Indiscretion (16 page)

‘Is everyone at Wythorpe as rude as you?’ she said to his back; but got only a bare chuckle in return.

Her uncle and aunt were delighted, and not in the least surprised, when Stephen Milner walked in on them at breakfast in the back parlour; and Caroline was glad of the opportunity to sit down to coffee and fade into the background while they plied their visitor with greetings and enquiries, and he made his explanations. There could hardly, she thought, as she bit savagely into a hot roll, have been a worse beginning. When Aunt Selina turned to her, and began to make a formal introduction, Caroline fully expected Mr Milner to seize the opportunity for capricious humour. But he only said: ‘We bumped into each other in the hall
—
but I’m glad, Miss Fortune, to meet you properly’ and shook her hand with great correctness.

‘So, Stephen, when do you return to Wythorpe?’ his uncle asked him.

‘Don’t know, sir. I’ve a fancy, while I’m in this part of the world, to go on to have a look at Silbury Hill. Fabulous tumulus, built, according to folklore, by the devil.’ Caroline felt, or felt she felt, his eye light momentarily on her. ‘That, or go home directly. I see you’re packing up. I might travel back with you, if you’ve no objection.’

‘Oh, an excellent notion,’ Uncle John said. ‘Best to be moving before the autumn rain
—
it makes such slow going even on the turnpikes. And then, you know, you will surely be wanted at Wythorpe
Manor. After quarter day there are all the matters of winter hiring, and stock-keeping, and then Isabella and Fanny will be looking to their winter season
—
gowns and dancing-shoes, eh?’ he added, with a sly snuffle at Caroline. ‘And all these things, you know, require the presence of the master of the house.’

‘Lord, so they do,’ Stephen Milner said, in the middle of one of his jaw-cracking yawns
—
but one that, Caroline thought, was a little affected, as if to cover something up.

‘Isabella and Fanny,’ Aunt Selina explained, ‘are Stephen’s sisters, my dear. Isabella is about your age
—
Fanny rather younger
—
both charming girls. I’m sure, when you join us at Wythorpe, they will make you thoroughly welcome, and be good friends to you.’

Caroline, picturing female versions of Stephen, could not quite share her aunt’s confidence.

‘True
—
true
—
that’s a blessing,’ enthused her uncle, ‘for you know, of course, what we intend with our niece, Stephen
—
and so what d’you think of her, hey? What think you of these quaint old bodies having a young girl about the Rectory, hey? Won’t it be a new lease of life for us?’

‘I hope so, sir,’ Stephen said, helping himself to ham. ‘As for company of her own age at Wythorpe, you forget there’s Lady Milner too.’

‘To be sure,’ cried
Dr Langland,
after a long moment, with tremendous awkwardness; and then, with even more unconvincing volume, ‘To be sure!’

‘My stepmother,’ Stephen informed Caroline calmly, eating away. ‘And actually a year or two younger than myself. Curious situation.’

‘Augusta too is an excellent creature,’ quickly put in Aunt Selina, seeming to leave quantities of things unsaid. ‘We look forward to introducing you all round, my dear. Now, Stephen, what did you do with your luggage? And will you stay with us tonight, and dine?’

‘I’ll gladly stay, Aunt, but if you’ll forgive me I’m engaged to dine with a fellow I ran into at the Bear. Name of Beauregard. We were at Cambridge together. You might recall his name from the scandal-papers.’ As the Langlands only looked blank, he went on: ‘Well, perhaps not. I dare say you’ve more sense than to read ‘em
—’

‘Beauregard,’ Caroline burst out, remembering a piece of gossip that Mrs Catling had chewed on with relish. ‘Not the gentleman who ran off with the actress disguised as a page?’

‘And disobliged his father, who is a Treasury minister and had him set up to marry the Earl of Melrose’s daughter, to their great mutual benefit. Most shocking of all, he has married his actress, instead of treating her as a discardable mistress in the acceptable fashion. Apparently the lady herself delivered the letter announcing the happy matrimonial news to old Beauregard, dressed in her page costume, and in spite of his shock he retained enough self-possession to tip her a shilling.’

‘But surely,’ spluttered
Dr
Langland, whose mobile eyebrows had been disappearing further up his fringe throughout Stephen’s narration, ‘surely
—
I cannot conceive
—
however could a lady pass as a youth?’

‘Oh, she was accustomed to it,’ Caroline put in, ‘for she was well known on the stage for breeches-parts.’

Her uncle looked helplessly from her to Aunt Selina as if one or all of them were going mad.

‘Roles in which the actress dresses in male clothes,’ Caroline supplied.

‘I see,’ her uncle said doubtfully. ‘There are one or two such in Shakespeare, of course
—
though I had not thought the popular stage much enamoured of the Bard in these times.’

‘Oh, the play doesn’t really signify,’ Caroline told him. ‘The whole point of it is so that the actress shows her legs. I’ve even seen them work a breeches-part into
Julius Caesar
—
I remember she finished up doing a jig round the Forum.’

‘Well, all I can say, my dear girl,’ her uncle concluded, after some further gapings, throwing up his hands, ‘and I’m sure you’ll agree, is
eheu
fugaces !’

As
bless you!
was the only response Caroline could think of making, she held her peace
—
especially as she felt that Stephen Milner, even when not looking at her, even when pouring cream into his cup, was somehow watching her very carefully.

‘Surely this Mr Beauregard must have quite cut himself off from society,’ wondered Aunt Selina.

‘Absolutely so
—
he went down to the Lower Rooms for the ball the other night and the Master of Ceremonies refused even to look at him. Fine thing, ain’t it?’ said Stephen with a sharp, metallic laugh. ‘So
—
though dining out is the greatest bore in the world
—
I said I’d dine with ‘em
—
see if the corruption rubs off on me. You’re a lover of the stage, Miss Fortune?’

Taken by surprise, Caroline said, hesitating: ‘I
—
am fond of a play. My father was in the theatre once, so in a way I am bred to it.’

‘We were saying how very different she will find our country ways,’ Uncle John said, benevolently patting her arm, ‘but she will take to them, I’m sure. The glitter of the great world, you know, is only so much froth and spume: you may look in vain for happiness there.’

Stephen Milner inclined his head respectfully, but said: ‘We’re all made different, mind, Uncle. You can’t feed a cat on carrots.’

‘Nor a pig,’ said Caroline, ‘on cream.’

‘Just so,’ Stephen said, with a fiendishly delighted look, ‘though they both like canary wine.’

‘Ah, is this the new slang?’ Uncle John said, beaming and wrinkling. ‘I do try to keep up with it. A sedan-chairman informed me last week in Queen’s Square that I was niffy-naffy. I found this entrancing
—
such onomatopoeic gusto
—
that, as I told him, I almost didn’t care what it meant precisely.’ His face fell a very little. ‘He called me something else then, which was just as peculiar, but not quite so pleasant-sounding
...
Oh, Stephen, where are you going?’

‘To reclaim my luggage from the clutches of the Bear. I will take up your kind offer, Aunt, thank you.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘You’re
too
kind
—
and I’m afraid that’s your trouble.’

‘An odd creature?’ Aunt Selina said a little later, as she and Caroline took their usual walk. ‘I suppose he is, my dear, in some ways. Stephen is perhaps not easy to pin down. He is much addicted to travels — he will think nothing of taking himself off quite alone to tramp about the Western Isles, say, in the very worst of weathers
—
and so he can be a little other-worldly, as it were, in company.’

Well, if Caroline did not quite wish him in the Outer Hebrides now, still she could not be easy with Stephen Milner about the place. She could not have said why. She came in for a few more gnarled and cryptic remarks back at Gay Street, and was treated to some abrupt and disconcerting silences, but mostly he seemed to take little notice of her for the rest of the day, until the time came for him to dress for his dinner engagement.

Or rather, not dress.

‘My dear Stephen,’ Aunt Selina cried, ‘you’re surely not going like that?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t signify,’ he said, with a negligent glance down at his coat, which was the same he had shrugged on that morning. ‘Beauregard don’t stand on ceremony.’ He turned suddenly to Caroline. ‘What think you, Miss Fortune? Would you have me at your dinner-table?’

She felt that he was laughing at her, and she did not care for it. ‘I would make allowances for you, Mr Milner,’ she answered, coolly picking up a book. Unfortunately it was one of her uncle’s impenetrable theological treatises, in which she was then obliged to pretend an absorbing interest while Stephen spent an unlikely time patting his pockets, picking up his gloves, and
—
she was sure
—
laughing at her some more.

The household had gone to bed before his return that night
—
not that this made it so
very
late, for the Langlands were always yawning by ten, and Caroline, try as she might, could not get accustomed to a retirement so early that she could only lie rigidly blinking like a child sent to afternoon bed as a punishment. He was late down to breakfast too the next morning, and looking profoundly seedy: Aunt Selina, quite alarmed, hoped he was not sickening.

‘Only with a self-inflicted malady,’ he grunted, abandoning an attempt at coffee, ‘and curable, if one could but find the cure. The wines at Mr Beauregard’s table were very choice.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘You should try hock-and-soda,’ Caroline offered. ‘Or a raw egg beaten up with pepper-sauce
—
you swallow it down quick.’ She performed an expressive mime, then noticing her aunt and uncle’s startled looks went on hurriedly: ‘You had a pleasant evening, Mr Milner?’

‘From what I can remember of it, Miss Fortune. Certainly Beauregard is very happy with his bride, and she makes a much better hostess than she ever was an actress. So he has lost very little, and she has gained a lot from catching him.’

‘It is curious how women are always supposed to be making these lucky catches, and never the other way about,’ Caroline said. ‘One would imagine we have nothing better to do than sit on the social bank, as it were, forever angling after a man.’

‘Precisely what many women do,’ he said, with a most irritating, secret, satisfied smile.

‘How dreadful it must be to be a male, forever besieged by these husband-hunting females! I wonder you can bear it. Or were you drawing a general rather than a particular illustration, Mr Milner
—
for
you
cannot be the object of such pursuit, surely?’

‘No,’ he said, unmoved, ‘women know I don’t care for them, I suppose, or rather ain’t taken in by them, and so I’m safe.’

‘My dear nephew, such cynicism,’ Uncle John reproved him. ‘This is only as much to say, you have not met the right woman yet
—
which is what I heartily wish for you, my greatest wish indeed!’

‘I take the wish kindly, Uncle, and fervently hope it will not be fulfilled. To marry is to narrow one’s possibilities horribly. As no couple can agree so long, they must yawn or fight. You and my aunt are the one baffling exception.’ The maid coming in at that moment, he turned to ask her: ‘Jane, do you think I might have a raw egg beaten up with pepper-sauce?’

Caroline’s prescription
—
reluctant as Jane was to serve something so unwholesome and even, her stony look suggested, positively indecent
—
seemed to do the trick. He was soon much restored: but she hardly knew whether to be pleased with her success, since a part of her did not particularly want Stephen Milner to be well at all. Mixed feelings was the scarcely adequate term for this vexing, perplexing consciousness when he was about; but perhaps at root was to be found the very simple human desire to know what he thought of her.

Caroline found out, later that day. Not from his telling her
—
which was, after all, hardly to be expected from the cryptic Mr Milner
—
but from that reliably mortifying practice, eavesdropping. She had started up the stairs to change out of her walking-dress, when she realized she had left a glove on the hall-table; and returning, overheard her name spoken in the front parlour, where Stephen was talking with the Langlands. Not being a saint, Caroline could not stop herself approaching the parlour door; indeed she was so far from being a saint that she hardly even tried, and was soon devoutly listening with her ear at the panel.