“How do you do, Miss Godric?” asked his spouse with a stiff nod, studying her with great care. Since issuing the invitation, she had had second thoughts. However, the young woman appeared presentable, so she unbent sufficient to add, “So happy to meet you. Allow me to present to you my daughter and—”
“Know Miss Godric,” pronounced the Honourable George firmly, making a leg. “Very happy to see you, ma’am.” The warmth in his voice compensated for Marianne’s disdainful glance and the sketchy curtsy.
Lord Alton shook George’s hand with unwonted cordiality. “Good evening, ah . . . um . . . Niece,” he said to Marianne.
As they proceeded into the room, Hester was introduced to haughty matrons, simpering debutantes, laconic bucks, and chattering dandies. She felt herself the target of a hundred curious stares. With her hand on his lordship’s arm, she managed to keep her composure, smiling and curstying with becoming modesty yet without excessive deference. It seemed to her that half the world was present, but Lord Alton was pleased to see that, as he had anticipated, the nature of the entertainment allowed of only a comparatively small company. There would be no opportunity for extensive socialising, though he thought Hester equal to anything.
They had been among the last to arrive, and now a couple of footmen were opening the pianoforte at the end of the grand salon, and the guests were taking their places in the rows of seats with which the long room had been filled. His lordship spotted Sir Humphrey Bardry and his party and led Hester in the opposite direction. A pretty young lady dressed in the height of fashion caught his eye and gestured to the pair of seats next to her.
“Pray sit here, Alton,” she called, “and make us known to your companion.”
He nodded and waved assent.
“I think you will like Lady Honoria,” he told Hester in a low voice. “The Stearns are neighbours of mine in Hampshire. Wilfred and I grew up almost as brothers.”
Lady Honoria was a lively, good-natured young woman of about Hester’s age. During the two seasons before she had married Sir Wilfred Stearn, to whom she was devoted, she had enjoyed an intermittent flirtation with Lord Alton and still had a soft spot for him.
His lordship introduced Hester, and they sat down.
“Do forgive my curiosity, Miss Godric,” said Lady Honoria at once, “but are your related to Miss Alice Godric?”
“My half sister, ma’am,” answered Hester reluctantly.
“Are you newly come to town? You are not staying with Lady Bardry?”
“Honor, don’t be nosy,” admonished her husband lovingly. “Miss Godric, you will indeed find it necessary to forgive my wife’s inquisitiveness. It is her besetting sin.”
“You are shockingly disagreeable tonight, Wilfred,” Lady Honoria pouted with mock pettishness. “I shall have to turn to Lord Alton for protection. He is quite the handsomest man here tonight, I vow. Do not you agree, Miss Godric?”
“Spare me blushes, ladies!” laughed his lordship, saving Hester the necessity of finding an answer. “Wilfred, I see you have not yet succeeded in curbing Lady Honor’s tongue.”
“No, indeed,” agreed that gentleman placidly. “She is as outrageously outspoken as ever. It makes life interesting, but as I do not wish to be thrown out of the house this evening, my dear, I beg you will save your retort for later. See, the performers are arriving.”
While Miss Corn and Mr. Welsh warbled away in incomprehensible Italian, Hester studied the audience. Many of the gentlemen were standing, so she had ample opportunity to compare them to her escort. Trying to be impartial, she was nevertheless forced to agree with Lady Honoria that none could bear comparison with Lord Alton’s tall, broad-shouldered figure, his strong, clean-cut features and corn gold hair. She found herself wishing she could run her fingers through that hair and hurriedly looked away.
Her attention was soon occupied by the irrepressible Lady Honoria, who simply had to point out Mrs. Dumbarton’s quiz of a hat, Viscount Wardell’s amazing waistcoat, Lady Martin’s excessively low bodice.
“And, my dear Miss Godric, do but look at Miss Holt’s dress. With that carroty hair, she ought positively to be forbidden to wear pink,” she whispered.
Hester soon discovered that her comments, though scathing, were tolerantly amused rather than spiteful. Warmed by her friendliness, she soon ventured an observation of her own, and even went so far as to disagree with her ladyship’s castigation of Mr. Peter Tolbury’s taste in jewellery. “The poor man cannot help it if his face is so red as to clash with his ruby,” she defended him
sotto voce.
“He might wear an emerald.”
“Well, but perhaps the ruby is an heirloom.”
The gentleman in question suddenly became aware of their concerted and critical gaze, and his scarlet face crimsoned.
“There, now he matches!” hissed Lady Honoria wickedly. They both dissolved in silent giggles, to the mutual despair of Sir Wilfred and Lord Alton.
At the beginning of the short interval, Lord Alton was pleased to see Sophie Bardry and Alice approaching them arm in arm. Lady Bardry, her back turned, was conversing determinedly with her neighbour, but Sophie looked no less determined. His nephew George soon joined them, with two of Alice’s flock of admirers.
After a few polite comments on the concert, conversation became general within the group. Alice, aware of her aunt’s disapproval, was looking nervous, so Lord Alton, who remembered all too clearly the tendency of her offended sensibilities to take refuge in tears, exerted himself to amuse her. Little did he realise that in so doing he was providing new ammunition to those who insisted that the younger sister, rather than the elder, was his target.
In fact, in spite of his intimate knowledge of the ways of society, he had not realised that in escorting Hester to an entertainment at his sister’s house, he had virtually declared to all and sundry that his intentions toward one or the other of the Misses Godric were serious. Mamas of more eligible damsels might grind their teeth in frustration, Lady Bardry might plead an indisposition and remove her party the moment the singing ended, but Lord Alton was not only a gentleman of rank and wealth; he was also popular. His charm had won him friends even among those straitlaced matrons who had deplored his rakish ways for years, and with the vast majority of his acquaintances he stood upon excellent terms. Moreover, everyone was burning with curiosity about the mysterious Miss Godric. Those few who did not succeed in obtaining an introduction after the concert, and many of those who did, applied to Lady Ariadne for information, but found her irritatingly offhand and uncommunicative.
“Daughter of Ralph Godric of Oxfordshire,” she murmured. “Miss Alice’s sister; large family, I believe.”
Lady Ariadne had noted with pleasure Lady Bardry’s discomfiture, with less pleasure Sophie’s defiance, and with displeasure the general interest of her guests in Miss Godric. Watching her brother’s hovering solicitude, she realised that she had been tricked into lending countenance to a nobody he had chosen as the object of his attentions; and far from going unnoticed in the crowd, the nobody had eclipsed her expensively hired musicians as the cynosure of the evening. It seemed all too likely that her triumph over Lady Bardry would prove transitory and that her rival would emerge victorious in the end.
She wondered momentarily if the earl might have less than honourable intentions. No, ramshackle though he might be, given over to a deplorable libertinism, even he would not introduce one of his barques of frailty to his family. She must do her best to dissuade him from any rash action, but in case of failure, she would endeavour to conceal from the world all she had discovered to the detriment of her future sister-in-law (shocking thought!), even if she would thus play into Lady Bardry’s hand. She would have liked to comfort herself with the anticipation of cutting off all correspondence with her brother if he married the wench. Unfortunately, he was the head of the family, and to do so would merely decrease her own consequence. What a pity Charworthy was a mere baron!
The constant stream of requests for introduction to her convinced Hester of the high regard which Lord Alton was held by all and sundry, making her the more certain of her own unworthiness. From Miss Holt with her carroty hair and thirty thousand pounds to Lady Julia Penrose, only daughter of the Marquis of Rosemead and even more beautiful than Alice, any of the unmarried ladies present would have been happy to toss her cap over the windmill at a word from the Earl of Alton. She was beginning to wish she had never let him persuade her to come when one of Lady Honoria’s acid remarks made her laugh.
“That’s better!” exclaimed her ladyship. “I was beginning to think you quite overwhelmed, my poor little country mouse.”
“Honor!”
“It’s quite all right, Wilfred. Miss Godric and I are going to be friends, and we understand each other already. You will come and see me on Monday, will you not, Miss Godric? I shall be alone for once, so we shall have a delightful cose.”
“I’ll bring her,” promised Lord Alton, thus providing any confirmation the Stearns needed of his devotion.
After taking Hester to Paddington and delivering her, exhausted, into Bessie’s care, he dismissed his carriage and walked home. His head was swimming with contradictory ideas and images.
As he had expected, Hester’s comportment had been perfect, even under the barrage of inquisitive eyes. He had not expected the inquisitiveness. Looking back, he could see that this desire to make her at home in society had blinded him to the obvious conclusions that society would draw. The world now knew that he pursued her, and the world would know if she rejected him.
No, he thought, no one would believe that. They would think he had changed his mind, had not come up to scratch. He must not let his pride become bound up in his need for success. He wanted her because he loved her, not because he would be humiliated if he lost her.
How beautiful she had looked tonight! And through all the heavy French perfumes and pomades, he had distinguished always her fresh lavender fragrance, like a breath of spring.
Chapter 16
“I hear her mother was a milliner . . . No, no, her grandfather is a shopkeeper . . . Father? . . . Ralph Godric . . . Land in Oxfordshire . . . Yes, a magistrate, I believe . . . Member of White's . . . ah, the Oxfordshire Godrics . . . Of course, Lady Bardry does not acknowledge . . . But you know Lady Bardry . . . Pretty-behaved young woman . . . Not putting herself forward . . . Handsome fortune, they say . . . Speaking of Alton’s ladybird . . . Sad rake, yes, but never bad
ton
. . . At his sister’s house? . . . Certainly respectable . . . And the Prince Regent . . . You’ve heard? . . . Commission to collect evidence . . . Divorce Princess Caroline . . . Pergami her lover? . . . Shocking . . .”
Conversations on these lines might have been heard in a dozen drawing rooms in London the morning after the Charworthys’ musicale. The end result was that a number of invitations delivered in Holles Street during the next few days had been amended to include Miss Godric as well as Miss Alice Godric. Few hostesses were not prepared to go slightly out of their way to accommodate “dear Alton,” and fewer still were willing to risk offending his possible future countess.
In very short order, “pretty-behaved” had become “charming,” and the handsome fortune rapidly grew until by all report Hester was well able to buy an abbey. That such an heiress should reside in Paddington, as rumour had it, was of course quite impossible. Lady Bardry was besieged by demands for introductions to “the beautiful Miss Godric.” Before she was forced to confess her inability to comply, Miss Holt obligingly eloped to Gretna Green with an Irish fortune hunter who was willing to overlook her carroty hair in view of the thirty thousand pounds; no one had a thought to spare for anything else.
Far from being grateful that her niece’s half-sister had suddenly become not merely respectable but also sought-after, Lady Bardry was convinced that the whole affair was a plot to discredit her. It did not even cross her mind that Lord Alton might consider Hester an eligible bride. Having exposed to the world her connexion with the Bardrys, he would offer her
carte blanche
, and as his mistress she would be a constant source of shame to her relations.
Quick to scent a plot, Lady Bardry was as quick to see a possible solution. It was Hester’s position on the fringes of the Polite World that made her vulnerable to seduction. Let Lord Alton see that she had the full protection of her family, and he must look elsewhere for a
chère-amie
. And how neatly that would turn the tables on Lady Ariadne! She must call on Hester at once, but first to Charles Street.
She found Lady Ariadne alone.
“How delightful your little concert was!” she gushed. “I simply had to stay until the singing ended, though my head was excessively painful. And so
very
kind in you to invite
dear
Hester. I had quite despaired of persuading her to take her place among us, but your arguments have borne fruit, and of course
your
credit is sufficient to carry off any little difficulty.
Too
kind of you, dear Lady Ariadne. Sir Humphrey was saying only last week that the poor child was bred up a lady by my sister and should not suffer for a mother she never knew.”
Since Sir Humphrey lived entirely beneath the cat’s paw, it was to be assumed that these noble sentiments issued in fact from his wife. She had by now nearly persuaded herself of the truth of her words. Lady Ariadne was harder to convince.
“Doing it rather too brown, ma’am,” she said bluntly, a lapse into vulgarity which would have brought her daughter a severe dressing down. “However, since Alton has bamboozled us both, it behooves us to make the best of a bad business or we will find ourselves laughingstocks. I shall, of course, do my utmost to avert a marriage.”
Disconcerted by this unexpected frankness, Lady Bardry was equally open. “You think he means marriage? I cannot believe it! I am afraid . . .” Then she recollected herself quickly. “Of course, in that case dear George will lose both fortune and title. How very sad! I daresay I should forbid my Sophie to think of him, but they are so very attached to each other I do not know if I can bring myself to such an extreme course.”