Cressida (7 page)

“I am very much afraid,” said Cressida sweetly, but with dangerously glinting eyes, “that I am
engaged
for that as well. ”

“And for the next, and the next, and the next, I daresay,” said Rossiter affably. “Not being dull of understanding, Miss Calverton, I take your meaning. To put it in the plainest possible terms, you do not care to dance with me.”

“To put it in the plainest possible terms, Captain Rossiter, you are quite correct!”

By this time the set had ended and, Lady Constance being still in the card-room, Addison brought Kitty across the floor to Cressida, at the same moment that Lord Langmere appeared to claim his dance. Cressida, who knew that neither Addison nor Langmere was acquainted with Rossiter, was obliged to perform the introductions, which she did in a decidedly offhand manner. She then realised that she had quite unaccountably neglected to present Rossiter and Harries to Kitty, and was about to do so when Rossiter himself, his eyes fixed upon Miss Chenevix in what appeared to be cool but definite admiration, called her attention to this omission.

“Good!” he said, when she had pronounced the necessary social formula. “It wouldn’t have done, you see, for me to have asked Miss Chenevix to dance with me before she had received my credentials as an old acquaintance of yours in good standing, Miss Calverton. ” He addressed Kitty with an air of negligent gallantry. “May I have the honour, Miss Chenevix—?”

Kitty cast a dutifully questioning glance at Cressida, but she so obviously wished to accept the invitation that had been tendered to her that Cressida, under penalty of causing a small, significant scene under Addison’s eyes, was obliged to nod her assent. Rossiter thereupon walked off with Kitty on his arm, while Addison, his brows raised over his cold blue eyes, gazed interrogatively at Cressida.

“An
old acquaintance
of yours, Cressy?” he enquired. “You are being very sly, are you not, my love? One would never have gathered, when we were discussing the gallant Captain a short while ago, that you were an
old acquaintance
of his. ”

“It was a very brief acquaintanceship, I assure you, ” Cressida said, and quite despairing, after her own imprudence in speaking of the matter to both Lady Constance and Langmere, of being able to keep from Addison’s inquisitiveness the facts of that acquaintanceship, added, “Only long enough for us to plight our troth and then unplight it again, which, you know, my dear, to a green girl is a matter of weeks—no more. Leonard, had we not best join the set—?”

Lord Langmere, who, following her instructions, had been talking kindly to Captain Harries, thus depriving the latter of the opportunity to ask Kitty to dance before Rossiter had snatched her up from under his nose, said so they had, and they went off together, leaving Captain Harries behind with the Honourable Mr. Addison, who cast a cold glance upon him and then also walked away.

“I
do
wish I had not been obliged to present Rossiter to Kitty,” Cressida said in a vexed tone to Langmere as they took their places in the set. “He is not at all the sort of man for a young girl to know—but then I daresay it does not signify in the end. He will certainly not make 
her
the object of his gallantry. ”

And she put the matter out of her mind, until at the end of the set she was startled to see that Rossiter, instead of bringing Kitty back to her, was standing amicably chatting with her, resisting the blandishments of Lady Dalingridge, who wished to parade her captive lion before her guests, and that he apparently had every intention of standing up with Miss Chenevix for the next set as well.

“Devil!” thought Cressida, her indignation mounting once more. “He is only doing it because he thinks it will annoy me!”

But again there was nothing she could do without provoking an undesirable small scene, so she allowed her own partner to lead her into the set, privately determining to get Kitty’s ear at its conclusion and inform her of the extreme inadvisability of a young girl’s making herself conspicuous by standing up twice in one evening with a man of Rossiter’s reputation.

As it happened, however, she was spared the necessity of instructing Kitty upon this point by the arrival upon the scene, just as the set was ending, of a breathless Lady Constance, who, it appeared, had been routed out of the pleasures of a gossipping game of whist in the card-room by a well-meaning dowager who said she was sure she would wish to know that Miss Chenevix had stood up for two dances in a row with Captain Rossiter, and that Dolly Dalingridge was quite livid with disappointment because she had not been able to exchange more than two words with him herself and was telling everyone that she knew nothing at all about Kitty, but that one could see she had been brought up without proper principles.

“And I
did
so depend upon
you,
dearest Cressy,” Lady Constance said, the very aigrette on her turban quivering with reproach, “to see to it that she didn’t fall into the briars, because she is
quite
inexperienced, you know, and didn’t so much as realise, until I warned her of it, that she must on no account waltz in public without the permission of one of the Patronesses of Almack’s! There! Thank goodness, the set is ending! Of course I have never met Captain Rossiter, but I shall most certainly give him a piece of my mind if he is bold enough to ask poor little Kitty to stand up with him for a third time!”

And she hurried off, to be shortly seen snatching Kitty away from an amused Rossiter in a very highhanded sort of way, which would have convinced anyone of the genuineness of her claim to Plantagenet blood.

Lord Langmere, who happened to have been standing beside Cressida when this bit of by-play had taken place, and had watched it with mild interest, now remarked to her that it rather appeared to him that Lady Constance was making a piece of work over nothing.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “she may even be doing your little Miss Chenevix a disservice. Rossiter is obviously attracted by the girl, and if he should have decided at this point in his life to settle himself—which seems possible, by his return to England—he would be a rich prize indeed for a penniless young girl to capture. ”

“Rossiter! You cannot be serious!” Cressida turned an astonished face upon him. “A man of his—his
experience,
to use the politest term, to marry a girl scarcely out of the schoolroom! He would be bored to death in a week, and she— She shook her head decisively. “No, it is quite absurd! This is only one of his sudden freaks. He was piqued because I would not grant him a dance, and this is his way of being revenged upon me!”

“Of course, you may be right,’ Lord Langmere conceded, but looking unconvinced. “A very thoughtless and ill-judged revenge it would be, though, my dear, to single out a young girl and make her the object of expectations that he has no intention of satisfying. Is he such a paltry fellow? I have only just met him, but he does not appear so to me.”

“Yes—no!” Cressida said, obliged to swallow the indignation that had prompted her first reply and give Rossiter his due. “He is not ordinarily devious, I believe. But this—” She stopped speaking suddenly, seeing that Rossiter, once more shaking off the importunities of Lady Dalingridge, who had again attempted to seize upon him as he had been relinquished by Lady Constance, was purposefully approaching. “Oh, good heavens! Here he comes! What now?” she said quickly. “Leonard, if he means to ask me to go down to supper with him, I am already engaged to you—do you understand?”

Lord Langmere said gallantly that it would please him above all things to take her down to supper, as it was for the purpose of asking her to allow him that pleasure that he had just approached her; and then Rossiter was upon them.

“Well, Cressy?” he said in a quizzing tone, regarding her slightly flushed and highly unwelcoming countenance. “I knew I was engaging in a forlorn hope, but just how forlorn it is I can see by your face, before I have so much as made my request. You are firmly determined, I gather, to eat with me no more than you will dance with me.”

Cressida, assuming an air of indifference, shrugged and glanced at Langmere.

“As I daresay you have already guessed, I am
engaged
to Lord Langmere for supper,” she said pointedly. “And may I
particularly
request,” she added on a sudden unworthy impulse, which she would certainly have quelled if it had not been for the unwonted perturbation that had brought the colour to her face when she had seen Rossiter approaching her, “that you do not ask Miss Chenevix to go down with you? She is in a way under my charge at present, as she is living under my roof, and I may tell you that I consider you have already drawn quite enough undesirable notice upon her by asking her to stand up with you twice this evening.”

“Do you, by God!” Cressida’s eyes, which had been purposely fixed upon her fan—a pretty thing of frosted crape on ivory sticks—flew up, startled, to his dark face. A slight flush of anger had risen in it, and as she stared at him he continued harshly, “You are responsible for your own actions and inclinations, my girl, but when you try to make yourself responsible for mine as well, let me tell you that you have gone your length! I shall neither be guided by you nor make myself accountable to you in what I do. If Miss Chenevix’s guardians choose to consider me an unsuitable person for her to know, I shall take the matter up with them; but what
you
have to do with it—beyond a wish to meddle in what is none of your affair—escapes my understanding!”

And he turned and strode off without another word. Lord Langmere, who had been a somewhat uncomfortable auditor to this exchange, was moved at this point to say fair-mindedly but rather unwisely to Cressida, “Really, my dear, he was quite in the right, you know. The matter rests in Lady Con’s hands, and I am sure she has said everything that is necessary.

“Oh, of course—being a man, you take
his
part!” flashed Cressida still more unworthily, and, clasping the fragile ivory sticks of her fan so tightly that she felt some of them break between her fingers, she too walked quickly away.

Naturally, being aware that she had acted badly, she was very gay indeed with her next partner, one of the German princelings whom Addison had despised, flirting with him in such a dashing manner that Addison began to speculate seriously on whether his suggestion that she might become a
Prinzessin
had really taken root in her mind, and causing several of the more proper dowagers present to remark to one another that really, my dear, if Cressida Calverton did not mend her ways, everyone would be saying that she was
fast.

Meanwhile, Rossiter had gone straight across the room to where Lady Constance, having secured an eligible if not exciting partner for Kitty in the person of the very young and bashful third son of a baronet, had seated herself beside one of those same censorious dowagers upon a small gilt rout chair, having determined to keep vigilant watch over her charge during the remainder of the evening. Cressida, who, although appearing wholly absorbed in her flirtation with her princeling, was perfectly aware of Rossiter’s movements, was astonished to see him halt before Lady Constance’s chair and, after parleying for a few moments with her and her companion, promptly draw up a third chair and seat himself beside them. The two middle-aged ladies, she could see, were making a valiant attempt to maintain their air of virtuous disapproval in the face of this frontal attack by the Captain; but they were no more immune than would the young ladies they were chaperoning have been to the flattery of having been so pointedly singled out by the lion of the evening, and they were soon smiling and engaging in what appeared to be a very comfortable conversation
à trois.

The set ended; Cressida was claimed by Lord Langmere, who came, as he had promised, to take her down to supper; and the next she saw of Rossiter he was, astoundingly, seated in the supper-room in a group comprising Lady Constance and the dowager to whom he had been talking in the ballroom, the dowager’s daughter, Captain Harries, Kitty, and the now perfectly tongue-tied third son of a baronet who had been dancing with her.

“Birds of a feather,” said Addison, pausing beside the chair in which Lord Langmere had installed Cressida while he went to fill a plate for her, “do
not,
it appears, always flock together. I refer, my dear Cressy, to your friend Captain Rossiter and that extraordinarily motley crew he has gathered round him. Three sucking babes, a pair of dowagers, and poor Captain Harries, who is regarding your Miss Chenevix rather as if he were a devout Muslim discovering his first houri at the gates of Paradise. If I am mixing my metaphors rather badly, it is because I have been reduced to a state of utter confusion by this grouping. Can you explain it to me? Dolly, I fear, is about to scratch Lady Con’s eyes out with jealousy, and in point of fact I believe it may well come to pistols at twenty paces on Paddington Green between them if Lady Con does not relinquish Rossiter to her soon.”

To Cressida’s relief, Lord Langmere’s arrival at that moment with a pair of plates abundantly heaped with the creams, aspics, and Chantillies provided for her guests by Lady Dalingridge prevented her from answering this speech directly, and she applied herself assiduously to her plate while Addison and several other members of her coterie who had also stopped beside her chair on their way to the buffet made witty conversation over their hostess’s disappointment and Rossiter’s odd choice of supper companions.

Her own mind was in a puzzle. Could it be possible, she asked herself, that Rossiter had indeed been so taken by Kitty that he was willing to endure what must be the decidedly dull conversation of his present companions for the sake of being near her? The girl was well enough, certainly, and she as certainly appeared to advantage that evening in the shimmering spider-gauze gown; but she was not a Beauty, and her quiet stye of good looks was not the sort to strike a man like a
coup de foudre.