Lady of Quality (21 page)

His evil genius prompted Sir Geoffrey to utter unwise words. "My dear young lady," he said kindly, "you must not expect my sister to jaunter off on an expedition of pleasure, leaving no one to receive Lady Wychwood!"

"No. Of course not," Lucilla agreed politely, but in a disappointed tone.

Now, Miss Wychwood had decided, many hours before, not to ride out in Mr Carleton's company, not even to see him. She had had the intention of charging Lucilla with a formal message of regret. That, she thought, would teach him a salutary lesson. But no sooner had Sir Geoffrey spoken than her hackles rose, and she said: "As to that, Mrs Wardlow will be only too happy to receive Amabel, and to be granted an opportunity to dote on the children, besides discussing with Amabel all the nursery details which they both find so absorbing, and in which I take no interest." She rose as she spoke, saying: "I must go and tell Miss Farlow what I wish her to do for me this morning."

"You
will
ride with us?" Lucilla cried eagerly.

Miss Wychwood nodded smilingly, and left the room. She was almost immediately followed by Sir Geoffrey, who caught her up as she was about to mount the stairs. "Annis!" he said commandingly.

She paused, and looked over her shoulder at him. "Well, Geoffrey?"

"Come into the library! I can't talk to you here!"

"There is no need for you to talk to me anywhere. I know what you wish to say, and I have no time to waste in listening to it"

"Annis, I must insist—"

"Good God, will you never learn wisdom?" she exclaimed.

"Wisdom! I have more of that than you, I promise you!" he said angrily. "I will not stand by and watch my sister compromising herself!"

"Doing
what?"
she gasped, taken-aback. "Don't be such a dummy, Geoffrey! Compromise myself indeed! By going for a morning's ride with Lucilla, her uncle, and Ninian Elmore? You must have windmills in your head!"

She began to go upstairs, but he halted her, stretching up an arm to grasp her wrist. "Wait!" he ordered. "I warned you to have nothing to do with Carleton, but so far from paying any heed you have positively encouraged him to pursue you! He has dined here, and you have even dined with him at his hotel—and in a private parlour! I had not thought it possible you could behave with such impropriety! Ah, you wonder, I daresay, how I should know that!"

"I know exactly how you know it," she said, with a disdainful curl of her lip. "I don't doubt Maria has kept you informed of everything I do! That is why you are here today, and why you have bullocked Amabel into coming to keep an eye on me! Before you accuse me of impropriety, I recommend you to consider your own conduct! I can conceive of few more improper things than to have permitted Maria to report to you on my actions, and few things more addlebrained than to have believed them when anyone but a gudgeon must have realized that they sprang from the jealousy of a very stupid woman!"

She wrenched herself free from his hold on her wrist, and went swiftly upstairs, only pausing when he said weakly that Maria had only done what she thought to be her duty, to say dangerously: "I would remind you, brother, that it is I who am Maria's employer, not you! I will add that I keep no disloyal servants in my house!"

Five minutes later she was giving Miss Farlow precise instructions about the shopping she wished her to undertake. As these included a command to obtain from Mrs Wardlow a list of the various items of infant diet which would be needed, Miss Farlow showed signs of taking umbrage, and said, bridling, that she fancied she was quite as well qualified as the housekeeper to decide what were the best things to give children to eat.

"Please do as you are told!" said Miss Wychwood coldly. "You need not trouble yourself to prepare the necessary bedchambers: Mrs Wardlow and my sister will settle that between them. Now, if there is anything you wish to know that I've not told you, pray tell me what it is immediately! I am going out, and shall be away all the morning."

"Going out?" exclaimed Miss Farlow incredulously. "You cannot mean that you are going on this riding expedition when dear Lady Wychwood may arrive at any moment!"

If anything had been needed to strengthen Miss Wychwood's resolve, that tactless speech supplied the necessary goad. She said: "Certainly I mean it."

"Oh, I am persuaded Sir Geoffrey won't permit it! Dear Miss Annis—" She broke off, quailing before the fiery glance cast at her.

"Let me advise you, cousin, not to meddle in what in no way concerns you!" said Miss Wychwood. "You have worn my patience very thin already! I shall have a good deal to say to you later, but I've no time now to waste. Will you be kind enough to send Jurby up to me?"

Considerably alarmed by this unprecedented severity, Miss Farlow became flustered, and plunged into an incoherent speech, partly apologetic, partly self-exculpatory, but she did not get very far with it, for Lucilla came running up the stairs, to inform Miss Wychwood that Mr Carleton's groom had just called with a message from his master: if it was convenient to the ladies, he would bring the horses to Camden Place at eleven o'clock.

"So I said it was convenient! That was right, wasn't it?"

"Quite right but we shall have to make haste into our riding-habits."

Miss Farlow uttered a sound between a hen-like cluck and a moan, and wrung her hands together, which had the effect of making Annis turn on her, and to say, in an exasperated voice: "Maria, will you have the goodness to send Jurby to me at once? Pray don't make it necessary for me to ask you a third time!"

Miss Farlow scuttled away. Lucilla, wide-eyed with surprise, asked: "Are you vexed with her, ma'am? I never heard you speak so crossly to her before!"

"Yes, I am a trifle vexed: she is the most tiresome creature! Her tongue has been running on wheels ever since we sat down to breakfast. But never mind that! Run and change your dress!"

Lucilla, having assured her that she could scramble into her habit in the twinkling of a bedpost, darted off to her own chamber, and if (thanks to Brigham) she did not actually scramble into her habit she was ready before her hostess. By the time Miss Wychwood came downstairs, Mr Carleton and Ninian had arrived, and Lucilla was cooing over a very pretty gray mare, patting and stroking her, and feeding her with sugar-lumps. Ninian, who had borrowed a well ribbed-up hack from one of his new acquaintances, was pointing out all the mare's good points to her; and Mr Carleton, who had dismounted from his chestnut, was holding his own and Miss Wychwood's bridles, and when Miss Wychwood came out of the house he handed both to his groom, making it plain that he meant to put her up into the saddle himself. She went forward, greeting him with a good deal of reserve, and without her usual delightful smile. He took her hand, and surprised her by saying quietly: "Don't look so sternly at me! Did I offend you very much last night?"

She said, rather stiffly: "I must suppose you meant to do so, sir."

"Yes," he answered. "I did mean to. But afterwards I wished I had cut out my tongue before I said such things to you. Forgive me!"

She was not proof against this blunt apology. She had not expected it; and when she answered him her voice was a little unsteady. "Yes—of course I forgive you! Pray say no more about it! What a—a
prime 'un
you have bought for Lucilla! You will be first-oars with her hereafter!"

She gathered her bridle, and allowed him to take her foot between his hands. He threw her up into the saddle where she quickly settled herself, while the mare danced on impatient hooves.

"Bit fresh, ma'am!" warned the groom.

"Yes, because she hasn't been out for three days, poor darling! She'll settle down when the saddle has had time to get warm to her back. Stand away, if you please! Now, steady, Bess! Steady! You can't gallop through the town!"

"By Jupiter, you're a regular out-and-outer, ma'am!" exclaimed Ninian, watching the mare's playful and unavailing attempts to unseat her. "I'll go bail you set a splitting pace in the hunting-field!"

"That sounds as though you take me for a thruster!" she retorted. "Have you decided which way we are to go?"

"Yes, up on to Lansdown—unless you had liefer go somewhere else, ma'am?"

"No, not at all: Lansdown let it be! Well, Lucilla? How do you like her?"

"Oh, beyond anything great!" Lucilla said ecstatically. The groom had mounted her, and she was groping for her stirrup-leather under her skirt. "Oh, botheration!"

"Here, I'll do that for you!" Ninian said. "Do you want it shortened or lengthened?"

"Shortened, please. Just one hole, I think. Yes, that is exactly right! Thank you!"

He tested the girths, tightened them, told her sternly to remember that her hand was strange to the mare, and to be careful what she was about, and swung himself into his own saddle. They then set forward, Lucilla and Ninian leading the way, and Mr Carleton, following close on their heels with Miss Wychwood beside him, keeping a critical eye on his ward. He seemed soon to be satisfied that a perfect understanding between the gray mare and her rider was in a fair way to becoming established, for he withdrew his gaze from them, and turned his head to speak to Miss Wychwood, saying: "No need to follow so closely: she seems to know how to handle strange horses."

"Yes," she agreed. "Ninian assured me that I had no need to worry about her for she was a capital horsewoman."

"She should be," he responded. "My brother threw her into the saddle when she was hardly out of leading-strings."

"Yes," she said again. "She told me that."

Silence fell between them. It was not broken until they had drawn clear of the town, and Ninian and Lucilla, once off the stones, were trotting some way ahead. Mr Carleton said then, in his direct fashion: "Are you still angry with me?"

She started a little, for she had been lost in her own thoughts, and replied, with an uncertain laugh: "Oh, no! I'm afraid I was woolgathering!"

"If you are no longer angry with me, who, or what, has put you all on end?"

"I—I'm not all on end!" she stammered. "Why—why should you think I am, merely because I let my thoughts wander for a minute or two?"

He appeared to give this question consideration. A slight frown drew his brows together, and a searching look between narrowed eyes, staring between his horse's ears into the middle distance, failed to provide him with an answer, for, after a short pause, he smiled wryly, and said: "I don't know. But I do know that something has happened to put you in a passion, which you are trying to bottle up."

"Oh, dear!" she sighed. "Is it so obvious?"

"To me, yes," he replied curtly. "I wish you will tell me what has destroyed your tranquillity, but if you don't choose to do so I won't press you. What would you wish to talk about?"

She turned her head to look at him wonderingly, a smile wavering on her lips, and in her mind the thought that he was strangely incalculable. At one moment, he could be brusque, and unfeeling; and then, when he had made her blazingly angry, his mood seemed to change, and her resentment was dispelled by the sympathy, however roughly expressed, which she heard in his voice, and detected in the softened look in his eyes. Now, as she met those penetrating eyes, she saw the hint of a smile in them, and was conscious of an impulse to admit him, at least a little way, into her confidence. There was no one else to whom she could unburden herself, and she badly needed a safe confidant, for the more she kept her rancour to herself the greater it grew. Why she should consider Mr Carleton a safe confidant was a question it never occurred to her to ask herself: she felt it, and that was enough.

She hesitated, and after a moment he said in a matter-of-fact way: "You had better open the budget, you know, before all that seething wrath in you forces off the lid you've clamped down on it, and scalds everything within sight."

That made her laugh. She said: "Like a pot of boiling water? That would be very shocking! It's true that I
am
out of temper, but it's no great matter. My brother arrived in Camden Place last night, to inform me that he was planting his wife, his two children, their nurse, and—I conjecture!—my sister-in-law's abigail, upon me today, for—according to himself!—a few days! Without warning, if you please! I am very fond of my sister-in-law, but it vexed me very much!"

"I imagine it might. Why are you to be subjected to this invasion?"

Her eyes kindled. "Because he—" She stopped, realizing suddenly that it was impossible to disclose to Mr Carleton, of all people, Sir Geoffrey's true reason. "Because Tom—my small nephew—has the toothache!" she said.

"You must think of something better than that!" he objected. "I daresay you believe me to be a cabbage-head, but you are mistaken: I'm not! And swallow that clanker I can't!"

"I don't think anything of the sort," she retorted. "If you want the truth, I believe you to be a most complete hand, awake upon every suit!"

"Then you should know better than to try to tip me the double," he said. "Bring his entire family to Bath because Tom has the toothache? What a Banbury story!"

"Well, I must own it does sound like one, but it isn't. My sister-in-law is—is set on taking Tom to the best dentist possible, and has had Westcott recommended to her. If you think that ridiculous, so do I!"

"I think it is a damned imposition!" he said roundly. "Oh, you are not accustomed to the language I use, are you? Accept my apologies, ma'am!"