April Lady - Georgette Heyer

"A child of her age! What does she know of the matter?" She coloured faintly, and managed to say, though not easily: "I was not very much older—when you offered for me."

His eyes turned towards her, an arrested expression in them. He did not answer her immediately, and when he did speak it was with a certain deliberation. "No. You were not, were you?" he said.

CHAPTER TEN « ^ »

The followingday was one of gloom, relieved only at nightfall, when the guests began to arrive for a loo-party. It began inauspiciously, with a further reminder from Madame Lavalle, which threw Nell into such a fever of apprehension that she could no longer forbear to plague Dysart, but sent round a letter to his lodgings immediately, imploring him either to tell her what she must do, or to negotiate a loan for her "with a respectable usurer". Hardly had this been dispatched than Martha came to her with a message from her mistress. Letty, it appeared, had awakened with a toothache, after a troubled night, and begged to be excused from accompanying her sister to North Audley Street, on a morning visit to the Misses Berry.

Nell found the sufferer still abed, a trifle heavy-eyed, but looking remarkably pretty, and without the vestige of a swollen jaw. This seemed to indicate that at least there was no abscess; but when Letty announced in the voice of one dwindling to decay that she thought perhaps the pain would go off if she remained quietly in bed, Nell was resolute in insisting that she should visit the dentist. She was not surprised by Letty's reluctance to do so, for the prospect of having a tooth drawn was not one which she herself could have faced with equanimity; but when Letty said at last that she would go, and that Martha should accompany her, so that Nell need not postpone her duty-call in North Audley Street, she began to suspect that the toothache was not unconnected with this call. The late Lady Cardross had been a close friend of both the Berry sisters, but her daughter, ungrateful for the kindly interest they took in her, could be depended on to find ingenious excuses for not visiting them. She said that Miss Berry was quizzy, and Miss Agnes cross, and nothing bored her more than to be obliged to drive down to Little Strawberry to spend the day with them. Indeed, she had brightened so perceptibly when Miss Berry, on the occasion of her last visit to the Merion ladies, had confided, with a sigh, that she was compelled to find a tenant for Little Strawberry, that Nell had been positively ashamed of her, and had later taken her severely to task for heartlessness and incivility. So she now eyed the spoiled beauty measuringly, and said that she would herself take her to visit Mr. Tilton. Had she been feeling less oppressed she must have laughed at the smouldering look of resentment cast at her from beneath Letty's curling eyelashes.

Happily for Letty, who, by the time she was handed into the sinister chair in Mr. Tilton's room, was in a quake of fright, that worthy practitioner could find nothing amiss with her teeth. In his opinion, the pain she was enduring so bravely was due to a nervous tic. He recommended bed, and a few drops of laudanum as a composer: a prescription which Nell inexorably forced her unwilling sister to carry out, with the result that by four o'clock Letty announced herself to be perfectly cured, and got up to array herself for the evening's party. She was not in spirits, but somewhat to Nell's surprise, and greatly to her relief, she had made no further reference, after a bitter outburst on the previous evening, to Cardross's cruelty. She seemed to have realized that there could be no moving him; and while the droop to her mouth, and the brooding look in her eyes, held out every promise of a fit of the sullens, Nell could not but feel she could bear this better than the exhausting and quite fruitless discussions she had lately been compelled to enter into.

Dysart did not come, but as the retired gentleman's gentleman, in whose establishment he resided, rather thought that he had gone out of town to see a prize-fight, this was not wonderful. Nell could only hope that he would find the time to send a written answer to her letter, since, if he were to call in person in Grosvenor Square on the following day, he would not find her at home. She was engaged to take Letty to an al fresco party at Osterley.

There was no letter from him in the morning; and had her hostess been any other than Lady Jersey, whom it would be very dangerous to offend, she would have been much inclined to have cried off from the party. It was impossible to do so, however, without giving grave offence, for Lady Jersey had been one of the guests at her loo-party, and would certainly not believe any tale of sudden indisposition.

"Oh, no!" Letty agreed. "It would be quite shocking if you did not go! But I am sure I need not, for I have not the least heart for it, besides being teased by this horrid tic. I mean to stay at home, with a shawl round my head."

"And Paley's Sermons in your hand, I daresay!" exclaimed Nell. "For shame, Letty! You have no more tic than I have!"

"Even if I have not I won't be forced to go to parties when I am in the deepest affliction!" said Letty, flushing. "I don't doubt it would suit Cardross very well to be able to say that if I continue to do so it is plain he has not done his best to break my heart, but he shan't have that satisfaction, and so you may tell him! I won't go!"

"Indeed, Letty, you must go!" Nell said earnestly. "You cannot, surely, wish to have your affairs made the subject of gossip! Think how vexed you were when Lady Sefton and Lady Cowper came here on Sunday to try if they could discover what truth there is in the rumours that are going about! Pray do not wear your heart on your sleeve, my dear! it is so very unbecoming!"

"I won't go!" Letty reiterated mulishly.

"Won't go where?" asked Cardross, coming into the room in time to hear this declaration.

"I won't go to Osterley with Nell! And I don't care if people do gossip!"

"Of course you will go to Osterley!" he said calmly. "What excuse could you possibly offer for crying off?"

"I have already told Nell I have the tic, and if she doesn't choose to believe me she need not, but you can neither of you force me to go!"

"Doesn't Nell believe you? How unfeeling of her! I believe you, my pet, and I will send a message round to Dr. Baillie, desiring him to call." He added, the glimmer of a smile at the back of his eyes: "My own engagements are of no particular moment, and I will promise to remain at home with you."

"Rather than endure your company I will go to Osterley!" said Letty, quivering with suppressed fury.

"Yes, I thought you would," he observed, holding the door for her to pass out of the room. He raised an eyebrow at Nell, and said, as he shut the door again: "What mischief is she plotting? A clandestine meeting with Allandale?"

"I don't know," Nell said worriedly. "I hope not, but I own I can't feel easy about her: I do most sincerely sympathize with her, but it will not do for her to be meeting him in such a way. You won't mention this to her, but I fear she has let her partiality for him be too clearly seen, and there is already a little gossip about her, in a certain set."

"The devil there is! Take care, then, she doesn't give you the slip! Secret meetings I will not endure!"

"No, indeed! But I have been wondering, Cardross, if you would permit me to invite Mr. Allandale to dine with us before he leaves England. Poor Letty! it is very hard if she is not even to be granted the opportunity of taking leave of him."

"Lending my countenance to an engagement of which I disapprove?" he said quizzically.

"Not more than you have done already, in saying that they may be married when he returns from Brazil!" she urged. "I am persuaded she would be very sensible of your kindness in granting her that indulgence; and then, you know, there would be no need for her to meet him without our knowledge."