His quoting from
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
gave Chloe the perfect opening to speak of Georgina, but instead she found herself saying passionately, “How I wish we had music at home like last night’s! I shall go to as many concerts as possible while I am here, for I shall never have another chance.”
“If you succeed in persuading me not to marry Miss Georgina, you will have to come to London next year to find her a husband.”
She shook her head. “No, Edgar will not permit her another Season if she wastes this one by refusing your offer. He wants her wed by the end of June, or, he swears, she shall never attend even our local assemblies again. He threatens her with dwindling into spinsterhood, like her aunt.” Chloe wanted to smile, to show she did not care, but she was afraid it would be a pitiful effort. She stared straight ahead, between Opal’s ears.
“Like her aunt!” Sir Lionel’s voice was oddly constricted, as if he were suppressing some violent emotion. “And are you so content with your lot that you consider spinsterhood a better fate for your niece than marriage to me? Or am I so objectionable as a husband that any fate would be better?”
“No! Oh no!” she cried, turning to him, aghast. “I... She likes you very well, and I am convinced you would be a wonderful husband, if it were not—”
“That I am so old?” he said wryly.
“That Georgie is so much younger than you.”
“Then you do not consider me past all hope of finding an acquiescent bride?”
“Of course not,” Chloe assured him, though her heart sank at the idea of his looking elsewhere for a wife should he decide to relinquish Georgina. “There are sure to be many young ladies perfectly willing to overlook the difference in age in view of your...your....”
“My title and my fortune?”
“I was going to say, your manifest qualities and virtues,” she replied, blushing.
Sir Lionel smiled. “But you hesitated to utter such a sweeping encomium after so short an acquaintance.”
“No, it just sounded so horridly fulsome. I feel as if I have known you forever. Heavens, here we are at the park already. Opal and I are dying for a run.” She urged the mare forward, glad of an excuse to flee her embarrassment.
His roan soon matched Opal’s stride. Side by side they galloped across the grass, slowed to a canter, then a trot, and stopped beside the Serpentine. Chloe slipped down from the saddle before Sir Lionel had time to dismount and come to help her.
The groom held the horses while they fed the ducks and screeching seagulls. Laughing over the birds’ antics, Chloe had time to recover her composure, and she accepted with equanimity Sir Lionel’s aid in remounting. She had a sudden horror of becoming one of those old maids who take the slightest attention from an attractive man as a sign of fond interest.
Her only business with Sir Lionel, she reminded herself firmly, was Georgie’s business. She had made a start already; perhaps she could finish it off on the way home. Maybe she should stress Georgina’s fear of her father?
“Edgar is always pigheaded and often intimidating,” she began.
“Ah yes, you were going to tell me how you prevailed upon him to agree to your staying.”
“I offered to take over the tiresome duty of chaperoning Georgina and making sure she does not encourage the wrong beaux. He could not deny that he wearied of the sort of parties young ladies must attend to meet eligible partis.”
Sir Lionel laughed. “So you won by undermining his position. Excellent strategy.”
“Perhaps, but it was a most unpleasant skirmish, and he is still angry with me for coming. I cannot be comfortable. If you will just tell me you don’t mean to offer for Georgie, I can go home and escape his resentment.”
“You have not yet explained why you think the difference in age is an insuperable obstacle to our happiness together.” He looked up at the sky, then held out his hand, palm up. At once dark spots appeared on his York tan glove. “And this is no time for discussion! If I’m not mistaken we are in for a cloudburst.”
“I felt a few drops on my face,” Chloe admitted.
They cantered out of Hyde Park and trotted through the streets as the spitting rain became a downpour. By the time they reached Chingford House, Chloe was soaked to the skin.
“Promise me you will change your clothes at once,” said Sir Lionel, lifting her down and escorting her to the front door.
“I promise, but I also promise you need not fear. I shall take no ill.”
“No, I don’t suppose you will,” he said lightly. “You are a remarkable woman, Miss Chloe Bannister.”
Remarkable? Chloe pondered the word as she dripped up the stairs. It was two-edged, she decided. Sir Lionel might conceivably mean that she was admirable, or—far more likely—that she was simply eccentric. Eccentricity was one of the labels people hung on old maids.
Sadly, she turned her mind to how she was to explain to Georgie why she still had no final answer.
* * * *
Days passed, weeks slipped by, and still Sir Lionel proved elusive. That is, he evaded the issue of his proposal to Georgina, not her presence, nor Chloe’s.
He invited them to the theatre, and whenever they went with a different party, he came to their box in the interval. He procured tickets for every concert, accompanying Chloe even when Georgina chose not to attend.
Escorted by Sir Lionel, Chloe, Georgina, and Arabella saw all the sights of the city, from wild beasts at the Tower to steam boats on the Thames, from Lord Elgin’s marbles to a balloon ascension.
He took them to Astley’s Amphitheatre. “The girls will enjoy the show,” he told Chloe tolerantly. But as she marveled at the amazing feats of the bareback riders and laughed at the tricks of the clowns, she noticed that he was enjoying himself just as much as the girls were, and as she was.
Sir Lionel was young in spirit, she thought, recalling his pleasure in tossing crusts to the gulls. How could Georgie resist him?
Besides these particular occasions, the baronet rarely failed to turn up at whatever evening entertainment they graced with their presence. At first Chloe was nervous of attending balls and routs without Lady Chingford. The toplofty ladies of the countess’s circle graciously acknowledged her presence but remained aloof. Georgina’s friends and admirers, though polite and sometimes even attentive, were too young to be a support to Chloe. To them she was a chaperon, there to sustain Georgie, too old to be in need of succour herself.
The Welches’ friends were somewhat closer in age. Doro and her husband were a popular couple with a large acquaintance, but their set, however courteous, had little in common with Dorothea’s aunt.
It was through Elizabeth Molesworth that Chloe met the ladies she came to look for on arriving at an assembly, those who looked out for her, who invited her to sit with them. Elizabeth rarely attended evening parties, but her invitation to tea and a private cose was followed by many more, to small, intimate gatherings of unpretentious people.
Elizabeth’s friends were her brother’s friends, so it was hardly surprising that Chloe saw as much of Sir Lionel at balls as did Georgie. Or more. Etiquette dictated that he must not stand up with Georgie or even with his niece more than twice in an evening, and he asked no other young ladies to partner him.
He did, however, ask Chloe.
At her third ball, already she felt quite at home sitting among a group of matrons with marriageable daughters. Sir Lionel came up to her, bowed, and begged for the pleasure of the next dance.
“I cannot!” she said, disconcerted. “You know I am a chaperon, a double chaperon since I promised your sister to look out for Arabella.”
“Ladies,” he appealed to her neighbours, “is there any rule to say that chaperons may not take to the floor?”
“If I could only winkle my husband out of the cardroom!” sighed one, laughing.
“Provided one’s charge is safe,” said another.
“Miss Georgina can scarce be safer than standing up with her brother-in-law, as she is at this moment, and Arabella is with her cousin. Come, Miss Bannister, I promise not to step on your toes. We sailors have our faults but we are a sure-footed breed.”
“Georgie has never complained of your stepping on her toes,” Chloe admitted.
“She would have if I had.” He held out a commanding hand.
“Go along, Miss Bannister,” urged one of the others. “If the girls return before you, we shall keep an eye on them.”
Chloe gave in to her own inclination. She took Sir Lionel’s arm and they joined a set for a country dance.
“Do you not dance at home, at the assemblies there?” he asked.
“Yes, occasionally, but there I am among friends.”
“I had hoped you might regard me as a friend by now.”
“Oh, I do. I meant, among people I have known all my life.”
“There must be advantages to being so well acquainted with all one’s neighbours.”
“And disadvantages, I assure you!” Chloe said with a smile. “Everyone expects to know everyone else’s business. But on the whole we rub on very well.”
“Since I inherited my country estate, I have failed abysmally to fathom the rural temperament,” said Sir Lionel ruefully.
“You have only owned the place a short time, have you not? Country people, gentry and tenantry alike, are slow to accept newcomers, especially those unfamiliar with the country way of life. Where is your house?”
“In Warwickshire.”
As the movements of the dance allowed, they talked of his new home. It sounded like a comfortable, well-kept manor, not very different from Dene. Reading between his words Chloe suspected Sir Lionel, used to the companionship of his fellow-officers, had found his few months there a lonely time. No wonder he was looking for a wife to keep him company and had fixed upon a country girl who would know how to go on with his neighbours.
But Georgina remained adamant: Sir Lionel was amiable, obliging, even charming, but he was too old.
Georgie continued to stand up with the baronet twice at every ball so that she could tell her father she had. After the first time, he also requested a dance with Chloe at every ball, no doubt because a third with Georgie was not permitted. However, they seldom spoke of Georgina, and he always turned the subject if Chloe tried to explain her niece’s feelings.
Georgie was quite satisfied, sure that his silence meant he would not press his suit where it was not wanted. Chloe began to despair, and to wonder why he had not yet declared himself. Edgar grew impatient.
April turned into May. The days grew longer and warmer. Arabella and Georgina between them teased Sir Lionel into planning a picnic at Richmond.
* * * *
The sun shone, the birds sang in the nearby woods, the grass was bright with buttercups and daisies. Equally bright, Lionel’s guests, seated on rugs and cushions, were making deep inroads into the feast provided by Gunter’s. Moving from group to group, he observed with pleasure the disappearance of hams and pies, cold chicken and thin-sliced sirloin, salads and confections. Lemonade and ale vanished by the gallon.
The fresh air sparked the hunger of even those ladies who generally claimed to eat like birds, he noted. Perhaps the sight of blackbirds and thrushes dashing about to feed their families had its effect.
On all but Chloe. With concern he saw that her plate was almost as full as when he had handed it to her. He had not been able to stay beside her, both because he was host and because her brother was one of his guests. He did not want to draw down Bannister’s wrath upon her head.
She had been subdued lately, retreating somewhat into the shell from which Lionel thought he had coaxed her. Was she unwell? Or had Bannister found out that she spent so much time with him to thwart, not to forward the match with Georgina?
That situation could not be drawn out much longer. Perhaps the moment had come for a dénouement, but Lionel found himself still very much unsure of the outcome.
He ought not to agitate Chloe if she were not in plump currant. Before he decided whether to chance his luck today, he had best consult Georgina about her aunt’s health.
His guests were beginning to rise. In pairs and small groups they roamed about the pasture or made for the Terrace Gardens to admire the view. Georgina, in pink with a beflowered straw bonnet, with Arabella and several friends strolled towards a group of browsing deer. Lionel hurried after them.
“May I have a word with you, Miss Georgina?”
She turned back, calling to the others, “Go ahead, I shall catch up with you. Don’t frighten the deer away!” Smiling up at Lionel, she said with enthusiasm, “It is a simply splendid picnic, sir.”
“I’m glad you are enjoying yourself. I fear your aunt seems a trifle out of sorts.”
Georgina frowned. “Yes, I have noticed, the last few days. I don’t believe she is ill. I wonder if she is fretting about Paul—my little brother, you know. He is only eleven, and he’s staying with the vicar at home while Aunt Chloe is here. She has been gone much longer than she intended.”
“She takes her duties as substitute mother very seriously,” Lionel said ruefully.
“She does not regard it as a duty,” said Georgie, indignant. “Aunt Chloe loves us like a mother, all of us.”
“I know, my dear, I know. Why else would she have taken on the awkward task of talking me out of asking for your hand?”
Before the abashed girl could answer, Bannister came up to them and clapped Lionel on the shoulder.
“Doing the thing up right and tight at last, are you?” he enquired heartily.
“I have your approval, sir?”
“Of course, devil take it! I want her off my hands, and the sooner the better. A June wedding, that’s what I’m looking for.”
“I shall see what I can do,” Lionel said sardonically, “but do you, pray, grant me a little privacy.”
“That’s right! Go do your billing and cooing in the woods where there’s none but the birds to see.” He strode off, mighty pleased with himself.
Lionel glanced around and saw Chloe about to disappear among the trees, alone. “For once your father is right,” he said. “Let us proceed to the woods with all due haste.” He looked down at Georgina, who gazed up at him in horror.