Lady of Quality (24 page)

"Dear, dear Annis!" uttered Lady Wychwood, powerfully affected, and wiping away a fresh flow of tears from her brimming eyes. "Always so kind! So much kinder to me than my own sisters! Believe me, one of the wishes nearest to my heart is to see you happily married, to a man
worthy
of you!"

"Beckenham?" enquired Annis. "I don't think I'm acquainted with anyone worthier than he is!"

"Alas, no! I wish very much that he had been able to fix his interest with you, but I know there is no chance of that: you think him a bore, and a bobbing-block, and—I sometimes think—are blind to all his excellent qualities."

"Oh, no! He is stuffed with good qualities, but the melancholy truth is that however much I may respect a man's good qualities they don't inspire me with a particle of love for him! I shall either marry a man stuffed with bad qualities, or remain a spinster—which is the likeliest fate to befall me! Don't let us talk any more about my future! Tell me about yourself!"

But Lady Wychwood said that there was nothing to tell. Annis asked her whether she indeed meant to take a course of Russian vapour-baths. This made her giggle. "Oh, no, and so I told Geoffrey!"

"Well, he depends on me to persuade you to do so!
I
told him that I should deem it an impertinence to do any such thing. Is it true that you have been out of sorts?"

"No, no! That is to say, I had a slight cold, but it was nothing! And then, of course, I had all the anxiety about Tom, which has made me look horridly hagged. I daresay that was what made Geoffrey get into one of his ways. Perhaps I might drink the waters, just—just to satisfy him! After all, that can't do me any harm!"

"Unless they make you feel as sick as I did, the only time I ever took a glass! We shall soon see! Since Lucilla came to stay with me I have visited the Pump Room almost every day, so that she can meet her new friend, who accompanies her mother to the Pump Room. I fancy you have met Mrs Stinchcombe: did she not come to dinner here when you and Geoffrey visited me last year?"

"Oh, yes! A most agreeable woman! I remember her very well, and shall be happy to renew my acquaintance with her. But this Lucilla of yours! Where is she?"

"You will see her presently. She has gone to take a walk in the Sydney Garden, with Corisande and Edith Stinchcombe. She and Corisande have become almost inseparable, for which I am truly thankful! I am extremely attached to the child, but I own I find it more than a little boring to be obliged to go everywhere with her! Chaperonage is no light task, I promise you!"

"No, indeed! I was shocked when I heard that you had taken it upon yourself to look after Miss Carleton. You are much too young to be
any
girl's duenna, no matter who she may be. Geoffrey thought you should have restored her to her aunt, and I must own I cannot but feel he was quite right. I don't mean to say that she is not an agreeable girl: Geoffrey was pleasantly surprised by her manners, which he tells me are very pretty—but what a responsibility to have assumed, dearest! I cannot like it for you."

"Well, if she were to be with me permanently I shouldn't like it either," admitted Miss Wychwood. "She is a lovely little innocent, had never been in Society—what she calls 'grown-up' parties—until she came to Bath, and made an instant hit! Already she has I know not how many young men dangling after her, which makes it necessary for me to keep a strict watch over her. To make matters worse, she is a considerable heiress: a sure bait for fortune-hunters! Fortunately, the Stinchcombes have a governess to whom the girls are devoted—even Lucilla likes her, having previously taken the whole race of governesses in detestation!—and so I am able to relinquish Lucilla into her care when it is a question of going for walks, or buying fripperies in the town. I only wish the Stinchcombes lived in Camden Place, but they don't! They have a house in Laura Place, so that I am obliged to provide Lucilla with an escort when she visits them. However, Mr Carleton gave me leave to engage a maid for her, who, I judge, is to be trusted to fill my place at need."

"But, Annis, is it so necessary to chaperon girls in
Bath?
Why, even in London my sisters tell me that nowadays it is quite unremarkable to see two girls walking together without even a footman coming behind them!"

"Two
girls, yes!" said Miss Wychwood. "But not one girl alone, I think! Mrs Stinchcombe is an indulgent parent but I am very sure she would not permit Corisande to come up to Camden Place unattended. And in Lucilla's case—no, no! Out of the question! Mr Carleton has, however reluctantly, confided her to my care until he has made other arrangements for her, and what a
horrid
fix I should be in if I let her come to harm!"

"He had no right to lay such a charge upon you!"

"He didn't. He had no alternative but to leave her with me, having himself, as he so gracelessly told me, no turn for the infantry, and not the smallest intention of taking Lucilla into his own charge. I will allow that he has enough sense of his duty to his ward to place her in the temporary guardianship of a—a lady of unquestioned respectability, which I flatter myself I am! But it went sadly against the grain with him to do it, and I fancy nothing would afford him more satisfaction than a failure on my part to guard Lucilla from all the hazards threatening a green young heiress on her first emergence from the schoolroom!" She checked herself, and, after a moment's consideration, said: "No! Perhaps I am wronging him! He would certainly derive satisfaction from the knowledge that he had been right to doubt my ability to take proper care of Lucilla; but I do him the justice to think that he would be seriously displeased if Lucilla were to come to harm."

"I wish you had never met her!" sighed Lady Wychwood.

But when Annis presented Lucilla to her that evening she was quite as pleasantly surprised as her husband had been, talked very kindly to her, and later told Annis that it was difficult to believe that such a sweet and pretty-behaved child could be the ward of a man of Carleton's reputation. She was rather puzzled by Ninian's presence at dinner, still more by the familiar terms he stood on with Annis, her house, and her servants. He behaved as if he had been a favoured nephew, or, at any rate, a boy who had known Annis all his life and it was evident that he ran tame in the house, and more often than not dined there. She wondered if he was perhaps related to Lucilla, and when Annis disclosed his identity she was at first incredulous, and then so forcibly struck by the absurdity of the situation that she went into paroxysms of laughter.

"Oh, I haven't been so much diverted since Mrs Preston's hat was carried off by the wind, and took her wig with it!" she gurgled. "The end of it will be, of course, that they will marry one another!"

"God forbid! What a cat-and-dog life they would lead!"

"I don't know that. You say they disagree on every subject, but it didn't seem like that to me, listening to them at dinner. I think they have a great deal in common. Only wait for a year or two, when they will both be wiser, and see if I am not right! They are still only a pair of bickering children, but when they are a little older they won't bicker, any more than I bicker with my sisters—though when we were all in the schoolroom we were used to bicker incessantly!"

"I can't conceive of your bickering with anyone!" smiled Annis. "As for Lucilla and Ninian, the Iverleys no longer wish for that marriage, and would—if they are to be believed—strongly oppose it. It wouldn't astonish me if Mr Carleton opposed it too, for he doesn't like Iverley."

"Oh, that settles it!" said Lady Wychwood, laughing. "Opposition is all that is wanting in the case!"

Annis could not help thinking that opposition from Mr Carleton would probably take a ruthless form, impossible to withstand, but she kept this reflection to herself.

She was destined, a few hours later, to be confronted by a dilemma. Lucilla, peeping into her bedchamber on her return from Laura Place, to thank her for having sent the carriage to bring her home, and to tell her how much she had enjoyed her first visit to the Sydney Garden, with its shady groves, its grottoes, labyrinths, and waterfalls, said, her eyes and cheeks aglow: "And Mr Kilbride says that during the summer they have illuminations, and gala nights, and public breakfasts! Oh,
dear
Miss Wychwood, will you take me to a gala night?
Pray
say you will!"

"Yes, certainly I will, if your heart is set on it," replied Miss Wychwood. "Did Mr Kilbride tell you of the galas and the illuminations last night?"

"Oh, no! It was this afternoon, when I told him that I was going to explore the Garden with Corisande. We walked smash into him, Brigham and I, not two minutes after we left the house. He said he was coming to visit you, but he
very
obligingly turned back, to escort me to Laura Place. Wasn't that kind of him, ma'am? He was so amusing, too! He had me in whoops with the droll things he said! I do think he is a delightful creature, don't you?"

Miss Wychwood took a full minute to respond to this, covering her silence by pretending that her attention was concentrated on the pinning of a brooch to her corsage. In truth, she knew not what to say. On the one hand, she felt it to be incumbent on her to warn Lucilla against the wiles of a charming but impecunious man on the look-out for a rich wife; on the other, she neither wished to destroy Lucilla's innocence, nor—which would be worse—to arouse in the child a rebellious spirit which might, too easily, lead her to flout the authority of her elders, and to encourage Kilbride's advances.

She compromised. She said, with an indulgent little laugh: "Kilbride's ingratiating manners and lively wit are his stock-in-trade. Pray do not you, my dear, administer to his vanity by adding yourself to the list of his victims! He is an irreclaimable here-and-thereian, and cannot see a personable female without making up to her! I long since lost count of the silly girls left languishing on his account."

Her words brought a crease between Lucilla's brows. She said hesitantly: "Perhaps he found that he didn't truly love any of them, ma'am?"

"Or that they were none of them as well-endowed as he had supposed!"

No sooner had she uttered these acid words than she regretted them. Lucilla's eyes flashed, and she said hotly: "How can you say anything so—so detestable about him, ma'am? I thought he was a friend of yours!"

She ran out of the room, leaving Miss Wychwood with nothing to do but to blame herself bitterly for having been betrayed into saying precisely what she had determined not to say. She could only hope that no malicious tongue had informed Mr Carleton that his ward had been escorted through the town by a man whom he knew to be a gazetted fortune-hunter.

It was an empty hope. On the following morning, she went with Lady Wychwood and Lucilla to the Pump Room. Mrs Stinchcombe, who was seeking a cure for her rheumatism by drinking a glass of the famous water every morning, was there, with both her daughters, and Annis led Lady Wychwood up to her at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing the two ladies fall instantly into very friendly conversation. She left them together while she went across the room to procure a glass of the water from the pumper, and was wending her way back with it to Lady Wychwood's side when she saw Mr Carleton advancing purposefully towards her. She braced herself, but the first words he spoke were quite unalarming. "Well met, Miss Wychwood!" he said cheerfully. "Ought I to condole with you? Are you too a martyr to rheumatism?"

"No, indeed, I'm not!" she replied lightly. "This is for my sister-in-law, not for me! What brings you here this morning, sir?"

"The hope of finding you here, of course. There is something I wish to say to you."

Her heart sank, but she replied coolly enough: "Well, you may do so, but first I must give this horrid drink to my sister-in-law. I should like, besides, to present you to her." Another two steps brought her to Lady Wychwood's side, and she handed the glass to her saying: "Here you are, my dear! I believe it should be drunk hot, so take hold of your courage and gulp it down immediately!"

Lady Wychwood eyed the potion doubtfully, but obediently took, not a gulp, but a cautious sip. She then took a larger sip, and declared that it was not by half as nasty as Annis had led her to expect.

"By which I collect you to mean that it is not as nasty as they tell me the Harrogate water is! You must let me present Mr Carleton to you: he is Lucilla's uncle, you know!"

Mr Carleton, who had exchanged a brief greeting with Mrs Stinchcombe, bowed, and said that he was happy to make her ladyship's acquaintance. He sounded indifferent rather than happy, and Lady Wychwood, somewhat coldly acknowledging his bow, was much inclined to suspect that her dear Geoffrey had been mistaken in believing Annis stood in danger of succumbing to this libertine's fascinating arts. It did not appear to Lady Wychwood that he had any fascinating arts at all: why, he wasn't even a handsome man! Recalling Annis's past suitors, all of whom had been blessed with good-looks and distinguished manners, she began to suspect that Annis had been making a May-game of her brother, as (regrettably) she too often did. She could perceive nothing in Mr Carleton that could appeal to any female as critical and fastidious as Annis, and consequently unbent towards him, complimenting him on his charming niece, and saying how much she liked Lucilla.

He bowed again, and said: "You are too kind, ma'am. Are you making a long stay in Bath?"

"Oh, no! That is to say, I hardly know, but not more than a week or two, I think. Are
you
making a long stay, sir?"