A London Season

by Anthea Bell

  “Yes, I dare say,” admitted Lady Yoxford, vaguely. “Only I may not have perfectly understood ... do you really mean her to reside here?”

  “Well, she can’t stay with me, can she?” pointed out her widower brother. “Uncle John’s old tenants wish to continue leasing the Grafton town house, and I’m more than happy for them to remain there. I don’t want to be saddled with its upkeep, as well as that barracks of a place in Westmorland. I’d prefer to let that too, or even try if the entail can’t be broken and sell it,” he added thoughtfully. “Well, that’s all for future consideration. Myself, I don’t wish to live anywhere but Waterleys when I’m in the country.”

  Isabella Yoxford could sympathize. Like her brother, she felt a strong affection for their childhood home of Waterlevs Hall, a pleasant Queen Anne mansion of modest size on the small but thriving Hertfordshire estate inherited by Sir Edmund from their late father. “And that will be very agreeable for us, since now we shall see more of you!” she said comfortably. “I can quite see that to reside in Westmorland would be most inconvenient, when you are for ever needed at the Foreign Office.”

  “Yes,” said Sir Edmund, returning to the matter under discussion, “but the thing is that when I’m in town, my old set of rooms will do for me quite as well as they’ve done these last few years, whenever I was home from the Continent. And I can hardly accommodate a young female in what is decidedly a bachelor establishment!”

  Lady Yoxford was forced to admit the truth of this. “Oh dear, if only she began, and then caught herself up. She had been about to say, “If only Catherine had been alive,” but she knew better than to risk opening old wounds by the mention of her brother’s wife to his face. In answer to his look of inquiry, therefore, she amended her sentence, and finished, “If only Jack had not been so foolishly reckless! And it’s my belief,” she added, “that Sophia, far from exercising that restraining influence upon him that Uncle John had hoped for, positively encouraged him! Indeed, I would almost say it served her right to be with him in the carriage that day, except that of course it would be very dreadful to wish anyone dead in such a shocking accident, especially when one was sincerely fond of that person, but still, you can see where Persephone gets her wildness! Not to mention her fanciful nature—for was ever a poor baby burdened with such a ridiculous name?”

  “That was a sad day for us all—more particularly Persephone, despite her being too young to know anything about it,” said Sir Edmund quietly, remembering his dazzling cousin Jack: Jack, so uncritically admired, and so tragically dead in a carriage accident along with his young wife, fifteen years ago.

  In point of fact, the admiration between the cousins had been mutual. With no brothers or sisters of his own, Jack Grafton, heir to one of the premier baronetcies in the country, had spent much of his childhood at Waterleys. He and Edmund had attended Harrow together, and ne had passed many a school holiday with Edmund and Isabella in Hertfordshire, rather than make the long journey up to the Lake District. Sir Edmund allowed himself a moment’s nostalgic remembrance of those carefree days. And now, he thought, his and Isabella’s parents were gone, Jack too, and last of all old Sir John himself. But surely the saddest loss because the most untimely, had been that of Jack, whose daring, quicksilver nature had fascinated Edmund, and who in turn had known how to value his cousin’s agility of mind and clever knack of getting the pair of them out of scrapes into which he, Jack, had led the way.

  Almost with his last breath, as he lay dying by the roadside near his shattered carriage, dragged out of reach of the horses’ threshing hooves, he had said faintly—though loud enough to be heard by the men who had run in vain to his aid—that he knew Edmund would look after the child. Edmund Grafton would not have needed this commendation from his friend and cousin to ensure that he kept a benevolent eye on little Persephone, but since his diplomatic activities kept him out of England so much, the relationship was necessarily an impersonal one. Indeed, Persephone Grafton was on his conscience, for he knew that her grandfather was too old and ailing to take much interest in the child whose mere existence reminded him painfully of his dead son. It was easy enough for Edmund to take care of the business matters relating to her upbringing from a distance, but he felt he should have done more. As it was, inevitably most of her childhood had been spent at school, with occasional visits to the Yoxfords in Upper Brook Street—although there had been none of those for the past two years. However, as Sir Edmund patiently explained to his sister yet again, the responsibility for Persephone’s welfare had always lain morally if not in law with Jack’s cousins, and now the legal guardianship of the Grafton heiress had passed to him, along with the baronetcy and the entailed Westmorland estates.

  “That’s all very well, but I am sure I did what I could to amuse her when she visited us last,” said Lady Yoxford, apprehensively, “and you know what came of that!”

  Her spirits visibly quailed as she recalled what she, like the Miss Maddens, thought of as the Unfortunate Business of the over-susceptible tutor. Since Isabella Yoxford’s spirits quailed easily, she did not stop to reflect that the circumstance was unlikely to recur, but her brother, swiftly calculating her family’s ages in his head, pointed that fact out to her.

  “Well, you’ve no tutor in the house now, have you? I know Charley’s at Cambridge, and surely Harry is away at Eton by this time! And didn’t you say, in a letter, that you had no plans to engage another tutor for Edward, but would send him to share lessons with the Barleigh boys? How old is Edward now—ten?”

  “Yes, and what with him and the twins, and little Maria on my hands too...” Isabella’s voice died away, and she sighed plaintively. “You do not know what it is to be a Mother, Edmund!”

  Calling to mind the small army of staff, headed by the stalwart, familiar figures of Nurse Barker and Miss Merriwether the governess, who so efficiently ran the Yoxford nursery and schoolroom, Sir Edmund was unimpressed by his sister’s pathetic appeal, nor did he attempt to deny the obvious. “No, I don’t!” said he, smiling. “Almost a shame! For when I see how well motherhood becomes you, I appreciate its advantages! I conclude it has a positively rejuvenating effect—I swear you look a year younger than when I last set eyes on you, Bella, and that was over a twelvemonth ago!”

  Lady Yoxford did indeed present a pretty picture, elegantly disposed upon a sofa and clad in a gown of blush-pink barege ornamented with rouleaux of a deeper rose hue around the hem, its sleeves fashionably puffed and wide at the shoulder. Her prettily rounded chin nestled becomingly into a falling tucker. At thirty-seven, just two years older than her brother, she could boast of a complexion whose delicacy was hardly faded, while the shining deep gold of her hair was undimmed: the grey and white of her drawing room in Yoxford House set off her rose and gold beauty to perfection. Hers was an amiable character, and only the prospect of being required to stir herself to unusual activity on someone else’s behalf could fret her for long. So she was easily enough cajoled by her brother’s compliments into momentarily forgetting the tiresome matter of Persephone’s impending arrival, and broke into a trill of laughter.

  “Flattery will not serve you, Edmund!” she said, with mock severity.

  “I’m not flattering!” he protested. “You look charmingly, my dear.”

  “So she does!” exclaimed a cheerful voice, as Lady Yoxford’s husband entered the room. “Ay, so she does! Well, how d’you do, Edmund?”

  “Very well, George,” said Sir Edmund, turning to shake hands warmly with the Viscount, a sturdy, easy-going man whom he held in great affection. “And how do you go on? No need to tell me how Isabella is! I can see that for myself, as I have been telling her.”

  “And pretty well for you I know your voice!” said his lordship, chuckling. “Hallo, said I to myself, coming in through the hall—by Jove, who’s this fellow making up to my wife, and in my own house too? Imagine my surprise on finding it was you! We hardly expected you these two days yet. Made good speed, eh?”
/>   “Yes, a remarkably easy passage to Dover,” said Sir Edmund. “And how’s the family?”

  “Tolerably well, tolerably well!” said the proud father, smiling, as he turned to glance at the pictorial record of his offspring. “You know, you’re right, Edmund: Isabella don’t look a day older than when that was painted!”

  The picture above the mantelpiece was a group painted by Mr. Charles Leslie two years earlier, representing the Viscount and Viscountess, their elder sons, the Honourable Charles and the Honourable Henry Hargrave, then young Edward and the twins Thomas and James seated at their parents’ feet, while the baby Maria, pet of the whole family and then just one year old, was clasped in her mother’s arms. Parted from his wife during the latter period of the French wars (in which, like his brother-in-law Edmund, he had served with some distinction), George Hargrave had succeeded to his father’s title at about the same time as the Corsican Ogre was finally defeated. His absence from England with the Army accounted for the gap in age between his second and third sons, but on coming home for good, Lord Yoxford had been very ready to make up for lost time, and the longed-for daughter, after so many boys, had at last crowned his and Isabella’s efforts.

  He now said cheerfully, “So we’re to have another addition to the family, eh? I collect young Persephone is coming!”

  Thus recalled to her sense of grievance, Lady Yoxford said plaintively, “Yes, and what am I to do with her, Edmund?”

  “Oh, take her into Society, show her how to go on,” said her brother, rather vaguely. “Put her in the way of making a good match, I suppose—Lord, Bella, I don’t know what it is one does with a girl in her first Season!”

  “Nor do I, having sons only except for Maria, who is just three!” Isabella pointed out. “And when I merely think of that tutor of Harry’s—Edmund, I can only say I shudder!”

  “Poor young fellow—child’s looks turned his head!” said Lord Yoxford indulgently. “Can’t blame him, Bella! She bade fair to be a beauty even at sixteen, and I dare swear she’s a stunner now! And she’ll have learnt some sense too—eh, Edmund?”

  “So I imagine, though I confess I hardly know—I had no time to visit Bath when I was last in England. But I must go down there for her as soon as I may. Persephone’s eighteen years of age—it’s high time she left that school of hers. Now, don’t fret, Bella! What I propose to do is engage some respectable lady of birth and breeding to chaperon her about town. All you need to do is present the child, take her about a few times—and if you give a ball for her, I’ll make sure all is arranged without the least need for you to bestir yourself. I promise Persephone won’t be a charge on you!”

  “Oh, very well!” said Lady Yoxford, partly mollified. “If you are sure you can find a suitable chaperon ... for my health, as you know, is not strong! But I suppose we do owe it to poor Jack, and perhaps it will be only for the one Season.”

  “Can’t be any longer!” her husband confidently predicted. “Not with young Persephone’s face, as I remember it, and the Grafton fortune! By the by, Edmund, I trust the old gentleman left you enough to keep the estate up? It’s the very devil of a thing to be burdened with a great entailed place like that if there’s not the money to run it properly!”

  “No, all’s well there,” Sir Edmund assured his brother-in-law. “And Sir John’s isn’t the only inheritance to have come my way recently, you know,” he added, almost ruefully. “There’s Cousin Sophronia’s property too. I fancy I had better break my journey at Cheltenham when I fetch Persephone.”

  “Oh, ay—Isabella mentioned that. Old Lady Emberley—on your mother’s side, eh?”

  Sir Edmund nodded. “Yes, though a distant enough connection in all conscience! She lived at Cheltenham, very retired, and why she should take it into her head to leave me her property, which is considerable, I can’t imagine, except? that she had very little family apart from Bella and myself.”

  “And she didn’t approve of me, not at all!” said Isabella, a sudden twinkle in her eyes. “Do you remember how she came to stay at Waterleys, Edmund, and made me read sermons aloud to her?”

  “Tried to make you read sermons aloud to her!” amended her brother, with an answering smile.

  “And scolded poor Mama for allowing me to have my hair in curl papers at night! And brought her own tea caddy with her, saying that she never went away without it—Mama was a good deal put out by that. Oh yes, and you and Jack found that family of baby toads and smuggled them into the caddy! Cousin Sophronia never did find out how they got there, did she? But she never came to stay again, either!”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Sir Edmund. “Jack and I must have been a pair of little toads ourselves! By rights she should have made you her heir, Bella, not me—I’m sure the toads would have been rated a far worse crime than curl papers, if she had but found us out.”

  “No, no, even if she had found you out, since then you have become worthy and respectable and a credit to the family!” laughed Isabella, throwing up her hands as if to ward off the playful cuff her brother pretended to aim at her, quite in their old childhood style. “While anyone can see that I am as frivolous as ever—though not, of course, of a strong constitution,” she hastily recollected, lest all this merriment should make her seem too robust.

  “Best wife and mother in the world,” said Lord Yoxford, fondly. “Can’t have her wearing herself to a thread over young Persephone, y’know, Edmund!”

  “She won’t. Trust Bella for that!” said Sir Edmund, unfeelingly. “But to return to Cousin Sophronia, she certainly did seem set upon leaving her property within the family—which reminds me, George,” he added a little diffidently, “that should you find your brood becoming more of an expense than you’d bargained for, you must remember that their fond uncle has no dependants of his own, and is now far wealthier than he has any need to be!”

  “Thank you, Edmund, but don’t think of such a thing!” said Yoxford cheerfully, for indeed, his revenues were such that he could afford to keep his large family in luxury as well as comfort, and he did not in the least begrudge Sir Edmund the unexpected windfall of Lady Emberley’s legacy. “I’m only glad that the Emberley money has come to you—old ladies have been known to get strange fancies, and leave things oddly.”

  “As a matter of fact, she did leave things oddly,” said Sir Edmund, with a slight frown. “That’s one reason why I must visit Cheltenham: to look into the matter for myself. But now, it’s high time I paid my respects to that brood of yours!”

  And rising from his armchair with loose-limbed grace, he directed his steps towards the schoolroom and nursery, to be received there with boisterous delight by Edward, the eight-year-old twins, and little Maria, for all of whom he had remembered to bring home presents from abroad, not forgetting a length of richly plum-coloured Lyons silk for Miss Merriwether, and some caps prettily trimmed with Brussels lace for Nurse Barker.

  Unaware either of the relief occasioned by her departure in the bosom of Miss Madden (and, to a lesser degree, that of Miss Mary), or of the apprehensions still rendering Lady Yoxford uneasy at the prospect of her arrival, Miss Persephone Grafton continued to fume and fret while her guardian conferred with the post-boy and John Digby. The latter, who had been travelling up behind the chaise in the dickey, had got down when his master did; he was knowledgeable about horses, and had been with Sir Edmund for years, frequently combining the functions of valet and groom, since Sir Edmund disliked having many servants around him, except when protocol and etiquette demanded it. All three men now stood talking judiciously, examining the horses and the state of the road and glancing up at the sky, while Persephone waited with growing impatience to hear the result of their cogitations.

  At length Sir Edmund returned to her and swung himself up into the chaise, apparently unaware of the discontent plainly visible on her pretty face, so that she was obliged to repeat her imperious question as the vehicle moved on. “Well, and what was the matter?”

  “Nothing
of very great consequence,” said Sir Edmund, with the attractive smile that had melted many a female heart, although it totally failed to charm or mollify his present companion. “But after the offside horse stumbled in that pothole, the post-boy fears he may go lame unless he’s carefully nursed along. And what with the shoe that was cast when we were half-way on the second stage from Bath, and the condition of these country roads after the rain, I’m afraid we are already behind the time when I thought to arrive in Cheltenham. John reckons we shall be the best part of another hour on the road. I have to call on a lady in Cheltenham—Miss Radley is her name—and I fear I shan’t have time to take you first to the Plough, where we are to spend the night, so you must come with me. But I trust my business with Miss Radley won’t take long.”

  Persephone sniffed slightly and said, morosely, “What does it signify, in any case? What do you care for my comfort or convenience? Why should I go with you to visit Miss Radley?” she continued, rather pleased to find a grievance upon which to seize. “Who is this Miss Radley?”

  Experienced diplomat as he was, Sir Edmund sighed inwardly. In the changeable weather of this time of year, a journey of any distance was always likely to be interrupted by various delays and minor accidents to carriage or horses, and Miss Grafton bore very ill with such setbacks. Sir Edmund was beginning to find his ward’s company excessively trying, and was at a loss to account for her determined dislike of him. Her attitude all day, and indeed the previous evening as well, had veered between moody sulks and fits of outright temper, interspersed with accusations of harsh tyranny on his part. Like Miss Madden, he could not imagine why Persephone seemed so set against going to London. He realised he knew little about young ladies, but surely it was the dream of any schoolroom miss to shine in Society? And shine Miss Grafton undoubtedly would, if he were any judge of the matter!