Джорджетт Хейер: April Lady

“Oh, yes, do wear it! In fact, you may have it for your own, for I am sure I can never bear to wear it again! ” said Nell tragically.

“Never bear—Nell, don’t be such a goose! Why, you went into transports when they showed it to you, and it cost you thirty guineas!”

“I know it did, and he saw the bill for it, and never spoke one word of censure, which makes me feel ready to sink!”

“For my part,” said Letty candidly, “I should be excessively thankful for it! May I have it indeed? Thank you! It will be just the thing to wear with my French muslin. I had meant to try if I could persuade Giles to purchase one like it for me.”

“Oh, no, do not!” exclaimed Nell, aghast.

“No, I shouldn’t think of doing so now that he has taken one of his pets,” agreed Letty. “I’m sure I never knew anyone so odious about being in debt! What shall you wear tonight? You haven’t forgotten that Felix Hethersett is to escort us to Almack’s, have you?”

Nell sighed: “I wish we need not go!”

“Well, there’s not the least occasion for you to go if you don’t choose,” said Letty obligingly. “You may send a note round to Felix’s lodging, and as for me, I daresay my aunt Thorne will be very willing to take me with her and my cousin.”

This airy speech had the effect of diverting Nell’s mind from her own iniquities. Upon his marriage, the Earl had removed his young ward from the care of her maternal aunt, and had taken her to live in his own house. Mrs. Thorne was a good-natured woman, but he could not like the tone of her mind, or feel that she had either the desire or the power to control his flighty half-sister. He had been startled to discover how casual was the surveillance under which Letty had grown up, how improper many of the ideas she had imbibed; and he was still more startled when she disclosed to him that young as she was she had already formed what she assured him was an undying attachment. Jeremy Allandale was a perfectly respectable young man, but although well-connected he could not be thought an eligible husband for the Lady Letty Merion. He was employed at the Foreign Office, and although his prospects were thought to be good his present circumstances were straitened. His widowed mother was far from affluent, and he had several young brothers and sisters for whose education he considered himself to be largely responsible. The Earl thought this fortunate, for although the young man conducted himself with the strictest propriety he was plainly infatuated with Letty, and no dependence whatsoever (in her brother’s opinion) could be placed on her discretion. Could she but gain control of her fortune she was capable of persuading her lover to elope with her. In the event, he was wholly unable to support her, so that that contingency seemed unlikely. Mr. Allandale received little encouragement to visit in Grosvenor Square, but, whether from wisdom or from a dislike of enacting the tyrant, the Earl had never forbidden his sister to hold ordinary social intercourse with him. She would incur no censure by standing up for two dances with Mr. Allandale; but Nell was well aware that under the careless chaperonage of her aunt she would not stop at that. She guessed from Letty’s ready acquiescence in her own desire to remain at home that evening that Mr. Allandale would be at Almack’s, and she at once shook off her megrims, and said that of course she would take Letty there.

Mr. Allandale was indeed at Almack’s, and for the fiftieth time Nell found herself wondering why it was that Letty had fallen in love with him. He was a well-made man, he was even good-looking; but his manners were too formal for ease, and his conversation was painstaking rather than amusing. He was certainly solid: Nell found him a little dull. Mr. Felix Hethersett, not mincing matters, said: “Fellow’s a dead bore. Shouldn’t think the affair would last.”

“No,” agreed Nell, “but I must own that she has shown the greatest constancy, in spite of having been very much made up to, ever since she came out. I did venture once to suggest to Cardross that perhaps it would not be such a very bad match after all, but—but he cannot like it, and will only say that if she is still of the same mind when she is a few years older he will not then receive Mr. Allandale in an unfriendly spirit.”

“Throwing herself away,” said Mr. Hethersett disapprovingly. “Dash it, cousin, very taking little thing! Besides being an heiress. Not but what,” he added, as a thought occurred to him, “very understandable you should wish to see her safely tied up to someone! I daresay she’s the deuce of a charge.”

“Oh, no, indeed she is not!” Nell said, quite distressed. “How could you think I wished to be rid of her? I am only too happy to have her companionship!”

Much abashed, he begged pardon. His earlier strictures on her family notwithstanding he was one of her more faithful admirers, and was generally recognized to be her cicisbeo-in-chief. She had other and more dazzling followers, but he was certainly her favourite: a circumstance which presented an enigma to the worldlings who never dreamed that the beautiful young Countess had no taste for dalliance, but smiled on Mr. Hethersett because he was her lord’s cousin. She treated him much as she treated her brother, an arrangement which suited him very well, since he was not, in fact, much of a lady’s man, but attached himself to the court of some lady of rank and beauty as a matter of ton. A high stickler, Mr. Hethersett, precise to a pin, blessed with propriety of taste, an impeccable lineage, and a comfortable fortune. He was neither handsome nor articulate, but his dress was always in the first style of elegance; he could handle a team to perfection; was generally thought to be up to every rig and row in town; and had such obliging manners as made him quite the best liked of the Bond Street beaux. The gentlemen thought him a very good fellow; the ladies valued him for two very excellent reasons: to be admired by him added to any female’s consequence, and to possess his friendship was to enjoy not only the distinguishing notice of a man of the first stare of fashion, but the willing services of one whose good-nature was proverbial. For the more adventurous ladies, the dashing chippers who damped their muslins to make them cling revealingly to their exquisite forms, painted their toenails with gilt, and lived perpetually on the brink of social disaster, there were many more attractive blades; but young Lady Cardross was not a member of this sisterhood, and, while she naturally did not wish to be so unfashionable as to own no devoted admirer, she took care not to encourage the pretensions of any of the notorious rakes who courted her. Mr. Hethersett could be depended on to gallant one uncomplainingly to quite the dullest party of the season; and there was no need to fear that the abandonment of formality would lead him to encroach on his position. He was neither witty nor talkative, but a certain shrewdness characterized him, his bow was perfection, and his grace in a ballroom unequalled. Even Letty, who said that his notions of propriety were quite gothic, did not despise his escort when she went to Almack’s. Almack’s was abominably slow, of course, and its haughty patronesses by far too high in the instep; but any lady refused a voucher of admission to its sacred precincts must consider herself to be socially damned. To attend the Assemblies gallanted by Mr. Hethersett ensured for one the approval even of censorious Mrs. Drummond Burrell, and had been known to win for a perfectly insipid damsel a condescending smile from that odious Countess Lieven.

Nell was as much astonished as she was delighted to perceive, on arrival in King Street, that her graceless but beloved brother was rather inexpertly dancing the boulanger, with a quiet-looking girl for his partner. He explained to her presently that he had never been so taken-in before. “Ay, you may well stare!” he said, his angelic blue eyes kindling with indignation.