarly was to call on her at nine-thirty,
Althea, in her anxiety to be ready at that hour, found herself occupying the
breakfast room with Francis. He wore a very drawn countenance and had that
aversion to sudden noises that bespeaks too much wine and too little sleep. He
did not eat more than a corner of toast but drank several cups of coffee;
Althea felt for him deeply but could think of no words that would fit the
occasion. His conversation was negligible, beyond inquiring of Althea how she
had liked the ball. Then he did no more than sigh, sinking into his own
miserable silence.

To Althea, sipping her second cup of tea, it was a relief
when Mr. Pendarly was announced and she could go out to greet him. He allowed
her a moment to adjust the very becoming shako on her dark hair and the folds
of the matching gray and green habit before they went out into the street.

If Edward Pendarly had hoped that the attraction he felt for
Miss Ervine would prove to be illusory, his hopes were to no avail. Miss Ervine
was in splendid looks, her military-style habit and shako hat making the most
of her height and authority. She held out her hand in the friendliest manner,
waiting to be thrown into the saddle, and Pendarly knew that his case was lost.

“You are here in very good time. It is fortunate for you
that I do not play the belle and delay you half an hour with changing my hat or
some such thing, which my sister tells me it is every fashionable woman’s duty
to do.”

“I cannot conceive that you would willingly inconvenience
anyone, ma’am.” He smiled warmly. Althea blushed but kept her tongue, waiting
until they were some minutes along on their ride toward the park.

“I hope you know, sir, that I did not speak as I did to have
you offer me the Spanish coin. I should hate to have you think so.”

“I shall maintain, Miss Ervine, and not as Spanish coin
either, that I should be much surprised to hear that you had troubled anyone
unwillingly. One cannot, of course, be held responsible for those things that
happen unavoidably.” He spoke with some fervor, and the glow of admiration
persisted still in his eyes. Althea felt the uncomfortable need to disabuse him
of his illusions.

“You have never seen me in a temper, sir,” she admitted. “I
am told that I am altogether a termagant when I am angry. In fact, I am still
at odds with my father, on account of my having scolded my brother for riding
through the gardener’s prized roses. When I am angry I do not think until after
I have wrought, and by then it is often very late in the day indeed.” Althea
said all of this forthrightly, but tempered it with as much of Maria’s smiling
as she could; in any event the gentleman seemed unimpressed by her confession.
He was, it appeared, determined to think well of her.

“The case you speak of surely is to your credit, ma’am. To
incur your father’s displeasure over another’s sensibility — I collect those
roses were something special to the gardener? — that surely indicates a great
measure of consideration.”

“I beg you will tell my father so, sir,” she said dryly They
had entered the Park now, and Althea would have dearly loved a gallop, but of
course this was London, not the long meadow at Hook Well, and such a display,
she was persuaded, would ruin her credit forever. She contented herself with a
sedate pace, keeping alongside Mr. Pendarly and enjoying the cool air of the
morning. Mr. Pendarly kept up a flow of light, entertaining conversation,
indicating places of interest that could be seen as they rode. There was no
denying he was attractive and, in a subdued manner, quite charming. When the
trees had hidden all but the Park itself from view Pendarly began to speak of
the sightseeing excursion he had thought of, suggesting points of interest they
might visit as a beginning.

“Of course, if you are determined to be a bluestocking, we
will visit the Botanical Gardens, but I must inform you that unless you wish to
be thought dreadfully learned or peculiar, they are not the place for a lady of
fashion.”

“Thank you for the kind warning. I will endeavor to cool my
botanical yearnings, then, for my sister would never forgive me if I appeared a
bluestocking after her careful tutoring. She labored hard and long to make me a
paragon of presentability.”

There was a quick look of something like disapproval at this
flippancy, but the glance was so brief that Althea could almost believe her
companion had not aimed it at her at all. She felt sure she could have said the
same sort of thing to anyone else and received no worse than a question as to
what she could possibly mean. Almost anyone she had met the night before — the
tall man, Sir Tracy Calendar, for example — would have understood the spirit of
her remark. Surely she had only imagined the look from Mr. Pendarly.

As if the thought of him had conjured him up, Sir Tracy
Calendar appeared from a side path, riding a beautiful showy chestnut. She
could feel, or rather sense, Mr. Pendarly bridle nervously at her side, for
what reason she knew not. She was pleased to see Sir Tracy, yet she would have
wished for this hour with Pendarly alone if Calendar had some unfortunate
effect upon the gentleman. Still, when Sir Tracy reined in beside her, she
smiled cordially.

“Your servant, Miss Ervine. You are early out this morning,
I see, and by the look of it, in excellent spirits after your triumph last
night. Allow me to compliment you: you have captured half the hearts of Bond
Street already.” He turned to Pendarly with a nod. “You must think yourself
fortunate to have stolen the march on this lady’s army of suitors.”

“I misdoubt, sir, whether I have captured so much as one
heart, let alone those of an army. Some interest, perhaps, but hearts? Surely
even in London that is a weightier business.”

“Nonsense, Miss Ervine. In London hearts are given as
lightly as air, and taken as freely at a moment’s notice. Mr. Pendarly here may
be at your feet today, and on the morrow be dangling after the first fair lady
with china blue eyes and a fair fortune that he encounters. A sad truth, I’m
afraid, to hand you on such a fine morning.” Althea gaped at Calendar; this was
strange talk for any morning, and she found the notion that any man would amuse
himself with her until a wealthier woman appeared particularly repugnant.

Pendarly, during this speech, had grown pale, looking with
angry eyes at Calendar. Althea was relieved to know that at least one of her
escorts was sensible enough to find such plain speaking offensive. It might,
she owned, be that she found the remark particularly obnoxious because she was
its target, but still she could not repress the notion that it might well have
been left unsaid. She would have glared in concert with Mr. Pendarly at
Calendar’s unrepentant head had not the gleam in that gentleman’s eye warned
her that he expected a reaction of that sort.
If I strangle with it, I shall
not give him such satisfaction
, she thought indignantly. Sir Tracy — the
man seemed a mind reader! — nodded as if he had understood this, too, and after
a very long moment of awkward quiet, he politely took his leave and rode off.

“I thought him pleasant enough last night, but what a
dreadful tongue that man has to him!” Althea remarked at the retreating back of
Calendar. “It goes beyond anything.”

“I am sorry that he should have had the opportunity to speak
to you in such terms, Miss Ervine, and that I did not task him with it. But it
is always so with Calendar, I believe. He has a reputation as a cynic, which he
preens upon all occasions — I think it very ill bred of him. There is no
accounting for the taste of others: some people find him most amiable.” Althea
wondered if there was not a touch of priggishness to Pendarly’s speech, but at
the moment a trace of priggishness seemed infinitely preferable to Calendar’s
odious plain speaking. Pendarly still seemed overset by Calendar’s manner. She
let him brood for a few minutes as they turned their horses back in the
direction of the Bevan house.

“I cannot thank you enough for this morning’s ride, sir. It
has altogether cleared the cobwebs for me — I have not ridden in above two
months, for my own hack at home broke its leg and was destroyed, and Papa has
not been able to bear the thought of the price of a new mount for me.

“Why does your father deny such a request? Especially when
you are such a good horsewoman?”

“My father has a particular dislike for spending money —
except on himself and occasionally on my brother. He does not intend to be mean
— he simply forgets that I have my little needs too. And there may be another
reason in that a year or two ago I made rather a spectacle of myself riding across
the hunting field after a dog of mine. Papa thought it so disgraceful that he
—” she broke off suddenly, knowing that being disowned, even so casually as she
had been twice been, could not increase her credit with Pendarly — “he scolded
me quite dreadfully.”

Pendarly smiled but said nothing. His mind seemed to have
drifted away, and Althea, cursing Sir Tracy roundly in her mind, kept silent
for the remainder of the ride. When they arrived in front of the Bevan house he
bid her good day and told her he would call again soon. Althea did not like to
be the one to mention their sightseeing plans, so they parted with vague
civilities.

It was barely eleven, and as she was informed that my lady
had not yet arisen and that my lord had departed the house some half an hour
earlier, Althea retired to the library where she discovered, after some
browsing, a life of Richard III, which she began with relish. How long she sat
reading Althea did not know, but when Debbens entered to tell her that Lady
Bevan had awakened and was inquiring for her sister, she whisked the book under
a sofa cushion, knowing what Maria’s consternation would be if she found that
her sister had been reading a
history
.

Althea, on entering Lady Bevan’s chamber, discovered curtains
drawn and her sister in high dudgeon, nursing a cup of cold chocolate and
shuttling through her cards of invitation in the half-light.

“You’ll never learn what is on them that way, stupid,”
Althea clucked at her as she lit the lamp at bedside. “You look completely done
up. Has that pretend headache of yours become real?”

Lady Bevan sat bolt upright and tried to form her face into
a semblance of aggrieved self-righteousness, but gave up at last when she saw
no reaction from her sister. “Very well, then, I should know better than to try
to fool you. But I
should
have had the headache last night, from the
heat and the press and that awful champagne of Lady Fforyding’s and from
Francis’s shocking treatment of me.”

“And now you have made yourself ill in earnest from
fretting. How silly you are, Mary. I must confess that I have no headache, for
all I drank as much punch as you and was as long in the ballroom as you. Poor
honey, had a turn-up with Francis, did you not?”

Lady Bevan considered denying the charge summarily, but
another glance at her sister assured her that Althea knew almost the whole of
it, and might as well be told now as later — before Francis had had the chance,
in fact. When she spoke, there spilled on a torrent of recriminations,
apologies, despair, all mixed with generous feelings of ill-use. Althea found
it a wholly unfortunate recipe. Maria ended her tirade with the matter of
Madame Helena’s bill — not the one incurred by Althea, for her sister was
paying that out of her own income — but the one that had come on the day of
Althea’s arrival, and rested still, unpaid, in the drawer of Maria’s
chiffonier. Now the fear of Maria’s heart was that any day the bill would come
before Francis, and she was in a tremor, for she’d no idea at all what to do,
and there was no possible way to pay it before the end of this quarter — nearly
three months away — and what did her dearest Ally have to say to her sister’s
distress?

“Peace, Mary, and let me think. You’ve a rare muddle on your
hands, but why are you so determined that Francis cannot know of it? Surely if
you lay it before him and act prettily enough he won’t scold you very much. No?
Well, then, perhaps you can pay part part of it now and part later? If nothing
else will do, I can advance you some money, although not so much. Since I
received
my
dun from Helena, I’m none too plump in the pocket myself.
Smile a little, Sis. The world will not come to an end. Try with Francis first,
I say.” Althea’s faith in Francis’s good temper added to her hope that he and
her sister would resolve their difficulties.

“Ally, you cannot understand. I have not told you the whole
of it,” Maria wailed. “Before you came — oh, some months ago — Francis and I
had the most dreadful row, and I said some horrible, unforgivable things to him
about his gaming, and he was horrid about my extravagance, as he put it, and
though we did make it up, it was never the same, although I promised to watch
my spending and he vowed not to be so — so
profligate
in his gaming. I
do not think he can ever truly love me after the things I said, and then last
night I thought it was going to be all right again.” Maria gulped miserably. “I
began to think that he might begin to love me a little again, then everything
was spoiled, for he went off to the gaming room and left me to amuse myself as
best I might. I am so miserable —” She burst into tears and buried her face in
the pillows. Althea gave her sister a five-minute pause to cry and recover
herself before she attempted to speak to her. When the weeping had subsided a
little and only an occasional gulp was heard from the pillow, Althea lifted her
sister bodily from the bed, patted her shoulder, dried her tears with a
ridiculously inadequate handkerchief, and refreshed her face with lavender
water. Then she demanded an account, detailed and
truthful
, of the
quarrel at the Fforydings’.