April Lady - Georgette Heyer

"But what in the world should I want it for?" Nell objected.

"That, my lady, is none of George's business!" replied Sutton coldly.

Whatever George may have thought, the ruse proved successful. There was no one in the hall to see Nell slip out of the house; and no one within earshot when she softly shut the front-door behind her. She heaved a sigh of relief, and set off quickly in the direction of the nearest hackney-coach stand.

Mrs. Thorne'sbutler, opening the door to Nell in time to see the hackney which had brought her to Bryanston Square move slowly away, was very much surprised that her ladyship should have deigned to enter such a lowly vehicle, but she had expected that he would be, and told him in the easiest way that her carriage had suffered a slight accident. He seemed satisfied with this explanation, but when she asked for his mistress he was obliged to tell her that Madam had retired to her room to change her dress for dinner.

"Then, if you please, be so good as to ask your mistress if I may go up to her," said Nell, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for a lady of quality to arrive in a common hackney half-an-hour before dinner-time, wearing a morning-dress, and coolly demanding to be taken up to her hostess's bedroom. The butler looked doubtful, but he went to deliver this message, returning almost immediately to beg her ladyship to step upstairs.

Mrs. Thorne was seated before her dressing-table, enveloped in a voluminous wrapper, and with her hair only half-pinned up into the elaborate fashion of her choice. She was a stout, goodnatured looking woman, and when she rose to greet Nell she seemed rather to surge out of her chair. "Oh, my dear Lady Cardross, pray come in, and forgive my receiving you in such a way! But I would not keep you waiting while I scrambled on my clothes, and so I told Thomas to bring you to me straightaway."

"It is very kind of you. I should not be troubling you at such an awkward time," Nell said, shaking hands. "May I talk privately to you for a few minutes?"

"Oh, my dear! Yes, yes, to be sure you may! Go and see if Miss Fanny is dressed yet, Betty! I will ring for you when I want you back again. Set a chair for her ladyship before you go! Do, pray, be seated, Lady Cardross!" She herself sank back into the chair before the dressing-table, saying, almost before her maid was out of the room: "Tell me at once, my dear! When Thomas came to say that you were below, such a presentiment shot through me! And I can see by your face I was right!"

"I don't know—I hope not! Mrs. Thorne, has Letty been with you today?"

"Oh, my goodness gracious me!" cried Mrs. Thorne, "if I didn't know it! No, my dear, I haven't seen Letty since she visited us last week. Don't tell me she has gone off with young Allandale! Wait! where are my smelling-salts? Now tell me everything!"

Clutching the vinaigrette, and warding off a series of palpitations by frequently sniffing its aromatic contents, she managed to listen to the story Nell unfolded without succumbing to the various nervous ills which threatened to prostrate her. She was very much shocked, interrupting the tale with groans, and horrified ejaculations, but there was nothing she could do to help Nell, because she knew nothing. She had never encouraged Mr. Allandale: girls liked to flirt, and there was no harm in that; but when she had learnt that Letty considered herself engaged to a young man without a penny to bless himself with, and no prospects worthy to be mentioned, she had never been more upset in her life.

Nell was obliged to break in on her volubility, and to beg that Selina might be sent for. Mrs. Thorne was perfectly agreeable, but she could not think that Selina would be able to throw any light on the mystery of her cousin's whereabouts. When she was told of the meeting that afternoon in Bond Street, she could scarcely be brought to believe that such a thing could have happened. "Selina going off to Bond Street! Oh, you don't mean it, Lady Cardross! I never heard of such a thing! To be sure, girls aren't kept so strict now as they were when I was young—why, not a step outside the house could I take unless my mother, or the governess was with me! And very irksome it was, I can tell you! I made up my mind I wouldn't use my girls so, and nor I have, but as for letting any of them go jauntering about town without one of her sisters, or Betty, to go with her, that would be quite beyond the line! Good gracious, whatever would people say? It doesn't bear thinking of, and if I find Martha was telling you the truth, which, however, it's very likely she wasn't, I declare Selina shall go to Miss Puttenham's seminary, say what she will! It was what Mr. Thorne said she should do, when Miss Woodbridge left us, but she pleaded so hard against it—well, there! But that Martha would say anything! Depend upon it, my dear Lady Cardross, Selina knows no more than the man in the moon where her cousin may be!"

But when Selina presently came into the room it was evident even to her fond parent that she knew very well why she had been sent for. She was in fine feather, and perfectly ready to be martyred in her cousin's cause. Hers had not been the chief role in the delightful drama, but she had been able easily to convince herself that without her self-abnegating offices the interested parties would by this time have been obliged to resign themselves to their equally disagreeable fates. Letty (if she did not go into a decline, and expire within the year) would have been ruthlessly forced into marriage with a titled Midas of evil disposition, at whose hands she would have suffered brutal ill-usage; and Mr. Allandale, unaccountably forgotten by his superiors, would have worn out his life in a foreign land, always carrying his lost love's likeness next his heart, and dying (in circumstances of distressing neglect and anguish) with her name on his writhen lips.

Until she found herself confronting Nell, of whom she stood in a good deal of awe, this affecting story had seemed to her so probable as to border on the inevitable. She had several times rehearsed the elevating utterances she would make, if called upon to account for her actions; and in these scenes every effort made by Letty's persecutors to drag from her the secret of her whereabouts failed. Sometimes she remained mute while the storm raged over her devoted head; but in general she was extremely eloquent, expressing herself with such moving sincerity that even such worldly persons as her father and Lord Cardross were often brought to see how false and mercenary were their ideas, and emerged from the encounter with changed hearts, and the highest opinion of her fearlessness, nobility, and good sense.

But in these scenes the other members of the cast spoke the lines laid down for them; in real life they said things so very different as to throw everything quite out of joint. In the event, Selina pronounced only one of her rehearsed speeches. Asked by her mother if she knew what had become of Letty, she clasped her hands at her breast, and declined to answer the question. She then invited the two ladies to threaten her as much as they chose, to do with her what they would; but warned them that they would find it impossible to force her to betray her cousin.

Mrs. Thorne should then have conjured her daughter on her obedience to divulge the truth; instead, and with a lamentable lack of histrionic ability, she begged her irritably not, for goodness sake, to start any of her play-acting; and before Selina could recover from this set-back Nell completed her discomfiture by saying in a tone of grave reproof: "Indeed, Selina, you must not make-believe over this, for I am afraid it is much more serious than you have any idea of."

After that, there could be no recapturing the dramatic flavour of the piece. Selina did say that she wouldn't tell anything, but even in her own ears this sounded very much more sulky than noble; and when Mrs. Thorne, heaving herself out of her chair, declared her intention of hailing her immediately before her papa, who would know how to deal with such impertinence, instead of behaving like a heroine, she collapsed into frightened tears.