April Lady (7 page)

"My dear sir, do let me assure you that I am neither so gothic nor so cork-brained! I daresay you will meet Letty at any number of parties. As for clandestine meetings, I am persuaded that your sense of propriety must be safeguard enough."

"Anything of a clandestine nature is repugnant to me," stated Mr. Allandale. "I can only beg of you, sir, to consider well before you blight, perhaps for ever, the happiness of two persons, one of whom is—or should be—dear to you! I reject—indeed, I scorn!—your suggestions of inconstancy, but too well do I know the arts that are employed in the world of fashion to detach from an unworthy object the affections of such as Lady Letitia! All is sacrificed to pride and consequence! If I were in more affluent circumstances, I believe no considerations of propriety could avail to prevent me— But it serves no purpose to continue talking!"

"None whatsoever," agreed Cardross, leading the way to the door. "It might even lead me to take you in dislike, and that, you know, would be fatal to your chances!"

CHAPTER THREE

 
 
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Any scheme
of intercepting her lover on his way out of the house which Letty might have cherished was frustrated by the Earl's escorting him to the front-door, and seeing him safely off the premises. He strolled back to the library; and, after hesitating for a moment or two at the head of the stairs, from which post of vantage she had watched Mr. Allandale's departure, Letty ran lightly down, and herself entered the library.

Cardross was engaged in mending a pen, but he looked up, and, when he saw his half-sister backed against the door, an urgent question in her speaking eyes, abandoned this task. A laugh quivered in his voice as he said: "Letty, you goose! Did you really think that I should succumb to that unfortunate young man's oratory? Do forgive me! but surely he is a very dull dog?"

"I don't care for that," she said, swallowing a sob. "He is not dull to me. I love him!"

"You must do so indeed! I should have supposed him to be the last man to take your fancy, too."

"Well, he is not, and even if you are my guardian I won't submit to having my husband chosen for me by you!"

"Certainly not. It's plain I should make a poor hand at it."

Hope gleamed in her eyes; she moved towards him, and laid a coaxing hand on his arm.
"Dear
Giles, if you please, may I marry him?"

He gave the hand a pat, but said: "Why, yes, Letty, when you are older."

"But, Giles, you don't understand! He is going away to Brazil!"

"So he informed me."

"Are you thinking that perhaps it might not suit me to live there? I believe the climate is
perfectly
healthy!"

"Salubrious," he interpolated.

"Yes, and in any event I am never ill! You may ask my aunt if it's not so!"

"I am sure it is. Don't let us fall into another exhausting argument! I have already endured a great deal of eloquence today, but it would take much more than eloquence to make me consent to your marriage to an indigent young man who proposes to take you to the other end of the world before you are eighteen, or have been out a year."

"That doesn't signify! And although I own it would be imprudent to marry Jeremy if I were indigent too I am
not
indigent, so that's of no consequence either!"

"I promise you I shan't refuse my consent on that head, if, when he returns from Brazil, you still wish to marry him."

"And what if some odious, designing female has lured him into marrying her?" she demanded.

"He assured me that his nature is tenacious, so we must hope that he will be proof against all designing females," he replied lightly.

"You don't hope that! You don't wish me ever to marry him!"

"No, of course I don't! Good God, child, how could I wish you to throw yourself away so preposterously, far less help you to do it when you are hardly out of the schoolroom?"

"If he were a man of rank and fortune you wouldn't say I was too young!"

"If he were a man of rank and fortune, my dear, he would not be taking up a post as some kind of secretary in Rio de Janeiro. But if it comforts you at all I don't wish to see you married to anyone for a year or two yet."

"Oh, don't talk to me as if I were a silly little child!" she cried passionately.

"Well, I don't think you are very wise," he said.

"No, perhaps I'm not wise, but I'm not a child, and I know my own mind!
You
aren't very wise either, if you think I shall change it, or forget Jeremy! I shall remember, and be unhappy for two whole years, and very likely more! I daresay you don't care for that, for I see that you aren't kind, which I thought you were, but, on the contrary, perfectly heartless!"

"Not a bit of it!" he said cheerfully. "With the best will in the world to do it, I fancy you won't fall quite into dejection. There will still be balls to attend, and new, and extremely expensive dresses to buy."

"I don't want them!"

"I wish I might believe you! Do you mean to abjure the fashionable life?"

She threw him a smouldering look. "You may laugh at me, but I warn you, Cardross, I am determined to marry Jeremy, do what you will to prevent me!"

He replied only with an ironical bow; and after staring defiantly at him for an instant, she swept from the room with an air of finality only marred by the unfortunate circumstance of her shutting a fold of her gown of delicate lilac muslin in the door, and being obliged to open it again to release the fabric.

Twenty minutes later Nell came softly into the room. The Earl looked up impatiently, but when he saw his wife standing on the threshold his expression changed, and he smiled at her, saying in a funning tone: "How do you contrive, Nell, always to appear prettier than I remembered you?"

She blushed adorably. "Well, I did hope you would think I looked becomingly in this gown," she confessed naively.

"I do. Did you put it on to dazzle me into paying for it?"

This was said so quizzically that her spirits rose. It had taken a great deal of resolution to bring her to the library that morning, for a most unwelcome missive had been delivered by the penny post. Since the Earl paid five shillings to the General Post office every quarter for the privilege of receiving an early London delivery Madam Lavalle's civil reminder to her ladyship that a court dress of Chantilly lace was still unpaid for had lain on Nell's breakfast-tray. It was not an encouraging start to the day. It had quite destroyed Nell's appetite, and had filled her with so much frightened dismay that for an unreasoning hour she could think of no other way out of her difficulties than to board the first mail-coach bound for Devonshire, and there to seek refuge with her mama. A prolonged period of reflection, however, showed her the unwisdom of this course, and convinced her that since it was extremely unlikely that a thunderbolt would descend mercifully upon her head there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the matter to Cardross, devoutly trusting that he would understand how it had come about that she had forgotten to give him Madame Lavalle's bill with all the others which he had commanded her to produce.

But the more she thought of it the less likely it seemed that he could possibly understand. She felt sick with apprehension, recalling his stern words. He had asked her if she was quite sure she had handed all her bills to him; he had warned her of the awful consequences if he found she had lied to him; and although he had certainly begged her, later, not to be afraid of him, it was not to be expected that he would greet with equanimity the intelligence that his wife had overlooked a bill for three hundred and thirty-five guineas. It even seemed improbable that he would believe she really had overlooked it. She herself was aghast at her carelessness. She was so sure that she had given the bill to Cardross with all the others collected from a drawer crammed with them that her first thought on seeing Madame Lavalle's renewed demand was that that exclusive modiste had erred. But an agitated search had brought the previous demand to light, wedged at the very back of the drawer. It was by far the heaviest single item amongst her debts, casting into the shade the milliner's bill which had staggered Cardross. What he would say she dared not consider, even less what he might do. At the best he must believe her to be woefully extravagant (which, indeed, she knew she had been), and he would be very angry, though forgiving. At the worst—but to speculate on what he might do at the worst was so fatal to resolution that she would not let herself do it.

With a childlike hope of pleasing him, she had arrayed herself in a gown which she knew (on the authority of that arbiter of taste, Mr. Hethersett) became her to admiration. It had instantly won for her a charming compliment, and she was now able to reply, not without pride: "No, no, it is paid for!" She added honestly, after a moment's reflection:
"You
paid for it!"

"It is a great satisfaction to me to know that I didn't waste my money," he said gravely, but with laughter in his eyes.

This was a much more promising start to the interview than she had expected. She smiled shyly at him, and was just about to embark on a painful explanation of her new embarrassment when he said: "Are you Letty's envoy, then? I own, I might listen with more patience to you than to her, but on
this
subject I am determined to remain adamant!"

Not sorry to be diverted from her real errand, she said: "Of course, I do see that it would be throwing herself away quite shockingly, but I believe you will be obliged, in the end, to consent. Well, I thought myself that it was just a fancy that would pass when she had seen more of society, and had met other gentlemen, but it isn't so, Cardross! She hasn't swerved from her devotion to Mr. Allandale, even though she has been made up to by I don't know how many others— and all of them," she added reflectively, "of far greater address than poor Mr. Allandale!"

"Nell!" he interrupted. "Can you tell me what she perceives in that dead bore to dote upon?"

She shook her head. "No, there is no accounting for it," she replied. "She doesn't know either, which is what makes me feel that it is a case of true love, and certainly no passing fancy."

"They are totally unsuited!" he said impatiently. "She would ruin him in a year, what's more! She is as extravagant as you are, my love!" He saw the stricken look in her face, the colour ebbing from her cheeks, and instantly said: "What an unhandsome thing to say to you! I beg your pardon:
that
is all forgotten—a page which we have stuck down, and shan't read again. My dear Nell, if you could but have heard that absurd young man addressing me in flowing periods this morning! Do you know that he proposed in all seriousness to carry Letty off to Brazil?"

Her thoughts were very far from Letty's affairs, but she answered mechanically: "Yes, she told me of his appointment."

He regarded her with a slight crease between his brows. "You are looking very troubled, Nell. Why? Are you taking this nonsense to heart?"

Now, if ever, was the moment to tell him that the page had not yet been stuck down. The words refused to be uttered. She said instead: "I can't help but be sorry for them. I know it is a bad match, and indeed, Cardross, I understand what your sentiments must be."

"I imagine you might! To be wishing Letty joy of a shockingly bad bargain would be fine conduct in a guardian! To own the truth, I wish I were not her guardian—or that I had never permitted her aunt to take charge of her. That woman wants both manner and sense, and, as far as I can discover, reared her own daughters as well as my sister in a scrambling way, encouraging them in every extravagant folly, and allowing them to set up their flirts when they should have been in the schoolroom!"

"Well, yes," admitted Nell. "I don't like to abuse her, for she is always very civil and goodnatured, but she does seem to be sadly shatterbrained! But I can't suppose that she encouraged Mr. Allandale, for she doesn't at all wish Letty to marry him, you know. She talked to me about it the other evening, at the Westburys' drum, and she seemed to feel just as she ought." She paused, considering this. "At least," she amended, "just as
you
think she ought, Cardross."

He was amused. "Indeed! But not as
you
think, I collect?"

"Well, not precisely," she temporized. "I must say, it has me quite in a puzzle to understand how it comes about that such a lively girl should fall in love with Mr. Allandale, for he is not at all sportive, and he doesn't seem to have more than common sense, besides having such very formal manners,—but—but there is nothing in his disposition to make him ineligible, is there? I mean, it isn't as if she wished to marry someone like Sir Jasper Lydney, or young Brixworth. And one wouldn't have felt the least surprise if she had, because they have both been dangling after her ever since she came out, and no one can deny that they have very engaging manners, in spite of being such shocking rakes! You would not have liked her to marry either of them!"

"I should not, but there is a vast gulf between Brixworth and Allandale, my love! As for eligibility, though there may be nothing in Allandale's disposition to dislike, there is nothing in his circumstances to recommend him. He has neither rank nor fortune."

"Letty doesn't care for rank, and she
has
fortune," Nell pointed out.