Althea (16 page)

“Never,” he said firmly. “And now, I have an invitation from
my aunt: she is visiting with me until my cousin Boskingram’s house is
refurnished, and as she is a notorious busybody, she has desired me bring you
to tea this afternoon. If I give you twenty minutes, can you make any changes
your vanity may require and be ready to make the call?”

“Oh, I think so,” Althea said bravely. Tracy noticed with
amusement that when his betrothed left the room, the anxious form of Lady Bevan
bore down upon her purposefully.

Less than ten minutes later Althea presented herself to
Calendar, dressed in a walking gown of blue muslin, clutching a pair of York
tan gloves very tightly in one hand. This was the only outward sign she gave of
inward turmoil and Calendar, helping her into the phaeton, amused himself with
the thought that he had grown very charitable of late, and refrained from
mentioning her nervousness entirely.

“What is your aunt like, Sir Tracy?”

“Under the circumstances I think you might use my name now,”
he said mildly, “and that is Tracy, without benefit of Sir. I should like to
hear you become accustomed to saying it.”

Althea blushed.

“My aunt will try to intimidate you at first, but I suspect
that you two will get on famously once you’ve begun. She’s as sharp as can put
together, is Aunt Peg, and she fancies she has a proprietary interest in me,
especially because since my parents died five years ago she has been most of my
family to me. She makes it the point of
her
life to be the bane of
mine
,
as well as the delight of my soul. For the rest, she is just a meddlesome old
woman who thinks I live an entirely immoral life, and wishes she might do so,
too.”

“So we are exactly calculated to suit one another? What a
strange notion you have of me, to be sure.”

“I expect she will admire you greatly. She has a weakness
for people who are not in the common way, and you, whatever you may say to the
contrary, are not in the common way at all. Besides which, as a pattern of
propriety, I hope you will undertake to give a good example for my errant
aunt.”

“You are the most insufferable man I ever met,” Althea said
slowly, “or else you are a wit.” He made a small bow. “I collect then that your
aunt dreams of dancing masters and gypsies or some such thing.”

“I rely upon you to cure her of the trait, and to cure me of
being so poorly mannered as to be insufferable during an afternoon call,” Tracy
said lightly. “And here we are. I was instructed to find you, deliver you up,
and then — er — go ogle the opera dancers in the Park. Now, your bonnet is on
quite straight, your gown is perfectly charming, and there are no wrinkles in
it. Come, ma’am, I should never have thought you a coward.”

“I shall undertake that it shall never be known, sir. We
Ervines are renowned as fools and madmen, and known to rush in where any other
would stay safe behind, but we are no cowards. Lead onward.”

“Bravo! See, Aunt Peg, here we are arrived.”

A small lively looking lady met them at the door, elbowing
the scandalized butler out of the way. She took Althea’s hand in a firm grip
and cast a baleful look at her nephew.

“Tracy, did I not give you your orders? Go and do not darken
my door for an hour or so. I shall make this child’s life miserable enough
without she has you tagging at her sleeve. Go along, kiss and say goodbye, and
if you see Monkshood, tell him I daily expect to see him here.” She fluttered a
peremptory hand in his direction, to which he replied with a bow. He took
Althea’s hand and, to her surprise, drew her close.

“I have my orders, ma’am,” he said lightly, and brushed her
cheek with his lips. Althea was conscious of a glowing sort of shock in her
midsection, as well as the blush that was becoming more and more apt to appear
in his presence.

“Call that a kiss, do you?” Lady Boskingram said scornfully.
“You young folk are a lily-livered lot!”

“My apologies, Aunt Peg. Your most obedient in all things,”
Tracy replied mildly. Pulling Althea closer still, he kissed her gently, but
with some warmth. Althea, after a moment’s shock, found herself returning this
kiss with rather more interest than form, until she remembered that they still
stood before the Dowager Countess of Boskingram. At that point she broke free,
a little unsteadily. Tracy, unfazed, gave her something like a grin and left
the house.

Lady Boskingram did not give her visitor time to consider
her nephew’s strange behavior. The older woman took the girl by the wrist and
led her firmly to a sitting room, where a fire was laid and service for tea set
out. Lady Boskingram settled herself comfortably in a large elegant thronelike
chair, and motioned to Althea to take a smaller chair near the fire, watching
all the while from under her speculative lids.

“You know, ma’am, you have much the look of your nephew when
you — observe that way? It can be very unsettling.” To Althea’s fury, she was still
oddly breathless, and the strange feeling in her stomach persisted.

“There is no real resemblance, child, although it is quite
possible that Tracy picked up that glare from me. He is my husband’s nephew,
you see, and even at that, I’m told he takes a great deal from his father’s
family.”

“Who are the Calendars, ma’am — so then Lord Boskingram’s
family is something else? He has never told me anything about his family,
except that his own parents had died. You did not know Tracy’s father?” Althea
unseeingly accepted her cracker and a half-cup of lukewarm tea.

“Didn’t know Arthur Calendar until he was older and sickly,
so I can’t see any resemblance to Tracy at all. Tracy’s mother was a Blakneigh
— sister to my husband William. Of course I knew her — Tracy’s mother, Anabel —
pretty well, before William took me off to the Continent on one of his
everlasting excavations. A sweet, pretty widgeon without two words to rub
together, and close friends with Henrietta Bessborough and that crowd. But I
bore you with all this family.”

“Not at all, ma’am, although I confess I cannot follow you
entirely. William was, I collect, the late Earl of Boskingram.”

The Countess sighed. “He was, and to my mind the best of the
lot of Blakneighs, but you will say I am prejudiced at least until I tell you
that my own two children are the stupidest offspring God ever inflicted upon
woman. I rather count upon Tracy to make up to me for all the disappointment I
have had in my own two sobersides children. Perfect Blakneighs. Thank heaven
Tracy is a Calendar.”

Althea nodded helplessly, and tried to finish the tepid tea.

“He was the most
provoking
child, with a trick for
imitation when he was young, and I think he has probably adopted that look from
me. I wish you would cure him of it: that sort of inscrutability unnerves me in
others.”

“But not in yourself?”

“When you are as old as I, my dear, you’ll look however you
want to, and what’s more, not a one will have the spine to scold you for it.
Tracy wants to marry you.”

Althea looked up hurriedly. “If you say you disapprove,
ma’am, I am sure he’ll promptly toss me back into the ranks of the unfortunate
and tell me to go along about my business.”

“And why should I disapprove, girl? Madness in your family?
Can’t be any worse than the collection of nitwits in his own. Poverty? That boy
has enough to make you a household twice over, and still keep several expensive
ladybirds on the side. Fortune is of little count.” She looked hard at Althea.
“‘Beauty? You’re not a diamond of the first water, certainly, but you’re like I
was — you’ve got spirit, which makes people think you’re a beauty even if you
ain’t. Why should I fret of it? And besides all this, even if I did disapprove,
which I by no means do, the boy would take no more notice of me than if I were
in China. Tracy knows his mind, girl. Be warned of that.” The dowager wagged an
admonitory finger at Althea.

“But now,” she continued, “I am going to play my game with
you. I cannot place your family, and it will plague me beyond anything until I
can. Indulge me if you can. Ervine. Where do your people come from?”

“We come from Lancashire, ma’am. Hook Well, near Hooking, a
village some few miles from Lake Windemere.”

The Countess nodded intently. “Your father’s name?”

“Sir George Ervine. My mother was Lady Dorothea Merrit. Does
that help at all?”

“Admirable! You don’t mince words, do you, nor flutter about
in maidenly confusions. I think your mother must have been some dozen years
younger than I, but I was good friends with her sister Ellen when we were
young. Your mama was which one: the spotty one, the bookish one, or the sickly
tempered one?”

“I believe it was my Aunt Lydia who had the spots, ma’am,
and I know it was my Aunt Babs who was sickly,” Althea said delightedly. “Aunt
Babs has outlasted three husbands so far, and looks like to outlast the fourth,
so I suppose the sickliness took no very serious course.”

“I never supposed that it did, but poor Ellen was forever
being plagued by Babs when the child had one of her earaches. Imagine sitting
at home nursing a sister with a roasted onion at her ear rather than going to a
Vauxhall masque! I am ashamed to say I cannot recall your father at all.”

“How you would desolate him, who is convinced that only the
Royal House of Hanover is so distinguished as that of Ervine. You might be like
to remember my Uncle Ambrose, who had the bad taste to be killed in a duel over
a lady some ten or fifteen years ago.”

A light came over the dowager’s face. “Of course!” she
crowed. “Got into a brawl at White’s over some chit’s fair name and settled it
with pistols. They were both dead foxed anyway, but I suppose that Ambrose was
the drunker of the two. So now I know just who you are.”

“Does my family make such a matter, ma’am?”

“As to your marrying Tracy? Ask Tracy that, girl, but don’t
be such a nodcock as to suppose I have any say in it. But it is my passion to
place everyone I meet in some sort of place: I shall quiz you shamelessly and
you shall answer patiently because I am a mad old woman, and then I will
release you to go about breaking hearts again. You know all about that, I
suppose.”

“I fear I know less of breaking hearts than of Roman poets.
Hook Well is a very isolated sort of place, and my papa did not approve of the
young men who tried to call upon me, so I became more accustomed to read than
to flirt.”

Lady Boskingram was fascinated by this glimpse of rural
tyranny and begged to know more. Under her prodding, Althea fell into the story
of her life at Hook Well and her escape to London, her tutelage under Maria’s
stern eye, and the long hours of subjugation to Madame Helena’s underlings.
Lady Boskingram seemed immensely amused: when Althea had done, she announced
triumphantly that she understood exactly whom she was entertaining: a heroine.
Althea demurred, but Lady Boskingram would have it so.

“It is most depressing, when all my life I have longed for a
little adventure, and then you appear, and things happen to you as if by magic.
Midnight escapes! Dancing masters! Pawning jewelry! I wonder if I could rid
myself of a few pieces that I truly hate by pawning them? I certainly cannot
give them to my maid, for the wretched girl would wear them in front of me, and
I would be plagued by them all over again.”

“It might be easier to have the stones reset,” Althea said
amusedly.

“Such odious practicality in a girl of your age!” Lady
Boskingram said disgustedly. “Here I look for romance, and instead find
housewifery. I don’t want to be
practical
about it, goose.”

“It cannot be a romantic impulse if you plan for it so,
ma’am,” Althea reminded her. “And at that, impulse is not always a happy
thing.”

“Regretting your answer to Tracy, child?”

Althea looked up wordlessly. The dowager nodded sagely. “I
know what caused it — Tracy explained the whole to me — and while I can think
of better reasons to accept an offer of marriage, I can think of many worse.
Let me only say that I can think of no one better calculated to make him
comfortable, and I think he will be a very good husband to you. In all events,
he won’t be a dull one! And I am so glad that it is you, rather than one of
Amalia’s chits that she keeps in the cellar.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” Althea asked weakly.

“My son Richard’s wife Amalia has been trying to marry Tracy
off these five years, and to such a collection of unsuitable insipid misses
that I should not have wondered had he been put off from marriage forever.
Tracy finally told me that he suspects Amalia keeps them in the cellar
alongside Richard’s port, and both are brought up when Tracy stays to dine. No,
it is time that Tracy took his responsibilities seriously, for even if he’s not
close in line to the title, there is his own name to be considered. Of course
Richard will doubtless live forever, and there are three boys, as well as the
child Amalia is carrying now — that girl is indefatigable! Six children inside
of eight years, and all of them revoltingly healthy. I cannot think what
Richard and Amalia are about — well, that is hardly true either —” The dowager
broke off at the sight of Althea’s face.

“Poor child, I can see that I have entirely confused you.
All I meant was that I feel better for knowing Tracy is to settle down at last.
I have a certain affection for him, you know.”

“Your secret is safe as houses with me, ma’am. But if I
marry Sir Tracy, I shall trust in you to help me go on. And will you some time
tell me something of Tracy’s family?”

“If you are so forgiving of an old woman’s crotchets that
you can bear it, I’ll tell you all the stories I can think of!” the dowager
promised happily.

When Calendar returned to his house sometime later, he found
his aunt and his betrothed deep in some scandal involving the Blakneighs, the
Calendars, and the Fitzalans, Lady Boskingram’s own family. Interrupted, the
older woman looked up and snapped at him, “I see you mean to drag her off home,
and just when we were to the most interesting part.”