Lady of Quality (11 page)

"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!"