It was with these tangled thoughts jostling against each other in her head that she joined Lady Wychwood and Miss Farlow to partake of a light luncheon, but she was too well-bred to allow the least sign of her mental perturbation to appear either in her face or in her manner. To invite anxious questions which she had no intention of answering would be to show a lamentable want of conduct: no woman of consideration wore her heart on her sleeve, or made her guests uncomfortable by behaving in such a way as to lead them to think she was blue-devilled, or suffering from a severe headache. So neither Lady Wychwood nor Miss Farlow suspected that she was not in spirits. She listened to their everyday chit-chat, responded to such remarks as were addressed to her, made such comments as occurred to her, all with her lovely smile which hid from them her entire lack of interest in what they were discussing. It was second-nature to her to maintain a boring conversation with the better part of her mind otherwhere, but she would have been hard put to it when she rose from the table to tell an enquirer what had been the subjects under discussion.
It was Lady Wychwood’s custom to retire to her own bedchamber for an hour’s repose in the early afternoon before spending the next hour with her much loved offspring; Miss Farlow, for reasons which she frequently gave at tedious length, never rested during the daytime, and brightly detailed the several tasks which awaited her. They ranged from mending a broken toy for Tom to darning a sad rent in the flounce of one of her dresses. “How I came to tear it I cannot for the life of me conjecture!” she said. “I haven’t the smallest recollection of having caught it on anything, and I am persuaded I couldn’t have done so without noticing it, and I am always careful to raise my skirt when I go upstairs so I cannot have trodden on it, for even if I did I should very likely have fallen, which I did once, when I was young and thoughtless. And I must have noticed that,for I daresay I should have bruised myself. Yes, and talking of bruises,” she added earnestly, “it has me in a puzzle to know how it comes about that one can bruise oneself without having the least recollection of having done so! It seems to me to be most extraordinary that this should be so, for one would suppose it must have hurt one when it happened, but it is so. I well remember—”
But what it was she well remembered Miss Wychwood never knew, for she slipped away at this point, and sought refuge in her book-room, with the intention of dealing with her accounts. She did indeed make a determined effort to do so, but she made slow progress, because her mind wandered in an exasperating way which put her out of all patience with herself. Mr Carleton’s swarthy countenance, and his trenchant voice kept on obtruding themselves so that she continually lost count in the middle of a column of figures, and was obliged to start adding it up again. After she had arrived at three different answers to the sum, she was so cross that she uttered in a far from ladylike manner: “Oh, the devil fly away with you! You needn’t think I like you, for I don’t! I hate you!”
She bent again to her task, but ten minutes later Mr Carleton again intruded upon her, this time in person. Limbury came into the room, carefully shutting the door behind him, and informed her that Mr Carleton had called, and begged the favour of a few words with her. She was immediately torn between conflicting emotions: she did not wish to see him; there was no one whom she wished to see more. She hesitated, and Limbury said, in deprecating accents: “Knowing that you was busy, Miss Annis, I informed him of the circumstance, and ventured to say that I doubted if you was at home to visitors. But Mr Carleton, miss, is regrettably not one to take a hint, and instead of leaving his card with me, and going away, he desired me to convey to you the tidings that he had come to see you on a matter of considerable importance. So I agreed to do so, thinking that it was on some question concerning Miss Lucilla.”
“Yes, it must be, of course,” replied Miss Wychwood, with all her usual calm. “I will join him immediately.”
Limbury coughed in a still more deprecating manner, and disclosed that he had been obliged to leave Mr Carleton in the hall. Encountering an astonished stare from Miss Wychwood, he explained this extraordinary lapse by saying: “I was on the point, Miss Annis, of conducting him upstairs to the drawing-room, as I hope I have no need to tell you, when he stopped me by asking me in his—his forthright way if there was any danger of his finding Miss Farlow there.” He paused, and a slight quiver disturbed the schooled impassivity of his countenance, which Miss Wychwood had no difficulty in interpreting as barely repressed sympathy for a fellowman faced with the prospect of encountering her garrulous cousin. He continued smoothly: “I was obliged to tell him, Miss Annis, that I believed Miss Farlow to be occupied with some stitchery there. Upon which, he desired me to carry his message to you, and said that he would await your answer in the hall. What would you wish me to tell him, miss?”
“Well, I am very busy, but no doubt you are right in thinking he has come to consult with me on some business connected with Miss Lucilla,” she replied. “I had better see him, I suppose. Pray show him in!”
Limbury bowed and withdrew, reappearing a minute later to usher Mr Carleton into the room. Miss Wychwood rose from the chair behind her desk, and came forward, holding out her hand, and with a faint questioning lift to her brows. Nothing in her demeanour or in her voice could have given the most acute observer reason to suspect that her pulses had quickened alarmingly, and that she was feeling strangely breathless. “For the second time today, how do you do, sir?” she said, with a faintly mocking smile. “Have you come to issue some further instructions on how I am to treat Lucilla? Ought I to have asked your permission before permitting her to spend the day with the Stinchcombes? If that is the case, I do beg your pardon, and must hasten to assure you that Mrs Stinchcombe has promised to see her safely restored to me!”
“No, my sweet hornet,” he retorted, “that is not the case! I’ve no wish to see her, and I don’t care a straw for her present whereabouts, so don’t try to stir coals, I beg of you!” He shook hands with her as he spoke, and continued to hold hers in a strong grasp for a moment or two, while his hard, penetrating eyes scanned her countenance. They narrowed as he looked, and he said quickly: “Did I hurt you this morning? I didn’t mean to! It was the fault of my unfortunate tongue: pay no heed to it!”
She drew her hand away, saying as lightly as she could: “Good God, no! I hope I have too much sense to be hurt by the rough things you say!”
“I hope so, too,” he said. “If my tongue is not to blame, what has happened to cast you into the doldrums?”
“What in the world makes you think I have been cast into the doldrums, Mr Carleton?” she asked, in apparent amusement, sitting down, and inviting him with a slight gesture to follow her example.
He ignored this, but stood looking down at her frowningly, in a way which she found disagreeably disconcerting. After a short pause, he said: “I can’t tell that. Suffice it that I know something or someone has thrown a damp on your spirits.”
“Well, you are mistaken,” she said. “I am not in the doldrums, but I own I am somewhat out of temper, because I can’t make my wretched accounts tally!”
His rare smile dawned. “Let me see whether I can do so!”
“Certainly not! That would be to acknowledge defeat! I wish you will sit down, and tell me what has brought you here!”
“First, to inform you that I am returning to London tomorrow,” he replied.
Her eyes lifted swiftly to his face, and as swiftly sank again. She could only hope that they had not betrayed the dismay she felt, and said at once: “Ah, you have come to take leave of us! Lucilla will be very sorry to have missed you. If only you had told us that you were going back to London she would certainly have stayed at home to say goodbye to you!”
“Unnecessary! I don’t expect to be absent from Bath for very many days.”
“Oh! She will be glad of that, I expect.”
“Doubtful, I think! Lucilla’s sentiments upon this occasion don’t interest me, however. Will you be glad of it?”
Somet
hing between panic and indignation seized her: panic because a proposal was clearly imminent, and she was as far as ever from knowing how she was to respond to it; indignation because she was unaccustomed to dealing with sledge-hammer tactics, and strongly resented them. He was an impossible creature, and the only fit place for any female crazy enough to consider becoming his wife for as much as a second was Bedlam. Indignation made it possible for her to say, with a tiny shrug, and in a voice whose indifference matched his own: “Why, certainly, Mr Carleton! I am sure we shall both of us be happy to see you again.”
“Oh, for God’s sake—!” he uttered explosively. “What the devil has Lucilla to do with it?”
She raised her brows. “I imagine she has everything to do with it,” she said coldly.
He apparently managed to get the better of his spleen, for he gave a short laugh, and replied: “No, not everything, but certainly a good deal. I am going to London to try if I can discover amongst my numerous cousins one who will be willing to take charge of her until her come-out next year.”
Her eyes flashed, colour flooded her cheeks, and she said, in a shaking voice: “I see! To be sure, it is stupid of me to feel surprise, for you have repeatedly informed me that you consider me to be totally unfit to take care of Lucilla. Alas, I had flattered myself into thinking that your opinion of my fitness had undergone a change! But that, of course, was before you flew up into the boughs when you learned that Denis Kilbride had accompanied Lucilla to Laura Place! I perfectly understand you!”
“No, you do not understand me, and I shall be grateful to you if you will stop ripping up grievances and flinging them in my teeth!” he said savagely. “My decision to remove Lucilla from your charge has nothing whatsoever to do with that episode! I don’t deny that I thought, at the outset, that you were not a fit person to act as her chaperon. I thought it, and I said it, and I still think it, and I still say it, but not for the same reason! I find it intolerable that anyone as young and as beautiful as you are should set up as a duenna, behaving as though you were a dowager when you should be going to balls and assemblies for the pleasure of dancing till dawn, not to spend the night talking to the real dowagers, and keeping a watchful eye on a silly chit of a girl only a few years younger than you are yourself!”
“Lucilla is twelve years younger than I am, and I frequently dance the night through—”
“Don’t try to humbug me, my girl!” he interrupted. “I was cutting my wisdoms when you were sewing samplers! I know very well when dancing comes to an end at the New Assembly Rooms. Eleven o’clock!”
“Not at the Lower Rooms!” she protested. “They—they keep it up till midnight there! Besides, there are private balls, and—and picnic parties, and—and all manner of entertainments!” She perceived by the curl of his lip that he was not impressed by this list of Bath gaieties, and said defiantly: “And in any event if I choose to chaperon Lucilla it is quite my own concern!”
“On the contrary! It is mine!” he said.
“I acknowledge that you have the right to do as you think best for Lucilla, but you have no right to dictate to me, sir! And, what is more,” she added wrathfully, “you need not try to ride rough-shod over me, so don’t think it!”
That made him laugh. “I am more likely to box your ears!”
She was spared the necessity of answering by the appearance on the scene of Miss Farlow, who peeped into the room at that moment, saying: “Are you here, dear Annis? I just looked in to tell you that I am obliged to—Oh! I didn’t know you had a visitor! I do trust I don’t intrude! If I had had the least suspicion that you were not alone I shouldn’t have dreamt of disturbing you, for it is of no consequence, only that I find myself obliged to run into the town to purchase some more thread, and so I just popped in to ask you if you happen to need anything yourself. Oh, how do you do, Mr Carleton? I daresay you are wishing me at Jericho so I won’t stay another moment! I shall just look into the nursery before I go out, Annis, because we think poor Baby is cutting another tooth, and I mean to ask dear Lady Wychwood if she would wish me to purchase some teething-powder, though I daresay she has some by her, or, if she hasn’t, you may depend upon it Nurse will have brought some from Twynham. Well! I mustn’t interrupt you for another instant, must I? Of course, I shouldn’t have come in if I had known that Mr Carleton was with you, no doubt to consult with you about Lucilla. So, if you are quite sure there is nothing I can do for you in Gay Street—not that I am not perfectly ready to go further, as I hope I need not assure you!”
Miss Wychwood stemmed the flow at this point by saying firmly: “No, Maria, there is nothing you can do for me, thank you. Mr Carleton has come to talk privately to me about Lucilla’s affairs, and I am afraid you are interrupting us! So pray go away to do your shopping without any more ado!”
She had been in a state of seething fury when Miss Farlow had come into the room, but the expression on Mr Carleton’s face had turned fury into amusement. He looked as though it would have afforded him the maximum amount of pleasure to have wrung Miss Farlow’s neck, and this struck Miss Wychwood as being so funny that a bubble of laughter grew in her which she had the greatest difficulty in suppressing.
The door was hardly shut behind Miss Farlow when he demanded, in the voice of one driven to the extreme limit of his patience: “How you can endure to have that prattle-bag living with you is beyond my comprehension!”
“Well, I must confess that it is beyond mine too,” she answered, allowing her mirth to escape her.
“What the devil possessed her to come in babbling about thread and teething-powder when she must have known you were not alone?”
“Rampant curiosity,” she replied. “She must always discover whatever may be going on in the house.”
“Good God! Send her packing!” he said peremptorily.
“I wish I might! But since the world thinks that I should sink myself beneath reproach if I didn’t employ a respectable female to act as my chaperon I fear I can’t. It would be too brutal to dismiss her, for she means well, and what possible reason could I give for getting rid of her?”
“That you are about to be married!”
She was growing accustomed to his abrupt utterances, but this one came as a shock to her. She stared at him with startled eyes, and only managed to say faintly: “Pray don’t be absurd!”
“I am not being absurd. Marry me! I’ll engage myself to keep you safe from all such pernicious bores as your cousin.”
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