The Grand Sophy (12 page)

“Silence, rattle!” said his victim. He was rather older than his companions, a handsome, dark man, with a decided of fashion and a languid manner. “Dear Sophy, I am tolerably certain that you cannot have been in London above many days. Not the smallest rumor of any volcanic disturbance I come to my ears, and you know how quick I am to get all of the news!”

She laughed. “Oh, that is too bad of you, Sir Vincent, but I don’t create disturbances. You know I don’t!”

“I know nothing of the kind, my child. When last I saw you, you were engaged in arranging in the most ruthless fashion the affairs of the most bewildered family of Belgians I have yet encountered. They had all my sympathy, there was nothing I could do to help them. I know my limitations.”

“Those poor Le Bruns! Well, but someone had to help them out of such a tangle! I assure you, everything was settled
most
satisfactorily! But come! I forget my manners in all this excitement! Miss Wraxton, do pray forgive me, and allow me to present to you Colonel Sir Vincent Talgarth, and beside him, Colonel Debenham. And this is Major Titus Quinton, and— oh, dear, ought I to have said your name first, Francis? It is one of the things I never know, but no matter! Captain Lord Francis Wolvey! And this is my cousin Mr. Rivenhall. Oh, and Mr. Wraxton also!”

Miss Wraxton inclined her head politely; Mr. Rivenhall, bowing slightly to the rest of the party, addressed himself to Lord Francis, saying, “I don’t think I ever met you, but your brother and I were up at Oxford together.”

Lord Francis leaned forward in his saddle to shake him by the hand. “Now I know who you are!” he announced. “You are Charles Rivenhall! Thought I couldn’t be mistaken! How do you do? Do you still box? Freddy was used to say he never knew an amateur with a more punishing right!”

Mr. Rivenhall laughed. “Did he? He felt it often enough, but I take no credit for that. He was always glaringly abroad!”

Major Quinton, who had been regarding him intently, said, “Then that is very likely where I have see you. Jackson’s Saloon! You are the fellow Jackson says he might have made into a champion if only you had not been a gentleman!”

This remark naturally beguiled all three gentlemen into a sporting conversation. Mr. Wraxton hung on the outskirts of it, occasionally interpolating a few words which no one paid any heed to; Sophy smiled benignly to see her friends and her cousin so happily absorbed; and Colonel Debenham, who had excellent manners, and a kind heart, began to make painstaking conversation to Miss Wraxton. By tacit consent, the military gentlemen turned to accompany Mr. Rivenhall’s party up the track, and the entire cavalcade moved forward at a walking pace.

Sophy found that Sir Vincent had brought his horse up to walk beside hers, and said suddenly, “Sir Vincent, you are the very man I need! Let us draw a little ahead!”

“Nothing in this life, enchanting Juno, could afford me more pleasure!” he instantly responded. “I have no fancy for the Fancy. On no account tell anyone that I said that! It is quite unworthy of me! Are you about to transport me by accepting a heart laid often at your feet and as often spurned? Something informs me that I indulge my optimism too far and that you are going to demand of me some service that will plunge me into a morass of trouble and end in my being cashiered.”

“Nothing of the sort!” declared Sophy. “But I never knew anyone, other than Sir Horace, whose judgment I would rather trust when it comes to buying a horse. Sir Vincent, I want to purchase a pair for my phaeton!”

They had by this time considerably outdistanced the rest of the party. Sir Vincent made his roan drop to a walk, and said brokenly, “Allow me a moment in which to recover my manhood! So that is all the use you have for me!”

“Don’t be so absurd!” said Sophy. “What better could I have for anyone?”

“Dear Juno, I have told you a great many times, and shall tell you no more!”

“Sir Vincent,” said Sophy severely, “you have dangled, after every heiress who has come in your way from the day I first met you.”

“Shall I ever forget it? You had lost a front tooth and tore your dress.”

“Very likely. Though I have not the least doubt that you don’t recall the occasion at all and have this instant made that up. You are a more hardened flirt even than Sir Horace, and you only offer for me because you know I shall not accept your suit. My fortune cannot be large enough to tempt you.”

“That,” acknowledged Sir Vincent, “is true. But better men than I, my dear Sophy, have been known to cut their coats to suit their cloth.”

“Yes, but I am not your cloth, and you know very well that indulgent though he may be, Sir Horace would never permit me to marry you, even if I wished to, which I do not.”

“Oh, very well!” sighed Sir Vincent. “Let us talk of horseflesh then!”

“The thing is,” confided Sophy, “that I was obliged to sell my carriage horses when we left Lisbon, and Sir Horace had no time to attend to the matter before he sailed for Brazil. He said my cousin would advise me, but he was quite out! He will not.”

“Charles Rivenhall,” said Sir Vincent, looking at her from under drooping eyelids, “is held to be no bad judge of a horse. What mischief are you brewing, Sophy?”

“None. He has said he will not stir in the matter, and also, that it would be improper for me to visit Tattersall’s. Is that true?”

“Well, it would certainly be unusual.”

“Then I won’t do it. My aunt would be distressed, and she has enough to plague her already... Where else can I buy a pair that will suit me?”

He gazed meditatively ahead between his horse’s ears. “I wonder if you would care to buy two of Manningtree’s breakdowns before they come into the open market?” he said presently. “Quite done up, poor fellow, and is selling off all his cattle. What’s your figure, Sophy?”

“Sir Horace told me not above four hundred, unless I saw a pair it would be a crime not to buy.”

“Manningtree would sell you his match bays for less than that. As handsome a pair as you could wish for. I should buy them myself if I had a feather to fly with.”

“Where may I see them?

“Leave that to me. I’ll arrange it. What’s your direction?”

“At Lord Ombersley’s house in Berkeley Square, that big one, at the corner!”

“Of course. So he is your uncle, is he?”

“No, but his wife is my aunt.”

“And Charles Rivenhall is therefore your cousin. Well, well! How do you contrive to amuse yourself, my Sophy?”

“I own, I did wonder how I should do so, but I find that the whole family is in a sad tangle, poor dears, and I do hope I may be able to make them more comfortable!”

“I have no particular liking for your uncle, who is one of my esteemed Chief’s cronies; on the only occasion when I solicited your beautiful cousin Cecilia to dance with me at Almack’s her forbidding brother forestalled me in a fashion as swift as it was crude. Someone ought to tell him that I am only interested in heiresses; and yet my withers are strangely wrung! Almost my heart goes out to the family. Do they tread blindly toward their doom, Sophy, or did they willingly receive a firebrand into their midst?”

She gave a chuckle. “They tread blindly, but I am not a firebrand!”

“No, I used the wrong word. You are like poor Whinyates’s rockets; no one knows what you will do next!”

VI

“Is the knocker never still?” demanded Charles of his mother, after the departure of the fourth morning caller in one day.

“Never!” she replied proudly. “Since that day when you took dear Sophy riding in the Park, I have received seven gentlemen—no, eight, counting Augustus Fawnhope; Princess Esterhazy, the Countess Lieven, Lady Jersey, and Lady Castlereagh have all left cards; and—”

“Was Talgarth amongst those who called, ma’am?” She wrinkled her brow. “Talgarth? Oh, yes! A most amiable man, with side whiskers! To be sure he was!”

“Take care!” he warned her. “That connection will not do!’“ She was startled. “Charles, what can you mean? He seems to be on terms of great friendship with Sophy, and she told me Sir Horace had been acquainted with him for years!

“I daresay, but if my uncle means to bestow Sophy upon him he is not the man I take him for! He is said to be a gazetted fortune hunter, and is, besides, a gamester, with more debts than expectations, and such libertine propensities as scarcely render him a desirable catch in the marriage mart!”

“Oh dear!” said Lady Ombersley, dismayed. She wondered whether she ought to tell her son that his cousin had gone out driving with Sir Vincent only a day earlier and decided that no purpose could be served in dwelling on what was past. “Perhaps I should drop a hint in Sophy’s ear.”

“I doubt of its being well received, ma’am. Eugenia has already spoken with her on this subject. All that my cousin saw fit to reply was that she was quite up to snuff and would engage not to allow herself to be seduced by Sir Vincent, or anyone else.”

“Oh,
dear
,” said Lady Ombersley again. “She really should not say such things!”

“Just so, ma’am!”

“But, though I do not wish to offend you, Charles, I cannot help feeling that perhaps it was not quite wise of Eugenia to have spoken to her on such a subject. You know, my dear, she is not in any way related to Sophy!”

“Only Eugenia’s strong sense of duty,” he said stiffly, “and, I may add, Mama, her earnest desire to spare you anxiety, induced her to undertake a task which she felt to be excessively unpleasant.”

“It is very kind of her, I am sure,” said his mother in a depressed voice.

“Where is my cousin?” he asked abruptly.

She brightened, for to this question she was able to return an unexceptionable answer. “She has gone for a drive in the barouche with Cecilia and your brother.”

“Well, that should be harmless enough,” he said.

He would have been less satisfied on this point had he known that having taken up Mr. Fawnhope, whom they encountered in Bond Street, the occupants of the barouche were at that moment in Longacre, critically inspecting sporting vehicles. There were a great many of these, together with almost every variety of carriage, on view at the warehouse to which Hubert had conducted his cousin, and although Sophy remained firm in her preference for a phaeton, Cecilia was much taken with a caned whiskey, and Hubert having fallen in love with a curricle, forcibly urged his cousin to buy it. Mr. Fawnhope, appealed to for his opinion, was found to be missing, and was presently discovered seated in rapt contemplation of a state berlin, which looked rather like a very large breakfast cup, poised upon elongated springs. It was covered with a domed roof, bore a great deal of gilding, and had a coachman’s seat, perched over the front wheels, which was covered in blue velvet with a gold fringe. “Cinderella!” said Mr. Fawnhope simply.

The manager of the warehouse said that he did not think the berlin, which he kept for show purposes, was quite what the lady was looking for.

“A coach for a princess,” said Mr. Fawnhope, unheeding. “This, Cecilia, is what you must drive in. You shall have six white horses to draw it, with plumes on their heads, and blue harness.”

Cecilia had no fault to find with this program, but reminded him that they had come to help Sophy to choose a sporting carriage. He allowed himself to be dragged away from the berlin, but when asked to cast his vote between the curricle and the phaeton, would only murmur, “
What can little T.O. do? Why drive a phaeton and two! Can little T.O. do no more? Yes, drive a phaeton and four!
”

“That’s all very well,” said Hubert impatiently, “but my cousin ain’t Tommy Onslow, and for my part I think she will do better with this curricle!”

“You cannot scan the lines, yet they have a great deal of merit,” said Mr. Fawnhope. “How beautiful is the curricle! How swift! How splendid! Yet Apollo chose a phaeton. These carriages bewilder me. Let us go away!”

“Who is Tommy Onslow? Does he indeed drive a phaeton and four?” asked Sophy, her eyes kindling. “Now that would be something indeed! What a bore that I have just bought a pair! I could never match them, I fear.”

“You could borrow Charles’s grays,” suggested Hubert, grinning wickedly. “By Jupiter, what a kickup there would be!”