by Fiona Hill
The two ladies curtsied to one another, though Honoria had rather have fallen at the countess’s knees and begged her to forget her husband.
“Alexander, I do not feel at all well,” Honor burst out suddenly. “Might we go home?”
Alex looked in surprise from his wife to Mr. Kemp, and then to the countess. “It would seem terribly rude to the Throstles,” he said quietly. “Perhaps Mr. Kemp would be kind enough to escort you home; that way, Emily and I may stay until it is more gracious to leave.”
This, of course, was worse than anything: not only to be alone with Claude, but to leave Alexander behind with Lady Willoughby! “O no, you are right, of course. It would be dreadfully rude—I had not thought of it. It is only a slight headache, after all,” she hedged. “I am certain some fresh air will mend it at once.”
“I should be delighted to take you onto the terrace,” offered Claude promptly.
“O no, please! I mean, I pray you will not be at such pains. Emily looks quite pale herself … it is awfully warm in here, don’t you think, Emily? Come with me to the terrace, won’t you, and let us permit Mr. Kemp to pursue more amiable pastimes.”
Miss Blackwood naturally obliged her at once, and Honoria employed the brief respite afforded by her desperate attempt to quit the ball most usefully; that is, by enjoying a thorough cry on her best friend’s shoulder.
Miss Blackwood was sympathetic, but begged Honoria to take hold of herself. “It is not the end of the world, you know,” said she, patting her hand. “And the next time we see Claude, we may give him the cut direct and have done with him.”
“He will never leave me alone,” cried the other wretchedly. “He is all conceit, and will pretend he did not see it.”
“In that case, I shall slit his throat,” Miss Blackwood suggested practically.
“O, Emily, would you?” sobbed Honor, between laughter and tears. “I should be so obliged.”
“It would be a rare pleasure, I assure you.”
“But that is not the greatest trouble,” Honor resumed, her spirits somewhat restored by her sister’s macabre jest. “It is Alex, after all; you see his demeanour with me … and with Her.”
“Well, as for Her … you heard what Lady Jane said about her morals. She will not toy with a marriage that is intact.”
“But mine is not intact!” cried the distraught young lady. “O, Emily, what shall I do?”
But Emily, unhappily, had no easy answer to this. It was all she could do to rally Honoria to some semblance of calm, and to persuade her they had best return to the ball-room presently.
“You will not leave me, will you?” Mrs. Blackwood pleaded.
“Not if I can possibly avoid it,” the other promised, and turned to lead the way indoors again.
Her progress was impeded, however, by the sudden appearance in the door-way of a tall, masculine figure, a figure whose voice (for it was too shadowy on the terrace to be sure by other means) soon identified the interloper as Mr. Ambrose Tayt, the gentleman who on the night previous had seemed so familiar to Honor.
“Miss Blackwood, I think?” said he, inclining his head. “And Mrs. Blackwood?”
“You are Mr. Tayt,” said Honoria, finding this meeting with a known person unexpectedly bracing. She smiled, and went on, “It is insufferably warm inside, don’t you think? Although quite, quite beautiful,” she added. “The Throstles are perfectly hospitable.”
Mr. Tayt agreed. “I am delighted to meet with you again, Miss Blackwood,” said he. “With both of you, indeed—but particularly with Miss Blackwood. I am sure you understand, ma’am,” he excused himself to Honor.
“O, yes, absolutely. We married ladies cannot expect to be so fascinating as those with less definite futures.” She found her spirits lifting amazingly at this encounter with another human being, and one so kindly disposed towards herself and Emily. Really, she refined too much upon her own difficulties.
“The last set before supper is forming, Miss Blackwood,” Ambrose went on smoothly. “May I hope you are not yet engaged for it?”
“Well—I do not know,” Emily temporised, looking anxiously at Honor.
“O, do go ahead, please. You need not bother about me,” she said cheerfully, and meant it. “I shall do very well.”
“But—Claude,” Emily murmured to her.
“If Mrs. Blackwood is unengaged also—though I know not how such a happy chance develops!—I know a gentleman who has begged to meet her all night. Might I present him to you? He really is a capital fellow, though a bit eager.”
“I—I should be glad to stand up with him,” Honor replied.
“You will make him a very happy man,” said Mr. Tayt, leading both ladies back into the ball-room. “I told him you were married, and he was quite glum, but this will improve his spirits.” And with similar easy, inconsequential remarks, Mr. Tayt brought the ladies to where his friend stood (a Mr. Munroe, if Honoria heard his name right) and contrived for all of them to take their places in a set.
Mr. Tayt said little to Emily while the music continued, but when it had ceased he begged the pleasure of accompanying her in to supper. This honour was accorded him (for Miss Blackwood had no desire to stand alone until, perhaps, Mr. Kemp might discover and descend upon her) and the two of them walked from the ball-room together. Honoria, attended by her husband—who had at last deserted the countess—preceded them by a little, and so could not hear their conversation. This was well for Emily, for it was a curious conversation, if closely observed.
“I think you paint,” said Mr. Tayt lightly, and delighted in the palpable twitch of Miss Blackwood’s hand upon his sleeve.
“I paint,” said she.
“So do I; I was most interested, therefore, when Lord Sperling told me you are something of an adept.”
Mr. Tayt was smiling down upon her, but Emily kept her regard fixed rigidly before them. “Might we sit near my brother?” she asked as they entered the brightly-lit supper room. “He is the tall gentleman, just there.”
“I remember your brother,” he replied, leading the way toward Alex and Honor. “I suppose he shares your interest in art? I should adore to hear his views on the artists of the Royal Academy. The annual exhibition opens any day now, I believe.”
But Miss Blackwood, rather than encouraging this seemingly acceptable topic by a rational reply, instead showed a lively alarm of a sudden, and seemed by her answer to be a most flighty young lady. “Do not let us sit by Alexander, after all,” said she at once, pulling away from the direction they had taken. Mr. Tayt observed her with evident amusement. “Pray, I see sufficient of my brother at home. Might we not join the Rowleys?”
Mr. Tayt obliged her with a smile indicative of something deeper than mere civility, and Emily took care thereafter to steer their discourse away from the topic of art. Her relief was manifest when the light repast was finished, and she hastened from Ambrose’s company with all due speed.
“Mr. Tayt seems a kind young fellow,” Honoria said to her, when they had left the Throstles and regained their own home. “Do not you think so?”
“He is—quite adequate in kindness,” Emily conceded.
“My dear!” Honor said reproachfully, reaching at the same time for her slippers and removing them thankfully. The three young people sat now in their own snug sitting-room, exchanging impressions of the evening before they should go to sleep. “His manner is such as must please, I am sure, and he struck me as being most intelligent. You are excessively severe with him, really.”
“I may be severe with him if I like, I suppose,” said Emily crossly, and instantly turned the topic. “Alexander, would you do us the kindness of stabbing Claude Kemp, please? In the back, if you can manage it.”
Alexander, who had more or less resumed his habitual distraction, begged his sister to repeat herself; he had not heard.
“I say, will you be good enough to kill Claude Kemp? He is here in London, as you must recall, and I do not think I shall enjoy this
city until he is gone out of it again.”
Alexander regarded her with an air of mild bemusement, and said he did not see why.
“Because he is a boor, dear brother, and a great beast as well. Why he very nearly tore Honoria limb from limb tonight, when she would not waltz with him. I am grateful we contrived to avoid him after that, but I doubt it will be possible henceforth, now he has discovered us.”
“Did you wish not to waltz with him, Honoria?” he enquired dispassionately. “Then you ought not to have.”
“But he forced her to do so; I tell you, he is a brute!”
“Emily, you might not wish to meddle in matters that do not concern you,” Alexander said evenly. “Whatever Kemp is, we have known him all our lives, and I think it most unlikely he should tear anybody limb from limb.”
“But he did, Alexander,” cried his sister in exasperation. “Honoria, did not he?”
“He did—he was rather—forceful,” said she, her old timidity regaining possession of her, and making it impossible for her to join wholly in Emily’s energetic censure.
“Well, then, you see, Emily,” Alexander resumed, in the tone of one who has been vindicated, “there is a great difference between being forceful and brutal. You refine too much upon the matter. Besides, if Honoria has any quarrel with Claude, I am certain they are well-acquainted enough to settle it between them.”
“Alexander, sometimes you make me ill,” Emily declared, and sprang rather violently from the sofa. “I am going to bed,” she snapped, and immediately made good her words.
Alexander, utterly untouched (it seemed) by the tone of his sister’s pronouncement, rose lazily and yawned behind his hand. “A very good notion,” he said to his wife. “I believe I shall retire myself. Good night, my dear.”
“Good night,” she returned, helpless to do otherwise, and so matters were left for a few days: Emily’s absences entirely mysterious, Alexander’s friendship with the countess unmentioned and unexplained, and Honoria positive that her husband persisted in believing a guilty connection linked her to Claude Kemp. At least Emily was home on Sunday, and they all went together to church; Honoria employed the ample time left to her husband’s occupation with his monograph to do a great deal of letter-writing, and even received a few letters herself. Among these was a note from her aunts, dated Bench Street, April 21. The closely scrawled sheets proclaimed the hand of Miss Mercy Deverell, and indeed her signature was to be found at the bottom, with “& Prudence” pencilled in afterwards.
“My Dear Niece,” it read, “I am told every girl in London for the first time forgets everything but what is under her nose; and so, if that is true, perhaps I must remind you that I am your aunt, and so is my sister—which is why I address you ‘Dear Niece.’ My sister Prudence has just asked me to read what I have written so far, and now I have done so she informs me we received a letter from you not three days ago; this being the case, I am reassured that the business mentioned above (about every girl forgetting her past in London) is fustian merely, and will no longer regard it. If you will excuse me one moment longer, I will read that letter to which my sister refers … if she can only find it … she is looking for it now … Ah yes! She has found it and hands it to me.
“Now I am in a far better case! Before I had no notion what to tell you, and only wrote because Prudence desired it—but here comes your letter to us, and provides me with any number of queries and remarks. The Post Office is a very great institution, my dear, and we ought to value it highly.”
Honoria had to break here, and steal a moment to laugh in. It was so like Aunt Mercy to begin a letter with no object, and to make the letter itself her subject. She continued to savour this eccentricity as she read on.
“You say you have got a great many new gowns; well, I have got a new shawl myself, which I think is very pretty. It is very pretty, is it not? Squire Kemp gave it me, you know—he is the magistrate here in Pittering, in case you had forgot—for being so kind as to play chess with him each Wednesday. Truthfully, I do not find it much of a task, and had far rather play chess than lace my boots, for example, but I do not tell Squire Kemp so, and I beg you will not either, for he would feel mighty silly about giving me a shawl for playing if he knew. Prudence reads over my shoulder and interrupts me to say all men are silly, and would I like some tea?—but no doubt you know all men are silly, for I believe you brought one with you to London.
“As always, the blessing of our existence here continues to be our small friends, who mew and bark their regards to you constantly. A very secret project, about which Prudence now reminds me you must be told nothing, is going forward in their behalf—and I do not think Sir Proctor will be sorry when he learns what he is to do, or at least when he has done it … or at least, that is what Prudence says. Prudence is always right, my dear; or did you know?
“You say you have taken a house in Albemarle Street.
“We live in Bench Street as we have for years. I would not mention it except for the fact that your mentioning your direction has proved very convenient indeed—as otherwise we should not know how to send this letter. Perhaps my including this intelligence as to our location will prove equally valuable to you.
“Perhaps not.
“In any case, the bottom of the page advances more rapidly than anyone could have dreamt it would when I started, and Prudence says if I close now she will scribble her name in below, and Mary may take this letter to be posted immediately, when she goes to visit Mr. Morley. Mr. Morley is a butcher.
“Your very obdt., etc.”
This missive, extraordinary though it was, did more to improve Honoria’s spirits than any reasonable thing could possibly have done. She thrust it into Emily’s hand, for that lady was just returning from her daily errand of mystery, and could not otherwise greet her for laughing. Emily laughed, too, when she had read it, and relations between the two young ladies were easier than they had been in days.
“Your Aunt Mercy is truly the oddest little sprite! What can she mean about a secret project? And Sir Proctor’s not being sorry for it?”
Honor blushed a little and said, “I will explain it to you some day, but you remind me of something: Emily, if I were to guess the truth of your life away from here, would you tell me?”
“I do not think you could guess it,” said the other.
“Then let me attempt it, at least. Is it possible you have taken a studio of your own, and paint there all day?”
“No,” said Emily, smiling tightly. “Would to Heaven it were.”
“Then you have found an artist to instruct you—is that it? And you go to him all day?”
“No again,” Miss Blackwood replied. “I feel as if we were playing a parlour game, don’t you?”
“A little,” Honoria sighed. “Emily, why won’t you tell me?”
“Because you would say it is impossible, and it is not impossible, for I am doing it.”
“But you do not paint here! And I know you too well to believe you have given it up altogether.”
“Do you? Then you know me rather too well, indeed,” said Emily mischievously. “Or, perhaps, not well enough. One more question now, and the game is at an end.”
“Only one more?”
“Only one—and that was it,” cried Miss Blackwood, and she jumped abruptly from her seat and fled the room, laughing at her outraged sister, who pursued her to no avail.
“Lady Jane invites us to drive in the park with her tomorrow,” said Honoria that evening at tea. “Will you come, Alexander?”
“I think not,” he answered, idly turning over in his hands a number of notes that had arrived for him in the morning’s post, and that he had been too much engaged with study that day to examine till now. “Perhaps Emily will accompany you.”
“Perhaps,” said his sister, with a significant glance at Honor—which was meant, as its recipient knew, to remind her she was lying. Naturally she would not be able to go; but Alex need not learn that.
�
��Here is an odd invitation,” said he, having opened a letter and perused it. “It is from a Mr. Ambrose Tayt, Esquire. Do we know a Mr. Tayt?”
“Know him?” muttered Emily, almost inaudibly. “I shall wring his noble neck.”
“I beg your pardon, Emily?”
“Nothing, Alex. What does Mr. Tayt suggest we do?”
“He desires us to accompany him to the exhibition at Somerset Place, the artists selected by the Royal Academy, apparently. I wonder he did not send the invitation to you, my dear. I am sure I do not recall him.”
“Perhaps he felt it too forward to address me a letter,” Honoria guessed. “You remember him, don’t you? He was at Emily’s come-out, the gentleman who wore his cravat à la Byron.”
“Who affected to wear his cravat à la Byron, you mean,” Emily corrected darkly.
“I can’t think what makes you so ill-disposed towards him,” said Honor mildly.
“Anyway, he wishes we will go with him on Saturday next,” Alex resumed. “Shall we?”
“I wonder why he chooses Saturday,” Honor mused.
Miss Blackwood’s mouth worked angrily, but she said nothing.
“I think we ought to accept,” Mr. Blackwood said finally. “It will be pleasant for Emmy.”
“O, very pleasant,” said she sarcastically, but prudence restrained her from saying more, and the matter was thus decided. In the interim, however, there were also a soirée at Lady Frane’s to be attended, two invitations to the opera, and a masked ball.
“I am not certain we ought to go to that,” said Honoria. “It was very good of the Rowleys to include us in their party, but I believe it may not be proper.”
“Perhaps not,” said Alex, “but it is sure to be diverting. I suggest you ask Lady Jane, tomorrow, when she takes you on your drive.”
“I will do that,” Honoria agreed, and did in fact.
Lady Jane, upon learning that her only companion was to be Honoria, had persuaded the coachman to let her take the phaeton out herself, and arrived in Albemarle Street holding the ribbons in fine style.