‘I do so hate to disagree with you, Aunt Tattie,’ Portia continued, ‘but I am very much afraid that I must. According to all the talk I hear most of the peerage who are so anxious to get themselves married before the end of the Season are so inclined not because of any romantic inclination but due entirely to the appalling state of the rooves on their stately homes. Already this year no less than four American heiresses have married into our aristocracy and my friends tell me that more than just their beauty and novelty value led to their betrothals. They say that even as we are speaking the new Duke of Marlborough is hunting for an heiress with more zest than his father hunted foxes.’
‘Sunny’s only taking after his father,’ Aunt Tattie replied. ‘But you’re quite right about rooves, because it was Lily Hammersley’s money that got Blenheim twelve miles of new roof. And a laboratory for the duke’s experiments with electricity. But even so—’
‘No even so, Aunt Tattie. With an inheritance such as I now have, I must be considered a catch. And that I promise you is enough to make me pack my bags tonight and return to Bannerwick,’ she added laughing, but inside she was serious enough, thinking longingly of her boat, the river, and the freedom of just being alone with the wind and the water, rather than as it were being ‘up for the taking’.
And so in all probability Portia might indeed have returned to Bannerwick had she not first had to attend a small dinner party at Medlar House given for her by her Aunt Augustine with the Duke of Salisbury as the principal guest. In spite of the persistent rumour that the duke’s son had already lost his heart to one of the girls who was generally considered to be of no consequence Augustine Medlar thought this an irrelevancy as such a match would certainly not win the approval of the duke. She therefore sat Portia on the Marquess of Huntingford’s right. The placement was of little interest to Portia who found the character of the Duke of Salisbury’s son as ordinary as his looks, but she was prepared not to renege on the invitation since given the family’s wealth she knew that if the marquess was interested in her it would not be for her inheritance. Compared to his lordship Portia was a pauper.
As it happened, it was not the Marquess of Huntingford who was interested in Portia, or indeed in whom Portia found herself interested. It was the man placed to sit on her own right-hand side who prevented Portia Tradescant’s now firmly intended if a little premature return to Bannerwick Park.
THE DRAWING ROOM
Little was said after Augustine Medlar’s dinner party. It was, according to all who attended, perfect in every way, and afterwards the considered opinion was that it was certainly the most notable dinner party so far thrown that Season, almost as widely discussed as the small dinner Lady Paget had thrown for his Grace the Duke of Marlborough the previous season when his hostess had placed the duke next to the woman who was now tipped to become his duchess, the beautiful and inestimably rich American debutante Consuelo Vanderbilt.
Little was said because Portia could not find the words for what was happening to her. That was one of the reasons if not the main one. Stunned by the news she had received only that morning that she was now a rich young woman, she really had been seriously determined to truncate her involvement in the Season and return home to Bannerwick, there to reconsider the shape and substance of her life. As Evie had helped her dress for the dinner she considered that although she would certainly miss London, a city she was growing to like more and more each day, now that she had money of her own she could return there any time because London itself was not going to vanish overnight. There was, up until the moment she had sat down to dinner at Medlar House, only one thing or rather one person she would miss by going home early and that was her new friend Lady Emily Persse. Again she thought that perhaps theirs was a friendship which could be continued at any time, but even though she was too young to have experienced the vagaries of friendship none the less instinctively she felt that if she fled now and deserted Emily at this point of their acquaintance things between them might well never be quite the same again.
Then she had taken her place for dinner which had been laid in Aunt Augustine’s second dining room, a round room with a cupola whose walls were decorated in rich dark red and gold leaf, escorted to the table by the Marquess of Huntingford, and as she had done so any decision regarding her immediate future had been taken out of her hands.
‘Good evening,’ the man on Portia’s right had said, having deposited an elderly dowager at her place on his right. ‘It seems I must inflict myself on you again, but then you must know what they say about Society. Same old people, same old faces.’
Portia had recognized the voice as soon as he spoke. Deep and mellifluous, but shaded with more than a hint of amusement which removed any trace of self-importance or pomposity. It was in fact a thoroughly good-humoured voice and as Portia already knew could only belong to Lord Childhays.
‘I would hardly call yours an old face, Lord Childhays,’ Portia had returned as she had taken her place.
‘But the same face next to which you have already sat once at dinner, and although as you so kindly imply it is not exactly an old face it is a face considerably older than the many younger ones I have seen dancing with you.’
‘I am a little tired of dancing for one reason and another. To be perfectly frank I would not be heartbroken if I did not have to attend another ball for a year.’
‘Do you not enjoy dancing?’
‘I always enjoy dancing, Lord Childhays.’
‘What is it then that you do not enjoy?’
‘I suppose having to have the same conversations every evening. I cannot disguise that I find them more than a little tedious. Most young men appear to have only one subject. Themselves. And I really do not like this affectation they have of being bored all the time.’
‘Most young women today also affect that sort of manner, Miss Tradescant, the hint of ennui, the disinterest, the lack of enthusiasm. Except you. You do not appear to have this affectation at all. In fact you are refreshingly unaffected. So I believe you when you say you find the repetition of these dances tedious.’
‘Thank you, Lord Childhays, for I mean it most sincerely. But there is something else about these events that I find I don’t enjoy.’
‘The fact that they make you feel as though you were a creature come to market.’ Lord Childhays said it as a statement of fact, rather than asking it as a question.
‘Why yes,’ Portia replied, pleasantly surprised by his apparent perspicacity. ‘That is very clever of you.’
‘Not really, Miss Tradescant,’ Lord Childhays replied. ‘I have been through quite a lot of Seasons so I well know how they make people feel. Some people. Sensitive people. The sort of people who know that most of the young men who come and ask them to dance already know more than enough about them. Of course not all young women object to this. In fact I understand some rather enjoy it because they too are out to make a match, particularly our American visitors who now invade our Season regularly in order to marry into English Society. And purely, it seems, so that they may wear ermine and velvet at coronations – as if there were several in one’s lifetime! Or so that they may have places of honour at dinner, crested writing paper and coronets on their bedlinen. I somehow doubt these are the sorts of things likely to appeal to you, Miss Tradescant.’
‘You are quite right,’ Portia replied. ‘I think there probably are many more important things in life, things which should occupy our attention better than whether or not we can have a coronet on our bedlinen or sit in an honoured place at table. Or, on the other hand, whether or not we can afford to get our roof releaded.’
‘I am more fortunate than most in that direction,’ her dinner companion replied, keeping an admirably straight face. ‘My country seat was re-roofed only five years ago, and besides I have the good fortune that were it all to fall in again tomorrow I would be well able to have it put back up immediately.’ Lord Childhays then frowned, as if a thought had suddenly struck him. ‘I do hope you
r own family home is not in need of such repairs, Miss Tradescant?’ he enquired. ‘Rooves can be the very devil. I didn’t altogether mean to make light of it.’
At that moment, Portia had not been certain as to whether or not her neighbour was taking her altogether seriously. She had meant the test she had set him to be a genuine one, yet there was a look in his eyes and a set to his mouth which definitely suggested he might well be teasing her.
‘You may make what you like of it, Lord Childhays,’ she had returned. ‘I really don’t give a lot of thought to the state of people’s rooftops.’
‘I don’t either, Miss Tradescant. So that is a relief. Let us return to the subject of dancing, if we might?’
‘Why not?’
‘I love dancing, but it’s a sad fact of life but a true one, did you know, that once a man is married he rarely if ever dances again with his wife?’
‘You are right, that is indeed sad. I just hope that if I ever get married whoever I marry will not feel that way about me. In fact I shall make it part of my marital contract that my husband is compelled to dance with me every evening.’
‘Having watched you dance, Miss Tradescant, whoever marries you would be a very foolish fellow if he did not fulfil such an obligation with every enthusiasm.’
‘You have watched me dance, Lord Childhays?’
‘You may tell a great deal about a woman from the way she dances, Miss Tradescant. Dancing, even the dances we amateurs perform on the ballroom floor, says a great deal about us – why dancing is the very stuff of life itself.’
Portia had been more than anxious to ask her neighbour what he had learned about her from watching her dance, but naturally, in the circumstances, modesty had had to prevail and so instead she had tried to widen the conversation to embrace the ballet and the reasons why since time immemorial people had always wished to dance.
Much to Portia’s secret relief, however, Lord Childhays had professed himself less than interested in the ballet, saying he found it altogether too noisy and as a consequence was unable to take it seriously. Portia had wondered how an art form which was based on mime could be considered ‘noisy’ to which Lord Childhays had commented drily that she had obviously never been to the ballet and sat near the stage, otherwise she would understand all too well what he had meant by too noisy.
‘And it isn’t just the dancers’ blocked shoes, Miss Tradescant. If you sit near enough to get a reasonable view you can often and all too easily hear the grunts and groans of the dancers as they lift each other, or in some cases as they struggle to achieve the necessary elevation. No, no, I far prefer the opera, and the theatre. While if I myself feel like dancing then I prefer to attend less formal affairs than the balls to which you poor creatures are subjected every Season. I like to go – and I fear this will shock you – but I far prefer to go to what we know as “married” dances, dances given by married people, you see, which are altogether much more fun. This business of not being able to dance more than one dance with a single young woman I find absurd. Which is the reason why I have not yet asked you to dance with me. For I very much fear that were I to do so and you accepted then I would be unable to surrender you to the arms of another.’
After that, Portia had difficulty in remembering what exactly was said for the rest of dinner for her head was suddenly in the clouds, although she well remembered Lord Childhays’ saying that the Season would take a turn for the better soon because the following week was Derby week, and then a fortnight later it was the Royal meeting at Ascot. Most and perhaps best of all she recalled that when he discovered she had a passion for sailing he told her that he would be honoured if she would be the guest of himself and his family at Cowes during the final week of the Season, an invitation which Portia was dying to accept but remembering all of a sudden what Aunt Tattie had told her of Lord Childhays’ apparent reputation as a roué she delayed giving an answer, saying she would of course have to discuss the possibility with her aunt. Naturally the exquisitely well-mannered Lord Childhays affected to understand perfectly.
Then when the ladies finally rose to leave the gentlemen she found that all she could think of was the ridiculously handsome and debonair man who had sat on her right. Roué he might be, she thought, but he was seven leagues more entertaining than anyone else she had yet met in the Season so far.
Which was why little had been said the day after Augustine Medlar’s dinner party for the Duke of Salisbury, little that is by Portia, who found she was not yet ready to discuss the matter of Lord Childhays nor his invitation to Cowes with Aunt Tattie. On the other hand Aunt Augustine had plenty to say, arriving mid-morning especially to make plain her displeasure with her niece for all but ignoring the man on her left, one of the main aspirants to the title of Catch of the Season.
Portia protested that she had not ignored the Marquess of Huntingford. On the contrary he had all but ignored her, as he had all but ignored the young American lady who had been seated on his left, a Miss Amelia Randle who had later complained vociferously about the marquess’s manners when the ladies had retired after dinner for the usual wiltingly boring small talk. Aunt Augustine had done her best to pretend this was not so, and that while Algernon Huntingford was perhaps a little shy he was in reality a most interesting young man and certainly one whom Portia should at least try to cultivate.
‘Why?’ Portia wondered. ‘Does his house perhaps need re-roofing?’
‘I have simply no idea at all what you mean by such a remark,’ Aunt Augustine returned huffily. ‘How should I know anything about the state of the family seat?’
‘Someone told me that the house needs extensive repair work,’ Portia replied. ‘And that his Grace would be very happy if his son made a worthwhile match. I think that is why Miss Randle was so disappointed to be ignored. Apparently her family is hugely wealthy – from building railroads I gather – and she had every hope of catching the marquess’s eye.’
‘I know all about the Randle family thank you very much, Portia,’ Aunt Augustine said, her mood worsening. ‘You seem to forget it was I who was the hostess at the dinner party.’
‘And made the placement, Aunt Augustine.’
‘It was certainly a mistake sitting you next to that roué Lord Childhays. I imagined he would be far too old to be interested in a slip of a thing like you. What you and he found to talk about quite so animatedly escapes me entirely. I imagine he was simply being kind, because he is not the marrying kind, my dear, far from it.’
‘I imagine you are right, Aunt Augustine,’ Portia replied, without a glimmer of a smile, although just the name of Lord Childhays had suddenly made her feel like dancing. Even so, the constant use of the word roué to describe her admirer was beginning to get Portia down, since it implied that her dinner companion, he of the amused expression and worldly charm, he who had seen something in her dancing of which she still had to be told, was in fact merely a libertine, and therefore even his invitation to Cowes must be viewed with suspicion for Portia had read far too much about women married to men who played with their affections ever to wish to join their ranks.
‘At least his house is in good repair,’ she now added, finding herself oddly determined not to let Aunt Augustine have the last word on Lord Childhays in case she was being grossly unfair on him. ‘Nor does Lord Childhays have any worries about keeping it in such a state.’
‘I fail to understand you, Portia, and you are fast making me lose my patience,’ Aunt Augustine replied. ‘What in heaven’s name is all this talk of houses and their good or bad repair, please tell me?’
‘Lord Childhays is not hunting for a fortune, Aunt Augustine, of that at least he can be absolved. Unlike I should imagine a good eighty per cent of the young men on offer.’
Augustine Medlar stared hard at her niece, drawing herself even more upright in her chair as she did so as if deeply affronted. ‘Explain yourself, child,’ she said. ‘Your manner is most unbecoming, and altogether unlike you.’
�
��We have paid a visit to Feverfew and Feverfew, Augustine,’ Aunt Tattie said, now entering a conversation which previously she had been only enjoying as an audience. ‘Mr Feverfew has informed Portia about her inheritance.’
It was as if someone had suddenly drenched Augustine Medlar with ice cold water, so astounded was her look. Portia failed to understand why she should look so visibly amazed, since her aunt must have known about the bequest. This however was most definitely not the impression she was endeavouring to convey for she remained speechless while growing ever more visually aghast.
‘Augustine, please stop!’ Aunt Tattie exclaimed, starting to laugh. ‘I had quite forgotten that look of yours! The look you can give just like that! Whenever you are found out!’
‘Found out in what precisely?’ Aunt Augustine demanded in return, unwilling as always to concede the higher ground. ‘I am astounded simply because I cannot believe my own forgetfulness.’
‘No, neither can we, dearest!’ Aunt Tattie continued to laugh, more than Portia could remember her laughing since those early sunny days they had all so much enjoyed at Bannerwick. ‘You are saying in effect that it had quite simply slipped your memory that our dear niece was to inherit a fortune?’
‘No of course I am not! I am simply saying I had forgotten the terms and indeed the nature of the bequest.’
‘Which of course you remember in full now, Augustine. Without even having to be reminded of them. Oh, what nonsense! Of course you had not forgotten! You have never forgotten anything of import in the whole of your life I should imagine, Augustine. Certainly not since I have known you. Of course you knew of Portia’s inheritance and Edward’s too. This is why you were so anxious to remove Edward from Lampard’s and my keeping and to patronize Portia’s social debut, is it not? So that you could manipulate their lives to your benefit.’
‘I protest, Tatiana!’ Augustine said, but with considerably less fire than usual.
‘You can protest until you go bright blue in the face, Augustine! But it’s the truth!’ Aunt Tattie continued. ‘Marrying Portia to someone of your choosing could only add to your social fame and power, much as the sort of thing you also undoubtedly have planned for my darling Edward! Well you shall not succeed this time, Augustine, and there’s an end to it! I simply shall not allow it.’
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